Left and Leaving

by Jo Verity

  In fact he wasn’t feeling wonderful. What with the beer, the lack of air-con in the car and the whiff of Louise’s spaniel coming off the blanket on the back seat, it was all he could do not to throw up.

  His mother’s house was on the other side of the highway that ploughed through the middle of Coffs and continued up the coast to Brisbane. He’d been astounded when she’d upped and moved here. It transpired that, not long before his father’s fatal stroke, his parents had discussed what was to be done when one of them was ‘left’, agreeing that the survivor should sell the family home and buy something more manageable. And his mother had done just that. The house and garden were considerably smaller. And there was no pool to worry about. It was handy for the library, the botanic gardens and the cemetery where his father lay. The move had been a wrench but it made sense and, four years down the line, she seemed reconciled to her new situation.

  ‘Be patient with her, won’t you?’ Louise said. ‘She comes out with some real corkers. I used to argue but…’ she shrugged ‘it wouldn’t do for us to fall out so I let it wash over me now.’

  ‘Corkers?’

  She laughed. ‘You’ll find out soon enough.’

  ‘Polly implied she’s losing it.’

  ‘She gets a bit muddled at times but I wouldn’t say she’s losing it.’

  ‘Muddled?’

  ‘She mislays things. Forgets names. Misses birthdays.’

  ‘Sure you’re not talking about me?’ he said. ‘So you think she’s coping?’

  ‘Seems to be. She eats well. Does the crossword most days. Reads a lot. She’s joined an art class.’ She paused. ‘One slightly weird development. She’s taken to going to church on Sundays.’

  ‘Mum goes to church?’

  ‘Like I said, you’re going to have to let stuff wash over you.’

  They turned into Prince James Avenue. The single-storey houses looked flimsy, as though they were constructed of foam board. They varied in design but the impression was one of uninspired uniformity. Corrugated tin roofs added an air of impermanence, as though these nondescript dwellings were temporary and could be easily swept away whenever someone came up with something better.

  Louise stopped outside number twenty-three. ‘I’ll wait here,’ she said. ‘Let you have a few minutes together.’

  Yanking his rucksack off the back seat, he started down the concrete path. His mother must have been watching from the window because suddenly the front door opened and she was coming towards him, arms outstretched. He’d been so preoccupied with leaving Vivian and worrying about how things would go with Polly that he hadn’t prepared himself for this.

  His mother looked unfamiliar in what he guessed was her best frock. For one thing, she wasn’t wearing her pinny, the declaration of her intent to cook, or clean, or get on with something useful. For most of his life, Gil had found it convenient to think of his mother as a flinty pioneer. Indestructible. Enduring. But he could no longer escape the truth. His mother was an old lady.

  ‘Hey, Ma. You’re looking gorgeous,’ he said, adopting the twang he’d spent the past five years losing.

  ‘Gil,’ she said. ‘My Gil.’

  Dropping his pack, he took her in his arms, breathing in the cheap lavender scent she saved for special occasions. They stayed like this for some time, her head pressed against his chest, her fingers clutching his arm.

  She set about fattening him up, producing meals that she was adamant had been his favourites. Insisting that he do something to earn his keep, he persuaded her to list things that needed doing around the place. This wasn’t entirely altruistic. A trip to the DIY store (Louise had arranged insurance on his mother’s car) for a tap washer or pig netting for the fence was a legitimate reason to escape when her witter and reminiscing got too much.

  His sons were like sniffer dogs, frequently turning up to visit their grandmother when a meal was in the offing. They seemed unfazed by his presence as though he lived down the road and dropped in every day. There was a lot he wanted ask them. How was school? What were their plans? How did they feel about their sister’s pregnancy? But if he went at them too hard, they might stop coming, and he was getting to enjoy their being around. As agreed, he spent time with Louise, Dan and the kids who also made no big deal of his being there. As ever, Rachel was ‘busy, busy’, promising that, if she could ‘rearrange a few things’, she would drive down from Grafton at the weekend. He shared several beers with an old friend who’d heard he was in town, doing his best to look interested in gossip about people and places he couldn’t remember. Janey called but he managed to duck out of speaking to her, not wanting his meeting with Polly (assuming it happened) to be coloured by his ex-wife’s opinions.

  Resolved not to put pressure on his daughter, he waited to see whether she would get in touch. When, after a couple of days he’d heard nothing, he began to worry she might hold out and he capitulated and phoned.

  ‘I wondered when you’d get round to calling,’ she said. ‘It sounds pretty cosy over there.’

  The boys might appear to be oblivious but evidently they were reporting back to their sister.

  ‘I’m sure you’d be welcome,’ he said. ‘Look, I don’t know how you want to do this. Maybe we could go somewhere quiet for a chat.’

  ‘Neutral ground, you mean.’

  ‘If you like.’

  ‘So why don’t you pick me up from work this afternoon? I finish at four.’

  ‘You’re still working?’ he said.

  ‘See? Why d’you always have to do this?’

  He wasn’t sure what he always did but he apologised anyway and said he would be there.

  He’d assumed that Polly had stopped work. She still had a couple of months to go but he didn’t like to think of her being at everyone’s beck and call. He didn’t like to think of her working at the wretched supermarket, full stop. What had started out as a stopgap – ‘while I work out what I want to do with my life’ – appeared, somewhere along the line, to have become permanent.

  As four o’clock approached, he grew more nervous. Should he swing by a store and buy her a gift? Flowers? Something for the baby? He’d better get this right. She wouldn’t fall for any bullshit.

  He parked near the front entrance, scanning the women leaving the store. What if he didn’t recognise her? What if she’d changed her mind and wouldn’t talk to him? He switched off the engine and got out of the car. Sun, reflecting off every shiny surface, dazzled him. The expanse of tarmac acted as a vast storage heater, pumping out heat upon heat.

  He closed his eyes, evoking the watercolour palette of London in January. Brick-built terraces. Steeply-pitched roofs. Congested streets. Buzz. Hassle. Grimy snow on Tooting Bec Common. And there, in her green coat, Vivian striding to the Tube.

  As soon as he’d arrived at his mother’s, he’d checked that the picture frame containing her hair was undamaged, then tucked it back in the pocket of his rucksack. When they’d parted at Kings Cross, in the chaos of Friday morning’s rush hour, they’d agreed that phoning would be tricky. ‘Email?’ she’d said. ‘Mum’s not online.’ ‘No worries, Gil. It’s not long.’ ‘So I keep saying. But you’ll get in touch if…?’ ‘Of course.’ Seven miles above the Arabian Sea, he’d made a deal with himself. While he was in Coffs, his head must be one hundred per cent in Coffs – or what was the point of this? He placed his hand on the roof of the car, the discomfort of the hot metal yanking him back to the southern hemisphere.

  She appeared from the side of the building. The red supermarket tabard was tight across the bulge of her belly. Her hair was dragged back in a ponytail. Her face was plumper and she wore no make-up.

  He’d thought about this for too long – rehearsing what he might say, what she might say. Now that it came to it, he couldn’t speak.

  ‘I hope you’re not crying, Dad,’ she said.

  He saw tears well in her eyes.

  ‘I hope so too,’ he said.

  He tried not to crush her belly
as they came together in a hug.

  ‘You’re hot,’ he said.

  ‘Hot. Bloated. Covered in stretch marks. Peeing every five minutes. It’s a barrel of laughs.’

  He held her tighter. There was nothing he could say to make it better.

  She pulled the band from her ponytail, shaking her head to loosen her hair. ‘Can you help me off with this?’ she said, indicating the fastenings on the tacky nylon tabard.

  Beneath it she was wearing shorts and a white T-shirt, her bump and protruding navel visible through the stretched fabric. She stared at him, defying him to comment, and he wanted to thump the shit who had done this to her.

  ‘Okay. Where shall we go?’ he said.

  She pretended to think but he was sure that she already had it planned.

  ‘Could we go out to Mutton Bird?’ she said.

  He’d expected he to suggest somewhere cool, a restaurant maybe or a shaded spot, certainly not a nature reserve where there was nothing but scrub and rocks.

  ‘It’ll be scorching out there.’

  She shrugged. ‘So why bother asking me?’

  They drove to the Marina, parking the car and walking along the boardwalk that gave access to dozens of moored boats and linked Mutton Bird Island to the mainland. A slight breeze, blowing off the sea, went a little way to alleviate the heat but the sun was unremitting.

  ‘You’re going to burn,’ she said.

  He pulled a bottle of Factor 50 from his pocket – his mother had insisted he bring it – and slathered it over his arms, legs and face. The wholesome aroma transported him back twenty years.

  ‘I was down here the other day,’ he said, pointing towards Jetty Beach. ‘Remember how you hated wearing a cozzie?’

  ‘Remember how you hated coming to the beach? You’d stick it for ten minutes then bugger off with your camera.’

  Was that how it had been? Maybe, maybe not, but it was enough that Polly remembered it that way.

  ‘Let’s not fall out about the past,’ he said. ‘It’s what happens from here on that’s important.’ His words might have come straight from a self-help manual.

  ‘The baby’s okay?’ he said. ‘You get regular checks? Blood pressure. Urine.’

  ‘Dad. I’m not a complete moron.’

  ‘No. You’re not.’

  Were he to tell her that one day she would fuss this way over her own daughter she wouldn’t believe him.

  He ploughed on, steeled for the next rebuke. ‘Everything’s good at home?’

  She shrugged. ‘It’s hard after having my own place. Don’t get me wrong, Alan’s been great. And I know I’m lucky to be living rent free, blah, blah, blah. Mum can be pretty controlling, though. You must know that.’

  ‘Yeah. Well. Someone had to take control.’

  They found a patch of shade under the wooden walkway leading up from the shore to the path running down the spine of the island. A previous visitor had faked up a seat from a pile of rocks and a plank of sea-smoothed timber, and Gil took his daughter’s arm, steadying her as she lowered herself onto the makeshift bench.

  ‘So. How would you like things to go from here?’ he said, hoping to guide her gently toward telling him what she wanted from him. Instead she took off in another direction altogether.

  ‘D’you have a magic wand handy?’ she said. She picked up a stone and threw it at a gull that was tormenting a small brown bird. ‘I don’t think I can do this, Dad. What if I can’t stand this baby? Like that woman in the book? What if I’m a bad mother? I’m not going to breastfeed, that’s for sure.’

  His daughter’s hands were cradling her belly as if to shield her unborn child from what was being said.

  ‘You can do anything you want to do, Polly.’

  ‘That’s crap, and you know it.’ She closed her eyes and massaged the back of her neck. ‘I can’t put my life on hold for the next eighteen years. I can’t.’

  ‘It won’t be on hold.’

  ‘Yours obviously wasn’t,’ she said, ‘but then you’re a bloke, aren’t you?’

  Children’s voices carried across the water. A tourist boat – big and ugly – manoeuvred into the harbour.

  ‘Isn’t this when you’re supposed to tell me how wonderful parenthood is? Everyone does. But I sit at my checkout, day after day, seeing all those miserable women with their screaming babies and that’s not the message I get.’

  He took her hand. ‘I don’t have the right to advise anyone on parenthood. I was rubbish at it. I don’t know why. I had a terrific role model.’

  ‘Gramps was a good dad?’

  ‘The best.’

  They sat in silence and he knew she was remembering the kind grandfather whom he resembled slightly, or so everyone said, who’d always had time to play or to read or to talk to her.

  ‘I so miss him, Dad.’ She wiped a tear from her cheek. ‘Shit. That’s another thing. I keep crying.’

  ‘Hormones,’ Gil said, putting his arm around her.

  They walked slowly on up the path to the highest point of the island, pausing now and then to let Polly catch her breath. She pointed back towards the town. ‘Coffs looks pretty good from here, doesn’t it?’

  He couldn’t deny that from a distance the town, rising up the hill from the white sands of the bay, backed by the misty ridge of the Great Dividing Range, looked idyllic.

  She closed her eyes and flexed her neck.

  ‘You okay?’ he said.

  ‘No. My back’s killing me,’ she said. ‘Can we go now?’

  The path was peppered with protruding stones lying in wait for the unwary. But when he offered his hand she didn’t take it. As they made their way back, he attempted to pick up their conversation, hoping to discover whether he even figured in her future.

  Eventually she said, ‘Can we not talk, Dad? I’ve been up since six. I’m shattered.’

  He dropped her back at the supermarket car park, holding the door open as she manoeuvred herself behind the wheel of an old Mazda.

  ‘See you soon?’ he said.

  She gunned the engine and, without replying, drove off.

  He’d expected a shouting match. Tears. Polly raking up every teenage grudge. Maybe, if she got really steamed up, physical violence. Instead he’d been faced with a frightened girl who was convinced that she’d blown her chances of a happy life.

  Overwhelmed with sadness, he watched her car filter into the traffic and disappear down the highway.

  Next morning, on the way to Bunnings Warehouse for a hacksaw blade, he stopped at the internet café. He’d resisted until now but seeing Polly, realising how scared and miserable she was, had unleashed a pack of black thoughts. Needing to know that Vivian wasn’t trying to contact him, he logged on and scanned his unopened mail. His inbox was jam-packed with dross but there was nothing from her. They’d agreed – more or less – that she would get in touch only if her father died. Her silence, although disappointing, had to be good news. Sitting in front of the machine, he wanted, more than anything, to mail her. To let her know that he was counting the days. But superstition triumphed. Renege on his deal with the gods – one hundred per cent in Coffs – and even the slightest chance of making things right with Polly would be scuppered.

  Louise asked him whether he could bear a family get together. ‘Rachel’s coming down at the weekend. It’d be at our place. Lunch. Nothing fancy.’ She paused. ‘It’d mean the world to Mum.’

  ‘Great idea,’ he said.

  ‘Really?’

  ‘No. But you’re right. We should do this.’

  ‘Thanks, Gil. It might be the last—’

  ‘I know.’

  Time was racing away. Good as it was to see the rest of his family, that wasn’t why he’d come here. He had to see Polly again but whenever he called she was either at work or ‘going out’. During one particularly frustrating phone call, he was a whisker away from telling her that he’d flown half way round the world, and spent a grand that he didn’t have, in order to see h
er. Maybe she was testing him. Maybe that was exactly what she wanted him to do. But after Mutton Bird he no longer had confidence in his own judgement.

  Not knowing what else to do, he contacted Janey. ‘Could we meet?’ he said. ‘I’d really appreciate an update on the kids. Your take on how they’re doing. The boys seem fine but it’s blood out of a stone when it comes to hard information. And Polly. I’m not sure what’s going on there. She seems very down.’

  Janey was a nicer person than she used to be. He attributed this to his successor – solid, dependable Alan. Alan’s first marriage had been childless and, when he and Janey got together, he’d taken to the kids, and they to him. Gil might have resented this but in fact he was grateful to the man who had created a stable home for them.

  They met in Janey’s lunch break, on the trade park where she worked as office-manager for a building supplies firm.

  ‘Good to see you, Janey,’ he said.

  She laughed. ‘Liar. You’ve been avoiding me all week.’

  ‘You know what a coward I am.’

  ‘I do.’ She placed a hand on his knee. (Her hand was so familiar but what happened to their ring?) ‘It’s fine, Gil. It’s been fine for years. What about you? Is your new life living up to expectations?’

  ‘It has its moments.’

  They sat on a wall in the shade of a eucalyptus tree, sharing her sandwiches while she gave him a rundown on their sons. Chris found schoolwork easier than his brother but was slapdash. Adam had a flare for design. They should both achieve grades that would take them to university if that were the way they wanted to go.

  ‘You’re doing a great job, Janey,’ he said.

  ‘That’s not what you said when you heard about Polly. You practically accused me of child neglect.’

  ‘Yes. Well. I was totally out of order. Do we know anything about the father?’

  ‘No. And I advise you not to go there. She’s very tetchy.’

  ‘Was it a one night stand?’ he said.

  ‘I don’t know. Horrible to think that, but it might be easier in the long run.’

  ‘She seemed so excited when she wrote telling me. I had to be happy for her. She made out you were over the moon.’