Bec looked at the passersby who marched on at their urgent pace. Some had cords dangling from their ears on the way to the train stations and bus depots, plugged into iPods and iPhones. Most were well dressed for offices, high heels swapped for runners by the older women. Some looked rough and undernourished, the pallor of their cheeks like grey-brown fungi, which never saw the sun. And each of them wore a frown. As if fear was guiding them home.
Bec heard in Evie’s words a lesson being delivered in a roundabout way to her. She knew the woman was trying to tell her it was time for this tragedy to wake her up and stir her into action. Into getting onto the path of who she truly was.
The café door opened and a woman came in. Bec could hear the rumble of the city, the rumble of humanity, busy and oblivious like ants. The outside air that wafted in felt tepid, coating her skin in a kind of amphibian-like film. The sudden roar of the coffee machine was making her head buzz and the juicer was rattling her nerves.
‘I really must be getting back to the hospital,’ she said.
‘Trust me. Archie is fine.’
Again Rebecca felt a confidence build in her from Evie’s presence and definitive stance on Archie’s condition. ‘Why did you come? Why are you here, helping me through this? What about your shop?’ Bec’s blue eyes settled on the still pretty face of the elderly Evie, a frown underscoring her question.
‘You know what small towns are like,’ Evie said, shrugging and fiddling with the sugar sachets that sat in red polka-dot cups. ‘I heard your boy was injured. Larissa offered to mind the shop. She’s just next door and there’s an internal door between the two, so it’s easy for her. Plus Gabs insisted I come to you. Yazzie insisted. Doreen insisted. As did Sol and Candy and every other person in that town. I was coming to the city anyway. And you need someone. Someone with a bit of sense. I used to work in the outback as a nurse. In a past life. I know what trauma is like. So I came and I brought with me all that love from the rest of the people in Bendoorin and round about. I think you’ve forgotten, Rebecca, how much you and the boys are loved.’
When they were done eating, Evie and Rebecca stepped out onto the street. Rebecca caught sight of a gash of blue sky between the towering buildings. The failing sunlight was glancing off the tops of the high-rises in triangular slices of golden light.
‘Ten more minutes before you go back,’ Evie said. Before Rebecca could argue, she was pressing the button on the traffic lights and they were crossing the street to an overwatered square of lawn that lolled out the front of a giant office building.
‘Take off your boots,’ Evie said, slipping off her own shoes, ‘and put your feet on the earth. Let the soil ground you.’
Rebecca looked at Evie as if she was queer.
‘Try it.’
She shrugged, removed her boots, then peeled off her socks. The grass felt cool on the soles of her feet, which were tender and bruised still from the river-paddock stones. Together they sat down, side by side, and watched as people passed on the street, to be swallowed up by the dark cavern of a giant railway station.
‘Can you feel the vibrational energy under you?’
Bec shook her head.
‘Everything has vibrations. It’s quantum physics. The life in the soil does. You do. To get through life it is wonderful to learn to sit outside yourself and observe life flow past you as pure energy. It’s even fun to try it.’
Prior to meeting Evie, Rebecca had only been used to straight conversations about sheep and cattle-stocking rates and grazing methods and what the footy teams might do on the weekend. But now she was being opened up to a whole new way of seeing the world. It was a relief to have such things shown to her through Evie’s comfort and kindness.
‘If you know that everyone is vibrational energy, you can stop yourself from getting caught up in other people’s stuff if it isn’t aligned to your own.’
Rebecca thought of the mornings she woke when before she could grasp any kind of thought about the day ahead, she would simply float in a sleepy bliss, opening her eyes to the beautiful mountains that basked in morning sun beyond the upstairs bull-nose verandah of their bedroom.
Then she would hear Charlie, clumping about in the bathroom. Muttering to himself. Telling her to get up. Hacking up a cough from too many bummed cigarettes and beers. His energy like a lead-weight sinker. She would feel suddenly tangled in his line and those first happy moments of waking would slide past her as she was being dragged under in a sludge pond.
‘Is that why I feel so angry around Charlie all the time? I know I should make the marriage work —’
Evie cut her off. ‘If you force something, it will never come to you. If it makes you feel good, do it.’
‘So that’s why he had an affair? Because it felt good?’ Rebecca was embarrassed she had blurted out her anger over Charlie’s infidelities, but she could feel something in her wanting to unravel the tangled mess that her emotions seemed to be. She plucked at the grass, wanting nothing more than to go to Archie’s bedside and take him out of that hospital and back to being the healthy boy he was, grabbing Ben away too, leaving her husband and her dysfunctional family behind. She hoped Evie would offer some advice. She was tired of living with such anger towards Charlie’s actions.
‘We are all on a solo journey,’ Evie said. ‘We come into the world alone, we go out alone. Once you open up, wake up and transition into being more aware, people you may have lived with for a long time can vibrate out of your path. That’s all it is. There is no right and wrong. It just simply is. Married or not. We journey along solo and sometimes we choose to hang out with others. Humanity has made it all so complicated and fraught, with impossible “rules”.’
‘Are you suggesting Charlie and I will separate?’
‘You have been separate all along. Your choice is, do you want to journey with him still or journey apart from him? You already have children together so how you travel from here is completely dependent on your beliefs and attitudes, not his. Remember, we make our own reality with our thoughts.’
Rebecca got to her feet. ‘I didn’t choose to have Archie hit by a bull! Look, I’m sorry, I have to be getting back.’ She tugged on her socks and boots.
‘Don’t be afraid,’ Evie said, laying her cool palm on Rebecca’s forearm. The old woman began to get up stiffly from the ground and Rebecca felt a jab of guilt. Her frayed nerves were causing her to be snappy with someone who had shown her only kindness.
She reached down and took Evie’s elbow, gently helping her up, then looked deep into her emerald-green eyes. ‘Sorry,’ she said quietly.
‘I know you are terrified of losing your boy. But you will never lose him, no matter what. Love is eternal and the energy in us is eternal. That’s another flawed premise of this planet that is perpetuated by the masses … that death is the end. There is no end. We’ve all been sent to this planet to hang out in these meatbags so we might as well make the most of it, no matter what life throws at us. The true Archie is not his body. It’s his energy. He is eternal, no matter what. And so is your love for him.’
Rebecca stooped to hug Evie. Despite the old woman’s small frame, she felt the power of her peaceful life force and at last felt calm.
When Rebecca walked back into the hospital and the room where her family had been waiting, she was relieved to find they had all gone. Frankie had finally taken Ben back to her flat and Mick and Trudy had left too.
She was met with an angry bark from Charlie. ‘Where have you been? What if something had happened?’
‘You’ve got a phone. You know how to use it,’ she said sarcastically.
‘Well, it’s my turn to get out of here. I’m going for a beer,’ he said.
‘Do you have to go boozing?’ she said, horrified.
He scowled at her. ‘I need to get out of here. You were gone for ages.’
Rebecca watched him tug down his jumper and walk from the hospital. This time she felt strangely unaffected and removed from him.
Rebecca was dozing when the surgeon arrived and gently coughed, waking her. She opened her eyes and instantly saw the look on his face. Before he had even spoken, relief swept through her body. In his hands, he held a big envelope of Archie’s scans.
‘He’s a strong little man. It’s all looking good. Very good. He’ll certainly make it. We’ll start to allow him to come round in his own time. Would you like to come and sit beside his bed?’
It was then Rebecca felt the pulse of gratitude and love as strong as the pull of the moon travel through her very being. She looked upwards to the panelled white ceiling of the hospital. ‘Thank you,’ she cried out to the surgeon, and, ‘Oh, thank you, god, thank you, the universe, whoever you are,’ she said, addressing the invisible force that was turning the planet and turning her days. With tears in her eyes and gratitude in her heart, she began to follow the surgeon, in search of her son.
Twenty-one
Gabs slammed the car door a little too hard, then grinned at Rebecca. ‘It’s shut.’ She dragged on her seat belt, then rummaged around in a shopping bag.
‘Don’t tell me you brought me fancy dress for the drive home,’ Bec joked.
‘Oh, that would’ve been a great idea. We could’ve dressed as roadkill.’
‘Oh, you’re a shocker, Gabrielle! But seriously, thanks for offering to come with me,’ Bec said.
‘Are you nuts? I’m not doing it for you, you slag. I’m doing it for my own bit of extra kid-free time. God, what a hangover! Two days’ worth! Drank the whole trip down from Bendoorin, then Frank took me to some Italian place last night. Too much vino. So today Gabs was super-organised and got you a roadie, and me, hair of the dog,’ she said, sitting a can of beer in the console and fizzing her own can open, then grinning at Bec. ‘Man, I feel crook!’ She burped loudly.
‘Aw pwor!’ said Bec, waving the air in front of her. ‘That stinks!’
‘I know, bloody garlic bread and linguine with garlic cream sauce.’
‘Yuck.’
‘You think yuck now; wait till it reaches my other end,’ she said.
Bec shook her head. ‘God, four hours in the car with Gabs and her gut, that’s going to be fun, isn’t it?’ she said, looking in the rear-vision mirror at Ben, who sat in a booster seat, grinning at his mother’s funny friend.
‘Let’s rock and roll,’ Gabs said, swivelling round to look at Ben. ‘All set to go, numb nuts?’
Ben waggled his legs up and down excitedly. ‘Yes, stinky bum,’ he said.
‘Oi!’ cautioned Bec, glaring at him. ‘Don’t let her steer you off track! Mind your manners, Ben.’
Rebecca pulled out into the city traffic, a mix of emotions swirling in her. She’d endured this city an entire six weeks. Six weeks of hell; but every day she reminded herself that what she endured was nothing compared to what little Archie had been through. He’d been in pain almost the whole time, and sick from the medication to boot. He’d had his fifth birthday in a hospital ward with tubes in him and no little friends. At least the hospital had arranged a volunteer clown and a slobbery Labrador.
At last they were on the road home.
Bec turned left into another busy street and double-parked near an ambulance bay. There, the driver of a patient transport vehicle was already waiting for them and he flashed his lights, motioning to her to follow. Through the vehicle window, she could see the shape of Charlie as he settled himself into the rear passenger seat for the drive with Archie back to Bendoorin.
Rebecca knew her little Archie was safely bedded down in the rear of the transfer vehicle with the kindest red-faced male nurse the hospital could muster. Archie still had a little way to go on his recovery so it had been decided that rather than bump him over the remote roads to Bendoorin, they would shuttle him there in comfort.
It was a relief for Bec too, who had watched him struggle for weeks in the city, away from the farm. Archie would only need to spend another two weeks max in the Bendoorin hospital until he came home. Bec tried not to think about what she may face with Charlie there.
Even though Archie was doing extremely well, Bec was still yet to recover from the shock of it all. Every day she had awoken at her mother’s city flat with a leaden tiredness. A queasiness and uneasiness sat with her most of the time. All she wanted to do was sleep.
It had been Evie who had been Rebecca’s rock. Somehow, on some level, the strength and peace that Evie brought had got them through. Rebecca and the boys were now accustomed to her gentle, loving but weird ways and words. The array of creams, tonics, crystals and affirmations that she brought to the hospital had all helped. Evie had been there on the first long, painful nights … and in her non-invasive way seemed to guide them all onto a path of healing, inside and out. Except for Charlie, who dismissed her as a ‘nosey hippy nong’.
Rebecca could now barely stand to be in Charlie’s presence. On the nights following the accident, they had all crammed into Frankie’s city apartment, Ben and her sleeping on the foldout couch, Charlie sleeping on the trundle. The tension between them was like an ugly ghoul in the room. The days blurred into weeks. Her mother coming and going. Peter cheerfully dishing up beautiful meals only to have them ruined by the sourness between Rebecca and Charlie.
Despite Charlie’s declaration of apology and of his love for her on the day of the accident, Rebecca had felt him slip away from her. The familiar hostility and bitterness returned as soon as Archie was clear of danger.
As the time in the city dragged on, she no longer believed she could bring their marriage back to life. Nor did she want to.
Then, without warning, Charlie had announced he was going to see his parents, and had revved away with the family four-wheel drive, leaving Bec without transport in the city, not saying when he would be back.
The job of caring for the livestock on Waters Meeting was now down to the goodwill of Frank and Gabs, Dennis and Doreen and the Rivermont crew helping out.
Each day without the vehicle, Rebecca was forced to take public transport to the hospital. She felt numb and haunted, sitting on the concertina-like bus. It was like being inside a giant piano accordion and just as noisy. She looked around at the faces of the people on the bus: they were blank, sad. Energetically dead. She felt bombarded by billboards, news bulletins, iPods, newspapers, sex scandals. She baulked at the intensity of the negativity — even in the sinister advertising intentions of the pretty models plastered metres high on buildings, making her feel bedraggled and less than perfect. She longed for Waters Meeting and the stillness.
But then she realised even if she was in her home environment, her mind would still be in turmoil.
Since the first day in the hospital when Evie had come to visit, she had begun to truly listen to the voice inside her head. As she kept reminding herself to pay attention to her thoughts, she realised it was no wonder life was on the slide for her. If what Evie had said so often was true — ‘that thoughts and words create your world’ — then no wonder she was in the shit. Her thoughts were shitty. They stank!
In that moment on the crowded bus, she realised she was dwelling on the sorrows outside herself. The fact that the city was an ugly concrete jungle where no one in society seemed to care. How no one would offer a seat to women with young children or the elderly any more.
But with her revelation, she had figured out all she had to do was to look away from the negatives around her and grasp onto any kind of good that she could find. No matter how small that good was.
On those journeys on the bus, as the weeks rolled by, Rebecca began to practise looking for the good. She leaned into Ben’s body and breathed in the shampoo scent of his hair and noticed the cute dimpled knuckles on his hand as he held the metal rail of the seat in front. She began to visualise Archie happy and well and reunited with them. She began to tell herself to ‘let go’ and to ‘trust’. Right now Rebecca realised she needed trust. And above all, to laugh.
And it wasn’t hard for her to laugh right now. All she
had to do was to look to her left, where Gabs sat with her white owl-eyes Chemmart sunnies, her white-socked feet up on the dash, with her best town navy shorts and hot pink polo shirt. Her short dark hair raked at all angles. Her brand-new Kmart runners kicked off on the floor of the vehicle.
‘You are one stylish unit,’ Rebecca said to her mate.
Gabs turned, pulled her sunnies down, looked blandly at Bec and fizzed the pull on another beer. She lowered her voice so Ben couldn’t hear. ‘Tell me about it. I am a goddess! Frank can’t get enough of me. He had me in the hotel shower. I put Nair on his nuts and all over. He’s as smooth and as fast as Usain Bolt.’
‘Nice. Really nice.’
Gabs grinned and began to open up the glovebox. ‘Might as well make the most of this little road trip. You got any tunes in this Mummymobile?’
‘Most of my CDs got covered in Thomas the Tank Engine yoghurt, compliments of someone in the back.’ Bec glanced at Ben and smiled at him. ‘You might find one under the seat.’
Gabs sat up after her search and proudly held up the Esther and Jerry CD as if she had caught a good-sized trout.
‘Ta-da! Oh?’ she said, looking at the cover. ‘Attracting the life you want,’ she read. ‘Not exactly the kind of listening I had in mind, but it sounds good. Mmm, what kind of life do I want though? Have you ever really thought about it? What you want?’
Rebecca pulled an ‘I dunno’ face. ‘What I want? I want good health. Mostly for my children. And to be happy.’
‘Not specific enough,’ Gabs said.
‘Forget me. What about you, Gabs? What do you want?’
‘I’ve always thought I’d want a million dollars, but if I got it, I sure as hell wouldn’t know what to do with it,’ Gabs said.
‘Well, I know where it would all go,’ Rebecca said. ‘It would be like my life. It would all go into the farm. You know, if you and Frank sold your place, you’d get a few million. You could retire and get into homemaking and topiary.’
The Farmer's Wife Page 16