I buy her cigarettes at the newsagency and her beer at the bottle shop next door. I also buy food for our dinner tonight; steak, potatoes and peas, and, at the last minute, a cake from the supermarket because it is, after all, my birthday.
As I am coming out of the shop, I see Mrs Donovan. I try to look away, but it is too late. Our eyes meet.
Hello, Elise. She smiles and her voice has a measure of concern. They are all like this. They will always be like this. How’s your poor mother? she asks.
I tell her that she’s fine and as I speak, I turn my whole body away from her, wanting to look like I am in a hurry.
You know if ever there’s anything you need done, you just have to ask.
I am not sure what she means but I smile politely and thank her.
I’m sure Jo-anne would love to catch up. Maybe you could come and have dinner next time she visits? Or I could arrange an evening?
Jo-anne is her daughter. We went to school together but we were not friends.
Mrs Donovan is not really concerned for me. She is just curious. They are all just curious. Still. After all these years.
I tell her that I must hurry. I turn my back on her as I am saying goodbye because I do not want to see that look on her face.
On Military Road the wind is wild. It comes straight off the ocean. I can feel the spray from the sea even though I am two streets back, and above my head the pine trees creak dangerously. The streetlights are out and I walk quickly, head down, forcing my way through the gust. There are not many cars. One comes towards me, crawling slowly, and I can hear the bass of the stereo speakers long before it gets close. As it passes, the driver leans on his horn, and someone winds down the window and shouts out to me. I cannot hear the words above the music and the roar of the wind. It may be someone I know. It may not.
I just keep my head low and walk faster.
I hate these streets at night.
3
You often do not see things until you are forced to see them through the eyes of someone else.
That is the way it is for me.
I do not think I ever really saw our house until Martin first came here. I do not think I ever really saw Dorothy either. But perhaps I did. Somewhere, deep inside. I just did not want to admit it to myself.
This is the house that my mother came to when she married Franco. Thirty-two years ago. Eighteen and pregnant, with her wide, startled eyes and her thick auburn hair. My mother was beautiful. This is what she has told me. Often.
I had the most beautiful legs, and she would pull her dress up high, right there on the street. Frances would ignore her. I would blush scarlet. She would keep on talking. But now look at them. This is what happens when you are left on your own with two children. And she would sigh, then drop all her bags on the pavement, so that she could truly sigh, with no distractions. He loved me this much. She would stretch her arms out wide. He really loved me. She would sigh one more time and then she would pick up the shopping with one last sigh to signal that the performance was over. It was our cue to start walking again.
But a few steps further on, she would start again. Her litany was endless.
We had nothing but our love for each other, she would tell us. We did not even own this house. Your father had to go off and earn money. As soon as we were married.
And he had. Miles away. A linesman with the electricity trust in the far north.
It broke his heart, to be away. Because he loved me. This much. And her arms were outstretched again, graceful like the ballerina she had dreamed of being.
This much, Frances would mock, rolling her eyes in disgust. This bloody much.
Don’t, I would say, but she would not stop.
This much, this much, this much, as she would dance around the room, and I would watch her, terrified of Dorothy walking through the bedroom door and witnessing Frances’s mockery and my own guilty laughter. This much, and she would pull me up from where I sat on my bed and twirl me round, both of us giggling now, her skirt up high, both of us laughing, twirling and twirling, until we collapsed, dizzy, exhausted, on the bed.
This much, we would whisper, one more time, in unison. This much.
And then Frances would turn away from me.
This much, I would say, hopefully.
But she would not respond.
This much, I would try again. Wanting her back. Reaching for her. My words faint in the silence that had descended.
But the game was over. As suddenly as it had begun.
My mother is fifty now. It is not old, but she seems old. She is no longer the wild girl who danced too much, talked too much and drank too much.
All the boys were in love with me, she would say, looking at herself in the mirror. The girls did not like me, they were envious, but the boys . . .
I can see her now as she would have been then. Never still, never silent, eager, laughing too loudly as one of them put his hands on her hips and another stroked her thigh. And I can see the other girls, sipping their shandies and watching with tight-lipped disapproval, whispering behind her back and shaking their heads, She is so embarrassing.
They were envious, my mother would repeat.
Perhaps they were. But now they are just curious, thinly veiled by a sad-eyed, ‘we knew this would happen’ concern. Poor thing, they say to each other, and they look at me, worried and anxious, including me in their circle of righteousness as an act of charity.
But my mother is oblivious to them. This house is now her world. She does not see them and she does not hear them. She probably never did.
She spends most days sitting at the kitchen table, writing letters or clipping newspaper articles and arranging them into two neat piles: ‘Similar Stories’ and ‘Possibilities’. She pastes these into scrapbooks. There are a pile of them in my old bedroom. She does not look at them again, but she needs to know they are there. They may contain that clue, that link she needs should she ever come close to unravelling the whole story. Because I think she still believes that one day she will find out what happened. I think she still believes that one day she will know.
So, when I arrive at the back door, she is there at the table. She is always there. In the yellow of the fluorescent light, she reads and pastes and reads and pastes. When I leave her, she goes back to her seat and continues, while outside the winter winds numb the hands of the old men on the jetty. Fishing for sharks in the midnight ocean.
This is my mother.
I never really saw her until I was forced to see her through the eyes of someone else. She never really sees me, and she never will. She looks at me through a cloud. The few words I say are like branches scratching on the windowpanes. Irritating, but they do not touch her. They just beat on the thick glass that protects her.
When Martin first came here, I was forced to see her as she is, and to see what this house had become. But perhaps I already had, and that was why I never wanted him to visit.
Or perhaps I did not want to see him.
He came to the front, although I had told him not to. We have always come in the back way. The front door was stuck from years of wet winters and long dry summers. I pulled and he pushed but it would not move.
Come round the back, I kept on telling him. But he did not listen.
Jesus, he said when he finally burst through, the whole house shuddering with the force of his impact, you need to do something about that.
And as he stood there, hot and sweaty in the dark corridor, I saw the rips in the carpet and the dim yellowing paint on the walls, fibro walls that sagged like cardboard in the wet and dried again in the intense heat of summer, powdery dry. And I saw him in his neat jeans and ironed shirt with button-down collar, his face pink and shiny from the effort.
I’ll just get my things, I said, hoping he would stay where he was, but he didn’t. He was right behind me. Through the lounge room and past the photograph of Frances.
Who’s that? he asked.
I told him it was my siste
r, but as I spoke, I kept on walking, out to the kitchen, with him right on my heels.
She was there, sitting at the table, watching us both as we came in.
Dorothy.
He held out his hand, but she did not move. She just looked at him. Up and down. I did not want to see what she saw.
Pleased to meet you, and Martin pulled out a chair and sat down opposite her. I think I just about succeeded in knocking the house down.
She turned back to her papers.
She continued reading.
Anything interesting in the news? he asked.
Not yet, and she did not lift her gaze.
I could feel my fingers pressing into my arms, white, and I willed him, with all my concentration, to notice that I wanted to go.
Shall we have a cup of tea? he suggested, thinking that the two words he had managed to drag out of her were an indication that she was coming around. There’s no rush, is there? and he looked up at me, standing silent by the kitchen sink.
Dorothy put her scissors down.
I am quite busy, she said, in the pompous voice she uses when she is irritated. I have a lot to get through, and she indicated the pile of papers in front of her.
I was looking directly at Martin now, waiting for him to meet my eye, waiting for him to understand. And at last he pushed his chair back, the leg lifting a corner of the lino. He flattened it back down again.
She’s a little dotty, isn’t she? he said as we headed out the back gate, and he reached to put his arm around my shoulder.
I had already moved away.
The three of us are in the kitchen now. I am cooking my birthday dinner and Martin is talking loudly about work. I do not listen. I concentrate on pounding the steak until it is tender. Dorothy does not listen either. She turns the pages of the paper slowly.
Outside the wind howls. It blows in through the crack under the door and lifts the carpets in the hall. If I stepped out there now, it would be billowing, like the ocean, beneath my feet. Martin once offered to tack it down for her but Dorothy told him there was no need. She liked it as it was.
Your father always enjoyed a steak, she says as I drop each piece into the pan. She speaks above Martin until he is forced to be silent. When he would come back from work, tired and hungry, I would cook it for him.
It is likely that she is lying. I cannot remember Dorothy ever cooking for him. But perhaps she did, back then, when he was alive. I cannot remember.
Martin clears the table. He reaches for the pile of Dorothy’s papers but she stops him.
These are not read, she says, and she moves them herself to a stack in the corner of the kitchen.
Martin offers us all a glass of wine. Dorothy only drinks beer and I do not want one, but he pours three glasses anyway.
It is one of his favourites. An excellent year, and he sniffs his glass appreciatively.
He passes one to Dorothy but she ignores him.
I have a present for you, she says, and I am surprised she has remembered, even more surprised that she has made some effort towards celebrating the occasion.
She goes off to her bedroom and comes back with a bundle of brown paper tied together with one of my old hair ribbons.
I am anxious as I take it from her. Martin leans over my shoulder and I can sense his amused curiosity. He is wondering what Dotty Dot, as he likes to call her, has got for me.
To most eyes, it would seem to be just an old piece of material. Pale-blue and dirty. But I can feel how slippery cool it is beneath my fingers and as I lift its weightlessness from the paper, I know what it is. As a child I had loved it. A wedding gift she had bought for herself. A satin dressing-gown. I remember how beautiful she had looked as she had spun around the living room in it.
And as I smile at her, she smiles back. It is just a moment, a brief instant, but it is enough to make me glad to have come here after all.
Thank you, I say and I can see Dorothy is pleased I am pleased.
Martin leans over my shoulder. I’m looking forward to seeing you in that, he laughs.
That night, we drive home in silence. The windows have fogged in the rain and Martin swears as he leans forward to wipe a small circle of vision in the windscreen. The heater is on full and there is no air. I am concentrating on pushing down the nausea.
Well, that wasn’t so bad, he says, referring to the evening.
His voice jolts in the quiet. I do not answer him.
He turns on the radio and starts humming to the music.
Although God knows what she intended by giving you that filthy rag. He takes my hand and squeezes it in his own. There is concern in his voice now and I do not want to hear what he has started to say. I think we’re going to have to talk again, he says, gently, about the possibility of a home.
I stare out the window.
Not tonight, he says, patting my fingers, but soon.
I stare at the patterns the rain is making on the glass and I think to myself that I will not even bother to turn around and fight him. He is a fool to think that he could make her leave that house. He has no idea.
Don’t sulk, he says, when we pull into the driveway.
Why the silent treatment? he asks as I brush my teeth.
You’re impossible, he says, finally giving up on me, and he shrugs his shoulders as he turns towards the bedroom.
I want to be by myself.
In the kitchen, I take my photo out from under the lining of the cutlery drawer. And, holding it up to the light, I try to see us as we really were.
4
Even this early in the morning it is hot. Everything is still, stunned and helpless in the relentless shimmer. The labrador from across the road has surrendered. She lies, tongue hanging out, in the shade of the scrappy almond tree by the fence. Underfoot, the asphalt seems to melt, black sticky tar, sweet smelling and soft to the tread.
Frances leads. I follow. There are no other people on the street and it is quiet, weekday quiet, with the desolation that descends once the working day has begun. Mothers who stay at home stay inside with the blinds down and the doors shut. They know what today will be like, and there is no sign of possible relief in the sky. No wisp of cloud, no faint breath of wind, no hint of change.
I walk at least ten feet behind, watching Frances ahead of me, the swing of the narrow hips, the long-legged stride, and I wish I could be like that. I do not dare run up alongside her. I have been forbidden. She may be my friend at home but outside it is a different matter, and I obey her orders. Without question.
Across Military Road and to the other side, we pass the Brownswords’, and I look in, hoping Tamara will be out the front and allowed to come to the beach with us. But the yard is empty, and the front door closed. Even if she had been there, it is unlikely Mrs Brownsword would have agreed. Frances is not responsible enough, in fact she is A bad influence. I know. I have heard it whispered, even spoken aloud in my presence, and I blush each time, ashamed and angry at my inability to defend my sister.
Down Grange Road, the last stretch which is not so bleak as the rest, and at the end, over a slight rise, there is The Esplanade, stretching for miles, and beyond that the sea.
Frances crosses the road and stands, the jetty and the kiosk to her left, waiting for me to catch up. This is where we always confer, briefly, quickly, not long enough for any of Frances’s friends to see us together. Although it is unlikely that any of them will be here yet. Frances likes to come early, to sunbake before they arrive so her dark tan will seem effortless, like all her attributes, and not something she has had to work on. Like the way she smokes, practised in secret, drawback perfected, before she made it public, or the lazy flick of her hair, blow-dried at home to look like it just did that, by itself. I know this but I say nothing because I, too, admire. I watch and I learn because I want to be like that. To look like I don’t care. One day.
This is the plan. I will stay near the shallow pools to the right of the jetty. I will not swim unless Frances is th
ere to watch me. I must not bother Frances under any circumstances. Frances will come and get me at lunchtime.
But –
Frances looks at me impatiently. What question could there be?
I close my mouth and wait, squinting in the glare, for her to turn and walk ahead, along the wooden planking that leads down through the white-hot sand and the dry grasses to the beach. I will follow at a discreet distance and at the end of the path, I will turn to the right, Frances to the left.
This is what happened. On that day and on every other day. There were no differences, no changes to a routine we had followed each morning of that summer. I think I am certain of that. But when they questioned me afterwards, my certainty was shaken. I knew that all they wanted was to hear that I had noticed a difference. Any crumb, any scrap, anything tangible to pick up and examine. And I would try again, winding it back to the beginning so that I could retrace each step until I was standing on the wooden planking again, watching Frances disappear down that path, striding off past the jetty to her favourite spot where she would be hidden, nestled between two pillows of burning white sand.
But did you actually see her there?
It is high tide, and the pools are full. There is no swell. There is never any swell at these beaches. Just the gentle roll of the sea to the shore.
Once, years ago, I went to the surf. In a tiny hot car, Frances and I in the back seat, our mother in the front. We had driven for miles, to the country. To rolling hills the colour of wheat, and beyond that the ocean.
This is fun, Dorothy had laughed, and she had run to where the surf crashed in a white fury on the shore. Frances had followed. Screaming as she dived in and was thrown under and up and out again, her long hair a tangle of sand and seaweed.
I had stayed on the shore and watched. Too frightened. Even when Dorothy had bent down low, arms out, to coax me to the edge, just the edge, I had hung back.
Scaredy cat. Scaredy, scaredy, scaredy cat, Frances had sung, round and round in circles, Dorothy laughing, eventually scooping me up in her arms and taking me in, held safe, high above the waves, but still screaming. Screaming blue murder in the blue blue sea.
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