by Isla Evans
‘You can write about me if you like,’ suggested Shelley generously, winding fettuccine around her fork. ‘You know, girl desperately seeks meaning in life.’
‘But girl limited in choices due to earlier impregnation,’ added Jacob.
Shelley bounced up out of her chair and jabbed her fork in his direction, pasta sliding off onto the table. ‘Christ, I’ve had it with you!’
‘Enough!’ snapped Sam, although his glare was centred on Jacob.
‘Well, this is fun,’ commented Caleb. ‘We should do it more often.’
Shelley sat down again, staring angrily across the table at her youngest brother, who blithely ignored her.
Silence fell as everybody concentrated on their meals and the hum of the airconditioner seemed even louder. Kate surreptitiously glanced around at her family, glad to be there but also glad that she wasn’t going to be there for too long. The knowledge that the unit was waiting, with its tidiness and peace and stillness, transformed any flickers of irritation into a wry amusement. It was like watching a play, without having to actively play a part. Or even stay till the end.
‘So what did you want with Grandpa’s stuff?’ asked Jacob suddenly.
Kate blinked, caught by surprise. ‘Um, just some bits I needed. For research.’
The others were now staring at Kate too, each wearing an identical look of surprise. Sam was the first to speak: ‘You went through your father’s boxes?’
‘Not all of them,’ said Kate, feeling inexplicably defensive. ‘Just a couple.’
‘What for?’ Sam paused as he made an effort to school his expression towards indifferent curiosity. He pushed some fettuccine around his plate and shrugged. ‘I’m just interested, that’s all.’
‘Me too,’ added Shelley.
Caleb grinned. ‘Me three.’
‘She got a shoebox and a folder thing full of papers and a whole box. I dunno what was in that,’ said Jacob helpfully.
‘For goodness sake!’ Kate fanned her defensiveness into annoyance. ‘Do I have to explain my every move around here? If you must know, I’m just doing a little family history research. And I needed some of his papers. Is that okay with everyone?’
‘Shoot, Mum, calm down.’ Shelley put up a hand as if to ward off her mother’s psychopathy.
‘Do you mean like genealogy?’ asked Caleb.
‘Something like that.’
Caleb looked interested. ‘Show me when you’re done, okay? That stuff’s great.’
‘And let me know if you discover I’m adopted,’ said Shelley, staring at the ceiling as if bored with the whole proceedings. ‘I’d really like to know.’
Sam sent her an irritated glance. ‘I think your mother would have already had an inkling, don’t you?’
‘Yeah, but we live in hope,’ said Jacob.
‘That’s it.’ Shelley stood up, thinning her lips almost to the point of absence, and hefted her surprised daughter out of the highchair. Emma immediately began to struggle, reaching a chubby, orange-smeared hand down for a piece of vegetable.
Sam looked at her wearily. ‘Come on, Shell.’
‘No, I’ve had it with him. And you never tell him off. It’s bloody ridiculous.’ Shelley glared accusingly at her father and then stalked across the room to the sliding door, which she wrenched open with a force that sent it shooting back on the tracks after she passed through. Jacob got up and helpfully closed it all the way.
‘Why do you have to do that?’ asked his father evenly.
‘Coz otherwise the flies’ll get in.’
‘You know what I mean.’
Jacob shrugged an answer and then stood behind his chair, staring down at his near-empty plate. ‘Okay if I go now?’
‘You might as well,’ replied Sam sardonically. He watched him leave. ‘And thanks very much.’
Caleb, who had taken no notice whatsoever of the preceding events, laid his cutlery across his plate with a clatter and then beamed at his parents. ‘That was delicious.’
‘My pleasure,’ replied Sam, looking at him rather nonplussed.
‘And lovely to see you here, Mum. Been missing you.’ Caleb stood up and leant forward to drop a kiss on the top of his mother’s head. She felt her hair part softly under his breath. ‘I’ll have to come round and visit soon, won’t I?’
‘Absolutely. Whenever you like.’
‘Cool. I’ll be in my room if you need me.’
Kate watched him as he walked off, and then turned to her husband. They looked at each other for a few moments and then both started laughing at the same time.
Sam shook his head. ‘Maybe they’re all adopted.’
‘No such luck. I’m afraid we’re totally responsible.’
‘Bugger.’
‘And it’s probably too late to adopt them out, as well.’
‘Double bugger.’
Kate grinned across at him, warmed by their rapport. ‘Listen, Sam. This was lovely, really lovely. Thank you.’
‘Even with the entertainment?’ He sighed and then shook his head. ‘I don’t know what’s up with those two. They just can’t seem to get on, can they?’
‘Not at all,’ replied Kate pensively. ‘I think it’s because they’re both frustrated at the moment. Shelley with her job and Jacob with where he’s going. So they take it out on each other. Easy targets.’
‘What’s wrong with Shell’s job?’ asked Sam with surprise.
‘She’s been telling us that she hates being a waitress for years!’ Kate smiled, rather amazed. ‘Don’t you ever listen?’
‘Not when I can avoid it.’ Sam continued to push the fettuccine around his plate and then looked back at Kate. ‘So what about Jake then? If he’s so unhappy, why doesn’t he just get a bloody job himself?’
‘Because he doesn’t want a bloody job himself. He wants a career.’
‘In computer games?’ asked Sam, his voice husky with disdain. ‘Well, good to see he’s got his feet firmly planted. Why the hell can’t he be more like his brother?’
‘Ssh!’ Kate automatically glanced behind her to make sure that Jacob hadn’t heard this last exchange, and then she turned back to Sam with a frown. ‘That’s half the problem, dimwit! He’d love to be more like his brother!’
Sam nodded slowly and then sighed again. ‘Yeah, I know. It’s just frustrating, that’s all. And don’t call me dimwit.’
Kate smiled with casual apology. She looked across the table, which was scattered with plates and cutlery and errant pasta and garlic bread crumbs. ‘Shall we?’
‘We shall.’ Sam pushed back his chair and stood. Then he paused as he glanced across at Kate. ‘You staying here tonight?’
‘Do you want me to?’
Sam shrugged. ‘I just thought it’d be easier. You know, if we wanted to take a bottle of wine out onto the decking and continue the evening.’
‘That’s true.’ Kate pretended to mull this over. ‘But you still haven’t said if you want me to.’
Sam laughed and rolled his eyes. ‘God, woman, you make it hard!’
‘Ah! Then in that case it would be easier if I stayed.’
Grinning, Sam reached across the table and grabbed Kate’s hand, raising it up to his mouth and giving it a quick kiss. ‘Then it’s settled. You’re staying.’
‘Seems that way.’ Kate reclaimed her hand, feeling the skin cool quickly where the kiss had landed. They started to gather the dishes together in companionable silence and Kate realised that she wasn’t just doing Sam a favour by staying, she was also doing herself one. She wanted to stay for the night, to enjoy his company and his partnership, but the choice was made easy by the fact that it was a choice. And escapism was only twenty minutes away.
ELEVEN
Dear Dad, I’ve given Jacob your green banker’s lamp. They all miss you, you know, but I wonder if he misses you the most. Maybe because he spent so much time with you last year. Sometimes I think he’d like to talk to me but I always change the subject. It’s just too
hard right now. Maybe soon. Remember when I asked you about my mother? Not about the stories you used to tell, but how she was when she died. That sort of thing. So you took me for a walk along the creek, and you showed me how to skim stones. And I’m sure we talked about her because I remember that’s why we went for the walk, but I don’t really remember what was said. So maybe you did what I’m doing now. Changing the subject. Deflecting.
PS: How about this: She paused by the child’s bed for a long time that night. So long that she was in danger of being too late. Wondering if that was a choice in itself.
It was the following Monday before Kate was given the chance to start sorting through the things she had reclaimed from underneath the Lysterfield house. But even then, with the unit to herself, she hesitated. The main problem was that the purloining of her uncle’s shoebox had reawakened her worm of doubt, now swollen with guilt as well. Because this had belonged to Angie’s father, not her own, and she knew that by taking it she had stepped over an invisible line. She soothed the worm by assuring it, and herself, that her appropriation of the shoebox was more in the nature of a loan, so temporary that it barely counted. Besides there would probably be no need to even open it; instead she’d find what she needed elsewhere.
Nevertheless, even after she decided to ignore the shoebox for now, Kate sat on the couch and simply stared at the cardboard box and concertina file on the coffee table before her. It occurred to her that this little trip into history might be like driving slivers of bamboo down behind her fingernails, into the puckered mass of nerve endings, and then lighting them and letting the flames cauterise what feeling she had left. Or like childbirth, which was even more painful. And maybe her search might net her some facts she didn’t really want to know. Like maybe there never was a Sophie Painter, maybe Angie had been adopted. Or even stolen.
Kate grinned and then lifted up the concertina file before she could analyse the moment any further. She flipped open the plastic catch so that the compartments all fell open, forming a semicircle across her lap. Each section was alphabetised and it did not take her long to realise that the contents all related to vegetables. Receipts for fertiliser and insecticides, instructions for assorted grafting methods, newspaper clippings showing ridiculously large produce, flyers from rural shows, accounts from nurseries for various purchases.
Smiling again, but this time at the irony, Kate went through each section methodically, just in case something important had slipped in amongst the vegetable-related matters. But her father had been meticulous and, unless she wanted to start her own vegetable patch, the concertina file was basically useless.
She pushed the file back together and put it down next to the couch, then turned to the cardboard box. Dust sprinkled around like fine powder as she opened it. She peered inside, confused for a moment at the expanse of maroon leather, and then her breath caught as she recognised it. It was her father’s leather desk set. A rectangular mat with brassy-gold corners, a matching envelope vice and a cylindrical pen holder. She lifted each object out and placed them gently on the floor, resisting the memory of her father sitting at his desk, accounts spread before him as he reached for a pen.
Underneath the desk set was a metal tin that had once held assorted chocolates. It rattled interestingly as she lifted it out but, when she prised the lid off, held only a large assortment of biros and pencils, some still in their packaging. Kate put it down with the desk set, returned to the box and took out the gilt-framed black and white photograph of her parents that had always sat by the lamp on her father’s desk. She wiped the glass down with an edge of her T-shirt. They were standing on the steps of the courthouse after their wedding, her mother in a full-skirted white dress and holding a bouquet of long-stemmed lilies. Standing close, but not quite touching, was her father, and he seemed so impossibly young, squinting in the sunshine with one hand in the pocket of his baggy, high-waisted trousers.
Kate blinked, and then squeezed her eyes shut for a second. Photos of her mother at around this age brought a dull sense of loss, but no great sense of nostalgia. Because Kate had no real memories of her, she always perceived her as if frozen in time and, as such, photos like these seemed rather apt. But her father was different, these drove the bamboo slivers in further. Especially when her mind juxtaposed this image of youth and health and hope with the man he had become at the end. The expression on his face. That was shocking.
Nevertheless she was going to place this photo where it belonged, back on her father’s desk. She reached over and laid it carefully against a couch cushion so that it was facing her. Then she turned her attention back to the box, and hit paydirt. Layer upon layer of papers filled the bottom half. Some loose, some stapled, some in large, mustard-coloured envelopes with addresses crossed out and her father’s fine cursive script printed over the top.
Before she could change her mind, Kate started with the envelopes. She plucked each out, straightened them into a pile on her lap and then started flicking through. Irrelevant ones, like Petrol receipts: 1971 – 1979 and Gas & Fuel: paid accounts, she placed with the desk set and soon she was left with just one envelope Certificates: assorted, which she tossed over onto Angie’s armchair. Next were the loose papers.
Three-quarters of an hour later, Kate had checked each paper in the box and still had not come up with anything that would help with her research. She found plenty of personal items, like her own childhood drawings, report cards, and even letters that she had written from overseas. After the first few of these, when she felt her emotions begin to swarm uncomfortably, Kate forced herself to adopt a purely clinical approach. Check for relevance but ignore detail, then put to one side. Over and over. When she finally finished, Kate collected everything together, except the framed photo and the envelope of certificates, and repacked the box. Then she sat back and stared at it with a frown.
Where were all the private papers? Like letters to and from her mother whilst they were courting, or cards from special occasions, or her mother’s own papers. Diaries, or postcards from relatives, or even the death notices from the newspaper when she died. Instead it seemed that her father had religiously kept every article regarding deformed vegetables that he could possibly find, and yet not one single newspaper clipping mourning his wife’s death.
Kate shook her head with disbelief, and then her expression cleared as it all began to make sense. Obviously he had been too distressed. And he had deliberately chosen not to keep any reminders of her life and, especially, her death. Which, of course, had also been the death of his second child. Perhaps it had simply been easier that way. Swallowing painfully, Kate looked down at the shoebox on the floor. It was a burnt-orange colour with diagonal black stripes across the lid and the words: Dobsons! Over 200 stores nation-wide! The bottom four corners had all been scuffed, with the orange peeled back to reveal soft grey cardboard, and one entire side had come loose, being only held in place by the snugness of the lid. It looked so innocuous, sitting there, that Kate reasoned it couldn’t possibly hold anything terribly personal. In fact the chances were that it was exactly the same as her father’s, and the mystery was in the concept rather than the contents.
She lifted it onto the coffee table and continued to stare at it, waiting while her guilt was steadily eroded by the very ordinariness of the box and the fact that, so far, she had found nothing of real note. Finally Kate took a deep breath and gently prised the lid off, the split side immediately opening like a drawbridge and spilling papers out across the coffee table. Without moving, Kate cast her eyes over them and was immediately and uncomfortably reminded that her extroverted, flamboyant, jovial uncle had been a very different man from her reticent, self-contained father. Because this man had kept everything. She could see tiny dog-eared photographs, and thin-papered letters, and certificates, and postcards. An entire life contained within an orange-striped shoebox.
And Kate also realised that it was too late to go back now. Her curiosity alone would not allow it. Besides, she h
ad already stepped over the line so she might as well see what it had to offer. She reached forward and delicately plucked a letter from within the pile and held it up to read the spidery script that filled half the page.
Dear Frank,
I hope this letter finds you well. Your father and I are both well. I must tell you that I have written to the Padre there to request he encourage you to write to us. I have sent you three letters and have not heard back once. We would like to hear that you are well or not. Also we need to know when you will be getting out as your father wants to look for some good land but not if you no longer wish to go into partnership with him.
Write back soon.
Your loving mother.
With a shock, Kate realised that the letter was from her paternal grandmother, who had died when she was only a baby. She read through the letter again, searching for clues as to where her uncle had been when the letter had been written but there was no address or date. She put it down on her lap and peered at the other papers across the coffee table, soon finding another with the same writing.
Dear Frank,
I hope this letter finds you well. Your father and I are both well. I received your letter yesterday and was v. pleased to hear from you after so long. Now I can sleep easy. First I must tell you some good news. Your father has found some v. reasonably priced land in Ferntree Gully that he says will be excellent. There is a house already there but it needs fixing. James has come down from Mt Isa and is willing to help until you get out. If all goes well, we should be living there when you return.
Here is all the news from here: Jean Tapscott from next door has had another baby girl, which makes five girls with no boys at all. They called her Patricia, which I am not v. fond of. Your auntie Val visited last week and they are all well there. She tells us Thomas is now engaged to Sophie Wharton. Last week James ran over poor Bessie with the truck but fortunately little damage was done and he managed to straighten the fender himself. That is all the news from here. Please write back soon as I do not want to be forced to contact the Padre again.