by Lia Weston
The screen door banged open and Phil backed out, carrying two toolboxes.
‘We have a guest,’ said Mrs Beadles. ‘You’ll need to get another cup.’
Phil, like his mother, seemed completely unsurprised to see Mary sitting on the veranda. ‘Where’s the valve?’
‘Oh, that’s right. I’d forgotten.’
‘You said it was an emergency.’
‘It was. Then I remembered how to turn the water off.’
‘Mum . . .’ Phil lifted a toolbox to scratch his forehead.
‘Well, you’re here now.’ She reached for her walking stick. Both Phil and Mary waited while Mrs Beadles and Alasdair re-negotiated the stairs.
‘She got you pruning?’ said Phil as they entered the Japanese section of the garden.
‘What?’ said Mary.
He pointed to the secateurs sticking out of her pocket.
Mary coloured. ‘Oh, um . . .’
‘Need a cutting, eh? I forgot to ask what you were looking for,’ called back Mrs Beadles.
‘I’m not sure,’ confessed Mary. ‘There’s this amazing smell sometimes at night . . .’
‘Ah. That would be my Cestrum nocturnum. It’s just up here.’
‘Queen of the Night,’ said Phil. ‘Variety of jasmine.’
‘There are two scented Queens, actually.’ Mrs Beadles stopped to switch her stick at a dead strand of creeper. ‘The Selenicereus grandiflorus is a climbing cactus.’
‘Do you have that too?’ said Mary.
‘No. The flower only lasts one night. I’d be asleep by the time it bothered to open. Waste of time.’
They crossed over a little bridge. Phil’s toolboxes reflected off the surface of the water, their red metallic sharpness shimmering among the lilies. Mary counted five Buddhas along the way. No wonder Mrs Beadles wasn’t that buzzed about church.
‘Here we are.’
The Queen of the Night had tubular white flowers and plain green leaves and looked like any other bush with tubular white flowers and plain green leaves. Mary had imagined spectacular blooms or at least variegated foliage. The reality was incredibly disappointing.
‘You’d never know, would you?’ Mrs Beadles held her hand out for the secateurs. ‘But that’s part of its beauty – the potential.’ She searched among the strands and put the blades into position. ‘The hidden.’ There was a snap.
Alasdair, who clearly had trouble standing up for more than a few minutes, collapsed into a pile of wood shavings.
Mrs Beadles peered at the cutting. ‘I’m going to strike this for you and see how we go. She can be ridiculously temperamental. I don’t suppose you’d want some cauliflower seedlings instead? Much more useful.’
‘Cool, thanks. I’ll bring some money tomorrow.’
‘Consider them a gift. Your mother has managed to make Saint Sebastian’s morning tea edible for the first time in distant memory.’
‘She know you’re here?’ said Phil, checking his watch.
‘No.’
‘I’ll give you a lift home after I’ve fixed the valve.’
Mary hung out of the window of Phil’s van. Mrs Beadles had to hold on to her hat to look up at her. ‘I’m clearing out a couple of vegetable beds this weekend. If you’re bored, I could use another pair of hands.’
‘Sure.’ Mary nodded.
‘And if you want to visit, just knock on the gate. Alasdair will alert me. But not between two and four. I’ll be studying.’
‘She means “napping”,’ said Phil, out of the corner of his mouth.
‘You’ll need to get the seedlings into the ground as soon as you can. Put them somewhere sunny. If you’ve got beans in the garden, they get along very well. And watch out for aphids.’
Phil revved the engine. ‘Mary’s got to get home some time today, Ma.’
‘Bye, Alasdair!’ said Mary, waving at the dog, who was panting heavily underneath a passionfruit canopy. A bee landed on his head. He appeared not to notice.
Phil seemed to fill the doorway.
Mary looked at Evie and snorted, heading past her, cradling a pot.
‘And hello to you, too,’ said Evie to her daughter’s back as it departed down the hallway. ‘I was wondering where she was.’
‘Mum found her in the compost,’ said Phil.
‘Well, that was where I left her,’ said Evie.
There was a shout from the back of the house. ‘Phil, come and see how crappy our garden is.’
‘How can you resist?’ said Evie, standing back.
Phil wiped his feet on the mat before entering. Walking past the hall mirror, Evie realised why Mary had snorted; Evie had put on the vintage fifties bunny ears she’d found while she was going through her wardrobe and had forgotten to take them off. Oh God, could she get anything right? Evie snatched them off her head.
Mary dragged Phil outside. Through the French doors, Evie could see her pointing at various spots in the backyard and gesturing at the elm tree. Phil was nodding thoughtfully, straightening the blade of one of Mary’s trowels.
Evie returned to her stack of cookbooks. After fortuitously running into Nathan outside the Sweet Meadow supermarket – if by ‘fortuitously’ you meant ‘orchestrated with a focus that made The Art of War look like Green Eggs and Ham’ – she had finally pinned him down for dinner the following Saturday. Now she had to lay the groundwork, and strategy was paramount. The menu had to walk a fine line between impressive and light. The last thing she wanted was a priest in a carb coma. No pasta. Definitely no curries. Her fingers ran over the photo of a champagne sorbet, lingering on the curve of the scoop.
Phil had apparently been introduced to every leaf, branch and bud before he and Mary stepped back inside. Evie followed them up the hallway, her mind still on what to feed Nathan, besides herself in thigh-high stockings.
‘See you on Saturday,’ said Mary. ‘Mum, we don’t have any plans, do we?’
‘Um, Nathan’s coming over,’ said Evie, ultra-casually. ‘Aren’t you going to Mini D’s?’
‘Nah, he’s busy.’ Mary turned to Phil. ‘You should come for dinner too!’
Phil brightened but politely protested. There was no graceful way out of it. Evie mentally smacked Mary on the head. ‘You’re welcome to join us, Phil.’
‘You sure?’ he said.
‘Of course,’ said Evie, abandoning her plans to have Nathan’s pants off by the dessert course. Fuckity fuck fuck fuck.
‘You can make that amazing mud cake, Mum,’ said Mary, neatly killing Evie’s light-yet-refreshing dessert plan to boot.
‘Can’t wait.’ Phil looked so pleased to be asked, Evie immediately felt bad for hoping he came down with a crippling case of the flu in the next twenty-four hours.
‘Where did this come from?’
Evie stood in the doorway of Mary’s room, the World’s Best Dad mug dangling from one scarlet-tipped finger.
‘That’s mine.’ Mary put her phone down.
‘That’s not what I asked you.’
‘Have you been going through my stuff?’
‘It was in the dishwasher.’
‘I –’ Mary paused. ‘Oh, yeah.’
Evie sat on the edge of Mary’s bed, sending a glittery scarf slithering to the floor. She slouched, then immediately sat upright and crossed her legs.
‘I won’t get cross if you’re honest with me. Did you steal this?’
‘Yes.’
‘Mary.’ Evie put her palms on her eyes. She exhaled audibly.
‘You said you wouldn’t get cross.’ Mary allowed herself the gleeful moment, exclusive to children, of rightfully correcting a parent.
‘Why? Why did you take it?’
Mary shrugged. ‘The man at the shop was rude to me.’
‘So you stole a mug.’
‘Everything else was too ugly to take.’
‘Honey . . .’ Evie got up and paced to the window, still covering her eyes. ‘You . . . we . . . You can’t do stuff like this.’
‘Exactly.’ Evie whipped her hands down and took a step back, disoriented. ‘And now we’re living in a place where at least half the town want me tarred and feathered.’
‘No, they don’t.’
Evie twisted her fingers into an upside-down prayer position. ‘Why do you think it’s been so hard for me to find work?’
‘Because there are no jobs?’
‘Think harder, babyduck.’
‘Because of stuff you did as a kid? Really?’
Evie nodded.
‘But you’re different now. I mean, you look completely different.’
‘People have long memories.’
There was a chink in Evie’s armour that Mary could now see. Her mother was supposed to be the make-everything-better parent, the reliable one who fixed problems. A cold thread spooled in Mary’s stomach.
‘I’m trying,’ said Evie. ‘I’m really trying to make it work. But you have to help me.’
Mary dropped her gaze to the screensaver, where a portrait of Mary Shelley was now bouncing calmly from pillar to post. ‘Okay,’ she mumbled.
Evie pointed to the mug. ‘So no more of this.’
‘Okay.’
‘Promise?’
‘Promise.’
‘Good girl.’ Evie ran her hand over Mary’s hair.
‘What happens if people don’t forgive you, like, ever?’
‘Then we’ll change our identities and become superheroes.’
‘Can I be called Botanica?’
‘And I shall be The Book Clubber, avenger of overdue library fines.’
‘We need Mini D for this, really.’
‘I know.’ At the door, Evie turned. ‘You drew the Hitler moustache on Joy’s billboards, didn’t you?’
Mary grinned.
‘No more of that, either. Well,’ Evie paused with her hand on the doorjamb, ‘maybe one more.’
There was a secret language to Evie’s church dresses. Travis had worked it out. Red for colder days. Yellow for rainy days. Blue when it was windy. Green – his favourite – was the single cipher he couldn’t decode, for she had worn it only once and then he wondered what happened to it.
He had a Sunday morning ritual now: wait in the park next to Saint Sebastian’s until everyone went inside for the service, listen at the door for the first hymn, and slip in while the congregation were standing. From the third pew, angled towards the centre aisle at about thirty-eight degrees, he could watch the back of Evie’s head, and then the rest of her when she went up for communion.
He liked the dresses with belts, which emphasised her hips. He didn’t like the hats, which looked old-fashioned. He began cataloguing her outfits in a notebook. It felt more respectful to immortalise Evie by hand instead of on his phone. She deserved paper, not pixels.
Every Sunday, between the sermon and the Eucharist, he would watch the ink flow across the page.
Navy dress with white collar. White jacket.
Red spotted dress, white belt.
Hair up. Leather gloves.
Evie on her knees, in front of Father Reid.
Red shoes.
She was perfect.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
Evie’s hand was wandering of its own accord. She almost poked her eye out with the mascara wand.
‘Steady, steady.’ She gripped the edge of the sink to right herself. It was amazing what a difference weeks of sobriety made. She used to be able to neck a bottle of wine without blinking; now she was two glasses of champagne down and listing sideways.
From the dining room came bass rumbles – Phil, who sounded like far-off thunder – and Nathan’s soft laugh, then something from Mary. The conversation kept veering towards nitrates and fertilisers, when all Evie wanted to do was find out more about Nathan’s non-church-related activities in order to get to know him again.
Evie adjusted her cleavage to better advantage and undulated back into the dining room. Phil leaned forward to pull her chair out. Nathan topped up her glass. Such gentlemen. Was this what Gabe always felt like, being the centre of attention, the sun around whom all others revolved? Evie crushed the thought and picked up her champagne.
It was the first time they had eaten in the dining room. In an attempt to look well read, Evie had made Mary fill all the empty bookshelves. Mary, in revenge, had put all of Evie’s crappy paperbacks at eye-level. Every time Evie looked at Nathan, she could see Tender Is The Knight over his shoulder.
‘Have you been to the Rose Apothecary?’ said Mary to Phil. ‘It sucks. The owner’s horrible. I was going to get potting mix there, but I thought he’d just throw a cat at me.’ She was sitting cross-legged on her chair and gnawing at the end of a bone from the standing rib roast. Along the ridge of her skull, her natural blonde was starting to emerge in a highlighted stripe.
‘I didn’t think that place was still going,’ said Evie. ‘Remember when we painted the front door yellow?’ she said to Nathan, leaning on her elbow. ‘I thought he was going to have a heart attack.’
Nathan grinned.
‘It’s not really going. It’s asking to be put out of its misery. If it was a horse, I’d shoot it,’ said Mary. She aimed the bone at the fireplace. ‘Boom.’
‘Got heaps of potting mix,’ said Phil. ‘I’ll bring you some.’
‘Do you know how to cross a mango with a passionfruit?’ said Mary.
‘Manfruit,’ said Evie, and was rewarded with a laugh, except from Mary, who rolled her eyes.
‘Mangoes won’t grow here. Too dry,’ said Phil.
‘That’s why you need to cross it with a passionfruit, duh.’
‘Don’t say “duh”, sweetheart.’ Evie shot an apologetic look at Nathan, but he was smiling indulgently at Mary as if she were strewing the table with pearls of wisdom.
‘Is it true that if you have hydrangeas at your house you’ll never get married?’ said Mary, dropping another pearl.
‘Says who?’ said Evie.
‘Gran. She said that if you were a woman they meant you were cursed to spinsterhood.’
‘Maybe we can take a break on the gardening talk,’ said Evie, making a mental note to rip the hydrangeas out of the backyard as soon as Mary wasn’t looking.
Mary immediately turned to Nathan. ‘Father Reid, were you as bad as Mum was when you were a kid?’ This was just getting better and better.
‘Honey, I don’t think Father Reid really wants to –’
‘Yes, I was,’ said Nathan. ‘We got into dreadful trouble.’
‘What was the worst thing you did?’ said Mary.
‘The sweet shop,’ said Nathan, shaking his head.
‘Heard about that,’ said Phil. ‘Amazing no one died.’
‘God had other plans,’ said Nathan, smiling at Evie, who was too chagrined that she still couldn’t remember what they’d actually done to enjoy the attention. Damn it all to hell. She drained her drink.
‘Why wasn’t Phil friends with you?’ Mary said to Evie.
‘Boarding school,’ said Phil. ‘Shipped off early.’
‘I hardly saw him,’ said Nathan. ‘His parents were always away on digs. Sometimes he didn’t even come home for Christmas.’
An image came to mind of Phil as a small boy, sitting forlornly on a bed in an empty room. Evie felt a sudden prickle of tears, and refilled her glass to cover it.
‘He used to write me the most terrific letters,’ said Nathan. ‘Phil’s quite loquacious.’
‘Ta,’ said Phil.
‘On paper, anyway,’ said Nathan, giving him an affectionate, slightly woozy smile. Evie realised he was quite drunk. How adorable.
‘I thought your mum was Nath’s imaginary friend,’ said Phil to Mary.
‘Seriously?’
‘Stories seemed too crazy. Said they stole the seats off every swing in Sweet Meadow.’
‘We did,’ admitted Nathan, taking a large swig from his glass.
‘And all the speakers from the school.’
Evie cleared her throat. ‘We did.’ She glanced at Nathan. ‘We, er, threw them in the creek.’ She delicately tucked her hair behind her ear.
Mary dropped the bone on her plate. ‘No wonder everyone hates you.’
‘No one hates your mother,’ said Nathan. ‘She’s a wonderful, wonderful person.’
Evie glowed.
‘Did she tell you that she called my dad a –’
‘Babyduck, why don’t you see if there are any more green beans in the kitchen?’
‘There aren’t,’ said Mary. ‘Father Reid, did you become a priest because you did so many bad things?’
Evie’s glass paused at her cherry-coloured lips.
‘You know,’ Nathan leaned back in his chair, his stomach impressively flat for someone who had eaten about a kilo of beef. ‘I never really thought about it that way. But I’d have to say the priesthood chose me rather than me choosing it.’
‘Like, your destiny?’
‘Exactly. I’d love to say it was an epiphany – I’ve always wanted to have one of those,’ said Nathan, looking rather wistful. ‘But it was more of a gradual awakening. I saw the way my father helped the community, and I knew deep down that I wanted to as well. I tried to deny it for a while. I was worried that I could never live up to him. But then I realised that if you do your best in the service of God, then you don’t have to try and be someone else, just yourself.’
‘Have you always been a priest?’
‘I worked in a surf store for a while, while I was travelling.’
‘Surfing,’ said Phil. ‘The other religion.’
Nathan nodded, his curls waving like underwater coral. ‘There’s something about the sea. It almost feels as if it’s the birthplace of creation.’
He was so starry eyed that Evie felt it would be wrong to point out that the sea technically was the birthplace of creation, at least from an evolutionary standpoint.
‘I enjoyed the surf shop, but it didn’t feel like home. Only the church did. So I realised there was no point fighting it and came back to study. I answered the call.’
‘From God?’ said Mary.
‘You got it,’ said Nathan.