The House At Salvation Creek

by Susan Duncan

  At the village she hesitantly steps inside a sparkling white one bedroom apartment with views of a rainforest garden and the slushing sound of a creek. An eastern water dragon stands statue-still on the balcony, and she sighs at its beauty. 'It's like being in the bush,' she says. Which is where she grew up. The reptile stares at her. She moves closer, her hand outstretched to pat him. He flicks his tail, takes off.

  'I want to be settled here within two weeks,' she announces.

  It is so easy I panic. 'She'll be right next door,' I tell Bob. 'That's good in one way, but it could be disastrous in another.'

  Bob, pragmatic as ever, smiles. 'Don't worry,' he says, 'remember the moat!' He pauses. 'You are absolutely sure she's not a good swimmer, aren't you?'

  ***

  On moving day, she's still in her underwear when I arrive at noon to pick her up. Wandering, as though she's forgotten who she is and what she's doing. Two steps. Sit. Two steps. Sit. Change is always stressful. At my mother's age, it is addling. Two steps. Sit. She looks around her home, already emptied of the furniture she is taking to her new home. There is no recognition in her eyes. Her hands are shaky. Her hair, carefully coiffed at the local hairdresser's the day before, is flattened at the back from too many hours stretched out on the sofa. Old lady hair,we used to call it. But neither my mother nor I ever thought we'd let it happen to us.

  'Here's your dress,' I say, handing her a garment I've found in the closet. 'Might as well get going.'

  But she looks exhausted. Grey-skinned, with sweat on her upper lip. I am frightened that she might die. That beginning again, instead of saving her, might kill her.

  We pack the bare necessities. In the bathroom, there's an unopened bottle of expensive moisturiser I bought her as a gift more than twenty years earlier, on display because she'd rather let people think she can afford mindless luxuries than use them. Appearances. Her whole life has been about keeping up appearances, like the rest of her generation. I want to weep.

  I open the car door to help her inside. She is still dithery but trying to look brave. Her own car, Mavis, stays in the garage. More dented than whole, the round, small white 1984 Datsun is up for sale.

  'I'll get a scooter,' my mother says, looking at me with a flicker of challenge in her rabbit-scared eyes. 'I'll fling a long scarf around my neck, toss my bag over my shoulder and hit the accelerator on the main street. I'll be unstoppable!'

  I know she is thinking about Audrey Hepburn burning up the roads of Rome, her arms wrapped around Gregory Peck, her face snuggled into his shoulder. And I know, I just know, she'll do it if we let her get anywhere near a scooter. Dead in a week, I think, and mentally shove the scooter idea into the never-go-there basket. It is the moment I understand my mother has become my child. And I want to cry, again – loud and hard – for all the good times and the wobbly ones. Once we believed life went on forever and if we made mistakes there was plenty of time to do it again and get it right. And now we know better.

  Her old dog, Wally, a slobbery Rottweiler with Marilyn Monroe hips and a grey snout, is heaved into the back of the car. He is coming to live with Bob and me – his own retirement home, I told my mother when I said we were taking him. Just like hers.

  We slide onto the super-smooth motorway from an entrance road and she never looks back, focuses straight ahead with her purse held firmly on her lap. But her hands are still trembling and her face is sheet white. She must be scared as hell. No upside except hanging out in a retirement village, the kind of place we both used to call 'the last resort' when it seemed like we'd never have to go near one ourselves. I silently curse the frailty of old age: I don't want to be like her, I tell myself. But is there a choice? Do we slide slowly into infirmity without noticing the signs? Can't open a packet of sweets. Find it hard to turn on taps. Get up from sofas with a grunt of effort. Then the big signs: shortness of breath, footsteps that slide into the hesitant shuffle of the aged, the long naps at any time of the day, sleeplessness at night. The inevitable countdown because when you are more than eighty, you know time is running out. There are no miracles when you're old. And none of us is immune to the passage of time.

  We swing into the driveway of the village, and wind through magnificent gardens of towering grey gums and rigid gymeas, of red hibiscus and fluffy bottle brush, to her new villa. She gives me the keys to her old house and I put them in my bag. Bob and I are going to prepare it for sale. Then I gently wrap her fingers around the keys of her new home. She gets out of the car, stiff-limbed, rocky on her feet. 'One, two, three,' she says, to urge herself on.

  I take her arm, lead her to the front door. She fumbles with the lock until I take the keys back from her and open the door. Inside, Bob and I have installed a new fridge, new washing machine and dryer, new pots and pans. There is a new electric jug, new toaster, new container filled with new cooking utensils. Spatula. Wooden spoon. Egg flip. Tongs. Like she is a new bride.

  I've filled the freezer with homemade spaghetti bolognese, chicken curry and lamb stew. There's milk, bread, Vegemite, marmalade and all the staples. I've found a plastic bin small enough to place on the counter, so she doesn't have to bend to throw away her garbage, which she says hurts her back. The pink chintz granny couch and armchairs are in position. The heavy round table and Edwardian chairs with the green and gold brocade seats have been squeezed in. The single bed she wanted in place of her queen-size is made up with new bed linen and fat pillows. Her old pillows were flattened thinner than a slice of bread. It smells fresh, looks clean and new.

  I let Wally out for a quick wander and piddle, fill a bowl with water. He flops onto the ground, as exhausted as my mother.

  The water dragon turns up on the balcony on cue and for a moment her eyes light up. Then she sinks onto the sofa in a small, crumpled lump. And, again, I want to weep and weep. I thought she would be unstoppable forever.

  Bob arrives to say hello, makes a cup of tea. 'You'll be fine, Esther,' he tells her reassuringly. 'You couldn't have continued where you were.' And it's true.

  I try to show her how to work the washing machine but she can't find the strength to lift herself off the sofa.

  'This is a new chapter,' I say, trying to be cheerful, to spur her on.

  She looks at me and attempts the coquettish smile of old, but there is more confusion than flirtiness in her eyes, as though she can't quite work out what has happened. I feel suddenly afraid that something inside her has snapped and she'll never recover, wonder if we should have left her where she was, wonder if the struggle to survive is what kept her going this far. Now the pressure is off, will she collapse?

  We finish our tea in the floral pink china mugs her local chemist gave her as a farewell gift and stand to leave. Bob wraps his arms around her.

  'I'll call you in the morning,' I tell her, opening the screen door. 'We'll do a shop, get what you need.'

  We load a reluctant Wally back in the car.

  'We're going to Pittwater, Wally. You love Pittwater.'

  But he doesn't perk up.

  Bob and I meet at Commuter Dock. I am childishly angry and have flung compassion into an outgoing tide. 'She didn't even say thank you,' I hiss.

  'She couldn't speak,' Bob replies. 'Give her time. She's old.'

  Inside me, though, there's a seething, irrational anger. Fury, I suspect, because until today, every time I looked at my mother I saw a vibrant, energetic, good-looking woman in her fifties. I can no longer conveniently pretend that she can manage perfectly well if only she would make an effort, which is how I've excused my erratic care for years. She is old. Now it is my turn to repay getting me to adulthood with every advantage she could afford. Duty is such an old-fashioned word, but that's what it boils down to. Because love is taken for granted in family. Duty is the nuts and bolts.

  'Yeah. Time. She'll be fine.' Anger rushes out of me like air out of a burst balloon. But will she cope? I'm not so sure.

  Wally sees the water, sniffs the air. Lifts his leg at a post. H
e jumps into the boat like he was born in a tinny. There's a grin on his face and he tosses his age and exhaustion over the side. I swear he throws back his shoulders and braces for a final fling at youth. Perhaps he remembers the year I entered him in the annual Christmas Eve Scotland Island to Church Point Dog Race. Threw him off the start barge when he refused to jump and thought I'd drowned him – only dog in the history of the race that's ever had to be rescued.

  'No more races for you, Wally,' I tell him. 'Them days are over.'

  At home, Wally settles in like he's never lived anywhere else, although Chip Chop's nose is out of joint for a few days. Then she relaxes. But she won't let him near the sofa. That's her territory and she's not going to budge.

  The following week Bob and I move into my mother's house to prepare it for sale. We take the dogs with us. Wally is heartbroken because he thinks he's returning to a suburban backyard. He mopes all day, sighing like a doggie that's doomed. We let Chip Chop sleep on the bed so she feels superior. They only escape once, to go to the river for a swim. Can't blame them, really – it was on a day hotter than hell.

  Bob and I strip faded wallpaper off walls and repaint the house, inside and out. On days when the temperature soars higher than thirty-five degrees, he mends cracked tiles in the laundry and fixes all the windows, broken by my mother when she locked herself out. Time after time.

  We landscape a feral garden, dump all the old saucepans she's put at the back door to soak after burning their bums, and prepare for a garage sale. Bob even lays new carpet. It is hard, relentless physical work and we nearly have our first real argument when I return to Pittwater to borrow some giant cushions from Bella to make the place look current. Bob reckons good bones sell a house, not pretty cushions, and it's wasted effort. But it is my mother's last shot at a financial killing and I am pushing the limits to get every extra penny for her. Truth is, we are both knackered. Truth is, I am ashamed I let things get so rundown while she was living here, ashamed that I never looked closely at her life. Afraid that if I did, I would have to take some responsibility. I am ashamed that while I was partying inappropriately, her world was slipping into depressing decay.

  After we've finished the repairs, my mother insists on returning to the house to see what we've done. I wait for a thank-you as she walks through rooms that echo with years that I suspect were mostly deeply unhappy. Although she never let on.

  'Oh, you took down all the wallpaper,' she says. 'It was so beautiful.'

  It was old, dirty and peeling, I want to scream, but I hold my tongue.

  'Oh, what did you do with the hanging baskets? They used to look so pretty.'

  The plants were all dead, I want to yell. But I stay silent.

  'Where are all my important documents? I kept them in the kitchen drawer.'

  I've thrown them out, of course, after checking them. Old receipts. Old bills stamped 'paid'. A couple of share certificates for companies that went belly-up in the sixties. But I don't say any of that. 'They must be in a box at your new place. Not unpacked yet.' Inside, I am smouldering.

  She makes her way down the front steps to the garage. The detritus of more than eight decades is set out for sale. She moves through the trays like a canny buyer, picking up, putting down, as though it is all new to her. Then I catch her slipping odd pieces into her handbag. And I explode.

  'If you put one more thing in your bag, I'll put you out on the freeway and make you walk home,' I snarl.

  Cool as a cucumber, she looks me in the eye. 'That's right, take it out on your mother. That's what mothers are for.' And she plonks herself in the car on a stinking hot day and stays there until I finish with the real estate agent. I kick myself for lacking compassion. Again. Drive through a blur of tears because she hasn't bothered to say a single thank-you for all the backbreaking work. Not a grateful look, nothing. But when did I ever thank her during the long years of growing up? When she cooked, washed, ironed, supported, listened to the self-obsessed litanies of the young? Not once that I can remember. Because I assumed I had a right to all she could give. As she believes now, in reverse.

  'If you look for praise from your mother,' Bob told me one day, 'you're doomed.' And yet I still do. Over and over. Are we always children around our parents? Even when we become the carers?

  Twenty minutes later, as McDonald's looms on the side of the freeway, she speaks her first words: 'Let's have a hamburger and thick shake for old times' sake.'

  It is a ritual. Every time I collected her to come to stay, we stopped there for a quick bite. The olive branch is down. I push aside anger, pick up where we left off. When I drop her back at her new home she sinks onto the sofa with a sigh, closing her eyes as though she will never feel rested again. I slip out the door without hugging her. Feigning haste when, really, there is none. I hold on to my hurt like a two-year-old.

  ***

  'Tell me about Pittwater,' my mother says one morning when we are having coffee and cake at a café in Mona Vale.

  'What do you want to know?'

  'Start with the history. I'd like to know about the early days.'

  'I'll take you for a drive when we've finished here. To look at the Aboriginal rock carvings at West Head Road. They're magnificent. You can see for miles, too. Right to the Pacific Ocean.'

  It is the first time she's been curious beyond the wire door of her villa since the move a month earlier and I begin to hope that her inner geography is catching up with her new circumstances, that soon I will call in and instead of finding her asleep on the sofa with the breakfast dishes still soaking in the sink, she will be bright and alert, the garbage emptied, the bed made, the day ahead embraced.

  'Join the pool group!' I tell her. 'Join the knitter-natters! Join the tai-chi class!' But she never stirs. Maybe showing her around her new landscape will break the paralysis.

  Along winding McCarrs Creek Road, where Chip Chop and I always get queasy, the bush is tinder dry. The drought is annihilating. My mother closes her eyes to it all, refusing to open them at the waterfall, which is just a collection of rocks without rain to fill it, and where the creek is now no more than a trickle.

  I turn into Ku-ring-gai Chase National Park and slide to a stop in a small area reserved for cars.

  'What have you stopped for?'

  'We're here.'

  'Where are the rocks?'

  'We have to walk a little. Not far. It's easy.'

  Her face falls, panic flickering across it. I can see she doesn't want to move.

  'Let's go. Can't sit here all day,' I say like a girl guide leader.

  I move around to her door and open it. I take her hand – when did the bones get so light and frail? – and help her to her feet. She looks around as though she's memorising landmarks in case I dump her in the bush forever. I lead her into a serrated landscape of shrivelled grevilleas, drooping apple gums. When we're about to turn off the track for a rough pathway leading to the rock carvings, she stops and stands still.

  'I need a toilet,' she says.

  'Right now?'

  She nods.

  'Ok, there's a café at Akuna Bay. We'll go there. Maybe have lunch, if you feel like it.'

  It's a start, I tell myself. We've made a start.

  Over lunch, to fill in the silence, I tell her a story: 'In 1901, twenty-four years before Dorothea Mackellar made Tarrangaua her summer retreat, a woman named Maybanke Anderson bought a large waterfront block of land on Pittwater Road, at Bayview.'

  She nods. Pokes at her fish and chips but doesn't eat anything.

  'Maybanke's story is a bit of local history,' I explain, trying to engage her. 'It's quite interesting. Really.'

  She puts down her knife and fork. She's not hungry. The morning tea was enough. I slam the lid on memories of my mother eating dozens of oysters at a time, of enjoying food with gusto and passion.

  'Anyway . . . Maybanke came to Australia from England as a nine-year-old child and grew up to become a schoolteacher. She married unwisely. Had seve
n children and lost all but three boys to tuberculosis. Along the way, her husband became an alcoholic, a bankrupt and eventually deserted the family. But Maybanke had a lot of guts. And family support.

  'With the help of her brother and mother, she worked and prospered only to find that, according to the law, her husband was entitled to custody of the children and control of her money. Nor could she be granted a divorce for desertion alone. The injustice of the system infuriated her, and she became a law reformer, a feminist and a campaigner for childcare and equal rights. She eventually divorced her husband for desertion, under a new amendment she helped to bring about. But she never forgot what it was like to be a single woman with young children and she helped to found the first free kindergarten at Woolloomooloo. When the press wrote about her, she was called "about the most intellectual woman in Australia". Love the about, don't you?'

  The waitress comes over to clear our plates, my mother's food still almost untouched. Around us, boats costing more than a house are tied to pontoons. A young family is scrambling off one, kids in hats and shorts, a scruffy, tail-wagging, long-haired, black and tan dog. Parents red-faced from the sun, or maybe the wine, trying to keep control. My mother's eyes lock on them, then fill with tears. Oh God, how I hate seeing her like this. I race on with the story.

  'Maybanke had just about every strike against her for the era. Divorced. A businesswoman. Politically active. A feminist,' I continue. 'Anyway, she met a bloke, they fell in love and married. Quite scandalous, it was. At the time, divorcees didn't usually get a second go because divorce was seen as an affliction, like the plague.'

  My mother looks up. 'Remember Mary? She was divorced. That would have been fifty years after Maybanke, wouldn't it? And it was still scandalous.'

  'Yeah, I remember her. Brought up two boys on her own. She was so beautiful. Must've been hard on her.'

  'It was. We weren't a forgiving lot in those days. We were quick to judge and pass sentence, women as well as men, and we should've known better. Everyone makes mistakes and I reckon the way we hid them was nothing but cowardice.'