The Mothers

by Genevieve Gannon

  She bounded back to the cab and slid into the back.

  ‘You just wanted to post a letter?’ the driver said.

  ‘That’s right.’ She was giddy, overwhelmed. She felt excited and proud. She had put Sadavir’s needs first, as a mother should.

  ‘Could you take me back to where you collected me from, please.’

  The driver nodded. ‘Must have been an important letter.’

  ‘Very.’

  Her toes jiggled inside her shoes. She wanted an answer now.

  ‘What was it? A cheque or something? You owe some people money?’

  ‘No, nothing like that.’

  The car reached her flat a short time afterwards. ‘You own this place?’ the driver asked.

  ‘I just rent.’

  ‘You’re alone?’ He was watching her in the rear-view mirror.

  ‘I’m separated.’

  ‘Must get lonely.’

  ‘Not really,’ she lied.

  When he pulled on the handbrake Priya opened the door to leave.

  ‘My family lives in Melbourne,’ he said. ‘I get lonely sometimes.’ Priya gave a murmur of interest. She wanted to retreat into the privacy of her flat.

  ‘Well, thanks,’ she said, climbing out.

  ‘Hey,’ he stopped her. ‘Can I use your toilet? I haven’t had a break in over seven hours.’

  ‘Oh, is that allowed?’

  ‘It’s allowed if you say it’s allowed.’

  He undid his seat-belt. ‘I’ll be quick.’

  ‘Why don’t you go to the McDonald’s down the road?’ Priya asked, feeling uncomfortable.

  ‘We’re already here. And they make you buy something if you ask for the key.’ He was sliding off his seat.

  ‘I—I really would prefer it if you didn’t.’

  He shut the door and came around to the front of the car as she stepped out.

  ‘I really don’t think—’ she began.

  He was advancing towards her. She turned and ran. The slap of her shoes on the concrete path echoed loudly across the deserted street. She didn’t turn to look if he was behind her. She jammed her key in the security-door lock. It stuck, she jiggled it. Terror shot through her as she felt his hand lay heavily on her shoulder.

  ‘I’ll scream!’ she shouted, turning. He jerked his hand away, as if her skin were red-hot. She yanked the door open and threw herself into the building, swung around and slammed the door behind her. He thumped slowly on the door. She could see the dark shadows of his two shoes. She backed away, as if he might burst through any moment. ‘I just want to use the bathroom.’ His voice was toneless. There was another thump.

  She hurried up the stairs and deadlocked her flat, her ears cocked all the while, waiting for the noise of him banging on the door, smashing a window, but there was nothing. She stood in the dark, too scared to move. She peered down at the landing through her window. A bar of white light shone on the empty stoop. She snuck into the kitchen and looked out the window. The car was still parked, empty, out the front of her building.

  Perhaps he was around the back, she thought. Or climbing up to her tiny balcony. She heard a crash and nearly jumped out of her skin. She found her mobile phone and punched in triple-zero, wincing at the loud dial tone echoing through the receiver.

  The call connected. ‘What is your emergency?’

  ‘Hello,’ she whispered, keeping the phone close to her mouth, her hands cupped around it. ‘Hello, there’s a man outside my house.’

  ‘Ma’am, can you speak up, please?’

  ‘I don’t want him to hear me. I live in Fairfield on Merivale Road.’ She faltered. ‘No, wait, sorry, that was my old house. I’m in Coogee.’ She recited her address.

  ‘Has the man threatened you?’

  ‘He followed me to my flat. He was an Uber driver. When we got to my door he tried to come in. I ran. He grabbed at me but I got away. He’s still out there somewhere. Please,’ Priya whispered, her shoulders hunching forward protectively. ‘Please hurry.’

  She hung up the phone and scanned the kitchen for a weapon. There was a cast-iron frying pan sitting in the drying rack. Behind it was the knife block. She grasped the pan’s plastic handle and crouched low, with her back to the wall.

  She thought of the weight of his hand on her shoulder, and the fact he was still lurking outside. At that moment, she wanted Nick. She wanted to press herself against his bulk and feel him reassure her. She dialled his number. It rang, but it went to voicemail. ‘Sorry I missed you. Leave a message.’ The mere sound of his voice made her feel less vulnerable.

  ‘Nick.’ Her voice wobbled. ‘Nick, I … I don’t know why I called, really. You see, there was this man … He followed me and … it doesn’t matter. You’re not there. I’d better just … I’m sorry to bother you.’

  She put the phone on the floor and hugged herself. There were cold patches of sweat on her T-shirt. She was too afraid to move. When the doorbell rang twenty minutes later her heart pounded so hard it hurt.

  A male voice spoke. ‘Police.’

  She tiptoed to the door with the frying pan at the ready. She could see two sets of shoe shadows beneath the door. ‘It’s all right, Ms Laghari,’ another male voice said. ‘The predator appears to have gone.’

  Ten minutes later she was sitting with the two policemen over a pot of tea giving a description of the driver. She traced her finger around the rim of her cup.

  ‘I’m sorry for wasting your time,’ she said.

  ‘It’s always better to call in these situations,’ one of the officers said.

  Priya was still jumpy, but she felt foolish all the same. He hadn’t attacked her. She was just paranoid and not used to living alone. He had probably snuck around the back of her building and taken a leak, then driven home to his wife and kids, oblivious to her terror.

  ‘You’d be surprised how often really dangerous creeps can be linked back to a string of strange reports. Every little bit helps,’ the constable said.

  ‘Thank you for coming,’ she said. ‘I feel a whole lot better knowing you’ve been here and done a search.’

  After the police left Priya tossed and turned and sweated, with the covers pulled up to her chin until the sky was a comforting blue and sunlight broke into the room. She wished it wasn’t Sunday so that she could go to work and be surrounded by people.

  She dressed, pulled on a jacket and sank her hands into her pockets. Despite the warm day, it made her feel protected. She slipped on a cap and sunglasses and, in this approximation of urban armour, she stepped outside.

  She needed caffeine. And sugar. And a bear hug from a close friend. She needed a deep sleep in a hotel bed, fluffy pillows and a roti breakfast just like her mother used to make. With sunny-side-up eggs, still a tiny bit runny in the centre. At least she could do something about that last demand, and she set out on foot, glad of the sunshine.

  Next to her favourite cafe was an overpriced gift boutique. Priya slowed as she passed the window, admiring the silver bottle openers from Italy. She noticed a pair of booties made of foal-coloured leather with white sheepskin lining. They would be perfect for Sadavir. She had money enough now that she could make incidental purchases without having to run a mental audit of her bank account. And this was her son, after all. She knew it was dangerous to think of him as such, but, if this couple replied to her letter in the way she hoped they would, she would like to be able to give her son a gift.

  She went into the store, picked up the booties and slid her fingers into the soft shoes, imagining the tiny feet that would fit inside. She put them on the counter. ‘Just these, please.’

  The young man at the register smiled obligingly and scanned the tag. They looked puny in his large hands. They seemed a paltry gift.

  ‘Hang on a moment,’ Priya said. ‘I want to get something else.’

  She roamed around the shop’s display stands. She laid a tiger-cub jumpsuit over her arm and chose a light-blue linen one-piece for summer. She select
ed a handmade wooden mobile and a pint-sized denim jacket. All up she spent $356 on baby clothes and toys. As the man behind the counter was wrapping the items, Priya’s phone rang. She tucked it between her shoulder and ear as she handed over her credit card.

  ‘Hello?’

  ‘Priya! My God, I just heard your message. Are you okay?’

  ‘Nick. Yes, I’m—’

  ‘I’m so sorry I didn’t get back to you last night. I was at Lee’s place watching the game. My phone died. I slept on his couch. I feel awful. Where are you?’

  ‘I’m in Coogee.’

  ‘I’m coming straight over. I’ll be there in half an hour.’

  ‘Nick, it’s okay, I’m fine.’ Her ordeal suddenly felt distant.

  ‘I’m coming. No arguments. Text me your address.’

  Twenty-nine

  Dan stood at the gate staring at two letters. One was stamped with a logo the colour of congealed blood—red with plenty of black in it. The other was a blue envelope addressed by hand.

  The official envelope came from Griffith Pathology, and it held the results of the DNA test he, Grace and Sam had taken. It had been a simple cheek swab.

  ‘It’s the same one they use when DNA-testing criminals,’ the nurse had chirped, while bagging and tagging the specimens.

  He traced his fingers over the paper, trying to guess what was inside.

  The results had come early. The pathologist had said eight to twelve working days, and it had only been seven. But he was glad it would shorten the wait. He couldn’t take many more of the recurrent nightmares.

  In the most recent one, the results revealed Sam was not Dan and Grace’s son. ‘But he could be,’ the typed letter teased. The folds of the page concealed a small piece of plastic that looked like a memory card for a digital camera. ‘Insert this in your son and download your own DNA,’ the letter instructed.

  In the dream, Dan could hear Sam crying. He searched the upstairs rooms and opened the cupboards but they were all empty. He woke up before he could find him. He gazed up at Sam’s bedroom window now, where Grace was feeding him.

  ‘How’s that boy of yours?’

  Dan jumped as their neighbour sat up, and raised her hand to ward off the sun. Edna Goss was on her knees behind the fence, making little divots in her garden bed with a trowel.

  ‘Hello, Mrs Goss. He’s still … not out of the woods.’

  Illness was the excuse Grace had given to avoid taking the baby around to meet their neighbour.

  ‘The poor little thing. Not to worry. I’m sure he’ll come good. My Brian was very poorly when he was born. Now he’s the director of his own company.’ Mrs Goss struggled to her feet, secateurs in hand, and began to clip away the vines that were choking her side of the fence.

  Dan looked up at Sam’s window again. He could feel the letter in his hand like a living thing.

  ‘If you ever need someone to sit with the boy, just sing out.’ ‘I will, Mrs Goss. Thank you. I better go in.’

  He folded the blue envelope and tucked it into his back pocket, then made his way inside and up the stairs, with the white envelope held out solemnly before him, like a wartime telegram.

  When he eased open the door he saw Grace seated in the rocking chair with Sam in her arms. The blue-and-white Turkish towel she’d wrapped around her wet hair had unfurled so that it hung over her shoulder. As she bent her face towards their baby, Dan was reminded of paintings he had seen of the Virgin Mary and baby Jesus, who was the only other child he could think of who was conceived in as unlikely conditions as Sam was.

  ‘All okay?’ Dan asked.

  She looked up, tired but content. ‘He’s behaving himself.’

  ‘Good little man. Mrs Goss was asking after him.’

  ‘She must think we’re deliberately hiding him from her.’

  ‘I said he was still ill.’

  ‘I feel a bit bad. She was so excited when I told her I was pregnant,’ Grace said. ‘Maybe I have been too paranoid. She’s in her seventies, after all. Who is she going to tell? Perhaps I should take him down to meet her.’

  ‘No!’ The word leapt out of Dan’s mouth. ‘I mean, she seems to have accepted he’s sick. Let’s just leave it for now.’ He shifted on his feet.

  ‘What’s wrong?’ Grace asked. ‘You look like you’ve seen a ghost.’

  Dan raised the envelope.

  ‘Is that …’

  ‘From Griffith Pathology.’

  She took a deep breath. ‘Have you opened it?’

  ‘I wanted us to do it together.’

  Grace looked down at Sam, who was still feeding. ‘Oh God, I’m not ready for this.’

  ‘You think it will be bad news?’

  ‘I haven’t allowed myself to hope it could be anything but bad news.’

  ‘You don’t think he could have my genes, or yours?’

  ‘He’s our son, Dan, I know it. We love him. But these numbers and cells and meaningless pieces of data could give someone the power to take him away from us.’

  He looked at the envelope, pale in his hand. ‘At least this way we’ll know what we’re up against.’

  Grace closed her eyes. ‘Okay.’

  Dan tore clumsily at the envelope, ripping part of the paper inside.

  A string of numbers unfolded before his eyes.

  ‘Well?’ said Grace.

  At the bottom of the column of figures was a businesslike percentile. It revealed a final, indisputable conclusion: Sam had no genetic relationship to either Grace or Dan. Dan dropped the letter.

  ‘No?’

  He shook his head. ‘Zero chance of parentage.’

  Grace pulled Sam closer to her. ‘So, it’s true.’ They stayed silent for a moment until Grace said: ‘How did this happen?’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘They’re going to come for him, aren’t they?’

  ‘No.’ Dan went to her. He put a hand on her shoulder. ‘Nobody knows but us.’

  ‘But it’s only a matter of time.’

  Grace’s nightmares were different from Dan’s, he knew. She had told him of her dreams: of brawny men in suits and dark glasses who would wrench Sam from her arms. She wept in her sleep and woke sobbing. It seemed like she was constantly on the tip of hysteria. One tiny nudge and she would topple over the edge.

  ‘This doesn’t change anything,’ he said gently but firmly.

  Sam began to cry. Grace tried to push her nipple back into his mouth, but he shook his head, cranky. She tapped his bottom, testing the nappy.

  ‘Do you want me to take him?’

  ‘He’ll be okay.’ She rocked slowly in the chair.

  He needed time to think. If all hell was about to break loose, he needed to have a solution ready to offer up. He needed her calm. More importantly, Sam needed her calm.

  Later, he went to the study, closed the door behind him and pulled the blue envelope out of his pocket. He tore it open and read. Dear Grace and Dan, To open with a cliché … His eyes skipped over the body of the text. He crushed the page closed. ‘No.’

  He cautiously unscrunched the page.

  In fact, I’m certain it is one of the hardest letters anyone has ever had to write for I feel sure nobody in history has ever found themselves in the situation the three of us face right now.

  The blue paper shook in his hands as his eyes skated over the words.

  When he finished the letter he lay it flat on his desk and read it again, this time training the light on it as if it were a clue to a murder. He tried to look past the prose and separate out the facts. This was a journalist’s stock-in-trade. Every day he was presented with information and claims that seemed to suggest one truth, but which, when he combed through them, offered little by the way of proof. The letter’s claims were without substance. The writer didn’t offer any evidence. She didn’t make any threats.

  ‘Okay,’ he said, frowning at the letter. ‘What is she asking?’

  She wanted to meet the child. He blinked.
What did she imagine—a backyard barbecue, with her and Grace in floral dresses, cuddles with Sam and some sausages and coleslaw on paper plates? As the scene came to life in his mind’s eye he wondered: Would her heart change when she met the little boy? Perhaps she was just trying to lure them out. Or confirm her suspicion. She had no way of knowing for sure that Sam was her child. Now that he thought about it, he wondered how had she found out about them at all? How had she identified Grace and Dan Arden as the other party in the mix-up? And for that matter, how did she know the mix-up had resulted in a baby? None of it made sense.

  He thought of all the unscrupulous tactics he had seen colleagues employ to land a yarn. The sports reporter who’d turned up on the doorstep of a Manly Sea Eagles player dressed as a fan shortly after the star rookie had undergone brain surgery. The political writer who had infiltrated the Young Liberals and recorded their private discussions.

  There was nothing in this letter to suggest it was authentic. Nothing other than the extraordinary level of detail the writer seemed to know about their child.

  If he answered it, he might be confirming what was only a guess on her part. He clutched the page in his hands and slowly, as if they were moving of their own accord, he felt them tear the paper down the middle, then rip those to pieces in half again, and again, until all he had was a lap full of blue confetti.

  Thirty

  Priya felt a buzz in her pocket. As she hastily grabbed her phone it slipped from her fingers and dropped with a clatter onto the kitchen tiles and skidded under the fridge. Every time her phone had vibrated in the past week she had immediately thought: Could this be it, the answer to the blue letter? She kneeled to retrieve it, relieved the screen hadn’t smashed.

  Hi Pri. How are you feeling? Quite a scare you had there. I can’t stop thinking about it. Part of me feels guilty, I guess. If I had been there this never would have happened. I hope you’re okay.

  Priya stared at the message from her estranged husband. After he had come over the other day they had shared a bottle of wine at her kitchen table, catching up like distant cousins. She had been nervous when he’d said he was coming, but the apprehension disappeared when she saw his face.