This Has Been Absolutely Lovely

by Jessica Dettmann

  With each exhalation, Patrick wondered if a breath in would follow, and when at last none did, he sat, holding his own breath, for a long time. His father was gone.

  The room was very still, and Patrick felt more alone than he could have imagined. Like a drop of water that had been dangling on the tip of a tap, now he was falling heavily to the ground.

  He lowered his head to the mattress and rested his cheek on his father’s warm wrist. ‘Dad,’ he whispered.

  After a while, he stood up. He considered pulling the sheet up over his father’s face, like you saw on TV, but there didn’t seem any good reason to. He was lightheaded and his ears were ringing as he walked from the bedroom, through the kitchen and along the hall to the front door. He didn’t know where to go.

  Naomi would know.

  The neighbours’ front door stood open, so he walked inside, down the hall past the photos on the wall, and through to the kitchen. He stood in the doorway for a moment, taking in the scene before anyone noticed him.

  Annie was at the counter, whizzing something in the blender. Naomi and Molly sat behind her at the kitchen table, playing with the baby’s feet. The baby lay on the table amid discarded cereal bowls and plates of toast crusts.

  Patrick cleared his throat when Annie switched off the blender, and they looked up at him.

  Naomi knew at once.

  ‘Patrick,’ she said, her voice so full of love that he couldn’t stand it. He reached for a chair and sat down.

  ‘What happened?’ asked Molly quietly.

  ‘He’s gone.’

  ‘Oh, love,’ said Annie, and she put a tall chocolate milkshake in a metal cup in front of him, adding a stainless steel straw. Patrick removed the straw and drank the milkshake in one go, then put his head on the table and cried, great heaving sobs.

  Petula moved her head at the sound and jerked her arms, thumping Patrick as she did so. He looked up, confused. ‘Sorry. I shouldn’t do this in front of the baby. It’ll upset her.’

  ‘She’s all right,’ Molly said, ‘don’t stop on her account.’ She scooped Petula up and stroked her back.

  ‘Patrick,’ said Naomi. ‘Have you called anyone? From the list I made you?’

  ‘Oh.’ He wiped his eyes and looked worried. ‘No, I don’t remember where I put it. Who do I ring? Is it the police?’

  ‘No, just his doctor. And then the funeral director. I can do it, if you want.’

  ‘I’ll do it. Is it important that it’s right now? Is there a rush?’

  ‘No, there’s no rush.’

  The door from the garden burst open and Sunny tumbled over the threshold. ‘Annie, are the milkshakes ready? Can we take them out into the garden?’

  ‘Please,’ Annie reminded her.

  ‘Please can we take them out into the garden?’ Sunny saw Patrick’s teary face. ‘Did you hurt yourself?’ she demanded. ‘Were you running? Was it something sharp?’

  Patrick snorted involuntarily with laughter.

  Naomi opened her arms to Sunny and took her onto her lap. ‘Patrick’s dad Ray — remember Ray, from next door? — he’s moved on. To another place.’

  ‘Did he say where?’ Sunny asked.

  ‘No one really knows where,’ said Naomi. ‘It’s a beautiful mystery. One day we’ll all find out.’

  Sunny furrowed her brow. ‘Sorry, Patrick,’ she said. ‘Look, if you find out before me, can you tell me where it is, because my dad moved on too. Maybe we can go see them sometime. Mum can take us in her van.’

  Annie raised her eyebrows at Naomi. ‘I don’t think euphemisms are helping here.’

  ‘He’s dead, Sunny,’ said Molly. ‘Ray died.’

  ‘Oh!’ Sunny’s face brightened. ‘Oh, dead. I didn’t understand. I thought you meant he went off like my dad did, in the night, when I was a baby.’ She paused. ‘Wait, did my dad die?’

  Naomi shook her head. ‘No, your dad really did move on to another place that is also a mystery to me. Sorry, Sunny, I should have been clearer. I didn’t mean to freak you out.’

  ‘That’s all right. Can we have the milkshakes please?’

  ‘They’re on the bench,’ said Annie, kissing Sunny’s head as she bounced up to get them.

  On her way out Sunny stopped and turned back around. ‘Patrick,’ she said, ‘we can bury him in the back here, behind our cubby. Or we can put him in the compost heap. Either’s fine.’

  The adults began to laugh.

  ‘Can you even imagine?’ said Annie. ‘My father would turn in his urn.’

  Chapter 35

  Paul and Brian waited until the car from the funeral directors had been to collect Ray’s body, and then for an additional respectful hour and a half after that, before they began their wedding planning in earnest.

  They laid out a lunch of smoked salmon and bagels for everyone, and started assigning tasks, which Brian read from a stack of hastily written but nonetheless fairly dictatorial notes. Anyone was welcome to contribute in any way they wanted to, but given the lack of time, if what they wanted to contribute coincided with what he’d allocated them, then so much the better.

  Jack had an extra shift to go to, making twenty-five-dollar cocktails at a friend’s maritime-themed bar in Manly called the Ship and Steel, so he was excused after agreeing to be in charge of beverages at the wedding. Brian and Paul wanted a signature drink, and they released him from the meeting once he came up with the concept for a twist on the Cosmopolitan called the Suburban, in which the traditional cranberry juice was replaced with Cottee’s raspberry cordial.

  They would marry at six o’clock on New Year’s Eve, in the back garden, on the patio. Diana was in charge of catering and Naomi was the designated Kid-Wrangler-in-Chief. Some suggestion was made that Annie would give one or both of the grooms away, but the logistics and symbolism of that made all their heads ache, and eventually Annie asked if she could please do the flowers instead.

  ‘Don’t you want to be in charge of music?’ asked Paul. ‘We were hoping you’d play a few songs. Maybe something new?’

  ‘Maybe,’ said Annie, loath to hurt his feelings, but she couldn’t think what song would be appropriate to play at her ex-husband’s wedding. Something old, something new, something borrowed, something blue. Well, they had two old grooms, one of whom had been borrowed from her, and she was feeling pretty damn blue. If she wrote them a song that would cover the last of the requirements.

  She admonished herself for being so bitter. There was no point. She didn’t want Paul. It was fine for him to marry Brian. More than fine. She was genuinely happy for them. But, no, she wouldn’t write them a song. There was going to be no more of that. It was the only way to move on.

  After the wedding planning meeting was adjourned, Annie went through the house on a mission. She collected all her new songs, scribbled on loose pieces of paper, in old notebooks she’d found on shelves, and even the rough jottings on scraps of envelope, and she put them in a box. Taping it closed, she considered labelling it, then decided there was no point. She taped shut the box of her mother’s notebooks too, and carried both boxes up into the attic.

  Up there, she breathed in the hot dusty air and looked around at her family’s past. There was so much rubbish. Really, she ought to clear it out properly. Now that she was going to be there for a while, helping with the baby, and getting Simon back on his feet, she’d have time for things like this. Having a live-in home organiser would be handy. She pulled aside an old dressmaker’s mannequin and shoved the boxes behind it. She didn’t want to have to look at them every time she came up there for something.

  She switched off the light and climbed back down the ladder.

  * * *

  Annie avoided the living room as much as possible for the next couple of days. Whenever she had to go in there, the piano seemed to stare reproachfully at her, like a dog she’d given up walking.

  ‘Fuck off,’ she muttered to it once, as she passed by to collect an armload of socks and empty glasses that v
arious members of the family had left strewn on the floor in front of the television.

  ‘Sorry?’ said Diana, as she went past the hall door.

  ‘Nothing,’ said Annie.

  Simon had made two more attempts to sit his mother down and convince her to sell the house and give him his share, but Annie had brushed him off each time. ‘You can stay here as long as you need to,’ she told him by way of consolation, ‘but at the moment a place for everyone to live is more useful than a chunk of money for you or the others.’

  Apparently feeling (with reason) his mother was treating him like both a child and a criminal, Simon went about in a deep sulk, which had less effect than he would have liked.

  * * *

  Once Annie had made her decision to Be A Proper Gran, as she couldn’t help thinking of it, she took on her new role with gusto. She wore Petula strapped to her chest in a baby carrier whenever she could, watched and discussed Star Wars, googled rare Pokemon characters, and turned the kitchen over to Sunny and Felix for the making of slime. She cooked them plain pasta with cheese whenever they requested it, declared Milo a vegetable, and — when Naomi and Diana were out of earshot — decreed it could be eaten straight from the tin with a spoon. If she was going to be a grandmother, she might as well be a fun one.

  To her surprise, and as much as she hated to admit it, hanging out with the kids was quite good fun. She wasn’t always alone with them, either. Often Diana or Naomi would join in with what they were doing: watching Big, or measuring up the garden and counting the chairs in preparation for the wedding.

  The music in her head grew quieter, and she found that if she played other people’s songs all the time, it was harder for her own to coexist with them. She moved the Bluetooth speaker around wherever she went. She gave the children full control of the music, which meant a lot of Bon Jovi, Taylor Swift and Parry Gripp, and made other adults consider anonymously calling in a noise complaint to the police.

  On the second last day of the year, she found herself in the living room with Sunny and Felix, who had dragged in four dining room chairs to build a blanket fort. Annie had advised against it, on account of the ambient temperature having reached the mid-thirties, but they seemed impervious to the heat and had collected several blankets for the walls.

  ‘Is there room for me in there?’ she called, on her hands and knees on the carpet.

  ‘Honestly? Not really,’ came Sunny’s blunt reply.

  Felix stuck his face out and gave Annie a sorrowful look. ‘Maybe you can be the lookout?’ he suggested.

  ‘Great plan,’ Annie told him, and clambered up to the piano stool. As much as they seemed to be enjoying her company, she could tell when she was not needed in a game. She lifted the lid of the piano, and for the first time in a couple of days looked at it. Had it really been only days since she packed away her songs? Time was behaving very strangely.

  Maybe she’d been a bit rash, forswearing all musical creation forevermore.

  Putting one hand back on the keys, she pressed them gently. It responded, the notes familiar and forgiving. She added her other hand and played a sudden storm of chords in vibrant apology for her tantrum. It didn’t have to be all or nothing: she could see that now.

  ‘And I thought it was all or nothing,’ she sang and stopped. What was a good rhyme for nothing? She bit her lip and thought. What if she switched them around? ‘And I thought it was nothing or all.’ That was better. ‘When I heard your footsteps in the hall.’

  From under the blankets came a muffled voice.

  ‘What was that?’ she asked.

  ‘What about “fall”?’ suggested Sunny.

  ‘That’s a good rhyme, did you think of that?’

  ‘No, I did,’ said Felix, climbing out. He came to the stool and stood beside Annie. ‘I love rhyming.’

  ‘I feared the other shoe would fall,’ Annie sang, ‘when you walked in.’

  ‘Do “small”,’ ordered Felix.

  ‘I felt so cold and I felt so small . . .’

  ‘Wall,’ said Sunny.

  ‘I thought the writing was on the wall.’

  ‘“Paul”?’

  ‘Hmmm,’ said Annie. ‘Shall we put Granddad in our song? Do you think he’d like it?’

  ‘He’d think it was absolutely lovely,’ said Sunny with deep certainty, and Annie pulled her in and cuddled her, laughing.

  ‘He probably would. He probably would.’

  ‘If your song is finished, can we do Kiss makeup now, please?’ asked Felix. ‘Mama said it would be okay to do it this afternoon because we have to have a hair wash tonight anyway before the wedding.’

  Annie shut the piano and stood up. ‘Let’s do it.’

  * * *

  Simon tapped on Molly’s door. There was no answer, but that might have had something to do with the fact that ‘I Was Made For Lovin’ You’ was blasting out through the house. On the patio, he’d just seen his mother carefully painting the outline of a black bat onto his son’s face with a small paintbrush.

  He knocked harder.

  ‘Yeah?’

  ‘It’s me.’

  ‘Get a warrant.’

  He opened the door and went in. Molly was lying on the bed, her arm covering her eyes. She had the blinds down and the windows shut.

  ‘You all right?’

  She looked at him. ‘I’m fine. It’s just so fucking loud.’

  ‘Mum’s lost it,’ he informed her. ‘It’s like Lord of the Flies out there.’

  ‘Have you read Lord of the Flies?’

  ‘No one’s read Lord of the Flies: it’s just an expression. Where’s your baby?’

  ‘Mum’s got her in the pram out in the garden.’

  ‘Oh. Is that good?’

  ‘I guess. Maybe not for Petula’s hearing, but I said I wanted help. I asked her for help.’

  ‘Has it made you feel any better? Knowing she’s going to look after Petula sometimes?’

  Molly shifted irritably on the bed. ‘It’s only been three days since I failed the multiple choice mothering test at the hospital. I don’t know how I feel. I’ve barely seen Petula since. Mum’s been wearing her like a bulletproof vest.’ She changed the subject. ‘How are you going? Mum was saying you might not go back to Germany.’

  Simon twisted the fringe of the chenille bedspread around his fingers. ‘Yeah, we might stay here for a bit. Put Felix into school. Stay in the house. How would you feel about that? Us being here with you guys and Mum?’

  She thought about it for a minute. ‘All right, I guess. I mean, Diana’s a lot, isn’t she? But she’s been nice to me since the baby. And I like Felix. He’s a good kid. What will you do for a job?’

  ‘I’ve been talking to Justin. He might have a position coming up at the real estate agency, helping manage some of the rentals. I’ve told him the truth. I think there’s a chance he’ll take me on anyway. You know, because of him and Mum.’

  Molly moved her hand away from her face and squinted at him. ‘Him and our mum?’

  ‘Oh,’ said Simon slowly. ‘That’s another thing. Mum’s sleeping with Justin.’

  ‘Our mum is sleeping with Justin Schoolbags?’ Molly sat up, incredulous.

  ‘Yep.’

  ‘Why? And also, gross.’

  ‘Justin’s not that bad.’

  ‘I meant Mum. How did you find that out? And why didn’t you tell me?’

  ‘I asked Justin to come round to value the house and she pashed him right in front of me. They weren’t even embarrassed. I must have forgotten to tell you. It might have been the day Petula was born. Things got a bit hectic and then there was Christmas and Patrick and Heather, and me blabbing about all my shit and then you went off and everyone freaked. Speaking of which, didn’t you wonder why Justin Schoolbags appeared on the beach looking for you that day?’

  ‘Oh.’ Molly tried to remember. ‘No, I didn’t wonder at all. That’s quite weird.’

  ‘You were pretty mental.’

  ‘I
was only joining the rest of you. This whole family is demented.’

  ‘Molly!’ Annie’s voice rang down the hall. ‘Petula’s hungry.’ The assessment was backed up by the baby’s hiccupping cries, and Annie appeared in the doorway cradling her. Annie’s face was painted white, with a large black star obscuring one of her eyes.

  ‘What do you think? Not bad eh? Want me to do yours?’ She looked encouragingly at Simon. ‘Felix would love it if you joined in.’

  ‘Nope.’ Simon stood up. ‘I’ve got to go to the German butcher before it shuts. Diana has ordered enough sausages for a royal wedding.’

  ‘I don’t think royals have sausage sizzles at their weddings,’ said Molly.

  Simon ignored her. ‘Mum, you right with the kids for a bit?’

  Annie pointed at her face. ‘I think we’ll be okay. Will you be long?’

  ‘Couple of hours? It’s bloody ages away. I don’t know why we couldn’t get sausages from the butcher three blocks from here, but nobody comes between my wife and a good sausage. Molly, I know what you’re going to say and you can just grow up, that is not what I meant, and that is my wife you’re about to make a gross joke about.’

  ‘All I was going to say, Simon, is that I imagine you’d come off wurst in that fight,’ Molly said, with a smirk.

  Simon groaned. ‘Puns are the lowest form of wit and puns about wurst are the lowest form of pun.’

  ‘Would you say they’re the wurst kind of pun?’

  ‘Stop.’

  Molly smiled and leaned back on her pillow. The baby had latched on without hurting her. That was new. It would be all right staying at Pa’s house for a bit. Diana wasn’t that bad, really. She hadn’t picked the easiest life, being married to Simon, let alone the rest of this family, and Molly felt sorry for her. When Dad and Brian flew back to London, and Naomi and Sunny drove back up north to the liminal space between New South Wales and Queensland, things would feel different. Quieter for sure.

  With Jack at the bar in the evenings, having the others for company and help with Petula would be good.