The Good Parents

by Joan London

  They felt slow and lumbering and, as clouds massed over the winter sun, more and more chilled. They smoked a cigarette each and then another one. What hicks they were, eating spaghetti in a tourist joint! Without their kids they didn’t know how to be part of life. Unwanted, outdated, unmoored.

  ‘The bigger the world the smaller I become,’ Jacob said. There was a smudge of cappuccino foam on his lip. Toni brushed it off. She felt a moment’s anger with Maya for having reduced them to this. They’d come bearing gifts and love and she’d thrown it all in their faces! She was old enough to know better.

  She did know better.

  ‘Something is wrong, Jacob.’

  He knew at once what she meant. Pointless not to talk of Maya. They’d never stopped looking for her in the streets.

  ‘What if she calls?’ Toni said.

  Suddenly they were frantic to go back. They ducked their way across a vast parade of streaming traffic, too panic-stricken to find a crossing. The heel of Jacob’s boot caught in a grate by the kerb and his foot twisted as he wrenched it away. A tram came rolling down on them. He limped aboard like an old man while Toni fumbled with the ticket machine. The tram was packed and they swung close together for protection.

  Toni rushed to the phone on the kitchen bench, Jacob hobbling after her. There was no message from Maya. Cecile wasn’t in. She doesn’t stick around much, Jacob thought. Maybe there’s a lover somewhere.

  From now on one of them must always be home, they said, within earshot of the phone.

  They called Magnus in Warton, when they judged him to be back from school. The arrangement was that he’d eat his evening meal and sleep the night with the Garcias next door. In the daylight hours when he was not at school he could stay home with the dog. This was a compromise. It was not that Magnus wasn’t comfortable with Carlos and Chris and their boys, in fact the whole family worshipped him. But he wanted the chance to have the house to himself, to live with his music. Even now, on the phone, Toni could hear the electronic thud coming from his bedroom. He’d be standing in the kitchen, looking out the long windows. All of them turned to look out the window when they spoke on the phone. The almond tree, a white radiance in spring, would be sprouting its first buds. Already there was a detached, self-sufficient note in the husky tones of Magnus’s voice. The music was getting fainter, he must be walking down the hall. She saw him mooching round the house in his big sneakers, head bowed, Winnie trailing him.

  ‘Is Winnie missing us?’ She heard the smile in her voice. The whole world smiled for Magnus.

  ‘Maybe. She won’t let me out of her sight. How’s Maya?’

  ‘I don’t know. She isn’t here at the moment. Actually, she’s been gone a few days. Something to do with work.’

  ‘Weird.’

  ‘Listen Magnus, where do you think she’d hang out in a city like Melbourne?’

  She hadn’t been going to tell him about Maya in case he worried but now she felt she couldn’t risk losing the chance of a sibling insight. He and Maya were close. In fact he’d be offended if she didn’t tell him.

  ‘Music shops. Parks. Movies. Hungry Jacks. Why, don’t you know where she is?’

  ‘No.’ She’d never been able to lie successfully to her children.

  ‘Weird,’ Magnus said again.

  Jacob phoned Global Imports, but now the phone had been cut off.

  He called the Missing Persons Bureau. A female officer with a young, out-there voice told him that to report someone missing you had to present yourself in person at a police station.

  ‘Can I ask you something? If an eighteen-year-old girl has disappeared but left a message on the phone to say she was going away, can she be counted as missing?’

  ‘When did she phone?’

  ‘Five days ago. But it isn’t like her. She knew her mother and I were coming to Melbourne to see her …’

  ‘Perhaps she has her own reasons.’ Was there a hint of suspicion in her breezy tone? Of rebuke?

  ‘Yes. Of course. But, you know, we’re a perfectly … functional family.’ He realised how futile this was. It might even sound suspicious.

  ‘Sure,’ said the young constable. ‘Don’t hesitate to call in if there’s been no word from her.’

  ‘After how long?’

  ‘Give it a few more days. Another week or so.’

  They sat on different sides of the conversation pit but there was no need for conversation. Their daughter was missing, whatever that meant. She was out of their reach. Their worn hands lay loose on their laps as the shadows came and went across the walls.

  There was a pattering of rain. They couldn’t help feeling that this was it, God or fate or karma coming to meet them. If life was a test, this is what would break them. Something in the pattern of their lives, separately or together, was being worked out. Like a snake turning around to bite them. They felt that they were being punished for something, though they knew this was superstitious and irrational.

  They sat very still as darkness filled the room.

  3

  Leaving

  Once in a spring twilight, a schoolgirl was waiting for a bus on the edge of the highway between Fremantle and Perth when a stranger in a low black car pulled up and offered her a lift. And without a word, against a lifetime’s warnings, the girl, Toni Parker, climbed in.

  Why did she do it? She would ask herself this, off and on, for the rest of her life. A chorus of horns broke out and spread down the line of cars behind him. He was holding up the traffic, it was rush hour, he was shockingly inconsiderate. Sometimes Toni wondered if she made this split-second, life-changing decision because she’d been brought up to think of others. Because she was a nice middle-class girl who was embarrassed.

  He was so calm, so matter-of-fact, that she bent down to look at him, thinking he must know her, perhaps he worked with her father. In the dim cab light she saw a youngish man, no more than thirty, with a large pale deadpan face and black eyes looking up at her, his thick eyebrows raised in query.

  She saw – did she? – what could she see in those few moments? – that he was wearing black with a strip of white at the neck, like a priest. His hair was slicked back. He didn’t smile, didn’t try to entice her. For one moment she almost believed that this was a Christian gesture, because it was growing dark and about to rain. Could she really have been so naïve?

  There was something compelling about him. And that was the truth about Cy Fisher. He always did exactly what he wanted to. In him the channel between will and action ran unusually clear and fast, unusually pure. He didn’t allow himself doubts or guilt. People always obeyed him, his will was stronger than theirs. Above all else he despised fear. Fear was the only quality in others that he didn’t tolerate. (Apart from disloyalty, of course.) He always tested people to find their point of fear. Did Toni sense that she was being challenged? Or was she simply thrown off-guard, like an animal caught in headlights, going forward when it should have gone back?

  Attention had always come her way because she’d been born good-looking, but that evening, standing at the bus stop in her uniform, she couldn’t conceive of herself as an object of desire. The bulky blazer, shapeless pleats, thick stockings that encased her had nothing to do with the expression of her body. Her hair was held back at the nape of her neck by a piece of elastic and squashed down under a beret. Even her pearly hands were encased in grubby stretch-knitted gloves. Except for her face and neck, every part of her flesh was covered. Unlike some girls, she never tried to make her uniform look seductive. Long ago she’d accepted the disguise it offered. Standing there that evening she was hardly present, numbly enduring these final days of her school life. This was probably the last time she’d ever stand at this bus stop, she thought.

  She yawned, tired. The bag at her feet was heavy with books and files for the evening’s revision. In three weeks’ time she’d sit her Leaving exams. It was an after-school revision class in French that had made her late. French didn’t much interest h
er, nor did any other subject. Last month she’d fallen out of love with a boy she thought she fancied. She felt no identification with her life or the future mapped out for her.

  Something else happened, which she only remembered years later. As she stood there, great iron-gray clouds banked up above her, the air turned purplish, there was a hush and everything seemed to go still. And for a second’s flash she saw herself standing exactly where she was, alone on the face of the earth. Then the lights changed, the cars started rolling and she forgot this vision at once.

  The low black car slowed down in front of her and the door opened, just as the first drops began to fall. At once the horns started up, baying at her like the voice of public disapproval. She picked up her bag and stepped into the new that was waiting for her.

  Nothing terrible happened.

  No sooner had she fitted herself in, sorted out her feet in their heavy brogues, settled her bag on her knees, than the rain crashed down and it was too noisy to speak. They crawled along, enclosed by wavy walls of rain, both of them peering through the windscreen. Right away of course she realised that he wasn’t any sort of man of God. A packet of cigarettes slid around on the dashboard which was streamlined, gleaming with lights like a control panel. No priest would drive a car like this. Also he had an unpriest-like five o’clock shadow.

  ‘You can throw that into the back if you like,’ he shouted, with a nod towards her bag.

  ‘It’s OK, thanks,’ she shouted back, keeping it clasped to her. That way he’d know she expected to get out soon. But she took her gloves off and the ridiculous beret and stuffed them in the bag, so as to feel less at a disadvantage.

  He raised his voice again to ask her where she was going. She named a street in her suburb. He’d drop her off there, he said, it wasn’t far out of his way.

  ‘Oh no thanks, if you could just drop me off at a stop further up, there’s a connecting bus …’

  He shook his head.

  She decided not to press the point. Better to show trust. By car her house was only ten minutes away. Better not to offend him. But she could feel her heart beating. From the corner of her eye she checked out the door handle.

  ‘What sort of car is this?’

  ‘Citroën. It’s French.’

  ‘I’ve never seen one before.’

  ‘There are fifteen in the whole of Perth.’

  How do you know the exact number of cars like yours in a city? Why would you want to?

  ‘What makes you so late?’ he asked.

  ‘I’ve just been to a French class. It’s the Leaving in a couple of weeks.’ It was the sort of over-information her mother gave when she was making conversation.

  He didn’t bother to answer. At least he didn’t patronise her. He left the highway and drove deep into the heart of her leafy suburb. The rain stopped like a tap turned off and the only sound was the swish of the tyres on the wet road. He seemed preoccupied. She took the chance to sneak a look at him. He didn’t resemble anyone she’d seen before. He didn’t look ‘Australian’. His face was too white and fleshy and his eyes too dark. His hair was long, slicked back, curling over his collar. His large nose was flattened over the bridge as if it had been broken. He wore a black suit, loose and soft from use, and pointy leather boots. A white shirt, done up to the neck. She’d never seen a suit worn with boots and without a tie before, let alone by a man with long hair. Was he fashionable or a foreigner? He was amply-built for a man not yet in middle age. A broad chest, broad thighs, a fold beneath his chin. He smelt older, humid and smoky. The black prickles along his jaw looked mature and urgent. Lips not quite closed, as if ready to speak when or if it became essential. The mouth shapely and distrustful. A heavy gold ring glinted on his right hand. He didn’t come from her world.

  ‘Which house?’ They’d entered her street. She pointed, he pulled up. ‘Thanks a lot,’ she said as she tried the handle of the door. He leaned across her and opened it. The light came on above his head.

  ‘Voulez-vous sortir avec moi?’ He spoke softly, his face close to hers. She blinked, shocked. So it was a pick-up after all. His accent sounded quite authentic, a lot better than hers. There was a gleam of amusement deep down in his grape-black eyes.

  ‘Ce n’est pas possible. J’ai les examens.’ She was backing out of the car as swiftly as she could with her hefty bag. Safe on home ground, she bent down and bestowed a charming smile on him. ‘Merci beaucoup. Au revoir.’ She shut the door.

  He watched her as she set off with studied calm up the front path, a beauty got up to look like a middle-aged policewoman. Why did they do that to their girls, try to desex them? Keeping them for the right sort of marriage, he supposed. It was meant to make them all look the same of course, but nothing could hide the lines of her figure and the shape of her face. The moment he’d spotted her looking up at the sky over the highway he could tell she was one for whom appearances would be everything. Arrogant. Look at the way she carried off that walk, gliding towards her house, a triple-fronter like all the others in the street, with lawn and shrubbery and stuffy parents terrified by what the neighbours think. They needn’t have worried. Their spoilt, pretty daughters always scuttled back to their own kind.

  Except it wasn’t her house. She’d directed him to a house in the street behind hers, owned by a family she didn’t even know. As soon as he drove off she doubled back down the path and hurried home around the block, exultant, breathing in the scents of wet lawns. Nothing terrible had happened!

  Yet that was the start of it all.

  It might have been in the same spring twilight that across the city Jacob too was rushing home late, before a downpour of rain. He was also in his last week of school, but he was late because he’d just smoked a joint – the first of his life – with his friend Beech and the Capelli boys in the back lane behind Capelli Foods. The reefer (as he and Beech called it, in homage to On the Road) was as fat as a cigar, and popped and crackled like woodfire as they handed it around. Just as they reached the lovingly constructed cardboard filter, Vito Capelli roared for his boys and after a stampede to destroy the evidence they all scattered, Beech to the Anglican rectory, Jacob to his mother’s dress shop, Arlene’s, two blocks further up.

  The sky had turned a cinematic purple and he started to feel he was in a film. In the exhaust from the cars whizzing past him along Fitzgerald Street, his long hair blew heroically back from his face. He heard his feet ring like doom on the iron treads of the fire-escape as he made his way up to the flat on top of Arlene’s. Enter Belmondo. Enter Brando. It’s a bit like being drunk, Jacob thought.

  His sister Kitty looked up from her homework on the kitchen table and said: ‘Why are your eyes all red?’ Rain started to clatter so loudly on the tin roof that he was saved from responding. The kitchen was unceilinged, a converted back verandah, walled in with louvres and weatherboard.

  ‘She’s got a fitting,’ Kitty shouted, pointing to the workroom. From the kitchen you could see into the workroom through a long, broad-silled window that had once opened onto the verandah. Tonight their mother had forgotten to draw the curtains. By long institution, since childhood, he and Kitty were on their honour not to peer.

  There was the familiar tableau of Arlene on her knees, worshipping at the hemline of an unknown woman whom Jacob, with the lightning eye of long experience, categorised on the spot. Late twenties, natural brunette, one of those high, pointy, possibly artificial busts, standard hips, sporty calves. Something pinched about her face. The face was important. Six out of ten. Six point five. Attractive if you passed her in the street but without that special quality that he and Beech were always on the lookout for. On the other hand she was probably tired. Some of Arlene’s best-looking clients lost their sparkle at late fittings. There was something wistful about them at this hour, he thought. The client stared blankly over Arlene’s head, slowly turning on the plywood platform that Arlene had once forced him to make in Manual Arts. It was a peaceful scene. In the background Chickie
the canary, his and Kitty’s ancient and only pet, was preening himself in his cage.

  There was a crack of thunder, and the rackety tacked-on kitchen rattled and swayed.

  ‘Kitty!’ Jacob shouted. ‘This is stupendous!’

  Kitty peered at him suspiciously. He was four years older than her and though not actively unkind, had for most of her life acted as if she wasn’t there. Her name rarely sullied his lips. She received the merest crumbs from his table. He never directly addressed her unless it was for some practical reason, usually to do with his own needs. He was the man of the house and a master at getting out of things.

  ‘I’ve put the potatoes on, Jake. You’ve got to do the chops.’

  Jacob stood blinking at her beneath the swinging light bulb. Overnight, it seemed, Kitty’s jaw had deepened and her eyebrows thickened. He could see where Arlene had let out the seams of her gym tunic which was straining across the erupting islets of her breasts. Woman-sized pink legs filled the space beneath the table. Kitty was bursting out of herself. There was a glass of milk beside her books, filled with unmixed chunks of Milo. She had a chocolate smear on her downy upper lip. He saw that it was too late for his sister now, it had been decided. She was never going to be pretty.

  ‘You’re acting funny, Jake.’

  Smiling mysteriously, avoiding her eyes, he navigated his way past her to the sleep-out.

  There was only one bedroom in the flat, which Kitty shared with Arlene. His sleepout was another part of the enclosed verandah, next to the kitchen. It had a similar low-silled window into the workroom. He stood watching in the dark, as he always did if the curtains were open.

  The client was standing at the workroom door with her back to him, putting on her coat. She reached her hands up under her brown hair and flicked it out over her collar, a female gesture which Jacob always found alluring. He heard the chorus of thanks and promises as Arlene escorted her down the inside stairs. She was nicer to her clients than to her children. How encouraging women were to one another! His mother’s voice became louder when she was tired. How many hours had he spent watching the women in that room, with his light turned off, through any chance gap in the curtains?