The Good Parents

by Joan London

  ‘I’m Andrew. Come in.’

  Jacob followed him down a long corridor to a living room dark from overgrown vines on a pergola outside the windows. Cheerless, unlived in, filled with the sort of antique-style teak furniture that you could buy in import stores.

  ‘Sit down.’ Andrew indicated a chair at the table. ‘Would you like a drink? I always help myself to my father’s whisky when I call in.’ He took down two cut-glass tumblers and a decanter from the dresser. ‘It’s lucky you caught me. My father’s put the place on the market. I’m packing up my kid stuff.’ He indicated an open door into a small bedroom. ‘You know, hockey trophies, Asterix, Tintin. Cheers.’ He sat down opposite Jacob and took a sip of whisky. He kept his eyes on Jacob. The place was cold, Jacob was glad of his coat. But he sensed that at last he was getting closer to the heart of the matter. Because why was this son so willing to engage?

  ‘I’m sorry to disturb you …’ Jacob began.

  ‘I’m glad of company. I don’t like coming here.’ Andrew threw his head back and swallowed the whole shot. ‘I reward myself with whisky. I find it helps.’

  He seemed like a nice young guy or was he being disarming? Of course he’d want to protect his father. (Would Magnus protect him if he knew he was in the wrong?) Maybe it was him, Jacob, that Andrew wanted to check out? He remembered the attitude of the sergeant at the Missing Persons Bureau. What, after all, might a girl be running away from? Fathers were suspicious people these days.

  ‘The fact is, Andrew, we don’t know where Maya is. We haven’t been able to contact her. Perhaps your father could help. Are you in contact with him?’

  ‘We talk occasionally on the phone.’

  ‘Do you know where he is?’

  Andrew shrugged. ‘He travels all over. I call his mobile.’

  ‘Could I ask you for his number?’

  ‘I’m sorry, he never gives it out.’

  ‘Then could you do something for me? Next time you speak to your father could you ask him to give me a call? Here’s my number.’

  ‘OK.’

  ‘Can I also ask you to call me if you hear anything about Maya, anything at all?’

  Andrew bowed his head, a signal of acquiescence, if only to Jacob’s right to ask. His deep brown eyes were full of thoughts, sad and grown-up. Already his high forehead was faintly lined. When he wasn’t smiling there was something ascetic about his face. He wouldn’t want to lie. Toni would approve of him, Jacob thought, unexpectedly. She loved sensitive young men.

  Jacob put down his glass and stood up. ‘Thanks Andrew.’ He hesitated, then looked him steadily in the eye. ‘The thing about Maya is, she’s a very special girl. We think she is. She’s very intense, very loyal. Once she commits to someone or something …’

  The two men shook hands.

  19

  Grand Final

  Toni was late and for a while Jacob was glad to be able to give himself to the experience, to the rumble of anticipation that was building up in the stadium, to be part of things for once, lifted up and carried along by the energy waiting to be released.

  Tod had good connections. Seats in the middle tier of the stadium, mid-field. Next to Jacob were two men in their mid-thirties, friends, Demons supporters, like him. He’d decided to back Melbourne, the dark horse, the desperate, you never knew what they’d pull out of the bag. He could shout and swear along with them, throw his arms around. Here he was allowed to be male. If he had a mobile phone he would have called Carlos. Guess where I am, mate! They’d made a tradition of setting up for the big match at the Garcias’, stacking the fridge with beer, wearing team scarves. Chris made everyone hot dogs. He thought of the streets of Warton, silent and empty, the whole country gone into retreat, everyone hunkered down in darkened rooms before the telly, as if war had been declared.

  A massed choir assembled on the emerald field and belted out a medley culminating in ‘I Still Call Australia Home’. Schoolkids did some aerobic dancing to indulgent cheers. Smoke and balloons went up, jet fighters circled overhead. Then the national anthem, the young gladiators burst out and a hundred thousand people stood and roared for blood. Then the toss, the grapple for the ball, the break. Everyone started calling out, as if the stakes were personal now, screaming his or her advice. Strange transformations materialised around him. ‘Get it out! Get it out!’ screamed the genteel middle-aged woman in front of him, in a sort of a tantrum. For a moment he was dizzy with the occasion of it all. This was his culture! His country!

  But where was Toni?

  Suddenly he was on his feet. ‘Holding the ball, ya mongrel,’ he roared, showing off to the guys next to him, who laughed and stamped their feet.

  Then for a little while Jacob forgot about his women, and his sense of having in some way failed them, and settled into his habitual meditation on the players as warriors, symbols, losers and winners on life’s playing field.

  The world was more changed than she had expected. Mile after mile it displayed itself to her in a hotchpotch of detail, factories, warehouses, car yards, rows of matching houses disappearing into the haze. It had never been clearer to her, what the world cared about. Her gaze seemed more acute, as if a blast of air had passed through her head.

  The bus moved slowly in the city traffic. Jacob would freak out if she was late. In the ashram they would be having the pre-lunch meditation. She never had improved at meditation, but already she missed it, like you miss regular exercise. She wanted to keep this calm, this clarity and purpose. One day during meditation it had occurred to her that Maya must be persuaded to come back.

  The game had started and she passed easily through the ticket gate. She was glad she was late. If she’d had to fight her way through throngs of people she might have turned back. From the moment she’d put on her jeans and black leather jacket this morning, the world seemed heavy and dark and animal again. As she stood on the first step at the bottom of the gigantic concourse, a roar broke out and filled the stadium, like chaos amplified. She should never have agreed to this. Stay in the moment, she told herself, but the moment was exploding, volatile, aggressive. She had an impulse to cower and cover her head.

  She went to the ladies’, and looked in the mirror and saw herself at last, the graying stubble of her hair, her ears puckish and alert, her brown skin faded to sallow, her valiant neck, her whole face carved into a new angularity. She caught a glimpse, like a ghost, of the hawkish features of Beryl. Her hand rose to her head. Her heart thumped in her chest. She wrapped her scarf tighter around her neck.

  She took a breath and went to buy a bottle of water from the kiosk before she battled her way to her seat. The large man in front of her at the counter turned and she was face to face with Cy Fisher.

  They stood silent for some moments while the hollow massed roar of the stadium rolled all around them.

  ‘Come over here,’ Cy Fisher said. She followed his black back with its gray-streaked hair to a square of wall beside the fire escape. The stadium held its breath again and everything went still. In quiet voices, they began to speak.

  ‘So you follow Australian Rules.’

  ‘Just dropped in for a while. I’ve got some money on this game.’

  ‘Who’s going to win?’

  He snorted. ‘Essendon.’

  ‘You couldn’t stand sport once.’ He’d hated exercise of any kind, but had that changed? He was trimmer and more youthful-looking than he used to be. All these years he’d loomed giant-like at the back of her memory but he seemed lesser here, on a more human scale. Something had relaxed in his face. A little baggy around the jawline, and there were swirls of violet skin under his eyes, but they were still black and shining. He was dressed casually, in a black T-shirt and zip-up jacket. His hair beneath the gray streaks was still dark, pushed back from a receding hairline. He must be nearly sixty. She hadn’t expected that he’d age this well.

  ‘Didn’t used to have the time. Now I’ve retired.’

  ‘Retired! What happened?’


  ‘I’ve had Death Therapy.’ He treated her to one of his sudden teeth-baring grins. ‘Heart attack. At a wedding! Triple bypass, three years ago. Someone looks after me …but I do things differently now. Had to get out of Perth.’

  ‘You live here?’

  ‘Melbourne’s an interesting town. Tons of culture.’

  ‘How’s your mother?’

  ‘Lives with Sabine these days. I fly her over a couple of times a year.’

  ‘What do you do with yourself?’ Obviously he couldn’t show his face in Perth.

  ‘Work out. Walk. Cook healthy food. Go to concerts. Would you believe it, I’m studying French!’

  ‘No business?’ But there would always be business …

  He looked amused. ‘I’ve got my finger in a few pies. But I was winding down in Perth. The big conglomerates moved in from the eastern states. No fun anymore. I was always on my guard …Anyway, what’s happened to you?’

  His eyes skimmed across her baldness but he refrained from comment. She noticed the interest, even affection in his eyes.

  ‘Oh Cy, we’ve lost our daughter.’ What did anything else matter? She was an old woman in black scuttling down the road, wailing and waving her hands.

  ‘Lost her?’ He looked around as if for a child.

  ‘She’s eighteen. She came to Melbourne and then she disappeared.’ She felt relieved to be telling him, as if he were a policeman or a doctor. Like handing over to a professional.

  ‘She do drugs?’

  ‘Not that we know.’

  He stood looking down at her. ‘We’d better go somewhere and talk.’

  ‘After the game?’

  ‘Now. You don’t want to watch this, do you?’

  ‘No. If you don’t mind missing it.’

  He shook his head and set off towards the stairs.

  She ought to tell Jacob. But she couldn’t risk losing Cy in the crowd. Once Cy decided on action, he took it. If stalled, he could change his mind. And what would Jacob say if she told him she was going off with Cy?

  As she followed him the siren sounded. It must be half-time. The crowd instantly spilled out all around her on the stairwell, pushing her against the wall. She could only just keep track of Cy’s head bobbing further and further down.

  She felt the old luxurious pull of relinquishment to him, of putting herself in his hands. Though she rarely thought of him now, she sometimes still had dreams of him in which he showed pain, even vulnerability, and she woke feeling tender towards him. Suddenly she remembered what it was like to be with him. How you saw things differently. Anything seemed possible.

  A light rain started to fall. It had rained like this when he spirited her away from Karen’s wedding, and in the restaurant after he took her to be married. When he asserted his powers.

  Maya would be found.

  He was the reason for everything, Jacob, their children, the way they lived.

  She and Jacob were small and ordinary, she thought, as she made her way towards him, tiny figures in the roaring crowd. Winds of change blew around them, wars broke out, plagues ran rampant across continents, children died. Still they trudged on. Long ago they opted for the small life, for safety and peace and a home for their children. They kept their heads down, their fingers crossed.

  There was Cy, leaning against a railing, at ease, missing nothing, a little space around him. Retired? He would never retire.

  Essendon had it in the bag. Jacob sat drinking beer morosely beside his fellow Demons supporters as the slaughter ground its way to the final goal. A losing game resembled those dead ends in life when you can’t do anything right. Hird was chaired off the ground to a roar of adulation. Wasn’t that every man’s secret dream?

  His neighbours stood up to leave.

  ‘Looks like I’ve lost my wife now,’ Jacob said. ‘First my daughter, then my wife.’

  But their moment of fellowship had passed. The men slunk off towards the exit without even saying goodbye.

  20

  The Devil’s Country

  This morning it was raining. The street was empty, swept by sheets of rain. She sprinted between the doorways of the Mimosa and the Corner Cafe to sit at an inside table. Through the open door she watched some doves sheltering beneath the tables on the terrace, pecking at crumbs, as diligent as ever, their feathers fluffed up against the weather. A summer storm. Leaves parted and hung dripping off the tree by the road. She thought of the manes of horses in the rain. A gust of wind set them shivering and tossing. Next time maybe she’d be born as a horse. Or a bird. She didn’t want to be a person anymore.

  Something had woken her, a mauve light through the frosted-glass windows that seeped in under her eyelids. Or was it a dream? In the dream she was moving through the Flynns’ house between sliding doors that opened to reveal Dory lying on a couch in a glowing mauve dressing gown, propped up on her side, her hand beneath her cheek. He was kneeling beside her. Go, just go, a voice said.

  She had a burning thirst and drank from the tap in the bathroom. She noticed she was still dressed. Her sandals were by the door and she pushed her feet into them. Her bag was by the bed. She felt deep inside it and the mobile was still there. Seen my phone anywhere? He was asleep on his back with his mouth open, like a corpse in this strange light. She let herself out.

  The smell of this place made her stomach clench. She must have slept but she was exhausted, as if she’d just done a full day’s work. Sore everywhere, but she had no time for a shower. Behind the desk at the entrance Helga was yawning, pinning up a strand of hair. Helga too was tired.

  Running in the rain to the cafe woke her up a bit. But when she came to order she found she didn’t have enough money for coffee. Just enough for a camomile tea. Even Rita seemed distant this morning when she brought the cup to the table. The tea had a dusty clover smell that reminded her of her mother. If she were home she would stay in bed today and let her mother take over. When she was sick, her mother, with her natural cures, her herbs and soups, kept the world at bay. She made you a child again. A vision crossed her mind from long ago, her mother’s hands, tanned and strong, wrinkled at the joints, the shiny oval nails clipped short for service.

  When she was a little girl, the word ‘mother’ sounded dark and velvety and sheltering, like flowers in the rain. She hated sleeping over at other people’s houses, even the Garcias. She didn’t like to be too far away from Toni.

  The fat man was inside too, stolidly eating his breakfast, his maroon suede sneakers splotched with mud. Salty chips and Coke gave him a little hit, so he could forget his misery for a moment.

  A big man at the table by the door was tucking into the kind of breakfast her father liked to have in cafes on his jaunts to Perth. Poached eggs and spinach and tomatoes, while he read a newspaper. It made him feel like a city man.

  Ali and Rita came and went through the bead curtain, not speaking. Ali’s mother shuffled out with bains-marie of fresh-cooked food. A baby was crying out the back.

  ‘Here’s a drink for you, baby.’ A memory flash, the sort you get after you’ve been drunk. She gasped, opened The Courier-Mail lying on her table. She couldn’t read the words. Something had happened to her brain.

  There was a party. We’re going to a party. He was actually smiling at her. A taxi, a white high-rise block of flats. A lift with a dim mirror reflecting the two of them going up, side by side, not touching, like a father and a daughter. A living room furnished like a hotel, generic paintings, wall-lights turned low, a smoked-glass table covered with bottles. Everyone was out on the balcony, smoking and admiring the view.

  ‘Here’s a drink for you, baby.’ She thought there was a gunshot down below but it was just a car backfiring. Everyone laughs, thinks she’s being funny. Her own voice, the ‘cute’ voice, exclaiming at the coloured tracery of headlights. He puts his arm around her. He’s pleased with her, even though she’s still wearing her denim skirt and T-shirt, like a schoolgirl, and everyone else is dressed up. Why d
idn’t he care how she looked tonight? She knows she’s becoming too excited. The balcony is dangerously high. Mr T is there, back from Bangkok, but keeps his back turned to her. She speaks with an Asian girl, beautiful as a model. My home is far away, the girl says. She gives a little shivery laugh after everything she says.

  The fat man was standing at the counter, ordering take-away. Sweet and sour. Probably for his morning tea. Ali’s mother brought out a bain-marie of steaming rice. He pointed to it. She scooped up a large spoonful for him and dumped it in the foil container. You could smell it, the sweet bready smell of hot rice. She watched the fat man lumber across the terrace carrying his take-away in a white plastic bag. The rain had stopped, the doves had flown away. Her heart was pounding and the sweat spurted into her armpits.

  Baby, have a drink. Like a father wanting to help. He’s never called her baby before. Then the need to go horizontal, to close her eyes, she’s about to curl up on the floor. But she’s falling back onto a bed in a dark room and he’s lying on top of her, kissing her, touching her, his face so close she can’t see it anymore. She sees behind him the stocky silhouette against the light in the window. She tries to kick and buck but she can’t move. She’s pinned down. ‘Wait,’ he hisses in her ear. She gasps but he puts his mouth on hers. She’s going under. This is the Devil’s country, she thinks.

  She’s sitting on a bathroom floor, being sick in a toilet.

  You promised. Never again.

  ‘Pull yourself together. You’ve been dreaming.’

  Was it a dream? She couldn’t remember how she came back to the Mimosa.

  The need for coffee was so strong that she thought of asking Rita for credit. But everyone was strange today, tired and sad, even Rita.

  She pulled the phone out of her bag and pressed One.

  ‘Andy here. Hello?’

  ‘Just to let you know, I’ve taken over the phone.’

  ‘Maya? What’s the time?’