The End of Cuthbert Close

by Cassie Hamer

  The principal hesitated. ‘Noah and Jasper are quite young for the class. Turning six later this month, yes?’ She pretended to consult her file. ‘Given that, along with Noah’s social immaturity, we think he might be better off going back and repeating kindergarten.’ Seeing Alex about to interrupt, she held up a hand. ‘Now, I know what you’re going to say. That he won’t have any friends, or the other children will make fun of him, or that it might further accentuate any feelings of inadequacy he may have in comparison to Jasper.’ She paused. ‘But in our experience, children at this age are very accepting. It’s one of the joys of working with them. They haven’t yet acquired prejudices in the same way as adults.’ She smiled at Alex, who shifted uncomfortably and resisted the urge to take a paintbrush and swab a large slash of yellow paint right down the front of the principal’s sensible black suit. Was she insinuating Alex was prejudiced? The cheek! The only people she didn’t tolerate were cyclists, charity-muggers, and people who tried to ruin her children’s lives. No wonder Noah had attacked the classroom like it was his own Pro Hart project. The principal clearly had no idea what she was talking about. She was probably a cyclist, like Martin.

  Alex crossed her legs and tried to restrain her fury. ‘Let’s say you’re right. Let’s say it works for the first year or two. But as we know, school goes for thirteen years. What about when Jasper leaves school and Noah’s still a year behind? It would devastate him.’

  Mrs Ryan shrugged. ‘It’s what happens with most siblings. They all finish school at different times.’

  ‘But they’re not just siblings, they’re twins,’ said Alex.

  ‘Not identical, though. The way I see it, they’re brothers who happened to be born at the same time and we need to acknowledge them as separate little boys who are very different to each other and have vastly different needs. We’re trying to do what’s best for them, as individuals.’

  And Alex wasn’t? She went to collect her handbag. There was no point to being in this room any longer. She had better things to do than argue with people whose sole intention seemed to be to misunderstand her children. ‘Thank you for your suggestions, but I think we’re done here.’

  James cleared his throat. ‘Thank you, Annabelle, for taking the time to meet with us.’

  Alex glared, but James continued. ‘You’ve given us a lot to think about. Can we get back to you next week about what we think is the best course of action?’

  Bloody James. She wanted to kick him in the shins. Make him angry, like she was. Their children were under attack, for heaven’s sake!

  ‘Would you like to say goodbye to the boys? I’ll find Miss Douglas and send them in.’ The principal rose and Alex waited until she was out of the room before turning to her husband.

  ‘Don’t tell me you agree with all of this?’ Alex hissed.

  James studied her. ‘You know how you hate those climate-change deniers.’

  Climate-change deniers, yes. She did have one more prejudice. People who couldn’t accept the science of climate change. Ignorant fools, in her view. The evidence was clear. ‘What has climate change got to do with Noah and Jasper?’

  ‘The way I see it,’ said James. ‘Mrs Ryan has presented us with the evidence. We can see for ourselves what’s happened.’ His eyes wandered over the dishevelled classroom. ‘And we – or at least I – have seen similar things happening at home.’

  ‘What’s that supposed to mean? That I’m not around often enough to know my own two sons?’

  ‘No, that’s not what I mean.’ James shook his head. ‘You work so hard, at your job, at being a mum, and you’re so caught up in the everyday stuff that it’s impossible to see a bigger picture.’

  ‘So now I can’t see straight?’ Alex felt a sting, like little bitey ants, nibbling at the corners of her eyes. It was bad enough for the principal to cast aspersions over her parenting, but not James, the one person she thought always had her back.

  ‘You’re deliberately misunderstanding me,’ he said. ‘This actually isn’t about you at all.’ Excellent. So now she was self-obsessed as well. James went to take her hand but Alex snatched it away. Childish, she knew. But the last thing she wanted was for him to touch her.

  He sighed. ‘You see everything through a lens of guilt. Even though you have nothing, nothing at all to feel guilty about. You’re amazing. But our boys need help. And we can either argue about it while things get worse, or we can do something, however uncomfortable it makes us feel to admit there’s a problem.’

  Before she had a chance to respond, the door opened again and through it came two very subdued little boys, followed by Mrs Ryan and Miss Douglas.

  Jasper went meekly to James, while Noah sidled up to Alex and took her hand.

  ‘Mummy, now that you’re here, could you stay for tuckshop?’ He looked up at her with wide, hopeful eyes.

  ‘I’m sorry darling, but I have to go back to work. I’ve already missed rather a lot today.’ She knelt down and pulled him close.

  He whispered into her ear. ‘I’m sorry I was naughty, but I’m happy you came to see me. Do you like our classroom?’

  Alex made a show of looking around. ‘I’m not sure about the paintwork.’ She winked. ‘But yes, I like it very much. Do you?’

  ‘I like it when I’m naughty because then I get to speak and everyone listens, even Jasper. And today I was so naughty that now you’re here.’ He grinned. ‘And you never come to school.’

  Alex leant back and fought the urge to admonish him. Her sensitive, complex little boy. Every fibre of her being wanted to scold him, tell him that breaking the rules was never acceptable, that if he continued to do it the school would separate him from his brother. Instead, she kissed him on the cheek.

  ‘Yes, my darling. Here I am.’

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  Cara squinted out the windscreen at the neat row of brand-new blond-brick townhouses, stacked along the street like a line of morning-coffee biscuits. The one in front of them appeared to have two pairs of shoes lined up neatly at the front door. This had to be it. Her parents’ new home.

  ‘C’mon, Mummy. What are you waiting for?’ Poppy’s voice was in her ear and Cara’s fingers went to the keys in the ignition.

  ‘Oh hey, I haven’t switched the engine off yet. You should still be in your seat. It’s dangerous.’ Cara put the car into park. ‘Please don’t do that again,’ she said sharply, then immediately felt guilty. It wasn’t her daughter’s fault that Cara’s stomach was a ball of nerves. She hated asking anyone for help, and what she was about to ask of her parents went well beyond asking them to babysit or give her daughter piano lessons.

  ‘Sorry, Mummy, I’m just so excited. I can’t wait to see Halmi’s new house,’ said Poppy.

  ‘Okay, could you pass me the gwapyeon.’ The Korean fruit jellies were her father’s favourites and Cara enjoyed making them for the way they made the cottage smell like a strawberry patch at the height of summer.

  ‘Here you go.’ Poppy handed over the tray, which had been sitting on the back seat next to her, then bounced up and down. After forty-five minutes in the car, she was like an over-excited puppy with the zoomies. ‘She says there’s a pool nearby.’ Poppy craned her neck. ‘But I don’t see it.’

  Walking up the front path, Cara balanced the tray in one hand and gripped her daughter’s fingers with the other. Poppy kept up her chatter.

  ‘Halmi says there’s a room just for the piano and another one where you and I can stay, but only if I promise not to take any textas into the bedroom because she wants the walls to stay perfectly white.’

  At the door, Cara stopped and fought the urge to scurry back to the car. It was silly to react so strongly against a place she hadn’t even seen yet. This was not her home, it was theirs. There would be no new school for her, no nearly wetting her pants because she couldn’t find the toilets, no sitting by herself at recess and lunch for weeks on end, no having to explain which country she was really from, no having to defend h
er smelly food.

  ‘Why does Halmi move house all the time?’ Poppy looked up at her, wobbling on one foot as she attempted to remove her shoes.

  ‘Because she likes new things, I guess.’ And she always thinks there’s something better out there.

  ‘I wish we could move house.’

  ‘No you don’t.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Because you’d have to leave your school and all your friends. All the people in the street. Aunty Beth, Aunty Alex, and all the kids.’

  ‘We could make new friends.’

  ‘It’s not the same.’ She leant down to eye level. ‘By the time I was your age, I’d been to three different schools.’

  Poppy’s eyes widened.

  ‘One time, I wet my pants because I didn’t know where the toilets were.’ Cara took her daughter’s chin in her hands. ‘Believe me, it’s not fun.’

  The door swung open.

  ‘Halbi!’ Poppy flew into her grandfather’s arms.

  ‘My wild Poppy.’ Cara’s father hugged the little girl tightly, his eyes seeking out hers. Is this right?

  Cara nodded imperceptibly. Her father had never hugged her like that as a child but he was nothing if not conscientious and, over time, he’d come to understand, even embrace, the Australian fondness for physical affection.

  Cara stepped into the cream-coloured hallway. The walls were bare, except for a crucifix at the end of the hall, and a framed certificate hung near the front door. Cara cringed. A bachelor’s degree in accounting was hardly deserving of front door status, yet it had taken pride of place in each of the six homes her parents had lived in since she graduated.

  ‘Oh, Appa, really?’ She gestured to the gilt-edged certificate.

  ‘Talk to your mother,’ he muttered in Korean.

  ‘What did you say?’ demanded Poppy.

  ‘Nothing, little girl. Are you still doing your Korean classes?’

  Poppy wriggled out of his arms. ‘I can count to ten and do all the days of the week.’ She smiled proudly.

  ‘I am impressed.’ He pinched her nose. ‘Soon you will speak better than me.’

  ‘She certainly knows things that I don’t,’ Cara volunteered, with a mix of pride and guilt. At Poppy’s age, she’d been so determined to erase all Korean from her vocabulary that she pretended she couldn’t hear her parents when they spoke in their first language. Now, here she was, sending Poppy off to Korean classes for three hours every Saturday. The irony wasn’t lost on her, but fortunately it was on her parents. For them, there was nothing ironic about education.

  ‘Would you like to take a tour of our new home?’ Cara’s father stood aside and gestured with an open palm down the short hallway. ‘The kitchen is this way.’

  In a second, Poppy was gone, heels flying, while Cara ambled, trailing her finger along the pristine walls. She rapped lightly with her knuckle and the reply was hollow.

  At the end of the hall, she paused. ‘Appa, should we make a bet? I’ll take two years and three months.’

  Every time her mother and father moved to a new home, Cara made a bet with her father about how long Joy would last before getting itchy feet again. Her father always predicted at least five years, while Cara never forecast much more than two, though this place certainly was nicer than some of the others they’d rented. Cara always won, though it was money she didn’t enjoy pocketing.

  ‘Certainly, daughter.’ He folded his arms and looked to the ceiling. ‘Twenty years.’

  Cara gasped. ‘You may as well give me your money now.’ She took his outstretched hand, his skin warm and papery, and shook it.

  ‘Why are you standing like strangers around the front door?’ Joy had Poppy’s hand in her grasp, and used her free one to shake a finger at Cara and her father.

  ‘Sorry, Ma.’ Cara pressed the plate of foil-covered gwapyeon into her hands.

  Her father went to take one but Joy tapped his hand. ‘Later, old man. You want to get diabetes?’

  ‘I think the sugar has already gone to his head. He says you will live in this house for twenty years,’ Cara exclaimed, expecting her mother to immediately pooh-pooh the idea and dismiss it as being a fate worse than death.

  But Joy grew still and looked at the ground. If Cara didn’t know any better, she would have said her mother was almost reluctant to speak.

  ‘Your mother has had a change of heart,’ said Appa triumphantly. ‘This is our forever home.’

  Joy shuffled her feet and Cara looked back to her father. ‘What do you mean?’

  Her parents were obsessed with property shows – derelict homes being overhauled in a week, and befuddled English couples buying crumbling French chateaus. Appa must have learnt the phrase forever home from one of them.

  ‘This is our castle. Our home. We bought it.’ Her father swivelled about the hallway with a flourish. ‘They will carry me out of here in a box.’

  ‘Sung-soo,’ said her mother. She didn’t often use his Korean name, but a joke about death was not to be tolerated.

  ‘Sorry, sorry.’ Her father bowed his head, then raised it and smiled. ‘But I am a happy man. Now, I can retire.’

  ‘Oh, really? You’re giving up the business as well?’ This was all too much. Buying houses? Quitting their jobs? Who were these two people standing in front of her? ‘Umma?’ said Cara.

  ‘Oh, you are such a fool, old man.’ Joy shot her husband a withering look. ‘Your father said he would get a divorce if we did not settle in one place, and I did not want to lose my place in choir at church, so I said yes. We will retire in five years. Not before.’

  Cara swallowed heavily. ‘Congratulations,’ she croaked, overcome with confusion about how she should feel. Happy that they had decided to settle? Miffed that they had not thought to consult with her? Angry that they had not done this thirty years ago and given her the stability that every child deserved?

  Her father stood at another door in the hallway. ‘There is something to show you.’ He paused, before opening it grandly. ‘It’s for you and Poppy.’

  ‘Whoa, Halbi. This is for us?’ Poppy breathed and stepped into the room.

  ‘So you can come and stay whenever you like.’ Sam stood aside to let Cara through. The room contained two single beds, one of them covered with a pink love heart–emblazoned doona, the other with a pale blue chambray-style bed cover. Between the beds was a whitewashed bedside table and lamp, and above it was a pink framed inspirational quote. Without change, there would be no butterflies.

  In the corner was a small bookcase, stocked with what Cara could see were some of Poppy’s favourites, and a couple of recipe books, presumably for her.

  ‘Look, Mum, it’s your wedding day.’ Her daughter picked up a small picture frame from the bookcase and handed it over. Cara studied the photo. Her head thrown back in laughter as the breeze caught her veil, the golden light of the setting sun catching Pete’s face as he grinned adoringly at his new wife.

  The photo was half the size of her university degree, Cara noted with a smile. Still, lucky it was there at all, given Joy’s angst over the day. Marrying in a garden? With only fifty guests! People from church would think they were poor. That they didn’t care. But Cara was firm. This was what she and Pete wanted. A cookie-cutter wedding hall with 400 guests wasn’t for her, though Pete would have gone along with it had she insisted. He would have done anything to make her happy. Her father understood this and quietly played peace-maker. Pete was a good man. He would take care of Cara. So what if he was Australian? So too was their daughter.

  Cara placed the frame back on the bookcase.

  ‘I love this room!’ squealed Poppy, leaping onto the bed and hugging the heart-shaped cushion on the pillow. ‘Can we stay tonight? Please, Mum? Please?’

  ‘Oh, sweetheart, we didn’t bring your pyjamas,’ said Cara.

  Her father coughed. ‘I might have bought you some pyjamas when I was at Kmart getting the other things.’

  Poppy dived under the pill
ow. ‘He did!’ She held up a star-spangled pyjama set. ‘Look, Halmi,’ she squealed as Joy went over to the bed to inspect.

  ‘There are some for you too,’ her father whispered. ‘No stars.’

  Cara nodded and coughed to clear the lump in her throat. It was so sweet of them, well, of her father at least, to try to make them feel so welcome in this new home of theirs.

  She blinked, but as she went to deliver the thank yous, there was a knock at the front door.

  ‘I will answer. Don’t you go.’ Her mother leapt off the bed and scurried out of the room.

  ‘Are you expecting someone?’ said Cara.

  Her father shrugged. ‘Your mother is always up to something.’

  There were voices in the hallway – her mother’s and a man’s.

  ‘Sam, Sam,’ she called. ‘David is here.’

  Who’s David? Cara mouthed to her father.

  He shrugged again and left the room. Cara followed.

  In the hall standing with her mother was a short, dark-headed man, dressed in a full business suit and tie. A briefcase in one hand, and a basket of fruit in the other.

  ‘Sam, you remember David from church.’ Joy was bright-eyed. Her movements animated.

  ‘Hello, Mr Kim.’ David from church bowed deeply.

  ‘Call me Sam.’ Her father shook David’s hand.

  ‘And this is our daughter, Cara, the one who I was telling you about. She has the accounting degree. Same as you.’ Her mother smiled sweetly, though Cara could tell her teeth were clenched.

  ‘I’m actually a food stylist.’

  ‘Oh, that sounds interesting.’ David cocked his head. ‘Korean food?’

  ‘All types. There’s not really enough work to be so specialised.’

  ‘I eat mostly Korean food.’ David seemed disappointed, but then brightened as he spotted the gwapyeon on the hall table. ‘Your mother is a great cook. She brings sweets to practice all the time.’