Jean Harley Was Here

by Heather Taylor Johnson

  ‘If my sister were alive, I’d hate this for her.’

  ‘They really got on, didn’t they?’

  An image of Lynn and Jean with brown paper bags full of antiques and craft crowding every space on the kitchen table. ‘How am I going to pack all this?’ A bottle of wine between them, dinner cooking on the stove, the women laughing at the kitchen table. Yes, they really got on, and John suddenly missed his wife. ‘She really wanted to be here. It’s my fault. I told her she could come, but she knew I didn’t want her to. I tried to do the right thing. I get that she’s still a part of your family, Coraleen’s mom and all, but I was glad she said no.’

  ‘Oh yeah, Orion will always know her as Aunty Lynn. No doubt about that.’

  John wondered, with Jean now gone, if Orion would ever see his Aunty Lynn again. Ever talk to her on the phone. Galena’s as far from Adelaide as a place can get – how often would John see them now or talk to them on the phone?

  ‘You know, I was a few years younger than Coraleen when my mum left my dad.’

  ‘Did you see him much after that?’

  ‘I never saw him again.’

  The men finished the dregs of their beer.

  ‘Maybe Lynn knew it would be better if you had the time alone with Coral.’

  ‘She’s always been intuitive.’

  ‘Is it a female thing, like they say? A mother thing? Jean had it too. Intuitiveness. Intuition.’

  A photograph John took of Jean with Stan and Orion in front of the Christmas tree: Jean has her finger in Orion’s mouth and the baby is deadset on chewing it. ‘He’s teething,’ she’d said before he took the shot. Orion’s cheeks are a fiery red; Jean’s looking at her son, laughing.

  ‘Want another?’

  ‘Most definitely.’

  John went to the fridge this time. Brought two beers back to the kitchen table.

  Morning brought chocolate chip pancakes a la Coco and Orion. They messed that kitchen up good with goops of yoke and flour castings, somehow putting a smile on Stan’s face and getting John busy with a washcloth like Coral had never seen before. After the dishwashing and during the full-bellied ten o’clock rest, the doorbell rang.

  Coraleen could almost see the knot in Kyle’s throat as she stood peering over Stan’s shoulder.

  ‘Kyle. How you going, mate?’

  She thought he looked as if he was bravely willing the knot to go away.

  ‘I was hoping I could see Coraleen.’

  Coral smiled, knowing he could see her right then. ‘Hi!’ She stuck out her neck a little bit further.

  ‘Oh, hi.’ He acted surprised, and Coraleen liked him all the more for his embarrassment.

  ‘Come on in,’ Stan said.

  ‘Hi.’

  ‘Hi.’

  ‘I was just reading.’ Coral held up a bright green book. She tried to act like she was bored, but her heart was skipping rope double time. She felt the energy jump up and reach her eyes, which became large with a teenage-lust she had never known before. What is he doing here? she thought, and, We’re going to kiss again today!

  ‘Do you want to go to the beach?’

  Seriously? ‘Give me a minute. I’ll come over when I’m ready.’

  She told her dad she was going to the beach with Kyle, knowing he’d say it was OK because she was, after all, fifteen, and he said, ‘Sounds like fun. You’ll be home for dinner, though. Gotta pack tonight too.’

  ‘Yep.’ Dinner was seven or eight hours away. Plenty of time for kissing.

  She ran into Orion’s room, feeling giddy, like she was back in eighth grade again when Scott O’Boyle had asked her ‘to go with him’, before her parents had gone silent on each other. She felt young and innocent, like she was thirteen years old. She looked at herself in the mirror once she was in her swimsuit and the feeling went away because she didn’t look thirteen at all. She looked and felt older: maybe a dangerous and thrillingly sixteen.

  She threw clothes on over her bikini, stuffed a towel into her day bag and grabbed her wallet, then looked at herself in the mirror one last time. She thought about her mum back home. She wanted to tell her about how Kyle was making her feel. She wondered if her mum had ever felt this way about her dad.

  As she stood in front of Kyle’s house waiting for him to answer the door, Coraleen’s lungs sat uncomfortably in her throat, making her wonder if this was what had been happening to Kyle’s throat when he’d stood in front of Stan’s door.

  ‘Hey.’

  ‘Hey.’

  They walked down the hallway, which was long like Stan’s and Orion’s, but there were runners on the floor, muffling the movement of feet.

  ‘Are your folks here?’

  ‘They’re both at work. Mum’s a doctor and Dad runs an outdoor clothing shop. They don’t get time off at Christmas.’

  Coral breathed quietly but deeply through her nose. She hadn’t wanted to meet Kyle’s parents again. The wake was one thing, but now they’d kissed. How self-conscious would she have felt? How aware would she have been that she didn’t look like the other people at the funeral with her red-black lipstick and her dyed black hair? That she didn’t look like someone their son should hang out with?

  ‘Is that your room?’ she asked. It was the first room on the left. Impossible to ignore.

  ‘Yeah. It’s nothing great.’

  Under the loft-style bed was a large desk that had a jigsaw puzzle on it, three-quarters completed. Books too. Scattered pieces of paper of all sizes. Dirty clothes were on his floor, but not many. Coraleen spied his jocks. They were blue briefs. When she looked up she saw the red in his cheeks. An old green futon sat under the window. More books on it. More paper. A poster of Einstein decorated his wall. That and a map of the world. Coraleen walked over to it. ‘That’s my home.’ She pointed to a nameless space slightly above and to the left of the red dot labelled ‘Chicago’.

  Kyle leaned in close to look.

  ‘You should visit someday.’

  He smelled of sunblock and shampoo. Her small breasts were touching his bare arm: only just, but just enough. Coral thought she could feel that his breathing had become irregular, but then maybe it was hers. She didn’t want his arm to move. Suddenly, her breast touching it was all she knew. His arm, her breast, the closeness of their bodies, the desire to swallow his tongue again, and this time to not stop.

  Coral made the first move, and after three minutes of kissing on the green futon, Kyle made the next. They alternated moves. It seemed an easy way to communicate to each other that this was OK, that we can keep going, and though she’d thought about it in a very hypothetical way the night before as she lay in Orion’s small bed, unable to sleep, staring at the ceiling and the pink and green racing stripes, she somehow seemed surprised and amazed when Kyle entered her. It was like she had suddenly become a woman as soon as his penis had broken through. Like she was at least twenty-one.

  So this is it? she thought, moving through the discomfort of the bones between her legs. It was awful and she tried not to wince, but the pain was intense. It wasn’t until after Kyle had come in a clumsy spill on top of her belly that Coraleen would think of the encounter as terribly romantic. And when the saltwater of a foreign ocean cleaned the dried blood from the inside of her bathers, she felt young again. They splashed one another. She squealed. He yelled, ‘I love being here with you!’ and she thought he was perfect. He was perfect, the day was perfect, the beach, the sun, and none of it could last. Nothing. Ever. Lasted.

  When they finally left O’Hare Airport they’d had more than thirty hours of travel ahead of them. John had wondered if they were even going to make it to the funeral – it’d be tight. Two hours in, over the desert fields of south-western America on the morning after Christmas, it hit John that he felt empty. The earlier feeling in his gut that nothing was right had calmed to such an ext
reme that he now knew hollowness. Maybe it was all that space seen from such a height mixing with his burden. Maybe it was all that dirt. He remembered Jean telling him about the desert in Australia and how it compared to the desert in America, how Aboriginal Australians compared to Native Americans. She’d seen so much, had such insight into the worlds of others, and this, at the age of forty, was his first time flying overseas.

  Maybe that was it – he’d just turned forty. Wasn’t forty a time when most people evaluated their lives and decided whether they were going in the right direction or not? Nothing was right, and now he was hollow and old.

  On the first leg of their journey to Australia he’d leaned over Coraleen; she’d been napping in that same S position as earlier in the car, which had seemed like ages ago, ages ago, and he watched the crumpled mountains of the desert below him, knowing at that moment he was saying goodbye to something, and it was more than his history and bond with Jean, it was more than the hope he’d built his marriage upon. He couldn’t put his finger on it, but it had been very real.

  In another aeroplane, heading for another new place, the earth below them was red and flat, riverless, lakeless, waterless once again. It was almost like flying over America’s Southwest, only a different shade of loneliness. Who lived down there? John couldn’t picture a white face if he tried because the book at home made it seem like only the Indigenous people lived where they were going. He let the ‘otherness’ of Australia take hold of him while Coral sat next to him, the complimentary earphones sounding off an American sitcom even he could hear.

  John jabbed her leg with his finger until she took out her earphones. ‘Look out the window. Look at the colour. It makes me feel like we’re finally in a foreign country.’

  ‘You didn’t feel like Adelaide was foreign?’

  John didn’t know about the buskers on Rundle Mall or the black swans in the River Torrens like his daughter did; he only knew that Adelaide was Jean and Stan and Orion, but mainly Jean. ‘Maybe Adelaide felt more like another home.’ Home, he thought. What did it even mean to him now? It might as well be the aeroplane since the only family left to love was sitting there beside him. Not fair to his mother, though, and he knew this, but what had she to do with his melancholic mood? No, Coral was his home.

  Coraleen turned back to the screen but didn’t put her earphones in. John turned back to look out the window, continued talking to his daughter. ‘I wish I’d seen Jean with Orion a lot more than I did. I know she was a great mother, but I wish I could’ve seen how she did it. Just to watch someone hold this tiny baby and then through the years mould it into a little person. It’s really special, being a parent. I just wish I could have seen that part of her more.’

  ‘Do you think Mom’s done a good job?’

  ‘I think she’s done a fantastic job.’

  ‘Do you think you’ve done a good job?’

  ‘I think I’ve done an OK job. I think I can do better.’ Tell her you love her. Tell her you love her every day of her short life and tell her right now. Tell her not to grow up too fast, to keep playing dress-ups and dance school as long as she can because simple things like that bring joy.

  They locked eyes, and what John saw in those seven seconds was a young woman who had fretted over a stain on a boy’s futon as the boy had tried to wipe it away with a discarded sock. He saw a mixture of the shame and curiosity she felt when she looked at the boy’s drooping, wet penis before he’d gotten dressed. The assuredness of a girl who’d loved her breasts more than she ever had as she exposed them to the boy the moment before she reached for her own swimsuit. He saw the guilt, the pride, the adrenalin of having such a big secret and all he could make of it was that he was looking into the eyes of his fifteen-year-old daughter, who he wasn’t ready to give up on. John touched her knee. ‘You’re not a little girl anymore, I know that, but I’ll be damned if I’m going to watch you grow up from afar. Just because I’m moving out, I won’t lose you, Coral. There’s still some moulding left in me.’

  Coraleen popped her earphones back in and returned to the sitcom. John returned to the cracked earth below them, and it seemed as if it was trying to tell him that life goes on, no matter how much the dust tries to choke you. No matter what foreign country you’re in. No matter, even, if you’re home.

  Sometimes

  Some days he woke up in the morning forgetting she wasn’t there. He’d open his eyes and straightaway think he’d see her getting dressed or hear her singing, or when he’d walk into the kitchen he’d find her doing something with food, her back to him, just shaking a little because she’d be putting peanut butter on toast or wiping down the bench or washing the dishes. Once he asked his nan when his mum would be home. His nan had sighed and said, ‘Come here,’ and told him a story about when her mum had died. Once he told his dad he wanted his mum to read the book. His dad had ruffled his hair and begun reading.

  Sometimes he thought his dad didn’t know how to do things because he did them differently than his mum had. Like never have his glass of milk on the table before he sat down. His dad always seemed to forget. And he wanted him to put sunblock on him slowly, and rub it all in so you couldn’t see any white streaks. Sometimes he said, ‘You’re not doing it right!’ and his dad would say, ‘Well, I’m doing it.’

  Sometimes he didn’t want his dad. Sometimes, he thought, only his mother would do. Sometimes he had to sit quietly in his room and remind himself that she was gone. Sometimes he thought she might come back. Sometimes he thought everyone was wrong. Sometimes his dad would come in and talk to him and sometimes he’d cry, his dad. But not always. But when he did, then Orion would cry too because it felt like the right thing to do and it felt like the only thing he could do. Sometimes, when he was thinking about his mum, his dad would peek in his room and leave him alone.

  His mum was gone, Uncle John and Coco gone. Orion was in the bath and it was his second bath since his mum had gone, his first since his rellies had gone. His dad wasn’t super keen on baths, so Orion had been the one to suggest it. His dad had suggested it two nights earlier but Orion had said no, he wanted to keep watching the movie with Coco, and his dad had told him, ‘Fair enough,’ then must have forgotten the next night. His mum would have said, ‘Come on now,’ and still made him have a bath the next night too. The only reason he suggested a bath all on his own was because earlier that morning they’d gone to the beach. ‘Digger needs a run.’ His dad probably would have suggested the bath in the end but Orion had beaten him to it.

  They’d gone at Dog Time, when all dogs were off their leads and they ran to each other and sniffed bottoms and chased each other into and out of the shallow water. Orion splashed while his dad kept an eye on both of them, which must’ve been hard with one over here and one over there, but he seemed fine just sitting in his spot being very serious with his sunglasses on. Sometimes Orion would go underwater and all he could hear was a loud noise that was empty of everything except the water and when he came back up there was a lot of noise: the waves, a seagull, a dog, other people. He’d look at his dad and wave to him and his dad would wave back.

  When Orion got cold he sat by his dad and buried his feet in the sand, which warmed his feet up quite a bit while the sun warmed up his body. Digger sat down next to them, panting and panting, all sandy and wet, and Orion began to bury his legs and then rub the warm sand all over his body. ‘Look, Dad. I’m making myself into ashes.’ His mum was made into ashes. It’s what people had to do sometimes when they died. Some people were buried underground. Orion wanted to be buried underwater.

  So with ashes all over his body and then the saltwater washing him off (and don’t forget the sunblock his dad had rubbed on fast and not all the way in), even he knew he needed a bath.

  Along with the bubbles up to his chest, the bathtub was filled with toys. He had dinosaurs, all sorts of colours, and pipes he could play only if he filled them up with water, and he had
boats he always ignored but still put all five of them in the bath. He could stay in there for an hour if his dad let him.

  ‘You OK in there?’

  He was usually OK in the bathtub because he knew how to wash his body and, though it was a little trickier, he knew how to wash his hair too, but sometimes he wanted his dad to do it because he used to like when his mum did it and she wasn’t here but he was. She did it softly. His dad scrubbed fast. Like with the sunblock. Orion said, ‘Yeah,’ thinking about how his dad did it wrong so he’d just have to do it himself.

  There was a lot of shampoo and it felt so nice so he rubbed it in for a long time until his dad came in and asked again, ‘You OK in here?’

  He said, ‘Yeah,’ but he wasn’t OK because there was too much shampoo and he didn’t know how he was ever going to get it out.

  ‘Here, lie down, Ry.’

  His dad helped him down slowly so his head was in the water but his eyes were still above, and he rubbed his hair gently, like his mum might have done if she had been there, and it felt so good he closed his eyes and hadn’t known his dad was talking until he opened his eyes and saw his lips moving. Orion didn’t ask him what he was saying and didn’t try to come up to listen, either. He liked this underwater world with his dad rubbing his head like that and he felt very safe and very, very clean. There was a loud silence under there. Like he could hear the blood in his ears.

  His dad dried him fast too, with a grown-up towel.

  ‘Mom always uses the frog towel with the hood.’

  ‘Well, she’s not here so we’ll just use this one.’

  Orion didn’t like when his dad said that: ‘She’s not here.’ Juni’s mum had told him that his mum would always be with him so really she was here, wasn’t she? Orion looked around the bathroom. Somewhere, his mum was watching his dad let him use the wrong towel, so he said, ‘Dad, use the frog towel the frog towel,’ and threw a fit. He knew he was throwing a fit, but he really couldn’t help it and once it started it felt really good, yelling and crying and demanding to be heard, until finally his dad said, ‘OK’ and finished drying him with the grown-up towel, then gave him the frog towel and pulled on the hood and said, ‘All right, let’s get you in your jarmies.’ Everything was OK then.