‘I should’ve been a screenwriter,’ she told her cat. ‘Taught my dad how to do it properly. Or a playwright like Marion.’ But she was the interior designer. And when Viv had known Jason it was Neddy who could write, Jean who could dance and Viv who could paint. Then it hit her, and the tears streamed quickly down her face. Neddy didn’t write anymore, Jean was no longer alive, and his name was Jason Prant.
In the loo, looking despondently at the blood on her pad, Viv asked herself again, What if I’d been pregnant this time? She didn’t play the whole scene out with this one. She only imagined the ending, which would be happy. Very Hollywood. Very Julia Roberts. She and Philip would have a baby girl, who they would dote upon, who they would travel the world with, who would have seriously incredible talents. A girl who would make them better people and make the world a better place. She and Philip would be the couple with the toddler on the beach.
It all seemed so simple, so easy, but would Philip make a good father? What made any man a good father? Stan was a good father, but he’d told her he doubted it nearly every day. He’d once said that a teacher at school had called him in because Orion had bullied a younger child as initiation into a gang, and Stan had seen pity for the Single Father in her eyes and he’d felt like screaming at her not to pity him, just tell him what to do.
‘It’s the not-knowing-what-to-do that makes me think I’m not doing it right.’
‘What the hell is right?’ Philip had asked, reaching for Viv’s hand, and Stan had responded, ‘If I knew, we wouldn’t be having this conversation.’
On the way home Philip had said, ‘It’s good Bec never got pregnant. I’d have been a terrible dad.’
After Viv had dealt with her past and her hypothetical future and come to realise that the present is simply what it is, she returned to the four chairs and two unhinged cabinets sitting on her balcony and brought them in. They looked good. A job well done. Inside, three small blocks of wood sat on the drop sheet on the living room floor. She would cut them into the shape of love hearts and paint them with the leftover pinks. Later, she would attach one to Orion’s ceiling – he’d told her he still had trouble sleeping at night. Said he looked up at the ceiling most of the time, feeling lonely. She would give one to Philip too, because she wanted to give him all of her heart and somehow that little bit more. The last heart would go to Jean, though she’d hang it in her own bedroom. What a curious and glorious trio of hearts.
Riding Bikes
Stan and Jean were like two tyres on a tandem bicycle, the road they travelled upon being their love. The purpose of their journey was evident: move forward. Their motto was a given: enjoy the ride, even the bumps. If one went flat, the other would carry the load and ride them to a safe place where they would find air and fill themselves so that they may begin anew. Like two tyres on a tandem bicycle, Stan and Jean were one, and Stan and Jean were separate.
The afternoon before Jean’s accident, the sparkling cider had been going down a treat, the scent of lamb smelling of good things to come. They’d been celebrating all right, their son climbing a jungle gym, enjoying the surprising burst of sunlight after an afternoon of rain. They hadn’t told Orion the news yet. They were only trying to process it themselves. They’d told Stan’s mum on the phone; it hadn’t gone down too well.
‘What if I die? What if I die and you are in America, in Jean’s home, and can’t say goodbye to me?’
‘Mum, you survived cancer, for chrissake. And besides, you could get hit by a car tomorrow. You can’t live your life thinking about death and you can’t expect others to.’ In the silence Stan had imagined his mum swallowing with some difficulty and preparing her voice to drop a few levels. Which it did.
‘Stan, I’m nearing eighty. What do you bloody expect?’
‘You’re years away from eighty, Mum.’
‘The cancer could come back. What if the cancer comes back?’
And Stan knew this. Stan felt this. ‘Mum, why don’t you come over? Help us celebrate?’
‘Why would I want to celebrate you leaving me for a year? It’s my worst nightmare come true.’
‘Because Jean’s glowing, because there’s a double rainbow in the sky, because Orion said he’s getting his kit off when it starts raining again, because we need a reason to open up the next bottle of sparkling. Should I go on?’
‘Perhaps. I’m not sure I’m convinced.’
‘Because we can be together now.’
Stan knew she hadn’t needed any more convincing and that it was probably icing on the cake that Jean would be going to the pub with her friends for more celebrations later that night, so he’d be alone with Orion and wouldn’t she want to spend the night with them?
‘Only if you promise to get out the backgammon.’
So he’d appeased his mother, if only temporarily, but her words had hit him and hit him good. Did he want to do this? He was thrilled Jean had won a fellowship at a university only hours away from her hometown and her mother, only hours away from her brother and her niece. She’d been living in Australia for twenty-two years now; didn’t she deserve to go home for longer than a three-week holiday? She deserved to share the northern night sky with her son, where Orion’s Belt was upside down, where she would say, ‘See, it’s right-side-up!’ Yes, he wanted this because she deserved it and because he loved the woman endlessly. They were a good fit. At night, curled on the couch, their arms the most comforting of limbs, no one reached for the remote; television was agreed upon with the same type of regularity as choosing which side of the bed to sleep on. Jean’s taste in music might have leaned more towards the bluegrass of her upbringing while Stan never shied from Aussie glam rock, but they both sang boldly when Paul Kelly played from their stereo and they went to WOMAD every year, always coming home with a few CDs. Give these two their own bikes loaded with panniers and ask them where they wanted to go, however, and Stan and Jean would kiss each other a long farewell and point in two different directions.
At the outdoor table on the undercover deck, they were looking at a map, hypothetically and half-seriously planning The Great Bike Tour of Missouri. The rain started up again and Orion got naked, as planned, but Jean was able to talk him into a raincoat – they were practical parents when push came to shove. Jean’s fellowship was at the University of Indiana, not far from the state where she’d grown up. Surely they’d have time to show Orion his mum’s hometown from the best vantage point possible. A family bike trip. It seemed entirely possible.
They’d never done a major bike ride together. History had proven that Jean stuck to the long road of bitumen. Many a time she thanked Stan for introducing her to bike travel, then paid him back by leaving for weeks with a single-person tent strapped to the back of her bike. She did it every April, as a rule, though missed the year following Orion’s birth. Still, that April, when Orion had been only three months, Jean had kissed her little boy on his eyelids and disappeared on her bike for a little over an hour.
Stan went bush and he went with friends. Every few years he spent thousands of dollars to dissemble his bike and stick it on a plane and land somewhere remote. He liked the hard road, the off-road, the fear and confidence it took to master it, which might explain why he didn’t even mind the occasional stack. They reminded him that he was alive. They reminded him he was mortal.
When Jean had brought out the atlas and said, ‘We could do this,’ and Stan had popped the sparkling and said, ‘Yeah, we could,’ the year away became real. They could ride together, Orion on a tagalong attached to a tandem bike.
After Jean had died, Stan’s bicycle gathered cobwebs. A film of plaster and dust rested on the sleek black seat while both tyres lost air and settled in for a lengthy rest. Jean’s road bike had been demolished, of course, but her touring bicycle had been given to the neighbours’ teenage boy, along with one of her old helmets. It was almost ghostly when that kid rode up and down the stre
et. Now there was the blue and red Avalanche – absent of its training wheels – and a little boy hopping on.
Without being aware of it, Stan had been preparing for this day since Orion was a baby. He hadn’t imagined it would be on this footpath running diagonally through this nearly forgotten park and he hadn’t imagined their dog Digger would be there but Orion’s mum wouldn’t, twenty-eight months dead. How could he ever have imagined it?
‘OK, just look ahead on the path. Look where you want to go and pedal.’
He could tell how nervous the boy was, clearly working on balancing his fear with some greater sense of confidence but coming up short on the confidence. Stan could see it in the way his son’s eyes wouldn’t rest on his own but scoured the track ahead of him, already looking where he wanted to go, yet needing a little security.
‘Don’t let go, Dad.’
‘I won’t,’ he lied, knowing he would have to if he wanted his son to succeed. And just as Orion moved his foot to the pedal, Stan wondered if in any way his son connected with the absurdity of the moment: he was about to learn how to ride a bike, and it was a bike accident that had killed his mother.
But then he was off, the bike occasionally leaning to one side and Stan correcting it with his wrist, keeping the boy straight. ‘Good job, Orion, good job.’ But it was difficult to run with the bike while bending over so far, and eventually Orion fell.
‘You OK, mate?’
‘Why did you let go?’
‘I didn’t let go. I lost my balance as much as you did. I’ve never done this before, just like you. It’s hard work. But it’s pretty fun. And once you’re riding this thing on your own, it’ll be heaps fun. I promise.’
‘OK.’ It was a grumble but it was a good sign. This was going to happen and it was going to happen today.
Orion stood up and looked at his knees and hands while Stan pulled up the bike. He was a brave lad, so much like his mum: a risk-taker who had the good sense to be practical. Orion used to love that his mum rode her bike to work, but, after having ridden on the bus with her one rainy day to the city, he’d told his mum that she shouldn’t ride her bike on rainy days. He’d told her that the day of the accident too. Even though she had her wet-weather gear on and assured him she wouldn’t get too wet, he told her he didn’t want her to ‘ride next to the big busses where all the people look out the windows and see you get splashed’. Stan had laughed at his son’s practicality and said, ‘You should listen to him,’ then kissed Jean on the cheek, gently squeezed her arse and said, ‘See you later.’
Some people would say, ‘At least she was doing something she loved,’ while others would say, ‘Rubbish – it’s shit to be killed by something you love.’ More than two years later and Stan still didn’t know what to make of it.
Orion took hold of the bike and swung his leg over it. ‘Are you ready, Dad?’
Stan laughed, wanting to say no, but yelled to his son, ‘Let’s do it to it,’ something Jean used to say. ‘This time pedal a little faster. Sometimes the faster you go the easier it is to ride straight.’
‘But don’t let me go.’
‘I won’t.’
Orion’s foot left the ground and Stan held the bike firm, determined to give the boy a solid start. Then they were moving more assuredly than before. Stan felt the boy’s equilibrium. Seconds must’ve passed before he took the firmness of his grip away from the bike seat. ‘That’s it, that’s it, that’s it!’ But then Orion stopped pedalling, looked down to the left, and fell accordingly.
‘Dad, why did you let go?’ This time there were tears.
‘I didn’t, mate. You were doing so well I just eased back, and then you got away from me. Sorry, Orion. Come on. Stand up and catch your breath.’
Stan reached for the bicycle to hand to his son once he’d got some control of his breathing. Jean would’ve given him a hug before standing up the bike.
‘OK, close your eyes.’
Orion did as he was told.
‘I want you to imagine the tyres on your bike, right? See how they’re rolling on the footpath? They’re moving together, aren’t they, the two wheels? Can you see them moving on the footpath?’
‘Yes.’
‘They’re going to go exactly where you want them to go if you just keep pedalling and looking straight ahead. Now, can you see yourself riding?’
‘Yes.’
‘OK. Don’t look down. Don’t look back. Can you see yourself looking ahead to where you want to go?’
‘Yes.’
‘Can you see yourself pedalling?’
‘Yes.’
‘Are you having fun?’
Orion giggled, as if catching onto a joke. ‘Yes.’
‘OK, let’s ride.’
Orion swung his leg over his bike again, this time with great enthusiasm. The memory of his tears was as distant as their starting point thirty metres back.
‘Don’t let go, Dad.’
‘I won’t.’
This time Stan started pushing as soon as Orion’s foot left the ground. ‘Pedal,’ he said, pushing him just that little bit more, and he didn’t notice Digger taking a shit in the bushes, he didn’t notice the strain forming in his back that would later force him to seek out a chiropractor for the first time in his nearly fifty years, he didn’t notice that he’d made a firm decision to not yell out anything encouraging to his son so as not to disturb his concentration – all he noticed was that the boy felt safe, balanced and confident, so Stan let go, in so many ways.
A couple more years without Jean passed, the ghostly neighbour having gone off to live with some friends and so there were no more sightings of Jean’s old helmet or bike. Orion had a new bicycle, one big enough for a nine-year-old boy and rough enough for the occasional homemade ramp and a little off-roading. Stan’s bike came out of its corner rarely and only for short rides to the shops or around the neighbourhood with his son. His bike was not happy being relegated to intermittent use when it knew it had once been a mighty mountain bike that’d seen the world. In fact it had had enough, so one day it yelled out to him, ‘Hey, fool, she might be gone, but I’m still here!’ because bicycles do not understand the love shared between humans, only the love humans share with them.
Stan was surprised to hear from Neddy’s husband Rodd as they only ever saw each other on social occasions with their families and friends, never one-on-one, and they’d only spoken to one another on the phone maybe twice before in all the years they’d known each other.
‘A friend of mine is going to Far North Queensland for a two-week mountain bike trek, some organised group thing. I’m thinking about going. Never done anything like it before, but I reckon by May I’ll be ready for a break. The house is crazy. Thought you might want to come along.’
Did Stan want to go along? The thought of it sent a fright through him, but it was one full of adrenaline. ‘Oh, man, Rodd. I’ll have to think about that one. How long can you give me to make a decision?’
‘End of the week? He’s got a few other guys in mind who might want the slot.’
Seeing as it was Sunday, this sounded fair. Stan hung up the phone and went into the garage to sort through some hard rubbish for Monday’s pick-up. That’s when his bike called to him. He didn’t hear any harsh tones, any name-calling, as it were. He heard a silent pleading, and wasn’t sure if it had come from his bike or from deep within himself.
Damn, but he wanted back on! The thrill of the downhills and the barely marked paths; the slip of the gears going up an incline in the dirt or mud; the unremitting yet welcomed ache in his muscles when the day was over. But what to do with Orion? There was no family support because there was no family. Jean was obviously gone and so was his mother. She’d outlasted the doctor’s estimation by almost a year but, in the end, the cancer had won. Painful as it was to her and painful as it was to watch, especially near
the end when she’d moved in with them, Stan had known his mother was ready and, because of that, he had been too. Now the closest thing to family he and Orion had was Very Viv and Funtastic Phil. They were always willing, but they were busy people with interiors to design and students to teach. There was Neddy, who had taken Orion for three days when Stan had chaperoned a school camp the previous year. Orion had loved that time with Juniper. But there was a third child now, only four weeks old. Surely Orion would tip them over if the house, as Rodd put it, was crazy. Orion had his own friends from school, of course, and Stan was friendly enough with the parents to ask them for a favour. They always said, ‘Anything we can do …’ their faces so obviously full of compassion; but still, what if something happened to him on the trip? It wouldn’t be the first time someone had broken a neck on a particularly tricky descent and become a paraplegic. It wouldn’t be the first time an aeroplane had crashed. It wouldn’t be the first time someone had been hit by a van on the way to the airport. Stan knew he couldn’t live his life thinking about death, but he was a single parent. He couldn’t help it. What would become of Orion?
Stan looked at his bike. There would be no going away with Rodd, but there was a serious need to start riding again. If he was going to go on an extended bike trip with anyone, it would be with Orion.
Jean Harley Was Here Page 18
