Where We Begin

by Christie Nieman

  She hung up and leaned back against the silver car and dropped her arm, the phone still in her hand, down by her side.

  ‘He died,’ she said. ‘Hessel died.’

  None of us could speak for a moment. And then Basil said, ‘No!’ and then louder, ‘No! Mum, what will happen to Dad?’ But Leonie didn’t answer. She had her hand over her mouth. I reached out and grabbed Basil’s arm.

  ‘Remember,’ I told him. ‘Remember what I said,’ but I don’t think he was hearing me, and I was so thrown into confusion myself that I couldn’t even begin to think about what would happen now. I couldn’t begin to work out how to feel about Hessel, now that he was dead, really dead, the grandpa I had only just met, who had been so lovely, and then so awful, and who now was just dead and gone.

  ‘They said someone has to come and pick up Bette,’ Mum said. ‘She’s there on her own.’

  ‘I can go,’ said Leonie, without hesitation, and then, after pausing, she said, ‘Although, I kind of wanted to stay close for Danny . . .’

  Mum took a moment. She looked at Leonie, and then she looked at me. ‘I’ll go and get her,’ she said finally. ‘Anna, would you mind waiting here? I’ll only be a couple of hours, I promise.’

  I nodded and we all stood back and watched her climb grimly into the silver bullet. She waved as she reversed, and then before I could even really think about what was happening, she was driving away up the road. And I didn’t know where she was going to end up: the hospital, or a bar.

  ‘She’ll be back, honey,’ Leonie said to me.

  I hoped so. I really did.

  *

  Before Basil and Leonie went back into town to wait on Danny’s new charge now that the situation had escalated, I cleared the last of my things out of Bromley Cairn. Last of all I took my memento mori down from the wall. Danny had done a beautiful job hanging it. That’s who it was, of course. Danny. Not Hessel at all. I leaned on my desk and looked out the window at the cairn. The innocent cairn. The innocent cairn made of innocent stones, drawn out of the ground and made to sit in the unfamiliar air for the rest of time.

  I put the rest of my things in the boot of Leonie’s car, and Basil and Leonie waited for me while I found an old jar in the shed, filled it with water from the outside tap, and picked wattle blooms from the tree outside the empty stable. I hovered for a moment there, and looked at the straw on the ground, at Hessel’s silent radio, still hanging from the nail on the wall. Suddenly I remembered Hessel’s warmth to me, the feeling of his kiss on top of my head, and I felt a strange and complicated pang of grief overlaid with a feeling of both shock and relief. I breathed in the sweet horsey smell mixed with the fragrance of wattle and turned away. I filled the jar with the blooms and left it on the doorstep of Bromley Cairn: something nice for Bette to come back to when she returned here, to her ancestral home, whenever that might be.

  As I got in the car Leonie was getting off the phone.

  Basil turned to me. ‘Lawyer thinks there could be a good case for voluntary manslaughter,’ he said. ‘Or even a not guilty verdict . . .’

  ‘Let’s just wait and see, hey Baz?’ said Leonie, moving her bag from the back seat, giving me room to sit down. She gestured out the rear window to the old house. ‘Flowers look nice,’ she said. ‘That was a nice thing to do.’

  *

  We were standing outside in the sunshine of the small park opposite the police station when the silver car returned with Mum and Bette. I let myself breathe out. She came back.

  Bette got out and went straight inside the station without saying a word to anyone.

  ‘Everything okay?’ I asked Mum. ‘Bette alright? Did you two fight?’

  ‘No. No. The opposite. I think she wants to harass the clerk in there. Or something. You know. Hear what they have to say about Danny first-hand. Stand up for him a bit. She’s never really had the chance to be that kind of parent before.’

  ‘Better late than never, I say!’ said Basil, both enthusiastically and inappropriately, and Mum turned and looked at him properly. ‘Basil,’ she said. And she held her arms open for a hug from him. Basil actually looked a little awkward, so Mum grabbed him and drew him in and said, ‘What, too cool to hug your old aunt?’ And then she held him out from her so she could get a better look at him. ‘You look so much like him,’ she said, and he looked at his feet and scuffed the dirt with his shoes.

  ‘So what’s your plan, Cathy? With Danny?’ Leonie asked. Basil and I grew instantly quiet.

  Mum looked awkward. ‘I don’t know. I don’t know if I can –’

  ‘He’s still in there, Cathy,’ Leonie said. ‘He’s still him. You just have to look a bit harder. Spend more time. But he’s not lost. He’s there.’

  Mum nodded stiffly and Leonie put a gentle arm briefly around her shoulders, and then began to move all my things from the boot of her car into Mum’s back seat. Finally Bette came back outside, looking tired, but changed somehow. Determined.

  ‘We can’t see him now, they don’t know when. But his lawyer is with him.’ She stood up straighter and looked around at all of us. At her family. ‘Coffee somewhere before you go?’ she said.

  But Mum put her arm around me. ‘I don’t think so, Mum,’ she said. Bette looked crestfallen, but Mum said, ‘I just need to get my girl home. She needs a bit of looking after. And her boyfriend told me this morning that he is missing her terribly.’ I snapped a look at Mum – she had spoken to Nassim?

  Cathy stepped forward and embraced Bette. ‘I’ll come back, Mum,’ she said. ‘I’ll come back soon, I promise. We’re gonna help you out, okay? Leonie’s going to start things off, and we’ll come down when Anna’s finished her exams.’

  Bette stepped forward and hugged me tightly. ‘Goodbye, you wonderful, brilliant girl,’ she said.

  Leonie and Mum shared an awkward hug. A friendship there, definitely, but built from circumstance and difficulty and loss. Too much similar pain, and the styles of dealing with it too wildly different. I wondered if lightness might be something they might find together, if things might change from here on in. Leonie turned and hugged me then, not an awkward hug at all. ‘Good luck with all your medicine stuff, kiddo,’ she said. ‘Let us know how it all goes, hey?’

  ‘I will,’ I said. There was a look between us that I took to mean she was happy we were niece and aunty now, and that she wanted me to know that I had her in my life now, forever. At least, I thought that was what it was, and the possibility of it filled me with such happiness. But of course exchanging words to that effect with Leonie was simply unthinkable. ‘I’ll definitely let you know,’ I said, with as much warmth and meaning as I could muster.

  Basil, however, heart on his sleeve, was dancing around and saying, ‘This has been so cool, cuz, so cool. It’s like we’ve, like, found each other. And when do I get to meet Nassim? I want to check he’s good enough for you and all that.’

  I loved that idea. I couldn’t wait to put Nassim to the Basil test. ‘Yeah! Let’s figure something out there. And anyway, we’ll be in touch about Danny, alright? We’re going to do everything we can.’

  Basil hugged me. It started off normal. A tight, heartfelt hug. And then it turned into a weird tick-tocking back and forth swaying until we nearly lost our balance and fell apart giggling.

  ‘Love you, cuz,’ he said.

  ‘Love you too. Look after our grandma, won’t you?’

  ‘Of course!’ he said, and he fist-bumped me, and then shook his fingers in mock-pain at my amazing super strength.

  ‘I hope you have some better material next time I see you,’ I said.

  And then finally Mum and I were inside the silver bullet together, waving goodbye as Leonie and Basil and Bette headed inside, Leonie with a soft hand on Basil’s shoulder, and Basil with his arm draped casually and protectively over our grandma’s shoulders.

  39

  The rest of the drive back to Sydney was a trip back to 1996. After a few prompts Mum began talking, and once she b
egan it was as if she couldn’t stop. She talked, her voice still croaky and tight. But she talked. She talked all the way to Gundagai, telling me all about her childhood and about Danny and the birthday parties and Leonie and Secret Cake and swimming at the waterhole and smoking and Becky and Madonna – at which point I interrupted her to search up Bedtime Stories on my phone and link it to the hire car’s Bluetooth so that Madonna’s soundtrack to the mid-nineties crooned along with us as we drove back in time. My mother talked about Hessel’s looming presence in the family but charming European persona outside of it, and the horses, and Danny’s secret room in Bromley Cairn and Leonie and Danny’s love for each other.

  ‘Like you and Nassim,’ she said. ‘Something really great, but really young.’

  ‘Which can be a problem,’ I said, my hand on my abdomen. Mum nodded without taking her eyes off the road and reached out and took my hand.

  ‘We’re going to get through this, okay?’ she said. ‘You and me and Nassim and Dad.’

  ‘Dad knows?’

  ‘Yes. We spoke this morning. He’s going to call you when we get home.’

  I nodded. It felt like the final piece, my dad knowing. It felt like everything in the right place. Mum gave my hand a last squeeze then put both hands back on the steering wheel. I brought my hand around and rested it with the other one on my abdomen. I knew what was in there now, thanks to Geraldine. I knew that the spark of life that was there was both amazing and as everyday and ephemeral as a butterfly in summer. I kept my hands together there and closed my eyes and the car gently swayed me, swayed us – me and this first little one of mine, this tiny fleeting spark of life, this little shooting star – and a lump rose in my throat.

  ‘This is not your fault, Anna,’ I heard Mum say, and I opened my eyes to look at her. Her gaze was flitting between me and the road, her eyes intent on making sure I was hearing what she was saying. ‘And it is not only your problem to bear or to solve.’

  It was amazing, the way she was being. I wanted to trust it. I hoped I could trust it.

  Mum went back to watching the road and I closed my eyes again and took my hands from my belly and folded my arms across my chest. My arms hung there like a hug, and the car rocked me, by myself in my own casual embrace, and I let it. It felt good. It felt whole, like a new part of me that said that while it was nice to have Mum’s support, hers and Dad’s and Basil’s and Leonie’s and Nassim’s, that was exactly what it was: nice. Not necessary. What was necessary was this, my arms hugged around myself.

  There was a pause while I mustered the strength to say what I wanted to say.

  ‘I’d like things to change, Mum. Really. No empty promises.’

  ‘I know,’ she said. ‘I’m going to try.’

  ‘That’s all I can ask.’

  ‘I’ll probably fail. But I’ll get up and keep trying. That’s all I can do.’

  ‘And I promise I won’t disappear as long as you’re trying, okay?’

  ‘Okay.’

  Mum looked forward as she drove. Her hands gripped the wheel, tightly.

  ‘Are you okay, Mum?’

  She turned to me and smiled. ‘Yes. It just feels good to be driving away again. Good in an awful way, if that makes sense.’

  ‘Not at all.’

  She laughed grimly at herself and shook her head. ‘I’ve never been good at the emotional stuff.’

  ‘Yeah, Leonie said something like that, like it’s our family tradition, or something.’

  The laughter left her and she just looked tired. ‘Thing is, I don’t know if that’s naturally who I am. I don’t know if I would have been different if all that had never happened – I think maybe, but I can never know, which makes me sad. I can never know who I would have been without that experience, what sort of mother – but I do know that as an adult, I’m just not good at the touchy-feely stuff. Sorry.’

  ‘That’s okay. I mean, it is what it is, right?’

  ‘Right.’ Mum sighed.

  ‘So, Mum, I just have to say this. And I don’t mean it to hurt you – it just needs to be out there, okay?’

  ‘Oh. Um –’

  ‘I don’t think I can forget. I don’t think I want to forget. I can understand now that you were trying your best. I couldn’t see that before, so I want you to know that I don’t think badly of you now, but . . . I guess what I’m trying to say is that it has to be okay for me to feel like your best wasn’t good enough. Not for a kid. Not for me.’

  Mum looked stiff-faced, like I’d just slapped her, or like she was about to throw up. ‘Anna, I tried to –’

  ‘But I’m okay with that, Mum. And look at me – I’m alright. I’m going to be alright. And it is what it is. I just don’t want to do any pretending. Okay?’

  Mum finally nodded. ‘That seems reasonable, Anna. I’ll try not to expect you to forget.’

  ‘Dad does it too. Expects me to forget.’

  It was a while before Mum spoke again. She watched the road, her lips tight. Eventually she said, ‘Yep. It’s a hard thing to swallow, not being good enough for the ones you love.’

  I could see that. How hard that would be. And I could imagine myself in that position. In the near future, in fact, if I let it happen. Unwilling, and perhaps unable, to be who I was supposed to be as a parent; absent in a relationship that was supposed to be all about love. That would be so unfair. So unfair to everyone, but mostly to the one who’d had no ability to choose. The muddy water of my thoughts ran suddenly clear, clear and clean and obvious and right.

  One day a child would be born. And I would love it to bits with all of me, with everything I had to give. One day.

  We’d been driving in silence, each lost in our own thoughts. But then Mum suddenly piped up. ‘I guess that’s why I’m so invested in my business.’ I thought she must have been thinking about the way she used her business to avoid any emotional interpersonal responsibility, but she surprised me with what she went on to say. ‘Because there I get to do some good in a way I can’t stuff up. I can help some people who really need it, provide some real physical and emotional support, without dragging my own baggage into the picture to bugger it all up. It satisfies that itch, you know?’

  ‘IT is emotional?’ I’d said it before thinking, and I felt instantly regretful about my scoffing tone. But my mother gave me a strange look: not hurt, but bemused. I was missing something. ‘When you say support, you mean tech support, right? Wait, I’m confused.’

  ‘You know what my business does, right?’

  ‘Of course I do. You build programs and platformy things for people to create partnerships. Data. Integration. Strategic synergy thingammyjigs. For the betterment of streamlining something. Health care. Health insurance. Something to do with health.’

  ‘You don’t know what we do.’

  ‘I do so! That’s what you do, right? Build platforms for partnerships?’

  ‘Well, yes –’

  ‘See!’

  ‘– but maybe you don’t know what they’re for.’

  ‘Health . . . something. Well, I don’t think you’ve told me,’ I said defensively.

  ‘Well, I don’t think you’ve listened. It’s won awards and everything –’

  ‘I know that! Isn’t it all just algorithms and investors and weird coding languages like Javanese and Sequin and Blocklink and –’

  ‘Okay. Firstly, JavaScript and SQL are languages, Blockchain is a technology that creates an incorruptible ledger of digital transactions, financial or otherwise – a kind of cryptography – actually a “public-key” cryptography –’

  ‘Okay, now I know why I haven’t listened properly to you before.’

  ‘Look, I suppose it is just possible I’ve never really sat down and talked properly to you about it. But all that stuff that I go on about is just the nuts and bolts and cogs and gears that make the thing go.’

  ‘Cogs and what?’

  ‘Oh shut up.’ Mum laughed.

  I laughed too and then Mum si
ghed theatrically and described the function of her business. She told me that there were so many people in communities in need of home care and lots of other people in those same communities looking to give back somehow and make connections. She designed an IT platform where those people could find each other and have all the proper checks and processes handled for them, and built a company around it, and offered advertising and sponsorship deals with private health funds to get it profitable – ‘Lucrative, actually,’ she said.

  ‘Really?’ I said. ‘That’s what your business does? Matches people up for free. That sounds like, really good. Even kind of community-minded.’ Mum rolled her eyes at my better-late-than-never enthusiasm. ‘But wait, like health insurers . . . aren’t you just exploiting the vulnerable for advertising fodder?’

  ‘You could look at it that way, or you could see it as the small price for offering people a free service that helps them. And private health funds are looking for ways to speak to their target markets, just like any other advertiser. It doesn’t automatically make them malicious. It’s a win-gain situation. That’s how I think of it, anyway.’

  I nodded and looked back out the passenger-side window. ‘It sounds pretty clever, Mum. No wonder it’s won all those awards.’

  The landscape rolled past and then suddenly Mum pulled the car into the side road at the Gundagai truck stop.

  ‘Let’s eat with the dog on the tuckerbox.’

  We got chips and gravy and sat on the block at the bottom of the statue as the sun began to lean towards the horizon.

  ‘I stopped here,’ Mum said as we took turns dipping chips into the shared pot. ‘That first trip. I stopped here – it was mid-morning and I had next to no money but I decided to get myself an egg and bacon roll and I sat right here. That roll was the best thing I have ever eaten. It tasted like freedom and escape and new responsibility for myself. Looking back, I was probably just in a great deal of pain and denial. But I was seventeen. You can get a lot of things wrong when you’re seventeen.’