by Ryn Shell
“Honeycomb crunch ice cream,” Helen called. The sound of her feet pattered down the passage toward the kitchen. “I’ll get it. Leave me some pizza.”
“You’re supposed to be in bed,” Trevor reached his arms out to hug Helen.
“I want to be in on the plans to find my dad.” Helen gave her uncle a quick hug, then turned to her mother. “I haven’t even met him.”
Rose jumped up and hugged Helen. “You will be included in everything from now on.”
“We’ll ask if they know of him at every country newspaper and police station we pass,” Carl said. “What else are we missing?” Carl lifted his eyebrow quizzically, an enormous slice of pizza paused in front of his mouth. “Should we forget hoping the police will find him and enlist farmers to find a farmer?”
Helen leaned forward and took Rose’s discarded pizza slice. “May I?”
She nodded. Her heart beat fast. “I need to ask farmers and truck drivers, enlist their help.” She knew she was on the right track. “So stupid! I should have been doing this already.” She spat the words out, with tears welling.
Helen hugged her. “Not stupid, Mum.”
“Why didn’t I see this?” Rose broke down into a blubbering mess. “I could get work at one of those all night roadhouses, truck drivers’ stop overs and ask all the drivers to watch for him.” Her face lit with enthusiasm. “We could visit small farms, especially in hill country like our own, and ask the town’s people and farmers if they have seen him.”
Carl and Trevor joined Helen in embracing Rose. They smiled and kissed her wet cheeks. They laughed—gently, lovingly. Carl rocked Rose, as his father would have done when they were young and in love.
After a long session where she shed tears of grief that she should have shed years before, Rose joined in the tears of relief and happy chatter with her children, Trevor and his partner Alvin.
Lightness swelled through the family group; it felt so good.
Rose couldn’t find the words to express her feelings; she looked into Helen and Carl’s eyes—they knew it too—hope.
Following a silence, Carl said, “Small farms, little boys and a young wife.”
“What about them?” Helen asked.
“That’s what Dad loved before he went missing,” Carl said thoughtfully. “No one changes that much. What you love you keep loving.”
Rose’s face took on a horrified stare. The room went quiet, expecting an outburst from her. “What?” Rose returned everyone’s expectant gaze.
“You can say it, Mum.” Carl squirmed. “What have I said wrong this time?”
“I don’t like you implying that Linton might have taken a second wife or might have another child.”
Trevor rose slowly and walked across the room to sit beside Rose. Carl, Helen and Alvin watched as Rose maintained her defiant expression.
“When are you going to accept it?” Trevor took Rose’s hand in his. “Do you really need to make your son struggle? He’s worried about you. He’s attempting to spell things out slowly enough for you to grasp them, and you need to listen to him.”
Rose swallowed.
“That isn’t fair to your children, Rose.” Trevor paused, watching her facial muscles strain to stay ridged and then twitch—but she maintained her cold stare at him. “It’s unlikely there would be a second wife because you aren’t his wife.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.” Rose yanked her hand from Trevor’s grasp. “We considered ourselves married. It was exactly the same thing.”
Trevor twisted sideways on the seat. “When I last had a good conversation with Linton, he was young, good-looking, unmarried…” He stared down Rose’s glare. “Yes, and don’t give me that filthy look because you know that it’s true. The last time we were together, Linton and I were cracking jokes about wanting to see naked blondes streaking across the plain to break the monotony of the drive. I assure you, Rose, my brother had a healthy libido, or he would not have got you pregnant at fifteen in the first place. Now, if you think that a vital man in his mid-thirties is living a celibate life without a family for companionship, then you’ve got rocks in your head.”
“Thanks, Uncle Trevor.” Carl moved closer to Rose and wrapped his strong arm around her. “I think you just got through to Mum what Doctor Marinovich has been trying to tell her for almost a decade.”
Trevor and Alvin stood and motioned to Helen to follow them out of the room.
Carl sat with his mother as she wept.
17
Trevor thought that both Rose and Carl had gone a little too quiet. He headed to Carl’s room with rod in hand. “Want to go fishing?”
“Sure.” Carl was composing his list of questions as he reached for the rod his father had given him. He knew fishing was Uncle Trevor’s euphemism for ‘I want to go someplace private and talk about your mum’.
They walked down the track from the back of the farmhouse, through the lush green treeferns. The tall overhanging canopy of Mountain Ash eucalyptus trees gave refreshing shade in the hot afternoon. The air was still; water birds stood motionless conserving energy or sleeping, knowing the fish would be waiting the hot afternoon out in the cooler, deeper water.
The water splashed, a white ibis opened one eye, and then closed it as Carl and Trevor pushed the tinny off the bank of the dam.
Carl took the oars and rowed out to the centre as Trevor lay back resting with the rim of his wide-brimmed hat pulled over his eyes. Slipping the oars out of the water, Carl allowed the boat to drift as he selected his favourite black lure with red markings. Trevor still hadn’t voiced what was on his mind.
Carl broke the silence first. “Mum is cracking jokes; she says I’m old enough to share the driving with her and that we should take Helen out of school for a year and go off to find my dad.” Carl observed Trevor’s face out of the corner of his eye while acting as if he were focused on the water where his float bobbed.
Trevor sat slouched over his hook, baiting it up. “You will always do best with the local live bait.” He cast his line. It zipped out, and he began to slowly reel in. “Keep your line moving so it doesn’t drop into a snag.”
“I don’t think Mum was joking.”
“I don’t want you all going off chasing after a hopeless cause,” Trevor muttered. “If you do see Linton, box his ears from me.”
“Did you know that Helen keeps a scrapbook on Skylab?” Carl asked.
Trevor nodded. “It’s a good idea.”
“I don’t know.” Carl shook his head. “I really don’t know. I thought maybe she’s fixating on it, the same as Mum does. She has her journal locked in a satchel, but it’s one of those silly latches you can click open with a pin.”
“You looked?” Trevor lifted an eyebrow at Carl.
“She’s my kid sister. I always keep an eye on her.”
“Hmm.” Trevor pushed his hat rim back. “She’s not a little girl any more.” He scrutinised Carl. “You are going to have to ease back on watching her. She needs her privacy.”
“Her first journal opening entry is: ‘As Dad hugged Mum to celebrate the news of her pregnancy with her daughter Helen, NASA was planning to bring their junk down to crush our dreams.’ What do you think of that?”
“I think the writing sounds too grown up for a ten-year-old,” Trevor said. “Your mum might have written that for her, or else Helen’s just a good writer for her age.”
Carl scowled. “Why did they have to crash Skylab over Australia in the first place?”
Trevor pulled the last few metres of his line from the water and reached for the green plastic bait box. “Skylab had problems from the start. It only served half its proposed nine-year lifespan before it was apparent it was too costly to keep it up there. I don’t know how these things work.” He pushed his hat back to look at Carl. “I know that your mum and dad were happy during those years.”
“The years Skylab was up there, you mean?”
“Yes.” Trevor pulled the hat
rim back down to shade his face. “Those were the happiest years of your mum’s life.”
Carl yanked at his line. “Other parents split up and get on with their lives. Why can’t Mum?”
“Ah!” Trevor grunted. “Her mother gave her a hard time growing up. That is a big part of why she’s taken Linton’s leaving her so hard. It’s never just been about your father. Often the thing we blame isn’t the cause of the problem.”
“Like how they treated Mum for postnatal depression for years until they woke up to the fact that that wasn’t the problem in the first place.”
“Something like that,” Trevor said.
“Then why can’t she be happy? I mean really happy. Not just an occasional smile. Why doesn’t she have fun? This waiting for Dad to come back so she’ll be happy,” Carl’s speech raced, “I get sick of it.” He shook his head. “Now I’m worried that Helen’s obsessed with this Skylab project. Why didn’t they just keep fucking Skylab up in the air?”
Trevor frowned. “You are not an adult yet. Don’t let me catch you talking like that again.”
“Well, eff Skylab then. It took my dad and the happy mother I used to have. And why didn’t they just leave it in orbit anyhow?”
“Well, I guess when you stick a humungous thingamajig in the sky without a control mechanism to navigate it, it wants to fall down.”
“What?” Carl drew his brows closer together. “It had no controls?”
“None to safely navigate it.”
“That’s ludicrous.” Carl scrunched his mouth.
Trevor nodded. “They thought that controls to direct where it landed would cost too much.”
“So the United States government sent an undirected seventy-seven-ton cannon ball hurtling toward—well away from them—and you and Dad get injured—I don’t see my dad again—and you don’t think I should swear?” Carl stuck a finger in the air.
Trevor cast his line. “Keep your line moving.”
“Didn’t anyone protest?” Carl asked.
“Some people were afraid—before it came down. You see, a year earlier a Soviet satellite re-entered over northern Canada. It scattered enriched uranium across a wide swath of that country. I think it was grazing land. The reindeer there had been the main diet for the local Aboriginal people. Now the area is too contaminated to graze on, and a major food source for a large community has been destroyed. Imagine if that happened to Australia’s cattle grazing regions. Yes, we were worried.”
“Helen even talks about Skylab over dinner.” Carl lifted his line, checked the lure and recast. “That’s why I’m worried that she might be as obsessed with it as Mum is.”
“What’s she saying?”
“She said NASA gave the odds as one in one-hundred-and-fifty-two of anyone being injured.”
“Sounds like she’s just doing homework,” Trevor said. “I can tell you, having almost been killed in that truck crash, I’m a bit obsessed with Skylab too.”
Carl worked the line, reeling it in. “And NASA never planned to bring it down in their country?”
Trevor rocked his head to and fro. “The early news about the planned re-entry said that NASA would guide the Skylab on the best possible orbit to have the minimum damage. They expected that Skylab should pass across southern Canada. From there its path would take it over the east coast of the United States before it would begin to re-enter the earth’s atmosphere. I think they could tumble it to get it out of orbit and begin re-entry.”
“Shit!” Beads of sweat formed on Carl’s brow. “So they did plan to get it past their country and then bring it down, right?” He swiped the back of his arm across his forehead.
Trevor sighed. “They didn’t want anyone harmed. Someone paid for all my hospital treatment and rehabilitation. I never knew what government department was involved, but I got more than the average public health care. Some agency took good care of me. I don’t like to speak ill of them when I’m just so grateful to be alive.”
“I’ve read the newspaper clippings that Mum collected.” Carl cleared his throat. “Imagine if Skylab had rained down over an enemy’s city. There was a cold war going on, and there were massive problems in the Middle East.”
Trevor reached under the seat for a hessian-covered water bag. “Ah ha!” His voice was thick with emotion when he spoke. “What’s new?”
Carl reached his arm out and accepted the water bottle. “So choosing Australia might have been deliberate?”
“Yes.” Trevor stretched out his legs. “I do believe they were concerned about which country might stir up repercussions. They did adjust the tumbling of the craft at the last possible moment to steer its descent closer to Australia. They were hoping it would all break up over the long stretch of open ocean before it reached our coast. NASA then hoped that it would fall into the sea, but if not...”
“They’d blast you and my dad with it!” Carl stared at Trevor with unnerving intensity and teenage rage. “Well, fucking hell to that!”
Trevor pressed his lips firm and did not respond.
“I want to find my dad. Hear his story. How badly was he injured? Why don’t you know all of that?”
Trevor shook his head.
“Didn’t you try to find out?”
“We have always attempted to.” Trevor stretched out his arm. “Here, pass me the water.”
“Wouldn’t there be medical records of where Dad was taken? New car or truck registration in his name? His truck insurance claim?”
Trevor shook his head again. “We had him listed as missing, and the police followed up those leads.”
“And?” Carl sucked his lip in.
“Nothing.” Trevor wound in his line. “Nothing biting either.”
Carl wound in his line. “They claimed to have downed Skylab in Australia without incident, and that hardly raised an objection.”
“Well, none that we were aware of.” Trevor lifted the oars. “Ready to go back?”
Carl nodded. “I guess they see us Australians as an easy-going, friendly lot. Not a problem to dump twenty-five tonnes of metal debris as five hundred pieces over an area four thousand miles long by one thousand miles wide on top of your friends.”
Trevor rowed without answering.
“Do you think Dad knows where to find us?” Carl asked. “Would he know that Mum, Helen and I still live together with you and Alvin in the big farmhouse?”
“Your mum’s berry farm is in the phone book.” Trevor shook his head briefly. “He could find you easily if he wanted to.” He pulled on the oars, then rested. “I think that if your dad was alive, he would remember you as a ten-year-old boy and could not have stayed away. That’s the real reason I brought you out here.” Trevor paused. “After ten years of a person going missing, you can have them legally declared dead.” He watched Carl’s reaction.
The nineteen-year-old quivered slightly but kept his face turned away.
“I’ve asked my parents to come and spend some time with us,” Trevor said. “Rose has always gotten on well with her in-laws.”
Carl laid his rod on the bottom of the boat. “She thinks they were better parents than her own were.”
Trevor swung the oars. “Funny how she never blamed my parents for their part in the bullying that went into her forced marriage of convenience to me. But, she never spoke to her mother again after that. I know that hurt them both.” He frowned. “I always tried to treat her right.”
“You did.” Carl pocketed his hands. “As far as I can tell.” He gazed around across the water, keeping his face turned away from Trevor. “I think Mum’s lost interest in the berry farm.” His voice cracked and broke. “When your parents come—”
Trevor smiled. “They are coming to give your mum a break from the business. I think everyone is worried about her, including her doctor.”
“I know Mum will be fine. She just needs a rest.”
“And to accept. Your mum has never completed all the stages of grief. I was hoping that when I talk to he
r about the possibility that Linton is dead that will move things along.”
“She might get worse if she thinks he’s—gone for good.” Carl bit his inner lip.
“That’s possible.”
“But, then…” Carl looked hopeful, “…she’s got a better chance of getting better.”
“Yes. Your dad would have been proud of you, Rose, and Helen, if he could see you now.”
18
Rose didn’t stop crying for several days, but when she did, she was unnaturally calm.
“Scary,” Carl said.
Trevor agreed. “Not right your having to become guardian for your mother’s mental health.” He phoned Doctor Marinovich.
Rose spent two weeks in a Saint John of God Hospital in Brighton, Victoria. When Trevor drove her children there, to collect her and bring her home, she was subdued but able to smile at, and engage well, with Helen and Carl.
“No more tears…” Rose said and forced her shoulders to relax, “…I shed for all the years I’d been holding them back.”
They arrived home to find the farmhouse in one heck of a mess. A home burglary is a strange way to learn what your priorities in life are. Bedtime was delayed, as Trevor reported a break-in to the police.
Next day, the family slept in. Then they finalised family plans. Rose would take the sedan and the old four-by-six trailer and with her children go on a working tour—for the rest of her active life, if need be. She planned to take off to Adelaide and then head up through central Australia and back via the west coast and finally back across the Nullarbor Plain.
Rose told Helen and Carl, “We will go to the Gemtree country of the Harts Range in Central Australia. We’ll camp in the open country, on the gem fields, with no one within miles. Linton told me he would take us there. We can ask the gem cutters if they have seen him.”
