Charlie Franks is A-OK

by Cecily Anne Paterson

  ‘Alright, come on in.’ She trotted in and I patted her and put a blanket on her. ‘Be good, okay?’ I went over to pat Mika, who was settling down for a nap. ‘Sweet thing,’ I murmured to her, and patted Fozzles on the nose. ‘You’re a good girl.’

  Inside, I made hot chocolate for Mum, watched her fall asleep on the sofa, then headed to bed, where I listened to the wind howl until my eyes shut and my brain got some rest.

  In the morning, Mum woke me up.

  Early.

  ‘Get up, Charlie,’ she sang out, sticking her head around my door. ‘I think we should do things today.’

  I sat up, rubbing my eyes. I was used to early starts, but when you plan a sleep-in, even seven am seems a horribly mean time for a wake-up call.

  ‘What things?’

  ‘The house is a mess.’ She almost looked pleased. ‘I was looking under the sink just now and it looks like nobody’s cleaned it for about eight months.’

  ‘They haven’t. Are people supposed to clean under the sink?’

  She stepped in, easing her enormous stomach through the door, her hands covered with rubber gloves. ‘Of course. Also, in the bathroom cupboards. And the laundry. And you should see the grout in the bathroom. It looks like nobody’s cleaned it …’

  ‘…for about eight months?’

  She grinned. ‘Exactly. And the weather’s not great, so once you check the horses, we can have an inside day.’

  I stretched and considered. Cleaning grout wasn’t in my plan, but it was a day with Mum with no interruptions, and it was as good as anything. ‘Only if we play my music.’

  ‘And mine,’ she said.

  ‘Deal.’ I hopped out of bed, looking for some clothes.

  ‘I’ll make you breakfast,’ she said, disappearing.

  I looked after her, confused at her sudden energy, but figuring she’d probably need a rest by nine am. Once she collapsed, I could check out YouTube for show jumping videos, if there was any reception with this wind. Even if I didn’t want to ride without Coco being there, I could at least practice in my mind by watching. A sports psychologist we knew in Sydney told me when I was ten, and just getting into running, that visualising the thing you want to do—running through it in your head—is seventy per cent as good as actually practicing it with your body. I’d tried it a few times before some of my races and managed to beat a kid who’d come first for the whole season.

  Breakfast was delicious. Mum was back to her old standards. Her cleaning was also back to her old standards, but I was wrong about the midmorning rest. We did grout, we did bathroom cupboards and we did kitchen cupboards. After a cup of tea, we did vacuuming (well, I vacuumed while Mum fussed over the correct way to position the cushions on the couch). ‘Dad’s been doing it wrong,’ she told me. ‘I always tell him to put them one in front of the other, but he just spreads them out evenly. It really bugs me.’

  I raised my eyebrows and grinned to myself. ‘Oh.’ I hadn’t noticed much bugging going on in the last eight months. As long as she could sleep, Mum hadn’t complained about anything while she’d been sick. She’d hardly been able to talk. But today was a step in the right direction. Maybe I’d finally actually get my mum back sometime soon.

  ‘Do you want a sleep? After lunch, I mean.’

  ‘I’ll see. Maybe not. I’m feeling good, and there’s so much to do.’ She looked around her, almost wildly. My eyes followed her gaze. The house was okay. I mean, it wasn’t terrible. It was ‘Dad’ standard, at least, which was about eighty per cent of ‘Mum’ standard, but I wasn’t about to try to improve things and give myself more work.

  Mum saw me looking. ‘See? It’s chaos.’ She took a deep breath. ‘I’ll get it fixed.’

  20

  Chapter 20

  The wind kept on until lunch time, when the rain started as well. It began as a patter on our aluminium roof, steadily became an audience clapping, then came in bursts of gunfire.

  ‘That’s a lot of water,’ said Mum, looking upwards. She had an omelette and toast and another cup of tea in front of her. Apparently having a baby made you really hungry and thirsty, although coffee was still off the menu. ‘Is Mika okay?’

  ‘I’ll go and see.’

  It was pointless taking an umbrella into the wind so I wrapped myself in Dad’s Drizabone farmer’s raincoat and put his hat on my head before heading down to the paddock. Fozzles and Mika were fine, and Cupcake was still in the shelter too. I gave them some feed, checked their water, patted them, then trudged back, water running down into my boots.

  ‘It’s a torrent out there,’ I called to Mum from the laundry, shaking off my coat and kicking off my boots. ‘Look, I’m heaps wet.’

  ‘Change your clothes,’ she called back, her voice emerging from the room the baby was going to sleep in. It had been built as a spare for visitors and relatives and anyone who stayed over but clearly, it wasn’t going to stay like that. I didn’t have an opinion on it, unlike Coco, who’d had her eyes on that room almost since we built the house, and who couldn’t see why a baby, who wouldn’t appreciate the bigger closet space, should have it all to itself. The only thing I’d been glad about was that the baby wouldn’t have to move in with me. Now, as I entered the room, still a bit drippy, my eyes got wide.

  ‘When did you do this?’

  Mum had the light turned on, because of the darkness of the storm outside, but I could still see that the walls were painted the most gorgeous shade of yellow. A white cot and some kind of weird white table thing stood next to each other. The cot had yellow and white blankets and on the table, a smiling toy giraffe beamed at me. Someone had put up a series of wooden shelves, and white triangular bunting was looped along the window.

  Mum was kneeling at the cupboard, sorting out little piles of what looked like baby clothes. She looked back at me. ‘Dad’s been working on it and I’ve done a bit too.’ She smiled. ‘When you’ve been at school, mostly. Haven’t you seen it at all?’

  I shook my head in wonder. ‘No.’

  She shooed me away with her hands. ‘I told you to get changed. Don’t get water through the house. I’ve just cleaned it. And your socks are disgusting. Take them off.’

  ‘I was just going to say it’s really, really wet out there.’ I made moves towards the door. ‘The creeks will probably rise soon. If it’s too wet, Dad and the others won’t be able to get home tonight. The water will be over the driveway. Should I ring them?’

  ‘We can ring later, if we need to. We’ll keep an eye on it. But it won’t be too bad on the driveway. Dad built a bit of a causeway so we wouldn’t get trapped anymore, unless there’s a really big flood.’ She pointed at my feet. ‘Socks!’

  I scampered back down the hallway to the laundry, where I pulled my wet clothes off, dumped them in the wash basket, then ran, half-freezing, back to my room, where I found some dry pyjamas and pulled them on.

  ‘Nice,’ said Mum, approving, when I found her in the lounge room. ‘I might get mine on too. I’m feeling a bit tired now. We can heat up something for dinner. Maybe even play cards. I’ll just have a nap first, though.’ She stretched out on the couch and shut her eyes.

  I walked around the house, checking for open windows and doors. The wind was even louder than it had been and the rain showed no signs of slowing down. If Josh had left his window open again, he was going to be sorry; it was right above his desk and last time the rain had gotten in, his iPod had been ruined. I rolled up a towel and pushed it against the back door. This house had more than a few quirks, and one of them was a propensity for gusts—of both wind and water—to get in underneath doors.

  It was only four in the afternoon, but it was as dark as it would have been at eight. Dinner, I thought, even though it was far too early. I knew Mum wouldn’t mind. She’d been eating everything I could feed her all day. And we could always have a snack later if we got hungry.

  I headed to the kitchen and dug in the freezer. It was surprisingly full. Plastic tubs and takeaway co
ntainers with all sorts of labels on them were stacked in the drawers and on the shelves—beef casserole, chicken stir fry, butter chicken. My mouth watered.

  ‘Mum, did you know there’s heaps of food in here?’

  There was a noise from the lounge room, but it wasn’t a reply. It was a different sort of noise. Almost like a groan.

  ‘Mum—?’ I wandered out, around the kitchen bench and through the dining area, towards the sofa. Mum was sitting up, clutching her belly with both hands, and the expression on her face wasn’t one that said, ‘hey, let’s have dinner and play cards’.

  ‘You’re all white. Do you want to go back to bed? Maybe have a cup of tea? I can bring you some food in bed, if you like. We can hang out in your room.’

  She swallowed hard. ‘I’ll go back to bed. That’s a good idea.’ She held out her hand for me to help pull her up, and I let out a breath as I shifted her weight up onto her feet. That baby was going to weigh a ton.

  ‘Can you help me walk back to my room?’ she asked, weakly. I blinked, surprised, but not really. Here it was—the energy crash after the day’s activities. I had expected it, just perhaps not so late, and perhaps not in such an extreme way.

  I put my arm around her back and under her arm and walked with her back to her room.

  ‘Oh, hang on,’ she said, and stopped. I stopped with her, confused. She stood still for a moment and shut her eyes tight, like she was concentrating on something. Then her face seemed to relax and she shook her head, like she was trying to get rid of something. ‘Okay,’ she said, and we kept walking.

  ‘Butter chicken for dinner?’ I asked when we reached the bed and she collapsed onto it, her eyes closed.

  She nodded. ‘A-OK.’ She pulled the tiniest of smiles to the corners of her mouth. It quickly disappeared, though, and then she didn’t make another movement. I backed out of the room, trying to hide my disappointment. It didn’t look like there would be any cards this evening. I slapped my hands hard against my legs and felt the sting through my PJ pants. It’s fine.

  More noisily than I should have, I pulled the tub of butter chicken out of the freezer and banged it on the counter. I was frustrated but it didn’t matter. Mum wouldn’t be able to hear my crashing around over the crashing noises that were coming from the sky. The wind was even higher now, the rain hadn’t stopped, and now there was thunder and—I shivered when I saw them—forks of lightning, not too far in the distance.

  I opened the microwave door, put in the butter chicken (with the lid loosened, but still sitting on top … Mum always insists) and closed the door again. I pressed my finger to the button to set the time and at the exact same time that I pressed, there was a massive crash of thunder and a burst of lightning, and all the power in the house disappeared.

  ‘Oh no.’ I said it to myself mostly. I knew Mum wouldn’t be able to hear me, but I probably wouldn’t have said it to her anyway, being asleep and napping and sick. No power meant no butter chicken, that was for sure, unless I heated it up on the gas barbeque outside. It also meant no TV, no warm showers and not much light.

  I’d have to dig around for one of the old lanterns we’d used before we had any power on the site at all, last year when we were still building. The only problem was, I didn’t know where they were, and there was no way I was going to venture outside into the rain if they were at the top of some cupboard in a bedroom somewhere.

  Dad would know. And the funeral would be over by now, so I could ring him … if I could even find a phone, now that tidy-up-Mum had been through like a whirling dervish.

  It took me a little bit of scrabbling around in the dark, but I did find the cordless landline phone on the kitchen bench. I sat down on the couch with it and pressed the ‘on’ button. Nothing happened.

  Weird, I thought. It’s lost all its charge already? I’d have to find someone else’s mobile instead.

  Coco’s phone was with her, of course; Mum and Dad shared one, which was with Dad; and I didn’t know the password to Josh’s, even if I’d been able to find it. The only other option was mine, and for a few minutes I suddenly understood why Mum and Dad kept making constant proclamations that ‘all phones should be kept on the kitchen bench, near the charger’. I knew it was somewhere in my room, but the question was where? After a bit of searching under some piles of clothes I managed to locate it. Phew.

  I took it to my bed and sat down. The ‘on’ button worked, but there was no dial tone. I looked at it more closely, to see no bars in the connection space. Nothing but an ‘x’. There was no way I could call Dad. There was no way I could call anyone at all.

  ‘Mum,’ I called out, my voice going before my feet, which were already walking down to her bedroom. ‘Mum, there’s no …’

  But as I stepped out of the door into the corridor, I saw Mum coming towards me. She had her hand on her belly, and a terrible look on her face.

  ‘Charlie,’ she said. ‘I’m going to have a baby.’

  My eyes moved from Mum’s mouth to Mum’s tummy and back again. Of course I knew she was going to have a baby. It was obvious. You only had to look at the size of her stomach to know there was something in there. It was even bigger than Fozzles’ had been. I was almost expecting the baby to be bigger than Mika, Mum was so massive.

  ‘Yeah, I know.’ I gave her a look, like, ‘you okay?’ and she just stared back at me, a wild expression in her eyes.

  ‘No,’ she said, eventually, her head slightly swaying. ‘You don’t understand. I’m having this baby now. I’m in labour, Charlie.’

  I laughed. I actually did. I felt bad about it later, but it was my first reaction. She’s joking!

  ‘Ha ha, Mum. Very funny. That’s a good one.’ I actually thought it was a pretty good prank. It was certainly something Mum would have pulled on me before she got pregnant. And I might have fallen for it before, but I was older and wiser now. ‘Pull the other one.’

  ‘I’m not kidding.’ Her voice was steady, but it was low and I could hear the beginning of a shake. ‘I think this baby is going to come soon.’

  I sat down in the middle of the floor. All the power fell out of my legs and I had nowhere else to go. I sat for a second, and then I jumped to my feet again. ‘But it can’t. It’s too early. Mum?’

  Mum was doing that concentrating thing with her face again; eyes closed, head down, hands on belly. She waited for a few seconds, and then let out a breath and looked back at me.

  ‘That’s a contraction. I’m going to have quite a few of those. Hopefully they’ll be slow, and the ambulance will arrive in time to get me to hospital. But I need you to get me a phone.’

  My stomach dropped. Not quite to the floor, but low enough that I felt sick.

  ‘That’s what I was coming to tell you.’ I held out my phone in a faltering hand. ‘It’s not working.’

  We stood and looked at each other. Above us, a thunderclap sang its bass notes and outside, lightning made everything into daylight for half a second. All I saw was my mum’s face, scared, small and weary. And in that moment, I knew that I would do what it took to help her.

  I just didn’t know what that would have to be.

  ‘No phone,’ said Mum. She leaned back against the wall, her palms pressed flat against it. ‘No power. Presumably no internet.’ I shook my head. The few times we’d lost power before, Coco had stomped out of her room, looking for someone to blame for her not being able to comment on Facebook anymore.

  I looked at the clock. ‘Can we wait? I mean, Dad will be home at nine. It’s nearly five now.’

  Mum didn’t answer me, so I turned to her. Her face was tight again, and this time she looked like she was in pain. I had to wait for her to talk again.

  ‘We can’t wait,’ she said finally, blinking hard. ‘Not four hours. This baby’s on her way.’ She looked at me. ‘You’re going to have to ride for help.’

  21

  Chapter 21

  ‘Ride for help.’ The words came out of my mouth automatically, but I di
dn’t really understand them. My head was spinning a bit. Ride for help?

  Mum groaned a bit and started sweating. ‘Ride your horse.’ She could hardly make full sentences. ‘Down to Ness. See if her phone works. Get an ambulance here.’

  For a millisecond, everything froze. Then, in slow motion, my brain jumped from ‘it’s raining’ to ‘it’s raining a lot’ to ‘Mum might die’.

  Almost like Mum could read my mind, she spoke again. ‘You can do it, Charlie. I have faith in you.’

  I hesitated.

  ‘Or you could deliver the baby yourself,’ she said, finding the energy to give me a grin like she used to in the old days.

  ‘I’ll go right now,’ I said. And then it was like I’d taken some kind of energy drink. I zipped to the kitchen and grabbed the biggest flashlight I could find, and ran back to my room to pull on my boots and find a jacket.

  ‘Coat,’ said Mum, weakly. ‘The rain.’

  ‘I will.’ I put my arm around her shoulder. ‘But first, you have to move. Somewhere more comfy.’

  ‘I’m fine.’ She waved me away. ‘I’ll go to the sofa once you go.’

  I wrapped myself in Dad’s big rain coat and pulled a riding helmet onto my head. ‘I’ll be back soon.’

  ‘Don’t be long.’ Her voice carried from the hallway, but I could hear the strain in it. ‘I have faith in you. And Charlie?’

  I put my head around the door.

  ‘You’re A-OK.’

  When I stepped out of the back door, the wind hit me so hard it was hard to breathe. As I went down the steps, it was like buckets of water were being poured over my head. By the time I’d jogged to the shelter (running faster was totally out of the picture with all the water on the grass), I was wet through, despite Dad’s expensive, super-everything coat. I’d have to tell him he was ripped off. I grinned to myself.