‘I was about to hand it to Lachlan,’ said Leo. ‘But I’ll give you a couple of days headstart before I pass it on.’
That was all the motivation she needed.
Two weeks later
Jo stepped into the elevator of her apartment block and pressed the button for her floor. It was only three-thirty, but she tried to get home early most afternoons since Charlene had come to stay. She didn’t like to leave her alone into the evening. Not that they spent a great deal of time together, mostly they kept to themselves. Charlene either napped or watched TV or went out for cigarette breaks.
Jo had met with Leo’s contact the following day, and he had given her more than enough to go on. She made some calls to verify his credentials, and started to piece together an outline. Leo gave her the go-ahead, and after that, he was content for her to work on it away from the office.
Jo let herself into the apartment and traipsed over to her desk, kicking off her shoes and dumping her briefcase on the chair. She wondered if Charlene was sleeping, she couldn’t hear the television. The first week it had driven her mad; the TV was going almost constantly and there was nothing that put Jo more on edge than daytime television. It reminded her of coming home from school when she was a kid. If she could hear the TV as she walked down the front path she knew her mother was either recovering from a hangover, or in the process of getting one, but she would be insufferable in either case. Sure enough, Jo would find Charlene lying on the couch in a haze of smoke, a gin bottle within easy reach, or else coffee mugs and dirty plates and junk food wrappers were strewn across the coffee table and spilling onto the floor. The voiceovers for those tacky afternoon game shows could actually make Jo’s palms sweat.
Charlene had the weekends off from treatment, so she spent them at Belle’s place. The first time Darren brought her back on the Sunday afternoon, he arrived with a portable TV and set it up in the bedroom for her, much to Jo’s eternal gratitude.
She went to check on her mother. She was lying on her side under the covers. Jo couldn’t tell if she was awake or asleep until she walked right around the bed. Her eyes were open, staring blankly out the window.
‘Hi,’ Jo said tentatively. ‘Have you been asleep?’
‘Mm,’ she grunted. ‘Till a siren woke me. It’s so noisy around here, Jo. What possessed you to live in the middle of the city?’
‘It’s close to work, I love living in the centre of everything.’
‘What, traffic and pollution and noise, and drug addicts down on the street?’
‘Yeah, all that,’ said Jo, perching herself on the end of the bed. ‘How are you feeling?’
‘Like you could care less.’
‘Okay, you’re going to have to give that a rest, Mum,’ said Jo. ‘It’s getting old.’
Charlene sighed. ‘I’m tired, okay? I’m constantly tired now. And I’m sore from the radiation.’
‘Is that cream helping?’ asked Jo.
She rolled over onto her back. ‘I don’t know, I suppose it’s not making it worse,’ she said, propping herself up to sit.
Jo considered her. ‘I really don’t understand why you’re doing this, Mum.’
‘Because I have cancer, or did you think I was doing it for fun?’
She ignored that. ‘I don’t know why you’re putting yourself through this much discomfort for a course of treatment the doctor said is unlikely to be all that effective.’
‘It has to do something,’ she dismissed. ‘Keep it at bay, at least.’
‘Mum, that’s not how it works. Cancer’s like a weed – if you don’t get rid of it, roots and all, if you only part-treat it, then it could come back worse than before,’ she said. ‘If you’d just had the partial mastectomy, the doctor said you might even have avoided the need for any follow-up treatment.’
‘Well I wasn’t going to have half my breast hacked off,’ she said grumpily.
‘So why not have the chemo – that would have had a greater chance of killing off anything that was left.’
‘Then I’d lose my hair.’
‘But you’d save your life,’ Jo said, frustrated.
She snorted. ‘What kind of a life would that be, with no hair and a deformed breast?’
‘It would be a life,’ said Jo, ‘whereas you’re risking an early death. Besides, your hair will grow back soon enough, and you can have breast augmentation surgery.’
‘You have to go on a waiting list for that,’ she said curtly. ‘Unless you have money, or fancy private medical cover, and I don’t have either. So I’d have to put up with looking like a freak for a couple of years or more. I’m not prepared to do that.’
‘You wouldn’t have to look like a freak, Mum, you could wear a wig, a prosthesis.’
‘Oh, and that’s not freaky?’
Jo shook her head. ‘I just don’t get it.’
‘What’s new?’ Charlene said bitterly. ‘You never did get me, Jo.’
‘Well, you have my undivided attention now, Mum. Help me understand.’
‘You don’t want to understand, you want to judge.’
Jo felt a pang in her chest. ‘Maybe I need to understand so I don’t judge you.’
Charlene sighed, turning her head to gaze out the window again. ‘All I’ve ever had is my looks. You think that’s trivial, Jo, because you’ve got other things to fall back on, but I never did. I had you when I was eighteen. By the time I was twenty-two I was on my own with two girls to look after. What was I supposed to do?’
‘You had choices, Mum; even if it was harder than it is today, you still had options.’
Charlene shook her head. ‘You’ve never been in the situation, Jo, you couldn’t possibly know what it was like for me.’
‘I walked out on a man when I was twenty-one, Mum,’ she said flatly. ‘I have a bit of an idea.’
‘You didn’t have children to worry about,’ she reminded her. ‘You had looks, and a brain. And you were so bloody independent from the day you were born, you never even needed a mother, let alone anyone else to look after you.’
‘I needed a mother,’ said Jo, ‘I just had to learn to get by without one I could count on.’
Charlene looked at her. ‘This is you not judging me?’
Jo held her hands up in surrender. ‘I’m sorry, you’re right. Go on, please.’
‘I did the best I could,’ she continued. ‘I was a teenager when I got pregnant, I was clueless, the only thing I was really good at was attracting men.’
‘You weren’t all that good at it, you kept attracting the wrong ones.’
‘They don’t wear a warning label, you know, Jo,’ she retorted. ‘Look, maybe I made some mistakes, but am I going to have to pay for them forever? I’m getting past my prime and I’m not going to be able to attract any sort of man for much longer. I have to think of my future. Do you know what happens to women on their own when they get old? They don’t have super, they don’t have any security. They’re on the bottom rung, reduced to eating dog food on toast –’
‘Mum,’ Jo interrupted, cutting through the melodrama. ‘You know we’d never let that happen.’
‘Yeah, well, the thing is, I did meet someone, earlier this year,’ she said. ‘He’s got some money, he’s secure, anyway. He likes a drink, but he doesn’t have a temper. Things were going well between us, and then this happens.’
‘Well, if he was any good, he would have supported you through this,’ Jo maintained.
She shook her head. ‘For all your brains, you are so naive, Jo. Why do you think I came down here for the treatment? I haven’t told him, I don’t want him to see me like this. And I’m not going back there bald and deformed.’
Jo frowned. ‘So what does he think you’re doing here all this time?’
‘I told him my daughter was starting work and I was going to look after the kids while she settled into a routine.’
Boy, she really had him fooled. ‘He won’t want to come and see you?’ asked Jo. ‘Even for Christma
s?’
‘He runs his own boat charter company,’ said Charlene. ‘Summer is his busiest time, it’s impossible for him to get away. That’s why I waited till now.’
‘You waited?’ said Jo. ‘How long have you known about the lump?’
‘I found it months ago, just after I met him, actually,’ she said. ‘I thought it was hormonal, but then it didn’t go away. I went to my GP just before the twins’ birthday, and she said I had to do something right away, so I told her I’d have all the tests in Sydney. That way no one needed to know.’
Jo was listening in disbelief. ‘What about your friends?’ she said. ‘Don’t you have friends that you told?’
‘No, no one knows,’ said Charlene.
‘Why wouldn’t you tell your friends?’
‘Because cancer smells like death, Jo,’ she said bluntly. ‘People are afraid of it, especially at my age. We’re all going around pretending we’re not getting old – fifty is the new forty, everyone keeps saying. Then someone gets sick and no one wants to know. I’ve seen it happen. I wasn’t going to let it happen to me.’
The next day
Jo felt a heavy sadness permeating everything she did. She decided to go into the office; she had to get out of the oppressive atmosphere in the apartment, and she didn’t have the wherewithal to investigate her story today. She could barely string words together into sentences; her writing was clunky and stale, everything seemed like an effort. She had slept fitfully, her dreams disturbing, flashes of her childhood, her mother all dressed up, overdone, but secretly Jo had always thought she was beautiful. And then there were the men – leering, loud, obnoxious, touching her mother, putting their hands all over her. Jo would lie awake in her bed after Belle had gone off to sleep, listening, confused, afraid. She wanted them to leave, to stop touching her mother, to stop what they were doing in her bedroom, making her cry out like that, she sounded like she was in pain. But the men kept coming, they never stopped coming.
Now Charlene was refusing life-saving treatment in order to hold onto a man who, for all she knew, might stand by her anyway. But she was prepared to risk her life rather than risk that he wouldn’t. Jo couldn’t imagine her desperation, her desolation.
She was scrolling through her emails, disinterestedly, when Joe appeared, leaning over the half-wall of her cubicle.
‘Hi,’ he said.
She glanced up at him briefly, before returning her gaze to the computer screen. She didn’t want to linger on those eyes.
‘Hello,’ she replied.
‘I haven’t seen you around much lately. How are you?’
‘Okay,’ she said, staring at the screen but seeing nothing.
‘You don’t look okay.’
She shrugged.
‘Jo?’ His tone was expectant, he was waiting for her to look up, but she couldn’t. ‘Jo, can you come to my office for a minute?’
‘I don’t think that’s a good idea.’
She heard him sigh. ‘Just for a minute.’ He dropped his voice. ‘Please?’
Maybe she should, so she could tell him that she couldn’t come to his office any more, and that he couldn’t hang around her cubicle any more, because she couldn’t take it any more.
‘All right. For a minute.’
She got to her feet, and he waited for her to pass. She walked directly to the door of his office and let herself in. He followed her, closing the door behind him.
‘What do you want, Joe?’ she said abruptly, turning to face him, but still not looking him in the eye.
‘I just want to know if you’re all right,’ he said, in that gentle, concerned voice he did so well. ‘I’m worried about you.’
‘You can’t keep doing this, Joe.’
‘I don’t know how I can stop caring about you.’
‘Well, you’re going to have to. I’m not your concern any more.’
‘Jo, can’t you even look at me?’ he pleaded.
She slowly raised her eyes to meet his. It felt like touching him, looking into his eyes. It was too hard. She turned away and crossed to the window, leaning against the frame as she gazed out at the street below.
‘How’s your mother?’ Joe asked.
‘She’s okay. The treatment makes her tired. I just try and keep out of her way, mostly.’
He nodded. ‘I can relate to that.’
She turned to look at him. ‘Do you want me to ask how it’s going for you, Joe? Because I can’t. Because no matter how hard it is for you – and if you feel anything like I do, then I imagine it must be very hard – I can’t have that conversation with you.’
‘I’m sorry,’ he said, defeated.
He looked so sad, and it was breaking her heart. ‘Joe, you have to promise me something,’ she said.
‘Anything.’ That made him look hopeful.
‘Well, that’s the thing, you can’t promise me anything,’ she said plainly. She took a breath. ‘So you have to promise me this – that you’re going to try to be happy.’
‘Jo, I can’t –’
‘No, I mean it,’ she said. ‘What’s the point of all this if you’re just going to be miserable, Joe? You have to go and be a wonderful father to that little baby. And it can’t just be about the baby, you have to be good to Sarah, so she can be a good mother to your child. You have to make them both feel loved and secure, build a life together. Stay together.’
He was shaking his head slowly. ‘I don’t know how I’m going to be able to do that, Jo.’
‘You have to find a way. You can’t be half-hearted about it. Or else nobody wins.’
Joe sighed, rubbing his forehead. ‘What about you?’
‘I’ll get by, I always have,’ she dismissed.
He was gazing at her with so much love in his eyes, she had to look away again. It took all the will she possessed not to close the gap between them and put her arms around him and hold him tight, even for a moment. But what good would that do? It would only make it that much harder to walk away.
‘You have to forget about me, Joe,’ she said finally, as she walked past him, opened the door and left the room.
Sydney Airport
Joe was waiting for Hilary at the arrivals gate at the international terminal. He could hardly wait to see her, and they had the whole drive to Leura together to catch up. Sarah had stayed back at the flat. She wasn’t exactly keen about coming up to the mountains for Christmas, though all his family was going to be there and they were planning a major celebration, despite Joe Senior’s rapidly deteriorating health. Or rather because of it. They knew this would be their last Christmas with him, and they wanted to cherish it. They were all too aware that they had not had that chance with their mother. Corinne and Alex and the kids were driving up from Melbourne and were due to arrive sometime today, and Will had promised he was making his way up today as well. Joe would have a night with them all, and tomorrow, or perhaps the next day, he’d travel back down to pick up Sarah.
Hilary finally appeared through the automatic doors, pushing a trolley laden with luggage undoubtedly weighed down with too many gifts for them all. She was an exceptional woman, his sister, and Joe was desperately proud of her. She’d never married, but she had a long-time partner, Gregory, an academic at Harvard. They’d been together more than a decade, and although they maintained separate houses ten minutes apart, by all accounts it was a happy arrangement. She’d never had children of her own; she had adopted a tiny, sickly orphaned boy from Serbia who, despite all the best medical care, and Hilary’s boundless love and nurturing, had died two years later. She admitted she didn’t have it in her to go through that again, and so she had become wedded to her career.
Her face lit up when she spotted Joe. She was a striking woman; she and Corinne were tall like the boys, only Mim had inherited the smaller frame of their mother. Hilary was slender and statuesque, but she had a smile just like their mum’s, warm and dazzling.
Joe came forward to meet her as she wheeled her trolley down the w
alkway, releasing it as she got to him to throw her arms around him.
‘Joseph, Joseph,’ she exclaimed. She was the only one who called him that. She leaned back to inspect him. ‘Oh, what are you doing looking older? You’re dragging me along right behind you, you realise.’
‘Steady on, you only saw me a few months ago,’ he said. ‘I can’t have aged that much.’
‘Maybe it’s the light here?’
Joe sighed. ‘You know, I’d like it if just one of my siblings could be a little complimentary, or I’m going to end up with a complex.’
‘Oh, that’s Corinne’s job,’ Hilary dismissed. ‘She’ll tell you you’re gorgeous and you haven’t changed a bit, you wait.’
He pushed her trolley through the terminal out to the carpark while they got the small talk out of the way – how was her flight, had she managed to get any sleep, the weather she’d left compared to what she’d arrived in. Joe opened the car door for Hilary, and tossed her heavy overcoat over the back seat, before stowing her bags into the boot of the car. He’d bought the medium-sized family sedan at Sarah’s behest, but he supposed she was right. They would need a car once the baby arrived, as she had pointed out, and lots more besides, apparently. His flat now resembled some kind of baby goods storeroom, every other day more gear jostled for the available space. Joe wondered if one little baby needed so much stuff, but it kept Sarah happy and off his back. He went to the doctor’s visits with her, took the hospital tour with her, and had experienced one small glimmer of hope when he’d accompanied her for an ultrasound and caught the first shadowy glimpses of the baby. His baby. He was still waiting for the love to hit, but it was a start.
Once they had negotiated their way out of the carpark, and paid the ransom at the gates to be released, Hilary turned to him.
‘So, Joseph, you’re going to make me an aunt again?’
‘That I am,’ he replied, focusing on manoeuvring the car across two lanes of traffic to get onto the freeway that would eventually take them home.
‘How is that sitting with you?’
Crossing Paths Page 41
