by Anna George
The large, cursive writing returned her to that day in December, when she was freshly alone. Late and frazzled, she’d charged into Stella Wright-Smith’s grand Edwardian in Balwyn and had been rushing the small talk – the obligatory rapport building, which bored her senseless (what a stunning vase, where did you get it? etc.) – when she saw the card nestled among a dozen other Christmas cards. It was the only one that was handmade. It was the sort of thing her half-sister Marcia would send: a photograph of herself, her husband and children, wearing Santa hats or holding candy canes. People emailed them these days but some posted, the ones who liked quality paper (Marcia emailed). This card was like those, but for one difference. There were no children in the picture, only a man and a woman and a dog – draped in tinsel and around each other. A silvery Weimaraner, athletic and beautiful, the sort of dog that Neve might own. As Neve stared at it, her brain became very slow. Single thoughts floated up. What are they doing with their mouths? And then: Are they snarling? Neve’s patter with Stella Wright-Smith collapsed completely. ‘Merry Christmas, Stella,’ was written in that distinctive cursive script. ‘All our love, Bec, Kris and Russ.’ Neve’s next slow thought was: Russ?
Stella, Neve’s prospective client, an elegant if bovine woman, was pouring coffee, when she saw Neve’s face.
‘Do you know them?’ A frown was confusing her smile.
Neve couldn’t look away. She shook her head. Kris was wearing the turquoise t-shirt she’d bought for him, earlier that month. It was his favourite colour and now she knew why. It matched his wife’s eyes.
Stella handed Neve a delicate cup. ‘It’s an in-joke, I guess. You know how people with children send out those cards. Look at our family, we’re so happy. Like big ads. We really don’t like getting them.’
Neve made herself nod.
‘The baby thing has been terribly fraught for them.’ Stella waved at Neve’s bump. ‘In truth, it clean broke Bec’s heart; and then broke them. But, I feel, lately they’ve turned a corner.’
Stella beamed as if she and Neve, and now this fascinating ‘Bec and Kris’ – absolute strangers to Neve, as far as Stella knew – were on the same side. In happy coupledom. Ignoring her host’s gross indiscretion, Neve felt the blood drain from her face, her neck, her shoulders. Any second, her eight-month pregnant body would be strewn across that ugly rug. She felt her knees go.
‘You’re awfully pale,’ said Stella. ‘Are you ill?’
‘No,’ said Neve.
Sat on the couch, she didn’t move, couldn’t trust herself with the coffee. She waited for her brain to fire. But it’d seized around the thought: he left her because he ‘couldn’t do it to Bec’. And then she understood the what and why. He’d omitted to tell her, his marriage had broken down because they couldn’t conceive. Perhaps that detail would have resonated too loudly for Neve. Instead, he’d blamed Bec’s affair. But now she understood. He couldn’t have the baby, the happy family, without his wife. He couldn’t do it to Bec. But he could do it to her.
A child had such power, cementing one relationship while destroying another.
As if the parcel were alight, Neve sprang to the road and flung it in a bin. She understood what they were doing in Flinders. He’d changed his mind, of course. Not about her. About Cliff. That was splendid for him. He was working out what he valued. Who he was. But, not with her blessing. It was as if he was giving a masterclass in selfishness. The presumption of that ‘Dad’ left her speechless.
Snowy was a white, wooden pony who longed to be a real circus pony. Neve made herself focus on the words. The swimming single letters. The child beside her was listening hard, caught up in the story, with worry stamped on her brow. ‘I grant you your wish,’ said Neve, doing her best impersonation of Santa. Stay with it, she told herself. Don’t wander. But it was possible, surprisingly possible, to breastfeed and to be Santa and to reflect on other matters. Elsewhere. Even if you didn’t want to. And your brain wasn’t working.
As Snowy joined the circus for one night, Jessie’s slight body became stiff and Neve stirred, refocusing. Snowy revelled in the world of the circus. But too soon, he would return to being a wooden toy. A Christmas gift. By the last page, Neve’s thoughts of Kris were eclipsed by Jessie, pausing over the image of the boy hugging his wooden pony.
A happy ending, of sorts.
When Jessie closed the book, without comment, Neve thrust Cliff onto her right breast and studied the solemn girl. Despite the allure of denial, reality always managed to make itself known. But not completely. Not yet. The secret, she was learning, was to keep busy.
‘Can you pass me those bags, please?’ she said.
Jessie fetched the brown paper packages.
Neve slit the paper fastener with a finger. Within, layered like a sponge cake, were tissue-wrapped parcels. She took out two pairs of jeans, two jumpers, three t-shirts. Jessie’s hands went to her mouth again, this time a toned-down mime’s rendition of delight. Neve felt her chest expanding with the girl’s unspent emotion.
‘Here. I hope they fit.’
‘They’re for me?’
Neve nodded. ‘Try them on.’
Careful not to tear the tissue paper, Jessie unwrapped a purple jacket, with a red, off-centre zip. She gaped at it, before progressing, agog, through the rest of the items.
Delving into the foot of the bag, finding its prize, Jessie gasped. The shoes were Mary Janes and green, with a single white strap and silver buckle. Neve had had a pair herself when she was a child: black and matte. Jessie lifted one shoe from the bag. With her tongue poked out, Jessie tried to put it on. She pushed the strap through the buckle but couldn’t get the tiny, silver pin in the hole. With quiet determination, she tried again. After the fourth attempt, she glanced up at Neve. Sombrely, Neve took on the task; she was conscious of the narrow bony feet beneath her fingertips. Once both shoes were strapped, Jessie stood. With a concentrated stare, she took her first steps. She looked, Neve imagined, like a toddler learning to walk: with high knees and flat feet.
As Jessie picked her way across the floorboards, her heels rose up and down, in and out of the shoes.
‘Too big, huh?’
Jessie shook her head. She peered down at her shoes, as if not recognising her own feet. Her face broke into the loveliest, broken smile that Neve had ever seen. Joy bounced between them.
‘You’re welcome,’ whispered Neve.
At her breast, Cliff lay with his eyes closed and milk on his lips. Neve cradled his plump warm body and smiled at Jessie. To hell with it. No one was going anywhere today.
29
Kelly looked even tireder than usual. Leah watched her droopy shoulders as she followed her big sister through the gloomy hospital corridors. Kel was taller than her and wiry, but she looked as if she’d shrunk in the wash. She was flicking the car keys up and down and not talking. Parked nearby was the Holden, with its bumper bar roped-up. Thanks, Leah supposed, to Phil. The prick was probably feeling guilty. She smothered a sob.
Kelly climbed into the driver’s seat and, before Leah was buckled, reversed. Her big sister was a jerky kind of driver, accelerating and braking so the car didn’t get a chance to roll smoothly – but not today. Today the car clung to the side of the road. Kelly was driving like an old woman hoping no one would notice she was ninety.
‘Why didn’t you get me this morning?’ Leah asked.
‘They told me not to. Besides, you wouldn’t have been any use.’
Kelly took a left, with a spin of the steering wheel. They passed the high school Kelly had hated and where she now worked, her second job, five nights a week. Leah stared at a hole in the high wire fence.
‘You sure you searched everywhere?’
‘Yeah.’
Tears fell then, years of them. The cliff-side houses of Frankston blurred by. Double-and triple-storey houses clung to the sandy dirt. In the recent weather, the land had moved and one of them had slid. It looked like it could go again, any second. Leah st
ared at its broken foundations, its crumbled walls and temporary fencing. The debate she’d been having in her head ramped up.
Should she call the cops? She was hesitating, not just because of what they’d do with her – for losing Tayla – or even with Cyndi. She was thinking about Mitch and what he’d said in her daydream. She was thinking about the hullabaloo. Search and rescue. Helicopters.
Too soon, they arrived at Kelly’s place. It was a dirty-white weatherboard, built in the seventies. Leah saw the weedy lawn that she mowed and the lonely tree with its rope and tyre. A Taylamade pit in the dirt beneath it.
Kelly parked in the cracked driveway. ‘Did a giant stomp here, Mummy?’ Tayla said once. Leah had stopped in her tracks. ‘I guess.’ That her daughter believed in giants had made her sad but grateful too. Sometimes it was easy to forget how new she was.
Leah stared at the house’s filmy curtains that she’d made. ‘Did you look in every garden in that street?’
‘She wouldn’t go into someone’s place.’
‘Yeah she would!’ Leah felt a jolt of hope. She rubbed her face, as Cyndi tottered onto the porch. Behind her, Kelly’s three kids ran into each other like frisky ponies.
‘She’ll have made a cubby or a cave . . . Like I told you, she’ll be hiding!’
‘Leah, it’s been two days and freezing! It was a king tide on Friday . . .’
Kelly was staring at Cyndi. Her baby girl was weaving to the concrete steps. Leah didn’t want to look but she didn’t dare not. On her way down, Cyndi was going backwards, trying to find the next step by feel. One foot dangled, as she slid onto her stomach. And reversed.
‘You have to call the cops,’ said Kelly.
‘But you remember that show . . . where the guy drifted in a hot air balloon to New Zealand? And he had to get rescued?’
Kelly shook her head.
‘Everyone was looking for him, with helicopters and stuff, remember? After he was rescued, he got a bill for over a million bucks!’
Kelly started to cry, cross tears. ‘What are you saying? What do we do? She’s not there!’
‘I bet she is,’ said Leah. ‘It’s been two days. She’ll be okay.’
Leah sprang from the car, climbed the steps and swept Cyndi up. She squeezed her baby girl until she squealed. Cyndi’s hair smelt of fake apples. In that moment, Leah loved her that wildly she could have gobbled her up.
‘You and me,’ said Leah, over Cyndi’s shoulder, ‘we’re going back to Flinders, now. If we don’t find her then, I swear, I’ll call.’
30
Time was marked again by feeds, changes, sleeps. Neve lurched from her baby to Jessie to household chores. Her blood pressure rose. Abandoned half-full cups of tea dotted the kitchen, the dining table and hearth like jetsam. Time seemed to be accelerating between feeds and she was becoming more tired, more irritable, as she sorted and stacked the washing. Fingering Jessie’s fraying denim shorts and faded t-shirt, she tut-tutted. She stuffed the tired clothes into a plastic bag, along with rubbish from the kitchen. She carried the load to her bin and, with some pleasure, tossed it in. Gone. A moment later, a vehicle approached. It was a rubbish truck, rumbling like a tank. Slumped against the wall, she watched as its mechanical arm lifted her bin and shook it.
Jessie’s parents, she decided, deserved to be shot.
Retrieving the empty bin, she bumped it over a stormwater drain, and a memory of a news story came to her. Of a baby, abandoned in a gutter. She remembered the throngs of people who’d come forward, offering to keep the newborn. Fleetingly, even she’d fantasised about finding the sorry mite and rescuing it. She wondered what became of it, when the fuss died down.
The hollow bin rumbled as she wheeled it to the wall. She parked it precisely, with its wheels flush with the stone. At the gate the girl was a pillar. Jessie wasn’t meant to be outside but, with the truck gone, the street was quiet. Simultaneously, they waved to each other.
Neve didn’t understand how Jessie had done it. But she’d made a tiny place for herself. She was digging in, like a louse, into the tender flesh of a warm host. Neve recognised something of herself in the child’s survival instincts. It wasn’t only physical shelter that the girl needed. It was the space to be and feel. To air her emotions, which seemed abridged. Atrophied. Neve wondered if Jessie was her mother’s little rock.
She gave the bin a neat backwards kick then headed in.
At five o’clock, she braced for the news. She told herself if Jessie was mentioned, the alarm raised, she would act. But, astonishingly, again, there was nothing of her.
On every channel, thousands of people were fleeing Syria. Images flashed of men and women carrying children over their shoulders as they climbed through wire fences. Desperate grimaces on their faces. What would she do, she wondered, in those circumstances? Four million were seeking refuge, a total of twelve million were ‘displaced’; nearly half were children, thousands travelling alone. The numbers were too big for her to process. Fighting was breaking out on the borders of Croatia and Slovenia. Hungary was closing. Australia was taking a minute fraction of the fleeing masses.
Then an image froze of a lone child. Aged around three, draped over a man’s arms, flopping like a worn soft toy. And there was nothing to process. The child’s death pierced her heart in a way four million lives couldn’t. The epic tragedy was made manifest in the chalky face and small body. A well of grief opened inside her.
Fleetingly, she imagined that child’s family camped out in her home’s downstairs bedrooms. She pictured gifting to them the entire lower level. Lord knows she’d scarcely been down there these past few days. But what was possible? Realistic? She thought of the people closer to home, who’d fled by rickety boat towards Australia. Who were now locked up, out of sight. The children growing up behind wire fences at our government’s behest. Seeking refuge, finding gaol. Rarely had she allowed herself time and space to think of them. Was this the doing of motherhood, again? Overwhelmed, she made a note to donate a hefty sum to Médecins Sans Frontières. Then she switched the television off.
What was happening to her? She sniffed. She was becoming a sponge.
The dinner was boiling dry, forgotten, in two pots. The smell of singed pasta permeated the air. Neve scrambled to the stove as Jessie emerged from the bath and climbed onto a stool. She was wearing her purple jacket, new blue jeans and green shoes, buckled properly. Ah, progress. The purple under her eyes was now a paler pink blending in with her cheeks. Her hair, clean from the bath, was a consistent fawn. Even her gappy grin looked whiter. Little by little, the child was being coloured in.
Neve tipped the blackening pasta into the sink.
‘By the way, I hope it’s okay,’ she said, ‘I tossed out your clothes.’
Jessie’s eyes widened but she smiled.
Neve left the burned pot to soak and retrieved another. She wondered what the girl would make of her new plan. Her do-nothing, keep-you plan. More a half plan, founded firmly on denial.
‘Why do you think your mummy hasn’t come back?’
The child’s smile dimmed and she rolled a shoulder.
Neve cut the heat beneath what was left of the dense tomato sauce. The chaotic red bubbles shrank.
‘Where do you think she could be?’
‘I don’t know . . . Having a big sleep?’
Neve stumbled, caught unaware by an answer so humdrum. With order restored to her kitchen, she nibbled the inside of her cheek. ‘Does your mum sleep a lot?’
Jessie nodded, propped on her elbows, her chin in her hands.
‘Why is that, do you think?’
‘She’s sad . . . and she works a lot,’ Jessie’s tone was glum.
‘Oh . . .’ With old people, thought Neve.
Neve felt herself poised on a precipice: how much did she want to know? And what would that knowledge herald? What if the mother was despairing somewhere? Frantic? Her stomach seized at the thought: the woman was a working mother. What if, exhausted, she�
��d momentarily lapsed? Twice? But surely if the mother was functional – sober, sane, safe – she’d have called the police? She would.
Or was Neve deluding herself? Why was this all so hard to understand?
‘Would you like me to find her?’ said Neve, softly.
Jessie shook her head.
‘I could do it without involving the police . . .’ Hearing herself, Neve fell silent. She hadn’t formed the thought before uttering it.
Jessie opened her mouth to speak but abruptly Cliff piped up. The sound was, Neve knew, a prelude to his hungry cry, part conversation, part complaint. It’d soon escalate. Restored somewhat, Jessie’s body skewed towards him.
‘Dinner will be ready in ten minutes.’ Neve brightened her tone. ‘You’d better work your magic.’
Neve tipped rigatoni into the fresh batch of boiling water and watched it become engulfed. Steam billowed in clouds. As she stirred the pot, she watched Jessie. Sure enough, Cliff was swept away by the girl’s impromptu pantomime, a hybrid Anatole and Snowy tale. For the briefest second, Neve leant against the fridge and shut her eyes. What if the mother was like the daughter? Adorable beneath the muck and hungry for kindness? Increasingly confused, Neve tried to nap, upright.
Ten minutes later, the second batch of pasta was al dente. Neve sat Jessie up to a bowl on the bench. Then she settled herself down with Cliff on the couch. Later, when Cliff was asleep, she would eat. As Cliff fed, she spied on Jessie, from her vantage point, some 5 metres behind the child. Jessie ate, she suspected, when unobserved. Much of the meal, Neve guessed, was eaten with fingers. Though pasta was on the floor and sauce, on the countertop, some of it had to be going in.
