Fairway to Heaven
Page 22
Chapter 24
‘I’m sorry. Did you just say April the seventh?’ I’ve got the calendar from the fridge outside on the outdoor table and I’m trying to count the weeks from now into April. It’s hard to count the weeks and concentrate on what she’s telling me at the same time, and I keep losing my place on the calendar.
‘Two-thirty in the afternoon on April 7. That’s the earliest appointment I’ve got with Dr Whethers. She only works three days a week and she’s always booked out a couple of months in advance.’
‘But that’s more than two months away, right? Are you sure that’s the earliest she can see me?’
‘Is it an emergency?’ The receptionist asks.
I hesitate too long. ‘Well, it’s not exactly life or death.’
‘Then I’m sorry. April 7 is the earliest appointment I can get you.’ She’s trying hard not to let frustration, or boredom, enter her tone. She probably has this same conversation, six times a day, always with women as desperate for a dodgy vagina cure as I am.
Two months.
‘I can put you on a waiting list for a cancellation, if anything comes up earlier,’ she says.
‘Please. If you could do that, I’d appreciate it.’
‘I will mail you out a letter confirming the appointment, and it will let you know what you need to do or bring when you come to see us, but the important thing is to make sure you bring your referral letter with you. Dr Whethers can’t see you without it.’
‘Okay, I will. Thank you.’
‘Thank you. Have a good day.’
Crap! My address. ‘Wait, are you there?’
‘I’m still here.’
‘Can you please make my address to care of the post office at Busselton? I just moved house.’
‘Certainly.’
When she hangs up, I stare at the phone.
Two months.
I let the phone fall and it skids on the plastic. If Seb — playing with his truck under the shade of the peppermint tree — hears the noise, he takes no notice.
One of the good things about taking a toddler away from his toys for ten days is he’s forgotten all the stuff he had. This morning when I carried the boxes from Jack’s into the beach house and opened them, Seb thought it was Christmas.
He has a big blue truck that’s a favourite. My sister sent it for his first birthday. It has a light on top that flashes when you press a button and it plays tunes — the most unlikely trucker tunes imaginable.
It came with three smaller trucks that fit on the big rig. Seb is having a great time backing these up the ramp, turning them, stacking them, unloading and starting again.
He’s happy for now, so I return to my new “to do” list, and cross off number 1.
1. Call Dr Whethers’ rooms for appt
2. Find out about rental home/join waiting list
3. Write Scarborough property for Nathan
4. Bookwork/invoices (Carl/Nathan/Kennett)
5. Call Debbie Caletta. Re property write-up
6. Make a budget!!!
7. Call post office, get a post box
8. Call Mum
9. Call for test results from Dr Garner Thurs
10. Research coffee machines for beach house.
The Culhanes keep a local business directory in the sideboard drawer, so getting hold of real estate agent phone numbers is easy. Getting hold of a rental property at this time of year in Busselton or Dunsborough, however, soon proves anything but easy.
I should have known.
After the third real estate agent tells me they don’t have anything right now, and to keep checking the website, I give up. I’m so lucky to have the Culhanes’ house until Easter.
Next, I try number five. Debbie Caletta is a colleague of Carl Barron. She rang me when I was driving to Perth on Monday afternoon about writing up a property for her. I was thrilled because it meant my name was obviously getting around at Blain & Barrow.
‘Debbie? This is Jennifer Gates speaking. You rang me Monday about a copywriting job?’
‘Hi, Jennifer, how are you? I signed an offer on that house yesterday morning, would you believe? We got a cash offer. So I don’t need you anymore.’
‘Oh, that’s great. Congratulations.’ I hope I get the appropriate amount of enthusiasm in my voice.
Debbie says she hopes to meet me soon, and after I hang up, I cross her off the list.
Nothing else on the list inspires me, so I add another item.
Take Seb for walk.
That’s the one I cross off next.
Procrastination is an art, and I’m expert at it.
I practice it for most of the next twenty-four hours.
***
On Thursday morning after breakfast, I dial Vic Park Medical Clinic, praying I get Shirley and not the temp.
I’m in luck.
Shirley tells me all my results were clear, and the smear test was normal.
Relief washes over me like a wave, then the wave sucks away, and more questions churn in the foam.
Washing up our breakfast dishes, I’m thinking: If it’s not an STD, what the hell is wrong with me?
What do I do for the next two months until I can see the specialist?
Will I ever have normal sex again? Like. Ever?
What about having more children if Brayden wants kids? There’s IVF I guess, but that’s more doctors, more tests, more money.
The dishes slip and clash. I drop a plate too hard, and it breaks.
On the floor, Seb is playing with a set of toy car keys that beep and ring, ring and beep. BEEP —
Snatching them from him, I throw them through the open door, into our bedroom. They hit the portacot and slide to the floor.
For a millisecond, Seb stares at me in silent, wide-eyed shock. Two seconds later, his face dissolves into an angry flood of tears.
‘Sorry, buddy.’ I pick my own keys off the kitchen counter, breathing deep. ‘Mummy needs coffee.’
I pack Seb in the Corolla and drive into town, heading for the café on the foreshore near the jetty. We’ve done this a few times in the last couple of weeks. They sell takeaway coffee, and mums can take it to the playground in the park where their kids can run around.
I order a takeaway latte, put Seb down, and he makes a beeline for the brightly-coloured climbing frames, ladders and slides.
The coffee is ready quick. It’s hot, strong, and sipping it saves my sanity.
‘Makes me feel almost human, you know?’ another mum with a coffee cup says, smiling at me as I reach the slide in time to make sure Seb doesn’t fall through the ladder rungs.
‘Almost is the key word I think.’
This lady looks every bit as frazzled as I’m sure I do, though she’s much better dressed. She’s pushing a little girl a bit older than Seb on the rubber-bottomed swing. It’s a one-handed push. Her other hand has a death grip on her coffee.
‘Nice to meet you, I’m Jenn.’
We talk while Sebby mounds up piles of brown bark chips at the base of the slide, and while her kid swings.
Her name is Linda and she lives a few blocks from the beach. Her daughter is Stella. Linda’s husband Gavin drives a tug for a drilling rig, offshore. The money is great, but he’s away four weeks at a time and sometimes he’ll be sailing in black spots where there’s no satellite reception and she can’t get in touch with him.
‘That makes it hard on Stella, you know. It takes the first week of Gav being home before she’s comfortable with him.’
‘I know,’ I say, watching Seb put a bark chip in his mouth. His hands were clean when we got here, but they aren’t anymore. ‘Don’t eat that, mate. Yuck.’
‘Then when he gets home, he thinks he’s on holiday, you know? … And there’s me, asking him to fix a tap, or refill the gas bottle, or hang a painting, or clean gutters.’
I sit Seb on the see-saw to distract him from eating bark chips, wrap his fingers around the hand-hold, and push on the other side. He likes t
hat.
Linda tries to get her little girl to go on the other end, but she’s not interested. She wants to chase the seagulls that have gathered, waiting to be thrown something from the plate of the tourists sitting to brunch.
Linda’s older than me, maybe thirty-five. She’s attractive, slim, not one of the tracksuit brigade. She’s wearing jewellery and make-up, and her toenail polish is fresh.
Jack would say: she’s making an effort.
I look at my scuffed purple-now-grey-mauve sandals and shuffle them into the shade of the see-saw.
Does Linda’s husband worry that she’s going to get hit on by another guy while he’s away? Does he think about whether she’s faithful, all those long nights alone?
I think she’d tell me, if I asked. She’s chatty and open in the way mums get when they’re hanging out for adult company and any conversation that doesn’t begin with, Mum, can I have…
‘When Gav’s home, he puts my routine all out of whack. I’ll be getting dinner ready and next thing I know, he’s let Stella have a tub of yoghurt or something and I know she won’t eat her dinner; or he’s playing with her, getting her all excited right before I want to put her to bed. I don’t like to say anything because he doesn’t get to spend much time with her, you know? But… sheesh.’ She rolls her eyes.
Not long after that, Stella trips and skins her knee, and Linda says they’d better head home.
‘We might see you here again sometime,’ she says, and I nod and say, ‘that would be nice,’ and realise I mean it as she packs the little girl in her stroller, and pushes away.
Fly-in, fly-out is a lonely damn job. So many Australian men do it, and while they’re stripping oil or gas from the seabed, or minerals from the soil — earning mega-bucks so they can set up a dream future — the women and any kids they’ve left at home learn how to live without them.
Hubby comes home, he gets in the way.
I never want to be like that.
Maybe that’s what Brayden always knew.
***
We stay at the playground for another hour, long enough for a second coffee for me and a mashed banana snack for Seb. Then we head for home.
Seb is more than ready for his sleep, and he doesn’t resist when I lay him in the cot and close the bedroom door behind me.
Today is two weeks since I busted Jack and Marnie in the bunker at Sea Breeze.
It’s also two weeks — almost to the hour — since I spoke with my mother. She rang when I was madly polishing the staircase at Jack’s house, getting ready for the date night that never happened.
My parents’ number is the only one beside Emmy’s, Nathan’s and Jack’s that I don’t have to look up before I dial. My mother answers on the third ring and says she knew it was me.
I always joke with my sister that Mum is psycho like that.
We spend the first part of the conversation discussing how long it is since the last time we spoke, and what they’ve been doing (playing lawn bowls), and finally Mum gets around to asking whether I have any news.
It takes me a while to explain that I’m in Busselton.
With Sebby.
Just us.
Yes, without Jack.
No, Jack’s not coming later.
After that, she’s so shocked she has to pass the phone to my dad.
He asks what I’ve done to upset my mother, listens, says, ‘Right-o,’ then proceeds to tell me about his week at lawn bowls.
In detail.
My parents have played bowls in Karratha every weekend, plus Wednesdays, since my father retired from the mines.
Lawn bowls is what they do well.
Dramatic family situations isn’t.
Eventually Mum returns to the phone as Dad’s telling me he doesn’t like the new set of bowls the family bought him for Christmas.
‘It’s me again, love,’ Mum says, sounding teary. ‘Are you okay? Should I come down?’
Good God no. ‘You’ll miss your bowls. I’m fine. Really.’
‘Sebastian is so young. Are you sure you can’t work things out with Jack? Relationships aren’t meant to be easy you know.’
‘They’re not meant to be this hard, either.’
My dad mutters something in the background like, ‘lucky she never married that joker.’ Only I’m not sure if he says “joker” or “Jack”. Mum shushes him. I can picture her with her hand over the phone making evil eyes at my father.
‘So what are you going to do in Busselton, love? Take some time away to get your head straight?’
‘I’m trying to set up my own business.’
‘A business? Doing what?’
Selling my body, Mum. ‘Freelance writing. Just like what I did in Perth.’
‘How are you going to make a living doing that when you don’t know anybody down there? Why didn’t you come home where at least you have connections? We could have helped you.’
The thought of returning to Karratha makes my head ache. ‘What would I do in Karratha, Mum? Marry a miner? Drive a truck?’
‘There are worse things in the world.’
No there are not. ‘I’m happy here. Sebby can see Jack.’
‘We’d see more of Seb if you moved up here.’ Hope in her voice.
‘He’s not much good at the bowling green, Mum. He makes too much noise.’
‘Oh, silly,’ she says, but she doesn’t raise the idea again. Instead she says, ‘I don’t like the idea of you being on your own down there.’
‘It’s Busselton, Mum, not the fifth planet of Pluto.’
‘I can be on the first plane to Perth. Just say the word.’
‘I’m not actually in Perth, so I can’t pick you up at the airport, and anyway, don’t you have bowls all weekend? You can’t let the team down.’ Go team.
‘If you need anything, anything, you’ll call me, won’t you?’
I cross my fingers. ‘I promise, Mum.’
After that, I open a bottle of white wine and pour a glass to take to the porch, which is cheating, I know — it’s not even wine o’clock — but conversations with my mother bring out the rebel in me. Bless her.
***
That night, I call Brayden again.
He sounds like he’s spent the day breathing red dust and diesel fumes, and should be asleep.
‘I’m going a bit stir-crazy,’ I say. ‘There are only so many beach walks and playground visits a girl can handle.’
‘You haven’t had any bites on the job front, then?’
‘Not much. I should put an advert in the paper or something.’
‘Did you come up with a business name?’
‘Not yet.’
‘What about making up a business card, or a flyer? You could put a card on the noticeboards around the supermarkets. That kind of thing is free.’
‘Yeah.’ He’s right, and it irks me that I haven’t thought of it. I could print one hundred businesscards on-line, have them delivered to my door, and it would probably cost about twenty bucks. ‘I should do something like that I guess.’
‘It’s not gonna happen by magic, Jenn. You’ve got to put yourself out there.’
‘That’s not as easy as it sounds. Don’t forget, I’ve got Seb. I can’t go pounding the pavements, unless it’s with a pram and that doesn’t exactly look business-like.’
‘I’m not forgetting Seb, but don’t go using him as an excuse either.’
That stings. ‘I’m not using him as an excuse.’
‘Okay, good.’
We’re silent for a beat, while I digest his excuse comment and try not to let it simmer.
‘Maybe I could take up scrap-booking,’ I say eventually.
‘Or knitting.’
I smile. ‘There’s fishing.’
‘Now you’re talking. Seb would love that.’
This time I hear the smile in his voice. ‘So how are you doing, Brayden, really? Is there any news about the court case?’
‘Oh, jeez, Jenn. I don’t know.’
‘I still haven’t been charged. Maybe that’s what I’ll have to look forward to when I get home. The HR guy at Newman keeps asking me if I want to talk to anyone — meaning a counsellor I guess — or a shrink. In the next breath he says to me, “I can’t believe how well you’re handling it”, but he’s standing there looking at me as if any second I might start twitching.’
I’m nodding on the phone, which is crazy. It’s not like Brayden can see me.
‘It’s like what happens when someone dies. People don’t know what to say. They’re never sure whether talking about it makes it better, or worse.’
‘Yeah.’ He yawns. ‘Hate this FIFO shit, feeling tired all the time.’
‘Go to bed, Bray.’ I know I have to let him go, but I don’t want to break the connection. At least on the phone, I feel close to him. ‘Sweet dreams.’
‘You too.’
After I hang up, I think about business names for a while. Scribble a few in my notebook.
They all sound crap.
I think about more names while I’m lying in bed, listening to Sebby breathe.
They still sound crap.
***
Friday mid-morning, Nathan Blain’s secretary calls to tell me Nathan doesn’t have any new properties for me to write up next week.
Friday lunchtime, I call Jack on his mobile to tell him I won’t be up there on Tuesday, and if any mail arrives at the house for me, would he forward it care of the post office, Busselton.
‘You really think you’ll stay there long enough to bother changing your address?’
‘Yes, Jack. I do. I’m on the waiting list to get a post box.’
‘It’s not like you’ve been inundated with work though,’ he points out.
Thanks for the vote of confidence. ‘All new business ideas take a while to get off the ground. I haven’t really promoted it yet.’
If a smirk can make a sound, that’s the kind of noise he makes. ‘So let’s say you put an advert in the paper, a miracle happens, and you get really busy. What happens with Seb? If you have to put him in day care, any money you earn will go in childcare fees. Kind of defeats the purpose.’
There’s no point talking to Jack.
Two hours later, Carl Barron cancels the one tentative review we had booked next week. His vendors have listed their house with another agent.