Simmering Season

by Jenn J. McLeod

  ‘Crap. Forget that,’ Mike said. ‘I’m staying here.’

  ‘Yeah, Dad, forget what I just said too. I’d rather stay at Taylor Anderson’s place. Her dad’s got an X-Box.’

  ‘Is that right?’ Dan laughed. He hugged his daughter to him and felt the day’s dirt fall away. ‘Okay, pikers, let’s eat. I’m starved.’

  4

  Maggie

  Maggie was keen to leave the sadness of Amber’s funeral and the craziness of the city behind and get back to Calingarry Crossing. Being away from her son had been the hardest thing. She missed him. Sometimes it felt like she was still trying to catch up on his childhood. Being the sole breadwinner since Noah was a baby had meant missing out on so much of those early years.

  ‘What a difference a sea breeze makes,’ Maggie said, the coolness covering her exposed arms with goose bumps as Sara negotiated the Subaru Outback through the city’s shadowy streets, then north across the Harbour Bridge. ‘You know the ocean is the only thing I really miss about Sydney.’

  While twisting her hair into a rough knot, tying it on top of her head with the black elastic—a constant companion on one wrist—Maggie watched a twin-hulled RiverCat on the water below bringing commuters down the Parramatta River from the western suburbs to the city. The fast-moving ferry speared the still blue water below the bridge, leaving two lines of white foam spreading in its wake. Other craft, under both motor and sail, dotted the postcard-perfect harbour.

  With a shoulder leaning against the partially open window, Maggie closed her eyes and lifted her nose to a breeze tinged with the smell of salt and seaweed. It made her wish she’d spent more time on the water during her twenty-two years living here. The occasional weekend Manly Ferry ride hardly counted.

  When Maggie opened her eyes again, an enormous red semi-trailer had gobbled up the vista. A tattooed truckie in a sweat-stained blue singlet leered down, a choking cloud of diesel smoke staining the sky above his cabin. Maggie jerked back, raised the window and flicked the air-con vents so they blew directly into her face, making a consistently disobedient strand of straight mousey brown hair dance around her eyes.

  ‘You okay there?’ Sara asked.

  ‘Do I look stupid, Sara?’ Maggie blurted, slamming her back into the contoured bucket seat of Sara’s Subaru and yanking the stubborn tress behind her ear for a second time. ‘Because I am. You know that, don’t you?’ Even before Maggie had finished saying the words aloud, Sara was laughing and nodding in agreement. ‘My father has a lot to answer for. Taking people under his wing was something he did. I’m not him. What was I thinking when I offered to put her up at the pub?’

  ‘You are like your dad. You were being generous and protective, Maggie. Don’t see it as doing something for Fiona. Think of it as doing something for Phillip.’

  ‘Hmm.’ Maggie wiggled her butt down into the seat to take advantage of the headrest. ‘I suppose when you say it that way. The girl is just spoilt rotten. Reckon I can work that attitude out of her.’

  ‘Work?’ Sara whooped. ‘Don’t go planning any Employee of the Month awards.’

  ‘What’s so funny? Is it wrong to expect someone to work for their food and board? We’re not all made of money, like the Blairs. And I thought spending time with her grandmother might help Fiona understand Amber’s struggles a little better. The offer wasn’t as an all-inclusive, first-class getaway. It’s an opportunity to experience life in the small town where her mother grew up.’

  ‘Not everyone has your work ethic.’

  Maggie shrugged. ‘Oh well, I’d be very surprised if she even took me up on the suggestion. It’s not as if Phillip can make her come out to Calingarry. The girl is almost twenty-two years old, not that she acts it.’

  ‘You’re right, on both counts. Still, I’d want to get to know my grandmother before it was too late.’ The ringtone on Sara’s phone rang out. Her smile said it was Will.

  The words ‘too late’ formed an image in Maggie’s head—the frail form of her father the first day she’d called into Saddleton Nursing Home.

  He’d been sitting in a chair in the common room along with half a dozen other men and women in varying end-stages of their lives. Maggie had watched him from the corridor for a few minutes, blotting her eyes with the sleeve of her shirt, trying to compose herself. Somehow she managed a brave face and made her way through the semi-circle of recliner and wheelchair-bound residents, all staring at the old black and white movie playing on a big-screen television.

  ‘Hey there, Dad.’ At first Joe had just stared, like he was looking, but not really seeing. His eyes, once big and brown and filled with warmth and life, were clouded, his stare vacant. ‘It’s me. Maggie.’

  Joe suddenly beamed. ‘My little Magpie.’ He reached out his arms and used the word he’d made up when she was a baby. ‘Smuddle?’

  Afterwards, Maggie cried for the hour-long trip home to Calingarry Crossing pub. Perhaps that first visit might not have been such a shock for her had she come home for visits every once in a while, or if her father or Ethne hadn’t kept his declining condition a secret when she’d telephoned. Not that she could have made the trek too often from Sydney. She thought a lot about her dad, but her life was with Brian and their son in the city. Trips back home cost money they simply didn’t have. Now Maggie had no choice, and while trying to make up for lost time with her father, every week she was seeing more and more a shadow of a man once wiser than Solomon.

  ‘You okay there?’ Sara asked Maggie after having terminated Will’s phone call with an audible kiss.

  ‘Just thinking.’

  ‘Will was just saying a short stint in the country is what Fiona needs. Look what it did for her mother.’

  ‘He’s probably right. I was just wishing I’d come home earlier.’

  ‘Why didn’t you?’

  ‘Sometimes life has other plans for us.’

  She didn’t feel the need to go into detail. If anything these days, Maggie found herself avoiding details about her life. She’d never been one to reminisce about sliding doors and decisions made. She didn’t make a habit of crying in her drink. She wasn’t chatty or demanding, preferring not to be the centre of attention at all. Maggie’s life hadn’t turned out particularly exciting, even though as a young girl she’d dreamed of a fun-filled existence brimming with colour and noise. Real life, as she eventually found out, was never as romantic as the fantasy.

  Running her dad’s pub meant being more social than she’d been in years, not that Maggie had to make conversation. Most pub patrons preferred talking about themselves, especially after one or two too many drinks when for some blokes bar talk turned into those over-the-counter confessions. Maggie’s challenge was skilfully avoiding them, as well as questions from a curious community about her past, especially her time in Sydney and her noticeably absent husband.

  The day eighteen-year-old Maggie had left Calingarry Crossing as Mrs Henkler—her father had insisted on marrying them first—had been so exciting. She was going to do it all: marriage, career, motherhood—and in that order. Somewhere in there she’d manage an Arts degree and get a job with a high-profile agency, eventually starting her own photography business before moving on, finally, to world domination as the next Anne Geddes. Imagine little Maggie, the minister’s daughter, achieving all that. Only she’d revert to the unedited version of her name—Magdalene. Just plain Maggie sounded so … so country.

  All too soon after starting a TAFE course, and with a small portfolio of work, she had her own cute-as-a-button baby to photograph—a totally unplanned pregnancy and way too soon. After losing her traineeship with the portrait studio, she took on the only job she could find. Fairytale Photos operated a small booth outside the Kmart store in Parramatta and the franchise owners didn’t see a problem with a pregnant photographer. In fact they loved the idea, unlike Maggie who found the long hours standing played havoc with her legs and back. At least the temporary job had kept money coming in while Brian pursued a neve
r-ending string of what he referred to as ‘opportunities within the music industry’.

  After only seven-and-a-half months into her unplanned pregnancy she gave birth to a tiny, fragile baby boy, as well as a guilt complex that remained just as raw seventeen years later. As much as Maggie and Brian had both loved the idea of parenthood, a baby had made their already meagre existence even harder. For fifteen years they played the same two-steps-forward one-step-back game with their finances. They fell further into debt when the Rev needed fulltime care and could no longer manage the pub in Calingarry Crossing, so Maggie had to give up work in the city and head back to her hometown.

  Going home to sell the pub two years ago was supposed to help Maggie turn the red into black, but the first lesson as a small business operator was that country pubs don’t sell overnight and tyre kickers aren’t only in the business of checking out cars. The broker with the slimy smile and sickly sales spiel was yet to produce a genuine buyer, just sticky-beaks and dreamers.

  In the meantime, Maggie was falling in love for the first time in years—in love with life, her dad’s old pub, and the idea of a second chance for her family in Calingarry Crossing. If only Brian would agree to make the move permanently. It would be an adventure, just like when they were young.

  ‘Gosh, that was a big sigh.’ Sara laughed. ‘Feel better?’

  ‘Did I do that out loud?’ Maggie sat up, clearing her throat and fingering the Reality TV News magazine on her lap, her eyes fixed on the double-page spread featuring i-ICON’s top twenty finalists—all so beautiful, all so musically gifted, all so young.

  All so not Brian.

  ‘You didn’t tell me how lunch went with Brian yesterday. I was surprised to find you tucked up in bed alone when I came back from dinner. You know we could’ve stayed in town longer. I was happy to fill in another day catching up with Poppy. I figured that fancy job your husband’s locked into would allow overnight conjugal visits.’ Sara giggled.

  ‘Fancy job? Oh yes, ha, ha!’ Maggie snapped the magazine on her lap closed. ‘What can I say?’ One day was enough! ‘I didn’t want to be away from Noah any longer than I had to be. Besides, Brian was … He’s pretty busy these days.’

  ‘Busy?’ Sara shot a brief sideways glance in Maggie’s direction. ‘Not too busy to make time for his wife, surely? Oh sorry, Maggie, that came out wrong.’ After a few seconds of silence Sara asked, ‘It’s the same job with that music production company? He must be pulling in a special salary, you lucky thing.’

  ‘Ah-huh. Yep.’ Maggie turned to look out the side window, not wanting her expression to expose the lie.

  Staying in Sydney another day had crossed her mind. There was no need to rush back. Ethne could look after the pub; she’d been running the place for years with Maggie’s dad. An extra day might have helped change Brian’s mind, maybe test out if sex really did make the heart grow …

  Did she say sex? She meant absence.

  The idea of dinner for two—somewhere cheap and cheerful in the city—then back to their flat for the night had tingled Maggie where there’d been no such tingling for some time. Brian once accused her of losing her passion for sex simply because they no longer snatched every opportunity to make love. It didn’t matter to Brian that she might be sorting laundry or up to her elbows in dishwater when the urge hit him.

  Maggie could have shown him some passion last night all right. Maybe they could have skipped dinner, or ordered in and let it grow cold as they had wild sex on the living room floor. Despite not far from nudging the big four-oh, Maggie was still a sensual, vibrant woman.

  And lonely.

  Sadly, there was no intimate dinner for two and no fabulous mind-bending sex to tease him away from the city, because Brian had suggested they meet in a crowded Newtown café in broad daylight so he could get to his pub gig around the corner on time.

  ‘Fine, see you there.’ She’d pouted and punched the phone to terminate his call. A quick meeting was probably better anyway. They couldn’t argue in public and he couldn’t weasel his way back into her good books like he used to with his eager puppy impersonation, whimpering and cavorting around, kissing her feet and licking his way up her legs until she’d giggle and run. He’d chase her to the bedroom, they’d make love, and all would be right again—until the next time they fought over money, or the lack of it.

  Maggie learned quickly that parenthood was all about responsibility. Nothing like a long labour and childbirth to squeeze out all remaining immaturity. She grew up fast. Brian didn’t.

  He didn’t get it then.

  He still didn’t get it at the café yesterday.

  Her husband was riding high on the latest promise from i-ICON’s producers, and when Brian was up he was like a two-year-old on a red cordial diet. After all these years, however, she also knew after every up came a down. That’s when he would suck everyone close down with him. Sometimes the higher the high, the bigger the low. Despite being eliminated from the contest months ago, missing out on the coveted top twenty, Brian had been riding higher than ever yesterday, convinced the producer’s latest communication meant that success would soon be within his grasp.

  ‘Sara, do you mind if I close my eyes for a bit?’ Maggie pressed a palm against her forehead. ‘Bloody awful headache. We can swap over and I’ll drive a bit later, if you like.’

  ‘Sure, Maggie, no problem. I’m kind of enjoying myself being in the driver’s seat for a change. Will doesn’t passenger so good these days. He likes to be in control. Nap away. I’ll wake you if I start feeling weary.’

  ‘Thanks.’

  Closing her eyes brought back the face of the stranger in the café yesterday.

  Her husband—Brian.

  5

  Brian had kissed Maggie hard on the lips where she stood in the middle of the ultra-trendy and very busy little café in King Street, Newtown. The kiss felt strange. She didn’t know who this man was, even though she’d been married to him for over twenty years. He sounded like her husband, but that was the only familiar feature of a man whose touch had once flipped her stomach and made her toes tingle. She missed that.

  Now, in the place of a man whose face once held her son’s image as well as his own, was a bad fake tan and an over-bleached smile that made the chipped front tooth he’d got in a drunken altercation with a club bouncer one night even more obvious. The sandy-coloured sideburns—edges tinged orange—were new and the cowboy hat and big buckled belt resting on skinny hips certainly justified the curious stares and the cacophony of Who is he? Isn’t that …? Wasn’t he …? Thankfully, Brian’s cringe-worthy new look was nothing compared to a couple of transvestites who sauntered into the café after them, joining two pink-haired girls sprawled across the corner nook.

  As Brian pulled out his wife’s chair, Maggie heard a young girl at an adjacent table trying, unsuccessfully, to talk softly on her mobile phone. With one of those voices that didn’t know how to whisper, the one-sided conversation wasn’t hard to follow.

  ‘He just came in. Not sure. A singer, maybe. Country. I wish …’ The girl quickly looked across at them. ‘Pfft! No way. Too old. Besides, she’s so not Nicole Kidman. Probably no one after all. So, what were we saying …?’

  Probably no one after all.

  The girl’s words acted like two fingers snuffing out a candle. Brian’s glow had gone, replaced by the facial twitch, a sniffle and an annoying obsession with his nose and mouth that had developed since Maggie saw him last.

  ‘Maggie, Maggie, Maggie.’ Repeating her name three times was a tell-tale sign of the old Brian. Once endearing, it now signalled a familiar lecture. ‘You’re pulling that face again.’

  ‘What face? Don’t talk to me about faces.’ Maggie instantly regretted her words, even though his expression did seem fixed and unnatural, aside from the fake tan.

  ‘It’s because you don’t get this business. You don’t understand.’

  Those last three words caused the hair on the back of Maggie’s ne
ck to prickle, like little Jackpot’s fur when old Achilles dared get too close to his doggy treat. She bit her lip to avoid attracting any more attention to their table.

  ‘Maggs, you know underneath all this that I’m still the same guy and I still love my family. You do know that, don’t you? I’ve just gotta do this.’

  Maggie nodded, her eyes fixed on what looked like a packet of cigarettes rolled up in the sleeve of the black T-shirt stretched tight across a gym-enhanced chest and shoulders.

  ‘When did you start smoking?’

  A new tattoo on his upper bicep poked out from underneath the sleeve, the words ‘NOWHERE MAN’ cleverly etched over the fading letters ‘N-O-A-H’. Brian must have seen the early veil of tears blurring her eyes because he shifted in his seat to turn the arm away from her scrutiny.

  Not even their son’s name had survived this latest makeover.

  ‘Come on, Maggs.’ Brian tried a laugh, only it sounded strained. ‘I butted out permanently years ago. You know me better than that. The stylist says I need an image.’

  ‘Image?’ She wanted to laugh. ‘How does a packet of cigarettes enhance an image these days? The Marlboro Man is no longer considered too smart, you know, and neither is that stylist. I hope the show’s still paying for all this.’

  ‘This is my choice. They said building a brand would help me.’

  ‘Help you what?’

  ‘Give me a break, Maggs. This is who I am now. I can’t change. An artist platform makes me more marketable. I need to stand out from the crowd. Besides, no one wants to know Brian bloody Henkler.’

  ‘Your son does,’ she said, deliberately avoiding any reference to herself. ‘And you can change. You can come back to Calingarry Crossing with me and Noah. We can start over. Without the rental on the flat we might be able to keep the pub.’