Simmering Season

by Jenn J. McLeod

‘I know the perfect place,’ Fiona said. ‘My shout.’

  ‘Great.’ Dan nudged the boy. ‘Noah and I just got hungry. Right, mate?’

  He shrugged. ‘Hungry enough if she’s paying, I s’pose.’

  As he climbed into Fiona’s Saab, the boy cast a final glance back up at his father’s window.

  How beautifully leaves grow old.

  How full of light and colour are their last days.

  John Burroughs

  39

  Maggie

  Something had woken Maggie. It was the dream, the one that had plagued her since her father went into the home. The dream showed three figures, wiry silhouettes standing within a bright light, the aura around them an almost ghost-like glow. It wasn’t frightening. The scene was quite serene and strangely comforting, yet Maggie had woken tonight with a sense of urgency.

  Then came the phone call.

  It was just before midnight.

  It was Roslyn.

  Maggie knew by her professional tone the news wasn’t good. ‘You should come in straight away.’

  Instinctively Maggie went to her son’s room. Of course, he wasn’t there. Noah was in Sydney with Fiona. They’d outnumbered her three-to-one on the telephone earlier. Even Dan had vouched for Fiona, suggesting a day or two at the Blair apartment might actually be a good distraction while Noah got his head around things. That left Maggie to make the late-night trip from Calingarry Crossing to her father’s bedside alone.

  Maggie was talking before she even reached the nurse’s station, panic pulsating through every vein, pushing her into a jog up the linoleum corridor with its subdued night lighting. ‘I got here as fast as I could. How is he?’ She didn’t stop or slow her gait, forcing Roslyn to follow, keeping pace, walking and talking all at once.

  ‘He’s not good, I’m afraid, Maggie. It was a bad turn.’

  ‘Another stroke?’

  Roslyn nodded. ‘We have Joe resting comfortably, but the doctor said I should call you just in case.’

  Just in case what? Maggie wanted to ask as Roslyn pushed the door open onto the almost empty special care ward.

  ‘I’ll leave you alone, but if you need me, ring the buzzer,’ the nurse said, her gentle tone helping prepare Maggie for the sight of her father behind the curtain.

  Maggie promised herself she wouldn’t cry. She swallowed back the sob now lodged in her throat at the sight of what was left of her father, what was left of the man, of his body withered by sickness and despair, yet still desperate to hold on a little longer.

  For what? Maggie wondered. For her? For Noah?

  Maggie wished her son was with her. Being apart was unbearable.

  ‘My Maggie.’ The Rev’s voice was barely audible, even in the cruel silence of the stark ward. Maggie longed for the hustle and bustle of a busy hospital room where there was noise. Noise was good. Noise meant hope. Silence only made the situation more profound, sadder.

  ‘Hi Dad. How you doin’?’ She smoothed the Rev’s customary comb-over, patting the flimsy few remaining strands on the top of his head.

  ‘So beautiful, so strong, so like my Mary.’

  ‘Shhh, Dad, just hold my hand.’

  Maggie leaned over and kissed her father on the forehead, stopping long enough to breathe in the thousand memories. The man who’d taught her to smuddle still smelled like a big hug.

  There was no truth in his words. Maggie wasn’t strong. In marrying Brian she’d followed the easy path—the path of least resistance—and all she’d managed to do was end up lost. Only now was she taking control of her future, taking control of her life, but she couldn’t stop her dad leaving her. She was here at least, when it mattered the most, holding her father’s hand, helping him to let go.

  How could he have deteriorated so quickly? Just the other day he was talking. Not the nonsense talk Maggie had become accustomed to, but almost a conversation. If anyone had asked at that time, she might have said he was improving. Maggie remembered the doctors had warned her of this cruel thing, that patients suffering from brain disease often came good just before the end, giving loved ones a final glimpse of the person they used to be.

  The Rev’s hands, twisted and tortured with arthritis, rested by his side, something transparent taped to thin skin. When did her father get so old? Without letting go, Maggie dragged a chair over to the side of the bed, lowering herself softly and pulling it closer still to slip her other hand under his fingers, wanting to remember his hands as powerful, protective, loving. She remembered his hands holding her as they danced around the living room. Maggie would stand tippy-toed on her father’s shoes while he waltzed in circles and Mary sang ‘Moon River’. She’d give anything to turn back the clock, to be six again, to still be dancing.

  Right now her father’s grip may have been weak, but it had the power to rip Maggie’s heart from her chest. She applied the tiniest amount of pressure so his fingers curled around her hand.

  ‘You’re my strength,’ he said.

  She leaned across and kissed his hand before resting her tear-streaked cheek on top. According to the big-faced wall clock ticking away in the hall outside the room, it was already three-thirty in the morning. Maggie kept talking, anything to escape the clock’s ticking away of time.

  ‘Please rest,’ she said.

  ‘Soon enough, Magpie.’

  Maggie heard his struggle with each word.

  ‘I was wrong,’ he said.

  Torn between her longing for him to rest so he would hold on longer and her need to let him talk, Maggie said, ‘Shhh, please Dad. Rest.’

  ‘I’m tired of secrets.’

  ‘No one’s keeping any secrets, Dad.’

  ‘So many secrets. I’m tired. No strength to keep the lies. No strength to tell the truth.’

  ‘The truth? The truth about what, Dad?’ Maggie’s body stiffened, a mix of dread and confusion. Where was all this coming from? ‘Do you mean the letters? I have them, Dad. Do you want me to give Dan his letter?’ The insistent sob that had been so determined to dislodge itself from deep inside her throat finally escaped.

  ‘We have to go, Magpie.’

  ‘Go where, Dad? Where do you want to go?’ Maggie traced the deep lines on his forehead and ran the back of her hand down his cheek. He was back to making no sense at all.

  The nurse appeared as if by magic, with just the sticky sound of soft, white shoes padding across the over-bleached floor. Maggie glanced at the nurse for a sign, any sign: a nod of reassurance, a glimmer of understanding, a hint of hope.

  Nothing.

  ‘Magpie?’

  ‘I’m here, Dad.’ Maggie tightened the hold on his hand as the nurse slipped away as silently as she’d appeared.

  ‘A father’s love never dies.’

  ‘I know that, Dad. I love you, too.’

  He wasn’t making sense now and Maggie couldn’t do anything. She liked to think she could control everything, protect everyone, but she couldn’t protect him from this.

  ‘Maggie. Brian’s daughter.’

  ‘No, Daddy, I’m Maggie. I’m Brian’s wife.’

  Maggie had to stop. What did it matter? Why waste precious moments? She didn’t want a broken conversation as her last memory and she could feel him slipping away.

  Something in the room changed. The silence dulled, the lights dimmed and nausea nudged its way up into Maggie’s throat. She gulped it back down as the room whooshed around and around, then she lowered her head to the bed again to wait for the wave of sickness to pass.

  The next thing she felt was a chill, like a cool breath of air feathering the back of her neck. She saw the image from her dream, the one with the silhouettes standing under a light. She heard her name, then the light seemed to swallow the shapes—gone.

  ‘Dad.’ Maggie sat bolt upright in the chair, her eyes slamming wide open, her heart smashing against her ribs. There was a chill, as if a door had opened and sucked the warmth and life from the room, filling it instead with stillness and
silence.

  The ba-boomp, ba-boomp, ba-boomp inside her chest slowly, slowly returned to normal and, just like in her dream, Maggie knew no dread, only peace. The Rev’s hand was still on hers, still giving her courage as she witnessed her father’s final tear roll down his face and disappear into the feathery strands of grey, his struggle finally over.

  ‘Now you can go to Mum and Michael,’ she whispered, tears flowing free, her promise to not cry forgotten.

  Now God had all three.

  40

  Fiona

  With a wave of the remote, Fiona killed the flickering of the giant plasma TV.

  ‘If you’re just going to sit and stare at that thing all day feeling sorry for yourself I’ll take you back to Calingarry Crossing now. Let’s go, cowboy, move your backside. We’ve got the whole day.’ She walked over to Noah sitting on the floor and dug the pointy toe of her black Prada pumps into his butt. ‘Come on.’

  ‘Quit it,’ he said, making a swipe for her ankle. ‘Bugger off.’

  ‘Or what? Now get up. You want to make the most of the time or not?’

  ‘Doing what? Did you change your mind about getting me into a club?’ Noah sulked.

  ‘Do I look completely bonkers? As if I’d take you clubbing and risk the wrath of Maggie again. Forget it. Besides, it’s Sydney, it’s summer, and I’ve got a brand new Megan Gale cossie to show off. Only cost 240 dollars.’ She slipped off the strap of her shocking pink mini dress to reveal a matching halter-style bikini top.

  ‘You still trying to impress me?’ Noah laughed.

  ‘Noah, I never tried to impress you. As if.’ She tossed a beach towel at him before picking up her car keys and mobile phone from the glass dish on the table by the elevator. ‘Coming or not? You can meet the gang. Molly’s gagging to meet you.’ Fiona activated the elevator and waited. ‘Let’s move it. I’ll buy you a pair of togs at the surf shop on the way. You a boardies guy, or do you want budgie smugglers?’

  ‘Board shorts will be fine, thanks.’

  ‘Good. Not that I have anything against a cute arse. But it’s good to leave some things to a woman’s imagination, if you know what I mean. There are some blokes who should never wear them, like Phillip.’ She shuddered. ‘The idea of a grown man wearing skin-tight cossies to go swimming is plain creepy. I told him he was too old, so now he has board shorts too.’

  ‘Geez, do you ever stop talking?’

  ‘I’ll stop talking when you start walking. Move it. I’m trying to make the most of your time before you go back home to the country. Besides clubbing, there must be things you want to do here in Sydney.’

  ‘For sure,’ Noah said as he jumped into the elevator ahead of Fiona. ‘Right now I’m looking forward to whipping your butt in the water.’

  ‘Dream on, cowboy. No way am I getting these 240 dollars wet,’ Fiona said as the doors glided shut.

  ‘How was the beach today?’ Phillip looked up from the stove, steam having fogged his glasses, making him look less professional than usual and slightly nerdier.

  ‘Closed,’ Fiona said with her head in the refrigerator. ‘Bluebottles. Gross!’

  ‘That’s a shame. Do you two want a …’ He looked at the Coke cans in Fiona’s hands. ‘Good. Sit at the table. Dinner will be ready soon.’

  ‘Your dad cooks?’ Noah whispered.

  ‘Thank God. Most times Mum hardly even ate, much less cooked.’

  ‘So you’re sorta getting on with your dad now?’

  Fiona shrugged. ‘I s’pose. Had our first big deep and meaningful last night. He told me stuff I’d kind of already figured about my granddad, like the way he used to treat Gran in Calingarry. I always knew Jack Bailey was a bit of a control freak, but I thought it was because he cared about me. Thing is, I was so anti my mother I think he used that, and me, to get to her.’

  ‘Are you pissed at not finding your real father at the reunion?’

  Fiona shrugged. ‘Part of me had hoped it would be as easy as landing in town and simply bumping into him in the main street. I’d recognise his face, he’d recognise me and voilà! Happy families. But to be honest, I don’t think I wanted to find him. It was more curiosity. Luke was the one convinced I had a rich father out there somewhere.’

  ‘And what would you do with another one of those? Phillip not rich enough?’

  ‘Luke would’ve enjoyed telling Phillip to piss off without jeopardising a potential inheritance in the process. Instead,’ Fiona giggled, ‘I told Luke to piss off. Should’ve seen the look on his face.’

  ‘Because of me?’

  ‘Because he’s a jerk and mean and totally under my grandfather’s thumb. At least Calingarry Crossing let me see what a loser he really is.’

  ‘So you won’t look for your real father?’

  She glanced towards the kitchen. ‘I might—one day. Maybe, after a little while. Dad said he was never happy about not telling me the truth. He said he’d wanted to, only Mum wouldn’t. She was afraid what people would think. Do you lie to those you love just so you fit in?’

  ‘You lie so you don’t disappoint the people who love you. At least that’s what I did.’

  ‘Oh, Noah, about your mum …’ Fiona fumbled. ‘I did the wrong thing telling Maggie.’

  ‘Yeah, well, it’s out there now.’

  ‘I still don’t get why you didn’t tell her. Maggie’s pretty cool. I see that now. You’re lucky.’

  ‘There was one night a while back that I was thinking about it. I heard her come upstairs after closing up. I figured that was as good a time as any. But then I heard her on the phone. She was talking to Dad—shouting more like it, only in a whisper.’

  ‘You could hear her?’

  Noah nodded. ‘I heard her telling him she was fed up. That she didn’t like the person he was becoming and telling him to change back, or else.’

  ‘You thought she wouldn’t love you if you changed.’

  ‘I dunno. It was just hard to tell anyone. Maybe you did me a favour.’

  ‘But she’s cool, isn’t she?’

  ‘It’s weird. I know she knows but she hasn’t said. It’s like nothing’s different.’

  ‘Everything’s good then.’

  ‘Except my dad’s a prick.’

  ‘Hey, we’ll have none of that language, thank you very much,’ Phillip said on approaching the table.

  ‘Sorry, Mr Blair.’

  ‘Feel free to call me Phillip. The name seems to be trending around here at the moment,’ he said, sliding a smile in Fiona’s direction. ‘Hope you kids are hungry. No standing on ceremony.’ He pushed the pasta bowl and a tossed rocket and parmesan salad—Fiona’s favourite—to the centre of the table. ‘Dig in.’

  They helped themselves. Fiona had mostly salad while Noah ate like he hadn’t seen food for weeks. Fiona had suggested seeing a movie at the Double Bay cinema. They had a Doris Day/Rock Hudson film festival marathon showing all week—the movies playing on a loop.

  After dinner, Phillip asked, ‘What’s that tune you were playing earlier?’

  ‘It’s the song we were working on together. You want to hear it?’ Fiona asked.

  ‘Sure.’

  After a couple of false starts, she and Noah managed two verses before falling apart in fits of laughter.

  ‘Bravo! Bravo!’ Phillip applauded. ‘Unfortunately, there’s not a musical bone in my body, but even to me those harmonies sounded pretty darn good.’

  Fiona smiled, remembering Phillip’s tone-deaf ‘Twinkle Twinkle Little Star’ from her childhood. Amber’s rendition had not been much better. Fiona had never thought to question where her musical ability came from, and while Phillip and Amber were patrons of the Sydney Symphony Orchestra, neither had a passion for music. Not like her—the Dalewood School for Girls’ Jesus Christ Superstar’s Mary Magdalene two years running.

  ‘Nice playing, cowboy,’ she said to Noah.

  ‘You too, poodle girl.’ Noah shoved her shoulder.

  She shoved him back, k
nocking his scratched guitar and thinking about the one currently gathering dust in her old room up the hall. Maybe she’d start to play again. Which reminded her …

  ‘I won’t be a minute.’

  ‘Where you going?’

  ‘That mangled box with your mum’s stuff won’t travel too well in the boot. I have a plastic crate to transfer everything into for the trip back.’

  Fiona glanced at the dresser and the bundle of sympathy cards from her mother’s funeral. What an idiot she’d made of herself that day. She could’ve blamed her behaviour on grief, only Fiona had been too busy being mad to be sad. Amber might have been Fiona’s mother, but blood didn’t automatically mean there was a bond.

  Did that make Fiona a bad person?

  She tasted tears at the corners of her mouth and put her hand to her face, startled by the wetness there.

  ‘I’m not a bad person. I’m not a bad person,’ she chanted, muffling her sobs in the messy walk-in closet, turning it upside down in search of the plastic crate she knew was in there somewhere. Then, stopping in the en suite, she splashed her face with water without glancing in the mirror. She couldn’t look at herself without crying again.

  Fiona walked back to the entry foyer where the buckled and broken box sat discarded. Better there than the boot of her car. Not even a security system and steel mesh gates kept crooks out of the basement car park.

  Sinking to the floor, cross-legged—the terrazzo tiles cool on her legs—Fiona started to rewrap and transfer the knick-knacks piece-by-piece, inspecting the trophies as she went—mostly Noah’s Best and Fairest awards. She could hear Noah’s guitar and the hum of voices as he and Phillip talked, while she flattened out and refolded the various letters Dan had dropped into the box. Of course she looked at each one—mostly financial marketing letters including a premium credit card offer, an old phone bill, an overdue on their rent. The next thing she unfolded was an envelope with the name and address handwritten. The addressee: Brian Henkler. The ivory-coloured business-sized envelope with matching parchment paper—the type too fragile for a printer—immediately pricked a memory and before Fiona had stopped to think, she’d unfolded the flimsy parchment, staring at the flamboyant handwriting with a squiggly knotty curly thing inside every capital B.