by John Moralee
They reached Nadine’s sister’s house a little after two. It was an improvement on the Tin Box, but not much – it was part of a converted motel complex where several families on welfare lived in close proximity. He parked nearby and turned off the engine. For a minute there was just the slow ticking of the engine cooling down and the soft sighing of breathing.
“Here it is,” he said.
“I’ll come with you.”
“Thanks.”
They walked up to the door. Cal thought that perhaps nobody was in, but then he heard a television inside and the excited shouts of children playing. He knocked. When no one answered, he knocked again, louder. A chain rattled. The door opened ever so slightly.
“Yes?” said a little blue-eyed girl.
For an instant he thought it was his daughter, but the girl was too young, only five or six. Her face was smeared with chocolate. “Is you mom there?”
“Yes.”
“Can I see her?”
“No.”
“Is she really there?”
The girl nodded, but it was clear she was lying and did not feel comfortable about it.
“It’s all right,” Heather said. “We’re friends. Is there an adult looking after you?”
“Grandma is sleeping.”
“Can you wake her?”
“She don’t like waking. She got a hangover.”
“Please wake her,” Heather said.
“Uh – okay.” The girl closed the door. After a minute an old woman unlocked the door screaming, “Get me some Excedrin, Wayne!”
She was dressed in a blue bathrobe that smelled of cigarettes. Her face was half hidden by straggling black hair bleached blonde at the tips. Even from a distance Cal could smell the whiskey on her breath. She groaned and complained the light was too bright.
Cal could see five small children in the darkness of the apartment. He could see dark purple bruises on them fading to yellow. When one boy tried to crawl between the woman’s legs she slapped the child on the head as loud as a gunshot, making the child cry and run back into the dark. Her action seemed to be an automatic response, no more than a reflex. She reminded Cal of his own mother. Another child tugged her gown and held up a glass of water and an Excedrin capsule. She swallowed it, grunting. “I need two, stupid.” Wayne hurried to get a second. The woman’s eyes were like black pits fiery with suspicion. “Well, what do you two folks want?”
“We’re looking for Darlene Bell.”
“That’s me,” the woman said proudly.
Cal could not believe the woman was in her mid-thirties; she looked so worn out. “I’m looking for my daughter,” he said, the words clogging his throat. “I’m Cal, remember me? I used to go out with Nadine.”
“You ain’t from welfare?” Darlene Bell said.
“No.”
“So what you here for?”
“I’m Cal. Calhoun Andersen.”
“Cal? Why didn’t you say so? I remember you. But what you doing here? Don’t you know Nadine’s dead?”
“Yes, I’m here to see Christine,” he said. It seemed to register with Darlene this time. He waited while she took a second Excedrin from her son.
“You looking for Chrissy?”
“Yes, that’s right. Chrissy.”
“You’re way too late, hon.”
“What do you mean?”
“Little bitch ran away.”
“You don’t know where she is?”
“No. And you don’t want to go looking for her.” She laughed. It was a wicked, dry laugh.
“I don’t believe you,” he said. “I think you know where but won’t say. If you don’t tell me where she is I’ll get a social worker to take away your kids.”
“You wouldn’t.”
“Try me,” he said. “You might even get some jail-time for child abuse.”
“Child abuse? What you talking about?”
“You can’t slap kids, Darlene. That’s breaking the law.”
Darlene Bell regarded him with pure hatred. She started to say something, a lie, but he warned her with his eyes.
“She lives at 54 Sycamore Street. I tell you what, Cal Andersen, you go there you’ll ruin that girl’s life.”
“We’ll see about that,” he said.
*
54 Sycamore Street was a white-painted house on a quiet street corner in the suburbs. There were lace curtains in the windows that he was sure he saw move as he parked. The lawn looked recently cut, the hedge trimmed. A Cherokee pickup truck was parked in the half-open garage.
“This is where she lives?” Heather said. “It’s lovely.”
“Darlene must have lied to us. This is far too nice.”
“Check it out anyway.”
He stepped out onto the sidewalk and jogged up the drive. He rapped on the screen door. He waited. Nobody came to the door. “Look, I know there’s someone in there. I saw you at the window.” He saw a ghostly shape come towards the door and heard the main door unlock with the snap of a bolt. A woman opened the screen door. She had dark hair cut to shoulder length curled up in bangs and vivid green eyes, but he recognised her through her new look. She recognised him and her eyes widened. She held on to the door until her knuckles turned white.
“Nadine,” he said. “Nadine - that is you?”
She nodded sadly. “Cal, my God, how did you find me?”
“Purely by accident, it seems. I was looking for my daughter. The daughter you never told me about.”
“Cal, this is so hard to explain.” She looked up and down the street, then back to him. She was just as beautiful as he remembered. “You had better come in. Is that your wife in the car?”
“Yes.”
“Bring her, too. I think I owe the both of you an explanation.”
He agreed. He beckoned to Heather and introduced the two women, and Heather followed him dazed by the revelation. The hallway was bright and airy and smelled of pine needles. Nadine directed them into the living room. He could not help but notice the framed photographs on the television of Nadine and a pretty girl, Nadine and a brown-haired man, the three together in a wedding photograph, the girl in soft pink satin, Nadine in intense white, joyful, radiant, her cheeks flushed, her eyes shiny. The groom looked so proud of his new family. That man could have been me, he thought. But he also knew that it could not have been. Certainly not at that confused time of his life, when he had not known what he wanted.
“Darlene told me Christine lived here. Now I understand why she was reluctant. You’ve been hiding all of these years.”
Over coffees, Nadine explained.
“Cal, I had no choice. I was in a bad marriage to Whit that just got worse. Whit started hitting me just about every day in places where no bruises would show in public – my back and ribs were black and blue. I wanted to leave, but he threatened to hurt Christine if I ever told the police. I was scared, but I didn’t know what to do. So I stayed with him. I stayed with him hoping he would stop, but he liked hurting me, he liked to make me suffer. One night, he beat me up until I was unconscious. When I woke up it was dark and I heard noises in my bedroom. I opened the door and saw Whit with another woman, a prostitute he had picked up for the night. He saw me standing there and she just laughed. Laughed. At that moment something just clicked in my head and I went into a black rage. I grabbed his rifle and shot him, and when the woman tried to escape I hit her with the butt of it. I hit her once – but it killed her. So there I was with two murders on my hands. I couldn’t explain it to the police. I called Darlene. It was my sister’s idea to dress the woman up as me and ruin her face. Then we dumped Whit’s body in the woods. She knew where to put the body where he would be found, but not for weeks. Meanwhile, she identified the dead woman as me, and the police assumed Whit was responsible. His body just verified it. After the investigation was over I came back as a different women: Abby Smith. I’ve been Abby Smith for twelve years. Christine knows me by no other name. She thinks her name is Christine S
mith. I have fake birth certificates for the both of us thanks to one of Darlene’s friends. For the last seven years I’ve been married to a good man, a man who doesn’t abuse Christine or me. For his and Christine’s sake, please don’t tell the police. Keep my secret.” She looked at both of them expectantly, a nerve in her neck twitching, her feet unconsciously tapping. “Cal, Heather, that girl who killed two people died in 1986, just like it says on the grave. Don’t bring her back to life.” She glanced at the clock on the wall. “Please go before Christine comes back from school. She has a good father, don’t spoil her life.”
“Tell me,” he said, “is Christine happy?”
“Very happy,” Nadine said.
Heather coughed.
Cal said to Heather, “I think Nadine should stay dead. What do you say?”
“I say … we should return to the hotel before it gets dark. We have to pack. We should let ‘Abby’ live her life.”
“That’s what I think, too.”
They stood up. Nadine kissed Cal for what he knew would be the last time, her lips cool on his cheek like a single drop of rain on a hot summer day. He hugged her, then released her.
“Bye, Nadine. Bye, Abby.”
“Thank you, Cal.”
She showed them to the door. It was a long walk to the car, but Cal felt as if he were lighter, younger, and freer. As he was pulling the BMW away from the kerb, he looked back a single time. He saw Abby waving not at him but at a girl coming down the block, a girl who looked so like her mother that for a crazy moment he thought he had slid into the past, an alternative past, a past that was fair and good and happy, a past with loving parents and with promising futures; then he turned away and looked at Heather and smiled and reached across to touch her hand. She smiled back at him.
The BMW turned at the corner, leaving the past behind.
Distant Relatives
“Where are we, Frank?”
We were about another three centimetres across the map since Lisa last asked the question. It was a big map stretched out on the passenger seat, folded many times, so three centimetres wasn’t very far, though we’d been travelling for hours and nothing seemed to change, outside or inside the car. Outside the Land Rover the sky was azure and the landscape deep red, rocky and pitted like nowhere else on the planet. It was beautiful yet eerie – the strange shapes of the eroded mountains had once been as high as the Himalayas, but now looked like their mutated offspring. Behind me, her shock of wild black hair pressed against the window, Lisa sighed for what had to be the hundredth time. She was just a little girl of twelve, but the expression of contempt was all her mother’s. By calling me “Frank” and not “Dad”, she knew how to hurt me. I was heartily sick of the attitude, not that I could blame her. She did not want to be here – with me especially – but there was nowhere else for her to be, not now, not after.
“Hello?” she said. “Is there anyone in there? Where the hell are you driving us now, Frank?”
Frank. I remembered her question – for a moment I’d been caught up with memories. “Oh, we’re almost at Alice Springs.”
“Almost?”
“An hour, maybe two, that’s all. Can’t you pretend to enjoy the scenery? We’re driving through the MacDonnell Ranges. Just look at that rock formation over there – see how the wind has hollowed a tunnel through the rock. It looks a little like an eye, doesn’t it?”
She mumbled something – it sounded like several swearwords – then rummaged in her pink Reebok bag until she located her CD Walkman and a fresh pack of batteries. The camera that I’d bought her remained untouched, as though she were afraid it would contaminate her. She put the Walkman on and stared out at the crimson hills, her eyes hidden by Raybans. Conversation, apparently, was off the agenda. It had been like this since we left Sydney, six days earlier. She did not speak to me unless strictly necessary.
We were heading for Darwin, where I lived and worked as a teacher, but on the way I’d imagined we’d get to know each other as father and daughter. That was why I’d hired a car and arranged the holiday/journey. It was a huge mistake. I should have just flown her to Darwin; instead, I was making her endure a dull ride across most of Australia with a man she hated. Six days of travelling could never make up for twelve years of absence; I knew that; I wasn’t oblivious. But I desperately wanted to give her a good time, to make her feel wanted. At the time I’d thought a trip to some nice places, like the Uluru – Ayers Rock – would take her out of her melancholy. But she had not even wanted to get out of the car to look. She was grieving, angry at everything, angry with herself, and I didn’t know what to do. Her mother had died, and now I was taking her to a different place where she would have to meet new friends and start at a new school. Our only connection was genetic, which was something she rebelled against.
Rachel, Lisa’s mother, had told Lisa that I had abandoned Rachel when she became pregnant. She had also told Lisa that I’d never wanted anything to do with her after she’d been born. Neither was true, but that was what she believed. The truth was not black and white. However, to say otherwise to Lisa was to directly insult the memory of her mother. Whenever I tried to talk about the past, Lisa would scream at me to shut up.
I could be the bad guy, for the moment.
In a few hours it would be dark again. Already, the land was subtly changing from red to purple. Alice Springs would be our last stop, I decided. We could get a flight to Darwin tomorrow and face our problems there.
*
Lisa walked several paces behind me as we entered the hotel lobby and I booked the room. The room cost A$175, but included separate bedrooms. Lisa would not consider sleeping in the same room as me. She was at the age when she was self-conscious about her growing body. I gave her the key and she went up the stairs ahead of me. I called the airport and arranged the tickets for the flight. It was getting dark outside. I stopped at the hotel bar and had a refreshing Tooheys. I had a second one, just to cool down. I didn’t drink much normally, but the combination of thirst-inducing trip, heat and tension drove me to it. I followed the Tooheys with a shot of rum. I then went up to the hotel suite, where I found Lisa sitting on her bed watching a soap on ABC.
“This television is chained to the wall,” she muttered. “You’d think they’d trust us, considering how much a room costs.”
That, believe it or not, was the most conversation I’d had out of her. Perhaps the news that we wouldn’t be driving the rest of the way had cheered her up. Perhaps. “What is that you’re watching - Home and Away?”
“Duh. It’s Heartbreak High. I hate Home and Away. The acting sucks.”
“Right. You like –um - it?” I indicated the programme.
“It’s okay, I suppose. The acting sucks, too, but at least it has better story lines ...” She fell silent then, as if she’d said too much. “I’ve been here before, you know.”
“This hotel or Alice Springs?”
“Alice Springs. Mum brought me here when I was eight. I remember … never mind.”
“What?”
“Forget it. I know what you’re doing, Frank.” There it was again. Frank. It was weird and frightening how she could use my name like an insult. Her eyes became shiny and wet. She pouted. She looked more and more like a little girl. “You’re just pretending to be interested in what I have to say so I’ll like you.”
“Lisa –”
“You’d rather I’d died too, isn’t that right? It’s such a pity I survived the crash car when … when she … when she died. Then … then you’d inherit Mum’s business and everything … and everything would be just how you want it. I know I’m just an inconvenience. You don’t want me. You never wanted me. What happens when we get to your home? What happens next? Do you ship me off to some private school where you won’t have to see me between terms?”
“No,” I said. “I’d never do anything like that.”
“Yeah, right. I wish I were dead, then I wouldn’t feel anything.” She turned away, her
shoulders jerking. “Why don’t you leave me alone?”
“Lisa, I’m your father. I haven’t been a good one, I know, but give me a chance. I stayed away because your mother didn’t want me to … Rachel didn’t want me to stay. God! We’re were just kids ourselves. We had plans … dreams. I wasn’t ready to be a father, but I am now. I’ve matured. I know you’re hurting. Your mother just died in an awful accident. It’s the worst thing that could happen. You have to grieve. Let it out, Lisa. Let out the pain because if you bottle it up, it’ll just get worse.”
“Shut up! Shut up! SHUT UP!” She stormed into the bathroom and slammed the door.
I listened at the door, hearing her sob, hearing her moan.
*
She came out fifteen minutes later. Her eyes were red, but she looked better for the crying. She glared at me defiantly. “I’d like something to eat – if that’s permitted?”
“Of course,” I said. “Would you like something here or somewhere else?”
“There’s a restaurant my mum took me to,” she said, quietly. “I can’t remember the name, but I’ll know it when I see it. There are tanks of fish in the windows and the tables are in front of a pool.”
“Okay,” I said. “I’ll ask the reception if they know it. Why don’t you change out of your jeans into something smarter?”
I half expected her to explode with rage, but she nodded and disappeared into her room. When she returned, she was dressed in white chinos and a cotton blouse and long-sleeved jacket. In the evening the air could be cool, so her choice of clothes was sensible. I had obtained the name of the restaurant and it was easy to find using the directions provided. The restaurant overlooked Alice Springs from a ridge. We sat near the rail and looked down at the town and hills. Lisa ordered a seafood platter and I had a seared beef fillet wrapped in paperbark, garnished with rocket and snow peas. I talked about Darwin, promoting the things she’d like doing. I was a trained scuba diver; I could show her how to dive. She seemed interested. After a while the sun vanished and the stars appeared overhead. They fascinated her.
