When the doctor had gone, the sonographer gave Meg a box of tissues to wipe herself and then escorted her back to the cubicle. Meg got dressed slowly, her eyes blinded by the changing-room lights after so long in the darkness. Everywhere she looked she could see a black mark in the shape of a ball—as if, instead of an image of her womb, she had looked directly at the sun.
In the hospital café, Jillian was so busy typing on her phone she didn’t see Meg arrive. Meg thought back to her first day of school, scanning the faces of her new class for someone strong to attach herself to—someone who wasn’t chewing their fingernails or sucking their thumb. She had quickly settled on Jillian—a tall girl sitting straight-backed at a desk in the front row, her dark hair pulled into tight pigtails. When Jillian had noticed Meg staring, she’d waved and pointed to the empty desk beside her. Perhaps even then she’d spotted something that needed fixing in that timid little girl.
Now, when Meg tapped her on the shoulder, Jillian looked up with worried eyes. ‘So?’
‘They didn’t say anything.’
Jillian seemed dismayed, and Meg felt the need to reassure her.
‘Not that I’d know, but it looked okay to me.’
Jillian smiled and Meg saw a flash of the grin that had greeted her from the front of the classroom all those years ago. The teeth were bigger and yellower and some weren’t even real, but the smile was the same, which made Meg happy and sad and nostalgic all at once. She supposed this was how it was when you were dying—the tiniest and most trivial things became weighty with history.
Jillian paid for her coffee and disappeared to the toilet. Meg waited for her at the entrance to the café. The café opened onto an internal foyer, which was surrounded by specialist consulting rooms—glass cages with water coolers and maroon-coloured chairs. As she scanned the rooms, something made her eyes linger on the hunched figure of an older gentleman. His elbows were on his knees and his head was bowed. She couldn’t see his face. His hat had been placed on the seat beside him and a rolled-up newspaper hung, limp, from his hand.
She recognised him, finally, by the heart-shaped bald patch on the crown of his head. Even then it was hard to believe it was the same man. He looked so defeated, so different from the Patrick she had come to know. Meg read the plaque on the glass door across from him: Associate Professor Gordon Lam, Urologist.
Just before Jillian returned, Meg saw Patrick stand up and approach the receptionist. He asked her a question and then laughed in his loud, exaggerated way. Almost as an afterthought he reached out and touched the back of the receptionist’s hand. The woman smiled, but as Patrick walked away, Meg saw her shake her head.
Meg knew Patrick was a sexist and possibly a racist and yet here she was, choked with pity for his loneliness. It was as if some emotional dial inside her had been turned to high. Perhaps, Meg pondered, it was this—rather than the quietly growing mass in her pelvis—that would kill her in the end. She took Jillian’s arm for fear that her own legs wouldn’t hold her. To her relief, Jillian didn’t flinch or pull away.
45
‘I could sue her.’
They’d just reached Geelong. It was quiet in the car and everyone was drowsy from the hum of the engine.
‘The agency maybe. Not the old lady,’ said Winnie.
Andy, who’d been drifting off to sleep, sat up.
His father made a grunting noise. ‘This would never have happened if she hadn’t had a parrot. Why do people in Australia like living with animals? They cause disease. Everybody knows that.’
On one level Andy was pleased. He assumed his father’s anger originated, at least in some part, from a place of love. But the thought of Mrs Hughes receiving a tightly worded lawyer’s letter after all that awkwardness with the face masks made him sick to his stomach. Still, he said nothing. His father had dropped everything and flown seven thousand kilometres to see him. The appropriate response from a dutiful son was agreement—at worst, a quiet acquiescence. Andy hoped these threats would disappear once the shock of the diagnosis had faded. His father had always been critical of lawyers, and equally critical of people who sued for what he called the bad luck of life. But Andy hadn’t spent a lot of time with his father in recent years. It was possible he had changed.
It was a relief to arrive at Winnie’s rambling house in Geelong. As the car pulled into the driveway they were greeted by a muscular German shepherd. Andy saw his dad tense up. Winnie opened her door to have her cheek licked by a long pink tongue.
In the front yard, Christmas lights had been strung between two trees. A pair of children with bare feet and bed hair burst through the peeling front door of the house. Andy stole a glance at his father, who was looking at Winnie, perplexed. For the first time Andy noticed how out of place his father appeared in Australia—he stood out, bright and conspicuous, like an animal in an unfamiliar habitat.
Once inside, Winnie led them to their room. Andy eyed the double bed, draped in a peacock-print doona. Above the headboard, stuck to the wall, was a poster of a rainbow with the words Jesus Loves You in Chinese characters.
As far as Andy could remember, he’d never shared a room with his father. He felt nervous about sleeping so close to this man who was such a mystery to him. From the stiff way his father rolled his suitcase in and stowed it in the corner, Andy presumed he felt the same.
For a few awkward moments they stood at opposite sides of the room, each in the narrow trench between the bed and the wall. Andy was relieved when his dad suggested they join the others, and he breathed easier when they reached the light-filled space at the back of the house. The home was bigger than any apartment Andy had visited in Hong Kong, but somehow it seemed more cluttered, with no clear markers of where one area began and another ended. Beanbags sat, slouched, beside cardboard boxes full of fruit. A pair of dirty socks lay next to a naked Barbie doll. In front of the TV there was a paint palette holding Lego and a half-eaten chocolate doughnut. But it was cheerful, with scattered jars of fresh flowers, and the children’s drawings taped to the walls. At the very rear of the house, bi-fold doors opened onto a small overgrown lawn. Beyond the lawn, near the fence, a wooden cubbyhouse hovered above four stilts and a rope ladder. The children—twins, Marcus and Maddie—hung from it, screeching like monkeys.
Winnie busied herself in the kitchen, preparing dinner. Winnie’s husband, Craig, emerged from behind the door of the enormous fridge, holding three frosted bottles of beer.
‘Winnie said you don’t drink, but can I tempt you with a VB?’
Andy’s father grabbed one of the bottles. Craig beamed and said, ‘Good man.’ It wasn’t true that his father didn’t drink—as a young boy, Andy had found an impressive collection of whisky bottles beneath his parents’ bed. Andy followed his father’s lead and accepted a beer. He took a sip. The bitterness made him wince and the bubbles burned his nostrils. He looked at his dad, leaning against the bi-fold doors, taking casual swigs from his bottle. There was so much he still didn’t know about this man.
Andy sat down on the couch, a deep three-seater plastered with dog hair. When the twins ran screaming into the room, Craig put down his beer and tossed them one at a time into the air. Watching them, Andy felt as if he’d been transported onto the set of an American sitcom. He stole another look at his father, but if his dad felt any guilt, or deficiency, watching this scene of rough family affection, he didn’t show it. If anything he seemed distracted, his eyes staring past Craig and the twins, through the lush garden to the coast and beyond.
Just then Winnie called them for dinner—a colourful buffet of homemade sushi, chicken satay, potato wedges, fried rice, and spaghetti and meatballs. Andy’s stomach rumbled. He hadn’t eaten since he’d left the hospital. He filled his plate as Winnie looked on approvingly. When he sat down she grabbed his cheek between her sharp fingers.
‘You’re so skinny,’ she said. ‘Like a skeleton.’
Andy’s father steered clear of the spaghetti and potato wedges, which ha
d been mauled by the sticky hands of the twins, and piled his plate high with sushi and rice. As they ate, the conversation swung, pendulum-like, between Cantonese and English. Winnie handled it all expertly, weaving Craig into the discussion just before he felt frustrated, and finding enough common ground between them to maintain an entertaining—if superficial—discussion. When she left the table to retrieve the dessert from the overflowing fridge, they sat in drunken silence. Andy listened to the beat of his pulse in his ears—a loud, panicky rhythm, eased only by the reappearance of Winnie, bearing mango puddings the colour of the sun.
Andy felt like a newly freed prisoner who, after six months of eating only gruel, was dining at a five-star restaurant. Even his father, a picky eater, had eaten every grain of rice on his plate. Andy sat back in his chair, happily full and slightly tipsy.
‘Winnie, can you ask Craig what he thinks about me suing the homeshare agency?’ Andy’s father said coolly, as if asking for another beer.
Winnie translated the question for Craig as Andy slumped lower in his seat. Craig had done a combined arts law degree for one year at university before dropping the law component. He now worked as a freelance web designer, but he was the closest thing they had to a lawyer in the family.
‘I’d have to look at the specifics, but I think you have a good case.’
Andy felt Craig’s blue eyes pause on his face before they flicked back to his father. He wondered how much Winnie had told him.
‘You’d probably have to prove what long-term consequences Andy has suffered as a result of the illness. And whether everything was done to minimise the risk to tenants. The greater the damage, the greater the payout.’
Winnie translated, and Andy’s father promptly delivered a list: ‘My son’s long-term health, his academic grades, his chances of getting into medicine next year.’
With each item on the list Andy felt a sharp blow to his chest. Perhaps his aunt saw this, because she stood up and started clearing their plates. ‘Lawyers are expensive,’ she said. ‘You’ll have to work out if it’s worth it.’
Craig leant back in his chair. ‘Winnie’s always complaining about how I dropped my law degree.’
‘If he hadn’t,’ Winnie said, looking at him with laughing eyes, ‘we wouldn’t have to live in Geelong. We’d be living in North Shore Sydney!’
Andy smiled, but he wasn’t listening. All his senses were attuned to his father—studying his unreadable face for signs of a shift, a surrender, a softening of his heart.
46
They were almost back at Meg’s house when Jillian pulled over next to the bottle shop. Ever since the late 1970s, there’d been a liquor store at the end of Rose Street. It was where Meg’s mother had bought her sherry, and her father had bought his beer.
‘For old times’ sake,’ Jillian said.
Meg waited in the car. The store looked unfamiliar. It was no longer owned by Giovanni with the mermaid tattoo—he’d sold it to a wine retailer decades ago and bought a house in Sicily with the money. Now it had a big neon sign out the front and was staffed by a uni student in a black T-shirt. But it still sold beer and wine—for now, that was all that mattered.
When they were teenagers, it had become something of a ritual for Meg and Jillian to raid the liquor cabinet when Meg’s parents went out. To avoid suspicion, they never took too much of anything—a few drops of sherry here, a splash of port there. Sometimes, if they were feeling really courageous, they might risk a sip from Meg’s father’s twenty-year-old scotch whisky. Afterwards, they would lounge on a picnic blanket in the backyard, nursing their revolting drinks and staring up at the tent of stars. Sometimes Helen would join them and sometimes she wouldn’t, depending on her mood. They talked about everything and nothing—boys, music, books, how annoying their parents were, what they’d dreamt about the night before.
Jillian’s eyes were electric when she emerged from the bottle shop brandishing a brown paper bag. She sped the rest of the way home. Meg found the old picnic blanket in the linen cupboard. As she laid the blanket down on the grass, her knees made a cracking sound. Meg wondered if this attempt to recapture a moment of youthful pleasure was a little pathetic. But it felt good to lie down. These days it always felt good to lie down. She looked up through the lattice of leaves.
Jillian had bought a thirty-dollar shiraz. It was a far cry from the noxious cocktails of the past, but in a nod to their adolescence, they drank it straight from the bottle.
‘I saw Patrick at the hospital,’ Meg said when Jillian lay down beside her.
‘Oh yeah? What was he doing there?’
‘Seeing a professor of urology.’
‘That’s prostate, isn’t it?’
‘I think so.’ Meg shielded her eyes from a shaft of sunlight.
‘Cancer, probably.’
‘He never mentioned anything,’ Meg said, and then remembered her bleeding.
‘He can’t be that unwell,’ Jillian said, sitting up and taking a swig from the bottle. ‘Greg said he’s taken up Latin dancing.’
Meg imagined Patrick in a sleek black tango suit and heels.
‘In a way, I admire him,’ Jillian said. ‘Putting himself out there, trying new things. I wish Henry was more like that.’
In all the years Jillian had been married, Meg had never really got to know her husband. She could count on one hand the number of times she’d visited their big house in the eastern suburbs. Jillian liked to keep things compartmentalised, and this extended to her relationships. She’d met Henry at university. Meg was from a different era.
‘He really panicked during the whole breast thing. Kept talking about how he couldn’t cope without me. It was like I was already dead.’ She handed Meg the bottle. ‘When we found out it was just a scare, he went back to normal.’ She clicked her fingers. ‘Just like that. Calling me to remind me to buy bananas and shaving cream from the supermarket the very next day, as if nothing had happened.’
Meg sat up and sculled from the bottle. She wiped her mouth with the back of her sleeve. ‘When Helen had her accident, some friends left piles of home-cooked food on the doorstep. Others crossed the street to avoid talking to us.’
‘Bastards,’ Jillian said, and belched.
Meg laughed and lay back down on the long grass. ‘I think they felt guilty.’
‘Well, I know my brother was banned from climbing trees after that.’
It was the first time they’d spoken about the accident in sixty years.
‘Mum insisted on calling a man to cut down the paperbark a week later. The night before he was due to come, I heard Dad attack the trunk with an axe. I peeked through the window, but it was pitch black—I couldn’t see a thing. I just heard the terrifying noise of him hacking and grunting and weeping.’
‘I remember walking to your house and hearing the siren and thinking it was for somebody else,’ Jillian said, her voice strained. ‘When I saw the ambulance out front I knew something terrible had happened. I followed the screams to the backyard. Hel was on the ground. Her eyes were terrified, but her legs were soft—the top one fell across the bottom one as if she was posing for a photo.’
As Jillian spoke Meg closed her eyes. She felt a breeze, gentle as a caress across her cheek. She wanted to tell Jillian that she often imagined Helen’s ashes dissolving into tiny particles, being sucked up by the trunk of the jacaranda and re-emerging, reassembled and reconfigured, in the purple petals of the tree. But even now, tipsy on wine, she couldn’t find the courage to articulate her silly fantasy. Instead she lay on the grass and listened to her friend’s drunken sighs and the whisper of the leaves until she couldn’t tell where the plant noises began and the human noises ended.
47
It was the first day of the school holidays and Winnie was driving them to the beach. Andy sat squashed between the twins’ car seats while his father sat up front. It was the first time Andy had been to the beach since moving to Melbourne. The twins were bubbling with excitement. They kicke
d and prodded Andy, and if he didn’t give them the reaction they wanted, they leant across him to kick and prod each other. Andy was happy to get out of the four-wheel drive when they arrived at the breezy beach. The twins ran ahead.
‘They’re strong swimmers,’ Winnie said, her face beaming.
Andy hadn’t learnt to swim until he was a teenager. His dad had taught him one weekend at Repulse Bay beach. Now he watched his cousins run into the ocean and felt jealous of their fearlessness. They might share blood through his auntie, but these kids with their round eyes and floppy hair were Australian in a way Andy knew he never could be.
‘The sun will be good for you,’ his aunt said, and patted him, hard, on the back.
Andy bowed his head. Today was the first day he’d woken up feeling refreshed. It turned out sharing a room with his father wasn’t so bad after all. He’d found it reassuring to hear the gentle breath of another person when he woke up, as he always did, multiple times a night. During the day his aunt and her family acted as the perfect buffer between him and his dad. For the first ten minutes he’d even enjoyed the excited holiday vibe in the car. But now his aunt’s words reminded him of his illness and exposed the unease he’d managed to bury the night before. He looked at his father, who hadn’t heard what Winnie had said. He was walking a few paces behind them and had paused to look up at the sky. It was only for a minute, but Andy took this moment of mindfulness to be a positive sign—surely legal battles were the furthest thing from his father’s mind.
They set up their umbrellas and towels near the edge of the water. Winnie had packed an esky with honey soy chicken wings and homemade Vietnamese rice paper rolls. After she had given Andy and his father a paper plate and ordered them to eat, she joined her children in the water. Andy watched his aunt splashing and squealing and marvelled at the difference between brother and sister.
‘Australia is a good place for Winnie,’ his father said, as if reading Andy’s mind. He didn’t say Australia wasn’t a good place for them, but he didn’t have to—it was evident from their impractical shoes and the stiff way they sat on their beach towels.
Room for a Stranger Page 15
