Plane Tree Drive

by Lynette Washington

  Denise pokes her head over the fence.

  ‘Goodness, what happened to your arm, Marg?’

  ‘He happened to my arm, Denise! Your cat scratched me as I was trying to rescue him from our pool!’

  ‘Oh poor darling Jerry, are you okay?’ Denise says to the dripping cat. ‘Hope you’ve had your shots, Marg.’

  I don’t answer her because I’m already forming a plan. I wonder how many of Martin’s EpiPen shots would be required to knock out an animal that weighs, oh, about eight-to-ten kilos.

  MARTHA AND CHARLES

  Gaps Between Boxes

  Last week I tried to tell Charles all of this, but he wouldn’t listen. I know it’s hard for him to hear, but it has to be said. He wants to live here forever, just to keep it clean. He wants me to keep the garden neat and plant new pansies each spring. He’ll trim the fruit trees and I’ll nip the flower buds off the herbs to drag out their productivity. I’ll mulch. He’ll dig trenches for the rainwater tank drip feed to keep my flowers fresh in summer.

  On Sunday nights we’ll sit at the dining table and go through the bills, just like we’ve done since 1975. On Mondays I’ll wake up and remember I don’t have to go to work anymore and neither does he. I’ll look at this house – this beautiful house – that we built together and made into a home and wonder what actually needs to be done.

  Nothing. There is nothing left to be done. We ticked all the boxes.

  So now are we supposed to hang up our desires and dreams and settle in with a cup of tea and the telly, passing each other the heart-smart margarine over our toast in the morning?

  Charles has always wanted an easy life, but I never did. And now that easy life feels like meandering slowly towards death.

  All those boxes we ticked, the house, the kids, the jobs. Whenever I ticked a box, I was wondering, ‘what’s in that gap, in between the boxes?’ But how do you do the in between when you are on the path that we were on? A path laid out for us by our parents and their expectations, and the society we were raised in, and its expectations, which were one and the same because in those days people did what was expected of them: get married, buy a house, raise kids, retire silently, get sick and die. I remember telling Anna when she was fourteen to always question other people’s expectations to see if they sat well with her expectations of herself. But I never took this advice myself.

  Now I am taking it. No more regrets. No more pining for the gaps in between the boxes.

  When we met, five-year-olds in preschool, Charles was an adventurer. In love with the idea of the Scarlet Pimpernel. He was the most exciting person I’d ever known. I think I fell in love with him then, even though it took me twenty years of friendship to realise it.

  This has been a wonderful place to live and raise a family. But now it’s a millstone. The garden that I cherished and tended to for decades now makes me angry when I look at it. I think of all the hours I spent in it instead of travelling the world. I walked the paths between the citrus trees when I could have been walking on cobblestones in Damascus. The floorboards that I have vacuumed more times than I’ve drunk champagne make me wild with a rage that scares me because I imagine all the railroad tracks I’ve never seen and the rattly carriages I’ve never sat in and all the windows I’ve not looked through onto blurry landscapes. The kitchen. Oh the kitchen. How many meals have I prepared in it? Let’s work on averages. Forty years of marriage. 365 days in a year. Three meals a day. Four family members. I can’t look at that splashback anymore without wanting to take a hammer to it, turning it into the mosaic of a Barcelona garden.

  Will he come with me? I am leaving, with or without him. We can still have great adventures together. We can seek out the gaps between the boxes. We are not too old.

  Dear Martha

  I’m leaving this letter on the kitchen table because I can’t face you right now and talk in a civil way.

  Meander slowly to death? That’s what you think I’m doing? I just don’t want to fight, Martha. I want peace. Is that so bad?

  I know you will sit down at the kitchen table tonight, even though I’m not there. Forgive me for putting the electric bill underneath, but it must be paid.

  Don’t worry. I haven’t topped myself or taken off with another woman. I’m staying with Anna for a few weeks. I suppose you will be gone by the time I’m back, but I need to clear my head. Your talk of boxes and gaps has me feeling wretched. I can’t begin to order the thoughts in my head.

  All I can say with certainty right now, in this hour before I put the letter on the dining table and leave the house you now despise so much, is that I never looked between the boxes. For me the boxes made a darn good life. I have always been satisfied and it frightens me to learn now, after so many years together, that you were not satisfied, as I imagined you were. How could I not know? Why didn’t you tell me?

  Charles

  So it seems we won’t be taking this trip together. Stevo has booked me: Adelaide – Singapore – Dubai – Dubrovnik. It’s one way. I will send enough postcards for Charles to repaper the hallway.

  Dear Martha

  I am writing to you care of the post office in Florence. I do hope you are still there, and still checking in for mail. Tell me when your email is up and running, it’s driving me mad waiting so long between postcards.

  The house has a buyer. They have offered the asking price. There are papers to be signed. The buyer wants a quick settlement. I fear that if I can’t get papers to you in time the sale will fall through.

  Please get in touch. Now that the sale is real, I am feeling quite relieved of it and want it done.

  Charles

  Dear Charles

  I have opened an email account, although I have to admit I’ve enjoyed my trips to the post office enormously. They know me there and it is lovely. They tolerate my stunted Italian and compliment me on my postcard choices. Each time I visit they teach me a new word. Today it was tramonto which sounds much more poetic than ‘sunset’, don’t you think? You must try to say it with the Italian flourish, not our flat Australian accent. It always sounds better if you use your hands.

  Can you attach the papers to an email please? Get Anna to help.

  Martha

  Dear Martha

  Anna laughed at my incompetence in scanning and attaching documents, but I’m learning new things. She’s happy you are having fun and says to say ciao.

  How is Florence? Have you seen Michelangelo’s David yet? And the Ponte Vecchio? I’ve been reading up. It sounds wonderful. I would love to buy you a little gold pendant on the Ponte, a house on a chain. Do you think they sell such things?

  Charles

  Charles

  You old fool. Go to the Flight Club on Goodwood Road. Ask to speak to Stevo. He has a ticket for you: Adelaide – Singapore – Rome. The train to Florence is a piece of cake. You only need a few words in Italian to get around here.

  I’ve been strolling the Ponte Vecchio daily, looking for the pendant you describe. There is no kind of jewellery you can’t buy on that miraculous little bridge. It’s just a matter of finding the buried treasure. It’s a wonder it doesn’t collapse under the weight of all that gold.

  With love and anticipation

  Martha

  Dear Martha

  I went and saw Stevo (don’t young people have normal names anymore?) and it was all arranged, just like you said. Even the train from Rome to Florence. You are a marvel.

  Martha, I can’t do this…flights, trains, passports, speaking Italian? I’ve told Stevo to put a hold on it all.

  Keep looking on that bridge. I know you will find that pendant, in a little gap between the boxes somewhere.

  With love

  Charles

  So Much Sand and So Much Water

  The cliff is steep, crumbling ochre walls stretching from sand to sky. The old concrete steps are still there, clutching onto the cliff and overlayed with new wooden steps. Charles wondered if he could walk down those steps now, much le
ss up them. But when he was a child, he would run. Surfers would stand aside, holding their boards out wide, as he sprinted, his parents puffing behind.

  Charles hurried down to the beach.

  ‘Hurrah!’ he called to the sea. ‘I am The Scarlet Pimpernel, you can’t beat me!’

  He hit the sand and didn’t feel the heat of it on the soft flesh of his feet. He spotted the rock pool and ran in search of crabs. His battle cry could be heard up the beach and down.

  Reaching the pools of warmed salty sea he conducted a thorough and exacting inspection, picking up rocks and putting them back down, disappointed that there was no sign of life. His search complete after several minutes, he looked impatiently back to the steps. He started jiggling and pacing and occasionally rechecking a rock here or there. There were no crabs; must be too late, or too hot. And when would she get here?

  A small figure made its way carefully down the wooden steps, taking each one seriously as though she’d been warned too many times that she might fall. Clutching the handrail she got closer, a fluttering yellow shape turning into a ten-year-old girl. Charles wasn’t looking, but someone pointed to him and she ran.

  ‘Charles! Charles!’

  Charles looked up and saw Martha.

  ‘Ah-huh! I am The Scarlet Pimpernel! You may call me Sir Percy!’

  He struck a pose, bracing his feet in the soppy sand, aiming an imagined sword at the sky.

  Martha giggled and brushed some kicked-up sand off her dress.

  Charles’s weapon was suddenly forgotten and he looked at Martha properly.

  ‘Would you like to search for lizards? There aren’t any crabs here,’ he kicked the water in the rock pool in disgust.

  Martha’s eyes popped.

  ‘Lizards?’

  ‘Yeah,’ Charles grinned. ‘I bet we can find a skink. Probably no monitors, though.’

  Martha gave a little excited jump.

  ‘Okay,’ she said.

  ‘Follow me! I know the way!’

  Charles led her to the base of the concrete steps. He wedged himself in a tight space between the rocks. Martha followed.

  ‘Where are they?’ she asked.

  ‘They’re here. You just have to be quiet so you don’t scare them. Weapons away.’ He tucked the imaginary sword into his shorts.

  ‘Now, no talking and no fast movement. They live in little cracks and crevices where they can hide away from predators and if they hear you, they’ll bury themselves so deep we’ll never find them,’ he whispered.

  Charles inspected the cracks in the concrete, the places where the old structure was trying to break away. Martha looked too.

  Old chip packets and tin cans were plentiful, but lizards were not.

  Martha pulled her dress up to her knees and sat on her hands.

  ‘I like it here,’ she whispered dreamily. ‘I wish…’.

  Charles’s mind stilled for a moment. A wish was a sacred thing, a thing he understood, a thing he respected.

  ‘I wish we could stay here. Always. Live here.’

  ‘Let’s swear,’ Charles said. ‘Let’s always come back here. Even when we are old.’

  ‘I’m going to be a ballerina, you know.’

  ‘And I’m going to be…something important. I just don’t know what yet.’

  Charles needed to get to the bottom of the cliff. His bones didn’t want to get him there. But he had important business on that beach.

  ‘Damn it,’ he cursed as he took one step at a time, hips and knees cracking, one hand grasping the rail. People rushed past him, some knocking him carelessly, others giving him a wide berth. He was glad he hadn’t asked Anna to come today. He couldn’t stand her worrying about him. Finally, halfway down, someone stopped.

  ‘Are you okay? Do you need any help?’

  ‘Look that bad, do I?’ Charles laughed.

  The woman looked embarrassed.

  ‘I’m sorry, it’s just…it’s a long way. Do you want me to carry that for you?’ She pointed to the urn tucked under Charles’s arm.

  ‘Oh no, that wouldn’t be right. Thank you dear, it’s very kind. But I am on a mission, you see.’

  ‘Okay, then,’ she said and kept walking.

  Step after step Charles made his way down until finally his feet reached the sand. He sat on the bottom step for a long time. Too long. He felt his legs cramping up, so he stood and walked to the sea. Charles slipped off his shoes and socks, rolled up his slacks and walked into the water, up to his ankles. The rock pool was still there, although it had been buried by sand over the years. The jagged rocks looked smaller than when he was a kid.

  ‘Martha, my darling, this is for you.’

  Charles opened the urn and tipped the ashes into the water of the rock pool. They swirled gently in the tide. Charles found a comfortable rock and settled in to wait for the tide to take her out to sea.

  JENNIFER, ALEXANDER AND DAN

  The Exhibition

  I have a little exhibition of my paintings. Not a proper one with media and VIPs, it’s just for friends and family. I have a dozen paintings hung on the walls of an old greengrocer’s shop that’s been converted into a gallery about the size of a pea: Mrs Ferris’ Grocery Shop. The room is full with twenty people in it. We serve orange juice and vodka and put out bowls of roasted chickpeas and Kalamata olives. The paintings are okay, but nothing special. There are eleven horizons and one burrow. People look at them and smile and say encouraging things. My mother buys the smallest horizon. She’ll hang it in the hallway where it’s dark and the globe is never switched on because in two steps you are in another room anyway.

  The stunning, svelte Alice from up the road buys a medium-sized horizon. The ponytailed man on her arm looks at her as though she is the answer to every question he ever asked. Maurice examines each piece carefully and with a gentle respect. He treats it like it’s real art and I love him for it. Florence sits quietly on a chair looking forlorn and doesn’t speak to a soul. Nothing else is sold. People hug me and leave after an hour. Dan takes Ava home so that I can tidy up, and soon enough there are only two people left in Mrs Ferris’ Grocery Shop.

  Act 2

  Scene: Mrs Ferris’ Grocery Shop, 81 Plane Tree Drive–night, now

  Jennifer locks the door and lowers the Venetian blinds, shutting out the street.

  ‘I didn’t know you painted,’ Alexander says.

  ‘I am a woman of myriad mystery,’ Jennifer says with a wink.

  ‘No you aren’t, I know all your mysteries. Except for the painting.’

  Jennifer remembers Alexander visiting her in hospital when she was twenty years old and grieving her baby all on her own and she knows he’s right. He was there long after her son’s father had bailed. He held her hand and cried with her. And then he vanished back into his world, as he did, leaving her to drift in her grief slowly towards a new life with Dan.

  ‘Tell me about the burrow,’ Alexander says.

  ‘It kind of stands out, doesn’t it?’

  ‘Like dogs’ balls.’

  ‘Well, I went on a painting retreat and there were bloody trees everywhere. I’m sick of looking at trees.’

  ‘So you found a burrow. What about a bird or a leaf or a person? Why a burrow?’

  ‘I don’t know. Have you ever tried to paint a bird? The buggers won’t sit still.’

  Alexander laughs.

  ‘Are you still making films?’ he asks, taking a sip from his neat vodka.

  ‘No, I’m making play doh.’

  ‘That bad, eh?’

  Something tries to rasp its way out of Jennifer’s throat and she coughs it back. This exhibition was supposed to be her light.

  Alexander cups her chin in his hand, looks her in the eye.

  ‘You’re lost.’

  ‘I know,’ is all she can say, but in a small way she hates Alexander for telling her the truth.

  He rests his body against the wall, between horizons, and stares at the floor. ‘When I was little, my gr
andparents were murdered by soldiers. Mum and Dad packed up me and Viktoria in the dead of night and we caught the first train – going anywhere. It took seven months altogether, but we ended up here, in Adelaide. Two weeks later, I was at school and you were teaching me English in the schoolyard.’

  This is a story Jennifer’s heard many times. She knows other details too – about the fear of those seven months, of the money running out and documents being stolen, about nights sleeping underneath his parents’ bodies so he could remain hidden from child smugglers and thugs.

  ‘Do you think your life has a point?’ she asks.

  ‘I used to think it did. Not so much now.’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘Things haven’t turned out…I don’t know…profound. My parents used to tell us that we were lucky to be in Australia and we had to make the most of this new life. That we had been given a gift. Now look at us. Viktoria is working for the tax department and I’m designing shoeboxes that pass for public housing. There is nothing profound about our lives. Maybe we wasted the chance we were given.’

  He looks so different now. Different to the way she sees him when she closes her eyes.

  ‘Do you ever think about The Game?’ she asks.

  ‘Not for years.’

  ‘I think about it all the time. How I hid behind it.’

  ‘We both did. Why didn’t we tell each other we loved each other then?’

  How are they suddenly, easily, finally talking about this?

  ‘I used to believe it when they said we were perfect for each other, except for everything. That stupid game. It feels like all those differences have been whittled away. Why did we think they were so important then?’

  ‘That game used to shit me,’ he says, but she’s not thinking about The Game anymore. She’s thinking about fixing this, because it all suddenly makes sense.

  ‘We left our fingerprints on each other. All over. Outside and in.’ She takes another deep breath and talks to the floor. ‘I loved you so much it hurt. I loved you as much as any teenager ever loved anyone. Like Juliette loved Romeo,’ she smiles at the melodrama of her words, but she remembers it so well. How it felt.

  Alexander leans in, takes her face in his hands and kisses her on the lips. Her heart is careening in her chest as she tastes him for the first time and her entire life coalesces right there, amongst all the horizons with their cliff tops and sweeping winds and she can’t stop kissing him. He tastes of twenty years of longing.