He smiles awkwardly. ‘Tomorrow. But just for a couple of days.’
‘Things are okay?’
He shakes his head. ‘Do you want to have lunch?’
She wants to say yes, but she’s anxious about getting home and seeing if Shane is back. Looking at him, the smooth line of his jaw and the gold of his skin, she knows this isn’t the only reason. She remembers lying in the hammock and wanting to kiss him. She hadn’t, of course; even drunk she’d been aware of Matt nearby, Ella asleep in the house. But now she feels herself on the brink of freefall.
His smile is wry as he says that he guesses dinner is out of the question.
Stepping back under the cool green shade of the plane tree, she wonders for a moment what it would be like to throw everything up in the air, all her life as it is now, fluttering around her against the blue of the sky. Dinner would be good, she could say. But it will have to be at my place.
The lightness is sparkling and cold.
‘I can’t,’ she says.
He takes her hand and squeezes it as he kisses her on the cheek, and she watches as he walks away, wanting to hold on to the possibility of changing her mind, going after him and saying that no, she’d like to have dinner, until he turns down a side street and is no longer in sight.
AFTER FREYA HAD THE termination, she and Matt had stopped circling each other. She loved him without the anxiety she had once had. He, too, changed.
‘I think we should live together,’ he suggested.
Her first play had been accepted for production, and she’d been looking for a flat. Sitting at his kitchen table, marking apartments in the paper while he made her breakfast, she’d read out descriptions of each place that appealed to her.
‘You know,’ she suddenly told him, ‘I feel as though my life is opening up; good things are happening in abundance.’
He sat down opposite her and took her hand in his. When he said that it made sense for them to find somewhere together, she was surprised and, she had to confess, momentarily taken aback by the idea. She had visions of her own place, and to alter that wasn’t as easy as he’d assumed it would be.
‘You don’t want to?’ he’d asked.
She’d looked at him, and then she’d stood up slowly and gone over to the window. ‘You know,’ she’d said, ‘if I hadn’t hesitated, if I’d just said yes immediately, it would be the wrong thing to do.’
He narrowed his eyes and tried to assess what she was saying.
‘The fact that I want to be on my own almost as much as with you is a good thing.’ She kissed him gently and then picked up the newspaper, handing it to him as she did so. ‘I suppose that means you’d better have a closer look at the places I’ve circled.’
Now, as Freya opens the door to the cool of the hallway, she wishes Matt were home. She’d walked past Shane’s on the way back from the train station and he still wasn’t there. She wants Matt here to take control of this situation because she isn’t sure what she should be doing.
As she heads up to the school, she realises she’s been so distracted by the play and Shane’s absence, she’s had little opportunity to dwell on the ramifications of Matt’s trip, and she’s glad of that. Because each time she thinks of it, she’s anxious. It’s there, underlying her general state, an edgy skittishness that rattles inside her, knocking against her being. She just wants to concentrate on dealing with the fact that Shane isn’t back. She can only hope he’ll be in the school grounds.
She waits under the shade of a Moreton Bay fig, the ground littered with bruised fruit and dead leaves. When the principal walks past, she wonders whether she should speak to her. If something has happened, she may have had word, and she looks up, wanting to catch her eye. But the principal doesn’t stop. Freya will stick to her original plan. If Shane isn’t here, she’ll take the kids home and call the police.
The bell rings loudly, jarring and harsh, and Freya hears the sound of children chattering as they wait at the door to their classroom until they are given permission to leave. Teachers call out over the noise, and the first group of kids break free, running across the playground to the spot where their mothers or fathers usually wait. Freya sees Ella, her hair coming out of her plaits, her face coloured with slashes of Texta and her knees covered in dirt; she is clutching notes in one hand, her bag in the other. Freya waves and she is, as always, light with the wonder of her.
‘Look,’ Ella says and she crushes the paper into Freya’s palm. ‘We’ve got an excursion. I need to bring some money.’
Freya bends to kiss her, and as she does so, she glances across to where Archie still waits outside the classroom. His bag is at his feet, and he sits against the wall, knees drawn to his chest, not looking up at the teacher who stands by the door.
‘Archie.’ It’s Darlene calling out.
Hearing his sister, Archie grabs his bag and glances up at the teacher who nods at him; yes, he can go.
Freya stops them as they cross the playground.
‘Can we get an ice-cream?’ they ask.
‘We’ll have something at home,’ she tells them, not wanting to deal with the shop owner again.
The kids groan, but Freya ignores them.
She doesn’t know why, but she decides to go past Shane’s house once again. She is so sure he won’t be there that she doesn’t even look for his car as they round the corner to the top of his street. It’s Ella who sees it first.
‘Look,’ and she points to the jeep pulled up out the front, one wheel on the kerb, the others in the gutter.
The three of them start running; Archie is in front, his thin brown legs fast as he races for the front door, calling out ‘Dad, Dad’ over and over again. Ella follows them into the dimness of the long bare corridor. Freya ducks under a light globe that hangs so low it almost touches her head and stands at the entrance to the lounge room. The carpet is old and stained, the furniture is minimal; a couch that is losing its stuffing, a TV and a coffee table, bare except for an overflowing ashtray on top.
‘He’ll be in there,’ Darlene says, racing back to the other end of the hall, and she pushes open the door to the front room.
Archie is right behind her.
Freya hears the kids, and Shane’s muffled greeting. The sweet smell of stale alcohol, smoke and sweat wafts out of the room, like rotten fruit, she thinks. Taking Ella’s hand, Freya looks in to where Shane lies on top of the unmade bed, the kids jumping around him, squealing in excitement, until he reaches up for them and pulls them down on top of him.
‘You’re back,’ she says, and her voice is tight.
He sits up, and she can see the beginnings of a black eye, purpled bruising around the bloodshot iris. He is wheezing as he tries to speak.
‘Thanks for having them, ay.’ He ruffles Archie’s curls. ‘Say thank you to your Auntie Freya.’
Darlene grins as she mimics her father. ‘Thank you, Auntie Freya.’ She even has the wheeze and she giggles at the success of her own imitation.
Freya just looks at Shane. Eventually when she speaks, the anger is impossible to hide, ragged at the edge of her words. ‘You said you’d be back yesterday.’
He doesn’t respond.
She is holding on to the doorframe, her knuckles white.
‘I was worried sick.’
Still, he doesn’t answer.
‘I didn’t know what to do. I was going to call the cops. I mean, you could have rung or something. Just let me know you were okay.’ Her eyes are smarting. ‘You’re their fucking father.’
She can see he has no understanding of why she’s angry.
‘I mean, what were you expecting this afternoon? That I would just get them again? Which I did and which I would do – but Jesus, you know, I watched what was happening on TV. I didn’t know whether you were dead in a gutter. But you’re fine, of course. And I was here to look after your kids until you decided to come back, pissed and totally okay.’
She takes Ella’s hand and steps out into the gl
are of the afternoon. Standing for a moment on the footpath, she wipes at the tears in her eyes. Why the fuck am I crying? she thinks, and she breathes in deeply.
He comes out behind her, stumbling slightly on the step near the front gate. ‘I shoulda called,’ he admits, ‘but I knew you’d be takin’ care of ’em.’
Across the road, a neighbour raises his hand in greeting. Shane nods back at him.
‘He’s lived here all his life,’ he says. ‘Helped me fix the car.’
Ella looks across at him.
‘My stinky car.’ Shane ruffles the top of Ella’s hair. ‘She’s always tellin’ me how much it smells,’ and he grins as he glances across at Freya. ‘I’m takin’ the kids to Macca’s; I can take her too.’
Freya shakes her head again. ‘You’re still pissed,’ she says. ‘You can’t drive.’
‘You could drive,’ Ella urges, pulling at Freya’s hand.
‘I don’t want to go to McDonald’s,’ she answers.
‘She can stay and have dinner, but?’ Out in the light, Shane’s eye looks worse.
‘I guess so,’ Freya replies.
‘I’ll bring her home,’ Shane promises. ‘Not in the car,’ he adds.
They look at each other for a moment, neither of them saying a word, and then Freya asks him how it was. She is referring to the riots, and he replies briefly.
‘They was angry, you know.’
She nods.
‘It’s not good. The cops don’t let up on the young kids and everyone’s had enough. It was gunna spill over.’ He rolls another cigarette as he speaks. ‘Wonder it doesn’t happen more often.’
Freya asks him if his eye is okay and he rubs at it sheepishly.
‘Not the worst black eye I’ve had.’
She tells him she has arnica at home. She’ll give it to him when he brings Ella back, and as she turns to leave, he thanks her.
‘For lookin’ after ’em,’ he says.
She just nods and says she’ll see him soon.
And she walks back alone, down the hill to their house; empty now with Matt away and Ella out. The door swings shut behind her and she stands in the long narrow hallway, looking down towards the kitchen, wondering what she will do with herself for the next couple of hours with no one else around. She will eat, she supposes; watch the news, she guesses; and she contemplates briefly the possibility of calling Frank and telling him to come over, but it’s just a game, a way of keeping herself amused in this strange and sudden period of waiting that has descended on her home.
WINTER
SUMMER HAS ENDED BY the time Freya first speaks to Lisa.
As the days become shorter and cooler, she buys a heater for Ella to change in front of, complaining bitterly about the fact that it is under thirty dollars.
‘How can they make them so cheap?’ she says, and Matt ignores her, used to this current obsession.
Outside, the garden has died back, and their small stretch of lawn is now half dirt, the grass roots brown and twisted. The broken lawnmower is put away, neither fixed nor returned to the shop.
Only the citrus trees are showing any signs of vibrant health, the lemon and orange heavy with thick-skinned fruit, waxy to the touch, the smell tart and sour. Freya picks each one up as it falls to the ground, keeping a bright red bowl on the kitchen table filled with the sharpness of their colour, brilliant in the softer days.
Winter has also brought a change in the political climate. The Labor Government is slumping in the opinion polls, and Freya reads the newspaper with a growing anxiety that this dip may be more than temporary.
‘It’s not as though I like them,’ she complains to Matt. ‘The way they backed down on an ETS was unforgivable – but I really don’t want to end up with the alternative.’
He refuses to believe it’s anything more than a temporary slide, but she is less optimistic. And as the polls fail to turn, her pessimism grows.
The cold weather has also heralded the beginning of the soccer season, and Ella has started playing, her practice sessions in the park at the bottom of the street. The breeze from the river brings with it a fog that swirls around the lights illuminating the ground, and the giant elms that line the banks are bare now, their branches white against the darkness of the sky.
Ella plays with enthusiasm, sliding in the mud whenever she can, coming home exhausted and filthy. In fact, Freya is hanging out Ella’s soccer clothes when the telephone rings. She swears loudly as each of the new pegs she has bought snaps in her fingers, and she gathers the plastic pieces, throwing them in the laundry basket before rushing in, breathless, saying her name as she lifts the receiver.
‘Is Matt there?’ the voice asks.
Freya says that he’s at work. Can she take a message?
‘Could you tell him Lisa called?’
Her intake of breath is small but audible as she introduces herself. She is Freya, she says. Matt has talked about her, Lisa; it’s good to finally speak.
Lisa’s response is awkward, her words slightly mumbled as she says hello, before apologising for bothering her at home like this.
Has she tried his mobile? Freya asks.
Lisa says she has. ‘Can you ask him to call? It’s important. He’s got my number.’
‘Shall I take it again just in case?’
As she writes it down, Freya realises that Matt must have been speaking to Lisa since his return. Lisa’s confidence in his knowledge of her number would seem to indicate this, and there is a numb ache in her heart, heavy and dull.
Freya looks at the message she has written: Lisa called. The two words are scrawled in pen and she circles them, placing asterisks around the edge.
It was never going to go away.
On the morning that Matt came back, Freya had met him at the airport, driving out there after leaving Ella at school. She was anxious; the acid in her throat and high flutter in her stomach made her feel as though she were bracing herself for terrible news. In the terminal, she tried to keep herself still, eyes on the gate as the line of passengers emerged. For one minute she thought he might have changed his mind, not coming back after all but deciding to stay up there in his new life with his new family, and she had to force her mind back from the lurch that it threatened to take.
And then, there he was.
He stepped into the arrivals lounge, bag slung over his shoulder, and opened his arms to her, and the sight of him, just him, unchanged, calmed her.
‘I missed you,’ he said, face buried in her hair, his breath warm against her neck, the softness of his skin familiar and good.
All the tension in her limbs dissipated.
In the car, he talked a little. As they headed past the international airport, container freight in square blocks of colour on their right, the filth of the river winding next to the road, he told her it had been difficult.
‘It was okay with Lisa,’ he said. ‘We managed to talk. But the boy, you know,’ and he looked out the window, turning away from her as he found himself unable to complete his sentence.
‘How did he react to you?’ Freya asked.
Matt just shrugged. ‘I think he said two words to me.’ His smile was slight. ‘But what do you expect? He doesn’t know me. She hadn’t told him anything about me.’
‘Not even before you arrived?’
‘She doesn’t even know whether I’m his father. And she’s always told him that his dad is dead. I hardly feel like I’m in a position to demand anything, to just walk in and tell him the truth, or ask for a paternity test. Not that I even know how to go about doing something like that.’
A truck pulled past them, its weight making the car shudder, and Freya shut her window against the onslaught of smell and noise. Reaching across, she rested her hand on the top of his thigh. He’d turned back to look at the road, oblivious to her touch.
At home he told her he was tired. He didn’t think he would go into work. He might take the car and have a swim. She offered to go with him, but he said he wa
nted to be alone. He would pick up Ella on the way back. They could all have dinner together, maybe even go out. He kissed her gently on the cheek.
‘I love you,’ he said.
She looked at him.
‘I’m sorry about all this.’ He wiped at a tear in the corner of his eye. ‘I don’t know what the right thing to do is.’
She had tried to work during the day, waiting for his return. The words she put down were useless, and in the end she gave up. Out in the garden, she pulled up onion weeds, digging down into the dry soil in search of the white roots, small bulbs that had never seen daylight. There was no end to the task, and in the midday heat, she felt the sweat drip down the back of her T-shirt, an icy trickle on her skin.
When he came back, some hours later, he told her he couldn’t talk about it anymore, apologising for his lack of communication.
‘I just haven’t sorted it in my head,’ he tried to explain. ‘So I don’t really know what to say.’
She’d squeezed his hand in her own and told him it was okay.
It wasn’t until a week later that he said he’d been thinking that maybe it was best to let it go.
‘I’ve let her know I’m here if she decides she needs me.’
Freya just nodded.
Matt undressed in the darkness of their room, and she watched him, his shape an outline only. She opened her arms to him as he got into bed and they lay close, silent but close.
He had, she presumes, done as he had decided. Tried to let it go. In fact, over the last three months, they haven’t talked a great deal further about his trip north. If he has called Lisa, as she can only guess he has, he’s never told her.
Now, standing next to the phone, she wonders whether she should try to reach him at the office and let him know that Lisa phoned. She hadn’t had the presence of mind to ask whether anything was wrong. She picks up the receiver, hesitates and then puts it down again.
Later that morning, as she heads into the city to meet Mikhala for a quick preview of her new work, before a meeting with Frank about her play, Matt rings her. She’s on the train, and she searches for her phone in her bag. When she sees his number, she is surprised. He never rings her during the day.
Too Close to Home Page 13
