Virginia plopped a parcel onto the tray of Mahalia’s highchair. Mahalia was a fast learner; she knew now how to unwrap a parcel to find what was inside. It was a horse, made of solid moulded plastic.
‘Hor!’ she said immediately. And then put the head straight into her mouth.
On the way to the horse paddock afterwards, she urged the stroller to go faster with back-and-forth movements, pushing against the safety strap. ‘Hor! Hor!’ she said, and pointed up the street. They came to the dogs. ‘Hor!’ said Mahalia, pointing at Teg.
‘That’s a dog. That’s Teg. And that’s Tessa.’
They walked on to the horses. Mahalia leant forward in Matt’s arms to smell them, wrinkling up her nose and showing her teeth with the pleasure of it.
‘Do they pong, Mahalia?’
She looked around at him at the sound of her own name and pointed to the horse. ‘Hor,’ she said, as if she were revealing a remarkable fact to him.
On the far side of the paddock was a brown cow with a circle of white ibises standing all the way around it. The cow ate unconcernedly, but the ibises seemed to be worshipping the cow, paying homage to the cow.
‘Maybe it’s the cow’s birthday, Mahalia, and they’re wishing it happy birthday. Look. See the cow?’
Mahalia knew cows from the book Eliza read to her. ‘Moo!’ she said.
They held a small birthday party. Just a cake, with Matt and his mother and Eliza and Virginia. Matt hadn’t wanted a fuss. He wasn’t in the mood for it, but his mother said they must have something and offered to make the cake.
Mahalia blew out her own candles, with help from Matt and a great deal of spitting. She leaned forward from Matt’s arms and sucked the icing off the slice of cake that Matt’s mother held out for her. ‘Hey, you lazy little bugga!’ said Virginia. ‘Hang onto the cake yourself!’
They gave her a slice to hold and she squished it several times between her fingers before shoving the mush into her mouth, laughing with her mouth wide open.
Matt’s mother and Eliza cleaned the kitchen together afterwards. They got on remarkably well: had a matter-of-fact way of looking into each other’s eyes, and didn’t get under each other’s feet.
Matt only overheard snatches of their conversation as he moved from the back yard, through the kitchen, and back again, attending to Mahalia:
‘. . . is just the best thing . . .’ said Eliza (she must be talking about singing).
‘. . . I’ll never make a living from it . . .’ (his mother’s mask-making).
‘. . . Mahalia’s his project now . . .’ (they were talking about him!).
Kent arrived, and Eliza tossed her teatowel over the back of a chair. She crammed a bike helmet over her head, pulled on her boots and a jacket and roared off on the back of his bike.
‘She’s beautiful, isn’t she?’ said his mother. ‘She’s getting to that age . . .’
‘What age?’ asked Matt.
His mother looked up, as though she had forgotten he was there. ‘Oh, when young women are really beautiful,’ she said, vaguely. ‘What is she? Twenty-five?’
‘Twenty-two,’ said Matt. It seemed that the whole world was older than him.
When she was almost ready to go home, his mother brought out a present from Emmy (Matt had sent her a letter with his address on it but she always assumed he wouldn’t be there long and sent everything to his mother).
‘I didn’t want to interrupt the party,’ she said.
Matt didn’t know a present could be so painful. He thought of Emmy, how she had once gazed at Mahalia, and knew it had been painfully chosen. He put it aside for later.
‘One year old,’ said Matt’s mother, wistfully, as she prepared to leave. ‘It seems no time since you were that age. And now look at you . . . You’re doing so well with her, you know. She’s a great kid.’ She put her arm round Matt’s shoulder.
Matt looked at her in amazement. He thought he’d been struggling, always. The sleepless nights. Those times when he could kill for sleep. The times he just wanted to make her shut up. The struggle with money. The vulnerable, sometimes nebulous feeling he nearly always carried with him, that he was struggling to simply exist in the world.
And he’d needed so much help, in the end. He’d wanted to look after Mahalia on his own – to show he could do it. But he’d had help all along the way. From Charmian, and Eliza, and Virginia. Otis, even, in his way. And his mother, even his mother had helped, just by always being there, even though he’d refused most of her direct offers of help.
‘Make sure you make the most of her, won’t you?’ she said. ‘They don’t stay this age forever.’
‘I will,’ said Matt, surprised. ‘I do.’
In the long months before Mahalia’s birth, Emmy and Matt had lain together, limbs entwined, and talked of the mystery of it all. They somehow envisaged their baby born under a tree somewhere, a broad tree with a canopy of sheltering branches, a vast, maternal fig, perhaps, and the mystery and wonder of the world would bless them all.
The idea of the tree had been a dream, really, because they knew for a long time that their baby would be born in a hospital. Emmy had wanted a midwife but had been told she was too young, that a hospital would be safer. (And even a midwife would have drawn the line at a tree!)
Emmy had looked around at the gleaming labour room, a place of white sheets and stainless steel. There was a forest mural covering one wall, a laughable attempt to make the place look natural.
‘It’s . . . so ordinary, really,’ said Emmy softly, looking around her.
‘It is ordinary,’ said the nurse briskly. ‘Just a natural ordinary thing.’ She pulled a curtain across and bustled about with equipment.
Matt squeezed Emmy’s hand and smiled. He’d known what she meant. It was far removed from their tree.
Matt watched as Emmy’s concentration centred itself somewhere in the middle of her being, so that he, and the nurses, and the labour ward, weren’t there at all. She had been like this often in the last few weeks: concentrated, thoughtful, far from him.
When she had pushed Mahalia into the world Matt had been struck by how much work it had been. It required every bit of concentration she possessed. Her breath was heavy. A film of sweat slicked her face, and Matt wiped it away with a cool washer. It was all sheer effort and will, more work than toiling all day in the hot sun.
Matt was woken by Eliza coming home in the early hours of the morning; he listened as the motorbike idled in the street while she found the key to the door. Then the bike departed and Matt heard her Blundstones hitting the floor of the front room. He imagined her bare feet creeping up the stairs, as she tried not to wake anyone. (Virginia, last week, said, ‘Do you have to sound like a baby elephant? Some people need their sleep, you know!’)
There was a faint scent and a rustle of clothing as she passed his room, and the sound of her door closing.
Matt turned over in bed and listened to Mahalia’s breathing, slow and even. She was one year old. He’d got her this far. It was an achievement, he supposed, but anxiety still gnawed at him. His doubts beat in his head like a drum. He got up abruptly and walked out onto the balcony, feeling sure that he wouldn’t sleep tonight. The streetlights shone onto him, making an artificial twilight. He heard the faint voices of people walking up the street on their way home from somewhere, and the sounds of human life soothed him. Their laughter wrapped the night in comfort. The black dog, Voucher, trotted along the pavement opposite, looking purposeful, the way dogs do when they’re on the move.
Suddenly he felt blessed that Mahalia was healthy, and alive, and with him. He went back to bed and pulled the sheet up over himself. Matt laughed aloud in the dark. A whole year! She’d been part of his life a whole year! He lay listening to Mahalia’s merciful, light breathing. The house was so silent he thought he could hear the tick of her heart, the swoosh of blood through her veins, and the slow, certain growth of every cell in her body.
14
Matt’s guitar appeared in the front room one day. BLUES IS THE MUSIC THAT HEALS said the case, white letters standing out in the gloom. The house was still cool; it had the tranquil, composed calm of a place remembering the night. Through the door the street shone in a bright square of light.
The guitar had been hidden from view of the street by a cardboard box. Matt saw it immediately as he came down the stairs in the morning. He put Mahalia down onto the floor, and she staggered away at once into the kitchen, where she could hear Virginia making breakfast. ‘Hey, Mahalia, babeee!’ Virginia called. Mahalia ran to her, her arms waving in the air to steady herself, all the better to be scooped from the floor and into the air.
Matt rubbed the dull, textured surface of the guitar case. He hefted the weight, and clicked open the catches, half-fearing that it would be filled with something else, that the weight would be something other than guitar. It wasn’t. The white body of the guitar gleamed.
Matt smiled.
It was his birthday.
Otis was at home, in bed. ‘Don’t get me up! It’s the weekend.’ Matt wrestled him off the bed and onto the floor. ‘You shouldn’t have done it, man.’
‘Done what?’ Otis stood up and wiped his eyes, which were filled with tears from laughing and trying not to. Matt hooked his foot round Otis’s leg and brought him down again. Otis regained his feet at once. Matt grabbed him by the shoulders and head-butted him, and this time Otis fought back.
It was a satisfying tussle. Matt hadn’t wrestled with Otis for a long time, not since Mahalia was born. He’d always had her strapped to his chest or clinging in his arms, but at this moment she was in the kitchen with Charmian.
‘But,’ said Matt, when they were both sitting back on the bed, panting with the exertion, ‘I’m paying you back for it as soon as I get some money.’
‘If you like,’ said Otis. He knew about pride. ‘But only some of it. It is ya birthday. I got sick of you playing Alan’s old heap of shit. That guitar of his is crap,’ he said happily. ‘And you can try out for that band now. You want to, don’t you?’
Matt pushed his hair away from his forehead and widened his eyes at the possibility. ‘Don’t know,’ he said.
In the kitchen Mahalia was playing hide-and-seek with Charmian from underneath a towel, her face alive with delight every time Charmian ‘found’ her.
‘Hey, this baby had a birthday and you didn’t ask me?’ said Charmian, her face reproachful.
There were photos of Mahalia, now, along with all the framed pictures of family and friends that covered the walls of the living room.
‘It was just a little birthday,’ said Matt, embarrassed.
‘Just a little cake,’ said Otis, grinning; he wasn’t at all sad he hadn’t been asked.
‘Just a little birthday.’ Charmian was disgusted with him. ‘The first one! That’s a big birthday! Only a little number but a big day!’
Charmian’s family had had some bad luck. Her daughter’s husband had got drunk and burned down the house they lived in (a big thing in a small city; it was in the local paper), so she and her kids were staying with Charmian and Alan and Otis until they could get another place. The house was overflowing with people, but houses were expandable, weren’t they: there was always room for more. Charmian’s normally placid face was weary. She’d come back after months in Kempsey with her relatives, and now this. But she’d met someone down there, and the thought of him brought a sly smile to her face.
‘I’m tired,’ she said. ‘Think I’ll go down south again, get me some lovin’.’
Matt wished he could get some loving himself. He might have a guitar again, but he also was lonely, and filled with weariness.
He hitched to his mother’s that afternoon, the evening of his birthday, hoping that the place would not close in on him like a Venus flytrap. He dreaded being drawn back into it. It would be easy. It would be like reclining onto a bed of moss and letting it grow over you. It would be like finding yourself in a part of the rainforest where the lawyer cane (‘wait-a while’!) grows thick, its toothed vines catching hold of your clothing.
He was eighteen. Old enough to do lots of things. Old enough, now, to be a father.
His mother’s house was filled with contradictions. It was in the middle of the forest, closed in, claustrophobic. And yet, perched as it was on the side of the mountain, there were places where you could look out and see over the whole forested valley, so that it was outward-looking and expansive. It was full of doors and windows, and yet, in places, there were no doors, just gaps where a door should be. He wanted to be independent, and yet his mother was always there.
His father had always been an unspoken presence. The fact of Matt’s existence made him ever-present. As always, there was something from him for Matt’s birthday. This year it was a cheque: a nice amount, two hundred dollars. Perhaps he thought Matt was too old now for other presents. Matt folded the cheque and put it beside him on the table. He could pay Otis back some of the money for the guitar.
He remembered other birthdays. The fun he and his mother had had.
‘Hey,’ said Matt, smiling, ‘remember the year you gave me the bike for my birthday? And I persuaded you to have a go on it?’
She sat up and laughed at the memory.
‘You hadn’t ridden one for years,’ said Matt. ‘And you got on it and took off down the drive . . .‘
‘It sort of took off with me,’ she said, ‘like some kind of animal with a mind of its own.’
‘And you yelled, “Help, help,” but you had to keep pedalling to stay upright, and you went out onto the road and halfway down the hill before you found the brakes. We both laughed so hard I thought I was going to be sick,’ said Matt.
‘You made me learn to ride it again properly after that,’ said his mother. ‘It kept me fit for a while.’
‘Matt,’ she said, as if out of the blue, but it was obvious she’d been thinking about it for some time, ‘why don’t you let me teach you to drive? You’re eighteen now. You could’ve had your licence for a year.’
Matt scratched the back of his neck and shook his head. ‘I’ll never get a car.’
‘If you could drive you could borrow mine.’
Matt sighed and shook his head. ‘Yeah, I know. But I don’t know that I want to get around that way.’
‘Most young men can’t wait to get their licence.’
‘I’m not most young men.’
‘Why are you so stubborn? And anyway, you might get a car one day.’ His mother started to collect up the plates. ‘Think about it,’ she said, not wanting to quarrel on his birthday. ‘The longer you put it off, the harder it’ll get.’
Mahalia had been sitting in her highchair, watching them and laughing because they were laughing. But when the conversation took a serious turn she’d started to grizzle. Matt pushed back his chair. ‘Come on,’ he said to her, ‘I’ll take you for a walk outside.’ She put her arms around his neck and he lifted her onto his hip.
In the garden, she walked along beside him, holding his hand, her bare feet curling up on the rough ground, her toes like pale grubs. He lifted her up and tossed her into the air and caught her. Mahalia loved that. He took hold of her feet and suspended her upside-down. Spatial development. She held on tight and swung like a monkey, and he carried her, still upside down, her body clasped securely to his chest, to the gap in the trees where they could look out over the valley. It was all space, and distance; only an occasional cleared patch and a dull roof showed where there might be other people.
Matt turned Mahalia the right way up again and plopped her down onto the ground. When Mahalia saw her grandmother come out to join them, she waved her arms and staggered across the grass towards her.
‘Gosh, you’re a little grub,’ said his mother. ‘You’ve got lunch all over you. Do you feel like a bath?’
‘Ba,’ said Mahalia, gesturing towards the house.
Matt’s mother ran some water into the big bathtub and Mahalia was
so keen to get in she helped her grandmother remove her clothes by lifting her arms and legs at the right moments. Matt’s mother knelt beside the bath and steadied Mahalia’s slippery body in the water.
Matt came inside and leaned in the bathroom doorway and watched, a rueful smile on his face. Once, he’d said to his mother, ‘I’ll bath her. She’s my baby, okay?’ As if his mother, by merely doing something for Mahalia, could alter the fact that she was. There was such a thing, he thought, as being too independent. And he was eighteen now.
‘Thanks for the offer to teach me to drive,’ said Matt, surprising himself. ‘I think I’ll take you up on it. I’ll go to the RTA and get the learner’s book, yeah?’
Mahalia had her first visit to Emmy’s mother on her own, for a whole day. She left cheerfully, strapped into the car seat, waving to Matt through the side window as the car pulled away. He felt her absence. His arms were empty. He was used to hefting the weight of her, taking her everywhere. He was childless for the first time in over a year.
Virginia and Eliza had gone out already. He lay on his bed and listened to the silence in the house. He picked up BLUES IS THE MUSIC THAT HEALS and strummed a few disconsolate notes, and the sound only made him sadder. It would have filled up his day if he could’ve jammed with Otis, but he’d be at school. For a moment Matt thought of school with something close to nostalgia: there were always people there to talk to, at least. He wished Eliza were in the house, singing – when she belted out a song it wasn’t a lonesome sound. It filled up the world with expectation.
‘Arr, shit!’
Matt hauled himself up off the bed, and set about tidying the room. He took in yesterday’s clothes and nappies from the line on the veranda and folded them. The sheets hadn’t been washed for ages, so he stripped his bed and the cot and shoved it all into a garbage bag to take down to the laundromat.
In the street he saw the dogs, Teg and Tessa. ‘Hi, Teg! Hi, Tessa!’ he said, in the high voice he used when saying something for Mahalia’s benefit. He stopped, feeling stupid. They wagged their tails at him anyway, and panted, their blue tongues hanging out.
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