The Intentions Book

by Gigi Fenster

  ‘Yesterday afternoon,’ says Morris.

  ‘Actually,’ Wendy says, ‘not yesterday afternoon—more like this morning. If she slept in her tent last night then she would’ve woken up in it this morning, so actually, actually, she wasn’t even missing this morning. This is really good news, David.’

  They’re rattling on about tents and knowing where she was, but there’s something they don’t mention: as long as Rachel was signing in, she was sticking to the rules. For a moment Morris feels comforted by this knowledge and considers raising it with the others. But the comfort passes and he says nothing. They’ll only ask whether he ever doubted that she’d stick to the rules. Then they’ll ask why, if she’s so good at sticking to rules, no one has heard from her. And he won’t know what to say.

  Wendy picks up her handbag. ‘Come on, you two. Keep me company while I have a cigarette.’

  ‘You go out,’ says David. ‘I’ll come and join you. I’ll just call Debs.’

  Wendy is hunched over in her chair with her hands tucked into her armpits. She’s rocking slightly.

  ‘Can I get your shawl?’

  She shakes her head and sits up straighter, but her hands are still tucked into her armpits and there’s still that rocking.

  ‘Thanks, but I’m not cold. It’s just my hands. They won’t stop shaking.’

  Morris keeps his hands in his pockets, ashamed of their calm solidity.

  Wendy’s hands shake so badly that she struggles to light her cigarette.

  If Morris wasn’t so ashamed of his steady hands he could take the lighter from her, lean in and light her cigarette. Or he could light a cigarette for her and take a drag himself before passing it on. If he wasn’t so ashamed he could hold the cigarette between her lips, let her drag on it and take it away until she was ready for the next drag. Like the good cop does for the handcuffed prisoner.

  Like Wendy did for Sadie when she was so sick from the chemo.

  Morris was walking down the path when he saw it. It was night. The light was on in the lounge, illuminating the sofa which Sadie was lying on. It was like watching a stage show or a silent movie. Sadie, playing the sick patient, lifting one languid arm. Wendy, the attentive sister perched on the side of the sofa, holding a cigarette up to the patient’s mouth. The patient draws on the cigarette. Her arm falls. She lies back. Her sister strokes her arm, brings the cigarette to her own mouth.

  Morris clutched his briefcase and stood dead still. He could have watched their performance all night.

  He should have watched how Wendy helped Sadie. He could have learned something. He could have taken up a little lesson and saved it for an occasion such as this. How to help someone smoke a cigarette when their wrists are handcuffed or their hands are shaking so badly they can’t light their own. Or they’ve just come home from the hospital and can only raise one languid arm.

  He tries to draw the memory out but there’s something wrong with it. She wouldn’t have smoked for years, and definitely not after chemo. Morris must have his memories mixed up. Wendy must have been feeding Sadie—soup, probably. Chicken soup. Sadie always made chicken soup when someone was sick.

  ‘I make it because it’s good comfort food,’ she said once.

  ‘You make it because you like playing the caricature Jew,’ Wendy said.

  ‘Caricature Jew. Is there any other kind? I mean, honestly, look at us. Look at Morris!’

  They both turned to consider him. He shrugged and did up a button on his cardigan—an action that clearly amused them.

  Chicken soup can’t be the right memory. There was smoke. Morris clearly remembers the smoke rising from Sadie’s face, and the smell that lingered in the lounge.

  ‘Marijuana,’ he blurts out. ‘You gave Sadie marijuana.’

  Wendy looks up sharply. ‘Sure, Sadie had weed after her chemo, but what makes you think of that now?’

  Your shaking hands, he can’t say. ‘I don’t know.’

  She gives a half-smile. ‘Sadie and the weed. There was a thing. Sadie and her weed.’

  After a while she says, ‘You know how sometimes you can be reading a book or watching a movie, and you see someone doing something that seems believable when you’re watching it. But afterwards, when the movie’s over or you’ve finished the book, you think about it and you realise that you can’t actually think of anyone doing it in real life? It’s not so strange as to be unbelievable in the story but it’s unusual enough that you think, Not in my world. In someone else’s maybe, but not mine. D’you know that feeling?’

  When Morris was ten years old, his mother made him accompany her to her boss’s house. The doctor was going on a long holiday and Pearl had to drop off papers from the surgery. Morris wanted to stay in the car, but his mother insisted that he come in and play with the doctor’s children while she and the doctor discussed what they needed to discuss. He stood behind her in the doctor’s entrance hall. There were suitcases everywhere, and children’s running feet.

  The doctor’s wife threw her hands in the air and said, ‘Did you ever see such chaos?’

  Morris’s mother said, ‘It must be a big job, the packing.’

  ‘Lord knows it’s hard enough to pack for our family, but to think of catering for four families whose only access to the mainland will be a boat that comes every few days. Think of feeding all those children for three weeks. Think of it!’

  The doctor’s family was going on holiday. With other families. There would be fourteen children in all. They were taking over a whole campsite. Morris looked around at the washing baskets and piles of toys, and thought, It looks like something from a film.

  That evening he wondered whether his life looked like a film to other children, whether the doctor’s sons might look at Morris and his mother as they sat listening to the wireless and think, Not in my world. In somebody else’s life that might happen. Not in mine.

  He imagined the doctor’s sons lying in their bunk beds. The oldest one leans down from the top bunk. ‘It must be funny to be that boy Morris, eh.’

  ‘Yeah,’ replies his younger brother. ‘It’s only him and his mother. Just the two of them. Must be funny to be just you and your mother.’

  ‘His mother’s a widow. Father’s dead.’

  The younger boy bangs his feet on the bottom of the bunk above him. The older one leans down again. ‘Yeah?’

  ‘Morris and his mother are Jewish. What do you think it’s like being Jewish?’

  ‘I dunno. I guess it’s kind of funny.’ The head retreats back to the top bunk.

  A few moments later the younger one gives three sharp bangs on the bunk. ‘What’s being Jewish?’ he asks the head which is hanging down towards him again.

  Wendy is wrong to think you only get that feeling after watching a movie or reading a book. It happens in life. All the time.

  He says, ‘Mm. I know that feeling.’

  ‘Well, it was like that with the weed. I’d read about people who smoked weed to help them through chemo. I’d seen it in a movie but I never thought I’d know someone who actually did it. When you see it in a movie, you think it’s only done by movie people—bigger, braver, story people.’

  ‘Mm.’

  ‘Well, Sadie was that person—the bigger, braver, larger-than-life story person who actually did things. She really, truly smoked the weed. It helped her get over the nausea and gave her a bit of an appetite. Just like in the stories. Bloody hell, it even got her laughing.’ Wendy gives a strange half sob. ‘How many people can say that some of their funniest memories of their deceased sister are from just before she died, when she was riddled with chemo, bald and skinny? Jesus Christ, Morris, she could still laugh. She couldn’t eat but she could laugh.’

  It takes Wendy a few moments before she can speak again. Morris busies himself with a cigarette, waits for her to collect herself enough to say, ‘Christ, that woman could laugh.’

  David comes outside. He’s holding a box of cigarettes. ‘Come on, Dad, you can’t s
moke that menthol crap. Have one of these.’

  ‘I didn’t know you still smoke,’ says Morris.

  ‘I don’t,’ David replies. He holds a hand out to Wendy and she passes him her cigarette so that he can light his off the end of hers.

  Morris excuses himself to go inside. There’s something he needs to think about.

  Morris lays the flier on the table.

  Rachel smiles up at him. He tries to smooth the flier down, but no amount of stroking will remove the cracks over her face where the shiny paper is crumpled and bent. She’s smiling at him through chicken wire. He feels unexpectedly, desperately sad for her. His daughter whose fridge is white, who is passionate about spreading the word on fitness training, considers herself lucky to be paid for doing what she loves best and must, for her exclamation-mark job, provide for herself a new name.

  His Rachel whose linen smells of lavender and who left him a notebook in her cupboard.

  They eat store-made soup which Wendy brought.

  David has the phone on the table next to his soup bowl. He picks it up immediately it rings, swallows hard before saying hello.

  It’s Molly. She has good news and bad news. David uses these words when he puts the phone down. ‘Search and Rescue has good news and bad news.’

  The good news is they’ve spoken to a tramper who saw Rachel’s tent this morning at about nine o’clock. The tent was erected exactly where Search and Rescue would have expected it to be, given Rachel’s plans—five or six hours walk from the car park. The tramper didn’t speak to Rachel or see her. He assumed she was sleeping.

  Wendy says, ‘That is good news. She probably decided to sleep in ’cause it was the last day and all. I bet she got going late.’

  They start doing sums.

  ‘So if she slept in, say until ten—’

  ‘Then it could be almost eleven before she’d packed up her tent and started walking.’

  ‘And she’d still have five or six hours’ walking to go.’

  ‘That means she’s hardly even late.’

  ‘Hardly. And for all we know she could have slept later, say until 10.30 or eleven.’

  ‘Any minute now she’ll walk out of the park right as rain and ignorant of all the fuss.’

  You don’t sleep in on a tramp, thinks Morris. On a tramp you get going with the sun. And Rachel is an early riser. Always was. As a baby she’d start crying at precisely five o’clock. Morris would hear her cries in his dreams before he heard them in the house. She’d cry only for a minute or two—just long enough for him to get out of bed. She knows I’m coming, Morris would think. She doesn’t need to make a fuss to get my attention.

  David used to giggle and coo when he had his nappy changed. Not Rachel. She gazed up at Morris, solemn and serious, as if recognising that the start of a new day is a matter of some weight. She’d wait patiently while he warmed her milk, and when he was ready she’d settle softly, softly into his arms.

  Rachel and Morris alone in a world that hasn’t yet woken.

  Then David would come crashing in and tickle Rachel’s toes to make her giggle. Sadie would follow. ‘I want my baby girl and I want a cup of tea. Come on, David, I want a cuddle before we get you ready for kindy. I want a kiss from my husband.’

  One swoop accomplished both the kiss and the removal of Rachel from her father’s arms and on to her mother’s shoulder. Rachel kept her eyes on Morris, gazing at him from over Sadie’s shoulder as she receded from the room.

  When Rachel got older Sadie started leaving a bowl of cereal out for her at night, with a little jug of milk so she could help herself to breakfast while everyone else slept. Sadie even bought a special milk jug with pictures of cows jumping over moons. They made Morris sad, those endlessly jumping cows.

  One morning he found Rachel sitting at the window with her cereal bowl in her lap. She glanced over her shoulder at him, then turned back to the window, saying, ‘When I get up early I feel like I’m the only person in the world. That’s nice.’

  The only person in the world, thinks Morris. That’s nice.

  Wendy says, ‘I suppose I’d better ask about the bad news.’

  The weather’s turned. It’s raining hard. Has been for some time. Rivers are rising. There may be landslides.

  Morris is holding a spoon. Above a soup bowl. There’s red tomato soup in the spoon. He must have been intending to bring it to his mouth but he can’t do that now. He looks down at the spoon, at the bowl. You don’t, on hearing such news, calmly go on with your soup.

  The spoon clatters against the side of the bowl. There are red spatters on the table.

  ‘Rising rivers,’ says Wendy. ‘Landslides. Jesus Christ.’

  The soup spatters look like ink stains on an old man’s pocket.

  ‘Jesus Christ.’ Wendy looks to Morris, as if expecting him to provide an explanation for the rising rivers.

  ‘She knows how to deal with rivers,’ he says.

  ‘Are you sure?’ Wendy asks.

  ‘I taught her.’

  Sometimes on a tramp Morris and Rachel would find themselves among other walkers doing the same route. This could lead to greetings, small talk and, if they were unlucky, invitations to combine pasta dinners or for Morris to have a sip of the whisky which Peter here lugs around with him on every single tramp. Like that time when he … If they stopped too long for lunch there were always other trampers, looking for conversation, whispering about a father and daughter tramping together. It’s quite sweet really. Maybe the parents are divorced.

  Always feeling sorry for Rachel and wanting to include her in their activities.

  It was like that on the tramp of the washed-away bridge. For two days they were shadowed by a party of three families. Two days of boys tearing through the bush behind them or bursting into the quiet spot where they’d stopped for lunch. Two nights in the same huts. The more the merrier, come and join us for dinner, we’ve got instant chocolate pudding for dessert.

  On the first night Morris and Rachel allowed themselves to be chivvied into socialising, but on the second Morris managed to stay firm. ‘We’ll be turning in early tonight. We have an early start tomorrow.’

  ‘Very early,’ added Rachel.

  It was still dark when they crept out of the hut next morning. They had their breakfast outside. Morris wondered whether the sleepers would consider them rude for sneaking away and found that he really didn’t care if they did. It was those families who were rude, violating his bush and scaring Rachel with their whooping. Sadie would say he shouldn’t care what they think. She’d say that he shouldn’t worry about people he’d never see again.

  They made good progress that morning. The sun rose to a clear mild day. They were alone in the world. They need never see those families again.

  At mid-morning they reached the stream. A bit later, the spot where the bridge was supposed to be. Had clearly once been. Morris pointed to some rocks on the other side. ‘It must have been there. It’s been swept away.’

  Rachel thought it might be a bit upstream. Became increasingly insistent that it was definitely upstream. Or downstream. Morris trotted after her. He knew she wouldn’t get far either upstream or down. The bush was dense. The path overgrown. The bridge had definitely been washed away. Finally she stopped and said, ‘Well then, we’ll have to cross here.’

  ‘Rachel, we can’t—’

  ‘Let’s go, Dad.’

  ‘Rachel, the bridge has been washed away. We need to think this through. We need to take it slowly.’

  ‘Those others—they’re only an hour or so away. I don’t see why we can’t cross,’ Rachel said.

  ‘It’s flowing water.’

  ‘It’s just a little stream. It’s hardly even moving. So what if we get a bit wet?’ Her tone was derisive.

  Morris knew where Rachel had learned that tone. She was mimicking her brother who over the past few months had become increasingly scornful of his parents. Sadie said David’s behaviour burned her but they s
houldn’t take it personally. David was just being a teenager. He had to scorn his parents to establish himself as his own person. She said Morris must have done it, and nagged him to tell her about his teenage rebellion. She wouldn’t accept there was nothing to tell, said, ‘Come on, Morris. You know you can’t hold out on me.’ She said, ‘If you don’t tell me what you did, how can I be expected to know what David will do?’ So Morris snapped at her. ‘David is nothing like me. If you want to know how he’ll behave, ask yourself what you did at that age.’

  ‘Me?’ said Sadie. ‘Me? I didn’t have to rebel. My parents were too busy doing it themselves.’ She looked sad then, and Morris felt sorry for snapping at her. He said, ‘Well, I suppose I was a bit irritable with my mother,’ and she said, ‘But you wouldn’t have been really bad, would you? You’re not like that.’ She still looked sad, so he said, ‘You know, you’re right about David establishing himself as his own person. It’s good that he’s doing it,’ and she said, ‘You and me, we didn’t need to do it. We were already our own person … people … person.’ And she smiled. But then she looked sad again and said, ‘Rachel had better get a move on if she’s going to do it. We don’t want her doing it when she’s twenty-five. There’s nothing uglier than an old rebel. Nothing uglier. Trust me.’

  Sadie would have been happy to hear Rachel’s irritable tone. She would have liked the derisive note when Rachel said, ‘Come on, Dad. Will you just get a move on. We’re not made of sugar.’

  Sadie would not have snapped.

  ‘Rachel, for God’s sake, shut up. This is important. Important.’

  She looked away.

  ‘Rachel, it’s just—’

  Morris was okay with Rachel becoming her own person. He understood that she would one day draw away. But not that day. Not when they were faced with flowing water. Not when there was an important lesson to be learned.

  Morris himself had learned that lesson about twenty years earlier.

  About twenty years earlier, Morris had sat at a river bank with a group of people and listened to a giant of a man explain the dangers of flowing water. Craig looked tall even when he was sitting down. When he spoke everyone listened—even the boys who’d been drinking beer and trying to put their empty cans in other people’s packs. Even the girl who’d kept up a steady stream of chatting since they set out that morning.