Bad Behaviour

by Liz Byrski

  It has not always been easy being the black son of a white single mother; as a teenager especially, he worried where he fitted, who he actually was. He has been teased for being too black and for not being black enough. His strength in dealing with that has come from what Zoë has told him about his father, and about his own importance in Zoë’s life. Now he wonders how much of what she said was true. Has she always seen him as the root of her shame? A sense of responsibility for her feelings has always been a faint, uneasy background noise that he has never previously been able to define. And so much is happening now; his love for Justine, his new relationship with Gwen. He wants to be able to enjoy it all but feels trapped in the threads Zoë has woven. He wants to be free of this part of being a son. Surely, he thinks, gazing out to the gleaming surface of the moonlit water, sometime the mothering just has to stop.

  Justine dreams frequently of the day she found the map. She dreams that she is back in Mal Fitzgerald’s office, planning her escape; memorising the pattern of the long winding road that linked the convent and the farm, counting off the things she will need for the journey. Then there’s the moment when the pain and the nausea strike her. She feels the warm leak of blood and staggers, bent double, out onto the verandah and falls on her knees. That’s when the reality of the dream changes to fantasy: instead of rolling in agony on the decking, instead of the heat and dust, the flies that settle on her face and in the trails of blood on her legs, the sound of voices and people running towards her, there is warmth and sunlight, and she is being lifted into some other, almost heavenly, dimension. When she wakes, as she does now, from the dream, she knows it is about freedom – the freedom of the moment that has brought her to this point. But sometimes she wonders whether there is more to the dream; when she was younger, she feared it meant that she might not be able to have a child. Now, however, she realises that her age makes this pretty unlikely anyway. Through the darkness she can see Dan standing on the balcony, silhouetted against the night sky. She wonders if he has thought realistically about this. They’ve never talked about having children; how will he feel if they can’t? She knows he’s out there going over his conversation with Zoë, and she’d like to comfort him but she holds back. This is something he alone can deal with; all she can do is complicate it.

  She rolls over in bed, her back to the window and closes her eyes, searching again for the bliss at the end of the dream. In reality she was certainly lifted up, but onto the creaky old settee on which Mal Fitzgerald and Greg used to drink and smoke. The dusty upholstery, with its reek of tobacco and grog, made her heave. There was a seemingly endless journey in the back of the car, with her head in Gladys’s lap and Gwen driving. And then the lights, bright lights, in her eyes, strange faces staring down at her, a mask over her face, the chill of metal instruments on her skin, the prick of a needle in her arm; and then darkness.

  When she woke, it was to softer lights in a hospital ward, and Gwen sitting beside her bed, her face grey with exhaustion.

  ‘You have nothing to be ashamed of,’ she’d told Justine before she left the hospital to drive back to the farm. ‘What’s happened to you is terrible and none of it is your fault; it’s his. And it’s my fault too. I must have been blind. All I could see was that you’d changed and I didn’t know why.’ She left, telling Justine that she would be back in a few days. ‘Tomorrow, Gladys will come and take you to my mother’s house. It’s by the sea. Have you ever seen the sea?’

  Justine shook her head. ‘I saw some pictures.’

  ‘Well, now you’ll see the real thing. You’ll be able to see it from the window, and we can walk to the beach and you can learn to swim. You’ll never see him again, Justine, I promise you that.’

  It was this room they had brought her to, and she had shared it with Gladys until they were sure she would not wake in fear and wander onto the balcony. She has only a hazy memory of Gwen’s return from the farm, a couple of weeks later, when she disappeared with a chalky white face and shaking hands, into her room for several days. It was almost five years before Justine learned what had happened back there.

  Justine touches the shark’s tooth that rests at the base of her throat. It’s suspended now on a fine gold chain, the strip of black leather replaced long ago. She wears it always; a constant reminder that anything is possible even in the most unlikely circumstances. Dan comes quietly back into the room, and she feels the flow of cool air as he lifts the bedclothes and climbs back in beside her. He is, she thinks, a very fortunate man. He lost his father but has lived always in the warmth of his mother’s unconditional love, and, later, the love of his stepfather and his sisters. Now things are changing and he has to adjust. Love makes her want to protect him from even this comparatively minor emotional hiccup but he must find his own way. She rolls over to face him, stretching her bed-warm body against the chilly length of his and laying her arm across his chest.

  ‘Love you,’ she whispers.

  He pulls her closer. ‘You are more than I ever dreamed of,’ he murmurs against her hair. And he kisses her forehead and wraps his arms around her.

  TWENTY-NINE

  Fremantle – April 2000

  In the space of a week, Zoë has become a person who checks her email several times an hour. Had she always meant to send the message? Would she have reread and changed it several times if she hadn’t always intended to send it? Anyway, it’s gone and the momentary relief of sending was replaced, when she reread it the next morning, with excruciating embarrassment. She might just as well, she thinks, have stood naked in the middle of the shopping centre. Still, it will only be read on the other side of the world, by someone whom she’ll probably never hear from again. And yet . . . and yet, a vein of longing throbs in Zoë’s temples; a nagging desire for completion, as though she has reached out a hand and only the corresponding touch of another can release her.

  ‘You don’t seem very pleased about it,’ Gaby says, as they make their way around Coles with the trolley. ‘You were always saying it was time Dan found someone and settled down, and now you’re sulking.’

  ‘I am not sulking!’ Zoë protests. ‘Who says I’m sulking?’

  ‘No one; me, I thought . . .’

  ‘Well, you’re wrong.’

  ‘I suppose it’s, like, the empty nest thing,’ Gaby says.

  ‘What empty nest thing?’ Zoë asks, mildly irritated by Gaby’s interference.

  ‘You know, like they say about women when their children leave home, that they get depressed. I heard it on Sunrise, some psychologist was saying . . . I think it’s your hormones, and you feel useless or something.’

  ‘My hormones are perfectly okay, thank you,’ Zoë says, plucking a packet of digestive biscuits from the shelf. ‘And with you and your sister still there, the nest is hardly empty – although sometimes I think it would be a relief if it was.’

  ‘Charming!’ Gaby says. ‘So, does that mean I can go travelling after all?’

  Zoë affords her a grin. ‘You don’t miss a trick, do you? Look, we’ve talked about all this before, Gabs. You can go, and Dad and I will help you, but you have to stay on at school and do your exams. You’re too young. The best time to do it would be after uni.’

  ‘But heaps of people do it in their gap year, and, anyway, I’ve told you before that I don’t want to go to uni. Travel is an education in itself; Mr Wheedon said so.’

  ‘Yes, well, Mr Wheedon’s right. But I’m sure he didn’t mean you should leave school and head off on your own without doing the TEE and trying to get into university. Another couple of years and you’ll have a bit more experience, and you’ll enjoy it more. If you don’t do your exams, you’ll always regret it.’

  Gaby gives a huge sigh of frustration. ‘You always say that but, you know, Mum, not everybody is suited to going to university. Some people learn by experience or get apprenticeships and stuff.’

  Zoë raises her eyebrows. ‘Mr Wheedon again or more wisdom from the Sunrise team of experts?’
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br />   ‘No, actually; we had this careers seminar thing, and this woman said that people should think about how they really want to spend their future, how they’d like their working days to be, and that that would help you work out what you wanted to do.’

  ‘And your point is?’

  ‘I thought I’d like to be, you know, travelling in Europe, seeing heaps of places and reading about them, and doing a bit of work, like being a waitress or picking grapes, or something.’

  Zoë stops the trolley and faces her daughter. ‘Well, the TEE won’t stop you doing that, and nor will going to university. And at least you’ll be able to get a decent job when you come back. Listen; darling, I used to say the same thing to your gran when I was your age. I nagged her rotten to let me go to London and in the end she gave in.’

  ‘There you are, then,’ Gaby says triumphantly. ‘You were allowed –’

  ‘But I wish she hadn’t,’ Zoë cuts in. ‘I wish she’d made me stay at school, do my exams, go to university or get qualified for something, before I did it. I wish I’d been a bit more mature. I don’t want you to make the same mistakes I made.’

  ‘Well, you can’t punish me for your mistakes. And I’m not even interested in having a boyfriend, so I’m not likely to go and get myself pregnant.’

  ‘Gaby,’ Zoë says, wounded by this but not wanting to let it show. ‘Give it a rest; stop bludgeoning me.’ The supermarket seems to close in on her. The bright lights and colourful shelves, the shoppers with their trolleys, the special offer signs, all make her feel as though her life has become some bizarre reality TV show from which she will suddenly be evicted for past mistakes, without anyone noticing that she’s gone. ‘I’m not trying to punish you, darling,’ she says, as heat prickles her neck. ‘I want you to have much more than I had, much, much more. But I want you to be ready for it, so you can get the best from it, be able to work out what’s good for you and what’s not.’

  ‘Oh, my god, you’re crying. Mum, don’t cry,’ Gaby says, stricken by the sight of a tear. ‘I didn’t mean to be horrible, please don’t cry.’

  Zoë sniffs and brushes her fingers under her eyes. ‘It’s okay, I’m not really crying. But I mean it, you know. I don’t want to stop you, I really don’t. I just want you to be older; a bit more prepared.’

  ‘Yeah, yeah, sure, Mum,’ Gaby says. ‘I know, I was just – you know, having a whinge. Look, we’ve got everything now; we can put it in the car and go for a coffee, if you like.’

  They pack the shopping into the boot, and walk to South Terrace, where the pavement cafés are busy with Saturday shoppers and day trippers.

  ‘So, you are pleased for Dan, then?’ Gaby asks as they settle at a table. ‘I think Jus is brilliant. So’s Gwen. She says I can go swimming with her and the Polar Bears, but I’d need to stay the night at her place because we have to get up at half past five.’

  Zoë laughs. ‘She’s obviously never tried to get you out of bed at seven o’clock on a school morning.’

  ‘Justine’ll come too, she says. It’s gonna be cool having her as a sister-in-law.’

  ‘Mmmm. Well, let’s see what happens. They may not even get married, you know; they haven’t known each other very long.’

  ‘’Course they will. D’you think Justine’ll ask me to be a bridesmaid?’

  Zoë ignores the question, takes a twenty-dollar note from her purse and hands it to Gaby. ‘Why don’t you go and get the coffee? I’ll have a flat white and a blueberry muffin, and get whatever you want for yourself.’ She breathes a sigh of relief as Gaby leaves the table. ‘If I haven’t heard from her by this time next week,’ she tells herself, ‘I’ll know she’s not going to write back. And if she doesn’t, I don’t care; she gave up on me when I needed her most.’ Only she knows that she does mind, and when she gets home, she goes straight to the computer to check her email but the inbox is empty – again.

  Renovating the flat has put Gwen in the mood for spring cleaning, although it’s autumn. She wakes early, goes to the beach for a swim, and returns to a hot shower, brown toast with Vegemite, and is raring to go. She knows she’s lucky to have so much energy. People assume she’s younger than she is; she, too, is sometimes pulled up short by the realisation that she is nearly seventy-five. It’s her forties she clings to, because it was a time when everything changed for her, all of it for the better. A time when she discovered what she was capable of.

  Today, she thinks, she’ll clear out the old bureau desk. Dan has finally persuaded her to buy a laptop and fixed her up with a broadband connection. Having discovered the internet she feels like a child let loose in a toyshop: newspapers from around the world, books, everything is just a mouse click away. She wants a nice modern desk for her laptop but first the bureau has to go. It is stuffed with old correspondence, articles clipped from magazines, dress patterns, recipes she’s never used and her old notebooks. She prefers not to call them journals, which she thinks sounds rather self-important; she’s always been an intermittent record keeper. They’re just slim exercise books, piled up in one of the drawers, their covers tatty, the dates scrawled across the front. If it were up to her, she’d dump them, but Justine would never forgive her.

  ‘You must never throw them out,’ she’d said, years ago. ‘Please, Gwen; leave them for me, promise me you will.’

  ‘Whatever for?’ Gwen had asked, ready to drop them in the bin.

  ‘Because they’re your story, our story. Please, Gwen.’

  And so now she must find a home for them, in her bedroom, she thinks, not down here on the bookshelf where someone might read them. She dumps the pile onto a chair, and the smooth covers shift and slide, and several fall on the floor. A piece of yellowing card glides down to join them. Gwen gathers up the notebooks and turns the card over. It is a picture of the Sacred Heart, one hand raised in a blessing, the other pointing to his, now somewhat faded, red heart. Gwen’s own heart gives a leap and, she sits on top of the other notebooks and gazes at it. It’s the picture Justine gave her the day they went to the convent to find her box.

  She had realised, soon after she had married Mal Fitzgerald, that she couldn’t bear to have his children. It was later, when she had paid a visit to the convent one day with her mother, who was a regular donor, that the idea of a young girl whom she could nurture came to her. The child would have to work, that was for sure; Mal would not stand for someone for whom he could see no use. But Gwen thought she could repay this work by giving the child a better life.

  Even sitting here alone now, she blushes at her arrogance. But back then, she’d just thought she could give a child a home and have someone to care for.

  ‘I knew it had to be you,’ she’d explained to Justine, years later. ‘There was something about you, something that wouldn’t be crushed. That was why I was so frustrated when you became so quiet and unhappy. You’d been doing so well; the reading, the sewing, even with the arithmetic you hated so much. If only I’d realised . . .’

  Browsing now through the pages of the notebook, she comes across the long gap between the week when Justine ended up in hospital and when the record begins again weeks later. Then there are pages and pages of painful detail about that last trip to the farm and about what happened with Mal. She certainly doesn’t want to read all that, and she flicks ahead to the point that she and Justine went to the convent, several months later.

  ‘Absolutely not, Mrs Fitzgerald,’ Mother Superior had said, drawing herself up to her full height. ‘The child is making a fool of you, I’m afraid. All her possessions were in her bag when you took her away. She couldn’t have hidden anything; we wouldn’t have allowed it. And under the water tank, of all places. Ridiculous.’

  ‘Justine is very clear about it, Mother Superior,’ Gwen had said. ‘The things are in a cigar box under the tank, and we’d like to go there now and dig it up. It’s very important to her.’

  ‘I really can’t allow it.’

  Gwen felt, rather than heard, Justine’s sharp i
ntake of breath and sensed the droop of her shoulders. She looked around her, wondering what to do, and the sight of the crucifix on the wall gave her an idea.

  ‘I believe the chapel is in need of repair,’ she said, looking coldly at the nun as she put her handbag on the desk and drew out her chequebook. ‘Perhaps a small donation might help.’

  Mother Superior held her gaze for a moment and then looked down. ‘That’s very kind . . .’

  ‘On the clear understanding . . .’

  ‘Of course.’

  Gwen wrote the cheque, tore it out of the book and handed it to her. ‘There’s no need to see us out. Justine knows the way.’

  But Justine had grown too big to crawl into the space, and had had to run to where the gardener kept his tools and find two spades. Together they’d dug away at the earth and the tufts of grass so that she could wriggle through.

  ‘This is for you, Mrs Fitzgerald,’ Justine had said, handing her the picture when they were back in the car and she was wearing Norah’s necklace. ‘It’s Jesus. It’s a bit messy but it’s the only thing I’ve got to give you. Apart from this necklace, it’s the only special thing I’ve got that didn’t come from you.’

  Gwen looks again at the card. ‘I’ll keep it always,’ she’d said then. ‘And let’s hope we’ll be as lucky in our next search.’

  Now she props the Sacred Heart up on the mantelpiece, scoops up the notebooks, and is heading for the stairs when there’s a ring at the doorbell.

  Gaby is standing on the porch, unrecognisable at first under her bike helmet. ‘You said I could come over sometime,’ she says, unbuckling the strap. ‘Is now okay?’

  ‘Well . . . yes, I suppose so,’ Gwen says. ‘It might have been better to call first, I might have been out.’