Grace's Table (14 page)

Grace had nursed many people much older than seventy, especially when she worked at Moreville, a gloomy place with its fragile sense of permanence. She remembered how eyebrows lifted with childish expectation when she entered a patient's room, as though she'd come to rescue them, take them home. Once they realised she'd only come to hand over a meal tray or make their bed they must have felt sharp disappointment. Not that all of them showed it. With some, the eyebrows simply dropped again and the passive mask of calm waiting returned to their faces. But there were those who never stopped railing against where they'd ended up. They'd slap and bite and scratch; throw things – trays, combs, accusations – or sob, sometimes for hours. In many ways, Grace respected them more. They refused to give up the energy that proved they were still alive.

Peter, imperturbable, went on, ‘I don't think you appreciate how much these big inner city blocks are worth if you subdivide them. Besides, it's more land than you need. If I was you, I'd carve off one of the blocks and sell it to a developer. I bet six months from now you'd be asking yourself why you didn't do it sooner!'

‘Not to mention the financial security it would offer you.' Susan nodded approval at her brother, looked to Richard for support.

‘Oh, yes. Security,' he said. ‘Very important at any age.'

Pa never saw the need to decrease the size of his farm by so much as an acre and neither did anyone suggest he should. He'd kept it all, right up until the day he collapsed down a back paddock where Mother eventually found him, virtually unconscious and plucking at the grass with one hand. Her mother always believed he was trying to keep a hold of the land he'd loved so much. It was a comforting idea.

‘I'm quite attached to my backyard clutter,' Grace said. ‘But by all means bin it, subdivide it and spend it when I'm dead.'

‘You cheat!' chorused from somewhere behind Des's old shed. ‘That wasn't seventy.'

‘But until then I think it's doing a pretty good job as a playground for your children, so let's just enjoy the space for as long as we can.'

Susan blushed. Peter shrugged: ‘Only thinking of you,' he said, ‘and all the upkeep. It's fine while you can still look after it. But …'

Each person was left to fill in the last line.

‘But,' Ada said, voice quivering, not with the tremors of age or injury, Grace knew, ‘when it comes time for you to be so concerned, you'll be here like a shot to cut the grass for your mum, won't you, Peter?'

‘Well – yes. I could certainly do that.'

Turning seventy wasn't proving to be a simple transition from one decade to the next. Sitting here, Grace had begun to feel a sense of trepidation. Like it or not, the psychological baggage that came with the number seventy was presenting itself – in the minds of her children. She'd just been nudged over the line into old age, and new unspoken words pressed at their lips.

It looked like the only thing holding them back for now was courage. A courage that was growing in strength with each beer or glass of wine.

‘I'm going to check the lamb and bring out some more dip.' Grace was eager for the solitary comfort of her kitchen, away from what her children might want to say next.

‘Can I help?' Ada turned with difficulty to face Grace.

‘Thanks, Ada, but I can manage.'

Back in the one room of her house that had seen more of her life than any other, Grace felt calmer. This was her space, her haven, her bolthole. The kitchen was the vault that stored her memories, witnessed her everyday actions, kept her secrets.

Grace remembered how she used to embrace herself in this room. She'd stand in the centre of it, between the fridge and the table, and wrap her arms tightly round her body. She did this late at night when the house was most still and sleep had come to everybody else but wouldn't come to her. There, she'd turn slow circles, always anti-clockwise, and with each turn she'd take in the four walls, over and over again. Throughout this circling she'd will the colour of the walls to go back through beige to lemon to soft, soft blue. Her turning, she knew later, was nothing more than a crazy attempt to shift time backwards. A foolish unscrewing of the mind.

When she finally accepted that the walls would remain beige, she took up sitting at the kitchen table for long periods of time. Sometimes her fingers worked in the dark at the scratches and dents on the Formica surface, trying to read them like Braille. At other times she'd simply sit and watch the moon move across the sky through the kitchen window. Some nights it was so bright she could see the veins and tiny hairs on the backs of her hands. Even though they were still young hands then, she remembered thinking how old they looked, all bone and loose skin; her wedding band drooped right down to the middle knuckle of her finger.

Des would get up some nights, say, ‘Grace, come back to bed.'

‘No, I want to stay here,' she'd tell him.

‘Why?' he'd ask, never getting it.

‘I'm keeping watch.'

Her sitting lasted months, and she came to sense something stir within those walls. If asked to describe what, she'd say it was as though the kitchen developed a will of its own; it became strong, committed, ready.

She went back to her bed then, but would leave a light on in the kitchen each night. She told Des it was for Claire, in case she needed to find her way there. It didn't matter to Grace that her daughter couldn't. Des never argued the point; he'd stopped arguing many points by then, especially those about Claire.

There was something about that night light that finally calmed Grace. It was difficult to recall how or why now, but at the time all she knew with any certainty was that, while it was on, the kitchen remained awake, vigilant, so that she might sleep.

When the sun came up in the mornings, Grace could keep watch herself while she cooked.

*

She looked across to the table, a pine rectangle now, not Formica, its top equally scarred with everyday use. She pictured her family seated there. She could see them as they cleared food from their plates, and sometimes not; grumbled over schoolyard injustices, real or imagined; or sulked, chin in palm, until someone gave in. She could see homework books open, letters being written, friends sitting, hands cradling mugs, gripping glasses, tissues. She had visions of eight or more teenagers squeezed round that table, then at other times a solitary person taking a solitary meal, and recently two together. If the things that had occurred around her kitchen tables over the years were etched as words onto their surface, then their tops would be covered with the tiny print of dictionaries and bibles, just to fit all the stories there to tell.

Now Grace would've liked to spend some time at that table, alone, reading those stories with her fingertips for meaning as she used to. Instead, she picked up the carving fork from the bench, opened the oven door to a blast of heat and poked the long tines into the thickest part of the lamb. She watched as its juices ran clear from the two holes. She took the joint from the oven, wrapped it in foil and allowed it the liberty of rest.

Then Grace returned and placed a different dip on the patio table.

‘What d'you call this one?' Peter asked.

‘Baba ganoush,' Grace said.

‘Baba-who?'

‘Ganoush, you goose,' Jane jangled, like a cereal ad.

‘It's Middle Eastern, Mediterranean – somewhere like that,' Grace said. ‘Made from eggplant, plus a bit of garlic, olive oil, lemon and a few other things you wouldn't know. It's lovely with this dipped into it.' She held out a basket of flat bread cut into irregular pieces. ‘Lebanese bread,' she said.

‘Turkish, isn't it?' Jane asked.

‘The packet said Lebanese.'

‘They're much the same thing, Jane,' Susan said.

Peter grimaced at the taste. ‘At least I know now what Dad meant when he said you had a weakness for foreign things.' He rinsed his mouth with beer.

Grace put the bread on the patio table, away from Peter, and sat down. She felt tired, and it wasn't because of the early start she'd had. This was a deeper fatigue. It grew from being on guard; wary of what might be said next. But she wasn't prepared to be silenced by it.

‘Some choices are only a weakness in the eyes of some people, Peter. To others, they're just right.' Grace took a large piece of bread and pushed it deep into the dip. ‘And your father was never the best judge.'

‘I think you're being a bit hard on h—'

‘Coo-ee,' rang out from down the side of the house.

‘Kath,' breathed Ada.

*

‘Here you all are!' Kath rounded the corner. ‘I've been banging on your front door for so long, I was starting to think you decided turning seventy wasn't worth the effort.'

In winter, when her mountain was cooler, Kath wore an assortment of colourful berets. Today, in the heat, it was a wide-brimmed camel-coloured hat that dipped and folded with every step, partly obscuring her view of the uneasy faces around the table.

Grace got up and Kath lifted the brim of her hat to kiss her.

‘Turning seventy's made you peaky,' she said, looking at Grace. ‘Come on, it's not that bad. Here, this is for you – should cheer you up.' Kath handed over a large wicker basket. ‘A birthday hamper – with some of your favourites.' With the other hand she flicked open an old black-handled fan in one quick motion like a bird opening its wings, to reveal a spray of pink cherry blossoms. ‘I'm overheating with all the excitement,' she said, fanning herself.

In the basket there was a big bunch of rainbow chard and two jars of crimson jam Grace knew would be rosella. An old Danish butter biscuit tin she guessed might now hold homemade biscuits, possibly her favourites, Melting Moments. And there was a bottle of red wine, which Grace picked for a Shiraz even before she turned the bottle round to read the label.

‘I picked the chard just before I left. Probably still growing.'

‘Thanks, Kath. It'll be delicious.'

‘Full of iron, without the metal filings, Grace,' Richard said.

‘Another of nature's hard-to-swallow medicines?' Peter asked Richard.

‘You could say that. But seriously, Peter, if you can't stomach the oily fish, have you considered taking a supplement?'

Safety, Grace decided, came in the most unexpected places.

She touched the dark leaves of the chard, admired its stalks, as colourful as any floral bouquet – yellow, orange, red, hot pink.

When Grace was a girl, she'd imagined men calling on her with a bunch of flowers in their hand. She would see herself press the blooms to her nose and close her eyes with a swoon as she caught the heady mix of roses or carnations or lilies. She'd smile at her beau with promise and he'd smile back, pleased with his clever foresight.

Des never brought Grace flowers when he called; he brought meat. He brought it wrapped in butcher's paper and secured with brown twine. Sometimes the paper would have a bloodied brown corner. At others, there'd be a pencilled tally of numbers or, if he'd taken the time, a love heart, always pierced with an arrow, and with Grace written inside. Sometimes the package would be large – a roasting joint of pork, the skin slashed in perfectly spaced lines, or a pearly heel of corned silverside – and at others it would be small, containing thick, lightly marbled medallions of beef eye fillet. Des's courting gifts were always succulent and tender, the best cuts.

Mother had looked on with a relaxed smile when Grace married Des, the butcher's legacy evident under his fingernails as he slipped the gold band on her finger.
At least my daughter won't know hunger
, her smile said. Pa's warnings had been more cautionary, and revealed an insight she wished she'd possessed back then.
A good cut of meat's only half the meal, Gracie. I hope he can give you the other half as well
.

Looking back, Grace supposed that what started as gifts of meat was always going to lead to marriage, because in accepting and cooking them for him she had already signalled her role as his wife. Back then, women weren't so worldly about their choices, if indeed they had that many to be worldly about. Grace envied young women today. She didn't think they'd be so easily swayed by a good meal, and neither did she think they would accept a plate only half full.

Grace lifted the chard to her nose. It smelt wholesome. ‘As beautiful as a bunch of flowers,' she said to Kath. ‘Only more edible.'

‘Neuroprotection, Peter, supplements! We're talking the biggies here – Parkinson's, Alzheimer's – all the usual suspects that hit the elderly. How'd you like to keep those nasty players from your door, eh?' Richard said.

‘Dad, are you pushing drugs again?'

‘Only the good ones, Jorja. Only the good.'

Kath turned and addressed the table. ‘Who's in charge of the wine round here?' she said, snapping the fan shut.

‘That'd be me, Kath. We've got a lovely bottle of Viognier on the go. A little fruity, so perhaps not to everybody's liking but I think it's delicious.' Jane went round and topped up everyone's glass.

12

The kitchen was chaotic. The meat was rested to a stupor, the peas were at risk of losing their original emerald brightness, along with the broccoli – long stalks and all – and the baby carrots had moved just beyond al dente. The cauliflower au gratin had crisped to dark brown round the edges as had the roasted vegetables, an acceptable lapse given that was how everybody liked them.

But no one could argue: the aromas in the kitchen were good.

Grace could remember dinners smelling as good in Harvest, but not always as plentiful. Today's lamb was plumper than many she'd had in Harvest. Some years the roasts had left nothing to spare. During those years Pa's cows were as thin and rangy as a mongrel dog, their hip bones and ribs on show as though their hide had been neatly laid over a skeleton. To stroke the side of one was like running a stick along a picket fence. And their once-full udders, usually awkwardly crushed between their hind legs by milking time, shrank or dried up altogether. Some ended up in a big pit in the bush, which Pa had dug with a dozer blade attached to the front of the tractor, their legs poking out from their bloated bellies like knitting needles in a ball of wool.

Livestock wasn't the only thing that grew thin at these times. Mother's plate held less too, and she'd stitch fewer new seams and darn more holes. She'd do her clever hatchings over holes in socks and jumpers; pride made sure they were close to invisible. Her stews got thinner, the desserts less sweet and the Christmas turkey shrank to a stringy chicken. Mother no longer whistled when she pegged out the clothes. Pa looked to the sky with a cheated face and Joe left school early. Dust ran higher up Grace's shins.

It was only years after the rains had come, washed the cobwebs from the rain gauge and filled the old-china cracks in the dams, that Grace recognised the changes drought had caused. As a child she saw only what each new day brought, not what the old one had taken away.

But there were also seasons of plenty, times when frugality wasn't a necessary virtue, and the Harvest Christmas table would be laden with food. And not just with those items that had made it into the freezer after the Show. There had been glossy baked hams the size of a car's wheel hub, the tops scored with diamonds and the centre of each dotted with a red glac
é
cherry, and crispy-skinned turkeys with drumsticks as thick as a toddler's arm. The custards for the dense, fruity puddings were silky and yellow, with eggs aplenty again. And Pa had loved that there could be a tot of brandy in the cream.

Grace was grateful for this hindsight now, to recognise the highs and lows of a life dictated by nature's kindness. Without it, the smiles and sighs and frowns from memories past would never reach people's faces. They'd be lost like old recipes or locks of hair.

Grace knew there was no sure way to get a large meal to the table perfectly. So, unsettled by the unfinished conversation on the back patio, she took solace in getting the gravy just as she liked it. She added a ladle-ful of master stock from the pot simmering on the back burner, and stirred.

‘Jane, could you put your glass down and give me a hand, please?'

‘Sure, Susie. Which hand d'you want?'

‘Both. The mint sauce needs pouring into a serving jug for a start. On second thoughts, I'll do it – it's boiling. Here, take these into the dining room.' Susan wrapped the new carving knife and Grace's worn, horn-handled fork in a tea towel and passed the package to Jane.

Susan probably thought the blackened steel of the fork looked shabby beside the bright new blade of the knife, maybe even made a mental note of what next to buy Grace as a gift.

But Grace didn't need a new fork any more than she'd needed new knives.

‘Only need one hand for that job.' Jane picked up her glass again and tapped out of the kitchen.

‘Watch you don't trip on the hall runner on your way,' Susan called.

Grace thought Susan should have stuck with teaching – there would be fewer scrapes and tears in any school ground where she worked.

‘The heels only look dangerous,' Jane called from the hall.

‘I wasn't thinking about the heels,' Susan mumbled.

Peter and Richard were conspicuously absent. They'd remained outside to tend the elders, as Peter put it. And Jane, even Grace had to admit, was more a liability than a help. The children, whose feed-o-meters had been grumbling for the past half-hour, kept coming in to ask that age old question:
Is it ready yet?
Nick placated them with a game of British Bulldog in the backyard. Grace could see through the kitchen window that he was making a show of not being able to catch the younger ones.

Susan decanted the mint sauce from pot to jug, spilling a good measure on the bench in the process.

‘Shit, I should have used the one with the wider opening. I bet we won't have enough now.'

Grace ripped squares of paper towel from a roll hanging on the wall and passed them to Susan.

‘Here,' she said. ‘We can always wring them into the jug if we're short.' She was only half joking. She went back to scraping the sides of the baking dish with an old tablespoon, worn flat across the top from years of metal on metal. ‘Besides, we're all family, Susan, so nobody's going to criticise our efforts. They'll all say it's lovely or delicious followed by thank you – don't worry so much.' Grace dipped her finger in the gravy and licked it. She liked it thinner and it needed more salt.

‘If it's worth doing, it's worth doing well,' Susan said.

‘It is done well.'
Some of it probably a little too well
, Grace thought.

The kitchen was at its hottest and the benches were covered in dirty pots and pans.

Grace ladled more stock into the dish, stirred some more then sampled the gravy again – it definitely needed more salt. She got the Saxa and sprinkled it across the gravy.

‘Given the family history you'd do well to go easy on that.'

‘Given the family history you'd do well to relax.'

‘Maybe I would've relaxed if we'd gone out to celebrate.' Susan mopped the last of the spill with brisk movements and tight shoulders.

Grace was tired of that old chestnut. ‘Any medical book will tell you we all need salt – just ask Richard. It's when you add extra to your plate that the damage is done. Even cows have salt blocks to lick, you know.' Grace dipped her finger in the gravy again. This time she was satisfied.

‘We're not cows,' Susan said, exasperated. ‘And all you're doing is giving the kids bad habits.'

‘You've got a vegetarian daughter descended from a butcher's family. So tell me where my bad habits have influenced that?'

‘That's just a fad she's picked up from some stupid girl at school. It'll pass.'

‘Can you still call it a fad if it's lasted more than a year?'

Then Grace wished she'd curbed her tongue. Susan opened her mouth to say something – but Jane tapped back into the kitchen.

‘Love your plates, Grace! Such fun having all different ones. Did you pick them up at antique shops?'

‘No. Life shops.' Grace worked briskly at the gravy. She imagined the spoon wearing down a year's worth of metal all at once.

‘I've never heard of Life Shops. Are they anything to do with Lifeline?'

‘Sort of.' Grace banged the spoon on the side of the baking dish. ‘It's ready.'

‘I'll get everybody in.' Jane went to the back door and yelled, ‘Come and get it!'

‘Classy,' Susan mumbled.

Grace looked at her daughter, disappointed. She thought sarcasm cheap currency.

‘Hands, everybody,' Jane said to the children as they filed past, holding the screen door open at her back – and baptising everyone with a little wine from the glass she was waving overhead.

Richard and Peter helped Ada up the back steps next, followed by Kath and Nick. Kath had linked her arm through Nick's as though she'd claimed him as her beau.

In the dining room Grace began to place people at the table. Ada had just found her seat – when shouting broke out across the street.

‘Oi, you. Bugger off.'

‘You own the bloody nature strip, do you?'

‘A good whack of it, yeah, I reckon I do given it's in front of my house.'

‘That's bullshit. The useless council owns it which means I can do what I fuckin' well like on it—'

‘Oh, for goodness sake,' Susan said. ‘Do we have to listen to this?'

‘Language alert.' Jane tried to clamp her hands over Meg's ears, but the fair head ducked and weaved out of her mother's reach.

‘Everybody knows the f-word, Mum,' Tom said. ‘It's part of the school curriculum.'

‘Just ignore them. They'll move on,' Grace said.

‘I'm moving them on right now.' Peter turned to go out.

‘Leave it, Peter.' Grace caught his arm. ‘People's tempers are frayed by the heat and mess. Let it go. They'll give it up soon enough.'

Grace watched Peter pause in the doorway. The tight fists he made of his hands. When territories were threatened, Peter's father had been like this, just as determined to reassert the boundaries.

Grace could still remember the smell of the dance hall that night as she and Bev walked in – it was ripe with cheap perfume, sweat and opportunity. The band was belting out a good likeness of Ray Charles's ‘Hit The Road Jack', which struck a rhythm deep in Grace's chest. She looked across the sea of heads, trying to spot Des's among them. It was impossible not to be caught up in the pulse of the crowd.

She and Bev walked the perimeter, each gripping the other's hand so as not to be separated. Men shimmied in front of them as though acting out some kind of mating ritual, which Grace supposed in a way they were. She and Bev edged round them and continued the search, laughing. But after two circuits of the dance hall, Grace still couldn't see Des.

‘Bev and I aren't off till late tonight,' she'd told him on the phone.

‘You're always off late. Can't you just leave?'

‘No.'

‘Why not?'

‘Because we're talking about sick people not dead animals.'

There was silence on the other end of the phone. Grace imagined him scheming ways for her escape from ward and duty, or maybe he was taking time to compose himself.

‘I should be finished by ten,' she said.

He could meet her and Bev at the nurses' quarters, then they'd all head to the dance together by taxi.

But now Des had other plans. ‘I guess I'll see you there then,' he said.

‘How will I—'

He'd hung up.

‘Do you think we should keep looking for him?' she asked Bev.

‘We've looked enough. It's his turn to try and find you – if he's here at all.' They found a seat up on the terraced balcony running round the sides of the dance floor.

Two girls – two leggy girls – without partners at a dance didn't go unnoticed. The offers to dance from eager young men kept coming but Grace gave each a polite
No
. Bev's face, full of cheery enthusiasm when men approached, was dashed to disappointment as they were sent away.

‘You dance.' Grace was conscious she was setting up an untouchable barrier around them. ‘I don't mind,' she lied.

‘I'm not going to leave you sitting here on your own.'

Grace was grateful. She was fragile enough with her chaste waiting, searching the crowds for the tall and familiar, but to be left sitting alone would feel like abandonment.

‘Thanks, Bev. He'll turn up soon, and then we can all have some fun.'

Grace's mood changed as the band moved through its mixture of slow and fast melodies. Roy Orbison's ‘Only The Lonely', too poignant in its title and theme, allowed her to wallow in calm and diligent waiting. Toni Fisher's ‘The Big Hurt' sanctioned her right to feel the victim of thoughtless neglect. When Bobby Bland's ‘Let The Little Girl Dance' came on, Grace saw it as a sign.

Angry indifference took over.

‘Come on, this is silly. He's probably not even here.'

At the next song, they caught the eyes of boys Grace had turned down, and the two girls were soon up and on the dance floor – where they stayed.

The young man Grace danced with was powerfully built but not as tall as Des. He was a confident dancer and Grace had relaxed into his lead much the same way she did with Des. Years later, she'd speculate that Des had known where she was all the time, but remained out of sight, watching her, waiting to see what she'd do.

Maybe it was Grace's easy comfort that Des recognised and felt threatened by. Or was it more to do with the fact that Grace hadn't stayed seated, waiting for him to find her? Whatever started the scuffle – one man trying to push in and the other in no mood to let him – soon led to the throwing of fists. A space cleared around the men as they fought. But Grace didn't see till she was older that it was over little more than their own masculinity.

‘Des, please. It was nothing,' Grace tried, to little effect.

She wanted to wade in and pull them apart but Bev pulled her back. ‘Are you crazy? You'll cop one.'

She gripped Bev's arm and winced with each punch that found its target. Perhaps Des hadn't anticipated the strength or skill of the other man. His fists were making contact more often than Des's.

‘Where're the bouncers? Why aren't they coming to break it up?' Grace's need for the hurting to end made time drag.

But barely a minute had passed before the men were pulled apart by two broad bouncers.

Grace followed Des's flailing arms as he fought his undignified exit from the building. Outside, thrown to the ground, he slumped, spitting blood.

Grace knelt on the rough gravel in front of him, not caring about the ladders she was putting in her expensive nylons. She dabbed at his lip with her handkerchief. But he wasn't ready to be soothed, not yet. He brushed her hand away.