Mahalia (11 page)

Emmy had always swung like that, too.

Eliza finally stopped and came to take Mahalia on the swing with her. She held the baby firmly across the chest with one arm and with the other held the chain of the swing. Higher and higher they went, till Matt feared for Mahalia's safety, but she was squealing with pleasure.

‘What is it with girls and swings? And girls and horses for that matter?' he said, when Eliza finally touched ground and propelled a laughing Mahalia back into his arms.

‘Oh well, if you don't know that . . .' said Eliza. She was panting, and beads of sweat stood out on her upper lip. She licked them away.

Next they went on a whirly thing, a flat disc of metal that someone had to push, then leap onto at the last moment as the whole thing spun recklessly around like a top. Eliza did the pushing, and Matt sat in the middle and held onto the bar with Mahalia in his arms, but he was dizzy far sooner than either of them were. When it had slowed down enough they staggered away and collapsed together in a heap on the grass.

Eliza challenged him to an arm wrestle. Although she was strong, he could have won if he'd made the effort, but then something in him simply gave out and his arm collapsed onto the ground. Perhaps it was her lion's eyes, their slight concentration towards the middle of her face that did it. They never left his, willing him to defeat.

When they arrived back, Matt took Mahalia to have a bath. She was big enough to sit in a proper tub now, if he stayed beside her and propped her up. She loved to suck on the washer, pushing her face into it the way a dog wrestles with a bone.

They were nearly finished when Eliza came to the door of the bathroom. ‘You've got a visitor,' she said.

Matt wrapped Mahalia in a towel and went downstairs. Mahalia was naked and pink, and sucked on her rubber duck. She clung harder to Matt when she saw the stranger there.

‘I hope you don't mind me calling in,' said Emmy's mother, ‘but you said I could, and you didn't say whether you had the phone.' She looked anxious.

Matt came forward with a smile. He'd never been sure how to address Emmy's mother so he didn't call her anything. ‘Would you like to come in?'

He took her to the kitchen where Eliza was making pizzas. Matt introduced them, hesitating over Emmy's mother's name,
Mrs Wood
. He wasn't used to calling people ‘Mrs'. He called all his mother's friends by their first names.

‘Would you like a cup of tea?' asked Eliza. ‘It's no trouble!' she added brightly.

‘No, thank you. I'm only staying a moment.' Matt offered Mrs Wood a chair and she sat down, smiling quickly up at him.

She sat awkwardly opposite Matt at the table. Mahalia sucked on her rubber duck and looked at her grandmother gravely, overtaken by Matt's serious mood.

‘I wondered . . .' said Emmy's mother, ‘. . . I came to see if Mahalia could visit us some time. On her own. She could stay the night, if you liked.'

Matt hadn't expected this. He felt dismayed. He hadn't minded visiting them, but this was unexpected. He looked towards Eliza, but her back was turned to him; she was tactfully rolling out pizza dough at the bench near the sink.

‘I'd rather she didn't stay overnight,' he said. ‘She's not used to being without me.' He frowned, thinking about it, trying to sort out his feelings, weighing them up against what he supposed was reasonable. The truth of the matter was that the thought of Mahalia going somewhere without him made him panic.

‘But I suppose you could take her for a few hours if you liked,' he said. He thought he could live with that. ‘She's at the stage where she's scared of strangers though, and . . . she doesn't know you very well.'

Emmy's mother reached her hand across the table towards Mahalia, who turned her face and hid it against Matt's shoulder. ‘If she comes to visit us she'll soon get to know us,' said Emmy's mother. ‘Won't you?' she added, smiling at Mahalia, who had turned to stare at her with wide eyes.

‘Well, I suppose it would be all right – just for a short time,' said Matt.

‘Would later this week do – Friday?'

‘Okay.' Matt felt like a traitor, for Mahalia was sitting on his lap, warm in her rough towel, trusting and innocent.

‘All right then. I'll pick her up. Would ten in the morning suit you?'

Matt nodded.

Emmy's mother got to her feet and said goodbye to Eliza, and Matt walked her to the front door. Afterwards, he took Mahalia upstairs to dress her and, with a heavy heart carried her back down to the kitchen where Eliza was putting the toppings on her pizzas.

Eliza said nothing to Matt about the visit, but for Mahalia's benefit, looking into the baby's face and smiling, she named the ingredients aloud as she placed them on the dough. ‘. . . some to
ma
toes,' she said, ‘some c
ap
sicum, some
mozz
arella cheese and – ,' said with a flourish ‘– a
little
bit of salami for happiness!'

Matt tried to see some connection between Emmy with her wild ways and slight, slim body and the plump, staid woman who'd sat in his kitchen; but he couldn't. Maybe Emmy
was
adopted, as she'd suspected.

Then again, Matt couldn't see any similarity between himself and his own father either. His father hadn't disclaimed his parentage of Matt, but had never wanted to be a father to him. If Emmy had been adopted, Matt felt his father had un-adopted him.

Matt's father had three cacti on his windowsill: a hairy one, a small one like a button, and a double-headed one.

He put them where they would get the most sun. He'd been told cacti need at least four hours of sunshine a day in order to flower. Matt wasn't there long enough to see that happen.

Matt had known his father for exactly a week.

At least, that was the way he thought of it, for it was the total time they spent together.

When he was fourteen he'd started asking about his father again. He hadn't asked since he was five. This time his mother arranged for them to meet.

On the way down the coast in the train, Matt looked out at the country rolling by and wondered why his mother had never taken him to meet his father on one of their almost annual trips to Sydney to see her friends. He wondered if he should have a name badge so his father would recognise him.

He was surprised by his father's soft American accent. His mother hadn't told him about that. His mother hadn't told him much at all, mainly because she felt that it was his father's business to tell him. But his father wasn't good at doing that. Anything Matt knew he had to gather for himself.

His father was neat. That and his accent were the most noticeable things about him. He was smaller than Matt, too, and even though he wasn't very old his hair was grey. He wasn't a suit-wearer, he didn't have to be because he taught at a university, but he wore neat pressed trousers and neatly ironed shirts, with small blue checks mostly. He didn't do his own ironing; he paid someone else to do it.

He drove a small flash car – a Saab, but an old one. The plush seats and the swift clean handling of the car through the city streets was unlike the bumpy progress of the old cars along dirt roads that Matt was used to and he felt alien.
I hate
cars
, Matt told himself.
I'll never drive a car, especially not one like
this
.

His father's voice was so soft it made Matt feel loud. He felt loud and awkward and too tall, next to his neat, small father. Matt swallowed his loud, Australian-accented voice in shame and embarrassment.

His father worked a lot in his study, marking papers and preparing classes; even though Matt was on school holidays, the university didn't seem to be. So Matt crept around the flat or stayed in his room, trying not to make too much noise.

The room Matt stayed in was blue, with a neatly made bed, and framed pictures on the walls. He was the loneliest he'd ever been in that room. He lay on the bed and ticked off in his mind the days he was to stay.

Everything in the kitchen had its place. His father cooked neat meals, and was as fastidious as a cat. The breakfast toast had crumbs so dry they stuck in Matt's throat.

They had absolutely nothing to say to each other. Because his father was an academic, learning stuff from books was his thing. He'd asked Matt about school, and Matt had answered politely, hesitantly, but school wasn't really
his
thing, and it showed.

Matt remembered sitting next to him in a coffee shop in Glebe, a place full of smart city people. His father read the Saturday papers. He smiled at Matt when he turned the page, and slipped him some money to go off and get something of his own to read. Matt bought a copy of
Modern
Guitarist
and when he came back with it his father looked at the cover and raised an eyebrow. ‘Do you play?' he asked, and Matt nodded. ‘That's great!' said his father, nodding. Then he went back to his paper, not in an unfriendly way, Matt thought, but because he couldn't think of anything else to say. And neither could Matt.

Matt had wished he'd brought his guitar, so at least he could show his father he could do
something
. His irrational desire to win this man's approval confused him, and left him resentful, and even more determined not to sit in a room all his life
reading books and pushing pens
, as he put it to himself.

And when Matt got home, the thing he most wanted to ask his mother (but didn't, because he feared hurting her feelings) was
why
and
how
they had ever got together long enough to have him.

11

At this stage of his life Matt felt there should enter an old carpenter or stonemason or some sort of positive male role model who would apprentice him and help him make something of himself.

But such a person wasn't going to materialise. As Matt walked the streets of Lismore, pushing the stroller in front of him, going into shops to search out the scrappy food that kept them alive, he saw only people like himself, people getting by and making do. But life had a tenacious streak, and optimism always asserted itself.

‘Hey, you've got a beautiful baby!' said a woman in an overcoat with matted orange fur like a teddy bear that had been loved too much. It wasn't cold, but she wore a coat anyway, and with her hands in her pockets, she fanned the flaps at the front of the coat as she walked.

That made Matt smile. He gave a skip and ran the stroller extra fast, and Mahalia clutched the side of the stroller and urged it forward with her body, as if she were riding a horse.

He bathed Mahalia, dressed her neatly for another visit to Emmy's parents, packed a bag: some nappies and spare clothes and her plastic drinking cup with the lid and two teddy bears and a rattle that Charmian had given her.

Emmy's parents had put a baby car seat in the back of their car, and as Matt leaned inside and plopped her onto the cosy wool seat cover Mahalia laughed and thought it was a game. He clicked her into the seatbelt and tickled her under the arms. But when he stepped back and closed the door she realised that she was being abandoned; she squealed with rage and pushed her chest forward, puffing it up against the restraining belt. She held out her arms to him and cried, and Matt, at the last moment, raced round to the other side of the car and wrenched open the back door.

‘You don't mind if I come?' he said. Emmy's mother's face was reflected in the rear-vision mirror. He couldn't make out her expression but he flashed her a smile. His hand rested comfortingly on the top of Mahalia's head. ‘I don't think she's ready to go by herself yet.'

It seemed a long visit. In between the ritual of morning tea and lunch they sat and watched Mahalia's antics and talked awkwardly about her. There wasn't a lot to say.

Mahalia could pull herself up by holding onto a piece of furniture and she stood clutching the sofa and beating her hand proudly against the seat. She always knew when she had achieved something and liked other people to notice it too.

At lunch, she picked up her food delicately between her index finger and thumb and put it fastidiously in her mouth and chewed with great enjoyment. She seemed to sense that they were visitors, for she didn't throw things on the floor for Matt to pick up endlessly as she did at home.

She sat for ages on the living-room floor and put clothes pegs into a tin, and then took them out again, seeming never to tire of it, looking up and laughing at Matt and at Emmy's mother every so often to show them she knew how clever she was.

They sat and watched her, embarrassed and dismayed by the possibility of conversation. Finally Matt thought that perhaps he could decently end the visit, and he offered to catch a bus back, but Emmy's mother insisted that she drive them, and Mahalia sang all the way home.

If sometimes Matt experienced his life as robust and full and expectant, there were other times when all seemed to be fragility. Then the weathered boards of the old shop appeared as thin and tenuous as his life. There was a flimsiness to it; it could be torn down in an instant. At these times Matt felt vulnerable, lay curled on his bed trying not to think how he could manage it all, and was tugged reluctantly back to the world by Mahalia's wail as she woke.

There were days without money that could stretch into weeks. When the rent and power bills were due no one in the house had any spare cash. Eliza ate when she went to her coffee-shop job, and it didn't seem to matter to Virginia whether she ate or not; her thin body seemed to be able to exist without the benefit of food, but Matt always needed to eat, and he wouldn't let Mahalia go without.

The times when he and Elijah used to go bush and live off the land had been good training for him. There wasn't much that Matt didn't regard as food. He and Elijah had eaten hairy mussels from the creek that tasted of mud, and old catfish so oily and strong-tasting that he almost gagged on them. They'd munched on lilly-pilly fruits, some as delicious as apples and others with a taste like eucalyptus oil. If the worst came to the worst, Matt thought, he'd head into the bush and kill something. He wouldn't ask his mother for help; he always let on that everything was fine.