Mahalia (20 page)

His world swung in an arc.

Blue. Green. Brown. The red of Emmy's shirt.

He swooped and seized Mahalia, holding her tightly against him. She squawked with surprise. Her breath was sweet and intoxicating.

Emmy's face. Dark sprinkling of freckles. Eyes, looking into his.

No crying
. His breath shuddered. Emmy's cool fingers were against his cheek. Her white pale slender fingers.

‘Don't
look
like that,' she said, sounding frightened.

‘Like what?'

She didn't reply, just kept looking at him. Mahalia wriggled to get free and he released her onto the ground.

Matt stared into Emmy's face earnestly, willing her to understand how he felt. ‘I
am
sorry you went through a hard time after she was born. But I was the one who looked after her when you went away and I did a good job of it. I'm
good
at looking after her. It's one thing I do
really well
. I won't let you take her away from me!'

Emmy laughed, embarrassed by his vehemence.

‘Well, I
am
. I know your parents think I'm hopeless, but . . . look at her.' He gestured towards Mahalia. ‘She's healthy . . . and happy . . .'

‘But I'm her
mother!
' Emmy put her hands on her hips.

‘So? Nothing will change that.'

‘I could take it to court!'

There was silence. The whole world seemed shocked. Then cicadas started a rhythmic thrumming in the trees. Matt looked over at Mahalia; she had filled the plant pot with stones and now she was tipping them out onto the ground again.

‘And you'd probably win,' he said, quietly. ‘Just because you are her mother. We both know the way things are set up. But you don't want to do that, do you?'

‘No,' said Emmy defensively.

Matt felt that they'd made a mess of things. From now on he could only salvage something. He thought of his father and the long trail of uncertainty that could be drawn through a life. ‘I want Mahalia to grow up knowing both of us,' he said. ‘Spending lots of time with both of us. That's what a kid wants. But you went away and she's used to living with me,' he said. ‘She's too young to go chopping and changing now.'

Emmy looked squarely into his eyes.

‘So that's why she should stay with me,' said Matt.

‘Emmy?' he said, trying to get through to her. ‘Let her keep living with me. For now, anyway. I don't want to take her away from you – I'd never do that . . . But she's her own person. Getting more that way every day. Maybe one day she'll want to go and live with you. I think that's quite likely.' A lump filled his throat. ‘I could handle that.'

‘Could you?' said Emmy, and laughed bitterly.

‘Maybe,' said Matt. Not having Mahalia with him was as unimaginable to him as his own death.

Emmy looked at him steadily. ‘Well, I suppose you
deserve
her more,‘she said. ‘At least, a lot of people would see it that way. But I can't just go away and forget about her, you know. I've thought of nothing else for months. I need to be able to have her sometimes. More than just sometimes. I want her to be a real part of my life.'

The words hung between them. Some words, like music, require space to make themselves felt.

‘Yes,' said Matt at last. ‘I know. But can we go on as we've been doing, for now?'

‘Okay,' said Emmy. ‘For now. But I want to work out something we can all live with.'

Matt nodded. For now. That would have to do.

Mahalia's cries interrupted them. She'd fallen over, and she wanted attention. Matt strode over to where she sat wailing on the ground and, scooping her up, returned to Emmy. All three of them sat down on the ground together.

‘She likes horses, too,' Matt said. ‘Don't you?' he added, addressing the last remark to Mahalia.

‘Horse!' she said bouncing up and down on his lap.

Emmy grinned reluctantly at him. ‘Remember', she said, ‘when you held her for the first time? The smell of your armpit was her first experience of the world.'

Matt felt for a long, optimistic moment that even though he and Emmy mightn't be together they could somehow do the best for their baby, somehow make it all work. He knew this was just the beginning of years of compromise and negotiations and juggling their time with her, but he wanted to make it work, for Mahalia.

He reached out quickly and took Emmy's hand. It was fine and weightless and pale. He glanced briefly at the constellation of freckles across her nose, and without passion, but for old time's sake, he kissed the top of her hand quickly and laid it against his cheek for a moment before letting it go again.

Because Matt
had
loved Emmy, with her freckled, luminous, magical body; he had loved the way she hadn't given a damn for anything, the way she had climbed onto the roof of the church tower and kissed and kissed him. The way she'd fallen into the river
just to know what it felt like
. He had loved the way she'd said to her parents, ‘We'll just love it, okay?'

He remembered how they had believed that loving Mahalia would be enough.

19

Matt packed up their things, glancing round as he did so and imprinting the place on his memory, for he knew he'd never return. Then Emmy drove them back to town; she said she wouldn't stay, but would come and see Mahalia tomorrow. Matt stood and watched her drive away, Mahalia on his hip. Mahalia waved until the car was out of sight. Then Matt found his key, picked up their meagre belongings, and opened the door. When it swung shut it echoed with a comforting familiar sound.

No one was at home. Inside was cool and dark and quiet. Matt made his way up the stairs to his yellow room and set Mahalia down onto the floor. He made up her cot, ready for bed (soon she would be needing a real bed, and her own room). He opened the door out onto his balcony and leaned over the railing; he could see Virginia way down at the end of the street, recognising her familiar shambling gait before he noticed her face beneath her hat. She saw him watching and waved. Matt waved back, then noticed the tangled windchimes he'd thrown into a corner of the veranda. He hung them up again, where they resumed their bony pensive sound.

It was all so ordinary. So ordinary and familiar and good.

He went downstairs and looked in the cupboards at the food situation. There were dried lentils and pasta and potatoes and baked beans in the cupboard; milk and cheese and yogurt and a squeaky fresh half-cabbage in the fridge. He was in the kitchen making dinner when he heard the front door bang shut.

Every one of her footsteps resounded in his head as she strode from the front door,
one
,
two
,
three
,
four
,
five
,
six
,
seven
, and down the tiny hall to the kitchen,
eight
,
nine
,
ten
.

The footsteps stopped.

Matt turned around from the stove.

Eliza smiled, staring at the floor, not at him. She grabbed a scrap of raw cabbage from the chopping board, crunching it between her teeth. ‘So you're back,' she said.

Weeks later, on a cool sunny day, Matt and Eliza set out on their bikes. Even though he'd got his permit at last and started to learn to drive, Matt had brought his bike in from his mother's place. With Mahalia in a baby seat on the back, they rode out of Lismore the hard way, up the steep hill that led to the coast.

They rode to a rainforest remnant for a ‘small forest walk', that Matt knew of. There was a grassy park outside the forest, and the rainforest was tiny, not big enough to get lost in, not really big enough to even walk in for very long. It wasn't like the rainforest where Matt had grown up. It was a tame forest, a forest for tourists, to give them a taste of what the ‘big scrub' that once covered the north coast had been like.

When they arrived in the car park with their bikes, Matt saw a man and a boy getting out of a car. The boy was about fourteen or fifteen, and they were obviously father and son, they looked so alike. The car was an old sports car, a single man's car, and something about them made Matt feel that perhaps the two didn't live together, that they were on a visit with each other. Matt took Mahalia out of her bike seat and unstrapped her helmet as he watched them walk away into the forest.

There was a playground in the park, and instead of going off on a walk straight away, he and Eliza decided to rest and let Mahalia play there.

‘You're thoughtful,' observed Eliza, narrowing her golden eyes against the sun. She lay on her back on the grass, lolling like a big cat.

‘Am I?' said Matt. He sat beside her, cross-legged, and tore a leaf into strips. ‘What did you mean when you said that you thought we're all a long way from home?'

Eliza looked astonished. ‘I must have said that ages ago! Fancy you remembering that!'

‘I remember lots of things.'

‘When was it?'

‘That time in the kitchen when I played the guitar and you sang. What did you mean?'

‘You do have a good memory.'

‘Well?'

‘It's just this feeling I have that lots of people aren't in the place where they really feel at home. You can spend a lifetime searching for it. I never truly felt at home with my family – I was always way different to them, even though I love them. Maybe for lots of people the only place they'll ever be at home is in heaven. But I like to feel that I'll find a home somewhere here on earth.'

Mahalia, who had been playing a little way off, came over to them and flopped onto Eliza's lap. Eliza reached into her bag and took out an orange and peeled it with her fingers, giving a segment to Matt and one to Mahalia.

‘Sometimes,' said Eliza, ‘I feel at home for brief moments, in a particular place, at a particular time. Like now. Maybe that's all you can hope for.'

Matt smiled across at her. ‘I feel at home when I'm playing with the band,' he said. He thought of the other night when he'd played his first gig with them at a pub. He thought he'd be nervous in front of a crowd of people, but once the music started he'd flowed right with it.

The father and son had come back from their walk now, and sat together on the grass under a tree, cross-legged, next to each other but not facing. Like Matt, they had each picked up a leaf and were tearing them to bits, perhaps as an aid to concentration. There was an intimacy between them that Matt envied.

It hadn't been great, that time he'd seen his father. But Matt felt that he was old enough now to make overtures he couldn't make before, be the first one to make a move, even if his father couldn't. Just as long as he didn't expect too much. It was the gesture that was important. In his head he composed the letter he'd write to his father, telling him about Mahalia, sending him some photos, perhaps.

Matt felt luxurious, having the whole day with Eliza and Mahalia stretched ahead of him. His mother had once said that earth was the right place for love, quoting some poet or other. She was right. It was. Trees, grass, sky, birds, soft, warm air caressing your body . . . it was a friendly planet to be alive on, a kind planet, and one where you
could
love, if that luxury came your way.

‘What do you want for Mahalia?' Eliza said suddenly. ‘You know, if a good fairy arrived to bestow graces on her.'

Matt considered her question, but he didn't need to think for long.

‘Oh,' he said, ‘all the ordinary things that parents want for their children. That she grow up strong and healthy and happy.'

Eliza put another piece of orange into his mouth. He savoured its sweetness.

‘I want her to be confident and unafraid . . . to find something that she really loves to do, that she's good at. You know, not just a
job
to make money . . . some kind of passion . . .'

Eliza sucked on a piece of orange, carefully, sucking the juice out from one end. Matt watched her mouth, the keen movement of her white teeth. He could kiss her now, he thought. Before, the memories of Emmy were too raw for him, but now . . .

Matt laughed, though he wasn't sure why. He jumped to his feet and put out a hand to pull her up to face him. He kissed her lightly on the mouth, and said, ‘Come on, let's go and get lost in this rainforest.'

Eliza peeled another orange and they wandered towards the entrance of the walk, with Mahalia trotting along between them. Then, with their arms around each other, and Mahalia on Eliza's hip, they disappeared into the cool darkness of the forest. There was no sound except for their soft footsteps on the fallen leaves, and a bird calling, and a jet plane flying high overhead. They crammed the last of the orange into their mouths and smiled at each other, and the juice ran down their chins.