Ripples on a Pond (33 page)

Robin, who had learnt how to turn on the television, turned it on, preparing for a crèche-free day. She turned it off, picked him up, slammed the door behind her and reversed her footsteps, Robin protesting – until he saw the red car. He hadn't ridden in it since she'd driven it up to Sydney. He sat beside her that morning while she attempted to make it go. It did, eventually, and made a lot of noise and smoke about it.

‘Is this my daddy's car?' he said.

‘Yes.'

She'd mentioned his daddy in Sydney, a year ago. Hadn't since. Wondered how he'd remembered.

They drove around the block a few times, just to shake out the MG's cobwebs, Robin happy to ride at her side. Not so happy when he recognised the crèche's street.

‘Little boys don't ride in the front seats of red MGs, so put your big boy's face on for me or we won't ride in it again.'

‘I don't like work.'

‘I don't either, but I like ice-cream, and shops won't give me ice-cream unless I give them money.'

‘Will we get ice-cream?'

‘We'll buy a giant container and cones too at four o'clock.'

‘Now.'

‘At four o'clock,' she said, and she took a biro from her satchel and drew a blue watch on his wrist, its hands pointing to four o'clock.

‘When the crèche clock's little hand gets to the four and the big hand gets to the twelve, we'll drive to a giant supermarket and buy ice-cream, cones, bananas and everything you like.'

‘Nanny's 'roni too?'

‘And macaroni too. Now we have to go to work so we can pay the lady at the supermarket, or she won't give us anything.'

He went, not willingly, but with minimal protest.

She was late to her classroom, and fifteen minutes after settling her rabble, the office woman knocked on the door.

‘Phone call, Miss Norris. It's not the Watson woman. She said she was your cousin and that it was urgent.'

Natalie.

Knew that Amberley had burnt to the ground, that Miss Robertson had left her hotplate turned on again. She'd left it on twice during the week Cara had been up there.

It wasn't Natalie.

‘That Watson dame left you two messages and you couldn't even call her back.' Raelene.

Cara's reply was reflex. ‘My mother died.' How many times since the funeral had she said those words?

‘Half your fucking luck,' Raelene said.

Cara didn't hang up. It was a good line; she'd use it one day.

‘The bastards are putting my kid into foster care and you don't give a shit.'

‘That's excellent news, dear.'

Midway through Raelene's extended reply, Cara placed the phone down and returned to her classroom to manhandle an eleven-year-old girl out to the corridor.

‘Remain there until I tell you to come in.'

When she went out to tell her, the girl had gone.

At lunchtime Cara walked up to a corner milk bar, bought cigarettes, matches and a bottle of Coke. Washed down two aspros with the Coke, then lit a cigarette – and saw the absconding student dodge into a shop. Considered pursuing her, visualised dragging her back to school and into the headmaster's office. Couldn't be bothered. Wished she could abscond from school too. Couldn't.

The office woman waved to her as she walked in the door. ‘That Linda Watson woman is on the line again, Miss Norris. Will I tell her you're unavailable?'

Cara was in the right mood now to speak to Raelene's social worker. She had two minutes before the bell. Two would be plenty to say what she had to say.

Linda Watson said she was calling to arrange an appointment for Cara to be assessed as a foster carer for Raelene's baby; that there was now some urgency.

Cara couldn't laugh at those too blind to see. She couldn't explain how her visit to the jail had been a research trip either, so she stood listening. The bell rang and she didn't care. Stood, shaking her head at the gullibility of the gentle souls who shared her world.

‘You'll also be required to have a medical examination,' soft-spoken Linda said.

And enough was enough.

‘My mother died three weeks ago and my father is not handling his loss.'

Nor is my three-year-old son, watching the clock's hands tick their way around to four o'clock. She glanced at her watch.

‘Are you dealing with your loss, Cara?' Linda asked.

Had anyone else asked that question? Apparently not. She had no ready answer for it.

‘Someone has to,' she said.

Social workers are trained to be sympathetic. The gentle voice, the sympathy of a stranger, encouraged a tear to leak from Cara's eye. She caught it with her index finger. Another leaked when Linda asked the age of her son. ‘Three,' Cara said. Still a baby, and ripped from his perfect life to be carried off each morning to spend his day with strangers at a crèche.

She spoke of Robin. Easy to talk to faceless Linda. She spoke of her father's lack of interest in life. More fluid leaked. She wasn't crying; had an allergy to gentle voices and sympathy, that's all. Miss Norris didn't cry.

The headmaster caught her wiping the leakage away with her palm. Miss Norris ended the call and turned her back on him. His hand on her shoulder was the final straw. She shook her head, opened her mouth to speak, but no words came. She was too close to breaking point for speech.

‘I'll drive you home,' he said.

Her hand spoke. She raised it. Shook her head again, then ran from him to Morrie's car. The scent of its overheated interior, the scent of him, was too much. She howled. Howled because Myrtle was dead and she hadn't even kissed her goodbye, and because Robert had abandoned her, and because she'd promised to take Robin shopping and was in no condition to take him anywhere, and it was too early to pick him up anyway. She'd said four o'clock, and kids needed to learn that four o'clock meant four o'clock – and if she didn't open the car's windows, she'd die of heat exhaustion.

She opened them, got a cigarette out of her packet, lit it and drove home – to a unit near as hot as the car, and not smelling of Morrie but of stale old man.

Walked by Robert's bed to the balcony's glass door. Opened it. Only hot air out there, but sweeter air. She stood at the railing, sucking that cigarette down to the butt. No neighbour to complain at this time of day.

Robert, roused by the scent of smoke, arose from his blankets to watch her suck the last from the butt.

‘Have a shower,' she said. ‘The flat stinks of you.'

He watched her unscrew the lid from a jar, drop the butt into it, then replace the lid. And she couldn't stand to look at his too-large pyjamas, his bare feet.

‘I'm not bringing Robin home to this again. Get dressed.'

‘I'm sorry,' he said.

‘Me, too – sorry that you look more like Gran Norris than her son. I couldn't stand the sight of her, and I'm not living with her any more. Nor is Robin. There are nursing homes for people waiting to die. And I don't care any more whether Mummy would approve or not. She abandoned me too.'

Took another cigarette from her packet, lit it and blew smoke in his direction. ‘Come out here and slap it out of my hand, Daddy. That's what my father would have done.'

‘She was my life,' he said.

‘She was Robbie's too.'

That got him onto his feet. She watched him attempt to flip his bed into a couch. She'd shown him how it was done the day it arrived and a dozen times since. Before Myrtle's death, he would have shown her how it was done. Watched him fail three times before she went inside to spill ash onto olive green vinyl as she clicked the seat into its lock.

He sat on it and stared at the blank face of the television.

His old-man smell, her helplessness against him opening her floodgates again, she ran to the bathroom, locked the door and sat on the tiled floor to trickle along with the shower, knowing that Myrtle's death, Robert's caving in, was her punishment for the sin of Robin's birth. She'd had no say in that, had no say in anything; and her bathroom smelled like a public loo and she had no say in that either. Used to clean it once a week; now it needed cleaning every day and she didn't have time to clean it every day. She bawled because it stank and because she'd meant to clean it last night. Had meant to do a load of washing too. The laundry hamper was overflowing.

Robert knocked. He knocked three times before she unlocked the door and let him in – or let Gran Norris in. His hair was as white and damn near as long as hers had been. She'd had fewer whiskers, but hers had been longer.

‘I'm sorry, poppet.'

‘I've had it up to my ears with your sorry, and with your poppet too. I'm tired of feeling sorry for you, Daddy. What about me? What about Robin? He's out there with strangers because I wouldn't trust you to look after him for five minutes. Are you sorry about that too?'

Maybe he was. He stood looking down at his now slipper-clad feet – slippers too big for him. Did feet shrink? The sight of them set her off again. She snatched a towel from the rail and bawled into it.

‘I don't want you to cry over me,' he said.

‘As if I'm crying over you!' she yelled. ‘You're not worth crying over. You've turned into your bloody mother, and she wasn't worth shedding one bloody tear over.'

Couldn't stop bawling, or yelling at him, and that shower wouldn't stop trickling.

‘Your mother won't forgive me,' he said.

‘She can't forgive you or anyone else,' she yelled. ‘She's dead. We're alive and she's dead – and she did it so bloody easily. Her whole life was so bloody easy, then she takes off while she's dreaming and doesn't even ring me up to say goodbye.'

‘I'm sorry.'

‘All you're sorry about is that you keep waking up in the morning. She's not up there, holding heaven's gate open for you. Heaven is a myth, a nursery rhyme for kids.
Jesus was born on a bale of hay and forever more the people will pray – or pay.
He's Jack and Jill in the hands of clever priests.'

Robert turned away to reach into the shower recess, to turn the taps.

‘It drips. It's been dripping since you got here. It's been dripping since I got here, and the fucking agent won't fix it.'

Shocked herself with that word. Raelene said it. Sometimes there was nowhere to go but to words, the worst words.

It shocked him away from the tap; shocked him sufficiently to turn his lost eyes towards her.

‘What have I done?' he said.

She saw what he'd done when she turned to the mirror. Eyes near swollen shut, red nose, blotchy face. She ripped off a handful of toilet paper and blew her blocked nose, wiped her eyes.

‘She was our rudder, our mainstay, and I didn't even know it, Daddy. We're sinking without her.'

L
IKE
G
RAN
N
ORRIS

R
obert came to the balcony door, perhaps to show Cara that he had dressed. He hadn't shaved. She hadn't packed his safety razor and blades. Had bought him a razor and blades at the supermarket, though perhaps not the right brand, the best brand.

She'd never seen him unshaven. She'd rarely seen him without his glasses. He never bothered with them now. Nothing he wanted to see. Looked like, smelled like Gran Norris, and she waved her cigarette at him, as she may have waved a bunch of garlic to keep a blood-sucking vampire at bay.

He remained in the doorway. He had something to tell her. It took time for him to formulate his sentences. It took patience to stand waiting for him to do it.

‘John phoned.'

She waited for more, but the message given, he returned to the couch. She looked at her watch, determined to be at the crèche when the hands reached the four and the twelve. Plenty of time.

‘He's worried about you,' she said. ‘Do you know how lucky you are to have a brother to worry about you? Mummy's brother didn't even fly over for her funeral.' He'd sent a cheap bunch of flowers and a condolence card.

‘She's not coming back, Daddy. Get over it.'

No response from the couch. ‘People die every day. They die everywhere. Planes fall from the sky, buses full of tourists crash, mothers and their kids die on the roads. Dying is a contagious disease most of us fight against catching, and you have to start fighting it. Robin needs you.'

His hand was picking at something on his knee. She sucked again on her cigarette, waiting for his fingers to stop picking at whatever they were picking at.

‘Remember the night you and Mummy told me about Jenny and Woody Creek? You told me that Jenny's town was a Pandora's box?'

Maybe he remembered. He'd stopped picking at his knee.

‘You were right. You were probably right about a lot of things,' she said. ‘I close the lid on that town, but its spring is hinged. Its lid won't stay shut.'

May as well talk to the man in the moon but she had time to fill so persisted.

‘Jenny's stepdaughter is in a women's prison down here. Raelene, the one who lives with – or lived with – Dino Collins.'

That lifted his chin. He remembered Collins – and remembered why John had phoned.

‘Miss Robertson is in hospital. A fall,' he said.

‘Where?'

Her question confused him. Where else but at Amberley? ‘She was on the floor.'

‘Is she all right?'

He shook his head. She wasn't, or he didn't know.

‘Mummy carried her,' Cara said. Her butt dropped into her ashtray jar, she screwed down the lid and placed the jar into its corner. It was time to get Robin.

She phoned John once the two were in bed. They'd found the old lady unconscious on her kitchen floor.

‘A stroke, either last night, or the night before,' John said.

Cara hung up the phone and it rang. She snatched it before it disturbed the sleepers.

Georgie, and tonight she could find nothing to say to her. ‘I won't talk,' she said. ‘I've just learned that an old friend is seriously ill.'

Went to bed to toss and turn. Tossed until two when she rose and crept into the bathroom to steal one of Robert's Valium pills. He'd kept his painkillers in the bathroom cabinet at Amberley and had placed their replacements into her mirrored cabinet, and tonight she needed something to turn off her brain.

And that bottle poured only three pills to her palm.

How long since she'd had the prescription filled? She stood staring at those three pills, then at the bottle. The date on its label told her how many pills Robert had been swallowing each day to maintain his zombie state. Ten days ago that bottle had contained fifty.

Knew now why he'd knocked on the bathroom door this afternoon, not to use her loo but to get a pill. Knew why he was having difficulty forming sentences. Knew he needed a pill supervisor.

Myrtle had taken charge of his painkillers after his knee operation when he'd clung too long to his familiar pain. Cara hadn't been supervising – and didn't want to.

In England, she'd told Morrie to find a nursing home for Bernard. In England she'd possessed a functional mind. In England she swallowed only contraceptive pills.

She wasn't in England. She was here, and somehow she had to get her head together so she could cope with Robert's out of control head. She dropped two pills back into the bottle and stared at the third, knowing it would give her sleep – and how do you get your head together when you can't sleep?

She stole five hours of wipe-out sleep that night and would have stolen more had the alarm not woken her.

He was asleep when they left the unit at eight thirty. He was awake when they returned and he snatched at his full bottle of zombie pills like an ill-mannered kid.

‘They're killing you, Daddy.'

Watched his shaking old hands struggling to remove the lid. Robin watched him. Cara filled a glass with water. She picked up five spilt pills.

One had rolled beneath the refrigerator. She retrieved it with her bread knife later and ear-marked it for herself.

At nine, ready to shout herself a longer night of wipe-out sleep, the phone rang.

Please God, not Georgie.

John. Miss Robertson was dead. She hadn't regained consciousness, and Cara's initial response was annoyance. She'd bathed, brushed her teeth; she wanted her bed, and Miss Robertson had named her and Myrtle her executrixes, and there was no more Myrtle.

I am an island, an island of sand, and the waves are washing me away.

Placed the pill back into the bottle and for minutes stood looking at her reflection in the bathroom mirror, and her face looked as grey as Robert's.

Walked out and stood a moment looking down at his unshaven face before shaking his shoulder.

‘Miss Robertson died.' His response may have been envy. ‘We'll have to go up there, Daddy.'

‘John will–'

‘We will. You and Mummy were her family. Her family will bury her.'

He tucked his head again into the pillow, pulled the blanket around his ears.

‘There's a new nursing home in Ballarat. Cathy is looking into getting you a bed there. If you don't want to fly up to Sydney with me and Robin you can move into the nursing home before we go.'

‘Just leave me be,' he said.

‘The nursing home staff will leave you be. They'll give you bed baths, bring you bed pans, won't make you get out of bed. They'll stuff you so full of your zombie pills you won't know if you're alive or dead – and they won't care. I care. Robin cares.'

No comment.

Gave up and went out to the balcony in her pyjamas, leaned over the railing to blow smoke into the night, her mind circling from Ballarat to Sydney, from funerals to vacant units. If she let Miss Robertson's and Robert's units, the rent she received from the two would balance the loss of Robert's pension, which would go to pay for the nursing home, so Cathy had said.

Plane tickets to Sydney cost money. She had none, or minimal. Robert's cheque account would have to pay. Couldn't see him flying up there. Couldn't leave him alone down here either.

At midnight he was up and heading for the bathroom. She was waiting with his chequebook and a biro when he came out. He signed a blank cheque and she helped herself to a pill.

The travel agent near the school booked three return flights, leaving at four fifty on Friday and returning on Monday evening – and maybe Robert wouldn't use his return ticket. John was his brother. He had Beth, sons, daughters. Just get Robert up there. Let John make the decision on what to do with him. She couldn't.

She collected Robin from the crèche at three forty-five and asked him to guess where they were going after crèche on Friday.

‘To the big shop with the car rides.' He liked those cars that gave one-minute rides when a coin was dropped into a slot.

‘Guess again.'

He guessed all the way home, was still guessing when she unlocked the unit door.

Her nose warned her.

‘Sit down on the steps, Robbie. Papa has been sick.'

He could smell it too. He held his nose and backed off. Didn't see his Papa lying in his own vomit, or the open pill bottle on the kitchen sink.

Cara saw, from a distance, then placed a greater distance between her and the couch and dialled triple zero.

They put her through to a voice that asked questions. She didn't know if he was unconscious or dead. Didn't know how many pills he'd taken. Didn't know when he'd taken them. Didn't know how many pills his stomach had rejected.

Left the phone off the hook and found out how many pills when she upended the bottle. Placed it beside the phone, and her hand covering her nose, her mouth, she went to the mess of him.

‘He's breathing.' She picked up the dishcloth, used it to wipe the stubble of his face, make it clean enough to slap. Slapped again.

And Robin came to the door. ‘Mummy?'

‘Go back to the steps!'

Slapped, shook him.

They came, in minutes that seemed like hours, two men in uniform, with bags and a stretcher. They loaded Robert onto the stretcher, and when Robin saw them carrying his papa from the unit, he fought those men as he hadn't fought the ones who had carried Nanny away. He stamped his feet and screamed for his papa. He fought Cara when she gathered him into her arms, then, broken-hearted, he howled on her neck as Robert disappeared down the stairs.

Cara watched them go, knowing she should follow the ambulance to the hospital. That's what people did – or what they did on television.

I am an abandoned island, she thought. I am a rocky island. Robin sobbing in her arms, she went inside, closed the door and unlocked the balcony door.

‘Sit out here, Robbie, while Mummy cleans up the mess.'

Not a tear in her. Anger? Plenty of that. She stuffed Robert's blankets, his sheets and pillow into a garbage bag. Wiped the worst of the mess up with newspapers, stuffed it into the same bag then ran it down to the bins.

She scrubbed then, the couch, the carpet. She dragged and pushed the couch back against the wall, then washed it again with vinegar, washed the floor with vinegar, and when the mess was gone from view if not from the air, she turned on the television and sat Robin down on her lone easy chair to watch that flashing screen while she fought to open windows she'd never previously opened. Opened every window wide.

And how dare he? How dare he do this to her and to his grandson?

She rang the hospital at six. That's what people on television do. He was alive. She rang John. Beth picked up the phone.

‘Dad's in hospital.'

‘Is he okay?' John's voice.

‘They say so.'

‘Don't worry about Miss Robertson's funeral. We'll take care of it,' John said.

‘Robin and I will be up tomorrow night,' Cara said.

‘You stay down there and take care of your dad, love,' he said.

‘The hospital is taking care of him. We'll see you tomorrow.'

Slept without needing pills that night. Slept with the windows and her balcony door wide open. You can't lock yourself away from trouble. It surrounds you. There comes a time when you have to get your back to a wall and fight.

*

Cancelled one flight before school. She'd get Robert's money back, or some of it. Called the hospital from school. Her father's condition was stable. Visiting hours were from two to four this afternoon and from seven to eight thirty this evening.

He'd have no visitors. The plane left at four fifty. They'd drive from the crèche to the airport and by seven, they'd be in Sydney. She offered John's Sydney number to the woman, told her she could be contacted at that number until Monday.

She had no sympathy for those who took – or attempted to take – their own lives. To Cara, suicide was a narcissistic act, a final, filthy punishment for those who had failed in their duty of care. If not for the stench of vomit, Robin would have run ahead into the unit to turn on his television show. Robert had given no thought to what might come later nor to the one who'd have to clean up the mess he'd left behind. That day she gave no thought to him.

Flew away from her problems at four fifty, her big boy at her side, and by six thirty they were at Amberley, having a fish and chips picnic on the floor beside Myrtle's open camphorwood chest, Robin giggling at tiny singlets he'd once worn, at the embroidered gowns and hand-knitted cardigans, saved by Myrtle for future grandchildren.

‘Boys don't wear dresses,' he said, his mouth full.

‘Boy babies do, when they're little enough to wear nappies,' she said.

His stroller, still in service at the time of Myrtle's death, made him ask how long since Nanny went away. He was much too big to ride in it now. He was too big to sleep in a baby's cot.

‘I'm bigger,' Cara said. ‘If I sleep in your cot, I'll have to stick my arms and legs out through the bars.'

‘You can sleep in Papa's bed.'

‘Papa's bed is like Father Bear's. It's much too hard.'

‘Why did he get sick, Mummy?'

‘He misses Nanny.'

‘We didn't get sick.'

‘Maybe we got a little bit sick, but we're better now, and the hospital and the doctors will make Papa better.'

Maybe.

Didn't know what was going to happen with him, but he was down there and she was up here to bury an old lady she'd known all of her life – and it felt like a holiday.

‘How many days when we go back?' he asked.

‘Tonight, tomorrow night, Sunday night, then on Monday night we fly home.'

‘And Papa will come home?'

Maybe so. Maybe not.

Tucked her boy into his cot late that night and just for fun, they sang ‘Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star' and ‘Baa Baa, Black Sheep', and they giggled so much they had to have a drink of milk and a proper song. He liked ‘Doggie in the Window', and knew all of the words. They sang it together, then he showed her how big he was. He put his arms through the bars and his toes too, and she kissed his toes and it tickled and he giggled again.