The Good Parents (17 page)

She never saw him again.

‘What’s happened to Sam?’ she asked Cy.

‘He’s moved on.’

A few weeks later she read in
The West
that a young man had suffered serious injuries after being beaten up and thrown off the Horseshoe Bridge. His name was Warwick
Hubble and he was twenty-seven. There was a photo of him. She showed it to Cy. ‘That’s Sam, isn’t it?’

‘Looks like it.’

After a while she said: ‘Was it because of me?’

He shook his head in disbelief at her presumption.

She had become afraid of him. At night she lay beside him but she wasn’t in her body. She didn’t challenge him anymore because
it wasn’t worth it. She wanted to leave. Wanting to leave filled every moment of her days. When she was with him she tried
to concentrate on what was around her, systematically noting cars, faces, advertisements, because she knew he could read people’s
minds. In bed she tried to remember the names of all the girls in her class, or the details of her old room so he wouldn’t
hear her thoughts.

Why couldn’t she just say to him ‘I want to leave’ and walk out the door? Or tell him that she couldn’t love a man with blood
on his hands? Because then he would find a way to make her stay. He’d convince her that staying was what she really wanted,
but after that he’d watch her, or have her watched, all the time. He’d break her, in some way. Nobody left Cy, they were kicked
out.

Whenever she summoned all her strength to confront him, he didn’t come home, or couldn’t be found, as if he knew her plan.
For a large man, he had a startling ability to disappear. She could turn towards him in a bar and find that he was gone. Then
just as magically he’d be back at her elbow. Once some detectives from the Vice Squad came to Park Lane and asked to speak
to him. His sisters said he wasn’t in. The detectives turned to Toni and asked to search the flat. She led them up, weak-kneed,
knowing she’d left Cy asleep in bed. But when they entered, he wasn’t there. His shoes were gone, even the bed was smooth.
The only back exit was from the platform into the pepper tree. She couldn’t envisage Cy, who hated all physical activity,
launching himself into its brittle, swaying boughs. But there was no sign of accident, no broken branches. The flat was ordered,
filled with tranquil leaf shadow, reminding her how quick, silent and clean he was in all his habits. She felt a moment’s
pride in his escape.

It turned out that at just the right moment he’d woken for a pee and seen the car turning into Park Lane. His sixth sense
told him it was the wallopers. He was down the stairs and out the back door just before they walked in.

How could she ever escape him? He always knew where she was. If she holed up in a room in a distant suburb, got a job in a
supermarket, changed her name, dyed her hair, he would find her. She had no money for a plane ticket to the eastern states.
Besides Cy had contacts at the airport and in all the capital cities. He would chase her down.

She couldn’t bear to go home to her parents. Anyway, he would have their house watched, their phone tapped.

Why wouldn’t he let her go if she wanted to so much? If he loved her? But the young and beautiful can never quite trust what
they’re loved for. His benevolence surrounded her as one of his family. Once you left the family, you were the enemy. His
sweet sisters would spy on her and betray her. Even now she suspected that Cy had asked Felice to keep an eye on her.
Régine, who kissed her all over her face and called her
my little daughter
, would throw her belongings down the stairs. There was a ruthlessness to Régine too, she had watched those old red hands
wring a chicken’s neck. The family would say she was ungrateful. They would say she had no respect. People who didn’t understand
respect, Cy said, had to be taught.

She became more and more remote. His touch was cold to her, as if it came from someone else. Cy must have noticed her withdrawal
from him but he said nothing. He knew how to watch and wait.

She took to walking in the park opposite, day or night, up and down, around the dark old Moreton Bay fig trees, past the bleak
little stadium, the stagnant lake. She couldn’t seem to get enough fresh air. She missed nature, the suburban garden of her
childhood, riding her bike along the river. Once in her childhood there had been a holiday in a beach house, way down on the
south coast. In bed at night she tried to reconstruct it. Sea, sky, bush, the sound of the waves. She went for long drives
alone in her car along the ocean or up to the hills.

She longed for the days when she had lain beside Cy, untroubled, content in his orbit, a child. She was emerging from a dream.
Something had awoken her, her own voice again, the only voice she could trust.

She lived a half-life. A thought came to her from nowhere:
she couldn’t bring a child up in this world
. She hadn’t been aware that she wanted children.

It was well past lunchtime. The French Bakery had filled up and emptied again while she had sat in her corner as rigid and
stony-faced as she used to be sitting opposite her mother in that great barn on top of Boans. Why had she been so hard on
Beryl?
I keep thinking I see you.
Of course she did. A generation always resembles each other in dress and voice and expression.

The only other customer left was sitting at the adjoining table, a middle-aged woman with crew-cut gray hair wearing a maroon-coloured
robe. In spite of her preoccupations, Toni was intrigued. A Buddhist nun, in the French Bakery, calmly drinking tea.

The nun looked up and smiled at her. She had a pink, scrubbed face traced with lines, and pixie ears. Her smile was warm and
matey, almost a grin. Her clear blue-gray eyes were crinkled at the ends.

Toni indicated her long-empty cup. ‘I guess I lost track of the time.’ She felt washed out, as if she had been crying.

‘Shopping does my head in,’ the nun said agreeably. Nothing unworldly about her. She had an American accent. There was a pot
of green tea in front of her. Unhurried, she turned around on her chair to face Toni.

Afterwards, Toni couldn’t remember much about their conversation. She’d done most of the talking. She told her that her daughter
had run away. Her companion sat very still, a look of pure interest on her face. Her eyes seemed alight. Perhaps it was her
job to listen to sad people. Did the Buddhists have confession? She was afraid that her daughter had got herself into a situation
that she couldn’t handle, Toni found herself saying. That she had lost herself.

The nun said her name was Kesang, and as they parted she handed Toni a card. She’d said no word to reassure her yet Toni walked
home lighter from the talk.

They phoned Magnus in the early evening, more for their sake than his. For the sheer pleasure of his calm, young voice.

Winnie had started fretting. She wouldn’t eat.

‘It’s OK,’ Magnus told Toni. ‘She comes to school with me.’

‘What on earth does she do there?’

‘Lies outside the classroom. Everyone talks to her. She really likes the attention.’

‘What do the staff say?’

‘Nothing. Just make the usual pathetic jokes.’

Did all the teachers feel sorry for Magnus, abandoned by his parents?

‘What about you? Is Chris feeding you up?’

‘Chris isn’t here anymore. She’s gone to America.’

‘What! She never told us she was going away.’

‘She didn’t tell anyone. She’s gone to meet some guy off the internet.’

‘Jacob!’ Toni called out. ‘Chris has left Carlos!’

‘Magnus,’ she said back into the phone, ‘are you still going there to eat at night?’

‘Carlos is kinda out of it. I don’t want to hassle him. I know how to cook.’

‘What did you eat last night?’

‘Can’t remember. Instant noodles.’

‘I’m going to phone Carlos.’

‘Don’t! Don’t do that. Carlos doesn’t want to talk about it.’

‘Magnus, can you go and stay at Ben’s place? Please. I’ll call Beth Lester.’

‘No! I can’t!’ For Magnus he sounded almost panicked.

‘Why not?’

‘They’ve got cats. I can’t take Winnie there.’

He could hear his mother talking to Jacob.

‘Magnus?’ Her voice had a rising edge to it, the only
time he didn’t like to hear it. ‘We’ll talk it over and call you back.’

After she hung up he remembered that he hadn’t told her Maya had called. He hadn’t made up his mind whether or not Maya wanted
him to.

A
n Asian multimillionaire had a vision of a shift in the earth’s axis which would cause earthquakes and volcanic eruptions.
He bought a piece of land north of Warton, near Tumbring, because he believed that this region would be spared from a massive
tidal wave which was going to hit the west coast. He saw the piece of land in a vision during meditation. In Tumbring they
said that he’d spent ten million dollars on supplies to feed and house and give medical treatment for up to ten thousand refugees.
He said the Buddhists believe that selfless acts would bring about a golden age of peace. He’d come to live here to get back
to God.

This event might not happen, he said, but if it did it would be before the end of 2001.

Warton didn’t have a mystic saviour, only the Brethren, who hadn’t told anyone why they’d chosen to come here ten years ago
and start a furniture business and build a church in a wheat-belt town. The Brethren never told their plans to non-Brethrens,
‘the worldlies’ they called them. Magnus knew this from Maya’s secret ex-boyfriend, Jason Kay. But one thing was certain.
If a great flood did come, God would make sure the Brethren were the first and only people to be saved.

Sometimes when Magnus set off like this, at dusk, through the empty streets, he thought about the sea water spreading across
the flatness, filling up the streets and the saltpans along the creeks, turning the silted-up lake into an inland sea. He
saw a great searchlight piercing through the clouds and tiny Brethren figures swirling up like dust mites, the sad, dowdy
women holding down their skirts, the little nursery-rhyme girls in their headscarves, the pale, aggressive males with their
bad haircuts …

People would wait for rescue on roofs and the tops of trees, or make rafts and try to paddle to Tumbring to be saved. Inevitably
his thoughts turned to the one he wished to save, or spend his last moments with, and here he is: leaping onto a door that
is floating past and managing to reach Brooke Lester just before the chimney she is clinging to is swept away …

He was walking to the Lucky because he was hungry and the kitchen smelt of empty Pal tins. He’d eaten all the supermarket
food he’d bought, eggs, Weetbix and packet ham on white sliced bread. How did Toni do it, put together meals that made you
feel good afterwards? He hadn’t been to the butcher – if he bought two chops, say, everyone would know he was cooking for
himself and then the Garcia situation would come out, and the mothers would get together and insist he stay with one of them.

Most nights he ended up going to the Lucky when all the families were inside.

He stood for a moment under the pine trees and studied the Garcias’ house for signs of life. Carlos’s truck was in the carport
all the time now, he mustn’t be going to work. When he saw Carlos putting hay out for the horses yesterday he went over and
asked him how he was. Carlos said he had an almighty hangover. Magnus didn’t want to look into his eyes. ‘How’re
you
doing Mag?’ he called out after Magnus. Magnus called back that he was fine.

There were no lights on in their house again tonight, just the television, but smoke was coming out of the chimney. Josh’s
jeep was gone, he’d be out with his mates, it was Friday night. He must have taken Jordan with him. They’d be at the pub to
watch Geelong versus Hawthorn. Carlos was probably pissed.

It was very quiet. The evening mist was swirling up from the creek. Surprising how much a house could tell you about a family’s
feelings if you stood and looked long enough. The horses had gone remote, back to their own horse lives again.

He was working on an eighty-minute tape for Carlos. He didn’t know what else he could do.

The moon was rising as Magnus stood waiting for Winnie to finish sniffing around the gate of the old drive-in. To cheer her
up he let her fool herself for a few minutes that she was still a young dog who could catch a lizard or a rabbit.

The drive-in was surrounded by a high cyclone fence, but from time to time a hole would appear and it would become a hang-out
again, until the Shire came to fix it. When he and his friends were little kids they used to race their bikes around the cracked
bitumen circuit. Last summer they sat amongst the broken glass on the steps of the projection booth drinking cans
of beer stolen from home. Those who smoked had a few cigarettes or joints. He liked the feeling after a drink or a toke that
you knew everything, but it didn’t last. Long yellow grass grew up around the booth and the ticket box with its still decipherable
sign,
Lights Out Please
. The screen and the speaker-poles had gone long ago. There was always talk that the drive-in was going to be bulldozed but
it never happened. The one thing this town didn’t need was space.