Ricochet Baby (23 page)

G
LASS SHOWS
R
OBERTA
a picture of her grandmother. They are sitting in the implement shed where Roberta has taken her father a thermos of tea. His hands are covered with grease from working on a tractor.

‘Under there,’ he says, pointing to a pile of old stock registers, ‘something for you.’

Unsuspecting, she lifts the hard-covered exercise books. Her grandmother’s face stares back at her.

‘Came across it,’ he says. ‘Thought it had gone.’ He means, she understands, that it has survived the purge.

Her grandmother’s dark hair is parted straight down the
middle
and coiled in a shiny, low bun that balloons behind her head. Her eyes are surrounded by a strong fringe of lashes, her skin fair. Like Roberta’s, her chin is long and almost jutting. There is no hint of resignation in her expression. She wears a a light-coloured dress with stripes running vertically from the shoulders to her waist; four bold buttons stud the centre of the bodice. An embossed gold locket lies in the hollow of her throat.

‘She died just before I met your mother,’ says Glass. ‘We had that in common — her father had just recently died too.’

‘Has Mum seen this?’ asks Roberta.

‘No, not yet.’ She guesses he is not planning on showing it to Edith.

He wipes his hands on a piece of rag, itching to pick the
photograph
up, but then he decides against it. She sees how he has
carried
this image through the years, bearing the death of his mother away from the farm, like a slow, unhealing scar.

‘You’re like her,’ says Glass.

‘No,’ says Roberta. ‘Don’t saddle me with that.’

‘But it’s true.’

‘Don’t try and suck me into all this,’ she says. She tries to make her voice as tough as she can.

Roberta walks slowly back to the house. She has an image of her own. It is the day of her grandfather’s funeral. Her aunts have written in her autograph book and she hands it to her father. ‘Will you write one too, Dad?’ she says.

And suddenly his face colours. He takes the pen from her and scrawls over the page. The words he writes are ‘This land is my land’, and he signs his name underneath.

I, P
AUL
V
AUGHAN
Cooksley, hereby make application to the Family Court, under Section 10 of the Guardianship Act, to be appointed guardian of my son Nathan Cooksley.

From careful reading of the Act, I understand that, in certain
circumstances
, the Court may deprive a parent of guardianship of a child and award it to the other parent.

I am aware that this will not take place unless the Court is
satisfied
this parent is for some grave reason unfit to be a guardian of the child or is unwilling to exercise the responsibilities of a guardian.

I believe my wife, Roberta, from whom I have recently separated (refer attached document) is not in a fit mental state to be the guardian of our child. Roberta abandoned our son at my mother’s home, and shortly afterwards became a voluntary patient in a psychiatric hospital.

She responded very slowly to treatment for post-natal depression and refused communication with me and other family members. Although of great support to me, my mother works, and has been unable to assist in Nathan’s care. Being Nathan’s sole care-giver has been at great inconvenience, as I had to take considerable amounts of time away from my work, until I was able to find a person who could help me with Nathan. This person is Prudence Davies, currently residing at my home in order to assist with part-time nannying duties. Nathan is now nine months old. He attends a well-run day care centre chosen by Ms Davies. He is a contented child and has formed a close attachment to Ms Davies and myself.

I request full guardianship of Nathan with limited visiting rights for his mother, if she recovers her health. To tell you the truth, your Honour, I am worried out of my mind about this situation.

Roberta hands a copy of this letter to her mother.

‘He’s got all the jargon,’ says Edith. ‘And a touch of pathos as well.’ She turns the pot three times before she pours herself fresh tea, her fourth cup of the morning. Edith finds it thirsty work being dry; she smiles to herself. If anyone has noticed her new state, they haven’t mentioned it. Edith has been to see a doctor in the city. She has not told anyone this. Since the first of what the doctor describes as her alcohol-free days, the first in twenty years, there has been an
odd clarity about her vision. The first day was a novelty, like a diet, and then she worried that it would become tedious. But mostly she feels so light-headed that it’s as dizzying as being drunk. She still hasn’t got used to the area of her brain that is free of pain in the mornings. And she smells the foliage in her garden, so sharp and poignant that her senses are overcome, the freesias, which smell like incense beneath the kitchen windowsill.

‘Don’t worry,’ Edith tells Roberta. ‘It’ll be all right, he can’t get away with that.’ She, who has never cared for Paul, hopes she is right. Her daughter is puffy round the eyes and has put on weight.

‘Does this mean you will have to go to court?’ asks Wendy of Roberta.

Roberta shrugs; she always avoids speaking to Wendy unless she has to. The table is cleared to make room for the three of them, Wendy, Roberta and Edith, to work on the latest venture. They sit close together, measuring out seeds, although Roberta’s heart is not in the task.

‘Have you taken your pills, dear?’ asks Edith. She finds it odd feeding substances to Roberta while she spends so much energy avoiding them herself. Roberta’s doctor at the hospital says she may have to take Amitriptyline for months. That, alone, is a thought to sober her. All the same, she has moments of joyous certainty when she tells Roberta that things will work out. Since she began her own experiment with sobriety, Edith has remembered all manner of things about her daughter when she was small. She remembers, in particular, holding her close under her coat, and singing to her in the wind. What would happen if she were to tell Roberta that, she wonders. Perhaps she would embarrass her. She feels she must move slowly and carefully. Even so, she rests her hand on Roberta’s shoulder for just a moment as she leaves the room. There is no reaction at first, then Roberta pulls away.

W
HEN
E
DITH LEAVES
, Wendy sidles towards the door, as if she doesn’t want to be alone in the room with Roberta. Their unease with each other is mutual.

‘Your mother’s only trying to help,’ Wendy says.

‘Well, I guess we’ll sort it out.’

Wendy says, ‘You remind me of my own daughter.’

‘I didn’t know you had one,’ Roberta replies.

‘She’s your kind of person,’ says Wendy.

‘What kind of person is that?’

‘Independent. Rather prickly. Clever.’

‘I’m not clever.’

‘Yes you are, you don’t want people to know. We could be friends, Roberta, you and I.’

‘Why would we want to do that?’

‘I saw from your room that you liked books.’ Wendy has been displaced from Roberta’s old room. She lives, for the moment, in the obdurate silence of Bernard’s house. It is not that the Nichols have no other spare room in their farmstead, but it is filled with a cot, a
high-chair
, mobiles hanging from the ceiling, and a size nought pair of gumboots at the door. Get rid of that stuff, Roberta said, on her return. But Edith had not. Instead, she has closed the door. So Wendy sleeps in the bare room which Orla had intended to decorate for her mother and listens to Bernard through the wall tossing and turning at nights.

‘You know, I’ve seen you somewhere else,’ says Roberta.

Wendy backs closer to the door. ‘I’m sure you haven’t, dear. Only that time when we met at Christmas.’

‘Oh, never mind.’ Roberta stands up from the table, pushing her fingers through her hair. ‘It must be the drugs — you think all kinds of things. You’re not on the run from the tax department, by any chance?

Wendy’s mouth drops open.

‘Sorry, old habits die hard. I wanted to be an income tax inspector at one stage of my life. An uncomplicated ambition, wouldn’t you say? Everything in black and white, right or wrong. Pity it didn’t work out.’

Wendy turns into the shadow of the door and Roberta sees her in profile.

‘I know where I saw you,’ she says. ‘Why would you follow us?’

Wendy is spared Roberta’s interrogation by the arrival of Josh.

‘H
AVE A BEER
, son?’

Roberta winces at her father’s choice of words.

‘Bit early in the day for me,’ says Josh.

‘Yeah, me too,’ says Glass.

‘I’ll make you a cup of coffee,’ says Roberta. ‘How d’you take it?’

Glass glances from one to another. Roberta blushes; it’s like
asking your husband on your honeymoon — a dead giveaway that they hardly know each other.

‘I’ll make it,’ says Edith, hurriedly. The three of them are left in the room to make conversation.

‘What do you think of the team?’ Glass asks Josh.

‘Uh.’ Josh is uncertain.

‘Our boys need to sharpen up in the line-out, don’t you reckon?’

‘Yeah, maybe. I’m a league man myself.’

‘Yeah?’ Glass looks uncomfortable. ‘Well. Yes. Things are a bit different nowadays.’

Roberta wonders why he bothers. Michael and Bernard never gave him the satisfaction of a good try in their lives.

‘I hear butterfat’s doing well at present,’ says Josh in a polite voice.

‘Bloody terrible,’ says Glass. ‘You chaps don’t know what a rough time we’re having out here.

Roberta longs to quieten the two of them. Glass is glaring at Josh as if he is asking for a loan; Josh is embarrassed by his gaffe. She can imagine that he has been practising all the things he might say, on the way over the hill — butterfat, cows, the weather. It’s no better than it was with Paul.

‘Why don’t we go out for a bit?’ she says, standing up.

Edith appears with a tray. ‘I thought you were staying for coffee.’

‘I’
M SORRY
,’
SAYS
Josh.

‘It’s not your fault. I guess fathers are like that. What d’you want to do?’ They are driving away from the farm.

‘Is there somewhere we can have a drink?’

‘Yeah, the Walnut pub.’

‘You don’t sound too keen.’

‘I’m not,’ says Roberta. ‘It’s a dump. As a matter of fact, I want to get my hair cut.’

‘You can do that any time, can’t you?’

‘Not what I had in mind.’ Roberta is warming to her idea. ‘I don’t drive right now,’ she explains. ‘Because of the pills. I’d kind of like to be independent about this.’

‘So you’re a grown-up, you can do what you like.’

‘It doesn’t feel like that at the moment.’

‘How much are you going to get cut off?’

‘I’m planning a serious kind of haircut.’ They have reached Walnut; Roberta signals for him to pull in alongside the European. And it’s true, she doesn’t want the worry of being even faintly pretty any more, she doesn’t want to remind people of her ancestors. ‘You’re not going to try and stop me, are you?’

Josh touches her hair. ‘You might be sorry for this.’

‘I’ve got a father, thanks. I had a husband who sounded just like you, too. What is it with you men?’ She is unwinding her hair from the rough braid over her shoulder. Josh lifts a rope of it to his face. ‘It smells like apples,’ he says.

‘Shampoo, that’s all it is.’

‘Perhaps you should get it cut,’ he says. ‘Perhaps it’s just as well.’

Shelley de Witt is between clients. She sits smoking in one of the empty chairs, stretching her red-nailed fingers and blowing a plume of blue smoke into the air.

‘So,’ she says, ‘I didn’t expect to see you back in here.’

‘Just think of all the scores you can settle with the Nichols,’ says Roberta, settling into a chair. ‘Clippers all over.’

‘You’re joking.’

‘Just cut it.’

‘How much do you want for your hair? I am ethical, you know.’

‘Ooh, la, la, Shelley,’ says Roberta, inhaling some of the
lingering
cigarette smoke. ‘You can have it. Put it in the museum or something. Put it under your pillow and pretend it’s Bernard’s. Or who ever.’ She can’t bring herself to say, my father’s.

‘Sure your friend doesn’t want it?’ she says, looking out the window at where Josh is sitting in the van.

‘Do it.’

Without another word, Shelley picks up Roberta’s hair and slices through it, her scissors making a squelching sound as if
cutting
a length of shiny material.

In twenty minutes it is all done and her head is covered with a furry mat of spikes. At once, she feels lighter, freer, without
having
to support the weight of her hair. Her eyes look enormous in the mirror, luminous and strange, her eyebrows like neat brown feathers laid above them. Shelley runs a slick of gel over the spikes and Roberta thinks the dark feathery tufts look like a blackbird that’s been in the rain.

Josh, waiting by the van, stares in disbelief as she steps into the town’s broad, stucco-fronted street.

‘You look like a stroppy dyke,’ Josh says.

‘You don’t mind?’

He laughs. ‘I don’t care, anarchy rules — you look great.’

‘Yeah?’

‘Yee-ha.’ He touches her face with his fingertips, kissing her in the street where people can see them.

‘That’s the first time you’ve kissed me,’ says Roberta.

‘You’re so beautiful,’ he says. ‘I can’t believe how gorgeous you are.’

‘I’m meant to be plain — it doesn’t matter what I look like.’ She cups her hands round his face and kisses him back, tastes the gum on his breath.