The Best Thing (19 page)

‘I’ll be in on that. Will I see you before then?’

‘Umm … I guess it’s possible.’

‘Coming house-hunting tomorrow, for example?’

I shift uncomfortably. ‘Mind if I say no?’

‘Ooh, a bit. But if I find anything
wonderful
I’ll force you to come round and admire the outside of it later on, okay?’

‘Okay, that’s fine. It’s all the non-wonderful places that get me down.’

‘Fair enough. Congratulate Dino for me.’

‘I will. See you later, Mum.’

The following weekend she does find something wonderful. ‘It’s just come on the market,’ she raves at me when she gets home. ‘It’s up for auction, but I’ve made them an offer. It’s gorgeous, Mel! I couldn’t believe my luck when I saw it!’

And even I have to admit that it’s heaps better than any of the other places she’s dragged me through. As she says, it’s like a country cottage dumped in the inner city, quite a cute weatherboard place, grey, verandas on three sides. It looks as if the owners got halfway through renovating it and ran out of puff—the kitchen and bathroom are quite trendy in a consciously old-fashioned way, but the other rooms still have their old paint, and worn red carpet. ‘The beauty of it,’ sighs Mum, standing in the middle of the loungeroom and breathing deeply, ‘is that there’s no smell of damp. And all the work under the floor’s just been done, new stumps, new bearers in a few places. I can’t go past it. Isn’t it nice? And the garden—after that poky little courtyard and the little hanky of lawn, it’s like a—my imagination just goes into overdrive, thinking what to do with all that space!’

‘It’s pretty good,’ I say grudgingly as we stroll around the outside. ‘A bit far from everything, though.’

‘Come on, with Stanmore station just down the road? And we’re
two
minutes from Leichhardt instead of a whole
five
!’ She’s trying to joke me into feeling as good as her.

I feel weird, though, as if I’m the cautious old mother and she’s the crazy daughter wanting to move out, grabbing the first opportunity. I feel as if I ought to warn her not to get too excited, that the deal might fall through. Most of all I feel as if she’s not treating our old house with the proper respect. It’s the only place I’ve ever lived in and here she is shrugging it off, her mind on the cash and the next place, not looking back at all.

We’ll be looking in the photo albums saying, ‘Oh, there we are in the old place. There you are with Dad, on the balcony,’ and it’ll be a whole
era’s
distance from where we are then, with this scungy garden tamed and blooming, with our things—and some new ones replacing Dad’s share—positioned throughout the rooms, and the baby … somewhere. Where does the baby go? We’ll have to fix that front fence or it’ll crawl out into the road. We’ll have to put shade-cloth or chicken-wire around that verandah rail, get gates for the steps. I pause in the front path,
feeling heavy and listless, overwhelmed by just
those
preparations. Maybe this isn’t the right place, for me and my child. And Pug’s room isn’t right either. Maybe nowhere is right. Maybe we’re just unwelcome in the world, the pair of us.

Everybody knows everything now—Mum and me about Dad and Ricky, Mum about Pug, Pug about the baby. You’d think everything would be fantastic, with all the truth out, but it’s not. I’m still floating, being swirled down towards some terrible dark plughole. Is it the baby being born that I’m scared of? That’s part of it. I’m starting to show, to round out, to be conscious of how much time there is to go, how much bigger I’ll be by November. But that’s not the core of it—that’s made up of a torn, frightened feeling centred on this business of Mum’s new house, on the Magninis and Mum getting to know and like each other, on Pug and that intense look he gets sometimes, full of unsaid things, pleas, difficult truths. People all around me are protecting me from themselves: Dad saying ‘Don’t come in!’; Mum doing her crying and screaming out of my sight and hearing; Pug holding on to something. It makes me wild with anger but at the same time I don’t think I’ve ever felt more in need of protection—frail and clumsy, completely unable to cope. Like a newborn.

Pug’s at home with me, fixing up my old bassinet in the back courtyard. I’m making tea, raspberry-leaf and mint tea, because Mum says raspberry-leaf’s ‘good for the womb’, even though it sounds and tastes like witch’s brew. There’s a knock on the front door. Dad.

‘Oh. Hi.’

‘Hi. Hoped you’d be in. I just want to borrow the projector. It’s okay, I’ve teed it up with your mum,’ he adds ironically as I hesitate. I step back, and he comes in.

He’s lost weight. He’s got new clothes. He looks almost … almost
trendy
? My father?

‘Ah, bugger it!’ Pug says loudly out the back.

Dad grins. ‘Sorry, have you got visitors?’ he says very
delicately.

‘Only Dino,’ I say, hoping he’ll think it’s … I don’t know, the gardener or somebody.

‘Oh yes? Mind if I go out and say hullo?’

‘No, go ahead.’ I quake in my shoes, following. It’s all happening too fast.

Pug’s squatting by the bassinet stand pieces, scowling and sucking a pinched finger. ‘Dino, this is my father, Dave. Dad, Dino.’

They shake hands. Pug looks so alert and polite I could
eat
him.

‘Having a bit of trouble with the Family Heirloom?’ says Dad, giving the frame an amiable kick.

‘Yeah, I can’t work the bloody thing out. I mean, if I could see it set up I might be able to suss where everything goes, but I’m workin’ in the dark here.’

Dad walks around the scattered pieces. ‘Buggered if I can remember,’ he says. ‘Ferret us out a photo, would you, Mel? I think
this
is a part of the stand as well, Dino. See, if you don’t have the little struts in position …’

When I get back they’re crouched one on either side of the frame, lifting pieces and looking at them like chimps in a lab. ‘Oh God, I remember all these little L-plates. I hope you’ve got all day for this.’

They pore over the photo. It shows me propped up in the bassinet like a doll, the flash making red discs in my eyes. But they’re not looking at me.

I fetch my tea and sit on the flower-bed wall, watching them piece the stand together. The man in my life and the man who walked out of my life. I’m split exactly into three as regards Dad: I hate and am disgusted by him; I feel exactly towards him as I always have; I’m poised feeling nothing for him, waiting for something he does or says to show me my
real
feelings for him.
And this is only one person we’re talking about! This world is certainly not a simple place.

You would swear Dad and Pug were old mates. They relate on the completely practical level of getting this bassinet set up, as if the thing had no sentimental associations, no links with a life Dad went ahead and destroyed, or with a life that exists inside of me that’s going to change everything for all of us all over again. It’s just this-goes-here and this-attaches-to-this, wood and metal bits in the right positions, emotion-free, significance-free. While I sit here growing bigger, almost
bubbling over
with significance.

‘So that’s your Dad,’ says Pug when I come back from seeing Dad out. He’s crouched in the yard, putting the wheels on the stand.

‘Yes.’

‘He’s all right.’ Pug works on, looks up at me. ‘I’m not saying what he went and did was all that fantastic, but he seems to be an okay sort of bloke.’

‘Yeah, he’s okay,’ I say lightly, wishing I could look at Dad so straightforwardly, wishing I could care so little, wishing my days weren’t so clagged up with feelings crossing each other like riptides.

Ivy covers the back of our house. Ivy covers the fences. Not a leaf moves. It smells green. It blurs edges and fills corners, making everything look soft and ruined. The sky is far and blue, as if seen from the bottom of a ruined tower.

Pug’s smiling at me. ‘Still pissed off with him, aren’t you?’

‘I’m not supposed to be?’ I swallow a mouthful of cold, bitter tea. My mouth twists.

‘Well, your mum seems to be … you know, working herself out.’

‘Mum’s Mum. I’m me.’ I glare back at him.

He smiles again. ‘Aah, it takes time to get over shit like that. Don’t rush yourself, it’ll happen.’ He stands up and sets the bassinet on its wheels. You’d never guess, now that it’s all together,
just how many tiny fiddly pieces went into it. Pug stands back from it, and we go all quiet.

‘Bloody hell,’ he says. ‘You used to fit in that.’

‘Yeah, and now look at me—the size of a house.’

‘I didn’t mean
that
.’

‘I
know
.’

‘It’s just—it couldn’t be for anything else but a baby, could it? A baby
person.’

‘It couldn’t. You’re right.’

I’ll remember this: us caught here at the bottom of the tower with this thing made of wood. The heavy, ivy-covered silence, the only movement Pug’s eyes, green in the green.

We’re walking up to Newtown, through the park. They’re lounged on a bench by the swings, smoking, two people the sight of whom used to send me down into darkest despair. By their stillness I know they’ve noticed me. The path goes right behind their bench.

It’s when I see the consciously casual way Donna puts the cigarette to her mouth, the way she squints against the smoke, her bitten nails, that it strikes me—the bliss of walking past them, and feeling nothing, no fear, no anything. They could be trees, a seesaw, garbage bins.

Just before we’re out of earshot I hear Donna say with deliberate clarity, ‘Stupid moll.’

I feel Pug tense up beside me, but he follows my cue and keeps walking. ‘D’you know them?’ he says, a little way on.

I grin up at him. ‘No.’ It’s as simple as that.

‘Go gently with that box, Mel,’ says Mum, standing aside.

‘It’s only books.’

‘I mean gently on
you,
duffer, not on it. It’s not worth losing a grandchild over.’

‘Oh,
that
.’

‘Yes,
that
.’

I put it down and go out to the ute for another load.

‘Hey, give us that.’ Pug comes up the path.

‘I’m
okay
with it.’

‘
Give
us it. Take something lighter. Take that box of stuff for the kitchen.’

‘Bloody hell! You’re all carrying on like I’m
incapable.’

He grins. ‘You gotta look after yourself, mate.’

‘I
am
! I’m
fine
!’

‘Good.’ He blocks my way, takes the box from me, leaves me swearing by the ute.

‘Hey, we’re almost moved,’ says Mum when she pulls up with the next load.

‘Yeah, all we need is some beds to sleep in.’

‘Well, they should arrive any minute.’ She hands me a lampshade and the three Balinese fans she used to display on the bedroom mantelpiece. ‘I’ve got Bob Close keeping an eye on the movers while they load up. Where’s that tea? I’m ready to drop.’

The three of us sit on the veranda.

‘It’s really clouding over,’ says Mum. ‘Hope it doesn’t rain on our beds. You should see the old place, Mel. It’s starting to echo, it’s so empty.’

‘Don’t
talk
about it!’

‘You sentimental old thing.’

‘
Shush,
Mum!’ She sees I’m serious and shuts up. Pug looks from her to me, surprised. ‘Don’t ask. It’s nothing,’ I tell him.

‘Whatever you say.’

It’s cold outside, for someone who’s only been allowed to carry fans and teacups. Now that the sun’s gone everything looks incredibly dreary, the ‘quiet cul-de-sac’ Mum was so pleased to be living in now seeming lifeless, deserted. The only sound is the distant traffic mumbling, and slurps of tea.

‘Well, better get back to it.’ Pug puts down his mug and goes up the path.

A jumbo jet lumbers low overhead. ‘Cathay Pacific’ reads Mum and sighs. ‘Yep, there’s a whole world out there.’

We watch the plane cut through the clouds and disappear. ‘Maybe I should’ve taken that overseas trip you suggested.’ She watches for my reaction.

‘And when you got back?’

‘Maybe I wouldn’t’ve come back. I could’ve made a new life in Kashmir, or Barcelona.
Tuscany.’

‘Well, why
didn’t
you?’

She thinks for a while. ‘Too much of a coward. For the moment, anyway. Maybe when I’m a bit further along paying off this mortgage … Hey, there’s nothing like watching other people work, is there?’ she says as Pug passes us with another carton.

‘You’re right. You stay there. Have another cuppa.’ He disappears into the hall.

Mum squinches up her face at me. ‘Is he a doll?’

‘He’s useful, isn’t he?’ I joke.

‘He’s lovely. I don’t know how such a curmudgeonly old stick as you managed to get hold of him.’

‘I must be nicer than you think.’

‘There they go, two men and a baby van.’ Mum peers out through the curtain of rain at the edge of the veranda. The noise on the tin roof means she has to shout.

Now the house is dark. It feels as if I’m crawling into a burrow going down the hall. Pug is restacking the book boxes in the loungeroom, which has about a two-watt globe in the ceiling light, so that he looks like a smuggler sorting loot by candlelight. All today I’ve found myself drifting towards him, needing to know where he is and what he’s doing, then hitting a patch of restlessness and having to move away again.

I hate this, these bare beds, this not knowing where anything is, not being able to walk through the house without dodging cartons and stepping over stuff. Now the rain’s trapped us in
here, the way night-time does only pale grey and noisy, beating on the roof. If everything was sorted out it’d be cosy, but with all the doors open, the cold air coursing through and the crowd of things to be sorted it’s like moving through a bomb site.

I go to ‘my’ room and start clearing the bed of clothes, very few of which fit me any more. I stash them away in the cupboard, hunt up some bed-linen and make my bed. I set up my lamp on the bedside table, and as soon as I switch on its white-gold fan of light the whatever that’s rattling around in me, making me want to cry, stops. I fit my bookshelf into the space beside the fireplace and start stacking, all the pregnancy books, all the school books, all the storybooks reaching right back to a few tattered Miffys from earliest days, Some of these I haven’t seen the covers of for years. I get absorbed, putting them in alphabetical order, reacquainting myself with them, sitting in my corner with my baby keeping me warm.