The Forrests (31 page)

‘I can do it.’

Over the boy’s head Amsi spoke to Dorothy. ‘So how’s the apartment-hunting?’

Grace walked Meg down the hall towards them, holding the baby’s hands as she proceeded in small, jerky lurches.

One segment of footpath outside the house had been repaved and three paw-prints were caught in the concrete, claws out as though freshly made for all time. Dorothy sat in the back of the car because
Meg cried if she was not in the front. When the engine turned over, music shrieked from the speakers. Grace cut the sound. The baby burbled and clapped her hands, and a rubbish truck ground towards them on the other side of the road, and the car passed through the dull smell of its contents and on, around the corner, up the feeder ramp and right onto the motorway that roared past the house for hours each night.

The waiting area was full of girls with curly dark hair between twelve and twenty-four months, and their mothers, or maybe nannies. Dot had never seen so many curly-headed toddlers; there must have been fifteen. She’d brought a book, but the place was too noisy. One lone man sat with his daughter on his knee, and she twinkled her hands and sang a wordless nursery rhyme as he jigged. ‘I wonder why they call everyone at the same time.’ Dot leaned forward over the low reception table so he would know she was addressing him. ‘It’s like Oz in here.’

He gave a shrug that was more like a mime of a shrug, as though they were in a nightclub or the kind of place where talk was pointless.

‘My granddaughter’s in there now,’ she said. ‘Do you come to many of these?’

‘Sorry?’ He held his daughter’s chest with one arm as he leaned forward and cupped an ear.

‘Do you come to many auditions? Does your daughter do a lot of this?’

He nodded. Then he sat back against the white faux-leather couch. The room was very hot and the adults’ voices were loud and artificial. She had done it herself, talking to Mister Unfriendly,
soared into that upper register that denoted false cheer. Dorothy looked down at her shirt and saw that the buttons were uneven. Starting from the top button she fixed it, then examined the polish on her fingernails, chipped in the shapes of tiny treasure islands, the miniature repeating asterisks in the striated skin on the backs of her hands. Next to her sat a short woman, a Filipina nanny possibly, of indeterminate age. ‘I suppose this sort of thing pays well,’ Dorothy said. ‘Being in a television ad.’

‘Yes,’ said the nanny. ‘It’s a sick world.’

Dot smiled. ‘You can say that again.’

Grace came out of the casting room, the baby in her arms. Dot stood, reaching out to take her, and Grace said, ‘For Christ’s sake, Mum, your shirt.’

Oh, weird, the buttons were undone; her bra was awful, a flesh-coloured satiny thing that appeared capable of standing upright in doubled mountainous peaks if unhooked and cast to the floor. Then the roll of stomach below the bra, the protruding curve of oatmeal flesh that looked, to Dorothy, as though it belonged to somebody else. Halfway up, the curve was cut across by the transparent black waistband of her tights, with a thick raised seam wiggling indecently down the middle and disappearing into the waistband of her skirt. ‘Oops,’ Dorothy said, her voice raised for the benefit of the room.

There was no time between being a child, really bemused by bodies like this, and having one of your own, no time at all, and on the way to the car she would explain this to Grace, who looked good still, though she wore a lot of make-up and you could always see a pink elastic thong strap when she crouched down to help the
kids with whatever. Not that she herself was even too decrepit; some women her age dated men of thirty, though she suspected those men were unknowingly gay. And Carmen from the maternity home had only just come out. Hope for everyone. Rather than alarmed she should be grateful. This was what she would say to Grace, that daily, in amongst all of the
yeah everything
, she tried to be consciously grateful. So what if she had learned it from the Internet? And she knew, she could tell, that Grace loved her kids, and her flinty, faintly desperate women friends, and her sexy old husband bringing those planes home safely day after day after day, even if she didn’t love the motorway whine and the oil refinery and half of Amsi’s colleagues sucking up the stress leave every year.

‘When will you know?’ she asked as they waited to cross the road to the car.

‘Oh, we didn’t get it.’ Grace rooted in her massive pink bag with one hand, the baby balanced on her hip with the other. ‘They cast the parents as white.’

‘They might change their mind.’ Of course they would. If it were down to her she would gobble Meg right up, her brother too.

‘God damn it, where are they?’ Grace stared at her mother, one arm half swallowed by the bag. ‘Did you give the keys back to me?’

‘Did I?’

‘After you went back for the nappies.’ Grace stood on her toes and peered down the street. ‘Where’s the car?’

‘The car’s down there.’ Dorothy gestured, loosely, to the line of parked cars.

‘Where? I can’t see it.’

They walked forward along the noisy street, the air thick with
midday summer heat, as though in a trance. Meg pulled the floppy cotton hat from her damp curls and waved it, then dropped it. Dorothy bent to pick it up. Flat pods of melted chewing gum blemished the footpath. Sunlight badoinged off storefronts’ plated glass. She should have unpeeled her tights in the bathroom at the casting place, shoved them in the bin that was sickly sweet with other people’s grandchildren’s nappies.

They walked on and the spot where she had thought the car was parked moved ahead of them, like the moon used to when she was small, and they were driving at night, all of them, the dark back of her mother at the wheel, the bony pressure of a brother’s or sister’s head against her shoulder, black hills on the black night out the window. A plane slowly tore the sky overhead and Meg pointed upwards, crying, ‘Daddy.’ She thought he flew them.

Dorothy tried to remember putting the keys in her skirt pocket or in her bag, or locking the car or unlocking the car. She looked at the floral, plastic-coated nappy bag slung next to the bright pink bag over Grace’s shoulder and envisaged it sitting in the well below the passenger seat, or on the bench seat in the back. Certainty was ungraspable.

When she had come back from the car Meg was next on the list to be called in, and there was hissed panic in the white-tiled, corporate bathroom as Grace fumbled the nappies out of the bag and balanced the baby half on a raised knee and half on the bench that housed the basins, and Dorothy handed her a perfumed plastic bag and wipes in the wrong order, a nurse in surgery fucking up her first day. Grace had lobbed the taped parcel of dirty nappy across the room and into the swing-top bin, and Dorothy
applauded her daughter’s aim, left standing in the bathroom with the baby-changing implements all around her feet, the door that Grace and Meg had bolted through already sliding shut.

‘Are you sure we haven’t gone past the car?’ she said now. ‘Are you sure we came out in the right direction?’

Grace growled between her teeth, a surprisingly underworld sound.

‘Let me take her.’ Dorothy hoisted Meg into her arms. The child’s towelling playsuit was moist with sweat. They were all sweating. On Grace it looked like a sprayed sheen of lacquer. ‘Poor little thing, what a big morning.’

The road took a slight bend, which seemed to speak to them as they approached, the curve of lined buildings leaning in confidingly,
You didn’t come this far
, and they turned and walked back towards the casting agency, the distance shorter in reverse. On the other side of the road, a bus pulled out into the traffic and revealed the boxy profile of Grace’s car. ‘Thank God,’ Grace said.

When the traffic stopped for the lights they picked their way between idling cars, Grace darting her head forward and leading, Dorothy raising one arm to wave thanks to the drivers for letting them cross. The baby was heavy, and soggy, and the skin of their arms glued together and made a very faint sucking noise like worn-out Velcro when it peeled apart. Dot dabbed at the creases in the girl’s neck with a tissue from the floral bag. The keys were dangling from the lock on the driver’s side. ‘For fuck’s sake,’ said Grace.

‘Oh dear,’ said Dot. ‘God, really?’

‘It’s not funny,’ said Grace. She nudged past her mother with a hip in order to unlock the passenger door. From a gilt-curlicued
boutique, a very tall young woman in tight jeans emerged, a man with corrugated grey hair behind her. They swung rectangular shopping bags from plush tassels and spoke together in a language that might have been Russian. As they passed Dot, and Grace, and the baby, the young woman said something sideways to the man and threw her head back merrily and laughed. Grace threw the car keys to the gutter. ‘You used to laugh whenever I lost my temper. Laugh and laugh and laugh and laugh and laugh and laugh and laugh. I hate my life,’ she cried. Tears broke from her.

‘Don’t be ridiculous. I take you seriously!’ But Dot had a memory. Having to leave the dinner table when one of them – who? – pushed yet another plate away, knocking over yet another glass of water, and she was unable to control her erupting giggles at the sheer fucking hopelessness of it all, the child wailing louder, real tears now, betrayed. She had stood in the hallway, wheezing with laughter, waiting till
all this
didn’t seem just completely ridiculous again.

Dot clicked Meg into the car seat and handed her a plastic bottle of water from the bracket in the door. The little girl drank then waved it around so that droplets sprayed everywhere, spotting Dorothy’s shirt. ‘Get in the back,’ Dot said.

Grace was under the wheel, retrieving the keys, sniffing. ‘But you’re not allowed to drive. It hasn’t been six months yet.’

Without seeing anything, Dorothy stared at Meg. There was an unspoken rule not to mention the loss of her licence and Grace had just broken it. Five months ago she’d been busted for speeding. In court she had been described as a recidivist and held in contempt for expostulating to the judge, ‘Don’t be so fucking stupid.’ Turned
out there was no statute of limitations on driving offences, and over the decades her unpaid fines had racked up a lot of interest. The lawyer, who promised to get her out of the charges and minimise the costs, proved to be overly optimistic. ‘A danger to road safety’ was the phrase heard. Could there be, Dorothy wondered, a statute of limitations on regret? A question to keep to herself.

‘We need to get the fan on. Sit down and have some water.’ Dorothy inched between the car in front and the dinged, flaky bonnet of Grace’s car. She sat behind the steering wheel and started the engine, and switched the air conditioner to high. After a few moments frigid air blew around them. ‘Bliss,’ said Dot.

‘This is bad for the planet,’ said Grace.

‘I know.’

Back at the house, Grace laid Meg down in the cot. The baby rolled onto her front and put her thumb in her mouth, exhausted. ‘You’re a good mother,’ Dorothy said when her daughter was back in the kitchen.

‘You can’t stay here any more.’ Grace’s voice wobbled.

Dorothy opened the pantry door, took out a small cardboard packet of raisins and lifted the flap with her thumbnail, loosened a few of the sticky black blobs and put the box next to the container of lunch that waited for Meg to awake. ‘You’re always so well prepared,’ she said.

‘I wanted to last till you could drive again. Or found an apartment. But you’re not even looking.’ Grace tipped sideways and donked her head on the wooden bench. ‘Sorry, I know you’re not a project.’

‘Darling,’ said Dorothy. ‘I’m sorry. Please don’t feel bad. You’ve
been so generous. All of you children, I know it’s not easy having your divorced mother living with you.’

‘Dad’s dating again, did you know that? He joined some online group. Why don’t you? It’s perfectly acceptable now.’ His relationship with Jennifer had not survived the divorce. Dorothy saw her once, walking her dog, also curly and golden, on the beach at Takapuna. That sickening moment as she approached, Dot waiting for the encounter to pass, afraid she might just
flip out
and throw herself writhing to the sand. Dot had said hello. Jennifer pretended not to hear. She’d yelled it to the woman’s back, the arm that casually swung one of those plastic ball-throwers, a long thin scoop that made her think of a speculum.
Hello, Jennifer
. Tossed on the wind.

‘Good for him.’

‘That guy, what about him, that photo by your bed?’

‘He lives in Spain. He’s married. He’s just an old friend.’

‘We think you’re frightened of being on your own. Us kids. That’s what we think.’

‘Right. I see.’ She could tell Grace was waiting for her to say something more. The warm, dark smell of raisins wrinkled through the air.

The commune had expanded from the few prefabs and A-frames it consisted of over fifty years ago. Dorothy didn’t remember the way it looked; nothing would be exactly the same except the stern rocks, covered in lichen. She longed to lie on the ground with Eve, looking at Daniel wand the baseball bat, practising his swing.

They found Michael in the vegetable patch at the top of a
dusty path, and the children squinted at his white ponytail, his missing-toothed smile, and solemnly accepted handfuls of soft, cloud-shaped raspberries fresh from the canes. Dorothy showed them the sunflowers while he walked Amsi and Grace around the beans and lettuces and thick-veined leaves of some other vegetable, perforated with snail holes. ‘We really have to go,’ Grace said, and the boy ran back down the hill, tumbling into gravity’s embrace, the adults coming after. There were brief goodbyes – Frankie’s fierce squeeze, his head thudding into her pillowy middle, the show hug of the little girl, reaching out from Grace’s arms to pat her cheeks, then the young family shut their car doors and drove off, taking the cattle stop slowly, leaving Dorothy standing there, the poker-worked sign that announced the commune’s presence swinging from its hooks. She began the walk back up through the fine dry earth and trees to Michael, and the luggage she had left with him.