The Good Parents Read online

  The reason she couldn’t write letters was because he was everywhere and everything and he was secret.

  Sometimes the phone rang, the answering machine clicked into life or a fax spewed out. He chuckled. She knew it excited him, to be lying with her at the top of this silent house of business. He liked to stalk naked across the room, and stand at the window, lightly scratching himself, with only the birds to see him.

  For a short time afterwards, dressed and back at his desk, he was blinky, dopey, like a little boy woken from sleep, winking at her as he spoke on the phone, calmer, no longer tormented. He was very attractive to her then. ‘My legs don’t work,’ she said as she tried to stand up from the mattress, and he’d smile but keep listening to his messages. She dressed quickly, took the little bag from her desk and set off downstairs, briefly carefree and light-headed.

  He winked and joked when he was happy and had sudden bouts of fondness for her. As he passed he’d whisper in her ear that she was the best little worker he’d ever had.

  Although she was proud to have made him happy, she couldn’t laugh at this with him. What had happened between them seemed too large, too radical for jokes. She smiled at him but she couldn’t laugh.

  A country girl. He’d been surprised he was her first. Wasn’t that unusual these days? he asked. The isolation in the bush perhaps? She shrugged, not knowing why he was so keen for news of her generation, or why he seemed so taken up with the idea of all young women as freely promiscuous. She didn’t want to think about this.

  She didn’t say that the way he made her feel aroused a longing in her to tell him about horses and her brother and her dog and the seasons and landscapes of the wheat-belt, all the things that fed into the river of loving that flowed through her.

  She knew all the tones of his voice. He had a voice for doing business with Asians and another voice for Australians. Like her father, he became more macho, jokey, his accent broader, when dealing with Australian men. He was more at ease exchanging smooth small talk with the Asians.

  Then there was the way he had of talking to his mother, tucking the phone under his chin, keeping on working, rolling his eyes now and then, ironic, yet always patient. His mother lived in a retirement village and forgot things and left flustered messages late at night: Maynard? Maynard? Are you there? – her voice quavery with self-pity.

  Who are you? she demanded, impatient if Maya answered the phone. Oh, you’re the little lass from the West, yes, yes, he’s told me about you. There were old girls like this in Warton, left over from the big landowner families, shuffling into the newsagency with their hats and walking sticks, pretending to be helpless but always getting their own way. Going on and on about something that annoyed them, while everybody else had to wait.

  His nicest voice, the only time he sounded open and natural, was when he spoke to his son Andrew. He was always happy after he hung up the phone to Andrew, smiling to himself for a few minutes, in a little dream. Andrew was an agricultural science student, writing his PhD – Maynard always mentioned the PhD – who’d come back home to help look after his mother. It was when she thought of Dory Flynn as a mother that Maya was able to grasp the momentousness of the situation, the affliction that had struck this family. A mother with cancer.

  The light in the house going out.

  Just before she left Warton she went to say goodbye to Miriam Kershaw, the headmaster’s wife. Miriam had asked for her, and at the last moment she knew she had to go. She steeled herself to step into that house, dark and stale with illness, walk down the shadowed corridor, sit beside her, and not show shock at Miriam’s body, so terrifyingly shrunken in her bed. Afterwards she went to the creek and lay back on the boulders and took deep swigs of air. I’m young! I’m young! she breathed.

  Her father was angry that she’d been summoned and angry that she went. Something about Miriam always made him harsh and impatient.

  Maynard never spoke of Dory’s illness in the office and she knew she mustn’t ask him. He remained matter-of-fact, calm and cheery. He gave no sign that he was worried. She couldn’t tell how much he cared. Perhaps he pretended not to care because he cared too much?

  She worried that he didn’t care enough.

  But this morning when she came in after the weekend, the face he turned to her shocked her. His eyes were sunken, his face blotchy, unshaven. For the first time she thought of him as old. He’d been up all night, he said. Things were going downhill. His voice was gruff and his hands shook a little as he shuffled papers. I shouldn’t really have come in, he mumbled, looking around the room. She knew it was for her, the ‘fix’ he sometimes joked about. In that moment she had no suspicions of him. She went straight to him at the desk. As she held his head against her, her eyes searched out the spire in the window behind him, her point of reference. Why should she be troubled by something so simple, so generous? She bent and whispered how she’d missed him, how she’d hardly lasted the weekend. She loved him for his need of her, and for his pain at last, his redemption.

  At midday there was still no word from him. She was so hungry that she closed the office and ate a hamburger and chips – taboo foods of her childhood – very quickly, sitting on a stool at the window of the espresso bar on the corner. Then a jam doughnut. She knew she ate too much to make up for being parted from him. The cafe was busy but not fashionable. She didn’t feel intimidated here. It had a TV and a magazine rack and a table of pale-skinned salesmen meeting for coffee. There was a pinup board in the back corner covered with fluttery desperate-looking homemade notices, to sell, to buy, to rent. It was here that she’d noticed Cecile’s Room to Let sign, her eye drawn to its professional graphics and its lack of chest-beating. She was still proud of this moment of good judgement, and the luck it brought her, to find Cecile. There was a new sign pinned up, a flyer for something called The Marijuanalogues, which made her think of her father. An evening of hilarity you will not soon forget (unless you smoke pot of course). Spread the herb! She remembered that her parents were coming to Melbourne to stay with her. When? It must be soon. For the past couple of months she’d deliberately wiped all thought of this visit from her mind.

  She finished off with a large Diet Coke and left. The day stretched endlessly ahead.

  The office was one in a row of old buildings, all joined together, two or three storeys high – a fashion agency for uniforms, a paper warehouse, a plumber’s workshop – down a side street, facing the church. It was like an old-fashioned village street tucked in amongst the tall buildings. Seen from a distance, it would make a good location for a film.

  The city centre was only a few streets away, but she never went there, among the fashionable people. She preferred to sit in the courtyard of the church. Every day she felt the need to collect herself, by being outside, near trees. The church was nested down between the glass flanks of the high-rise on either side of it, a valley surrounded by mountains. It was built of blackened stone, as old as England. Clusters of white plastic chairs were set out hospitably beneath tall English trees. A few twittery sparrows hopped along the bare black branches. She was used to native trees full of singing birds. Sometimes it was in this courtyard that she could feel most fully a stranger. When she first came to Melbourne she was almost surprised to find the same currency. It was like another country over here.

  Clouds scudded past the tops of the skyscrapers so you could think it was the buildings that were moving. A hush seemed to descend over the precinct and for a moment everything stilled. Nothing appeared, no car, no passer-by. No phone rang, no door slammed, no voice called out a greeting. On the Diet Coke billboard next to the cafe someone had scrawled Nutra Sweet Causes Cancer.

  She understood suddenly that death meant ending. Her heart started to thud, for Dory.

  By three o’clock she felt very bad indeed. She shut down the computer, put on her jacket, zipped it up to the chin and locked the office door. Although she had no experience of religion she went straight across the road into the ol
d church and sat down in a pew. She had an impulse to pray for Dory, though she didn’t know what for. Too late now to pray that she’d be cured.

  For her forgiveness? Why hadn’t she thought of this before? She’d let herself believe that to be held and caressed like this was a good thing, kind and loving, when they were both so lonely. He was more lonely than her in a way. But who knew what Dory felt or understood, lying there day after day?

  She’d taken her cue from Maynard in this.

  When he spoke of Delores his voice was even and controlled like a professional carer, or the parent of a special child. Once, after he’d thanked one of Dory’s church friends for the curry she’d sent, he put down the phone shaking his head. ‘Excellent women,’ he said. ‘Saints.’ He sighed. ‘Just like my wife.’

  He spoke as if she were apart from him. He only called her ‘Dory’ if he was talking of the past. He said I when he talked of future plans. How to finance his return to Asia, probably Indonesia or Thailand. To live, for good. He spoke like a traveller who would soon be on his way.

  But this morning he’d held onto her like a child does, his head against her stomach. He was breaking up inside and didn’t know it. She knew she was harnessed to him now, wherever he was going.

  No one had taught her how to pray. Who is God? she’d asked her parents when she was a kid, and they had thrown their arms about and talked of trees and kindness and the way families love each other. Jason Kay’s God was the Great Headmaster, watching you wherever you went. Jason lived in fear of Hell, yet when she rode past his Brethren meeting hall, it seemed to her that it was Hell, chocolate-brick, windowless like a big toilet block, a yard of gray sand, a high cyclone fence all around.

  Churches always made her curious. What was supposed to happen there? Comfort? Inspiration? But the cold dusty light and vinegary smell inside this old church had no power to calm her.

  The tram was packed with very loud schoolkids. She was only a year or so older than some of them but she shut her eyes in their midst like a middle-aged woman with worries. If she could have prayed it would have been for Cecile to be home but Cecile was in Kuala Lumpur visiting her sister. There was nobody else in Melbourne she could talk to. Her secret life with Maynard cut her off, from her own past, her own family. She belonged nowhere.

  Above all do not panic, she told herself. She would buy some takeaway noodles, have a long shower and watch a rerun of Friends, which was like going to bed with your teddy.

  The next morning he wasn’t there. She strode straight through the dark office to the flickering answering machine and listened to the voice of a woman with a foreign accent telling her that Mr Flynn would not be coming in today, because unfortunately, yesterday afternoon, Mrs Flynn passed away. Mr Flynn will be in touch, said the woman in her precise, gentle foreign voice. Francine, Bernadette or Tina? Whoever she was, she didn’t feel comfortable speaking into an answering machine. Er – thank you. All the best … Like signing off a letter.

  Maya sat down in his chair. Through the window she could see the very tip of the spire, a mysterious, ornate black knob. What was it supposed to be? An acorn? A bud? She’d asked some workers at the church, but they didn’t know. All that care, she thought, put into something that nobody knew about or saw. Just the birds, year after year. For some reason, this made her want to cry.

  She didn’t know how long she sat there. It was cold, she’d forgotten to switch on the heating. She sat sunk into her jacket, the collar turned up, the wool around her jaw. A phone rang on and on somewhere in the empty building. It felt like days since she’d spoken to another human being. What to do next? She took her little bag from the drawer of her desk and made her way down the stairs to the Ladies’ Restroom.

  A toilet was flushing and the black-haired beautician from Mimi’s was washing her hands. She had switched on the lights and was peering critically at her skin, though her geisha-pale face looked perfect to Maya. She smiled at Maya from the mirror. All the women from Mimi’s were friendly. She was wearing tight black pants and a pale-blue smock and high black platform heels. The air carried drafts of her airy, floral perfume.

  ‘Busy day?’ she said to Maya, as she reached for a paper towel. Her name, Jody, was embroidered on the pocket of her smock. Jody had a kid, Maya had watched her once on the footpath, blowing kisses to a little tear-blotched face in a car driving off up the street.

  ‘Not really. My boss’s wife died last night.’

  ‘Oh no!’ A concerned, maternal frown appeared beneath Jody’s dead-straight, blue-black fringe. ‘Was it expected?’

  ‘She’d been sick for a while. Cancer.’ They stared at one another as Jody slowly dried her hands.

  ‘I don’t know what I’m supposed to do.’ Maya heard her own voice echo, high and plaintive in the tiled room. ‘I’ve never known anyone who died before.’

  Why was she talking like this? She’d never once met Dory. And even as she spoke she remembered Miriam Kershaw.

  To sound innocent.

  Jody raised her perfectly plucked eyebrows. ‘You could always send some flowers.’

  ‘How do you do that?’

  ‘There’s a florist round the corner. They’ll deliver them for you or you can take them yourself.’ She started to edge gently around Maya. ‘I’ll speak to the girls. We’ll send a card or something. That poor guy. Any kids?’ She hesitated at the door.

  ‘A son. Grown up.’

  ‘You OK, sweetie? Going to close up for the day?’

  ‘Yes, I will. I’ll take the family some flowers.’ She hadn’t known this was what she was going to do until she heard herself say it.

  Everything was speeding up. She was in a taxi holding a bouquet as big as a baby, wrapped in mauve cellophane, the stems like limbs across her knees. They were racing down a freeway, in a direction she’d never been before. Billboards, overpasses, factories stood to attention beneath a sombre sky. She was like an official mourner, sweeping past in a motorcade. The taxi was filled with the freshness of her flowers.

  Why this terrible rush? She’d run into the florist’s, pointing to irises and hyacinths and orchids and flowers she didn’t know the name of, as long as they were purple or mauve. She’d never been in a florist shop before, and the exotic blooms, the leafy hush and tang went to her head. In Warton if people gave you flowers, they would have grown them.

  She hadn’t asked how much they’d cost – nearly as much, it turned out, as a really good haircut – just signed her credit card and rushed out again to hail a taxi. As if she were late. For what? To show him her support? So as not to be left out?

  Her mouth was dry and she was sweating inside her coat. She caught a glimpse of her half-profile in the taxi’s tinted window, and for a moment she thought she saw Dory. But Dory looked nothing like her.

  She’d spotted a photo once in his wallet and made him take it out and show her. Dory with baby Andrew beside a potted palm in a studio in Jakarta, a creased little colour print, faded now, washed out. The tiny boy was fat and gingery, his face a smudge, screwed up ready to cry. In contrast, Dory was very striking, like a sixties pop-star, with a beehive of black hair, pale pink lipstick and dark, kohl-lined eyes. She was Dutch-Indonesian, Maynard said. (My father is half Dutch! Maya told him, but as usual, he didn’t seem to hear.) He’d met Delores in Java in his days as a saxophonist with a touring band. She taught Indonesian in a language school. Later he went into business for a while with her father. Dory wore white gloves and a collarless mauve coat with large mauve cloth-covered buttons. Her smile was serene, her eyes shy, shining. ‘She looks happy,’ she said to Maynard as he slid the photo back into his wallet. He said nothing.

  In her mind, as time went by, the name Dory came to have a sort of orchid-coloured glow.

  They were off the freeway now, charging into a suburb. The main street of every suburb here was a city in itself, stacked with shops and cafes, under rows of swinging wires. This was what Dory would have seen when she first came to Melbourne, look
ing out a taxi window over little Andrew’s head.

  The flowers were for Dory, of course.

  The Flynns lived in a dead-end street that finished in a shallow rise of bushland. The houses were packed in, side by side, close to the road. In Melbourne everyone lived closer together. Some of the houses were modernised, with glass and timber additions and frondy landscaped gardens, but the Flynns’ house was bare and treeless, like it would have been when it was built.

  So this was where he came from and returned to. Winter sun shone briefly through the clouds, but the house looked dark, stricken, closed in on itself.

  It was after she had paid the driver and turned towards the house with her armful of rustling cellophane and flowing purple ribbons, that she realised her offering was not only showy and over the top, it was fatally, morally wrong. Sweat spurted into her armpits, she swung around but the taxi had already disappeared. No shelter anywhere. Oh God, how could she get rid of it? Was anybody watching her?

  The curtains in the house were drawn. There was no one on the street. Quick, she told herself, leave it on the doormat and run. Head lowered, she moved swiftly up the front path to the porch. There was no garden, just a concrete slab and some woody shrubs by the steps. Somehow she’d expected Dory to have made a beautiful garden.

  Andrew opened the door as she tiptoed across the porch. He could be nobody else but Andrew, though he’d grown tall and dark and clear. The fat smudge-faced days were long gone. How had he known she was here?

  A wave of heat moved up her neck so violently that her eyes watered. ‘I just wanted to …’

  He smiled and put his arm out and firmly ushered her inside. The door closed behind her.