The Good Parents Read online

  In the bathroom opposite was her towel from home, bone-dry on a rail, and another towel, more recently used. There was an expensive little pot of lemon-scented cream on the shelf beneath the mirror. Whose? Toni sniffed it, dipped her finger in and smeared it under her eyes. Her face felt dried out from the plane. What made her think she could take liberties like this in her daughter’s house? Right now she’d like to curl up in Maya’s bed and close her eyes.

  As she came downstairs a beam of late afternoon sun shone straight from the courtyard onto the couch where Jacob slumped. Toni removed the remote control from his hand, turned the television off and sat down next to him. Within a minute she too was asleep.

  This was how Cecile saw them when she came into the house. First the suitcases, then the two figures sitting side by side in the last light. She knew at once who they must be. She padded down and stood in front of the couch, studying them. The man was snoring gently, one hand across his stomach. The woman’s head lolled back, her mouth slightly open and her chin squashed down in a position she probably wouldn’t regard as flattering. They were just at the turning point in that process of thickening and blurring that slowly ate up people’s youthful looks. In sleep, this was endearing.

  They looked like they were used to sitting like this on a couch, their hands fallen down together as if at any moment they might find each other and clasp them. Cecile almost felt that she was the intruder. She stepped back a couple of paces.

  People resented being looked at, she’d learnt that very young. Her mother – her adoptive mother – used to go red in the face and start to cry if Cecile stared at her when she was a child. She was sent to her room, but she crouched listening at the end of the hall to the inevitable phone calls that her mother would make to her friends.

  To be perfectly honest she frightens me.

  I sometimes think she isn’t human.

  Her mother never understood that she’d learnt to read people with her eyes from the moment she opened them because she was alone and too young to know the words their mouths were forming.

  Why was Maya so offhand about her folks? When Cecile asked if they’d be OK with a mattress on the floor, Maya rolled her eyes. ‘They’d love it! They’re terrified of luxury. They’re just old hippies.’

  This couple didn’t think of themselves as old. They both wore jeans and worn leather jackets and much-polished R.M. Williams boots, more like ageing rockers than hippies. His belt was snuggled under the gentle rise of his belly. Her long roughened fingers were scattered with silver rings. He had a pouchy jaw, a weathered face, and a mass of gray-blond hair. Her hair was dyed dark red, tucked thick and curling behind her ears. She had black arched eyebrows, clear sallow skin, a long, muscular neck. She took care of herself. Her jacket pushed out over her breasts.

  You could say a sort of small-town version of Nick Nolte and Anjelica Huston. They looked right somehow in this setting. They matched the house.

  She liked the way they didn’t sprawl, but sat upright, self-effacing in their daughter’s territory. They could be sitting in an airport lounge. There was a holiday sheen about them, they seemed to breathe a wholesome air. Good country people come to the city. Their eyelids were fluttering. People always knew when they were being watched. Cecile felt a moment’s pang for what she had to tell them.

  ‘Hi,’ she said softly.

  They opened their eyes at the same time and sat up blinking, wiping their mouths.

  ‘I’m Cecile. I live here with Maya.’

  Dazed, they started to struggle to their feet. Cecile held up her hand.

  ‘First I have to tell you that Maya is not here.’

  ‘She’s at work,’ said the mother, sitting back.

  ‘She’s gone away. She left a message on the phone five days ago. I wasn’t here when she went.’

  ‘Where has she gone?’

  ‘She didn’t say. She said it was for work and that she’d be in touch.’

  ‘Did she say when she’d be back?’

  Cecile shook her head.

  They sat very still and solemn, their hands fallen on their laps, as if the air had gone out of them. They’d forgotten to introduce themselves. They were sweet.

  In spite of her mother’s apprehension, Cecile knew that she observed her fellow beings in a spirit of enquiry and benevolence, not to say, in some cases, with a quite disproportionate tenderness. In fact she was careful to keep a space around herself in order to retain detachment and balance. She knew, even as a child, that her distance from her adoptive mother was a kindness. Above all else she despised the exercise of power over others.

  She turned on the lights and the heating and stood at the kitchen bench. ‘Shall we discuss it over an aperitif?’ she asked them.

  ‘Maya and I pride ourselves on our dry martinis,’ Cecile was saying, brandishing a tarnished cocktail shaker, chattering like a cooking demonstrator, aware that the parents weren’t really listening, when suddenly, without a word, they rushed past her, out the front door into the courtyard. She peered up to see them illuminated by the spotlight over the fishpond, each puffing furiously on a cigarette. Smoking the way people drink when they want to get drunk, with a savage, private intensity. Like most smokers they were probably trying to give up.

  How had they managed to stay together? This was the question Cecile always asked herself about couples. He was a big, pale, dreamy man. She was quite a foxy lady. What was the glue between them? Her detachment? His distraction? He was putting a packet of Drum back in his pocket. They were roll-your-own type of people.

  Ever since they opened their eyes to see a tiny Chinese girl standing before them, the world had darkened and a heaviness crept over them that no martini could lift. The girl – the young woman – Cecile was very kind. Of course you must stay, she said. She was very self-possessed. She had a precise, definitive way of talking, perhaps from speaking English as a second language, or perhaps from going to an exclusive school. It was hard to tell her age, she could be nineteen or twenty-nine. Not the stereotype of the glamorous Asian girl, in her loose black clothes with her hair pulled back behind her slightly protuberant ears, and her bare broad face. Almost a Maoist look. Her sleeves were neatly turned back from her slender wrists, ready for work. She was a gracious host, more than she needed to be. For a few minutes she slipped out, reappearing with some sort of spicy Asian soup which normally they would have relished. She brushed aside any offer of payment. They ate, forgetting to taste it or praise it. Had Maya been unhappy? they asked. Did she have a boyfriend? Was there any sign that she was into drugs or a religious cult?

  They felt shocked, like jilted lovers. Sick with disappointment. They hadn’t realised how much they’d been counting on seeing Maya. Now they must wait a little longer. Surely there was a good practical reason for her absence.

  Or were they the reason?

  They felt shamed, rejected, in front of this sophisticated young woman.

  They must stay as long as they needed to, Cecile said. Shyly they excused themselves and made their way up to Maya’s room where, like sick children, they put themselves to bed.

  ‘It isn’t like her,’ Jacob said.

  ‘Isn’t it? You know how we get on her nerves.’

  ‘That’s because we still matter to her. She’s very loyal, really. She’s never let us down before.’

  ‘Remember how I treated my parents?’

  ‘We’re not parents like your parents.’ Right from the start, this had been an article of faith between them.

  ‘Maybe we are, to Maya.’ Toni turned her head to look out the window. They liked to think of themselves as young at heart, open-minded, but it was true, Maya hadn’t seemed very pleased with them for some time.

  ‘We let her go,’ Jacob said.

  ‘Perhaps we shouldn’t have.’

  ‘We had no choice, remember?’ My little thundercloud, he used to call her.

  ‘Maybe this is her way of telling us that she wants to be left alone in her new
life.’

  ‘Maybe it isn’t anything to do with us. Most likely she got the date wrong and she’ll be back tomorrow.’

  They were silent for a while. Jacob thought of the hallfuls of parents he had faced, term after term, queuing up for his good advice. His self-righteous hints that perhaps there was something that they didn’t quite get about their kid. Usually he advised easing up, letting alone, believing in the good in your child. Sometimes his palms tingled and he knew he wanted to say that the little bastard needed a strong hand.

  Physician, heal thyself. Where was that from? The Bible? A line of a song or poem would often go round in his head and he wouldn’t know where it came from. It generally related to where he was in his life. His unconscious sending him a message.

  ‘Something is keeping her away,’ he said at last.

  ‘A love affair,’ said Toni.

  There were no curtains in this house. The room was lit by the glow of the sky of a great unknown city. Maya’s room at home looked out onto the palm tree next to the verandah. Every day Toni stood in front of her pinup board for a few minutes to look at the photos, not for themselves, but to understand why Maya had chosen them. In Warton it would only be about eight o’clock. Magnus was probably still at the Garcias.

  They’d come to bed way too early, they would never fall asleep.

  They lay still, not talking. Visions crossed their eyes but they didn’t share them. Both thought they were stronger than the other.

  After some time Jacob decided to get up. Toni was asleep. There was no true dark here, no relief. The bed sagged and his tracksuit pants were twisted in the crotch. Usually he slept naked, but he didn’t like to, somehow, in his daughter’s sheets. He thought he’d sneak down to the living room and see if he could catch a late-night movie.

  He heard a faint twang of music as he came down the stairs. There was no light on in the living room except for the glow of the computer screen. Cecile was sitting at it, intent. From behind she looked like a twelve-year-old schoolgirl with a ponytail. The music came from her computer, a flute, a tinkling ukelele, wailing voices, a sort of Oriental opera.

  ‘Working late?’ he called out, so as not to surprise her.

  ‘Editing.’ She kept looking at the screen. She was wearing narrow rimless glasses.

  He approached. On the screen was an image of a walled courtyard with a door open to a dark interior.

  ‘You’re a film editor?’

  ‘Editor, writer, director. I have my own company, Prodigal Films.’

  ‘Why “Prodigal”?’

  She turned. ‘That’s the name of a film I want to make. When I can work out how to do it.’

  ‘I won’t disturb you. I just need a drink of water.’

  She turned back to the screen and pressed a key. ‘This is just personal footage. Holiday snaps.’

  He stood looking at the image over her shoulder. Light fell through a grilled window onto the solemn profile and translucent folded hands of a young Chinese girl.

  ‘My half-sister, Clarice. In Kuala Lumpur.’

  Her hand paused on the mouse and he felt he was intruding. He went and filled a glass from the tap in the kitchen and stood drinking, looking at the courtyard window. The spotlight by the fishpond was still on. Security, he supposed. The swaying bamboo reminded him of water plants streaming upwards in an aquarium. He felt he’d stumbled into an underwater workshop, a secret, nocturnal industry. Excitement churned deep in his bowels. He turned back, unable to keep away.

  ‘You work with music?’

  ‘For rhythm. Mood. This is a pingtan opera, in Cantonese.’

  ‘What’s it about?’

  ‘The fleeting nature of love. Something like that. I don’t speak Cantonese.’

  She turned to face him. Strange to have such a large, solid presence in the house. Maya had the same roaming curiosity as he did, and also wore tracksuit pants to bed. It must be a family trait.

  ‘Did Maya know about your films?’

  ‘Of course.’

  He was silent. She’d never mentioned it to him. Why did this hurt him? He’d always felt that Maya understood his passion for films.

  ‘Have a cigarette if you like,’ she said, ‘I really don’t mind.’

  ‘Oh, no thanks. I’m giving up while I’m here. That was just an aberration earlier. Toni hasn’t smoked for years.’

  What a dag he was, in these saggy-bottomed pants, nattering, middle-aged. He lived in a dream and sometimes it cleared a little and words came to him about his life.

  ‘Right now I feel as if I’m in a film myself,’ he said.

  ‘What kind of film?’

  He considered. ‘A mystery. A crime thriller? Most plots turn around a crime these days, have you noticed? It’s become the norm.’ All his thoughts seemed to take shape, spill out of him. ‘Beautiful young women are always in danger. You’re afraid for them the moment they appear …’ He took a breath. Cecile was studying him. ‘Sorry. You were working.’

  ‘I’d better finish this tonight. I promised Clarice.’

  Did she ever lose her composure?

  ‘Goodnight Cecile.’

  ‘Goodnight.’ She gave an unexpectedly wide smile. His face loomed out of the dark like a portrait by an Old Master, an infinitely layered texture of tiny brushstrokes and lines. The sad eyes burn, self-judging.

  To keep faith with Maya, they decided to set off the next morning to see the sights of Melbourne. Maya wished no one to worry, she wished to be left alone. They must respect that. ‘We should try not to talk about her,’ Toni said over the cup of green tea that was all she could find for breakfast. ‘We should try to not even think about her. Our vibes mustn’t disturb her.’

  Before they left, Jacob phoned Global Imports and listened to the recorded message. The office is currently unattended, but leave your number and we’ll get back to you. What could you learn about a man from his voice? The tone was smooth as a radio announcer going through his paces. A mature, confident, middle-class voice. What did we mean? Jacob took a breath and left a message, as if to answer him, man-to-man. This is Jacob de Jong, I’m looking for my daughter Maya. He spoke low in his throat, using what his kids called his headmaster voice. He hoped he sounded like someone to be reckoned with. As he spoke he felt increasingly aggressive. If Maya heard the message she would know he was upset.

  There was no sign of Cecile. Her child-size boots were still standing by the door, but perhaps she was wearing another pair. Or was she asleep upstairs in the room next to theirs? Did she finish the holiday snaps for Clarice? Their conversation last night was a tiny lit-up room in Jacob’s mind. He didn’t mention it to Toni.

  Out into the world they went, armed with map and camera. In the park opposite there were European trees with bare sculpted branches. Chestnut trees? Oaks? Also poplars and plane trees and unfamiliar eucalypts with tough dark leaves. The sky was gray, the gum leaves didn’t shine as they did back home. Apartment blocks towered over the park. Many of the families in the towers were refugees, Cecile had told them. It was good to think of them waking to the birds and trees, that this country had offered them a haven.

  There was a playground for the kids and a set of goalposts with a large puddle in front of it. The usual man with a dog sat smoking on an ornamental rock. They passed an old Chinese couple in straw hats tied under the chin and a Vietnamese man delivering newspapers on a bicycle.

  Everything was thrown into the mix here. A broken-down worker’s cottage next to an up-to-the-minute converted warehouse, all weatherboard and corrugated iron. Glimpses of old-time suburbia, front fences, roses, birdsong, then an apartment block with an Asian look, tiled white balconies, wrought-iron screens. Two shops side by side, one selling newspapers, ice creams and shampoo, like a shop at a beach, the other transformed into a hip little wine bar. A Buddhist nun with a vivid homely face walked past, her burgundy robe not out of place here. In the distance were old brick factory chimneys, a spire, a civic clock, a fluttering Austra
lian flag.

  So this was what had happened to the rest of the country! Apart from camping holidays and a package trip to Bali, they hadn’t lived anywhere but Warton for nearly twenty years.

  What a difference a few hours’ sleep made, Jacob thought. Was Maya’s absence really such a catastrophe? If she had mixed up dates, arrived back a day or two late, was that the end of the world? They took their place at the crowded tram stop outside the Vietnamese supermarket, amongst tiny grandmothers in black pyjamas and smooth-faced housewives in straw hats. Some were accompanied by their daughters, patient and slender with long black hair and fashionable jeans. Maya hadn’t told them this was an Asian neighbourhood, just like she hadn’t mentioned that Cecile was Chinese. He could see it wouldn’t seem relevant, living here. On the corner a group of Middle Eastern men were talking Arabic, doing a deal. Young people of all races milled around the shopfronts in a sort of costume of poverty, army jackets, broken-down sneakers, gelled hair. A swarm of skaters kicked their boards into their hands and swung onto a tram.

  They walked across a grand old English park into legendary Carlton where Jacob had always wanted to go. Look at the trams rattling past, the rows of Victorian houses, people reading in cafes! A greengrocer played opera and sold buckets of cut flowers. They allowed themselves to be enticed by a spruiking waiter to eat spaghetti at a table on the pavement where they could study the passers-by. In this tender light all the passing faces looked intent and defined. Was it the glare at home that flattened and slowed everybody? Lovely pale-skinned girls with sensitive expressions went past, like Parisiennes on their way to a cello lesson. Young urban males walked and laughed unself-consciously together. Older women wore jagged hems and tousled hair like playful little girls. Old people were everywhere, in the bookshops and cafes, making sign language to friends through windows, as hedonistic as the young. Everybody moved fast, had somewhere to go. The elegant Melburnians. Where were the fat people? Personal beauty was rare in Warton, but here it was hard to see anyone who didn’t have style. There were little specialty businesses everywhere, enterprise wherever they looked. They were used to a dying town, shops closing down one by one.