Ricochet Baby (22 page)

The power within the house shifted. My mother never went to church again. Religion wasn’t mentioned and I avoided it at school, standing stony-faced when prayers were read at assembly, my eyes straight ahead. My mother’s garden flourished as she worked in it every day. Around five in the evening she took her first drink. In the summer she carried it outside, walking around
looking
at the roses; in the winter, she merely propped herself beside the stove where she was cooking dinner and drank. Sometimes it made a difference to the way she behaved; at other times you would scarcely notice it.

I became their perfect child, the centre of their lives and the conversation they had with each other.

‘D
ID YOU EXPECT
Nathan to be perfect?’ asked Dr Q.

‘I don’t know. I didn’t think about that. At least I don’t think I did. I expected more of myself, I can tell you that. But then I always do.’

‘You weren’t disappointed in him?’

‘No, not at all. Only in myself. When I saw Nathan he was all I could have imagined, but …’

‘Yes?’

‘Nothing really. That’s all there is to it.’

‘There’s a saying we doctors have. Listen to everything that comes before the but.’

I feel like crying. I think I’ve been protecting myself with all this talk, but he can see through me all the time.

So I tell him. ‘But when I took him home, he seemed like a doll.’

‘Uh huh.’

‘You don’t seem very surprised.’

‘Nothing much surprises me much any more, Roberta.’

‘I felt like a doll who’d been put in charge of another doll. Big dolls and little dolls. What do you make of that?’

‘I think we’ve probably made enough of things today.’

‘You regard this as a breakthrough?’

‘What do you think?’

‘I want to see Nathan again.’

‘Ah.’ He rubs his sore elbow and his stomach grumbles. It’s way past lunchtime.

‘I want to see him properly, you know, a real person.’

‘Good.’

‘So we’re finished then, you and me?’

‘I think we’ve hardly begun. We can start on the work now.’ More work. Always, Dr Q has more work for me to do.

A
GAIN, WHEN
I return to the ward, I have a visitor. I don’t recognise her at first, a trim woman in early middle age, wearing a
high-throated
blouse and a severe jacket and skirt of very good cut.

She puts her arms out to me, but I am wary of strangers,
especially
those who want to embrace me. I am not sure whether she is a new patient and, if so, she may be a strangler, for all I know.

‘It’s He-
l
en
,’ she cries.

Helen Blue Eyes.

‘Dear Roberta,’ she says. ‘I came as soon as I heard. Well almost, because I had to get someone to care for our little girl.’ She glances nervously at her surroundings, the way they all do. ‘She’s such a darling baby just a few weeks younger than your little man.’

‘Who told you I was here?’

‘Well now, that would be telling, wouldn’t it? I just heard you weren’t so well.’

I rack my brains, trying to think who we know in common.

‘Paul?’ I hazard. She shuffles and I know I am right.

‘How is he?’

She looks scared then; I can tell she doesn’t know the half of it.

‘Why don’t we sit down?’ I suggest. I steer her towards the courtyard. She looks over her shoulder, as if looking for someone to reassure her that she is not going to be knifed. It is cold outside, a sharp wind rattling the bamboos that edge the yard. I wear a heavy tamarillo-coloured jersey sent to me by Auntie Kaye, but Helen shivers in the wind. Jed sits smoking at a table with another patient, dressed only in a singlet over his trousers. He has lost some weight, his eyes look sunken. He comes and goes inside his
electrically
charged brain. I think they will be moving him on from here soon.

‘Come and help us save the world, darling,’ he calls to me.

‘Not today,’ I say. I motion for Helen to sit down. She leans towards me, her manner confidential.

‘He’s right,’ she says. ‘We should make plans to save the world. We have to save the children.’

I have forgotten what she is like; I glance around, wondering if Nurse Peach is handy, but she is nowhere to be seen, which is probably my own fault. I have been avoiding her since my
excursion
with Marise and Josh. I have not told anyone what we did.

Helen says, ‘Did you know that a couple left their little girl in the middle of a freeway in America?’

‘No,’ I said.

‘Terrible. A terrible thing. They had a pact to kill themselves and the little girl didn’t want to do it with them, so they left her there. Now isn’t that a dreadful story?’

‘Dreadful,’ I agree.

‘You see, dear,’ she says, leaning even closer towards me, ‘when I heard that story, I thought, poor darling, I should have seen her mind was going.’

‘Are you talking about me?’

‘You did leave him, didn’t you, dear?’

‘Not like that.’

Her eyes shine with fervour. It occurs to me that she really has been admitted, and that when it comes eight thirty tonight the gates are going to be locked and I will be shut up here with her.

‘Your little boy’s doing really well.’

‘He is?’

‘You’ll be proud of him when you see him, smiling and
laughing
all the time. I’m sure they’ll let you see him soon.’

‘I can see him whenever I want,’ I say.

She smiles at me pityingly. ‘Of course, dear,’ she says.

‘As a matter of fact, I’m going to see him tomorrow.’

‘Yes, of course you are.’

‘I really must say goodbye,’ I say, in what I hope is my most engaging social tone. ‘I’m late for lunch already, and you kind of look forward to things like that in here.’ I know that in her
inexorable
way, she is going to tell me something horrible.

She gathers herself tidily together. ‘Now, when they let you out of here, you mustn’t mind what people say to you.’

‘I won’t.’

I can’t stop what comes next, short of putting my hands over my ears and causing a scene.

‘That little girl Michelle, who we did classes with, well, she’s very young, she doesn’t understand illness like more mature people do. She just blew up and said the nastiest things when I told her
what had happened. You mustn’t think that way, dear, I said to her, she can’t help it, poor girl. Look, I said to her, having children
simply
drives some women mad. I told her it wouldn’t happen to you again, they don’t let it, do they? She’ll have her tubes tied, I told her. Will they do it soon, dear?’

‘W
ELL
,’ I
SAY
to Nurse Peach, ‘I’m off now. I’m going home.’

‘Roberta,’ she exclaims, with alarm. ‘You can’t go home yet.’

‘Why not?’

‘Where would you go?’ I guess she is asking if I have a home to go to, but I am past having pride.

‘I’ve got plenty of places to go.’

‘Yes, but are you expected? Has someone arranged to pick you up?’

She knows she has me on the run. ‘Are you going to detain me?’ I ask.

‘No-o. I don’t think so. But we need to talk this through.’

‘I’ve done enough talking.’ And it’s true, in a way, because this morning I have been so drained of words that I have none left for her.

‘Have you talked about it with your psychiatrist?’

‘He said we’d made a breakthrough.’ I don’t like being
devious
with Nurse Peach and, as I suspect, she is not going to let me get away with this.

‘We’ll have a talk to him about this,’ she says.

‘You can.’

‘But, as I had half-expected, she is in for disappointment in that quarter. Dr Q has taken the rest of the day off sick by the time she gets through.

‘If you’re not going to detain me, I’m going to leave anyway.’

‘He’ll be disappointed about this.’ When I have nothing to say, she asks again, ‘Who will I ring to come and get you?’ I have a
suspicion
she knows something I don’t.

‘Nobody I can get a taxi.’

‘I’ll have to get some staff,’ she says.

‘What for?’

‘So you can sign the form.’

‘What kind of a form?’

‘An A1. 9/94.’

I have no idea what this means, and I am not surprised when she leaves me waiting for a long time, hoping I will cool off. I tell myself to stay calm, not to let anyone provoke me, although it is one of those days when there is a tense, edgy feel about the ward, as if there is a northerly blowing outside. Eventually she comes back, followed by another doctor whom I hardly know. He is a pleasant man, flustered with overwork.

‘You’re sure about this, Roberta?’ he says.

‘Yep.’ I’ve fallen into the ways of my companions in here.

Nurse Peach hands me a card with an appointment for a
psychiatric
out-patients’ clinic. ‘I hope you’ll keep this appointment,’ she says.

I nod in a businesslike way. The doctor is trying to assess my state of mind on the spot but I’m not giving him any openings. I smile and nod when he tries to engage me in conversation. He looks at Nurse Peach and shrugs.

‘Well then, if you’ve made up your mind.’ She hands me one of her forms, which is for discharge against medical advice. I fill in the gaps: I, Roberta Cooksley hereby discharge myself from hospital.

When I have finished this task, she hands me my bag of clothes and I sign for my rings and some cash I have in safe
custody
.

‘There’s a bed here if you need it,’ she says.

F
AY
,
JUST HOME
from her aerobics class, wears a fluorescent tracksuit and a matching headband with her Reeboks. Standing by the twin roller doors of her garage, she glows in the cool afternoon, until she sees me.

‘What are you doing here?’ she whispers, her manicured hand at her mouth.

‘Where’s Nathan?’ I ask.

‘They said they’d let me know if you were released.’

‘They wouldn’t have used that word, Fay. I was a voluntary patient.’

‘Well, whatever.’ Fay gestures impatiently as if I am playing a wilful game of semantics. She stands massaging her soft throat in a nervous way, and I realise with pleasure that she is afraid, as momentarily I was afraid of Helen, in the presence of someone she regards as a dangerous lunatic on the loose.

‘I gave him to you, where is he?’

‘Well dear, that was months ago, things change.’

‘Nobody told me.’

‘I gather you didn’t ask.’ I make her nervous, standing and looking at her. ‘You didn’t really think I’d turn in my job, did you?’

‘I thought you’d look after him for me. I thought you’d want to.’ But as I say it, that sounds like nonsense. The enormity of what I have done to Fay is something I’ve only just grasped; it is true she has a life of her own. I see how mad I was when I gave him to her. And worse, how could I ever have thought Nathan would be happy with her? This moment of enlightenment reassures me that I must be well, able, at last, to understand cause and consequence.

‘So where is Nathan?’

I see Fay turning over in her mind whether to tell me, but it is a question she can hardly avoid. ‘With his father, of course, where did you think he’d be? A child should be with its parents.’

‘I know,’ I tell her. ‘I realise that now. I’m sorry for the trouble I’ve caused. I’ll go and see him right away.’

‘It’s a bit late in the day for that, I’d have thought.’ She is still nervous but a shift occurs; something about the nature of her fear changes. ‘Well, I hope you’ve got somewhere to stay.’ By late in the day, I think Fay means this particular day, this afternoon. For although I believe I am well, I have been in hospital a long time. Words have a literal meaning and I am not ready to translate their nuances, at least not here, not out in the world. As I turn away it does not occur to me that she is not talking of an hour or so here and there; she is talking about time for once and for all.

R
OBERTA WALKS UP
the hill along Ashton Fitchett Drive, pulling her patterned woollen jacket around her, the bag of clothes bumping her knees as she walks. The houses look different from when she was last here. This is not a place to be frightened of, she tells
herself
. She has been a scared stranger in this world of newness and development, this suburban landscape with the giant windmill turning its arms overhead. It is like settling in another country, and now she is ready to discover its topography, its surfaces and
tributaries
, until it is hers. She will be friendly and outgoing and invite people over. What has happened will pass into memory. It will be part of her history, but other people will forget.

A police car cruises slowly along the street. A safe place to live.

The house has a comfortable familiarity. She raises her hand to knock, thinking how odd it is to have to knock at your own door.

The two of them, Paul and Prudence, have been watching out for her. They have heard the news: Roberta is out.

As Paul opens the door, Roberta sees Prudence’s face at the window, and recognises her at once. Nathan is in her arms.

‘I’m home, Paul,’ she says, the words thick in her mouth, like medicine.

‘Go away, Roberta,’ he says. ‘We don’t want any trouble.’

The police car just happens to be idling past the gate. Only Roberta sees that it is no coincidence.

Prudence, wearing a skirt printed with an ethnic design, wrapped gracefully around her slender waist, walks through from the kitchen into the hallway behind him. Just as Helen had said, Nathan is doing well, chuckling in Prudence’s arms. Roberta reaches out to him, but he buries his face shyly against Prudence’s shoulder.

‘You brought it on yourself, Roberta,’ says Paul and closes the door.

T
HERE IS AN
art theatre and coffee bar within walking distance of Ashton Fitchett Drive. All my money has gone on the taxi and I have no phone card. But the staff at the cinema remember me, a woman who sometimes, at the weekends, watched a movie by
herself
. As a rule, it is a crowded place, but towards the end of a movie’s run you strike sessions when there is hardly a soul in the place. I would wait until the last day before the film was
withdrawn
, so I could sit in splendid isolation with only the cat that lives at the theatre on my lap, a couple of loners like myself and the screen filled with images for company.

Oh, the seeds of my destruction were there for all to see, long ago. How could Paul have made a mistake like me?

‘Bit of a problem,’ I tell the woman at the counter. ‘Especially bad day at the office. Could I possibly use your phone?’

‘Yeah, it’ll be okay this time.’ She knows I haven’t been at the office. Have they heard about me, I wonder. They are
showing
The Madness
of
King
George
, and today is one of their
rushed-off-their
feet times. Madness is hot. ‘I expected it to be funny,’ says one woman to another as they leave a session. ‘But it was pitiful, really. Didn’t you think it was sad when he went round the twist?’

I clutch the phone, praying Marise hasn’t given up work yet. It is more than a month since I saw her.

‘God, what are you doing on the loose?’ says Marise when I get through. It’s meant to be a joke, but it falls flat. She sounds harassed. ‘I’m in a case meeting,’ she says, when I explain. ‘Wait outside the theatre and don’t move till I get there, okay?’

‘You won’t send the cops, will you?’ I am surprised they have not followed me down Ashton Fitchett Drive, but perhaps their only brief is the maintenance of order in the street.

‘Don’t be ridiculous,’ she says, and hangs up.

Now an hour has passed. Evening approaches as I wait for the red Porsche. But in the end it is Josh Thwaite in his battered Bedford van who sits in rush-hour traffic, honking the horn to attract my attention. I don’t hesitate about getting in beside him,
but once I have, I can’t think how I could do this to myself — as if I’m not in enough trouble already. And it is only an afternoon since I left the hospital.

‘Why did you come?’

‘Marise couldn’t make it. You put the shits up her, phoning like that. Did you run away?’

‘No, I explained to her.’

‘Well, she was in a bit of a rush when she spoke to me.’ He looks rough, wearing a baseball cap and a Swanndri as if he, too, has come out in a hurry.

‘You didn’t have to come. You’d be best to keep away from me.’

‘Don’t tell me, I know that already.’

It seems as if the whole world is against me. The last time I saw Josh we had spoken to each other with great kindness. And it is certainly true that I have not asked him to come; I feel nettled by his attitude.

We head toward the sea, the bare, windswept bays where waves break in green shards of water on this cool, breezy evening. He pulls into a parking bay and we sit looking across the black needle-point rocks, the gap-toothed, barbaric coastline. His fingers drum on the steering wheel.

‘Your old man doesn’t want you back?’

‘That’s one way of putting it. You’re not responsible for me.’

‘We’ve been through that. Where am I taking you?’

I explain how I had wanted to see Marise and borrow some money. Tomorrow the idea is to go to my parents’ farm. This is a plan I’ve worked out on the spot. I am seething with rage towards Marise, who has landed me in this, like a corny matchmaker who hasn’t got her facts right.

‘I’ll take you to the farm now,’ he tells me. ‘The old girl’s just had a rebore — she should get us there.’

I am provoked into an immediate argument with him. It’s a long way and I haven’t got money for petrol or for us to get
anything
to eat, and yes, I can get my parents to give me some money when we get there, because, yes, I do have it right, he hasn’t got much cash on him either, but what about his wife?

‘I’m not married,’ he says.

‘Partner. Who cares? What’s a marriage licence these days?’

‘It’s different from what you think.’

‘But you live with Leda.’

‘Yeah, yeah, okay.’

‘Like, really live with her?’

‘I guess so.’ He hunches his shoulders forward, edging his body away from mine, watches a gull dive for a fish beneath the waves. ‘I didn’t ask for this any more than you did. I didn’t ask you to start having your baby on my doorstep.’

‘So stop trying to rescue me.’

‘I’m not,’ he says, looking straight out to sea. ‘It’s just that I’ve always thought about meeting someone like you.’

‘You don’t know me.’ He has never seen me except in
childbirth
, or when I’m on the loose from a psychiatric ward. My mind flicks quickly over the manics I’ve been around in the last few months, but Josh doesn’t fit that mould.

‘You don’t know me either,’ he says, turning towards me. We look at each other warily. I see what he means. I want to jump his bones, yet there is little I know about him.

He is idly fingering the sleeve of my jersey. ‘You look pretty in that colour.’

‘I look like a tomato.’

‘Nah, better than that. It warms the colour of your eyes. You’ve got really nice eyes.’

‘Thank you.’

‘So why don’t we start again?’ he says. ‘I thought you were a rich bitch and you think I’m married.’

‘I’m probably still not hard up. Even now,’ I say, wanting at once to keep the record straight. I’m thinking about his income tax problems and the spare little house in the suburbs.

‘It’s not the same thing,’ he says, as if I’ll understand his
shorthand
approach.

‘So what about you?’

‘I used to be a fisherman,’ he tells me, still looking out to sea. ‘My boat went down and I’m too scared to go back to sea.’

‘That must be hard.’

‘It is, because I love the sea.’

‘What happened?’

‘I was on this fishing boat. It just sank like a stone one night, well, pretty close to it — we only had a few minutes’ warning. Three hands lost, but two of us stayed afloat on the life-raft. It was a cloudy, windy night. You could sort of see the stars now and then, know what I mean?’

I do know; I’ve been out on the farm often enough on nights when you look up at the sky and see faint streams of stars between ragged banks of cloud.

‘It was choppy, but it wasn’t the weather, the fish were loaded all wrong. The person that done that’s dead. Yeah, nothing you can say about that really.’

‘A mate of yours?’

‘Yeah.’ His hand finds mine and he grips it tightly, as if he has to hold on to someone while he is telling this story.

‘We didn’t fight or shove for a place, nothing like that. But fuck, y’know, it was scary. It was dark, and the sea was like a big black mountain. Bloody cold. We got in a line, two of us holding the boat on the deck for the others. We were the best swimmers, so we go shoving and shouting at them to get in. But then the boat tilts over real fast, and all of a sudden they’re in the drink, and me and my mate are left hanging on to the lifeboat. We heard their voices calling out against the wind for a few minutes. Yeah.’ He twists my hand so that it hurts. ‘I still hear them sometimes, y’know?’

‘I guess I would too.’

‘Then we’re in a flat patch of water, and we could launch
ourselves
off. Next thing, there’s just the suck of the boat going down.’

I can’t speak for a while and I see that he is crying. I touch the side of his face.

‘Haven’t told anyone else about this,’ in answer to my
unspoken
question. ‘Not all of it, not like this. What you’ve gotta know, though, one of those fishermen who went down was married to Leda.’

‘Aah.’ I suck my breath in, but I have already guessed this. ‘She was having a baby?’

‘Yeah. She’s tough on the outside, and kind of mean in her ways,’ he says, as if to excuse her. ‘But she didn’t have anyone. Well, me neither.’

‘You’ve no family?’

He shifts again. ‘Not that you’d want to know.’

‘I might.’

‘Take it from me, they’re a bunch of arseholes.’

‘Do you care for her?’ I have to ask him, and he has to tell me the truth.

‘I care for her,’ he says and part of me breathes a sigh of relief. ‘I wouldn’t do the dirty on her.’

‘Aren’t you doing that now?’

‘I mean, like walking out without telling her. Look, she knows where I am. She doesn’t like it, but she’s got no claim on me. See what I mean?’

‘But you care for her, you said so.’

‘Give over, eh.’ He drops my hand.

‘But if you love someone …’ Probably I sound like a
school-girl
. And anyway, what do I know about love?

‘I didn’t say that.’

‘Well, do you?’ Now that I’ve started, I can’t stop. It is past time for my medication.

‘I dunno,’ he says wearily. ‘I’m in the shit, just like you.’

‘What are you going to do about Nathan?’ he asks.

‘I’ve got to get him back. But I can’t think straight tonight. My father might know what to do.’

‘Then I’ll take you to your folks, okay?’ When the Bedford roars into life, he says, ‘I reckon you’ll dream about him tonight.’

‘Nathan? I have been already. It started weeks ago.’ I don’t need to tell him that the dreams began after he and Marise and I buried the placenta.

‘Look in the glove compartment,’ he says, ‘you might find something to eat.’

There are two squashed Moro bars. I offer one to him. ‘You have them,’ he says, ‘you probably need some sugar.’

‘G
LASS
,’
SAYS
E
DITH
, urgently. ‘There’s someone outside.’

Glass is preparing to go to bed, even though it’s only nine o’clock. His back is so painful he doesn’t know how he will get up in the morning. He wonders about finding the liniment in the
bathroom
cupboard and asking Edith to rub it. Wendy, for once, has gone to her room. Unfair comment: of late, Wendy frequently goes to her room soon after dinner. He can’t understand why she doesn’t just leave. She and Edith have begun a small business packaging seeds for sale, which seems to keep them occupied, but the
conversation
is more sparse. Edith hasn’t mentioned Roberta in weeks. Tomorrow he has decided he will take a run into town on his own and see if he can find out from the doctors how things are going. ‘Let the treatment run its course,’ they have told him.

He looks at Edith, with impatience, as if she is seeing things. But her gaze is so intent that he pulls himself to his feet. He sees
them, Roberta and Josh, walking up through the avenue of trees, holding hands in the moonlight.

At first, seeing his own life before him, he finds it hard to believe what he sees. He wipes his eyes with the back of his hand. But Edith is already out the door and flying down the path to meet them. When she reaches the couple she slows down, as if she
doesn’t
know how she got there. At first Glass, following more slowly behind, thinks Edith might strike Roberta, the way she holds up her hands blindly before her. Then she reaches for Roberta,
holding
her in an awkward clasp, pulling her daughter’s unresisting head close to hers. Roberta allows herself to be held in this embrace, although she doesn’t respond.

The young man stands to one side. When he sees Glass, he holds out his hand.

‘I’m Josh,’ he says, and Glass knows that something else has changed, and perhaps it will be for the better. ‘I’ll leave her with you.’ He nods in Roberta’s direction, turning back to a van you could only call a heap. Glass can’t see how it would get a warrant of fitness.