The Forrests (16 page)

‘But why me?’

‘You were the driver. Weren’t you? Anyway I’m sure they won’t track you down.’

‘But, Frank …’ He’d told her he would deal with it. Hadn’t he? Had the fines been forgotten? Or was she some kind of unknowing fugitive? ‘I can’t worry about that shit now.’ A small
satisfaction, watching him flinch at the language. She dug the fork into a root system and raked it out.

The water, running warm in the kitchen sink, felt delicious over her hands. Dot squirted a perfect green jet of detergent onto her palms and rubbed them vigorously. Movement caught her eye; a neighbour’s cat trotting through the vege garden, and she clapped her hands and hissed through the window. Its back twitched and it slunk quickly through a hole in the bushes. Ruth spoke from the fridge, her head inside it, reorganising. ‘Did Dad tell you we’re going home? I feel bad but I really miss my girls.’

‘It’s OK. Eve’s going to be fine.’

‘Even though they don’t really need me.’ Her delicate pink nails caught the light as she lifted a bowl to her nose, removed the cling film, sniffed it and put it back.

‘Who, your girls? I’m sure that’s not true.’

‘You know.
Twins
.’

‘Oh but they still need their mom.’

Ruth smiled, unconvinced.

‘Ruth. They do.’

‘They’re very close.’

‘Well. That’s lovely. Anyway, I envy you.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘Living somewhere else. I hate being this age. I’d like to turn back on the past with a flame-thrower. One of those hoses that sprays fire. But I bet you don’t even feel it, the weight, dragging around behind you. I mean you’re American now, and your life – is it like our childhood was another planet?’

Ruth said, ‘Isn’t everyone’s?’

A call came from upstairs. ‘I’ll go,’ said Dot.

‘Anyway,’ said Ruth. ‘Getting older is a lot better than the alternative.’

Later she borrowed Nathan’s car to explore their old neighbourhood, look at the family house, a thing that Dorothy never did. ‘Visiting Mars,’ Dot said, and Ruth nodded, tucking a house key into the back pocket of her dark-blue jeans.

‘Evelyn and Lou are coming. Change of scene. Are you sure you won’t?’

‘I’m good, thanks. Bring me a souvenir.’

The medication prohibited Eve from driving, so she sat in the back like a foreign dignitary, Lou beside her and Ruth the chauffeur. ‘Six months,’ Eve had said that morning, not griping but bewildered, the way she sounded about everything now. ‘I can’t drive for six whole months.’ The street was fresh with the feel of coming rain. Dorothy gave Ruth a jaunty wave and said, ‘Take ’em down memory lane, thanks, driver,’ in a silly voice. Ruth fired her the finger as she shifted the car into gear, and Dorothy burst out laughing. They drove off, Evelyn’s profile still and serious like a child’s, Lou snuggled into her shoulder.

Dot spun right into her mother who had been standing behind her in silence. Lee took her glasses off and clung to them, twisting the stems. It was odd to see tears appear in her eyes. Her mouth jerked and she said, ‘What if we’d lost her.’

‘Oh Mum.’ Dorothy leaned in and hugged her awkward, starchy body. ‘We didn’t,’ Dorothy said, and stroked Lee’s arm as she drew
a shuddering breath. ‘She’s going to be fine. Come on. You ready to come inside?’

‘I’d like to head back to the hotel. Start packing.’

‘It’s great you’ve been here,’ Dorothy said. ‘We needed you.’

‘Really?’ She was wiping her nose with a white handkerchief, her eyes searching Dot’s face.

Dot hugged her again. ‘Yes, Mum.’

Upstairs, the tray with crumbs, the soup bowl with its tidemarks were evidence of Evelyn’s health. In the tangle of jewellery on the dresser were the earrings they’d both been given, all those years ago. Dorothy held them to her ears, looked in the mirror, her own pair lost to house moves, carelessness and time. Lee would be pleased to see those, if she remembered. There was a small crater in the pillow where Eve’s head had lain. What did she think about up here? Kneeling on the floor beside the bed, Dot leaned her forehead on the blue sheets. The pillow smelled of her sister’s perfume. Light came through the window and she was second base on the field at the commune, followed Michael’s gaze from the batter’s mound to see Eve and Daniel plough towards her through the long grass. Michael thwacked the bat into his palm. Gold lit the grasses. Daniel’s steady stride, Eve behind him, a shadow. She woke up to the front door slamming shut, the sound of voices. Dot’s knees cracked as she stood too quickly. Blood drained from her head, the corners of the room rocked.

‘Who made this?’ Evelyn was sitting at the table, eating dinner with Louisa. ‘It’s delicious.’ There was deep peace in the repetitive motion of her hand as it glided between the plate and her patient
mouth. Dorothy touched her sister’s shoulder, settled the tray from her room on the bench, put the soup bowl in the sink and ran the tap on it. ‘How’s the old neighbourhood?’ she asked.

‘Smaller,’ Ruth said. ‘Eve got a bit antsy. Wanted to come home.’ The smile that followed this was meant to be relaxed, but a current ran between Ruth and Louisa, the discomfort they must have felt in the confined space of the car while Evelyn’s voice got louder.

Later Dorothy tucked Lou into bed and brought Evelyn a cup of camomile tea on the couch. She turned the music down and sat below her sister on the floor. ‘Has it been good having them here?’ she asked. ‘Mum and Dad?’

Eve nodded. ‘Mum’s hair looks nice. Dad’s older.’

‘Of course it took you nearly dying to get them back.’

‘Yeah,’ Eve laughed. ‘Should have done it sooner.’ Rain started, pattered the window. ‘Isn’t that lovely.’ She stroked Dorothy’s hair. ‘Did they come when Amy was sick?’

‘No. It was all over fast, and she’s so fine now.’

‘Mmm,’ Evelyn said. ‘But still.’ The rain came in earnest now, enveloping the house. ‘Where’s Nate?’

‘Upstairs. I think he’s on the phone.’ She and Nathan were allies now; he told her things. ‘You’ve got a good man there.’

Eve’s hand stopped stroking. Dorothy felt it leave her hair. ‘Has Daniel phoned?’

‘I don’t know.’ Breathing seemed to require thought, volition. ‘Not while I’ve been here.’

‘I just wondered.’ Eve’s voice was dreamy. ‘I thought someone might have told him, seeing as he’s family.’

‘Tania has spoken to him.’

‘Tania?’

‘Yes.’

Evelyn moved her arm. ‘Oh, OK.’

‘I don’t know how to get hold of him,’ Dorothy said. ‘Ask Tania.’

Eve began stroking her hair again.

‘You’re my family.’ Dot leaned her head back into the sofa seat and looked at Evelyn’s upside-down face. ‘I mean, thank god we’ve got each other. I love Ruth, but she’s from outer space.’

‘I feel like the one who’s a Martian. Changed.’

Dorothy squeezed the hand that Evelyn had rested by her shoulder. ‘We all are.’

That same night the fever came, vomiting and delirium. Eve mangled her words. Nate drove her back in to the hospital. The doctors couldn’t tell them. Maybe an infection they couldn’t locate. Scans revealed nothing, nobody knew why, meningitis from an infected bone, the blood/brain barrier, quarantine Louisa, visit in a surgical mask, we’ve only got room in the chemo ward, no high risk on the chemo ward and we’ve had some results, it might not be meningitis, let’s get her into the chemo ward where beds come free regularly, where there’s always a guy in trouble for smoking in his bed and how do you enforce that ban, how do you discipline a person who’s got nothing to lose, could you roll over, darling, we’ve got to do another LP, let’s get you on your side, can you hold her hand, Nathan, that’s it dear just look into your husband’s eyes, hold on, we’re going to be gentle as we, yes, there it goes, yes, it’s in, not long now, good girl. The syringe came back – still cloudy. They’d try the other kind of antibiotics. Wait.

Tania appeared in the doorway with Lou. ‘Thank you,’ said Dorothy, hugging this very good woman, holding the sides of her worried face and nodding. ‘Thank you.’ Nathan clutched the girl’s shoulders and she walked over to her mum and stroked her arm, then ran into her father’s arms.

Her parents were called at their hotel. A chest X-ray and a cranial scan revealed nothing. An MRI showed the abscess. Another drug was tried. They waited, again, but the infection had her in its grip. ‘We’re going to operate,’ the surgeon said. Dorothy heard
drainage, shunt, bone flap
.

In the flurry of medical preparation, nurses adjusting drip bags and the catheter, the machines started telling a different story. ‘Are we getting her into theatre or not?’ said a nurse.

‘Wait.’

‘Right,’ the nurse said. ‘Time for theatre.’

But there, at the last minute, it all stopped.

‘This looks like stroke. I’ll get the specialist,’ an orderly said. ‘Wait.’

‘Should we leave?’ Lee gestured to the door.

Nate and Lou approached the bed. Lou climbed up and lay next to her mother. The nurses backed off.

‘But she was fine,’ their father said. ‘She was fine.’

Dorothy nodded. OK. There was the click of relief that the worst was arrived at, the tension and fear floating away. For a second. Straight after that, she knew the fear had been the only thing that held her together.

Afterwards, she drove Nate and Lou home. Andrew and the kids would be there now; she’d rung them from the hospital. Her husband had said, disbelievingly, ‘No.’ She parked away from the
lights of the house and the three of them sat there in the dark and clutched each other’s hands across the handbrake. Louisa passed her dad the box of tissues from the pocket in the back of the passenger seat and said, ‘Come on,’ and they waited a minute longer until he was ready to face the house.

Near dawn Dorothy found him in the garden, looking at the council block behind the house, the high walls covered in scaffolding. Rusty metal rods rattled and the wooden platforms creaked. Blue tarpaulins sheeted in the wind.

‘Looks like the whole thing’s going to take off,’ Nathan said.

‘It might. Tania brought another lasagne.’

‘People are amazing.’

The morning was cold. He blew on his hands to warm them and put them over his ears. Inside his head it would be stifled, there would be the seashell sound of his blood. This was what Dorothy was thinking about, so that it was a surprise when Nathan said with perfect clarity, ‘Looks like the whole thing’s going to take off and fly away.’

The music from the stereo inside flared across the garden; one of the kids must have gotten hold of the remote control.

HE WAS A
young man in a beanie and a suit, carrying a plastic bag full of paper. Dorothy saw through the bubbled glass of the door his figure approaching, his clenched fist raising, getting closer. He knocked on the door as if he was a friend. A rhythmic,
it’s show-time
knock. She was surprised, expecting a Mormon or Jehovah’s Witness, the young evangelists in striped shirts and suit pants, black wraparound sunglasses, pineapple hair. This guy was slim, with prune-coloured smudges under his eyes. He’d come from a local mechanic’s. Was on the hustle for new work. ‘We already have a mechanic,’ Dot whispered.

‘I beg your pardon?’

She cleared her throat. ‘The baby’s sleeping. We already have a mechanic.’

‘Thank you. I won’t take up any more of your time.’ He didn’t move. The sky cracked and rain drummed on the trees in the street, shattering over the parked cars, pooling on the ground.

She stepped out from behind the door. ‘Do you have an umbrella?’

‘Sorry, goodbye.’

He was halfway up the path, his woollen hat already plastered, when Dorothy called after him, her voice raised over the roaring rain. ‘Excuse me? Do you want to come in?’ She held the door open – he smelled of wet suit cloth – and when he crossed the threshold she said, ‘Oh my god, the washing.’

In the back garden she tipped the red laundry basket upside down to shake out the water and unpegged the washing, hands stiff and fumbling, casting pegs aside, bright pink and yellow legs fallen on the slushy grass. The man helped, throwing half-folded sheets, towels into the basket. Andrew’s gym gear, his underwear, her nursing bras, Grace’s shorts, Amy’s rabbit, Donald’s dinosaur pyjamas, Hannah’s tiny striped T-shirt. The man followed her up the back steps into the house where she said, ‘I’ll put these in the dryer, please sit down.’

His eyes were bloodshot and he dabbed at them with the tissue Dorothy handed him once they were sitting opposite each other at the kitchen table. ‘Feel free to take off your jacket.’

She passed him a towel. The front of his white shirt was soaked through, and droplets of water glimmered on the woollen ridges of his hat. A leaflet from his plastic shopping bag sat on the table in front of her, the cheap paper splodged with rain. He only made money on commission. Nobody wanted to change mechanic or to hear about his offer, his deal. The deal involved tyres but already Dot was waning, regretted inviting him into the house. She listened out for the rain to ease. Grace and Amy were at school and Donald at nursery and Hannah was sleeping. She was meant to rest now
too, which was infuriating enough that it pleased her all over again to have this strange, sad man sitting at the kitchen table. ‘Me?’ he said. ‘Two children.’ Neither at school yet. She imagined the scene when he left his house each day, kissing his wife goodbye as she stood there with a baby in her arms. That morning, Dot had been in the shower when Andrew left. Donald, four, had stood to one edge of the shower curtain, just staring, boring a hole in her body. Before long Hannah would be old enough to pull herself up to standing and she would notice when Dot left the room and balance at the side of the bath holding onto the edge, crying while Dot washed herself, away from her. This was one of the stages that would happen, just as now she was at the stage of crawling confidently, briskly, towards cigarette butts whenever they were in the park. When she sat up it was a miracle of posture, her back beautifully erect, her big round head a weightless balloon.

That morning Dot had asked Andrew whether he was angry with her and he had been genuinely surprised. It was unclear whether he was walking around enraged but not knowing it, or whether she was projecting. Dot wished she didn’t know the word
projecting. Latent. Trigger
. Someone in the house was angry, it must be so, even though the cake tins were full. Maybe it was both of them. Angry at the
out there
. Angry at the
chance
. ‘Do your children go to playgroup?’