The Forrests (30 page)

‘So. When are we going to talk about what we’ve got to talk about?’

Dorothy fanned herself with a piece of paper from her bag. It was going to be a scorcher. ‘What do you want to talk about? Jennifer? I’ve got nothing to say about Jennifer. I’m running late.’

‘You agreed we would talk.’

‘Here on the road? Is this why you’re here? I’m late for work.’

‘OK, you’ve got your work. Sure.’

‘Do some paintings. Or go and see Jennifer. I like Jennifer. Say hi from me.’
Lying is counterproductive
. Or
Fake it till you feel it
. Or
Speak your truth
. Or
Have high expectations
. Or
How about a reality check
or
Listen to yourself
or
Get out of your own way
.

‘ “Do some paintings”? That’s a fucking emasculating thing to say.’

‘Sorry.’ A fly zipped past her ear. ‘We’ll talk when I get back. Later. If you’re there.’ Through the low shop-buildings a view cracked open of the city and the sky above it, clouds banked in deepening shades of grey against each other, piles of rocks in the sky.

As Dot crossed the courtyard, Sondra intercepted her with the news that Jo’s waters had broken, the baby was coming early, maybe too early, and they’d taken her to hospital. ‘It’s my fault.’

Dorothy hugged her close. ‘Don’t be silly.’

‘It’s because I cut her. Now the baby’s going to be deformed.’
Dee-formed
, that was how she said it.

‘Listen, she’ll be fine. Where’s Carmen? Are we still going to see Tina?’

The central hospital was a van ride away. Carmen, the maternity home director, organised them, Dorothy and the girls, all except Jo who was doing the hard yards in the birthing unit on another side
of town. Sondra was not allowed to go. Dorothy hated Carmen’s kind of discipline. She left the girl lying on her bunk bed, reading. ‘Do you want my iPod?’ Sondra said nothing. Dot laid it on the blanket near her feet.

The van’s air conditioner was broken. The mothers sat on the splitting vinyl seats with legs apart, fanning themselves.

‘Has she seen her baby?’ Dot asked.

‘I think so.’

‘Imagine it, having a newborn, then next thing you know you wake up and you’ve got a kid who’s nearly one.’

‘Sounds like normal life,’ Carmen said. ‘Boom.’

Dorothy shut her eyes; let her body be rocked by the vehicle’s bad suspension.

‘Hey, Dorothy,’ one of the girls in the back called over the engine, ‘what would you draw on the paper bag? Your self-portrait?’

She thought about it. ‘Breathe into this?’

The girl squinted. ‘What?’

At the hospital she would find a moment to call Andrew, suggest they go for a walk later or dinner. This was an adjustment period, without the kids.
A new way of being
. It was natural they had no clue how to handle it.

The smell of the hospital was just the same. Emerging from the lift into the neurology ward, Dot felt her mouth parch up. Almost expected to see the same nurses or that man with half a head, leering round a corner. But this was a happy time, she told herself, the girls’ chatter filling the foyer. ‘Tina!’ someone yelled out, the vowels bouncing off the walls. A nurse approached. It was Lou.

‘In here.’ She grabbed Dorothy’s hands and kissed her cheek. ‘I know, I know.’

‘It’s a blessing,’ said Carmen.

‘It’s a miracle.’

Tina’s body was obscured by the crowd of girls. Dot made her way to the corner by the window, where there was breathing room.

‘She’s not talking yet,’ said Lou.

‘Tina,’ Carmen said softly, almost singing. ‘Tina, Tina, you woke up.’ She leaned forward and Dot could see the smooth, relaxed arm. The girls crooned quiet hellos and patted the bed or the body tenderly. For a few moments the air in the room held this gentle wakening energy, more like a ward with newborn babies than here where people were submerged, semiconscious.

Lou stood with Dorothy at the window. In the car park a girl pushed a young boy around in a wheelchair, careening around cars and bollards, the boy’s arms stretched above his head. With no warning, the girl jerked the wheelchair to a stop and the boy tumbled out. For a second both children froze. Then he got to his feet and walked straight up to the girl and whacked her arm. The car park dissolved into an asphalt blur, the children out of sight.

A gull-like cry came from the bed, and one of the girls called out, ‘She’s pulling her tubes.’

Lou cleared them back to the corridor and passing the bed Dorothy saw Tina, her arms and legs jerking, her plump, unlined teenager’s face awake, her eyes open. A doctor pushed the door shut. ‘Come on, out of here.’

‘Let’s go,’ said one of the girls, her pointed finger on the button, holding the lift doors open.

*  *  *

It was lunchtime when they got back, and Dot and the girls set pots of chicken and rice out on the communal table beneath the vine-braided trellis. Their usual loud, rude talk warmed up again now they were sitting down, far from the hospital’s constraints. She and Andrew hadn’t even kissed in months.
Focus on the positive
. But maybe that was a positive. Confused! The table was dappled by shifting blobs of light that filtered through the vine, patches of whiteness in the paddle shapes of stegosaurus fins. As a child their son had been a dinosaur obsessive; before Donald could tell the difference between letters and numbers he knew a baryonyx from a coelophysis. Tendrils and crinkle-edged leaves curled above their heads. Beyond this shade, the courtyard light banged whitely up from ashy gravel. Heat pulsed. Sondra handed Dorothy her iPod. Free of make-up, her face looked peeled, huge as she leaned forward, awkwardly, and said thanks. Dorothy took her bowl to the kitchen with some others to scrape the dark-grey, splintered bones with squashed purplish ends into the rubbish bin.

Several hours later, Jo was still in labour.

‘They induced her,’ said Sondra, ‘her water broke and nothing’s happened so they gave her the shot.’

‘Going to hurt like hell now,’ said Carla, the youngest girl. ‘And they get the forceps in there too.’

‘That suction thing,’ Sondra said, ‘like the plumbers have.’

‘The ventouse,’ said Dot.

‘Gives the baby the pointy head. My nephew got one of those, but he turned back to normal.’

‘They’ll probably have to cut her open,’ Carla said. ‘Caesarean time.’ She ran a pointed fingernail down the middle of her belly. Pottery clay sat drying in half-squidged lumps on the art table, its surface taking on a webby bloom. The girls’ talk whittled into silence. After a time, through the walls between them and the administrator’s office, came the faint trilling of the telephone. They held still and then, a few long seconds later, they heard Carmen cheer.

Dorothy walked home as fast as she could, wheezing from asthma and all right
all right
age. Cries and thuds came from the neighbour’s kids, playing stickball in the street – a balding tennis ball rolled by her feet and with a grunt she scooped it up and lobbed it back to the pitcher who caught it flawlessly, like it was coming home into his hand.

The house was warm and smelled of toast. There he lay on the bed watching a cycle of BBC World News.
Your husband
. Dorothy held the stitch that gripped her side. On the screen, weather maps swirled. ‘Jo’s had the baby,’ she said, a hand on her chest from the urgent walk and from the burning knot of this news. ‘She’s fine. He’s a boy.’ She took a piece of toast from Andrew’s plate and ate a corner.

‘Hey. That’s mine.’

‘I’ll make you some more. Have one of these.’

She’d picked up a packet of biscuits on the way home and now she tossed it next to Andrew on the bed. Keeping his eyes fixed to the news, he pulled and pulled at the cellophane wrapper and finally she took it off him and used her back teeth, feeling a dangerous tug on her gums as she wrenched the packet away from her mouth.

‘Ruth called this morning,’ he said.

‘How is she?’

‘Oh, she’s in NA and SLAA and OA and a group for compulsive shoppers. Got a lot of language. Had a lot to say about intimacy. Rationalisation. Narcissism. Ownership. Addiction.’

‘Jesus.’ These were Ben’s terms, it appeared, part of his ultimatum. There would be no more solo trips to Europe or New Zealand; there would be no more Hank. Poor Ruth. ‘How was your day?’

His eyes searched the room as though the answer was written in the air. ‘Night school hasn’t opened yet.’

In the kitchen she slid bread into the toaster and pressed the lever down. It was broken and she had to push it again and again, metal rasping against metal, and finally hold it in place with a heavy chopping board. Propped by the bread bin was an internationally posted envelope with her name on it. The handwriting made the room tip. She tore it open while she took spreadable butter from the fridge and honey from the pantry, too many things in her hands, the paper resistant, thickly glued, she tore right through the return address. The bread began to toast. The crumb smell streaked the air like charcoal. Eve’s gaze. Her appetite had vanished; if anything she wanted a drink. From the envelope she took a printed rectangle of card that bore a photo of Daniel and a woman who looked about thirty. Dark-haired. Not the Rio blonde. The pressed text was notification of their wedding, the date already passed. Daniel’s note said
Dottie – I finally did it – you’re right, it’s the best thing ever
, and ended with kisses and
love, D
. ‘You’re right’? Her name was Maria. ‘You’re right’? When had she ever said ‘It’s the best’? WHEN HAD SHE EVER
SAID THAT? Dorothy crammed the card back into the envelope. The stamps were from Spain.

‘Andy,’ she said – the word just came out of her mouth. In the window behind him the image from the screen was reflected: another weather map. She stood in the bedroom doorway and decided to do it before there was time to think. ‘Turn off the TV.’ In the kitchen the toast popped. The dark, cooked smell made her feel a bit sick. Her husband raised a godlike arm towards the screen and it fell silent. Unconsciously –
really, Dorothy
? – she lifted the words from Daniel. ‘Andy, you’re right. It’s for the best. We’ll get a divorce.’

The invisible cage around him atomised. You could almost see it break up into particles and float away. ‘Dottie.’ He looked amazed. ‘We’re having the talk.’

The phone rang, and they looked at each other until she said, ‘It’s OK. Answer it.’ While he was talking, she went out on the deck and sat on his karate mat, then stood again and tried to do downward dog, and felt blood rush to her face and straightened up and walked to the edge of the kwila boards, her head thudding, and made herself stop, not move. The yellow leaves prinkling that dark green tree. Look. Orange droplets of rust on the wind chimes.

THE COMMENT THREAD
was a comfort, largely because the older divorcees who posted there were much unhappier than her, and seemed to struggle with language. ‘Life is so cool to be sad and depressed.’ ‘God loves your wrinkle and your failing hearing.’ ‘YOU OWN NO ONE NO ONE OWNS YOU.’ But Dot knew she should wean herself off. Someone had written ‘I haven’t been lonely once.’ She closed down the connection and returned to the world – Grace’s small living room – the chaos of morning.

Her grandson was making goofy faces at the crockery cabinet’s reflective glass doors. ‘Frankie!’ An echo of words hung in the room – his mother had spoken, given an instruction – the sense evaporated. He sprawled on the floor and commando-crawled towards the mound of clothes on the sofa. His wrists landed on the cushions as though pulling himself towards a desert oasis. Lightly he popped to his feet, plucked underpants from the pile and flung
them high into the air, where they somersaulted before he caught them. He did it again. ‘Hey, Dodo, look.’

She was already looking. How could she ever wrench her gaze from this perfect boy, her grandson, his shiny shiny eyes. Dot began to fold the washing. This time Frankie bobbed up beneath his pants like a soccer player heading the ball. His mother said the same thing as before, more loudly, and he spun towards the sound and the underpants fell to the floor. Dorothy cheered as the boy kicked them down the hall, swerving invisible oncomers. Grace gave her a look. ‘Are you sure you want to come with us?’

‘Yes. I can help with Meg. If you have to talk to them separately or something.’

‘I won’t have to talk to them separately.’

Meg was being auditioned for a commercial, if you could describe a baby screen test as an audition. The kids were good-looking. It helped pay the rent.

Frankie emerged from the bathroom wearing the underpants and tossed his pyjamas in the air so they fell in a small heap of primary colours beside the hallway runner. He put his legs through the sleeves of the pyjama top and hobbled towards Dorothy, eyes glowing. ‘I’m a cheese boy.’

‘Time to get dressed.’

‘Dodo, did you know that ten is not the highest number?’

‘What is?’ She lifted him under the arms, swung him onto the sofa beside her, and tugged a T-shirt over his head, feeling the old momentary resistance as his skull crowned through the double-stitched collar.

‘Eleven,’ Frankie said. ‘Or a hundred.’

‘What about a hundred and one?’

He stared. ‘What about a hundred and two?’

‘That’s how old Dodo is,’ said the boy’s father.

‘Aha,’ said Dorothy. ‘Today, I feel it.’

‘We should do something for your sixty-fifth.’

‘Hmm, maybe.’ She just had to keep putting Grace off until being sixty-five passed.

Amsi held the shorts out and Frankie succumbed to the inevitable. He balanced with a hand on his father’s shoulder and held one thin, knobble-kneed leg raised and lingering, crooked in space over the open waistband of the shorts. ‘Come on, you’re going to be late for school.’

Finally dressed, the boy climbed from the sofa to a kitchen chair, balanced his way over three more chairs, their legs grating on the floorboards with his shifting weight, then leapt to the hall carpet in a drop-and-roll move. He sat up and picked at the double-knotted laces of his shoes. Amsi leaned against the wall, calm, the air-traffic controller on his morning off, and watched. ‘Do you want a hand?’ he asked his son.