The Good Parents (36 page)

What if Maya decided not to see them again? What was it she thought they could never understand?

Out of the worry and self-doubt since Maya’s defection, something new was emerging. She saw more, Toni thought, now she was
outside her life. Now that she was not so pleased with herself. Gradually this was becoming her compensation.

Did she really need bells and gongs and robes? What she wanted was an even more extreme modesty, an anonymity, a lightness
on the face of the earth. She wanted to apply herself to this, give it her whole life.

A small, a very small place. Trees, bush, but not too far from the plains. She’d grown used to the wide vista over the years.
A verandah where she could sleep. To be closer to the drama of weather, the stars, the pure cold air.

You could eat the air. You could live on air. The sounds – a single bird call across the valley, then another by the track.
So clear in the silence it made you attend. You became more present. Getting closer to what? To that which she sought.

You become addicted to noise, radio, TV, telephone. It was threatening to be alone. She was just at the beginning.

She thought of the lone ones who sometimes came into town. Old shearers, or jobbers who lived out on a back block. Miriam
Kershaw, walking the streets, was called the town witch. Solitude was not much approved of in Warton. It was related to madness.

To live apart. Even as a child, at the Richardsons’ beach house, she had thought this was a better way to live. For her that
possibility – when Magnus left – was far more thrilling than a trip to Paris, say, or Istanbul, or the world which she had
never seen.

She wondered if Jacob, always faithful to her wishes, would grant her this.

No news from either of the children.

‘I’ve seen Tod Carpenter.’ Jacob sounded cheerful, even breezy. ‘No leads. But he’s given us a couple of tickets to the Grand
Final next Saturday.’

‘I leave the retreat that morning. Ask someone else. Ask Cecile.’

‘I want
you
to come,’ Jacob lied. To take Cecile to a Grand Final, to see this great Australian ritual through her eyes, was his idea
of heaven, but Cecile worked every day of the week.

‘It might be a bit much … it’s not really my …’ But her voice failed. She knew this was a dream of his.

‘It’s a once-in-a-lifetime chance. These tickets are gold.’ He produced his trump card. ‘Magnus would never forgive you.’
Though he wasn’t sure – who could ever be sure about anything with that boy? – that Magnus would care at all.

They agreed that he would mail her ticket to her, and they would meet at the seats.

‘Do you good. Bring you back to reality.’ He made the smack of a kiss before he hung up, sounding false and debonair. He was
possibly a little stoned. She supposed he’d fallen in love with Cecile.

She was crossing the courtyard when she came across the young nuns in a sunny corner, shaving each other’s heads. They were
chattering and laughing as one sat in a chair with a towel around her shoulders and the other sheared her downy skull with
battery-powered clippers. Toni enjoyed standing there in the sun with them. Suddenly she asked if they would cut her hair.

‘How much off?’ they asked when Toni had sat down and put the towel over her shoulders. They pulled back Toni’s heavy mane
into their hands. Others gathered around.

‘Like you,’ said Toni.

‘W
hat’s the time where you are? It’s really late here.’ It didn’t sound as if she was speaking out in the street this time.
He could hear her yawning. Moonlight splashed across the cold kitchen floor. He took the phone back to bed with him. For some
reason he felt it was warm where she was.

‘Why are
you
up so late?’ She never gave any information.

‘Talking with Kitty. Playing music for her. That’s all we do these days.’

‘Are Kitty and Carlos still going strong?’

‘Yeah. They think it’s a secret though …I’ve just remembered something. I saw Jason the other day.’

‘Jason Kay? Is he still around?’

‘I saw him outside the Lucky. We talked.’

They were silent for a while.

‘Myz? Are you still there?’

‘That fuckin’ weak wimp Jason.’ She broke into Warton High lingo when she was upset. ‘When’s he gonna get his shit together
and leave that fuckin’ town?’

‘Also Ma sends her love. She said to let me know if you need money or anything.’

‘You told them I called you?’

‘They were gonna get the cops.’

Silence. This time he didn’t try to break it.

‘Are they still in Melbourne?’

‘Yeah.’

‘Weren’t they going to Tasmania?’

‘I guess they’re waiting for you.’

He couldn’t hear her in the silence but he sensed she had started to cry.

She’d been dreaming. She was walking up a hill towards some sort of celebration, loud music and bonfires. It was night-time,
the path was lit by burning torches stuck into the earth, the flames streaming in the wind. He was ahead of her, holding his
little son Andrew’s hand. Then she saw he was also carrying a tiny girl, with flying strands of thin dark hair, who suddenly
jumped down and ran to cling to her, Maya, walking behind them. She picked the child up and started carrying her. The dream
was dark and urgent, black and red.

She woke into thick darkness and for a little while she didn’t know where she was. Then she became aware of the familiar rattle
of the air-con, and saw the faint glimmer from a street light around the edges of the sealed frosted-glass window. He had
gone out earlier in the evening, and she must have fallen asleep.

It wasn’t till she turned on the light that she saw he’d forgotten to take his phone with him. It was lying on the table on
his side of the bed.

The only person she wanted to speak to was Magnus. The only one she could bear. Because he wouldn’t be shocked or worried,
and he wouldn’t ask questions. He knew she did what she did because she had to. Kids growing up together got to know each
other in a deep, realistic way. He was the one she told the truth to, because with him there was no need to lie.

Sometimes the desire to speak to him was so strong that she’d take the phone from Maynard’s jacket when he was asleep or in
the shower and go out onto the street to phone him.

It was the straightness of his voice, the pureness of his tone, without probing or put-downs, that made her want to cry. As
if a clean breeze had blown into the sealed air of this room. She looked at the clock. 3.34 am. That meant 1.34 over there.
It was pretty cheeky of her to call so late, yet he’d shown no shock. She lay back on her pillow and thought of him at this
moment, across the continent, falling asleep in his room off the kitchen, the moonlight flickering over the long hump of his
body, and the wallful of looping wires and dials that was beginning to define him.

His room was the centre of the house. All the purest channels of the family ran towards him.

What would happen to him if there was something that he really wanted? Would he change? Would he compromise? Would his heart
get broken if he was betrayed?

In the way that she and Magnus were different, she and Jason
Kay were the same. She’d sensed this from the moment she first saw him but hadn’t liked to admit it. Every morning when she
saw his face on the school bus she had the feeling she was looking at herself.

She sat next to him the first time because it was the only empty seat left. He radiated difference, like a halo around him.
Sitting next to a Brethren was like sitting next to someone who didn’t exist. You never talked. They weren’t supposed to talk
to worldlies. She hated school and didn’t want to talk to anyone. It was restful, with him, a little island amongst all the
action around them. They both looked out the window – flat paddocks, scrub, the big water pipe – and left each other alone.
She sat next to him on the way back.

They started to talk. He was doing maths and economics, tech drawing and accountancy. He wasn’t allowed to do sport or English
Lit, history, biology or religious studies. He couldn’t socialise or buy food. He went to the library every lunchtime, the
first Brethren kid here who had gone to senior high school. She began to notice how beautiful he was, in his own way. Brown
eyes, shining brown-blond hair, white teeth, eyebrows as delicate as fishbones. Long fingers, long torso, with a way of wearing
his school clothes that made him look as if he were going to an office.

How was it they discovered they had both seen the UFO, back when they were ten? Jason had never told anybody. His stepfather
Grant would beat him for telling lies, he said. When his mother Valda married Grant, they moved into the community in Warton.
She picked out Valda amongst the Brethren women, meek-looking like all of them, but prettier, fine and pale like Jason, with
long blonde hair under her headscarf.

Even her parents told her she must have been dreaming. They told her it was better not to talk about it. No one else
reported seeing it. Something made her mention it to Jason on the bus. It turned out that on the same night, at the same time,
they were both woken by a bright light coming through their windows. They each described it – long, glowing, cigar-shaped,
hanging in the northern sky – nodding excitedly at one another. It was silent, yet alive, like an animal. After this, how
could they not be bound together? They were a club of two. They felt they’d been in some way chosen.

They started to meet during the holidays, on the afternoons when Jason’s mother helped out at Warton Homeware. Sometimes he
came to her place. They met in the cemetery along the Perth road if they wanted to be alone. Jason walked from his side of
town and she walked from hers. They had to take care nobody saw them. This made them a little tense. It was exciting. They
walked around the graves reading out the epitaphs. They lay down in the shade and talked about school and everyone they knew
and how sick of Warton they were and what they would do when they left. He’d like to work in a music shop in a big city, he
said. She had it all worked out for him. Every week he had to put away a little money until he had a bus fare to Perth. Once
there he could stay with Arlene and Joe, get a job and save his fare to Melbourne and join her. Surely the Brothers would
never find him in a gated retirement village in an outer suburb? Jason raised his eyebrows but said nothing.

By mid-year they were kissing. She thought she was in love. She had to fall in love with
someone
and he was the only one who came near being possible. When the chance finally came, with both sets of parents out of town,
even Jason said it felt God-sent.

She didn’t think of Jason as male but as a fellow being. When they lay side by side under her doona, naked, his smoothness
against hers, it hadn’t felt sexy, but natural. She thought of animals in dark burrows, insects beneath leaves, earthworms
rubbing together.

‘Try! Try!’ she said sternly as she held him. He’d sneaked out of the Brethren enclave under cover of darkness. First she
made him smoke a joint that she’d got from Josh Garcia and drink a glass of Carlos’s beer. Then came the ultimate test. Something
about him made her want to rip her clothes off and confront him.

‘I can’t.’ A clamminess had broken out over his skin.

‘Why not?’ They were whispering so Magnus wouldn’t hear them.

‘It’s a sin.’

‘What sin?’

‘Lust and fornication. If you sin you have to stand out the front of the meeting hall and be judged by the Brothers. I’d be
withdrawn from.’

‘But
you
don’t think it’s a sin.’

‘It’s in the Bible. The bottomless pit. The lake of fire.’

‘The Bible was written by
old men
like the Brothers. Anyway, they can’t see you.’

‘God can.’ He was shivering all over his body.

‘Your God’s like a surveillance camera.’

‘This is the Devil’s country.’ He was groaning.

‘You have to give that stuff up.’

‘I can’t! I can’t!’ He was rocking back and forwards, on the edge of her bed, his fists in his eyes. ‘It’s like a virus. It’s
like AIDS, once you get it, it’s always with you.’

It was a pretend world they’d made, she’d turned him into her pretend lover. Now she saw he didn’t really want her. He was
crying. He sickened her a little, filled her with sadness.

Then her parents walked in. She went under the doona and stayed there while her mother sat down on the bed and put her arm
around him. ‘It’s OK, Jason, it really is, just put some clothes on and go home. Nobody need ever know.’ They lectured her
through the doona after he was gone. She didn’t know what she was up against, etc, how she could harm him, cause irreparable
psychological damage.

When she came to Melbourne, she’d wanted a lover. A real man. To prove herself.

Jason was pulled out of school and started working in the furniture factory. It was as if he’d moved to another town.

One evening just before she left, when she’d been working late in the newsagency, she went to the dunny out the back and stepped
into the lane to look at the moon. And there was Jason, standing further up the lane behind Homeware. Quietly they approached
each other and stood talking in the shadows for five minutes. She told him her plans for Melbourne and he listened, looking
down and shuffling, a little smile on his face. She carefully didn’t ask him any questions, except one, just as they parted.

‘Why did you come out into the lane just then?’

‘I wanted to look at the moon.’

At ten, he’d come back to the room with a pizza which they’d eaten sitting on the bed watching TV. He drank a couple of cans
of Fourex beer and was almost asleep when there was a call on his mobile and he’d gone into the bathroom to talk, sliding
the door closed. Then he said he had to go out. Maybe this time I’ll come too, she said from the bed. To test him. And because
of the long night ahead.

He frowned. ‘I have to meet some people. You’re not dressed.’