The Good Parents (39 page)

The bus moved slowly in the city traffic. Jacob would freak out if she was late. In the ashram they would be having the pre-lunch
meditation. She never had improved at meditation, but already she missed it, like you miss regular exercise. She wanted to
keep this calm, this clarity and purpose. One day during meditation it had occurred to her that Maya must be
persuaded
to come back.

The game had started and she passed easily through the ticket gate. She was glad she was late. If she’d had to fight her way
through throngs of people she might have turned back. From the moment she’d put on her jeans and black leather jacket this
morning, the world seemed heavy and dark and animal again. As she stood on the first step at the bottom of the gigantic concourse,
a roar broke out and filled the stadium, like chaos amplified. She should never have agreed to this. Stay in the moment, she
told herself, but the moment was exploding, volatile, aggressive. She had an impulse to cower and cover her head.

She went to the ladies’, and looked in the mirror and saw herself at last, the graying stubble of her hair, her ears puckish
and alert, her brown skin faded to sallow, her valiant neck, her whole face carved into a new angularity. She caught a glimpse,
like a ghost, of the hawkish features of Beryl. Her hand rose to her head. Her heart thumped in her chest. She wrapped her
scarf tighter around her neck.

She took a breath and went to buy a bottle of water from the kiosk before she battled her way to her seat. The large man in
front of her at the counter turned and she was face to face with Cy Fisher.

They stood silent for some moments while the hollow massed
roar of the stadium rolled all around them.

‘Come over here,’ Cy Fisher said. She followed his black back with its gray-streaked hair to a square of wall beside the fire
escape. The stadium held its breath again and everything went still. In quiet voices, they began to speak.

‘So you follow Australian Rules.’

‘Just dropped in for a while. I’ve got some money on this game.’

‘Who’s going to win?’

He snorted. ‘Essendon.’

‘You couldn’t stand sport once.’ He’d hated exercise of any kind, but had that changed? He was trimmer and more youthful-looking
than he used to be. All these years he’d loomed giant-like at the back of her memory but he seemed lesser here, on a more
human scale. Something had relaxed in his face. A little baggy around the jawline, and there were swirls of violet skin under
his eyes, but they were still black and shining. He was dressed casually, in a black T-shirt and zip-up jacket. His hair beneath
the gray streaks was still dark, pushed back from a receding hairline. He must be nearly sixty. She hadn’t expected that he’d
age this well.

‘Didn’t used to have the time. Now I’ve retired.’

‘Retired! What happened?’

‘I’ve had Death Therapy.’ He treated her to one of his sudden teeth-baring grins. ‘Heart attack. At a wedding! Triple bypass,
three years ago. Someone looks after me …but I do things differently now. Had to get out of Perth.’

‘You live here?’

‘Melbourne’s an interesting town. Tons of
culture
.’

‘How’s your mother?’

‘Lives with Sabine these days. I fly her over a couple of times a year.’

‘What do you do with yourself?’ Obviously he couldn’t show his face in Perth.

‘Work out. Walk. Cook healthy food. Go to concerts. Would you believe it, I’m studying French!’

‘No business?’ But there would always be business …

He looked amused. ‘I’ve got my finger in a few pies. But I was winding down in Perth. The big conglomerates moved in from
the eastern states. No fun anymore. I was always on my guard …Anyway, what’s happened to you?’

His eyes skimmed across her baldness but he refrained from comment. She noticed the interest, even affection in his eyes.

‘Oh Cy, we’ve lost our daughter.’ What did anything else matter? She was an old woman in black scuttling down the road, wailing
and waving her hands.

‘Lost her?’ He looked around as if for a child.

‘She’s eighteen. She came to Melbourne and then she disappeared.’ She felt relieved to be telling him, as if he were a policeman
or a doctor. Like handing over to a professional.

‘She do drugs?’

‘Not that we know.’

He stood looking down at her. ‘We’d better go somewhere and talk.’

‘After the game?’

‘Now. You don’t want to watch this, do you?’

‘No. If you don’t mind missing it.’

He shook his head and set off towards the stairs.

She ought to tell Jacob. But she couldn’t risk losing Cy in the crowd. Once Cy decided on action, he took it. If stalled,
he could change his mind. And what would Jacob say if she told him she was going off with Cy?

As she followed him the siren sounded. It must be half-time. The crowd instantly spilled out all around her on the stairwell,
pushing her against the wall. She could only just keep track of Cy’s head bobbing further and further down.

She felt the old luxurious pull of relinquishment to him, of putting herself in his hands. Though she rarely thought of him
now, she sometimes still had dreams of him in which he showed pain, even vulnerability, and she woke feeling tender towards
him. Suddenly she remembered what it was like to be with him. How you saw things differently. Anything seemed possible.

A light rain started to fall. It had rained like this when he spirited her away from Karen’s wedding, and in the restaurant
after he took her to be married. When he asserted his powers.

Maya would be found.

He was the reason for everything, Jacob, their children, the way they lived.

She and Jacob were small and ordinary, she thought, as she made her way towards him, tiny figures in the roaring crowd. Winds
of change blew around them, wars broke out, plagues ran rampant across continents, children died. Still they trudged on. Long
ago they opted for the small life, for safety and peace and a home for their children. They kept their heads down, their fingers
crossed.

There was Cy, leaning against a railing, at ease, missing nothing, a little space around him. Retired? He would never retire.

Essendon had it in the bag. Jacob sat drinking beer morosely beside his fellow Demons supporters as the slaughter ground its
way to the final goal. A losing game resembled those dead ends
in life when you can’t do anything right. Hird was chaired off the ground to a roar of adulation. Wasn’t that every man’s
secret dream?

His neighbours stood up to leave.

‘Looks like I’ve lost my wife now,’ Jacob said. ‘First my daughter, then my wife.’

But their moment of fellowship had passed. The men slunk off towards the exit without even saying goodbye.

T
his morning it was raining. The street was empty, swept by sheets of rain. She sprinted between the doorways of the Mimosa
and the Corner Cafe to sit at an inside table. Through the open door she watched some doves sheltering beneath the tables
on the terrace, pecking at crumbs, as diligent as ever, their feathers fluffed up against the weather. A summer storm. Leaves
parted and hung dripping off the tree by the road. She thought of the manes of horses in the rain. A gust of wind set them
shivering and tossing. Next time maybe she’d be born as a horse. Or a bird. She didn’t want to be a person anymore.

Something had woken her, a mauve light through the frosted-glass windows that seeped in under her eyelids. Or was it a dream?
In the dream she was moving through the Flynns’ house between sliding doors that opened to reveal Dory lying
on a couch in a glowing mauve dressing gown, propped up on her side, her hand beneath her cheek. He was kneeling beside her.
Go, just go, a voice said.

She had a burning thirst and drank from the tap in the bathroom. She noticed she was still dressed. Her sandals were by the
door and she pushed her feet into them. Her bag was by the bed. She felt deep inside it and the mobile was still there.
Seen my phone anywhere?
He was asleep on his back with his mouth open, like a corpse in this strange light. She let herself out.

The smell of this place made her stomach clench. She must have slept but she was exhausted, as if she’d just done a full day’s
work. Sore everywhere, but she had no time for a shower. Behind the desk at the entrance Helga was yawning, pinning up a strand
of hair. Helga too was tired.

Running in the rain to the cafe woke her up a bit. But when she came to order she found she didn’t have enough money for coffee.
Just enough for a camomile tea. Even Rita seemed distant this morning when she brought the cup to the table. The tea had a
dusty clover smell that reminded her of her mother. If she were home she would stay in bed today and let her mother take over.
When she was sick, her mother, with her natural cures, her herbs and soups, kept the world at bay. She made you a child again.
A vision crossed her mind from long ago, her mother’s hands, tanned and strong, wrinkled at the joints, the shiny oval nails
clipped short for service.

When she was a little girl, the word ‘mother’ sounded dark and velvety and sheltering, like flowers in the rain. She hated
sleeping over at other people’s houses, even the Garcias. She didn’t like to be too far away from Toni.

The fat man was inside too, stolidly eating his breakfast, his maroon suede sneakers splotched with mud. Salty chips and
Coke gave him a little hit, so he could forget his misery for a moment.

A big man at the table by the door was tucking into the kind of breakfast her father liked to have in cafes on his jaunts
to Perth. Poached eggs and spinach and tomatoes, while he read a newspaper. It made him feel like a city man.

Ali and Rita came and went through the bead curtain, not speaking. Ali’s mother shuffled out with bains-marie of fresh-cooked
food. A baby was crying out the back.

‘
Here’s a drink for you, baby
.’ A memory flash, the sort you get after you’ve been drunk. She gasped, opened
The Courier-Mail
lying on her table. She couldn’t read the words. Something had happened to her brain.

There was a party.
We’re going to a party
. He was actually smiling at her. A taxi, a white high-rise block of flats. A lift with a dim mirror reflecting the two of
them going up, side by side, not touching, like a father and a daughter. A living room furnished like a hotel, generic paintings,
wall-lights turned low, a smoked-glass table covered with bottles. Everyone was out on the balcony, smoking and admiring the
view.

‘
Here’s a drink for you, baby
.’ She thought there was a gunshot down below but it was just a car backfiring. Everyone laughs, thinks she’s being funny.
Her own voice, the ‘cute’ voice, exclaiming at the coloured tracery of headlights. He puts his arm around her. He’s pleased
with her, even though she’s still wearing her denim skirt and T-shirt, like a schoolgirl, and everyone else is dressed up.
Why didn’t he care how she looked tonight? She knows she’s becoming too excited. The balcony is dangerously high. Mr T is
there, back from Bangkok, but keeps his back turned to her. She speaks with an Asian girl, beautiful as a model. My home is
far away, the girl says. She gives a little shivery laugh after everything she says.

The fat man was standing at the counter, ordering take-away. Sweet and sour. Probably for his morning tea. Ali’s mother brought
out a bain-marie of steaming rice. He pointed to it. She scooped up a large spoonful for him and dumped it in the foil container.
You could smell it, the sweet bready smell of hot rice. She watched the fat man lumber across the terrace carrying his take-away
in a white plastic bag. The rain had stopped, the doves had flown away. Her heart was pounding and the sweat spurted into
her armpits.

Baby, have a drink
. Like a father wanting to help. He’s never called her baby before. Then the need to go horizontal, to close her eyes, she’s
about to curl up on the floor. But she’s falling back onto a bed in a dark room and he’s lying on top of her, kissing her,
touching her, his face so close she can’t see it anymore. She sees behind him the stocky silhouette against the light in the
window. She tries to kick and buck but she can’t move. She’s pinned down. ‘Wait,’ he hisses in her ear. She gasps but he puts
his mouth on hers. She’s going under. This is the Devil’s country, she thinks.

She’s sitting on a bathroom floor, being sick in a toilet.

You promised. Never again.

‘Pull yourself together. You’ve been dreaming.’

Was it a dream? She couldn’t remember how she came back to the Mimosa.

The need for coffee was so strong that she thought of asking Rita for credit. But everyone was strange today, tired and sad,
even Rita.

She pulled the phone out of her bag and pressed One.

‘Andy here. Hello?’

‘Just to let you know, I’ve taken over the phone.’

‘Maya? What’s the time?’

‘Did I wake you?’

‘No.’