Australia Day Read online

  Barry would never forget the time he’d called the crisis team for his father. It was a hot day in March, a few days after his dad’s sixtieth birthday, and Barry and his mother had returned early from her appointment with the oncologist. The doctor had good news—her cancer had responded to the latest bout of chemotherapy. They were desperate to tell Barry’s father but couldn’t find him anywhere inside the house. It was Barry’s mother who finally discovered him, in the garage, jamming a hose into the Holden’s exhaust pipe. He’d bowed his head like a criminal as he followed her inside and didn’t say a word—not when she boiled the kettle and placed a mug of tea in front of him, not when he heard Barry on the phone to psych triage, and not later, in the bathroom, when Barry cleaned the soot from his hands with a wet face cloth.

  That night, as Barry locked the garden hose away in the shed, he’d kept one eye out for a note—some confession or apology or last declaration of love—but if it was there, he couldn’t find it.

  He sat in his car in the hospital car park. The clock read four-thirty. Pandora’s admission had absorbed the entire day. He watched a pretty woman in scrubs—a junior doctor, perhaps—check the lock on her car three, four, five times. He watched her walk halfway to the hospital front entrance before turning back to test the lock again. Barry looked down at his phone, checked his inbox. There was an email from his father’s nursing home. There had been another outbreak of gastroenteritis. The last time his father got gastro, he’d ended up in hospital. Barry hadn’t planned on visiting him tonight, but now he would have to, if only to pacify that niggling pain inside his chest.

  The nursing home was in a trendy inner-city area—a blond brick building tucked between two cafes selling pulled-pork sliders for twenty dollars. Barry parked beside an ambulance. He wondered if it was waiting for his father, but he’d had no missed calls and the carers were pretty good with notifications. They’d rung him the time a new nurse accidentally gave his dad Miss Longbottom’s medicine, and when a lady with dementia had bitten him on the thigh.

  Barry found his father in a wheelchair in front of the television. Judge Judy was on, her voice cutting through the noise of somebody’s oxygen machine. Barry couldn’t tell if his father was sleeping. His eyes were half open, only the whites showing.

  ‘Dad,’ he said, placing a hand on his father’s reassuringly warm arm. His father jerked awake.

  ‘Blanche?’ He sucked a tendril of saliva back into his mouth.

  ‘Not Blanche, Dad. It’s Barry.’

  The old man’s eyes flickered across his son’s face before returning to Judge Judy.

  ‘I brought you something,’ Barry said, digging into his satchel and pulling out a doughnut he’d bought for lunch but hadn’t had time to eat. ‘Your favourite.’

  The old man lifted the bag to his nose and inhaled deeply.

  ‘Do you like this show?’ Barry asked.

  ‘It’s all right.’ His father shoved the doughnut into his mouth. ‘She’s not afraid to tell it like it is.’

  Barry watched the jam spill like congealed blood from his father’s lips. When the diagnosis of Alzheimer’s was made, Barry had hoped his dad’s heart might soften with his brain, but it hadn’t. Though his memory failed and his bladder failed, his sternness never swayed. Perhaps once, a long time ago, there had been a soft centre in there somewhere, but over the years it had calcified—thickened and puckered like a scar.

  Only the drink had ever worked to relax him, and then only for a short while. Barry had enjoyed those Christmas lunches when his father was loose with brandy, when he would tell them tales from Vietnam—funny stories, like how he had dared his best mate, Mike, to eat ten chillies, or how he had fallen off his motorbike into a steaming pile of buffalo dung. It’d be ten years, at least, since Barry had seen his father like that. With each passing year, his heart had hardened that little bit more—as if, like some character from Greek mythology, he was slowly being turned to stone.

  Barry pulled up a chair and sat down beside his father. Judge Judy was lecturing some girl about teenage pregnancy.

  Barry cleared his throat. ‘I hear there’s a gastro outbreak.’

  ‘A what?’ His father turned on his hearing aid, waited for the inevitable shriek.

  ‘Diarrhoea going round.’

  ‘Ah.’

  ‘You okay?’

  ‘Yep.’ Doughnut sugar clung like glitter to the front of his woollen jumper. ‘But poor George in room ten died from the bloody thing.’

  ‘Really?’ Barry was shocked. They hadn’t mentioned that in the email.

  ‘Imagine. Dying. From the runs.’

  And in the weighty silence that ensued, Barry contemplated just that.

  As Barry signed out of the facility, one of the nurses approached him. She had a familiar face, but he couldn’t for the life of him remember her name. Just in time, his eyes found the ID badge pinned to her smallish breast.

  ‘Olga.’

  ‘Mr Wheeler’s son. Your visits mean the world to him.’

  Barry was sure she said that to the relatives of all her patients, but it was still nice to hear—to pretend, for a while.

  ‘And he’s so very proud,’ she added, looking down at the faded knees of his jeans. ‘He says you’re a doctor?’

  ‘Social worker,’ Barry corrected her. He smiled. ‘Close enough.’

  The nurse laughed a loud, overcompensating laugh.

  Tonight he would have to take one of the sleeping tablets rolling around in his drawer. Something about seeing his dad gave him terrible insomnia. Growing up, he had fallen asleep to the sound of his father’s slippers pacing the floor. A couple of times he had buried his head in a pillow to shelter his ears from the howls. Come morning, nobody mentioned it. They all pretended it never happened. Only one time, when a neighbour complained, did Barry’s mum whisper something about the war.

  Barry heated up a Lite n’ Easy meal in the microwave and turned on the television. He watched MasterChef, which only made his food even less appetising than it already was. He followed this with a beer, and then another, and another. In the end he didn’t need a tablet but passed out, half-drunk, on the couch.

  *

  The next morning Barry was busy with other clients, and it was late afternoon by the time he got to the hospital. Pandora was in the internal courtyard, stalking back and forth and smoking. She had dressed herself in the leopard-print leggings and the long hot-pink jumper. Barry watched her, unnoticed, through the floor-to-ceiling glass doors. She was talking to somebody hidden from view behind a giant potted fern. Pandora rarely had visitors. Occasionally her cousin dropped off a pack of cigarettes out of some vague sense of familial duty, but Pandora’s cousin was tall—too tall to be hidden by a fern.

  Barry moved to another window to get a better look at the visitor. Even behind a veil of leaves, her resemblance to Pandora was striking. They had the same lips, the same lilac eyes, the same mane of dyed black hair. Except this woman was smooth and serious—like a wax mannequin of the real thing. Barry left the two women to talk and climbed the stairs to the cafeteria.

  Four o’clock was a bad time to eat at the hospital. The chips sagged, the lettuce hung limply from the mouths of burgers, and roughly cut chunks of lamb shrivelled in swamps of curry. Barry picked up a jam doughnut, wrapped in plastic, to have with his coffee. It was stale and all the sugar rubbed off when he unwrapped it, but he ate it dutifully, because his father had taught him never to waste food, and because, for a moment, it stopped the grumble emanating from his stomach.

  Doughnuts reminded Barry of his mother. Sometimes, when he was a boy, she would take him with her on the tram to Victoria Market. Barry loved all the colour and noise of the stalls, and he could touch things when nobody was looking, like the hairy, spiky skins of fruits that looked like they came from another planet. If Barry was good, his mother would buy three jam doughnuts in a brown paper bag. She and Barry would eat theirs on the ride home—still hot from the deep-fryer—
as they marvelled at the lofty buildings and frantic lunchtime crowds. At home, Barry would present the last jam-filled treat to his father, on a tray, with a pot of hot tea. It might just have been the effect of Barry’s cheerful mood, but on those days even his father seemed a little less formidable.

  When he finally sat down with Pandora, alone, she was angry.

  ‘What did you go and call the police for, Barry?’

  It was a conversation they’d had before.

  ‘You’re getting sick again, Pandora. I did it for your own good.’

  Pandora snorted through flared nostrils, flicked a lock of her tangled hair.

  ‘Who was that lady you were speaking to before?’ he asked.

  ‘You spying on me now?’ Pandora snapped. ‘None of your business.’

  ‘Was it Maria?’

  Her shoulders caved, as if the mere mention of her daughter’s name had wounded her.

  ‘Like I said,’ she repeated, but this time without the fire, ‘none of your goddamn business.’

  Barry heated up his Lite n’ Easy meal, but there was no MasterChef tonight. It was Friday—most people were out—and the choice was between Finding Nemo and Pretty Woman. He put his DVD of Apocalypse Now in the DVD player. When Barry was growing up, his dad had banned them from watching movies about Vietnam. If they came on TV, he would shout, ‘What a load of rubbish!’ and hurl his slipper at the screen. Even as a child, Barry had wondered if all this was just an act. Perhaps, rather than a poor imitation, the films were actually too close to reality. After all, joker Mike who had eaten the chillies was eventually blown apart by a mine, and Barry’s father had hunted for his body parts, like Easter eggs, in the waist-high grass.

  The film was nearing its end when the phone rang at ten past nine.

  ‘Barry? Is that the social worker Barry Wheeler?’

  ‘Speaking.’

  A pause. Barry could hear a TV, a kettle whistling.

  ‘You look after my mum, Pandora.’

  ‘Of course. Yes. Maria.’

  ‘She talks about me?’

  Pandora rarely spoke of Maria. When she did, her head shook and her voice wavered.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘How is she?’

  ‘Better.’ Barry remembered Pandora’s interrogating eyes. ‘She’s had a minor relapse. It happens.’

  ‘I’d like to ask you a favour.’

  ‘Of course.’

  ‘I wonder if you might ask her to make contact with the family lawyer. Once she’s better.’

  ‘Regarding what?’

  ‘Regarding her will.’

  ‘Well, she certainly doesn’t have testamentary capacity at the moment,’ Barry said, his thoughts turning to the property in Richmond.

  ‘I understand that.’

  ‘But I’ll pass your message on.’

  ‘Thank you.’

  ‘Once she’s well.’

  ‘Much appreciated.’

  ‘Although I’d encourage you to speak to her directly. She is your mother, after all.’

  ‘I’m flying to London in the morning. It’s hard to get time off. From work. And the kids.’

  ‘Of course.’

  ‘Thank you, Barry,’ Maria said, and hung up.

  Barry sank into the couch and turned up the volume on the TV. He ate the last of his ravioli and watched a bloodied Marlon Brando lamenting the horror.

  Pandora was worse. Her euphoria had given way to an angry paranoia.

  ‘Where are my sunglasses?’ she yelled when she saw him. ‘My diamond-encrusted sunglasses?’

  ‘They should be here somewhere,’ Barry said as he watched her rifle through the drawers in her bedside table.

  ‘That’s what my mum used to say after she took my old toys to the op shop. They should be here somewhere!’

  ‘Pandora.’ Barry put a hand on her shoulder. ‘Don’t stress. We’ll find them.’

  She sat down on the bed then—appeased, for a moment. She hadn’t bothered with make-up today. Her face looked pale, anaemic.

  ‘There was a paper bag when you came in. We put your clothes in it, and the sunglasses too.’

  Pandora nodded. She studied her hands, gnarled and knotted like tree roots. ‘My daughter’s stealing from me.’

  Barry felt his stomach leap. ‘Why do you say that?’

  ‘Things keep going missing.’

  Soon after Barry graduated, a psychiatrist had told him that delusions have their origins in reality. Barry still found it hard, ten years on, to tease the truth from the fantasy.

  ‘We’ll find your sunglasses, Pandora. Don’t worry.’

  Pandora picked at a scab on her wrist. ‘There’s no one, Barry.’

  ‘I’m here, aren’t I?’

  ‘I’m going to die alone.’

  It was probably true. Most of Barry’s clients died alone. A few lay dead for days before anybody noticed they were gone.

  ‘This is a relapse,’ Barry said, hating himself. ‘Nobody’s dying.’

  Barry had only seen his father cry once, at his mother’s funeral. That was enough. He sat in the front pew of the church, near the coffin, quietly convulsing. Barry was close enough to see the old man’s face. It was as if an epic battle were underway beneath his furrowed brow. Well-meaning hands on shoulders were violently shrugged away. Offers of tissues were met with a dismissive wave of his hand. But every so often a lone tear trickled down his crumpled cheek, and Barry’s father hung his head in shame.

  The next morning, a Saturday, Barry jumped out of bed with his alarm. The thermostat read five degrees. He made himself a coffee for the journey and drove to Victoria Market through the maze of empty streets. Most people were at home, taking refuge beneath their doonas. Except the doughnut maker. He was there with his van—a glowing, metallic beast in the abandoned car park. A couple of committed patrons paced and rubbed their gloved hands together as they waited. Barry sat on a ledge, nursing what remained of his homemade coffee. As he sipped, his attention turned to a young man with a preschool-aged daughter. He watched the girl’s eyes close with delight as she took her first bite of doughnut and then flash wide with fear when her father scolded her for spilling jam on her jumper.

  ‘Next!’ the doughnut maker cried, and Barry stood up. There were thirteen residents on his father’s floor—twelve now George was gone. Barry ordered a dozen. As he walked to the car, he felt the hot balls of dough warm his palms, like something alive, through the bottom of the paper box.

  Allomother

  Sunday nights are for planning. I search the internet for the latest exhibitions, concerts and other kid-friendly events. We’ve been to the main attractions: the museum, the botanical gardens, the children’s farm, the gallery. We’ve sampled babycinos and avocado smash at all but the most pretentious cafes. Sometimes I don’t plan anything at all. I plan not to plan—because too much structure can suffocate creativity in a child—and we do silly things like make nappies for Baby from the fallen leaves in my backyard.

  Monday nights are for cooking. I bake homemade treats for our outings. Healthy snacks like apricot muesli bars and savoury muffins made with organic pumpkin and goat’s cheese. There has to be something to counteract the frozen rubbish that gets dished up at home. Snap-frozen, her mother corrects me, but she is just defending the time she spends on the couch watching back-to-back episodes of House of Cards.

  Tuesday nights are for packing. Or rather checking that my oversized waterproof handbag is adequately stocked. Because when it comes to kids—and Molly in particular—you can never be too prepared. Every so often I get caught out and have to add another item to my list. It’s an organic thing, my list, a little like my muesli bars. Two packets of Dora the Explorer bandaids, one tube of Cancer Council approved nanofree kids’ sunscreen, a hat, a cardigan, a spare pair of underwear, a BPA-free water bottle, a lunch box with aforementioned organic snacks, face towels, Molly’s second-favourite Barbie doll (Candy, with the blue-biro-coloured hair) and my camera.


  I have one photo. Jules and Mick took everything else—the ultrasound images and DVDs, even the positive pregnancy test I dipped in my urine. It’s a selfie taken in the bathroom mirror, with one hand cupping my belly. The phone covers my face. Only my mouth is showing. I’m wearing a grey maternity top from Kmart and a pair of black trackie dacks covered in lint. There are no identifying features. No scars or beauty spots or tattoos of ex-lovers’ names. Nothing to prove that it’s me. It could be anyone.

  *

  I’m drinking a watery cappuccino at the zoo cafeteria. Molly is under my chair, feeding discarded chips to a one-legged pigeon. It is three o’clock and the cafe is full. I scan the tables, priding myself on being able to pick the parents from the non-parents. The parents are the ones checking email on their smart phones while their toddler eats marshmallows off the floor. It’s the nannas and pops and aunties and uncles who hang, bright-eyed, on every mispronounced word, confident they’ll soon be rewarded with a flash of wisdom or comedic genius. Like when Molly compares the mole on my neck to a sultana, or asks me questions I can’t answer, like whether fish sleep—and if they do, how do I know, if they never close their eyes?

  They took vial after vial of blood. I was terrified, but I needn’t have been. My hormone levels were within normal limits, and my uterus wasn’t hostile—who knew organs could be hostile?—like my sister’s. It was the proof I had been searching for all these years that I was better than her. But the victory didn’t give me the joy I thought it would. I didn’t feel like I’d won anything.

  ‘I want to see the ephelants.’

  We are in the ape enclosure. A female is nursing her newborn, two young chimps are catapulting from tree to tree, and a large male is lying on the platform-cum-stage, juggling his salmon-pink testicles.