Page 26 of Birds of a Feather

Gerry

‘What do you make of it?’ I asked after I had read the email twice. I couldn’t ignore how different this message was to my recent exchange with my ex, Matt.

‘It’s wonderful.’ Her eyes glistened with tears and optimism. ‘It’s really wonderful.’

‘Do you want to reply with your phone number?’

‘Oh yes, darling,’ she replied enthusiastically, as though it should have been obvious. ‘Of course.’

Gran dictated an email that detailed her delight at receiving a response, her keenness to keep in touch and her phone number.

I hit send. It was 11.10pm London time, so it was possible that Gerry would call today if she had a habit of checking her emails late in the evening, we agreed.

Irrespective of the time in London, it was definitely time for me to get to work.

‘I have to go, Gran,’ I said, putting my laptop back in the case and sculling the last of my coffee. ‘I’ll keep my fingers and toes crossed that she calls soon.’

‘Thank you, my love.’ She grabbed my arm firmly. ‘Thank you for everything. You will never know how much this means to me. I’d given up on ever finding out what happened to Gerry, let alone getting in contact with her again.’

Her voice wavered.

I kissed her forehead and then stood back to admire the look of joy on her face. Despite my current romantic prospects being non-existent, I was glad Gran looked so optimistic about matters of the heart. And I felt oddly proud that I’d played a role in facilitating it.

‘I love you, Gran. And I’m really happy for you.’

She dabbed her nose with a tissue with one hand and swatted me away affectionately with the other.

‘Now, be gone with you,’ she joshed. ‘I’m waiting on an important call and I can’t have you hanging around to eavesdrop.’

As I pulled away from the kerb outside her house, I wondered how long she would sit at the table waiting for the phone to ring. After sixty years, what was a couple more hours?

Chapter 16

Elise

Elise’s kitchen had always been the heart of her house. The table she now sat at alone had hosted competitive card games, countless conquered homework tasks, creative craft projects and philosophical discussions. The kitchen sink had provided the setting for her nightly debrief with Rosie about her day when she was young. The warm soapy water helped to soothe her daughter’s teenage angst and there was something about standing side by side, rather than looking directly at each other, that encouraged her to share. John – who prided himself on being an early adopter of gadgets – was keen to get a dishwasher as soon as they were on the market, to make life easier. But Elise resisted until Rosie had left home, arguing it would make life easier, but not better.

Elise looked to the scars etched into the doorjamb to the left of the sink, which provided evidence of Rosie’s and then the grandkids’ height milestones. Crude markings documented their transitions from toddler, to child, to teen and beyond, when they no longer wanted their height measured and Elise wouldn’t have been able to reach the tops of their heads anyway.

Being a grandmother had brought her so much joy. She and John had been apprehensive when Rosie and Thorn were married after only eight months, and when they had Jarrah shortly after that. Elise had worried that their bohemian lifestyle and what she considered to be alternative theories about parenthood were not suited to caring for a baby. But Jarrah had thrived in a world filled with colour and music and, most of all, love.

When Jarrah was about twenty months old, Rosie fell pregnant with Beth. Everyone was thrilled their family was growing. However, towards the end of her pregnancy, Rosie experienced some bleeding. She called Elise to come and look after Jarrah so she could go to the doctor. By the time Elise got to the house, she’d had a major haemorrhage. Elise arrived to find Rosie shaking with shock in the bathroom and Jarrah covered in the blood her mother had lost on the way down the hallway.

Rosie was put on bedrest for several weeks and then delivered of her baby by emergency caesarean under general anaesthetic a few days after Christmas. Elise and Thorn spent hours pacing the hospital corridors waiting for news. Eventually it came: mother and baby were okay. But just. Rosie was very poorly for several days, and Beth was treated in the neonatal intensive care unit. When the pair was reunited, feeding didn’t come easily, and Beth was very difficult to settle.

By the time Beth was about four weeks old, Rosie was not doing well. Nowadays, she would have likely been diagnosed with postnatal depression but, in those days, it was usually chalked up to a case of the baby blues that would abate once the baby started sleeping better. One afternoon Elise felt an urge to detour past Rosie’s on her way home from work. She could hear Beth’s high-pitched screams reverberating through the quiet suburban street before she’d even got out of her car. By the time she reached the front door, she heard Jarrah’s wailing and Rosie’s sobs too.

She took one look at her daughter and called for John to bring around a suitcase of her things. She spent the next three weeks helping to care for Beth while Rosie got some much-needed rest.

It was during this time that she began the ritual of bundling Beth into her pram in the early evening, when she was at her most fractious, and walking to the local park. They sat under a giant lemon-scented eucalypt where Beth stared up at the leaves while Elise read Snugglepot and Cuddlepie until the local kookaburra issued the final birdcall of the day and indicated it was time for them to go home.

Elise and Beth continued these trips to the park for months; long after Rosie had emerged from her postnatal fog and found joy in motherhood again. No doubt the trips helped lay the foundations for the bond they shared, which grew as Beth matured and she too developed a love of the natural world.

Elise understood the role she played in Beth’s life. She provided dependability and stability when it wasn’t always available at home, and she allowed Beth the space to be herself. Sometimes she felt like she was the conduit between Beth and the rest of the world and she was aware she was closer to Beth than many other grandparents were to their grandchildren. She was happy for Beth that she’d won the money. And she hoped that by giving her a financial leg-up, it would help ease her self-imposed burden of responsibility.

Elise looked at the clock for the second time in as many minutes. It was 7.25am – 11.25pm London time. She knew the chance of hearing from Gerry today decreased with every second that passed.

She walked into the spare bedroom and retrieved the box from the bottom drawer of the bedside table. She hadn’t returned it to its hiding place on the top shelf of the wardrobe; she figured she was much less likely to break her neck revisiting it there, and it seemed like a small, symbolic gesture to inch it out of the closet, even if it was still hidden in the shadows. The combination dial moved more easily this time, and she felt more confident, excited even, about delving beyond the photo and ticket stub into the box’s contents, and into her past.

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