Page 120 of Here One Moment

The last time I’d been home had been for Ivy’s wedding (to my wedding photographer, I was her bridesmaid and was very careful with my bouquet and did not leave a pollen stain on her wedding dress). Mum had been slender then, but I’d been pleased for her, I’d thought it was all the dieting paying off. Now she was fragile and birdlike, her clothes hung off her, her cheeks were sunken and her eyes enormous. Still beautiful but terrifyingly frail. We’d been the same height and build for many years, but our hugs had always been of a parent and child. I had always leaned toward her. Now for the first time it was as though I was taking her in my arms.

Before I could express my concerns, she stood back and surveyed me and said, “You look terrible.”

Auntie Pat said, “Yes, you do.”

“It’s a long flight,” I said defensively. I was not the one who looked terrible!

“What’s wrong with you?” demanded my mother, sounding not at all frail.

I didn’t tell them about the Friday-night parties, or the way my thumping heart woke me in the middle of the night with a gasp of terror, or about my permanently dry, sour mouth and the dull feeling in my head that only went away with my first drink each evening.

I told them I was distressed because we had learned that David and I couldn’t have a baby. I didn’t tell them of my secret relief, and I didn’t tell them I needed a baby to save me and my marriage from the dreadful abyss into which we seemed to be falling.

It turned out this was old news. David had called his mother and Michelle had called Mum.

David would have been just thrilled to know his mother and his in-laws had been discussing his sperm.

(He would not have been thrilled.)

They said it was going to be fine. Michelle had a plan, which she wanted to discuss with me, and Mum and Auntie Pat were already on board. David and I were to be brought on board too. The plan was that we would adopt a Korean baby, and our baby would be so very lucky, because unlike most adoptees going to white families, he or she would have a Korean grandmother and a half-Korean father. Michelle had already been calling adoption agencies. Auntie Pat was waiting to hear back from a friend whose daughter had adopted a baby from Korea, in case she had useful information. Mum had various distinguished people writing character references for us: the mayor, my high school principal, the head of the local chamber of commerce. (They had all sat for her at various points.) Of course, these references were probably not even necessary; David was not only half Korean but had a career in cardiology, saving lives, while I worked for the Australian Taxation Office, helping catch tax avoiders. We were clearly of excellent character and would go straight to the top of any list of desperate parents-to-be.

The mention of excellent character recalled a vision of our behavior at the rooftop parties, hands all over each other, in full view of everyone, staggering down the stairs to bed. It felt sensual at the time but so sleazy and vulgar in the morning, and reprehensible in my childhood home. What would my dad think? What would Jack think? I could not imagine either of them on that rooftop. Sometimes I wondered if my recurring image of two people toppling backward into the inky black night was symbolic. It represented David and me, but I only thought that when I was drunk; when I was hungover I had no interest in symbols or visions and I knew it meant nothing.

“Obviously this is only if you and David are happy with the idea,” said Auntie Pat.

“Really?” I said. “We have a choice in the matter? We won’t come home one day and find a little Korean baby on the doorstep delivered by the postman?”

“Very funny,” said Auntie Pat.

“Didn’t that happen to Betty Carroll?” said Mum.

“Betty’s baby didn’t come from Korea, Mae,” said Auntie Pat.

(It was an open secret nobody was really bothering to keep anymore. The oldest Carroll girl, Bridgette, had given birth at fifteen to the fattest baby you’ve ever seen.)

“Oh, yes,” said Mum. “Fancy me forgetting that.” She frowned. “I think I predicted it too.”

Another woman might have found it outrageous that Michelle was already making calls to adoption agencies on our behalf, but Iliked the idea of pleasing my mother-in-law, and—this sounds terrible—I think it reduced my level of responsibility. If I couldn’t take care of this baby Michelle was organizing, she would do it for me. She would help me keep the baby alive, and the baby would get me back into my clotted-cream house, where all my fancy dinnerware and wedding boxes were packed away along with my former self, while another newlywed couple paid us rent to live there. Also, I would be doing something “good” by helping out a child in need.

“I think I would like to adopt,” I said. “If David is happy to.”

Of course, we didn’t know what we didn’t know. We didn’t know many of the Korean children adopted at this time were not orphans at all. We didn’t know about unwed mothers being coerced into giving up their babies, or document fraud, or profit-driven adoption agencies. It did not occur to us to think about distressing questions of identity that might face these children when they grew up.

I watched Mum tentatively nibble a tiny corner of lamington as if it were a strange exotic food rather than her favorite cake, then put it back on her plate with a deep sigh of resignation.

I slapped my palms on the table and said there would be no more baby talk. We needed to focus on Mum and her health. This, after all, was the purpose of my visit. I said it was ridiculous that she hadn’t been to the doctor yet, and Mum said, no need to get bossy, Cherry, because she’d been yesterday! Pat had finally worn her down.

Mum looked so pleased with herself. She was experiencing the glorious relief of having faced a fear. She’d believed going to the doctor would make her sick, but now she’d finally been convinced to go, she was convinced it would cure her. Sillier things have been thought.

They were waiting for a whole lot of test results. The doctor was being extra cautious. She probably just needed an antibiotic!

Auntie Pat avoided my eyes. I said, “I thought you read your own cards and you’re going to die?”

She said, “Oh, we’re all going to die, Cherry. I probably misinterpreted it. I am human, after all.”

I asked about the Madame Mae sign and Mum said she’d taken early retirement. It had started to become too tiring. Sometimes she’d been so tired she saw nothing, nothing at all, and she had to make it up. She said this as if we’d be shocked. Once again Auntie Pat and I pointedly avoided eye contact. Didn’t she make it all up?

“All these women, looking at me with such need in their eyes, year after year,” said Mum. “I couldn’t take it anymore. Some of them became too dependent on me. They got addicted. That woman from the Southern Highlands wanted a weekly appointment. I said, absolutely not, you can come twice a year at the most. She wore me down and I let her book in for quarterly visits, but it just wasn’t…healthy.”

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