Page 24 of Weekends with the Sunshine Gardening Society
Sherry blinks. ‘Oh,’ she says. ‘Right.’
Now Elizabeth plays the one strong card in her hand. ‘So I really need the work. I have a son and I need to provide for him.’
She should add something, so it doesn’t sound all too selfish. ‘And I want to work,’ she goes on. ‘I have skills to offer.’
Sherry looks at her enquiringly.
‘I’ve had to deal with a lot of challenges,’ Elizabeth says. ‘I feel I can handle anyone and anything. And I can type.’
Thank goodness her father suggested she learn to touch-type while she was at university, saying it was useful. He’d learnt it while he was in the army, and swore it helped him get promoted because he could pitch in and handle correspondence deftly when others could not.
Sherry looks momentarily pleased. ‘We’ll have to give you a test,’ she says.
‘Of course.’ Elizabeth hopes she looks relaxed as she smiles. She doesn’t like tests, but she’s confident in her typing ability.
‘And you can work the hours?’
Those hours are ten to five, four days a week, and Elizabeth isn’t entirely sure she can manage them, but that’s why she’s heading to her parents’ place after this, to ask if they can help.
‘Yes.’ She swallows. ‘Absolutely.’
Sherry waves her into what looks like one of the doctors’ rooms and plonks an Olivetti on the desk and a set of headphones on Elizabeth’s ears. They’re attached to a cassette player and,without any warning, Sherry presses ‘play’ and Elizabeth hears a recorded monotone, likely a doctor, dictating a letter.
Fifteen minutes later the dictation test has finished and Elizabeth sits back, hoping she hasn’t made too many mistakes.
‘We’ll let you know,’ Sherry says as she ushers her to the door and Elizabeth wonders if that’s true.
Still, it would be a good idea to talk to her parents about looking after Charlie even if she doesn’t get this particular job. She will have to work, at whatever job she can find, and it’s more than likely that job won’t fit neatly into school hours.
During the short drive from the medical practice in Sunrise Beach to her parents’ house in Sunshine Beach, Elizabeth mentally runs through her to-do list for the rest of the day. She wakes up with a list in her head and never reaches its end. Items drop off as they’re completed then more are added. It’s entirely possible she’ll have a to-do list in her head until the day she dies, and that feels somewhat like a torture. The ever-renewing, never-vanquished list. For just one day – that’s all she dares hope for – she wishes she could be list-free. Or maybe she wouldn’t know how to function without it.
She’s noticed, much to her surprise, that the only time she doesn’t think about the list is when she’s gardening. There’s something about putting her hands in the earth that sucks her worries out of her brain, almost like magic. Not that she believes in magic. If magic were real, wouldn’t Jon be alive? She prayed often enough, and prayers are incantations in their own way.
‘Hello, sweetheart,’ her mother says with a wide smile as she opens the door to Elizabeth. Her parents live in a slightly run-down, one-storey weatherboard house that they’re slowly renovating – her father likes a project – but it’s as full of warmth as they are.
As her mother hugs her she pats Elizabeth’s hair, as she usually does. It’s a ritual, checking that Elizabeth is still there. They almost lost her once, as a child, when she ran out froma footpath – too fast for her father to catch her – and straight into a car, and ever since then her mother has carried out these discreet checks. When she was a teenager Elizabeth hated them. Now they’re the most reassuring thing she can imagine.
Her mother walks slowly down the hall. She’s stiffened with age, despite Elizabeth’s exhortations that she keep mobile, go for walks, maybe take up golf.
Her father, sitting at the kitchen bench, springs up. That’s what golf has done for him: kept him nimble. Why can’t her mother see that?
‘Hello, love,’ he says, kissing her cheek, grabbing her arm. Again, to check. They both do it. They don’t know how to not do it.
And Elizabeth can hardly talk: when Charlie was a baby she used to bend over his cot and put her cheek next to his mouth to feel his breath. Just checking.
‘How did you go?’ Her mother pats the stool next to her father’s, indicating that Elizabeth should sit.
‘Good, I think.’ She sits obediently and puts her handbag on the bench. ‘She gave me a typing test.’
Her father looks triumphant. ‘Bet you did well.’
‘I don’t know yet, Dad.’ She glances quickly at each of them. ‘If I get the job I’ll need you to give me a hand with Charlie. It’s four days a week, and while I could take him to school I wouldn’t be able to pick him up, because I’d finish at five. And school holidays …’ That’s only just occurred to her: what will she do in the holidays?
‘We can do it,’ her mother says firmly, nodding at her father. ‘We’d love to do it.’
Her father pats her hand. ‘We sure would.’
Although Elizabeth is used to her parents’ generosity, she’s never taken it for granted, and sometimes she can’t fathom how she can be so lucky to have them help her the way they do. Her brother’s back in Brisbane, probably feeling neglected becausetheir parents came here to be with her and Charlie. And Jon, before he died.
