Page 30 of Weekends with the Sunshine Gardening Society
‘That’s because it is,’ Cynthia says softly.
‘It may even be fun enough to help me forget that my mother-in-law walked in on me having sex.’
Lorraine hears a noise and turns to see that Shirl is standing close enough to have heard every word. Whoops.
‘All true, Shirl,’ she says.
‘Sorry to hear that, Lorrie.’ Shirl shakes her head then moves in the direction of the unfortunate cactus, picking up her machete on the way.
Lorraine has a brief thought of buying her own machete and displaying it next to her bedroom door, like a warning sign to Cora, but Mike would probably just think it’s a new tool for his business and put it in the shed.
‘So is that why you joined?’ she asks Cynthia.
‘Hm?’ Cynthia is scrabbling around near the fence.
‘Did you join the society because your mum did?’
Cynthia’s back is to her so she can’t tell if she’s planning to anwer or not.
After a few seconds Lorraine hears a soft word: ‘Partly.’ Then Cynthia turns around and Lorraine sees that her face is half crumpled and she feels bad for asking.
‘Sorry, Cyn,’ she says.
‘For what?’
‘For asking.’
Cynthia shakes her head quickly. ‘Nothing to apologise for. I mainly joined because Von told me to. But also because I wanted to understand Mum better.’
‘Makes sense.’ Lorraine pulls on another weed and makes a face when it breaks off halfway up the stem. ‘I don’t think she was hiding it from you. I think she just wanted something for herself. And I understand that.’
Cynthia smiles gratefully. ‘As do I.’
‘Bloody weed!’ Lorraine holds up her limp trophy.
‘I thought you loved weeds?’
‘Shut up.’
‘Okay.’ Cynthia grins and turns away, while Lorraine digs her fingers into the dirt, hoping to find some roots.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
Atcertain moments Cynthia notices the ways this house has changed and the ways it hasn’t. There are photos of her mother in frames – in the living room, in the bedrooms – but the other traces of her life are gone. Her sewing is no longer piled in a basket in the corner. The novels she was always reading aren’t stacked on the little stool next to the couch; in fact, the stool has gone too. Her cookbooks have vanished, as has her apron. All of this happened while Cynthia was elsewhere and it’s only now that she’s here, seeing the evidence of it, that she realises she may never forgive herself for not being here when Diane died.
A dog is barking somewhere close and Cynthia thinks of something else she missed while she was gone: the death of the family pet, a Jack Russell called, appropriately, Jack. He was the successor to the previous Jack Russell, named Russ.
She thought that moving away, separating oneself from one’s family, was what had to happen as a person grew older. When she became a mother she was still young, or so she felt, despite the responsibilities that arrived when Odette did. She wasn’t ready to leave behind the structure of her original family life, even though her relationship with her mother had never been particularly close; and it was that structure she tried to replicate in her own little family, without questioning whether or not it suited her.
Then, in her mid-twenties, she felt the constraints of it all as shackles. She adored Odette, but motherhood was holding her back, as was marriage. Everything in her life was geared to someone else’s needs and her own were never acknowledged. Indeed, she wasn’t sure if she had them any more because it had been so long since they’d been expressed. The American surfer was just an excuse; an opportunity. What was really going on was that she wanted to leave, wanted to see who she might become if she wasn’t stuck in what she perceived to be the rut of her life.
Pat was a casualty of that. Pat who is just now climbing the back steps to the house and sliding open the glass door, smiling at her like the old friend she guesses he probably is. Old friend and other parent of her only child. Severance from him, no matter how much she had thought it imperative, was impossible. They always had to deal with each other to raise Odette, whether she was in the US or here.
‘Good morning,’ he says as he closes the door then turns around to face her, his hands tucking into the pockets of his lightweight jacket. A sailing jacket, that’s what it looks like. Although she doesn’t think he sails. He’s always been a surfer, and in her experience those types don’t tend to exist in the same body.
‘Good morning.’ She smiles. She’s expecting him – he called and said he’d like to come round and have a chat.
On hearing this her father decided he needed to go fishing, which made Cynthia think Wilfred knows what Pat wants to talk about. It seems odd, the two of them communicating regularly and her knowing nothing about it. But she has no right to know, even if it rankles a little.
