‘Of course.’ Cynthia sounds relieved. ‘I’m at Dad’s if … you know … you want to call.’
‘Yeah, all right.’ Now it’s Lorraine’s turn to pause. How do you end a conversation like this?
‘I’d better go,’ she says eventually. ‘Things to do.’
‘Okay.’
‘Ta-ta.’
She hangs up in time to see Simon stick out his tongue at Terry and she braces herself for whatever’s coming next.
CHAPTER THREE
Thegarden is a mess. Elizabeth knows this. It’s impossible to not know it because she sees it every day. This medium-sized back garden that was once ordered and cared for – that was loved – is now unruly. There is leaf litter in the beds. There are sticks on the grass. The bushes that need pruning haven’t been pruned in a while. Flowers have fallen and started to rot.
Jon wouldn’t approve. ‘Never let a weed go unremoved,’ he liked to say. She can only imagine what he would make of what his beloved project has become. But he’s not here. He hasn’t been here for three months. Is it three months? Maybe it’s four. Maybe it’s two. Maybe it’s an eternity.
That’s something Elizabeth has discovered about grief: it causes time to change shape. Grief this profound, this paralysing, is not something she’s had to deal with – not in such a major way. At thirty years of age she’s lost grandparents and she’s grieved them. But they weren’t people she spent every day with, or had a child with. There’s a special kind of grief for those people.
She’d lived such an ordered life until this; no doubt that’s one of the things Jon liked about her when they met, as he was a man who liked an ordered garden and a pressed tie and a clean shave. He never said and she didn’t ask, and now she can’t ask becausehe is dead. And because he’s dead he can’t see the disorder in his garden and in his wife.
‘Mum-my,’ comes Charlie’s singsong voice from the back door.
Elizabeth turns her head towards it. ‘Yes, darling?’
‘What’s for lunch?’
Lunch. Elizabeth hasn’t thought about it. That’s another thing about grief: it sucks up all the other functions of life, like eating. If it hadn’t been for her mother regularly appearing with crustless cheese sandwiches and chicken vol-au-vents at key times, Elizabeth wouldn’t have eaten for weeks. Her mother seems to have developed a predilection for cocktail food – or perhaps it’s that she thinks Elizabeth will only eat things that can be picked up in one hand. It’s surprising cabanossi hasn’t made an appearance.
So while Elizabeth hasn’t thought about lunch, her mother will have. There will be something covered in Glad Wrap in the fridge, because her mother dropped round this morning, as she does every morning, sometimes with Elizabeth’s father in tow. They have both helped her more than she knew she would need to be helped.
In the week after Jon died, for instance, her father was brilliant: capable, commanding, helping to organise the funeral and making sure guests at the wake were looked after while Elizabeth sat limply in a chair and tried to remember the names of people she hadn’t seen in years. She and Jon had known each other since high school but they’d lost touch with most of their high-school friends – those same people who drove up the Bruce Highway from Brisbane to kiss her on the cheek and pat her hand and say they were so very, very sorry. She wanted to ask them why they weren’t so sorry that they didn’t visit Jon in the two years he was sick; years in which Charlie was discovering the world and Elizabeth tried to manage a boy looking outwards and a husband whose illness made him turn inwards. If her parents hadn’t packed up their lives in Brisbane to live nearby, Elizabeth would have faced it all mostly alone.
It had been Jon’s idea to move to Noosaville when he took up a job at the council. Being a civil engineer would take him places, he told her, and it took them up the road to the Sunshine Coast. They both loved it and chose Noosaville as their home, with its charming houses and the river so close they could hear the swish of boats. Elizabeth walked Charlie in his pram by the river, over to Hastings Street in Noosa Heads and back again. Long walks, soaking in the sun, looking at birds, enjoying the slow pace of this small community.
Her parents chose Sunshine Beach as their home. Not too much of a drive from her, and she couldn’t blame them for preferring the ocean to the river. A lifetime in Brisbane has probably inured them to rivers. But she still likes them.
Except Elizabeth hasn’t walked by that river in months. Not since Jon started ailing and she had to spend her time by his side. Not had to. Wanted to. Or sometimes had to. Caring for someone who is seriously ill, then terminally ill, is an act of love but often, too, of service. There are minutes, hours, days when you have to take a breath and rededicate yourself to the task. For task it becomes. Even love can be a task. Ask any parent.
Elizabeth smiles weakly at her son. ‘Lunch, um … I’m sure Granny left us something delicious. Would you like to go and check?’
He looks at her as if he’d rathershego and check, his little nose wrinkling, his thick titian-coloured fringe almost covering it. She needs to take him for a haircut. Something else to add to the list of things she’s been neglecting.
Charlie’s glance moves to the garden bed over Elizabeth’s shoulder and now his forehead is wrinkling along with his nose. ‘What’s wrong with that?’
He points to something and Elizabeth turns to see a wilting hydrangea.
Another weak smile. ‘It just needs a bit of attention.’Don’t we all.
‘Is it dying?’
His eyes are bright and she sees only innocence there, but what he has said makes her breath catch. The plantisdying. Because his father, the garden’s caretaker, has died. There’s a parable or something in that, isn’t there? Or there should be. If she reads her Bible again, the way she’s been meaning to ever since Jon died – all the way through, knowing there will be succour in it if only she can sit down andfocus– maybe she’ll find it. But for now there’s only a dying hydrangea and no way to explain it other than neglect.
That’s what she told Reverend Willoughby when he stopped by to see her last Sunday. She hadn’t turned up to church again that morning and he was worried about her, he said. He has been very kind to her since Jon died, even though she’s been slack about her church attendance. She supposes it’s his job, but she appreciates it nonetheless. He’s checked on her and his wife has brought food. Small gestures that have meant a great deal.
When he visited he glanced around the garden and raised his eyebrows, then muttered something about sending someone to give her a hand. But Elizabeth doesn’t expect anything. That’s something else about grief: even an expectation of getting out of bed in the morning seems grandiose.
‘Maybe,’ she says to Charlie and stands. ‘But I’ll give it a water and see if it recovers.’
