Page 62 of Weekends with the Sunshine Gardening Society
A white Corolla is parked behind her blue Laser, and as Michelle had a white Corolla the last time she saw her Kathy feels confident approaching the car.
She can see a hand waving from the driver’s side, then the door opens and out steps her daughter: coppery hair tied in a ponytail, lots of make-up – as usual – and wearing a T-shirt that has shoulder pads and sequins, which seems an excessive amount of embellishment for such a simple garment.
‘Mum!’ Michelle is beaming. That’s a good sign.
She slams the door shut and Kathy winces. Owen was always telling their daughter not to slam car doors but the advice has never taken.
Michelle hurries around the back of the car and before Kathy can utter a greeting she’s been enveloped in a hug. She hugs back and remembers how good it is – how reassuring – to be held by someone who loves you unconditionally. If Michelle still does. No guarantees with children. Or girlfriends who tell you that they’ll love you forever.
‘Hello, my love,’ she says into Michelle’s ponytail and squeezes her a little tighter for a few seconds.
Michelle kisses her on the cheek, then stands back and looks down at her. She’s the tall child. Grant is the same height as Owen – five foot nine – but Michelle takes after Kathy’s father, who was six foot four. Although she’s not that tall – five-eleven the last time they measured her.
‘I like your haircut,’ Michelle says and smiles.
Kathy runs a hand through the bob she got done a couple of days ago at the local hairdresser, feeling like a change then wondering if a woman her age should have a hairstyle that’s better suited to a schoolgirl.
‘Thank you. I thought I’d get ready for warm weather.’ Kathy smiles and feels her shoulders and neck letting go of whatever tension she didn’t know they were holding. ‘I’ll get your bag.’ She nods towards the boot.
‘That’s okay, I’ve got it! You don’t need to do that for me.’
Kathy wants to say that she likes to do things for her children, but Michelle could truthfully reply that Kathy left her children and moved half a country away, which doesn’t suggest that she wants to do anything much for them. She probably wouldn’t accept Kathy’s reasoning that she movedbecauseshe believed she was doing something for her children: sparing them the shame and the shambles that her life had become. In Kathy’s eyes, at least.
Michelle pulls a small suitcase from the car and Kathy gestures for her to walk ahead up the path to the house.
‘Pretty flowers,’ Michelle says, gesturing to the pink-dotted bed to her left.
‘Pigface,’ Kathy says. She didn’t know their name when she moved in but she does now.
‘Really? I wonder why they’re called that.’
‘I don’t know.’ Perhaps Shirl would; Kathy can ask her next weekend.
They enter the house, which is darker than Kathy likes but she rented it in a hurry. If she decides to stick around this part of the world she may look for something brighter. She has surprised herself by even thinking of staying, because when she moved here she thought it would be temporary. A place to change and move on – to where, she didn’t know. Her emotions were all over the place and permanency not on her mind. It’s grown on her, though, this coastal lifestyle. Melbourne has a bay and there are beaches further south, but it’s not as if she or many peopleshe knows grew up as ‘beach people’. The Sunshine Coast is full of beach people, either by upbringing or choice, and there’s a lot to be said for how relaxed it can make a person to live in a place where mild breezes and seagulls remind you that the ocean with its breathtaking vastness is so close by.
Michelle puts her bag next to the couch and glances around. ‘It looks like you’re camping,’ she says.
‘I suppose I have been.’
‘You’re not staying, then?’ She sounds somewhat hopeful.
‘I don’t know. Maybe.’ Kathy gestures to the couch. ‘Take a seat. Can I get you a glass of water? Some food? When did you last eat?’
‘Water would be lovely, thanks, Mum. But I ate not that long ago.’
After filling a glass in the kitchen, Kathy offers it to Michelle then sits next to her. She only has the couch; there aren’t any chairs or beanbags or anything else to suggest she’s planned for visitors.
Michelle takes a couple of sips of water then puts the glass down on the coffee table.
‘Dad says hello,’ she says, glancing at Kathy out of the corner of her eye.
‘How is he?’
Michelle’s jaw hardens, then she relaxes. ‘He’s, um … He’s okay now.’ Another glance. ‘But he was pretty bad for a while. Upset, you know. More about you leaving Melbourne than anything.’
‘I know it was a big shock. All of it.’
Kathy remembers the tumult when she told Owen she was leaving him. Nothing had happened with Jemima apart from a statement of intention – Kathy had no interest in being an adulteress. She told Jemima she had to leave her marriage before they could begin anything, so when she told Owen she’d fallen in love with someone else it was with a clear conscience, even ifshe didn’t tell him who it was. That didn’t stop the whole matter becoming wretched, though. He was devastated, telling her that he’d planned their retirement and everything. He didn’t understand what someone else could offer Kathy that he couldn’t.
