Page 92 of Weekends with the Sunshine Gardening Society
‘Warm! It’s a bloody oven. Still doesn’t put me off a cuppa, though.’ Lorraine waggles her eyebrows, and Elizabeth laughs and takes the hint, turning to pick up the kettle.
‘Can’t have cake without a cuppa,’ Lorraine says.
She smiles in the everything-is-going-to-be-all-right way she sometimes has and Elizabeth feels like she could dissolve, becausethat’s all she ever wants anyone to express to her. That’s the mantra she has created for herself to start each day and it has so rarely felt true.
Lorraine puts her handbag on the kitchen table. ‘And in case you’re wondering if I’m partly using you to get away from Mike,yes, I might be. He’s hanging around the house like a bad smell, thinking if he says nice things about my cooking I’m going to like him again. As if! Cora’s the only one who likes him at the moment. Even Mum got sick of him yesterday and wanted to go home before we had pudding, and she can put up with a lot.’
She exhales loudly.
‘But I did really want to see you.’ She swivels and looks out. ‘And see the garden. Have you been spending some time out there?’
‘Yes.’
‘I hope you don’t …’ Lorraine stops and scratches the side of her head. ‘I hope you don’t treat it like a shrine. Does that sound bad? I don’t mean it to. I just mean you should get out there and use it. Be in it. We all want it to be beautiful for you and I think …’ Another scratch. ‘I think it’s meant a lot to everyone, to be working on it. We’re bringing it back to glory and we hope we’re bringing you back too.’
Elizabeth isn’t sure how to take that, so although she wants to say something she doesn’t know what.
‘That sounds weird,’ Lorraine hurries on. ‘Didn’t mean it to.’
‘No, I understand,’ Elizabeth says. ‘And … I’m in it, I can assure you. After work I like to sit out there. I take the radio for company, or sometimes Charlie is pottering around. It’s calming being out there. But …’
She stops, thinking of the times she’s felt Jon’s presence in the garden so strongly that she wanted to take his hand, and her sorrow when she remembered that she couldn’t. So it has made her happier – to have achieved this for him – and more sorrowful, and trying to reconcile those opposites can make her feel like she’s in an existential limbo she never asked for.
‘You don’t have to talk about it if you don’t want to,’ Lorraine says. ‘I just wanted you to know that it’s a special project.’
Elizabeth nods, grateful to not have to explain herself. In times gone past she wouldn’t have really liked Lorraine. Actually, that’s not right: she wouldn’t have approved of her. If Lorraine thinks something is the right thing to do she just does it and doesn’t ask permission. And because she’s not at all malevolent, her right thing usuallyisthe right thing and therefore no harm is done. She has blasted right through Elizabeth’s baked-in layers of reserve – mainly by telling rude jokes while they’re on duty with the society, a tactic Elizabeth knows is peculiar to her because she’s never heard Lorraine tell them to anyone else. Not even Cynthia.
Those two have an interesting relationship. They look at each other with love yet barely speak while they’re working, which makes Elizabeth wonder how much time they spend together outside of society hours. She knows they’ve been friends since childhood; perhaps that gives them a certain base level of trust and acceptance which means they don’t have to talk much any more. Elizabeth wouldn’t know: she doesn’t have any friends from childhood. She was reserved even then and books were her companions. Her friendships were made in high school, but she feels like they’re slipping away because she’s not in Brisbane any more and her life no longer fits into a straightforward mould.
‘Charlie’s a beaut kid,’ Lorraine says. ‘You’re doing a great job, Liz.’
‘Is he?’ Elizabeth gazes out the window and sees Charlie laughing. No – squealing! He and Simon are running rings around each other and pointing at something. The mysteries of childhood play.
‘Sure. Mine’s pretty good too, if I sit back and think about it,’ Lorraine says. ‘The times when they drive you mad are the times you can forget that, but overall he’s good. Easy to be around. Not like Terry.’ She makes a face.
‘Teenagers can be tricky,’ Elizabeth says.
‘Just wait until Charlie’s a teenager and he stops talking to you. It’ll break your heart.’
Elizabeth feels an anticipatory pang of loss for the time when this happens to her. Or maybe it won’t. Maybe Charlie will always want to talk to her. She just wishes she knew how to make that happen, because Lorraine seems like a loving, interested mother yet her eldest is doing what so many teenage boys do.
There’s more squealing from the garden and Elizabeth’s heart lifts.
‘Maybe I should bring Simon around more often,’ Lorraine says. ‘If that works for you.’
Elizabeth nods slowly. Charlie has school friends but they’re usually busy on weekends and during holidays, so the holiday weeks are stretching ahead of them both with few distractions booked in.
‘It does,’ she says.
‘Great! I’ll get my diary out.’
The next thing Elizabeth knows, Lorraine is suggesting all sorts of days and times and things the boys could do together, and she can’t help but think that Lorraine’s visit wasn’t just to see her and bring cake but to take care of Charlie too. There is so much kindness and thoughtfulness wrapped up in all of it that Elizabeth can barely understand how Lorraine can manage it; and so much gratitude in her that she barely knows how she’ll express it.
There’s time, though. Time for them all to get to know each other better. And that makes Elizabeth feel, at last, like the weeks and months ahead of her may become bearable.
JANUARY 1988
COASTAL BOOBIALLA
