city slicker

walnut road

“Have you spoken to your mother?” asks Dad. “I think she’s avoiding me. I called her to see if she remembers a house we lived in when we were first married.”

It’s unlike Mum to let a phone call go unreturned, even if it’s a loaded one. We wait for our tea and think in the sun: Dad, P, Pete and me.

On the ground beside our table, there’s an expandable folder full of my old school assignments and notes – Dad and P frame it as a community service to return it, but also it has clogged their spare room since the 80s. When Pete and I arrived at the cafe, they were thumbing through pages written in multicoloured texta. I feel exposed.

“Which house? Why?” I ask. Beside me, Pete is partly here, but mostly around the corner at the primary school fete where his kids are high on Fanta with their mum and her boyfriend. 

“Just around the corner from us. It’s on the market – P and I are thinking of buying it. Four bedrooms, classic 1960s. Fantastic. I’m pretty sure it’s where your mum and I lived when we were first married,” says Dad.

“That’s weird. Don’t you think that’s weird? Will it go with my ramekins?” I ask. 

“Your ramekins were separated at birth from this house. And yes it’s a bit weird, but it’s a great place and there’s plenty of room for everyone to come and stay,” says P.

She means grandkids. 

Until about an hour ago, Pete was volunteering at the Jaffa Smasha outside the front gate at the fete, while his ex-wife scooped gelati into cones by the bubblers. When I came to find him (head down as I passed the gelati stall), he was wrangling a queue of kids intent on smashing Jaffas with a mallet. I knew he was jack of it when he wrenched the mallet from a ten year old and said You had your turn buddy, move along. 

I tell Dad that I’ll call Mum to check on her when I get home, but get distracted by the concertina folder full of bad reports from maths teachers, pining letters to my first boyfriend, overworked poems on notepads, short stories about ruined marriages. It takes me until the following day to remember to call Mum, and it goes through to voicemail. 

That night I have a dream that wakes me with the words of it, rather than the visuals.

With Dad it was the eating up, with Mum it was the leaving. Cancer spread through Dad’s leg until it looked like a cricket bat. A mould got Mum. It spread up her arm, and underneath her top she looked like phosphorescence. They were co-dependent, Mum and that mould, and when it died and shrank away, she shrank away and died. P still bought the four-bedroom house. I hit my head against the side of the outhouse and yelled no no no until I woke myself up.

In the morning, I leave another message for Mum, text my brother to find out if he saw her over the weekend, check on Dad’s general life status. I still think your mum’s avoiding me, he replies.

Maybe the mould claimed her. Maybe she is avoiding him. More likely she hasn’t checked her messages.