Dan sat on the chair, flicking through a Woman’s Day, faces he didn’t recognise, faces that didn’t exist when there was no television. At one point a nurse came in, wheeling a steel trolley, all good cheer. In a mellifluous Pacific accent she asked if Antonia was OK as she stripped back the sheet and carefully disengaged and emptied the catheter bag. ‘Does Antonia need anything?’ she asked. Antonia was a vegetable, Dan thought spitefully, Antonia was just a lump of meat. But he smiled at the nurse, watching her buttocks swing beneath the thick white fabric of her uniform as she wheeled the trolley back out of the room.
Sometimes his mother would say something in her first language. It did sound like an old language, Dan thought, it sounded much more ancient than English.
At eight o’clock he was roused by a cough. The nurse had popped her head around the door to say apologetically that visiting hours were over. Dan leapt to his feet but his mother wouldn’t move, wouldn’t let go of his grandmother’s hand. The nurse came up to her and gently patted her arm. ‘Time to go, sweetheart,’ she said softly. ‘You can see her tomorrow.’
‘Oh, God, I don’t want to go back to Jo and Spiro’s. I don’t want to see any of my frigging family, even the good ones. I just want to be with you.’ His mother had the key in the ignition, her hand was on the handbrake.
‘We don’t have to,’ he said.
Dan knew what his mother wanted. Her need was flowing through her blood, and her blood and her need were flowing through him. They both wanted the same thing.
‘Do you want to go for a drink?’
It began as a small curl at the edge of her lips, then a crease, a wrinkle, that reached her shining eyes; the smile flooded across his mother’s face and found its way to his.
‘I reckon Spiro really wanted some of that stir-fry.’
His mother collapsed into giggles. ‘Poor guy, he’s a bit of a doormat, isn’t he? That’s the problem — Greek men either have to go completely macho on their wives or they’re pussy-whipped. Whatever you do, Danny, don’t get involved with a Greek woman. They’re bitches.’
Dan was looking at an older man sitting at the bar, short spiky hair bleached by the sun, brown weathered skin, and a farmer’s tan that finished at the neck and sleeves. He was scowling, but not at anyone or anything. He was drunk already, thought Dan, a few more drinks and he’d be looking for a fight. He was nothing like Dennis — he was short, unfit, with a paunch and flabby arms — but something about the way he was sitting, the way he was looking out into the distance, reminded Dan of his cousin.
His mother stirred her gin and tonic with the straw. ‘I can’t bear another night in this city,’ she said. ‘It’s so oppressive.’
Dan was drinking a vodka and tonic. It was odourless, but also tasteless: a concentrate of lemon pulp had settled at the bottom of the glass. He’d hardly sipped from it. His mother had nearly finished hers.
‘Driving here I was convinced that I was going to stay until she died, that I was going to show her, show them all, that I was a good daughter. I was going to tell you to take the car and drive back to Melbourne, leave me here to look after her. I was going to stay until she died.’ She made a gesture of frustration. ‘But I don’t want to do that anymore. I want to go home, I want to be in my own house, I want to kiss and make love to your father, I want to hug Theo, I want to put on old records and put on make-up and dress up and dance to great music and I want to laugh. I want to dance and laugh and fuck.’
She shook her head. ‘There was never music in my parents’ house, there was no laughter. No wonder I wanted to run away first chance I got. No fucking wonder.’
It was her third gin and tonic. She was getting morose, thought Dan.
But the next moment, she brightened. ‘I still remember the first night I ever danced. There was a girl at the salon where I was an apprentice, she was a dancer — every Friday night she’d take a dance class in a little studio on Rundle Mall. She kept inviting me and I kept declining, but then this one afternoon after work, I said I’d go.’ His mother was tapping the table. ‘Now what was her name?’ She banged her glass hard on the table. ‘Renee! That’s right, her name was Renee. Well, she took me dancing and it was the most wonderful thing I’d ever experienced. The music, the steps, the dresses, the joy on people’s faces — I had never witnessed such joy. I danced there that Friday and I went the Friday after and the Friday after that. My father followed me that third Friday and dragged me home, literally pulling me by the hair all the way through the city and across the park to Mile End. And he hit me and we had the most massive fight and I told them then that I was never going back to a meeting, I was never ever going back witnessing. I told them that God wasn’t in their stern bloody Kingdom Hall, I said that God was in music and in dancing. I told them I didn’t believe in their God anymore. They threw me out that night. I left with one small suitcase and a pair of boots under my arms.’
The memory made her falter, and melancholy returned to her face. ‘The funny thing is that it was what my father always used to say to me: “You Aussie kids don’t know how lucky you are. Look at what you have, all you have. Me, me, I came to this country with a suitcase and pair of shoes in my hands. That’s all.”’ Her eyes were wet as she turned her gaze to Dan. ‘Well, fuck him. I know what that’s like. I learned exactly what that’s like.’
Dan rubbed at his face, almost scratching at it. He couldn’t quite understand what his mother was saying, thought he must be missing something. ‘And they never wanted to see you again? Just because you didn’t believe in God?’
His mother sighed. ‘Maybe that was an excuse, maybe they were already looking for a reason to chuck me out. Your dad thinks that was what happened, reckons I must have been too loud-mouthed for them, too opinionated, too independent. I was already challenging their stupid rules. By the time I met your dad I was a couple of years out of home and working in that pub in Broken Hill. I had toughened up, mate, I had to.’
His mum looked around the pub, as if she’d only just realised there were others around them, that other lives were being lived. ‘Your father doesn’t get religious faith. He doesn’t understand it. My old man, my mum, I can call them lots and lots of things, but hypocrites about their faith they weren’t. Nah, they truly believed I was banished from them.’
She finished her drink and looked wistfully at the empty glass. ‘One more? Is that OK?’
‘Sure. I’ll get it,’ he said. He went to the bar and ordered her another gin but also got her a big glass of water.
His mother unleashed a further torrent of words as soon as he sat down. ‘What I hate is, it’s like I still want to prove to them all that I am a good person — that I’m not evil. That was what the fantasy of staying by her bedside till she died was all about. It wasn’t about her, it was about proving something to Bettina and to my dickhead brothers. But what for? They can’t forgive me, they have to be right with God. And why should I care? I know my kids are beautiful, I know my husband is wonderful, I know, I know my life is good. What do I want to prove?’
And Dan suddenly understood: They know I’ve been in gaol, they know what I did. That’s why she wanted me here — not Regan or Theo — to prove to them that I am a good person, to show them that I am not evil.
‘I don’t give a fuck what they think. They’re not my family.’
His mother shrank away and he regretted the severity of his words. He hadn’t meant to be that harsh, he just wanted her to know that, in this alien town, all that mattered was her and him, none of the others. Words, he thought, they betray you. Again, he thought about Dennis, how the mangled sounds, the agonised syllables, didn’t matter. Dennis said what he meant, he had to — it took too much energy to talk in circles. Dennis was direct.