She ducks into Bi-Lo for cigarettes before we return to the car. Flicking one alight, she draws hard, sags against the driver’s window, lets out a sigh. ‘Adolescence is another country, isn’t it? He thinks I’m spying on him. He’s right. But it’s more that I’m looking for some…continuity. Just to poke my head into his selfish little world every so often. All he has to do is be a reminder. Too much to ask, probably.’ She opens her eyes, laughs, a hard, hollow guffaw. ‘Great example, aren’t I? Here’s me worrying between fags about him smoking pot.’
The road to Mount Dandenong spirals by tiered gardens, drooping ferns, rivulets forking over moss. Whether due to incipient motion sickness, fragrant air, or my vodka spiked with a forgiveness pill, I am starting to soften towards this faded young woman gripping the wheel, hands at ten to two. We could be estranged siblings, closer in age than she and my father.
No, it’s a twist on Stockholm Syndrome. There should be a Declarations question along the lines of what psychological baggage have you brought from a lifetime of learning to love your bullies? My late tormenter’s accomplice is in the driver’s seat, three vodkas under her belt. The third must be the steadier – she takes hairpin bends with a chauffeur’s nonchalance.
Helen cranks down gears as the road tilts up. Four corners on, she veers into the dirt driveway of an abandoned two-storey guesthouse in what I recognise as Tudor style, white with chocolate trim. The whole structure lists leftwards. We climb out of the Gemini.
‘See that room?’ She points to a window over its veranda. ‘That’s where Peter was conceived one chilly Friday night. You know what a dirty weekend is?’
‘I think I can imagine, more or less.’
‘Back then it was the dirty weekend venue. I grew up in these parts and I already had a car, so I put the idea into your Dad’s head to nick off after his Friday afternoon lecture. He could make inanimate noun declensions sound sexy. So off we drove, he and I, in this car. Can’t bring myself to trade it in. Anyway, the thing I remember clearest is him promising me that next time he would carry me all the way into the bedroom and present my wedding ring, if he managed to defect. Thought I’d snagged myself a handsome Russian. Wasn’t to be. I’ll bring Peter here when we’re mates again. I hoped today, with you here, would be the occasion to show him where he came into the world, introduce you two properly and send off the father he never met. Some poetry in that, don’t you reckon?’ A tear glistens on her cheek. ‘Did he keep his hair?’
‘Does it matter?’
‘Lighting coals under memories. That’s what today’s about, like we said.’
You said. I’m here for the ride. Or company. Actually, I don’t know why I’m here.
‘Yes, he had all his hair last time I checked. If you must know.’
‘Charm to burn, your Dad. Can I ask you to do something while we’re here? Put his ring on my finger?’
She takes out the ring from the jewellery box, holds up her hand expectantly.
‘You are joking.’
She isn’t. Realising she’s crossed a line, she slips it on herself. ‘This is the place, wouldn’t you say? He loved it up here. He never wanted to go back to Russia, I know that much.’
We stand together. Her soft sobs are slow hiccups.
I look around the forest. Indeed this is a lovely quilt of a place, cottages and gardens inspired by embroidery. A breeze sighs through the massive eucalypts, old but regenerating. I think of the mushrooming expedition four summers ago, my father removing the ring. Today rewrites that dismal trip. Now I am standing in the place where my father was happy once. Basking in that brief sun.
‘Okay, on to the summit.’
We return to the car. She fires the ignition.
‘Do you know the expression – to get in a rut? Yama, right? Literally it means to fall into a hole on a bad road, but it applies to life generally. Some people climb out. I moved in and furnished mine.’
We accelerate onto the asphalt. After a kilometre or two of gentle ascent Helen manoeuvres into a carpark ringing a restaurant, nudges the bumper against the safety barrier. Reaching for the handbrake, she leans against me for a moment, sharply recoils, gives me to understand that the contact was purely accidental. See? I’ve moved on.
Bluffs fall sheer to Melbourne’s silvery rim.
‘Our timing’s out.’ She winds up her window as a thunderclap splashes hail on the bonnet. ‘It’s setting in. I’d better get you back to Lilydale.’
Neither of us speaks as we drive down the foothills, rain a thrumming monotone. At the station carpark she pauses, looking at me.
‘So. Closure?’
I rummage in my mental dictionary.
‘Russians say proshai, yeah? Over, done with, no more bitterness. I hope.’
‘No. Proshai does not translate. Some Russian words just don’t.’
I sense she wants to part as we met – strangers bonded together. Not so much to be rid of me – well, that’s mutual – but because it is the right moment. Whether or not we ever see each other again (I am sure we won’t) I helped assert her coda to the affair, hold my father to the light as never in life.
Which doesn’t leave me any less soiled by the whole encounter.
We clasp hands, I get out, wave. She waves back, disappears in traffic. I make my way to the Melbourne platform, find a bench to myself, watch three trains come and go at twenty minute intervals, until relief douses my rage.
Unfinished business finished, as Sergey Vladimirovich would say. I board the fourth, ride the feeling all the way back to Richmond. I walk home from the station along Punt Road, the Kinks’ Sunny Afternoon playing in my head. There’s been no rain this side of Box Hill. Two months post-solstice, the elms ringing the MCG are black clumps against the skyline holding out against spring. Party noise floats from a studio behind our flat – young voices, laughter, the tinkle of glass. The back door is open. Anna is ironing tablecloths in the laundry, her hair tied back in an orange ribbon. Panhandles are jutting every which-way from her bag on the door hook. She puts down the iron and runs to meet me. ‘Want to hear my news? The good news first?’
‘So I’d better brace myself?’
‘None of it’s bad. I’ll start with my Eureka moment. I was on my way back from Dimmeys, you know the place that sells teflon frypans at a discount? Anyway, this guy came up and asked me directions to Richmond Post Office. “Sure,” I said. “Just keep to this side of Swan Street, cross two intersections, and turn right at Lennox. It’s got a big Australia Post logo out the front, you can’t miss it.” As you can see I had my hands full of frypans, but I turned around and followed him at a discreet distance, just to see how clear my English was and set him straight if I’d made a mistake. It was perfect, he didn’t even break stride. And – you know what? He was Australian.’
‘Don’t tell me. He asked you for English lessons?’
‘It gets better.’ She leads me to the living room, points to the feast. Bread bowls, potato salad, a platter of foie gras on discs of crispbread, cucumbers pickled in lime and a long-necked flask of five-star Armenian cognac. Where had she found that?
‘This isn’t your present by the way. Just the trimmings. The very good news is… I was late. Twice. The doctor ordered tests, and…’ She cups her midriff.
We embrace, spin in a deranged waltz. The iron topples from its socket and thwacks against the trough.
★
BALACLAVA