Nine Months Of Summer

1.3

1.3

Yvette spent the solstice weeks in a numb haze. She helped in the garden, mowing lawns, pruning, weeding and harvesting, all performed under Leah’s watchful eye, as if she were poised to kill or maim a darling member of the floral kingdom any moment. She soon decided her mother’s passion for gardening was fanatical and unbearably tedious—who cared if this year’s blooms won first prize in the show?

One afternoon, she could endure the watcher no more and downed tools, feigning exhaustion to sit in the warm sun with a sketchbook and pencil. She idly traced the lines of a dead tree in the neighbour’s paddock, pathetic efforts, knowing what she was capable of. She missed the luxury of her studio space and ready access to materials at Goldsmiths and the Royal College of Art, luxuries she had taken for granted at the time.

Later, while her mother enjoyed her soaps, she lay on her single bed, isolated and apart. She felt tattered. A teddy bear come apart at the seams. All her stuffing gone. About now she’d have been plump about the belly, all flushed and expectant and busy knitting booties. She met the gaze of the forlorn girl in the print above her bed. Poor little girl. What tragedy wrecked her?

She knew she was wallowing in her gloom. Yet she had latched on to her loss with an unrelenting clasp. She had to let go, she would let go, she was poised to do just that, but not yet. Although even now her dogged sadness had begun to feel ridiculous.

When the living room went silent and she heard the fly screen bang shut, she traipsed to the living room and slumped on the sofa. Moments later the fly screen banged again. Yvette didn’t move. Then she sensed her mother standing over her. ‘Cheer up.’

‘I’m all right,’ she said. Leah had no inkling of Yvette’s abortion and Yvette wasn’t about to confide.

‘You haven’t seen Debbie since you arrived.’

‘She knows where I am,’ Yvette said sourly.

‘She’s waiting for an invitation.’

‘It’s hard. We don’t get on.’

In her mind she was understating the emotional distance that had grown between them. They were estranged, Yvette had decided, having grown attached to the fact that only twice in their ten years apart had she received news directly from her sister and not via their mother, a card announcing the birth of each of her boys. She emitted a heavy sigh but her mother was steadfast, waving a finger in the direction of the telephone. Forcing down her own resistance, Yvette swung her legs to the floor. Satisfied, her mother went outside.

With no expectation of anything beneficial arising from this coerced reunion, Yvette lifted the receiver and stabbed the numbers on the keypad. A female voice answered.

‘Hi. It’s Yvette,’ she said flatly.

‘Yvette! How are you?’

‘Good. And you?’

‘Great to hear your voice. Welcome back!’

‘Thanks.’

They chatted about the old times Yvette didn’t care to remember, of their childhood days in Perth, teenage years in London. After what seemed an eon of small talk, she succumbed to an impulse to be convivial and invited Debbie over for coffee.

The following afternoon she watched an old Holden ute buck and bounce down the long dirt track, pulling up beside the machinery shed. A figure of average build, dressed in baggy pants and a sky-blue T-shirt, walked in strides towards the house with the easy-going gait of the Australian country woman. Yvette knew the woman was Debbie but strained to recognise in her the Debbie she’d grown up with—a cute, freckle-faced, impish girl with a self-conscious smile. She looked to Yvette now like every other twenty-something woman in the area, totally lacking in style. Her hair was long and brown and shapelessly cut. The T-shirt hung limply from her bust; the pants, on closer inspection, were pilling; and the fawn Crocs she sported to complete her outfit looked like foot boats. Yet her smile was warm, her brown eyes seemed genuine and Yvette softened in her company.

They sat in the garden on the north side of the house, sheltering from the cold southerly wind. Leah waved from the veranda and offered to make tea. She returned five minutes later with two mugs and a plate of Monte Carlos.

‘Why don’t you join us?’ Yvette said, suddenly craving relief from the intimacy of just the two of them.

Leah mumbled something about needing to clean the house. Yvette knew it was an excuse. The house was immaculate.

Debbie took a few sips of her tea before blathering on about her two boys with that familiar need to prove her worth chiming with every comment. She glowed over their achievements at school—a merit award for this, a merit award for that, how good Peter was in the junior soccer team, the terrific progress Simon was making with the violin and how marvellous it was that they were both in the school choir performing at next year’s folk festival held at the showground. Choir? At a folk festival? Forgetting she once loved to sing, Yvette couldn’t imagine any pursuit more cringe-worthy. She couldn’t countenance being part of anything amateur and looked down from an absurdly high height at anyone, young or old, who did.

She stared absently at the distant hills, doing her best to be polite while fending off jealousy over the doting interest Debbie took in her boys. Her sister hadn’t the conversational grace to ask about the last decade of her life. But then again, it was probably better Debbie didn’t know how far her sister had drifted from their mother’s upright morality, campus adventures as she limped from one boyfriend to the next, and in Malta, where she’d taken unconventionality to a precipice with her flirtations in the iniquitous underworld of drugs and crime. It had been easy to do. Too easy. Easy to keep the truth from them too. Her letters contained the veneer of her studies at art school, then her sight-seeing escapades with her best friend Josie and their glorious life in the sun. And as for her mother and sister, neither visited her once in that whole ten years. Not once.

A pair of parrots, splendidly red and green, perched on the bird table, chortling to each other. Yvette raised a hand to slide her hair behind her ears and they flew away. She was wondering how to divert her sister’s attention from her offspring when Debbie set her mug at her feet and said, ‘I dreamt about you last night.’ Her tone had an intimate ring. ‘You were standing on my veranda in a long red dress, with a gorgeous young man beside you.’

‘What happened?’

Debbie blushed. She seemed awkward. ‘Nothing,’ she said, averting her gaze. ‘But I had a strong sense you were meant to be together.’

The wind gusted from the south, blowing a shaft of Yvette’s hair in her face. She smoothed a hand across her cheek, feeling in her belly an echo of the childhood thrill of teasing her sister. She sat on the edge of her seat and lowered her voice to a whisper. ‘That’s weird.’ She widened her eyes. ‘Maybe it’s a premonition.’

‘Don’t.’

‘It’s a coincidence at least.’ Yvette relished in the game. Debbie had always been easily spooked. ‘A psychic read my palm before I left Malta. I was in a nightclub and an old woman with leathery skin and a mystical look in her eyes took hold of my hand. She said I would meet the father of my children before I was thirty.’ And as she spoke, the words took on a potency they had lacked before that moment. As if in the telling she was imbuing the prophecy with all the significance of the cosmos.

‘She was probably drunk,’ Debbie said.

‘She wasn’t. She was emphatic. She grabbed my arm and told me he was definitely not the man I was with.’

‘Carlos?’

‘Carlos.’

‘She got that part right.’

‘What would you know?’ Yvette said sharply.

‘Sorry.’

Their mother’s cat flopped down at their feet and arched her back.

‘Maybe I was meant to come to Australia to find him.’ Her voice had gone all misty.

‘Who?’

‘The father of my children.’

She knew it was ludicrous but the prediction had suddenly given her hope. Although she couldn’t imagine encountering an Australian man she’d find desirable. None of the Aussie men she’d met had charisma, mystique or originality. They looked generic, they sounded generic and they were all into sport.