I’ve stopped picking up the phone to call my mother. I did it for months after she died. I even dialed the number a few times, before I remembered and quickly slammed down the phone, before some stranger answered. I don’t hear the phone anymore and think, “That will be Mum.” But I still miss her. Every day.
I understand, intellectually, that the death of a parent is a natural, acceptable part of life. Nobody would call the death of a very sick eighty-year-old woman a tragedy. There was soft weeping at her funeral and red watery eyes. No wrenching sobs. Now I think that I should have let myself sob. I should have wailed and beaten my chest and thrown myself over her coffin.
I read a poem. A pretty, touching poem I thought she would have liked. I should have used my own words. I should have said: No one will ever love me as fiercely as my mother did. I should have said: You all think you’re at the funeral of a sweet little old lady, but you’re at the funeral of a girl called Clara, who had long blond hair in a heavy thick plait down to her waist, who fell in love with a shy man who worked on the railways, and they spent years and years trying to have a baby, and when Clara finally got pregnant, they danced around the living room but very slowly, so as not to hurt the baby, and the first two years of her little girl’s life were the happiest of Clara’s life, except then her husband died, and she had to bring up the little girl on her own, before there was a single mother’s pension, before the words “single mother” even existed.
I should have told them about how when I was at school, if the day became unexpectedly cold, Mum would turn up in the school yard with a jacket for me. I should have told them that she hated broccoli with such a passion she couldn’t even look at it, and that she was in love with the main character on the English television series Judge John Deed. I should have told them that she loved to read and she was a terrible cook, because she’d try to cook and read her latest library book at the same time, and the dinner always got burned and the library book always got food spatters on it, and then she’d spend ages trying to dab them away with the wet corner of a tea towel. I should have told them that my mum thought of Jack as her own grandchild, and how she made him a special racing car quilt he adored. I should have talked and talked and grabbed both sides of the lectern and said: She was not just a little old lady. She was Clara. She was my mother. She was wonderful.
Instead I said my brief acceptable little poem and then I sat back down and held Patrick’s hand, and afterward he helped me bring cups of tea to my mum’s friends and chatted so charmingly to the old ladies, and I never thought, I no longer have a family, because Patrick kept holding my hand, and Jack was going to be running into our arms at Sydney airport, and I knew that Patrick’s mum was planning on leaving a big bowl of her beef stroganoff in the fridge because she knew it was my favorite.
Four weeks later he said, “I think it’s over.”
My mind kept going around in endless circles. If I ring up Mum to tell her about Patrick, I’ll feel better, but Mum is dead. If I tell Patrick that I can’t believe my mum is gone, I’ll feel better, but Patrick doesn’t want me anymore. If I take Jack to the park or a movie, then I’ll feel better, but I’m not his mother anymore. If I go and see Maureen, then I’ll feel better, except she’s not part of my life anymore.
I didn’t have enough other people in my life to cover the loss of this many people at once. I didn’t have any spare aunties or cousins or grandparents. I didn’t have backup. I didn’t have insurance to cover a loss like this.
The pain felt so physical: like huge patches of my skin were ripped off and have never healed.
And now the hypnotist is having a baby.
So, Mum, I know, it’s a good job and they pay me, but ever since I saw the hypnotist’s pregnancy tests, I’ve had these strange images running through my head at work. Sometimes I imagine throwing a hot cup of coffee straight at a colleague’s face, or tearing off all my clothes and running naked into the boardroom shouting obscenities, or picking up a pair of scissors and driving the sharp edge over and over into my thigh. You would not understand that. Crazy thoughts didn’t run through your head.
So I called in sick and went to the beach to learn how to boogie board.
It was harder than I expected. The board was slippery. Why was it so slippery? I couldn’t seem to keep it in position under my stomach. I kept sliding off. That had never looked like a problem when I saw other people doing it. I got mad and swore. I thought, Even the boogie board doesn’t want me.
And then when I did manage to hold the board still, I couldn’t seem to get my timing right to actually catch a wave.
I thought, Six-year-old boys can do this, what’s wrong with me?
I thought, Other people find love and have babies and make families, what’s wrong with me?
I thought, Other people don’t obsess over their ex-boyfriends, what’s wrong with me?
I considered letting the board float away to sea in a fit of petulance, but it seemed too wasteful, and I was already ashamed enough about my day off.
When I was walking up to the car, sniffing and cold and cranky because I couldn’t even seem to fit the stupid board comfortably under my arm, I saw that woolly-haired man who had seen me the day I fell asleep in my red dress. He was walking down to the beach with his boogie board stuck comfortably under one arm.
“How’s the surf?” he said.
“Stupid,” I said, and kept walking.
When I got to my car, my mobile phone was ringing.
It was the hypnotist.
The experience of flying together for the first time made Ellen and Patrick chatty and overexcited. They both got the giggles as a flight attendant did an especially grim-faced safety demonstration, although nobody else seemed amused by her. They had bought novels to read on the plane, but they both kept putting them down on their laps to talk.
Patrick seemed especially high-spirited.
“I didn’t even ask if you’ve been to Noosa before,” he said, as the plane took off.
“I haven’t,” said Ellen. “What about you?”
“Just once,” said Patrick. “Actually, it’s where I met Saskia.”
Ellen noted that it was one of the rare times that he actually spoke about her as if she was just a normal girl.
“How did you meet?” she asked, trying to keep her voice light and not overly interested.