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  Almost two years after moving in, we all moved out. Broke and broken. But it wasn’t the first time we’d felt that way. We were ready to start over, again. I knew it would be hard but whenever I am challenged – then and now – I can’t help but think of what Nick or Maurice might do or say.

  I remember chatting to Maurice over one of several hundred shared coffee catch-ups. We got to talking about his dad and he told me how his dad’s sudden death from a massive heart attack was a critical turning point in his own life.

  It was late December 1982 and Maurice and Nick had moved out into a flat in Brunswick. Maurice had returned to McIvor Street to tackle the huge job of sorting, the kind we all face when our parents die. He left the house in the early morning sunshine for the short walk to the Dallas supermarket. On the way home a storm was brewing. ‘Typical Melbourne weather,’ Maurice told me. ‘I remember struggling with the shopping bags, pushing myself into the fierce winds, tie flapping in my face. I thought of calling a cab but I was nearly home.’

  Then the hailstones started pelting his body, his head, face, eyes. Loud thunder rumbled around him as he tried to protect his head with one hand and balance the grocery bags in the other. The handles dug into his fingers as he shifted his cane in front of him, hurrying to get home out of the storm.

  ‘I was wet and cold, shivering as the rain soaked through my suit into my skin. Rain kept falling, dripping from my hair into my eyes. I was so cold I could hardly move. Then I stepped into a puddle of water.’

  That’s when he allowed the tears to fall. His shoes and socks wet and his feet frozen. His aching arms refused to carry the shopping bags any longer. He stopped for a rest against a low brick fence.

  ‘I was tired. Fed up. I’d had enough of the misery.’

  Maurice had worked so hard at forgetting, at moving on with his life, throwing himself into his career, his studies. He was loving his work, the people he met, his athletics and cricket. But sometimes, some days were just too hard.

  ‘I guess it all hit me then. I missed my dad. And losing him made me think of Mum and Russell all over again. Facing our first Christmas without him was tough. I didn’t feel like celebrating at all.’

  But Maurice didn’t give in, not then, not ever.

  Suddenly, one of the shopping bags fell from his grasp onto the footpath. The apples rolled out around his feet, toilet paper tumbled into the gutter at the edge of the nature strip. As he bent down to scoop up the turkey he cut his hand on the broken jar of cranberry sauce. Sucking the blood from the cut, his stomach turned somersaults, tight knots twisted like a child’s spinning top, as he found his mind unravelling and an outpouring of grief escaped.

  ‘I remember I sat in the gutter, in a puddle of water, and cried, probably for the first time since the accident. It was the closest I came to giving up. I just wanted to go to sleep and let it all be over.’

  ‘I mostly thought of Mum then and I heard her talking to me. You’re better than this, she said. Don’t complain. Don’t make excuses, she said. Be strong.’

  Maurice sifted through the mess at his feet. Hands out in front as he searched for the scattered groceries. He found the turkey, the toothpaste, and gathered them up. The bruised apples he left for the birds.

  Seventeen

  It’s mid-morning on New Year’s Day and I am hanging up a calendar to mark the first day of 1984. It keeps falling from the wall. The weight of the glossy photos of Ireland too heavy for the drawing pin. With the third attempt, I cut my finger. A sharp paper cut close to my nail, and the blood smears the white background when I try to rub it away. Idiot, I grumble and bang the pin hard into the wall, knocking a mirror that shatters at my feet.

  I had woken in an anxious mood on that memorable day. Hungover from a friend’s New Year’s Eve party. Hot and sweaty, as the early morning sun spilled into the car where I had crawled sometime around 2 am. I rolled over and cuddled closer to Jon, snoring beside me. His long legs curled up so he could fit into the back seat, I buried my head into his back and cried. They were quiet tears from a place I didn’t recognise. A low-lying, beneath the surface, stream of sadness. I had nothing to worry about. I was engaged to this incredible man I loved, someone who made me feel like a princess, like Dad once did.

  ‘What was he like?’ Jon had asked one night after he’d met my six brothers.

  ‘Who?’

  ‘Your dad.’

  ‘He was a lot like you.’

  ‘How?’

  ‘He was good at making people laugh, he had a dry sense of humour. He was laid-back, diplomatic to the point where you never knew what he was really thinking.’

  ‘So you think I’m tactful?’ he smiled.

  ‘Most of the time,’ I teased. ‘I mean he was perceptive and generous, and like you, Dad loved to entertain.’

  Now he was gone and Jon would never know him. Finally, it felt like I was beginning to heal. I was getting married to a great guy with a fancy Dutch name. Jon was my fiancé. But that word sounded strange in the same way ‘getting married’ didn’t quite roll off my tongue.

  As I struggled to get comfortable in the back of the stuffy car I imagined the big white wedding. I fiddled with the ring on my finger as I thought about my girlfriends admiring it at the party the night before.

  ‘Lucky you,’ Michele grinned. I did feel lucky to have Jon, who was so charming he could snap me out of my moods. So perceptive he could melt my brooding with his teasing.

  On that New Year’s Day, I was as happy as I’d ever been. I was with a man I knew I could love and laugh with until I was old, someone I would even consider changing my name for. I had so much to look forward to and yet…something didn’t feel right.

  Was I good enough for him? Maybe his parents were right when they questioned him, suggested it was too soon. Maybe their son could do better. Maybe the wedding wouldn’t happen. Maybe the dream wedding was just that. Wishful thinking.

  ‘Who will give you away?’ Kerry asked when I had shared the news with her.

  ‘My mum,’ I said without hesitating. I had toyed with the idea of asking my six brothers to walk me down the aisle.

  As I wound down the car window for some fresh air, I thought of Mum and wrestled with voices in my head. It won’t happen, they warned. You’re not good enough. Tears streamed down my cheeks. I pictured Mum walking beside me on my wedding day into St Brigid’s, the beautiful bluestone church in Fitzroy. The same church where she and Dad had married, where my brother Paul and many of my aunts and uncles had married. Why was I crying? Nostalgia? Or just feeling sorry for myself because Dad wouldn’t be there? More tears gathered in the corners of my eyes. I blinked them away, sniffed back the water running from my nose. And snuggled closer to Jon.

  Outside the hot car, the street was quiet. My mouth was dry from the booze and cigarettes and I climbed out to look for water, maybe a garden tap. The rows of new houses all looked the same. The bleakness of Melton, the satellite suburb in outer Melbourne, reminded me of the Dallas of my childhood. Brand new Christmas bikes and skateboards were flung in front yards overgrown with weeds.

  Would I ever stop missing Dad? How it felt to touch him, to wrap my arms around him. When I close my eyes tight I see his face again. I am five. He is walking towards me in his white work shirt, loosened tie and dark grey pants. He strolls along Kiewa Crescent waving his newspaper to show he’s seen me waiting for him. I bring his voice to my ears, his smooth, calm voice like a cheerful piece of music. ‘There’s a good girl, Carly, love, put on a record for ye Da.’ When my father called me to him, I felt like the chosen one.

  I crawled back into the sweltering car where the temperature had climbed above a hundred degrees. I couldn’t hold back the tears. I was a little girl again sitting on Dad’s knee while he sang those songs of Ireland. ‘Danny Boy’ or ‘I’ll tell Ma’. I can smell him next to me – stale cigarettes and beer breath. But it’s just Jon.

  ‘Can we go?’ I nudged Jon to wake him. ‘I need to get hom
e.’

  Matthew, the youngest of my six brothers, is watching TV in the lounge room of the family’s rented home in Moonee Ponds when I come in from the kitchen. A tissue pressed against my bleeding finger from the calendar-hanging fiasco. Summer World of Sport is booming from the screen. At fourteen he lives for his sport and he barely moves his head to greet me.

  ‘Where’s Mum?’ I ask.

  ‘Bed.’

  I glance at my watch; the fine gold one Mum gave me for my twenty-first birthday. Grandad pitched in for it too. It’s ten o’clock in the morning and Mum is always up early.

  ‘Has she been up yet?’

  ‘Dunno.’

  ‘Anyway, Happy New Year. What did you do last night?’ I sit beside him on the sofa.

  ‘Stayed home.’

  ‘Did you have dinner?’

  ‘Yeah, Paul got some fish and chips before he went to work.’

  ‘Did Mum have some?’

  ‘Yeah. What’s with all the questions?’

  Fair enough, I think, as I head to Mum’s bedroom to see for myself. I scan the room. Dark blue jeans on the chair, red shoes on the floor. Clothes falling out of the wardrobe, gold cross earrings on the bedside table next to a white saucer with cigarettes floating in cold coffee. I pick up a photo, stained and curled up at the edges. Mum and Dad smile out at me, Dad with his new white teeth and bottle of Bailey’s next to him. Mum with a soft black shawl wrapped over her shoulders, leaning into Dad, big smile on her face. I remember the photo and cringe a little at the memory and details of the night. The three of us at the Irish Ball at Camberwell Civic Centre. Imagine me, tubby, awkward Cally, in the Rose of Tralee, a beauty contest? How could the fat one possibly be the Rose? But Dad wanted me to try; he even filled in the application form for me. ‘Of course you’ll win,’ he told me. ‘And you’ll get a free trip to Ireland.’ Did I believe him? Not one bit, but I wanted to please him, make him proud. I’d made them both promise not to tell my brothers. Imagine the teasing – laughing at me on the catwalk, excess flesh falling out of a bikini, a baby elephant in high heels. Okay, there was no bikini walk but there was a stage and an audience. Maybe my sister Margaret knew about the contest. Well if I had to do it she would too. Soon it would be her turn and now that Dad wasn’t here it was up to Mum and me to encourage her. ‘Our Maggie will win, to be sure,’ I can hear Dad telling us.

  ‘Mum, you awake?’ I call gently as I kiss her cheek.

  When I lift the blanket and sheet away from her warm body there’s a soft groan from her lips. The room is stuffy and smells of sweat and cigarettes. I open the curtains and lift the window up as the sun streams through, the air already warm.

  ‘Mum. Wake up.’ Smoothing her forehead, I notice her skin is damp and sticky.

  ‘Muummm.’ Louder now. Another groan comes up from the pillow, longer this time. ‘Are you okay?’

  No response. Maybe she’s just feeling sick. She feels warm. A fever? I am used to Mum staying in bed, to deal with her dark moods, the pains in the stomach. But this grogginess is different. I shake her again, harder now, trying to wake her. She responds and shifts in the bed and I think she might be waking. Breathing deeply to calm myself I try talking.

  ‘It was a great party, Mum, the girls talking about the wedding. I can’t wait. We’re thinking of an Easter wedding. I’ve asked Margaret to be bridesmaid. Vicki will be matron of honour. You remember, she gets married next month.’

  I ramble on, but I get nothing back. I pick up the silver frame on her bedside table.

  ‘I love this photo of you and Dad. You look so happy. That dress is gorgeous, the blue chiffon you wore to Paul and Julie’s wedding. Have you still got it? Would it fit me? Doubt it, you’re so slim. I love Dad’s matching tie, so dark it makes his eyes look like sapphires.’

  I take a breath, twisting my engagement ring on my finger, admiring the diamonds. At least with the ring the wedding feels real. I daydream as I lie on the bed and wait for Mum to wake up. I remember how she had hugged me hard when I told her the news of my engagement. It was the week after I got back from the big overseas trip. Three months traveling around Europe and a week at Dad’s home in the south-west of Ireland. And a few days on the tiny island of Inishmacatreer with its thatched cottages facing out onto the beautiful Lough Corrib. Just like Dad promised it would be.

  ‘Lucky you came home,’ my mother giggled when Jon took me home from the airport. ‘He might not have waited.’

  ‘Yeah. I missed him. I missed you all.’

  ‘Did you like Ireland? It’s beautiful, isn’t it?’

  ‘It was even more lovely than Dad had said. It was spooky meeting his brother Andrew. He looked so much like Dad, or how he might’ve looked in ten years’ time.’

  I was glad my mother had made it to Ireland the year before me. It was all unexpected and a little rushed when she flew out of Tullamarine airport. Her first time on a plane and the start of a long, cold Melbourne winter. She arrived some thirty-six hours later for the Irish summer, if there’s such a thing. With my older brother Andrew by her side, they were the first of the Egans from Australia to travel to the other side of the world. I have the elegant green, cashmere twin-set she wore still hanging in my wardrobe. Andrew Egan junior, with his sun-kissed curls, Aussie tan and surfboard under his arm was a hit in Ireland. And the family welcomed them both with a Guinness and stories of Dad.

  ‘It’s grand to be sure,’ Andrew scribbled home to us on the back of the Greetings from Galway postcard with its colourful Irish pubs on the front. ‘Dad’s island is a long stretch of green fields at the edge of the biggest, bluest lake I have ever seen. Of course, Mum loves it, she sits by the big white rock on the shores of the lake. She’s sad but says she feels close to Dad there. Dad’s family has been good to us.’

  The large white numbers on the bedside clock flip over, 11.13 am, 11.18, 11.25 as I watch Mum sleeping. How hard it must have been for her in Ireland after Dad died. I can only begin to imagine the hours she would have spent sitting by the lake wishing him alive again, willing him to come running home to her.

  As I watch her sleep she begins to stir and mumble something. I try again to rouse her. Is she talking in her sleep? What is she trying to tell me?

  ‘Wake up, Mum.’

  There’s something wrong. I can feel it, swirling and tightening in my stomach. I want to go to sleep too, but my brain is too busy as I remember one of our midnight chats not so long ago. That time I crawled into her bed, still in my jeans, late home from a night out with Jon. A mother and daughter ‘talk’ I thought we might never have. Maybe it was my going away, maybe it was getting engaged. Or maybe it was understanding my mother in a new, adult way that made me feel I was getting close to her. Closer than I had ever been. Now, as I take her hand, I feel sad for those lost years. Ashamed of my selfish teenage ways, of those days when we struggled to even speak to each other. So much had happened in the three short weeks since I’d returned from Europe. Maybe I was finally growing up.

  ‘Light me a smoke and tell me about Jon,’ Mum had said to me, during that memorable chat only a few weeks before.

  ‘Tell you about Jon?’ I had laughed. ‘You already know everything about him.’

  My then boyfriend of eighteen months had followed tradition and nervously asked Mum if he might marry her daughter. ‘You can have her, if you’re game,’ she joked and went on to make sure he was aware of my shortcomings.

  ‘Well, he’s gorgeous. You can see that for yourself, but of course that’s not the main attraction. I love that he makes me laugh, mostly at myself. We talk all the time. Well, what I mean is he’s a good listener.’

  ‘He’s good to you?’ Mum said, more as a statement than a question.

  I nodded.

  ‘He’s good to all of us,’ she said. ‘Always shifting my furniture for me, fixing leaking taps, changing light globes.’

  ‘Yeah, he likes to fix things, recycle old stuff.’

  ‘He reminds me of my Uncl
e Ron.’

  ‘From Shepparton?’

  ‘Near there. He was a horse trainer. Very gentle soul.’

  It wasn’t the first time I had been told that Jon reminded them of a friend or an uncle who was off the land. But he was a boy from the suburbs. Like my brothers he grew up playing football in the street, riding his bike to Merri Creek.

  ‘While you were away Jon called in and did a few jobs for me. I got him to fix the record player. He even stayed and listened to my records with me. He liked The Platters.’

  ‘I’ve never heard of them.’

  ‘He’s like your dad,’ Mum grinned at me, sipping on her cold tea. ‘You know, your dad and I only ever fought when he drank too much.’

  ‘I know.’ I nodded, but I didn’t want to remember Dad that way, even if it was true.

  ‘He never got angry with me,’ Mum went on. ‘Not even when I let the baby’s pram roll down the steep hill and he fell out.’

  ‘That was Paul wasn’t it?’

  ‘I don’t know. Maybe. Or perhaps Andrew or Tom. I’m not too sure which of you it was.’

  ‘Do you remember when you sent me to school with a baby photo that was supposed to be me. On the back it had Paul, then Tom underneath and after that, Andrew. All the names crossed out. And then you wrote, Caroline. You tried to pass me off with a photo of a boy.’

  ‘Well, he was a pretty baby, whichever one it was, and it was such a lovely lace Christening dress.’

  Mum looked away then. Tears in her eyes as she stared up at the ceiling. Was she remembering something she didn’t want to share? Hugging her that night, not long after I had returned home, I felt her thin arms. She’d lost weight. Grief had stolen a part of her. I tried to imagine what it might be like to lose your husband, the friend you had known since you were fourteen. The man you had married at seventeen and shared more than half your life with. And I thought of Jon and the idea of losing him had made me feel sick.

  The morning of New Year’s Day dances on as Mum’s bedroom heats up. I wonder if I have dozed off in the chair. Still she sleeps and groans occasionally. I touch her cheek, prodding her, calling to see if she can hear.