The Best Australian Stories (54 page)

Her lover said on the phone at the Monument that he was leaving it up to her. How had it got to this point, so quickly? She didn't know if she could find the conviction not to see him. She didn't know how much longer she could bear it.

*

God how tired he was. He had just enough energy to slide a disc into the player by his bedside, pull his clothes off and fall naked onto the bed. But still his eyes remained open.

He'd put on Kancheli's
Abii Me Viderem
. He'd been longing for it all evening. He was listening these days to composers from small, almost forgotten countries on the outskirts of the old Soviet Union. Countries which had known great suffering. Kancheli was Georgian. There was something pure and unsparing about this music, like walking over a strange harsh landscape.
I turned away so as not to see
, that was what
Abii
Me Viderem
meant.

He saw suddenly the garden around the hospital, pretend bushland that had probably once been landscaped, stunted banksias and eucalypts, forlorn paths of grey sand, a picnic table and benches that nobody ever sat on. Still, it had a certain delicate, unassuming serenity. After rain you could smell the eucalypts. Freesias appeared in early spring and magpies chortled around the carpark.

Inside was its own world, a lonely place, and yet there was no face which did not smile at him. You sometimes glimpsed children in pyjamas running down the corridors, bald-headed sprites surrounded by a sort of hush as all the adults held their breath for them. Once he walked into a waiting room full of women, old and young, in pastel floral gowns, and it seemed to him as they looked up that their faces were like flowers. Strangers told each other their stories, sitting together in gowns. They went very deep, very fast. Cancer had humbled them. Nothing had protected them, not virtue or intelligence or good looks. There was nothing left to separate them, nothing left to protect. A young Chinese woman called Mrs Cheng, sitting next to George, told him she had the Lord and that was all she needed. When she received her diagnosis, she'd reached into her handbag for a tissue to wipe her eyes and pulled out a little handcard, nicely printed, which said
The Lord Will Save You
. She had no idea how it got there. It was like a blinding flash, she said.

Sometimes he felt he
had
died and woken up.

How could he tell Ulla that to the end of his days (an end on which he now reflected daily), he would never pass a bus stop without looking for her, waiting in her dusty sandals?

He was growing sleepy. He reached out one arm and switched Kancheli off. Out of music comes silence. Once he fell asleep (after listening to one of the Russians) and dreamt that he was walking down a snowy street at night, lit by glowing, old-fashioned lanterns. How could he tell them that what he remembered most was the pull he felt, strong as love or nostalgia, to give up, lie down in the snow, and close his eyes.

Motel Morning-Star

Liam Davison

Angelo remembers this place. Even as his father turns the car into the forecourt of the Morning-Star Motel, he knows he's been here before. He can't say when: before his mother left, before the motel was built? He can't be sure. But he's been here before.

He remembers the curve of the bay beside the road, the water shimmering in the distance. It touches something in him, some half-forgotten link with family and home and travelling together, the three of them in his father's car, only it's not the one he sits in now. It's an older car. His mother sits in the front, her dark hair falling over the back of the upholstered seat, and he's a smaller version of himself, cushioned in the back with the smell of his father's cigarettes wafting over him.

He remembers the statue of the Virgin lit up against the night sky by the side of the highway. It stood, perched on its column, sixty foot or more above the turn-off to the beach – the turn-off he looks at now from the carpark of the Morning-Star Motel. He remembers seeing the statue from a long way off, hovering above the road like an apparition. It drew the car towards it. And when they passed below it he remembers looking up through the back window to see it floating above the car, shining like nothing he'd seen before. The whole car was bathed in light.

‘The Big Virgin!' his father said. ‘Like up in Queensland. The Big Banana they have, now this. The Big Madonna.'

And his mother hushed him. ‘Don't,' she said. ‘What will Angelo think?'

Further down the peninsula, they had passed caravan parks shut down for the winter months and beachside kiosks with flaking stucco walls. At the top of a hill, his father had stopped the car. Angelo remembers now, as his father shuts the car door behind him and walks slowly across the stones towards reception, how he'd looked back across the bay to where the shining Virgin seemed to float above the water.

It's not there now. Outside the car, the air is filled with light and movement. Insects with shining wings float past the window and he can feel the heat of the afternoon through the glass. The highway runs behind the straggling line of oleanders at the edge of the carpark and he can see the empty column at the turn-off to the beach. It's not as tall as he remembered it to be. Lines of rust stain the white paint and he can see the empty platform at the top, the open expanse of sky where the Virgin used to stand. The monument rises like something out of memory, drawing him back to a half-remembered past which stops short against the sky. He thinks of his mother's dark hair falling across the back seat of his father's car, the light from the statue washing across her face. And he knows that, somehow, his memories end with her; that if he traces them far enough back he will come to the empty space she occupied before she left.

Angelo sees his father walk from reception towards the car, a short, overweight man in a dark suit, shielding his eyes from the insects. As he draws near, Angelo can see his face and the beginnings of a relieved, self-satisfied smile, as though a weight has been lifted from his mind. He sees him peering in at him, the cigarette stuck to his bottom lip, and for a moment it's the face of a younger man, the man who sat beside his mother all those years ago. She might be there even now in the room his father's come from, pulling her hair back into a plait, putting her make-up on, getting ready to walk out into the bright light of the day as though she's never been away.

His father bangs the side of the car with the flat of his hand and moves round to the back. He throws the boot open and Angelo can hear his bags being lifted onto the stones – the same bags Nurse Bird had carried into the ward when his father arrived. Most of the others had already gone, their few belongings packed into similar bags by bewildered-looking parents. ‘Wicked shame,' they said as they carried the bags out to their waiting cars. Angelo watched them go, wondering whether his mother would come. And when his father walked into the ward without her, with Nurse Bird carrying the bags, he thought, ‘She'll be at home. She'll be getting things ready.'

Nurse Bird had told him as much. ‘You'll all be going home,' she'd said, with her small, sharp face daring them to defy her. ‘They're closing us down. Back to your mothers and fathers. Back to the family unit. God only knows what they'll do with you now.'

But they hadn't gone home. Instead, his father had driven around the bay, through the low-lying land where unfamiliar houses clung to the railway line, and out into open country. He kept the radio on and his eyes on the road. And now, it seems they have arrived. His father opens the door and Angelo steps out, onto the stone carpark of the Morning-Star Motel. He can smell the bay on the hot wind as he carries the smaller bag towards reception. His father walks two steps ahead with the other bag.

Inside, the room is cool. The glare is cut by heavy drapes and an air-conditioner rattles against the panelled walls. Behind the counter, a woman with long, dark hair is leaning over papers with a yellow light beside her on the desk. Angelo starts when he sees her. She appears to glow with the reflected light and, when she looks up, he's surprised to see how young she is, no more than a girl, with a vaguely familiar face. His father stubs out his cigarette in the Morning-Star ashtray on the counter as she moves towards them. The smoke curls around her face. She might be his mother looking across the back seat of the car at him all those years ago.

‘There's just the two,' his father says. ‘There's not much else he needs.'

She leans across the counter to look at the bags, and Angelo sees her smiling down at him with the light from the window across her face.

‘This is Lena,' his father says. ‘She'll look after you.' Lena turns the smile towards his father as if some tacit understanding has been reached between them and his father smiles back. They're comfortable with each other, as though they've met before. ‘She'll show you where your room is.'

Lena moves out from behind the counter and takes Angelo's bag from him. He sees his father's eyes drift to her legs and feels the softness of her hand against his.

‘Hello, Angelo,' she says. ‘You'll like it here.' And the sweet scent of her perfume stays with him as she straightens up and moves towards the door.

Outside, it seems hotter and brighter than it had been before. The light bounces off the white stones of the carpark as they follow Lena along a concrete path to a row of doors. Each door has a blue star with a number stencilled onto it. Angelo counts them as he goes. Seventeen is open and he can see a man lying on the bed in underpants. A television blinks in the corner with the music turned down low.

‘Victor,' Lena says. ‘You won't need anything to do with him.'

At twenty, she stops and reaches for the key. She twists her body to get to the tight pocket of her skirt.

‘I've made it ready,' she says as she pushes the door open, and Angelo can see a towel folded on the double bed with a miniature soap on top of it. Inside, there's a vinyl couch, a chair and a television set, which Lena switches on.

‘Do you like the telly, Angelo?'

The walls are the same wood panelling as reception. An air-conditioner makes the same rattling noise against it.

‘It gets hot in the afternoon,' Lena says and stretches across the couch to draw the blinds. ‘Keep these shut and you'll be all right.' Angelo catches a glimpse of the bay before they close. ‘There's cold water in the fridge.' The room has a closed-up smell of Pine-O-Cleen and other people's cigarettes.

Angelo watches his father put the two bags into the wardrobe and close the door. The bed's bigger than any he's ever slept in, a bed like the one his parents used to share, and he moves away from it, intimidated by its size, unsure of what's expected of him. He moves towards the vinyl couch. Lena laughs and runs her fingers through his hair as though she's always known him, as though she can put him at ease by touching him.

‘He's like you, Joe,' she says, and it takes Angelo a moment to realise she's talking to his father. ‘He's a lot like you.'

She walks to the bathroom at the back of the room and his father follows her in. Angelo can hear her giggling behind the door and the low sounds of his father's voice.

‘Don't,' she says.

He looks at the TV with the sound turned down until the toilet flushes and she comes out, smoothing down her clothes, smiling at him.

‘I'll see you this afternoon,' she says to Angelo. ‘Just to see you're settled in. You'll like it here.'

His father follows her to the door. As she opens it, Angelo sees him rub his hand along the inside of her leg. She pushes him away and shuts the door. Angelo hears her footsteps on the path outside and his father turns to face him. The two of them are alone, with the television blinking in the corner.

‘Your own bed,' his father says, pushing the mattress down with his hand. ‘Your own TV. A clean towel every day.' He picks up the miniature soap and smells it. ‘Those buttons there,' he points to a console beside the bed. ‘That's a radio. A radio and TV' And he turns it on to prove the point. The music sounds like the piped music from the hospital, and already Angelo can imagine the slow hours he'll spend listening to it or watching daytime television.

His father is like a salesman. He moves from feature to feature in the small room, opening the wardrobe to reveal the bags again, pointing to the half-sized fridge beneath the bench, the jug of water.

‘It's comfortable,' he says. ‘Your own bathroom.'

He looks everywhere but at Angelo, who stays seated on the vinyl couch and looks, not at the things his father shows, but at the man in the dark suit who's brought him here.

‘You'll like it here,' he says, taking Angelo's shirts from the bags and hanging them in the wardrobe. ‘Lena will look after you.' The hangers are fixed to the metal rod and he struggles to keep the shirts straight. ‘I'll be back in a few days. I can't stay long today.' There are only four hangers and, when they're full, he folds the clothes back into the bags. ‘I'll bring some hangers when I come.'

When he leaves, Angelo turns the television off and pushes the buttons on the console. Each channel is the same – the same music, the same pre-set volume. He switches it off as well and settles back into the vinyl couch. Outside he can hear the wind off the bay and the occasional crunch of car wheels over the stones – the same noises he will hear for most of the night, along with the opening and closing of doors, the footsteps on the concrete path, the muffled voices from the room next door. He will lie awake in the dark room watching the glowing numbers of the digital clock in the console by his bed.

*

When the cars swing in off the highway their headlights flare into his room, shining through the curtains and lighting up the back wall like a screen. He sees, for an instant, the tray that Lena brought him, still sitting on the couch with the sausages half-eaten on the plate, the box of Panadol she calls his medication, the glass of water she's placed beside his bed.