The Pause (15 page)

Kate and Dad left for Disneyland yesterday. We saw them off and did the photo thing before they went through customs. Dad tried to put on a brave face for Kate's sake but he had a bit of a hangdog expression when he and Mum hugged. They're not going to last. I could see it in their eyes and their hug. They grew up and grew apart. While we were little, I guess Kate and I were the glue that bound them. But now I'm bound to Mum as Kate is to Dad and there's nothing but history keeping our little unit together.

Like me, Mum's a bit of a greenie, so although we all took a taxi to the airport, we caught the train home. It was the first time I'd been on a train since …
(When I started back at school, Mum took some time off work and insisted on driving me to and from school.) And now, having emerged from the darkness, I know which side of the wheels I'd rather be on. Mum held me around the waist as we got off at our station – at
the
station. She didn't say anything. She didn't need to. I reached over and kissed the top of her head as we made our way up the escalator.

Mum wanted to take me to try this new restaurant which generally has lunch queues milling outside. At night it's a bit quieter. Luckily we managed to get a table fairly quickly, which I was grateful for given that, by the time the waiter showed us to our table, I was so hungry I could have eaten the quack out of a low-flying duck.

We studied the menus but it wasn't an exhausting task. This was one of those restaurants where the chef has only a very tenuous grasp on reality or else thinks he's just too cute to kiss and offers up dishes like pureed bat's testicles served on a bed of natural henna that has been curing under the armpits of an old Ukrainian woman for seventeen years. The food is generally served on white plates the size of tractor tyres with the portions so small you need a microscope or homing beacon to find them. The menus were made of compressed plywood and the options written with candle wax. Mum and I looked at each other and tried not to snort at the
pretentiousness of the place. Mum grew up in the Western Suburbs and is a bit of a class warrior.

‘Do you have any specials?' asked Mum.

The waiter leered at Mum. ‘This is a fine-dining establishment, ma'am. We cater for certain … tastes.'

After giving us a few minutes to consider our choices, the waiter reappeared and loomed over us like a sentinel, with an air of practised superiority.

He looked at Mum, contempt etched across his face for no discernible reason. ‘And what has ma'am decided on?'

Mum looked up at the snooty git. ‘Ma'am has decided to go next door for a pizza, because ma'am has a growing teenage son who needs feeding and will get precious little nourishment from' – she looked back at the menu – ‘quail and alfalfa chowder. Especially not for twenty-eight dollars.' Mum handed the waiter his wooden menus and we stood up to leave.

‘As you wish,' said the waiter, a leer creeping across his face.

‘And take the silver spoon out of your arse: you're a bloody waiter, not the Duke of Kent.'

We practically stumbled into Angelo's Pizzeria giggling like a couple of nuns who have inadvertently wandered into a male strip show. I watched on proudly as Mum spoke to Angelo in
fluent Italian and ordered us a family-size seafood pizza with extra prawns, which we took home and scarfed down in front of the TV. Barrister or not, she's a working-class hero. She's
my
hero.

I gaze out the window and notice with increasing alarm that the wing wobbles as we taxi towards the runway. I didn't know they did that. I don't know much about engineering and aeronautics but I thought wings would be rigid. When I think about it, though, I suppose they need to be unstable in order to function properly. I'm not sure I get that, but I kind of like it.

As the plane waits for take-off clearance, I try to distract myself from the wobbling wings and imagine Kate being let loose in Disneyland. If Dad buys her a soft drink and some candyfloss, a switch in her brain will flick and she'll end up tearing around like the Tasmanian devil in those old Looney Tunes cartoons. Little kids might even mistake her for a ride and try to leap on her as she goes spinning past. Poor Dad. Poor Disneyland.

The pilots gun the engines and I'm pushed back into my oversized seat. I've never been keen on air travel. If people were meant to fly we would have been born with boarding passes in our hands. I grip
the armrest while Mum holds the back of my hand. My heart is pounding so fast that there's no discernible gap between the beats. ‘When closing gate to secure dog in yard,' says Mum, trying to interest me in what she's just written on her iPad, ‘it is essential that dog not already on other side of gate.'

I appreciate Mum's efforts to take my mind away from the take-off. It's one of our favourite family games. We recount all the stupid things Dad's done down the years but make it sound like a self-help book. Dad plays too, and sometimes I'm pretty sure he does some of the spectacularly dumb things he does just so that we'll laugh at him because surely no one in their right mind would attempt to trim their nostril hairs with barbecue tongs, especially not while they are actually barbecuing and their wife is looking on from the upstairs window holding a bowl of water.

The plane banks over Botany Bay while my fingers leave an indentation in the armrest.

Mum hands me her iPad. ‘Your turn.'

The plane dips suddenly and my heart pretty much flatlines. Is she serious? I can't let the armrest go to take her stupid iPad. It's my clenching the armrest that's keeping us in the air.

‘C'mon, Dec,' she encourages. ‘If you come up with one, I'll get you a beer when the trolley comes around.'

I look over at Mum. ‘Seriously?'

She nods.

Mmm. Motivation. ‘Okay.' Thinking back to the time when the sink in their ensuite was blocked and the tong/hedge trimmer thing, I release the armrest (miraculously the plane stays airborne), take the iPad, and opt for a Newtonian approach. ‘When bowl of water is tipped out of upstairs window, water will continue in downward motion until encountering object, usually husband, who will then generally gush, with equal and opposite force, “Jesus Christ, Gabriella!”'

Mum snorts like a wombat in a pepperbush when she reads it. The elderly woman across the aisle glares over at Mum with a look of superiority. Obviously snorting is unbecoming for business-class passengers. If her nose reached any higher it would start to haemorrhage.

‘Lighten up, vinegar tits,' says Mum, just loud enough for the woman to hear but soft enough for her to pretend to ignore it if she chooses not to get into it with Mum. The woman turns to her husband, who looks over at us, but that's as far as it goes.

‘Did you just call her “vinegar tits”?' I whisper to Mum, who gives me an innocent, butter-wouldn't-melt-in-her-mouth doe-eyed look.

Mum is such a frequent flyer that she is automatically upgraded whenever she checks in. She
also had enough frequent flyer points to upgrade me, as well as Dad and Kate. I'm positive Qantas business class would never have encountered the likes of Kate before, and I'm certain that Dad's latest Hawaiian shirt would have required the cabin crew to hand out complementary sunglasses.

‘I've got one,' says Mum. She takes back her iPad and types it in. ‘When catching train home from work, it is best not to wait until one is halfway home before remembering that one drove in that day.'

Me. ‘When sawing branch off tree, it is vital not to be sitting on branch.'

Mum. ‘In order to establish one's position of alpha male, it is essential not to scream like a seven-year-old girl when encountering a daddy-long-legs.'

Me. ‘When checking under car bonnet, it is imperative to put up that arm thingy or bonnet will collide with head when released.'

Mum. ‘Never floss teeth with razor blade, no matter what is stuck between them.'

Me. ‘Socks with thongs is never okay.'

Mum. ‘When returning from the dog park, one should first ensure that the dog one took is the same dog that one brings home.'

I decide to opt for Mum's use of the formal British ‘one' – I think it's really effective. ‘When
one has the coordination of a baby giraffe and has consumed four pints of Guinness, one should not attempt to dance anywhere near the wedding cake.'

Mum. ‘When one is trying to locate work colleague's home in Sydney, greater success will be achieved when not using Melbourne street directory.'

By the time the drinks trolley is open for business, Mum and I are practically in hysterics. When she is able to speak, she asks for a red wine and gets me that promised beer. I'll be eighteen in four months so it's no biggie.

‘To the future,' says Mum as we clink glasses. ‘Whatever it may bring.'

I'm about to wash down my peanuts with Stella Artois (I am flying business class, after all) when Mum stops me. ‘And, to sticking around,' she says, ‘because you're worth it.'

I smile and squeeze the back of her hand.

It's not the first time I've had a drink but my memories of my first session are not fond ones. Chris, Maaaate and I got completely trashed on Maaaate's old man's putrid home-brew when we crashed there in year eight, and I hurled so much that I practically turned myself inside out. And before that, Aunt Mary forced some whiskey down my throat the night she went over the cliff. She did it to numb the pain (hers not mine), but I hoicked
it up quicker than she could pour it down so she beat four shades of shit out of me, threw me in the back seat of her car and took us on a one-way trip to the coast.

But now that I'm an adult (well, four months away from being one), I am going to drink maturely and sensibly and so I sip my beer and enjoy every mouthful. Before I've finished half, Mum's onto her third glass of red.

After dinner, we both recline our seats to the comatose setting so we can watch a movie. I opt for an action/adventure/thriller that involves lots of car chases, buildings being blown up for no adequately explained reason and bathrobes cascading provocatively to the floor. Mum settles for a period piece that seems to involve the male protagonist spending an inordinate amount of time staring out of windows at lush green fields and rolling hills, either contemplating the nature of existence or whether or not he really ought to be getting on with something other than spending so much time staring out of windows.

Mum's movie kind of reminds me of Lisa. I spent a good bit of time staring out of windows (at home and in psychiatric hospitals and classrooms) thinking about her. Missing her. Craving her. I can't believe I'm actually going to see her. I can't believe I almost … died. I would have
missed this moment and thousands of others like it.

On approach to the airport on Lantau Island, Mum tells me about the old one in Kai Tak, which was so close to the city that you could be in your hotel room fifteen minutes after touch-down. Apparently the planes flew between the buildings as the pilots aimed at an enormous checkerboard on a hill before banking sharply to the right and plonking the plane down hard either onto the runway or, as was sometimes the case, into Victoria Harbour. The new airport is fast and efficient but, as far as Mum is concerned, dead boring. She used to enjoy the thrill of landing at Kai Tak, waving at people eating dinner in their high rise as you flew past their window.

When we get through customs, Lisa isn't there to greet me, which is how I planned it. Although I've teased certain information out of her such as her school, timetable, address and so on, I have been very subtle about it and haven't mentioned our coming here because I want it to be a surprise. I'm dying to see her reaction. To see if she's missed me half as much as I've missed her.

We take the Airport Express into the city and then the regular MTR to our hotel on Nathan Road. Had I been by myself, I could imagine that finding my way around Hong Kong would be
about as easy as eating Maltesers with chopsticks, but Mum guides us through the complexities of the rail network like a professional tour guide and doesn't need to call on my Cantonese – which wouldn't get us very far anyway, as there are very few opportunities to order tea as we navigate our way through the labyrinth of the Hong Kong underground.

By the time we get to our hotel room, I feel like something the cat's dragged in and then dragged out again. Mum decides to take a shower but I just flop onto my bed and sleep like the dead. The dead that is happy to be alive.