The Full Ridiculous (20 page)

I don’t understand why she is so upset so I ask why I can’t tell anyone and she says it’s because they won’t understand. She says that I belong to Dad and her and Tess and Ingrid. She says we all belong together and it doesn’t matter who’s adopted and who’s not. But people won’t understand if I tell them I’m adopted. They’ll treat me like I’m different and I’m not different.

I don’t really understand what she is saying but I do understand I must not tell anyone I’m adopted. Mum asks me to promise so I promise. Molly and Davie knock on the door and ask if I’m coming back out to play and Mum smiles and pretends she hasn’t been crying and says, ‘Yes, he’ll be out in a minute.’ And then she gets ice-blocks out of the freezer and I choose a red one and take the rest out to the other kids and we all play in the sprinkler again.

I’m twenty years old, in the second year of university, and life is pretty damn fine. I’ve just broken up with my second long-term girlfriend and I’ve decided to play the field for a while. I’ve made a decision not to settle down until I’m about thirty. That gives me ten good years of partying, after which I’ll need a rest anyway. That’s my life plan. I like my plan. It’s a good plan.

Sitting next to me in the Linguistics 235 tutorial is my mate Dazza. He likes my plan too. He likes it so much that he’s decided to use it as his life plan as well.

The tutor asks a question and a voice answers. I can’t explain this but the voice is incredibly familiar even though I haven’t heard it before. It belongs to a girl I haven’t even seen but I know instantly that she is
important
. A voice within me says
Oh, so there she is.
I can’t see her because we are both sitting on the same side of the long tutorial table with about five or six people between us. I lean forward with no small amount of trepidation and look down the table. I still can’t see her because Dazza’s big boofy head is in the way so I whisper, ‘Hey Dazza, what does she look like?’ Dazza has a really long gawp and turns back and says, ‘Good.’

Her name is Wendy Weinstein. She is Jewish. Or Jewishlite as she likes to say. She’s the second Jewish person I have encountered. The first was a guy I went to school with but he was kind of annoying so I avoided him.

Within a week of hearing her voice, I tell Wendy I am adopted. She is the only person I have told since I was four and a half years old. I tell Wendy because I sense that we are going down a long road together and it’s important not to start off with any secrets.

I am thirty-five years old, standing at the letterbox, flicking through the mail. Electricity bill.
Yay.
Gas bill.
Yippee.
Letter from the hospital where our kids were born. Addressed to me, not me and Wendy.
Odd.
I rip it open and scan. It’s not about the kids. It’s about me.

The hospital has something called a ‘post-adoption agency’ and they’ve recently been contacted by my birth mother.
My birth mother.

I have a birth mother and she is alive.

I go inside and read the letter with Wendy. My birth mother wants to contact me. She wants to write me a letter. The agency wants to know if I will accept the letter. It’s up to me. I just have to say
no
and the matter will be dropped and I won’t be contacted again.

Wendy tells me I’ve gone white. I suddenly feel incredibly tired, overwhelmingly exhausted. It’s only four o’clock in the afternoon but I lie down on the bed and fall instantly asleep. I stay asleep until three o’clock the next afternoon, unconscious for twenty-three hours while the known universe shifts slightly to the left.

I tell my mother about the letter from my birth mother and her eyes well with tears. She tells me that she feels like she entered an unspoken contract with my birth mother to raise me as her son and that my birth mother has come back and broken the contract. I put my arms around her while she cries quietly into my shoulder.

I tell her if it’s going to cause her so much pain, I won’t proceed. The tears dry up and she tells me not to be ridiculous. Just because she doesn’t want it doesn’t mean I shouldn’t want it. She tells me she’s always been amazed by my lack of curiosity. I tell her that I am curious but I’ve never felt the need to go looking for my birth parents. This must be because I have such great parents. Her eyes well with tears again but this time she gets that look like she might crow.

I’m twenty-six years old, holding my day-old son. Light pours through the old Georgian windows of Wendy’s hospital room in the neo-natal unit. I look up and see my mother studying me from a chair in the corner.

‘What?’ I say, smiling.

‘That’s your own flesh and blood,’ she says. ‘That’s the first time you’ve held your own flesh and blood.’

I look back in wonder at my boy. She’s right. He is the only person I have ever met who comes from the same gene pool. And what is remarkable to me about that fact is that it’s not important.
He’s here. He’s himself. That’s the important bit. He is here to be loved and I love him.
I glimpse for a moment how my own parents embraced me instantly and completely even though I am not their biological child.

I am thirty-six years old, meeting my birth mother for the first time. We’ve corresponded for eighteen months and now we are face to face. We sit in the modest kitchen of her home, a four-hour flight north of mine. She speaks softly, a quiet, self-contained sort of person.

There is something incredibly dear about her.

As she lifts her teacup to her mouth, we are simultaneously conscious that her hand is trembling. I feel an immense gratitude for the gift of life she has given me. She tries to master the tremble but her hand shakes harder and she is forced to put her cup back in the saucer.

This isn’t going to be easy.

I’m forty-one years old and my mother is dying. We both know it. I sit at her bedside in the nursing home, holding her hand.

When did those hands get so bony? So blue-veined and fleshless?

I remember being a little boy, no more than three or four, and our positions are reversed. I am in bed and she is holding my hand. I have woken with a night terror and she has come to comfort me. I drop off to sleep but wake again in fright. Each time I wake, she is there, holding my hand.

What a privilege it is to be here, holding hers now.

I know she is afraid but she will not tell me because it is her job to comfort me, to stop me from being afraid, not the other way around; this is how she thinks. I brace myself for the hour that she tells me, finally, that she is afraid.

I will know then that the end is very near.

She asks me to close the venetians, which I do. Her once-lively interest in the world contracts on an almost hourly basis. Just a few weeks ago the clock-radio on her pink laminate bedside table would have been barking a political debate. Mum, eyebrows knit in concentration, would offer observations of such pithy accuracy that they took your breath away.

So sharp, this woman, a spitfire all her life but now she is leaving. Receding, not so gradually. Her world has shrunk into a single room where she lies dying. She is only interested in what is going on in the room. It’s all about the room. This nurse coming. That nurse going. How much apple juice is left.

She turns and holds me with her watery gaze. There is such love in her look that I can hardly bear it.

‘I’m glad she’s here,’ says my mother.

‘Who?’

‘Up north,’ she answers and I realise she means my birth mother. I take a deep breath to stop myself from bawling. All I can manage is, ‘Oh Mamma.’

It occurs to me that I will not know such fierce unconditional love again. I have not yet learned that it will not die with her; that it will travel with me all my days.

28

You are sitting on the couch, cross-legged, attempting the lotus position. Your knees ache and there’s a weird twinge in your left hip but you are doing your best to meditate as instructed by Doctor Maurice. You are trying to observe (not attach to!) your feelings of abandonment when Wendy comes through the door with the shopping so you unfold yourself and help her unload the car.

After you’ve unpacked the groceries together, Wendy says she needs to talk to you about finances. You nod but for some reason you do not feel the usual rush of dread. The loan from Ingrid has helped through the last months but the money is running out again. You’re back to the old discussion about generating more income or selling the house. At least you no longer have Declan’s school fees to worry about.

You tell Wendy about a phone message from the Rat-tat-tat editor at the
Herald
, the guy who talks without pronouns. You’re not exactly sure what he wants but he has asked you to lunch at a fairly swanky restaurant in the city. You are now officially the last person on earth to leap to optimistic conclusions, but you’re guessing it could be about writing for a movie website that the paper is launching. You’ll also try to step up the freelance work and failing that, the local grocery store is looking for night stackers again.

Wendy takes your hand and strokes it.

‘How are you?’ she asks.

‘A bit better, getting better.’

‘Yeah, I can tell.’

‘Sorry I’ve been so useless.’

‘It’s been pretty horrible, hasn’t it?’

You lift her hand and kiss it. ‘Thanks for sticking with me.’

She shrugs and gives you a crooked smile.

‘Why do you?’ you ask. ‘Why do you stick with me?’

‘You’ll come back,’ she says, ‘and I’ll be here.’

Another letter comes from Mount Karver addressed to Rosie. This time there is no joyful dancing, only quiet trepidation. You and Wendy watch your daughter read her letter. She looks puzzled and then her mouth curls into a smile.

‘I’ve got a second interview!’ she declares.

Wendy can’t make the interview because she is about to leave on a two-day conference. She asks Rosie if she wants to try and move the interview day but Rosie says, ‘No, Dad can take me, can’t you, Dad?’

You nod manfully but privately baulk at the thought of managing her terrible disappointment if it all goes pearshaped
which, let’s face it, it probably will.

Two days later you are back in the school’s administration building, waiting in the long corridor and not in the anteroom to the headmaster’s office. Elsie Schmetterling offers no explanation why she has placed you here. You interpret this as a bad sign.

Elsie reappears and says, ‘She’ll see you now.’

She?

Rosie shoots you a look as you head south down the corridor instead of north towards the headmaster’s office.

‘Where are we going?’ you ask.

‘The deputy’s office,’ answers Elsie, like it’s the most natural thing in the world.

A sense of doom sinks like a lead weight in your gut. You were hoping that Wendy’s session with the headmaster might have improved his disposition towards Rosie. But the gutless turd is getting his deputy, Sabina Smith, to do his dirty work for him.

Sabina Smith is a sturdily built woman with a mean face that belies a kind and friendly spirit. She’s the ideal person to inform Rosie of her rejection, and negotiate her way through parental outrage on the school’s behalf.

Ms Smith’s office is almost hilariously austere compared to the splendour of Ignatius Quinn’s. She stands to greet you, shakes Rosie’s hand and then yours. Rosie sits in one of the two chairs opposite her desk just before Sabina Smith says, ‘Please, take a seat.’

Rosie says, ‘Oops!’, leaps to her feet and sits again, all in one motion. The deputy chuckles. You settle into a chair too and brace yourself in the crash position.

‘Well, I have to say that was a very impressive letter, young woman.’

Ah,
you think,
she’s using one of those positive-negative-positive strategies. Start off with something nice, then deliver the bad news, then end with something warm and effusive.

‘Full of commitment and passion,’ she continues. ‘You’re exactly the kind of girl we want at Mount Karver.’

Huh?
You wonder if it’s a trick. But it’s not.

‘Thank you!’ says Rosie. She turns and beams at you. You smile back.

‘Well that’s great news,’ you say.

Rosie chats happily with Sabina Smith about starting dates and extracurricular activities. At the end of the meeting the deputy opens the door for you and you file out.

‘Your limp has almost gone, Mr O’Dell. It’s barely discernible at all,’ she says.

This surprises you because:

(a) you weren’t aware that you were limping anymore, and

(b) you weren’t aware that Sabina Smith had been tracking the progress of your limp.

On the way home Rosie hits her phone, texting everyone she’s ever met in her entire life. You swing by Macca’s for celebratory chocolate thickshakes, half expecting your trusty physician, Doctor David Wilson, to stride disapprovingly through the doors and whip the beverage from your chubby hands. You’ve been avoiding mirrors lately but you know if you looked you’d find yourself doing an alarmingly accurate impersonation of an over-stuffed sausage.

A girl in a McDonald’s cap stands on the table of the booth next to you, hanging tinsel from the ceiling.

‘Bit early for Christmas decorations,’ you comment to no one in particular.

By way of reply, Rosie lets rip with a mighty burp and adds, ‘It’s almost December, old man. Get with the program.’

The girl in the McDonald’s cap titters.

29

Before your lunch with Rat-tat-tat, you place a phone call that you have been meaning to make for some time. You call Maxx and tell him that you are no longer writing your book on the decline of Australian cinema. You haven’t abandoned the idea altogether but you are putting the project on ice. Maxx doesn’t even pretend to be surprised. He says he hasn’t been in touch because he didn’t want to guilt you into writing something you weren’t ready to write.

This last part is a fib because you know via a mutual friend that Maxx has been in despair, drinking heavily and showing up intermittently to his ever-shrinking office. Maxx hasn’t been in touch because the last thing he needs is another book he can’t sell. Most forms of old-school publishing are spiralling down the toilet while Maxx, like every other publisher in the known universe, scrambles to harness the power of the mighty internet to flog his stories. Maxx asks you whether you have any soft porn narratives for the mature female market up your sleeve. You both laugh the same hearty-but-hollow laugh.