Page 111 of Thursdays at Orange Blossom House
Her father remains silent so she can only guess at what he’s thinking. Maybe he’s changed his mind, just as she has.
‘I’m not sure I want you staying here alone while I’m gone,’ she continues. ‘Not with Mum just in the home. You’ll be lonely. And I don’t want you trying to manage the housework on your own. So I’m going to pay some professionals to come in and help you.’
He opens his mouth and she puts up her hand.
‘I’m taking out a loan to pay for it. Annette can call to check on you every now and then – maybe she could even come and stay for a few days. But I really need this, Dad.’
What she wants to say is that if she’s going to spend the remaining years of her parents’ lives worrying about them – an indeterminate number of years – she has to take this break now, because the next opportunity will be after they are both dead, and then it will have a decidedly different hue.
‘What will you do?’ he croaks.
‘I haven’t decided. Maybe Europe. Although I’m going to leave after term ends so it will be cold there. I’m also thinking of Hawaii.’
She’s also thinking of India, and of Dennis, because what Sandrine said has been revving at the back of her mind, the noise getting louder and louder. But India isn’t a conventional holiday destination, especially if she tells her father that she wants to take yoga classes there. That she wants to take the time to just be, in one place, with herself. It’s hard to explain to someone who hasn’t been on the mat that sometimes the big adventures happen inside us. She knows Grace Maud and Dorothy will understand, and she knows that they will want to hear all about it when she returns. It would be unreasonable to ask her father to have the same interest.
‘I hear that’s nice,’ he says, nodding. ‘Hawaii.’
‘Maybe I’m crazy to swap one place with beaches for another,’ she says, shrugging.
‘No, you’re not,’ he says firmly, looking her in the eyes. ‘You deserve a holiday.’
‘Thanks, Dad. So …’ She looks at him enquiringly.
He nods slowly. ‘I wouldn’t mind a bit of company while you’re gone.’
She feels relieved that it was so easy. ‘Okay.’
‘Perhaps your mother could come back for a few days while you’re away?’
‘Dad … she can’t. She’s in the home now. She can’t leave for days at a time.’
She watches his face to try to figure out if he too is losing his memory, or if he’s just trying on the idea.
‘But …’ He sniffs a couple of times. ‘I miss her.’ His voice is soft, broken.
‘I do too.’ It’s true, even if unlikely. While she’s never been her mother’s favourite person, Patricia misses the woman she’s known all her life. ‘But she can’t come back here, Dad. I think you know that. For such a little woman she can cause a lot of mischief.’
His laugh is knowing and regretful. ‘She sure can.’
‘But maybe someone can take you to visit her while I’m gone.’
‘Good, love.’
‘I’m about to make lunch. Are you hungry?’
He nods. ‘You read for a bit. I’ll let you know when it’s ready.’
He nods again.
Heading for the kitchen, she feels the rush of knowing that she will be able to leave, and guilt at feeling so free. This seesaw of emotions will, she reasons, probably go on for the rest of her days.
CHAPTER FIFTY-SIX
For someone who grew up and lived on a property that had the same routines for years, Grace Maud likes to think of herself as being quite adaptable to change. Something about close observation of the seasons and knowing that nature is always changing, even as those same seasons have a clear structure that doesn’t change. There are small adjustments, of course – it’s not as if every single day’s temperature is the same as on that day the year before. Yet wet season, dry season – what southerners would know as summer and winter – and the gaps in between, when the humidity builds up and seeps out, arrive pretty much as expected. They couldn’t manage the cane if they didn’t.
One change Grace Maud is sure she’s been quite relaxed about is to do with people coming and going. She doesn’t like it necessarily – although she was quite pleased to see the back of her husband – but she’s managed it. It is, therefore, a surprise to her that she’s not taking the news of Patricia’s planned departure well, even if it’s not to be permanent.
That morning Patricia picked her up to go to class – they have stuck to the Saturday class even though Dorothy is unable to attend – then drove them both to Kuranda so they could visit their friend and her baby – and that’s where Patricia made her announcement.
