Page 44 of Thursdays at Orange Blossom House
‘Are you sure? He’s always coming into the staffroom after school when he knows you’re there.’
‘I think you’ll find that’s because he always has some extra session on after school. Running. Jumping. Whatever those kids do.’ Patricia had flapped a hand dismissively. ‘Anyway, I’m not the only one in there after school. You are too.’ She gave Marjorie a look.
‘Oh, he’s not interested in me,’ Marjorie said with a tinkling laugh. ‘Besides, I think I’m seeing someone.’
‘You think?’
‘I’m waiting for him to ask me out,’ she said demurely, and Patricia knew who it was: the recently arrived maths teacher, Mr Li, whose muscles are distractingly large for someone who spends most of his time with a calculator.
On his first day Marjorie could barely contain herself, and she’s been fluttering around him ever since.
‘Nearly there, love,’ Patricia’s father says and she realises she’s let herself drive on autopilot. Not the most conscientious thing to do, but they’re still safely on the road.
‘Yes, Dad,’ she says, seeing the outskirts of the town ahead. Five minutes away. Possibly ten. She’s no good at judging distances.
She sees her father’s head is turned towards the half-open window. Beyond him are rows and rows of mango trees, their leaves vibrant, their fruit still several weeks away.
‘I thought that farm was cane,’ she murmurs.
‘It was.’ Her father nods slowly. ‘They sold. New owners put in mangoes.’ He glances in her direction. ‘It’s been a while since you’ve driven this way.’
‘Yes, I guess it has.’
She hasn’t been to Innisfail since she moved back in with her parents. And John wasn’t living there when Patricia moved away, so it’s been decades. Still, not many people around here change their crops. They like to keep what the soil’s been used to. She understands – she’s been the same way – even as she knows that change is not only desirable but necessary if fields are to stay fertile.
‘It’ll be good to see the boy,’ her father says, turning to the window again.
‘Yes, Dad.’
She looks in the rear-view mirror at her mother: she’s sitting silently, staring back at her with eyes Patricia no longer recognises.
‘Not long to go, Mum,’ she says, although she has no way of knowing if her mother is even really there.
She probably won’t find out until John starts smoking and her mother wants to join him. How strange to realise now that it might be a good thing: a sign that part of her mother is still with them, even if they don’t see it often.
‘Turn off up here,’ her father says.
John lives on a small property out of town. Ever since he bought it seven years ago he’s been talking about growing some exotic fruit on it, although there’s nary a new tree to be seen.
‘There they are,’ John says as Patricia puts on the brakes and rolls down the window at the end of his long driveway.
She wants to correct him: he’s not talking to a bystander so he should have said, ‘Thereyouare’. But he hates it when she points out that he’s wrong about something. Everyone hates to be wrong, she supposes, except no one stops to consider that her job means she hates it when people can’t use the language properly.
‘G’day, Dad,’ John says, and they shake hands.
‘Mum.’ Peck on the cheek.
‘Patricia.’ Another peck.
Patricia refrains from flinching as she inhales the stench of cigarette smoke embedded in John’s hair and clothes. She notices that his paunch is bigger and his jaw slacker than they were the last time she saw him. And his hairline has receded further too. Ooh, she bets he doesn’t like that. He used to have quite a mane. It was his trademark, along with the anchor tattoo he acquired during a mysteriously brief stint in the navy and which their mother abhorred, declaring that tattoos were for people who’d been to jail. Then she forgave him, because he brought her a bottle of 4711 and a bunch of flowers and said he’d wear long-sleeved shirts from then on. He’s wearing one today, although the sleeves are rolled up just to the point where the tattoo starts to be visible.
‘Come in,’ he says, striding ahead. ‘The barbie’s on.’
Patricia pulls the bowl of coleslaw out of the back seat of the car and looks up to see her mother standing still, her fists clenched and her feet planted at an odd angle, like she’s a toddler about to have a tantrum.
‘Mum?’
Her mother’s head swivels towards her. ‘Where are we?’ she says.
