Page 49 of Thursdays at Orange Blossom House
‘Clara,’ Frederick says, bending to kiss her on the cheek and accepting, as he always does, that she uses the German form of his name. He shakes Dorothy’s father’s hand. ‘Dieter.’
Dorothy receives a peck on the cheek from each of her parents, then follows them down the hall to their sitting room with its rows of books and LPs and its absence of a television. They’ve never had one and Dorothy doesn’t imagine they ever will.
Dorothy feels a pinch on her upper arm and turns, knowing that Cornelia will be standing there.
Hello, Dorothy signs.Still living at home, I see?
It’s their running joke even though it stopped being funny a while ago. Cornelia is still living with their parents, even though she’s in her late twenties, because there’s no job she can do in Cairns. That is, there’s no workplace that will accept someone whose lip-reading is excellent but whose spoken voice is not. It’s easier, their parents decided long ago, for Cornelia to continue to be supported by them. Which means living at home and doing the housework in exchange. She reads voraciously; she’s one of the most educated people Dorothy knows. If they lived in a city maybe there’d be somewhere she could work, or more that she could do, but not here.
When Cornelia was young her paediatrician said that there were homes for ‘children like her’.
‘It will make it easier on you,’ he’d told their parents, but her parents’ response was unanimous: the hardest thing in the world would be separation from their daughter. That’s when they’d hired a tutor to teach sign to both Cornelia and Dorothy. That’s when Dorothy started being the family translator.
She was in danger of staying at home forever herself, wondering if she’d ever be able to leave Cornelia to try to communicate on her own, until her father had sat her down one day.
‘You must have your own life,’ he said. ‘If you want to live elsewhere, of course you should.’ Dorothy wanted to ask him why, therefore, had he put such a responsibility on her at a young age, to be Cornelia’s voice in the world.
Instead, she said, ‘What about Cornelia?’
‘We’ll manage,’ he said firmly.
Her parents had learnt some sign over the years and it was enough, it seems, for them all to get by.
Once she’d moved out Dorothy thought she’d revel in the freedom; instead she missed Cornelia’s silent-yet-noisy presence. She’d become so attuned to knowing where Cornelia was just from the sound of her footsteps, the way she swallowed saliva, her loud mouth-breathing whenever she was upset about something. Her sister, it turned out, was a symphony and she hadn’t realised it.
She couldn’t go back, though, because her father was right: she did need to make her own life. And Cornelia needed to make hers. There was every chance they’d live together again, one day, once their parents were gone, because Cornelia would be no more able to work in a ‘normal’ job then than she is now.
Cornelia was one of the first things Dorothy told Frederick about when it became clear that they were serious about each other. It’s one of the reasons they are trying to create a successful business for themselves: so they can buy a bigger house one day, with room for Cornelia in case they need it. Frederick didn’t waver when Dorothy told him about the extra responsibilities that could come with marrying her. Just as her father has never wavered in his commitment to them all.
‘So unlike you to have the afternoon free,’ her father says now, gesturing for them to take a seat. ‘We thought it must be something important that you would come here.’
Dorothy feels guilt that she doesn’t think her father meant to cause. It’s true that she doesn’t visit often – because she rarely has time. It’s also true that she could make arrangements to see them at night. But she’s always so tired. Yoga is the only thing she does at night apart from going home, and that’s because it gives her far more than it takes. She knows that if she were to see her parents for dinner the conversation alone would drain her. They’re intellectuals who have demands. She doesn’t listen to enough different recordings of Beethoven’s piano concertos to be able to say which conductor is best, and she can’t readily come up with anything else to talk about that will satisfy them.
‘I know I haven’t visited for a while,’ Dorothy says meekly, wishing she could take Frederick’s hand – for strength or protection, she’s not sure which. ‘I’m sorry for that.’
Her mother shakes her head. ‘You have a business. It is fine. We understand.’
But I miss you, Cornelia signs.
I know you do, Dorothy replies, and this time she knows the guilt was instilled on purpose.I miss you too.
Dorothy wants to say more but she knows it’s equivalent to talking in a language no one else understands – Frederick knows fewer signs than her parents do – so instead she squeezes Cornelia’s hand and smiles.
Cornelia sits on her favourite chair and Dorothy knows she’ll pick up most of the conversation through lip-reading. Sometimes Cornelia’s ability makes Dorothy self-conscious, like she can’t hide anything, but today she doesn’t want to: there’s no reason to exclude her sister from this conversation.
‘It is something important, yes,’ Dorothy says, looking at Frederick for encouragement, which she receives in the form of a small smile.
‘I’ve – we’ve – been trying to have a baby for a while. It, uh …’ She feels her face crumple a little. ‘It hasn’t worked. I have – I have, uh …problems.’
She risks a glance at her mother and sees the tiny indication of concern she used to see occasionally when she was a child. If she fell over and skinned her knee, her mother would always tell her to get up and stop crying, but there would be a moment – sometimes more than one – when Dorothy would see that she was genuinely worried. She held onto those moments, because it meant her mama really cared, and sometimes Dorothy needed to remind herself of that.
‘There’s a place in Brisbane,’ she continues. ‘A clinic. We think they can help us.’ She catches Frederick’s nod in the corner of her eye and takes courage from it. ‘But it’s going to be expensive. To go there. To stay there. I may need to be away for a while.’
She doesn’t want to say the next part. She hopes they won’t make her. This is not something she ever wanted to ask them for.
Not that she thinks they wouldn’t be generous, but just as her mother wanted her to stand on her own feet in childhood, Dorothy has been trying as hard as she can to do that her whole adult life. So she doesn’t expect to feel her father’s hand patting her knee. That’s why she flinches. And regrets it, because to him it must seem like she’s scared of him. She’s not. She never has been. But how delicate this dance of family is, when the people who know you so well are the ones whose feelings you want to protect so vociferously, whose opinions you worry the most about.
‘Dorothea,’ her father says softly – that low tone that lulled her to sleep on the rare nights he wasn’t working late. That sang to her and let her know she was safe. Dorothy may be able to look after herself, she may now have a husband to care for her too, but she will never stop being a little girl who simply wants to be reassured that her father will keep the monsters away.
