Page 45 of Weekends with the Sunshine Gardening Society
Not that it’s so rosy Kathy won’t have maybe just another half-glass of shiraz. She still needs a crutch and this is the one she’s chosen.
Then the phone rings and she jumps, knocking her glass over on the coffee table and the wine with it. She swears, torn between wanting to mop up the wine immediately and answer the phone. No one calls her at night. Who’s ringing her this late?
‘Hello?’ she says, sounding cross.
‘Hi, Mum,’ says an equally cross voice back to her and Kathy swears under her breath. Michelle. Who has not once called her since she left Melbourne. Why now?
Kathy doesn’t want another confrontation like the one they had when she said she departed for Queensland and Michelle told her she was running away from her problems. Which was, yes, okay, correct – but that didn’t mean Kathy wanted to hear it.
‘Hi, sweetheart,’ she says, because a mother has to at least pretend to be affectionate even when she’s not feeling it. ‘How are you?’
Kathy realises this sounds lame because it’s the sort of question you ask when you’re talking to someone regularly, not when you’ve been ignoring them because they don’t approve of you and ‘your choices’, as Michelle and her brother termed it.We don’t like your choices, Mum. Yeah, so? What if Mum doesn’t like them either but feels as if they aren’t choices so much as inevitabilities?
‘So now you care how I am?’
Michelle’s voice is loaded with disdain and it makes Kathy sigh, because her grown-up daughter seems to think Kathy should still be taking her children into account with every decision she makes about her life.
‘Of course,’ Kathy says, trying to keep her voice neutral. No sense in poking the bear. ‘Just because I don’t live in Melbourne any more doesn’t mean I don’t care.’
‘You don’t ring me.’
Kathy takes a slow breath so she doesn’t take the bait. ‘I’m sorry, Michelle, I know I’ve been slack.’
It’s always better to show penance even if you don’t really feel it. Time is saved because it’s what the accuser wants.
Michelle huffs in response. ‘Are you drunk?’
‘What?’
‘You’ve been drinking.’
‘It’s Friday night, Mich. I’m allowed to unwind.’
‘Grant said you were drunk the other night too.’
Kathy has a vague memory of her son calling her after she’d finished a bottle of something, but she didn’t think she was drunk so much as chirpy. Not that she can admit to not really remembering their conversation because that would be proof of what he told his sister.
‘Then I guess I’m a failure as a mother.’ When penance doesn’t work, sometimes admitting defeat can do the trick.
‘Don’t be sodramatic.’ Another huff, then Michelle sighs. ‘We’re just worried about you.’
‘I’m fine,’ Kathy says and she realises that, in some ways, she means it. She has a job, she has activities, she’s still trying to commit to getting fit. Effort is being made.
‘Then why did you leave?’
There’s a tone of hurt-little-girl and Kathy understands, even if she doesn’t want to give in to it. Michelle is more than old enough to be responsible for her own feelings.
‘Because I wanted to change things. And I have.’
‘By drinking every night?’
‘It’s not every night,’ she says before she can censor herself, and she’s rewarded with a minute’s silence on the phone line.
‘It’s not good to drink alone,’ Michelle says finally.
‘I know. But, honestly, I’m fine. Or I’m getting to fine.’
More silence. Then, ‘When will you be fine?’
