Maggie turned down the flame under a pan and slid the eggs into a frothy yellow puddle in the middle. ‘Everything’s starting to make sense, now.’
‘How do you mean?’
‘That main character of yours, Tyson Jones.’
‘What about him?’
TYSON: [arms akimbo] Yeah. What about him?
‘Oh, honey. I’ve read all of your drafts. I know more about Tyson Clueless Jones than you do. His baggage is your baggage, Hux.’
‘That’s so ridiculous.’
‘I don’t think so.’
‘My bacon’s burning.’
‘Changing the subject doesn’t change the truth, Hux.’
‘Maggie, I love you, but you are wrong. Dead wrong. Now, hand over that frying pan before my breakfast goes up in smoke.’
CHAPTER
16
Morning tea with the Cracknells on Wednesday started with ginger cake and coffee made with powdered milk out of a jar. By the time Jo had inspected the sisters’ fossil collection housed amongst the gold-rimmed tea cups in a glass-fronted timber cabinet, helped them re-label one that wasn’t an impression of the extinct plantGinkgo wintonensisas they’d supposed, butAustrosequoia wintonensis, and eaten not one but two of the chocolate biscuits from a tin they kept in the refrigerator, they’d exhausted their opinions on the missing man. Jo was expecting the conversation to turn to the dirt diary, which she’d brought with her and placed with due reverence on the old-fashioned cedar dining table, but Dot and Ethel had another agenda.
They trapped her at the table with a second cup of coffee so she couldn’t rush off, then Ethel cut to the chase. ‘Tell us about this son of yours, Jo. What happened to make him so unhappy with you?’
Oof. She set her mug down before she dropped it. ‘It’s fine, really, Ethel. I’m sure we’re just having some typical mother–son hiccup and it’ll all be over soon.’
Dot placed her hand on hers. ‘Tell us anyway. Bottling all this stuff up does nobody any good. His name’s Luke, I think you said. And he’s ten?’
Jo smiled. ‘Yes. Ten. I can’t believe it myself, sometimes.’
‘And has he hated you from the day he was born, or is there some more recent date when it all went bad?’ Ethel wasdirect. And she asked the question like she had a pen poised over paper and was taking notes. She’d missed her calling; she and Acting Senior Constable Clifford had more in common than they knew.
Jo sighed. Here went nothing. ‘A while back, before my marriage ended, Luke got in trouble at school—big trouble—for breaking into the tuck shop. The alarm went off, the police were called, he was suspended. As I say, big trouble.’
‘Oh, pet.’
‘Yes. Anyway, a few days later it was Mother’s Day, and Luke said he wanted to cook dinner. I took him to the grocery store, then he spent all day in the kitchen crashing and banging and saying he didn’t need any help, and he fussed about with the table so there were flowers in a jar and the good placemats. About six o’clock he tells us he’s about to start dishing up. I was in the laundry and my husband came in and he said—about the trouble—he said to me, “What are you going to do about Luke?”.’
Jo’s voice had grown thick so she took a sip of the coffee, which had grown cold. Inside her mug, the powdered milk had left tide marks down the sides. ‘Anyway, so I said, “You mean, what arewegoing to do”. But he was like, no,you. I didn’t understand and I said so. How was Luke’s act of breaking into the tuck shop my fault? And he said, “Well, Joanne, who else’s fault could it be?”.’
She’d hated that. It had been like being slapped, only worse.
‘I stood there, after he left the laundry, with a pair of socks in my hands that I’d been folding, with the detritus of family life watching on in silence around me—a deflated soccer ball, work shirts hung up over the sink so they would be easy to iron, an old shoe box where the single socks lived, a tin of shoe polish with no lid so the inside was crusty, you know—’ Jo sniffed. She’d lost the thread of what she’d been saying.
‘He’d let you down.’
Jo nodded. ‘Yes. That’s the moment I look back on as the end of my marriage. Not legally, of course, that took months—years—and spreadsheets and court orders and the whole splitting-the-sheets shitshow that thirty per cent of Australians go through. But that was the moment when my heart felt suspended in my chest and I realised that the union of two that I’d thought I was involved in was no union at all. I was on my own. With all the blame, apparently.’
Another of Dot’s monogrammed hankies was pressed into her hand and she used it to mop her eyes. ‘Anyway, Craig left the laundry, but I was a mess, crying and whatever, and I just knew I had to get out of there before Luke saw me. I was too much of a mess to hide what I was feeling under some fake smile, and I didn’t want to scare him. So I took off out the laundry door, thinking I needed some air. Some space. Some quiet walking the streets under the power lines watching possums or whatever. I could hear Luke calling out that dinner was ready, but I went out that door anyway. And Craig? He sat down at that dinner table and ate the dinner that our son had cooked for me—forme—like he was king of the fucking dads and … well. Long story short, Luke never forgave me for missing the dinner he’d worked so hard on.’
Jo pressed her hands to her face for a moment.
‘I’ll bet if you were to tell him what happened he’d understand, Jo,’ said Dot. ‘Just have an honest talk and tell him how you felt; you were so upset and you didn’t know what to do and you’re sorry you missed his meal. Tell him the way you’ve told us.’
