The Forrests

11. Loose





He was a young man in a beanie and a suit, carrying a plastic bag full of paper. Dorothy saw through the bubbled glass of the door his figure approaching, his clenched fist raising, getting closer. He knocked on the door as if he was a friend. A rhythmic, it’s showtime knock. She was surprised, expecting a Mormon or Jehovah’s Witness, the young evangelists in striped shirts and suit pants, black wraparound sunglasses, pineapple hair. This guy was slim, with prune-coloured smudges under his eyes. He’d come from a local mechanic’s. Was on the hustle for new work. ‘We already have a mechanic,’ Dot whispered.

‘I beg your pardon?’

She cleared her throat. ‘The baby’s sleeping. We already have a mechanic.’

‘Thank you. I won’t take up any more of your time.’ He didn’t move. The sky cracked and rain drummed on the trees in the street, shattering over the parked cars, pooling on the ground.

She stepped out from behind the door. ‘Do you have an umbrella?’

‘Sorry, goodbye.’

He was halfway up the path, his woollen hat already plastered, when Dorothy called after him, her voice raised over the roaring rain. ‘Excuse me? Do you want to come in?’ She held the door open – he smelled of wet suit cloth – and when he crossed the threshold she said, ‘Oh my god, the washing.’

In the back garden she tipped the red laundry basket upside down to shake out the water and unpegged the washing, hands stiff and fumbling, casting pegs aside, bright pink and yellow legs fallen on the slushy grass. The man helped, throwing half-folded sheets, towels into the basket. Andrew’s gym gear, his underwear, her nursing bras, Grace’s shorts, Amy’s rabbit, Donald’s dinosaur pyjamas, Hannah’s tiny striped T-shirt. The man followed her up the back steps into the house where she said, ‘I’ll put these in the dryer, please sit down.’

His eyes were bloodshot and he dabbed at them with the tissue Dorothy handed him once they were sitting opposite each other at the kitchen table. ‘Feel free to take off your jacket.’

She passed him a towel. The front of his white shirt was soaked through, and droplets of water glimmered on the woollen ridges of his hat. A leaflet from his plastic shopping bag sat on the table in front of her, the cheap paper splodged with rain. He only made money on commission. Nobody wanted to change mechanic or to hear about his offer, his deal. The deal involved tyres but already Dot was waning, regretted inviting him into the house. She listened out for the rain to ease. Grace and Amy were at school and Donald at nursery and Hannah was sleeping. She was meant to rest now too, which was infuriating enough that it pleased her all over again to have this strange, sad man sitting at the kitchen table. ‘Me?’ he said. ‘Two children.’ Neither at school yet. She imagined the scene when he left his house each day, kissing his wife goodbye as she stood there with a baby in her arms. That morning, Dot had been in the shower when Andrew left. Donald, four, had stood to one edge of the shower curtain, just staring, boring a hole in her body. Before long Hannah would be old enough to pull herself up to standing and she would notice when Dot left the room and balance at the side of the bath holding onto the edge, crying while Dot washed herself, away from her. This was one of the stages that would happen, just as now she was at the stage of crawling confidently, briskly, towards cigarette butts whenever they were in the park. When she sat up it was a miracle of posture, her back beautifully erect, her big round head a weightless balloon.

That morning Dot had asked Andrew whether he was angry with her and he had been genuinely surprised. It was unclear whether he was walking around enraged but not knowing it, or whether she was projecting. Dot wished she didn’t know the word projecting. Latent. Trigger. Someone in the house was angry, it must be so, even though the cake tins were full. Maybe it was both of them. Angry at the out there. Angry at the chance. ‘Do your children go to playgroup?’

‘Yes.’ He named one Dot hadn’t heard of, just as she hadn’t heard of the mechanic’s. While she stayed indoors the neighbourhood was rearranging itself.

‘Does your wife work?’

‘She’s at the bank.’

‘Right.’

He was sweating, water dots the size of ladybirds glistening on the sides of his nose. Perhaps there was a cultural reason he didn’t remove his hat, or perhaps that was a racist assumption. Dorothy liked to keep the house hot. She liked not having to put on a jumper. It was wasteful but temperature was one of those things now like appetite, where what she wanted was what she wanted. The children had grown used to it. It was quite good being a fat mum. They liked her softness, the cuddles. She didn’t spend hours walking or doing Pilates or running nowhere on a treadmill. They helped with the biscuits and the cakes. Fingers stroking the bars of the electric mixer, licking grainy raw dough.

She offered the young man at the kitchen table a slice of Madeira cake, which he declined. ‘No thank you. I’m allergic to gluten.’

‘An apple? Mandarin?’ Dot pushed the fruit bowl towards him.

‘What sort of car do you own?’ he asked.

‘A metallic salmon people mover.’

‘Does it run well?’

‘It’s ugly,’ she said. ‘But I don’t drive it. Everything I need to do is close by.’ She didn’t say, I don’t leave the house without the aid of lorazepam, so not a lot of operating heavy machinery.

‘That’s nice.’

‘Which street are you in?’

‘Oh, I don’t live around here.’ He named a suburb she had vaguely heard of, which might have been one of the grotty old suburbs, rebranded by estate agents. Pylon Valley, Abattoir View.

‘But you work for this mechanic?’

‘It’s freelance. We generate contracts for local businesses.’ He laughed. ‘I came here a few weeks ago to see if I could interest you in some tree pruning but there was nobody home.’

‘Really? I wonder where we were.’ Dot dug her thumbnail into a mandarin, the bubble-like pores popping, limonene spritzing invisibly over her hand. ‘We have a plum tree that needs to be crowned.’

‘Yes, I saw it from the road. But I don’t work for the tree surgeon any more.’

The word surgeon sat on the table between them like a fish. He ate his mandarin, but the room was too quiet, and Dot was afraid she was going to hear him swallow, so she stood and said, ‘I’m just going to check on my baby. She’s sleeping.’

Internal motes floated across her field of vision as she walked out of the room, feeling the drop in blood pressure. She wasn’t going back to therapy because there was only so much therapy she could handle. That was why Andrew was pissed off. The realisation made her smile, and then she felt regretful, and told herself she must make more of an effort. She should stitch that on a handkerchief. Pull your f*cking socks up.

She leaned over the cot sides to lift the girl. With the first baby, Dorothy had been small enough to fit inside the cot too, to curl up and comfort Grace when she wouldn’t stop crying, and then she got bigger and bigger and bigger until now so much of herself pressed against the cot sides while she leaned down that its bars creaked and scraped against the wall. A little rubbed line was appearing in the paint. When Hannah moved into a bed and they dismantled the cot for the last time and tried to sell it online they would have to paint over that rub mark. Or perhaps by then the cot would have had it and they would just leave it out for the inorganic rubbish collection, or take it to the tip. The baby was still asleep, undisturbed even by being lifted, and she was breathing. There was a timetable, a schedule, by which everything was meant to happen but now it seemed a good idea to lower her back onto the blankets and go and ask the salesman if he was ready to leave. In this room you couldn’t hear the rain. As she slowly removed her hands from under the baby, Dot felt a creeping up her back. It was wrong to have this stranger in the house.

The man had taken off his hat. It sat on the table, a flat half-oval. Dorothy stared at his head, where the hair grew short and tufty out of a rectangular shaved patch. Staples held the seam of a surgery scar together.

He grabbed at the hat and went to pull it back on. ‘It’s OK,’ she said. ‘You don’t have to. Sorry, I know it’s very warm in here.’ She reached the tin of chocolate chip cookies down from the top shelf, pausing to lean a wrist against the shelf, her head on her arm, tears hot in her eyes. ‘Condensed milk and brown sugar,’ she told the man, her voice wobbling and jolly, and sat back down.

‘Thank you. But I won’t have one.’

‘Of course. The gluten thing.’ She bit one and chewed.

‘I should really be going.’

‘My husband would know if we need to switch mechanics,’ she said. ‘It’s his territory.’ They both looked at their hands. ‘Do you mind if I ask?’ Dot pointed to her hairline, to the place on her head that corresponded to that place on his.

‘No,’ he said, ‘just some surgery.’

‘Were you a surgeon, back in India?’

He laughed for a long time. ‘No.’

‘Sorry.’

‘Don’t be. I’m flattered.’

‘Do you mind if I ask how old you are?’

‘I’m twenty-two.’

Dot thought about what she was doing at twenty-two. At twenty-two she had bumped into Daniel in town and gone back to his place where they had made love, a holiday from real life already, over a long afternoon. Later they’d gone to hear a band. She couldn’t remember the flat she lived in then but she remembered the Uprising poster on the wall above Daniel’s bed, the soft cotton of the paisley bedspread, the sweet, dusty smell of the carpet in his room. The way he said, ‘I just want to check . . .’ and did something and she responded involuntarily and he said, ‘Gotcha.’ She wondered what she would do if she bumped into him now. She hadn’t seen him since the funeral, where Ruth had reported that he smelled of beer. ‘When I was twenty-two,’ she told the man, ‘I didn’t have two kids to support.’

‘What did you do?’

‘Well, I was a teacher. I’m still a teacher. Maternity leave.’

He nodded and looked down at the orange-and-white peel on his plate. ‘Really?’ he said. ‘Very interesting. What subjects?’

‘Art, English, but I really haven’t taught for a while.’

‘You’re an artist.’

‘No. I’m not an artist like you’re not a surgeon.’

‘Like I’m not a tree surgeon.’

Dot laughed. ‘Yes. How long have you lived here?’

‘Since school. My parents had family here, we came when I was seven.’

Same as her. ‘Long time.’ There was a simple sum to do but she wasn’t capable of the maths.

‘Fifteen years.’

Fifteen years ago she had been . . . she imagined a steamer docking. Crowds of people. Steerage. ‘Did you come on a boat?’

‘Don’t be silly! Sorry,’ he said.

‘It’s OK. Sorry. I don’t go out a lot. Not that that’s any excuse.’

‘In a plane.’

‘Have you been back?’

‘Yes, every year.’

‘Such a long way. With little ones.’

‘But when we get there the family looks after us.’

The phone rang. Dorothy made a surprised face at the man, like, nobody ever calls this number, which was true. ‘Hello?’ She smiled at him while she listened, a bubble of hysteria rose in her throat and she felt hot, or hot for him, it wasn’t clear. She mouthed ‘The childminder’. He nodded, though he could not have understood.

Chloe was crying; sobbing, on the verge of hyperventilation. Dorothy walked the phone into the hallway. ‘Slow down, it’s all right. What’s the matter?’ The girl’s cat had just been – she could hardly get the sentence out – the cat had been run over. She heard the brakes and ran out of the house and the car drove off and there was the – lying in the – just gone. ‘Oh no,’ Dot said. ‘Oh, you poor thing.’

‘I just don’t think I can come in. I’m sorry. I know the children will be waiting. I have to go and bury . . .’ Chloe’s voice rose in a semi-wail and she said, ‘Oh god, Dorothy, I’m sorry.’

‘No you mustn’t be, the kids will be fine, I’ll call Kate, she can bring them home. You attend to your poor cat. Take care of yourself. I’ll call you tomorrow.’

Her friend Kate’s home phone and cell phone both rang until the recorded answering service picked up. It was very nearly time for the school bell to announce the end of lessons, and the children would stand there while the playground emptied, waiting. Grace haughty, head in a book. The frizzy-haired nursery teacher holding Donald’s hand. Amy hanging off the monkey bars, frightened to jump down, no one to catch her. Dorothy thumped herself lightly on the breastbone with a fist. She was there. Never mind the constricted throat, the insects prickling her skin, the way she didn’t exist from the ribs down. She poured a glass of water from the sink and drank it in two gulps. ‘You know,’ she said to the man, and wiped her mouth.

He rose to his feet. ‘I should go.’

‘Wait.’ She put a hand on his arm. He looked down at it, and back at her, and she moved it away. ‘Sorry. Would you like to come with me on the school run? The mums will all be there, you could bring your flyers.’

‘Oh.’ The man bit his thumbnail. ‘We usually try to book people in to an appointment then and there. For the commission. But OK, sure. I’ll come.’

‘Great!’ The burst of sound surprised them both. ‘What’s your name?’

‘Sam.’ Mandarin peel lay scattered on the table, cottony with pith.

‘I’m Dorothy.’ She looked in her bag for the keys but it was weeks since she had taken them out and the bag was full of rubbish, receipts and bus tickets and old tissues, soft as she sifted through them. She dumped the contents on the table and snatched a tampon and a crumby, lidless lip-balm out of sight. ‘God, we’re going to be late.’

Sam pointed to the copper tangle half hidden by a folded map for the family walk at the sculpture park, a walk they had abandoned early when the sky began to draw away from her and she needed to lie down and hug the earth. ‘Keys?’

‘Thank you. I’ll just be a minute.’ In the bathroom she locked the door, but the small orange prescription bottle was empty.

The air out on the wet path came as a shock. Thin trees shimmered against the sharp sky. Sweat covered Dorothy’s body, under her bra, down the backs of her legs above the weatherproof boots that were stiff with lack of wear. She paused by the letterbox, one hand on the fence post, Hannah strapped froggily into her buggy, covered in the striped fleece blanket that was crusted in spots with old milk. It was possible Dot was going to be sick. The front door was still open but if she went to close it she’d slip back into the force field of the house. ‘Can you shut the door?’ she called to Sam, and turned away and sang to the baby a little.

‘Did you stop teaching when you had children?’ Sam asked, catching them up near the corner. Dot adjusted her step to match his. He walked slowly and time was running out to get to the school gates.

‘We might be too late for the other mums,’ she said. ‘I think we need to step it up.’

They rounded the bend of the quiet street and got onto the main road. A car passed, close and fast, and Dorothy flinched. ‘Do you mind if we –’ she said to Sam, and dropped behind him to walk on the inside of the footpath. Other people walked in and out of shops and that woman with the pink hair was waiting at the pedestrian crossing with her ferret on a lead. Still there, still crazy. The colour lifted Dot’s feet and carried her. ‘What does your wife do at the bank?’

‘She’s a teller.’

‘Does she like it?’

‘Yes, actually. She does.’

‘Do you have an iPod?’

‘No.’

‘I don’t like how if you put the ear-buds in before you turn the music on you can hear the blood pulsing in your ears. Not so much hear it as feel it.’ She made the noise, doof doof.

He looked at her and shook his head. ‘Sorry, I don’t get what you’re saying.’

‘I just need to talk.’ She really needed to breathe, too, but if she thought about breathing it would become impossible, voluntary, and they couldn’t have that. In a low voice she vocalised the words from all the text she read, advertising hoardings and car names, Trail Blazer, Supa Deal, He Wants You, It’s Back!!!.

The neighbourhood gleamed under a slick layer of rain, and the air carried damp trees, traffic fumes, dry-cleaning chemicals. They passed the greengrocer with bright buckets of gerberas and lisianthus out the front, and the Turkish café and the fetish shop and the newsagent and the local councillor’s office and turned another corner and the street was lined with parked cars and a long barred fence chained with bicycles, and reached the zebra crossing that led to the school gates. Adults milled in the schoolyard. ‘You live close,’ Sam said.

‘Yes, we’re lucky.’

Afternoons were apparently just the same as ever – scuddy clouds, leaves flipping, the community faces flushed and cheery, thick hair pitched in the wind, sturdy legs straddling linen shopping bags packed with crackers and fruit for the playground. At first the faces were strange, every one, and then the crowd began to split into individual blobs and features, animated mouths, eyes, Kate’s horsy teeth, Fleur’s freckles, people Dorothy knew. She steered Sam towards some women from the book club she had once belonged to.

‘Wow!’ said Fleur, arms wide. ‘Oh Dottie, well done!’

Dorothy went sideways, stiffly, into the embrace. ‘No big deal,’ she said. The women looked questioningly at Sam. ‘This is Sam. Fleur, Kate. He’s from the mechanic’s. A new mechanic?’ she prompted him.

‘No,’ he said, ‘but under new management.’

‘He’s got flyers.’

‘Oh.’ Fleur’s gaze was stuck on the beanie. ‘Thanks.’ The women politely took them.

‘Because you were having trouble with your brakes, weren’t you?’ Dorothy asked Kate.

‘Oh – yes. They fixed it.’ She shrugged and smiled at Sam. ‘Not your mechanics, sorry. Rivals, I suppose! But we’ll definitely come for a quote next time.’

‘Thank you.’ He nodded and wandered a little way off to pass leaflets to other people. The bell rang and the doors to the school building opened and suddenly children were everywhere, darting around the quadrangle, the thud of soccer balls against a wall, shrieks and giggling.

There was Grace, with her friends. Their pod circled the crowd, arms folded. Last time Dot had been here her daughter still ran around the netball court, playing games. ‘What do they talk about?’ she asked Kate.

‘God only knows,’ Kate said. ‘I roll my eyes.’

The nursery kids were let out. Donald sprinted up and dumped his schoolbag at her feet and said, ‘Where’s Chloe?’

‘She couldn’t come today.’

‘Mummy! Can I go to Ivan’s house, please, can I,’ and shook his hands in prayer and Ivan’s mother from the other side of the playground raised an arm and nodded, and Dorothy called, ‘Thank you,’ and kissed her son’s ducking head before he raced away.

‘Are you going to that road-safety meeting?’ Fleur asked.

‘Can’t,’ Kate said. ‘Ted’s got shingles.’

‘Oh no.’

‘You should go.’ This was to Dorothy, with significant eyes.

‘I know.’ The cautionary tale. Poster girl for speed limits, sober driving, pedestrian crossings, chicanes, judder bars, cycling helmets, slow down signs, check before you step notices, rigorous broken yellow line parking prosecution and not letting your life get out of control. ‘Maybe it would be too much. I don’t want to freak people out.’

‘Dottie, you lost your sister. It happened. People are freaked out. It is a freak-out situation.’

‘I don’t want Eve to be some sort of exhibit.’

Kate nodded. ‘Well. That’s different.’

‘How did Ted get shingles?’

‘Kids. Chicken pox. Stress. Midlife crisis. Take your pick. At least it’s keeping him where I can see him.’

The wind licked coldly at Dorothy’s head. She had once had a beanie, like Sam. She shouldn’t have thrown it on the fire.

Sam walked towards them, giving a half-wave. ‘Thank you, Dorothy,’ he said.

‘Any takers?’

‘A few. I’d better be going.’ He smiled at Grace, who’d attached herself sinuously to her mother’s body. ‘Hello.’

‘Mummy,’ she said, nuzzling Dorothy’s upper arm. ‘You’re here.’

Dorothy stroked her daughter’s honeyish hair, wanted the hug to go on for ever. ‘We’re going to the playground,’ she said to Sam over Grace’s head. ‘Would you like to come?’ Amy doofed into the backs of her legs – ‘Mama!’ – and she nearly lost her balance. ‘Don’t do that,’ Dot said loudly. ‘Don’t do that to me.’

‘Don’t do that to Mum you stupid idiot,’ said Grace.

Amy looked at them. A decision was made and her face dropped and she hung her head. Dorothy lowered herself to the ground on one knee and pulled her into a hug. ‘Sorry,’ she said. ‘Sorry for giving you a fright. I didn’t mean to shout.’

‘Who’s he?’ Amy’s voice buried in her neck.

‘This is Sam.’ Getting up was going to be difficult. Dot put a hand forward to the wet asphalt, backside in the air, and pushed up all her weight through one knee. Fabric squeaked around the seams of her trousers and blood whumped in her ears. They were the last ones left in the schoolyard.

At the playground Amy chewed a blob of gum she had found under a bench. Dorothy opened a palm and the girl craned her head forward and spat out the gum, green and tooth-ridged. The bin was overstuffed with fast-food boxes, and Dot shook the gum off onto the streaky steel hub on the top. Sam was pushing Hannah on the smallest swing; the baby kicked her chubby legs and beamed.

‘My brother owns a car dealership,’ Sam said as the child swung back and forth in front of him. ‘If your husband is ever interested in trading in the people mover.’

‘Do you work for him as well?’

‘Sometimes.’

‘Older brother?’

‘Yes.’

‘Are you close?’

Sam smiled. He had dimples. ‘It’s very nice when siblings get on.’

‘OK, not an answer.’

‘Sorry?’

‘Nothing.’ Grace had joined up with some boys from the big school and was sitting on a skateboard at the top of the slide. ‘Grace!’ The girl ignored her. The skateboard tipped forward, front wheels in the air over the steep metal trough. ‘Grace!’ Dorothy ran to the slide, legs chafing, her voice low and betraying panic, as though her daughter was an unleashed Rottweiler. ‘Get off there now. Get off!’

Grace scowled and pushed the skateboard down the slide. At the bottom it shot and skidded along the asphalt. She slid down after it, controlled, stately. ‘Jesus, Mum, I wasn’t going to do it.’

Raindrops spotted the playground as though shaken from the trees. The sky condensed. A large incongruous seabird lifted itself from the asphalt into flight, legs hanging heavy beneath it. More rain fell, and steadier, and mothers and children crowded to get out the safety gate. Sam brought the baby to the buggy and settled her in while Dot shook open the folded rain cover. She domed it over Hannah and the baby cried, as she always did, her little hands reaching for her mother from behind the clear plastic sheet, outraged that she had become removed by this layer, made blurry. Sam produced a broken umbrella from his plastic bag and held its stingray tatters over them all, pushing the buggy with his other hand as they made their way, centurions in turtle formation, through the security gate and along the street. Huddled beneath the waterproof fabric, Grace and Amy in front splashing water from the puddles, this kind man at her side, Dorothy’s heart opened and she felt she could stay outside in all weathers, walk for miles. The rain, the clear plastic, the wet leaves – all were concrete, touchable, safe.

At the front door, Dot shooed the girls inside and rocked the buggy over the threshold, unclicking the domes on the plastic cover and pulling Hannah into her arms. Sam hesitated.

‘Do you want to wait out the rain again?’ she asked.

He doffed the umbrella. ‘You did have an umbrella,’ she said, as though naming the object for the first time. She reached out and softly pinched the rim, where a spoke bobbled through the nylon. ‘Sam, thank you.’

‘You’re welcome.’

For a moment longer they stood grinning at each other.

‘I’ll talk to my husband about the car. You could come back and I’ll sign the forms. Make an appointment for an engine check or whatever it is mechanics do.’

‘Can we watch TV?’ Grace in the small entranceway, tracking mud over the floor.

‘Grace! Shoes off! Help your sister.’

Sam said, ‘Yes, I’ll come back. Thank you for the fruit.’

She was distracted, crouching down to put Amy’s slippers on, and when she looked up he was running through the rain, his heels lifting behind him.

‘Thank you,’ she called, and he waved, the umbrella flapping above him, shattered raindrops spraying from it, every which way.



The next day while the baby was sleeping there was another knock on the door. Dorothy shut the oven door to keep the heat from escaping, and ran to answer it. A woman with a clipboard introduced herself, waving the photo ID on her lanyard as though it were a hypnotist’s watch chain. ‘I’m from the council. We’re doing a survey about neighbourhood feeling, the sense you have of belonging in this area. Do you have twenty minutes now or should I come back?’

She ticked the 25–39 age box. Her last year in that bracket. The urgent need came over her to make the most of it. Yeah! She beamed at the council worker, wanted to throw a hand up for a high-five.

‘Are you satisfied with this neighbourhood as a place to live?’

‘What is your experience of road safety in this neighbourhood?’

‘Do you have access to physical and mental health facilities in this neighbourhood?’

‘Do you consider most of your friends to come from this neighbourhood?’

‘Can you describe for me, demonstrating with boundaries on this map, your sense of where the neighbourhood begins and ends?’

There was a mechanic’s on the back street behind the bank. And another on the edge of the playing fields by the adventure playground. Everywhere she walked now, Dot looked for those large roller doors, the open squares of darkness within, the dank air that smelled so headily of petrol, cubicle offices with glass windows like the graphed pages of Grace’s maths book, men in overalls, turning pads, hydraulic lifts, oily floors.