The Forrests

6. Mojo





What she thought of as her situation, a sleeping bag on her boss’s couch, no utility bills in her name, still living out of the knapsack that had accompanied her travels, Evelyn felt most keenly when visiting Dot. It was all very well being penniless and heartbroken and back in her job at the florist’s as though the past months had never happened, but the romance faded at her sister’s rented house miles from anywhere, ages on the bus to a neighbourhood of charity shops and the TAB, here in the constant turn of the washing-machine drum, the bottles forever sterilising on the stovetop. In this family home she was an alien, the night’s adventures clinging like foreign gas. Dorothy welcomed her, happy to have adult company that came without judgement, but Evelyn wished she would for once finish a sentence. Half the times Dot went to Grace there wasn’t anything the matter, and if she was being fed, or changed, or entertained, the conversation inevitably dwindled, funnelled into the baby’s endless need. It was a surprise of the mildly unpleasant kind, how time-consuming this small creature was, and Evelyn couldn’t help but suspect, punnishly, that Dottie milked it, let every spill and leakage require maximum clean-up, burped the baby at length, hand-scrubbed a square of muslin and pegged it out after a single use, because it was a way of occupying time. What else was she going to do, home all day long in the new-mum smock costume she had taken to wearing?

Andrew would come back from work each night and kiss his wife and cuddle the baby then disappear into the garage where his painting was set up.

‘Is it me?’ Eve wondered, and Dottie said, ‘No, it’s not you. He needs to do some painting every day. It keeps his head together.’

‘Like the karate.’

‘Yes.’

‘Whatever it takes.’

‘Yes.’

Sometimes they met in a café and just as Dorothy’s pot of tea or heated-up pie was served Grace would squall until Dot, refusing Eve’s help, took her outside. Mostly Evelyn wound up eating and drinking alone, reading the newspaper or watching her sister pace the footpath as she joggled the baby, and then Dot would flurry in all apologies and close to tears, slurp her tea, have a mouthful of cake and announce she had to go.

Despite being a colonised baby domain, some weeks Dorothy’s house was the only really human place Eve found herself. She had to admit that her social life was out of control. She also had to admit that social life was a euphemism. Her random f*cking was out of control. They lived in a small place. Sooner or later she was going to f*ck her way into a corner and would have to leave town. This was what she said to her sister one afternoon in the tiny back garden, Grace fatly in her nappy on a blanket, eating pieces of cut-up peach with her fingers, crawling to swipe at the Disney ball and watch it roll.

‘A corner,’ Eve said. ‘I can see it. There will be no one left.’

‘Well why are you doing it? I worry about you.’

‘It’s not that bad. I’m exaggerating. One day I’ll meet someone lovely.’

‘Not in a bar.’

‘Dorothy, nice men go to bars too. Anyway, I met this guy last night who was really sweet and so funny –’

‘And that’s another thing, you always go to their place. What if some psycho? It’s completely self-destructive.’

‘Do you want to hear the story or not?’

Of course Dorothy did. At least one of them was having a life. Andrew worked until six every night and early in the morning he went to the gym. More than anything in the world she hated that gym. No, perhaps she hated karate more than the gym, because that was what he did there. If Andrew didn’t do karate, if he didn’t go to the gym, he got strung out, so she tried to love karate, but mostly she tried not to drink alone. ‘Go on,’ she said. ‘Nothing too grisly.’ More than once Eve had recounted some sexual disaster explicitly as she held the baby in her arms, which made Dot wince although Grace was too young to understand.

‘I might be off intimate detail for life.’ Evelyn went on to tell Dot how this man had talked non-stop, how he constantly described what he was doing to her or worse, what she was doing to him – ‘You’re squeezing my balls’ – until it had stopped being amusing and gone way past turning her on. He kept going even when she asked him point blank to stop. Finally, after ‘I’m reaching for the condom’ she’d jumped out of bed and yelled ‘LA LA LA’ in his face.

‘What did he do then?’

‘He asked me to leave. So I did – “I’m pulling my knickers on now, I’m getting into my jeans, you’re lying on the bed staring, I’m looking for my shoes, I’m not giving you my phone number, you’re storming out of the room, you’re slamming the bathroom door, I’m picking up my bag, I’m LEAVING YOUR HOUSE.” ’

‘Shh.’ Dot gestured at the fence, the closeness of the neighbours. ‘And what does Kimiko think? When you come home at three in the morning?’

‘I’m very quiet. I’m a good girl, Dot. She doesn’t mind as long as I’m at work on time.’

‘Fresh as a daisy.’

‘Ha.’

‘Seriously, you should be careful.’ An aeroplane inched across the sky. Dot looked at her sister, the tawny hair, the energy rising off her like tendrils of smoke, her undeniable f*ckability, and said, ‘Do you regret coming back?’

‘Not yet. Sometimes. Yes. It’s only been a few months but it’s been like forever.’

‘You know Daniel’s in South America. Guatemala or something. Or is that Central? He sent a postcard, don’t tell Andrew. Wait, I’ll get it.’

The mention of his name made Eve want to rip a hunk of grass from the earth. This could not be done, and nothing could be said to her sister. Better to bury Daniel because face it, she’d had no right to him and she’d wanted him for so long and followed him across the world and by anyone’s standards she probably deserved to have him leave her but she could never, never tell Dot. How to know whether the secrecy – really the lying – came from love, or shame, or the sheer envy of having been the one left out by those two for all that time? They’d never talked about it but she knew, like she knew about Michael being a pot fiend when their parents insisted it was just that he was shy. Could she judge whether or not Daniel had been worth it? She was frightened that, if she looked in her heart, she would discover that he was, and would have to face up to what that meant, now he was gone. ‘Actually, I should get home. I’m on dinner. What should I make?’

‘Pasta? I don’t know, you’re the cook.’

‘Yeah. Daniel doesn’t send me postcards.’ Partly it was what Dorothy would expect to hear, if she were to maintain the pretence, and partly it was true, and it hurt, and it felt good to say it.

‘He probably doesn’t know where you live. How would he know where you are?’

Dot’s voice had risen the way it did when she felt defensive. Huh. Eve lifted Grace high in the air and drew her in, giggling, for kisses and cuddles. ‘Bye bye, lovely one,’ she said.

Grace stopped laughing. She gazed over Eve’s shoulder and said, ‘Bye bye.’

Dorothy’s hand flew to her mouth.

‘Oh my god,’ said Eve.

‘Did you hear that? Say it again.’

‘Bye bye,’ Evelyn said, and Grace said, ‘Bye bye, Evie.’

‘She’s talking!’

The baby girl looked from her mother to her aunt and back again with a wide crescent smile, amazing connections firing in her brain. ‘Bye bye.’