The Good Parents (5 page)

‘Forbes!’ Rhonda never let him down. Besides, a couple of years ago Rhonda had undergone a near-death experience. She had
a heart attack and
saw the portals
before she was revived. It gave her a sort of moral authority.

Her father talked to Tod on the phone and arranged it all. He knew how to make a good fellow of himself, old Tod. It took
her in for a while. And then mysteriously, every cell of her body seemed to shrink away from the sight of him.

It was true that Tod did his best. He played guitar, cooked stir-fry, took a camera everywhere. When he drove his MG he wore
an Italian cap to protect his head. His hair fell out ten years ago in the week before his twenty-first birthday because his
girlfriend ran off with his best mate. There were photos of him at his party, hamming it up in a woman’s wig. He was round-faced,
snub-nosed, stocky but fit, he worked out. He’d lived in Hong Kong and London for a few years and was paying off his house,
a stark home unit twenty stops out on the train. He didn’t have a girlfriend just now, but lots of friends, at work – he sold
insurance – and at the clubs he’d joined. He heard of the job at Global Imports from a guy at the gym.

Why, when Tod was so kind to her, showed her how the trains worked, took her on drives to the Dandenongs and to his favourite
restaurants and bars – entered smiling, waving at people who didn’t see him – was she, soon after she moved in with him, so
desperate to get away? There was something increasingly intense about his chubby hands as he cooked and put down plates for
her. Instinctively she swerved away so he wouldn’t touch her when he opened the car door for her. She stopped running past
him in a towel. Once she saw him bringing in her washing when it started to rain, tenderly gathering and folding her scrappy
underwear. People often rang and cancelled outings with him. He chewed gum non-stop for his breath. Sometimes he was so tense
he roared off in his MG for a drive. There was a devastated look in his eyes when he watched television at night, gnawing
on his fingers. She wanted to write a letter about him to someone, a cruel letter about being sexually repressed. She wanted
to feel free here, not trapped by pity.

Once, in the middle of the night in his spare bedroom, she woke gasping, surfacing for air. In her sleep, Miriam Kershaw’s
words had come back to her, in her English accent, from her bed with her eyes closed. Her last words.

Tod means death. Don’t go with that boy
.

After the interview with Maynard – he told her she could start straight away – she had a coffee at the corner espresso bar
and copied down Cecile’s phone number from the notice board. Cecile happened to be home that day and told her which tram to
catch to her house. That evening Maya went back to Tod’s home unit and told him she had to live closer in now, for her new
job. She was starting work tomorrow. Good old Tod put her bag in the boot of the MG and, his jaw working overtime, his hi-fi
turned up full blast, drove her to Cecile’s.

It was night again and she was still wearing her old trackies. Was it because she was so alone that she found it hard to get
a grip on things? There was nobody she could possibly write a letter to about this. If she did, where would she begin? The
Flynns’ house. The house of the dead.

She lay back on her bed. What sort of family lived in a house like that? A man who wasn’t interested in home. A woman without
joy. Why wasn’t Dory happy? Miriam Kershaw said that was why you got cancer. Loss of hope. Had Dory been homesick? She was
a teacher, and went to church and had friends. Why hadn’t Maynard made her happy? Or she him? Maya asked him once if he’d
had any affairs before Dory was sick and he couldn’t help laughing.
Many
affairs? she corrected herself, hating to seem naïve, but by then he had his coat on and was blowing her a kiss.

But Dory had Andrew.
Is there anything I can do for you? Anything at all?
As if the whole world was in mourning for his mother.

Each time she thought of Andrew’s face she held her breath
for a moment. The underlids of his eyes were swollen like little ramparts to hold in grief. His dark hair had reddish glints
left over from childhood and his clothes were loose and crumpled on his tall, thin frame. He must have slept in them all night
beside Dory’s bed. When he smiled she saw that something which was guarded and cloudy in Maynard, in him ran clear.

He had strong, narrow fingers. She could feel them now, holding hers.

He was forever out of bounds for her. She had done something to herself which cut her off from him, as well as from her past,
and most people her own age.

Perhaps she should quit, just not ever go back.

She woke late to a rainless day and the smell of something reassuring. Toast! She sniffed the air for another human presence.
Cecile! She stumbled to the top of the stairs. Down in the kitchen Dieter was sitting on a stool at the bar, munching toast
and sorting through Cecile’s mail.

‘Dieter!’ She was even glad to see him. Usually they kept to the unspoken pact between them to ignore one another. ‘How are
you?’ She came down into the kitchen.

Dieter waved his buttery knife at the open packet of bread on the bench. ‘Help yourself.’ He must have brought the bread with
him. He kept his own jar of cherry jam in the fridge, a Swiss brand. Dieter never smiled and never had been heard to say hello
or goodbye. It was restful when you got used to it. If they needed to communicate they always got straight to the point.

‘Do you know when Cecile will be home?’ She pulled her coat on over her stale old tracksuit. Her hair needed washing.
There was sunlight on the bamboo leaves in the courtyard. She felt she’d been away in a dark land and had just come back.

He shrugged. ‘Today, I hope. We have bills to pay.’

Dieter’s status in the house was uncertain. He was a partner in Cecile’s company, Prodigal Films, and there were periods when
he was around for days on end, watching videos, making phone calls, engaged in long intense discussions with Cecile. The living
room filled up with his clothes and papers, became his personal office. He left his video collection here and a stash of ganja
in an empty 16mm canister on Cecile’s desk. He stayed up very late. Sometimes he was there in the morning, asleep in his clothes
on one of the couches.

He had thin-lidded eyes, very sharp, and a tight-closed mouth. At first sight Maya thought he looked hostile, even spiteful,
but she soon found out that he wasn’t interested in the personal. Cecile said he was like a scientist about life. When he
was working with Cecile he despised all interruptions, as if what he was doing was all that mattered in the world.

He had a room somewhere with a bunch of musicians. Although, like Cecile, he had a day job at NuVision, as a telecine operator,
he never seemed to have any money. It was always Cecile who bought their meals. He had the traveller’s mentality, Cecile said,
unworried, he was always saving up to go somewhere else.

So far Prodigal Films had made a music video for the band of one of Dieter’s housemates, and a corporate video for Cecile’s
father which they were still editing. Cecile was the director and Dieter the cinematographer.

‘You are not at work?’ Dieter said ‘v’ for ‘w’. His ‘verk’ had a driven, obsessive sound. It was a word he often used.

‘My boss’s wife died. It was her funeral yesterday.’

‘So? You are not needed in the office?’

All at once she thought of mail spilling out of the brass letterbox, faxes scrolling across the floor, the answering machine
overloaded with urgent calls. What if Maynard was too grief-stricken to work and did not come back for weeks? What would happen
to Global Imports? How could she desert him at a time like this? She was not holding the fort.

She peered at the clock on the microwave. ‘My God, is it really eleven?’

Coffee roared through the percolator on the stove. His arm shot out at once to turn off the gas. Fresh, perfectly timed coffee
was another of Dieter’s obsessions.

‘Black?’ Dieter said. ‘You buy no milk, I think.’

It was nearly twelve o’clock by the time she hurried down the street to the office. The Global letterbox in the hall had already
been cleared. Strong chemical scents seeped out from beneath Mimi’s door as she passed, perhaps a Paraffin Treatment was in
full swing. The dusty smell of the staircase made her heart lurch. He wouldn’t have come in, she told herself, not yet.

She could see the dark shape of his head through the frosted glass of the partition. He was standing at the table and further
back against the window was another shape. Somebody was with him. She hung her coat up and walked in.

He was photocopying a pile of documents. In a black suit and tie and a white shirt, as if he were still dressed for the funeral.
He looked handsome, well-groomed, in control, with the little smile fixed on the corners of his lips as he turned towards
her.

Standing behind him was a very short, broad Asian man in a well-cut black coat.

‘This is Mr T, my good friend and new partner. His full name is much too hard for us Westerners.’ There was a twinkle
between the two partners, a nodding and showing of teeth. Mr T was in control, which meant he had the money, she could tell
that from Maynard’s readiness to please.

‘And
this
is Maya.’ A little pause made her wonder if he’d already spoken of her.

‘Yes yes yes,’ said Mr T.

‘Maynard, I’m sorry …’ Her voice went creaky. There was so much she was sorry about, Dory, the flowers, her lateness, not
being there for him. ‘I wasn’t sure whether …’

‘Best to carry on, I think.’ He went on photocopying, quite stern, not looking at her. ‘Thanks for the bouquet, by the way.’
Far from being slowed by grief, he seemed energised. There was a sleek, glittering look about him that she’d never seen before.
His whole presence had changed. Was he in shock? Or did he feel relief? He was pretending not to care.

He gathered up the documents, knocked them straight, slid them into a new briefcase. ‘We’re off to eat.’ He spoke lightly,
blinking, as if to bat away her gaze. ‘There’s going to be some changes. I’ll brief you after lunch.’

There was mail to sort, a bit of filing, an invoice to prepare. She worked furiously, though her hands shook and her eyes
blurred. In fifteen minutes everything was finished. It sometimes crossed her mind that there wasn’t enough for her to do.
If his computer skills were up to scratch he could have run the show himself. He didn’t really need her. A suspicion which
she’d always dismissed now came back to her. That he’d planned all that was to happen between them even before he met her
and that was why he’d hired her. Office hours, the only time he had to himself. And you know what young women are like these
days.

It was Tod who fixed him up.

She could hardly breathe.

He didn’t need her anymore. In fact, now that she’d strayed out of the office into his private life, he wanted to get rid
of her.

It was clear he was going to sack her.

Leave now, a voice kept telling her in her head, just pack up and go, but she sat rigid at her desk, looking at the spire.

She heard him let himself in. His face was a little flushed as he took his jacket off and slung it over his chair. He came
towards her at her desk smiling, smelling of alcohol, loosening his tie. Swivelling her on her chair to face him, he pulled
her up, and kissed her in the ear in a semi-humorous way. He was strange, she felt afraid for him. Then he was holding her
close, closer and she felt his need for her, his lips cold and desperate, she tried to warm him with her mouth. She heard
their breath in the silence, the little gasps from their lips. He bent her back over the desk, and they laughed a little,
their eyes meeting as he ran his hands up her legs, pushing up her skirt, his hands smoothing and diving. Her whole body came
alive again to meet his, soft with relief.

Something, a mouse scrape, made her eyes fly open and she turned her head a fraction and caught a movement, a glitch on the
known horizon of the frosted glass of the partition, a blur that rose up and became an eye peering over the top, startled
to meet hers. Mr T, on tiptoe.

If he’d just arrived, she would have heard the roll of the handle of the door from the corridor, the click of its closing.
Even lying back like this, she would have registered the brief suck of new air. She knew by heart the full repertoire of sounds
of this place.

They must have come in together.

‘Don’t look like that,’ Maynard was saying, smiling wide, consciously, like a celebrity, holding the glass of water for her.
He helped her sit down on the chair. Everything looked different, as if the light had changed. His skin was thin and dragged
across his bones. A half-smile she’d never seen before hovered on his face, top teeth resting on bottom lip. Eyes flickering
with nerviness and deep down knowledge of himself. He was saying something about closing the office, that he and Mr T were
starting a new venture up north. ‘Don’t look like that,’ he said again in a low voice. ‘I just asked him to wait while I spoke
to you. Then one thing led to another. I’m sorry, I’m a bit pissed. I didn’t know he’d
watch
.’

But he’d been about to make love to her. He would have.

He went into the waiting room and shut the door behind him.

She’s going to pieces, she’s going to make a scene
.

The door to the corridor slammed closed.

Maynard came back into the office. ‘He’s gone, Maya. He’s waiting downstairs.’ He crouched down beside her. ‘Listen, why don’t
you come with us?’

She could keep her job, he said, and have a bit of a holiday in a warm climate to boot. Whatever that old boot was, he said,
trying to make her laugh as if she were a kid. Could she leave at once, was that possible? He’d call to see if there were
still seats on the plane. Just come as she was. She could buy what she needed when they got there. He talked cheerfully and
fast, helping her up by the elbow. And all the time, in the shine of his eyes, like tears, there was regret, that made her
even sadder.