Lessons From Ducks (16 page)

Matt watched her, amused. “Some kind of new party game?” he asked.

“He can’t have gone far,” Anna said, “I was only gone a minute.” She started picking up cushions and peering underneath them.

“Dad?”

“It’s alright. Who are you looking for?”

“He must be here somewhere,” Anna moved a pot plant to one side to look behind it.

“
Who
must be here somewhere?”

“Buddy.” She lifted up the bottoms of the curtains.

“Buddy?”

She stopped to put her hands on her hips and throw him a look of exasperation. “Yes, Buddy.”

“And Buddy is…?”

“Let me find him and you’ll find out.”

“We could help if you’d just tell us what you’re looking for.”

“Not what, who.”

“Here we go.”

“Or is it whom?” she paused from moving the TV.

Matt rolled his eyes. “Don’t start this again.”

“I’m not starting anything. But if I tell you who I’m looking for it will ruin the surprise.”

They watched Anna scan the room, which as far as he could see, was empty apart from them. “Ann, is it a good surprise? Or one of those, ‘hey, meet my new friend Buddy who is a decapitated head
,’
kind of surprise.”

“Decapitated head? What rubbish are you on about now?”

“You gotta admit you’re acting a little odd
.
It’s either that or your friend is playing the best game of hide and seek I’ve ever seen.” He cupped his hands around his mouth and said in a singsong voice. “Come out, come out, wherever you are.”

“Don’t be patronizing.”

“I’m not.”

“You are.”

“Fine, I am. But come on, it’s pretty obvious there’s no one here but us.”

Anna was about to reply when she heard a faint, CHEEP. Given that she was listening for it, she was the only one who heard it.

“Aha!” Anna stabbed a finger victoriously towards Matt. “There he is.”

“Who? Where?”

“I’m not sure. Be quiet while I listen.”

Matt sighed and made a zipping motion across his lips and threw away a pretend key.

“Shush,” Anna hissed. She had heard another faint CHEEP.

In the silence they all heard it.

‘CHEEP CHEEP’

It came from the kitchen and as she rounded the corner of the bench Anna realised she had left a cupboard door open, the one where the bowls were kept. Nestled snugly inside her breakfast bowl and looking proud of himself, was Buddy.

“There you are,” Anna cooed. “Don’t you dare do that again, you hear me? You gave me such a fright.”

‘CHEEP’

Anna scooped him out of the bowl gently. He had left her a murky souvenir. “Thanks,” she told him. “Guys, meet Buddy.” She thrust out her hands to reveal the little yellow duck.

Oscar squealed with delight.

“You bought a new duck?” Matt asked.

“No I hatched it.”

“Maybe you should back up a couple of steps and start at the beginning. Did you just say you hatched a duck?”

“Yes.”

“From an egg?”

“That’s usually where ducks hatch from, yes.”

He gave her a weird look. “You didn’t lay it, did you?”

“Don’t be absurd.”

“I hate to point out the obvious but this conversation got a little absurd a few minutes ago, and it was nothing to do with me.”

“Shut up dad,” Oscar said, startling them both. He stroked Buddy’s back, who preened under his touch. “You ask Anna questions but you never let her answer.”

Matt’s mouth gaped open. His son had never spoken to him like that before. “That’s not true.”

“Yes it is.”

“It’s not. Is it?”

“Yes dad, it is. Now let her tell us how she hatched Buddy.”

Anna enjoyed the gobsmacked expression on Matt’s face. “There’s really not that much to tell. I found an egg by the back gate and it was still warm, so I figured I’d give the poor thing a fighting chance, so I kept it as warm as I possibly could and a few days ago, out came Buddy.”

“You kept it warm?” Oscar asked.

She nodded.

“How? Did you sit on it like a mother duck does?”

Matt snorted. Anna ignored him.

“No I’m a little heavier than a mother duck. I might have squashed it if I did that.”

“Just a little,” Matt said.

“Ok,” said Oscar. “So how did you keep it warm then?”

“Sometimes I wrapped it up all warm and snug around a hot water bottle, and sometimes I put it under this special heat lamp I bought,” she pointed, “that is hot like the sun.”

“Wouldn’t that have cooked it?”

“Ok maybe not as hot as the sun, but pretty hot. And other times I tucked it under my shirt and let my body keep it warm.”

“Wow.”

“Yes indeed. Wow. And it worked.”

“Can I hold him?”

“Of course. Sit down on the couch so he doesn’t fall.”

“Can he fly?” Oscar asked as Anna placed Buddy on his lap.

“No. Besides the fact he’s still a baby and his wings are just tiny tips still, see, he’s a breed of duck that doesn’t fly. Like Mrs Dudley and the others.”

At the mention of Mrs Dudley Oscar looked sad. “Buddy doesn’t have a mother anymore.”

“No,” she agreed. “He doesn’t. Not his real mother anyway. But he has me to look after him, and if you like, you can help look after him too.”

“I can?”

“Sure. I bet he’d love it if you came round every now and then and played with him.”

Oscar looked hopefully at his father. “Can I dad?”

“It’s ok with me if it’s ok with Anna.”

“I wouldn’t have suggested if it wasn’t,” Anna said. Hadn’t he realised by now that she didn’t say anything she didn’t mean? Of course, it would mean that she’d have to accept them in her life for at least a short while longer which wasn’t ideal, but she figured she could live with that.

Chapter twenty

Somehow, when Anna had said ‘every now and then,’ Oscar took that as in invitation to visit every day on the days he stayed with his father. Taking full and shameless advantage of the fact that Anna was home on holiday, Oscar would put pedal to the metal and arrive promptly at Anna’s house at twenty past three. Given that school was across town and the bell rang at three, this either meant he rode like a demon or hitched a tail wind on a passing car. He would arrive breathless but excited, and before the helmet was even off his head he would have mumbled “Hi Anna” and have pushed past her into the house on his way to find Buddy.

“Nice to see you too,” Anna would say to the air in his wake.

After a few days of this, Buddy’s internal clock kicked in and at twenty past three he would be waiting at the front door, chirping eagerly in anticipation.

“I could take it personally you know,” Anna told him, “that you’re not as excited to see me in the mornings.”

‘CHEEP’

“Yes I know I’m not an eight year old boy. Don’t hold it against me.”

‘CHEEP CHEEP’

“That’s not fair. We have our fun too, don’t we? Didn’t you enjoy the bath last night?”

Anna had. She’d forgone the daily showers, fitted in around work constraints, in favour of a long and leisurely evening bath. With a glass of red wine in one corner and a scented candle (frangipani) in the other, she would roll up a hand towel for neck support and run the water as close to the top as she dared without it spilling over. Then she would sink in and let her body soak until her fingers were wrinkled like prunes and the wine was all gone. Each time the water got cold she would prise up one end of the plug enough to let an inch or two of water out
and run the hot tap until the water reached the desired temperature once more. She had a small footstool beside the bath to place her magazines or books on when she wasn’t reading them. Two nights previously, lulled into a semi slumber by the warm water, the book had fallen to the floor and she was laying there with her eyes shut when she heard a scramble beside the tub and then there was a plop! Water splashed onto her face.

“What the - ?” she’d sat up, feeling for the rolled up hand towel – which had fallen into the water – and failing to find that using what she thought was the sleeve of her top off the floor but which turned out to be her knickers, to dry her eyes, but not before she burnt her toe on the candle and knocked the, now thankfully empty, wine glass into the water.

The culprit was now paddling happily up and down the bathtub admiring his reflection in the polished porcelain.

“Buddy,” she said, “how lovely of you to join me.”

‘CHEEP’

“Yes I know I left you all alone. I was enjoying a bath as you can see.”

‘CHEEP CHEEP’

“No I don’t think it’s selfish at all. You can’t begrudge me a little pampering.”

‘CHEEP’

Buddy felt deserving of a little pampering too. Anna enjoyed sharing her bath tub with him, right up until he used it as a toilet that is, the little white splodge emerging from under his jaunty little tail, and mingling in with the bath water. Anna briefly wondered if it would sink or float but she didn’t hang around long enough to find out.

Thinking about the bath with a smile on her face, Anna jumped when there was a knock at the door. She checked the clock on the oven as she dried her hands on a tea towel.

“Three twenty,” she noted, “right on time.”

“Hi Anna,” Oscar said craned his neck impatiently to see past her to where Buddy was turning in excited circles.

‘CHEEP CHEEP CHEEP CHEEP’

“I could be wrong, but I think someone’s happy to see you,” Anna said, watching the duckling trip and somersault over his feet. Oscar dropped his school bag and jersey on the floor under the coat rack and for a split second Anna caught a glimpse of the future that should have been. She took a sharp breath.

Don’t scare the boy.

“How was school?” she asked, her tone even.

Oscar shrugged as he picked Buddy up. “Ok.”

“Learn anything earth shatteringly exciting?”

It was a question her father used to ask her. Anna didn’t even know she remembered that until the words came out of her mouth.

“Nope.” Buddy nibbled lightly at Oscar’s cheek with his beak, as if searching for bugs in the grass. Oscar giggled.

“Really? How disappointing. What’s the point of going to school then?”

“To eat your lunch.”

It was a joke Oscar had heard his father say many times.

Anna laughed then stopped when she heard a strange beep. Unaccustomed to the sound, it took Anna a minute to work out what it was as she’d forgotten she’d set the timer on the oven, a complicated business she wasn’t even sure had worked until that moment.

“It’s ready,” she declared, sliding her hands into a pair of blue oven gloves. They had a picture of a red rooster on one side. It had the expression of a rooster heading for the chopping block. She didn’t even know she owned oven gloves. She’d half-heartedly on a whim decided to clean out the fourth drawer that morning, - mainly because of a mountain of plastic supermarket bags that were threatening to overflow and take control of the kitchen – and underneath them all the oven gloves sat serenely, apparently unused apart from one small, unidentifiable stain. The sight of them had given her an idea.

“What’s ready?” Oscar, buddy safely ensconced in hand, climbed up onto one of the stools at the breakfast bar. Anna had stopped worrying about him carting Buddy around; he was more careful than she was. Also with each passing day Buddy increased in both size and robustness. She was genuinely surprised each morning when she looked into his box at how much bigger he seemed than when she’d put him in there the night before.

“You, my friend, should count yourself lucky. I’ve only baked one other cake in my life before today, and it was a terrible flop.” She paused with her oven-glove-clad hands on the oven door handle to give him a hopeful look. “Let’s hope this one is more successful.”

The door fell open with a flourish and out wafted a small cloud of smoke. “Oh darn,” she said, waving it away. “I knew there was a reason I didn’t do this.”

But when she pulled out the cake itself she was pleased to see it was unscathed, the smoke traced to an old oven fry that lay forlornly burnt to a crisp on the bottom element. Anna used a pair of tongs to pick it up and throw it out the kitchen window.

“Well will you look at that,” she said, pleased.

Oscar looked.

“What is it?”

“What do you mean, what is it? What does it look like? It’s a cake of course.”

“I meant what flavour is it. Like chocolate, vanilla, or something else?” Oscar couldn’t off the top of his head think of any other flavours of cake. The only ‘cake’ he ever ate was on his birthday, and it came from the supermarket. A slice that came in a box with fluorescent frosting and a candle that his father would replace with one of those comical ones that would magically relight itself every time you blew it out. His father thought they were hilarious. Every single time. Oscar had discovered through trial and error that the only way they could be extinguished once and for all was by flushing them down the toilet. His teacher had once said that in the event of a nuclear explosion only cockroaches would survive. Oscar was pretty sure that when the cockroaches crawled out from beneath the burning rubble those candles would light the way.

“It’s banana.”

“Well it looks nice.”

“Nice? Oscar, this cake looks better than just
nice
. It looks exactly like the cake in the picture
.”
She thrust the open page of the recipe book in front of his nose as proof.

He studied it. “Almost but not quite,” was his verdict.

Anna turned the book around and studied the picture, comparing the two. As far as she could see the cakes looked identical; golden and plump and dewy and flawless.

“What’s different?” she asked, baffled.

“It’s just, no. Nothing.”

“Spit it out Oscar.”

“Well in the picture, see,” he leant over the top of the book and pointed, “there’s a big bowl of chocolate icing ready to be put on the cake. And, see here, a cup of hot chocolate to the side. With tiny marshmallows.”

Anna hid a smile. He was right. It was the first time she had really seen a glimpse of his humour, and she liked it. He looked up at her like a Labrador puppy.

“I can do the icing and the hot chocolate,” she said. “But the marshmallows are pushing it.”

“Deal.”

For the second time that day Anna morphed into a domestic goddess and, following a recipe at the back of the cake section, she made a big batch of butter chocolate icing – most of which they ate off spoons and very little of which made it onto the actual cake – and, because of the heat from the day outside, two cups of cold milk with spoons of milo.

“You do the honours,” Anna said, passing Oscar a knife.

“No way, you baked it, you should be the one to cut it.” He tried to pass the knife back.

“I can’t. It looks so good. You’ll have to do it.”

So, tongue between teeth and forehead furrowed in concentration, Oscar carefully measured out two slices – ‘how big?’ he asked Anna. ‘Not too much for me. Bit more than that, bit more, bit more, yep that ought to do it,’ she answered when the piece was as wide as a jumbo slice of pizza  - and they ate in silence, enjoying every moist delicious crumb and licking every trace of icing off their fingers.

“Another slice?” Anna asked.

“I’d like to, really I would, but I’m stuffed.”

“Are you sure? There’s heaps here and it’ll get wasted with only me to eat it.”

“I can’t fit any more in”.

Anna shrugged. “Ok but if you change your mind let me know. I can always wrap a slice for you to take home.”

She picked up the two empty glasses and started rinsing them under the taps, using a brush to scrub the stubborn bits of milo that had stuck to the bottom. She was feeling a sensation she could only describe as cheerful, and was therefore completely unprepared for the question when it came.

“Why don’t we ever see them?”

Anna didn’t hear him clearly at first, he said it so quietly. She picked up a tea towel and started to dry a glass. “Pardon?”

He spoke louder, but not more confidently. “How come we never see them?”

“Who?”

“Your husband and baby.”

Anna winced.

Husband. Baby.

Two innocent words that stabbed at her flesh like shrapnel from the grenade he had just unknowingly lobbed into the room. She turned and looked at him.

“How do you –?” she couldn’t finish the sentence, but he understood anyway.

“The clothes –” he pointed towards where one of her husband’s shirts was draped casually over the back of the couch – “and the toys.” Her eyes followed his to the toybox in the corner. There was a colourful ball and a tin drum set sitting on the floor in front of it, but only one drumstick; she’d been unable to find the other one.

How could she even begin to explain? She couldn’t. She doubted she could explain it rationally to the highest trained therapist in the world, let alone an eight year old boy.

“It’s complicated,” she said.

“You mean I wouldn’t understand because I’m just a kid.” There was no disappointment or resentment in his voice when he said it. It was said as a matter of fact.

“Well, yes. I guess so. Although to be honest, I’m sure many adults would struggle to understand it too.”

“It’s ok, you don’t have to tell me.” He looked back towards the toys. “They’re messy though, aren’t they. Every day they leave things lying around. Do you always tidy up for them? My nana used to nag me to pick up my things when I was smaller. I’m much better at it now.”

“Does your nana live with you?” She wondered if he meant Matt’s mother.

“She used to. But then she got sick,” he continued.

Once upon a time she might have asked questions, these days she had a policy of ‘don’t ask, don’t tell.’ If someone wanted you to know something they would tell you. But he had opened up to her and she didn’t like to leave it hanging, as if she didn’t care about what he’d said.

“I’m sorry to hear she’s ill,” she said.

“She’s not anymore.”

“Well that’s good to hear.”

“She died.”

“She–
what
?”

“She died.”

“Yes that’s what I thought you said. I’m sorry to hear that.”

Oscar studied the counter top where Buddy was preening himself, trying – and failing – to balance on one foot and falling comically. “Thanks.” He’d heard it before.

There was an awkward silence. Being the only adult present in the conversation, Anna again abandoned her policy, just this once. “When did she –?”

“Two years ago.”

“Was it –?”

“Cancer.”

“Oh.”

She looked at his little face, eyes still downcast. Her heart, relatively unscathed for the majority of her life, had taken a hammering over recent years. Until now, she’d even doubted there was much left of it that wasn’t blackened by grief and pockmarked by pain or stained with sadness. But hearing Oscar tell her that his grandmother had died, she felt a familiar jolt inside as something withered and died with a familiar dying wail of “life isn’t faaaaaaair!” trailing off into silence. Well, she thought, that ought to have taken care of the rest of it.