Millie and the Night Heron (2 page)

Mum didn't like him either. One day he was kidding around in the kitchen and wrote down a shopping list for each of us.

‘What do you want?' he asked Mitchell. ‘What do you need to make your life complete?'

‘Ascooter,' Mitchell said without thinking. ‘A proper one, like Dylan's got.'

‘And you, Millie?'

The world was so full of things I needed to make my life complete, I couldn't think. There was the Gotcha Girls latest CD, sunglasses would be cool, the next book in the
Lady of Glenfair
trilogy, a pair of knee-high boots. My head spun with choices.

‘We'll come back to you, then,' he said. ‘Kate?'

‘I don't want anything,' Mum said.

‘Come on, Kate,' he wheedled. I think he knew she didn't like him and he wanted her to.

‘I have everything,' Mum said firmly. ‘I have Millie, Mitchell and Sheri, a studio – what else could I need?'

‘You're a hard woman, Kate. Sheri – no, I know what you want.' And he wrote
love, care and attention
down on the shopping list, while Sheri kissed him and Mitchell and I made being-sick noises, but quietly.

‘I want toe socks,' I said suddenly. ‘Toe socks and the next book in the
Lady of Glenfair
series.'

‘How come she gets two things?' Mitchell objected.

‘Because she's a girl, Mitch,' Brendan said, ‘and girls always want more than men want.'

‘That's not true,' Mum said, bristling.

‘Not women like Kate,' Brendan said smoothly, ‘but girls do.'

‘I'll settle for the book,' I said quickly, and watched him write it down.

It seemed hardly any time before Sheri and Mitchell moved out to live with Brendan. Sheri said that when you know something's right, you go for it. She had been alone for too long, she said, and so had Brendan. He was responsible, loving,
a professional man (he was the local school counsellor) and they shared a love of jazz, movies and good food.

Mum said it didn't bother her that it had happened fast. It was just something about him.

Sheri said, ‘You just don't want us to move. You're locked in a co-dependent relationship with me, Kate. You've been depending on me for your social life for the last five years, ever since Patrick went away. You need to get out more. You need to see more people. You need to like your own company more, learn to enjoy being alone.'

‘What's this co-dependent relationship stuff? Where did you get all this psycho-babble from?' Mum asked. ‘Brendan? It sounds just like the kind of stuff he says.'

‘Well, he did say it would be hard for you when I move.'

It was more than hard. It was totally different. I'd get home from school, thump my bag down, wander into the kitchen looking for food and there would be no one there. Sheri used to always be in the kitchen when Mitchell and I got home from school. She'd make us toast or juice or hot chocolate. She'd ask about our day, chat about hers. I'd do my homework in the back sewing room if Sheri had the radio on. She didn't mind if I chatted to her while she worked. You can't often
talk to Mum when she's working. Art is just different. You have to concentrate more. Craft, which is what Sheri did, is more user-friendly IMO. (IMO means ‘in my opinion'. Patrick and I use it in emails all the time.)

We didn't have house meetings any more. What was the point with just the two of us? We didn't have group Saturday clean-ups. Mum would clean up any old time—and suddenly, swooping down like Genghis Kahn on the barbarians. We didn't have big curry cook-ups, or crazy dancing in the kitchen, or girls' nights in with face-masks, hair dyeing, make-your-own-pizza and a tear-jerker video. Mum worked all hours in the studio. She wore old jeans and Patrick's shirts for weeks on end. She wore her paint-spattered sandshoes while her soul gathered dust in the bottom of the wardrobe.

I called the house meeting. I sent Mum an invitation. I'm not good at art, not like Mum, so I did a collage. There was a picture of a pizza, a musical note, a champagne glass and then the words:

I left it propped up on her easel where she couldn't miss it.

When I got home from school there was a note stuck on my door.

Millie,
Thank you for your invitation. I will be there with bells on. I've bought pizza makings, cranberry juice (your favourite), and there's a new top on your bed you might like to wear. I saw it this morning at the op shop and thought of you. I look forward to tonight. Give me a buzz at the studio when you get home.
Lots of love
Mum xxxxx

I didn't buzz her straightaway. I was expecting an email from Patrick. Sure enough, there it was:

>

It was a typical Patrick email. He wrote emails the way he talked.

‘So,' Mum said later, eating pizza, ‘what's on the house meeting agenda?' She was wearing her rosebud dress and she'd clipped a flower in her hair. I was wearing my denim skirt with the new top, which was very groovy. It had a picture of an Indian
goddess on it and the front of it was my favourite colour—a greeny blue, a little like the ocean.

‘I miss you,' I said. ‘You're not like you used to be when Sheri lived with us.'

‘I've been working,' Mum said. ‘I thought if I really got stuck into work, I'd feel better, you know?'

‘And do you?'

‘Well, sort of,' Mum said, ‘but not entirely. I miss Sheri, but I think it's more than that. I feel there's a hole in my life. I haven't just been working. I've been re-assessing and I've applied for a job.'

‘You've got a job,' I said. ‘You make art.'

‘I'll always make art, but making art isn't enough for me. I need a job. I need to get out more. I think we need to move. A bigger place. Somewhere with a proper gallery. I don't want to move back to the city, it's too expensive. But I want a change of scenery.'

‘But I like this scenery,' I said. ‘I like where we live. I like this town.'

‘It's all going to be different for you next year, anyway,' Mum said calmly.

I couldn't see how she could go on just eating her pizza like that as though everything was okay. My mouth felt all dry and my stomach was wobbling. I could hardly eat another piece. I ate it
anyway. It was Kate-and-Millie's Special with extra cheese and extra olives.

‘So what's the job?'

‘Head of the Art Department at Wetlands TAFE.'

‘Where's that?'

‘About 150 kilometres down the coastline,' Mum said, ‘I thought we'd go and have a look next weekend. My interview is Monday week. I gather they are pretty desperate for someone to take over.'

‘Take over?'

‘The Art Department, darling. Just think, if I get the job I'll be head of the Art Department.'

‘What about me?' I wailed. ‘What about this house? What about school next year? What about Frannie and Carina? They're my best friends in the world and I won't ever see them again. Have you even thought of me?'

‘Yes,' Mum said, glaring at me, ‘of course I have. Millie, it's going to be hard for you, I know that. But you will make new friends. You have a huge capacity for friendship. And think, Sweetie, Frannie is going to Our Lady's next year and Carina is moving back to the city. You know that.'

‘I could still see them,' I whined.

‘You can still see them when,
if
we move. Think of having real money. Think of exploring a new
place. Anyway, Millie, I haven't even got the job yet. I think I'm a good artist, and I am a good art teacher, but I have never been head of any department, so I probably won't get a look in.'

I hardly slept all that night. Mum said it was a mixture of indigestion and watching
Buffy
too late at night, but it was really the idea of moving. I hated it.

We stayed at a Bed and Breakfast, with views, the brochure read, of spectacular mountain ranges on one side and the sea on the other. The mountain ranges had been cleared by loggers and the sea wasn't visible at all. The B & B also promised a ‘delicious five-star breakfast' which turned out to be a loaf of Tip Top raisin bread—toaster provided—a tin of fruit salad in light syrup, four rashers of bacon and two eggs.

‘Free range eggs,' Mum said.

‘I can see that,' I told her, washing chicken poop off mine. ‘I like them better when they come out of a carton.'

‘Oh, you do not, Millie. If you did, you'd never
have written that letter to the local paper about how bad it was to keep battery hens. You told me you were an animal rights activist.'

‘I am,' I said, ‘but I prefer my eggs without farm life evidence. Does that look clean to you?'

‘Good enough to eat,' Mum said, and swooped down on me, hugging me tight and nearly breaking my egg. ‘I love you, Millie girl, even if you are a cantankerous kid.'

Mum got high on new places. I'd forgotten that. It had been a long time between real holidays, because we often didn't have quite enough money around holiday time when everything, even petrol, went up.

Gradually I caught Mum's enthusiasm. It took a mixture of food, shopping and walking. In that order, of course. The best food was provided by the hospitality students of Wetlands TAFE at their restaurant,
The Pelicano.
They had children's rates, but the waiting staff treated me just as seriously as they treated Mum. They read the Specials board and didn't mind when I asked whether the duck was free range.

Rebecca—we knew that was her name because she introduced herself to us—agreed with me that they should be using free range ducks but they didn't because of the expense. She also said that in her opinion they should widen
the vegetarian choices, but it didn't worry us because Sheri wasn't there.

‘If I get this job,' Mum said, as we drove back to the B & B, bellies full of Rack of Lamb encrusted with Honey Mustard and served on a Bed of Mash, ‘and I do say
if,
Sweetie, because I really don't have the qualifications, but if I get this job, we could make that our treat restaurant.'

The Red Cross Op-Shop was the best. It didn't have that op shop smell, even, and for once there were young people working there. Not that I'm against old ladies in op shops, but I think it's pretty cool to walk into an op shop where the radio is tuned to FM and there's an essential-oil burner on the counter. The clothes were fantastic. It was like shopping at a boutique. We only spent twenty dollars and I walked out with a new summer outfit.

The walk was over the wetlands themselves. There were hides where you could sit and watch the birds without them seeing you: pelicans, ducks, little blue-feathered moor hens. It was very peaceful. You had to be very quiet and I leant against Mum's shoulder while we both watched the groups of pelicans sailing grandly past. She put her arm around me and we stayed like that for the longest time, just sitting close, not saying anything, the bird noises like music someone had
forgotten to turn off.

Eventually Mum kind of shook herself, the way you do when you've been daydreaming and suddenly realise that the toast has burnt.

‘Oh, Millie,' she said, ‘I wish I could paint us the way we are now. I wish I could do that.'

‘You could, Mum. You can paint anything.'

‘No.' She sighed. ‘Figures in landscape aren't my vocabulary.'

‘Can't you add to it? You're always telling me to broaden my vocabulary.'

‘That's words, darling. You should always use more and different words.'

‘Why shouldn't you do the same with painting?' I hated it when adults told you one thing and then told themselves something completely opposite. Why did they do that? There was a long silence. Not quite silence, of course, because all the birds were calling out to each other and squabbling over little fish.

‘You might be right, Millie,' Mum said slowly. ‘Maybe I should. It's just scary stepping out from what you know you can do and trying something different, something that mightn't work.'

‘But you're doing that now,' I argued. Sometimes Mum was peculiarly stupid for an intelligent woman. ‘I mean, going for this job. How do you know that's going to work, but you've sailed into
that, haven't you? And you're always telling me not to be scared of life.'

Mum laughed. I liked it when she laughed. It was such a glad sound, as though the sun had brightened all of a sudden.

‘Oh, Millie, you're a wise child,' she said, hugging me hard to her side, awkwardly, because she was doing it with only the arm that was still around me.

‘And a wild one,' I said, pleased. ‘Don't forget that I'm a wild girl.'

I sat in the car while she went for her job interview. She got dressed up, in an artist-goes-for-a-job kind of way. We both wished Sheri had been there. Mum had brought every last respectable thing with her, of course, which was fine, but none of them went with each other.

‘These trousers,' I said, holding up a pair. They were my favourite. They looked liked old men's trousers—you know, brown checks—but groovy, too.

‘Brown's not a power colour, darling,' Mum said. ‘Damn. I wish I was like your father. He'd just throw on one of his eternal white shirts, a pair of dark trousers and an unusual, look-at-me-I'm-a-genius tie and get the damn job before he'd opened his mouth.'

‘Well, you're not Patrick.'

There is always someone practical in a family, isn't there? Someone who has to state the plain truth in an in-your-face way so that everyone stops dreaming about what might be and gets on with the life in front of them. I was that person.

Eventually Mum wore a different pair of trousers, my second favourite pair, the colour of dark chocolate, and with that a pale pink shirt and a dark scarf draped in an arty way and secured with a kilt pin. She let her hair go wild. There wasn't much else she could do—it was going to rain.

I waited in the car and it did rain. Lashings of water streamed down the front window and the trees bent so far over I thought some of the smaller ones would snap. Mum was gone forever, leaving me lots of time to think. Have you noticed how thoughts come in little gasps and how each one leads to another? But if you said to someone, I started out thinking about pelicans and ended up thinking about pizza, you'd be the only person probably in the world who would know how pelicans could lead you to thinking of pizza napolitana as made by D'Angelos. Not that I was thinking of pelicans. That's just an example.

I actually thought:

See what I mean—from trees and rain to West Highland Terriers in twenty-five thoughts.

I'd just added them up when Mum came out, running to the car, holding the portfolio of photographs close to her to protect it from the rain. I lent over and opened the door for her.

‘How did it go?'

She slammed the door shut and chucked the folder on to the back seat. Her hair was all wet and the curls lay flat, but as soon as the car heater went on, it would begin to frizz in all directions.

‘I don't know,' she said. She sounded kind of sad and flat.

‘What do you mean, you don't know?' That was what she always said to me. ‘You must have some idea.'

Mum shrugged and turned the ignition key. The car started first time. It didn't always do that.
It must have sensed her mood.

‘I just don't know. They said they needed someone pretty soon, and asked whether I could move in that time, and I said, yes, of course, but they also said I hadn't had any experience in that role and was I sure the administration side of things wouldn't be too much. I just don't know, Millie. You know how it is when you finish a test. You hope you've done well, but you don't know.'

‘Well, if you don't get it, they don't know what they've missed. I know you could do the job perfectly, Mum.'

She smiled at me but it wasn't her big smile. It was her little, weak-around-the-edges one, like when Patrick forgets her birthday—which he does sometimes, although he always tries to make up for it later.

It isn't that she and Patrick love each other in that ‘lurve' way—you know, smooching and Valentine Day cards and how Sheri and Brendan carried on. It's that's they are each other's best friend. They had been forever and then they decided to try to be more than that, and that's when they had me. But it didn't work, Mum said, because they were too used to each other.

‘I don't know, Millie. Maybe it
would
be too much for me. I haven't that kind of experience. I don't even know that I can still teach art. I haven't
done it for years and I don't think I did a good job then.'

‘Mum!' I hated it when she got in these moods. ‘Stop being a pestimist.'

That's a family joke. Mitchell used to say ‘pestimist' instead of ‘pessimist', when he was little.

‘Oh, Millie, I'm sorry. It's just that when I walked in ... It wasn't like a proper interview. It was kind of all cosy. They were just sitting around their staff room, chatting. There was real coffee brewing. I could smell it before the door opened. I thought, I could like these people. I could like working here.'

We drove back to town in silence except for the odd sniffle from Mum. I was worried about her crying and driving at the same time, but there was so much rain outside I supposed a bit inside couldn't hurt.

We found a café and Mum went to the Ladies to check that her mascara hadn't run. When she came out, she looked a little better.

‘Can't do anything about it,' she said, over the menu. ‘Either I get it or I don't. We'll have to leave it up to Fate and Destiny, Millie. I'll tell you what, let's call in on Sheri and Mitchell on the way home?'

‘We had dinner at this restaurant called
The
Pelicano,'
I told Mitchell. We were in the rumpus room while Sheri and Mum had a good talk in the kitchen. ‘There was a statue of pelicans, a really good one, and a girl called Rebecca served us. The food was awesome.'

‘I want to live with you again, Millmill,' Mitchell said, sitting closer, ‘I don't like it here much.'

‘What's wrong, Mitchell? I thought you were happy.'

‘I was, sort of. We never do anything but. Not together, the way we all used to. He shouts, too, when you don't think you've done anything really bad. He shouts.'

‘Oh, Mitchell, you know how people get stressed. Maybe he's just stressed. He listens to people's problems all day, after all.'

‘It's okay when he's not here,' Mitch said. ‘I like it then. The TV is really big. Did you see it? But I can't watch it that much.'

We didn't stay long because Sheri had to cook dinner and we were not invited to stay.

‘He's under pressure,' I heard her say. ‘Sometimes he doesn't come home until nearly midnight, but he rang today and said he'd be home for dinner. I hope you understand, Kate.'

‘Of course,' Mum said and we both gave Sheri a big hug.

Our house looked too big when we got home. Mum looked at me and we both put our shoes back on and went out for dinner. Mum had a glass of wine and I had a coke spider.

Most of the streetlights in our street were out when we walked home later and the sky was full of stars.

Mum said, ‘What can you see?'

‘The Southern Cross,' I said. ‘Look, there are the two pointers. But I don't know the other names. I keep forgetting.'

‘I think I can see the Pleiades,' Mum said, pointing to a hazy bit of sky, ‘but I always just think I can see them. I'm never sure. Imagine, Millie, whether we are here looking at them or not, those stars keep on shining. That's something, isn't it?'

I wasn't sure if that was such a cheerful thought, but I kept that to myself.