Yellowcake - Margo Lanagan [26]
He brought the gerberas back to the table. ‘Stalks are pretty thick.’ He eyed Marcus’s hands, which were already binding vine-stems together. ‘Won’t be a problem, will it?’
‘Where will she be, though?’
‘Swathes, she told me. I always make her tell me. Just in case of exactly this.’
‘Do you have a feeling?’
‘No. Just a clock.’ Dad nodded at the microwave. ‘And a phone that says she can’t be reached.’ He patted the phone in his shirt pocket.
Can’t be reached—a little stab of fear lit through Marcus’s belly. He pushed a gerbera into his face. ‘These don’t have any smell.’
Dad sniffed one and pulled his mouth sideways. ‘It was roses last time, wasn’t it?’
‘Roses and lavender.’
‘Lemme think.’
Dad went into the bathroom. Marcus began to plait stems, listening to him clink things around in there.
Dad came back with the black bottle of aftershave that always sat behind everything else in the cupboard. ‘This,’ he said with a grin. ‘What I smelt like when we first met. If that doesn’t wake her up, I don’t know what will.’ He unscrewed the lid and put it under Marcus’s nose.
‘Phew. It’s stronger than roses and lavender.’
‘Isn’t it, though. We all went round stunk up with the stuff. She liked it back then. All the girls liked it. Or so we told ourselves.’
‘All right.’ Marcus was plaiting the green stems, loosely so as to leave room for the gerbera stalks. Swathes in town, is she? Or Swathes at Eastlands?’
‘Town,’ said Dad. ‘Or somewhere on the way. Or she might walk in at any minute, and think it’s funny that we’re worrying. Keep going, though.’ He set off through the house to the front. Marcus heard him on the porch, on the path, heard the gate. He heard, almost, Dad’s head turning as he checked up and down the street. Plait, plait. This would be an interesting wreath—a bit odd-looking, but it would hold together well, these good strong stalks with their regular sprouts of little leaves along them. In springtime they had yellow flowers, funny shaped, like some kind of pea-flower, Mum had described them once, but it was winter-time now, and they weren’t even beginning to bud up yet.
Dad came back. ‘We taking the train in?’ said Marcus.
‘I thought we’d drive. Be quicker this time of night.’
‘That’s not the way she would’ve gone, though.’
‘I figure, we’ll go up the railway station, ask if there are any delays on the line, then drive into town and check Swathes.’
‘You reckon she’d stop the train?’
‘Someone’d press the emergency button, for sure. Don’t you reckon?’
It was a shame to have to wake Lenny and put her in the capsule, but she settled back to sleep pretty quickly once they started driving. Marcus sat in the back with her; he didn’t want to take Mum’s seat in the front. He just put the gaudy wreath there, in its cloud of aftershave. The smell had got on his hands and stuck there, despite a quick scrubbing with soap-in-a-bottle (lavender, chamomile and orange). Now his hands carried two little clouds of powerful scents, and felt slippery-dry.
It was a long drive; he could have slept, but he wanted to keep Dad company, so he made himself sit up straight and watch the suburbs tumble past, the freeway roll smoothly by. It was a fine clear night, and everything looked cleaner under only streetlights and neon, kinder, more mysterious. The lights went over Lenny’s sleeping face like cloths stroking her, her woolly hat, her fanning eyelashes, her mouth so small and perfect, like the bud of some strange flower, or maybe a faun’s hoofprint in snow. Marcus laid his perfumed hand on the blanket tucked over her stomach, and watched out the windscreen as the night and lights rushed on at them.
The first time, only Dad had been there—well, Marcus had been, but he’d only been tiny, so he didn’t remember any of it. Scared the geewhillikers out of me, Dad said. It had been in the laundry, which in the old place—Marcus knew that house as another land, the land of his babyhood, entirely built of Mum and Dad’s stories—had been a separate little hut, in the back