That afternoon, I beat it down to the chemist to buy red and purple Rit fabric dye. If I have to live another six months in the same ten pieces of clothing, I can at least change the colors.
First, clean all garments, the instructions say. I know exactly where to go. Standing at Pop’s door, I knock gently, and he calls me in.
“Hi. I was wondering if you’ve started the laundry already?”
He sees the bundle in my arms and beams. “No, I have not. Let’s get going, shall we?” He lifts himself slowly, pushing up on the arms of his chair. “That right there looks like a nice load.”
I follow him down the hall and hand him my sweatshirt, a turtleneck that my mom sent me after I told her about the cold Sydney mornings, a couple of T-shirts, and a pair of boxer shorts that baffle Pop.
“I sleep in them.”
“If you say so.”
He pats down the clothes, his face bright with joy and usefulness. He’s whistling. I could have kept him busy. I should have.
“Afternoon,” Evan says, coming in the side door.
Pop and I both turn. I can feel myself oversmiling. Thank God Pop’s here to keep the conversation superficial.
“Hello, Evan. You’ll have to wait on your laundry today. Kelly here has a load in the works.” Evan and I grin at each other, and I blush, but Pop is so focused on the sounds of the washing machine, no one is the wiser.
“I should be able to get by,” Evan says.
“Thanks,” I say in a tone that says I’m taking the disruption to the day’s workflow very seriously.
“I’m off to the store. Won’t be home until late. Kelly, I thought I could take you to the art museum tomorrow if you want, for your last day.”
“Oh, sure. Great. Definitely. Yeah.” I halt the blathering there.
“All right, then. You two have a good night.”
“What’s that?” Pop says.
“Going to work.”
“Good boy.”
He is. He really is.
With Evan working and John out for the night, I ask Pop if he wants to have dinner with me after I get the kids taken care of. He smiles and says he’ll bring the wine.
That evening, the kids are angels, one of those lucky nights when everyone gets along, like how your hair always looks extra good the day before you’re scheduled to get it cut. Pajamas on, teeth brushed, blankets tucked around bodies, all without a single nag. I leave them in their beds, shining flashlights on their books, and join Pop at the table.
“Can I make you a glass of wine?” Pop offers, holding the tap on a box of Franzia.
“Please.”
He fills the glass to the tippy-top, like they do at Red Lobster. I’m tempted to joke that he’s trying to get me drunk, but I don’t even know if he has a sense of humor, so I just say, “Cheers.” He nods and raises his glass carefully.
“I hope the food’s okay,” I say. “I’m not a big cook.”
“It smells marvelous.” He’s a gentleman from another era.
“It’s curry. I found a recipe that was starred, so I thought that must be a good one.”
“We loved curry,” he says, the we referring to I don’t know who.
“I think we’re about seven minutes away. The rice is still cooking.” I bring out our plates, and he winks when he sees that I set the table with the same china Evan used. “So you’re from Fiji?”
He explains, in his old-man voice with his old-man pacing, that he grew up in Australia, spent his youth there, but moved over to Fiji after he was married. “She always wanted to come back here, though.”
“Your wife?”
“Yes. Have I shown you her photo?” I shake my head. “Well, one moment, then!” He pushes back his chair and rises slowly, shuffling across the hardwood.
I check the rice. The simmering fish is getting too tough to wait any longer. I plate two dinners of chewy rice and hard fish, feeling every bit my mother’s daughter.
“Here she is,” he says.
I put our plates down. “What a beauty.”
“Indeed.”
While we work through our dinner, I ask him where the photo was taken, and he tells me about this house and that holiday and how good things were, and I listen, wondering how long it’s been since he’s said this many words in a row.
After he’s told me enough about his Bette, we drift into the population problem, and that leads us to his best mate’s widow, a former activist named Dove. He worries about her something terrible. “She’s all alone.” I tell him he should take her out for lunch, and he laughs and says Ellie used to say the same thing. We talk about the Olympics, cricket, and U.S. football. He can’t remember what our big contest is—the Super Cup?—and I say, Close: Super Bowl. I tell him how Eugenia Brown fired me. We talk about tennis and hiking in the Blue Mountains and how I almost had to be brought out on a stretcher and I say I really need to do some Jazzercise.
“Ellie used to do that jumping around. She and all the ladies around town,” he says, shaking his head, imagining his daughter and her girlfriends grapevining. “She had so many leotards. I must’ve washed one every day.”
“Kept you busy—”
“Kept herself busy is right,” he says, not quite hearing me. “Always up to something.”
“Did she work?”
“No. Not in a job.”
“My mom liked to say she never knew a woman who didn’t work all damn day,” I reply, yoking my mom to his daughter, and not for the first time.
We talk about his recliner; it doesn’t work anymore. I tell him my plan to dye my clothes and he says he’ll find me a bucket, he thinks they have a tub in the garage, but we keep sliding back to his daughter. He’s got another picture to show me. He’s going to go get it.
I top off my wine.
What a terrible mistake I’ve made, leaving Pop in his room to rest himself to death while I sat in this house “alone.” He could have been my guide. He would have told me anything, everything. I need to write Libby and Slug more, and visit them as soon as I get home.
“Here it is!” he says from inside his room.
I head in, crossing into his space. “Show me.”
He turns his head. “This is Ellen with her mum.”
“Look at those two.”
“Look at those two is right!” he says, putting his hand on my shoulder.
“Wait. I found a picture of you and Ellen—” I leave him for a moment while I dash into the living room. “Here!” I call. “How about this one?” I hand it to him in the hallway, where we meet.
“Ah, oh, yes.” He has tears in his voice. “That’s her exactly. That’s my girl,” he says, using my father’s phrasing.
After letting Pop live in that image for another moment, I say, “I hope I’ve done an all-right job around here.”
“I’ll tell you one thing. This is the happiest Evan’s been in a long time.” Old people and their hyper-calibrated radar. They can’t hear a word, and they can barely get out of their chairs, but they’ve got six or seven other senses, scanning, collecting, decoding.
“Oh, wow, okay, that’s good.”
“Well, dear,” he says, looking from his clean plate to his watch, “I’m out past curfew.”
“Of course. I’m so glad we did this.”
He kisses me on the forehead. “Me, too, dearie.”
I go into my room and drop onto the bed and before I know what’s happening, I’m crying. I’m crying because up until the other night, I half thought I’d misread the Evan thing, or made it all up, and now I understand that it’s been real and palpable the whole time and I made someone happier than he’s been in a long time, and that feels giant, epic. And I cry because I wish I could have given this family more than I have, something meaningful and lasting, more than just walking with them through Wonderland, the Blue Mountains, the Avoca Caravan Park, more than just letting them show me pictures and tell me stories, something as big and important as what they’ve given me. I fall back on my bed, thinking about my mom and the things we have and have not been able to give each other, yet, and I hug my pillow like I used to hug hers, the one that smelled just like her, a heady mix of face powder, Final Net, and hand cream.