The Mother-in-Law(59)

At home, Tom goes right upstairs. I do too, but while he heads for the bedroom, I tell him I need a quick shower. In the bathroom, I set the shower running and I strip off my clothes and I stand under the stream of water and cry. I cry until I don’t know which is water and which is tears.

I cry until I’m dry.

By the time I get out of the shower, Tom is in bed. At first I think he is asleep, but as soon as I crawl in beside him, his eyes open.

“How are you going to live without me?” he says.

We both chuckle, even as a tear slides from the corner of Tom’s eye.

“I won’t,” I say, and then he reaches for me and we don’t talk anymore.

1970

When Ollie was four months old, I got a job at the Star Theatre in Yarraville. The Star was unusually opulent for the area, and was packed every Saturday night. Unique to the cinema was a baby room where babies were lined up in their carriages and given a number. If a baby started crying, its number was flashed on the screen and its mother would come and collect it. Ollie was one of those babies. I brought him in a basket as I didn’t have a carriage, and if he cried, which was rare, someone came and found me in the concession stand.

Like Meredith said, I figured out how to get a job and look after Ollie at the same time. I was surprised how good it felt to be able to do that. I wasn’t completely self-sufficient, I didn’t pay rent at Meredith’s and I still slept in her shed, but I started to contribute toward bills and food. I worked Tuesday and Saturday nights to begin with. Tuesdays were busy but Saturdays were nearly always fully booked, all one thousand seats. I roamed between the ticket box and the concession stand as the foyer swelled with people. I’d been to the Star before, as an attendee, but there was a different buzz to working there. I liked it better. I felt like I was behind the scenes on a show, or had a backstage pass to a concert. I saw people I knew from time to time, but they never saw me. I existed in a different world to them. Sometimes they looked directly at me, but still, they never saw me.

I raced around the busy theater, directing people in with a flashlight serving popcorn. Once everyone was inside the movie, I’d often go to the baby area and look at the babies, all lined up. Seeing them, it was hard not to think about the babies of the girls at Orchard House. They would have been lined up like in the hospital nursery before they were taken home by someone else. None of the girls thought they had a choice. I wished I could go back and tell them they did.

During the movie, if I heard a baby cry, I’d try to settle them for a few minutes before I’d run their number up to the screening room to flash over the screen. Nine times out of ten, I did settle them. Ollie always slept, even then my simple, content boy.

I was watching over the babies one night when a young man came out of the cinema, twenty minutes after the film started. I made my way to the concession stand, where he was headed.

“Just a popcorn, please,” he said.

“Small, medium or large?”

The young man blinked at me, looking me full in the face. It took me a moment to place the young man as Tom Goodwin, the plumber that had visited my parents’ house a couple of times. According to my father, he was “a good worker.” He wasn’t a handsome man, but he had clear blue eyes, a good crop of hair, a great smile. He was on the shorter side, and he did nothing to conceal his intrigue at finding me working at a candy bar in Yarraville.

“I know you,” he said.

“And I know you.” I smiled. “Tom, right?”

He cocked his head. I could actually see the cogs turning in his head.

“What are you doing here?”

“What does it look like?”

“I haven’t seen you around for a while,” he said eventually. I recognized it for what it was: a question. For that exact reason, my first instinct was to be vague in my response. I’ve been busy sprang to my lips as did I was over in Europe for a while. But I forced those words away. Suddenly I understood what Meredith had said about the freedom of having nothing to lose.

“I went away to have a baby.”

I loved the way Tom didn’t try to conceal his surprise. He blinked, long and slow, and then blinked again. He actually took a step back. It was, I am certain, the fact that I admitted it rather than the fact that it happened, that caused his astonishment.

“A boy,” I said. “Oliver. He’s over there in that basket.”

“He’s . . here?” To my surprise, Tom walked over to the baby area and peered into Ollie’s basket. “This little fella?” He gazed down at him and his face softened. “And . . . your family—”

“They’re thrilled.”

I laughed, and Tom surprised me by laughing back. He had a great laugh. A full-bodied, hearty laugh that came from the well of his stomach and the cavern of his chest.

“So how are you supporting yourself then?”

“I live in a shed in Spotswood, in the backyard of my father’s disgraced cousin. I cook and clean for her. And I’m working here for money.”

He frowned. “You’re kidding?”

“Afraid not. But don’t worry about me, I’m doing just fine. Very well, actually.”

I glanced at the clock. I’d been talking too long. I had to get things cleaned up and organized before the intermission. I grabbed a popcorn container and made Tom a large one and handed it to him. “That’ll be a dollar,” I said to him.