Her boredom trick
From Griffith REVIEW Edition 26: Stories for Today
© Copyright Griffith University & the author.
Written by Georgia Blain
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When Clara finally arrives, she is not only half an hour late, she has also brought her dog with her. It leaps from the car, Clara only just managing to hold onto the lead as she uses the strength in her arms to get herself out, her scarves catching in the door as she shuts it behind her.
‘Fuck it,' Sinead mutters as she and her daughter wave hello from the front steps of their house. ‘I told her not to bring that animal.'
The dog leaps up the stairs and Clara just lets her go. She licks Zoe all over her face and nips at Sinead's hand.
‘Down,' Sinead instructs, but it's useless. ‘We can't take her.' She looks at Clara, who is gathering Zoe in folds of chiffon, and kissing her on the top of her head. ‘You know she has nits,' she adds, but Clara continues to kiss her granddaughter.
‘I don't have nits,' Zoe says. ‘You combed them out last night.'
‘I didn't know you could catch nits orally.' Clara, who is oblivious to Zoe's attempts to squirm out of her hold, winks. ‘I'm sure they taste delicious.' She turns to Sinead. ‘Shall we go?'
First, there is the matter of the dog. It pants, hot-breathed, next to them. They cannot take her, Sinead explains wearily. ‘We're looking at houses. The real-estate agents won't want her inside.'
‘Well, I'll tie her up outside,' Clara replies.
‘I don't want her in the car.'
She'll be fine, Clara promises. Besides, if she has to take her all the way back, they'll be so late it won't be worth going. ‘And I know you don't want me leaving her at your house.'
‘Come on,' Zoe urges, sick of waiting.
‘On one condition.' Sinead has her arms folded across her chest. ‘You pay for my car to be cleaned if she's sick.'
‘Of course I would, darling.' Clara has already opened the back door and let the dog leap in on top of Zoe. ‘You know you don't even need to ask.'
It is only an hour's drive to Bundeena, but Clara's late arrival means they have to ring the agent and let them know they won't be on time. Clara sees no need. ‘It's their job to wait for us,' she says as she opens her window wide to the dust of the road. And then, because Sinead is clearly fed up, she takes the mobile phone and makes the call.
‘They'll be there all afternoon,' she says as she hangs up. Pulling the sun visor down, she checks her lipstick, rubbing at where it has bled into the corners of her mouth. ‘What a glorious day.' She looks across at her daughter driving. ‘How many houses did you ask them to show us?'
There are only four available for rent, and only one that appears suitable. The others are either too expensive or too run down, Sinead explains. Clara nods, flipping up the visor.
‘There's a couple for sale as well.' Clara takes a scrap of paper out of her bag, and looks at the addresses scribbled across it. Sinead knows Clara has looked at the places for sale before. She is always talking about buying a shack at Bundeena, although she has no intention of doing so. Sinead's plan is to rent a place together, somewhere cheap that they can take it in turns to use. With other people on the lease as well, it will be affordable for everyone.
‘So long as it's only one other person,' Clara insists. ‘I'd like to know I could have long stretches of time down there if I need it.'
When Sinead protests about the cost, Clara is no longer interested. She smoothes out her scrap of paper. ‘We'll just look at the ones for sale, then.'
‘Why?' Sinead asks. ‘You've seen them before. You have no intention of buying one of them.'
‘You never know.' Clara smiles.
‘The agents must hate you,' Sinead says.
‘It's not their job to hate me,' Clara tells her. ‘It's their job to like me.' She looks to the back seat, where Zoe is quiet, her cheek pressed against the window, her eyes fixed on the blur of trees, houses and cars, rushing past in a stream of colour. Beside her, Clara's dog lies with its nose resting on Zoe's bare knee.
‘Are you all right, darling?'
It is unclear whether Clara is talking to her granddaughter or her dog, and Zoe remains silent.
‘Are you doing your boredom trick?' Sinead asks, looking at her daughter in the rear-vision mirror.
Without taking her eyes from the window, Zoe nods.
Sinead explains: ‘She likes to experience the boredom. She doesn't want to read or talk or listen to music – it's to see how long she can go just doing nothing.'
Clara thinks it's marvellous. ‘You're meditating, darling,' and she turns to the backseat again. ‘Do you know what meditation is?'
Of course she does. Zoe's best friend has an uncle who is a Buddhist. ‘He meditates. He says that if you can interrupt someone when they are meditating then they aren't really meditating.'
‘Then you weren't really meditating.' Sinead laughs.
Zoe just rolls her eyes and turns back to the window. ‘I never said I was.'
As they leave the highway and drive into the national park surrounding Bundeena, the change is dramatic. Theirs is the only car now, and out the window there is nothing but bush: blue-grey eucalypts, sandy scrub, delicate ferns, gnarled bottlebrush, and the last remaining stalks of Gymea lilies piercing the sky. The road narrows, twisting up and down hills, pressing in close to the rocky outcrops that delineate the roll of the landscape.
‘It's beautiful, isn't it?' Sinead opens her window, breathing in the sharpness of the air. She wants her mother to also appreciate the beauty, to show how much she, too, loves it. ‘And so close to the city. That's what's incredible. Less than an hour and you're here.' She needs Clara for her plan to work. She could take out a lease with friends, but if she has Clara on board, it's one less person she will have to find, and she and her mother will have some flexibility in any timeshare arrangement they establish. It is the perfect way to have a holiday house, she thinks, and she smiles as she envisages long weekends swimming, relaxing in the garden and having friends to stay.
But, as they turn into Bundeena, she finds herself disappointed. Just slightly. And as the disappointment descends, she is aware that this is how she usually feels when she comes here. It is more suburban than she wants it to be. There are brick-veneer houses with huge extensions and a new development on the main street, the construction noisy, the scaffolding high enough to threaten something substantial. But she says nothing.
‘It's a perfect day for an ice cream,' she tells Zoe.
‘Magnum?' Zoe seizes on the offer.
‘I don't know about that,' Sinead replies. ‘We'll look at the houses, have lunch, maybe a swim and then decide.'
‘Bloody hell. Do we have to do all that first?'
Clara frowns slightly as she opens the door to the noise of the construction, and stepping out onto the pavement she adjusts her scarves, the chiffon floating flimsy in the stiffness of the sea breeze. ‘I do wish you wouldn't say "bloody",' she tells Zoe.
Sinead grins. ‘Oh, for God's sake. There are far worse things she could say.'
‘Well, I don't like it.'
‘So how many bloody houses are we going to look at?' Zoe asks.
‘Four,' Sinead tells her.
‘Bloody hell. We'd better start bloody looking then, or we'll be here all bloody day.'
Clara ignores her, concentrating instead on the pictures of properties for sale outside the real-estate agent's office. She taps on the glass and the agent, who clearly remembers her, glances up and waves.
‘Kevin.' She smiles sweetly as he comes out to greet her, and then introduces him to Sinead and Zoe.
‘So, which ones are we interested in today?' he asks, and Clara runs through the list of shacks for sale.
‘But first we want to look at the rental houses,' Sinead adds, handing him her own list.
Sitting out on the pavement, Zoe flicks stones at the tyres of Sinead's car. Clara's dog hangs its head out the window, tongue out, a sticky thread of saliva running from its teeth down the glass.
‘Pepper,' Zoe calls to her, and the dog barks. ‘Pepper,' she calls again, and the dog barks a little louder.