On Brunswick Ground Read Online Free PDF Page A

bit like the sky.
    I rustle around the kitchen, trying not to interrupt her sadness, letting it lean on air like her sculptures, without prodding it with questions. She casts me a grateful glance, as if my silence were a gift. I find some cheese and olives and put them on the table. Then I drag my chair and sit sideways from her. She takes a deep breath.
    â€˜It’s Mary, she’s coming to Melbourne. I should be thrilled but I’m terrified.’
    She waits for a bit.
    â€˜We have no common language, you see.’
    When the thunder claps again, she smiles and adds:
    â€˜Sounds like the rap of a poltergeist or someone knocking at the door.’
    But her smile and her comment are more like an attempt to defuse the atmosphere, or to get a grip on herself. A daughter is a stranger to her mother. The Shakespearian banality of it fills her eyes. She has nothing else to add. This is it. Few people have the moral courage to unpack their tragedies so cleanly, without any alluring veil of mystery.
    â€˜Why does she want to come?’ I ask.
    Sarah stares blankly at me.
    â€˜It’s for a holiday or … maybe they’ve broken up and she wants to stay at my place to find a job – in a burqa.’
    With her wry smile, she adds:
    â€˜Well, even if our prime minister finds them confronting, she’s not banning them altogether. At least Mary won’t be sent to a detention centre.’
    â€˜Oh.’
    I wait, putting cheese on rice biscuits and pouring out wine, water and juice. Glasses sit in a row in front of Sarah. She chuckles.
    â€˜This is starting to look like my bar.’
    I clink her glass with mine.
    â€˜Quite a few people wear burqas.’
    â€˜I know, but generally they’re Muslims.’
    â€˜And she isn’t …’
    â€˜Not any more than you are.’
    â€˜It could be a cultural, political statement …’
    â€˜That’s more my style than hers.’
    More than an expression of anguish, her bittersweet smile shows the extent of her despair. She sighs before adding:
    â€˜It feels like something deeper.’
    I stop trailing my finger in the eddies of wood grain on the table.
    â€˜Something that has nothing to do with Islam?’
    Her head jerks up. Her ‘Yes’ rings hollow and sad. For some reason it reminds me of the lonely beach somewhere near Frankston I walked on the other day, alongside the dry scrub, where skeleton trees on the foreshore rubbed their antique limbs in the wind, as the sea rustled and fretted on the grey sand – a sad, sad beach.
    â€˜Have you tried asking your mother what it’s about? You said they get on.’
    She takes a hearty gulp of wine before answering.
    â€˜Ha, beyond the weather, I can hardly speak to my mother. She won’t even mention her cancer to me.’
    â€˜When’s Mary coming?’
    I hand her a biscuit with cheese on it but she’s staring at her knees.
    â€˜Tomorrow.’
    â€˜Why has she sprung this on you so suddenly? Surely…’
    â€˜She probably had another plan that fell through. I’m the last person Mary would have gone to. But if she wants to find a job in Melbourne – which is my guess – then she’s broken up. Why would she want to stay with me when I’ve just come back from Adelaide? She’d stay with friends if it were a holiday.’
    After that, Sarah blitzes her wine. All I can think of is that Frankston beach. I ask what Mary does.
    â€˜She’s a book designer. She’s studied typography and also illustrates children’s books. Even as a kid she was always playing around with fonts. I used to call her Gutenberg. I thought at one time she would become a printmaker.’
    I imagine the two of them tiptoeing around each other, then bursting into electric disagreements about porridge, or the bathroom roster. I imagine them walking along rigid corridors and stepping into silent kitchens – prisoners of a