Tess Evans - Book of Lost Threads

Mrs Pargetter packed some muffins. ‘Some for the road and some for your mother,’ she said, handing Moss two plastic containers. She added a thermos of tea. She tended to forget that nowadays they were only two and a half hours from Melbourne, even on a bad traffic day.

Sandy drove in silence as Moss sat in the back with Finn, staring out at the dry yellow paddocks and the featureless winter sky. She failed to notice Finn’s oblique glances and this time barely felt his hand as it moved tentatively to cover hers. While she understood the situation at the surface of her mind, Moss couldn’t quite grasp the fact, the uncompromising finality, of Linsey’s death. She couldn’t imagine how all that energy and longing and striving for perfection had simply stopped. How all the unfinished business over which Linsey had surely fretted would be processed by other hands or remain unfinished 163 forever.

‘You okay?’ Finn said finally. Moss nodded and continued to stare. ‘Won’t be long now. The exit’s only a few minutes away,’ he offered, feeling inadequate.

When Linsey left, all those years ago, she had assured Amy that she and Moss could stay in Aunt Shirley’s house until Moss was of age. There was a careless generosity in Linsey’s personal dealings that contrasted sharply with her hard-nosed practice as a banker. Consequently, Amy was still living in the family home even though their daughter had attained her majority several years before.

Moss felt the sickness of loss as the car pulled into the kerb and she saw the front door with its distinctive leadlight. Grief is not a constant state. It comes in waves, and at that moment Moss was engulfed, unable to speak or move. Linsey had loved her but she’d pushed her away. She had a flashback to that day at the beach; a little girl reaching out to Amy, leaving Linsey with her arms hanging ineffectually by her sides. It was what Moss had always done: blamed Linsey and exonerated Amy.

Music was their one shared pleasure. ‘One day I’ll hear you sing Mimi at the Sydney Opera House,’ Linsey would say. ‘And Violetta in Milan,’ Moss would reply. ‘Then Madame Butterfly at Covent Garden,’ they would chorus gleefully.

Linsey was always planning, as though life could be moulded to her will. But even before the sweet young voice began to mature so wonderfully, she loved to hear her daughter sing. Her tense face would soften and her eyes shine. At those moments the dissonance between them abated; Moss realised only now that they’d been moving towards an acknowledgement of the love they’d always felt for each other but had expressed clumsily and only too rarely since her adolescence. And she, Moss, had chosen to sever the bond. After Amy’s revelations regarding her conception, she had marched off to Linsey’s apartment and, ignoring the bell, knocked peremptorily on the door.

Linsey smiled to see her daughter. ‘Moss! What a nice surprise. Come in.’

Moss pushed past her mother and confronted her in the hallway. ‘I won’t be long,’ she said coldly. ‘I just want to tell you how I feel.’

Linsey was bewildered. ‘Whatever’s the matter? Has something happened to Amy?’

‘Mum’s fine. But she told me the truth. About how I was conceived. You advertised for a father for me. You chose a stranger. I suppose your friends weren’t good enough? And as for taking your chances with a sperm bank…’

‘Moss-Miranda, I don’t understand. I wanted the best for you…’

‘For you , you mean. I can see now why I was such a disappointment. You wanted a genius, a beauty… You wanted a-a paragon , not a child.’

When she spoke, Linsey’s voice was dry, but the struggle to control her emotions showed in her face. ‘I made mistakes, Moss. Motherhood didn’t come naturally to me like it did to Amy. And it’s true, I did think that I could plan the perfect baby, but once I saw you, I finally understood. You were a perfect baby, just as you were. I wanted someone to love and care for, and…’ She looked away. ‘Someone who might love me.’

Moss almost gave in then, shaken by this evidence of her mother’s vulnerability. Her impulse was to hug this woman who, though difficult in some ways, had nonetheless provided so much stability and certainty in her childhood. She moved forward slightly just as Linsey stepped back. And the moment for reconciliation was lost in that one uncertain gesture.

Stung by the apparent rebuff, Moss’s anger returned. ‘I just came to tell you that I won’t be going on with my singing. That was your ambition, not mine.’ She was beside herself now, shouting. ‘I’m glad you left. You’re a calculating bitch. You’re not fit to be a mother.’

‘Don’t do this.’ Linsey’s voice fractured the air between them. ‘Please don’t do this.’

But Moss had turned and left with an air of grievance that later compounded her shame. She didn’t look back, but she could see in her mind Linsey’s stricken face, her eyes darkened with pain, and the delicate tremor in her cheek. Visualising that, Moss was almost exultant, and strode off to the lift with a fierce, triumphant little smile.

Linsey had watched Moss’s retreating back and put out her hand as if to stop her. It was too late; Moss turned the corner and was out of sight, and Linsey’s hand fell back to her side.

She closed the door and went into her meticulously furnished sitting room where she sat down heavily. She picked up a cushion and held it to her, staring miserably at the wall. It wasn’t so long ago, it seemed, that she had held Moss for the first time and experienced the surge of joy that changed her forever.

Such a fierce little baby , Linsey remembered. She would stiffen her body and scream if she didn’t want to be held. In those early days, though, she was mostly happy for Linsey to hold her; happy to snuggle into her willing arms. Despite her tiredness, Linsey loved those early mornings when Amy slept and she had this bewitching little creature to herself. She would sometimes stand and watch her, smiling as the little nose wrinkled and twitched on the cusp of sleep and waking. To Linsey, moments like these were tiny, perfect stitches in the fabric of her life.

Was I too hard on her? Linsey wondered. Moss so often went to Amy when she was in trouble. Amy was the forest where Moss could explore and play freely, whereas Linsey created pathways, some of which led Moss to places she didn’t care for, but others to hard-won goals of which she could be rightly proud.

She just needs time , Linsey thought. Her music is too important to her.

Then the sobering thought: But how important am I?

Amy had been watching for the car to arrive, and ran out to greet her daughter. They both cried then, holding each other and rocking in unconscious mimicry of their ancient foremothers’ mourning rites. In another age, their stifled sobs would have been a full-throated keening. They would have rent their garments and covered their heads with ashes. The village women would have joined them in a circle of pain, sanctifying their grief. Now they stood, just the two of them, in a cold suburban street, drying their tears with crumpled tissues. This was probably enough for Amy. She had loved Linsey in her own way, but not enough to overcome their differences. She’d always carried her love lightly, and much of her present feeling was for Moss, who needed not only to mourn but to be shriven. She clutched her daughter and felt the shudders that reverberated deep in her own body.

‘Shh. It’s okay, sweetheart.’ Murmuring words whose meaning was less important than their cadence. Lullaby words. Lullaby rhythm. ‘It’s okay. Shh. It’s okay.’