Debra Adelaide - The Household Guide to Dying

Dear Delia

About the wedding cake. I’m afraid I need more precise ingredients than that. And how long would you recommend I cook it for? Hopefully you will be able to help me. Mother of the Bride.

Dear Mother of the Bride

As with the wedding itself, hope is the chief ingredient of a wedding cake. You are right to be hopeful. Hope will keep a marriage going for a long, long time. Have a go. I’m sure you can manage it.

The centre of Amethyst was in a hollow, streets angling down towards the main roads, the clusters of shops. The streets were full of enormous trees and then, on the west of town, there were large open spaces like natural parklands along which sauntered a lazy river, bordered with willows and reeds. In autumn, the place was enchanting. In the cooler months it was perfect, and in summer it was shady enough to give the illusion of coolness. Along the main street into town the palms were enormous, dense, and in the late afternoon crammed with brightly coloured parakeets monstering the fruits in a cacophony of greed. They shot back and forth across the road boldly, forcing me to steer the car from side to side to avoid them.

The Paradise Reach Motel, a small family business, was still there. It had quiet, spacious rooms, a palm-crowded front garden with a pool, and a friendly watchdog, whom I noticed as soon as I pulled up. Surely it wasn’t the same one from years back – he’d have been well over sixteen by now: did labradors live that long? The woman at the desk wasn’t familiar, but she told me the motel was still in the same hands.

You’re from Sydney?

Somehow, up north, people always knew.

Yes, I said. But I lived here once, years ago.

Oh, and are you on holidays now? Visiting relatives?

Something like that.

I checked into my room, threw my bag in the corner and myself on the bed. I lay there for a long time, resting, thinking. Until it became dark enough that I had to get up and turn on the lights.

I found Mitchell upstairs in his bar. He appeared to be interviewing a new pianist. I started to tiptoe out again when I realised what was going on, but he waved to me to stay, and without asking what I wanted, fixed me a drink.

This is Chris. He nodded to the man sitting at the bar. He might be playing here.

Chris held out his hand and shook mine. In profile he revealed a lean tanned face, but as he turned, I glimpsed the other side, a mottled mess of dark birthmark, more raspberry than strawberry, spreading from his nose to his ear and disappearing under his hair, which was black and curly. He continued talking.

I’ll do requests, but there are certain tunes I won’t play.

Fair enough, Mitchell said.

‘You Must Remember This’.

Okay.

‘Candle in the Wind’.

Yep, fine.

And especially ‘Piano Man’. Come to think of it, nothing by Billy Joel. Not a note. Or I walk out that door right there and never come back.

Sure. Okay.

I glanced at Mitchell, who was sounding oddly acquiescent, though he didn’t look it. He looked, with his sleeves rolled to the elbows, polishing wineglasses which he periodically held up to the light for exaggerated inspection, like a man with more important matters on his mind than what a temperamental pianist might condescend to play.

Chris seemed to relax. He paused, took a sip of his drink, then added,

Beyond that, I’ll play just about anything. Swing, jazz, honky tonk, country, blues, you name it. Bach, Liberace, Mrs Mills, anyone you like.

Mitchell stopped polishing to ask, Trucking songs?

Sure, why not? I’ll work any nights you like, within reason of course. Might want the occasional night off for Christmas or something. But no days.

I don’t open much before four or five anyway, Mitchell said. Except for functions.

Yeah, well, that’s the other thing. No weddings, no engagements, no twenty-firsts, you know? I can’t stand those crowds. They expect you to know every tune on the planet and get the shits when you won’t play those Burt Bacharach numbers for hours at a time.

Mitchell shrugged and said, They usually bring their own sound. What about funerals, though? I get the occasional one. Usually small crowds. Except the Irish and Islander funerals tend to go on for a while.

Now, funerals I can do. Chopin, no problem. Drunken Irish songs, ‘Danny Boy’, that’s all fine by me. I love funerals. Chris rose, glancing at his watch. He eased into his jacket then held out his hand to Mitchell.

Tomorrow night, see you about…Mitchell began.

Around seven. Might manage it by then. Chris said goodbye to me and departed.

I raised my drink while gazing at Mitchell. A direct or indirect question to him was a certain way to complete and eternal ignorance. The only way people could find anything out was by waiting, listening, watching. Unfortunately, Mitchell being such a generous host, that also meant hours spent drinking many drinks, all of them pretty potent. I could sit on one of his margaritas for an hour now and then, but I couldn’t sustain the pace over the length of a night. If he noticed you drinking too slowly he simply reached out for the remains of your drink, tossed it into the sink, and made you something different and more solvent. A pineapple daiquiri, three times the normal strength. The only advantage was that these sessions had the effect of making your tongue numb but his loose, as if he was the one drinking, though I never saw him with anything other than a bitter lemon. So you got to hear information about all sorts of people, in and out of town. Fascinating, if you could remember any of it the next day.

It was a quiet evening, only half a dozen patrons clustered at a few tables over by the windows. On the bar a canary fluted sleepily in his cage. Behind Mitchell, on the back wall, the row of mirrors reflected the semi-precious gem colours of the exotic and rarely dispensed liqueurs and mixers – crème de menthe, grenadine, Galliano – while behind me on the open windows the gauzy curtains waved in the warm breeze, sucking and billowing out to embrace the potted palms then gently and noiselessly dropping again.

At times like this I could understand what had kept generations of men seated at bars sipping beers with only the drone of a television in the background. It was a sanctuary, where nothing was required of you, nothing asked. An enclosed and protective place that was also a public space with company and conversation should you require it. A place that made few demands, allowed a person to float without care or deadline, timetable or commitment. And drove their women mad with frustration.

I remained quiet, briefly catching Mitchell’s eye in the bar mirror as he turned to the shelf to stack glasses or smooth out towels. Then, after he served a beer to someone, I spoke.

So, what’s Chris’s story, where’s he from?

But Mitchell reached down to one of the fridges, then slowly stood up again before asking,

What brings you back after all these years?

He asked it in a way that implied he wasn’t interested in the answer, didn’t need an answer. He knew why I was back.

Have you been to the caravan? he continued.

Not yet. Going there tomorrow, I said.

About time, don’t you think?

I know that.

His curls had greyed beneath the Greek fisherman’s cap, and the lines in his face were deeper, but I still would have known him in an instant, anywhere.

Apart from sending on those boxes of yours, I haven’t known what to do about the place for bloody years. By the way, he added, you look like shit.

I know, I said. Bilateral mastectomy tends to do that to you. Especially followed up by secondaries. Liver. Tumours. The works, really. I’m just in the queue now for the upsized deal, the mega meal. You know, the one you can never finish eating.