it. “We don’t have to go to the reception if you’re not feeling well. I can drive you home.”
“I don’t know,” she said uncertainly. She pulled at the damp frizz on her forehead, trying to cover a little more of the space above her eyebrows. The space seemed vast now. Her fingers explored it nervously, scuttling across what felt like an acreage of blotched skin. I shouldn’t have had it permed so soon before, she thought wretchedly. This dress is wrong. I should have worn the green suit. I shouldn’t have worn a hat. She said plaintively, “You were so clever, you and Brian. Such clever children.” Her voice came from a long way back, from our high school years or even earlier, from the times of swinging on the gate. “He’ll go far, teachers used to say,” and her eyes stared into nothing, following the radiant but bewildering trajectory of Brian’s life. She spoke as sleepwalkers speak: “He’ll go far. They always told us that, I remember.” She looked vaguely about. “I mustn’t miss the tram, Philippa.”
As though the action were somehow related to the catching of trams, she stretched her hands out in front of her and studied them, turning them over slowly, examining the palms, the backs, the palms again. Her hands must have offered up a message, because she gave a sudden sad little yelp of a laugh. “I’m being silly, aren’t I? There’s no trams anymore.”
“Oh, I do that too,” I said. “The trams still run in my Brisbane.” I tapped my forehead with an index finger.
“You know who I ran into in the Commonwealth Bank one day? Last year it was, the big one, you know, in the city, on the corner of Adelaide Street? Mrs Matthews!”
“Mrs Matthews?”
“Richard’s mum, you remember?”
“Oh, Richard,” I said, dizzy with loss. It was so unsettling, this vertigo, hitting sudden pockets of freefall into the past.
“Richard went away too,” she said. “They never see him. It just seems like yesterday when Brian and Richard and you and the others … and Julie … and Elaine. It was terrible what happened to Elaine. I cried when I read it in the paper. It’s not fair, it isn’t fair.” She picked up a leaf and began shredding it nervously and then dropped it. She ventilated herself again, holding the dress away from her skin, shaking it lightly. “Everyone’s children went away.”
“God, it’s hot,” I said. “The staff club will be air-conditioned though. For the reception. I wish they’d hurry it up.”
“But you come back a lot, Philippa. I saw in the paper —”
“Oh yeah. Every year. Brisbane’s got its hooks in me, I reckon. Look, he’s coming at last, he’s seen us. Oh damn.”
We watched the student who had intercepted him: jeans and t-shirt, sandals.
“They all look scruffy,” she said. It was an affront to her. Even the adults, the university people, the ones who would be at the reception, even they looked scruffy. Well, not scruffy exactly. But more or less as though they were dressed for an evening barbecue at the neighbours’. I shouldn’t have worn the hat, she saw. I shouldn’t have worn the corsage. But how could she have known? She had thought it would be like going to a wedding.
And he could have been a bridegroom coming towards us, easing away, trailing worshipful students like membrane-embedded alpha-helical streamers. He had the kind of bridegroomly self-consciousness and forced gaiety that goes with weddings.
“Dorrie!” he said loudly, full of energetic joviality, hugging her.
He had always called her that, from before he even started primary school. At five years of age: Dorrie and Ed. Never mother, father; certainly not mum and dad. It was as though even then he knew something they didn’t. And they had been too apprehensive, too apologetic, to protest. They had never even asked why.
“Philippa.”
“Good on ya, mate.” We hugged, old puzzle parts locking together. “You were bloody amazing. I’m speechless, I’m dazzled. What the hell’s an ootheca?”
“What’s a what?”
“An oo-ith-ee-ka.” I pronounced all four syllables carefully, the way he had, the stress on the third, treating each sound like glass. “The ootheca of the praying mantis.”
“Jesus, Philippa!” Brian laughed. “Typical. Absolutely peripheral to the lecture. Trust you to focus on a fucking word.”
“What does it mean?”
“It’s the ovum sac,” he said.
“The ovum sac. Hmm. So the breakthrough was dependent on female biology.”
“Oh, fuck off.” He made a fist and shadow-boxed, stopping an eighth of an inch from my nose. “Listen, Dorrie …” — turning toward her. He had a message of great urgency and import.
“Brian,” she rushed in eagerly, tripping over her nerves. “I remember about the crystal set, you and your Dad, how you used to hear foreign languages.”
Brian frowned, at sea. He just stared at her, disoriented, and then looked around nervously. (“You actually blushed, for God’s sake,” I told him later. “As though anyone would give a damn, even if they’d heard.”)
“Now, Dorrie,” he said gently. “There’s this ghastly reception that Philippa and I have to go to, it’s a stupid boring thing, and there’s no sense in the world making you put up with … So listen, I’m going to call a cab for you, all right? And we’ll come on later for dinner, just like you wanted. All right?”
“All right,” she said, parrot-like, meekly, looking somewhere else. And then afterwards there’s a reception, she’d told the saleswoman, seeing white linen and cake and champagne, and I think this little one, the saleswoman had said, adjusting a wisp of feather at her brow, this little number will be perfect. Just the thing for mother of the famous man. Just the thing for the scientist’s mum.
It’s because I wore a hat, she thought.
“Look,” Brian said, raising his arm, waving. “Here’s a Black and White.” He hugged her again. “Take care of yourself now, Dorrie. Go and put your feet up on the verandah for a while. We’ll see you later, okay?”
He said something to the driver, gave him money, and we both waved. We kept on waving till the taxi disappeared.
“Don’t look at me like that, Philippa.”
“Like what?”
“Just cut it out, okay?”
“Don’t try and dump your guilt onto me.”
“She would have hated it. She’s terrified of social stuff, always has been. They never went anywhere. I was being kind, if it’s any of your business.”
“Jesus, Brian. That was brutal. And so totally unnecessary. I would have kept her under my wing.”
“She would have hated it,” he insisted. “Anyway, I’m not even going myself. I’m off to the Regatta. Let’s go.”
“What?
