Chapter 39
FRASER
‘Come on, Parks,’ I say, shaking the tent from the outside. ‘The day’s getting away from us!’
There’s a muffled ‘Leave me alone, bro’ that heralds our official arrival at the Teenage Years.
I zip open the tent door. ‘Do you want breakfast?’
She rolls over. ‘Dad, I don’t feel good.’ She’s lying on the air bed, half in and half out of her sleeping bag, in the foetal position, clutching her stomach.
‘Are you going to be sick?’
‘No, it just hurts.’
‘What sort of hurt?’
‘I’m literally dying.’
‘You’re figuratively dying. Is it a sharp pain on the lower right side?’
Please say no! I really don’t want to be contending with a burst appendix in a tent.
‘Stop asking,’ she says, groaning as she sits up. She’s very pale. I put my hand to her forehead. No temperature.
She staggers up, shoving her feet into a pair of sneakers, and heads to the amenities block while I run through a mental checklist of everything she’s eaten in the last twenty-four hours.
She’s gone a long while. Finally I head over, too, hover near the door, and call out, ‘Parks? You okay in there?’
‘Noo.’
Her voice is teary now, and small. Eventually she comes back out but won’t look at me. In fact, she just stands there, arms crossed, looking totally lost.
‘Did you pack the things?’ she asks.
It takes me a moment to catch on. ‘Oh, God. Parker. I’m sorry. I didn’t.’ She folds over, stricken, and I don’t let her see how it guts me. Audrey wouldn’t have let this happen!
‘It’s going to be absolutely fine,’ I reassure her. ‘I’ll head to the supermarket.’
She looks like she has no idea how to handle this in the interim.
‘Fold up some toilet paper,’ I advise.
‘I have!’ She rolls her eyes.
‘Do you want me to call Mum?’
She shakes her head, trying not to cry, allowing me to pull her into a hug, during which I seem to revisit every single age she’s ever been and all the ages she will be.
This milestone is evidence that time thunders forward, whether we’re ready or not.
‘I miss Audrey,’ she says into my chest, rendering this into one of those moments, where grief attaches itself to the cells of a normal experience like a virus, because the person should be here—the situation only magnifying their absence.
‘I miss her, too,’ I admit, heart lurching. ‘I’m sorry she’s not here to help.’
‘I feel like I’ll turn around and she’ll be standing there,’ she says quietly. ‘I literally just felt like that in there.’ She motions towards the shower block.
Of course Audrey would be there for this.
‘Don’t tell my colleagues’—I squeeze her tight and say this more softly—‘but I think the best thing we can do is allow ourselves to be comforted by that feeling, even if science can’t explain it.’
My brain won’t compute this phenomenon at all—that sudden, strong sense of someone’s presence.
I’ve been tempted to discuss it with the neuroscientists at work but haven’t been brave enough.
I need to keep my job! Surely there’s some logical, scientific explanation involving our desperate hope for connection or our clutching to denial.
That desire to believe they never leave us, even years later, because a part of us won’t ever accept they’re really gone.
‘Listen, why don’t I leave you with my phone, since I’ve got a signal. You can stay in the tent, relax on TikTok. I’ll pop to the shops and be back in twenty minutes with everything you need. Including chocolate. How does that sound?’
When I’m back with an armful of options, I can hear Parker in the tent laughing. I fling open the door like Superman throwing his cape over his shoulder and ceremoniously toss the items I’ve foraged onto the air bed.
‘Pads,’ I announce. ‘Tampons. Liners. Overnight pads with wings. Period undies. Period cup, some sort of wipes, some kind of deodorant, this special wash stuff, naproxen, hot-water bottle, heat patches, milk chocolate, hazelnut chocolate, caramel chocolate …’
‘Wow, Parker!’ Is that Rachael’s voice coming from my phone? ‘If it isn’t Menstruation Man returned from a triumphant quest!’
Parker bursts into fits of laughter. ‘Dad, how many uteruses do you think I have?’
‘Is that Rach?’
‘Yes, I called her. She’s coming to visit!’
Here?
I take the phone out of her hands. Sure enough, Rach lights up the screen, luxuriating in bed in her Canberra apartment, sun streaming through the window, long blonde hair splayed across the pillow. She doesn’t look like she’s in a rush to go anywhere.
‘What’s going on?’ I ask her, backing out of the tent. ‘Hang on. Parks—do you need Rach for any of this, or are you all right?’
‘I’m fine,’ she says. She’s fine. My child—getting on with the business of being grown up, suddenly.
I carry the phone over to a picnic table. ‘Sorry she called you so early.’
‘Are you kidding? I’m thrilled she did. It’s a big thing.
And she misses Audrey.’ There’s a moment of silence, the way there often is when one of us mentions her.
We don’t pause deliberately. We’re not lowering the flags to half-mast and going all ceremonial on ourselves.
The sound of her name just catches us off guard sometimes, even when it comes from our own lips, and snowploughs the day sideways a little.
Parker emerges from the tent, selected products from my haul bundled into the towel she’s hugging to her chest. I salute her as she walks past, as if farewelling her to the front, and Rachael smiles.
‘By the way, Dad,’ Parker calls. ‘Your phone was going off with Bumble notifications. Gross!’
Oh, God. I forgot about that.
‘This one woman, Ava, messaged you three times! And then Uncle Josh called. He wants to visit me at my summer music school.’
‘But he’s in New York.’
‘He said he’s coming home for something important.’
My muscles brace as if he’s already here, my body preparing to spend his visit avoiding conflict.
‘Look, Frase, if it’s okay with you, I thought I’d book a room tonight in a motel near the camping ground,’ Rachael says, drawing my attention back to the phone in my hand. ‘Spend the weekend with Parks? Also, I’ve got some news I want to discuss with you.’
‘Are you really on Bumble?’ Parker calls, still backing away towards the showers.
‘What news?’ I ask Rach.
‘Like, dating actual women?’
Speaking of actual women, Rachael rolls onto her side in the white singlet top she’s slept in, head propped in her hand, bed hair tumbling across her face. Fuck, is she going for dating wing-woman or contestant?
‘Because, Dad, if you want to meet someone,’ Parker shouts back, dragging my attention away from the phone, an increasingly difficult challenge, ‘it’s okay with us!’
Us?
I look back at Rachael as she swings her legs over the side of the bed and sits up. ‘She and I had a long chat, the executive summary of which is that we agreed it’s time for you to move forward. I told her I want you to be happy.’