Chapter 24 About Mattie
ABOUT MATTIE
On the road to Lionheart twelve grey kangaroos of various ages and sizes stopped hopping across a field to watch the silver truck speed by. The mob moved closer together, distrustful of the engine, then hopped along after the truck passed.
Ronnie reached for Nev’s dirty hand, which helpfully came off the wheel and rested on the center console where she could reach it. The memory of the sapling surrounded by a ring of compost on the grassy slope behind the horse barn was oddly comforting.
“Thank you.” She interlaced their fingers.
“No worries.”
“That was really sweet.” She kissed Nev’s knuckles, then rested their hands on her thigh and watched window TV, letting the lights and colors wash over her. “I think I’m high.”
Nev snorted. “Ding ding. Fifty points.” She pulled off Pademelon Road onto the Bermuda grass in front of Reg’s purple Queenslander and took her hand back to shift into park.
Ronnie’s relatives were inside, which gave her a minute to adjust and transition into big loud family time.
Nev turned off the engine.
Lorikeets in the bloodwood tree that Rainbow called the vanilla ice cream tree. “Is that her favorite?” Ronnie pointed.
Nev nodded, put on sunglasses and unwrapped a stick of gum. “You good?”
Effortlessly mature and sexy. So annoying. Ronnie would have been turned on if she wasn’t half dead. It would be a long time, yonks, before she got laid again. “Thanks for a fun date.”
“You’re welcome.” Enigmatic behind Ray Ban aviators, Nev chewed the gum. “Something tells me it won’t be the last time.” Nev cracked an amused smile.
Relieved and grateful, Ronnie went in for a kiss, but Nev gave her a hug.
Ronnie wasn’t offended. “Why do you do that?” she asked, curious.
Nev hesitated.
“Do you want to kiss me?”
“Um…” Nev licked her lips. “When you’re older.”
“How much older?”
Nev chewed the gum and hid behind the aviators.
“A good wine takes decades to ripen. If you drink it too early, it’s sour.
Once you pop the top, you have to drink the whole thing in two days.
It stops aging. You only get one chance to time it right.
The longer you wait, the better the good ones get. You’re not ready. I’m not ready.”
Ronnie rolled her eyes. “M’kay.”
Nev got out and walked around, opened the passenger door, then helped her down. Ronnie steadied herself against the truck door.
Reg and Blaise stood behind Rainbow on the raised Victorian veranda, next to the sign. Rainbow ran out screaming the way she screamed for ice cream trucks. Ronnie braced for impact.
Her daughter was gentler than the dogs would be, but not by much. Rainbow squeezed her around the lower ribs as if testing to see if she would break.
Ronnie held her breath, patted her daughter on the back.
Nev walked her to the veranda before handing her off to her relatives. Reg and Rainbow lifted her up the stairs.
She watched her swollen feet—numb meat balloons on stiff ankles—to help them find the steps. “Don’t have unprotected sex, kids.”
On the other side of the screen door Mattie laughed.
Nev didn’t follow. She had hung behind and was leaning against her truck.
Ronnie paused and turned back. “Call me later?”
Nev shook her head. “Can’t. Have to drive Gunni to the airport. I’ll be back next week.”
Ronnie swallowed. “Have a safe trip.”
Nev touched the brim of her Akubra, tipping her hat in a way few people could without looking ridiculous.
Mattie’s friend had given him a front-row ticket to the match, but if Mattie was disappointed not to be there, he hid it. The Madonnas cuddled on the couch while the Crusaders versus Chiefs super rugby round robin match played on the telly.
The hospital had told her to walk around as often as she could to prevent internal scarring. When she shuffled around the house, waiting for the older wallaby joeys that were loose in the family room to hop out of the way, Mattie and Reg spotted her like she was a midfielder they were guarding.
She rested on the couch, propped up with pillows under her knees on one of the coveted ottomans while her relatives pampered her and brought her random things they thought she might need.
That night, Ronnie was the only one who didn’t cook something. The kitchen was in holiday mode—giggly excitement, everyone teasing Mattie, who teased everyone, and razor-sharp focus on what magic spell Nonna was casting in the big pot.
After dinner, which was pork roast, they let Rainbow stay up late watching movies, eating popcorn and candy, while Nonna retired with her boxed wine to her apartment in back, off the pool.
At eleven, Blaise turned off the telly and dimmed the lights. Rainbow opened windows and turned on fans, pausing to watch Ronnie shuffle to the toilet.
In the dark living room she lay on the fold-out bed beside her daughter and listened to a chorus of ceiling fans. In the wide old house, a central corridor caught the breeze. At night they slept with front and back doors open. Screens kept some of the mosquitos out.
Rainbow was all elbows and knees, in the midst of a growth spurt. The girl was already up to Ronnie’s chest. She was pretty. Puberty would be a nasty surprise for the girl. There was nothing Ronnie could do about that, except love her and make sure she had clothes that fit.
“Did they take out your vagina?” Rainbow asked.
Ronnie laughed. “No. Did you learn about reproductive systems in school?”
“Can you still get pregnant?”
“They took out one of my two fallopian tubes. The other still works.”
“Were you trying to have a baby?” Rainbow asked.
“No. I was trying not to. I’m happy with the one I’ve got.” Ronnie tweaked her nose.
“I don’t want to be an only child.”
It hadn’t occurred to her that her daughter might be disappointed.
“By the time you get married, all your eggs will be dead.”
Ronnie laughed. “Nine-year-olds don’t worry about that.”
“I’m mature.”
“Not that mature. I don’t want to do the family thing again. We’re a family. I’m never going to get married. Why would I? I already have you.”
“Don’t use me as an excuse to fail at everything. You’re kind of a loser, mum.”
Bloody hell… She wasn’t thick-skinned enough to survive a tween. “Rainbow! That hurts my feelings. I’m not a loser. I’m trying extremely hard. We don’t talk down at people.”
“Sorry.”
“It’s okay.”
Rainbow snuggled under her arm. “This is so nice. I love this.”
What? “Really?”
To her surprise, Rainbow nodded. A minute later the girl rolled over and her breathing slowed. Ronnie was left wondering what had just happened and what she had missed.
Mattie appeared like a disembodied head, lit from below by the cold glow of his phone. He bent over the bed, patted Ronnie on the head like a dog. “Are you awake?”
Ronnie grunted, mentally walking through all of the steps it would involve to extricate herself from the pillows, sheets, and lukewarm hot water bottles.
Mattie bent over Rainbow, then picked up the girl and carried her into his bedroom. He returned carrying a pillow, tossed it on the couch, clicked on the overhead light. “I’m calling Luca. Want to say hi?”
Ronnie’s cold dead heart melted. “Yeah.” She checked the time. “Help me up.” He helped her sit up and shuffle over to the other couch. She reached back with both hands, grasped the side and back of the sofa, then eased herself down gingerly. She was never going to take her abs for granted again.
Beside her Mattie held up his phone like he was taking a selfie. A tiny head appeared on the screen. A toddler’s head bobbed at the bottom edge of the frame. Mattie’s face broke into a wide grin. “Luca! My boy!” He began babbling in a mixture of English and Spanish.
Luca’s face lit up and he approached the camera. He glanced up at someone off-screen, then back at them. Luca reached for the phone, held it upside down, giggled.
She and Mattie waved again, grinning. Mattie asked Luca about his day at school, which must mean daycare.
The toddler replied in near-perfect English and fluent Spanish.
Luca was precocious. Ronnie had noticed that the last time she saw him.
He had been born two months premature, spent two harrowing months in the Spanish equivalent of a NICU, and had cochlear implants that looked like external hearing-aids.
Luca showed them his toy dinosaurs and trucks. They oohed and aahed appreciatively. Mattie babbled on delightedly in Spanish about the various qualities of the t-rex and triceratops, front-end loader and bulldozer.
After a few minutes the toddler lost interest and wandered off, hunting for bikkies and milk.
Judging by the way yellow light slanted across the walls of the apartment it was late afternoon in Madrid. Mattie chatted with the elderly woman easily and affectionately. Luca’s great-grandmother’s name was Firenza.
Firenza encouraged Mattie to buy an apartment in Bilboa. Ronnie nodded off against his shoulder.
Your sister is sick?
Mattie held her with one arm and the phone with the other, struggling to explain the ectopic in his limited Spanish.
“Pobre Ronalda,” Firenza said. So ugly, like my aunt. Everyone called her a lesbian. Send her to me. I will find her a rich husband in Bilboa. There are men in the city who like women who look like men. It is because of the French that they like ugly women.
After Mattie ended the call Ronnie snorted. He chuckled. “It is because of the French that they like ugly women,” he whispered, imitating the exasperated cadence of the old woman’s voice.
Ronnie laughed silently, hugging a pillow.
In the morning, Reg and Blaise moved around the kitchen, frying sausages on the stovetop while talking in low voices.
Mattie joined her on the glider in the screen room, offered her a plate of snags and eggs. She accepted it, holding a hot water bottle against her incision with her other hand. She had seen her incision at the hospital when a doctor examined it yesterday; she would have a c-section scar.
She ate beside her brother in companionable silence. Today she felt better.