Chapter 3 Lottie
LOTTIE
NOW, NSW SOUTHERN HIGHLANDS, AUSTRALIA
At the lounge room window, I am spooning cornflakes into my mouth, watching a rabbit nibble at something by the lemon tree: paws to mouth, head down.
Abruptly, it sits bolt upright, twitching, then jumps, elongated in flight for a moment until swallowed by the hedge. I envy its ability to disappear.
Across the fence in the Brookbank River picnic area, gum trees are interspersed with oaks and elms. Up our street, traditional cottage gardens are dotted through with natives, and fail-safes such as crepe myrtle planted for the extremes of the four-seasons weather.
It is odd to think I have chosen to return to this village I spent so many years planning to escape as a teenager.
The lure of the work, the silent, shadowy corners and the comforting presence of the old books in Phyllida’s shop are what brought me back.
And the knowledge that I would be working beside my grandmother again.
I wanted to be here with her and the books instead of living in the city as a singleton, running around inside busy, bright cafes making coffees and scraping food waste into bins and cleaning tables.
Brookbank felt like a safer place to nurse the pain that I had inflicted on myself.
It suddenly hits me that I will be the one in charge of Phyllida’s antiquarian bookshop when I open up today.
I have worked in the shop for several months of each year since I was twelve: through weekends and school holidays and long university summer breaks, and a full year when I was back here in my early twenties after travelling overseas.
But for all of those shifts—and every shift in this last month since I’ve been back—I have been carefully stewarded by Phyllida.
Working in the shop alone feels like being thrust into a responsible adult world I have never really had to navigate, despite the fact that I’m nearly thirty.
I should have come home earlier. I should have been here for my grandmother; to understand her thinking and why she did this thing.
She was too old to be hefting boxes of books around on her own.
Is too old, I remind myself. She’s still with us.
Hooked up to a bunch of machines in the hospital, barely there, but alive.
I thank my lucky stars Mary had popped over to see her unexpectedly on Saturday night and found her just in time.
In the bedroom, I wipe tears from my face and kick clothes out of the way.
I locate my favourite earrings, then pick up Phyllida’s letter from my bedside table.
I stare at it, unable to decide what to do.
I rang the hospital yesterday to find out if I could visit her yet, and they told me she’s not properly conscious, but that I am welcome to come and sit with her.
Maybe I’m delaying my visit because Phyllida’s letter has freaked me out so much.
What do you do about your grandmother’s dying wishes when she’s not actually dead?
I can’t ask Miriam for help. She doesn’t know about the overdose—she thinks it’s a stroke (Mary and I agreed on that story when she told me what happened).
But since the letter arrived, my mother has done nothing except badger me to let her read it. As if.
Miriam has always had a strained relationship with Phyllida.
I suppose it’s something to do with my father, but it might be other things.
Maybe religion. Miriam is an atheist, so she was unimpressed when, at twelve, I came home from a school religious instruction lesson and demanded to know if there was a god; demanded she take me to church, just in case there was and it meant I was at risk of eternal roasting in hellfire if we didn’t immediately sort something out.
Miriam refused to take me, of course, but Phyllida had been thrilled to be asked.
She isn’t a devoted Christian—she likes parts of all religions—but she was friends with the women in the church and she liked the idea that I was interested in developing my spirituality.
From then on, most Sundays, Phyllida and I would go to church.
It stopped when I was fifteen and I decided that maybe Miriam was onto something.
If there was a benevolent god, why would he have let Tracey Schuster’s dad molest poor Tracey and then lie about it in court so that Tracey was forced to leave home and become a junkie and walk in front of a train?
You’d think God would have something to say about that.
And about the kids starving in Ethiopia, and about the Christian cult leaders in Uganda who murdered seven hundred followers with fire and poison before running off with their money.
What kind of god was I praying to if he didn’t bother using his powers to get down to the nitty-gritty?
Phyllida said it was good I was on my own path of discovery.
She seemed to have her own homegrown brand of religion too, which, from what I could see, involved walking along the river and having silent communion with some sort of deity, while being generally delighted by any little thing nature threw her way: ducks, wombat holes, repulsive-looking fungi on dead logs.
I peer into the hallway mirror and wonder why the cucumbers have done nothing to cool my swollen eyes.
It looks like two bullfrogs have landed on either side of my nose.
Phyllida’s weird letter, which made it obvious she’d planned her death, was bound to put anyone in a depressed mood.
But it was the possibility of her being gone from my world that kept me awake most of the night.
By my bed there is a photograph of me as an eight-year-old holding Phyllida’s hand at The Mad Hatter’s Tea Party she hosted in her shop every year.
In her other hand is a book. Always a book.
I wonder who took the photograph? Mary? My teacher, Mrs Price, who brought my whole class to Phyllida’s shop for the party?
Perhaps Roddy? I have forgotten. And why hasn’t Roddy called me to discuss Phyllida’s condition?
He is almost as close to Phyllida as I am, and is the only other person Mary was going to tell about the suicide attempt.
I don’t want to ring him in case he hears how upset I am and offers sympathy, which will just make me cry more.
I’ll text him later; get him to come into the shop so we can talk about Phyllida’s condition.
And about the strange letter she left me. He’ll know what to do.
I look back at Phyllida in the photograph, taken more than twenty years ago.
She is wearing a tall purple hat, a bow tie and a waistcoat she embroidered with circular patches.
She convinced every kid in my class to stand up and read with her that day, and afterwards she brought out Dormouse treacle tarts inspired by Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland.
She treated the books with a gleeful reverence that was catching.
All the kids there that day wanted a grandmother like mine.
I pick up my bag and my phone and head to the van, breathing a sigh of relief when I don’t run into Miriam in the kitchen.
I don’t want her questions or her expensive cosmetic suggestions for fixing swollen eyes.
I need to find Phyllida’s strength and take each day, each moment, as it comes.
There’s an overused phrase my English grandmother had seemed to live by, at least until now: Keep calm and carry on. What changed her mind?