At the beginning of spring Sam’s mother revealed she was dating. Her boyfriend was Roger, the friendly man who had eaten lunch with Sam and his mother at the bank, but it was a few months before either Katie met him or Sam saw him in person again. For the longest time he was just the man with the beard they would watch through the lounge-room window, driving off in his silver car as their mother waved goodbye from the footpath. One day their mother had a new necklace—from Roger, she said. Most evenings she’d spend half an hour on the phone, laughing. Twice he sent flowers to the house.
Dettie hated him.
‘The ink,’ she said one night while babysitting, ‘is not even dry on those divorce papers she sent your daddy, and there she is, out gallivanting around.’
Dettie was washing up as she said it, and the shudder that shook through her arms with each word was so ferocious, Sam worried she might smash the dishes on the drip tray.
‘I mean—what would he think?’
As he stood beside her, wiping mugs dry with his tea towel, he watched her reflection in the kitchen window.
‘One day,’ she said, ‘you kids are going to go to Perth to be with your father again. And all this nonsense—dating strange men, children getting confused, unfaithfulness—will be put to an end. Once and for all. You mark my words.’
Dettie had never remarried, and as Sam stared up at her image, paled in the glass, watching her take each slow, deep breath, he thought of the photo she kept of her husband—crumpled and sticky-taped around the edges—tucked in the bottom of her handbag.
Seething for the rest of the night, Dettie sat in the kitchen, hunched over endless cups of tea, asking Sam and Katie to keep the television down in the next room. When the sound of their mother’s keys finally jangled on the other side of the door, Dettie forced a tight smile, woke Katie, who had fallen asleep on the couch, and led the children into the hall to greet her.
‘How was your night, Joanne?’ Dettie asked, tightening her fingers on Sam’s shoulder.
‘Oh, Lord!’ His mother was startled. Clicking the door shut quietly behind her, she entered, setting her handbag down by the phone.
‘It’s so late,’ she whispered, kneeling down to kiss Sam and Katie each on the cheek. ‘What are you two still doing up?’
‘They wanted to see their mother,’ Dettie said, pulling them both firmly against her belly.
Unfastening a clip in her hair, their mother sighed and brushed past them into the kitchen. ‘Well, they’ve seen me now, Dettie. Thank you.’ She dropped her keys in the fruit bowl and ran herself a glass of water. ‘But come on, you two. It’s late. And you both look exhausted. Run on to bed. I’ll be there in a minute.’
Katie had barely opened her eyes the whole time. She turned robotically and clumped off towards her room. As Sam wandered into the hall, he saw Dettie, still glaring at his mother as she sipped her water. He saw her lean over to ask in a hushed tone, ‘Joanne, have you been drinking?’
‘Dettie.’ Sam’s mother’s voice hardened. ‘Enough. For heaven’s sake.’
As he passed his mother’s bedroom Sam could just make out, lit softly by the streetlight through the window, an old photograph of his father still hanging on the wall. His father’s face looked down over his mother’s dressing table. He grinned at the camera, head tilted, holding up a newborn Katie in his arms to show her off. Sam wondered what indeed his father would think. Then he wondered where he even was. Or whether he thought about them at all. His father, frozen in time, stretched his crooked smile.