Everything about mornings was satisfying. The ride across the parklands with Sue. The crackling yellow grass of summer. The puddles of winter. The daily skirmish with the Pulteney Street traffic. Coffee in Rundle Street with the street sweepers at work.
Above all, Ro loved the moment when the key clicked smoothly in the lock and she pushed open the door of the shop. The smell of a thousand old books reached out to her: paper, ink, mustiness, wafts of compost from the sink where a fellow worker had failed to throw out the remains of afternoon tea.
The peace of the first hour or so, every chore from dusting to paperwork, was balm to Ro’s soul, a chance for the bigger questions to drift gently in her mind.
In the foggy time, while Ro grappled every day with guilt about Gerry, everything changed, everyone grew up.
Alby was first.
‘I’ve got a job in Kambalda,’ she announced in the pub one night.
Ro yelped. ‘Kambalda?’
‘Yeah. You know. In WA.’
‘Not in a mine?’
‘Yeah.’
‘Shit, Alby. How could you? Mining. Probably on Aboriginal land.’
‘Certainly on Aboriginal land. The whole country is Aboriginal land. This pub is on Aboriginal land.’
‘Yes, but mining?’
‘Pretty bad, I know. But the money’s fantastic. I’ll make enough money to …’
‘To what?’
‘I don’t know. Hell Ro. I’m so sick of dead-end jobs. It would be good to have a bit to spend for a change.’
Ro borrowed Sue’s car and took her to the airport.
Then the household broke up.
‘I’m shifting to Alice Springs,’ Petra announced. ‘We’re going to try living together.’
Ro was shocked. ‘As a couple you mean? The two of you alone, without anyone else?’
Petra laughed. ‘Yeah. Wicked, isn’t it?’
Ro and Sue and Mikki helped pack and load the car till the suspension sagged. Petra drove off slowly on a dismal grey day.
Every time Ro walked past the empty room it whispered faintly to her. Somehow the remaining three never found time to look for a new housemate.
Into this hiatus Mikki dropped the news that she had won a year-long fellowship in London. She would store her belongings in the shed so that that they could let out her room.
Two empty rooms.
Before the year was up Mikki wrote from London. She was planning to stay there and was pregnant to a turkey baster.
This news floored Ro. It removed Mikki from her world by much more than geography. That one of her very own housemates, a sister, a woman she had laughed and cried and fought and danced and smoked dope with, a woman younger than Ro herself, could go off and join the mothers, without a moment of doubt, was astonishing.
Had she forgotten the oppressiveness of families, nuclear or otherwise? Had she forgotten that there are already too many people in the world? That the Earth in its present damaged and vulnerable state was not a place to bring children into? Above all, how could she go smiling into that jungle of demands and responsibilities?
Julia was more succinct. ‘Wonder how she’ll cope with nappies?’
‘Exactly,’ Ro said. ‘Do you know what percentage of garbage is made up of disposable nappies?’
‘I expect she’ll use cloth ones.’
‘But washing nappies is the original women’s drudgery.’
Julia laughed. ‘I was thinking more of the smells. I always thought Mikki was a bit on the fastidious side.’
It was a time of major readjustment in Ro’s relationship with Julia. At first Julia listened patiently to Ro rehashing her time with Gerry, reliving and retelling every part of it, trying over and over to make it end differently.
Julia wasn’t unsympathetic. She could see how badly shaken Ro was. And she was aware of her own part in the story. Perhaps if she and Ro hadn’t got off together, Ro and Gerry would still be together. But she doubted it, knowing Ro.
By the end of a year Julia’s patience had run out. She was tired of listening to Ro spin her wheels, and she didn’t see herself as an expert on emotional difficulties. She suggested that Ro see a counsellor.
Ro was outraged. Therapy? The opiate of the masses. Individual solutions at the expense of collective action. A consumerist indulgence of the western world. Wasn’t this why they had a sisterhood, so they could look after each other and avoid the evils of the psychiatric system?
Julia, ever the pragmatist, didn’t bother to argue. She simply drew lines around what she would offer. It was time, she said, to recognise that they were no longer lovers, in the relationship sense. She loved Ro and would be there for her as best she could, but Ro must find her own way out of the bog.
Ro was at her lowest ebb. Sex, once such an absorbing preoccupation, had dwindled away to nothing. She was numb. She continued to think Julia the most beautiful woman she’d ever met, but she lacked the spark to act on the idea, with Julia or with anyone else.
It was the break-up of the household that she felt most keenly. Loverless and friendless she rattled around in the half-empty house with Sue. And she assumed that Sue would move out soon. Ro would not be able to afford the rent on her own. She could barely manage when there were two of them. So she would be homeless as well.
When Sue announced after dinner one night that she wanted to talk, Ro nodded but kept her eyes glumly on the table.
‘I’ve enrolled in medicine,’ Sue said.
Ro was surprised into looking up.
‘Wow,’ she said. ‘Just like that?’
Sue frowned. ‘I’ve been thinking about it for ages. It’s what I always wanted to do. Nursing was second best. Back then nobody told me that women could be doctors.’
‘That’s fantastic. If anyone can do it, you can.’
‘I don’t know. I’m nervous.’
‘No need. You’re smart, you’re hardworking, you’re organised, you’re thorough. You’ll piss it in.’
‘Thanks Ro.’
The more Ro thought about it the more enthusiastic she felt. ‘How good will it be when we have lesbian doctors everywhere? And specialists. Surgeons, gynaecologists, you name it. Think of a hospital run by women!’
‘Um …’
‘We could revolutionise the whole health system. Move out from the women’s health centres and take over the world. Have combined western and alternative healing clinics. Wow.’
Sue laughed. ‘Stop, Ro. Let me get through the basics first.’
‘Yeah. I’ll help. I don’t know how. But I’m backing you, sister.’
‘That’s the thing. We can’t go on living here. I won’t be earning.’
Ro slumped down again in her chair. Here it was, then.
‘Ro? I’m not abandoning you. But I think we need to find a cheaper place.’
‘You mean go on living together?’
‘Yes. That’s if you want to.’
Ro was astonished. She thought of all the things that drove Sue up the wall. ‘What about my messiness?’ she blurted. ‘And how I forget things. I thought you hated all that. And I smoke.’
Sue shifted uncomfortably. ‘Well, what about my bossiness? I’m a control freak, remember?’
Ro gaped. ‘It’s my fault,’ she said. ‘It’s not you. I know I’m impossible.’
‘I suppose I’m used to you. I’d miss your messes. And your crises.’
Ro pushed crumbs around on the table with her forefinger.
‘I’m kidding, you know,’ Sue said. ‘I’ve noticed that you smoke outside now.’
Ro was touched.
‘You’ve been saying that you want to go back to uni,’ Sue said. ‘We could help each other. Find a place we can afford. Put our heads down and work.’
And so was born a pact that lasted them through the next six years. Occasionally they niggled at each other, but mostly Sue withdrew from conflict and came back when she’d calmed down. They worked out ways to cope in a small unit, routines that worked.
During this time Ro grew closer to her mother. She was less judgemental now about Elsa’s reaction to having a lesbian daughter. Ro saw that it wasn’t only anxiety about what the neighbours would think. Elsa had real concern for her, for Ro. For her safety in a hostile world.
Ro realised belatedly that coming out was not a challenge for lesbians or gay men alone. Others were affected, too. Elsa had to come out, in effect, every time an acquaintance asked about her daughter. Is Ro married yet? Does Ro have any kids yet? And whether Elsa answered honestly or not, she would hear the homophobia. She wasn’t stupid.
Ro knew that she was lucky. She might complain about her mother to friends. But she knew that her mother’s reaction to the news that Ro was a lesbian had been comparatively mild. She had heard her friends’ stories: the mother who rushed out of the room and threw up noisily in the toilet; the mother who shrieked, ‘You’re taking the easy way out’.
Elsa was more like the mother who responded to her daughter’s announcement that she didn’t want to have sex with men anymore by shuddering with distaste. ‘Of course you don’t, dear.’
How much did the mothers actually know about lesbian life? About lesbian sex? About any sex? How much did the grandmothers know? Surely they experimented themselves. Ro thought again about her mother’s frequent failure to ask about the realities of Ro’s life. Part of it was Elsa’s difficulty with the word lesbian.
Ro had been angry about that. She’d been defensive, she’d been critical, she’d been guarded. She’d probably been rude. What she’d never done was meet her mother halfway. She tried a new approach. At least once in every conversation she used the word lesbian in as light and cheerful a context as she could manage. And her mother responded.
There were setbacks. On one occasion Elsa came out with a thought she’d been mulling over.
‘I was wondering if any of your friends, your lesbian friends … when they live together … well, I was thinking about you and Sue. Whether one of you could stay home and do the cooking and cleaning and all that, keep house, and the other one could go out and earn the money. Like husband and wife.’
The fatal words. In spite of her best intentions Ro was incandescent. Hadn’t her mother understood anything?
‘We don’t do that! Marriage. We don’t believe in that!’
Elsa retreated at once, a poked snail.
But over the years it became easier.
‘I saw this thing on telly about lesbians,’ Elsa said.
‘Oh?’
‘They had a baby. The two of them. They did it with IVF.’
‘Oh yeah? What do you reckon?’
‘It was sweet. They were lovely with the baby.’
‘You don’t think a child has to have a father?’
‘Well, you didn’t. Not for long anyhow. That’s it, isn’t it? Things happen. Not all babies have fathers. My best friend, remember Aunty Jean? She was brought up by her gran. She thought her gran was her mum. Later she found out she was actually her gran and her older sister was her mum.’
Ro considered this tangle. ‘I guess there’s always been a bit of that.’
‘Women coped. I would never choose it, but I don’t see how you can say it’s wrong.’
But there was a sting in the tail.
‘I don’t think it’s right for men though,’ Elsa added. ‘Two men with a baby. I don’t like the idea of that.’
In this new spirit of openness, Ro moved on to her brother. But here she was in for a surprise. Murray and Jen were way ahead of her, clearly waiting for her to say the word. They were full of stories of their own.
‘There’s this girl in my office,’ Jen said. ‘Not very old, she left school last year. Anyhow the others were teasing her about when was she going to get a boyfriend, all that stuff. We worked back one night and I could see she was upset. Well, I could guess. I knew what was going on. It all came out. She doesn’t want a boyfriend. She wants a girlfriend.’
‘What did you say?’
‘I told her it’s fine. It’ll happen when the time’s right. I told her about …’ Here Jen hesitated.
Clearly she had told the young woman about Ro, her lesbian sister-in-law.
Ro was startled. It was the thing with her mother over again. She’d been too caught up in her own life to notice the rest of the world changing and moving on. And meanwhile she was being outed all over the place by her own family. More than outed. Being held up as a role model.
‘I hope you don’t mind,’ Jen said.
Ro laughed. ‘Not at all. Happy to oblige. I’ll get you the Lesbian Line brochure. You might find other recruits.’
At long last Ro began to enjoy her original family, her family of origin. She could have them as well as her family of choice. She looked forward to seeing them, talking to them. She took her nieces on outings, sat through The Princess Bride without complaint.
‘The Princess Bride,’ said Sue. ‘You’re besotted.’
Ro looked sheepish. ‘Hopefully they’ll move on to more interesting ideas. To tell you the truth it was a mistake. I thought from the review that the heroine was strong.’
‘And let me guess. She wasn’t.’
‘Well, she rode her own horse. I suppose that’s something. And when they were attacked by Rodents of Unusual Size she did pick up a stick. But she didn’t actually use it. The hero had to do it all.’
‘Poor hero.’
‘Don’t worry, he got his reward in the end.’
Ro was flattered by this friendship with her nieces. And they were, after all, the feminists of tomorrow. Perhaps the lesbians of tomorrow?
She was fascinated by glimpses of their lives. They talked with their parents about sex and bodies and friends and everything else under the sun. And Jen was adamant that when they started experimenting they were to bring their friends home so that they could experiment in safety. Ro noticed that Jen was careful to say friends rather than boyfriends. No wonder kids were staying at home longer.
University, the second time around, was both less and more confusing. Less because the lecturers had shrunk, metaphorically speaking, and become more human. More because the jargon was worse than baffling. Ro had arrived back in time for the full flowering of postmodernism.
She refused to be defeated and ploughed her way laboriously through prescribed texts. She tried out bits of theory on Alby, returned from her mine in WA, but Alby had no time for such introspective wank. She saw her role as stopping Ro’s head from exploding. Whenever she could she dragged Ro away from her books to drink and play pool.
Sue was more supportive. She was working steadily through medical school, struggling with a different set of jargon.
Eventually Ro began to make headway and plodded toward a degree. But having finally arrived, she was ambivalent. Old childhood voices warned her against getting too big for her boots. No one else in her family had been to university. Was she betraying her class background? Her feelings came to a head over the idea of hiring cap and gown and lining up to get her piece of paper. She couldn’t do it. She told her mother, thinking that Elsa might understand.
‘Why?’ cried Elsa. ‘You’ve done all that work. Aren’t you proud of yourself?’
‘I suppose so.’
‘You suppose so? What’s the matter with you?’
‘I don’t know. It’s about standing up there, dressed in all that gear. It’s so British-ruling-class.’
‘Don’t be silly. For once in your life you line up with all the others and do what’s fitting. You’ve earned it for goodness sake. I’ll be there and I’m proud, even if you aren’t. And isn’t Sue coming, too?’
So Ro lay awake the night before the ceremony contemplating the gown hanging on the handle of the wardrobe and trying to suppress the feeling that she was going over to the dark side.
Because she was awake she heard the phone ring and jumped up to answer it before it could disturb Sue. She didn’t catch the name. Blah blah blah from Flinders Medical Centre. About Alby.
Ro could hear the blood pounding in her ears. She struggled to breathe.
‘Yes?’ she said. Her voice was barely audible to her own ears.
‘Are you there? I’m sorry to disturb you. But you’re listed as next of kin.’
She’s dead.
‘Her motorbike?’ Ro croaked.
‘Yes. It sounds as though she skidded on gravel.’
This must not be the end. It must not. Alby must not slip away invisibly.
‘Can I see her?’
‘Yes of course. She asked me to ring you.’
Reality lurched.
‘She’s alive?’
‘Oh yes. She’s not in danger.’
Ro sat down weakly on the arm of the sofa.
‘She’s down for surgery first thing in the morning,’ said the voice.
When Ro reached the hospital Alby was a pulpy mess on a trolley. By the time the surgeon finished with her she looked a little better, stretched out unnaturally straight in a bed, face purple and yellow between stitches, one leg in plaster. Most importantly, she was alive.
Ro was torn between wrenching pity and a desire to scream. Bloody motorbikes. But when Alby opened one eye and squinted at her Ro’s heart melted.
‘Sorry,’ Alby said faintly. ‘Suppose you thought I’d gone and left you.’
‘It’s okay,’ Ro said. Alby didn’t answer. She’d already drifted off again.
Ro held Alby’s good hand for the rest of the day and missed her graduation.
Elsa was disappointed.
‘Ask her round for dinner tonight,’ Sue said, leaning on the end of Alby’s bed. ‘I’ll cook a special meal and you can wear the gown.’
And so it was that Ro’s graduation photo lacked the august sandstone backdrop of Adelaide University. Instead it included Elsa and Sue grinning their heads off at the kitchen table.
For Alby it was a turning point. Her bones mended and she stopped hobbling around on crutches. But she sold what was left of the motorbike.
‘No more drinking or smoking,’ she told Ro. ‘And I need your support with that.’
It was the least Ro could do, and it certainly suited her budget. But she mutinied about dope.
‘It’s not bad for you.’
‘Crap,’ said the new Alby briskly. ‘It’s as bad as tobacco.’
Ro didn’t argue, but she went on having a quiet joint when no one else was around. She was floating a little above her desk when Sue came into the bookshop one afternoon. Ro smiled expansively.
‘Can I help you?’ she asked.
‘Doesn’t look like it,’ Sue said, turning to leave again.
At the time Ro thought, if she thought at all, that Sue must have been having a hard day. But Sue, who knew the owners, took Ro to task over dinner.
‘What if it had been one of your bosses? It doesn’t look good.’
‘But how could you tell?’ Ro was genuinely puzzled. She prided herself on her ability to look cool in every situation, stoned or not.
‘Oh come off it Ro. Your eyes were whizzing round in their sockets. And the smell!’
Ro was chastened, and anxious not to lose her job.
She joined Alby’s gym. They compared pecs and biceps and went on long bike rides down the coast and through the hills. Ro gave up everything, all her vices gone. She no longer had so much as the occasional nighttime puff on the balcony. She was clean.