IILUSTRATION: PAPERLILY STUDIO

Dad said she enjoyed being at sea. She loved the shape of perfectly sculpted cake layers, the glinting headache of the casino floor and symmetrical rows of blinding white pool loungers, strewn with t-shirts and books to save for later. She sent us photos of all these sights, and none of herself or Dad. One evening she composed me a rambling text message about the different salads she had at dinner, how one of the salads, showered in nasturtiums, would transport sunshine into her body, and the other, made mostly of beetroot, would only bring darkness and decay from underground. 

I called Dad to report the salad rant the following day, a roundabout way of suggesting he keep a close watch on her. He seemed distracted. “I gotta go, Luce. There’s an alarm going off.” The alarm was man overboard, the man overboard was Mum.  

The Indian was calm and forgiving that morning, a vast private lagoon for Mum to enjoy. Dad said she held casually to one of the many flotation devices they threw like she was waiting for a tow. Back on board, she must have looked like an alien, the lashings of eye makeup she always used, platinum hair slicked back, wrapped in a foil blanket like a soggy kebab. Frank googled the survival rate. “Twenty-five percent. Jesus.” 

I finally got them back on the phone. “Mum, that was… beyond silly. They’re going to think you tried to kill yourself.” 

“It was from a low deck! I just wanted to swim.” 

“You couldn’t swim in the pools? There are eight pools.” 

“They were all occupied.” 

I called again later, when she was asleep. “I think we need to do something, Dad.” 

“I know.” 

—— 

We expected a fight when we moved her to Souvenir Hill, but by the time Dad signed over the first astronomical instalment (and waited for a few residents to die in order to move up the waitlist) Mum had little concept of home or leaving it. Doctors struggled to fit her in to any known category of dementia, and when they came close to a diagnosis, some extra information we supplied would rule it out. She’d always been nuts, but even nutcases can lose their faculties in a traditionally medical way.  

In our family we called them behaviours.  Behaviours that passed as eccentricities mainly, sometimes construed as attention seeking, but often inexplicable, pointless. The range was broad, from harmless if a little embarrassing, to outright mortifying.  

She tended to sit on the floor, no matter the company or formality of meeting, legs stretched out, conversing as normal. In year three she packed me a cold block of tasty cheese for the school bake sale, which I dumped in the bin outside my classroom. The worst, for Frank at least, was when she jumped in the pool at his swimming carnival, not even at our home school, some private boys’ college in the western suburbs. The kids trying to complete their heat were stunned, ducking under lane ropes, reaching for the sides. She floated on her back, skirts billowing around her like wings until someone dragged her out. It was always water.   

We moved to a house with a pool of our own. A kidney-shaped oasis in a circle of palms. Three broad concrete steps into the shallow, opening into a deep, cold bowl of slightly saline water in the widest end. The neighbours made it known they’d enjoyed unrestricted access to the pool with the previous owners. Their kids were welcome to unlatch the gate and swim after school, hauling bright inflatables from the shed at their whim. Dad gently advised this might not be a habit they’d want to continue, and they struggled to hide how offended they were. Encountering Mum in her naked-breasted glory a week later, supine on a pink lilo, was enough to ensure they never returned without an explicit invitation, of which there were very few.   

She swam beautifully, fully submerged or adrift on the surface, the envelope of water lulling her into a calm she didn’t otherwise possess, a baby en caul. Some days she was full of maternal generosity and wisdom, dressed absurdly but beautifully, making sloppy cheese toasties and dancing to the radio. Frank said he didn’t realise Mum was weird, not for years. “I think my friends had to point it out. We certainly never discussed it.” 

“You and I? No, I don’t think we had to. Dad compensated. The weirdest mum and the most stable dad.” 

“True.” 

We set up her room at Souvenir Hill with things from home. Her own doona, her Salvador Dali clock melting off the bolted-down desk, a bunch of gaudy ornaments from her office cabinets, books and teacups she loved. Finally, her clothes. Tulle, lace, neon lycra, waves of silk.  

“She’s going to miss the rest,” Frank frowned into the wardrobe, after packing it as full as possible. “This doesn’t even scratch the surface.” 

“We’ll rotate them. Seasonally. She’d like that.” 

He checked his watch. “Yeah, okay. I’ll just put it in my calendar. Rotate mum’s seasonal wardrobe.” 

“Go back to work, big shot. I can do the rest.” 

—— 

Before they mastered her medication cocktail, Mum’s cognizance and mood was a lottery. Anxious and reckless? Angry and lucid? Few combinations were desirable. Frank and I alternated visiting, mid-week, then either Saturday or Sunday. On his weekend turns he dragged along his wife and my nephews, but I always went alone. Dad went every day. I hinted to him that she wouldn’t realise if he missed a day or two, but he kept the schedule without complaint.  

“What do you talk about?” 

“I just tell her about my day, go to whoa.” 

“All of it?” 

“Pretty much. It shuts her up, if I’m honest.” 

“Maybe I should do that.” I considered it. That morning I’d woken up with Monty, an ex Mum adored. I’d have to leave that detail out, and the conversation we had about money, his private financial affairs were probably not for my mother’s ears, or her big, loose mouth. “Or maybe an abridged version.” 

“Doesn’t work,” Dad said, patting my hand. “She knows when you’re fudging it. I tell her everything.” 

The next time we sat down with hot, strong tea in the courtyard outside her room, I told Mum about my day, start to finish. She interjected a few times, but to my surprise, provided the story was decently told, no matter how dull the subject matter, she listened. It was asking her dreary questions and encouraging her to engage that agitated her. The storytelling became a way for me to check in with myself, how closely my behaviour resembled debauchery, how pathetic my Friday nights seemed after a breakup. A depression meter of sorts, was I wallowing? How many times had I slept with Monty again or lent him money? How many Uber Eats dockets, how many skipped gym sessions? It became therapy.  

“You should try it,” I told Frank. “She really calms down if you can talk without stopping.” 

“Mum doesn’t want to hear about my day to day at work and the kids’ bedtime routines. What would I say?” 

“Office politics?” 

“I don’t get involved in those, if they exist at all. It’s riveting enough in business advisory, we don’t need extra stimulation.” Frank had formed a habit of making fun of his boring job as a defence mechanism. Mum was always calling him names she considered basically derogatory, my little accountant, numbers boy, captain logical.  

“Well enjoy her throwing things at you forever more.” Frank spent many visits ducking from various missiles – stale custard creams, lipsticks, profanities. “Never mind pestering you to take her swimming.” This she did regardless. Dad, Frank, myself. When can I go swimming?  There was no pool at Souvenir Hill, not even hydrotherapy. We’d failed to consider it. 

One morning, we sat with our shoes off and the sun on our toes. “Dad’s going to marry Mabel,” she said.  

“What?” I had my eyes closed against the glare but squinted at her now. “Who’s Mabel?” 

“The woman.” She waved her hand. “She has a son who’s a fireman in Busselton and a little white dog.” 

“Huh?” I sat up. “Are you getting confused with a movie?” 

“Ask him,” she sipped her tea, smiling flatly. “He’s taking her to the movies today.” 

—— 

Mabel looked like an odd chair at my mother’s Marri dining table. “This was a nice surprise,” she said, as if she belonged in the house more than I did, as if I was the visitor. I got my first period here, I wanted to say. I played elastics on the driveway, I threw up a litre of contraband choc milk in that sink, the one where you wash your carrots. Dad blinked at me, silent, reading my thoughts perhaps. “Sorry about your mother,” Mabel ventured. 

“She’s not dead.” 

“No! I meant, her condition. Will you stay for dinner? I’ll pull out another chop.” 

“No, thank you. I just… Do you mind if I have a word with Dad?” 

“Oh, of course.” Mabel picked up her book and made her way to the patio. She unhooked the pool gate and took a moment to decide where to sit. Dad and I watched her select a lounger and adjust the back to a better position for reading.  

“Luce.” It was a full sentence.  

“Why didn’t you tell us?” 

“I wanted to see how it went.” 

“You’re still married, you know?” 

“Yes, I know.” 

He looked so forlorn and useless, like he was sat in a little tinny drifting away from me on a current. I couldn’t summon anger. “How long have you been seeing her?” 

“A few months, maybe.” 

“And you told Mum?” 

“I told you, I tell Mum everything. She doesn’t seem to mind. She’s away with the fairies, you know that.” 

“She said you’re going to marry her. Mabel, I mean.” 

“She did?” 

“You didn’t tell her that?” 

“No,” he paused. “But I would like to I suppose.” 

I looked again at Mabel in her crisp white t-shirt and navy slacks. Her silver blonde hair in neat waves. Reading poolside, dry and demure. 

—— 

They honeymooned on the same cruise Mum had taken with Dad three years earlier, albeit an upgraded, more exclusive iteration. Mabel sent us photographs she’d convinced other passengers to take. The two of them clinking their fruit-adorned hurricane glasses together or standing against the railing with a background of endless ocean. “This is bizarre.” Monty said, squinting at the screen. “Do we hate her?” 

“Mabel? I don’t know. I mean, I suppose we’re meant to.” I zoomed in on her boring outfits. A call interrupted my scrutiny. 

“Come to Dad’s,” Frank said. “I’ll meet you there.” 

When I arrived, there was no one inside. I wandered out to the pool and saw Frank bent over his phone on the lounger, typing an email, ignoring Mabel’s yapping white dog whining at fly screen. “What are you doing?” He nodded toward the water. She was underneath it, gliding, arms splayed out like a skydiver, suspended. When she surfaced, she didn’t acknowledge me. I wondered, absurdly, if she had drowned and this was her ghost.  

We took her every day for the length of the cruise. When Dad and Mabel returned, suntanned, in love, with tacky gifts, we told Mum she couldn’t swim anymore, but maybe one day in the future. Her eyes got wet and tired, almost frightened. Frank had a meltdown. “I made a mistake. Fuck. Why did I give her that and then take it away?” We couldn’t take her to a public pool. She hated to share. 

“What about the beach, a quiet one?” 

“She’d swim out with the rip and never come back.” 

“She really would.” 

“I fucked up.” 

—— 

She went over a cliff after that, deteriorated. She stopped rolling her eyes happily when I told her Monty had stayed over again, stopped asking Frank where specific coats and dresses were in the wardrobe rotation, which, sweetly, he’d kept up. During my monologues she’d sometimes lift her head. “Will I be swimming this week?” 

“Not this week, Mum.” 

“Dad came yesterday, with Mabel.” Dad stopped visiting every day in the lead up to the wedding and had only popped in twice since the honeymoon.  

“Oh, he did? How did you find her?” 

“I think she’s a witch.” 

One morning she went missing. Dad, Frank and I were packed into a gymnasium watching Frank’s eldest son receive a community award followed by the youngest playing halting oboe in a drawn-out orchestra production. Mabel declined the invitation, citing an appointment, which Frank and I joked was almost certainly an upper lip and chin wax. It was in a rare moment of satisfaction and familial elation, nestled between my father and my brother, a six-dollar coffee from Frank warming my palm, that my phone began to flash. Souvenir Hill, the nursing home. “Hello?” I whispered into the phone, extracting myself from the rows of parents and grandparents craning to see their particular little snowflake onstage.  

“She what?” 

I sent Frank to Souvenir Hill to speak to the police and told Dad to take the kids home then meet me at his house to start searching. I arrived first. Mabel’s car was skewed in the drive, not parked in the garage. Everything felt unhinged, temporary somehow. I unlatched the side gate, and once inside the yard could hear Mabel’s soft but frantic voice pleading with someone. 

“It’s really time to go, Josie. They’ll be missing us by now.” 

Mum was naked, various items of spangled and brightly tinted clothing blooming like giant jellyfish around her in the water.  

“Mum?” 

Mabel turned to me in shock and relief, a towel clutched in her hands, waiting to wrap Mum like a toddler after a bath. Her eyes were teary.  

“Oh God, Lucy, I’m sorry. We were only going to be here thirty minutes. I’m so stupid. The other day, she was just begging and begging your father for a swim, and I realised the only reason anyone’s saying no to her is me.” Her voice cracked at the end. A giggle burst out of me. Mabel’s eyes only widened. “Are you angry? Where are Gregory and Frank?” Mabel kept glancing at the pool, squinting to protect Mum’s modesty. She was breast stroking the length now, her bum alternately round and long with the frog kick action.  

“They called us, the home. They noticed her gone. The police are there now.” I was laughing uncontrollably now. “How on Earth did you get her out?” 

Mabel shrugged, trembling.  

“It was easy, I just punched in the code and left with her. The girl at the desk smiled at me.” The more I laughed the more distressed Mabel became. “She just won’t get out.” 

Mum flipped onto her back, liquid as her surroundings. She let herself dip just below the water’s skin, its ripples and currents glinting in the sunlight, covering her in flashing sparkles, palms open and upward, a watery smile floating on her lips.