Free Eating the Underworld by Doris Brett Page B

it. ‘Big deal!’ is one of his favourite sayings.
    My friends are amazed when I tell them that I won’t be seeing my father on this trip. ‘Why?’ they say. ‘What’s wrong?’ I shrug my shoulders. I really don’t know.
    A few weeks later, we are in Boston, staying with Nancy, an old friend. ‘Why isn’t your father seeing you?’ she asks, astonished. I do the now familiar shoulder-shrug.
    â€˜He could come out and stay here for a few days,’ she says, ‘we’re only thirty minutes away by plane.’
    I decide to try again. My father sounds somewhat sheepish when he answers the phone. I wonder whether his New York friends have also been saying, ‘Your daughter is here and you’re not seeing her?’
    He seems quite relieved when I suggest that he could come and stay with us in Boston for a few days.
    â€˜I’ll come just for the day,’ he decides.
    Nancy, Martin and I pick him up from Boston airport. He looks just the same as he always did, my warm, lovable father. I give him a hug and we head out to sight-see, ending up at Harvard Square, land of a thousand bookshops.
    My father seems to be enjoying himself. In one of the bookshops, I spot an anthology of Australian poetry that contains a poem of mine that he hasn’t seen. I show it to Dad. He reads it cursorily and then puts the book back.
    â€˜Aren’t you going to buy it?’ Nancy is surprised.
    He makes a brushing away gesture. ‘I’ll find it inNew York.’
    The translation of this is clearly, ‘Forget it.’ My feeling of unease returns. My father has always been proud of both Lily’s and my writing and likes to keep copies of all we do. I’ve never seen him like this, but I don’t know what to say. ‘Don’t you want my poem?’ sounds so petty.
    I try to put the incident to the back of my mind. Dad seems well. He’s lost weight and looks fit. ‘Dorka sends her love,’ he tells us.
    Dad and Mum met Dorka and her husband just after the war’s end. They got to know each other while waiting for visas to Australia and America, the countries they respectively chose.
    Dorka and Dad meet again, decades later, when Dad is visiting Lily in New York. There is sadness in the reunion. Mum has been dead for some time and Dorka’s husband is also ill, soon to die.
    Dorka and Dad keep in touch. She is lonely and urges Dad to come to America to live with her. They can lead a good life, she says. She is a very wealthy woman, with homes in Florida and the mountains, as well as New York. They know each other’s spouses, they can remember them together.
    Dad is more reluctant than she. As he sets out for another visit to Lily, he says, ‘I should shift countries at my age? If Dorka wants to marry me, she can come here.’
    Three weeks later, he is back in Australia, to pack up his belongings. He is moving to New York.
    It’s strange to think of my father being so far away.It means I’ll only be able to see him every couple of years and I’m sad about that. But I’m glad that he’s found a companion. Dorka will never take Mum’s place, Dad says, but he feels comfortable with her and it’s good to be part of a couple again.
    He is a man in his late seventies, preparing to leave the country in which he’s spent the last five decades. I am struck with admiration and reminded again of what a survivor he is.
    â€˜What’s Dorka like?’ I ask. I feel peculiarly like a parent whose child has eloped with a stranger.
    Dad finds her difficult to describe. Finally, he lights on a phrase, ‘She has a lot of energy.’
    Some months after Dad’s marriage, I get to meet Dorka. It is a few years ago. She and Dad have flown over for a visit. She’s short, savvy and intense. We spend the day together and end up at the Botanic Gardens for a performance of A Midsummer Night’s Dream . As