Last time, I sat opposite a woman in a blue dress.
She called it a frock. Marine blue with a floral design interspersed with dashes of green, white and yellow. She wore a cardigan in cooler months like many women of her generation.
I now settle into the comfortable booth with its padded leather seat while prevailing winds tear through gaps in the high rise outside and throw rain sideways at disgruntled shoppers and commuters.
Seems I was right to cancel the camping trip.
The comfort of familiarity embraces me as I remove my jacket and beanie. Soon the friendly waitress greets me and glances at the space across the table.
“Are you waiting for someone?” she asks, and again I try to place her accent.
“No, not anymore.”
“I’m sorry.”
I feel tears welling up. Wow, I hadn’t expected it to be emotional. I’m a proponent of emotional fasting like most Aussie males. I just wanted a warm beverage and refuge from the rain and I thought I’d chosen the Cosmopolitan Café because it shunned the friendly dogs and upturned milk crates beside tiny, wonky, al fresco tables full of customers convincing themselves they’re happy.
My cappuccino arrives, with two little biscuits instead of one. When I look up surprised, the owner offers a reassuring smile from behind the busy counter.
I shouldn’t cry, I tell myself, she wouldn’t want that. She’d want me to eat both biscuits because she had a famously sweet tooth and never took her cappuccino ‘solo’. She was so adamant that a tea or coffee should be accompanied that she once gave my cousin $1 to buy something sweet on his weekly coffee outings.
$1 went a long way in her day.
My coffees are now always accompanied, as is this one. As I savour its warmth, I ask myself;
Could I have done more?
I mowed her nature strip with the old push mower. She said it looked lovely and hugged me.
I helped paint the old dunny. She said it looked lovely and hugged me.
She attended my graduation ceremony and said it was lovely and hugged me.
But had she needed a man to do odd jobs, or had she needed a man to break his emotional fast?
“I take the 400 bus,” she once told me over cappuccino.
“…I don’t need to go to Eastgardens, but it’s the longest journey and it keeps me out of the house for longest. I can’t stand being in the house all day since Cec died.”
…when I was three.
She then listed the friends from bowls and bingo who had passed away, and I had to wonder whether that was why so many women of her generation sparked up conversations with strangers on public transport.
I finish my coffee and the two biscuits.
As I step into the driving rain, I wipe the moisture from my eyes to see a blue bus with the number 400.
Image: Van Thanh
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