Chapter 11

Saturday we drove downtown. The Mezzaluna website said to park on Ward and present the ticket at the restaurant. So I parked and we walked the few blocks. We took the elevator upstairs and I spotted Dad immediately. We waited to be taken to the table as he wasn't alone. He was with a woman.

"Hey," he said. "You look lovely, Rachel; nice clean-up, Pat."

"Thanks."

"Let me introduce you to Winnie." He turned to her. "I don't know what name to use."

She laughed. "Too many. Don't bother. Hey. I can guess which is which. The last time I saw Gordy he wasn't finished with his Ph.D. I ran into him Thursday afternoon."

We all shook hands and sat down. Dad and Winnie already had drinks, Rachel and I ordered glasses of Viognier.

"I went over to the Gallery after I spoke to you, to look at the Kaldor Collection in the New Contemporary Galleries. I was looking at this incredible Sol LeWitt when a voice behind me said 'Gordy?' and there was Winnie. She'd recognized me."

"You haven't changed that much in a quarter-century," Winnie said. "Men age better than women do, I think."

"Let's not get into that. Anyway," dad turned to us, "Winnie and I dated while I was a student, working at the Australian Museum and she was at the Gallery."

"And I'm still there. Two decades and two rotten marriages later."

"And now Curator."

"True. And you two. You're at Sydney?"

"Yes," said Rachel, definitely in her quiet mode.

"What are you studying, Patrick?"

"History and Law. It's a five-year programme."

"Rachel?"

"Mostly mythology right now, but I want to do Art History; tying image, myth and music together."

"Really?"

"Really. Look, you know about the Dreamtime, right?"

"Right."

"The reality we know came about through instantiation of the Dreaming."

"You know the Germanic myths? The Old Norse? The material in Wagner's Ring?"

"Yes?"

"Doesn't Erda dream the world? What was, what is, what will be?"

"Hmmm."

"And we don't think there was cultural contamination between Scandinavia and Australia two millennia ago, do we? So it's something deeper. And I want to know what and how."

"Are you into Jung and Campbell?"

Rachel laughed.

Dad let the ladies continue and asked me about Gordy. I told him about Gordy's unhappiness at the uni and my advice. I also told him about Gerri.

"So you are acting the nungungi," he noted.

"Only with folks I know. It doesn't seem to work casually."

A waiter appeared with menus. But the ordering seemed to be quite straightforward: Rachel ordered the spatchcock [young chicken or poussin], Winnie ordered the house risotto, and both Dad and I ordered the lamb rump.

"And Gerri's sister?"

"Oh, she's really into her studies. She'll end up with a doctorate and be a professor somewhere."

"You seem to know a number of people," Winnie remarked.

"Not really that many," I responded. "But neither of us is very good at mere acquaintances as opposed to friends." I looked at her. "What do you do?"

"I'm associate curator at the Gallery. I've worked there for 15 years, in three tranches."

"Oh?" I was leading her now.

"When I met your dad, I was a student assistant. I did that till I received my MFA and MRS at the same time."

"MRS?" asked Rachel.

"She means she got married," Gordy explained.

"Right. Under three years later, I was back, separated, pending a divorce. I wanted to get away from here. I thought about Cowan in Perth, but stayed on this coast and went to Brisbane for 18 months, after the divorce came through, did a Masters in Museum Studies, while squandering my settlement on the uni and the Gold Coast. On the coast I met a businessman with a large yacht and foolishly got married again. We spent years cruising as he invested and re-invested his dosh over the Sat-phone and the Internet. Then one night in Hobart he fell overboard. We were moored at the Murray Street Pier. Actually, he fell off the pier, drunk – I learned he'd been trading lies with yachtsmen at the Blue Skies. I was in Dromedary, at the Vipissana Meditation Centre." Winnie looked at Gordy. "Remember Karen?"

"Yes."

"Well, she went bonkers. Brown rice. Breathing. Meditation. That sort of thing. One with the universe. I went to visit overnight. Bad food and uncomfortable bedding. When I got back to Hobart about noon, I was a wealthy widow. So I got rid of the yacht, relocated to Sydney, bought and furnished a lovely condo, and went back to work at the Gallery. There you've got it. Tour of my life in under twenty minutes!"