Chapter 79

I made Jack a pineapple upside-down cake for his twentieth birthday. It took me hours and it was a gluggy mess. I bake like I dance. You can imagine the expression on Mrs. Murphy’s face when she saw it. She said Jack’s last girlfriend had a “real knack” for baking.

Jack’s twentieth birthday meant he was required by law to register with the Department of Labor and National Service. Registering didn’t mean he would necessarily do national service. That was decided by a “birthday ballot.” Numbered wooden marbles, each representing a day of the year, were placed in a barrel. It was the lottery you didn’t want to win. The ballots happened twice a year and by this time were televised, so there could be no secrecy about the process, because people were beginning to say they were rigged. Conspiracy theories are not a new development.

Jack and I and his parents watched the ballot on their television in its wheeled wood-veneer cabinet.

“Don’t worry, Mum, I’ve never won a raffle in my life,” said Jack.

Jack’s birthday was March 15. His number was 102.

Men in suits handled the ballot. Men in suits often handle your destiny.

The barrel was spun. Each marble was hand-picked, held up between fingertips. The second-last number called was 101.

Mrs. Murphy exhaled. She said, happily, “Well, the next one won’t be 102, Jack, that’s for sure!”

I said, almost to myself, “The coin has no memory.”

“What’s that, Clever Clogs?” said Mrs. Murphy sharply.

“Don’t call her that, Mum,” said Jack.

I said, “It makes no difference. Each time they spin it’s the same probability—” I don’t know what was wrong with me. Shut up, Cherry, I think now, when I remember my behavior. Mrs. Murphy did not want to hear about the gambler’s fallacy. People can’t grasp it. They look at me as if I’m crazy when I tell them my Lotto numbers are one, two, three, four, five, and six, because it is impossible for them to believe that this combination is as statistically possible as any other combination.

The next number was 102.

Mrs. Murphy burst into tears. She blamed me. I understood. I was to Mrs. Murphy as Jiminy Cricket was to my mother. I’d brought bad luck to her son and I couldn’t even bake a simple pineapple upside-down cake.

Jack wasn’t worried. Being balloted in meant you had to be in the Australian regular army for two years. It didn’t necessarily mean he’d be sent to Vietnam.

Mr. Murphy said, “Like I’ve always said, national service will do the boy good, give him some discipline!” But his face was splotchy and his eyes were wild. He’d fought in France.

My only view on the ongoing war in Vietnam was that I did not want my boyfriend to have anything to do with it. I like solving problems. The war was a problem I had no way of solving. I have always felt like that about current events. I enjoy popular culture, you may have noticed. I like reading what a movie star eats for breakfast. It’s soothing and silly and it doesn’t really matter. However, I am distressed by the imprecise nature of current events because all relevant information is not available, and is possibly never available, and it does matter.

I didn’t know what to think about the Vietnam War.

I can assure you the other women in my family knew exactly what to think.

Grandma said, “Let the Americans worry about it, nothing to do with us!”

Auntie Pat joined the protest marches along George and Macquarie streets, a neatly painted sign bobbing above her head: End the War! Abolish Conscription!

“Marching alongside those germy long-haired hippies,” sniffed my mother, who approved of the war and thought it was a necessary evil “to keep the commies out.” My mother was pretty conservative for someone who told fortunes for a living.

Jack did his training in Victoria and excelled, which Mrs. Murphy said was so stupid of him. He was subsequently selected for “special overseas service.” Jack had never left the state before he went to Victoria, let alone Australia. He would not have been able to point out Vietnam on a map.

That’s when my mother instantly changed her views, as though she were executing a graceful pivot on the dance floor. Conscription became an “abomination.” She adored Jack.

Jack assumed the people in charge knew what they were doing. If they needed him, he’d help out. I remember him reading a Not with My Son, You Don’t sign in a shop window in Waitara and saying to me, “Well, whose son then?” He would have preferred not to put his carpentry business on hold just when it was taking off, but he was also excited to be leaving Australia for the first time. When he came back we’d get married, get on with our lives, and have those four children. It was all good with Jack.

We did not ask my mother to do a reading for Jack before he left with all the other “nashos” and she never offered. I never asked Mum if she saw or felt something, but when I said goodbye to Jack at the train station a thought came into my head:

You’re never going to see him again, Cherry.

It was a cool, clear, cruelly definite voice.

I took no notice. I chose not to believe the voice. I went home and wrote him a letter. I told him all about an enthralling geometry lesson I’d done back in high school.

I know.

Not every boy would want to hear about a geometry lesson, but Jack was a carpenter. He had an innate understanding of geometry.

I told him about how our second form teacher, Miss Crane, drew the tiniest chalk mark on the blackboard and explained that a point is “zero-dimensional,” meaning it doesn’t actually exist. But once you have two points—two nonexistent points—you can fill in the space between with lots and lots of points, and you get a line, which has length, so it’s now one dimension, which you could argue means it does now exist. Miss Crane dotted her chalk against the board, over and over, in a straight line, demonstrating how a series of nothings could become something. (Actually, you could also argue the line still doesn’t exist, it’s just a concept, but I’d learned by then not to add caveats to everything I said. This was, after all, a love letter.)

I told Jack how I leaned forward that day in class as if I stood with my toes hanging over the very precipice of enlightenment. In my naivete, I believed Miss Crane was about to explain something that explained everything. Something I felt I almost already knew, but could not articulate; it was related to infinity and God, the ocean and space, the universe and my dad.

Of course, I did not achieve enlightenment in my geometry lesson. Miss Crane put the chalk down and told us to take out our compasses and protractors.

I told Jack that when I was with him, I felt like I was close to understanding what I had nearly understood that day.

I told him I was a zero-dimensional, nonexistent point, floating in space, until I met him.

Yes, I know. What an embarrassing love letter! Attempting to be poetic about geometry! A modern woman would never write such a thing. You should most definitely exist before you meet a man! You should have your own career, your own hobbies, your own thoughts, and your own financial plan!

Never mind, no need to feel mortified on my behalf, because I don’t believe Jack ever read or received my letter.

Jack had only been in Vietnam for twenty days when he and two other members of his platoon, both national service conscripts—“nashos” like him—were wounded in action by an enemy mine. Jack died in a field hospital early the next morning. The other two recovered.

Jack was born at a minute to midnight. Sixty seconds later and he would have had a different birthdate and the birthday ballot, the “death lottery,” would have had no impact on his life. Jack Murphy would have been my husband and the father of my children. I wonder if I would have liked them.

Mrs. Murphy would have been my mother-in-law. I wonder if she would have ever learned to like me. I doubt it. I saw her just once, a decade later, when I got out of my car after parking on Albert Lane, Hornsby. She looked terribly old and drawn, but I recognized her straightaway. I know she saw me, I know she recognized me. We held eye contact for a good few seconds. Her lips moved. I assume she was muttering, Clever Clogs. I went to lift my hand, but she turned her head sharply and crossed the street to avoid me.

My mother never stopped marveling at the quality of her beautifully built, geometrically perfect floating shelves.