“Errol Flynn was a Tasmanian,” my mother volunteers. The clear pitch of her voice fills the angel-bedecked bedroom where she spends so much of her time these days. I look up, surprised that she has pulled this somewhat obscure fact from somewhere deep within her memory.
My mother, I realize, never fails to amaze me. . . .
She meets my gaze with blue eyes that shine above a fresh, rust-colored scab where a surgeon’s knife has flicked a basal cell carcinoma from one side of her nose. Another, slightly less angry-looking patch imprints her left cheek with a quarter-sized circle that gives her the appearance of having dipped too heavily into the rouge pot.
The effect, though alarming, is not unique. We’ve seen it before, off and on for years, when she’s periodically undergone treatment to counteract the consequences of a harsh prairie wind and sun on her Scotch-Irish skin. We’ve come to accept the look as a temporary condition—a necessary but transient evil. As something to be dealt with. Nothing more or less.
But this time, there’s a difference. A place on her arm—just above her right elbow. Melanoma. My niece tells me the news on my way back from my month-long trek through Tasmania and the Australian Outback. The surgery’s scheduled in two weeks. My sister, says my niece (who’s been caring for my mother in my absence), will give me more details.
I don’t want them.
“How did you know that?” I ask my mother, as I process the information she’s offered me like a present. “That Errol Flynn was from Tasmania?”
“There’s a lot I know.” Her reply as open-ended as the questions we can’t bring ourselves to ask each other.
The truth is that I know there’s a lot she knows. And, as always, when in the presence of my mother, I feel humbled. Not overshadowed, exactly, although there’s that too. But humbled.
“I saw a Tasmanian Devil,” I tell my mother. I show her the picture my friend Andy snapped of me near a sign that says: “Danger. Tasmanian Devil. DO NOT FEED.” The Devil—framed at the bottom of the snapshot—appears to be the epitome of evil: its fanged teeth and sharp claws capable, it seems, of ripping its wire cage to shreds at the slightest provocation.
My mother lets out a nervous laugh, wincing as much at the picture of me—mugging for the camera, teeth bared, fingers splayed, in my best Tasmanian Devil imitation—as she is at the genuine article writhing at my feet. “That’s hideous.”
“It is, isn’t it?” I admit, referring, like her, as much to me as to the Devil stationed next to me. “I love it. . . . Andy got bitten by a koala bear the same day he took this picture of me.”
“You’re kidding,” says my mother.
“Nope,” I respond, before telling her the story. . . .
After a brief overnight in Launceston, we traveled south along Tasmania’s west coast toward the Wilderness World Heritage area of Cradle Mountain. Our first stop along the way: Mole Creek’s Trowunna Wildlife Park, where kangas lounge in the mid-day sun like languid lizards. Here, too, you can cuddle a furry wombat in your arms. Or challenge the devil to a staring match, as I do.
Tasmanian Koalas by Margaret Dornaus
Andy, fresh from the wilds of Manhattan’s Upper East Side, immediately heads for two adorable koalas draped over eucalyptus branches like a pair of jungle gym playmates at recess. “Look at them,” Andy coos, his maternal side showing. “They’re so cute.”
They are cute. They are picture-postcard perfect, ready for their close-ups, with one slight modification; when Andy enters the frame, I return his favor to me by snapping his picture. Then comes a slight error in judgment when Andy decides to reach down and stroke the fur of the koala closest to him.
“Ouch,” he shrieks. “Did you see that? It bit me.”
“You must have been bothering them.” Trowunna Park’s tall, lanky gamekeeper strides onto the scene in a proprietary manner.
“I thought you said we could touch them,” Andy cries, rubbing his right forearm, which is fast swelling to hide the fresh tracks of koala-sized incisors.
“I did.” The gamekeeper is a laconic fellow.
“Well?”
“You must have done something.”
Andy is stunned. As he continues to rub his wound, I wonder aloud if he should get treated for tetanus. Or rabies? The gamekeeper appears unfazed by my questions. “Must have done something,” he repeats. Then, ignoring Andy altogether, he heads toward the offending koala as if it were the victim instead of the perpetrator in this scenario and gingerly turns it over to inspect its underside. “Ah,” he says. “That explains it.”
We wait a beat. But Mr. Gamekeeper has a hidden talent, it seems, for dramatic timing. Finally, he says, in a rather self-satisfied way, “It’s a boy.” And? The point would be?
“He thinks you were messing with him.” The barb is an accusation.
Obviously, Andy and I are more out of touch with the natural world than we thought we were. We still don’t get it. The gamekeeper must detect our confusion; we see his lips turn up slightly in a little sneer. “You’re a mate,” he says to Andy. Andy nods. “He’s a mate.” Okay. “He thinks you were messing with him.”
Andy’s face turns as purple as his forearm. I decide it’s time for an intervention, so I pull at the sleeve of Andy’s uninjured arm. “It’s time to go,” I whisper.
“What?” My friend’s in shock.
“Let’s go. Now.” I tug a bit harder until Andy stumbles forward to follow me.
“I only wanted to take his picture.” Andy is whimpering like the wounded animal that he is. “I thought he was cute.”
“I know.”
“He was cute.”
“I know.”
“But he bit me.”
“Yes, he did.”
“See?” He thrusts his throbbing arm up for inspection.
“Yes, I see. You’ll be all right.”
“You think so?”
“Yes. Just keep walking.”
As we head off toward a mob of ‘roos, I look over my shoulder like Lot’s wife—what was her name?—in the Sodom & Gomorrah story. I try not to think about turning into a pillar of salt. I shrug the notion off—this isn’t my home, after all—as I see the gamekeeper staring blankly in our direction. Still cradling the koala bear in his arms, he suddenly looks shrunken, childlike. It’s as if he is ready to be tucked in for the night with a good bedtime story.
“Why do you think he bit me?” Andy is past whining.
“Maybe he liked you.” It’s all I can think of at the moment, but it seems to mollify Andy.
“Oh,” he says. He rubs his arm again. “Do you think so?”
“Keep walking.”
My mother is laughing hysterically. Two weeks later, an orderly wheels her into Recovery. “She asked me where the champagne was,” he says, “but I told her all we had was juice.” He is smiling at the lunacy of my post-operative mother’s words. He strikes me as somewhat patronizing.
I take my mother’s hand. “We’ll have champagne when we get home,” I whisper. ”And more stories. . . . ”
©Copyright Margaret Dornaus, 2010
