Hands, Heels, Hope and A Little Black Book

Olivia warmed herself in the orangish fanfare of an Australian dawn as it pushed the night sky out from across Port Phillip Bay. Tiny waves quietly kissed the sand, pirouetted, and retreated with the outgoing tide. Olivia flipped a stray curl off her shoulders and pulled a mandala patterned beach towel tight around her shoulders. The bare backs of her thighs sunk into the cool moistness of the sand as she inhaled the serenity generously offered by calm waters of the bay. All too soon, her peace would be shattered by tribes of cabana pitching beach goers with their squealing children and hoons on jet skis racing and churning the water. But for now, the beach and the bay were hers, and hers alone.

Olivia wound herself into a lotus position and joined her hands into prayer against her chest. She selected a mantra from a little black book that guarded her secret thoughts that was perched on the edge of her towel. She filled her lungs with long, deep breaths, while also trying to pause her racing mind long enough to absorb the tranquility that meditation could bring. Each time she exhaled, “Om”, the haunting vibrato of her mantra set some tiny part of her free, even if only momentarily, from the cacophony of competing thoughts inside her head.

Olivia had grown up always feeling that something was missing from her life. She struggled to put her finger on what that might be or how to define what was a blank space, a black hole, or the missing link in her life. Sometimes she felt ungrateful, despite the good fortune she was born into. Others considered that Olivia just frittered away far too many hours trying to comprehend the incomprehensible, searching the farthest reaches of her mind for something that, simply, was not there. Most of her friends passed off Olivia’s obsession with constant rumination as just another foible. “That’s Olivia. She’s got issues,” would be their flippant explanation, without ever considering that Olivia might actually be quite troubled.

Olivia was an only child. Her mother was an academic wed to pedagogy and a barristerly woman that Olivia feared more than she respected. There was never talk of a father. Occasionally, in Olivia’s teenage years, there was mention of a sperm donor, but only in the context of the biological reality that a child resulted from the fertilization of an egg by a male. There was never a suggestion that a sperm donor could be involved in the day to day raising of a child. In Olivia’s family, women did the child raising. In fact, men never featured in Olivia’s life and she had never found herself wanting for their company.

A snort, a whinny, and the thud of horse hooves in the early morning sand, rocked the rare quiet in Olivia’s mind. There, before her, an exquisite specimen of equine fitness, a dappled grey with strapper on board was making its way toward the shallows. As if he had far more important things to do than exercise, the grey flicked his luscious mane and jauntily swung his body back towards the sand, much to the frustration of the tiny strapper. Spotting Olivia, the grey stopped dead in his tracks, ignoring the strapper’s vain attempts to cajole his seventeen hands of rippling muscle back into his aquarobic routine.

“C’mon Freezy”, coaxed the strapper, squeezing his knees into his charge’s girth. But, as if mesmerized by her beauty, the sensitive grey locked his wide brown eyes onto Olivia. She too, locked her blue eyes on to his. It was as if they were secret lovers.

“So, you like him, do you? That’s my horse,” an unfamiliar voice emerged from the direction of the rainbow pallet of wooden bathing boxes that were perched haughtily behind her.

Startled, Olivia, jumped to her feet, the mandala towel falling in an undignified heap in the sand. She turned in the direction of the broadcaster-like voice to discover it belonged to a tall, fit looking man with a mass of grey hair that licked and coiled across his forehead.

“He’s beautiful. What’s his name?” she stumbled, as if caught doing something forbidden and not knowing how to explain herself. She had already begun to relive the exhilaration she felt as a child riding Shetland ponies at her mother’s hobby farm.

“That’s Antarctic Freeze. We call him Freezy”, the man replied. His pale blue eyes followed the tiny strapper, now up to his stirrups in the water, expertly maneuvering a reluctantly obedient Freezy through his aquatic paces.

“That lad will in the Melbourne Cup”, the owner man half whispered, as he proudly admired his steed.

“Interesting……”, Olivia managed to respond, not quite making eye contact with the man.

She turned away to finding herself suddenly fixated on a pod of dolphins that were cavorting and chattering like a party of excited school children in the deeper water beyond.

“Would you like to take a ride on Antarctic Freeze?”

She looked up to the man’s face but didn’t speak.

Olivia searched the lines etched in the man’s face, half hoping any secrets from his past or present would miraculously and fully lay themselves bare before her. The dewy flatness in his lowered eyes spoke of a man whose life had been sapped from him, leaving him to exist without really living. Olivia could only guess at what might have brought this man’s life to an emotional stand still. Somehow, even though he was a stranger to her, she felt his pain.

For a nanosecond, their eyes met. Blue on blue.

“Langley. Call me Lang,” he offered while diverting his gaze to focus sharply on the antics of Freezy and the strapper who were still in the water.

Oddly, Lang sensed that he knew Olivia although he had no recollection of ever setting eyes on her before that day. Olivia stood motionless, first staring at Lang and then back towards the rhythm of the waves from which Antarctic Freeze had emerged and began to casually make his way back toward the beach.

The strapper released the reins as Antarctic Freeze, still salty and dripping wet, hooved the sand and then spectacularly rolled onto his side and then his back, all four legs akimbo while writhing joyfully as if scratching his own back.

Captivated by the grey’s grooming ritual, Olivia nodded in tacit agreement to a ride that would take her toward the general direction of her home. With that, Lang scooped up a smiling Olivia and the mandala towel high up onto a now patiently standing Antarctic Freeze.

No one noticed Olivia’s little black book of secrets steal out of the folds of the mandala towel and wedge into the sand behind Antarctic Breeze’s offside hind leg.

Lang waved as Antarctic Breeze with the strapper and Olivia on board, clopped on the hard sand along the water’s edge before turning toward the white dunes with their stumpy casuarinas and finally disappearing through a gap in the wattle and wire fence.

Lang lingered on the sand. He sensed a familiarity about the young woman who had just been whisked away. He kicked at the sand, unable to find a logical explanation for why he was feeling off balance. He kicked again but, this time, the sand delivered up the little black book. With an unexplainable fondness he picked up the book. He found himself flicking through it looking for he did not know what, a name, a phone number, a question, or an answer. Lang knew that book must have belonged to Olivia.

The Melbourne Cup came and went. Antarctic Breeze won the 3200 metres by nine lengths as expected, creating a new chapter in racing history for greys. Freezy continued to show off his swimming prowess at Port Phillip Bay, followed by his ritual of towelling off by rolling in the sand.

The December sun was already high in the sky as Olivia, with some trepidation, answered a knock at the door. She wasn’t one for having visitors, whether invited or otherwise.

“Olivia?”

She squinted into the bright, white sunlight.

“It’s Lang. We met on the beach.” Watching Olivia’s jaw lower, he continued on, “You went for a ride on Freezy. You dropped this.”

She opened her eyes just wide enough to catch the spine of the little black book as Lang lowered it towards her. Baffled by his presence, Olivia’s forehead, wrinkled as much as a young face can.

“How did you find me?” she asked.

“Your name and address are in the book. It turns out that I think I might know your father,” Lang lightly offered.

Lang hoped that Olivia hadn’t noticed the bubbles of sweat that had formed at his temples and were slowly trickling into the stubble on his cheeks. He felt his blood run cold and drain from his limbs as if, and again, in mortal danger.

Olivia burst into a mocking, shocking cackle of a laugh gone mad.

“You can’t. No one knows my father. I don’t know my father!”

She wondered how someone could say something so absurd and not see the madness in what they were saying. At the same time, she was willing to give him the benefit of the doubt. Somebody must know how she was conceived. Her composure took flight, setting off a tidal wave of emotion that reverberated through her entire body.

“My father was a person who donated sperm as gift to my mother,” she exclaimed harshly. Her lip curled, baring the perfect symmetry of her front teeth.

“Olivia! I know this may come as a shock to you.”

Lang steeled himself, wondering if he had made a huge mistake. Perhaps, he had revealed too much too soon.

Instinctively, Lang gathered Olivia toward him, gently guiding her head into his chest as if to steady her quaking torso. He had considered that she might pull away.

Olivia’s brain was a collision of exaggerated thoughts. She was confused as to why Lang would appear on her doorstep. She considered that his intentions might be less than honourable, perhaps even sinister. She wondered why she was allowing him to hold her and stroke her fair. But, as she sank into Lang’s chest, she began to tune into the steady patter of his heartbeat. She felt the warmth of his embrace. And then, she began to feel peculiarly safe.

The little black book of secrets tumbled to the ground. A rectangular sheet of bond paper slid from his pages and landed on the wooden decking of her verandah. Olivia bent to retrieve the book and the paper. With no recollection of this oblong shaped addition to her book, she flipped it over so that she could read the type.

Olivia frowned as she struggled to decipher the letters in Harlow bold font and the huge scrawl of a signature where the curve and loop of the first letter appropriated the rest of the print. She blinked, tossed her hair forward and back as if to adjust her vision, and stared again. The sheet of paper, the same size as a bank cheque, was indeed a bank cheque made out to Olivia Sanderson for $20,000.

For Olivia, things could not have been any crazier. Her mouth opened and closed like a pouting fish, but no words came out. She shook her head, then wiped her brow with the back of her free hand.

Lang waited patiently hoping that Olivia might compose herself.

“Olivia,” he coo-ed in a calm parental tone as he tried to bring her back to earth.

“My horse, Antarctic Freeze, won the Melbourne Cup. This cheque is a small share of the winnings.”

By the way, my name is Langley. It’s Langley Sanderson”. I am your sperm donor. But what I want and have always wanted is to be your father.