Sixty Summers

by Amanda Hampson

  ‘I don’t want to talk to him right now. Don’t make me. And don’t start talking about how much the wedding cost.’

  ‘The wedding is irrelevant now. Before you do anything drastic, you need to speak to our lawyers. I’m not familiar with family law, but we need to find out how it all works.’

  ‘Can’t you and Dad handle it? Or are you going to humiliate me by making me go to the lawyers and show them?’

  ‘Anthea, you’re an adult, and have been for some time. You need to face up to the situation.’ Maggie looked at the unhappy face of her daughter. ‘You don’t really want a divorce, do you?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ she said sulkily. ‘I just feel …’

  Hearing voices, they looked up to see Elena and Kristo coming down from the house. ‘Let’s talk about this later,’ Maggie said quickly.

  ‘Dad,’ said Anthea, as soon as he was in range. ‘Mum said I have to go to the lawyers and tell them everything.’

  The colour drained from Kristo’s face. ‘No bloody way! Everyone will know. The whole fucking Greek community —’

  ‘Hang on, Kris … there’s such a thing as client confidentiality.’

  ‘Bullshit. No lawyers.’ Now he was riled, there would be no reasoning with him. ‘No divorce. You’ve only been married five minutes. You’re going to embarrass the whole family!’

  ‘She can’t stay married to him, he’s a —’ began Elena.

  ‘Elena, stay out of this,’ pleaded Maggie. ‘I asked you to go inside.’

  ‘What am I, ten years old?! I’m the only one sticking up for Anthea!’

  ‘We’re all here for Anthea,’ insisted Maggie, knowing it was futile. ‘Can we please take this argument inside? So at least the neighbours don’t have to know.’

  Anthea began to cry. Kristo stormed off up the steps to the house and Maggie followed him. When she looked back, the twins lay side by side on a sun bed, Elena’s arm outstretched taking a selfie. Hashtag sad face.

  The argument didn’t stop there. It raged all through dinner, giving Yia-yiá the opportunity for her input. After dinner, the twins announced they would go back to the city and stay at Elena’s place. It would be cramped and they would have to share a bed but, as Elena pointed out, it would be less stressful for them.

  Maggie went to bed exhausted, but relieved at the temporary reprieve. She was woken just before midnight by the sound of a vehicle in the driveway. Through the louvres at the top of the stairs, she could see Aaron’s ute, an enormous vehicle like a life-size Tonka toy with a reflective logo on the side advertising his electrician services. He called his business ‘Bright Spark’, a misnomer if ever there was one. Having triggered the motion detector lights, Aaron himself stood in the pool of light in the turning circle. He looked up and gave Maggie a childlike wave.

  She rushed downstairs and let him in, warning him to be quiet. They went into the kitchen. She closed the dining-room doors and locked them. It was rare for Kristo to wake in the night but if necessary Aaron could make his escape out the back door. ‘What are you doing here, Aaron? It’s really not a good idea.’

  ‘I just wanted to talk to her.’ He looked around hopefully. ‘Is there anything to eat?’

  ‘It’s practically midnight … and anyway, she’s not here.’

  ‘Oh. I missed dinner. Sorry.’

  Maggie got a cold sausage out of the fridge, sliced open a bread roll, wedged it in and handed it to him.

  He took a bite. ‘Do you have any tomato sauce? Sorry.’

  ‘If I give you some sauce, will you leave? You don’t want Kristo to catch you.’ Maggie got the sauce out of the fridge and plonked it in front of him. ‘What were you thinking, posting that video online anyway?’

  Aaron was a decent boy. It was hard to think of him as anything other than an overgrown child. He was handsome in a chiselled, fit way. Apart from the tribal tattoos he wore like sleeves, he looked like an all-American boy from the fifties with his blond crew cut and muscles.

  ‘I don’t know,’ he said through a mouthful of sausage, tomato sauce squishing out both sides of the roll. ‘Actually, I do. I came home, I was pretty drunk … Thea was out … I started watching … er, never mind. And then … I thought …’

  ‘Yes, all right. I think I can fill in the blanks myself. Now you have to make things right with Anthea. You don’t want her to divorce you, do you?’

  He shook his head vehemently, and waited for Maggie to tell him what to do.

  ‘I think you should write a letter. Not an email or a text. A proper letter apologising. A love letter.’

  ‘A letter? Ugh. Can’t I just get flowers? Or perfume? She likes perfume.’

  ‘You can do that as well. It only needs to be a short letter. But heartfelt and romantic. Tell her how you feel and how sorry you are.’

  He gulped the last of the sausage roll and laboriously licked the sauce off his fingers, getting just as much satisfaction out of that. Maggie couldn’t believe how far and wide it had spread, in between his fingers, even traces halfway up his wrist. Finally, he said, ‘Could you help me … like … get started?’

  Sighing, Maggie got out some paper and a pen, and put it on the table in front of him. ‘Okay, so Dear Anthea, or Thea … Dear Thea.’

  Aaron stared at the paper as though he’d forgotten how to write. He looked up at her with a tortured expression. Maggie half expected to hear a line of Shakespeare spill poetically from his lips … A rose by any other name …

  After a moment he asked, ‘Can’t I just say “Mate” … or even miss that bit out?’

  Maggie got up and put the kettle on. It was going to be a long night.

  Behind the scenes, Rose and Kristo evidently kept in touch because, the next thing Maggie knew, Kristo had latched onto Rose’s idea of the three friends revisiting Europe and practically insisted that Maggie must go. In an effort to convince her, he talked up the competencies of his cousin Yannis, who was Maggie’s reluctant offsider. Even though he had failed his certification exam, Yannis had high aspirations for himself and he too embraced the idea, knowing he would enjoy an elevated status during Maggie’s absence.

  Despite wanting to get away, Maggie began to feel she was being got rid of. When she finally agreed to go, Kristo began to tell everyone about her ‘adventure’, as though he’d dreamed up the whole idea himself. But Maggie wondered privately if a spell in hospital wouldn’t be more beneficial than going off with her girlfriends in search of her lost youth. Clearly Kristo preferred the idea that his wife was going on holiday, as opposed to undergoing psychiatric care, and she felt obliged to go along with it.

  Nico scowled every time he saw her and persisted in asking why she was going away and where she would go. He was the last person she wanted to know her movements. She made it her business never to be alone with him, despite his constant attempts to orchestrate it. It took all her strength to hide her loathing of him.

  Anthea and Elena were unfazed by Maggie’s plan. It was only a month. Within minutes of assessing whether her departure would affect them in any way, they were discussing if and when they could join her somewhere on the trip. Normally, Maggie would have agreed. She was inured to the idea that the twins got whatever they wanted, but she knew the minute the girls were involved, the whole enterprise would be derailed by them lobbying for things to be done their way. Rose would hit the roof. Besides, Anthea and Aaron were in counselling and that was the priority right now. And Maggie needed a break from them as much as anything else.

  Kristo must have been honest with his mother because, over the next couple of weeks, Maggie noticed Yia-yiá was tearful and anxious, as though Maggie’s unravelling had triggered something deep in her.

  Yia-yiá and Pappoú had migrated as newlyweds, following his older brother, Georgios, and wife Agnes, to Sydney. They had all worked for another Kytherian, from the same village, who owned a delicatessen. Within two years they had saved enough to set up the fish shop in Marrickville, now the stuff of family legend
. By then, Kristo had been born, followed by the other three boys over the next five years. Pappoú and Georgios had manned the front counter and the fryers. Yia-yiá and Agnes were out the back, preparing the potatoes, mixing up the batter, scaling and filleting the fish and minding the children. Face to face with customers, Pappoú and Georgios had continued to improve their English. But Yia-yiá and Agnes only had each other; all their family friends were Greek and, without the time or money for lessons, it took both women years to acquire basic English. Yia-yiá still spoke to her sons almost entirely in Greek and only resorted to English if there was no alternative.

  Maggie had often wondered how Yia-yiá had coped with all those babies, the pressure of work and running a household and, on top of that, struggling to understand what was going on around her. But she was young. She had all the boys in her early twenties. That was her lot and she was likely grateful for it. All their friends and family would have worked just as hard; it wasn’t as though they were any different. But she would have been perpetually exhausted and there must have been times when she wondered if there was something else – some easier path in life.

  Yia-yiá had been elevated by her sons to a legendary status. Her role as the goddess of drudgery did her daughters-in-law a disservice and they all came to resent her for various reasons, even the Greek ones who married with her blessing. Witnessing Maggie’s vulnerable state seemed to touch on a truth hidden inside the family mythology.

  Kristo wept on the way to the airport, he called Maggie psichí mou – my soul – and went on about how much he would miss her. He hadn’t showed his affection in this way for years, yet she found herself unmoved by his endearments, as though nothing touched her any more. She remained convinced that everyone simply wanted her to go back to being her old self. Not of ten years or thirty years ago, but a few weeks ago, before they were confronted by her unhappiness.

  He wanted to come into the terminal to wave Maggie off, but, fearful of an emotional parting, she insisted that he drop her out the front. They sat in the car, silently watching other vehicles pull in and pop open boots. Passengers spilled out, collected bags. There were embraces and partings. One party waved from the pavement. The other drove away. This level of the airport was the scene of partings, the lower one for joyous reunions; a constant wave of humanity ebbing and flowing across the world. Maggie had no sense of how she would feel on her return. There was nothing but blank space ahead.

  ‘Call me and let me know you’ve arrived safely,’ said Kristo.

  ‘We will arrive safely.’ She opened her handbag to check she had her passport for the tenth time. ‘But I will text and let you know.’

  ‘You won’t do anything silly, will you?’ His voice cracked.

  ‘Like jump out of the plane without a parachute?’

  He thumped his fist on the steering wheel, giving her a start. ‘It’s not something to joke about! Okay, I got the message. This is not about me, but I am human. I feel pain too.’

  ‘I’m sorry. I was being flippant. I think I’ve absorbed so many other people’s pain in the last few decades that I’ve stopped being absorbent.’ She leaned over, put her arms around him and kissed his bristly cheek. She whispered in his ear. ‘I do love you.’

  Kristo nodded miserably. ‘I love you too.’

  ‘Please don’t get out. I can get my bag myself. You just drive away – I’ll be home before you know it.’

  She pulled her suitcase from the boot and could feel Kristo’s embarrassment radiating from the car, imagining the entire airport had paused to nudge and point at this neglectful husband. Then she walked into the terminal without a backward glance.

  As she sat with Rose in the departure lounge, the airport swirled with currents of nervous excitement that amplified Maggie’s own anxiety. Announcements urging lost people to come to the gate had a metallic reverberation that made her head throb. Where on earth were all these people? Was there a vortex somewhere in the terminal that sucked unwary travellers into an alternate universe? All she wanted was to be left alone, but right now the best she could hope for was to cram herself into that airline seat, knock back a couple of sleeping tablets and be unconscious for a few sweet hours.

  ‘I think we should have some rules —’ began Rose, digging around in the multiple pockets of a daypack she had purchased especially for the trip. ‘Where are my tissues? I cannot get on a flight without tissues.’

  ‘Then go and buy some. How about a rule about not asking where things are? That is my chief hate, people asking me where their stuff is,’ said Maggie.

  ‘Crisis averted!’ Rose pulled a handful of crumpled tissues from the depths of her bag. ‘I was thinking more that we ban discussions about how badly we slept and how many times we woke up. Aches and pains. Indigestion … um, bloating … constipation … the effects of gravity —’

  ‘Yes. Okay. I get it.’

  Despite Maggie’s terse response, Rose pushed on. ‘No old-people talk. We need to suck it up. Our young selves danced drunkenly all night and never complained about it.’

  ‘If I agree to all those rules, will you stop talking to me for a while? I just need some quiet time.’

  ‘I can stop speaking to you indefinitely, if you prefer.’ Rose gave her a haughty look, then, softening, added, ‘Sorry, Magsy – nervous energy. We’ve still got half an hour before boarding. I’ll go for a walk. Give you a break.’

  Maggie nodded. She took Rose’s hand and held it for a moment. ‘Sorry. Thank you.’

  ‘Maggie, I wouldn’t have railroaded you into this if I didn’t think it was the right thing for you to get away. I will take care of you, I promise.’

  Watching Rose stride off down the expanse of glossy linoleum, so confident in her strange harem pants, her mad hair springing off her head like an explosion of silver light, Maggie breathed a sigh of relief. All she needed was a few moments when she didn’t have to respond to anyone or pretend to be all right.

  When Rose returned from her stroll, she sat down beside Maggie. ‘I got herbal tea, some snacky things, chocolate … are you okay?’

  Maggie nodded. ‘What are we doing, Rose? I can’t believe that I let you talk me into this. What can we possibly hope to find?’

  ‘Wouldn’t you like to find that Adonis you met at that wine festival in Athens? Man, he was cute.’

  Maggie looked at her in horror. ‘I’ve already got an excess of Greeks in my life, thank you.’

  Rose laughed. ‘Sorry, bad example.’

  ‘Besides, that Adonis will be a grandfather with a pot belly and an ouzo problem now. What if we find out that nothing is as good as it was in 1978? Where will that leave us?’

  ‘Why are you coming with such a gloomy outlook?’ asked Rose.

  ‘Because, as you pointed out, you and Kristo bullied me into it. And I couldn’t think of what else to do with myself.’

  ‘Well, brighten up. We need to be open to possibility. That’s the thing I remember most. We were open to the world and whatever direction life might take us.’

  ‘Yes. And this is where we ended up. That’s how it goes.’

  Rose ignored her. ‘That’s what I want to find … that freedom of spirit. I see it as a journey of discovery.’

  ‘You’re not going to start singing now, are you?’ asked Maggie.

  ‘We are going to sing on this trip. That’s non-negotiable.’

  ‘Fine, but no yodelling. I can’t bear it when you yodel.’

  Rose gave an annoyed sigh. ‘Consider it on the list. And I’ll sing in my head for the moment.’

  ‘What are you singing? Just so I know.’

  Rose closed her eyes for a moment. ‘Steppenwolf, baby – “Born to Be Wild”.’

  Maggie snorted. She watched Rose nodding to the song in her head. ‘Okay, start at the beginning.’

  Rose counted down, they leaned in, heads touching and began to hum softly together.

  Part Two

  The Journey

  Chapter Six
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br />   It was almost five years since Rose had seen Fran in the flesh. She was still elfin, but age had thickened her all over and her face looked slightly wizened, like an apple on the turn.

  Since Fran couldn’t drive, she made the journey to meet their dawn arrival at Heathrow by public transport. She suggested they all take the shuttle to Paddington and taxi from there, but Maggie wouldn’t hear of it. She announced herself exhausted, which seemed incredible given she’d been comatose practically the entire trip. Anyway, Maggie wanted to pay for the cab so that was the end of it.

  After the initial excitement of the reunion, there was a sense of anticlimax in the cab. They were all suddenly out of sorts and began to gently bicker. Fran kept insisting that, although her place was small, she wanted them to stay, rather than waste money paying for accommodation.

  ‘We’re too old for airbeds and all that,’ said Maggie. ‘Thanks anyway.’

  Rose looked across at her. ‘I think saying we’re “too old” for anything should be on the banned list.’

  ‘I think the “banned list” should be on the banned list,’ Maggie said.

  Fran looked anxious. ‘What’s this list?’

  Rose didn’t want to squabble. ‘It’s nothing. Forget it. Anyway, we have a place booked, so we don’t even need to have this argument.’

  ‘It’s not really an argument,’ argued Fran. ‘It’s a discussion.’

  Maggie settled back and closed her eyes. ‘I need to be comfortable.’

  Check-in wasn’t available until midafternoon, so they all went to Fran’s place in the meantime. Even by Rose’s standards, Fran’s place was shabby, with wonky-shaped rooms and traffic noise that surged like a tide in the background. It was cluttered with odd furniture and props left over from various theatrical productions that added a bohemian touch to what would otherwise have seemed squalid. Fran had also acquired a marmalade cat that looked the worse for wear despite its fancy French name.