by Lette, Kathy
‘Jesus.’ I swivelled to stare at Harry, who was still noisily untangling himself from the snare drum. ‘This morning, you were thinking of her the whole time, weren’t you? That’s why you had your eyes closed! Oh, well, whoever you are, I’m sorry you’ve had to experience that. Harry’s never been that good in bed. I did once scream “Oh god! Oh god!” but that was only because I’d just seen a huge huntsman spider on the bedroom ceiling over his shoulder.’
With the help of my brothers-in-law, Harry had now scrambled back to his feet. ‘Start the bloody music!’ he called out in desperation.
‘My advice to your girlfriend?’ I tottered to the front of the stage and scrutinised the women below. ‘Don’t make the mistake of turning f . . . f . . . fifty. Stay young . . . Although, ironically, I should probably offer to pay you child support. I mean, you’ve just taken a fifty-one-year-old teenager off my hands. Our priest is here somewhere. Hello, Father Gallagher? Can you show yourself?’
‘Music! Goddamn it!’ Harry demanded, as the band fumbled into position.
‘Well, Father, wherever you are . . . My query is, can we get an annulment after twenty-eight years of marriage? My other question is, can a fifty-year-old woman with a varicose vein wear heels and date again? . . . Oh, fudge.’
My eyes landed upon my boss, a statuesque, thirty-something brunette with alabaster skin, who’d been mysteriously parachuted into the role of editor at the local paper despite a total lack of qualifications. I groped down the cerebral equivalent of the back of the sofa and remembered something else.
‘Bloody hell, Harry, you’re rooting Angela, aren’t you? You told me once you fancied her . . . Even though she has about as much personality as she has hair. She’s nearly bald, you know. It’s all extensions.’ What I lacked in clarity I now made up for by hiccupping heavily. When I recovered, I added, ‘I know you think you’re god’s gift, Ange, but truth is, you’ve passed your bore-by date. You light up a room by leaving it. Last week you held a meeting to discuss our overuse of paper clips. We have a desalination plant going rusty, holes in the s . . . s . . . shark net and a crack in the nuclear reactor, and our “editor” gets us to write about a kitten that looks like Hitler, a mum finding a gecko in her fridge and grass growing quickly after rain. These are the things that keep me awake at night, I can tell you.’
The alcohol in my system made the guests a little blurry; rather than a group of well-dressed suburbanites, they now appeared to be one giant, indistinct, gasping amoeba. A voice from far back in my cerebrum told me to maybe call it quits. I suspected I was about one drink away from waking up in an unfamiliar nation with nipple jewellery, but it was too late, because my mouth had already set off on another sortie down self-destruction street, despite it being clearly signposted TURN BACK, YOU ARE GOING THE WRONG WAY.
‘And we all know about the kickbacks, Ange. Why else would you ask us to go easy on certain developers and local big shots? Plus, you shred paperwork faster than Trump’s accountant. The whole office knows you only got the job because of your big-boobed, playboy-pet look . . . So, did you crawl through Angela’s cat flap, Harry?’
‘For the love of god, Ruby, put down the bloody mic!’ Harry begged, as band members frantically plugged in their instruments.
‘D’you know what? It’s my birthday and I’ll implode if I want to. Actually, it feels pretty damn good. One of my greatest regrets, apart from not being Nora Ephron, is that I’ve never s . . . s . . . said what I really think. Nope. Not to anybody, really.’
‘Why not buy a vineyard, Ruby, and cut out the middleman?’ a high-pitched voice heckled from the crowd.
My eyes snagged onto the culprit. It was Karina, one of the school mums whose company I’d endured since our now-eighteen-year-old daughters had met on the kindergarten mat. Karina rolled her eyes condescendingly in my direction and puckered her collagen-filled lips in disapproval.
‘Oh, Karina, by the way, your husband sent the babysitter a dick pick. She showed her mum, Shaz, who showed all the other mums. Oh, and Shaz, your perfect hubby groped me at your anniversary party. Isn’t that right, Robbo?’
There were some hoots of drunken male laughter scattered around the room like tiny explosives, which my confused, befuggered brain took as a sign of encouragement.
‘Oh, and Robbo, so cocksure, aren’t you, entering every room scrotum-first. Well, guess what? And this goes for all you steroid-addled ex–footy players. Your trophy wives tell you they’re at Pilates in the mall, but they’re really meeting their toy boys. A much more effective way to strengthen the pelvic floor, apparently.’
Every head in the room was now tilted towards me in a hyper-alert way. The audience blinked and blinked at me, like a giant, multi-eyed insect. But I just couldn’t read the signs; and to be honest, not even an intensive course in advanced semaphore could have helped me now.
‘To my own kids – I would take a bullet for you both, you know that, but being your mother is like being an unpaid PA to two pushy A-listers. It’s my own fault. I’ve s . . . s . . . spoiled you rotten.’
The mic gave a croaking gasp, like the cough of a dying man, as Harry unplugged it. But the room was so quiet my voice still carried, clear as a bell.
‘Zoe, I love you to pieces, pumpkin, but just to be clear, you are not a multi-millionairess top model accidentally trapped inside the body of a girl in the burbs. You’re bright but lazy. If you use your gap year merely to Instagram photos of yourself pouting, then forget uni; you’re clearly headed for a career gyrating in your pants in a lap-dancing club.’
There was an indignant gasp from the head of the P & C, Debbie Darlington, another of my ‘besties’.
‘Oh, shut up, Debbie. You let your fifteen-year-old get botox! When she next asks for botoxed lips you should give her a good smack about the chops . . . But then again, would she be able to feel it?’
I cackled at my own quip, not noticing that nobody else was laughing. The alcohol had made me totally oblivious to the fact that I was no longer a shoo-in to win ‘Ms Popular of the Peninsular’ this particular year. But once I’d started mouthing off, I just couldn’t stop. All my pent-up frustrations were exploding out of me like uncorked champagne. Two or three bottles of truth serum will do that to you; after all, drunken words are only sober thoughts.
‘And Jake? I love you, kiddo. But you’re smoking too much weed. Unless you’re s . . . s . . . secretly staring in a reality TV show called Hash in the Attic. So, here’s the sermon. Verily I say unto you, either knuckle down at your apprenticeship or leave home. I mean, do you have any idea how much you cost? You wolf down food as though you’re a slave in Egyptian times, bolstering yourself for a day of heavy pyramid building. Out the door by twenty-four. That’s the motto. The Bank of Mum and Dad is shutting up s . . . s . . . shop.’
I felt my elbows gripped in a vice-like hold and slowly realised that I was now flanked by my brothers-in-law.
‘Ah, Scott and Alessandro! Do you know what we call you behind your back, Scott? “I’ve Got Scott”. As soon as you meet someone, you’re like, “I’ve got a boat . . . I’ve got a new SUV . . . I’ve got a waterfront home . . . I’ve got a dirt bike . . . I’ve got a jet ski . . .” You’re one of the richest blokes on the peninsula – and we know that because you keep telling us so. Scott’s a human rights lawyer,’ I told the crowd. ‘You’ve probably heard him jauntily talking to his junior all night, saying things like, “So, exactly what kind of electrodes did they use to torture his testicles?” Or “How many dead bodies were exhumed from the mass grave?” And yet, you abuse my s . . . s . . . sister’s human rights all the time, bragging about never having changed a nappy or cooked a meal, you hypocritical dipshit.’
The heady taste of honesty flooded my mouth. How long had it been since I’d let myself say something I really meant?
‘Oh, and meet Alessandro, my other brother-in-law. He’s the Dent Boss. He takes dents out of chassis – we call him “the car whisperer”. But it’s all ca
sh in hand. Everyone knows you do your mates’ drug laundering through your business, Sandro – that’s why we secretly call your garage “the laundromat”. D’you know that?’
My brothers-in-law then attempted to lift me up off my feet and simply carry me off stage. My legs pedalled in the air for a moment, like a cartoon character, before I delivered two quick kicks to their shins.
‘You boys have really got to work on your people skills. It’s my fucking birthday!’
‘That’s enough!’ My mother had now pushed her way to the front of the crowd. She thrust a forefinger up at me as if she might impale me upon it. Her glare was icy enough to turn volcanic ash into snowflakes.
‘Oh, s . . . s . . . sorry, Mum. I stole your limelight. Mrs Ruth Ryan is only happy if people float out of her presence backwards, like flunkies at Buck House.’
I demonstrated the walk, teetering in reverse in my heels. This drew a splutter of laughter from my flummoxed guests, especially when I fell over and lost a chicken fillet from my push-up bra. It lay quivering at my feet like a stranded jellyfish. Perhaps the guests would mistake it for a stress-relieving executive squeezy toy, I thought, vaguely, kicking it into the crowd.
‘Ruth’s only mothering advice? To never go out without lippy. You should never have had children, Mum – that’s like feeding live chickens to an alligator. You think I’m joking?’ I asked nobody in particular as I hauled myself back up to standing. ‘She named her three daughters after precious jewels – Emerald, Amber and Ruby – but she tells us now we’re little more than cut glass, our lives a cheap imitation. At least Dad was warm and fun and loved us. Sure, he didn’t exactly regard matrimony as an exclusive carnal arrangement, but we loved him. Why would you punish us for that?’
My mother made a face like a snail that had just eaten a slug pellet. I had never, ever spoken back to her, but I was sure as hell making up for it now. After such a brilliant demonstration of ambassadorial diplomacy, a job as a UN hostage negotiator surely beckoned.
‘My sisters aren’t talking to each other, by the way, thanks to Mum poisoning them against each other. And I’m always left rushing around trying to patch things up . . . I’m the youngest, you see, so my family tend to bounce me back and forth like a shuttlecock on a badminton court.’
The band were finally tuning up. Insulted guests were making for the doors, led by Debbie and Celeste. Abandoned plates were being lofted back to the kitchen by waiters wearing rictus smiles. Some guests started booing from the back. ‘Hey, Ruby, you really should get out less,’ someone heckled. ‘Do you intend finishing this diatribe any time in my life span?’ bemoaned another.
‘Okay, okay, I’ll finish,’ I said, trying in vain to shrug off my two burly manhandlers, who were back with a vengeance. ‘But one more thing before I go . . . The principal news, aside from my birthday breakdown, is that I have metastatic pancreatic cancer. Terminal.’
The collective intake of breath sounded like an asthma attack.
‘I only found out today. With so little time left, you’re probably wondering what would I like most in the world? To patch things up with my sisters, actually. Mum, you’ve successfully alienated us from each other for so long, making us compete to be top of your speed dial. Well, enough is enough. Emerald, Amber . . . I’ve booked the three of us onto the next cruise ship leaving Sydney. On S . . . S . . . Saturday. For three weeks – to clean the slate before I cark it. You can’t say no, girls, it’s my dying wish . . .’
I saw my surprised sisters turn instinctively towards our mother.
‘And forget what Mum thinks. Mum always has to have the last word. But this time I’m having it – engraved on my epitaph.
‘So, there’s not much else to say, except to thank you once again for coming to celebrate this special night with me. Quite a birthday present, right? Hooray. Happy Birthday! You’re fifty . . . now die!’
2
The registered letter was lying on the doormat when I woke the next morning. It was from my doctor.
Dear Ms Ruby Ryan,
Please ignore the letter you were sent in error yesterday. It was addressed to the wrong patient. You do not have cancer and are perfectly healthy, to the best of our knowledge. We are terribly sorry for the mix-up and hope that this unfortunate clerical error didn’t cause you undue distress. The staff member responsible has been disciplined.
Yours sincerely,
Dr Zahra Hanbury
Golden Sands Medical Practice
I flumped onto the hall floor. Oh, fudge. Oh, fuckity, fuckity, fuckity fudge.
3
Scrunching up the letter, I realised that my world had humpty-dumptied, never to be put back together again. By the time I’d thrown up and taken a cold shower, my hangover had left my temples and was now throbbing behind my right eye like a displaced heart. I had absolutely no idea how to cope. I’d always been known as the soft, self-deprecating, easygoing, knockabout Ryan sister. This was like going from a beginner’s slope straight to a black diamond ski run with no instruction. When I’d opened the doctor’s letter saying I had terminal cancer, a steel vice had wrapped itself around my chest. But today’s letter explaining the misdiagnosis had squeezed the vice so tight, it left me gasping to the point of asphyxiation.
There was no going back. I hadn’t just burnt all my bridges, I’d nuked them to oblivion. Sprawled on the cold bathroom tiles with my head above the toilet bowl, waves of regret washed over me as I remembered the hurtful things I’d said to my friends and family the night before. It all came crashing back – a kaleidoscope of horror. I couldn’t recall how I got home, but I could remember throwing Harry out with the words: ‘Never darken my vag again.’
My kids, torn between agonising grief at the news of their mother’s illness and mortification at my humiliating performance, had decamped in shock to stay with friends.
By midmorning, when I finally summoned the courage to open my laptop, it was to a barren inbox, apart from a message from my boss, Angela, offering her condolences but curtly suggesting I start my sick leave immediately. Angela normally monologued for hours, we staff writers listening patiently, hoping that by the time she stopped talking about herself she’d want to hear our story ideas, but chances were we’d all have died from old age by then. Today, however, she’d got straight to the point.
There were no messages from my normally loquacious girlfriends, either, which spoke volumes. My best friends, Jaynie and Debbie, had blocked me on Facebook and Twitter, which said it all, really, loud and clear. I’d have to get a change of address card marked ‘Social Siberia’.
My mother had left a message on my landline in her most severe, church-pew voice. ‘You’ve disgraced the whole family. Consider yourself well and truly out of my will’ – a pointless gesture if I had been dying but a rather annoying development now that I wasn’t. My mother had never let self-doubt cloud her judgement. She loved to hate things. She could write off whole countries without even going there, whole nationalities without meeting any members of them – and daughters with the stroke of a pen.
‘You’ve always been a drama queen, Ruby. Chemo will sort you out,’ she post-scripted in a blasé tone, as though offering me a stale scone. ‘At times like this you need to crack hardy.’
Or just crack up, possibly.
Harry’s voicemail message was furious and confused in equal measure. ‘You disgraced and libelled me in front of all our mates. As if I could ever cheat on you. That stupid shit on my phone . . . It was just silly banter with an old client. Oh, and thanks for telling everyone I’m bad in bed. That added the fucking icing to the happy fucking birthday cake. But I’m putting your insane behaviour down to this shit-awful disease, which we can fight together. Because . . . I love you,’ he added, tonelessly, ringing off.
Anger welled up in me – anger bitter enough to taste. Love? The bastard had given me a worm farm for my birthday. A bloody worm farm. I wanted to feed him to the worms at that moment, that’s for sure. I’d truste
d him completely. We were a team. We shared so many in-jokes about our kids, our friends, even our mortgage, threatening to go along to a police line-up to identify the house that was attempting to steal our wallets.
How could I not have known he was cheating on me? Clearly, I was one neuron short of a synapse. Could there be life after infidelity? Well, maybe, if he’d admit it: perhaps then, after a lot of kowtowing and pleas and abject begging, I could forgive him. It would hurt, but my heartache would eventually pass. But Harry’s denial via voicemail echoed in my head like an explosion. The refutation hurt even more than the affair itself.
Both my sisters had called. Amber, a chef, had left a message of anguished love and distress and the offer of chicken soup and/or internal organs; Emerald, a vet, left a list of medical questions and advice.
I rang back my oldest sister first.
‘Emerald, I’m so, so sorry about yesterday,’ I blurted at the sound of her hello.
‘Due to a technical error, you seem to have missed out on having a cyclone named after you,’ Emerald responded, dryly.
‘Oh, god. Was I that bad? A mix of alcohol and shocking news brought out the worst in me. Am I in much trouble?’
‘Trouble? Oh, no, you’re not in trouble . . . Not unless you count dangling over a cliff face by a single pube “trouble”.’
‘Oh, Jesus. That horrendous, huh? I feel sick. Can I come over?’
‘Ah . . . Only if you happen to have a bombproof, flame-retardant, armoured vehicle handy in your garage, because my apparently “money-laundering” husband wants to kill you. Which in itself is ironic, as you told the world that you have a death sentence already.’ Her voice softened. ‘Is it true, Rubes? Or were you just shit-faced? Tell me exactly what the doctor said.’
My mouth felt like the bottom of a budgie cage and my teeth were all furry, as if they were each wearing a little coat. ‘I need protein. Meet me for lunch.’ I tried to think of a venue appropriate for social lepers. ‘Convict Cafe. One o’clock . . .’