Fulfillment

by Golland, K. M.

  “Yes, I do”. I smiled then quickly changed the subject. “And as soon as this boot is off and my foot is dance ready, we are going out.”

  Tash playfully rolled her eyes. “You can still dance with crutches, Lex. You’d pull of a decent zombie in ‘Thriller’.” She proceeded to slump her arms and twitch her shoulder and neck.

  “You idiot,” I giggled. “No, I’m not going out in public and dancing with crutches, forget it.”

  ***

  Bryce asked Tash how the job was going while I talked to the girls about the surgery and when I was expected to be walking properly again. I also reminded Lil and Steph that Charli’s birthday was next month and that she wanted to have a sleepover with her friends, which included Lil’s daughter, Jasmine, and Steph’s daughter, Katie. Both Lil and Steph sounded over the moon at the prospect of relinquishing their daughters over to my care for the evening. Me...not so keen. I remembered all too well how loud, fun...and loud, a sleepover could be for a young girl.

  The bell sounded and children began finding their waiting parents. Nate spotted us first and excitedly jogged our way.

  “Bryce!” he shouted, right before he kicked the football in his direction. Bryce was quick and took off, marking it before it hit any cars.

  “Nate, not near the cars,” I rebuked.

  “Sorry,” he called back.

  I noticed Charli skipping happily toward us when a girl I did not recognise walked up beside her and said something Charli did not like, causing her to stop and turn toward the girl. I noticed Charli’s fists ball at her sides, and I knew that was not a good sign.

  “You’re just mean,” she yelled at the girl.

  The little girl shoved Charli nearly causing her to fall backward.

  “Hey,” I called out ready to hop my way over there when Nate saw the commotion and went to Charli’s aid in my stead. The little girl saw him coming and ran off.

  “What did she say?” Nate asked Charli as they walked closer.

  “Nothing, she is just a bully. I hate her,” she answered.

  “What was that all about?” I asked, as Charli pressed her head into my stomach and wrapped her arms around me.

  “Nothing, Mum, she just sucks and she smells like cheese.” How does a child smell like cheese? I wasn’t sure.

  “Charli, why did you yell at her?”

  “Because she said babies are dumb. They are not dumb. My sister wasn’t dumb,” she said angrily, with her head still pressed against my abdomen.

  Tash put her hand to her mouth, Bryce looked in the direction the little girl took off in and I just held Charli tightly.

  “Little girls that smell like cheese are dumb, Charli. Not babies.”

  “I hate cheese,” she said as Bryce opened the car door for her.

  “No you don’t, silly rabbit.”

  ***

  We sat around the breakfast bar watching Bryce make dinner after we got back to the apartment. It had taken a while to douse Charli’s raging anger toward the cheese-girl—who Charli refused to identify by real name. I decided to let it go because, like me, she was incredibly stubborn, and I knew from my own experience that constant probing would only make her clam up more.

  Switching my attention from an uncooperative Charli, I offered to help Bryce with the dinner preparation instead. He refused, so I turned my offering into demanding and was rewarded with dicing the onions. I made a point never to offer or demand again, as the onion fumes singed my eyeballs, forcing tears to spill out onto my cheeks.

  “So, Charli-Bear...God damn it! My eyes...” I wiped my sleeve across my face. “Urgh! Have you thought of a name for...who invented onions anyway? Stupid smelly things.”

  Bryce was laughing as he the chopped carrots.

  “Laugh all you want. I’m never offering to help you again.”

  “Good,” he arrogantly replied.

  I glared at him, but it must’ve resembled a winced, screwed up, ugly looking glare, as I could not yet open my eyes without them burning like fuck.

  “Sorry, Charli. Have you thought of a name for your sister yet?”

  “Yes,” she said happily.

  “Well? Let’s hear it, Sweetheart.”

  “Bianca,” she said confidently.

  As soon as she said it I loved it. “That’s a beautiful choice. Why did you choose Bianca?”

  “Because it’s pretty, and I like it, and it has all our initials in it.”

  Bryce stopped chopping and just stared at Charli. I was speechless, too. She had put so much thought into it, much more thought than a six-year-old should have. It was so endearing.

  She noticed our pause and continued. “And any way, I didn’t like Blanche or Cinba.”

  I looked at Bryce and smiled, trying not to laugh and also thankful she had not chosen Cinba—it reminded me too much of the Lion King. He put his knife down, picked up Charli and sat her on the bench so that she was his height.

  “Bianca is perfect, Charlotte, thank you.” He leaned in, kissed her on the head then went back to the chopping carrots.

  I noticed a tear in his eye as I wiped my own. “I’m chopping onions, what’s you excuse?” I said to him, lovingly.

  “I don’t have one,” he replied.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

  I’ve never liked cemeteries, even as a young teenager when it had been ‘cool’ to sneak into the local one at night and pretend to call upon the dead. I’d hated that game, and at the time I’d hated my brother for blackmailing me and my sister Jen to go along with him and his idiot friend. I can’t say as an adult that my dislike for cemeteries had decreased over the years, because it hadn’t, and as I hobbled along the gravel path in between row upon of row of headstones, that became hugely apparent. It wasn’t that cemeteries gave me the creeps—unless I was at one during the night with said stupid brother and idiot friend. No, it was more that they held such sadness and loss of people dearly missed.

  As reluctant as I was about being at Melbourne Cemetery, I wouldn’t have wanted to be anywhere else other than with Bryce at that very moment. I had promised him I would be there to support him on the anniversary of the accident that claimed the lives of his parents and little brother, Lauchie. It was also the accident that subsequently led to Gareth suffering from Dissociative Identity Disorder.

  Gareth, Lucy and Nic were walking a few meters ahead of us. Lucy was carrying three large lillies, Nic carried Alexander, and Gareth held a book called the The Hunger Games.

  Bryce was by my side as I hopped along with my crutches, crutches I wanted nothing more than to burn by way of a celebratory bon fire. He was quiet; they all were, but not in a bad way. I guess doing this annually for the past 16 years had made each year just that little bit less harrowing...then again, possibly not. Maybe they had just found their own mutual way to emotionally deal and communicate during this particular day, either way, I was still glad to be by his side supporting him.

  “Hey, you alright?” I said under a low voice.

  He looked over at me. “Yeah, it just doesn’t get any easier, you know?”

  “I don’t think it’s supposed to get easier. I just think you learn to accept that you are supposed to believe that it does.”

  Bryce scoffed mildly “Yeah, we do tend to fool ourselves more than we fool those around us.”

  “Uh huh, we do. It’s one of life’s greatest fallacies,” I said disappointedly.

  He placed his hand on the small of my back. “I’m glad you’re here with me.”

  I looked up into his sad but appreciative eyes. “Me too.”

  There was silence for a minute, then Bryce slowed his pace, forcing me to do the same. “I need to warn you.”

  “Warn me of what?’ I asked curiously.

  “There’s a very good chance you could meet Deirdre today.” Deirdre? Oh...Deirdre. Deirdre was one of Gareth’s alters, an alter that was not only female, but elderly and a mother-hen type, so to speak. From what I had been told, she kind of held the ot
her alters in check and tried to keep the peace.

  He struggled to retain a straight face but I could see a trace of humour creeping in. “Let me just say she is...um, how do I put it? Pushy...and forward...and...” He leaned in closer, “fucking annoying.”

  “Bryce!” I whispered back, my eyes darting from him to the back of Gareth’s head.

  “She is, you’ll see.” Oh God. I hope Deirdre doesn’t want to hurt me like Scott does.

  The thought of Scott wanting to hurt me entered my mind, giving me wave of dread and a vision of my fall again. Alexis, stop linking the two together. Scott was not there in the apartment. You would have seen or heard him. I had to keep telling myself that. He couldn’t possibly have been there that morning, could he? No, he didn’t have access to the apartment, Bryce made sure all keycard access numbers were changed after his last uninvited visit.

  “Here we go, Hunny.” Bryce said, snapping me out of my thoughts and compelling me to a halt before I ran right up the back of Gareth.

  I looked up and noticed Lucy and Nic bent down on their knees, placing the lillies on each of the three graves. Lindsay and Stephanie Clark’s headstones were on either side of Lauchlan Clark’s headstone, and I found it both touching and fitting, as if they were both still nurturing and protecting their young son even in the afterlife.

  Gareth moved forward and propped the book up against Lauchie’s headstone. “This one’s a good one little mate, you’ll like it,” he said, his voice soft, endearing and obviously holding an enormous amount of love for his young cousin. It was heartbreaking, but also enlightening to see this side of him. He stood back and took in the grave before him.

  Bryce noticed me staring and leaned closer to my ear. “Lauchie loved books, and so does Gareth. He brings him a new one every time he visits.”

  Gareth removed a weathered paperback that I’m assuming he’d left here the last time then stood back up while gazing down at Lauchie’s grave with a lost expression. Bryce moved forward and placed his hand on Gareth’s shoulder, giving it a tight squeeze before putting his hand back in his pant pocket.

  “God, I miss them,” sighed Lucy as she traced her finger along the letters of her mother’s headstone.

  Nic wrapped her arm around Lucy’s shoulder, pulling her head closer to gently touch her own. Alexander squealed at his mother’s sudden closeness while trying to grab at her hair. I hopped two steps forward so that I was standing next to Bryce again, then I slid my hand into his pocket, taking a hold of his and removing it so that I could encase it in my own and let him know I was there for him. He looked down at our interlaced fingers then up to my eyes. His eyes were mildly moist, and the hurt and pain he felt was clearly visible, destroying a small piece of me at the sight of him this distraught. In that moment I decided I absolutely hated the man who ran the red light and caused this overwhelming feeling of grief, hurt, and loss—I hated that man.

  Lucy laid out a blanket next to her mother’s grave and put her hands out for Nic to pass Alexander to her. “Come here, my big boy,” she cooed at him. “Let’s tell Nanna what you have been doing lately.” Her sad demeanour now pushed aside and a forged happy alternative replacing it.

  “Yeah, tell Nanna how you keep rolling around everywhere, and that Mummy bought you a jail because of that,” Nic said while clapping Alexander’s hands in her own.

  “Don’t,” Lucy groaned. “I already feel bad about the stupid kiddy pen.”

  “Mum would absolutely freak if she saw that thing, then she’d throw it right over the balcony,” Bryce interjected, with a knowing smile.

  He took a seat on the grass next to Lucy then stretched out his arms to gently pull me down into his lap.

  “What is so wrong with a kiddy pen? I used one with both my kids, and they don’t have a jail-complex,” I said defensively.

  “I don’t know, they just kind of look punishing. Maybe if they replaced the bars, I’d feel better. Hey...” she addressed Bryce, by lightly flicking the back of her hand on his leg. “Remember that time when Mum’s friend, Ros, came over and her son, Jacob had one of those child restraint things on—”

  “Yeah,” Bryce smiled as he traced his finger up and down my leg. “Mum took it off him and threw it straight into the fireplace.”

  “How shocked was Ros?” Lucy giggled.

  “Well it did look like a leash, Luce. Mum was appalled.”

  “I know. That was so funny,” she reminisced, while lightly shaking her head.

  I looked at Nic, who shrugged her shoulders as if to say ‘I don’t know, I haven’t heard this story before’.

  Bryce caught our exchange and offered an explanation. “Mum was a strong believer of free will; no restraints, no restrictions. And that included restraints of all kinds, including kiddy restraints.”

  I raised my eyebrows. “No restrictions?” I teased. “So that’s where you get it from?”

  He gave me a playful glare.

  “If I remember rightly,” Lucy added, “Ros asked Mum what the hell she thought she was doing, and Mum replied with something along the lines of ‘freeing Jacob from the confines of madness.”

  Bryce shook his head and smiled as he recalled that particular memory of his mother. “Yeah and then Ros yelled, ‘How is keeping him safe madness?’ and Mum yelled back ‘because you are supposed to keep him safe, not a dog lead! He is not a dog!’

  “Well, she was correct,” Gareth added, his feminine sounding voice grabbing my attention. “This Ros woman was the boy’s mother was she not? Therefore, it was her responsibility to teach him to obey without the use of a restraint. When my son was a young boy, he did as he was told. No ifs, buts, or maybes.”

  Bryce whispered in my ear. “Alexis, meet Deirdre.”

  Gareth turned in our direction. “Bryce, my dear boy, look at how handsome you have become. And who is this injured young lass on your lap?” Deirdre asked.

  I was dumbfounded, stunned, at a loss for words. Gareth was staring me in the face, but it wasn’t him, he had lost all of his mannerisms. Instead, having a whole set of new ones, feminine ones; ones that suited an elderly woman such as Deirdre.

  “Well?” she said with a hand on the hip. “Aren’t you going to introduce me?”

  “Sorry, Deirdre,” Bryce said with dry amusement. “This is Alexis, my girlfriend. Alexis, this is Deirdre.” Fuck! What do I say?

  “Well aren’t you just a modern day beauty. It’s a pleasure to meet you, Dear.” he extended his hand, or was it her hand? Oh, God! I’m so freakin’ confused right now.

  “And Lucy!” she squealed in a higher pitched voice, “You look simply exquisite and...oh...don’t tell me...is this? Is this little bonny boy your son?”

  Gareth gracefully pranced over to Lucy and smoothed his pants down as if he were wearing a dress before he sat on the blanket next to Lucy, legs together and to the side.

  “Yes, Deirdre. This is my and Nic’s son, Alexander,” Lucy happily replied.

  Deirdre gave Nic a sideways glance, wrinkling up her nose. “I don’t see how that’s possible,” she said in a pompous tone.

  She turned back to face Lucy, fussing over Alexander.

  Nic looked at Bryce and me and deliberately went cross-eyed.

  I burst into laughter.

  “Something funny, Dear?” Deirdre asked as she played with Alexander’s finger.

  “Oh no. Nothing’s funny,” I answered, like an adolescent child trying to cover up a secret.

  “One does not laugh unless one deems something funny, Dear Alexis.” One needs to get the fuck out of here before one puts her broken foot in it. Help!

  “I told her a joke,” Bryce added quickly, sensing my inability to find my maturity and act responsible in this bizarre situation.

  “Well...let’s hear it then?” she probed, with an encouraging flick of her hand.

  “Dyslexic man walks into a bra,” he said, stone faced and in an extremely flat tone.

  Again, I couldn’t contain myself and b
urst into laughter. Nic and Lucy followed suit and Bryce couldn’t help but chuckle along with us.

  Deirdre just looked downright confused. “How does one walk into a bra? Was it hanging out to dry?”

  ***

  We stayed at the cemetery for a couple of hours longer, Bryce and Lucy recalling moments of their childhood, a childhood which sounded just like most—innocent, fun, and full of love-filled moments. Gareth—or Deirdre, I should say—continued to nosily retract little pieces of information from our lives. She was actually an endearing, if not an overly inquisitive alter, and it wasn’t long before I relaxed around her and took her not at face value, but character value.

  “So, Alexis Dear, how did you break that ankle of yours?” Deirdre asked as she tilted her head to the side to study my boot. “That’s quite an odd looking contraption you have there.”

  Bryce pulled me to my feet and helped me balance while getting my crutches.

  “Well, I fell down the stairs...” I paused, standing on one foot, feeling slightly uncomfortable in explaining to Deirdre of the series of events that led to my fracture. I couldn’t help shake the feeling that she kind of already knew.

  Bryce handed me my crutches which I secured in place under my arms.

  “And how did you fall, Dear?”

  “I don’t know,” I said rather sharply.

  Lucy placed her hand on Gareth’s shoulder. “It’s time to leave, Deirdre,” she said softly as she turned him around to face Lauchie’s grave. I noticed him put his hand to his head for a moment.

  “Deirdre normally leaves and Gareth returns about now,” Bryce whispered into my ear.

  Moments later, Gareth turned to face us and almost instantly I could recognise his demeanour, it was so surreal. He lowered his gaze looking embarrassed, I’m assuming because he realised what had happened. I tried to ignore him and act as though nothing had happened, thinking that was the best thing to do.

  Lucy and Nic had already started walking to the car, so Bryce and I turned to follow, Gareth behind us.

  Bryce stopped. “Shit! Give me a second,” he said then turned back toward the graves walking past Gareth. He kneeled down and placed something small at the base of his father’s headstone.