‘Why have you got that sad face on, Mummy?’ She cups hot little hands on my cheeks. Six years old and already so perceptive, perhaps more perceptive than the adults in her life.
I am saved by the postman, who arrives in canary yellow on his motorbike and is about to put a letter in our mailbox when Ellie rushes to collect it from his hand. They smile at each other, and Ellie skips back to where I am standing. She gives me the mail, which I open. It is from Nina’s lawyer, and concerns my grandmother’s will.
‘Who is it from, Mummy?’
‘Your great-grandmother.’
Ellie frowns at me.
‘She wrote it before she died.’ I read on, taking in the news. I read the lawyer’s note again before telling Ellie. ‘Nina has given her cottage to us.’
Ellie smiles. She has her great-grandmother’s dark eyes, unlike my blue-grey ones. I am a hiccup in the maternal line, living proof of the strange ways in which genes do their work. ‘Heterozygosity’ we call it in the genetics lab. A fancy name to explain how Nina’s fine, Slavic features could miss me all together, choosing instead to reside with my mother and daughter. My face is broad, my hair fairer, I suppose like my father’s, a man I try to picture by looking at myself in the mirror. My reflection is the only hint I have.
2
Under the fluorescent lights of the genetics laboratory, the paper I’m writing on looks bluish white. I’m noting down the sample numbers I have designated to the DNA of each female member of a family thought to carry a key genetic mutation for breast cancer. Nowadays, the experiment happens in a machine, with many labs even sending their samples away for analysis and receiving the results over the internet. That is how removed from hands-on testing we have become.
When I started running gene sequences like this, the experiment looked like a vertical racing track where the competitors ran from top to bottom. Two plates of glass sandwiched a thin film of gel with electrodes at either end. Carved into the top were slots, the starting gates, marking the lanes where each person’s DNA samples had been loaded. There were four lanes per person, because to decode someone’s secrets, their DNA must be amplified, cut up and read according to the order of its four component parts, or bases, as they’re known: A, T, G, C; for just four bases, arranged in different orders, connect and separate each of us. The DNA samples marched downwards, depositing fragments, according to length – longest to shortest – as they went, each fragment ending at the very next base of the chain until an entire gene’s code was eventually revealed on X-ray films. Those films were then manually interpreted and any mutations noted.
Something similar happens within the machine, behind the control panels – although with lasers and coloured dyes rather than radioactively labelled DNA. For the younger scientists, the workings are a mystery. I preferred the old way. A woman raised by her grandmother is destined to be old-fashioned.
Later, after a tea break and a conversation with Jude, who has suffered more conversations about my marriage than a colleague should have to bear, the machine spits out its results, revealing the genetic code of four strangers. Four generations of women who will be told that, yes, they carry one of the main genetic mutations for breast cancer, an answer that could either divide or unite them. I want to tell them we are more than our genes, more even than the sum of our parts, and that the information I’m giving them is only part of the equation. But I – a geneticist who would give her right arm to learn the identity of her father – am not in a position to talk.
I clean up the experiment, disposing of the spent tubes of reagents and washing down the equipment, then prepare for the next family’s sequencing run: pipetting out the samples, adding the chemicals, rechecking the protocol. It is finicky work and I concentrate to avoid contaminating the samples with other DNA, including from my own skin.
Halfway through loading the machine my mobile phone rings, startling the laboratory with a cheesy tune I keep meaning to change. I quickly discharge the contents of the pipette and answer Ian’s call.
‘Sara,’ he says, his voice dressed smartly for work. ‘How are you?’
‘Let me guess.’ I tug off my laboratory glove, trying not to get any of the mutagenic chemicals on my skin. ‘You can’t get Ellie from school?’
‘I could, but I’d be late.’
I lower my voice. ‘You’re already late.’ A familiar anger burns inside me. ‘I have a job, too, you know.’
‘Mine’s less flexible,’ Ian mutters.
I hear Nina’s words about making every day, every discussion, a fresh start. I see her holding my grandfather’s hand, something I was never fortunate enough to witness in real life, and imagine their dark heads laughing, kissing. In Nina’s old black-and-white photographs, her brooch is secured so high on her blouse that it is difficult to imagine more.
‘How was Italy?’
‘Good.’ He sounds surprised. ‘Thanks.’
Why did we never go to Italy together as Ian had suggested? Just the two of us. I didn’t want to leave Ellie behind with Ian’s ageing parents, who had never approved of me working, that was part of it. And I certainly didn’t want to leave her with Helena.
‘I’ll get her,’ I say.
‘Who?’
‘Our daughter.’ I draw a long breath and end the call, looking, as I do, across to Jude, who has just finished an experiment and is at the sink cleaning up.
‘Jude?’ I rest my hand on the sequencing machine, the timer counting down as it begins processing the samples.
She glances up from what she is doing. ‘Fine. I’ll take over but tell Ian, from me, that he’s pushing his luck.’
‘Sorry. Bloody Ian and his lawyer’s lunches.’ I roll my eyes but see that she’s over my habit of knocking my husband while giving in to his demands. ‘I’ll owe you one.’
‘Or two,’ she teases, brushing a strand of prematurely grey hair from her cheek. ‘A Tassie pinot will fix it. Twenty twelve.’ She winks.
I crunch my face into another apology and mime making a note of her request on the back of my hand. ‘Done.’
She drains the sink and turns to face me. ‘You going to make it official then? Your separation?’
‘Not sure.’
‘He needs to do his share, Sara.’
‘I know.’ I kiss her on the cheek. ‘Thanks, Jude.’
I grab my bag and leave the air-conditioned, hermetically sealed laboratory for the warm, humid air outside. The well-watered lawns of the university squelch up into my sandals. It was on a day like this – steamy to the point of saturation – that Ian moved out last summer, and I’ve been trying to retrace my steps ever since.
At the school gate, other mothers are piecing together disrupted conversations at the edge of the playground, while a girl from Ellie’s class pours water from her drink bottle down a metal slide, cooling it off for bare legs. An older boy is making a mud pie at the bottom for her to land in. Nina would have called it good old-fashioned play, but I can’t help seeing it as a statement about the traps men set for women.
‘Hi, Sara,’ a friend calls to me. ‘Thanks for minding her the other day.’ She’s got her arm around her daughter.
‘Any time,’ I call back, pointing at my watch. ‘Running late.’
She waves me on and I head for the classroom, which is still stale with the smell of thirty sweaty children, although Ellie is the only one who has not yet been collected. She looks small and guilty under the weight of her schoolbag and compulsory broad-brimmed hat. The teacher marks her name off the roll with a dramatic tick.
‘Sorry.’ I push my sunglasses onto the top of my head. ‘My husband was supposed to get her today, but …’
The teacher takes her handbag and a stack of books from her desk, and makes for the door, herding us out in front of her.
‘I don’t mind who comes, just so long as someone does. I’m supposed to be at a staff meeting.’
‘Of course.’ Outside the class, I turn my attention to Ellie and whisper, �
��Sorry, sweetie. Daddy …’ I crouch and draw her in for a tired, clammy hug.
She isn’t listening. Her eyes search the exposed beams that support the verandah’s iron roof and stop. I follow her gaze and see the full length of Sammy the carpet python, stretched out along the rafters.
‘He’s growing.’ I try to keep my voice even, impressed rather than revolted. I notice three bulges in the creature’s sides and shiver despite myself. The snake shows us his forked tongue.
‘He ate the little birds out of the nest.’ Ellie looks momentarily sad as she points to a gum tree overhanging the building. ‘But the teacher says that’s just nature. The strong eat the weak.’ I wonder if those were the exact words the teacher used and am tempted to chase after her, to say that children shouldn’t have to learn all life’s horrors in their first year of school.
‘I climbed up and touched him today.’ Ellie gleams mischievously. ‘I touched each bump: one, two, three.’ She pokes her fingers into the air with each number.
‘Did the teacher know you touched him?’
‘No, but he’s harmless. Daddy said so.’
We make our way towards the car. It’s the last week of the school year, and I’m not sure any of us could have lasted another week in this heat. A boy, slogging his way home in front of us, is holding his drink bottle upside down. Large drops of water splash onto the cement footpath. By the time we reach them, they’ve vanished.
Ellie stops. ‘I thought Daddy was getting me today.’
‘So did I.’ I stroke her cheek. ‘But he’s busy at work.’
‘Oh.’ She scuffs her right shoe against a rock.
‘He loves you, sweetheart. He just can’t always get away on time.’ If I can just spare her the feeling of abandonment that haunted me as a child, I’ll be happy.
A few days after she was born – one glorious summer day – my mother sent me a letter that ruptured my newfound maternal bliss. She told me that she regretted not having raised me, but that she had had her reasons. ‘And I was too young to be a good mother,’ she wrote. ‘One day, I will tell you the whole story and I hope you will understand.’
But she has never told me. What I know is that I arrived in the first months of my mother’s medical degree. Raising me would have interrupted her studies and her career.
I scruff Ellie’s hair, which is spinning out of its plaits. ‘Let’s get home. I’ll make you a banana smoothie. Sound good?’
She nods and overplays a final few falling steps towards the car, slapping her hands against the dark metal and, not acting now, pulling them away just as fast, unleashing several exhausted sobs.
I kiss her fingers better and test the car with my own hand. ‘We could cook our dinner on that!’
‘Really?’ She stops crying, and I hold her to me.
‘Maybe another time.’ I laugh gently, pulling open the car door. A rush of hot-vinyl-infused air burns my face and nostrils and I wonder what cancer-causing chemicals are being off-gassed.
‘You’ll need to drag that towel across the seat so you don’t burn your legs, Ellie. And wind your window down until I get the air-conditioning going.’ I stop talking, giving both of us some space to just be.
In Tasmania, the air is fragrant with the breath of the bush and the sea. I only moved away because of Ian’s work, and it was only supposed to be for a few years. I picture Nina’s cottage, with its rampant vegetable garden and the wilds of the mountain creeping in through the back fence, and wonder when it was that Nina decided to leave it all to me. Perhaps she changed her will after I told her that Ian and I were living apart. She probably figured I needed the security more than Helena did.
It saddens me that, should I take up the offer of Nina’s cottage, I will likely receive a warmer welcome to Tasmania than she had. I imagine her as a young widow knocking on the Forsters’ door with a plate of dumpling-like pelmeni, only to be told that they had already eaten. ‘They claimed to be Christian yet shut their door in their neighbour’s face,’ Nina told me. She only tried once but was convinced the chill spread from house to house, like the mountain wind.
‘They thought I wanted their money, their food. Their husbands! Net!’
In the photos I have seen of Nina from that time, she defiantly tied her hair into tighter and tighter buns while other women took to wearing fashionable bobs. She told me that she had proven them all wrong and that through hard work, not charity, she had earned the right to live in Australia. ‘My hands are rough,’ she would insist, holding her palms out for me to touch.
During my childhood, she told anyone who would listen that she never received a government pension, grew much of her own food, and made bridal gowns so beautiful that the Governor of Tasmania commissioned her to make the dress for his own daughter’s wedding. Nina’s wedding gowns paid for my mother’s and my education. ‘Helena is now a doctor,’ Nina would say. Back then I still believed Helena was my half-sister, and Nina our mother.
Years later, driving my grandmother past a shop window displaying racks of factory-made wedding dresses, I saw her head shake at the thrown-together, mass-produced garments. She made my wedding dress with the belief that I might pass it down to my daughter. No doubt if she had been able to carry more than a small suitcase with her from Russia, she would have offered me her own dress. She never said so, but I suspect she regretted deeply that Helena never married. I suspect it was a large part of the reason she raised me, to save Helena the shame of being a teenage mother.
In the rear-vision mirror I see Ellie staring sleepily out of the car window, strands of hair slick against her forehead. I catch sight of myself, flushed and shiny faced.
‘It’s too hot,’ Ellie whines.
‘I know. Here.’ I swivel the air vent in her direction and catch a whiff of mildew. ‘I’ll make you that cold smoothie as soon as we get home.’
We pull into our driveway beneath the dense shade of the mango tree that takes up most of the front lawn, clogging the humid air with its sweetness. To my surprise, Ian is waiting at the front door, just beside the Christmas wreath that Ellie and I made from young eucalyptus fronds. He is wearing his best suit and his wavy, dark hair is longer than he wore it when he and I were together. He has a tan and an affected European air, yet was born here to English parents. Ellie finds new energy and runs towards him, jumping high into his arms. Her happiness at seeing her father brings me close to tears, although I am angry for having needlessly rushed from the lab. Still, here we are, a family again, if just for a moment. I manage another glance at myself in the rear-vision mirror and quickly puff up my lank hair.
‘You got away after all,’ I say, shutting the car door. I smile and shake my head, trying to find the humour we used to share.
‘The meeting was cancelled, and …’ He hesitates. ‘I needed to see you.’
My stomach dips and I’m caught off-guard by my feelings for this man, my husband of seven years, the father of our daughter.
A jogger runs past our gate, an overweight woman who appears a few years older than me.
‘We have such a weight problem in this country,’ Ian says, almost to himself. I catch his judgmental expression and pull my own stomach in.
Ellie kisses her father three times on the cheek, her hands lovingly holding his head in position.
‘So, you had a good trip.’ As I say the words, I am overcome again with regret. If Ian and I had had an Italian holiday, maybe our relationship wouldn’t have faltered. Maybe Ellie would still have two parents who loved each other and who could live in the same house without arguing. I’m about to say something to this effect when Ian answers.
‘Yeah, it gave me time to think.’ He puts Ellie down and she runs to the sandpit I built for her. ‘I’ve only got an hour or so before I’ve got to get back.’ His eyes are on the accumulation of rotten mangos on the lawn. I feel slovenly for not having collected them. I stretch my t-shirt down so that it better covers my hips and might look slightly more fashionable. I silently vow to
do more exercise. To buy a new outfit. God knows when.
‘I think we should make things official,’ he utters quietly, out of range of Ellie’s hearing. His top lip is shaking as he studies my face for a sign that I understand what he is suggesting. I take a step back.
3
Shaded by our home’s wide eaves and an overhanging bougainvillea dripping in magenta blossom, I unlock the front door and enter. It is cool inside. Silver Christmas tinsel shimmers prettily over the lounge-room architrave, making Ian’s announcement seem less believable. Everything reminds me of my life here with Ian and Ellie. The pine Christmas tree has decorations that Ellie made in kindergarten. Her colourful hand-drawn placemats are on the kitchen table, each with a picture of the three of us. There is the antique vase – yellow and blue – that Ian and I bought on honeymoon in Tasmania.
As I make my way down the central hallway, my legs moving automatically beneath me, I hear Ellie and Ian laughing outside, Ellie’s gaiety pursuing me like a cruel joke. I open the door at the end of the hall and lever open the stiff louvre windows that encase the back verandah. A hint of a breeze wafts inside, stirring the sappy smell of the pine tree in the corner. At the last window, I jam my finger under the metal handle. Tears well in my eyes and a hard, tight lump blocks my throat, before erupting as a cry. I cover my mouth, muffling the sound, and sink heavily into the worn wicker couch that was once Ian’s and my favourite place to relax together at the end of the day. It seems impossible that he and I are the same people who once sat here sipping our glasses of wine while we soaked up the river views and each other’s affections.
Sometimes, early on, what started as a kiss, a stroke of a hand under my dress, turned into hungry lovemaking here on the woven sisal rug, the crisscrosses pressed like a Celtic tattoo into my skin. That was before Ellie was born.
One of Ellie’s teddies falls off the couch, and I pick it up, hugging it to me before scuttling it across the wooden floor as if it were to blame.
Matryoshka Page 2