The Last Anniversary

by Liane Moriarty

  She started doing the class two years ago after the morning her husband Jonas gave her a funny sad look and said, 'Don't you think we'd better get a divorce?' He was handing her a cup of tea at the time. She slopped it all over her hand and burned herself. 'I don't know what you want, Veronika,' he'd said. 'But I know it's not me.'

  Most people only need to come to Boxercise for the Broken Hearted for a couple of months before that crazed look in their eyes starts to fade. Their jabs become less vicious and more comical. They start smiling instead of scowling, which isn't nice for the newly broken-hearted. Eventually they stop coming and take their healed hearts back to the cheery classes like 'Move 'n' Groove'.

  But Veronika still comes, week after week. Her broken heart may have healed but she can always find something or someone to be angry about.

  She's angry with that snooty market-research woman who told her last night she talked too much in the focus group about tinned tuna. (Wasn't that the point? Wasn't that what she was being paid for? To give her opinions?) She's angry with the man who swerved into her lane on the way to the gym and raised an apologetic hand, as if that made it OK! She's angry with that Asian girl in the red and green top over there who consistently kicks with the opposite leg to the rest of the class and doesn't seem to notice. She's angry with Sophie for being so manipulative and cutesy, Grace for being so beautiful, Aunt Connie for being so patronising and now so dead, Aunt Rose for being so dippy, Grandma Enigma for being so cheery, Thomas for being so sappy, Mum for being so fat and tragic, Dad for being so cruel to Mum. She's angry with her third-grade teacher and the woman who fitted her for her first bra.

  She combines them all into one giant sumo wrestler of humanity and punches him again and again in his big flabby stomach.

  'HA!' yells Veronika with the rest of the class, doing a jump kick followed by a slice to the neck. Her sumo wrestler flinches but doesn't fall.

  On the way home in the car, still puffing from her work-out, Veronika listens to a radio interview with a criminal psychologist, who is talking about the difference between male and female serial murderers.

  Veronika turns up the radio. She is interested in murder.

  'Men stalk, women lure,' says the criminal psychologist.

  'So we lure our victims with our irresistible feminine wiles?' says the interviewer irresistibly.

  'You could put it like that. In fact, you tend to already know your victims,' says the criminal psychologist, apparently happy to let the interviewer act as a representative of female serial killers.

  'Aha! Watch out for your wives and girlfriends, listeners!' says the interviewer.

  Veronika shouts at the radio. 'Shut up, you fatuous twit! You moronic cow! This is interesting!'

  'You tend to smother or poison your victims,' says the criminal psychologist.

  'Ooh, here's a lovely dinner I've baked for you, honey!' chortles the interviewer. Veronika gives the car radio a left hook and it really hurts her hand. She hadn't intended to connect.

  She turns off the radio and pulls up with a screech of brakes at a red light. She hates this intersection. The traffic lights are clearly faulty. Her lane is always treated unfairly. Look at that! The fools doing a right-hand into Condamine Street have had two green lights in the time she's been sitting here! She's already written once to council about it. Perhaps it's time for a visit. Personal confrontation seems to be very effective when dealing with bureaucrats.

  Afterwards, she will be fascinated by the complex workings of her own brain. Because there she is, busily pondering the issue of faulty traffic lights, while simultaneously her smarter, more intuitive subconscious mind is considering the topic of murder. And then, without warning, her subconscious lobs a clear, precise, perfectly articulated thought straight into her consciousness. It's not so much a thought as a fundamental truth. A truth she has probably always known, somewhere deep within her psyche, ever since she was a small child and first heard the (SO OBVIOUSLY FABRICATED!) story of Alice and Jack.

  Aunt Connie was most definitely a murderer.

  Well of course she was. Alice and Jack didn't just vanish. They were murdered. Poison probably, artfully sprinkled on cinnamon toast!

  Veronika smiles, oblivious to the fact that the lights have changed and the car behind her is tooting with increasing irritation.

  27

  I want my ashes scattered one night, at the stroke of midnight, by Rose and Enigma at Kingfisher Lookout. (No, it is NOT necessary for any of you younger ones to accompany them, thank you. They are perfectly capable.) Afterwards they can celebrate with a feast of my cinnamon pear tartlets and some nice champagne. The pies are in the freezer. Thaw overnight and cook at 250 degrees for twenty minutes. They should still be warm by the time you get to the top. You can take that champagne I won in the Legacy Raffle.

  PS. Don't stand too close to the edge when you throw the ashes, girls, or you'll be joining me sooner rather than later.

  'It will be her last midnight feast at Kingfisher,' says Rose. 'I can remember the first time we did it. We must have been about thirteen.'

  'All very well for you Night Owls,' says Enigma. 'I'd rather be asleep at midnight. I can remember you dragging me up there when I was about thirteen. All I wanted to do was sleep.'

  'Rubbish. You loved it,' says Rose.

  'Well of course I loved it. I was thirteen,' says Enigma. 'But I'm too old for it now, for heaven's sake. Are you nearly finished?'

  Rose is painting a silver moon and stars on Enigma's cheeks. She's already done an identical design on her own face. It was Connie's favourite. She chose it for her fiftieth birthday party and wore a midnight blue and silver dress to match. Rose gave Jimmy a colourful sunrise on his forehead. She remembers Connie sitting on Jimmy's lap, pressing her cheek to his. 'Opposites still attract! Even now we're old fossils!' In fact, they were extraordinarily young, thinks Rose with surprise, who at the time had believed that they were all astonishingly old.

  'You used to be much quicker,' grumbles Enigma.

  'You used to be much more patient.' Rose dips her brush into the midnight blue. She watches her hand's tremor. Every day it distresses her afresh, the way her body doesn't belong to her any more.

  'What does it matter if it's not perfect just this once?' says Enigma querulously. She is sitting opposite Rose, her face tipped forward, an unwilling canvas, with her glasses clasped in her lap. 'No one is going to see!'

  'Enigma Anne!' Rose uses the same quelling tone of voice she and Connie both used when Enigma was naughty as a child. They were imitating their own mother's scolding tone.

  Enigma subsides and pushes her lower lip out slightly. Rose turns to share a meaningful face with Connie and remembers yet again that she is not there. She will never get used to that either. Every day she will forget and remember, forget and remember.

  She dabs metallic silver paint over the deep crevices in Enigma's cheeks. When she was a little girl she had such firm, velvety, kissable skin.

  'Connie and I used to love kissing the back of your neck,' she tells Enigma. 'We showered you with kisses.'

  'Hmmph,' mutters Enigma, but Rose feels her face soften beneath her brush.

  When Rose is finally finished and they are ready to go, Connie's ashes have gone missing. They get irritable and snap at each other until Enigma remembers putting the container in the fridge.

  'The fridge?' repeats Rose. 'Did you think they would go off?'

  'Yes, I know it sounds silly,' says Enigma. The moon and stars on her face give her a puckish look. 'But I was clearing the table and I couldn't think what it was. I have a little rule: when in doubt, put it in the fridge!'

  'Imagine Connie's face!'

  'She'd be absolutely furious!'

  They look at each other and they have to sit down while they giggle, resting their heads on their hands.

  Outside, it's bracingly cold. They rug up in beanies, scarves and gloves. Connie's ashes are safely stowed in a picnic basket together with the h
ot, foil-wrapped tartlets and the cold champagne.

  'Look at the stars!' says Rose as they climb astride their bikes. 'It looks like they've put extras out for us tonight.'

  They drive slowly up the winding paved road towards Kingfisher Lookout. Rose has a pleasant sense of anticipation, as if this ceremony will make everything OK, as if by following Connie's instructions to the letter they'll get her back.

  At the top they light candles and place them around the edges of the picnic rug. The moon is a big yellow coin creating a floodlit path across the river.

  'Did you see that illustration in Grace's last Gublet book?' says Rose with pride. 'I said to her, "That's midnight at Kingfisher Lookout." She said, "You're right, Aunt Rose." She's a very talented girl. I knew it from when she was five years old.'

  'It is very pretty up here,' says Enigma. 'It only seems like last week that we came up here for my fortieth birthday. I remember, Connie said, "Enigma, you're old enough to know the truth about Alice and Jack!" My word, I thought, this is a turn-up for the books! Old enough! I thought I was ancient!'

  'I didn't think we should have waited that long,' says Rose. 'But Connie had that theory about forty being the "precise age where you're old enough and young enough to handle a revelation". It wasn't a scientific theory. She just made it up! But she's so certain about things, isn't she? Whereas I'm uncertain about everything.'

  Enigma is looking at her with a strange expression. The moon and stars on her face scrunch up with concern.

  'Are you losing your marbles, Rose? You're starting to worry me. Some of the things you've been saying to Sophie! It will be awful if you lose your marbles.'

  Rose thinks of marbles pouring from a jar in a clattering torrent of coloured glass.

  'I'm not losing my marbles,' she says. 'I'm just shook up by Connie dying.' And as she says the words for the first time,

  'Connie dying', she feels a new steely sensation.

  She picks up the container of ashes and stands near the little fence that Jimmy built after the war.

  'We'll do it together,' she says to Enigma. 'Come on.'

  'We've still got another twenty minutes before midnight.'

  'Oh, for heaven's sake! It won't hurt her if we're twenty minutes early. She was always so bossy!'

  But now she can't unscrew the lid on the container.

  'Oh sugar!' she swears.

  'Give it to me,' says Enigma. She taps around the edges of the lid with a knife from the picnic basket. 'This is what Margie always does with the tomato sauce.'

  'That doesn't do anything,' says Rose.

  Enigma grunts as the lid finally comes free and holds it towards Rose. 'Here you go!'

  They hold it together, their hands overlapping.

  'Shouldn't we say something?' says Enigma.

  'Goodbye, Connie,' says Rose. 'Thank you for the cinnamon pear pies. Thank you for always being so strong and so clever. We'll miss you.'

  'We love you!' Enigma starts to sob. 'We'll make sure everything stays the same!'

  Together they shake the container and watch the fine grey ash stream down into the moonlit river below.

  'Goodness!' says Enigma through her tears. 'Connie's ashes look exactly like the dust when I empty the vacuum cleaner.'

  But Rose's steely feeling has vanished and she's crying for the first time since her big sister died.

  28

  Margie, wearing her black one-piece swimming costume, stands in front of the mirrored wardrobe in her bedroom with her eyes shut.

  She has deliberately avoided actually looking at herself in a swimming costume for many years, quickly averting her eyes if she happens to pass her reflection. But now, even though it's the middle of winter, she must, as they say, 'face the music'.

  Because tomorrow she is going to allow a man she barely knows to take a photograph of her in a swimming costume. 'I have a proposal for you,' the man from Weight Watchers had said to her, stirring Light and Low into his skim milk cappuccino. Margie still can't believe she'd said yes. Immediately. Without even thinking about it. 'Sure I will,' she'd said. She hadn't even sounded like herself. She'd sounded like a confident American. She might even have put on a bit of an American accent, as if she were on a TV show. It was very odd.

  Margie takes a deep breath and opens her eyes. She squints. A shadowy figure squints back at her.

  She sighs. Where are they this time? After a few minutes walking around the house talking through her previous movements-'So, I came in the front door from visiting Rose and the phone was ringing and I was dying to go to the toilet'-she finally finds her glasses on top of her handbag, puts them on and once again stands in front of the mirror with her eyes shut.

  Surely it won't be that bad. Will it?

  Whenever Ron sees her in a swimming costume he starts talking about beached whales. Oh, he doesn't say, 'You look like a beached whale, Margie.' No, he just gets an innocent sly look on his face and starts telling a story related to whales. He has a whole selection of them. His favourite is about a beached whale in Oregon that the authorities tried to blow up with dynamite. Apparently they thought it would turn into convenient bite-sized pieces for the seagulls. 'Imagine it!' Ron always says with enthusiasm. 'Massive chunks of smelly whale blubber raining from the sky. Only the Yanks, eh?'

  'Why are you telling me this story?' Margie always asks. 'I hate this story! The poor whale!'

  'No reason,' Ron says. 'It just came into my head.'

  When Ron and Margie were first married he used to hide her nightgowns so she'd sleep naked. When she put on her red crochet bikini in the Seventies he used to embarrass her by putting two fingers in his mouth and doing a loud wolf-whistle. He didn't know any stories about beached whales back then.

  'One, two, three,' says Margie out loud.

  She opens her eyes.

  'Oh Lordie me.'

  It is worse than she thought. All that crinkly white flesh like an uncooked chicken. Saggy, baggy upper arms. Thighs like pork sausages. The tummy. Oh, dear, the tummy! Like a big watermelon.

  What happened to pretty petite little Margie McNabb and her twenty-three-inch waist? Always one inch smaller than her sister's waist! No matter how hard Laura tried she couldn't manage it. (The sweet, secret triumph!) Before Veronika was born Margie could still just squeeze into her wedding dress.

  The only consolation is that her new friend will surely not look any better in his swimming costume.

  She remembers him sitting across from her in the coffee shop. He was very...wide, reflects Margie. His body sort of kept on going and going.

  Although, of course, a fat man isn't nearly as pathetic as a fat woman.

  Her new friend's name is Ron. This is a coincidence that Margie should have exclaimed over the moment he introduced himself. 'Fancy! That's my husband's name!' she should have said, but she didn't for some reason. She avoided talking about her Ron at all. Instead she'd concentrated on Fat Ron and his 'proposal'.

  Not Fat Ron, she decides. That's cruel. Rotund Ron. That's nice. Like a jolly character in a fairytale.

  'I think it will be a laugh,' Rotund Ron had said, 'if nothing else.'

  'It will be a hoot,' Margie had said in her new confident American-sounding voice. Then she'd amazed herself by reaching over to shake his hand. Initiating a handshake. She'd never initiated a handshake. She was becoming a women's libber!

  Well, it will be a hoot, thinks Margie, taking off her glasses so that the fat lady in the mirror is blurred.

  And maybe, just maybe, I'll show them all.

  29

  'I'll be very, very sad if you go and live on the moon,' said Melly the Music Box Dancer, looking rather glum.

  Gublet felt angry. 'Don't make me feel guilty, you frilly pink bitch!'

  Melly started to cry. 'You hurt my feelings very, very badly!' She stood up on her pointy toes and twirled around in circles so fast that her tears splashed off her face just like a garden sprinkler.

  Gublet stamped his foot. 'Oh,
fuck it!' Then he had a clever thought. He would find a NEW best friend for Melly so she wouldn't be lonely when he went to live on the moon. It was SUCH a clever thought!

  The baby has got the hang of smiling after Sophie's visit. Grace has taken digital photos of him grinning gummily up at his father and emailed them to friends and family. She has also printed off thirty copies of one of these photos and turned them into charming thank you cards for all the gifts they've received. Grace has never done such a thing before; it seems like the sort of sweet girly motherly thing someone like Sophie would do. She has written a personal message on each card. Your rattle is Jake's favourite toy! Jake looks so sweet in your outfit! Your teddy is Jake's favourite toy! She has addressed, stamped and posted the envelopes. The effort to do all this was so colossal that when she let them slide into the post-box she felt the weak-kneed relief of someone who has finished writing a thesis or running a marathon. 'Good God, hand-made cards!' said a friend the next day, breezily bitchy. 'Talk about a superwoman! You don't always have to be so perfect, you know, Grace. Give the rest of us ordinary mortals a chance.' Grace hung up and threw the portable phone against the wall, screaming, 'Oh fuck it, fuck it, fuck it.' There was a mark on the wall. It took half a tub of her mother's Gumption to scrub it away.

  Today, Grace sits at the kitchen table paying bills over the phone, while Jake lies in his bouncinette that Aunt Margie gave to Grace. 'Deborah didn't want it for Lily,' Margie had confided to Grace when she brought it around. 'I didn't want to sound like an interfering mother-in-law, so I just said, "Well, dear, your own husband used to gurgle away for hours on this very bouncinette, kicking his fat little legs." Oh dear, it's a terrible thing to say, but I did prefer Sophie to Deborah.'