The Last Anniversary

by Liane Moriarty

  Her mother yawned. A genuine, slightly bored yawn.

  And Grace thought, She's going to let me die right in front of her.

  She took the sesame bar to the rubbish bin and then she scrubbed her hands to ensure there was no trace of sesame seed left. She took the chicken penne up to her room and climbed into bed and ate it there. Three days later her mother said, 'I think it's going to rain' when she came down to breakfast and her punishment had ended.

  Now, twenty years later, as Grace irons, her grown-up mind thinks with bitter amusement, 'She won the bluff. Of course she would have stopped me.' But another less certain part of her still wonders, Would she have let me die to prove a point?

  Callum still hasn't turned the television back up. 'I can't believe you've never told me this.'

  'It's not that interesting. I don't know how your parents disciplined you.'

  'My father roared at me and my mother chased me around the house brandishing whatever she happened to have in her hand. They didn't ignore me for days on end.'

  He is looking at her with what Grace takes to be revulsion at yet another example of her strange, cold family life, compared to his rowdy, messy, cheerful childhood.

  'Can you turn it back up?' she says, but instead he stands up.

  'Grace. Sweetheart.' He reaches out a tentative hand to touch her face.

  'Now you're blocking the television,' says Grace, and presses the steam button so the iron hisses.

  43

  'Have you told your husband yet?'

  'No.'

  'I haven't told my wife either.'

  'My husband would just sneer at me.'

  'My wife would just laugh at me.'

  'Well, we'll show her.'

  'Maybe. I hope so.'

  'You're not losing your nerve, are you?'

  'Not after we've come this far.'

  44

  Ron is sitting in his study, desultorily working on some overdue paperwork, when he is pleased to remember that it's the first of the month, which means he can flip over the page on his Aubade Lingerie calendar. The picture for May is of a skirt flying up to reveal a G-stringed bottom, and while it's a very appealing, professional piece of photography, it will be interesting to see what June has to offer. Under no circumstances can he flick ahead. He takes pride in such small, secret acts of self-denial; they build character. He has tried to explain the importance of delaying gratification to Margie, but she only pretends to be interested while stuffing more and more food down her cakehole.

  The calendar was a Christmas gift from a supplier. When Ron's daughter Veronika saw it hanging up in his study she became unexpectedly feral. They had a ferocious argument about it. She was completely irrational, of course. It never ceases to amaze him, the stunning lack of logic in women's brains. For Christ's sake, it's not like he put it up in the dining room! Besides which, this isn't something you'd see hanging up in a mechanic's workshop. It's a limited-edition collector's item. It's tasteful. It's elegant. The photos are in black and white!

  'Oh, what would you know about art, Dad!' Veronika's lips had curled. 'This is soft porn. It's insulting to Mum! It objectifies and degrades women!'

  'Don't upset your father, darling,' Margie had said. 'It doesn't worry me. It's very pretty.'

  'Well, it should worry you!' Veronika had sounded like she was close to tears and stormed out of the room, leaving Ron to wonder out loud whether his daughter was actually stable.

  (It beggars belief that this intense, contemptuous, skinny woman is the same toddler who used to be so excited when he came home from work that she spun in circles, shrieking, 'Daddy home! Daddy home!')

  Sometimes Veronika makes him feel strangely inferior, strangely lower-class, and that's not right. Australia is a classless society. Egalitarian. He is pleased to remember the word: egalitarian. An upper-class, well-educated sort of word. He may be the son of a fitter and turner but he can use words like 'egalitarian', no problem at all.

  Just because Veronika has all the benefits of the university education that Ron missed out on. A university education he damn well paid for!

  To be scrupulously honest, the island paid for it.

  But still.

  Oh, forget it. He'll never understand her.

  Ron takes down the calendar and reverently flips the page to reveal a photo of a woman with her arms raised above her head as she pulls off her sweater. Her uplifted breasts are encased in a lacy bra.

  Isn't the lighting sort of...moody? Grainy? Doesn't that make it art? What does soft porn actually mean? Didn't Rembrandt or somebody or other paint nudes? What's the difference? Just because he's dead. And French. Was he French? The fucking French. He must look Rembrandt up on the Internet. He should do an art-history course or something.

  The phone rings and he answers while still studying the woman's breasts.

  'Hi, Dad.'

  Ron drops the calendar on his desk as if it's hot.

  'Hello, Veronika.'

  'How are you? What are you doing?'

  She is sounding unusually light-hearted.

  'Just-paperwork, love.' He is irritated by how wrong-footed he is feeling. 'Do you want to speak to your mother?'

  'Oh, OK, no time to chat I see! Well, is she there?'

  'Actually, I don't think she is. She's out.'

  'That's annoying. I wanted to tell her something. Something to do with the Munro Baby Mystery.'

  'What is it?'

  'No, no, I'll tell Mum.'

  'Oh, well, the Alice and Jack business is nothing to do with me.' He tries to take a light tone but knows that he is sounding jocular and middle-aged. 'Strictly women in charge. It's a wonder they let men on the island.'

  Veronika ignores this. 'Mum's always out these days,' she says. 'Where is she?'

  He searches his mind and comes up blank. 'I don't know. Weight Watchers?'

  'Mmmm. I don't think so. Not at this time. I'd be worried if I were you, Dad. Maybe she's having an affair now she's getting so trim, taut and terrific.'

  Ron has no idea what she's talking about.

  Veronika says, 'I hope you've been complimenting her on how good she looks.'

  Ron sighs. 'What, has she changed her hair colour or something and I didn't notice?'

  'Dad!' Veronika explodes and sounds more like her normal self. 'Are you telling me you haven't noticed that Mum has dropped three dress sizes? You're unbelievable! Do you even look at her? All that sniping about her weight and then you don't even notice! God! You're probably too busy getting off on that pathetic pornographic calendar of yours to even look at your own wife! I wouldn't blame her if she was having an affair!'

  'Is that just a pause for breath or have you finished?'

  'Yes, I've finished. God! Just tell her I called when she gets home. And take a second to look at her! I'll see you at the Anniversary.'

  'Yes, all right.'

  Ron puts down the phone. He picks up the calendar and puts it back on the hook. He is used to Veronika's outbursts but this one has left him with a vague sense of disquiet.

  He crosses his arms behind his head and stretches back in his chair. So Margie has been losing weight. About bloody time. She could have told him! She tells him everything else, babbles on about all sorts of irrelevant crap. Wasn't it a bit strange that she hadn't mentioned she'd lost weight? Was it some sort of trick? It is true that she has been out a lot lately. Actually, he's barely seen her over the last few weeks. She must have told him where she was going tonight but he hadn't really registered it. He knows Veronika was only joking about her mother having an affair, but thinking about it gives him a strangely familiar sort of jolt, deep in his gut. It's not necessarily an unpleasant sensation. It's a nervy, adrenaline-filled feeling like he used to get before a rugby game. He looks at June Girl's breasts and identifies the feeling exactly.

  It was the summer of 1967. The Prime Minister, Harold Holt, had just vanished while surfing on a Victorian beach. His body was never found and everybody was t
alking conspiracy theories, but Ron couldn't have cared less about whether it was the Mafia or Martians who took off with Harold, any more than he cared what had happened to Alice and Jack Munro. He was fixated on one goal: Margie McNabb, the prettier, in his opinion, of the somewhat renowned Scribbly Gum Island sisters, daughters of the Alice and Jack baby. There were at least three other guys vying for Margie, and Ron was determined to be the last one standing. He wasn't necessarily the best looking or even the smartest of the three of them, but he knew exactly how to play it, when to come on strong with the charm, when to pull back and be a bit cool, when to be funny, when to be sensitive. He didn't consider it a done deal until the day he triumphantly slid that diamond ring on her finger. Then he knew he could relax and concentrate on other things-like work and sailing.

  Margie, he remembered, used to wear a red crochet bikini, which used to send him bananas. Her breasts in that red bikini outclassed all the girls on his Aubade calendar.

  It was in the Eighties that she started to really pile on the weight. It seemed to happen so fast. One day he woke up with a fat wife. Not a chubby wife. A fat wife. He didn't like it and that made him the bad guy. Apparently it's the worst thing in the world to comment on your wife's weight, even while she balloons before your fucking eyes. You can't say, 'Are you sure you need that second piece of cake?' You can't even say, 'Maybe we both should eat a bit healthier.' No, you're meant to just pretend to be equally attracted to her now she weighs as much as a small truck as when she wore a red crochet bikini. The only solution is to try and avoid looking directly at her as much as possible. That's why he hasn't noticed she's lost weight. It's not his fault.

  Does he still love her? It's not something he's bothered to think about much. She aggravates him, certainly. Sometimes he can feel his nerves begin to chafe the moment she opens her mouth.

  But he still thinks nothing tastes as good as Margie's cheese and mushroom omelette. He still automatically rubs the soles of her feet when she puts them on his lap while they're watching television, although maybe it's been a while since she's done that. He still remembers how he felt watching her cry her heart out at her dad's funeral. Margie was always such a Daddy's Girl, and it made him want to punch something because there was nothing he could bloody well do to fix it for her.

  They haven't had sex for months, but he's never been unfaithful to her, except in his mind, and who could blame him for that?

  He does give her a pretty hard time, sometimes. But she just takes it-no matter how far he goes with it-she just keeps on smiling and blinking until he wants to scream, Are you still in there, Margie?

  The thing is, even though he knows that Veronika was only joking, if some guy, for whatever reason-maybe if he had some sort of fetish for fat women-tried to come on to Margie, then she could easily fall for some pathetic line. She's so gullible! A hopeless judge of character. The way she repeats what tradesmen tell her with such wide-eyed respect!

  To his own surprise, Ron finds himself suddenly banging an agitated fist on his desk so hard that his jar of paperclips rattles.

  It's past ten on a Tuesday night. Where the hell is she?

  Rose is sitting at Enigma's kitchen table separating eggs. She does it automatically, in quick, efficient movements. One sharp crack of the egg against the side of the bowl, yolk in one half of the shell, white in the other.

  Rose is working in an assembly line with Enigma and Margie, baking marble cakes for the Anniversary. They'll be sold in special 'Alice and Jack Anniversary' souvenir boxes and sold at a premium: $30 a cake. Last year they sold over a hundred on the night. Rose remembers Connie had rubbed her hands with joy after counting up the cash, as if she were still nineteen years old and destitute, not ninety years old with a share portfolio worth so much that Rose had to sit down the last time the accountant went through the figures with them. Those years of worrying about money and not having enough to eat had changed Connie forever, thought Rose. Food and money were her two obsessions until the day she died. And Jimmy, of course. And the island. She was an obsessive sort of woman, really.

  'I just can't get over it,' says Enigma. 'Last night I woke up in the middle of the night thinking about it.'

  Another obsessive woman! Enigma is still sulking over the fact that Margie will be out on the night of the Anniversary. That girl latches on to things like a pit-bull terrier.

  'I'll be back by midnight, Mum,' says Margie. 'Just like Cinderella.'

  'You shouldn't be going at all,' mutters Enigma.

  Rose picks up another egg from the carton and observes Margie's new slimline figure. 'Margie,' she says thoughtfully.

  'You're looking so pretty today. So slim!'

  'Hmmph!' says Enigma, but Margie looks pink and pleased.

  'Thank you, Aunt Rose. Guess what! Ron finally noticed that I'd lost weight! But he was very strange about it. He actually asked me if I was having an affair last night. He sounded a bit insecure!'

  'And are you?' asks Rose with interest. Margie does seem a lot more confident these days. Someone has been putting that colour back in her cheeks!

  Margie frowns down at her mixing bowl. 'Not exactly.'

  Enigma throws down her sieve with a puff of flour. 'How can you "not exactly" be having an affair! I certainly hope you're not! I never got to have an affair, did I? I would have quite liked to have one at times too!'

  'Oh, Mum, how can you say that? Dad was a wonderful husband.'

  'He might have been a wonderful father to you, Margie, but you weren't married to him, so you have no idea if he was a wonderful husband. At times I was bored silly. But did I rush out having affairs? No! I made myself a nice sherry, bought a new Mills and Boon and put up with it.'

  Margie rolls her eyes at Rose. 'Listen to Mother Theresa.'

  Enigma snaps. 'I suppose that's meant to be what you lot call witty, eh? Do you see me laughing? No, you don't.'

  The oven timer goes off and Margie puts down the beaters and goes to take out four marble cakes and put in four more.

  'Aunt Connie would be pleased. We've sold out of tickets to the Anniversary even earlier than last year,' she comments. Obviously, she is not going to say anything more about the 'not exactly' affair, thinks Rose. She will have to ask her another time.

  'You know,' says Rose, 'I was thinking that we should make this our last ever Anniversary celebration.'

  Margie and Enigma both stop what they're doing and turn to stare at her, thunderstruck.

  'It's just so much effort, isn't it,' she says. 'It's not like we need to make any more money.'

  'Connie would just die!' says Enigma.

  Rose and Margie exchange amused glances.

  'Oh, I know she's already dead!' cries Enigma. 'I had noticed that, actually! I had noticed that everything is falling to pieces and everybody wants to change everything now she's dead.'

  Her face is working, ready to cry.

  'I'm just raising the idea,' says Rose soothingly. 'I just sometimes think we don't need to make any more money from Alice and Jack. I just think perhaps it's time to give it a rest.'

  'It's a family tradition!' cries Enigma.

  'It's a family business,' says Rose. 'A profitable family business.'

  'Well, we should keep it profitable for the children. I knew you were losing your marbles, Rose. We should take you to a doctor and ask him for a prescription for Alzheimer's.'

  'The children don't even care about the business,' says Rose.

  'Grace is busy with the baby and her Gublet books, Thomas doesn't even like coming to the island, and Veronika-'

  'Veronika is writing a book about Alice and Jack!' says Enigma triumphantly. 'She's very interested. She wants to come and talk to me with a tape recorder. She even wanted to hypnotise me.'

  'Yes, and that's going to be a problem, isn't it. What are you going to say to her?'

  'Oh, I'll waffle on!'

  'Yes, but we can't let poor Veronika write a book of waffle, can we. That's not fair. I think we shoul
d just tell them all the truth. Just sit them down one day and tell them all! I nearly told Sophie the other day.'

  'Rose!'

  'I can't help it. All of a sudden I'm just tired of keeping it a secret. Let's just tell them all. I don't want them to hear it after I die.'

  'Not till they're forty,' says Enigma stubbornly. 'That's the rule. I had to wait till I was forty, and I'm what you could call the star of the story!'

  'Speaking of Veronika and her book,' says Margie. 'I forgot to tell you that she's been placing ads asking for anyone with information relating to Alice and Jack to come forward. Well, apparently she's been getting a few responses.'

  'Kooks!' says Enigma. 'Veronika is a naughty girl. She shouldn't have done that. All the kooks will be coming out of the woodwork! Remember the time that psychic wrote us that weirdo letter telling us she'd dreamed that Alice's body was "somewhere mossy"? Connie laughed so much that Jimmy had to get her a glass of water.'

  'Yes, well, one of the kooks says he's going to come to the Anniversary Night and give Veronika this information in person.'

  Enigma chortles. 'Well, that should be good for a laugh.'

  'Mmmm,' says Margie. 'Apparently he insinuated on the phone that he was related to Alice and Jack in some way and that he might therefore be entitled to some sort of "compensation" for all the money we've made from the story. Veronika says he sounded a bit creepy.'

  'Well, just let him try, eh!' says Enigma.

  'What if the only way to disprove this fellow is by actually telling the truth?' asks Rose.