The Last Anniversary

by Liane Moriarty

  The way Rose had felt about those three was somehow different from the exasperated affection she had for their mothers, Margie and Laura, those golden-haired Misses with their big blue eyes and sticky, greedy rosebud mouths, who were both in love with their daddy anyway. And it was different again from what she'd felt for their grandmother. Rose's love for Enigma had always been interlaced with fear: What if we do something wrong? What if they take her away? What if they find out? But with Thomas, Veronika and Grace it had just been unadulterated, besotted love. Sometimes she was filled with such love for them it felt almost mystical, almost sexual, almost enough to make it seem the point of...everything.

  She reaches up one hand and pulls aside the lace curtain on her window. The sudden flood of sunshine makes her blink. The Anniversary is more often than not a beautiful day, which Rose always feels is a little fraudulent, an inaccurate representation of the actual day itself, which had been a Gothic sort of day, all grey, brooding skies, a howling icy wind whipping the gum trees back and forth, the river murky and choppy. Rose can still see Connie standing at her bedroom door, wearing red mittens and a scarf their mother had knitted, wrapped around her neck to just under her mouth. Rose could tell she had woken up with one of her earaches by the way she was holding her head tilted to one side. She was all snappy. 'This is your last chance to change your mind, Rose. After today, we can't go back. Ever.' But Rose hadn't been able to speak or move, she was trapped at the bottom of a very deep, very dark mineshaft and she didn't know how to claw her way out. She thought she was going to be there forever. She hadn't said a word. She'd had nothing to say. Connie's face had clenched with irritation and she'd said, 'Right. Well, we're doing it then.' And they'd done it.

  And in the blink of an eye seventy-three years had passed.

  And now, tonight, some man, some 'kook' who saw Veronika's silly advertisement will be on the island, saying that he's related to Alice and Jack Munro! It makes Rose want to laugh and it simultaneously makes her want to cry. It gives her a trembly feeling of fear and at the same time it gives her a pleasantly uplifting feeling of rage.

  It really is time to get up.

  The audience holds its breath in anticipation as that brave battler, Rose Doughty, overcomes horrendous pain yet again to arise from her bed.

  Enigma does not dream. Veronika has told her that everybody dreams, they just don't remember it. This is nonsense. Veronika is always talking such nonsense. If Enigma dreamed, she'd remember it. She has an excellent memory. It's not fair that she doesn't dream. Her husband Nathaniel used to have long, complicated dreams which he always wanted to tell her about over breakfast. It was very boring pretending to listen to him. She used to sigh a lot to try and give him the hint, but he didn't take any notice, just kept droning on.

  Well, here she is all alone on the Anniversary morning with nobody to bring her so much as a cup of tea in bed. She is a lonely old widow, sitting here in her bed, which is so sad, like something in a Grace Kelly movie. She sniffs experimentally.

  Actually, the truth is she doesn't miss Nathaniel all that much. It's nice having all the extra space in bed and keeping the electric blanket turned up so high that she can wear her summer nightie. She'd never actually meant to marry him. There were plenty of other livelier fellows who would have suited her better than Nathaniel, with his hangdog face, always loping around behind her. Always just there. She'd accidentally said yes to his proposal. It was because all her friends were always going on about what a nice boy he was-so sweet, so clever-so she thought she'd look silly if she said no. It was just like when she went shopping with Connie and Rose and they told her that red polo-neck top looked so good on her, she'd be mad not to buy it. So she bought it, against her better judgement, and sure enough, did she ever wear it? Not once! It just sat there hanging in the cupboard. Nathaniel was just like that red polo-neck top. A mistake. But you couldn't keep your receipt and exchange your husband, could you? No, you were stuck with him. Well, you were back then. Today they just divorced each other at the drop of a hat. Look at Veronika. Married for all of five minutes. Enigma had given her a very expensive iron as a wedding present. Did she get it back? No siree.

  She pushes back the covers and slips her feet into fluffy pink slippers, which Laura once said looked like something Barbara Cartland would wear. This should have been a compliment but Laura made it sound like an insult, which was confusing. Enigma doesn't really understand Laura a lot of the time. She supposes she is clever. Mothers aren't meant to have favourites but how can they not, when one child is so much nicer to you than the other one? Enigma has taken care not to treat Margie like her favourite daughter, but she is of course, and she should be grateful for that and she should certainly not be abandoning her mother on such an important day as the Anniversary. It's hurtful.

  The house is warm and toasty as she walks to the kitchen because she kept the heating on all night. Nathaniel would have had a fit. But as she was always trying to tell him, he was married to a celebrity. Enigma was a celebrity, just like Barbara Cartland, and she was also quite rich, just like Barbara Cartland, so why should she have to shiver on cold winter mornings?

  She's going to have a smoked-salmon omelette for breakfast, made with King Island cream, her treat to celebrate the Anniversary. Seeing as nobody else cares about her, she'll just have to look after herself. When she was a child she always got a special gift and breakfast on the Anniversary. It was like her birthday but even better because she was the Star of the Day. Rose made her a special new dress to wear, and the night before she wore rags in her hair to curl it. She looked just like a little princess and the ladies who visited the island all wanted to hug and kiss her even more than usual. 'You poor, poor darling!' they'd cry, sweeping her into scented arms. And Enigma would cry with them, thinking, 'I am a poor darling!' and that would make them cry even harder, thinking she was crying for her vanished mummy and daddy. This was sort of true, but not in the way they thought. Enigma's greatest fear had been that her real parents would come back to claim her and take her away from Rose and Connie and Jimmy. Every Anniversary morning she woke up terrified that this might be the day Alice and Jack would turn up, saying, 'Right. We'll have her back now, thanks very much!' And they wouldn't know her favourite foods, or how she needed to have her hair brushed as light as a feather, or her back washed upways, not crossways, or how to tuck the blanket under her neck, or anything important about her!

  When Connie and Rose had told her the truth about Alice and Jack on her fortieth birthday, that had been the part that made her really very cross. All those years thinking that Alice and Jack might turn up and steal her away when there was as much chance of that happening as Santa Claus turning up on the island! It was virtually child abuse!

  'But you never told us you were worried about that!' Rose had looked quite upset, as well she should have.

  'Oh, for heaven's sake, Rose, we spoiled the child rotten!' Connie hadn't been at all sympathetic.

  Margie dreams she is trying to kiss Rotund Ron in a gondola in Venice, while an extraordinarily good looking Italian gondolier in a red and white striped top makes the gondola rock back and forth so much that they can't get their lips to meet. (The gondolier is doing this because he wants to kiss Margie himself!) They all three find this hilariously funny. Rotund Ron is doing his jolly fat-man laugh, even though, of course, he's not a fat man any more, and Margie is giggling uncontrollably like a schoolgirl. She looks down and realises she's wearing her red crochet bikini, and this is so funny she can barely breathe. Tears of mirth stream down her face. She points out her swimming costume to the two men and they gasp and laugh with her.

  'You just got a text message!'

  Margie opens her eyes. 'What did you say?'

  Ron leans up on one elbow and looks down at her with a suspicious, sleep-creased face. 'Your mobile phone just beeped. Someone sent you a text message. Do you want me to show you how to read it? Are you laughing? Why are you laughing?'

 
'I was having a funny dream.'

  'Do you want me to check it for you?'

  'It's OK. I know how to check my text messages.' Margie wants to get back to her dream in Venice. 'I'll check it later.'

  'Well, who would be sending you a text? I didn't even know you knew how to text.'

  He sounds hurt and uncertain. He thinks she's having an affair. Apparently Rotund Ron's wife is suspicious too. Both Margie and Rotund Ron agree that they quite like these wrong-footed versions of their spouses. It's a hoot! Margie compresses her lips to stop herself from giggling. She actually feels a touch tiddly, as if she's been drinking champagne. It must be nerves about tonight, or that dream, that funny dream!

  'It's probably one of the kids,' she says. 'They send me text messages all the time.' This is an outright lie. The only person who sends her text messages is Rotund Ron, and this one will be something about the arrangements for tonight. It would never occur to Veronika or Thomas to text their mother. They would assume, like their father, that she wouldn't know how to read one. This is the first fully fledged, blatant lie Margie has ever told in her life, and instead of feeling guilty she feels a rush of exhilaration.

  'Really?' Ron lies back down, scratching the top of his head. 'What do they text you about?'

  'Oh, just whatever,' says Margie carelessly. She gets a bit reckless. 'Sometimes Veronika sends me jokes.'

  'Veronika sends you jokes?'

  Margie's lips twitch. 'Yes. Sometimes they're quite funny too.'

  There is silence while Ron digests this. Margie rolls over onto her side away from him and secretly runs her hands over her stomach under her nightie. She has 'abs' now. People know she's lost weight but nobody knows about her 'abdominals'. She flexes her legs and caresses her 'quadriceps'. Her body belongs to her again now, like it did when she was a little girl, before she developed curves and hips and that inconvenient bust. She used to wear her bra to bed every night, done up on the tightest clasp, because Laura told her that if she didn't she'd end up with breasts so big they'd be dragging on the ground. She didn't like her breasts. They were arranged by someone else to please boys like Ron Gordon and then to feed her children; they weren't anything to do with skinny, busy Margie McNabb who could turn cartwheels and climb trees with her dad.

  And then, when she got fat, her body seemed to have even less to do with her; she was lost in a mountain of chicken-skin flesh. She shudders just thinking about it.

  For some reason she hasn't been out yet and bought a whole new wardrobe to reveal just how much her body has changed. She prefers to keep wearing her old clothes, hanging off her and gaping around the waist. She doesn't want to share all the details of her weight loss around just yet, to hear Veronika take credit for it, to hear everyone discuss it and argue about it and make jokes about it.

  The ordinary phone rings and Ron bounces upright as if to defend himself from a punch. Oooh, lovers calling from every direction, thinks Margie gleefully. 'Ron Gordon!' he growls, and Margie swallows a guffaw.

  'Oh, good morning, Enigma.' Ron relaxes against the head-board. He gives an old-Ron-style smirk. 'Happy Anniversary.'

  Margie hears her mother's plaintive voice spilling from the phone. 'Well, my word, Ron, you know perfectly well it's a very unhappy anniversary! Let me talk to Margie!'

  Ron goes to hand over the phone but Margie silently, wickedly shakes her head.

  'She's in the shower, Enigma. Can she call you back?'

  'Thank you,' says Margie after he's hung up. 'She only wants to go on and on about tonight.'

  'That's all right.'

  It's an oddly courteous exchange. Goodness me, thinks Margie. It's all very strange in the Gordon household today. They lie next to each other in silence, as polite as strangers on a train. I've slept beside this man for over thirty years. I should be more relaxed with him than anybody else in the world, so why is it that I feel so much more like myself when I'm with Rotund Ron, who I've only known for such a short time? Relaxed enough to laugh so hard I do those embarrassing laugh-snorts. Relaxed enough to tell him whatever comes into my mind, without censoring it, without checking first if it's going to make him sneer or sigh. Like the ladybird beetles. I've never told anybody about the ladybird beetles before.

  Yesterday she'd told Rotund Ron that whenever a ladybird beetle landed on her hand she liked to think it was a message from her dad, telling her he loved her, and that it was amazing how often, whenever she was feeling especially low, that sure enough an exquisite red and gold beetle would appear from nowhere, tiny wings fluttering. It hasn't even occurred to her to ever tell Ron this, even though he was really very fond of Dad and the two of them used to have long, serious chats together about their cars and mileage or something.

  'So-are you-disappointed about missing the Anniversary tonight?' asks Ron.

  Lordie me! The man is actually asking how she feels about something.

  She answers noncommittally, briskly, just like he does when asked about anything too personal. 'Not really.'

  Ha! Give him a taste of his own medicine.

  'Oh,' he answers. 'I thought you enjoyed the Anniversary, that's all.'

  Her heart softens slightly. After a few seconds, she says, 'When I was little, every Anniversary morning I used to wake up frightened that Mum and Dad were going to disappear like Alice and Jack.'

  She would lie in her bed, her heart thumping. She'd want to run and check if they were still there in their bed, but she was frozen with fear. She couldn't even move a muscle, as if that would set everything in motion. Sometimes it seemed whole lifetimes of paralysed horror passed before her dad would appear at her bedroom door in his striped blue pyjamas, his hair all sticking up, asking if she'd like a cup of tea in bed. The relief of not being abandoned was so enormous she nearly wet her pants each time.

  And then, when her own children were little she became morbidly convinced they would vanish if she took her eyes off them for a second. She was obsessed with newspaper stories about missing children. Often she wrote letters to their mothers, telling them their child was beautiful and she was praying for them and enclosing a large cheque just in case it could help in any way. One woman in Queensland still writes back to Margie every Christmas, thirty years after her curly haired six-year-old daughter vanished while waiting for the school bus. Margie can see the faces of those missing children from the Sixties, the Seventies, the Eighties, as clearly as if they were her own children. She can remember their names, their mothers' names and what they were wearing when they disappeared. It's the unsolved ones who haunt her the most. It's better when the bodies are found. Aunt Connie always said, 'Unsolved mysteries are the best!' and Margie would want to scream at her, 'Not for the mothers, they're not!'

  She has never told anybody about her 'thing' with the missing children. It's between her and their mothers.

  Ron clears his throat. He sounds as awkward as a teenage boy on a first date. 'So, were you angry then-when they told you the truth about Alice and Jack?'

  Yet another question about feelings! Has he been reading her copy of Men are from Mars, Women are from Venus?

  'I think I already knew, without knowing I knew,' answers Margie. 'I think my subconscious had worked it out. So it wasn't a surprise, really, it was like a confirmation. I didn't feel angry so much as hurt that they felt they had to wait till I was forty to tell me.'

  'Yeah. Sure. Right. I can imagine it might have been, ah...hurtful.'

  Watching Ron try to talk about anything vaguely emotional rather than factual is like watching an uncoordinated man earnestly trying out a few moves on the dance floor. It's both touching and excruciating. There is silence. Margie takes the opportunity to quietly practise her pelvic-floor exercises. She can squeeze her pelvic floor for an impressive eight seconds now, which is not bad for a fifty-five-year-old woman with two children. An interesting thing is that these exercises often make her feel a bit sexy, or 'horny', as they say.

  Ron says, 'So, this thing you've got on toni
ght, this Weight Watchers thing, partners aren't invited, right?'

  He has already asked this three times. She says, 'No, I'm sorry, you can't come tonight.' This new feeling of power is quite delicious. She rolls over to face him and says, hardly able to believe her wantonness, 'But we could arrange for you to come right now if you like.' He stares at her blankly. Oh dear, thinks Margie, did I get the terminology wrong? Doesn't 'come' mean orgasm? I guess I'm as bad at dirty talk as he is at 'feelings' talk! She puts a hand down his pyjama pants and takes a good, firm hold of his penis. His eyes widen in understanding. In all their years of marriage Margie has never, ever done such a thing without husbandly guidance. It was always Ron's role to request sex and hers to either acquiesce, or plead tiredness or 'that' time of the month. She's behaving like a real hussy this morning!

  He says, rather hoarsely, 'This is unusual.'

  A shadow of concern flits across his face and Margie knows he is wondering if she has developed these new habits in another man's bed, but then he obviously decides to think about it later as his eyes roll back in his head comically, like a cartoon character parodying sexual pleasure. Margie pulls her flannelette nightgown over her head, closes her eyes and imagines she is stroking the handsome gondolier's swarthy Italian penis.

  And the best thing is, according to her calorie-counter book, an 'active' sexual session can burn as many as four hundred and twenty-five calories.

  Grace is flossing her teeth while she stands at the end of the bed, fully dressed, watching Callum sleep. It's a strange feeling to stay awake the whole night while the rest of the world sleeps. It makes her feel tough and edgy. Sleeping seems like a dopey, passive way to spend perfectly good time. She remembers reading somewhere that the average person spends twenty-two years of their life asleep. Year after year after year. How pathetic! Callum's unshaven face is soft and facile. He's been lying there in virtually the same position for hours on end. Meanwhile, Grace has done two loads of laundry and cooked and frozen three more lasagnes. There is not another centimetre of room in the freezer. That will have to do.