by Karen Bell
Robert hadn’t punished Mila that night, or the one after that, but she knew it was coming and by Saturday she was beyond demented. Late that morning, Holly was out in the garden, calling for her pet rabbit, the one Mila’s parents had given her for Easter, when Robert called Mila in.
‘We’re having rabbit for dinner tonight.’
‘No.’ Mila felt the blood draining from her cheeks.
‘Oh yes we are and you will prepare and cook it.’ Robert reached down and picked up a plastic bag that was sitting ominously on the floor beside him. Opening it to show her the contents, Mila had dry-retched at the site of Holly’s dead pet, neck broken, red eyes staring sightlessly from its furry white face.
‘You’re a monster. I won’t do it. This is punishing Holly, not me!’
‘Oh you will do it, or I’ll tell Holly exactly what’s become of her bunny and who, by their negligence, was responsible. Don’t think this is your only punishment, it’s just the appetiser.’
Mila didn’t doubt his sincerity for a second.
That evening, Holly was too upset about her missing pet to eat the ‘chicken’ that was served and Mila went on a hunger strike in sympathy. Even threatening looks from Robert and the anticipation of her penalties to come couldn’t force her to lift her fork to her mouth.
At seven that night, Mila’s parents came to collect Holly for her sleepover and Mila had already gathered a few items in a suitcase that she’d hidden in the back of the wardrobe. She’d planned to run while Robert prepared the basement. She’d planned to close the padlock and lock him down there. She’d planned follow by car to her parents and to tell them everything, and together they would call the police.
As if reading her mind, Robert had pulled her aside.
There was a chilling dispassion in his voice.
‘You know if you ever try to take Holly from me I’ll hunt you down. No matter how long it takes, or how much it costs, I will get custody. You will lose more than just the security I give you. You will lose your daughter and I will blacken your name to her forever. You remember that.’
Holly was Mila’s life. Life without her would be no life at all. And Mila was the only buffer between Him, Holly and the amoral compass that guided him. She couldn’t risk Holly ending up solely in his care or the isolation from her, which that promised.
Robert believed his love for Holly was beyond reproach but Mila recognised that his whole framework was flawed. He truly believed he could control everything and Mila knew that if she were to challenge his authority, his vengeance would be boundless.
It was the first and last time she ever tried to leave.
Mila initially suspected that Robert’s brutality was the outcome of some childhood trauma but if that was the case, he never shared it with her and over the years she had come to believe that there had been no dark past or repressed abuse by which to excuse him. She had eventually negotiated the safest passage through the minefield that had become her daily existence. If she did exactly as she was told, if she was available to him sexually whenever he wanted and in whatever fashion he desired, she could more or less keep the peace. Mila was prepared to do anything to protect Holly from seeing Robert’s flip-side.
She was always walking on eggshells, but frequently, his state of mind was entirely beyond her control. If Robert had a tough day at work – which seemed to be the case more and more of late – or if he’d simply woken on the wrong side of bed, then she knew that nothing would please him except a trip with her to the basement.
In the five years that preceded Robert’s death, he’d been home less and less in the evenings adding business meetings and interstate travel to his busy daytime agenda. He told Mila his trips were for conferences, seminars and important clients. She had assumed he was having an affair. Even though their weekly date nights were still sacrosanct, Mila was more than grateful.
As Holly’s departure for university in Melbourne drew closer, Mila counted down the weeks with a gnawing hole in her belly that grew more with each passing day. She was happy for Holly to be embarking on her next phase of life but she couldn’t shift the loneliness already taking root. The only remedy was to treasure every minute of their fleeting time to be together.
Holly was as perceptive as ever, and often when Robert was away, she would choose to stay home with Mila watching movies like Roman Holiday, Casablanca, and more recently Titanic and The Notebook. Mila had a love-hate relationship with ‘chick flicks’ as Holly called them. She too had grown up watching them with her mother, but now they all too poignantly reminded her of her many unfulfilled childhood dreams and left her feeling more despondent than before.
After her parents had passed, Mila learned that they had willed their home and savings to her solely, along with a bequest to Holly for her twenty-first birthday. Considering that they’d known nothing of her tormented existence, Mila was as surprised as Robert that her parents had slighted him in the will. Perhaps they had sensed her predicament more than they had let on, but their intuition fell short of envisaging how enraged he had become when he found out, or how dearly it had cost Mila in consequences administered over the following months.
With the ill-gotten windfall, Mila had momentarily allowed herself to fantasise again about divorcing Robert and moving back home, but Holly was by then sixteen and due to finish school the following year. She had already decided to apply to Melbourne Uni to study and for Mila, the thought of living at her parents’ house without them all, cut a ravine of loneliness so deep that she quickly abandoned the idea in preference of maybe renting a small apartment.
Not long after, Robert had convinced her to sell the property, and the proceeds had been deposited along with Holly’s monetary gift into a term account in both their names. The bank had never questioned it.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
‘The night’s still young, and I think we’ve all earned a drink. Let’s open a bottle of red shall we?’ ventured Adie. ‘Where did that husband of yours keep the alcohol anyway?’ Never shy to help herself, Adie was rifling through the living room dresser to no avail.
‘Where do I need to go, to get a drink around here - the basement?’
Adie was already heading down the corridor as Mila jumped up.
‘No wait, I’ll find us a bottle,’ she yelled a little too loudly.
Holly hadn’t moved from her spot but called after her, ‘Dad’s basement was always out of bounds. It was his man-cave, kept under lock and key. I doubt you’d find anything more exciting than a quarter century of dusty old accounting files.’
‘Ooh or maybe he was secretly conducting satanic rituals down there,’ ventured Adie, upon whose comment Mila nearly choked. ‘Sorry¸’ she apologised, ‘that was insensitive of me. Just trying to make light on this dark day.’
‘It’s okay,’ interjected Mila, ‘no need to apologise. You know that our marriage wasn’t without its differences.’
Holly looked seriously at her mother ‘I know that you and Dad had your ups and downs and that Dad could be a bit of a tyrant. I never thought that you two were really soul-mates. I mean he was always so different with you than he was with me. I never understood it.’
It was a miracle, thought Mila, that Holly had somehow been brought up unscathed, a miracle that Robert hadn’t managed to undermine the relationship between his wife and his daughter. All those throw away lines belittling her, criticising her in front of Holly.
For many years he thought he’d pulled the wool over her eyes, thought that a child wouldn’t question her own normal when there was no other normal to compare. But Holly was smart and she’d spent enough time in the company of Mila’s parents where conversation flowed freely and affection was unrationed to recognise the difference.
Eventually he’d woken up to it, that Holly had for some time been a quiet observer of the household dynamic and perhaps begun forming her own opinions. So, by the time she reached double digits, Robert became more guarded in front of her, instead initiating code words, like ‘lat
er’ that told Mila to prepare herself for the worst.
‘Remind me to show you something later.’ Mila’s heart would immediately begin to pound.
She wished now that her beautiful girl wasn’t going to be away for ten months of the coming year. She would desperately miss her, but Mila was glad for her to enjoy the freedom and independence of youth that she had missed out on.
‘Darling I know it sounds heavy and all but I just want you to know that you were the best thing to ever come out of my relationship with your Dad. You might think you were a mistake, but you were the absolute best mistake I could have made and there isn’t a day when I don’t feel blessed to have had you.’
‘Mum, that sounds like an end-of-life-speech. Your life is not over, I mean you’re still only thirty-four. There will be another man for you and maybe next time he’ll be the right one. Isn’t that true Adie?’
‘Of course it’s true. Your mother is a gorgeous woman, inside and out, with much to offer. She is just coming into her prime now.’
Finding a man was the absolute last thing on Mila’s agenda. She didn’t expect she would ever trust a man again. Anyway, she wanted to get to know herself, perhaps for the first time. The real her – if there was one, not the her that was a reaction to him. She had been a daughter, a mother, a wife and a possession. She had never just been Mila. It was a concept she looked forward to with some trepidation. Now that there was no one to demand anything of her, would she even know what to do with herself?
Mila was the only one to notice the coincidence between the date of Robert’s death and the date he had first forced himself on her eighteen years earlier. It was now December 27, almost a week, in which Christmas had come and gone. For Robert’s parents, Christmas would forever be tainted by their son’s death. For Mila, from this year forward, Christmas would serve as an anniversary of her liberation.
‘Are you sure you don’t want me to stay with you in Sydney for New Year’s Eve Mum?’ Holly must have seen the play of emotions furrowing Mila’s face. She broke from her reverie. ‘Sweetheart, you’ve had this holiday planned for ages. You didn’t take a break after finishing school; it’s been a really tough year of uni and the last eight weeks trying to be here for Dad and back to Victoria for the last of your exams. You need the break, far more than I need you hanging around feeling sorry for us both.’
‘It just seems wrong to go so soon after Dad’s passing.’
‘He would have wanted you to go and it would make me really happy to think of you relaxing with your friends.’
‘She’s not the only one who could be relaxing with her friends,’ Adie piped up. ‘You know Carlos has to cancel our cruise tickets because his big boss decided to come over from Boston at the last minute for a Summer New Year. But I have a great idea. Why don’t you take Carlos’ ticket and come with me instead?’
Mila absorbed the offer with a measure of disbelief. ‘Come on, there’s a million reasons why I couldn’t go on that cruise with you.’
‘Name just three,’ Adie invited.
‘Well to start with my husband just died a week ago.’ Mila took up the challenge.
‘So he’s not going to complain then is he. NEXT.’
‘Secondly, I have no passport.’
‘The cruise is within Australian waters only.’
‘Thirdly, Carlos will want you there to play happy families with the big boss’s wife.’ Mila was clutching at straws now.
‘The big boss is recently separated from his wife and will be only too happy to have Carlos to show him a good time without me.’
‘I have far too much mail piling up that really needs to be attended to.’ Okay so that was a pathetic excuse thought Mila, but the game was fun.
‘No offices are open between Christmas and New Year. The mail isn’t going anywhere and you can look at it all when you get back. What do you think they’re going to cut off your electricity and telephone over the holiday season? And anyway that’s four excuses I thought we were stopping at three – all of which have been thrown out of this court.’
‘I don’t have a swimsuit.’
‘Mum, that’s five and they are each as pathetic as the other,’ agreed Holly, the two girls clearly ganging up against her.
Adie wasn’t going to take no for an answer and was working herself into an excited frenzy. ‘So here’s the plan: Tomorrow morning, you and Holly go through Robert’s clothes and belongings. It will be good to have a deadline, less thought and more action; I’ll sort out the tickets and in the afternoon we go and buy you a swimsuit and some sexy clothes in the sales, so you can throw away the old-woman wardrobe he made you wear.
Mila was already panicking about the cost but Adie wasn’t finished. ‘Tomorrow night you and Holly spend the evening together and the next day you put Holly on the plane, come home and pack a bag, because at five p.m. on the twenty-ninth we’re on that cruise ship heading out of Sydney Harbour at sunset. Don’t think about it. Just say yes.’ She looked smug and happy.
‘Yes!’ yelled Holly enthusiastically.
‘Yes,’ echoed Mila somewhat less convincingly. ‘Do you really mean it? I mean how much is it? I don’t know that I can afford to splurge on a cruise.’
‘Don’t be silly, we wouldn’t dream of you paying. The last minute cancellation charge would be about eighty percent of the cost anyway. You’d be doing us a favour.’
The tawny port was beginning to take effect and Mila felt a small wave of excitement rolling into the swell of exhaustion that had beached her. She was light headed and somewhat dizzy.
‘Well if Carlos agrees, then the slightly tipsy me, accepts your invitation graciously. Now I think I need to take myself off to bed. What about you two?’
‘I’m shattered,’ said Holly.
‘And I’m off to tell Carlos that I’m spending this NYE with my new lover. Oh I did mention didn’t I that we’d be sharing a bed?’
‘I thought they’re all bunks on cruise ships.’
‘Seriously, do Carlos and I look like a couple who would do bunks? And I thought you knew me.’
‘Well looks like I’m about to get to know you very well,’ Mila laughed.
What she’d omitted from the conversation was the fact that her first and last cruise had been on the dodgy Russian liner than had brought her with her parents to Australia thirty years before.
CHAPTER TWELVE
The three women were crammed into a dressing room trying on swimsuits.
‘This would be depressing,’ commented Adie while tucking her voluptuous breasts into a barely-there bikini, ‘standing here with you two, if Carlos didn’t so appreciate my ample assets. As for you two, with your perfectly toned, perfectly lithe bodies, you could be sisters rather than mother and daughter.’
‘I guess there are sisters sixteen years apart,’ replied Holly.
Adie was looking at Mila with an expression of distain. ‘Girlfriend, why don’t you take a leaf out of my book, take off that boring black Speedo and try on a bit of sunshine. The lime green of the other cossie that Holly picked would be great on you too, you know.’
‘I couldn’t wear that!’ squealed Mila looking at the barely-there bra top tethered to absurdly small bottoms by a thread of lycra.
‘Actually Mum I think it would look fantastic on you and I’ve decided on the blue crochet bikini anyway.’
‘Try it on. Try it on,’ they chorused.
A minute later, the three of them were rolling around on the floor in fits of laughter as Mila had pulled on the handkerchiefs charading as a bikini, before valiantly trying to tuck in the expanse of pubic fuzz that escaped on either side of the skimpy briefs.
‘Oh my goodness Mum, have you never heard of a bikini wax or even a razor?’
‘It’s been some months since I’ve needed to shave for anyone. I thought I’d earned a break and it wasn’t like I was planning to go public with the pubic so to speak.’
‘Enough. Too much information Mum.’
&n
bsp; Adie was already on the phone. ‘Could you squeeze a friend of mine in for a bikini wax at five p.m.? Four thirty? Perfect.’ She hung up with a smug look on her face. ‘It’s all set. Ruby is the best and usually fully booked at this time of year but she’ll squeeze you in as a favour to me.’
‘Well it seems I have no choice in this decision.’
‘Trust me you’ll love it,’ smiled Adie sweetly.
‘Boiling wax poured on my sensitive bits? Excruciating pain? What’s not to love?’
‘Exactly.’
After two more frenetic hours of shopping, Mila kissed Holly and Adie goodbye at the door to the beauty salon promising to be home in time for dinner. It was still around thirty degrees outside and Mila had changed into one of the bargain basement cotton sundresses they had bought together. Her long hair was twisted and loosely caught up into bun to keep it off her neck.
As she stepped through the door, she was immediately soothed by the hum of ceiling fans, the heady scent of gardenia oil and music unlike any she had ever heard before –a haunting melody of pan flutes. Mila heard herself sigh.
A graceful woman of oriental descent stepped out to greet her. She had beautiful cheekbones and dancing eyes, and as she reached out to take Mila’s hands in hers, Mila noticed she hadn’t felt skin as smooth as that, since Holly was a baby. She guessed her to be between thirty and forty years but it was impossible to know.
Introducing herself, she led Mila through beaded curtains to a small cubicle.
Suddenly struck down by, a fit of modesty, Mila faltered, realizing that she didn’t know the exact procedure to follow but sensing her discomfort Ruby patted the table and offered her a paper G-string. She then busied herself preparing the wax while Mila slipped off her briefs and put on the ribbon of crepe paper trying to figure if it had a back or a front. Clearly, it didn’t matter, both sides as revealing as the other and Mila felt herself blush as she lay back on the table, lifting her knees as if waiting to give birth.
Ruby turned to face Mila before smiling. ‘This is the first time you’ve had bikini wax?’