by Rebellious Daughters- True stories from Australia's finest female writers (retail) (epub)
Time blunts the sharpness of resentment. You forget your grievances or their scale diminishes. You miss the opportunity to share a coded reference or family joke. You wonder if your parents are watching the same television shows and how they are interpreting the increasingly grim world news.
In the end it was France, the scene of our rupture, which provided also the scene of our reconciliation. My mother’s native country, beloved by my father since they had met there, he as a young staffer at UNESCO, she his bi-lingual secretary. He courted her with glamour, showing off her severe beauty at exclusive nightspots. France became emblematic of their youthful optimism.
As a family we visited France two or three times a year. Speaking the language, we felt completely at home there. On native ground, my mother became more confident. She laughed more, was more assertive. My father, seeing this, also relaxed, into a sentimental nostalgia, telling anecdotes about De Gaulle and his other favourite French heroes. Throughout my childhood we made pilgrimages to my father’s favourite shrines: the village where Joan of Arc was born, the Chateaux of the Loire, the palace of Versailles, the cathedral at Chartres. These places were sacred to him and moved him to tears. An early adopter, he loved countries that forged head with new technology. ‘Just look at these superb motorways,’ he would say admiringly of the efficiency of the toll road network as we sped down the Autoroute du Soleil. Later, he shifted his enthusiasm to the new high speed trains. Then there was Le Minitel, the early prototype of the internet issued to every household to look up timetables and itineraries, and make reservations; the bold architecture of the Pompidou centre; the space age satellite departure gates at Charles de Gaulle airport. In France, the man I associated with fault-finding revealed himself to be as generous with praise as with criticism.
Those childhood holidays brought a rare spate of harmony to our trio, especially during the summer breaks in the south. On our yearly stay at the beach at Cannes, my father swapped his handmade suits and Hermès ties for casual shirts. Though he did not swim, he took me out pedalling in a paddleboat when my own feet could not reach the treads, heading straight for the horizon. He appointed himself architect and chief engineer for our elaborately tiered sandcastles; often the only adult shovelling sand on our stretch, he urged me on as his labourer before the tide swept our bridges and turrets away. Or the three of us read side by side under a fringed parasol on our blue and white striped mattresses, waiting for the Eskimo Gervais vendor to run across the burning sand shouting out his flavours (‘Fraise! Vanille! Chocolat!’), his ice box slung across his tanned shoulders.
We were insular, indolent and self-contained in our daily routines: the rituals of la plage, la terrasse, le marché, la promenade, la sieste, le restaurant. In late afternoons the air shimmered from the oil of sappy cypress. Dark as olives, we sluiced our skin in the Mediterranean’s azure brine. We ate bulky, gaping pan bagnat sandwiches of ripe tomatoes in bread soaked in grassy olive oil. Peach and melon juice dribbled down our chins. In the evenings, we dressed up and sat on the balmy terrace of the Carlton or the Majestic, bronzed and polished, stupefied by the sun, watching the world stroll along the Croisette, ordering elaborate dishes from oversized menus. We glowed with privilege and satiated satisfaction.
Three years after the break with my parents, my husband David and I decided to spend three months in France. Ahead of our trip, I made tentative contact by phone. The reception was frosty, but I talked in safe generalities about our plans and asked solicitous questions. I said we would be passing through London and would like to see them. They made non-committal noises. Like an old fashioned emissary sent from an enemy state, David went ahead of me, with peace making gifts, issuing an invitation to have lunch. They accepted.
When we met on neutral ground, my mother shrank from my embrace, but my father let me take his arm as we walked to the restaurant they had chosen – Heston Blumenthal’s gastropub at Bray. Unable to restrain himself, he told me he did not like what I was wearing. I ignored the comment rather than rising to it as I normally would, determined not to behave like a baited bear.
We sat, hunched with apprehension, beneath the low beams of the 16th century inn, my parents’ faces drawn with age, etched with wariness. We spent an inordinate amount of time praising the very good bottle of wine my father had brought and steered away from the personal, staying within the safer boundaries of current affairs. Afterwards, we strolled by the river and a gradual thaw began. Our shoulders dropped, we took a few snaps, we lingered in a shy attempt at rapprochement. When my father suggested we prolong our encounter by driving to Windsor for afternoon tea, we agreed easily. As we walked up to the castle, I took my father’s arm, encouraging him to share his extensive historical knowledge while my mother walked behind us, slower to drop her guard.
Once settled in Nice, just half an hour’s drive from the scene of the burnished summer holidays of my childhood, I persisted in my reconciliation moves, calling my parents weekly to demonstrate my sincerity. Anecdotes about the peculiarities of our life in France were well received. They laughed at our bafflement over lunchtime closing hours and disgust at the quantities of dog shit on the pavements. Eventually, keen to see them but also to show off our success in securing a glamorous waterfront apartment, we invited them for that ultimate peace making festivity, Christmas.
It was a high risk strategy. Christmas had never been a festive time in our household. Being Jewish, my father would have preferred to ignore the date completely. He usually stewed in a state of bah humbug resentment for most of the month, joined in solidarity by my mother, who unleashed her Gallic vehemence against everything from street decorations to carols, mince pies, turkey and stuffing. But we assured them that our Christmas would provide an escape from all the traditions and excess they despised.
My parents accepted tentatively, with conditions. They would not stay with us. They would not stay very long. On the day of their arrival, I left a bunch of violets, my mother’s favourites, at their hotel with a note to say we would pick them up for dinner.
I can only describe what happened over the next five days as a magical alignment. A unique state of grace. Every small pleasure was shared, every delight mutual. We sat in easy conversation in squares bathed in winter sunshine, as if it had never been otherwise. My parents were keen to explore, enthusiastic about every suggestion, relaxed in surrendering all decision-making. Their amenable, easy-going mood seemed genuine. Unrecognisably good company, they were like charming, urbane acquaintances one wanted to get to know better.
My parents and I are by nature grudge holders, with long memories for wrongs and slights. But now an amnesia of forgiveness washed away the litany of reproaches on both sides. Perhaps they recognised that our war was one neither side could win. It was not that they surrendered, they simply changed the rules of engagement. There was no talk of apology, no blame. No subtext, no undertow or malaise to break this fragile but miraculous truce. It was as if the constantly ticking bomb of our family had been defused and my parents swapped their ritual refrain of complaint for the gentle hum of benign tolerance.
Christmas day dawned sparkling. We sat on our wide balcony and let the champagne fizz through our bodies, making us light of head and heart. Wrapped in a cocoon of unforced bonhomie we took pleasure in watching the wooden fishing boats bob below. It was, my father declared, our best Christmas ever. My parents left for London beaming. We returned to Australia in quiet triumph.
I linger on that memory, cherishing the detail, because it became a crucial consolation for what lay ahead. This newly opened account of goodwill was a fund of stored up credit I would need to draw on soon enough. I could not suspect that less than two years later, I would be tested as a daughter like never before when my father suddenly lost his sanity and my mother suffered a breakdown under the burden of his care. Everything I had rebelled against simply vanished.
JOYRIDE
MICHELLE LAW
I wasn’t surprised to find my tyres flat,
the handles dusty, the spokes almost rusted through. I hadn’t ridden my bike for months, let alone beyond the parameters of my street, which was the distance Mum deemed safe lest I be run over by a reckless driver, or abducted by child molesters. Mum, a worrier who was always on high alert having grown up in Hong Kong in the ‘70s, where pickpockets and other predators roamed, and then a faithful viewer of A Current Affair and Today Tonight, felt there was always something to fear: criminals, faulty electronics, cereals with a high sugar content. I learnt to fear everything and suspect everyone. So I was always within Mum’s sight.
But over the past year, my final year of high school, I’d taken to going on short bike rides to escape the claustrophobia of living together. After my parents split, the five kids in the family divided between both households. By the time everyone had left for university, it was just me, the youngest, and Mum, alone together from when I was nine years old. This meant that our lives were inextricably linked: we knew each other’s habits, fought regularly, and depended on each other for company and counseling. In short, we were each other’s strongest allies and worst enemies. It was suffocating. The more time we spent together, the more our lives began resembling Grey Gardens – we were like Big Edie and Little Edie, alone in a dilapidated house being swallowed up by overgrown plants and mental illness, which ran in our family. And like Little Edie, I had alopecia, an autoimmune disease that causes hair loss, to boot.
Now I was 17 and preparing to move out of home for university in Brisbane, a prospect that I found equally terrifying and exhilarating. It meant learning to cook, clean and navigate a public transport system by myself, but it also meant freedom.
‘Where are you going this time?’ Mum asked, suspicious, as I buckled my helmet. ‘Down to the park again?’
‘I don’t know,’ I said. ‘Probably to the canal and then to the shops.’
‘What are you going to buy?’
‘I thought I’d just walk around, look at the sales.’
‘Maybe I’ll meet you there.’
‘No! Don’t. I mean, because I don’t know what time I’ll be there.’
Eventually, Mum came around to my lie.
‘Maybe get some laundry powder, if it’s on special,’ she said, handing me money. And with that, I set off for the garage. If I was going to pull this off, I needed to pretend this trip was like every other one of my bike rides.
Using the heel of my foot, I kicked in the garage door, which had expanded in the frame after the recent summer storms. The humidity blanketing the town over the last several months had left even the house bloated. Eventually, I located my bike beneath all of the storage containers and old art projects disintegrating from silverfish bites. Technically, I wasn’t lying. I was going to stop by the shops if I had time, and the canal was en route to Liam’s house.
Liam was the most beautiful person I’d ever met. He had wavy, brown locks, a Roman nose, kind brown eyes, a chiseled jaw, and a hint of stubble. He was tall, tanned and toned from doing water sports every weekend and even I, a bookish shut-in whose ideal man was pale, British and internally anguished (essentially, Mr. Darcy), couldn’t resist him. And to my great surprise, Liam was interested in me. Me. I had no idea why, since we had nothing in common besides both of us being in grade 12 and living in the same town in coastal, regional Queensland. He was a Disney prince incarnate who’d had beautiful girlfriends, and taught body and wake boarding to kids at the beach in his spare time, which I found charming (the part about the kids) and also a living nightmare (the part about the beach). And I was an Australian born Chinese virgin with bad eyesight, anxiety and thin hair. My pastimes included performing in the school musical, working with the school magazine committee and public speaking at Lions Clubs Australia events. My first kiss came from our grade’s punching bag during a drama lesson, and even he wiped his mouth after the kissing scene was over.
But I was fairly happy with myself, despite all of the usual self-consciousness felt by adolescents and despite the fact that I was different to most people I knew. So I was not so baffled about the idea of Liam and I being attracted to each other. I just didn’t see how we made a good couple, yet I fell hopelessly into the fantasy of what we could be. With him, there was the promise of really fitting in at school.
‘He’s totally into you,’ said my friend, Jessie, several weeks before my joyride to Liam’s house. I was visiting her at the boutique where she worked after school and on the weekends. She stood behind the counter rearranging stock as I idly browsed jewelry. It was the kind of place that sold chunky, beaded necklaces worn by middle-aged Caucasian women who owned multiple kaftans and whose husbands owned multiple yachts. I twirled some of these necklaces around my finger absentmindedly.
‘I don’t know,’ I said. ‘He’s never made a move.’
‘But you talk on MSN every day.’
‘That’s true.’
‘And he told me he thought you were gorgeous.’
My breath caught in my chest. I’d wanted some reassurance that I wasn’t out of my mind in thinking that Liam could be interested in someone like me.
Liam and I had met online through mutual friends and since then, we’d caught up a handful of times at group hangouts. He went to the gargantuan public school nearby that churned out so many seniors each year that it was normal for students and teachers to lose track of each other. And I went to a Lutheran private school a few suburbs across that our parents sent us to because they thought it would mean we’d get bullied less (it didn’t).
Each afternoon, we’d jump on instant messenger and update each other on the happenings of the day – what assignments we were working on, which friends said what scandalous things. Eventually, we started discussing more personal stuff: what anime we watched, what Tolkien books we’d read, who we’d liked or dated in the past. I discovered that he lived one suburb away, loved X-Men and science fiction and played keyboard in a band. He worked at the local Big W doing night fill and when he had late shifts, I would stay up and wait for his MSN status to switch from ‘Away’ to ‘Online’. We talked nightly, if not several times a day. But as the weeks wore on, and my moving date drew closer, our communication became irregular. Some nights he would be hours late logging on; other nights he wouldn’t log on at all. I held onto whatever stupid conversations we now had like a lifeline.
‘Do you like Cadbury fruit and nut?’ he asked one night.
‘I love it,’ I typed, groaning aloud at the pointlessness of the subject.
‘I hate it!’ he replied, and I wished I’d been honest the first time so he’d know just how much we had in common and how it was obvious we were destined soul mates. Then he told me I was one of the coolest people he’d ever met, and I told him likewise, and then suddenly I was willing to risk my relationship with my mother to pursue a romance with a broad shouldered wake boarder. If I didn’t take action now, I’d lose Liam.
Until this point, my experience with boys had been limited. There was the four year crush I’d had on a boy, which culminated in him asking me out as a joke during a school excursion. Then there was the time I lied about not owning a telephone so I wouldn’t have to give my number to a boy who smelt like cabbage. And then, finally, a failed online romance with a boy several years older than me. Besides that drama class kiss, I’d never kissed anyone, let alone held someone’s hand. This was, in large part, due to Mum’s strictness.
Mum had enough household rules to keep all my siblings and I in check: no shoes or balls in the house; no pets that couldn’t be kept in tanks or cages; no sleepovers; and above all: no ring, no ding. Which is exactly what it sounds like. Without a wedding ring, you can forget about having sex, and you’d better not try having it under her roof. This also extended to any other kind of sexual activity, even kissing. But what if the kissing was done under somebody else’s roof?
As I sped towards the end of our street and onto the pavement, I ran through a mental checklist of all the bad things that could happen to me on m
y great escape: being abducted, getting raped, getting hit by a car. I’d never ridden this far away from home before. If I wound up in hospital, what would Mum’s reaction be? Would she disown me? Refuse to let me leave home ever again?
I kept pedaling. Past the park, past the canal, past the shopping centre and Video Ezy, past the Shell and the fruit barn, before finally turning a corner at the fish and chip shop. I’d never ridden this far away from home before. I passed a group of younger kids on their bikes, helmetless, sucking on ice blocks and yelling to each other over the deafening traffic, and felt suddenly at ease. I was just like them now, free to do whatever I wanted without parental supervision. It was the first time I’d ever felt truly alone and I loved it.
Conversely, Mum was lonely, and as a consequence she was always present, always nearby, despite our house being large enough to cover two blocks of land. Even when I was in the bathroom or on the toilet, she’d knock on the door and start a conversation from thin air, about a product she’d seen on television, or the friend she ran into at the shops. In the mornings before school, she’d stand behind me as I did my hair and watch me apply eyeliner light enough for the teachers not to notice.
‘Go away, Mum,’ I’d say. ‘Don’t just stand there. It’s creepy.’
‘Creepy? I’m just watching you,’ she’d say. ‘Is that a crime?’
Some mornings I’d wake up to find Mum sitting on the edge of my bed, and the moment I’d open my eyes I’d be accosted with that morning’s news: ‘Steve Irwin is officially dead,’ she’d tell me, or ‘Anthony Callea is on Sunrise! Come watch.’ As I drifted in and out of sleep I’d hear her slippers shuffling along the tiles in the hallway. I knew Mum was glancing into my room, waiting for me to wake up so she’d have someone to talk to.