‘Now, the christening,’ Iliana whispered over Bianca’s head.
Anita slapped her palm down on the sheets and turned to Michael. ‘What did I tell you?’
Michael tried not to laugh.
‘What do you mean, what did you tell him?’
‘That you’d already be thinking of what next! She’s only an hour old, Ma.’
‘Well, I want to be ready.’
Vinnie patted her on the shoulder. ‘Is it my turn yet?’
‘Only if you promise not to drop her.’ Iliana winked at Anita. ‘You should have seen him after you were born. He was in the waiting room smoking a cigarette and he didn’t hold you for a week.’
Vinnie huffed. ‘It was different back then. We weren’t allowed in to see the baby being born.’
Michael nudged Vinnie’s arm. ‘That might not be a bad thing there, Vinnie.’
Iliana carefully passed the tiny bundle to her husband. He held her gently and sat down in the plastic chair by Anita’s bed. As Iliana watched him coo and whisper to Bianca, she felt her heart swell.
This life they had made for themselves was everything.
Chapter Forty-four
Vasiliki stared open-mouthed at her daughter. Aphrodite was clutching the skirt of her wedding gown, staring back at her mother. The two-thousand-dollar creation was so heavily beaded across the bodice that Vasiliki had to try not to look directly at it in case she was blinded.
‘Did you hear what I said, Mum?’
Vasiliki pressed a hand to her forehead and felt beads of sweat there. Where was her handbag? She needed to blot. ‘I need to sit down.’
‘And I need to go get married. Aren’t you going to say anything?’
Vasiliki closed her eyes, took a moment, tried to stay calm. ‘I’m supposed to be happy that my oldest daughter is walking down the aisle and she’s already pregnant?’
If God was listening, he would surely strike her down right there and then for her hypocrisy.
Aphrodite huffed and crossed her arms over her beaded bodice. ‘Thanks for being happy for me.’
‘Don’t do that. The beads. You’ll break them.’ Vasiliki tugged at her daughter’s arms and placed them by her side. ‘What were you thinking, Aphrodite? Why did you have to tell me this right now?’
‘Because I thought you’d be excited, that’s why. For God’s sake. Now you’re going to get all Greek on me?’
‘What’s that supposed to mean, young lady?’
Aphrodite stomped her foot but the sound of it was buried in the massive skirts of her wedding dress. ‘I’m twenty-eight years old! I don’t want to wait until I’m thirty to have a baby. I’ll be ancient. I honestly can’t believe you’re acting this way. One of your other daughters is a lesbian, for God’s sake! I’m the one doing the traditional thing and you can’t even be happy for me? What else do I have to do?’
Vasiliki put her head in her hands. Perhaps things were easier when parents sorted out their daughter’s husbands. And speaking of which, perhaps she could choose another personality type for her daughter as well. Was this stubbornness from Tom? Is that what Aphrodite had inherited from him? She sighed. There was no use looking for blame somewhere else. Aphrodite had got all this temperament from her mother.
Vasiliki looked up wearily. ‘What are your grandparents going to say when they find out?’
Aphrodite lifted a finger and speared it in her mother’s direction. ‘If they still think things were better back in the village, they can go back to Greece. This is the eighties, Mum. Things are different these days. I can’t believe this. I’m marrying a Greek boy—someone I chose for myself, not like you—and you can’t even be happy for me.’
Aphrodite spun around—storming out the door was out of the question as she would have had to walk into the inside vestibule of the church in front of all their guests—so she shuffled to the corner and huffed.
It was Vasiliki’s job to calm her daughter’s nerves. She had to pull herself together. Her own life had been a whirlwind in the past twelve months with her daughter’s wedding preparations and her own two weeks in Adelaide to be with Elizabeta. Seeing her friend so weak and ill had given her a new perspective on many things, including making it a priority to look after her own health, but these insights were perhaps best not shared right now with her daughter, who seemed to be on the brink of a panic attack.
She took a deep breath and tottered over, trying to ignore the pain in her foot. She had a bunion on her left big toe from years of wearing heels like this and it was killing her. She smoothed down the skirt of her Carla Zampatti mother-of-the-bride suit.
‘Aphrodite, come on.’ She tried to calm herself. ‘You took me a little bit by surprise. That’s all. Phew. So, I’m going to be a grandmother, huh?’
Her daughter turned. Her eyes were glassy and her lips trembled. ‘Yes. In about seven months.’
‘Whoa.’ Vasiliki breathed deep, tried to preserve this moment. Her firstborn was about to have her firstborn. And then a hurricane of memories rose up from her stomach and she could feel the bile in her throat. She felt dizzy.
‘Mum, are you all right?’ Aphrodite reached for her, pulled her to a plastic chair and pushed her shoulders down.
She wanted to strip off her damn wedding outfit and kick off her ridiculous heels and just be able to breathe. When she had conceived Aphrodite twenty-nine years earlier, when she’d spun a lie for the husband who had been chosen for her, for her family and for her daughter, she hadn’t thought about what this exact moment would feel like. She should be happy—a wedding and a baby—but she felt treacherous. Like a giant fake and a liar. Her daughter was about to be walked down the aisle by the man who wasn’t her father.
Who wasn’t her birth father; she corrected that thought. Vasiliki’s heart thumped. She had so many regrets about what she’d done all those years ago and the choices she’d made ever since to cover it all up. Australia had changed so much since then that it was hard to imagine what those days had been like for young women like her. Straight off the boat, that’s what Australians used to say. And straight into Melbourne with as many Greeks as there were back home. She had become a part of this country, through hard work, through having children, through being a successful business owner with Steve. Did she feel Greek, still? She was Greek Australian. She held both countries in her heart. And her beautiful daughter, standing there pouting, was Greek Australian too, had been since the day she was conceived.
Vasiliki was convinced that if Tom knew about Aphrodite, he would be here. She knew it. He would be out there in the church, sitting with Frances and Andrew and Iliana and Vinnie, celebrating this day with the rest of the Bonegilla girls. She knew there was already one person missing—Elizabeta was still going through radiotherapy—but were there actually two?
She searched her daughter’s face. There was so much water under the bridge now. What good would it do to find out the truth about who her birth father was? She loved Steve, adored him. And he adored her. He was her real father, had raised her, had loved her, had pushed her and encouraged her and protected her like every good father does. The truth about her genetics would be an explosion in the family that no one would recover from. It had been Vasiliki’s choice to go into her marriage with that in her heart and in her belly.
Tom was going to be a grandfather and he would never know. And Frances? Her dear friend, Frances? She would be this child’s great-aunt.
Vasiliki dropped her head between her knees.
‘Mum. Mum,’ Aphrodite pleaded. ‘What’s the matter? Oh God, should I call an ambulance? You look terrible.’
‘No, don’t.’ Vasiliki said, her voice muffled by her skirt. ‘I think … I’m having a hot flush, that’s all. Stupid menopause.’
Aphrodite’s hand was on her back, rubbing gently. ‘Breathe, Mum. Breathe. I think I need to get Dad. God, where is he?’ Her voice wobbled and broke.
You cannot let your guilt ruin her life.
Vasiliki s
at up. She breathed deep. Found the steel in her spine. She gripped her daughter’s hand. ‘I need a tissue.’
‘So do I,’ Aphrodite sobbed.
Vasiliki clicked open her clutch. Inside was the handkerchief Tom had given her almost thirty years ago, in someone else’s car down at the beach. The night Aphrodite was conceived. She stared at it, sitting neatly alongside her lipstick, compact, a comb, her purse and a packet of tissues. She had completely forgotten she had tucked it in there. She had wanted a little piece of Tom to be with her today. She took out the tissues and snapped her bag shut.
They stood together, two short women of the exact same height, elevated by their love of ridiculous heels, aided and abetted by Aphrodite’s sister’s job as the shoe buyer for a national department store, and fixed each other’s make-up. Gently swiping the smudged mascara, reapplying foundation where it had been smoothed away, blotting lipstick and blushing cheeks. It took a few minutes, and some kind of calm was restored. From beyond the door, the sounds of voices and footsteps grew louder.
‘I’m about to get married,’ Aphrodite said, her eyes wide and scared.
‘Yes you are, my beautiful clever girl. And I’m so proud of you.’
Mother and daughter held hands. There was no hugging with a dress that pouffy.
‘Okay. Here’s our plan,’ Vasiliki said. ‘I’m excited about the baby. Of course I am. But can this be our little secret for today? I can’t tell your father. He’ll have a heart attack. He’s already stressing about the reception and the car parking. We invite two hundred people to your wedding and he thinks there are going to be no car parking problems. I’m surprised he’s not out there in one of those orange vests directing the traffic.’
‘Dad.’ Aphrodite shook her head and smiled. ‘He would if I asked him.’
‘He would do anything for you, you know that.’
‘I know it. Thank you to both of you for giving me this wedding. I’m sorry I told you this way. I’m excited, that’s all. I wanted you to be the second to know.’
Vasiliki understood being excited about having a baby. She’d been through it four times. She would never tell anyone that her firstborn would always be her most precious. She clasped her daughter’s hand.
In that moment, she decided.
She would never skao to mistiko. She would never burst the secret of Aphrodite. Never ever. She couldn’t do that to Steve, who loved his daughter, or to Aphrodite, who adored her father. The past should stay in the past. What did the Australians say? That she should let sleeping dogs lie.
That’s what she would do. That was her real wedding gift to her daughter. To gift her the life she already knew and a father who had raised her with all the love he had in his heart.
‘Let’s go.’
Chapter Forty-five
1989
‘Do you think they’re getting on?’
Frances sipped her Earl Grey tea and looked out at Elizabeta’s back yard. It was a lovely home with a wide stretch of neatly trimmed lawn in the backyard, and beyond it fruit trees and a vegetable patch. A beach shade fluttered in the breeze, the kind made of green and white striped canvas, and under it sat four little girls. Elizabeta’s husband Nikolas had been erecting it when they’d arrived.
‘I don’t want the girls to get sunburnt,’ he’d said.
Her own granddaughter, little brown-haired Bethany, was standing by the small wooden table pouring cups of water for the other girls. Her two pigtails were bobbing up and down by her ears as she seemed to be instructing them in some way, judging by the finger pointing and the pursed lips.
‘It looks like they’re having fun,’ Vasiliki said as she squinted over at them. ‘If I had my glasses on I could be sure. I can’t believe I left them in Melbourne. I know exactly where I put them too, on the kitchen table. I said to Steve just before we left for the airport, “Don’t let me forget my glasses”. So what did I do?’ She threw her hands up in the air. ‘I forgot my glasses. I was so excited about having a holiday, just Klio and me, that I didn’t even think.’
‘It was such a lovely idea to bring them along for a Bonegilla girls reunion,’ Elizabeta said. ‘Although it was very easy for me. I didn’t have to fly anywhere. Luisa just dropped Sophie off and there we were.’
‘Bianca couldn’t wait. I don’t think she slept for a week. She loved the flight over,’ Iliana laughed. ‘The air hostesses gave her a colouring book and a little pencil case. And she sat there the whole time from Sydney—what it is, two hours?—with her head down, scribbling.’
The four women repositioned their chairs so they could watch their granddaughters playing. Frances couldn’t remember now whose idea it had actually been. There had been so many phone calls back and forth—from Sydney and Melbourne and Adelaide—that the original proponent had been forgotten in the excitement and plans for the weekend.
They were older now, the Bonegilla girls. It seemed ludicrous to call themselves ‘girls’ but the name had stuck and it gave them all a spring in their step when one of them said it. It invoked an instant smile, bringing back so many memories of what they had shared and now, what they would still share. Bonegilla had given them their friendship. Australia had given them a new life. And their daughters had given them these wonderful granddaughters to cluck and fuss over and spoil.
Thinking back now, Frances thought perhaps it had been Vasiliki’s idea. Vicki, she should say. Frances had never managed to get used to calling her that, even after all these years. Vasiliki had called them all to lament that they hadn’t met each other’s granddaughters and the idea had sprung to life. A weekend away in Adelaide, the opportunity to give their own daughters a break, they suggested, and the idea had snowballed from there. They had chosen Adelaide for Elizabeta’s sake. Since her own granddaughter had been born, she’d lost another breast to cancer and had gone through a punishing round of chemotherapy. None of the other Bonegilla girls said it out loud, but they knew money was tight for Elizabeta and Nikolas. Still only on one income, they made do, but there wasn’t any left over to fly off to Sydney or Melbourne for the weekend. None of them minded. They had all sensed that Elizabeta was happiest when she was at home and were happy to come to her.
Over the years their reunions had been so important to them all, and now bringing their granddaughters along was a way of keeping that connection alive, of having something to talk about other than their aches and pains and their parents’ illness and, sadly, deaths. Frances’s parents had both died in the past year, so close together that Tom had flown out from London for her mother’s funeral but hadn’t been able to get back on a plane within two weeks to come home for their father’s. Vasiliki’s father had dropped dead from a heart attack in his fruit shop while unpacking rockmelons. Her mother lived with them now, frail and increasingly forgetful, with what little English she had fading fast from her memory.
As for Iliana, her parents had retired years before and during one of their annual trips to Italy, her father had died of a stroke. Her mother was still living at home, strong and independent.
‘Look at them, will you?’ Elizabeta laughed when her own granddaughter, Sophie, downed her glass of water, wiped her forearm across her mouth like a sailor might, and then ran across the lawn to the Hills Hoist. Elizabeta shook her head in amused disbelief. She seemed to know what was coming.
‘What’s she doing?’ Iliana gasped.
‘Just watch.’ Elizabeta nodded.
Up Sophie scampered, finding purchase for her foot on the metal handle of the clothesline, and, like a little monkey, she was up on the frame, her knees hooked over one of the spokes, and hanging upside down by her knees.
‘This is how you do it,’ she called in her little-girl voice to the others. Bianca, Bethany and Klio ran after her and looked up at her, into the blue sky, as if she was flying off somewhere in a rocket. They reached high for her hands and held on, dragging her around in circles under the clothesline, running and giggling, their bare feet pressing lightly in
to the prickly grass, their laughter ringing around the backyard like the sweetest sound imaginable.
‘Aren’t you scared she’ll fall off?’ Iliana cried.
Elizabeta shrugged. ‘She loves it. What can I do? She has a sense of adventure. My sister Luisa used to climb all the trees at Bonegilla. Just like she does. Like a little monkey. She was never scared. I think that’s where she gets it.’
Frances understood why Elizabeta wouldn’t want to take away her granddaughter’s simple pleasure, why she would relish the look of pure joy and adventure in her little eyes when she dangled and spun and laughed and laughed.
‘I like to see happiness in my family again,’ Elizabeta said.
The girls knew why.
They had spent so many years worrying about Elizabeta, but something had changed in her. For the first time in many years, she seemed content with her life. It was there in her face, in the fullness that had returned to her body after the chemo the year before. The smiles they hadn’t seen for such a long time. Was it too much to ask that all her suffering was finally over?
‘What about you?’ Iliana asked. ‘How are you and Andrew going?’
Frances looked out to the girls, hesitant about answering the question. ‘We’re all right. We have our ups and downs like everyone else I suppose. We’ve been trying. That’s all you can do, isn’t it?’ She’d been trying for a very long time to make her marriage to Andrew work. It wasn’t his fault really. The problem was that no matter what he did, he wasn’t Massimo.
‘Are you glad you didn’t leave him in the end?’
Five years before, on the day Elizabeta had told them she had breast cancer, Frances had made her choice. She was going to fly back to Sydney and see Massimo, tell him that she couldn’t go on any longer the way they were, that she wanted to leave Andrew and be with him. Really be with him. Not in clandestine motels and in dangerous phone calls, but together, they way they should have always been. She’d had it all planned. She was at the motel early. She’d brought flowers and cheese and crackers and some other nibbles, the prosciutto he loved, and a bottle of wine, so they could talk and make plans. She’d found her bravery. She had decided what she wanted from her life and she had been determined to chase it.
The Last of the Bonegilla Girls Page 31