The Ties That Bind

by Lexi Landsman

  The back of her throat throbbed and her eyes felt swollen. She dug in her bag for tissues and wiped her face and then her runny nose. When her sobs eventually subsided, she stared out the window through bloodshot eyes, trying to distract herself from dark thoughts.

  She looked up at the only house on the road that was being rebuilt. It stood out among the debris like a watchtower, its fresh coat of white paint beaming in the light. In the distance she saw an olive grove, with some rows cut down to nothing more than bare trunks. There was a group of builders laying down the corrugated-steel roof sheeting and a young man painting the window slats. In front of the house, a girl was planting roses in the soil.

  She was wearing shorts and a paint-splattered top. Her long golden-brown hair fell down her back in a neat plait. There was something about the way she held herself, the way she moved, that caught Courtney’s attention. The warmth of her smile, the olive tone of her skin and the shape of her eyes seemed disquietingly familiar. It was like Courtney knew this girl; she looked closer and then had the strange sensation that she was gazing into a mirror and seeing a reflection of her younger self.

  Then, with a rush of shock that ran down her spine, it suddenly dawned on Courtney. What if she had a sister?

  David woke with a hangover and was immediately struck with overwhelming guilt about his encounter with Bronwyn last night. He wished he had just gone straight home after his run. As he replayed the sequence of events in his mind, he tried to reassure himself that it was just one kiss before he came to his senses and abruptly left. He would never have forgiven himself if it had gone any further.

  Bronwyn didn’t have his phone number, so David obsessively checked his work email address to see if she had sent him any unpleasant messages. Thankfully she hadn’t. And he hoped that she would be just as embarrassed as he was for the lapse in judgement. He certainly prayed she wouldn’t get angry enough over his sudden departure to exact revenge on him through the university authorities. Fraternising with a student would put a swift end to his career, and his marriage. And his life was already cracking; it would only take a bit more pressure to send the rest of it to pieces.

  He turned his thoughts back to his wife, the woman against whom he’d nearly committed the greatest act of betrayal. He had a feeling in his chest like a wound had reopened and was suppurating. It held everything meshed into one: guilt for not being able to protect his son, for having come so close to being unfaithful to his wife with a student, but mainly for letting his family down.

  He went to the kitchen and brewed a mug of coffee. The thought of eating made his stomach turn. He found Matthew sitting in the living room, leafing through pages of an astronomy book.

  ‘I don’t get it, Dad,’ Matthew said when David walked in the room. ‘If stars are light years away and we’re just seeing the light they sent out hundreds of thousands of years ago, we’re looking at something that isn’t really there.’

  ‘You’re the expert,’ David said, keeping his distance in case the smell of alcohol still lingered on his breath. ‘I’m just the dad of a little genius. What would I know?’

  ‘Mom says that you think you’re always right and that you always have an answer for everything. So, I thought you’d know.’

  ‘She says that, does she?’ David laughed, feeling stabs of guilt tear at his chest. He thought of his wife: her beautiful aqua eyes, the touch of her cheekbones, the way her smile made him feel whole. Why had he let himself get so out of control that he nearly destroyed his marriage?

  ‘I don’t think it’s fair,’ Matthew said. ‘We’re seeing something that isn’t really there anymore. It’s as if the sky is lying.’

  The guilt burrowed itself deep in his gut. How could he explain to his son that that was the reality of perception? Sometimes it let us down.

  ‘You’re right,’ David said. ‘It is as if it’s lying.’

  47

  COURTNEY dug through her bag, searching for Doctor Harvey’s number. Her hands quivered as realisation took hold. She saw her two parallel lives: the one she had and the one she could have had.

  If she hadn’t been put up for adoption, she would have grown up here, on this unblinking Australian land. She might have lived on a farm and learned how to muster sheep, how to know when potatoes were ready to harvest, how to milk a cow, how to train young grape vines to twine around a trellis. Her skin would be darker and freckled. She would have toned arms from all the outdoor labour and light streaks in her hair from the sun.

  She wouldn’t have gone off to art school and spent a night locked in the bathrooms before her final exam. She wouldn’t have met David. They wouldn’t have married and had Matthew. She wouldn’t be doing everything she could to save his life.

  And she certainly wouldn’t be staring out the car window at a construction site right now wondering if she was seeing her sibling for the first time in her life.

  The idea that Courtney could have a biological sister sent an electric pulse right through her, making her feel off balance. She pictured herself like the house in front of her, with a room that had always been locked. A space filled with secrets and stories. And now, at thirty-six, she was getting her first peek inside.

  She toyed with the prospect. If she’d had a sibling, would she feel so alone right now?

  Courtney finally found Doctor Harvey’s number and dialled with shaking fingers. It rang and Courtney braced herself for the voicemail message.

  ‘Doctor Harvey,’ Courtney said when Annabel answered on the final ring.

  ‘Rose,’ Doctor Harvey said, and Courtney didn’t correct her.

  ‘I went to that address you gave me,’ Courtney spat out. Her voice sounded like cracked glass that could shatter at any second. ‘And all the houses on the road burned down.’

  Courtney could hear the doctor sigh. ‘I’m sorry,’ she said. ‘It’s hard for us to know what survived the fires.’

  ‘I did see a young woman though, building a house.’ Her chest was tight. Her heart was pounding in her ears. ‘She looked strangely familiar.’ Courtney took a deep breath, bracing herself. ‘Is it possible I could have a sister?’

  There was silence on the phone. And then the doctor answered in a steady tone that sounded rehearsed. ‘I’m sorry, Rose. As I said, all our records were lost.’

  David could still remember with clarity the early morning Courtney went into labour. He had been in his usual deep sleep, when he was woken by her hand squeezing his. From that simple gesture, David bolted upright and gut instinct kicked in. Courtney had a bag packed with all her necessities, so it was simply a matter of driving to the hospital. But as fate would have it, Miami had been issued with a tornado warning as winds reached dangerous speeds. So, instead of staying home as the midwives advised and waiting for the contractions to become regular and more intense, in the hope the wild weather might ease by then, David decided to head to the hospital. He wasn’t taking any chances.

  The wind was blowing trees sideways, so David chose the safest route to avoid the possibility of falling branches. Fortunately, the roads were empty because no one was stupid enough to venture out. He remembered being overcome with the immense responsibility of getting his wife and unborn child safely to the hospital. By the time they arrived, Courtney was sure their child was minutes from being born, but she was in labour for five more hours.

  From the moment David first saw their baby, he knew he would do anything to protect their son from whatever life threw at him. David had always imagined it would be something like school bullies or a broken heart or some sort of failure. He never expected anything like this. Certainly not something he couldn’t see coming.

  David was standing in Matthew’s room, bending over his son’s bed so he didn’t knock his head on the hanging planets. Matthew looked up at him, his eyes round like full moons.

  ‘I don’t feel well.’ He was shivering under his soccer blankets.

  ‘What do you feel, Matty?’

  ‘Like I did af
ter the chemo.’

  David sat on the edge of the bed and wondered what Courtney would have said to soothe him. ‘It’s okay to feel sick, Matty.’ He rubbed his back. ‘They said you might, so don’t be scared. It’s okay. We’ll just drop by the hospital and they’ll check to see that your blood factory is how it should be.’

  As David drove to the hospital, he kept stealing glances at his son to check that he was okay. Had they ever told Matthew he was born during a storm that ended up flattening houses? He couldn’t remember.

  Matthew sat quietly and patiently as his blood was taken. When the results came back, they cut short Matthew’s reprieve at home. His next cycle of chemotherapy was supposed to start the following day but his neutrophil count had dropped and his iron was low. They admitted Matthew to prevent him contracting an infection and gave him a transfusion of red blood cells. They also injected him with Neupogen, a man-made protein that stimulated white cell production. He would only be able to start the next cycle of chemotherapy when his levels improved. They told David these setbacks were to be expected. So, David focused on easing Matthew into being back in the hospital, while trying to calm his own nerves.

  At least it wasn’t so scary for Matthew anymore. By now they knew all the nurses. They even knew most of the patients and their parents. Despite being a place of such suffering, the children’s ward was full of warmth. Kids’ drawings and paintings adorned the walls. The nurses were always chatty and friendly. They played games and mucked around for the kids.

  Matthew looked out of his room. ‘Hey, Dad,’ he said as he shifted in the bed to get comfortable again. ‘Do you think Mom has found the special medicine?’

  ‘I don’t know, buddy, but we can’t get our hopes up. Your mother thinks that she’ll find what she’s looking for, but Australia is a huge place and it won’t be easy.’

  ‘But if she finds it, will I still need to have chemotherapy?’

  ‘The stuff Mom’s looking for,’ David paused, choosing his words carefully, ‘is not something we can rely on. It’s a medicine that would hopefully make you better quicker. But you’d still need to have chemo first.’

  David pulled the hospital sheets around his son and tucked in the edges as Matthew drifted to sleep. He wished Courtney was there with them to say that the chemo would be okay. That the pain would be worth something in the end.

  David grabbed Matthew’s prized soccer ball and put it at the foot of his bed. He thought back to the many nights he stood beside Matthew’s cot when he was a newborn baby and watched him sleep just to be sure that he was okay. Now, as David monitored the rise and fall of Matthew’s chest, he realised that he could watch his son’s every breath and it wouldn’t make any difference.

  David was no longer his son’s keeper.

  48

  JADE was planting roses to start a new rose garden beside the shed. After pressing firmly down on the soil to get rid of any air pockets, she added mulch to protect the roses during the first stages of growth. One of Jade’s earliest memories was planting roses with her mother. She had always wondered if it was those early impressions that fostered her love of nature. She couldn’t have been any older than three. Her mother had plaited her hair slightly to the side instead of centred because ‘things should never be even’.

  Her mother had kneeled by the rose garden. ‘I’m going to teach you about roses,’ she said. ‘Will you remember?’

  Of course I’ll remember, Jade had thought, until her mother used such big words. ‘Banksianae, Laevigatae, Bracteatae, Synstylae, Gallicanae, Rosa.’

  But now, as Jade watered the freshly planted roses, the names of the rose species were crystal clear in her mind.

  Adam was painting the frames of the house. Even after their first ever disagreement, he had arrived early at the site and got to work like he had every other day. They hadn’t said anything more about his desire to move to Sydney and her complete rejection of the idea of going with him. Yet, even though he kissed her cheek, there was something new in his expression that made her uneasy. It was like he had opened a window into his life and then closed the shutter. Jade tried to pretend nothing had happened. She wasn’t good at confrontation, and she told herself that by not bringing it up again, the issue would simply cease to exist.

  The truck arrived with the roof trusses stacked on the back.

  She looked at the bench she had built below the willow tree and could see that the leaves were starting to grow back. By summer, the bench would be covered in pockets of light and shade and the earth below would be matted in dry brown and damp apple-green leaves. The wood already had texture: markings of bird poo, faded patches and a cobweb in the corner.

  She looked at her house, admiring the fresh blue paint on the outdoor wooden window shutters that her grandmother wanted as a reminder of Greece. Then her gaze wandered to the shed beside the house and the rose bushes in front of it. She could see how it would be. Full of summer light, blossoms and a dense tangle of glossy leaves.

  When they erected the corrugated-iron roof, it would have an overhang on all sides, so that the porch would always be screened from the elements. They could sit on any side of their home and gaze at the view of the countryside from all angles – the silver canopies of the olive groves, ducks resting on the dam, the haze of the mountains.

  Jade had the sudden desire to bring her father to see the roof sheeting being laid. It felt like capping the house was some sort of closure, an end to their displacement. She wanted to share the moment so that Paul could see what she saw now: a chance to start over. Maybe it was a good thing their house had burned down, because the new one wouldn’t hold the hollowness her mother’s absence had left seeping in the walls. There would be no glass vases to remind Jade of how Asha loved to pick lavender, or dreamcatcher on the balcony that sang in the wind, no dressing table in her parents’ bedroom where Jade would picture her mother brushing her long honeycomb hair, her neck poised like a ballerina. The mandarin, peony and white musk notes of her perfume wouldn’t linger in the house, her scent constantly haunting Jade.

  They could create new memories in that house. They could forget all about her. Maybe this was exactly what her father needed. A new beginning.

  She imagined them standing on the building site, light in their faces, a smile on his lips, the darkness he had carried in his shadow lifting. He would tell her how proud he was of the way she led the construction. He would talk animatedly of how he would fill his shed with tools once more. They wouldn’t breathe a word of Asha; she would be the furthest thing from anyone’s mind. They would talk about the olive groves and guess when they might bear fruit again.

  When Jade arrived at the cabin she ran inside, excited. She pushed open the door to her father’s bedroom, only to see that the blinds were drawn and it was dark and musty, closed off from the fresh air outside.

  ‘Dad,’ she said softly, seeing the shape of his body asleep on the bed, his back facing her.

  He shuffled but didn’t turn over.

  ‘Dad, the house is almost finished,’ Jade said, unable to keep the excitement out of her voice. ‘They are laying the final sheets of steel to the roof. I want you to see it.’

  He didn’t say anything, so she raised her voice as if he hadn’t heard. ‘Dad, the house, our house, it’s almost finished. Will you come there with me, now?’

  ‘Go without me,’ he mumbled.

  ‘Dad, please,’ she whispered, feeling as if her lungs had been punctured and the air was escaping from them. ‘This is important to me. To us.’

  Silence hovered in the room, heavy and thick, full of unspoken disappointments and regret.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ he whispered, but it was like he’d said nothing at all.

  ‘You’re always sorry but you don’t do anything about it,’ Jade snapped, unable to keep her emotions in check. ‘I’ve done everything for the house. Everything!’ she shouted. ‘I haven’t troubled you once about any of the plans, any of the problems we’ve run into.�
�

  Her dad still didn’t roll over, so she was yelling at his back, which only inflamed her more. ‘The least you could do is face me. Or are you too cowardly for that?’

  As the words left her mouth she felt guilty. She knew her dad wasn’t well but she just couldn’t help herself. ‘Dad, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean that,’ she said, softening her tone. ‘But this is really important to me. I just would love it if you were there.’

  He finally rolled over, revealing bloodshot eyes and sadness embedded into his frown lines. ‘I really am sorry, Jadey,’ he mumbled, his tone genuine, his voice hoarse.

  Jade felt herself retreat. She sat on the edge of the bed. ‘It’s okay, Dad. I just thought seeing the house might …’ Help you forget her.

  ‘You’ve done plenty,’ her father said softly. ‘A child shouldn’t have to see a parent like this.’

  ‘Dad, I’m not a child anymore,’ Jade said softly, delicately, as if he could break.

  ‘You are to me.’

  ‘All right, Dad. When you’re ready, we’ll go there together.’ She stood for a moment, feeling a sense of helplessness mixed with anger at her mother for turning her father into this person she no longer recognised.

  Jade went back to the house and parked on a hill in front of it for a better vantage point. From there she could see the builders as they lifted the charcoal steel sheeting onto the roof.

  She felt proud to see it come together, like a jigsaw puzzle whose final piece was being fitted. She pushed aside the sadness that was creeping up on her. She had rebuilt their home. They would start again.

  In the distance, Jade noticed a woman with copper-and-blonde hair that shimmered in the sun like a sequin. She was kneeling in front of the house, where Jade had just planted roses. Her long, white dress lifted in the wind as if she were made of snow. Ethereal and graceful, a beauty so striking she seemed imaginary.

  Jade felt as if the ground beneath her had given way, as if gravity had shifted. Her knees became jelly, her breath quickened and her heart pounded heavily in her chest as realisation took hold.