by Carol Mason
‘I think I’d just like to be alone,’ I tell him, trying to match his cheeriness and failing abysmally. Tell him! a part of me screams. A cord of opportunity stretches between us and holds us fast. I can’t seem to break it and neither can he. Then I find myself turning and starting to walk away.
‘Don’t,’ he says. ‘Come back to my place. I don’t want you to be alone.’
And then, when I don’t respond, I hear him say, ‘I’m totally not happy with this . . .’
Without turning to look at him again I throw a casual wave over my shoulder, meaning, I’m fine. My misery is swallowing me from the inside out. As I start my climb up the hill I’m aware he’s still standing there watching me; I can feel how confounded he is. How we both are. Eventually I hear his firm footsteps going off in the opposite direction.
TWENTY-SIX
It’s raining heavily by the time I reach the house. I stand in the darkness of the interminably quiet kitchen, unable to take off my jacket, unable to move an inch for thinking how I just did the wrong thing.
The opportunity to tell him was there all night. It nudged me and yet I let it walk on by. Rain lashes the window – even the weather seems to be annoyed with me – and for the first time it hits me so powerfully that I don’t want to be here in this place. This is not my home. I can no more go down that hall, lie in that bed . . . I want to be with my family. Mark and Jessica. I need my husband and daughter more than I need air. The yearning makes me stifle a gasp with my hand and bite down hard on my palm.
The pavement is slick and shiny with rain and street lights. I don’t know how I got outside, out of the gate. All I do is put my head down and walk, rain thrumming a tattoo on my hood. My legs move quickly to a rhythm of angst in my head. I don’t look up until I’ve located his street. House number 6524 is harder to see in the dark. On the crest of the hill there is little illumination except for the moon.
He told me he rents the main floor and there’s an older couple living upstairs so I only look for two-storey houses, ignoring the ranchers. After a hasty extrapolation from the one house number that has a light above it, I land on which one is probably his. There is a glow coming from the front room. Brown horizontal blinds not fully dipped. A number that’s visible only when you’re up close.
A flurry of nerves turn me nauseous. Anxiety causes me to involuntarily blink. I stop several feet before his door. I cannot reach out a hand to knock. For God’s sake, yes you can, I think. I take several deep breaths, hang my head, and then just do it. My heart is barrelling. Seconds pass, and then the sound of feet on a creaky floor. I have the urge to run, but it’s too late. The door opens.
‘Olivia,’ he says. And we are face to face again.
I open my mouth to speak, but with the prospect of saying it I am utterly frozen.
Those three little words. I have never uttered them to a living soul. But they inhabit every cell of my being, worse than any terminal diagnosis. I have often thought there’s no feeling more sobering than the realisation that, of the many things I could change about myself – my hair, my weight, my marital status, my entire identity if I wanted – I can never change this. These three little words stick with me for the rest of my life. They have become me. I am unable to separate me from what I did. We are one and the same.
He waits. And I think, Yes, he was right. What’s my story to the heinous things he will have witnessed and done? I doubt it will even give him pause.
My heart ticks wildly. Suddenly my blood rushes with the prospect of saying it. I am a river about to burst its banks.
Tell him, my inner voice says. Just damned well say it.
I am on the verge. But before I can get a word out I burst into tears.
TWENTY-SEVEN
19 May, 2016
I am arranging her stargazer lilies on the window table when I see her walking up our drive, her white-blonde and bubblegum-pink hair in a sloppy updo. She’s wearing her skinny, ripped blue jeans and schlepping a file folder under her arm. There’s a purple bra strap peeking out where her thin, grey sweater has slid off her shoulder. Close behind her is the UPS man and his eyes are glued to her backside.
It’s come! Hurrah! Talk about cutting it fine!
She sees me watching and gives me the victory smile. I let out the breath I’ve been holding for the last few hours. Phew! In a few short weeks she will be off to college, depending on how she performed today. No one else has been holding their breath. No one else was worried about this. My daughter and my husband expect the expected. I am always on the lookout for something to jinx it coming around the corner.
‘All good then?’ I ask as I open the door to sign for the parcel.
She pulls her earbuds out. ‘Totally. I aced it.’
I must be smiling from ear to ear. The delivery guy beams one back, clearly thinking I’m very happy to see him. I sign for the parcel, then close the door with a sharp donkey-kick. In the kitchen, Jessica is tipping juice down her throat straight from the carton, one of her mannish habits that would probably send the legions of her male admirers running for the hills. ‘Happy birthday!’ I plonk the parcel down on the granite.
There’s an instant where she looks genuinely stunned. ‘Huh? But I got my present already!’
‘That was from your dad.’ When in doubt, Mark buys a Tiffany pendant. ‘This is from me.’
She rapidly fans her face with a hand and pretends to pant like she’s just about to give birth; Jessica has always got ridiculously excited over gifts. Then she runs for the scissors. ‘It’s something to wear. I just feel it.’ I watch as she pierces the thick plastic.
‘Wrong!’ I try to throw her off the scent. Jessica has an almost supernatural ability to guess gifts.
As I observe her diving into it I am peripherally aware of the ambient scenery – the sun streaming in the tall windows, the potent scent of lilies drifting from the front room. The black-and-green-covered hardback book of poems I gave her this morning, still sitting on the end of the bench, that opens with ‘Reynard’s Last Run’. I will come back to this moment in my memory many times when life has gone to pieces, less than a couple of hours from now, wishing we could have frozen time right there, like stopping a ball mid-air.
It’s wrapped beautifully in silver tissue, tied with a silver satin bow. ‘Oh my God!’ She looks at me with wide eyes. ‘I know what this is!’
I feel silly-overjoyed and can’t help but smile.
‘This is unreal!’ She spies a hint of peacock blue. Her cheeks flush. Jessica has the kind of rare alabaster skin that always has a bloom of pink like a pompadour doll. Something she inherited from my mother, that completely skipped me. ‘I can’t believe you did this!’ She gawks at me in disbelief. We had joked as we’d come out of the shop, ‘You could feed a small country with what that thing cost.’
‘This is crazy!’
‘Don’t worry. It got reduced. I was watching it for a while.’
‘You devious person!’ She squints. ‘How reduced?’
‘You don’t ask the price of your own present!’ I tut. ‘But, it was a lot reduced, as it happens. They were practically giving the thing away.’
‘You are so lying!’ She beams another smile and gives a little squeal of glee.
I watch her unpick it from the wrapping. The fitted silk bustier bodice, with the softly capped sleeves in lace and peacock sequins. The floaty folds of skirt. Jessica was always mad about fashion, even as a kid. There would be drawings all over the house of stick models with boobs and big hair, dressed in all manner of her outlandish designs, some of them quite inspired. She could sketch and colour in for hours. I was convinced she was going to be a fashion designer until she ended up being more left-brained like her father.
‘I can’t believe I’m actually holding it and it’s mine!’ She stares at it like it’s her newborn baby.
We had seen it in Neiman Marcus. ‘Plenty other gorgeous grad dresses besides that one!’ my pragmatic daughter said when we saw th
e price tag.
‘Oh my God, I have to try it on!’ She scoops it up and bounds off upstairs.
I’m scrunching wrapping paper when my phone rings and I see it’s Deanna.
‘Hey!’ she says. ‘I just saw the UPS van. Did the birthday girl like her gift?’
‘She loves it! She’s trying it on now.’
‘I must see her in it. You free to pop over for drinks on Saturday? Just us, and maybe the Waxmans.’
‘Damn,’ I say. ‘We can’t. Mark’s going away tomorrow to another conference. Maybe next weekend?’
‘I’ll have to see. I believe we have something on. What about a walk and coffee, Monday?’
Since I started my own event-planning business people often assume that work is one of those things that can get fitted in between muscle pump class and matcha lattes at Starbucks. At first it irritated me; I wanted people to take me as seriously as I was taking myself. But now that I actually hate the damn job, I’d cheerfully have coffee with a lamp post if it means not having to deal with another complaining client. ‘Sure!’ I say. We agree on 10 a.m.
My phone beeps and I see Mark on the other line. ‘Hi!’ he says. It’s amazing how Mark can make possibly the world’s shortest word sound so expansive.
‘Hi, you . . . Guess what? It came!’
‘Ah. World crisis over then? Are we still on for dinner tonight, babes?’
‘Of course! I changed the reso from 6 to 7 p.m., though. Give us a bit more time.’
‘Hmm . . . Time for what?’
I grin. ‘Not that.’ I always appreciate how after all these years Mark still flirts with me and there’s nothing contrived about it; it just comes naturally to him. ‘Or, then again . . . maybe that . . . If one of us is lucky.’
‘Haha. You’re so funny. One of us . . .’ Mark will always explain the joke. ‘I can’t leave yet, though. Sadly. Got a meeting at five. Hope to be out of here by six. Long day.’
I look up and see Jessica at the top of the stairs. ‘Ooh! Hang on . . .’ I fumble for FaceTime. Within a second or two his big blonde head fills my screen and then his patient face transforms into a cheeky grin. ‘What do you think of your stunning daughter?’ I turn the phone so he can see her walking down the stairs.
‘Wow!’ She puts on an entrance for him then flourishes a curtsey when she gets to the bottom. Mark looks genuinely stilled by the sight of her, as though he too can’t get over the wily passage of time. ‘Beautiful. That dress was definitely worth the arm and two legs it cost.’
‘You said it was on sale!’ Jessica gawks at me again.
‘It was. From a fortune to slightly less of a fortune.’
‘I feel bad now!’
‘Let’s take it back then,’ I try to deadpan her.
‘It’s OK. I recover quickly!’
‘You girls still need me? Hmm . . . Getting a little busy here . . .’
‘Hey, where are you?’ Jessica peers into the phone. ‘That’s not your office!’ Behind his head is a velvet sofa and fireplace. She chuckles. ‘Busted!’
‘OK, OK . . .’ He affects his ‘caught out’ face. ‘I’m at the Hyatt. Been here since lunchtime. But I really am having meetings.’ He wags his Manhattan glass, his eyes dancing deviously. ‘It’s a shitty job but somebody’s got to do it.’
‘Long day indeed!’ I say and blow him a kiss. ‘See you in a few.’
‘Drop me at Cara’s?’
I look up from blow-drying my hair. ‘What? Right now?’
‘Pu-leese? I want to show her my dress!’
A sigh is almost on its way out. I get a bit tired of playing chauffeur, but it is her birthday.
‘Can you give me five?’ I say. ‘You know if I don’t dry it properly I’ll be wearing a bird’s nest by dinner.’
A short time later we are in the car. Then, because we’re so immersed in conversation about Jenna Bowles, who walked out of the exam in tears, I accidentally turn right at the traffic lights. Damn! Now we’re destined to pass the high school just as all the kids are piling out and all the super-charged Range Rovers and convertible BMWs line up to collect them.
‘Sorry! I wasn’t thinking,’ I tell her when she groans at my silly error. We are stuck with it now for a mile or two. I stare at the frustrating congestion ahead.
She puts the radio on then starts texting with Cara. I’m peripherally aware of her thumbs flying over keys as she sings along to The O’Jays’ ‘Use ta Be My Girl’.
‘Hey,’ she says, when she’s finished her chatting, and has thrown her phone back into her bag. ‘There’s something I want to talk to Dad and you about tonight. I was going to save it but Cara thinks maybe it’s better if I break it to you first.’
I glance at her. ‘Break what?’ It’s not like Jess to be mysterious.
‘You’re not gonna get mad at me?’
I have to stop now because a tribe of teen boys are waiting at the crosswalk.
‘Promise?’
‘Mad?’ I look at her again but she won’t meet my eyes. ‘Why would I get mad? What have you done?’ The boys amble across and I press my foot on the gas again.
‘OK,’ she says dramatically. ‘Here’s the thing . . . I’m not going to Europe for six weeks. I’m going for a year!’ She squeals with glee.
‘What?’ I shoot her another quick look.
‘I’m sorry! I changed my ticket a few days ago. Cara might be joining me. We’re going to work our way around all these different countries, and we’ll be able to share a room to save some money, although she might only stay six months, by then I’ll have met some people . . .’
She rabbits on about her plan excitedly. My brain is slow to process this. I need to pull over but there’s no safe place. ‘Hang on . . . You changed your ticket? Without telling us? What about school?’
‘I deferred my place.’
‘You . . . ?’ My heart hammers. I must have slowed down because the car behind me gives a toot for me to move on. I return my foot to the gas pedal.
‘I’m sorry!’ she says. ‘I really didn’t want to go behind you guys’ backs but I knew if I brought it up again there’d be all that drama, just like the first time I mentioned it, so I paid for the ticket change out of my own savings and I’m going to find jobs and fund my own travel. I’m not asking for any money off anyone . . .’
‘I can’t believe this!’ I say. I’m less bothered that she’s going for a year than I am about the way she’s gone about it!
‘It’s my life.’ The excitement has disappeared quickly, and now she’s strident. Jessica can have a short fuse. ‘I’m so sick of studying! I’m sick of never having any fun! I want to see the world. You did it at my age! Remember? And I’m not actually doing it behind your backs. You guys don’t have any right to tell me what to do. I’m nineteen now!’
‘Don’t we?’ I realise she’s worked very hard, as good marks don’t come naturally to her. But it still doesn’t stop me saying, ‘Until you’re out there earning a full-time living, we are the ones filling your savings account and funding your education – so we actually do have some rights here, you know.’
Damn. I don’t mean to make it about the money.
I switch the radio off as the music is getting on my nerves. There are several beats where she refuses to add anything as my disappointment must fill the silence, and I try to just focus on driving. ‘And I didn’t do it at your age,’ I say, after a moment or two, still fuming over what she’s just said. ‘I’d already done my degree.’ Now I sound like Mark. I think, Calm down and keep it in perspective – it’s not worth getting into some blistering fight over, plus it’s done now. I change my mind and put the music back on just to distract myself.
The road bisects the park now for about two miles, a thicket of tall cedars on either side interrupted every couple of hundred kilometres by a break in the footpath from where runners, cyclists and dog walkers will emerge then have to wait until all is clear to cross to the other side. Not far off, a pack of teenage boys
dawdle along the road; I watch them clowning around with each other, probably because they’re all excited there are three or four girls in ultra-tight jeans up ahead. Normally this would make me smirk.
I’m aware of her staring out of the window, pissed off. She is annoyed with me? Ha! Then I hear her mutter, ‘Fuck.’ As though her brain is still rattling all this stuff around, and she can’t help but spit a little venom out. ‘Happy birthday to me,’ she says, more pronounced. I feel her glare at me. ‘God, Mom . . . You’re such a hypocrite.’
At first I don’t think I heard straight. Hypocrite? That’s the last thing I am! I’m about to retaliate but . . .
It happens so fast.
I am aware of form. Of something large sailing across my field of vision in a flash of colour. The dull bump. The pitch of myself forwards and the soft leather firmness of the car seat against my shoulders as I’m thrown back. The squeal of something. My brakes.
Oh my God. I have hit a deer.
I am past it, though. Please don’t let me have killed it. It occurs to me to just keep driving. But what happens next is surreal. My car has come to a full stop. I am straddling two lanes, turned slightly in the wrong direction. Jessica is babbling but I can’t pick out words. Everything is remarkably still and green, like I’ve driven into a landscape painting. Nothing is moving, not even a tree leaf. Oncoming cars are not honking impatiently. Instead they are slowing down from a distance – a long line of them. My first real indication that something is seriously amiss. Instinctively I switch off the music. Voices filter through the open roof, a flurry of them. A steady tightening of doom in the air, an intense gathering of dread. I turn my head slightly and stare through the back window, but I’m not sure what I’m looking at. There is a cluster of people standing around, forming a loose circle. A fellow in Lycra on a bike, his bottom raised from the seat, frozen, looking down on something like a wind-hovering bird. There is movement now, a slight clearing. I see legs on the ground.