But June and Mary are past that; they’ve outgrown, or denied, such exchanges, for to feel too much might tear open the membrane holding all the other emotions intact.
June glances at Mary’s face—her lips are curled in polite delight. Pia’s smile mirrors Mary’s.
Social masks. Though family, that’s all they see of each other. One layer deep. And never do they discover, for they do not reveal to each other, the multitude of layers sitting beneath the skin and the tumbling, rocking waves of an inner-life.
Chapter 8
Grace
Since receiving the email from the secret daughter, Grace has done her best to swallow the growing sense of betrayal down, allowing it to fester in the acid of her stomach. She loved John with all her heart and he loved her too. She knows that.
But a potential daughter, a daughter not born of their own relationship, raises a million alarm bells. And though infidelity might only be one possibility as to the reason for this daughter, she has resisted looking deeper for answers in case her husband did betray her.
Because then what? How she views her entire marriage, the death of her husband, the man he was, would all change.
After tossing and turning all night, this morning she woke with a vigour she hasn’t possessed in a very long time. A vigour fuelled by anger. By potential adultery. And with that vigour she has turned the entire house upside down, seeking something that would show her that this so-called daughter, this intrusive Rebecca Putsy, is a liar and a con artist, hell-bent on destroying the fraying connection Grace has to her deceased husband.
The last place left to look is the office.
Grace has sat in John’s office, at his desk, many times since his death, running her hands over the smooth timber handles of his chair and edging her fingertips along the grooves on his desk.
He was always the one to handle the budget, pay the bills, do their taxes, and file their paperwork. She never had to do anything like that. John took the rubbish out, mowed the lawns, and handled the general maintenance. Grace was who shopped, prepared meals and took care of the housework.
Three months after his funeral, she came home from a weekend with her son in Adelaide to a house with no power. The contents of the fridge and freezer had rotted, staining the house with the smell of decay. For weeks, she couldn’t rid the fridge of the stench.
The power company had disconnected the electricity because she hadn’t paid the bill. She had forgotten that was something she had to do now. John did that.
Life for Grace this last year has been more than loss and grief; it has been about learning to navigate through this world made strange and unfamiliar because her skipper, John, is no longer here leading the way.
Grace left the office to last because, deep down, she knows this is where any evidence of this daughter if it does exist will be found. But time’s up.
Grace sets two boxes on the carpet and collects all John’s golfing and fishing magazines. She drops them in the box marked for rubbish. Moving onto the filing cabinet, she pulls the drawer open. Inside is a long row of alphabetically arranged green folders hanging from metal rods.
The folders are crammed full of paperwork, some bursting and crumpled pages hanging out the tops of folders. Seeing the immensity of documents has confusion tunnelling her vision. Fog moves in, shadowing her thoughts.
Her fingers tremble. Her heart picks up pace. Existing within this cave of grief, attention always on avoiding the looming creature that lurks within the shadows, is taking its toll.
But this has to be done. This has to be done.
She fingers through the A folder—old invoices and receipts for insurance and other such things are inside. The B folder holds similar paperwork.
Scratchy irritation stirs. Irritation at John. How dare he put her through this?
Hot anger tautens all her skin, compresses her ribcage. Anger because John has gone and died and left her questioning their entire marriage or if she even knew him at all.
With sharp motions, she fingers through the paperwork in each folder before bundling the folders into her arms, the wire hangers digging into her forearms, and shoves them into the box marked for keeping.
Grace opens the top drawer of the desk—stationery and the like. She pulls the full drawer out and tips the contents into the rubbish box, then moves onto the next drawer that holds some calendars and old notebooks. Mostly empty. She tosses them in too.
When she pulls on the third and last drawer, it doesn’t open. There’s a lock on this one. She sits down in the seat as though she is a dead weight and stares at the drawer.
What the hell are you hiding from me, John, you bloody bastard?
Grace lurches to her feet, heads to the garage for a hammer. When back in the office, she swings at the timber drawer as hard as she can, over and over, clanging and banging, eventually splitting the drawer open. She throws the hammer to the carpet at her feet and heaves off the splintered drawer front. She tosses that aside and reaches inside for the bits of paper and notebooks.
Flipping through the papers, nothing stands out as incriminating, that is until she uncovers an invoice. Grace carefully holds the invoice in her trembling hand. It is for a private investigator and states ambiguously: For Services Rendered.
She closes her eyes and takes a deep breath, trying to calm her racing heart.
Not outright evidence, but when combined with the email, it’s enough to confirm to Grace that John went to his grave a liar.
Chapter 9
Lily-Rose
Three o’clock in the afternoon and Lily-Rose has only now dragged herself out of bed. She staggers down the hall between the half-filled moving boxes and bubble wrap. The sun is much too bright and needles to the back of her eyes like a jabbing finger.
She squints against the sharp light as she rounds into the main living area. The view through the glass balcony doors, out to the Sydney Harbour, is always stunning, but this afternoon, she doesn’t dare look.
Her mouth is furry with an acrid taste like her last meal was from the rotting contents of a garbage bin.
With a hand to her throbbing head, she searches for paracetamol in the medicine cupboard above the stove top. The stove top Lily-Rose has not used in the entire seven years she has lived here. Hugh always did the cooking. He liked it. Was good at it too. Said it relaxed him after dealing with sick people all day long.
Fuck you, Hugh.
He is the reason she feels like shit this morning. Ever since he came over last month with divorce papers, she has been an emotional wreck. For a full week she couldn’t stop crying, her eyes red and puffy. It can’t be good to be rubbing her fragile skin with tissues all day long.
Then she was angry—almost violently angry. How dare he waltz on over like he is Jesus or some such person and hand her papers as though she didn’t have a say in whether or not they should remain married.
Yes, she had an affair. She did. But something had been missing either in their marriage or inside herself, she is unsure what or which. She didn’t feel loved, cherished, beautiful—not in all the ways that she needed—and hadn’t for many years. If ever.
Hugh has to take on some responsibility for what happened too!
The anger lasted a long while, then the grief kicked in again, followed closely by hopelessness. Hopelessness and desperation, which are the sole catalysts for her bender last night.
Aside from dancing on a table at some bar along the Darling Harbour, her memory of last night has an overwhelming number of black spots. Who can concentrate when her head is pounding like a brick is smashing her skull?
She finds a tab of paracetamol and with shaking hands, pops two onto her tongue. Two big swallows of water and they are down. The water sloshing in her belly is enough to announce that she is starving and seedy.
She flops onto a stool and reaches for her phone. Sunday is her assistant’s day off, but Lily-Rose is in no shape to take care of herself.
“Julia,” she says,
voice hoarse and weak. “Drop what you’re doing. I am a dying woman here. Can you please grab me a strong, hot coffee, a bottle of orange juice and a hamburger? As quickly as you can please. Oh, and some chips.”
As she places her phone back on the bench, she notices the screen full of texts and missed calls. Her stomach lurches. What the fuck has happened now?
The first text is from her soon-to-be ex-husband.
HUGH: Classy. Please be so kind as to keep in mind how your public mid-life crisis affects my reputation too.
Then her best friend Rachel Chance.
RACHEL: Big night, Lily-Rose? Fine form, darling. Gave me a good laugh this morning.
Then her daughter.
PIA: Holy hell, Mum! Is everything okay? Ring me!!!
Followed by her publicist.
JENNY: Are you trying to make my job hard for me? Even I, the queen of publicity, do not know how I’m going to deal with this.
Two minutes later from her publicist again.
JENNY: Don’t worry, I’m working on trying to spin this positively. Help me, God.
JENNY: Okay, the fact that you’re not answering my calls or texting me back means you’re either dead or in bed. I’m guessing the latter. So here’s the link. Pleasant morning, Sunshine! http//:www.womansworldmag/lily-rose-freedman-big-night-out
Her thumb hovers over the link. Her heart is racing like she has awakened from a nightmare—perhaps she has, but rather awakened to a nightmare.
She squeezes her eyes shut, winces and quickly clicks the link.
A new screen opens with a headline. Out the corner of one eye, she dares to read it.
LILY-ROSE – AN UGLY DISPLAY ON THE STREETS OF SYDNEY
Her stomach drops. She opens both eyes and scrolls down. Front and centre, below the headline, is an enormous picture of Lily-Rose on all fours out the front of her house, a taxi beside her, vomiting into the gutter.
Half her breast is hanging out of her dress, which the gossip site has covered with a big gold star that matches the gold star covering her bare arse swinging in the breeze for all the world to see as her dress has ridden up to her waist.
Lily-Rose stands and screams, then throws the phone across the room. With a clang, it hits the floor-to-ceiling glass door that leads out onto the patio, shattering the pane from top to bottom. The glass implodes and crashes to the tiles with a loud roar.
Wind, noise and sunlight gush through the empty space.
“You’ve got to be kidding me. You’ve got to be bloody kidding me.” She marches to the stools that line the kitchen bench, takes two legs in a white-knuckled grip and hoists a stool into the air. She wobbles; it’s heavier than she anticipates.
Fierce violence rumbles in her guts and she screams as she rushes to the second glass door. Her bare feet crunch over broken glass. Pain stabs as her soles are jabbed and cut.
She roars another scream and swings the stool like a bat at the door. Her arms jolt with the impact. Myriad veinlike cracks spread from the point of impact, then the window bursts into a million little nuggets and crashes to the floor.
“Can’t I go through a divorce in private?” She throws the stool across the room. “Can’t I fuck up once without it being spilt all over the media?” The stool clanks against the tiles.
Warm tears sting her eyes. Her chest burns with pain. Her lungs are tight, airless. Why did she sleep with Antonio?
If there is one thing in her life she has ever wanted to change, that is it.
If there is one moment she regrets so deeply the guilt is like a hot flame lancing all her flesh, that is it.
If there is one event that she will never be able to make amends for, that is it.
Chest heaving, she spins and sprints at the wall nearest her. As she is near, she bends so her forehead is the first to collide with the hard plaster. A thud, a dull throb, and then she’s falling…
Blackness.
Chapter 10
Pia
The bathroom at Viewtree House is an ice room. Pia can’t understand how Nan and Aunt June can shower in here during the harsh Tasmanian winter, let alone in the warmish spring.
The tiles grip the cold and sting the soles of her feet as she steps out of the shower, which is just a shower rose installed over an old claw-foot bath, and tiptoes the long length of the bathroom to where her towel and clothes are waiting on a wonky chair.
Goosebumps rise over her arms and legs as she shivers into a towel and quickly dries herself. The ceilings are not too high in this bathroom, but the enormity of the room means even the steam has little chance of heating the space.
Her first stipulation is that the insulation is updated and the tiles are ripped up and re-laid with underfloor heating. The busy wallpaper, pale with a pattern of big flowers, faded in some places, torn in others, needs a complete refurb.
But the original plaster is to stay. The way it is shaped above the arched window is aesthetically quirky. You don’t see old-school craftsmanship like this in contemporary homes.
In San Francisco, Pia had worked in a historic hotel. She was infatuated by the old-world charm from the moment she stood across from the twelve-story structure and looked up, let alone when she strode through to the lobby with all the marble columns and ornately moulded ceilings. Perhaps while growing up and visiting Nan and Aunt June during school holidays, Viewtree House worked at shaping her tastes.
Excitement buzzes through her limbs for what she is about to embark upon with her family. Yes, coming to Tasmania has veered her a long way from her original plans but, in a way, it is still on the same trajectory.
She will be part owner of a bed and breakfast. Not a Hilton or a Sheraton by any measure, but something much more intimate, historic and sentimental. A better option.
While still naked, she drops the towel covering her and stands in front of the mirror that hangs over the basin. She presses a hand to her stomach and sighs. Perhaps this possibility of life nestled in her belly is the main reason for coming home.
Before leaving the USA, she bought a pregnancy testing kit and followed the instructions to the letter. Two pale blue lines appeared on the stick, visually pointing out that her life is about to monumentally change.
She still can’t believe it. There has to be another explanation. She has booked an appointment with the local doctor for today to confirm once and for all.
Speaking of doctors, when Pia is back in her room, she notices on her mobile that she has three missed calls from her father.
Her excited buzz from earlier vanishes. Since Mum decided to play the mid-life crisis card and sleep with a younger man, talking to either of her parents fills her with a tight aching dissonance.
Even though she has certainly not taken sides, every conversation with either of them is filled with buttered-on placation and carefully selected topics.
She calls Dad back. He answers mid-way through the first ring. “Pia?”
“Hi, Dad.”
“You’re home? In Australia?”
“Yeah. I arrived home yesterday. I was going to give you a call today to let you know—”
“So you obviously haven’t seen the news.”
She frowns, shakes her head, as a deep sense of foreboding fills her. “No. Why?”
“It’s your bloody mother. Just wait, I’ll send you a link, no use trying to describe it to you…” clicks and clacks sound. “There, I sent it. Have you got it?”
She looks at her screen and the message dings. “Yep. Let me take a look.” She opens the link to a news article and front and centre is a picture of her mother on all fours in a gutter. Important body parts are tactfully blurred. “Jesus Christ.”
“Is this some kind of a joke? Some payback for handing her divorce papers?”
Pia gasps. “You’re getting divorced? You didn’t tell me that.”
“I’m sorry, honey, I thought I told you.”
This feels so … wrong. This feels more wrong than her mother having an affair. “A divorce is
so final, though. Are you sure—”
“Having an affair with a man half her age is pretty final too, wouldn’t you think?”
Pia sighs into the phone, scrubs a hand through her hair. “I guess so. But do you think you should give it more time before you start taking big actions like divorcing?”
“It’s best to peel the Band-Aid off quickly, honey. But the divorce isn’t the issue here. The issue is your mother writing herself off and splashing it all over the media.”
“I hardly think she would have meant this.” She looks at the picture again and cringes, then sits on the end of the bed, her face and neck hot.
“I still have a career I need to pursue. I know it’s never been as worthy as her acting, but it’s important to me. And the last thing I need is a hospital ridiculing me about my ex-wife.”
Ex? How can he talk so casually about this? “She’s still your wife, Dad. You’re not divorced yet.”
“Not yet. But the quicker the better.”
Tears prick the back of her eyes. “Geez, Dad, can you think about how this is making me feel.” She barely gets the words out, her throat is so tight, but when she hiccups a sob, she pulls the phone away from her mouth.
“Honey, I’m sorry. Please don’t get upset about this.”
“Sure,” she manages, words choked, and wipes her eyes. “I won’t get upset about my parents divorcing. I mean, it’s not my life. It doesn’t affect me, does it?” Her sarcasm is laid on thick.
Dad sighs, his breath airy through the phone. “Of course it affects you. But I can’t help it. This is something we are all going to have to push through.”
Pia sobs again—an ugly, mournful cry. It has to be the hormones. Crying is not what she does. Throughout the entire mess with her parents, she hasn’t shed one tear. But now she is behaving like a lunatic.
“Fine. I’ll pull on my big girl pants and push through it.” Almost no conviction supports her words. “But what do you expect me to do about Mum?”
“Can you give her a call and talk to her. Try and make her see how her behaviour affects all of us.”
The Secrets Mothers Keep Page 4