“I think it’s Indira who is missing,” said Troy. “I miss Indira.”
“Me too,” said Amy. Indira was a great Christmas guest, because she hadn’t celebrated it growing up and therefore had no rules or expectations or baggage about the holiday. She always got a little drunk and sang carols beautifully. None of the Delaneys could hold a note, so they were rapturous in their appreciation. Also, she would have found a way to convince Joy to let her into the kitchen to help.
“Did you hear that?” Troy called across the room to Logan. “We miss your girlfriend!”
Logan ignored them as he unscrewed the old light globe.
“Get Indira back!” cried Amy. “I command it, peasant!”
One of their favorite games when they were kids involved Amy’s siblings agreeing to be her “peasants.” Well, it was one of her favorite games. They all had to do what she commanded and fetch her things. She could never quite believe she got away with it. She could still remember the sick, delicious feeling of power as she watched Brooke obediently make her bed.
Logan didn’t even bother to respond. Her power was long gone.
Troy lowered his voice. “I don’t especially miss Grant.”
“I miss his roast potatoes,” said Amy.
“He was so fucking proud of them,” said Troy.
“Deservedly so,” said Amy. “Hey, have you noticed how Brooke is—”
“I can hear you both,” said Brooke from the floor next to the couch, where she was lying flat on her back on the purple floral carpet doing some weird kind of pretzel-like stretch. Brooke had worn a summer dress to please their mother, who said, “Oh! That looks nice, although I thought you’d wear your lovely green one today.” Amy had at least made an effort to get the color code right by wearing a vintage green miniskirt and a red singlet top. Her mother said, “My goodness, you look like a gangster’s girlfriend!” The boys wore the same clothes they always wore, and their mother told both of them they looked gorgeous.
“Eavesdropping peasant.” Amy kicked her sister with her foot.
“You’ve forgotten the revolution.” Brooke stretched one hamstring and then the other. “We are no longer your peasants.”
She was Brooke again. That’s what Amy had been going to say. Have you noticed how Brooke is Brooke again? She was back doing random yoga poses and floor stretches. She snorted when she laughed. She talked about lowbrow stuff like The Bachelor. She actually looked taller. Maybe she’d been subconsciously hunching for Grant. “Girls, you must never hunch for a boy!” their mother used to cry, which was all very well for her.
Brooke sat up, her dress bunched up around her knees.
“Bum shuffle,” ordered Amy. “Be cute. Like you used to be.”
“She’s still cute,” said Troy.
Brooke tried to shuffle along the carpet on her bottom but couldn’t do it. “I’ll get carpet burn,” she said. She put her hands flat on the monstrous carpet. “When Dad dies, how fast do you think Mum will tear this up?”
“His body will still be warm,” said Troy.
Amy shuddered. “That’s horrible.”
“Mum should just get people in and do it,” said Troy. “Imagine how much better this room would look with beautiful floorboards.”
“Dad keeps saying he’s happy to tear it up,” said Logan. “I’ve said I’ll do it but then he always changes his mind at the last minute.”
“It’s because Grandma was so proud of it,” said Amy. “They used to call this the Good Room. She worked all those hours to save up to get this carpet after Dad’s father left, and she thought this color was so fashionable.”
“Grandma chose this color,” marveled Brooke. “Imagine actually choosing it.”
She stretched her legs either side of her in a V-shape and dropped her forehead to the horrible carpet.
“Ouch.” Amy shuddered. “Don’t do that.”
“You three all need to stretch more,” said Brooke without lifting her head. “Hey, did I tell you I’ve joined a basketball team?”
“Seriously?” said Logan from his perch.
“Thought I’d try a new sport,” said Brooke into the carpet.
Amy and her brothers all exchanged glances. There was no other sport besides tennis.
“I always wondered how I’d go in a team sport,” said Troy. “Tennis is lonely.”
“Because you’re such a team player,” said Logan.
“I’m good at basketball,” said Brooke.
“Of course you are,” said Amy.
There was an ominous clatter and crash from the kitchen.
“Do you think we should try again to help Mum?” Brooke stretched even lower, her voice muffled by the carpet. “I’m pretty hungry.”
“Yes, I’m actually feeling quite faint.” Troy put the back of his hand to his forehead.
“She yelled at me last time I went into the kitchen.” Logan hopped down from the ladder. “Do you think she’d notice if we ordered a pizza?”
“I opened the oven to check the turkey and she smacked me across the back.” Brooke sat back up, her face flushed. “She literally smacked me.” She pointed at Troy. “You’ve got glitter on your face.”
“Leave it. It looks nice,” said Amy.
“What’s Dad doing?” interrupted Brooke.
“He’s in his office,” answered Amy. “Watching reruns of Harry’s matches.” She’d stood at the door and watched him, his head bent, his massive shoulders hunched, murmuring to himself as he took notes for God knew what purpose.
“Obviously thrilled to spend Christmas with his beloved family,” said Troy.
“It’s because of Harry’s comeback. He’s obsessed,” said Amy.
“This seems to be a new level of obsession,” said Logan. “Now he knows what Mum did.”
“Yep. He’ll never forgive her for taking away his golden boy,” said Troy lightly. He refilled his champagne glass and held up the flute to the light.
“They aren’t talking,” said Brooke. “They’re not even looking at each other.”
“It’s upsetting,” said Amy, and she thought she spoke idly, the way anyone would speak if their parents weren’t talking on Christmas Day, but she saw her siblings straighten and tense. Looks were exchanged. Unspoken warnings shared. This was the way it had been ever since the year of suicidal thoughts. She’d been fourteen. Everybody had suicidal thoughts at fourteen. Unfortunately Amy had written long heartfelt goodbye letters to each member of her family, which had been discovered, roundly mocked, and never, ever forgotten. Brooke said she still had hers “on file,” which was mortifying. (Amy had misspelled the word melancholy.) Such was the paradoxical nature of sibling relationships: they could tease her for the sappiness and spelling of her suicide notes while being terrified she’d write new ones.
“You mustn’t get worked up about it,” said Brooke carefully, as though Amy were teetering on the edge of a bridge.
“I’m not suicidal, it’s just upsetting!” snapped Amy.
Brooke held up her hands. “Got it.”
“I’m not ten! If they get a divorce, they get a divorce!” She could hardly bear to think of it. Her parents living in different homes, trying out new hairstyles and hobbies, new relationships? In truth she felt exactly the same way she would have felt if they’d divorced when she was ten.
“Surely they’re too old to divorce,” said Brooke. “What would be the point?”
“They’re not that old,” said Logan. “It happens.”
“I should have got them a marriage counseling gift certificate for Christmas,” said Troy thoughtfully.
He’d got their mother a bike. You could tell it was a bike, even though every inch of it was beautifully wrapped in gold paper. “A bike!” their mother had cried, both hands to her heart as he carried it in. “How did you know I wanted a bike?”
Troy mysteriously always knew what everyone wanted.
“I must eat,” said Amy. “Brooke, go tell Mum we have to eat somet
hing now because you’re getting a migraine.”
“You tell her you have to eat because you’re having a panic attack,” retorted Brooke.
“Tell her Logan is hungry,” said Troy. “She won’t want Logan to be hungry.”
“I told her I was hungry an hour ago,” said Logan.
Steffi came out from under the coffee table and put her head on Amy’s lap.
“What’s the latest with Claire?” Amy asked Troy as she stroked Steffi’s soft ears. Troy’s ex-wife had been back in Australia trying to get pregnant with their frozen embryos and so far she’d been through one round with no luck.
“She’s having a break, trying again in the new year,” said Troy. “There are four more left.”
“Do you hope that she does get pregnant?” asked Amy. “Or that she doesn’t?”
“I want it for her. I don’t want it for me. I don’t want that guy bringing up my biological child. I really, really don’t want that.” He paused. “Did I tell you I met him?”
“The cardiologist?” asked Brooke. “What’s he like?”
They all looked at Troy, waiting for his answer, staunchly on his side in spite of their sniping, in spite of his past mistakes, suddenly, mysteriously as close as siblings could be. Amy remembered that awful day when their father got out of the car on the highway. One moment they’d all been fighting, hating each other as hard as you can possibly hate a sibling, and then suddenly, the car was silent and Troy was holding Brooke’s hand and they were looking at each other, waiting for their mother’s response, united in their horror.
“He’s an arrogant twat,” said Troy.
“That’s surgeons for you,” said Brooke.
“He’s not right for her,” said Troy. “He calls Claire baby. She’s trying to have a baby and he calls her baby.”
Brooke said, “I mean, I guess that’s a common term of—”
The kitchen fire alarm began to beep. An acrid smell filled the house, and their father limped heavily into the room, radiating grumpiness. One of the grinning snowmen toppled from the shelf and onto the carpet.
“What’s going on?” demanded Stan. He looked at them all as if they were children.
“It’s fine!” Joy shrieked from the kitchen. “Everything is fine! Just relax! Everybody stay right where you are!”
* * *
Joy threw a tea towel up at the smoke detector on her kitchen ceiling to try to make it stop beeping. She wished Logan had never installed the damned thing. It was so sensitive. So judgmental of her cooking.
“It’s not an actual fire,” she told the smoke detector. She caught the tea towel and tossed it up again. It was a bad throw. It landed splat on her face. She twisted it into a ball and threw it again. “It’s just a bit of smoke, you stupid thing! Stop overreacting.”
She’d been doing walnuts in butter and brown sugar like Savannah had done on Father’s Day (she’d told Joy that salad was a “cinch!”), and then she’d been distracted trying to stir the stupid lumps out of the gravy, and next thing the walnuts were black smoking chunks of nuclear waste. No warning, no middle ground!
Lunch kept slipping further and further away. Her children wouldn’t stop interrupting to ask if they could help, and she didn’t want their help, because then they’d all get involved and start making annoying suggestions and ordering her around: Don’t bother with the walnuts, Mum, isn’t it time to put the potatoes on?
It felt like she was stuck in one of those recurring nightmares she still had where she was trying to get one of her children to a match on time but her car was moving in slow motion. She’d wake with her foot still desperately pressing an imaginary accelerator.
She threw the saucepan straight in the bin. It was ruined forever. Everything was ruined forever. What in the world was she trying to prove with this elaborate lunch and all these fancy, fiddly side dishes? No one in her family even liked turkey. Or walnuts. She’d created a picture in her head of a glittering red, gold, and green Christmas Day that would somehow magically make them a family again.
“Are we ever going to eat today?”
Stan was in the kitchen, glowering at her. It was the first time he’d spoken directly to her in weeks, and this was what he chose to say.
“Well, that’s lovely,” she said. “Not ‘Can I do anything to help?’ but ‘Are we ever going to eat today?’”
“Everyone has been offering to help and you refuse to accept,” said Stan.
She said, “Everyone has not offered to help. You have not offered to help.”
“I am very happy to do anything if it will finally get lunch on the table. I am at your disposal.”
I am at your disposal.
It was like seeing his damned mother come back to life. She used to sit in this kitchen exhaling a long stream of cigarette smoke with amused, malicious eyes while Joy cooked: feeling stupid and banal and talking too much.
Joy didn’t know she was going to do it before she did it.
She picked up the first of his mother’s sneering china cats and threw it with the power of a first serve against the wall, decapitating it cleanly. She picked up the second one and did the same. It caught the edge of the kitchen cupboard and sent a glittering shower of hand-painted china across the bench.
There was silence.
“Feel better?” drawled Stan with his mother’s cruel contempt. “Or do I need to pass you another ornament?”
The smoke alarm once again began to beep its thin, sharp, insistent warning of danger ahead.
Chapter 50
NOW
“So then my father stomped out of the kitchen—well, he sort of stomp-limped because of his bad knee—and went back into his office and slammed the door. It turned out Mum had smashed these two ornaments that belonged to my father’s mother.”
“Oh dear. Did they have sentimental value to your father?” asked Roger Strout.
“Spot on, Roger,” said Amy.
Sometimes he suspected she was gently teasing him. Roger Strout was a former automotive fleet sales executive who had accepted a redundancy package two years ago, completed a Diploma of Counseling, and was now offering talk therapy six days a week. His ex-wife thought that was appalling because who in their right mind would accept help from Roger, of all people? No wonder there was a mental health crisis in this country. In fact, a lot of people not in their right mind would accept help from Roger, of all people, because yes, there was a mental health crisis in this country, and people from all walks of life were desperate for help. He was booked up three months in advance. He was well aware of the limitations of his qualifications and experience and scrupulous about never describing his clients as his patients, because it wasn’t a doctor–patient relationship: it was a collaboration.
Right now Roger and Amy sat opposite each other in the matching oversized fabric-covered wing chairs with the brass stud detailing on the arms that all clients touched with their fingertips when they were about to tell him something important.
Amy’s blue-dyed hair was tied back in the tightest, tidiest ponytail he’d ever seen her wear, as if this was one area of her life over which she could maintain control.
At their last appointment she’d mentioned that her mother had sent an unexpected text message saying she was going “off-grid.” Amy had spent the session talking about how she’d like to go off-grid herself, maybe move to a small country town where everyone knew her name, except she really hated the country. She hadn’t shown up for the appointment after that, and then, last week, Roger had got the shock of his life when he saw Amy with her siblings on the local evening news appealing for information about their missing mother.
“So then my father refused to eat Christmas lunch with us, which my mother finally served at around four p.m., by which time we were all starving and quite drunk, and, well … it was a very dysfunctional Christmas Day. But you know, that happens in lots of families, doesn’t it?”
“Christmas can be stressful,” said Roger, who had begun
Christmas Day with an early-morning screaming match with his ex-wife about the agreed handover time for their two children. Festive indeed.
“None of us were exactly in a rush for another family event, and we were all busy and distracted over January. I’m not saying we lost contact with our parents. I mean, how often do you visit your parents, Roger?”
Roger made a noncommittal sound. Amy preferred not to play by the therapy rules and instead pretended they were old friends catching up for a chat. She tried to catch him out by shooting abrupt personal questions at him, which he normally managed to dodge. (The answer was that he had dinner with his parents every Sunday night without fail.)
“But you’re an only child,” she said.
He had no memory of sharing this information.
“See, because there are four of us, we all assumed that someone had been over to the house. Brooke and Logan are always over there, except apparently they weren’t for a few weeks, which they could have mentioned.”
She said this with the cheerful, childish disdain with which siblings often spoke about each other. Roger had a client who was an extremely well-spoken university lecturer, except for when she talked about her older sister, when she morphed into a freckled, pigtailed kid: “My sister gets everything, Roger.”
“Normally Mum is the one organizing family events, or she drops by, or suggests coffee, and so it took us a while to notice she wasn’t in touch,” continued Amy. “Also, it’s not like Mum and Dad are incapacitated. They’re so active. They’re more active than me.” Amy plucked at the fabric of her pants. “Mum isn’t even seventy yet. They keep describing her in the papers as an ‘elderly’ woman. She’s not elderly! They should try returning her first serve when she’s in a bad mood.”
She smiled tremulously at the thought of her mother’s serve.
“My brothers and sister and I worked out that when we got that text from Mum, it had been a whole week since any of us had had any contact from her, which seems wrong. I mean, she is a little bit elderly.”
She used her fingertips to massage her cheeks. “My jaw aches. I’ve been clenching it ever since we filed the missing persons report.” She opened and shut her mouth a few times. “I keep thinking about my rabbit dream.” She looked at him expectantly.
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