by Lyn Denison
“No, not at the time. I didn’t and she didn’t. And then, well, I was pregnant.” Beth shrugged. “Mum and Dad took Long Service Leave from work, and we went on an extended holiday.”
“And then there were four,” Kat said dryly. “Didn’t anyone suspect?”
“Not that I know of.”
“Did you love him?” Kat asked flatly.
Beth moved in her seat. “I was fifteen.”
Kat held Beth’s gaze.
“You know what it was like at home, Kat. Any bit of attention was love.” She made a negating movement with her head. “Look, I’m not completely blaming Mum and Dad. I knew what I was doing. Well, as much as any fifteen-year-old knows what they’re doing. I just didn’t plan on getting pregnant. He had condoms, but neither of us had done it before so,” she shrugged again, “it just happened.”
“You didn’t answer my question.”
Beth raised her eyebrows, and part of Kat recognized the similarities between them. She saw herself in Beth’s expression.
“I suppose I did love him,” Beth said carefully.
“You also didn’t tell me who he was. And did he know about me?”
“Kat, I see no need to go into all this—”
“But you’re not looking at it from my place in the situation, are you?”
The silence stretched between them for long moments, until finally, Beth sighed. “I suppose I’m not. And I have to admit I’m finding it difficult to do that. You don’t know how much I wish—” Beth paused, swallowed, then drew herself together. “All right. His name was John Pattison. He was sixteen years old and the cousin of a friend. He was here for a couple of months visiting from Adelaide. He’d gone before I realized I was pregnant. I never told him.”
“Do you know where he is now?”
A myriad of emotions passed fleetingly over Beth’s face before she shook her head. “No. Why would I? And I see nothing can be gained by stirring all this up.”
“You don’t feel he has a right to know about me?”
“No. Think about it, Kat!” Beth appealed. “We were both far too young. He’s probably married, has a family. What’s to be gained by throwing his life upside down.”
“He might just want to know,” Kat said softly.
“And what if he doesn’t? Do you want to put yourself through that?” Beth asked.
Kat’s emotions went into overload and her stomach churned. Perhaps Beth was right. She needed more rejections like she needed a hole in the head. She made herself change tack.
“Did you ever consider having an abortion?” she asked Beth instead.
“Not consciously. I didn’t even realize I was pregnant for months. I must have been in some sort of denial. I kept judiciously ignoring the obvious signs. I was nauseous, and I put on a little weight.”
“Mum didn’t suspect?”
“No. I’d caught a cold or flu as well and it wouldn’t clear up so Mum made an appointment with the doctor. She was to take me herself then something came up at work so she decided I could go on my own. It wasn’t our family doctor but he was pretty shrewd. He asked me if I was pregnant and it went from there. He was the one who brought up the subject of abortion, and then only to tell me I was too far along to have one.”
“So you were stuck with me?” Kat put in wryly.
“I suppose I was. But, Kat, in my defense I don’t think I would have wanted to terminate my pregnancy, even if Mum had wanted me to.”
At this, they both went quiet, lost for long moments in their own thoughts.
“Looking back,” Beth said at last, “I went into emotional shutdown. Mum stepped in and made the decisions. It was easier to let her.”
“Do you have any regrets about that?” Kat asked carefully.
“Yes and no. I know I wasn’t in any position emotionally to make any choices but—” She shifted in her seat again. “I don’t want to lie to you, Kat. I think we both need for me to be honest. Even if Mum hadn’t made the decision she did I probably would have put you up for adoption. I remember the doctor mentioning adoption to me as an option, but then Mum took control and that was that.
“You see, I’m not a very maternal person. I never was. When I was a child I didn’t have any interest in dolls or dreamed about having children, a husband and family like my friends did. I couldn’t see myself raising a child. Not then and not now. I made the decision not to have any, well, any more children.”
“But you married Phil,” Kat put in.
“Yes. Being married suits us both. And having children was never an issue with Phil. Apart from the fact that I was thirty-nine and far too old to be having children when we married, Phil has two sons from his first marriage.”
“Phil was married before?” Kat was surprised. Beth had kept that to herself as well. “Did Mum and Dad know?”
Beth shook her head. “I didn’t see any need to tell them. Phil had been divorced for ten years before we married. His ex-wife remarried, and he has little contact with his sons.” She gave a slight shrug. “I suppose you could say Phil and I are birds of a feather.”
“So what you’re trying to say is the status quo is fine by you.” Kat tried to keep the bitterness out of her voice. “You want everything to go on as though the family secret was still locked in the proverbial closet.”
“Well, yes. And no.” Beth bit her lip. “All I’m saying is I would find shifting gears from your sister to your mother pretty well impossible. I don’t want to make any radical changes. I don’t think I’m capable of doing that.”
“And you think it would be easy for me?” Kat put in. “You’ve always been a shadowy figure in my life, all my life. You were rarely there. A sister who wasn’t even a sister. I used to make excuses because there was such an age difference between us. So what makes you think I want to change anything either? We haven’t even so much as spoken for over a year.”
“I know. And I am genuinely sorry about that. But you’ll have to admit that’s not entirely my fault. You’ve never contacted me either.”
Kat knew this was true. “Would you have wanted me to?”
Beth didn’t reply for long moments. “I have to say on some level I’ve regretted that we couldn’t be closer. I know we should have been. But I could also see it would have been complicated.”
“Did Mum tell you that?” Kat asked sharply and Beth paused again.
“I don’t think so. Not in so many words. After you were born Mum said it would be best if I didn’t get involved with you. She decided I should stay on with Aunt Grace for a few months. By the time I came home everything was in place. Mum was Mum, you were the new baby and I was the big sister. Mum and Dad went back to being parents, and I went back to school.”
Kat was amazed. Her mother’s elder sister, their Aunt Grace, was even more self-possessed and introverted than her mother was. Kat couldn’t remember Aunt Grace being at all interested in either of them, Beth or Kat. “Aunt Grace was part of it?”
“No.” Beth shook her head. “As far as I know Mum and Dad, and the doctor of course, were the only ones who knew. Mum told Aunt Grace she just needed to get used to having another baby without having the complications of me around. So I stayed with her. Aunt Grace’s only comment was that she found it extremely distasteful that Mum and Dad were doing that sort of thing at their age.”
Kat gave a reluctant smile. That rang true. “It can’t have been easy for you,” she said, surprising herself.
“I suppose not. I think I’ve put it all out of my mind for so long it seems like someone else’s dream.”
They lapsed into silence again.
“Mum should never have done it,” Kat said at last.
“I know. But she did. And we can’t change that. In her strange way she probably thought she was doing the right thing.”
“That’s what Dad said the other night.” When my world was knocked off its axis, Kat thought to herself.
“So. As they say, what’s done is done,” Beth sai
d almost matter-of-factly. “And it begs the question, where do we go from here?”
“You said before you didn’t want any upheavals in your life,” Kat reminded her.
“That’s not quite what I said.”
“As good as.”
“I’m trying to be honest with you, Kat. I simply don’t think I’m ready, if I’ll ever be ready, to change our roles. And I don’t think you want to either.”
“You don’t know what I think.” Kat knew she sounded petulant but couldn’t seem to stop herself. “About this or anything else for that matter, wouldn’t you say?”
“That’s probably a fair comment,” Beth agreed graciously. “So. Maybe we could do something about that.”
“About what exactly?”
“About us. About each other. Maybe we could talk more often, get to know each other better.”
“We do know each other,” Kat said, knowing nothing could be further from the truth.
“Do we?” Beth raised one dark eyebrow. “What do you think you know about me?”
Kat shrugged. “I know you were pregnant at sixteen.” Kat took herself to task and made herself meet Beth halfway. “You did well at school, which was probably amazing considering. You worked hard at your job, and now you own your own company. And you got married eleven years ago. None of us attended the wedding.”
“And so passed over thirty years.” Beth smiled faintly. “Yes to all you mentioned. But with hindsight I know I tended to keep the most significant areas of my life well distant from you and Mum and Dad.”
“What do you mean?”
“I sometimes feel I existed in parallel universes to some extent. There was my family life and my true reality. For instance, most significantly, did you know I had an on-again-off-again relationship with an older and very much married man for twenty years or so?”
Kat gazed across at Beth in surprise. “You did?”
“I did. And he was my boss.”
Kat tried to read behind Beth’s closed expression but could only detect a calm acceptance. “And Mum didn’t know?”
Beth laughed softly then. “What do you think?”
“I’d say that would be a no. If Mum had known it would have been just one more dissatisfaction she could have used to verbally abuse Dad with.”
Beth glanced down at her hands. “I guess you’re right. Anyway, I never told her. Yet he was an important part of my life for a very long time.”
Kat tried to recall all she knew about Beth’s boss. He was the previous owner of Beth’s company, and she had known he was married with a family. She remembered her mother often complaining about Beth working such long hours. She’d also got the impression that Beth’s boss’s wife was from what her mother referred to as old money, and more than once she’d shown Kat photos in the newspaper of the couple attending some function or other. She held Beth’s gaze again. “Were you in love with him?”
“Perhaps. I thought I was for a long time.”
“Did his wife ever, well, know about you and him?”
Beth shook her head. “I don’t think so. He always said he’d leave her when his children grew up.” She gave a bitter laugh. “Saying that out loud makes me seem very gullible, doesn’t it?”
“But he never left her?”
“No. But who knows. It never came to that. Fate stepped in. His wife was involved in an awful car accident and was, still is, confined to a wheelchair. He became remorseful and decided to sell the business so he could care for her. I decided I’d buy it and because he was so remorseful I was able to afford it. A couple of years later I met Phil.”
There was silence again while Kat digested all that Beth had said.
“All that, well, the last bit, is in confidence, of course.”
“Off the record?” Kat said wryly.
“If you like. So, what about you?” Beth prompted.
“What about me?” Even as she said the words Kat was overcome by guilt again. She reminded herself again that she was supposed to be meeting Beth halfway. She shrugged. “Not much to tell. I still teach at the same school, and I’m renovating this house.”
“Short and to the point,” Beth remarked. “Em tells me you and Shael broke up.”
Kat’s eyebrows rose in surprise. She had never discussed her sexuality with Beth, but it seemed Em had. Something else Em hadn’t mentioned, apparently. “Oh, yes. I forgot,” Kat said off-handedly. “And I’m a lesbian. But it seems you already know that.”
“Yes, I know you are. I’ve known since Mum told me all about you and Ruth Dunleavy.”
“She told you?” Kat rolled her eyes. “Why am I not surprised?”
“She wanted me to talk to you, to try to, as she put it, talk some sense into you.”
“She did?”
“She did.” Beth laughed softly. “Which is quite amusing on a number of fronts, not the least that I didn’t think I had any right to try to tell you anything, but especially how to live your life. Actually, I knew Ruth.”
Kat looked at Beth in amazement. Yet she shouldn’t be surprised. They were almost the same age and grew up in the same suburb.
“I didn’t know her well,” Beth continued, “but we were both keen golfers at one stage and belonged to the same golf club. I quite liked her. She was bright and entertaining. She made no secret of the fact she was a lesbian even then.”
“You weren’t—” Kat tried to choose her words carefully. “You never thought you might be a lesbian, too?”
Beth was momentarily taken aback. “No. Why would you think that? Because I knew Ruth?”
Kat shrugged. “Ruth didn’t have many straight friends. You only seemed to mix with women, and you didn’t get married until you were almost forty.”
“I was with Ben for most of those years. Secretly.” Beth gave a crooked smile. “I suppose it was akin to being in the closet. But no, I wasn’t a lesbian. I simply wasted too many years on a lost cause.”
Their eyes met again and Beth sighed. “But part of me can well and truly understand why you shied off men.”
“That’s not what I did,” Kat said emphatically. “I simply prefer women.”
“All right. So you prefer women,” Beth placated. “All I wanted to say was that unlike Mum and Dad, I have no problem with that. It’s your preference. And I would never presume to try to tell you how to live your life. I certainly didn’t let anyone tell me how to live mine.” She paused. “Well, after you were born, that is.”
Kat sat silently digesting Beth’s words. She supposed she should be grateful Beth didn’t subscribe to their parents’ opinions on Kat’s supposedly abhorrent lifestyle.
“I just wanted to know if you were okay,” Beth repeated and Kat looked up inquiringly. “I mean, apart from the shock of Mum’s revelations, are you getting over your breakup with Shael? Em said you’d been together for ten years.”
Kat paused. Just short weeks ago she would have said she felt she’d never get over Shael’s betrayal. But now, with this change of scene and a new focus, she knew she was getting her life back together. The heavy depression she’d felt in the awful old flat had lifted and if it hadn’t been for Meggie, Kat knew she could simply have moved on with her new life. But there was Meggie. There always would be Meggie. Kat loved her dearly and would never be able to walk away from her.
“I see you aren’t over her.” Beth’s soft words drew Kat back from her thoughts.
“Oh, no. I mean, yes, I am. I’m okay. I’ll admit I was devastated in the beginning, and I’m still sort of upset but not in the same way. We, Shael and I, just have to sort things out. Financially. And about Meggie.”
“Meggie?” Beth frowned, obviously puzzled.
“Yes. Em didn’t mention her?”
“No. I don’t think she did.”
“Now, that’s very unlike Em, the news of the world.”
Beth smiled. “I suppose so. Em’s very, well, open. No, she didn’t tell me about Meggie. Was she the other woman involved?”
“No.” Kat shook her head. “Meggie’s ten going on thirty, and she’s,” she shrugged, “I guess she’s sort of your granddaughter.”
“You had a child?” Beth asked incredulously.
“Meggie’s not my biological daughter. I wish she was. She was just a baby when Shael and I met. But I couldn’t love her more if she was my daughter.”
“Well, I’m totally surprised. I mean, I knew you and Ruth broke up, and I knew you were with Shael. I think you even mentioned her once or twice when we spoke.”
“On the rare occasions we spoke.”
Beth nodded. “We should have contacted each other more often, I know. I suppose we’re both products of our upbringing. If we had spoken at least I’d have known about Meggie, wouldn’t I?”
Kat knew it was as much her fault as Beth’s and she said as much. “I’m sorry. I should have made more of an effort.”
“We both should.” She paused. “Maybe sometime you could introduce me to Meggie.”
Slowly Kat smiled. “I’d like that. You’ll love her.”
Beth glanced at the time. “I guess I should go now. I said I’d take Dad up to the hospital.” She slid a glance at Kat. “I don’t suppose you want to come with us.”
Emotions rose and warred inside Kat. “I don’t think I can,” she said at last. “I’m sorry, Beth. I’m not ready. Not just yet.”
“All right. I understand.” She walked to the door and Kat followed her. “I will keep in touch though, Kat. I promise.” And then she was gone, leaving Kat with even more to think about.
Kat washed her dishes after eating a light dinner she hadn’t tasted. Her mind went from Beth to her unknown biological father then to Jess as she relived pieces of conversations, of memories. But mostly she thought of Jess and those stolen moments she wished had gone on forever. Her emotions felt like they were running on a never-ending roller coaster.
Finally, in exasperation, she had a long shower before donning comfortable old baggy shorts and an equally old T-shirt. She was about to sit down and check out what was on television when there was a tentative knock on her door. Kat opened it to find a subdued Jess standing there.