by Isla Evans
CONTENTS
Title Page
Copyright Page
One
Two
Three
Four
Five
Six
Seven
Eight
Nine
Ten
Eleven
Twelve
Thirteen
Fourteen
Fifteen
Sixteen
Seventeen
Eighteen
Nineteen
Twenty
Twenty-One
Twenty-Two
Twenty-Three
Acknowledgements
Ilsa Evans lives in a partially renovated house in the Dandenongs, east of Melbourne. She shares her home with her three children, two dogs, several fish, a multitude of sea-monkeys and a psychotic cat.
She has completed a PhD at Monash University on the long-term effects of domestic violence and writes fiction on the weekends. The Family Tree is her seventh novel.
www.ilsaevans.com
Also by Ilsa Evans
Spin Cycle
Drip Dry
Odd Socks
Each Way Bet
Flying the Coop
Broken
ILSA EVANS
The
Family
Tree
First published 2009 in Macmillan by Pan Macmillan Australia Pty Limited
1 Market Street, Sydney
Copyright © Ilsa Evans 2009
The moral right of the author has been asserted.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted by any person or entity (including Google, Amazon or similar organisations), in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, scanning or by any information storage and retrieval system, without prior permission in writing from the publisher.
National Library of Australia
cataloguing-in-publication data:
Evans, Ilsa.
The family tree / Ilsa Evans.
ISBN 978 1 4050 3903 1 (pbk.).
A823.4
Typeset in 11/15 pt Birka by Post Pre-press Group
Printed in Australia by McPherson’s Printing Group
The characters and events in this book are fictitious and any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.
Papers used by Pan Macmillan Australia Pty Ltd are natural, recyclable products made from wood grown in sustainable forests. The manufacturing processes conform to the environmental regulations of the country of origin.
These electronic editions published in 2009 by Pan Macmillan Australia Pty Ltd
1 Market Street, Sydney 2000
The moral right of the author has been asserted.
All rights reserved. This publication (or any part of it) may not be reproduced or transmitted, copied, stored, distributed or otherwise made available by any person or entity (including Google, Amazon or similar organisations), in any form (electronic, digital, optical, mechanical) or by any means (photocopying, recording, scanning or otherwise) without prior written permission from the publisher.
The Family Tree
Isla Evans
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The Family Tree has its roots in a short story I wrote twenty years ago, when trying to come to terms with the death of my own father. As such, I would like to dedicate it to those who have spoken out for the right to die with dignity. I salute you all.
She saw the rifle, its barrel gleaming dully in the fading light, as soon as she turned into the passageway leading to her father’s bedroom. She came to an abrupt halt and stared, disbelief shoved aside by mushrooming distress. For as long as she could remember that rifle’s existence had been betrayed only by a flash of walnut stock or a glimpse of blackened metal deep in the recesses of her father’s wardrobe; but now it was out in the open. And she understood the implications immediately.
The rifle was propped in the only corner of the bedroom that she could see from where she now stood, and she knew there was significance in the placement. To see the rest of the room she would have to continue up the passage and through the doorway, then turn to face the matching twin beds, and her father, and a choice that had clearly been made. But instead she remained where she was, unwilling to move forward in either space or time. And she suddenly reasoned that the events waiting to unfold could not begin without her, that she was the linchpin, and therefore as long as she remained on the periphery there could be no conclusion. But even as she clutched at this reasoning, the rifle casually mocked her with its presence. And she knew that, really, she was nothing more than a bit player. She could only postpone, not prevent, whether she liked it or not. But still, that first step was just so damn hard.
ONE
It was the loss of three whole months that finally opened Kate’s eyes to the enormity of the problem. For quite a few years now she had been accustomed to losing a slab of time – usually during spring, which seemed to excel in a ‘now you see me, now you don’t’ type of methodology. One minute she would be noting with pleasure that Christmas was soon approaching, and the next she would be standing, rather stunned, at the pointy end of the stick. With everybody else having long finished decking their halls and bowing their hollies, and now just becoming inebriated on a surfeit of Christmas spirit. And she would wonder frantically whether she had somehow slipped through a ripple in time, and whether there was any way of clawing her way back again.
But that year it wasn’t just a few weeks that went by the wayside, but an entire season. It seemed that she tore August off the calendar only to reveal December lurking beneath, having used the cover of winter to do a little illicit queue-jumping. And at first she couldn’t even see the track from where she was standing, let alone start planning how to get back on it. Because the time-warp issue wasn’t the only concern. It was exacerbated by – or perhaps even related to – the fact that the very last remnants of her get-up-and-go had quite clearly got up and fled, and showed no signs of returning, even for a fleeting visit.
Somehow Kate did get through Christmas, probably because she’d done it for so many years it was almost second nature now. Making lists, fighting crowds, writing cards, wrapping presents, attending festivities, and sourcing the globes for Sam to light up, once more, the sputtering fifty-year-old Christmas-tree lights that his late mother had once bought in Coles for a few shillings. And which, apparently, sentimental grounds demanded couldn’t be replaced even if their homicidal tendencies became more pronounced with every passing year.
But the traditional argument she mounted against the lights was largely absent this year. Indeed, it was difficult to muster up any level of concern, despite the obvious threat to life and the vicelike headaches brought on by spasmodic bursts of white light. Instead it seemed that, in a swift internal takeover, her get-up-and-go had been replaced by a lethargy that made each of her chores feel like climbing Mount Everest. Whilst dragging along the rest of her family in a sled tied to her back.
Strangely, as well as producing a desire to simply sleep each day away, despite a predominance of bad dreams, the lethargy also opened her eyes to things that she hadn’t quite registered before, and they rankled. Like the way everybody sat on the
couch watching television while she decorated the Christmas tree. And the way she devoted hours to finding that perfect present, while they all dashed out at the last minute and flew from shop to shop merrily grabbing whatever was left. And the way she spent the entire morning cooking Christmas dinner only to have Sam sit in pride of place carving the turkey and grandiosely handing out slices. With a largesse that suggested not only had he cooked the bird, but he’d also raised it from a chick and breastfed it each evening.
Then there were her presents. A new, very expensive vacuum cleaner from Sam that did everything bar toast bread, a pair of dangly beaded earrings from Shelley, a bottle of perfume from little Emma, an electric pancake maker from Jacob, and a book entitled In Pride of Place: The fascinating history of garden gnomes from Caleb. Complete with a free plaster garden gnome whose badly painted face gave him the appearance of the elephant man. And, as she opened each gift, the relevant giver spent several minutes extolling its virtues, and their cleverness in choosing it.
‘I noticed your old vac wasn’t very efficient last time I did the car,’ said Sam proudly, putting on his glasses to read the hundred and thirty page instruction book. ‘And it didn’t have all those bits to get under the seats and that sort of thing.’
‘You’re always wearing those,’ commented Shelley, pointing disparagingly at her mother’s tasteful gold sleepers. ‘So I thought I’d get you something a bit funkier.’
‘This little beauty’ll make two pancakes at a time,’ enthused Jacob, running a hand lovingly over the shiny chrome surface of his gift. ‘So you know how usually we have to wait ages when you make us pancakes? Not any more!’
‘I know how much you love books,’ said Caleb with a wave towards his mother’s pile of editorial work. ‘And you also like gardening, so when I saw this book I was rapt! And a free gnome! How cool was that?’
‘Da,’ dribbled little Emma, who was yet to utter an intelligible word, as she popped the perfume bottle out of her mouth and held it up, the atomiser showing clearly the amount of damage one tiny tooth can do in less than a minute.
And it wasn’t just that the gifts weren’t particularly thoughtful or, if they were, displayed a distinct lack of knowledge about her (for instance, she would never willingly choose vacuuming, pancake-making or gardening as a leisure activity), it was compounded by the fact that each person then demanded visual proof that she appreciated their particular offering. So Kate’s Christmas morning was spent with In Pride of Place: The fascinating history of garden gnomes propped on the kitchen counter as she made piles of pancakes for breakfast while wearing the dangly earrings that, every time she turned her head too quickly, whipped around and threatened to impale an eyeball. Then she had to use the new perfume, which entailed removing the damaged atomiser knob and pressing the thin tube into her wrist hard enough to release the perfume, so that while she smelt nice, she also had a row of tiny indentations across her wrist that looked like a tribal tattoo. Finally, because Sam was looking rather put out, in between stuffing and cooking turkey, roasting pork, carving ham, baking copious amounts of potatoes, pumpkin and parsnip, and making gravy, she had to trial-run the new vacuum cleaner, which had such strong suction that it devoured some silver tinsel that had been trailing from the Christmas tree and very nearly brought the whole thing down.
But easily the worst present of all was the one which displayed the most insight and the one which she herself had placed under the tree. A hardback book from her father with a glossy black jacket titled, in vivid red lettering: So you want to write? Then enough with the excuses – just do it! And as Kate stared at the cover, knowing that her family’s eyes were fixed upon her with concern, it was all she could do to hold her smile in place. And not let it slide away until she burst into tears and flung the hardback through the nearest window. Preferably a closed one. Let Sam vacuum up that mess with his one hundred and thirty page instruction, supersonic, super-strength vacuum bloody cleaner.
Then Christmas, too, was past, gone in a blur of tinsel and a flash of epileptic fairy lights, and it seemed like the seventeen hours she’d been awake that day had been condensed into three at the most. And she fell into bed on Christmas night with the sort of weariness that saps bones, and then opened her eyes on what felt like the next morning only to discover that it was New Year’s Eve. Already. Because life wasn’t just passing quickly, it was roaring past with a velocity that was downright terrifying. Like a hurricane that probably wouldn’t stop until she was ready for a nursing home. Then time would go back to normal, and she’d sit at the window in her wheelchair with a crochet rug over her lap wondering where the years had gone, and why they were now limping past as if ancient themselves.
And when the elderly Kate tried to live in the past, there would be this huge black hole in the latter half, containing only a blur of momentum with occasional events standing out as atypical peaks in a flow chart. Like when Shelley announced that she and Daniel, her live-in partner of the past year, were separating and, oh by the way, she was pregnant. Or the day Jacob declared that he was giving university a miss in favour of becoming a professional Internet gamer and yes of course he had thought it through. Or like 18 June just gone when she’d stood in her father’s bedroom and wondered, desperately, whether refusal was an option. Or whether it would simply leave her with a far larger burden of guilt, exacerbated by the understanding in his eyes.
But the main problem was the whirlwind. Definitely. And even if its momentum had increased post-June, the fact remained that it had been eddying before that. And, strangely, she seemed to be the only one affected. So that they were all busily living life, while she was simply providing sustenance, like bloody pancakes. And being the wind beneath their wings wasn’t as fulfilling as it was cracked up to be. No, she wanted to have the wings. So that not only could she, too, fly, but she could also use them to beat everybody over the head until they started picking up after themselves, and feeding themselves, and generally caring for themselves so that she could get something done. Something for herself.
Like maybe write a book.
And that, she suspected, was the crux of the problem. Not her life itself, or even her father, but simple run-of-the-mill frustrated ambition. Because there had always been a book, or several, curled up somewhere within her, just waiting for extraction. Years ago they had been friendly entities, which lent her a sense of warm security with the knowledge that one day the time would be right for their birth. As a university student she had spent her spare time in smoky dark cafes with fellow literary souls pretending to be tortured by talent. Feeding off their collective angst to produce obscure poetry and agonisingly dark prose. And if somebody had told her then that she would end up editing other people’s work, she would never have believed them. Because back then she never doubted that her drive was unstoppable and her destiny was assured. She would get that writing career started as soon as she finished university, and then it was after she had spent some time in Europe, and then it was after she had worked in the publishing industry for a while, and then it was after she and Sam had bought a house, and then it was after the kids were older, and then it was never. And never was now.
The bottom line was that she was Katherine Rose Painter, who lived at 23 Haverlock Lane in Lysterfield – a wife, mother, freelance editor and a failed writer. With no one to blame but herself. She could have paused at any point and made time for writing. But it seemed that whenever the chance arose, she went a different route. And it had been her who wanted to start a family sooner rather than later, and her who insisted on having another child when Shelley was only two, and then her uterus that hospitably made room for two eggs at the same time and therefore put an end to even the concept of free time for the foreseeable future.
So twenty-five years after Kate started working in the publishing industry as a stopgap until she wrote her first novel, she was still working in it. Only these days she worked from home, either editing or, more often than not, writing up reports on
other people’s manuscripts. Each one representing a stranger who was waiting, somewhere in Australia, to discover if they would be published. And no matter the standard of their work, they had each accomplished something she hadn’t – they’d written a book.
But, along with the gradual acceptance that she herself was never going to join their ranks, there slunk a bitterness that underscored everything else. So that the shadows of what she had failed to achieve were now discolouring what she had, like her happy marriage and her reasonably affluent lifestyle – with spacious home, swimming pool, block of land in the country – until their edges were blurred. Once, she thought, she would have used humour to cope, but now it seemed as if everything was beyond a joke. And it was simply too hard to pretend there was nothing wrong. As if the months weren’t flying past, and she wasn’t the only one who was being left in their wake just staring at the calendar and fighting back the tears.
TWO
They had planned a low-key New Year’s Eve that year, inviting only Kate’s cousin Angie and her ex-husband, Oscar. Shelley was leaving the baby with them while going into the city for the fireworks, and both Jacob and Caleb had other plans also. So, like many other evenings, it was to be just the four of them, sitting on the decking by the pool, enjoying a barbecue and some nice wine. Then later, after Emma was put down for the night, they would relax even more, maybe play some cards or simply lean back and effortlessly allow the final minutes of the old year to slide past.
An hour or so before her guests were due, Kate smoothed the last of a mudpack around the curve of her chin and then peered at the mirror. Cracks were already segregating her crow’s feet and creating a fault line between her eyes, the whites of which looked rather rheumy against the richness of the mud. Her light brown bob was pinned back but strands had adhered themselves to her skin in feathery clumps. Kate grimaced and the mud fissured even further. In the background she could hear Caleb playing his guitar, badly, while from the lounge room floated the sound of an early evening game show, complete with canned laughter and adenoidal compere.