by Lea Darragh
‘Cate, stop.’
‘I have never asked you these things before because talking about her hurt too much, but now I think that it’s time that I know exactly who my mother was.’ His inner struggle was hard to watch, but, however painful it was, it had to end. My voice was soft, coaxing, like I was trying to talk a scared child out of a safe hiding place. ‘She doesn’t deserve to consume your every thought anymore, Dad. Plus, I think that knowing will help me to sort things out with Nick…I feel like he wants to run away from me and I need to know how to stop him.’
When he spoke it was to the inanimate, folded newspaper in front of him. ‘I stumbled.’
I waited…and waited…
‘What does that mean?’ I finally spoke because he was transfixed by the past.
‘It means that I had her, she was mine, but I couldn’t hold her back.’
‘She was unhappy?’
‘She was an artist.’
I was confused. ‘That’s relevant because…’
‘She represented life itself. She couldn’t sit still, not even if she was painting. She’d be dancing around to her records as she painted. She was a natural.’
‘I remember Van Morrison playing all of the time.’
‘It was our song, I guess.’
A vivid memory played… ‘You used to sing that to her.’
He was taken aback and he finally spoke as if he was actually having a conversation with a real person and not a shadow in the past. ‘Do you remember that?’
‘I don’t remember a lot about her, mostly because I refuse to, but I remember how the two of you laughed. It’d be the middle of the night and I’d wake thinking that there was some kind of party in the next room. I used to creep out of bed and crouch in the doorway and watch the two of you dancing, drinking the Mathiesons’ wine, laughing. I loved seeing my mum and dad like that.’
‘We knew that.’
‘Why didn’t I get into trouble?’
‘I wanted to tell you off, but your mother wanted you to see what love looked like. She said to me,’ he paused to get the wording faithfully right, ‘“Jimmy, it’s our duty to teach our lovely princess of a daughter that there can truly be a happy ever after.”’
My stomach flipped. How could such sweet words come out of such a callous woman? ‘You were her prince?’ I indulged him.
‘So she said…in the beginning…then I turned into an ogre who sucks life out of anything beautiful.’
‘What happened, Dad?’
‘When you’re as plain as me it’s difficult to hold such a spirit back.’
‘So she did just pack up and leave, then? She rejected us both?’
‘I shut her out.’
‘It must have been impossible to satisfy such an obstinate woman.’
He shook his head. ‘She wasn’t like that.’
‘History contradicts you, Dad.’ He shrugged. ‘I knew that Nick was a lot like you, but I guess I never knew how deep your similarities ran; why must you both play the martyr all of the time?’
‘Fix it, Cate.’ His eyes burned to emphasise his need for me to never let history repeat itself. ‘I will never forgive you if your marriage ends because the two of you just gave up. Nothing is ever that bad that it can’t be sorted out.’
‘Well that’s hardly true—’
‘Catherine!’ His open hand suddenly slammed onto the table and his burning, pleading eyes bored into mine. When he spoke it was through gritted teeth. ‘I mean it.’
Unruffled by his outburst, I continued. ‘No one can ever really know what goes on between a husband and wife behind closed doors. I’ve place too much pressure on him over the years. I’ve been such a burden on him, not one that he deserves.’
He scoffed and shook his head. ‘Nobody knows that more than me.’
‘Tell me.’
He contemplated, but maybe today, around the small intimate dining table, was a perfect place for confessions. When Dad spoke I felt my own confession simmering toward the surface.
‘I drifted away from your mother, not the other way around. I loved her, but when I watched her paint or sketch, or sit cross-legged in the back garden gazing up at the sky, all I saw was a caged bird.’
I didn’t want my next question to come out as insensitive. ‘But why did she leave me?’
‘Since you were born she told me that she thought that you’d been here before; you were mothering the children in the street before you could walk. Do you remember when you and Nick were three or four years old and he fell off his bike?’
I shook my head. ‘No.’
‘He’d scraped his knee very badly and you ran into the house and fetched Dettol and band aids and cotton balls and cleaned him up. You always tried to fix everything.’
It all became clear. ‘And that’s why she left me with you?’
‘She knew that I needed you more than she did. She didn’t reject you, love; she was trying all she could to save me.’
We sat as we digested everything. It took a few moments while I relished in the fact that I was having an actual conversation with my dad, and it took me by surprise that it loosened my tongue. It dislodged the heavy, painful ball of fire in my stomach that dictated every decision that I had made since she left.
‘She made me feel worthless,’ I said. ‘You have no idea the consequences that her actions played in my life.’
‘I’m sorry.’
‘You didn’t leave me. I should have been happy just to have you in my life, but she turned me into this horrible, ugly, sad person. All I’ve done for my whole life was to think only of myself. My singular goal led me to a person like Roy with whom I did despicable things just so that he wouldn’t run away from me like she did. And then I focussed my attention on doing everything that I could to make up for what I had done in order to satisfy him, ruining my life and taking Nick down with me.’
‘What are you talking about, Cate?’
You’d think I would be used to it, but now my own mouth had run away on me and I couldn’t think of any lie quick enough to sate my father’s harsh glare. I know his anger was focussed on Roy, but I had to be assured that when this secret came out, I had it within me to take full responsibility for it.
My whole body trembled and I thought I might throw up again. I didn’t want to tell my father what I was about to. It made me ill to think of what I had done, let alone voice it. Redemption? Is that something I needed in order to move on? I could never absolve myself, but would my dad’s reassurance bring me peace from this?
How could I even begin telling my father this...?
The entire day ten years ago circled vividly in my head.
It was windy, it was cold, and the heavy clouds in the leaden sky were on the cusp of rain. It was eight thirty, and the beginning of a hideous Friday morning.
I waited for the attending doctor in a sterile and clinical operating suite, and it took me by surprise that such a feeling of instant panic could overwhelm my nervous system to the point of picking at my cuticles until blood trickled from my fingers. I couldn’t remember a time when I had ever felt so fragile and exposed, out of control and extremely unnerved. It was as if I had been knocked for a six and didn’t know how to regain control of myself once more.
My eyes explored the suite as I lay back on a forty-five-degree-angled examination table, coming to rest on a small instrument table just to the right of me. I tried to convince myself to look away, that there was nothing to see here. However, like a car crash that held your attention as you slowly drove by, my eyes were transfixed by the stainless steel, duck-billed apparatus, and long suction tube. An uncontrollable shudder overwhelmed my body, and the more I tried to stop my legs from trembling, they only trembled with more vigour. If my feet hadn’t already been placed in the stirrups that angled my legs in the correct position, and if I hadn’t already been administered a sedative that had slowly disabled and incapacitated my body, I would have been off that bed in a flash and running for the doo
r.
‘Excuse me,’ I said to a nurse who had been shuffling paperwork around a bench across the room. My voice sounded as if it came from the other side of the small room, and I fought hard to focus on the plump woman. It was a fight to keep my eyes open, because each time I blinked, my eyelids seemed heavier and heavier, as if a kilogram of weight had been added each time they pressed together. The nurse took a couple of steps over to the middle of the room where I was lying and I hardly felt that my heavy hand was being lifted and gently enveloped in a warm grasp.
‘Is everything ok, sweetheart?’ she said softly.
I used my forehead muscles to lift my eyes open. ‘This is the right decision, isn’t it?’
‘It must be the right decision for you. Otherwise you wouldn’t be here, would you? Don’t worry. It’ll all be over soon.’
I had been briefed by the discerning nurse about what the procedure entailed, along with some of the physical side-effects that I was to expect. The physical side of this situation was not what drove me to mutilate my otherwise immaculate nails; it was the fact that after this was all done, after the baby had been removed, I was terrified of what kind of mental state I would be in. Nobody could tell me that kind of information. Nobody could tell me whether I would feel the relief that I was hoping for because doing this meant that Roy would still love me, or whether the self-hatred that was slowly creeping up from the pit of my stomach would consume me. All that I knew, all that I had been told by the all-understanding counsellor earlier in the warm, lemon-yellow room with a suede couch and fluffy throw cushions, three doors down from this white, sterile operating theatre, was that I may feel regret, I may feel loss and that I may feel resentment. But all of those things were nothing compared to the disgust that I felt towards myself for getting into this situation and not having the character to do what most would tell me to do; which in a home town run by family-owned businesses would no doubt have been to keep the baby.
Inevitably, I was forced to give in, and allowed my eyes to close, opening them again when it was all too late for me to change my mind. And because I was weak and terrified of being alone, I gave Roy what he wanted.
Now, returning my attention to my patient father sitting opposite me, my words left my mouth as if on their own accord.
‘When I was seventeen I had an abortion.’
Time ticked on as the words echoed around my head, taking a few moments to realise that they were echoing around my entire world.
Tears fell down my father’s face. ‘Oh, love.’
It wasn’t the first time that I’d seen my dad cry, but to know that I had caused him anguish unbearably caused me the same.
I moved around the table to sit beside him, wrapping my arm around his shoulder.
‘I’m sorry, too, Dad,’ I cried with him.
‘Why didn’t you tell me?’
‘I’m so ashamed. I’ve never told anyone.’
‘Nick?’
I thought back to when I’d learned of Nick’s run-in with Roy at Maisy’s on that Sunday morning. It had coincided with the fact that I’d had the procedure done only two days prior. ‘No. But I suspect that he knows.’
Time ticked on further in silence as we finally managed to dry our eyes.
‘You’re not the only one who has ever done this,’ Dad comforted me.
‘And how incredibly sad is that.’
‘But I know you. Don’t take every choice that a woman has made to terminate a pregnancy and make it your own. These things happen for many different reasons.’
‘I killed my baby, Dad. No matter which way you look at it. That is exactly what I did.’
‘I’m sure you did what you thought—’
I shook my head to stop him. I couldn’t bear to hear any more excuses made for me. Nick used to do it for me while I was with Roy. I’d done it in every aspect of my life. It had to stop.
‘I accept that sometimes women have no choice in the matter, but what I did, it was weak. I was a coward for not standing up to Roy. I thought that he would leave me if I didn’t. I did it for my own gain but then I lost him anyway. There’s nothing you can say that will make me feel any less culpable. I stole a life and for the past ten years I’ve been trying to make up for it, at any cost, ignoring the fact that I was ruining my only chance at real happiness with Nick. But even if I have a million babies I can never…’
‘Well if you won’t let me help you, how do you plan on helping yourself through this? There has to be forgiveness, love. Or the regret will eat you alive.’
‘I can’t forgive this.’
‘Of course you can.’
‘How can I forgive without being selfish about it? I’d only be doing it for my own redemption.’
‘Would you? What about Nick?’ I was utterly confused. Ashamedly I admitted that I was still getting used to thinking of anyone other than myself. ‘I’m sure he’s suffered through the consequences of your actions. Why not forgive for his sake? He’s worth that isn’t he?’
He was right. I could do that easily. I would do anything to give Nick his own redemption.
I rinsed my dishes, had a quick freshen up in the bathroom, and my feet objected when I replaced my suffocating shoes onto them. With a perfunctory kiss on my cheek from my dad, I left, taking a slow walk back to Mathieson’s Vineyard, along the way rescripting every word that I wanted to say to my husband tomorrow, on our anniversary.
Chapter 26
Present day—June eighteenth
‘I’m sure the restaurant won’t fall apart if I’m not there for an evening,’ Nick said to Lucy as she stood unmoving in the doorway after her untimely entrance.
‘Will you be down later though? I’m sure Catey understands what a busy man you are.’
I wasn’t a violent person — even Roy had never incited such a reaction from me — but I wanted to slap her smirk from her face.
‘I’ll be there to close up.’ Nick tempered her ambition with a low tone of authority. He was her boss after all. ‘If that’s all, Lucy, maybe you should head back to work.’
She eyed me curiously.
‘Bye Lucy,’ I said as she continued to hover.
I had the feeling that perhaps all was not as I first thought. Maybe something had happened between the two of them, but I held out hope that whatever it was, it had to be completely unrequited.
We were finally alone again and I wanted to tell him about our baby growing beautifully in my belly. But our entrée was spoiling and I was starving.
‘Should we eat before it gets cold?’ I said as I slipped from the stool.
He followed me to the table and obliged me by taking a sip of soup.
‘Good?’
‘Very,’ he said quietly.
‘Nick, we’ve been through a lot together, too much to even fathom when I think about it. But I just want you to remember that nothing is insurmountable for us. When we are on the same team we are unbeatable. And to prove it —’
‘Stop, Cate.’
‘For once will you just allow me to finish?’
He replaced his spoon into its position beside his fork and sat back in his chair. I didn’t know whether he was giving me his full attention or just becoming too irritated with me and was about to get up and leave. I continued anyway.
‘To prove how good a team we are when we are together…’ I reached around to the back pocket of my jeans for the proof that I needed to fix everything.
‘I kissed Lucy.’
Nick’s confession, although almost inaudible, filled the room, his unwavering gaze holding mine across the table as the world suddenly stood still. My mouth fell agape, frozen with shock. The brick that he had hurled at me hit me with such force that it left my shell of a body sitting numb on the chair while my insides were splattered all over the buttermilk wall behind me.
Blinkingly, I managed to fractionally regroup and force my mouth closed, leaving the very first image of our baby untouched in my pocket. I watched Nick in dismay as I
tried to understand whether or not what I had heard had actually been what he had said. I couldn’t find a word, not a single one that would do justice to the side-swiped jolt to my entire body. All I could do was to watch the guilt steal him further away from me.
‘I’m sorry, Cate,’ his voice broke as he murmured my name, ‘but now that I’ve dishonoured you there is no reason for you to stay with me.’
A typical wife would have cried, or thrown at him one of the wine glasses that stood proud in the middle of the perfectly romantic dining table. But not me; I forbade my tears to fall, instead steeling myself into battle mode. Aside from breaking my heart, his declaration angered me, added fuel to my fight. However hurtful Nick’s trump card, it was trivial compared to mine. Before revealing it though, I had to get to the bottom of why my intelligent, patient, loyal husband had resorted to behaving with such recklessness. Allow me to correct that; I wanted him to tell me why and not just assume for myself. If he’d let me in for just a second I’d have all I needed to chip away and fix the one thing that was wrong. I’d very recently learned how therapeutic disclosure can be.
‘I knew you were desperate to push me away, but of all of the things that I predicted that you were capable of, I never once thought that you would do something this miscalculated. I thought you were more creative than that. I thought I was the only one who made stupid decisions around here.’
His expression altered as if he’d remembered something that had left a distasteful residue in his mouth. ‘I completely understand if you leave. Who am I to stand in your way of happiness?’
Again, I wondered whether what was coming out of his mouth was actually what he was saying. ‘You can’t be serious,’ I said with incredulity. ‘You’re my husband; you are my happiness. I will tattoo it across my forehead for you to see every day if that’s what it takes. And if you think that frivolous fraternising with a waitress is going to end us, then you’re sorely mistaken.’
He spoke as if I hadn’t. ‘You looked happy with Blake.’
I was taken aback. ‘What does this have to do with Blake?’
‘I saw the look on your face when you were together.’