The Spill

by Imbi Neeme

Nicole stood up. ‘I’ll just go check on dessert,’ she said.

  ‘Let me help you,’ Samantha was quick to offer.

  ‘I’m fine.’

  ‘I’m happy to help,’ Samantha insisted with the smile of a saint about to slay some pagans.

  Her smile disappeared the minute they stepped back into the kitchen.

  ‘This is a disaster,’ Samantha told her sister. ‘You’ve got to get her out of here.’

  ‘What are you talking about? It’s going fine.’

  ‘Dad has barely eaten anything.’

  ‘Celine probably has him on another diet.’

  ‘Tina keeps calling Celine “Celeste”.’

  ‘So what? Mum always calls Trent “Troy”. It’s her way of showing affection.’

  ‘Yeah, and we all know how much Trent really loves that.’

  Samantha watched as Nicole checked the apple crumble in the sweets oven and then turned the temperature up. She was probably ruining it.

  ‘You always do this, you know,’ Samantha observed.

  ‘Do what?’

  ‘Sabotage your own events. You missed the Gobbles party bus at your own twenty-first. And you completely stuffed up lunch the one year you hosted Christmas.’

  ‘I’m not sure two examples count as “always”,’ Nicole said in a small voice.

  ‘And now you invite Tina and Dad to your fortieth? What were you thinking?’

  ‘That they’re both my parents.’ Nicole’s voice was now even smaller.

  ‘Well, good for you. Tina stopped being my parent twenty-five years ago,’ Samantha said, marching out of the room. She stood in the hallway and breathed in and out for a minute to try to get her anger levels back under control. She could do this. She knew she could. Her reward at the end of the day would be the hidden vodka, waiting for her at home.

  But the minute she stepped into the dining room, she realised the situation had worsened. Rosemary was nowhere to be seen. And now Celine and Jethro were looking down at their hands, too, and Trent had the wild eyes of a drowning man. Only Tina was smiling and tucking into her meal.

  ‘Where’s Rose?’ Samantha asked the room.

  ‘I just showed her where the Xbox is,’ Jethro said.

  ‘Her iPod battery had run out,’ Trent explained.

  ‘It was like her i-Thingy was a person who had died, it was such a huge drama,’ Tina piped up. ‘She was demanding to go home to recharge it. Imagine wanting to leave a party because of a battery!’

  ‘I can’t see why it’s so hard to imagine,’ Samantha retorted. ‘You always leave the party when the wine runs out.’

  ‘Touché,’ Tina said, with a laugh that sounded like a peal of tiny bells. ‘Although these days, I’m all about the food. The sauce on this beef has such complexity of flavour! Who would have thought that Nic would become such a great cook!’

  ‘She didn’t cook it, Tina,’ Samantha said. She usually avoided calling Tina anything, so the name came out barbed.

  ‘Well, she’s got great taste in caterers. God knows where she got her great taste. The rest of us have no clue, wouldn’t you say, Sam?’

  Samantha could taste the bile in her mouth. ‘It’s not taste she has, it’s money.’

  ‘Maybe it is. But she certainly knows how to spend it,’ Tina replied, all matter-of-fact, before turning to Trent. ‘How’s it going at the Bunnings? You never really struck me as the handyman type.’

  ‘It’s, uh, Home Hardware,’ Trent corrected her. He’d recently taken a systems support job there, joking that he was expanding his knowledge of ‘hardware’. It was true that he’d never picked up a power tool in his life, but then again, neither had Tina.

  ‘Oh, really? That’s not as big, is it? You weren’t tempted to take one of those FIFO jobs? I heard that’s where the real money is,’ Tina said, going in for her next forkful of food.

  ‘We decided that it was better for me to be home with Sam and Rose,’ Trent replied. He smiled over at Samantha and she did her best to smile back, but she didn’t like where Tina was going with all this.

  ‘But imagine, you could have had a much nicer home to return to every six weeks if you had. Oh well.’

  ‘I don’t think you can talk.’ Samantha was starting to see red now. ‘You can’t say “Oh well” about our house and Trent’s job when you live in a Housing Authority flat and stack shelves for a living.’

  Tina stared at Samantha for a moment. There was something in her eyes that was setting hard, like concrete. ‘Now, now,’ she said. ‘I didn’t mean anything by “Oh well”. It’s just a little expression of mine. I’m sorry if it caused any offence, Troy.’

  ‘Trent,’ Samantha muttered under her breath.

  ‘Anyway, I’m actually delighted to see you made it along today,’ Tina continued. ‘I guess you two didn’t break up this time . . .’

  Now Trent was looking down at his hands, too. Before she knew what she was doing, Samantha had leapt up and hurled her fork like a warning shot at the empty spot next to Tina, hitting the mahogany sideboard in the corner of the room with great force.

  Jethro gasped. ‘That’s my grandmother’s sideboard,’ he said.

  ‘I don’t give a flying fuck about your grandmother or her sideboard,’ Samantha told him. She had now fully become the Other Samantha, the one from her childhood, the one Donna-Louise tried to help her control, the one she drank to placate. And she had no idea how she could stop herself. ‘You can go out and buy another hundred sideboards with the change in your pocket.’

  Ashen-faced, Jethro got up and left the room, but Samantha was past caring.

  ‘As for you,’ she said turning back to Tina. ‘Stop being such a fucking bitch. I had no idea being sober made you this fucking mean.’

  ‘Sam! What are you doing?’ Nicole was standing at the doorway.

  ‘I’m not doing anything,’ Samantha said, her tantrum still in full swing. ‘It’s all Tina’s fault.’

  ‘What did I say?’ Tina set down her fork and looked at all of them with the wide-eyed innocence of a wolf wearing the severed head of a sheep as a hat.

  Craig exchanged urgent looks with Celine and muttered, ‘We should go.’

  ‘No, I should go,’ Tina said. ‘I’m obviously not welcome. And if I stay any longer, Samantha might start throwing knives at me.’

  ‘You are welcome here, Mum, of course you are. You’re all welcome,’ Nicole said desperately. ‘Please, it’s my birthday.’

  But Tina was already on her feet. ‘I’m sorry if I said anything to offend you or Trent, Samantha,’ she said, primly, before turning to Nicole. ‘Happy birthday, my beautiful girl.’

  And with that, she left the room, Nicole at her heel.

  Samantha sat down, now deflated.

  ‘We really should go, too,’ Craig said. ‘Cee-Cee’s got an early job tomorrow morning.’

  ‘I’m doing a client’s make-up in Peppermint Grove,’ Celine said brightly. ‘She’s going to an assembly at her kids’ school and she wants to look her best. Full on, huh?’

  And after a flurry of air kisses and firm handshakes, they were gone.

  The minute they were alone, Samantha looked over at Trent for support, but he wouldn’t meet her eye.

  ‘Why won’t you tell your family the truth about that Christmas?’ he said quietly. ‘I’m sick of looking like the villain.’

  ‘With all that just happened, that’s the thing that bothers you? Not Tina being such a bitch about our house and our life?’ Samantha asked. She was struggling to keep herself from shouting again. ‘Anyway, we all know that Nicole was the real villain that Christmas, with that frozen ham.’

  ‘Jesus, Samantha.’ Trent still couldn’t look at her. ‘Sometimes you’re very hard to love.’

  Trent’s words winded her. Struggling to breathe, she pushed through the large double doors into the piano room and, sitting on the piano stool, she closed her eyes and concentrated on her breathing. In and out. In and out. As all her anger – at Ti
na, at Nicole, at Trent – rose up in her chest, she pushed it out with each breath. And when the shame at having behaved so very badly rose as high as her throat, she pushed that out, too.

  When she finally felt like an empty shell again, she opened her eyes and looked around the room. Other than the piano, there was only a painting of a girl at a piano that she was pretty certain was by a famous artist, and a huge chandelier. It was so typical of Jethro and Nicole to have a whole room dedicated to an instrument neither of them played.

  She heard Jethro returning to the dining room. ‘Where’s everyone gone?’ he asked, his voice muffled. She crept closer to the doors so she could hear better.

  ‘They, uh, had to go,’ Trent said.

  ‘Samantha, too?’ asked Jethro. He sounded hopeful.

  ‘No, she’s . . . somewhere.’

  There was a slight pause while Jethro obviously did his best to swallow his disappointment. ‘Well, now that Tina’s gone,’ he finally said, ‘can we at least open some wine?’

  ‘Hell yeah,’ said Trent, suddenly sounding happier.

  ‘Which would you prefer: a Henry James Pinot Noir or a Man O’ War Syrah?’

  ‘I really don’t mind,’ Trent replied.

  ‘Okay, well, let’s start with the Man O’ War. It feels somewhat fitting,’ Jethro said, and the two men laughed.

  ‘I’m sorry about my wife,’ Trent said. ‘She’s complicated.’

  There was the sound of Jethro pouring the wine. ‘People are complicated, mate,’ Jethro said. ‘A glass of this will make everything simpler.’

  ‘Sure will.’

  Listening to this conversation, Samantha felt small and sad. All this time, she’d thought Trent drank because he was weak, like she was. Like Tina was. The thought that he might drink just to cope with her – or worse yet, to escape from her altogether – was too much to bear. Unable to listen anymore, she crept out the other door only to immediately run into Nicole, who seemed to be doing her own creeping about in the hall.

  ‘Which room is Rose in?’ Samantha asked, avoiding her sister’s eyes. She knew she should apologise for what had happened, but she still felt too embarrassed.

  ‘In the yellow room,’ Nicole replied, gesturing down the hallway behind her. She wasn’t looking at Samantha, either.

  ‘Thanks,’ Samantha mumbled and set off to find her daughter.

  Eventually she found Rosemary frantically manipulating an Xbox controller in a room whose yellow walls perfectly matched the yellow throw cushions on the leather couches.

  ‘How are you doing, darling?’ Samantha asked, sitting on one of the couches. She picked up a perfect yellow cushion and hugged it. ‘Did you eat enough food?’

  ‘Yep!’

  Samantha closed her eyes and tried not to think of her husband drinking wine back in the dining room, or of the wine itself. But after a few seconds, the sound of rapid gunfire on the television made her open her eyes again.

  ‘What on earth are you playing?’ she asked in horror, as she watched her twelve-year-old daughter gun down a man wearing a bandana and army fatigues.

  ‘Call of Duty: Black Ops,’ Rosemary said, taking another man down with a single headshot. ‘I found it in the cupboard.’

  ‘Turn it off.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Because it’s not age-appropriate.’

  ‘Jethro said I could play any game I wanted. It’s his house and his rules,’ Rosemary said, reloading her weapon.

  ‘Well, I’m your mother.’

  ‘Biologically, yes,’ she said, taking another shot at someone’s head.

  Samantha didn’t have the energy to stop her daughter, but nor could she watch. She stood up and walked over to the other side of the room, to the large set of shelves full of records.

  ‘Typical that Jethro still owns vinyl,’ she said, although she knew Rosemary wasn’t listening.

  As she pulled each record out, she automatically began to order them alphabetically by artist. The Beach Boys before the Beatles. The Jam before Billy Joel. Tom Waits before the White Stripes . . .

  Slowly but surely, the Other Samantha and the clamour of rapid gunfire faded completely away, leaving only the sound of her heart beating.

  Piece #6: 1999

  ‘You can’t spend New Year’s by yourself! Come to ours! Trent and I are making paella.’

  ‘Um . . .’ Nicole hesitated. The thought of spending New Year’s stone cold sober, listening to Samantha tell Trent that he was doing everything wrong was hardly appealing. But then again, as she and Darren were on another ‘break’, she wasn’t exactly looking forward to seeing the new millennium in on her own.

  ‘You have to come. I insist!’ Samantha said.

  ‘Okay, okay,’ Nicole replied, although she knew she’d regret it. ‘But only if you can tell me what the hell paella is.’

  ‘It’s Spanish rice,’ Samantha explained. ‘Bring half a kilo of prawns. Fresh ones, not frozen. Oh, and some lemons and limes. Trent is making mocktails!’

  Nicole sighed. She was twenty-nine years old and she was going to spend New Year’s drinking soft drink from a margarita glass.

  Two days later, she dutifully showed up at Samantha and Trent’s small flat in Shenton Park with half a kilo of prawns in one hand and a bag full of limes and lemons in the other. Trent greeted her at the front door, wearing a sombrero and holding what Nicole presumed was a non-alcoholic margarita.

  ‘Hola, gringo!’

  ‘Gringa,’ she corrected him. ‘Anyway, I thought paella was Spanish, not Mexican.’

  ‘Spanish. Mexican. What’s the difference?’

  ‘Uh, the North Atlantic Ocean?’

  ‘A mere pond,’ Trent said with a grin. ‘No Darren tonight?’

  ‘Didn’t Sam tell you? We’re on a break.’

  ‘Oh, that’s a shame,’ Trent said, although he clearly meant the opposite. Now that the two of them didn’t work together anymore, Trent barely bothered to hide his dislike of Darren. ‘Where’s he at tonight?’

  ‘I have no idea,’ she replied, although she knew he was probably down at Club Rumours hoping to shove his tongue down a twenty-year-old’s throat. He’d told her a number of times that he could get a younger, more petite girlfriend, like it was a matter of him just trading Nicole in like a used car.

  ‘Trent, you got the wrong rice!’ Samantha shouted from the kitchen. She was standing at the small island bench with a copy of The Barefoot Contessa Cookbook in front of her, along with a thousand different ingredients, each in their own little bowl, like she was on a cooking show.

  ‘The literal translation of “paella” is “a shit load of washing up”,’ Trent told Nicole.

  ‘The recipe says medium-grain. You got long-grain,’ Samantha said.

  Trent ignored her. He was good at ignoring Samantha in a way Nicole never could.

  ‘Would you like a non-alcoholic margarita, Nic?’

  ‘Sure. Thanks.’

  Trent moved around to a corner of the kitchen where he’d set up a small bar, with glasses, juice, ice and, to Nicole’s surprise, a large unopened bottle of tequila with a red plastic hat for a lid.

  ‘Is that actual alcohol I see before me?’ she asked.

  ‘Sam and I agreed that we can make a boozy one a little closer to midnight,’ Trent said, as he salted the rim of a glass. Nicole looked over at Samantha, who gave a small nod.

  It’s a Millennium Miracle, Nicole thought.

  Down the hall, Rosemary started to wail. ‘Mummy! Daddy!’ she cried.

  ‘Not again,’ Trent said. ‘It’s been so hard to settle her tonight.’

  ‘It’s going to be even harder when the aeroplanes start dropping out of the sky at midnight,’ Nicole replied.

  Trent, who’d been working for a Y2K consultancy for the past twelve months, laughed. ‘Not on my watch.’

  ‘I’ll see to Rosemary, will I?’ Samantha said with the air of a martyr, as she looked up from the recipe book.

  ‘No, no. Yo
u’re cooking. I’ll go.’

  He handed Nicole her mocktail and disappeared off down the hall.

  Nicole stood and watched her sister frown at the recipe book for a few moments.

  ‘Can I help?’

  ‘I’m fine.’

  After a few more moments of watching Samantha continue to frown, Nicole decided to drink her mocktail out on the balcony, which offered the scenic view of the block of flats across the street. From the lack of lights, Nicole guessed everyone was out at some party or another tonight. Only the flat on the end of the second floor seemed to show any signs of life. There, Nicole could see a woman, silhouetted by the fluorescent light in the room behind her, sitting alone on the balcony. Nicole couldn’t tell from her shadow what age the woman was, but there was something very peaceful about her.

  ‘Are these prawns frozen?’ Samantha shouted from the kitchen.

  Nicole sighed.

  By the time Rosemary was settled and then re-settled in her cot and dinner was finally cooked, served and eaten, it was almost ten o’clock. The three of them were out on the balcony, sitting on fold-out chairs with their plates on their laps.

  ‘That was delicious,’ Nicole said to Samantha, as she finished her last forkful.

  ‘The rice was too sticky.’

  ‘That’s not because it wasn’t medium-grain,’ Trent was quick to add.

  ‘Maybe not,’ Samantha replied in a tone of voice that suggested it was exactly the reason the rice was too sticky.

  ‘Great flavours,’ Nicole said, hoping to side-step the argument.

  ‘I reckon it’s time to open that tequila,’ Trent said, rubbing his hands together.

  Samantha’s eyes darted to her watch. ‘It’s a bit early. Midnight’s still two hours away.’

  ‘But it’s New Year’s Eve, Sammy,’ Trent pleaded.

  ‘One cocktail,’ Samantha replied. She stood up and started to collect the dirty plates. Nicole saw Trent trying to hide a smile and Samantha must have too, because she added, ‘That’s what we agreed.’

  ‘Yes, one cocktail. And we’ll sip it really, really slowly, we promise.’

  The minute Samantha disappeared inside with the plates, Trent leant over to Nicole and said, in an arch whisper, ‘She said one cocktail, but she didn’t say anything about how strong it was allowed to be.’