by Imbi Neeme
Nicole had to laugh.
While Trent went inside to mix the drinks, Nicole looked back over at the lone woman’s flat. The balcony was now empty and the light was off. Maybe she’d gone to a party. Or maybe she’d gone to bed. Nicole really hoped it was the latter. She liked the idea of the woman feeling so comfortable in her solitude that she had no problem turning in two hours’ shy of the new millennium.
‘Get this into you.’ Trent was back beside her, holding out a margarita glass filled to the brim with a pale liquid.
Nicole took a sip. The cocktail was so strong, she spluttered a little.
‘Jesus, Trent. This is ninety-nine parts tequila, one part everything else.’
‘I know,’ he said with a wide smile. ‘Chug-a-lug, pooh bear.’
Nicole took another small sip and put the drink down.
‘What’s Sam doing?’ she asked.
‘The dishes. She insisted.’ Trent didn’t need to explain any further.
‘Who lives at the end there?’ Nicole asked Trent, pointing at the lone woman’s flat.
‘The local cat lady. None of her cats seem to like her, though, because they’re always running away. She’s forever sticking MISSING CAT posters up around the place,’ Trent replied, just as Rosemary’s mournful cry started up again from inside the flat.
‘Mummy! Daddy!’
‘Shit,’ Trent said.
‘I’ll go this time,’ Nicole offered.
‘Are you sure?’ Trent was already getting up.
‘Yeah, it can be my New Year’s gift to both of you.’ She put her cocktail down and went inside.
‘Sam, I’m checking on Rose,’ she said as she passed the kitchen on the way to Rosemary’s bedroom.
‘Oh, is she crying?’ Samantha’s voice sounded a million miles away.
‘You can’t hear her?’
Samantha returned to scrubbing a large pot.
Nicole started off down the hall but then with each step grew increasingly uncertain. She couldn’t remember what the rule was for re-settling Rosemary before midnight. Was she supposed to keep her in the cot or was she allowed to pick her up? Samantha was always very particular when it came to these things.
As she returned to the kitchen, she saw Samantha moving a small glass away from her lips to the kitchen bench, but the action was so quick and fluid that she immediately thought she must have imagined it.
‘What now?’ Samantha’s tone was short.
‘Should I pick her up or should I pat her in the cot?’
‘Do whatever you want. It’s a new millennium, after all,’ Samantha said, turning back to the dishes, not looking at Nicole. The tequila bottle was open beside her on the bench, its red plastic hat sitting beside it.
Nicole headed back down the hall, confused. She wasn’t sure what was more unsettling: the open bottle of tequila or Samantha’s complete lack of instruction.
By the time she got to Rosemary’s door, however, the crying had stopped. She stood there, a long time, waiting. Listening. Wondering about what she saw. But when she passed the kitchen again, neither Samantha nor the tequila and its little red hat were there.
She found Trent alone on the balcony.
‘Where’s Sam?’
‘Brushing her teeth.’
‘What? There’s only an hour to go. She can’t give up so close to the finishing line.’
‘Try telling her that.’
Nicole picked up her cocktail and winced as she sipped it again. She imagined this was what it was like to drink methylated spirits.
Sam appeared at the doorway. ‘Goodnight,’ she said.
‘See you next millennium,’ Nicole replied.
‘Yeah, see you next millennium,’ Trent echoed, getting up to give Samantha a kiss, but she had already stepped back into the shadows of the flat.
Trent and Nicole sat in silence on the balcony. In the distance, they could hear the parties in the neighbourhood picking up volume as the city began the downhill slide to midnight. She thought again of that woman in the other block of flats and she wondered what Tina was doing tonight, if she was alone or if she was at the pub.
‘You have to forgive Sam,’ Trent said. ‘She’s been a bit upset since the accident the other day.’
‘What accident?’ Nicole said, sitting up straight in her seat. ‘She didn’t tell me about any accident.’
‘Well, it wasn’t really an accident. It was a near miss, but Sam was really shaken up by it. She was driving back from the shops with Rose and she took a corner too fast and the car went into a spin and she ended up facing the wrong way. There wasn’t any damage to anyone or even to the car. But the way Sam went on about it—’
‘She took a corner too fast?’
‘I know, right? She normally drives slower than my nanna.’
Nicole thought of how Samantha, when she was younger, had cried when she thought Craig or Tina was driving too fast. That was after that car accident when the car had spun and then flipped like a pancake.
They sat in silence and finished their cocktails.
‘Fifteen minutes to go,’ Trent said, looking at his watch. ‘What do you say about a cheeky shot of tequila for the stroke of midnight? We could even do the whole lick, sip, suck thing.’
‘Sure. Why not.’
Trent went back inside and Nicole looked again at the dark flats and thought of Darren dancing like a dickhead at Club Rumours with all the teenagers. She wondered if he was thinking of her. Probably not.
‘I can’t find the tequila,’ Trent said, as he came back out onto the balcony, empty-handed. ‘Sam must have hidden it. Or poured it down the sink.’
‘Or down her throat.’
Trent laughed. He thought Nicole was joking, but Nicole wasn’t sure if she was. She thought again of that swift arm movement. Glass from lips.
They sat in silence until finally the sky above them exploded into colour and the streets around them erupted into a chorus of cheers and car horns.
‘Happy new millennium,’ Trent said quietly.
‘Happy new millennium,’ Nicole replied. But she was still thinking of Samantha taking that corner too fast, tyres screeching and car spinning out of control, like Tina’s car had on that dusty red road almost twenty years ago at Bruce Rock.
Samantha
‘I had an affair with your father,’ Aunt Meg said over the din of the Blue Duck Cafe. She said it in such a matter-of-fact way that it took a few moments for her words to properly land in my brain.
I opened my own mouth to reply but no words came out. I looked at Nicole beside me to see her reaction, but she was leaning in towards Meg and I couldn’t see her face.
‘When?’ she asked.
‘In the year leading up to your parents’ separation,’ Meg replied. At least she had the decency to look away from us at this point. ‘I’m not proud of myself and what I did, but, well . . . your father was persuasive.’
‘Did Mum know?’ Nicole asked.
Aunt Meg shook her head. ‘No. Tina knew that Craig was being unfaithful but she didn’t know I was the one he was being unfaithful with. Once, we almost got caught out, but then . . .’
‘Then what?’ My voice had managed to come back and the words came out much louder and heavier than I expected.
‘Then Tina got drunk and crashed the car with you girls in it and, uh, the rest is history.’
‘So, what you’re saying is that Tina crashed the car because you were fucking Dad?’
Aunt Meg flinched when I said this. ‘No, no,’ she said hurriedly. Then she added, ‘Not really. When she crashed the car, she was on her way to our parents’ place. Later, she told me she’d been trying to leave him.’
Nicole and I must have been looking at her blankly, because she changed tack. ‘Didn’t you ever wonder why you were on the way to Kalgoorlie and not heading back to Perth to start school?’
‘We were on our way back to Perth,’ I told her. She hadn’t been there. How would she know?
> ‘No,’ she said patiently. ‘You were on your way to Kalgoorlie.’
By this stage, I was ready to call it. ‘This is bullshit,’ I declared. ‘You’ve barely had anything to do with us or Tina for years and now you’ve popped up out of nowhere with these terrible lies. I can tell you this much: Dad wasn’t unfaithful to Tina, not with you, not with anyone else. Dad left Tina because she was a drunk. End of story.’
I glanced over at Nicole for support, but she was regarding Aunt Meg thoughtfully. She clearly didn’t share my outrage, and that just fuelled it even further. ‘Don’t tell me you believe this, Nic?’
‘I’m not believing or disbelieving anything at this stage, Sam. I’m just listening to what Meg has to say.’
‘Well, I don’t believe it.’ I was aware that I was now slouching in my chair like a sullen teenager. I looked back at Meg. ‘And even if what you’re saying is true, why the fuck are you telling us now? You’ve basically had nothing to do with our lives for thirty-five years. You made yourself so scarce we used to call you “The Ghost Aunt”. Why do you even care?’
Meg cleared her throat. ‘After the accident, I broke it off with your dad immediately and moved to Melbourne. But as you know, things between your parents rapidly fell apart. I pretended to myself that I moved to get away from Craig, but really, I think it was to get away from all the guilt I felt.’
As she spoke, she started to swirl the froth on the top of her latte with a spoon. I found myself watching that instead of her.
‘Tina always tried. Always sent gifts and cards and called me on my birthday. She was always drunk when she rang. And I found myself withdrawing from the whole situation. Then, after our parents died, I dropped out of Tina’s life altogether. It was easier than watching her drink herself to death, knowing the part I played in it. Of course, I always told myself I would find a chance to come clean with her, that I would tell her about the affair, but then Nicole got in contact with me to say Tina was dead and I finally felt the full weight of everything.’ She placed her fist against her breast. ‘I thought I was going to explode. Telling you both felt like the only thing that was left for me to do.’
‘But why?’ I demanded, looking back up at her. ‘It’s not like you ever gave two fucks about what happened to me and Nic, anyway.’
‘I know it must seem that way,’ Meg said, eyes down again. ‘I was too young and silly to have thought about the impact the separation would have on you two. It was only much later after I’d actually lived some life and seen what divorce can do to kids that I realised you might have needed me in your lives. But by then, it all felt too late to do anything.’
‘But why now? Tina’s dead. What difference does it make, except maybe to you?’ I asked.
‘Because it’s the truth. Surely that counts for something. Your parents’ divorce wasn’t all Tina’s fault. It was mine, too. And Craig’s.’
‘Things are very rarely one person’s fault,’ Nicole observed, which just angered me even further.
‘Except when it came to Tina and drinking,’ I said. ‘Then it really was all Tina’s fault.’
‘Don’t be like that,’ Nicole said, putting her hand on my arm, but I shook it off.
‘At least I’m being like something, not just soaking up this bullshit like a sponge.’ I pushed away my half-finished coffee and stood up. ‘Nicole can give you a lift to the airport, Aunt Meg. I’ve got to go.’
‘But where?’ Meg said, suddenly old and feeble again, but I couldn’t respond. Instead, I threw a twenty dollar note on the table and walked out as quickly as I could without running.
I didn’t go to my car. Instead, I took off my shoes and walked to the near-empty beach. The Fremantle Doctor, the afternoon sea breeze, had already come in and cleared away most of the swimmers, surfers and sunbathers. Only those who didn’t mind the occasional mouthful of sand remained. And at that moment, a mouthful of sand felt like the best option I had.
The day was hot and even though I knew I hadn’t put enough sunscreen on and that my dress wasn’t giving me much cover, I was past caring. I was too angry at Meg and Nicole. I was angry with Tina, too. I’d never had a mother, not properly, not in the way people were supposed to have a mother. How dare they try to take my father away from me as well?
I thought of the vodka bottle from Nicole’s kitchen; the smell of it as I emptied it onto those flowers. The waste. The release.
I sat on the beach for as long as I could but I desperately needed something to push Meg’s words out of my head. I stood up and walked back to the road, up towards the Ocean Beach Hotel.
The Sunday Session at the OBH was in full swing. It was heaving with young people, drinking and laughing and being young. I couldn’t help but hate them all.
My heart tightened a little when I spotted one couple through the open windows: a short dark-haired girl talking to a tall guy with square shoulders and shaggy hair with what looked like a jug of Coke between them. They struck me as a younger version of Trent and me, a sober nation of two amidst a sea of drinkers. I remembered how relieved I’d been to find someone like me, someone who didn’t see the point in erasing themselves with alcohol every weekend.
The booze had managed to find us both, in the end.
I bought a hipflask-sized bottle of vodka from the bottle shop and then slunk over to the park across the road, the sea breeze whipping my long hair around my face. I wanted to go back to the car to get one of the scrunchies I kept in the glove box, but I didn’t want to risk seeing Nicole or Aunt Meg again.
Just then, a stretch limousine pulled up in front of me, distracting me. Now I was faced with another couple – a woman wearing a boned satin gown she’d been vacuum-sealed into, and a man, considerably older than she was, looking hot and bothered in his suit.
The groom began to remove his jacket but the bride was quick to intervene.
‘You’ll ruin the photos!’ she said to him, as the wind lifted up her veil so that it was like a plume of smoke around her head.
‘But this jacket is ruining my day,’ he protested. ‘It’s so hot!’
‘The photos are more important,’ she replied.
She was right, of course. I only really remembered the bits of my wedding that had been captured in the photos. Everything that had fallen outside the camera’s neat rectangular frame had been easier to forget.
A second stretch limousine pulled up and three lavender-coloured bridesmaids and three groomsmen tumbled out. They were all a similar age to the bride and I found myself wondering if they were the bride’s friends or the groom’s children. At Celine and Dad’s wedding, now almost a decade ago, Nicole and I had been forced to wear pale pink organza, even though we were both in our thirties. I had been petite enough to (almost) carry it off but Nicole had looked ready for Las Vegas in those ridiculous heels and all that make-up. And yet, that had been the day she had met Jethro and the two of them had ridden off into the sunset to Dalkeith.
And what had I managed to do in those ten years? I had stayed in the same dank townhouse, ignoring Trent, arguing with Rosemary and drinking in the shadows.
As the bride began screeching at the groomsmen to keep their jackets on, I decided to head back to the beach, despite the wind.
I sat a few metres from the water, looking out at the clear blue horizon and then down at the vodka bottle, still in its brown paper bag, beside me on the ever-shifting sand. Hardly an ‘Instaworthy’ moment, as Rosemary would call it, but this was my moment.
I pulled the bottle out of the bag and read the label. It contained eleven standard drinks, which was eleven points in the system I’d developed. Each day I didn’t drink gave me five points and each standard drink I consumed cost me one point. I hadn’t had a single drink since Tina died and out of habit I started to calculate how many days had passed so I could work out how many points I’d earned. Then I stopped myself.
‘Fuck the points,’ I said, as I opened the bottle and, turning my head away from the wind to avoid
getting sand in my mouth, took my first sip.
Fuck the points was exactly the kind of thing Tina would have said. But in that moment, I knew I wasn’t like Tina. I was entirely like myself. This was who I was. I was Samantha, and I was drinking as much as it took to forget I was Samantha at all.
Piece #7: 2007
As Nicole stepped into the cafe, she felt her stomach tighten, as if in anticipation of a punch.
It had been four months since she’d last caught up with Samantha and, if left to Nicole, she’d have gladly waited another four months. She always felt better about herself when she was away from Samantha and her barbed comments.
However, Samantha had phoned, insisting that they do the dress fittings together, and Nicole had found herself surrendering once again.
‘Hello, stranger,’ Samantha said when she saw Nicole. She stood up to give her the ghost of a kiss on her cheek and Nicole got the usual strong whiff of peppermint. She had a private theory that Samantha brushed her teeth in the car while she drove.
Nicole stood back to look at her sister. Judging from her clothes – a pencil skirt and neatly pressed blouse – she had come straight from work. Nicole, in contrast, had come straight from home and was still wearing the clothes she’d slept in. It had taken her half an hour to find her shoes amidst the mess of her dark ground-floor flat, which was more cave than human dwelling.
Samantha sat back down, smoothing out her skirt as she did so. ‘How are you?’
‘Fine. Although I’m not exactly looking forward to this dress fitting.’
‘Why not?’
‘Don’t you think there should be some international law that protects women over thirty-five from being forced to wear organza?’
‘Really? That’s your only objection to Dad marrying Celine? Having to wear a bridesmaid’s dress?’ Samantha said, her mouth forming a thin line. ‘I keep thinking of poor Donna-Louise.’