by Imbi Neeme
‘There’s nothing fun about alcoholism,’ I reminded her, and then regretted it when I turned to see her rolling her eyes.
‘Yeah, yeah. Whatever,’ she said. ‘I was just saying.’
My head was now thumping. All this talking about drinking was making me feel queasy in the heat of the car, but I wanted to bring my daughter in close to me again. ‘The real point was that we never really got on that well. Aunty Nic was much closer to her.’
‘Do you think she was closer to her because you went to live with Grandpa?’
‘Probably.’
‘Why did you go to Grandpa’s?’
‘Talk about the Spanish Inquisition,’ I tried to joke, but Rosemary was looking at me expectantly. She wanted an answer. ‘Well, the thing is, I had a big fight with Tina when I was about thirteen. And I went to live with him after that.’
‘Do you remember what the fight was about?’
‘No,’ I lied.
Even now, thirty years later, I still couldn’t think about it without feeling that same shame and fear like a knot in my stomach – small and tight and impossible to untie.
‘Did you ever regret it?’
‘No,’ I lied again.
‘Because I would totally live with Dad if you guys split. We’d just eat takeaway pizza and watch reality TV.’
‘God help the two of you if I ever die,’ I said, laughing.
‘Hey, is that your car?’ Rosemary said, as we pulled into the small parking lot next to the Blue Duck.
My heart sank when I saw the parking ticket on the window. Combined with the cost of the vodka and the whisky and the taxi home, this was the most expensive night out I’d had in a long time.
The next morning I rose at seven, showered and got dressed for work.
‘What are you doing?’ Trent asked when he saw me come down for breakfast. ‘I thought you were taking the whole week off.’
‘I’m not like my sister,’ I told him. ‘I can’t sit around doing nothing.’
‘Nobody’s saying you have to do nothing but you could at least do something that isn’t work. If I had a week off, I’d spend it at the movies.’
‘Well, maybe you’ll get lucky and your mum will die.’ The words fell out of my mouth before I could stop them. Trent’s face fell and my heart contracted.
‘I’m sorry,’ I said, rushing to hug him. ‘I’m really sorry. I don’t mean to be such a bitch. People grieve—’
‘—in different ways.’ Trent nodded. ‘I know. But please remember I’m on your team, Samantha.’
I knew the minute I sat at my desk in my small office that coming back to work was the right decision. The tension that had been gathering around my neck the past few days immediately slipped away as I methodically made my way through my inbox. I then went all the way back through the emails I’d flagged but hadn’t responded to before I went on leave. Among them was an email from Nicole, written two days before Tina had died, begging me to go into the hospital.
I took a deep breath and then deleted it.
‘You look well . . . considering,’ one of the women from Accounts Receivable remarked when she saw me in the break room. ‘I’m so sorry for your loss.’
I wanted to say that there’d been not that much left for me to lose, but I didn’t, of course.
‘Thank you,’ I said.
‘If you need anything . . .’ Her voice trailed off into that useless place most people end up when faced with other people’s grief.
‘Thank you,’ I repeated. But this time, I knew there wasn’t even a hint of gratitude in my voice.
I avoided the break room for the rest of the day, and by five o’clock, I almost felt like myself again – or, rather, the version of myself that I preferred to be. But then, when I got home and found the envelope in the mailbox, that façade immediately began to crumble.
The envelope was hastily scribbled to me with the following note in Nicole’s loopy handwriting:
Read the entry marked with the Post-it note.
Inside the house, I threw the envelope down on the coffee table and ignored it for as long as I could. The evening was hot and airless and the air-conditioning was straining to keep up. I changed into a sarong and ate my supper on the couch, occasionally scowling at the unopened envelope on the coffee table, like it was an uninvited and incredibly unwelcome guest. Trent was playing tennis and god knew where Rosemary was. Probably in Fremantle again with her uni friends.
The more I looked at it, the more I found I wanted a drink. But I kept shovelling salad into my mouth, pretending to myself that it was really salad that I wanted and needed, and not booze.
When all the salad was gone, I opened the envelope. I would have preferred to have opened a bottle, but I knew Trent would be home any moment. Inside, I found a small pocket-sized diary with 1981 in gold embossed letters on the cover and knew instantly that it was Tina’s. She had never been without one of these diaries, except perhaps at the very end in hospital. Once again, the regret rose up in my chest. I turned to the page with the yellow Post-it note and read Nicole’s message: See 31 Jan.
The writing in the entry for the thirty-first of January was small and controlled.
My heart is broken.
The car is fucked.
I took a deep breath and rang Nicole.
‘Okay,’ I said. ‘Let’s talk to Dad.’
The Spill
1982
An hour after they left the motel in Hyden, they stopped for petrol. The sun was burning high and none of them could imagine ever feeling cool again.
Tina let the girls choose a soft drink from the petrol station’s hardworking fridge. Nicole chose a Mello Yello and Samantha chose a Passiona. Tina didn’t get a drink for herself. Instead, she took a big sip from Samantha’s can and then from Nicole’s.
‘Mummy tax,’ she explained to them.
She unfolded the large map and pretended to look at all the lines and dots but her mind kept going back to the phone call with Craig and the bottle of whisky she’d left behind in Hyden. She didn’t want to know where she was going. She just wanted to drive. She shoved the map to the side and started the engine.
‘We’ll have lunch in Merredin,’ she announced to the girls.
‘Will we get to Nanna and Poppa’s in time for Young Talent Time?’ Nicole asked.
‘Probably,’ Tina replied, although she had no idea what time Young Talent Time was on.
Nicole quickly finished her Mello Yello and lay across the back seat, amidst the pile of pillows and doonas. She felt like she was being hugged by a cloud. She closed her eyes and thought about which song she would sing if she were a contestant on Young Talent Time. Probably ‘He’s My Number One’ by Christie Allen, which was still her favourite song even though it wasn’t in the charts any more.
In the front seat, Samantha sipped her Passiona slowly, but the can was growing warm in her hand, making its contents taste like passionfruit spit. The seatbelt was digging into her neck, and she was really too small to be able to see out of the windscreen properly. She wanted to ask her sister if she could have one of the pillows to sit on, but she was still upset with Nicole for pushing her off the swing back in Hyden.
Tina fiddled with the radio until she’d picked up a station playing music. It was ‘Brass in Pocket’ by The Pretenders and she began to sing along at the top of her voice.
As she drove along the dusty road, she hit a series of bends and she leant into them hard, approaching them at speed and then switching to the brake at the last minute. There was something about the pressure of the brakes followed by the release of the accelerator that made her feel in control of her life again.
In the back seat, Nicole had started sliding around. It was fun at first, but then her head banged hard against the door.
‘Mum, can you slow down?’ she shouted over the blare of the radio.
‘It’s fine. We’re fine,’ Tina said, more to herself than to anyone else. But then she leant too hard into the last corner a
nd the world went into slow motion.
Tina turned to Samantha beside her, worried that she would slip out of the seatbelt. She reached out to hold Samantha back and shouted both girls’ names in a desperate attempt to keep them in this world, to stop them from flying out of the car and away from her forever.
Nicole, in a tangle of doonas and pillows, felt her body bounce between the roof and the seat as the car spun and then flipped and rolled, but her mind was curiously calm as if she had remained perfectly still.
Samantha, with her mother’s hand on her chest, felt like she was on the Mad Mouse at the Royal Perth Show. She closed her eyes and succumbed to the ride.
And then everything stopped. There was one last metallic groan as the car finished its slide along the hot gravel road and then there was silence, except for the final bars of ‘Brass in Pocket’ still playing on the radio.
Nicole’s first thought was that she might be crying. She put her hand up to her eye, expecting to wipe away tears, but found blood instead.
Samantha’s first thought was that she couldn’t see the sky.
And Tina’s first thought, after she’d seen that both her daughters were okay, was I need a fucking drink.
Nicole
I arrived at the pub fifteen minutes ahead of time only to find Samantha already there, sitting at one of the tables out the front.
‘The one time I’m actually early for a thing, you’re even earlier,’ I said to Samantha with a nervous laugh.
I didn’t tell Samantha that the reason I’d arrived so early was because I wanted to give myself the opportunity to leave again before Samantha and Dad got there. Samantha already being there made that escape route impossible, not without a scene, not when I was the one who had pushed for all this. And, in any case, dramatic exits were more her thing than mine.
‘I haven’t been here for years,’ I said, as I sat down. ‘Not since Darren and I were still together. Or not together, as the case often was.’
‘I’ve never been here at all,’ Samantha replied. ‘It’s quite nice.’
I had been surprised when Samantha suggested we meet with Dad at The Queens, especially since I knew it was one of the places Trent liked to come on the nights he went out with his friends while Samantha stayed at home to be furious. She’d never actually spoken to me about how she felt about Trent occasionally drinking, but over the years she’d said volumes in eye rolls and pursed lips.
‘How does Trent feel about you being on his turf?’ I joked. ‘Are you two going to have a dance-off in the carpark?’
‘Trent doesn’t know I’m here,’ Samantha said. There was something about the offhandedness of her tone that worried me.
‘Is everything okay with you two?’ I asked before the words got swallowed.
‘Yes. Why are you asking?’ The sharpness of Samantha’s response made me think I had touched a nerve.
‘Because . . .’ I started, but the words didn’t come. ‘I don’t know.’
‘Trent said he heard from Darren, by the way,’ Samantha said. ‘Apparently he’s living in Osaka and getting married to some Japanese girl half his age.’
‘Yeah, he emailed me, too.’ I could tell he was pretending to do it out of courtesy, but really, he was gloating because he was getting married and I wasn’t.
‘Anyway, you’re well shot of him. Remember how he didn’t even come and see me in the hospital when Rosemary was born. Where was it that he went instead? Taekwondo?’
‘He didn’t do taekwondo. He did karate. But I don’t think that was why he didn’t go to the hospital.’
I thought it bold of Samantha to bitch about Darren’s no-show at the hospital when she hadn’t even visited her own mother on her deathbed, but I didn’t mention it. I still couldn’t talk to her about it and anyway, I needed to keep her onside.
‘He was definitely at taekwondo,’ she was still insisting.
‘He didn’t do taekwondo.’
‘Whatever.’ Samantha then changed the topic again by sliding Mum’s diary back to me across the table. ‘Here. You can have this back.’
‘So, what did you think?’
‘Not much.’
She obviously must have thought something if she’d agreed to meet with Dad, but I didn’t challenge her. I just put the diary back in my bag.
‘The diary entry might not be related to anything Dad actually did, you know,’ Samantha informed me. ‘Tina’s heart might have been broken only because Dad was so angry at her for driving drunk.’
‘We still don’t know that for sure,’ I said, immediately picking up the menu to try to block the old argument about whether or not Mum had been drunk. I didn’t want to start fighting with Samantha before Dad even got here.
‘I’ve ordered some polenta chips, by the way,’ Samantha told me.
‘Great. I’m going to the bar to get a drink,’ I said, putting down the menu. ‘Do you want anything?’
Samantha shook her head and took a sip of her soft drink through her straw, her lips pursed more than necessary.
Up at the bar, I decided to order a cocktail, something to sip slowly. I was worried that any other drink would go down too quickly and then I’d have to order a second drink and Samantha would ingest her lips altogether.
‘Which cocktail do you recommend?’ I asked the guy behind the bar.
‘The Fourth of July is very popular,’ he replied.
‘So is dabbing,’ I quipped and then regretted it. It was the kind of joke Mum would have made and it only deepened the Tina-shaped hole in my chest. The guy just looked at me blankly.
‘I’ll try one,’ I added, quickly fumbling for my wallet.
‘No wuckas,’ he replied, as he rang up my order. ‘Our mixologist will get right onto it and we’ll bring it out to you.’
On the way back to the table, I passed Samantha, who was now on her way in.
‘Just going to the loo,’ she told me.
I sat at the table and looked around at the other patrons. Behind us was a large group of men in suits and loosened ties, chatting about the Australian cricket team’s form over after-work drinks. At the table to my right, a couple were mid-argument. The woman was blowing her nose loudly into her paper napkin, while the man jabbed angrily at their shared bowl of nachos with his fork. I hoped the talk with Dad didn’t end up in a public scene like that. Just the thought of it made my mouth go dry.
There was no water at our table so I quickly sneaked a sip of Samantha’s soft drink and was surprised to taste the alcohol in it.
My first thought was that a mistake had been made. Samantha had got the wrong drink and hadn’t realised it was alcoholic.
My second thought, however, was something darker and half-formed: booze-drenched lilies in a bin. But before the thought could properly crystallise, Dad arrived and Samantha returned from the bathroom.
‘Sorry I’m late,’ he said, kissing us both on the cheek. He sat next to Samantha and put his phone on the table, face up. ‘I’m expecting a call from Cee-Cee,’ he explained. ‘She’s just at the doctor’s and might join us afterwards.’
‘Is everything all right, Dad?’ Samantha asked him.
‘Yeah,’ he replied, but he didn’t offer any more information. Instead, he said, ‘How are you both holding up?’
‘Okay,’ I replied at the very same time Samantha said, ‘Great.’
I found myself bristling. ‘Great’ felt like a poor word choice so soon after losing our mother.
‘So what’s this big thing you need to talk to me about?’ Dad asked.
Samantha gave me a look that at first I couldn’t interpret. And then I realised that she was expecting me to start the conversation. My mouth had gone dry again. Where the fuck was my drink?
‘Nic wants to ask you something,’ Samantha eventually said.
Dad turned to look at me.
‘Um, well . . .’ I cleared my throat. ‘The thing is, Dad, we caught up with Aunt Meg the day after Mum’s funeral.’
&nbs
p; ‘Oh.’ His mouth formed a perfect round ‘O’ shape.
I forged on. ‘She wanted to get something off her chest. Something she said that hap—’
‘Did you guys order food?’ One of the bar staff had arrived with a big basket of polenta chips.
‘Yes, thanks,’ Samantha said, clearing a space in the middle of the table.
‘Too easy,’ he replied, putting the basket down. He could not have been further away from describing the situation in front of him.
‘Excuse me,’ I said, touching the guy’s arm lightly, as he went to leave. ‘I ordered a cocktail and the bar guy said someone was going to bring it out?’
‘I’ll go check where’s it at for you, champ,’ the guy replied, flashing his too-white teeth.
Dad popped a polenta chip into his mouth and immediately took it out again. ‘They’re hot,’ he remarked.
‘Dip it in the sour cream,’ Samantha told him.
‘I’m trying to avoid dairy,’ Dad replied. ‘Cee-Cee says it makes my aura cloudy.’
‘Aura?’ I asked, glad for the digression but also genuinely curious why the very Christian Celine would be talking about auras.
‘She’s been taking me to her kinesiologist in Morley and apparently I have a hole in my aura,’ Dad told us sheepishly. It wasn’t clear whether he was feeling sheepish about the hole in his aura or the fact he was seeing a kinesiologist.
‘What’s a kinesiologist?’ Samantha asked.
‘I have no idea,’ Dad admitted. ‘All I know is that my aura is cloudy and holey and I can’t eat cream.’
We all sat in silence for a moment, while Dad blew on his polenta chip. I had no idea how to steer everyone back into the conversation. Luckily, Samantha helped me out.
‘Now, what were you saying about Aunt Meg?’ she said, once Dad had finished his mouthful.
‘Uh, yeah, Aunt Meg.’ My stomach tightened. My heart was thumping and the blood was rushing around my ears, louder than the ocean. ‘Aunt Meg said that there was more to your divorce than just Mum’s alcohol abuse. She said, um . . . she said that you had an affair with her.’