The Spill

by Imbi Neeme

Outside in the hall, Craig shouted, ‘You’re going to die penniless and drunk in a ditch!’ And then Tina responded, ‘I hope your dick falls off!’ And then the front door slammed.

  Yep, thought Nicole. GTBH.

  Samantha

  After I left Coco’s, I drove south to Donna-Louise’s house in Busselton. The drive took two and a half hours and, a few times, I considered turning back and going home to my hidden stash of vodka. But then I would think of Donna-Louise and I would keep going.

  Somewhere just outside Mandurah, my phone rang. It was Dad. I didn’t want to talk to him. I didn’t want to talk to Nicole or to Trent or to Rosemary. I just wanted to talk to Donna-Louise. I reached over and switched the phone to airplane mode and drove the rest of the way to Busselton in silence.

  If Donna-Louise was surprised to see me standing on her doorstep, she didn’t show it. Instead, she ushered me inside and offered me a cup of tea, like I was a neighbour dropping by and not some mad woman who had driven over two hundred kilometres on a whim.

  ‘I was so sorry to hear the news about your mum,’ Donna-Louise said, as she prepared the tea. ‘I was going to drive up for the funeral but I thought it might be a bit awkward for everyone if your father was there with Celine.’ She paused. ‘I assume he was there with Celine.’

  ‘Yes, they were both there.’ I thought of Dad at the wake, hovering near Nicole’s front door, like he’d already left before he’d even arrived. ‘Actually, Celine has been in hospital. A miscarriage. She’s fine, but I think it was disappointing for them both.’

  ‘Ah,’ Donna-Louise said, laying out lace doilies for the teacups. ‘I thought Craig might try for fatherhood again. He certainly didn’t have any luck persuading me.’

  While the tea steeped, Donna-Louise asked how Rosemary was going in her third year of university.

  ‘I’ve got no idea. She’s out all the time,’ I said. ‘And the rare times that she is home, she’s either asleep or in the bathroom taking selfies.’

  I thought of Rosemary’s Instagram account, full of photos taken in nightclub bathrooms, looking up at the camera with her lips pushed out so they looked like sausages. Of course, when I told her I wished she’d use her normal face, she blocked me.

  ‘I see the apple doesn’t fall far from the tree,’ Donna-Louise remarked.

  My face must have shown my confusion, because she quickly added, ‘Oh, no, not you. You’re not the tree. I was talking about Tina. Rosemary’s always been so much like Tina.’

  ‘You think so?’ I said, trying to sound like I was disagreeing with her. But I knew in my heart, she was right. Despite all my efforts to keep them apart over the years, Rosemary had turned out just like Tina. A party girl.

  ‘Of course, you had a touch of that wildness, too, when you first came to live with Craig and me. Do you remember how many times I had to get you to rearrange the bookcase?’

  I nodded. It had been Donna-Louise’s favourite task to give me whenever I lost my temper. At first it had felt like a punishment, but then, over time, it became a kind of meditation. I had tried the same with Rosemary but it hadn’t worked.

  ‘I wasn’t that wild,’ I said.

  ‘No,’ Donna-Louise reflected. ‘But you certainly had the capacity for wildness, given half a chance.’

  I briefly thought of all the vodka I’d recently had the capacity for and quickly changed the topic.

  ‘How’s the golf?’

  ‘I’m president of the women’s social team now,’ she said, with a small laugh. ‘I still miss the Mount Lawley Club, but some of the members still come down to play a few rounds with me every now and again.’

  Donna-Louise poured the tea out through the strainer and I found myself wishing I could do the same with my life: pour it through something to make it pure again. ‘How is Nicole? Has she finally got that rich boyfriend of hers to marry her?’

  ‘I don’t think Jethro will ever ask,’ I said, choosing to ignore Dad’s claim that Jethro had asked his permission years before. ‘I think they pretty much live their lives in the shadow of his previous marriage.’

  ‘Hmmm,’ Donna-Louise said, tightening her lips. ‘I always half-expected she would get herself knocked up to have some security.’

  ‘I don’t think she can have babies,’ I replied. ‘The only time she’s ever talked to me about it was after some specialist appointment she’d had, but she didn’t seem that upset about it. She’s not really the maternal type.’

  It was the standard response I gave whenever people asked me if my sister had children. But this time, as I spoke, all I could think about was Nicole holding Celine’s hand.

  Donna-Louise gently stirred some sugar into her tea. ‘I suppose you’ll eventually tell me why you’ve come here. Of course, it’s a delight to see you. It’s just that it’s been a little while since you visited.’

  ‘At least I’m wearing shoes this time,’ I joked, suddenly remembering the time I’d turned up at the Mount Lawley house in my bare feet. I couldn’t even remember why now, although I could still recall the feeling of the dew on their perfectly kept lawn against my soles.

  ‘Shoes?’ Donna-Louise glanced at my feet, her brow furrowed. Her memory was obviously even worse than mine.

  ‘Anyway,’ I began, ‘the reason I’m here is because Nicole and I talked to Dad about his split with Tina and it spilled into some of the reasons you split with Dad.’

  ‘Did it really?’ Donna-Louise said, with one carefully plucked eyebrow arched.

  ‘Yes, he admitted he was unfaithful to you.’

  ‘Oh. Right.’

  Donna-Louise looked away, back out the window into her immaculate garden. I was starting to wonder why I’d driven all this way if all it achieved was dredging up the painful past for poor Donna-Louise.

  ‘Did he tell you who he slept with?’ she asked, still looking outside.

  ‘We, uh, didn’t really drill down to that level of detail. But as I was driving here, I admit I did wonder. Was it someone at work? His secretary? That woman, Cheryl?’ I shuddered. Cheryl had been all peroxide and cheap perfume and had a laugh like a hyena.

  ‘Oh, a secretary would have been fine. We could have bounced back from that. We could have bounced back from a hundred secretaries.’

  ‘Then who was it?’ I began scouring my memory for other women Dad had known back then. ‘Was it someone from the club?’

  Donna-Louise lifted her chin and turned back to face me. ‘It was your mother.’

  I felt my stomach fall away, like I had just hit a dip on a rollercoaster. ‘He slept with Tina?’

  ‘When I found out, he told me some outlandish story to try to convince me it hadn’t happened. He was always very good at telling stories, your father. But all his stories aside, the truth was I always knew that Tina was his real love.’ She paused and straightened the lace doily underneath the teapot. ‘You were talking about the shadow of the ex-wife that Nicole and her rich boyfriend live under? Well, let me tell you that Tina cast a very long shadow over every single day of the twenty years Craig and I were married.’

  I had no words. That my father, who loved order as much as I loved it, could still love Tina, an agent of chaos – it just didn’t make sense.

  Donna-Louise poured us both some more tea. Her voice was as carefully measured as the sugar she spooned into her cup. ‘I want you to know that I didn’t leave him because he slept with his ex-wife. I left him because I finally accepted he had never really been mine.’

  ‘But he left her. I don’t understand.’

  ‘I expect he left her for the very same reason as I left him: she was never really his. Tina was nobody’s. I always admired her for that.’

  I found it hard to believe that the cool, collected Donna-Louise could ever admire anything about my drunken whirlwind of a mother. This was a day full of surprises.

  ‘The real question, of course, is why Tina slept with Craig. She never showed him anything other than joyous disdain. I suppose we’ll never kno
w now.’

  ‘I guess we won’t,’ I said, sitting back in my chair. My head was a flurry of half-formed thoughts. One thing was for certain: I could no longer rely on the version of the past I had been carrying around all these years.

  In the next room, a clock chimed. Donna-Louise stood up. ‘It’s getting late. Would you like to stay for dinner? I could even make up a bed for you in the spare room.’

  I remembered the bed she had made for me the night my mother slapped me and how good the cool cotton sheets had felt. I found myself yearning for that kind of comfort again. But I knew I needed to get back to my husband and my child.

  ‘No, I’d better get back to Perth. I have work in the morning,’ I said, putting my cup very carefully down on its saucer. ‘Thanks for the tea. And the chat.’

  ‘Any time,’ Donna-Louise said. ‘Although, you could probably find a cuppa a little closer to home.’

  I smiled, but I was aware that we were both now acting like the conversation about Dad and Tina had never taken place. I gathered my things and Donna-Louise walked with me to the door.

  ‘Give my best to Trent and to Rosemary,’ she said, embracing me quickly.

  ‘I will.’

  I nodded and went to go but then stopped myself. I turned back to face Donna-Louise. ‘The real reason I came down here was I wanted to say I was sorry Dad hurt you like that. And actually, I don’t care if Tina was the love of his life. The truth is you were the best thing that ever happened to him. You were the best thing that ever happened to me.’

  ‘Oh Samantha,’ Donna-Louise said, her grey eyes shining with almost-tears, but she didn’t say anything else. She just gently shut the door.

  I drove back to Perth, the long road ahead of me slipping under my car and into the past. As I drove by the turn-off for Mandurah, I remembered to turn my phone back on. A call instantly came through the car’s Bluetooth system. It was Nicole. I accepted the call before I had time to think about it too much.

  ‘Where are you?’ Nicole sounded worried.

  ‘I’m driving.’

  ‘I can tell that much. Where are you going?’

  ‘I’m driving back from Busselton. I went to see Donna-Louise.’

  ‘What did The Iron Lady say?’

  The use of the old nickname grated on me. ‘She said a lot of things, actually.’

  ‘And?’

  I saw no reason to protect Nicole from the truth, not when she’d opened this can of worms with Dad in the first place. I took a big deep breath and let it all out. ‘Remember how Dad said he was unfaithful to Donna-Louise? Well, it was with Tina. He slept with Tina.’

  ‘What?’ Nicole’s voice was thick with confusion. ‘I mean, why would he . . .’

  ‘That bit’s easy,’ I replied, with a laugh that wasn’t mine. Once again, the Other Samantha had taken charge. ‘Tina was the love of his life and he never got over her. That’s why he fucked her. The real question is why did she fuck him? Donna-Louise had no idea, but I know why.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Because Tina was a fucking bitch who just wanted to fuck everything up for everyone.’

  ‘Oh Sammy, you know that’s not true.’

  She was right, of course. It wasn’t true but I was saying it anyway. Tina felt like the obvious target for all this anger and grief I was feeling. And so I pushed on.

  ‘Why else would she do it, Nicole, if not just to fuck up Dad and Donna-Louise’s marriage? She was probably drunk and feeling mean. Or completely sober and even meaner. I remember her phoning from the pub, pretending to be sorry that Dad and DL were separating. She wasn’t sorry. She was the fucking cause.’

  ‘Don’t do this. We just buried her.’

  ‘No, Nicole. You buried her. She was never my mother to bury.’

  And with that, I hung up and turned my phone back onto airplane mode, even though there was a part of me that wanted to ring back Nicole immediately and apologise. While Tina might have slept with Dad, there was no getting around the fact that he had also slept with her. Dad needed to take his share of the blame in all this. The problem was, I wasn’t ready to give it to him.

  Dad had been my saviour. He had pulled me out of the wreckage of my life with Tina. He had given me shelter and order. He had given me Donna-Louise. And yet, he’d valued none of it, instead yearning for the very thing he had saved me from.

  In the silence of the car, all I could hear was my own rapid breathing above the hum of the motor. I pushed away all my thoughts and focused as hard as I could on each breath coming in and going out, until finally, my breathing slowed. Now there was only the hum and the lights of the drive-through bottle shop up ahead.

  I arrived back in Perth just after eight. The house was dark, save the glow of the television.

  ‘Where have you been?’ Trent asked. ‘I called a thousand times.’

  ‘My phone ran out of battery,’ I lied.

  ‘Well, your sister’s been trying, too. And your dad. They’ve left messages on the answering machine if you want to listen to them.’

  ‘Not really.’

  I sat next to Trent on the couch and laid my head on his shoulder. My mind touched briefly on the bottle of vodka I’d just bought, now hidden in my handbag, but I pushed the thought aside. The vodka could wait until later, when Trent had gone to sleep. For the moment, I was happy to be sitting next to him.

  He was watching a movie that involved a lot of alarming-looking blue people running around.

  ‘What is this film? And why are those people so blue?’ I asked.

  ‘It’s Avatar,’ he replied. ‘And the blue people are Smurfs gone rogue.’

  ‘Smurfette looks well fierce,’ I remarked. We continued watching in silence.

  ‘But seriously,’ Trent turned to me at the next ad break. ‘You should ring your dad and your sister, Sam. They both sound really worried.’

  ‘Let them worry. I’ll ring them in the morning.’

  But I knew I wouldn’t ring them in the morning. Nor the next morning. I would keep ignoring their calls and texts. I imagined that in years to come I would tell Rosemary and maybe even my grandchildren that this was the summer that I lost them all: first my mother, then my father and then my sister. This, I’d tell them, was the summer that I chose to be an orphan.

  Piece #17: 2013

  After the appointment with the specialist, Nicole and Jethro sat in the car in silence. Outside, people moved about living their lives. But inside their car, it felt as if everything had been put on pause.

  ‘Nic—’ Jethro finally began, but Nicole stopped him.

  ‘It’s okay. We don’t have to talk about this yet. We need to let it sink in first. Can you just take me home?’

  Jethro nodded and started the engine.

  Nicole’s first impulse, after Jethro had dropped her off and headed back to work, was to ring Tina.

  ‘Sammy!’ Tina answered the phone. There was lots of noise in the background.

  ‘No, Mum, it’s Nicole.’

  ‘Nicole?’

  ‘That’s right.’

  ‘Of course! It says it on the phone! Duh! Everyone, look, it says Nicole on the phone and I said Sammy.’

  By now, Nicole’s ears had adjusted to the laughter in the background and she knew that, even though it was barely midday, Tina was already at the pub. She found herself withdrawing.

  ‘I can hear that you’re busy. Don’t worry about it, it’s nothing urgent. I’ll ring you back later.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘I’LL RING YOU BACK LATER.’

  ‘Ta ta,’ Tina said cheerfully.

  After she hung up, Nicole sat and stared at her phone for a long time. She wanted to ring Jethro but she knew he would still be driving to work. But as she scrolled through her contacts, she knew there was nobody else she really wanted to talk to.

  Her finger stopped on Samantha’s name. It had been such a long time since they’d shared anything personal with each other. In recent times, they hadn’t even s
hared the impersonal stuff. She decided to take the plunge and ring her. After all, they were sisters. They should be there for each other.

  ‘Hi, Nic. What is it?’ Samantha sounded distracted.

  ‘Just thought I’d ring to say hi,’ Nicole felt like a character from a sitcom, brimming with fake cheer.

  ‘Okay . . .’ Samantha sounded wary. It wasn’t their practice to ring just to say hi.

  ‘All right, okay, so I am ringing to say more than hi. I got some bad news today.’

  ‘What’s the matter?’ Samantha sounded concerned enough for Nicole to continue.

  ‘Well, Jethro and I have just been to see a fertility specialist.’ Nicole took a deep breath before she said the next bit. ‘And it turns out I have an incompetent cervix and it’s unlikely that I’ll ever be able to have children.’

  ‘Oh,’ Samantha said, her tone unreadable. ‘I’m sorry to hear that.’

  They fell into an uncomfortable silence and Nicole found herself trying to fill it.

  ‘Of course, I’m forty-one,’ she said. ‘You could argue that most women over forty have incompetent cervixes to a certain degree. But mine, it turns out, is particularly incompetent.’

  ‘Oh, well,’ Samantha said, after another pause. ‘At least the decision has been made for you.’

  ‘What do you mean by that? What decision?’

  ‘The decision about whether or not to have children. You’ve never been good with decisions.’

  Nicole clenched the phone. Samantha had no clue about the decision she’d had to make back when she’d fallen pregnant to Darren, and how that had worked out for her.

  ‘Yeah, I guess,’ she said, pushing her feelings down with each word. They spoke for a few more minutes, mostly awkward chitchat about what Rosemary was up to. And then Nicole made her excuses and hung up.

  Ringing Samantha had been a mistake.

  She thought again of ringing Jethro. He’d be at work by now. But she wanted to give him a little more time to digest the news. God knew that she, too, needed more time. The information was sitting high in her throat, like something she was having trouble swallowing.