The Spill
Page 26
‘Ah,’ Dad said, taking his hand away from mine and folding them in his lap again. ‘That.’
‘Yes. That. Donna-Louise told me what happened.’
‘It’s not what you think. It’s not even what Donna-Louise thinks.’
I frowned. ‘Then what is it, Dad?’
‘It’s a big stuff-up. That’s what it is. This is where I stuffed up the most. Even more than I did by sleeping with Meg.’
‘Okay. So tell me about it.’ I had the urge to tell Dad to lie down on the love seat, while I took notes, like Linda. ‘When did it happen?’
‘The night of Nicole’s twenty-first.’
‘Oh god,’ I said, my hand automatically flying up to my mouth, but then dropping away. ‘Hang on. You and Donna-Louise didn’t separate until, what, a decade after that?’
‘It was almost twelve years later that DL found the letter Tina wrote me at the time, begging me to keep it a secret.’
‘Jesus, Dad. Why did you keep the letter?’
‘To convince myself it had happened.’
‘What do you mean “convince”?’
Dad looked down, embarrassed.
‘It’s so embarrassing to admit this, Sammy. The thing is, we didn’t actually sleep together,’ he said quietly. ‘I’d only had a few light beers that night because DL and I were driving the people who didn’t fit onto that awful Gobbles bus into the city. When we got back, DL went straight to bed with one of her headaches and I found Tina and your sister in the backyard. I drove them both home – Nicole first and then your mother. Tina was so drunk. Drunker than I’d seen her in years. But friendly. We laughed and chatted, like we had when we first got together. And then, when we got to her flat, I didn’t want the evening to end and for us to resume hostilities. So I invited myself in.’
He stopped to watch a brightly coloured bird land on one of the rose bushes.
‘That’s a Western Rosella,’ he explained, although I hadn’t asked. ‘They usually travel in pairs, so it’s quite rare to see one on its own. DL used to hate them because they ate her fruit trees, but I’ve always loved them. All that colour . . .’
‘Dad?’ I said tentatively. I needed him to return to the story. I needed to understand what had happened.
‘Ah, yes. Now, where was I?’ Dad said, as if waking himself from a dream. He turned back to face me. ‘I invited myself in. I guess I thought we might share a few more drinks and chat more, but she just went straight to her bed and fell asleep. I waited for a while in the lounge room and then – and this is the part I’m not proud of – I went into her room and lay down next to her. I didn’t touch her, I swear. I just wanted to be close to her. And then, when she woke up an hour later and saw me there and assumed that she and I had . . . so I let her think . . .’
‘Why would you let her think that?’ None of this made sense to me.
‘I’ve been exploring this with my own counsellor and I’m still not sure. I think I thought she might get back together with me if she believed we’d slept together. That she would think the door between us that had been firmly shut had somehow been opened again and she might decide to step through it and come back to me. But then she wrote me that letter and I realised how horrified and full of regret she was. The truth is that my lie just made her slam that door shut for good.
‘And then years later, when DL found the letter, I tried to tell her that it hadn’t actually happened, but she didn’t believe me.’ He unfolded his hands and turned them, palms up as if he was hoping to catch the sky. ‘But why should she have believed me? I’m not a good man, Samantha. I’m weak. My counsellor says that’s why I surround myself with strong women.’
‘But Tina wasn’t strong. She was a drunk.’
‘You think she wasn’t strong because she drank?’ Dad seemed genuinely confounded. ‘She was strong, Sammy. Strong enough to know when to hold on and when to let go. I’ve always held on to the wrong things for much longer than I ought to and let go of the right things at the wrong time.’
We sat in silence. I thought of Donna-Louise, straight-backed and proud, and how she had deserved so much more than feeling like someone’s leftovers. I wondered if Celine felt the same way.
‘Have you told Celine any of this?’
‘Yes. She’s come along to a couple of my sessions with my counsellor and we’ve all prayed together,’ Dad said, as if that answered the question.
‘And?’
‘Cee-Cee understands, like I do, that you can’t change the past. You can only change the way you behave in the future. And she knows and trusts that I’m trying hard to be a better person.’
I realised in that moment that the past was like one of Rosemary’s slinky toys when it got all twisted and bent. Even if I managed to untangle all the lies and resentment, I could never fix it. So why shouldn’t I try to be like Dad and leave it behind?
‘I’m going to try to be a better person, too,’ I said.
‘That’s why Tina sent you to live with me, you know,’ Dad said, looking out at the garden that he and Tina had planted together, and the roses she tried to destroy. ‘She was worried you were too much like her. She wanted you to have a chance to be a better person than she thought she was.’
My jaw dropped. ‘But I thought it was because she didn’t want to deal with me anymore. I know I’m not . . . easy.’
In fact, I was a pain in the arse. Therapy had been showing me that. I had been so busy stamping my foot and demanding what I wanted from the world that I had never stopped to listen to anyone around me.
‘No, it wasn’t that at all. She wanted to protect you. And then, when you were hovering between the two houses for a while, she made that decision to move to a smaller place that didn’t have room for you.’
‘She did that on purpose?’
‘She did that out of love.’
I bowed my head. All those years, I had thought Tina hadn’t wanted or cared for me.
‘I wish I’d known all this before she . . .’
‘Before she died?’ Dad put his arm around me. ‘Nicole told me you didn’t go see her in the hospital. That must be a hard thing to sit with.’
I started to cry. ‘Nicole doesn’t know, but I did go and see her. Too late, though. I left it too late.’
Dad gently squeezed my shoulder. ‘Let that one go, darling. Tina had her faults, but, as I said, she knew when to hold on and when to let go. We could all learn something from her.’
Piece #21: 1986
It was the kind of day when even the sky seemed defeated by the heat. When Nicole went into Tina’s room and suggested they go to the beach, she was surprised that Tina said yes. Tina’s hangovers had been a little worse in the six months since Samantha had gone to live with Craig and that morning’s had been even more severe than usual.
‘We can pick up your sister on the way,’ Tina said, from underneath the wheat pack on her forehead.
‘No need. She’s already here.’
‘Again?’
‘Yes, again.’
Samantha might have been officially living in Mount Lawley, but she had been constantly turning up unannounced in Bassendean, like a moth flitting uncertainly between two flames. Most Saturday mornings, Nicole would get up to make coffee for her and Tina and find Samantha sitting at the dining room table doing her homework or quietly rearranging the books on the bookshelf so they were back in alphabetical order. One time, she’d admitted to Nicole that she came to Bassendean because she had no idea where to stand in the Mount Lawley house on Saturday mornings without feeling like she was in Donna-Louise’s way.
‘Mum said yes,’ Nicole told Samantha when she got back out to the living room.
‘I’ll have to stay here tonight,’ Samantha replied. ‘Donna-Louise doesn’t like sand in the house, not after she’s cleaned all the floors.’
‘Another rule of The House of No,’ Nicole said, picking up a book and pretending to make a note inside it. ‘No sand.’
‘Don’t call
it that,’ Samantha protested. ‘It’s not really like that. Not when you live there.’
‘Sorry, Sammy, but you can’t sleep here,’ Tina shouted from her room. ‘There’s a couple of bicycles on your bed. It’s kind of a long story.’
Samantha frowned and leapt up, muttering, ‘It’s still my room,’ as she stormed off down the hall.
Nicole returned to her copy of The Accidental Tourist, but she couldn’t concentrate on the story. For one thing, Samantha was making way too much noise trying to remove one of the bicycles from her room. And for another thing, it was bugging her that she still didn’t understand why Samantha had gone to live in Mount Lawley. No number of questions, direct or indirect, to Tina, Craig or even Samantha herself, would reveal the reason. Nicole figured it had something to do with Samantha getting drunk at that party, but she thought there must be more to it than that.
Whenever she asked her sister, all Samantha would say is, ‘It’s between me and Tina,’ in a voice she seemed to have borrowed from a soap opera. Nicole wasn’t used to things being between Tina and Samantha that didn’t involve her. She wondered if Samantha wasn’t telling Nicole because she was still angry that Nicole had dobbed her in to Tina. But even that didn’t make sense. It was entirely the kind of thing Samantha herself would have done. Surely, she could see that.
Samantha was still wrestling with one of the bicycles in the corridor when Tina emerged from her room.
‘Leave it in there,’ Tina told her. ‘We’ll deal with it later.’
‘But I want to change the sheets.’
‘You’ll have to wash some sheets first,’ Tina laughed.
‘There’s always clean sheets at Dad’s.’
‘Well, maybe you should sleep there,’ Tina said, her tone a little pointy. ‘Actually, that reminds me. I need to talk to you.’
She made a wide sweeping ‘step into my office’ gesture back in through her door. Samantha gave up on the bicycle, leaving it so it was half in her room and half in the corridor, and stomped into Tina’s bedroom.
‘What about me? I’m part of this family too,’ Nicole shouted after them.
‘This is between me and Samantha,’ Tina replied in her own soap opera voice, as she closed the door.
Nicole strained to hear what they were talking about, but she couldn’t make out any words, just a low rumble. She put her book down and edged her way down the corridor, past the bicycle, and was almost there when the door was flung open again. Tina’s smile was brighter than the sun, but Samantha’s face was flushed with an emotion Nicole couldn’t quite name.
‘Grab your bathers, Nicole,’ Tina said. ‘We’ve got a date with the Indian Ocean.’
Nicole told Samantha that she could sit in the front seat. Normally, she’d assert her front seat rights as the elder sister but today, she just wanted Samantha’s face to go back to normal.
‘I’m happy to sit in the back,’ Samantha said, her voice quiet.
The car remained silent as they drove along the highway. Nicole was thankful that they’d had to wind all the windows down because of the heat. The rush of air in her ears drowned out the weirdness between Tina and Samantha.
A few times she twisted around to look at Samantha in the back seat, leaning over to flick her gently on her bare leg. But Samantha remained still and quiet, like a zombie version of herself.
As they got closer to the beach, Nicole had an idea on how to perk her sister up. ‘Mum, can we drive past the Jetson house?’
‘Of course.’ Tina laughed as she turned down the West Coast Highway, past the huge square monstrosity with multiple levels and seafront views that Tina had always joked she would buy when she won Lotto.
‘See our house, Sam?’ Nicole turned around in her seat to look at Samantha, but she was looking the other way.
‘There’s probably no room for me in that house either,’ Samantha muttered.
Tina pulled into the BP, but not in front of the petrol bowsers.
‘Go in and get yourselves an ice cream. Anything you want,’ she told them, which finally snapped Samantha out of whatever dark spell she was under.
‘Can we really choose anything?’ Samantha said, like Christmas had suddenly arrived early and offered her an ice cream.
‘Yes, you can really choose anything.’
‘So we can choose any ice cream we want, even the expensive ones?’ Nicole had to double check. Sometimes when Tina said ‘anything you want’ it meant nothing over fifty cents.
‘Anything. Now go in and choose before I change my mind,’ Tina said, handing them a five dollar note. ‘And get me a Heart.’
Inside the BP, Samantha was loving the fact she could choose anything she wanted. ‘I can’t decide between a Gaytime or a Bubble O’ Bill,’ she was saying. ‘Or maybe I should get a Funny Feet? Although, shouldn’t it be “Funny Foot”? There’s only one of them.’
Nicole was having trouble concentrating on the ice creams. ‘What did Mum want to talk to you about?’
‘Nothing,’ Samantha said sharply, before adding ‘Maybe I’ll get a Vienna Chocolate! They’re mintox.’
‘She must have said something.’
‘I said nothing.’ Samantha was looking fierce again, like her normal self, which was an improvement on the hollow version of Samantha she’d been in the car. Nicole backed off and returned to the freezer, trying to convince herself it really was nothing. She ended up choosing a Heart. It felt easier to copy Tina’s choice than to make one of her own.
They ended up eating their ice creams in the beach carpark, still sitting in the car with all the windows down. Out on the horizon, dark clouds were rolling in from the far west.
‘Looks like a storm is coming,’ Tina said, as she fished her diary from her bag. ‘What ice cream did you eat again, Sam?’
Samantha, still sitting in the back seat, had gobbled up her ice cream and was now on to the bubblegum nose, making loud cracking noises as she chewed.
Nicole answered for her. ‘A Bubble O’ Bill. I had a Heart like you.’
‘Samantha has a heart like me, too,’ Tina said to nobody in particular, noting something in her diary.
‘I reckon I’m ready for a swim,’ Nicole said.
‘You’d better get in quick before the storm hits,’ Tina replied. ‘Those clouds are looking very Pritikin.’
Nicole turned around just in time to see Samantha grimace in the back seat. She then looked at her mum, hoping a swim would do what seeing the Jetson house hadn’t, that it would bring them all back together. ‘Aren’t you coming?’
‘No, I’m going to stay up here to watch Mother Nature’s show,’ Tina replied.
Down on the beach, Nicole threw off her sundress, ready to run into the water, but Samantha hung back.
‘I forgot to put my bathers on.’
‘Then swim in your T-shirt and undies. They’ll dry soon enough.’
Samantha looked around, no doubt checking that no one from school was nearby, and then primly took off her shorts, folding them next to Nicole’s abandoned dress.
The two girls bobbed up and over the breaking waves, not saying much to each other. Nicole could see Tina, now sitting on top of the dunes. She waved but Tina didn’t see her.
‘Mum told me you were moving,’ Samantha said suddenly.
‘You mean we are moving. You, too. You still kind of live with us. Sometimes.’
‘No, just you and her. She’s getting a two-bedroom place. She said I won’t have my own room anymore, but I can still sleep on the fold-out sofa.’
Nicole remembered the last time they’d opened the fold-out sofa, and how even Tina had been alarmed by the amount of debris and dust that had gathered on the thin grey mattress. She knew Tina wanted to get a cheaper place now that Craig wasn’t paying child support for Samantha, but Nicole had assumed it would be a cheaper place with room for all of them.
‘You can share my room,’ Nicole offered, but Samantha had duck-dived under the water and didn’t hear her.
/>
The waves were getting choppier and a couple of times they almost got dumped so they headed back to shore. As she towelled herself off, Nicole regarded the incoming storm. The clouds were now almost black and there was lightning sparking up the horizon. The whole world was starting to shake.
‘Let’s go back to the car,’ she shouted to Samantha. The two girls grabbed their things and ran back up through the dunes past Tina and into the car, where they huddled, clutching their towels around them, as the rain started to hit.
Tina was now standing up on top of the highest dune. Nicole hung out the passenger window and shouted for her to come to the car, but she stayed where she was.
‘What’s she doing?’ Samantha asked. She sounded frightened.
‘What are you doing?’ Nicole shouted to Tina.
Tina turned and looked at the girls. ‘I’m greeting my demons!’ she shouted back to them. Nicole couldn’t be sure, but Tina looked like she had been crying. Or maybe she’d just got sand in her eyes. Or rain.
The girls watched as Tina turned back to the storm and held her arms out, as if to embrace it.
Piece #22: 2018
When Samantha got the call from Nicole saying Tina had been admitted to the Royal Perth, she drove straight to the hospital. But when it came to getting out of the car and walking into the hospital, she couldn’t do it. Instead, she sat in the car for an hour, listening to the cricket on the radio, despite the fact that she didn’t even like cricket.
As she listened, she imagined the ball being hit around the cricket ground. With each hit, the ball created a line in her mind and the lines grew and grew, creating a pattern, like a web. Or a safety net of sorts.
And then she found herself starting the engine and driving home. Via the bottle shop.
Nicole could deal with the doctors, she told herself. It was about time she stepped up, anyway.
At first, Nicole left Samantha long, chatty voice mail messages with updates about Tina’s health and suggestions about when might be a good time for Samantha to visit.