The Mother-in-Law

by Sally Hepworth

  Nettie turns her back to me and for a moment, there is total silence. But after a few seconds a curious noise begins, thin and reedy, like the ragged edge of a tin can. It takes me a moment to realise the noise is coming from Nettie. I reach for her shoulder but before I grasp it, she spins around and lunges at me like a force. Her elbow catches my nose and I careen backward, landing hard on my tailbone. As I cry out, Nettie appears over me, gripping the cushion so tight the veins in her hands pop out.

  ‘Nettie. Darli . . .’

  I fall silent. The expression on her face is pure and unadulterated hate. I think of Ollie’s visit a few minutes ago and I see the juxtaposition, suddenly, of sons and daughters. Sons see the best parts of you, but daughters really see you. They see your flaws and your weaknesses. They see everything they don’t want to be. They see you for exactly who you are . . . and they hate you for it.

  ‘This is over, Mum,’ Nettie says, and I’m not sure what she means until she presses the cushion into my face and holds it there with a resolve that tells me she is not letting go. I feel her weight on my chest. I grab hold of her wrists and squeeze hard, but she just pushes the cushion harder into my face. I can’t take a breath. My lungs burn. And as the edges fade to black I think to myself . . . she got that resolve from me.

  60

  NETTIE

  The past . . .

  Mum’s legs stopped moving first. She didn’t go down without a fight, but that was classic Mum. And it worked in my favour, each kick had only served to tire her out faster. Now I sit astride her chest, the same way Ollie used to sit on me when I was a kid and he wanted to interrogate me for snooping in his bedroom. Slowly her vice-like grip on my wrists weakens until she lets go entirely, but I keep holding the pillow down until she’s been still for several minutes. Finally I stand, leaving the cushion over her face.

  Mum is dead. Her legs have fallen to the sides so her shoes point in opposite directions. Looking at them, I’m reminded of the Wicked Witch of the East when Dorothy’s house falls on her. Mum took me to see The Wizard of Oz at the Grand Theatre for my ninth birthday and even gave me a pair of sparkly ruby slippers to wear as a present. I missed most of the show because I was admiring the way my footwear sparkled in the theatre lights. I wore those slippers every day after until the soles were thin as paper and I could feel the rocks and dirt under my feet. It was one of only a handful of times that Mum got it right with me.

  My brain wades through all the information at hand as I try to figure out what to do next. Mum’s left arm is bent up over her head. Her nails are painted an awful flesh-coloured pink, and on her ring finger is her cluster of rings, all modest yellow gold. I’d never seen her without those rings, not in my entire life. They are like a bizarre knuckle, a living part of her. Or, now, a dead part of her.

  I’m slowly becoming aware of the trouble I’m in. I killed my mother. Killed her, as they say in the movies, with my bare hands. And yet, as I look down at her, so still and quiet, all I feel is peace. Not the untethered, freefalling terror I felt when Dad died. Peace. It’s funny, in theory, a mother and a father do the same thing. They nurture you, protect you, try to form you into a reasonable human being. If they do it right, they will keep your feet on the ground. If they do it wrong, they’ll stop you from flying. The difference is subtle, yet vast.

  Dad. His name pops into my mouth and I breathe it out. It’s the first time I’ve had a problem, a real problem, and he hasn’t been here for me.

  It is just a problem, Antoinette, he would probably have said, and a problem is only a problem until you solve it.

  I massage my right wrist gently, then my left. For someone so skinny, Mum was surprisingly strong. And determined.

  After your father died, I contemplated suicide. I researched it, I bought poison online—it’s still in the door of the darn fridge!

  She had said that, hadn’t she? Or have I imagined it?

  I walk to the kitchen and hold the fridge door open with my hip. A half-empty carton of milk is wedged in beside an unopened bottle of tonic water and two brown glass bottles with white labels covered with medical gibberish. I squat down to examine the labels. In square green and red letters the name LATUBEN is spelled out.

  An idea starts to form in my mind.

  I slide my hands into a pair of washing-up gloves and carry both bottles back into the front room. When I remove the pillow from Mum’s face, I only look at her long enough to see that she doesn’t look serene. Her face is frozen in a haunting grimace, an angry bitter cry. I put down one of the bottles and remove the lid of the other, and I focus on tipping the contents into her mouth. Most of it spills down her cheeks and collects in her mouth, so I tip the last of it into the fireplace and leave the empty bottle beside her limp hand. There doesn’t seem to be a lot of point in using the other, so I shove it into my handbag. It’s not a great plan, but it’s all I’ve got.

  As I turn to leave, I rub my wrists. They’re going to be bruised tomorrow.

  61

  LUCY

  The present . . .

  Ollie’s phone stops ringing, finally. But when my phone starts to ring immediately afterward, it sends an odd alert through me.

  ‘We should answer that,’ I say.

  Ollie nods as if he’s just realised the same thing. My phone is next to him on the couch and he presses it to his ear.

  ‘Hello? Yes?’ His eyes find mine. ‘What do you mean?’ His eyebrows shoot skyward. ‘No.’

  ‘What is it?’ I ask, but Ollie holds a palm up.

  ‘Are you sure?’ he says into the phone and then he is silent for the longest time. I can’t tell if he’s listening, or processing. His eyes close, hard, his face crumples. I don’t dare speak. I hardly dare to breathe.

  ‘Yes,’ he says after an eternity. ‘Okay. We’ll be right there.’

  ‘What is it?’ I ask when he hangs up the phone.

  ‘It’s Nettie,’ he says. ‘She’s dead.’

  62

  NETTIE

  The past . . .

  Who are we after we’re gone? I wonder. It’s a good question to ponder. Most people can’t come up with an answer right away. They frown, consider it for a minute. Maybe even sleep on it. Then the answers start to come. We’re our children, of course. Our grandchildren. Our great-grandchildren. We’re all the people who will go on to live because we lived. We are our wisdom, our intellect, our beauty filtered through generations, continuing to spill into the world and make a difference.

  People may not articulate it exactly like this, but ultimately they will end up with some version of it. Then they can rest secure in their contribution, certain that their lives will not be void of meaning. But not me. I’ll go to my death with no idea if my life had meaning. To anyone.

  The funny thing is, there are so many ifs that could have changed this story.

  If I’d been fertile.

  If Mum had given me money for surrogacy.

  If we’d inherited the estate.

  If they weren’t going to blame my brother for it.

  My brother was a lot of things, but I wasn’t going to let him go to jail for a crime he didn’t commit. And so, with the tiniest hint of irony, I’m taking the path my mother was going to take.

  The problem is, Patrick comes home at exactly the wrong time. I am sitting up in bed, in my pyjamas. After extensive googling to ensure that one bottle of Latuben will be enough to kill me, I have poured it into a coffee mug. It is sitting on my bedside table. According to Google, I’ll be unconscious within thirty seconds and dead within ninety. On my lap is a notepad and a pen. I have just put pen to paper when I hear Patrick’s car pull into the driveway.

  I planned to write a note, explaining everything to Patrick, absolving him of blame and guilt and responsibility. I wanted to give him that. Even after all that’s happened, I have affection for Patrick. He tried his best. If I had only become pregnant easily, Patrick and I would probably still be happy. People underestimate the role fate p
lays in our lives. Silly them.

  And so, when I see his car, I lift the mug to my lips and drink it down in one almighty gulp. Then I lie back and close my eyes.

  I’m out.

  63

  LUCY

  The present . . .

  Dad arrives early on the morning of Nettie’s funeral with a bag of donuts for the kids. He stays to help Ollie and me as we roll about the house like marbles, searching for missing socks and neckties (for Archie, who now, he tells us, has a funeral uniform). The photographers are outside again today. They arrived two days after Nettie’s death, when the whole twisted story had hit the press. MONEY, GREED AND FAMILY: INSIDE THE SOCIETY FAMILY MURDER-SUICIDE. The article didn’t have much in the way of facts, but the police have warned us that more would likely come out. There is something about the uber-wealthy falling from grace—people are insatiable for information, and the more sordid, the better. The police also warned us the media will almost certainly be outside the funeral, trying to get a shot of us crying. (Yesterday Harriet gave the photographer the peace sign and trout-pout lips as she hoofed her way out to the car. It is probably today’s cover story, but I don’t have the heart to look.)

  ‘How are you holding up?’ Dad asks me. I am ironing Edie’s only clean dress. She will have to wear it with odd socks because I can’t find a pair that match. In light of everything else that’s happened, I can’t find a reason to care.

  ‘Honestly? I feel like nothing will ever be the same.’

  ‘It doesn’t last forever, honey.’

  I look up from the ironing board, blinking back the tears that come to my eyes with such ease these days. ‘How do you know?’ I ask, a childish question, but then again, he is my Dad.

  ‘I know because . . . I’ve been there.’

  Even as an adult, it’s easy to forget that your parents are people. Now, it occurs to me that of course he’s been there. My mother’s death had come right on the heels of Dad’s mother, my nana. It’s not something I’d thought much about back then, after all, my dad had been a grown-up and I was just a kid. And Nana, as far as I was concerned, had been old (sixty-one). But it was only a year later, almost to the day, when Papa, Dad’s dad, dropped dead of a heart attack. He had been sixty-seven.

  It was a lot of people to lose in just over a year.

  I put down the iron. ‘How long does it last?’

  He offers me a sad smile. ‘It lasts . . . a while.’

  ‘Muuuuuuuuuuum,’ Harriet calls. ‘Archie’s watching the iPad!’

  ‘I’ll go,’ Dad says.

  The kids are sad about Nettie’s death. All of them have cried, multiple times, even Edie, but their grief is wonderfully fickle—here one moment, gone the next. This too, I’m becoming familiar with.

  ‘How do I look?’ Ollie says.

  He stands in the doorway of the laundry in what I think of as his ‘Eamon suit’. It’s tight-fitting, navy blue. A recruitment suit. He looks handsome in it. I tell him so.

  ‘I’m going to sell it tomorrow,’ he says. ‘On eBay.’

  There’s no point in telling him not to worry about it now, or that we can talk about it in a week or two. Ever since Nettie’s death a week ago, Ollie has been on a mission to do anything he can to make money, save money or reclaim money. We’ve sold our watches, all of my jewellery, a handful of other items that have value. It’s got a frenzied avoidance-of-grief feel to it, but at the same time I find myself comforted by it. As though he’s recommitting to his role in the family, showing us the kind of person he wants to be.

  ‘Actually there’s a Facebook page for people who want to buy second-hand Hugo Boss suits,’ I say. ‘You’d probably get a better price for it. I can post it on there if you like.’

  ‘That would be great,’ he says. ‘Or just send me the link and I’ll do it.’

  I would be hard-pressed to find an upside to the whole tragedy of Diana’s and Nettie’s deaths, but if I was really trying, I’d say it was the new harmony between me and Ollie. Somehow we’ve found ourselves perfectly aligned on the goals of our family and we are equal partners. It never suited Ollie being the full-time breadwinner and, the funny thing is, I’ve always known that. Now, working as a team, I realise we are playing to our strengths again. I don’t know what is going to happen tomorrow after this funeral. I don’t know if we can afford to keep renting our house. I have no idea what’s ahead for us. I know it’s likely to be bad for a while. But I’m hoping it won’t be bad forever.

  ‘It’s nearly time to go,’ I say.

  I turn off the iron and peel Edie’s dress off the ironing board. Ollie appears right beside me and gently tugs at my necklace. ‘That was Mum’s, wasn’t it?’

  I nod. I’ve been wearing it every day since Diana died. Ollie turns it over in his fingers. ‘I remember seeing it around Mum’s neck when I was little. She said it symbolised strength.’

  We both look down at it. ‘It’s a shame she didn’t give it to Nettie.’

  We’re quiet for a moment, staring down at the necklace. Then Ollie lets it fall back to my chest. ‘Maybe she knew Nettie wasn’t strong enough to wear it.’

  64

  LUCY

  Ten years later . . .

  ‘Lucy? Abdul Javid is here for his interview. Is Ollie here?’

  I glance at my watch. ‘He must be running late, Ghezala. I’ll come out.’

  ‘Okay. I’m going home now. Have a good evening.’

  I hang up the phone and pull on my suit jacket. When I don’t have interviews on I often wear leggings and a T-shirt around the office—one of the perks of running your own business—but today Ollie and I have had back-to-back interviews. Our office is a short drive from our home, in a rundown old townhouse not far away from where Ghezala used to live. A lot of new refugees settle in this area, which makes it convenient for them and cheap for us. Ollie and I each have an office (formerly bedrooms) and Ghezala’s office is in the old living room. On the days Ghezala comes in, she brings in food for us to share in the living room. She has a playpen set up as well, for those days her youngest isn’t in daycare.

  Ghezala has five children now. Hakem is making enough money that she doesn’t need to work any more, but she comes in to help us all the time—translating, making the candidates comfortable, helping explain cultural differences. As a member of the board of Diana’s charity, she was the one who approached us a few months after Diana’s death. She’d heard about the business we wanted to start and let us know about a sizeable pool of money Diana had bequeathed that was designated for ‘ventures deemed by the board to be in the interests of the charity’.

  Our business fits this criteria.

  I step into the hallway and shake the hand of a very tall man, his skin as black as burnt wood.

  ‘Mr Javid?’ I say.

  ‘Mrs Goodwin?’

  ‘Please. Call me Lucy.’

  ‘Then you must call me Abdul.’

  Abdul smiles a brilliant white smile. Apart from the trouser legs of his suit, which are several inches too short, he is very presentable. Abdul was a project manager for a major construction group in Afghanistan. He arrived in Australia four months ago and has been working as a night cleaner at the local hospital while trying to find work more appropriate to his skills.

  ‘Come in, Abdul. Ollie, my partner, will join us in a moment.’

  ‘Did someone say my name?’

  Ollie clambers through the back door, dressed in a shirt with jeans. The days of his shiny tight suits are long gone. Now Ollie does a lot of his interviews via Skype, so he can be found dressed smartly from the waist up and wearing God knows what from the waist down. He works hard, harder even than he did with Eamon. He is always running late, his paperwork is never done, but he’s also more alive than I’ve ever seen him. He spends hours with the candidates, doing whatever it takes to get them ready for an interview.

  I do most of the work with our organisations, finding jobs where there aren’t any and opening the minds
of decision-makers who may not picture a refugee as their ideal candidate. ‘Just give them an interview,’ has become my catchcry. ‘One interview.’

  More often than not, that interview gets our client the job. Like Ollie, I live for that now. As a team, we’ve become passionate about making sure everyone gets a go. I like to think we get that from Diana, and that she would be very proud of us.

  Ollie and Eamon’s business declared bankruptcy shortly after Diana’s death. Eamon was investigated for misappropriating company funds and found guilty of fraud. Ollie never regained any of the money Eamon stole from him but he took some satisfaction from the fact that Eamon spent six months in prison (and that Eamon’s young girlfriend Bella had left him for an Iron Man. Last we heard Bella and the Iron Man were writing a Paleo cookbook together).

  We take a seat at the round table and Abdul tells us about his time in Australia. He explains the difficulties he’s had finding work. Some have to do with his English, he explains.

  ‘We can help you with that,’ Ollie says. ‘English lessons, intercultural relations, mentoring.’

  After Nettie’s death, Ollie threw himself into the business with such vigour I wondered if it was healthy. He’d lost his parents and his sister within a year and he needed to heal. It took me a while to see how healing this business actually is for him. He is trying to connect with his mother. And in a funny way, even though she’s gone, it’s working.

  We don’t see Patrick any more. We sent Christmas cards for the first couple of years, but once he remarried (apparently to a woman who is the heiress to a very nice fortune stemming from her late father’s packaging business) and became the father of twin boys, we let the contact drop. Ollie still finds that especially difficult.

  ‘It’s not fair. All Nettie wanted was to be a mother. If she hadn’t had fertility issues, she—and Mum—would still be alive.’