Authors: Jessica Bell
“I’m not sick, Alex,” I say, disappointment cutting through my effort to sound pleased. “I’m pregnant.”
Twenty-four
“You’re going to have to tell your supervisors that you can’t take the job,” Alex says, massaging his brow, voice laced with a concerned mellow air.
“What? Why should I do that? My life doesn’t have to stop just because I’m having a baby.”
“
We’re
having a baby, Melody.
We
.” Alex walks out onto the balcony. I follow him. He stares at his feet—smiling.
“What are you smiling about?” I half-whisper, leaning against the white prickly wall. “My life is finally going in the direction I want it to, and what, you’re smiling now because you think you’re going to get your way? Is that it?”
“Melody, you have
life
inside you,” Alex says, holding his hands in the air, as if gesturing to some godly miracle about to rain down on us. “You should be happy about it.”
“Well, Alex, I’m not.
We
haven’t been happy about us for a long time. We need this break. If you want any chance of surviving as a couple, we need this break. Maybe I won’t be able to go on tour anymore, but—”
“
Maybe
? Mel—”
“Let me finish.” I rub my brow, taking a deep breath so as not to raise my voice.
No tour. Why? Why me?
“Listening.” Alex licks his lips—clicks his tongue with attitude and folds his arms.
“There’s nothing stopping me from moving to London and continuing this job. I’m not going to sit around here all day cooking meals and washing dishes to the same dead-end tune. It’s enough. I deserve more than this. And if I can’t have music, I think I deserve the opportunity to have a proper career. At least that way, I can give Tessa the upbringing she deserves. And, see, now it’s not only Tessa we have to think about, is it? We need the money. I mean, your events are great, when they work, but your job is like gambling! We can’t rely on that anymore.”
“Mel—”
“Alex, stop.”
He puts his hands in his pockets and huffs like an impatient child.
“I do
not
want to divorce you. I want a
break
. That’s all. A
break
. If you love me like you say you do, you’ll understand how important this is. This can only help us. We. Need. This. Break.”
Alex takes my head in his hands and looks at me as if he’s about to say the most important thing I will ever hear. But he doesn’t say a word. Instead he kisses me on the nose, leaves the balcony, and walks out the front door.
Two hours later, after sitting on the couch watching Greek-dubbed American cartoons with Tessa, biting my nails and trying to convince myself that Alex just needed some space, he comes back home with a guitar. The vivacious rattle of the door handle startles me, and I stand up in shock.
“I hope you’ll play it for me once in a while,” Alex says, standing by the open door. “You know. When I come to London.” Alex puts the guitar down, protected in a case made with soft-toned brown and beige material, and gently shuts the door behind him.
I’m speechless. My gaze shifts from Alex to the guitar, to the front door, as if somehow the door is responsible for materializing this scene like a hologram. But a smile creeps up on me like drizzle turning to rain; a silent voice marking victory; a sense he has finally understood and accepted me for who and what I am. I walk to him, slide into his arms, and rest my head on his chest. His heart is beating fast, but the longer I stay wrapped in his embrace, the more it slows down. I balance myself on his feet—and we rock from side to side, to the same rhythm, as if we are silently singing the same tune.
Alex kisses me on the top of my head and says, “
Se’agapo, moro mou.
”
I look up. Nuzzle the tip of my nose into the dimple in his chin.
“I love you, too, baby,” I reply. “I love you, too.”
It’s eleven thirty at night and my mother just called to tell me they’ve arrived at the hotel. I’m relieved to hear they’ll visit around ten to ten thirty tomorrow morning.
The good thing about visiting on a Saturday morning is she doesn’t expect us to be dressed or geared to go out anywhere. Visiting on a Saturday morning means she’s prepared to laze around all day, enjoying everyone’s company as if the primary resident of this household. Queen Bee-tty. I can deal with Saturday morning visits, because I know we’ll simply chill out on the balcony and eat take-out
souvlakia
. Pressure low. Spirits high.
Tessa is finally asleep, and Alex has put his work to rest for the night. I pour us each a glass of red wine, take the glasses out onto the balcony, and light a few tea light candles.
Is this our goodbye, see you in the next life?
Melancholy soars through me like a hot flush.
Why do I feel so sad? It’s not an end. It’s a new beginning. And we’re celebrating. Yes. We’re celebrating.
I sit in silence sipping my wine, looking into the brownish sky, imagining the stars I’d see if I were sitting on my parents’ verandah on the island. Somewhere up there is us, a happy us, in some parallel universe, living the way we’re supposed to be. I truly believe that the earth is our practice ground—the place where we are to test things out, to make mistakes, to discover what we believe in, what we are passionate about. Death is when we move on and go
up there
—to the real world; to start again, to rectify our mistakes and live a happy and fulfilling existence. There is no hell. Earth is hell. This is where we are allowed to sin.
Up there
, is where we no longer want to.
I can hear Alex fiddling with the old record player. The needle crackles as it lightly touches the vinyl before Elvis Costello’s raw, defeated voice, murmuring synthesized strings, and solo guitar twang surrounds me like membrane. Alex comes out, downs his whole glass of wine and sings along to
I Want You
, kneeling at my knees …
We listen to the song over and over again. Over. And over. And over. We make love to it. Over. And over. And over. On the couch, on Alex’s desk, on the floor, drowning each other in defeat—in the dark—swimming in song, in lyrics that speak to us like hidden thoughts.
No poetry.
Just us.
“Hey, are you coming to bed?” I call out to Alex who is in the bathroom brushing his teeth, a little too loudly, forgetting that Tessa is asleep nearby.
“Yeah, just—getting something,” Alex calls back, dropping volume halfway through his sentence.
Alex tiptoes back into our bedroom holding my new guitar. He hands it to me with a boyish grin on his face.
“Er, what are you doing?” I ask.
“Play for me.”
“
Play
for you?”
“Yeah, play for me.”
“Now? It’s two o’clock in the morning. I’ll wake Tessa up.”
“No you won’t, I’ll close the door and you’ll play softly.” Alex hands me the guitar, smirking, I assume at my dropped jaw, and gets onto the bed, with a little bounce, the way he used to when we’d just met—when we’d spent 24-hour blocks without getting dressed and made love like wind-up rock gods.
I take the guitar, identical to my last, cross my legs and rest it on my knees.
“Um … what would you like me to play?” I ask, swallowing an excess of saliva.
“I don’t know. You choose.”
“Er, okay. How about a bit of Joni?”
Can I remember any Joni?
“Why not?”
“Actually, no, I know …”
I play the song I wrote the other night, when I stole one of Alex’s cigarettes, at a volume so low any true rock artist would say was a crime. A steady and crisp drone of four/four rock chords act as a pillow for my soft, drawn out vocals:
so you want to live the life of a star
and you want to be at peace with mankind
really want to be a mother and father
so you want to know the meaning of life
want to be the ripple and wave
really want to know yourself completely
so you want to start your own revolution
and you want to teach your daughter it all
and you really want to fight this depression
do you really want to hold emotions to ransom
do you want to be cruel to be kind
do you really want to lose precious intentions
so you really want everyone to hear you
and you want everyone to see
but do you really want to be this famous?
“Melody?” Alex asks, tears lingering in the corners of his eyes, when I finish playing.
“Hmm?”
“Do you think we are going to be okay?”
I put the guitar down and gesture for him you to lie in my lap.
“Yes,” I nod. “We’ll get there. In time.” I stroke his forehead and tears trickle onto my knee. Warm. Calm. And hopeful. A baptism of new life.
Twenty-five
Our buzzer rings and Tessa jumps up and down squealing with erratic glee. My parents are here. I wonder if Mum will be happy to see me, or too distracted by one of Dad’s mishaps to give me a long and meaningful hug—the daughter-turned-friend kind she always fantasized about and tried to discuss with me, odd smile breaching common aloofness, before I’d take off for school.
Her voice would muffle behind the crunch of cornflakes—the swish of milk between my teeth. When I’d swallow, she’d be looking at me—head tilted—that smile on the brink of dwindling—corner of her mouth twitching in anticipation. Oh, how I wish I wasn’t such a cold-hearted teen and listened in those moments when her voice was gentle and warm; when she needed to love me; when she needed me to love her despite the shit she put me through. Why didn’t I see it then? Why didn’t I stop chewing when I saw that smile? I wonder now if I had hugged her, given her what she seemed to be inadvertently asking for, whether we’d consider each other friends today. Perhaps if I’d hugged her—said, I
understand
—she wouldn’t be so bitter and cold. But I understand now. Is it too late?
I open the door. Dad looks up from picking something off the hem of his blue and white plaid shirt, while Mum, hisses some obscenity, I think, at him for not being careful about his appearance. Once they realize the door is open, Mum’s face changes shape as fast as a portrait shot along a reel of negatives, to a beam of genuine pleasure. Dad stops picking and relaxes his shoulders—he often gets a break from Mum’s nitpicking in the company of others—and shakes Alex’s hand, doing the whole male Greek meet and greet—heavy pats on the back to masculinize the pecks on each cheek.
I fall into my mother’s arms and breathe in her freshly hennaed hair—a pleasing scent of wet autumn leaves and mud. For a long time I denied that I ever did her wrong. I convinced myself that being a child I didn’t know any better. But I do now. And now that I’ve had a taste of what she often went through, I feel a thumping need to let her know I’m sorry.
Mum doesn’t try to pull away after the obligatory three seconds like I think she might. She instead pulls me in closer and tighter, scrunching my hair in her grasp behind my neck. She is gentle the way she used to be when I was too young to care.
She whispers, “It doesn’t matter anymore.”
I release her embrace and stammer a couple of unarticulated gurgles of surprise.
“Alex called. He told me. And anyway, no one is to blame for anything. Stop feeling guilty. The past is the past!” She flings her arms in the air and reaches for Alex to give him a kiss hello. Alex winks at me over her shoulder, when Tessa pulls on Dad’s jeans. Dad picks her up.
“G’day, Blossom. Oh,
my
have you grown since the last time I saw you! You’re heavy!”
“Yeah, I’m all grown up now.” She wriggles out of his arms, leans against the wall, puts her hand on top of her head to mark the spot, “See? Look how tall I am.”
“Oh. Before I forget,” Mum says, pulling me aside to talk over Dad and Tessa, “I’ve got something for you.” She dips into her handbag and pulls out a framed, enlarged black-and-white photo of the five of us having dinner together on the island from last year. We all look so happy. We
were
happy. “Cool, huh? Anyway, I thought you might like to hang it on a wall somewhere.” She looks around, already trying to pinpoint the perfect position, eyes shifting over the walls as if seeking out a mosquito.
“Thanks, Mum, it’s really nice.” I hold out my hand to take it.
“Where would you like me to put it?”
“Um, just leave it on the kitchen table for now. I’ll find a home for it later.”
“Oh, Mel? The hotel is really nice, by the way. Great choice, really great choice.”
“I thought you’d like it there. Wholesome, I thought.”
“You’re right. They’re kind.” Mum nods with over-eager enthusiasm.
After making some coffee, we all drift into the lounge room. Alex and Dad sit on one side of the corner couch. Properly—legs crossed in the same direction. And do they realize they’re holding their coffee cups in the same manner? With erect pinky fingers?
Since when does Alex ever do that?
“So, you know how I was telling you about that crazy client the other day, right?” Mum asks, brushing non-existent crumbs off her slick, black satin pants. She’s about to continue when she catches Dad looking at me questioningly.
“Mummy’s going to get me a little brother or sister, Betty,” Tessa blurts out, stretching her leg and pointing her toes to tap my mother’s knee for attention. Alex laughs, briefly rubs has hands over his face and shakes his head. Dad’s eyebrows raise and his nostrils flair as he grins. He opens his mouth to speak, but Mum jumps in first, “Of course she will, Sweetheart,” and takes a breath in preparation to continue, but pauses before exhaling. Her eyes widen like an owl. “Sister? Brother? What?” Mum squeaks, the bridge of her nose wrinkling like a pinch of skin.