Authors: Jessica Bell
“I’m not sure, anymore, though. Maybe I’ll keep it.”
Serena nods and disappears into the kitchen again.
She has asked us to go home with her, back to Australia—for the three of us to live in the house she inherited from her grandfather. I feel I’d be intruding, but she keeps insisting it’s big enough for a family of ten, hates living in it alone, and had decided to put it up for rent before she came here because she hardly uses any of the rooms. But if we go with her, she said she’ll remove the ad.
I don’t know what I want. I don’t know what would be the right thing to do. I’ve spent my life running away from pain. Would moving back to Australia be a repeat of the same thing? Maybe I should just keep living here, in this apartment—face-to-face with reality. I don’t know if I can leave Dad either—living in that big house in the middle of a mountain all alone. Who would help him if he fell down the stairs, or locked himself in the garage?
Tessa rolls into the living room with a plate of chicken curry on her lap.
“Here, Grandpa. Here’s your curry.” Tessa hands Dad a steaming hot plate on a brown rubber-based tray.
“Thanks, Cherry Pie,” Dad replies, kissing her on the forehead.
Reminded of Alex and the forehead kisses he used to give Tessa, I swallow so hard, trying to inhibit tears, that everyone turns their heads.
“Don’t worry, Mummy,” Tessa says. “I’m going to bring your curry in too-
oo.
”
Silently shaking myself from despair, I call out for Serena. “Can you help her bring them in? She has to do it one by one!”
Serena yells back, “Let her do it. It’s good exercise. She wants to anyway.”
Tessa rolls back into the kitchen and returns to the lounge with another plate of curry on her lap. But this time it’s resting on a tea towel—the tea towel Alex incessantly kept by his plate when we ate dinner.
“Papa told me to tell you he loves you very much, Mummy,” Tessa says as she hands me my curry. I freeze, plate mid-air. Dad’s mouth is contorted mid-chew. I can even hear Serena holding the pot still above her plate, ready to fill her dish.
Silence.
“Tessa? Blossom? He
spoke
to you?” I whisper, bending down close to Tessa’s face.
“Yeah,” she shrugs as if it’s completely normal, her eyes shifting left and right as if thinking she might have done something wrong.
“When?” I quickly stand and look around the house to see if I can catch a glimpse of him.
“Just now. He helped me make the curry with Serena.” Tessa frowns. I hear Serena put the pot back on the stove. She pauses at the living room doorway, and eats standing up, unfazed.
Does she know about this?
“Does he speak to you often?” I take hold of the wheelchair and wheel her around the house in a frantic search for some physical evidence. I have to convince myself what Tessa is saying is true. Dad is about to get up and follow me, but he changes his mind after Serena flashes him a look.
“Yeah, all the time,” Tessa says. “When you put me to bed, he comes and sings the sweet dreams song with us. Mummy, he sits right next to you. He puts his hand on your tummy.”
At the thought of such a thing, I abandon Tessa in the corridor, run to our bedroom, and bury my head into Alex’s pillow, still clothed in the same pillowcase it was in when he died. And I cry
And cry.
And cry.
Half an hour later Serena taps on my door. I don’t say anything, but she comes in anyway and lies next to me. My breath must stink because after initially lying on her side to face me, she turns onto her back.
“Bad breath?” I ask, candidly, squinting with curiosity.
“Um … yeah,” Serena chuckles. “I’m sorry. I’m sorry.” She laughs even harder—so hard she brings her knees to her chest to accommodate it.
I don’t manage a laugh, but I do summon a little smirk as I get up to brush my teeth. Serena turns onto her stomach, takes the duvet with her, and rolls up into a human-sized cocoon. When I get back from the bathroom, she’s still lying there, hidden under a big pile of feather-down and soft pastel aqua linen.
“Did you eat your curry?” I ask. I hear a muffled “yep” before she exposes her teary face. I’m about to ask what’s wrong, but notice mascara stains all over Alex’s pillow. I panic, snatch it out from under her head and stare at it in my shaking hands. Serena sits up, opening and closing her mouth like a fish out of water. I rush the pillow to the bathroom and try to soak up Serena’s tears with my bath towel in frantic desperation. Unable to control my anger, I yell, sitting on the bathroom floor, hugging Alex’s pillow as if it were my own child and someone was threatening to take it away.
“You’ve ruined it! You fucking
bitch
! You’ve destroyed Alex’s pillow!”
Serena kneels down to try and comfort me, but I push her out of the bathroom with my feet—she topples backwards and lands on her back with a thud. I slam the door closed, mortified, humiliated from my own aberration; my heartless ingratitude. Eyes wide with shock, I cover my mouth with rigid fingers, push my top lip into my teeth to stunt whatever other slander I might utter during this irrational tantrum. I couldn’t expect anything less than verbal abuse in retaliation, but after all that, Serena still remains calm and
apologizes
to
me
.
“Melody?” she whispers through the keyhole. “I’m sorry.”
I stand up and open the door. She’s bawling—make-up running all the way down to her chin.
“No, Serena.
I’m
sorry. I’m so sorry.”
Twenty-nine
I had always dreamed of hiring an old beat-up Volkswagen van, with a mattress in the back, and taking a three-month road trip around Australia. So that’s exactly what me and Alex did, before we had Tessa. We drove from Melbourne to Darwin and flew back to Athens from there. I had always wanted to see Alice Springs with my own eyes—the TV never did it justice.
After reconciling with Serena, I have a nap and I dream of the night me and Alex camped, in the middle of nowhere, probably illegally. Surrounded by vast nothingness—a fierce silent roar—more powerful than any sound this earth is capable of spawning.
Imagine standing in the middle of a field. Imagine red dirt. Distance and more beyond it. Imagine searching for the end of this distance, where the stars join to it like pins to a tent in loam. Imagine looking up to a cluster of approving eyes. Lying naked beneath them with the man you want to spend the rest of your life with. Imagine a silence that echoes the touch of your hand to his cheek. Imagine existence being loud and small, the way the Sun lights up the Earth. Imagine you are the Earth and he is the Sun, that silence is tangible, and the stars are the souls of your previous lives. Imagine distance is the place you’ll find life and death, where soil is your skin, and the dry fields your bones. Imagine love is the desert.
I wake up when it’s dark, still clutching onto Alex’s pillow. Serena is lying next to me, examining my face with remorse.
“G’day stranger.” She strokes my hair.
I sit up and look at the stained pillowcase and suddenly remember.
“I’m so—” I croak, attempting to apologize again for my behavior.
“Don’t worry, I understand.
I’m
sorry. I wasn’t thinking straight.”
We lie there, for too long, on our sides, like fresh lovers wondering who is going to make the first move.
Serena breaks the ice. “I made an appointment for you at the gyno. Tomorrow, ten a.m.”
“Thanks. Where’s—”
“James is watching TV with the photo album still open on his lap, and I just put Tessa to bed.”
I jump out of bed and bolt toward Tessa’s room, hoping I haven’t missed Alex. Maybe he’s singing to her without me. But when I get there, Tessa has already fallen asleep. I turn around and Serena is standing right behind me.
“Honey, he’ll come to you when the time is right. He may have been a bit of an idiot to cheat on you, but he loved you. I know that for certain. Believe me. I’d have been able to see it in his eyes on your birthday if he didn’t.”
I nod and sigh and run my fingers through my hair.
“Are you hungry?” Serena asks. “Do you want me to heat you up some curry?”
“No thanks.”
“You
have
to eat something. You haven’t eaten
all
day.”
I shake my head.
“You’re eating. And that’s my final word.”
Serena goes into the kitchen and I make my way into the living room to sit with Dad. He’s entranced by the TV. Watching, but not really
seeing
.
How is he coping with this? How does one mourn their wife and support their mourning daughter at the same time?
“Dad?”
“Hmm?” Dad hums through tight lips.
“Do you want me to take you back to the island?”
“If I’m getting in your way.” He nods, still staring at the TV.
“You’re not getting in my way at all. I just want to know how you feel.”
“Whatever’s best for you, Sweetheart,” he replies without a flinch.
Submissive. Always damn submissive!
“Dad, for once in your life can you speak up? I’m not Mum; I’m not going to dictate how to live your life.” I raise my voice a little too much, bordering on loss of control. His frown creates an air of irritation I’ve never sensed before.
“I’m sorry. I’m sorry.” I shake my head. “That was a terrible thing for me to say. I’m sorry.”
“That’s okay. I understand.” He faces the TV again.
Bite your tongue. Melody. Don’t.
“I’m really sorry,” I say again, hoping it will tame the urge to voice an opinion that is surely not sought after.
“I said, it’s okay,” Dad replies, his tone increasing a tad, but still refusing to show any sign of life.
“Do you want something more to eat?” I ask, hoping to make things right.
He grunts an affirmative response, so I get up to help Serena in the kitchen, but before I have the chance to walk out the door, he stops me.
“Mel.”
“Hmm?”
“You know what? It’s
not
fucking okay. I
loved
your mum. I don’t give a shit if she ordered me around, or told me when to comb my hair, or … or anything! I
let
her tell me what to do because that’s what made her
happy
. That’s how our relationship
worked
. You have no right to judge me.” Dad pokes himself in the chest with a thump. “You have no right to judge
her
. I loved her. I
loved
her, Melody. And I will
always
,
always
love her!”
I can’t help but smile. He spoke. And he said something real.
“Okay. I said I was sorry, Dad.”
“I know,” he replies in a calmer tone. “It’s okay … and I
would
like you to take me home. But don’t even think about asking me to live with my sister. I don’t want to stay with her. I want to go back home. I want to go back to where I’ll remember Betty. And don’t tell me I need to move on. I’m too old to move on. I want to stay right where I am, and I don’t care if every single day is filled with grief, because that grief is the only thing that is going to keep me alive. If I don’t have that grief, Betty will stop living in my heart and if that happens, I’ll stop living.
I’ll
stop living … so, Melody don’t even
think
about calling my sister. I’ll be fine on my own. I
want
to be on my own.”
“Okay, Dad.”
How did he know I was thinking of calling his sister?
“I’ll take you home. I’ll take you home tomorrow if you like.”
“Yes. That would be nice. I would like that. Thank you.”
I have another dream about Alex. At the Patti Smith concert. Tessa was on stage, head-banging to rev up the stagnant Greek crowd. Alex took me in his arms, kissed me and whispered, “Teach Tessa.” And that was it. He disappeared and left me staring at a teenage Tessa playing air guitar to silence.
Everything
was silent. Except for Patti’s voice:
not to die, but to be reborn, away from the land so battered and torn.
And then I woke up.
Those lyrics, being a Jimi Hendrix cover, reminds me of Dad’s obsession with him when I was young. It also reminds me of the gold Gibson guitar I wanted to buy him. So, while Dad is packing away his things, preparing for his journey back home, I call the guy at the music shop to tell him I’m coming to buy the electric guitar I had looked at a couple of months ago. I give him my credit card number so we don’t have to worry about money when we arrive.
“Dad, I’ve got a surprise for you.”
“Oh?”
“Yeah, come with me.”
“Okay, when I’ve finished packing.”
“No, you can do that in twenty minutes. Just come with me.”
Dad stares at me and Serena grinning from ear to ear in the doorway.
“Now. Come on!”
I take the clothes out of his hands and throw them on the bed. I grab a scarf and blindfold him. And the three of us accompany Dad to the music shop.
“Can I get an ice cream, Mummy?” Tessa asks as I roll her onto the footpath.
“Sure, but on the way home, okay? We have to do something else first.”
“Where are we going?” Dad asks as he trips over a crack in the pavement and Serena takes the weight of his fall.
“Whoops! You all right?” she asks, straightening his blindfold.
“Is this thing necessary? I could just close my eyes, you know.”
“It’s necessary!” me and Serena exclaim and then laugh at the synchronicity.
“Jinx!” Tessa squeals, jiggling left to right in her chair.
When we arrive at the shop the guy is standing in the entrance, still dressed in his flannel shirt and ripped jeans.
“G’day, how’s things?” he asks. I put my finger to my mouth—signal him to hush. He mouths “Sorry,” recedes his neck into his shoulders and tiptoes backward a couple of feet.
“Who was that?” Dad snaps. “Where are we?”
“We’re right … here.” I pull the blindfold from his head as if revealing a rabbit in a top hat.