Into My Arms (15 page)
As he headed to the car, his mobile in the back pocket of his jeans rang, the tone somehow urgent and plaintive. He ignored it, pulling away from his unit so quickly that the wheels spun and smoked. Fifteen minutes later he pulled onto the Hume Highway. It was ironic, he thought, as he automatically checked his side mirror for the merge. For weeks he’d been anticipating taking Skye home, introducing her to his family and showing her where he’d grown up. They’d planned to spend a week there after Christmas. He’d envisaged this drive with her beside him: maybe they’d stop for lunch in Yea, or pull off so they could visit the gallery at Benalla. There was a Sidney Nolan there. She’d like that. But instead Skye was still in Melbourne, opening her own long white envelope, and the people that he’d always believed to be his parents suddenly weren’t.
He needed to stay calm, he told himself. It was a long drive; he had to concentrate. Surely there would be an explanation—there
must
be. His mother and father were the most honest people he knew; they set a premium by it. What had his dad always told him when he was growing up?
Make sure you look at someone when you shake his hand, look him right in the eye. Otherwise he’ll think you have something to hide.
How many times had his own father done just that, gazed at him, unflinching, without turning away? Hundreds of times, tens of hundreds; day after day, year after year.
Maybe there’d been a mistake, Ben thought again desperately. But even as he grasped at the notion, he knew that he was kidding himself. The letter had Skye’s name on it too. And then there was the physical evidence. They
did
look like each other. It wasn’t just Nell—he’d noticed it too, but had thought nothing of it. Why should he? Ben felt his foot go down on the accelerator, saw the speedometer needle leap. His sister. Oh God, his sister! He felt like crying, or throwing up. He knew that was the end of it. He could never see her again. He didn’t
want
to see her again. And his parents, his mother and father—why hadn’t they told him? Why, for God’s sake, had they never let him know?
Ben’s mobile rang from where he’d tossed it onto the passenger seat, startling him so that he momentarily veered into the next lane. He straightened the car, heart racing, then out of habit glanced over to see who had called. The display read
Skye home
. That was strange. Why wasn’t she ringing from her own mobile rather than the landline in Nell’s kitchen, where anyone could listen in? He saw her suddenly, as clearly as if she’d been sitting next to him: ash-blonde hair loosely caught in a ponytail at the nape of her neck, her mouth close to the receiver, her whole body leaning into the phone, willing him to pick up. Her mouth, he thought in a fit of grief, her beautiful mouth. He’d never kiss it again. The anger that surged through him drove the speedo up over one hundred and thirty, made the car shake, the road outside hum. He switched off the phone without looking at it again. Stay calm? It was all he could do to stop himself throwing it out the window.
Ben arrived in Tatong just as evening was falling. Normally this was his favourite part of the drive, the moment that made it all worthwhile. He’d turn right at the only pub in town, then head up the hill, pulling over to watch as dusk stole across the valley. The land was still; the first stars were reflected in the patchwork of dams spread out beneath him. Ben knew every one of them: knew which were good for yabbying, or where you could catch tadpoles, knew the deepest and the coolest for swimming on hot summer days. Tonight, though, he careered straight through, stopping only to wrench open the gate into his family’s property. As a country boy he knew he should close it behind him, but he got back in the car and drove on without stopping, tyres sliding on the gravel of the track to the house.
‘Ben!’ his mother exclaimed when he burst through the door into the kitchen. She was playing Uno with Kirra, but as he came into the room she dropped her cards and pushed her chair back from the table, a smile washing over her face. Kirra stood up too and raced to clasp him around the waist; her head, he noticed, was now level with his chest.
‘You didn’t tell us you were coming,’ his mother rebuked him delightedly. ‘Have you eaten? Let me get you a plate.’
‘I don’t want to eat,’ said Ben. ‘I came to talk to you. Where’s Dad?’
‘He’s out with a sick cow, waiting for the vet. It’s one of the milkers—’
‘We got a new puppy, Ben!’ Kirra interrupted, still holding him tightly. ‘His name’s Spud and he sleeps on my bed. He’s a cross between a Jack Russell and a pug. Dad says he looks like someone stepped on his face, but he’s
so
cute. Come and see him!’ She started tugging him by the hand and Ben could feel himself losing control of the situation.
‘Not now,’ he said, louder than he had intended. ‘Kirra, go to your room. I need to speak with Mum. I’ll come and see Spud later.’
‘But I want to show you him
now
,’ Kirra whined.
‘GO!’ Ben shouted, and she fled without looking back. He’d never yelled at her before.
‘That’s no way to talk to your sister,’ his mother began, moving towards him, but Ben cut her off.
‘Is she? Is she my sister?’
Her step faltered, and he knew everything he needed to know. ‘Of course she’s your sister,’ she replied, but so quietly he could barely hear her.
‘Is she?’ Ben repeated. ‘Are you sure you didn’t get her thrown in from wherever you picked me up from? Kind of a two-for-one deal, maybe?’
Mary swallowed, the cross at the base of her throat bobbing briefly up and down. She opened her mouth, but no words came out. Ben took a step closer. A clock ticked between them.
‘What can you tell me?’ he asked.
‘What do you know?’ she countered, hands locked around the chair she stood behind, as if she might suddenly have to pick it up and use it to defend herself.
He forced himself to speak evenly. He set out, in the baldest terms, what had happened. Mary’s face grew paler as she listened.
‘Do you know for sure?’ Mary whispered.
‘We each had a blood test. I got the results today.’ He pulled the crumpled piece of paper from his jeans and held it out.
Mary waved it away and sat down in her chair. ‘I just wanted a baby,’ she said. ‘I couldn’t have a baby.’
‘Fine.’ Ben thrust the results back into his pocket. ‘But why didn’t you tell me? Why didn’t you tell
me
?’ He was going to cry, he realised. He could feel the tears gathering, the snot already collecting at the back of his throat.
Mary had already begun weeping herself. ‘Your father wanted to, but I was scared,’ she sobbed. ‘I couldn’t work up the courage.’ She reached for a potholder lying on the table and buried her face in it, rocking back and forth. ‘I didn’t know how to explain it,’ she gulped from behind the floral fabric. ‘I was terrified you’d think that I wasn’t your mother, that you weren’t my child.’
‘So you
lied
to me?’ Ben asked, astounded. ‘You made Dad tell me about the birds and the bees, but you wouldn’t let him say where I really came from?’ He closed his eyes, trying to take it all in. ‘What a joke, what an absolute joke. You spent half of my childhood saying the rosary or going to church, yet somehow it was OK not to tell me the truth?’
Mary rocked and sobbed, rocked and sobbed. ‘I meant to,’ she gasped, ‘when you were eighteen, or twenty-one, but then I just couldn’t do it. I was so afraid of losing you.’
‘You should have told me when I was ten!’ Ben shouted, furious. ‘Eight, even. Seven. Whenever I could have understood. Were you going to keep it from me all my life?’ The betrayal was too enormous to comprehend. ‘What about Kirra?’ he asked. ‘Was she donated too?’
His mother shook her head, her face still hidden. ‘She was just lucky.’ Then she finally looked up, cheeks streaked with tears. ‘But you weren’t lucky. You were a miracle.’
Ben knew the words were meant to soothe him, to reaffirm how much he’d been wanted, but for some reason they only made him angrier. ‘Such a miracle that you couldn’t talk about it? Such a fucking miracle that you
didn’t even tell me
?’ Deep within he knew that his rage wasn’t just at his mother but at the whole terrible situation, and came from his pain at what he’d lost, yet he couldn’t seem to stop himself. He reached around blindly for something on the kitchen bench, found a clay figure he had made when he was still at school and threw it hard at the wall behind her. Mary screamed and covered her head with her arms; the ornament shattered into tiny pieces that rained down onto the floor. Kirra appeared briefly in the hallway, took one look at him and raced back to her room.
He was almost halfway back to Melbourne when the nausea hit. The tears had stopped, but this was something new—something oily and alive, uncurling in his belly. For a kilometre or two he drove on, trying to fight it, buttocks drenched in sweat and clamped tightly together. He thought again of his mother’s deceit, trying to distract himself with his pain, but by the time he saw the Allen’s sign near the turn-off for Broadford he knew he was beaten. He pulled in beside it, wrenched the car door open and stumbled out into the dark. The creature in his stomach reared up and spat venom. Ben fumbled with his pants but wasn’t quite quick enough, his bowels erupting before he’d pushed them past his hips. He sank onto all fours just metres from the highway, retching and heaving, his legs smeared in shit. Later, when he tried to wipe himself clean, he found that the only thing he had was the results from his blood test.
Skye shifted on her stool, trying without success to get comfortable. Fewer positions were these days. She put down her tile cutters and stood up to lean across her workbench instead, but the minute her stomach made contact with its edge she felt the baby kick.
‘Didn’t you like that?’ she asked, stepping back. Now, though, she was too far away to see what she was doing, so she bent over again. Another kick.
‘You don’t want me to work, huh?’ Skye straightened up and sat back on her stool. ‘Good. Neither do I.’
She toyed listlessly with the glass squares in front of her, pushing them into different combinations. Maybe some indigo to offset the carmine? That should make both colours deeper, more textured. When she put them together, though, they simply looked red and blue, as predictable as a child’s painting. She dropped her hands to her stomach. The baby was still now. She imagined it floating inside her, curled nose to tail. How big would it be? The size of an orange, maybe even a grapefruit? She sighed. At six months pregnant she should know that sort of thing, should know whether it had fingernails yet or could recognise her voice. Hamish had bought her a book about it all, but every time she picked it up and tried to read, the words slid off the page and onto the floor.
‘Hey, baby,’ she said softly, palms on her belly, caressing her bulge. ‘Do you know who I am? Do you know your mummy?’
Jess looked up from under the bench and thumped her tail. The baby didn’t move.
Skye turned her back on the glass and moved her stool along the bench to her laptop. She clicked on the screen with a faint sense of guilt. She shouldn’t be coming here again. She should turn it off, she should be working, but she just wanted to see if there’d been any updates. It wouldn’t take long. Black text appeared against a turquoise background and she began to read the introductory paragraph, though she knew it by heart. The material was comforting somehow, its words and rhythms both an absolution and a liturgy.
Genetic sexual attraction (GSA) is a sexual attraction between close relatives, such as siblings, first and second cousins or a parent and offspring, who meet for the first time as adults. The syndrome was initially recognised after the relaxation of adoption laws in the late 1970s gave adopted children easier access to their records and led to an increase in the number of reunions between adoptees and their blood relatives. An unexpectedly high number of both men and women reported struggling with sudden and terrifying emotions after such reunions, including feelings of romantic love and overwhelming lust towards their biological sibling, parent, aunt/uncle, nephew/niece, or, in at least one documented instance, grandmother. In many, but not all, cases the attraction was reciprocated, leading to the break-up of marriages and families and the formation of new, technically illegal and incestuous, relationships.
It was Nell who had found the website, sitting hunched over her old computer at the kitchen table while Skye recuperated after her stay in hospital and lay staring at the ceiling in her bedroom, thoughts circling like sharks. Ben was her brother . . . but she loved him, and he loved her . . . but he was her brother. Her brother! Every morning when she woke up and remembered what had happened the pain hit her again, renewed and relentless. She’d whimper, close her eyes and burrow back under the covers, but there was no escaping the situation. She missed him, she ached for him, but he was her brother. She couldn’t love him, not like this, yet she couldn’t seem to stop.
In that sense the website had been a relief. Nell had got her up when she discovered it and helped her to the kitchen so they could read it through together. Skye had been mesmerised: she wasn’t alone or deranged; there was a name for what had happened to her and Ben. ‘Listen to this,’ Nell had said, and quoted from an article linked to the site: . . . “
Genetic sexual attraction associated with IVF births is a time bomb waiting to go off . . . more commonplace than supposed.”
’ She turned to Skye and reached for her hand. ‘I’m sorry. If we’d had any idea that this might have happened we’d never have donated those embryos. You’ve just been unlucky. You have to put it behind you now.’ Skye had burst into tears and Nell had taken her back to bed. Put it behind her? She was still waiting for him to call.