Simply Heaven (46 page)

‘We’ll talk about it outside,’ I say.

I’m careful to pull the door to as we leave the house. Hardly any point, really, as Mum’s in such a rage now that her voice would pierce the walls of a nuclear bunker. I think for a moment, as she rounds on me in the courtyard, that she’s going to clock me one.

‘What do you mean, you’re not coming?’ she shouts. ‘Are you going to stand for those … those
bitches
treating us like that?’

She’s not calmed down at all. I know what she’s like. She’s been stewing up there at the hotel while I’ve been tied up with Tilly, and her rage has got worse and worse until she’s worked herself into such a state of unreasonableness that everything she’s doing right now seems completely logical to her. This is what I ran away from. This is how I don’t want to be.

I try to speak evenly. ‘Of course not. I’m sorry. I understand that that was horrible. But I don’t think all the fault was on one side, and I’m not leaving my husband because you guys can’t get on with his family.’

Mum looks like I’ve slapped her. ‘What do you mean, you don’t think the fault was on one side? Where do you think you get off? Are you going to side with
them
now?’

I can’t stop a small snort of frustration. ‘Oh, Jesus, Mum, can’t you hear yourself?’

Mum’s decibel level goes up another notch. At this rate, I won’t need to tell Rufus what’s happened in his absence, as he’ll have heard it all the way over at Great Rissington. ‘Oh, well. That’s nice. I’m glad I’ve come all the way to England to get brought up by my
own daughter
!’

I give her a hopeless shrug. ‘It wasn’t me that decided to start shouting the odds.’

‘Christ,’ she says.

We reach the outer wall. I glimpse the shadowy figures of my dad and my yaya behind the limo’s smoked glass windows. They’ve left her to it. No doubt they agree with everything she’s saying, but they’re leaving the fighting up to her.

‘So you’ve decided to forget all about your family, then? Not good enough for you any more, eh?’ demands Mum.

‘God Almighty, Ma. Do you think you could push it a bit further with the emotional blackmail?’

This, of course, plays it right into her anti-intellectual hands. ‘Emotional blackmail? Well, hark at you! What? Swallowed a dictionary now you’ve gone up in the world?’

A back window comes down, slightly. ‘Colleen,’ says Yaya reprovingly.

‘Well, what?’ asks Mum. ‘Listen to her!’

Yaya’s eyebrow knits. ‘The girl’s got her choices to make,’ she says.

‘Yeah,’ says Mum, ‘and it looks like she’s already made them.’

I look at her, aghast. She can’t seriously be offering me an either-or here, can she? ‘You can’t mean that, Ma! You can’t! Are you seriously saying it’s a choice?’

‘Well, what do you think? We’re your family. If you want to choose another family, then what do you expect?’

I protest. ‘Are you saying,’ I ask, ‘that it’s a choice between my family and the rest of the world?’

‘You choose,’ says Yaya. ‘Your family. The other family. She can’t make that choice. How can she make that choice, Colleen?’

‘Family’s family,’ says my mother. ‘There’s nothing more important than your family, and if you haven’t learned that by now, then all I can say is God help you. Your dad didn’t turn his back on your yaya, and nor did I …’

‘I don’t get it, Ma. Family First, yes, but it can’t be Family Or. You can’t just … I’m not choosing another family! I’m not! I’m married, for God’s sake! I have a husband!’

She carries on as though she hasn’t heard a word I’ve said. ‘… just don’t expect to come running back to us when it all goes wrong. Those people. They look down on you. They despise you. You think by sucking up to them you can get them to change their minds, but it won’t work. You silly, silly little girl …’

‘You’re being unreasonable! Can’t you see? You’re being totally unreasonable! Yaya! Tell her!’

But Yaya just says: ‘They despise you. Oh, yes, they do. Don’t you see that? How can you not see that?’

‘… after everything we’ve done for you. After all those years, all the things we’ve done, the things your dad’s done, and your brother, all the things we’ve done to protect you, all the money we’ve spent on you and all the worrying we’ve done. Well, that’s fine. Have it your way. You want to get rid of us, go ahead!’

I feel like I’m being stretched on a rack of conflicting emotions. Tearfulness, anger, outrage, injustice, fear, astonishment: they’re pulling me apart. ‘I don’t! How can you say that?’

‘After everything they’ve done,’ says Yaya.

‘… first bloody chance you get. I suppose that’s why you didn’t even want us there at your wedding. Too bloody
embarrassing
, I suppose, in front of all your
grand relations
…’

‘Is that what this is about? Mum, there was no-one there! No-one! It wasn’t
you
who was excluded! It was—’

‘… still. This is just like you. Just bloody typical. You’ve always thought you were too good for this family, haven’t you? Right from when you were a little girl. And the funny thing is, it’s always been us who’s had to bail you out, hasn’t it? Because you go, “Oh, I’m Melody Katsouris, I’m far too good for this family” and the first thing you do, always, is pick people who think
they’re
too good for
you
. It’s like, your character fault, isn’t it, missy? So then who has to come in and clean up afterwards? Pick up after your cock-ups? Well?’

‘Your family, that’s who,’ says Yaya. ‘Us, that’s who.’

‘I’m grateful,’ I say, though gratitude isn’t what I feel right now. But I’m still trying to be reasonable, still clinging to the hope that somehow I can break through the barrier of my mother’s self-defensive rage. ‘God knows I’m grateful. I understand. I owe you an incredible debt. Like all kids do their parents. I know that, Mum. But it’s … don’t you understand? I love him. I love him and I’m not leaving.
They’ve
got to understand that as much as you have to. It’s not about them, or you, it’s about me, and him.’

I’ve seen her in rages before. Every day, pretty well, that I’ve been with her, she’s gone off on one about something. That’s how it is in our family. Mum raving at the gods, Yaya echoing her like a Greek dramatic chorus and Dad, well, Dad chewing on his cigar and going off to do the business. That’s the way it is, but today I’m not playing ball. I’m not doing it. It’s too important. Rufus is too important.

‘Yeah, yeah, yeah,
him
.’ She spits the word out like wormwood. ‘Always
him, him, him
. You never learn, do you? You’d’ve thought, wouldn’t you, that you’d have learned after the last one? But oh, no. The last one thought he was too good for you too, and look where
that
got you. Jesus, Melody. Open your bloody eyes and
see
, won’t you? You’ll get all fucked up just like you did with the last one, and you’ll only have yourself to blame. Only, this time we won’t be around to sort it for you.’

I spit the dummy. ‘No,
you
see! I’ve had about enough of this! All of you! It’s not about you! None of you can get that through your heads, can you? It’s not about you! The way you all go on – you and them – the only mature people in the whole bloody mess seem to be me and Rufus! It’s not
about
you!’

‘Yes it is! Yes it is! We’ve protected you, we’ve sorted out your problems when you were too damn pathetic to do it for yourself, we’ve bought your way out of stuff and fought your way out of stuff and now you’re just going to pretend … we’ve done
everything
for you, Melody!’

‘Everything,’ says Yaya.

‘Like what?’ I scream. ‘It’s not – parenting’s not a two-way street! It’s what parents do! They look after their kids! It’s not some –
repayable contract
! You have us, you raise us, and we go and live our lives! It’s a debt, yes, but it’s not repayable in kind!’

‘Oh, get over yourself, Melody,’ she sneers.

‘No! You don’t understand!
I love him
! I’m not giving that up!’

Mum tosses her head. Looks at me – at what I’ve just said – with all the contempt that Mary and Beatrice have stored up, and then some.

‘Well, we’ve heard
that
one before,’ she says, ‘haven’t we? And look how
that
ended up. That’s just what I’m talking about. You can’t do
anything
without us. It always falls to us, in the end. Me, and your dad, and your brother. We do everything for you.’

‘I know,’ I tell her. ‘I know, I made a mistake. But you can’t make me pay for it for the rest of my life.’

‘Everything,’ she says. With a meaning that even I can’t miss.

I stop dead in my tracks. She’s the one with her arms folded, now: a gesture of defensive triumph.

‘What are you talking about?’

Mum lets out a laugh that sends chills down my spine. ‘Don’t come the innocent with me, missy,’ she says. ‘Don’t pretend you don’t know what I’m talking about.’

I know. Oh God, I know. Did I know all along? Have I been pretending to myself, all this time, when I knew?

She’s switched off the cellphone again. It doesn’t even go to voicemail. And the hotel says they checked out before they came down to Bourton, and I don’t know where they are, can’t go and confront them, so I call Costa because it’s the only thing I can think of to do.

There’s a game of footie on the idiot box in the background. I can see him in my mind’s eye, my beautiful, graceful, vicious brother, sprawled out on the white leather settee with his mates, debris of man-fun scattered over the coffee table. Costa with my dad’s warm brown skin and my mum’s blonde curls, T-shirt hitched up over a hand that lazily scratches his six-pack. Costa who’s broken my heart.

‘Hey, Sis!’ he says. ‘How’s it going? Olds behaving themselves?’

My throat is full of tears. It’s the sound of his voice. I can’t speak for a moment. Hear him sit up, over there on the other side of the world. Hear his voice change.

‘What is it, Mel? What’s wrong?’

I find my voice at last.

‘You’ve got to tell me. You’ve got to tell me the truth.’

‘Hold on.’

The sound of the game fades. He’s walked out into the hall.

‘What is it, Mel?’

‘Don’t lie to me Costa.’

‘No. OK. What?’

‘Tell me it’s not true.’

‘What?’

‘Costa,
what happened to Andy
?’

The phone slips against his cheek. It takes a moment for him to come back on the line.

‘Christ, Sis …’ he says.

I’m shouting. My voice cracking, slipping upward. There’s something inside me, gnawing and fighting to get out. My whole body hurts. My chest is so constricted I can barely breathe.

‘Tell me,’ I yell.

‘Mel …’

‘
TELL ME!
’

‘What do you want me to say?’

‘Tell me the truth!’

‘Well, kiddo, we got rid of him. It was what you wanted, wasn’t it?’

‘What do you mean? What do you
mean
, you got rid of him?’

‘I wouldn’t worry about it. He’s not coming back, believe me.’

‘What do you mean? What did you
do
?’

He sounds so calm. Like he’s talking about a walk in the park. He almost sounds like he’s enjoying the memory. ‘Well, we took him out fishing. You know. When you were asleep, after Ma called us.’

‘What do you mean, fishing?’

‘Well, Mel, you didn’t think we’d let something like that just ride, did you? Come on. The bastard had it coming to him.’

‘What?
What did you do
?’

‘Well,’ he says, ‘we took him out the reef and chucked him in the water …’

A sob rips itself from me, huge and hot, doubling me up so all I can do is grip my chest and howl. No, God, no, no, no,
please
don’t let it be true.
Please
. Tell me he’s off in Tassie somewhere, living it up in the bars and never thinking of me. Tell me he went to New Zealand to get away from us, that he’s running a bar at Chang Mai, that he went down to Canberra, that he ran off with someone he’d been sleeping with all along, that he’s married now, with three ugly kids and a bitzer. Tell me you
paid
him to go away. Tell me he hates me. Tell me he wishes he’d never met me, that he wishes me cancer, that he’s been warning the world away from me. Tell me he’s in jail or in hospital or in Cambodia. Anything. Just don’t tell me that. Please don’t tell me
that
…

I can’t tell him. How can I?

Costa sat on the stairs with me, held me in his strong brown arms and told me it would be all right. He said: you never know, Sis. One day you’ll be glad he’s gone. One day you’ll know you had a lucky escape. You’ve still got us. You can trust us. We’ll take care of you
.

He thinks that I’m devastated by my parents’ departure, by the disaster of their visit, the trauma of the ultimatum, that the days I spend crying, inconsolable, the tremors, the sickness, are a reaction to the stress. How can I tell him? How can I say: ‘The man I thought had left me was murdered by my family? The blood of assassins flows through my veins.’

And it’s all begun again, the wound has opened up again, because before, when I grieved, I grieved for myself, for the girl abandoned, the love disdained, for all that promise come to dust. And now – now I’m grieving for Andy. I grieve for my guilt, and his loss, and the reality that he will never breathe, see, touch, screw, laugh, love, dance. I grieve for the man I loved and the knowledge that no-one will visit his grave, no-one will raise a glass on his birthday in rueful memory, that his mother-father-sister think he left them the day he left me. I grieve for the lies, and the loss, and the cold, sick shock of truth.

Tilly comes home from the hospital and brings my new goddaughter to see me and I can barely hold her for fear she will be contaminated. And Tilly, through her own exhaustion, instantly sees the desperation that drives my tears and, not understanding, comes and sits on the bed and gives me the first gentle touch I’ve had from anyone other than my husband since I got here. She strokes my hair and cradles me against her squashy, sloshing mummy-breasts, and all I can think is: ‘I don’t deserve this. I will never deserve this. It’s my fault. If she knew, she would hate me. Andy’s dead and it’s my fault.’