The House of Memories (33 page)

There was no note attached. I checked inside the envelope again to be sure. It was empty. I took off the rubber bands and removed the top page. Underneath was a cover sheet, laid out like hundreds of other manuscripts I’d seen in my working life. The title. Author. Date. Word count. Contact details.

US

Aidan O’Hanlon

February 2012

50,000 words

+ 1 9123997899

I thought at first the title was
US
—United States. Had Aidan written a nonfiction book about his work in America? A novel about life in Washington? Was this why he’d got in touch? To ask me to edit his book? I looked at the title again. I was mistaken. It wasn’t
US
. The word was
us
.

I turned to the first page. I began to read.

D
ear Diary!

Hi, it’s Jess!

Someday someone will make a musical of my life and today’s happenings will be one of the BEST parts of it! Talk about action-packed! It’s like that famous story—when a butterfly flaps its wings in the forest, something else happens hundreds of kilometers away. And me cutting up Dad’s credit card was the butterfly flapping its wings and making all these other things happen and people getting all mixed up, but it’s okay now, it really is. In fact, it couldn’t be better!

I’ve seen Charlie and I’ve been to Lucas’s HOUSE! At last! I was always a bit jealous of Ella and her London uncle and his amazing house. I’d met Lucas at Ella and Aidan’s wedding, of course, but only briefly. This was different. He looked better in London, somehow, all kind of shaggy-haired and in a big jumper, between us a bit mad-looking but also really clever-looking. And he has the most wonderful voice. He sounds like Kenneth Branagh. Actually, he even sounds a bit like the captain in
The Sound of Music
, that nice deep voice (even though the captain is supposed to be Austrian but is actually played by a Canadian actor called Christopher Plummer).

Anyway, I’d better go back to the start!! What happened was after I got Charlie’s e-mail and e-mailed him back, I took all the change Ben had given me (he had heaps of it—he said people always give him handfuls of coins as tips when he delivers their room service) and I went down to the phone box. (Which stank. Seriously, it was disgusting.) I rang Mum and Dad first, because I’d promised in my e-mail that I would. And Mum started crying as soon as she heard my voice and kept saying she’d been so worried and was I okay, and Dad came on too and said the same things. He even sounded like he was crying.

I felt a bit bad. I’d just been trying to find my own feet and be independent (and all right, also teach them a bit of a lesson) and it seems they thought I’d been kidnapped by an ax murderer or something. And Mum kept apologizing (when I suppose it should have been me apologizing really but I was happy to let her go first) and she told me everything about the TV show that I’d got upset about. She said that it wouldn’t have been good for me because basically it was going to be R-rated, and the network wanted me to wear low-cut tops and little skirts and flirt with special guests, and Mum and Dad didn’t mean to upset me by not telling me about it, but they really thought it wasn’t right for me, and then I finally got it—when they’d said it would be called
Mess with Jess
, the network people had meant it in a sexual way, not make a mess as in be untidy around the kitchen. Yuk, I said. No thanks. I wouldn’t have liked to do that.

And I meant it. One of my goals in life is to play the role of Maria in a stage version of
The Sound of Music
either in Melbourne or on the West End or basically wherever it happens first, and no one would believe I could be a nun if I’d appeared on a TV show like that, would they?

I told Mum and Dad all about what had happened since we’d talked last, how I’d managed to live on just a few pounds as well as some food from the hotel. (I nearly said “food that Ben had stolen from the hotel” but stopped in time. Dad wouldn’t have approved of that kind of behavior.) And I said I’d been offered two places to stay AND a job in a kitchen and that I had spent the previous day cooking liver (still disgusting to think about) and that I had a possible job in a Russian restaurant too!!

“But what about the auditions?” Dad said. And I told the truth, that I didn’t think I was ready for more of them just yet, that I needed to go to lots more dance classes and singing lessons first, that the standard was so high. “But how will you be able to practice or go to classes if you are working in a kitchen?” he said. And I said, “Well, I won’t be able to, I suppose. I’ll just have to work to earn some money and worry about my performing career later.”

And Dad really is SO sweet. He said straightaway, “No daughter of mine is going to waste her talents in a restaurant kitchen when she could be onstage,” and Mum came on and said, “Darling, you can work in a restaurant anytime. There are hundreds of restaurants in Melbourne but you’re in London now. If you’re not in the mood for the auditions, why don’t you just have a holiday for a couple of weeks, move back into that nice hotel if you want, or pick another one if you’d prefer, and go to see as many musicals and plays as you can, soak them all up. That will be as good for you as a hundred auditions, surely. And then if you want to come home after that, you can. Or you can stay there and then meet up with us in Europe in a few months’ time on our filming trip. It’s up to you, Jess. You’re an adult now. You can decide for yourself.”

What fantastic parents!! Seriously. I said I’d think it over even though I didn’t need to. I’d LOVE to move back into the hotel again. It would be so hilarious to have Ben bringing me my room-service dinners—I’d give him really big tips from now on, of course! And I’d LOVE to have a couple of weeks of just seeing musicals and forget about auditions for now. And I’d LOVE to go home for a bit and then come back with Mum and Dad on the European filming trip. But I said I’d call them back later with my answer.

“Later? Does that mean tomorrow or later today?” Mum said.

“After I’ve been to talk to the people in the restaurant,” I said. But then I thought about having to go into a kitchen and be shouted at by a bad-tempered Russian chef and I realized I really wasn’t in the mood for that either. I’d much rather get started on moving back into the hotel and booking to see some shows, so I said, “Actually, I don’t need to think about it. I’d love to do all of those things. Where should I get a new credit card from?”

Dad said he’d work it all out with the hotel and that he’d talk to Charlie about giving me some money and organizing a new credit card, and that reminded me I needed to call Charlie next, so I said good-bye to Mum and Dad and told them I loved them and then I rang Charlie at Lucas’s number. And it was brilliant to talk to him. He told me off a bit at first but that didn’t last long and then we got talking and he said, “Just get over here, Jess. We’ll talk more in person.” Before I had a chance to ask, he said, “Ella isn’t here at the moment. I’m not sure when she’ll be back.” So I went over to the address in Paddington he gave me and Charlie came out and paid the taxi (luckily, as I had only about tenpence left) and I came in and met Lucas again and we sat in the kitchen and talked and talked and it was really great. They asked me so many questions and it felt really good to be with family again who really care.

Lucas showed me around his house too and I also saw all the foxes I remember Ella talking about. But the main thing I saw was the mess. It really was the messiest house I’ve ever seen. It seriously didn’t look like it had been tidied in this century. It’s all surface mess, Lucas told me. He said Ella was an excellent housekeeper and that it was actually spotless underneath all the books and papers.

And then we went into his kind of private room downstairs that was also really messy but in a good way, and there was a fire and big armchairs near it, and a whole wall of photos including loads and loads of photos of Felix. It was a big shock to see them at first and I kind of had to hold my breath for a minute, because I was scared I was going to cry, but then Charlie and Lucas came over to the wall of photos too and the three of us looked at them all together and we even started talking about Felix.

And Lucas said to me, straightaway—I didn’t know if he would mention it or even if he knew everything that had happened that day but he did—he just brought it up and said, “It must have been especially hard for you, Jess, being there when it happened.” And he just said it like that, “being there when it happened,” not “it was your fault” like everyone else always hinted at. It just did something to me, and I started to cry and it was different from when I’d had the champagne with Ben and Zach and told them and cried, because I was with my brother, Charlie, and with Lucas, who is really part of the family too, and they just gave me big hugs and told me it would be okay, that I had to stop blaming myself—all the things everyone said to me all the time, but even as I was crying I felt something change inside me. It was exactly as Lucas had said, that I had been there when it happened and it was a tragic accident but they also knew, I could tell, that I would have done anything in the whole world to stop it from happening.

Charlie looked like he was about to cry too, and even Lucas did. But we still kept talking about Felix and we even laughed at one stage, when I reminded them both how OBSESSED Felix used to be with brooms, and I acted out what he used to look like when he was pushing a broom around the kitchen, with this REALLY determined look on his face, and it just felt incredible to be able to laugh when we were talking about Felix. It made me feel kind of warm inside myself, where my heart is. It made me feel good.

Lucas said he would make us all some tea and we went back into the kitchen and I could see that Charlie was looking at the clock and I said, “Is Ella coming back soon?” They said they didn’t know, that she was out meeting someone and they didn’t know how long she would be. And I said “Who?” and they looked at each other and then Charlie said, “Aidan. Aidan’s in London.” And I said straightaway, “Can I go and see him too?”

And Charlie said, “I don’t think so, Jess. I think we need to leave them alone for now.” And I thought about it and I realized he was right. I don’t know for sure, as Mum stopped talking to me about it, but I don’t think Ella and Aidan have spoken to each other since she left him. It made me glad to think they were talking again. I hope they will get back together again. They were two of the happiest people together I’ve ever seen. They just got on really well, they talked all the time, and if I was staying with them in Canberra, I’d hear them laughing in their room—not at me, either. I listened in once to make sure. Aidan had been telling Ella a story about work and he just really made her laugh. Ella’s always had a great laugh. It actually sounds like she is saying, “Hahahahahahaha.” Felix inherited it. He had a really great laugh too.

So what we did next was Charlie took me to Ben’s in a taxi and we got my bags and then we went to Covent Garden and booked me into the hotel again. Dad had already e-mailed them with his credit card details so my booking was all in place and I don’t know how it happened (maybe Dad being extra sweet) but they upgraded me to a suite!!! That’s where I’m writing this at the moment. I not only have a four-poster bed again and an amazing bathroom, but also a little sitting area and even the tiniest balcony. I’m on the fourth floor and I look down on a great, lively street in Covent Garden. It’s (seriously) like being in a film this time. Charlie and Lucas said they would leave me to settle in because they wanted to be back at the house when Ella returned. “Have you heard from her yet?” I asked, and Charlie said, “No, not yet.” Then Charlie gave me some money (five hundred pounds!!) and said to go and get myself a new phone PRONTO so that Mum and Dad could contact me whenever they needed to. So I did, and then I went to the box office place in Leicester Square where you get last-minute tickets and I went a bit crazy, if I do say so myself. I’ve booked a seat for
The Lion King
for next Saturday,
Matilda
next Tuesday and for
Les Misérables
the night after! I’m going to see as many musicals as I can over the next two weeks, which is how long Dad’s booked me into the hotel for now. I’ve decided to call this a research trip rather than an audition trip. Which means I’ll still have plenty to tell the others about if and when I decide to go back to college in Melbourne.

If I didn’t think one of those nocturnal actors was in the room beside me, I would start singing now, I am so happy. Either “I Whistle a Happy Tune” from
The King and I
or “Happy Talk” from
South Pacific
. I don’t know which one, maybe both!! See what I mean, Diary—wouldn’t today make a great scene in a musical????

I’m going to send Mum and Dad an e-mail now, just to say another big thanks for coming to my rescue and being basically the world’s best and kindest and most understanding and generous parents. And then I’m going to change into the white robe and order room service and hopefully it will be Ben who delivers it!!

Love for now,

Jess xxxxoooo

A
idan had written the story of our lives.

He started at the beginning, at our first meeting, when he came into the kitchen while I was cooking and made up a story about his mother being Italian. He wrote about our first date, the drink in the summery beer garden. Our first kiss. Our next date. The next. And the one after that. The first time we slept together.

He wrote about our visit to Australia. His proposal. My visit to Ireland. Our months in London, nights sitting up with Lucas, talking, laughing. Our move back to Australia. Our early days in Canberra together. Our wedding day.

He wrote about the night I told him I was pregnant. How he felt when I came into the bedroom holding the pregnancy test and told him there was a blue line. How I had done another test. A third test. How all he had been able to say was, “Bloody hell. Bloody
hell
!”

He wrote about my pregnancy. How he had always thought I was the most beautiful woman in the world and now he knew it for sure.

He wrote about the day Felix was born. The drive to the hospital. Sitting by my bed as my contractions got worse, more painful. How helpless he felt watching me writhe with the pain. How useless he felt, feeding me ice chips and rubbing my back. How he wished he could take on half the pain, all the pain. How desolate he felt watching them wheel me into the delivery room, wanting to come too and feeling so angry with the nurse when she said he had to wait. How he wanted to order everyone else out when they finally let him join me. How he stood behind the bed, holding my hands, how my cries cut into him, how he wanted to scream, “Someone, do something, help her, please, now!” How the labor seemed to last for days, for weeks, how those five hours seemed like the worst time in his life because he wasn’t able to help me. He had to just stand by and watch, but then everything started happening. Suddenly everyone was moving and people were coming in and out of the room and I was really screaming and then there was a cry, a different kind of cry, and a nurse or was it the midwife, someone said, “It’s a boy!” And then there was Felix, with that extraordinary thatch of black hair. And the two of us had laughed. We laughed and laughed as if his being born was the funniest thing that had ever happened to us.

I had forgotten that laughter.

He wrote about the two of us becoming the three of us. How it felt to bring that tiny baby home from the hospital. How we lay in our bed that first night, after Mum and Walter and Jess went back to their hotel. I lay on my side, he lay on his side, and Felix lay in the middle. We were both so tired and so happy and in a kind of shock. Aidan wrote about that shock, how even though of course we knew I was having a baby, that of course there was going to be a baby at the end of my nine-month pregnancy, still, look, here he was.

He wrote about our conversation that night.

“Hold on to your hat,” I’d said. “Here we go.”

I’d forgotten I said that.

He wrote about Felix’s first week, first smile, first months, first tooth, first steps.

He wrote about Felix’s family—his granny, Walter, Jess, Charlie and his family in Boston, his family in Ireland.

He wrote about us too.

About him and me. About our lives together. Our conversations. Our work—his job, my job. Felix was now the center of our lives but we still had our own lives. It was all there on the page, descriptions of the editorial projects I worked on when I first came out of the maternity-leave haze. Anecdotes that I’d told him about authors I was working with. He remembered everything.

He wrote about our first wedding anniversary. Mum and Walter came to Canberra and babysat Felix for the night. We had dinner in an upmarket, overpriced Italian restaurant where the portions were too small and the waiters snooty. They hovered around our table too much and whispered in Italian to one another. They didn’t realize we could hear them and that Aidan spoke Italian. He translated for me, also in a whisper. They were insulting all their customers, including us. I was too skinny, one of them thought. I’d be much more attractive if I had more meat on my bones. They thought Aidan was Scottish. One of them had been to Glasgow once and hated it. It was the hole of Europe, he said. They weren’t impressed with what we ordered either. Unadventurous. As boring as Canberra itself, they agreed. If Glasgow was the hole of Europe, Canberra was the hole of Australia. As we left, after we’d put on our coats and paid and were standing by the door, Aidan turned to the waiters and thanked them in flawless Italian for a memorable evening, adding that he would be sure to let his Italian friends in Canberra know all about this place.

I remembered their shocked expressions.

We walked down the street, laughing so much we actually had to stop walking. Then Aidan confessed that he was still hungry. I admitted I was too. So we went to McDonald’s and had a burger each. And then we went home, even though Mum had told us she didn’t expect us until midnight. It was nine thirty when we arrived. Felix was up. He had gone to sleep, Mum said, but he’d started to cry, so she’d got him up for a cuddle. She looked so guilty, we knew she hadn’t even tried to settle him. If she had her way, Felix would have been awake twenty-four hours a day.

Aidan wrote about Lucas’s surprise visit coinciding with Charlie’s visit. He wrote about that afternoon when we’d all been together, the sunny afternoon when we’d laughed and I’d felt so happy and I had taken a photograph of them all together.

He had remembered every moment that I remembered.

He wrote about Felix’s first birthday party. I made an orange cake in the shape of a sleeping fox.
F
was for Felix and Fox. It looked like a large baked bean. I was as good at icing as I was at knitting.

He wrote about the first time Felix shouted, “I’m Felix O’Hanlon!” in his toddler-babble. About Felix’s love of brooms and vacuum cleaners, how he would happily spend an hour pushing a broom around and get very cross if we tried to take it away from him.

He wrote about Felix’s laugh. His laugh that everyone said was just like mine.

He wrote about how tired we often were. How we were still in a bit of shock that the two of us were parents. That someone had put
us
in charge of a baby. But he also wrote about how much fun it was. What a surprise it had been to us both, amid the sleeplessness and the exhaustion and the mess, just how entertaining a baby was. We could spend hours looking at Felix, watching his expression change. Watching him yawn. Stretch. Crawl. Pull himself up to a standing position. Take his first tentative steps.

Aidan remembered things about Felix I had forgotten.

He wrote about the week Felix decided to eat only green things. Broccoli, green beans, green grapes. Before that he’d eaten most fruit and vegetables—pumpkin, sweet potato, ordinary potatoes, carrots. But for some reason, for that one week, it was green foods only. He actually screamed when we tried to get him to eat some banana. Until, one morning, exactly seven days later, he happily ate some stewed apple, and then for lunch, a full bowl of mashed carrots and pumpkin. His doctor said he’d never heard of a baby doing that. Aidan and I were very amused. It was his Irish heritage coming through, Aidan decided. The eating of the green.

I had forgotten that.

Aidan wrote about the day Lucas’s first box of books arrived. He wrote about Felix’s favorite toys, favorite clothes, favorite nursery rhyme, favorite TV show.

He wrote about me.

He wrote that his favorite thing was to make me laugh. How much he loved the way I laughed. The way my eyes lit up first and then I would smile and then I would laugh. He wrote about how much he loved to watch me editing. The way I would bite my lip while I was concentrating. The way I would tap a pencil against my chin. I didn’t know I did that.

He wrote about how much he loved being with me. Talking to me. How clever I was. How kind I was. How patient and loving I was with Felix. How beautiful he thought I was. How much he loved me in a particular red dress I had found in an op shop in Canberra. How much he loved the perfume I wore. The way I could twist my hair up into all sorts of styles, but how most of all he loved it when it was down.

He wrote about our families. About how much he enjoyed hearing me and Charlie talking on the phone, how much he enjoyed watching me Skype Charlie’s kids in Boston. The presents I would send them, not just for birthdays or Christmas, but parcels at all times of the year, filled with clothes and books and toys, that the kids wouldn’t open until they were Skyping me, so I could watch them unwrap everything.

I’d forgotten they used to do that.

He wrote about our plan for a big family. About the night we decided to try for another baby. How hopeful we were it would happen again quickly. How great Felix would be as a big brother. How we’d just have to convince him to put the broom down for long enough to play with his little brother or sister.

He wrote about the day Felix died.

It was all there, all the detail I had made him tell me again and again. He wrote about trying to call me as soon as Jess had called him. He wrote about my arriving at the hospital in the taxi. He wrote about the meetings with the priest, the funeral director. About the funeral being delayed while a coroner’s report was carried out, how it had to happen after an accidental death. He wrote about going to collect Charlie from the airport. The funeral. The cemetery. About how it felt to watch that tiny white coffin go into the ground. How everyone had left us alone, left the two of us there on our own with our Felix, at his grave, for nearly an hour afterward, while we stood there, holding each other and crying.

I had blocked that out of my memory.

He wrote about the days afterward, after Mum and Walter and Jess went back to Melbourne. When it was just us. When all we seemed to be able to do was cry. When all I could ask him was for the details of that day, again and again. He wrote about me shouting at him when I found him trying to put Felix’s toys into a box.

He wrote about the day I left him, five weeks after the funeral. He wrote about coming home from work and knowing the moment he turned the key in the door that I had gone, even before he saw the note lying next to the keys on the kitchen bench.

He wrote about the following weeks and months. About Mum coming to Canberra to help him pack up not just Felix’s room but all the rooms. He wrote about going to Sydney. About going to the restaurant to try to talk to me.

He wrote about his own move to Sydney. His job there. He’d hated it. He wrote about visiting Mum and Walter in Melbourne. About seeing Jess. How bad she was. He wrote about Mum telling him she’d discovered Jess was hurting herself. That it had started after she’d had Felix’s name tattooed on her leg, at the exact spot his head reached when she measured him against her.

I remembered her measuring him. She did it every time she saw him.

I hadn’t known about the tattoo.

He wrote about sending me letters, e-mailing me, leaving phone messages. Hearing nothing back.

He wrote about the first anniversary of Felix’s death. He spent it with Mum and Walter and Jess.

I hadn’t known that.

I’d been in Western Australia by then. I didn’t talk to anyone in my family that day, not even Charlie. I’d thought it would make it worse.

He wrote about his friend from college days contacting him, offering him a job in Washington.

He wrote about Washington. About his new apartment. About his work.

He wrote about me.

How much he missed me. How he talked to me, every night. How he talked to me about Felix. How each night he wished I was in bed beside him.

He wrote about how guilty he felt, every day, every night. How all he wanted to do was change everything that had happened. How he knew he couldn’t. How he knew he could never fix it. How that made him sad, every moment of every day.

He wrote about Charlie getting in touch with him. Lucas ringing to let him know I was in London. About Charlie and Lucas wanting to convince him to come over and see me.

He wrote that he had canceled the meeting with Charlie. That this was between him and me, not Charlie and Lucas and everyone else. It was our marriage.

He wrote that he had asked his boss, his friend, to send him to this London conference, even though one of his colleagues had already been given the job. That after his boss said yes, he used the conference date as his writing deadline, so he could leave this manuscript in London for me.

He wrote about our wedding day again. How, on the morning of our wedding, he had gone for a walk on his own. We hadn’t slept apart the night before our wedding. We’d wanted to be together. Our apartment had been full of people that morning: Mum, Jess, friends of mine from Canberra and Melbourne, the hairdresser, even the florist and the caterer at one stage. It was a gorgeous blue Canberra day. He went for a walk around the lake. He thought about meeting me, falling in love with me, asking me to marry him. About how sure he was that he wanted to be with me for the rest of his life, to make a family with me, our own family. He described coming back and everyone saying, “He’s back! Call off the search party!” He wrote that I’d looked up from where the hairdresser was finishing styling my hair into a retro-style bun. I’d caught his eye in the mirror. I’d mouthed the words, “Are you okay?”

He said yes. He smiled and said yes. Twice.

I remembered that.

There was just one more page of his manuscript to read.

It wasn’t about Felix. It wasn’t about London, or Washington, about his work or my work, his family or my family. It was a story from our wedding day. Something that happened at the end of our wedding day.

I remembered every minute of it.

It was after midnight. We’d finally farewelled everyone and gone back home, to our own bedroom. We’d fallen onto the bed, holding hands, me still in my cream silk dress, him in his dark suit. We’d been so exhausted and so happy. It had been a day of talking, laughing and dancing. It had been perfect.

As we lay there, Aidan started to recite one of the readings we’d chosen for the ceremony. Charlie had read them so well that afternoon. I sat up, amazed. I stopped him.