The Last Anniversary (40 page)

‘Is Rose talking to another journalist?’ asks Laura.

‘Oh,
probably
,’ says Enigma. ‘She’s probably there right now telling the whole world that I’m illegitimate, that I’m the daughter of a rapist with a head shaped like an egg. Why does she have to say that part? What’s that got to do with anything? Everybody is probably looking at me thinking
my
head is egg-shaped! There’s no need to snort like that, Laura, it’s very bad-mannered. Well, Laura, I blame you for this whole debacle, it is
your
awful friend’s fault–he started it! I said from the beginning he was a kook, but I didn’t know he was my own daughter’s
beau
! People are very upset about this, you know. Very upset. Did Rose think of that before she started blabbering on? I can see you giggling, Margie. Why are you so happy these days?’

Enigma feels all itchy with irritation. Nobody is giving her any sympathy whatsoever. ‘You look like the cat that swallowed the cream.’

‘I think it’s because she’s stopped swallowing cream,’ says Laura.

‘Oh, ha, ha,’ says Margie happily. ‘You’re just jealous. I’m nearly as skinny as you.’

‘Well, I think actually you’re in much better shape than me,’ says Laura. ‘You’re very toned, I must say. I was admiring the back of your arms before.’

‘They’re called triceps,’ says Margie. ‘I can do tricep push-ups on my toes.’

Rose comes back into the room–another one who looks like the cat who swallowed the cream, with her sophisticated new haircut! She’s
still
so pretty really, and it gives Enigma that jealous, hurt, proud feeling she’d forgotten. When she’d learned that Rose was her mother, she’d thought, I have a beautiful mother, so maybe I’m beautiful too? But nobody who knew the truth had ever commented about Enigma’s resemblance to Rose. Daughters were meant to be prettier than their mothers, but Enigma knew, deep down in her heart, that she could never, ever be as lovely as Rose. Enigma probably resembled her father. A rapist! It wasn’t fair. Her blood was dirty. Enigma
hated
her father for what he’d done to Rose–a secret, powerful hatred that could make her feel quite dizzy.

Rose says, ‘Sorry about that. Another journalist. Oh, Enigma, I forgot to tell you that some young girl called from Channel Nine this morning and asked if you and I would be prepared to be interviewed by Ray Martin. I said I certainly didn’t want to be on TV, thanks very much, but I’d check with you.’

Enigma nearly spills her cup of tea. ‘Well, Rose, of course I’d like to be on TV! It would be a good opportunity to set the record straight.’
Television!
She’d get her hair and make-up done by a professional! She’d have a tiny microphone pinned to her jacket.
Ray Martin
would look at her with those kindly interested eyes and ask her questions. All the tennis girls would videotape it.

Rose says, ‘I said I was
fairly
sure you’d be interested,’ and Enigma catches her winking at Laura and Margie but she doesn’t care because she’s going to be on television–finally!

Sophie and Ed are in the living room talking about the colour ‘duck-egg blue’, which Ed thinks might be perfect to lighten the room, when Sophie says irrelevantly, ‘Are you single, Ed?’

And there’s the twitch. A lightning-quick spasm of all his facial features, as though an invisible hand suddenly slapped him across the face. The twitch hasn’t changed at all, except that it only happens once and it’s so fast that you’re not quite sure if you imagined it. He says, ‘I had my heart pulverised about two years ago, and I know it’s hard to believe with these devastating good looks but I’ve been single ever since. What about you?’

She says, ‘I haven’t been in a relationship since I broke up with Thomas three years ago.’

‘It’s difficult, sometimes, being single,’ says Ed reflectively, and Sophie remembers the scientific way he would examine his own feelings when the boys at school used to do horrendous imitations of his twitch. ‘Most of the time I’m fine, just getting along with my life, but sometimes I just get hit by this sulky left-out feeling. Like when you played musical chairs and the music stopped and you were there feeling like a moron. You know what I mean?’

‘Oh, I know,’ says Sophie. ‘I know.’

She watches Ed stopping to examine the framed photos that line the mantelpiece of Connie’s old fireplace.

‘That’s my collection of godchildren,’ she says. ‘I’ve got nine of them. I’m considering telling my friends there are no new vacancies.’

Ed says, ‘I’ve only got one, a friend’s daughter called Sarah. She’s a little princess. Her mum and dad and I all have to sit around having tea parties with her.’

He picks up one of the photos and says, ‘I always assumed I’d be a dad. It’s weird. I think I knew I was gay even before I realised what the word meant, but I also had these deeply conservative ideas about how I’d grow up and have kids and live in a house with a white picket fence.’

‘I’m sure you could find a nice guy prepared to wear a flowery apron for you,’ says Sophie flippantly, but then she sees the stoic expression on his face and it’s identical to the one she’s felt tightening her own facial muscles, when she says to women with false bravado, ‘Well, my biological clock is sure getting nervous!’

She watches his profile as he picks up another photo and thinks, with a surge of anger on his behalf, Well, for heaven’s sake, why shouldn’t Eddie Ripple–sweet, kind, sad Eddie Ripple–be a Dad?

She thinks maybe Aunt Connie had it exactly right after all.

‘Have you got to be somewhere?’ asks Ed, as he turns around and finds Sophie looking at her watch.

‘No,’ says Sophie. ‘Just checking the time.’

G
race is walking to the top of Kingfisher Lookout. She has the baby in a sling across her front and a backpack full of supplies, from a change of nappy to a sketchpad, just in case Gublet makes an appearance.

It’s only an hour to the top of the lookout but it’s been like packing for a month-long trekking expedition and Grace had begun to wonder if it was such a good idea. After all, it would be no problem finding somebody to watch Jake for a couple of hours, especially now that people are treating Grace like she’s made of glass. Veronika and Audrey have even offered to take him for a whole night, so that Callum and Grace can go and stay in a hotel and have a romantic dinner together. ‘I think it’s crucial for your relationship,’ Veronika had lectured. ‘You need to see yourself as Grace and Callum again, not just in your roles as parents. You have to work to keep the romance alive, you know; it’s not like in the early days when everything is just
perfect
and you can’t imagine arguing with the other person, or even being annoyed by them!’

‘You mean not like it is for you and Audrey,’ Grace had teased, and Veronika had grinned her new sheepish grin and said, ‘Well…yes, but anyway, love is a decision, that’s what Aunt Connie told me before she died. Actually, I don’t really know what her point was, do you?’

Grace hasn’t done much exercise since the baby was born. It’s a warm spring day and within a few minutes she can feel sweat trickling down her back. Her heart is thumping, her legs feel heavy and sluggish, the baby is a lumpen weight against her chest, while the backpack thuds uncomfortably against her shoulder blades, and she thinks miserably, ‘Oh God, I should just forget it!’ and then, ‘Oh, no, no, stop it!’ because she can feel the swirling blackness ready to suck her down and under and she’s been just managing to hold it at bay for the last few days, mainly through the rediscovery of mind-numbingly good sex.

She keeps on walking and thinks about that ridiculous woman yesterday saying piously, ‘Well, you know what, when I feel down, I just say to myself, Megan,
every day is a gift.
’ If it hadn’t been for the girl sitting to Grace’s left, who’d caught her eye and pointed discreetly at her mouth, mimicking retching, Grace might have walked out of the Glass Bay Postnatal Depression Support Group at that very moment. She had only agreed to go to it to please her mother and Callum. Laura was all for getting Grace straight onto Prozac, while Callum just wanted her to see a good doctor about it. Grace was steadfast: no drugs, no doctors. No drug could make her love her baby like a proper mother. No doctor could magically cure her. Besides which, she was feeling much better–and she didn’t
have
postnatal depression–she’d always been a grumpy, bitchy type of person. That was just her. The very thought of sitting in front of a doctor, with all that doctorly focus on her and her inappropriate feelings, made her feel unbearably trapped, like a pinned butterfly.

But when Callum came home with a yellow flyer pulled from the noticeboard of the Glass Bay fish and chip shop, she’d agreed to try out the support group–just once. That was the deal. At least the attention wouldn’t be on her alone.

Within ten minutes she had decided she absolutely wasn’t going to a second meeting, especially after pious Megan was followed by a pale wispy wraith of a woman who’d just had twins, and now had four children under the age of five, and a husband in the army who was likely to be shot at any moment in the Middle East. She talked apologetically about how some days she didn’t have time to brush her teeth and she felt really down and guilty about not coping. Grace shifted uneasily in her chair, thinking, Well, of course you can’t cope, you poor girl–for God’s sake, who in the world could! The government should give her a full-time nanny or something. How could Grace possibly make a comment after that?

But then another woman had said, ‘Well, this is going to sound really bad after what you’ve been going through, because I’ve only got one baby, who sleeps through the night, and a very supportive husband. I’m a corporate tax lawyer and I’ve actually always been quite vain about my time-management skills. I mean, I could achieve–but anyway, that’s why I don’t understand how this has happened.’ She had taken a deep breath and looked around at the group with a half-fearful, half-laughing expression. ‘Yesterday I sat at my kitchen table and stared at a packet of cream cheese for a whole hour.’

‘Oh!’ Grace leaned forward. She hadn’t intended to contribute a single word, except to compliment the host before she left on her chicken vol-au-vents (actually quite stodgy, far too much cheese) but the words were just tumbling out of her mouth. ‘That happened to me, but it was a carton of milk.’

‘Really?’ said the woman and clutched at her arm, as if Grace could save her. ‘Did it really? Because I thought I was going quite loony.’

And then pious Megan interrupted with some inane piece of advice and Grace sat back and felt teary. She didn’t know why it meant so much that a corporate tax lawyer had sat and stared at a packet of cream cheese for over an hour, and touched Grace’s arm, but it did, and when they talked about their next meeting Grace had found herself offering to bring along mini-quiches, so she guessed she was going again.

Their ‘group coordinator’ had talked about the importance of fresh air and sunshine and exercise. So, seeing as Grace was ignoring all her other advice about antidepressants, counselling and confiding in trusted family members, she had decided that the very least she could do was go for a walk.

She tightens the straps of her backpack, takes a deep breath and forces her body to move.

‘D
o you think if we had a baby together it would blush
and
twitch?’

‘That’s a very strange sort of question.’

‘Well, do you think it would?’

‘Probably. We’d have to leave it out in the snow to die.’

‘Oh. That’s a bit sad.’

A
s the path up to Kingfisher Lookout starts to steepen, Grace feels her calf muscles tighten and her breathing get ragged. For God’s sake, she and Veronika and Thomas used to
run
up here without stopping. Veronika always won, of course.

At least Jake isn’t crying. He’s looking around with interest, blinking slightly at the sunshine coming through the trees, a single droplet of saliva hanging off his bottom lip.

Grace stops with her hands on her hips to catch her breath and says out loud, ‘Every day is a gift, Jake. Of course sometimes it’s a really horrible gift that you don’t want.’

‘Ho!’ agrees Jake.

Grace wonders if she could ever confide to that corporate tax lawyer that she is devoid of proper motherly feelings for Jake, but as she looks at the soft flushed curve of his cheek she is struck with a feeling of loyalty. She won’t betray him. He is, after all, markedly more beautiful than the photo the corporate tax lawyer showed of her rather scrawny-looking baby. Also, Callum said he thought Jake might be musical, and Veronika’s girlfriend, Audrey, who seems to know a lot about babies, said she thought he was quite advanced for his age. Grace doesn’t want anyone feeling pity for Jake! People should feel jealous.

‘Look,’ she says to Jake. ‘You’re just stuck with me, OK? I know Sophie might have done a better job but I’m just going to do the best I can. I’m a better cook than her, anyway.’

Jake chuckles.

‘Oh, you think that’s funny, do you?’

She starts walking again. After a while her breathing gets into a rhythm and her body seems to loosen up and remember the concept of exercise. As she loops around the pathway that Uncle Jimmy and Grandpa built all those years ago, the river glitters and glares in the sunshine, so she has to stop and put her sunglasses on. The jacarandas are out and their pale frothy purple is so beautiful against the blue of the sky it hurts her chest, but perhaps that’s just her lack of fitness.

She remembers coming up here to paint with Aunt Rose.

With her great-grandmother.

Would it have made everything different if she’d known that Aunt Rose and Aunt Connie were related to her? Probably not. She still would have taken their love for granted, like children do.

Veronika and Thomas have both been going on like disappointed middle-aged parents about the deceit of their family. They are disgusted that everyone has kept the truth from them for all these years. ‘I was perfectly mature enough to handle it at eighteen!’ said Veronika, while Thomas was baffled by his family’s ‘unethical actions’. But Grace quite likes the fact that you can think something is one way all your life, and it turns out you’re wrong, it can be something else entirely. It makes her feel free. Nothing is rigid. Things change. You can change your mind. You can change your thinking.

Grace is just glad that Alice Munro never existed.

Finally, with her heart thudding from exertion, she reaches the top of Kingfisher Lookout and sinks down on her knees at the grassy picnic patch. At least it’s a weekday and there aren’t any visitors about to see her bright red face. She lays out a rug from her backpack and unhooks her sling to release poor Jake, who is sweaty from being pressed against her chest.

‘Are you as thirsty as me?’ she asks as she lays him on the ground. ‘I’ve got some nice boiled water for you. Mmmm. Delicious, germ-free boiled water.’

He looks up at her and reaches out a dimpled hand to grab on tight to her hair. As she leans forward a drop of her own sweat rolls off her forehead and lands on his face. He blinks with surprise.

‘Sorry,’ says Grace.

‘Ha,’ says Jake forgivingly and grins at her.

And that’s when it happens, and she can hardly believe it, because, oh my God, it
is
just like all those stupid mushy new mothers said it would be, a shot of joy straight to the heart, just like the adrenaline that saved her life–a burst of pure, mind-clearing euphoria, powerful, primal, lustful, blissful love for her son. She presses her lips to the soft springy skin of his cheek.

‘Actually, I love you more than anyone,’ she whispers in his ear.

‘More than your daddy, even, but that’s our secret.’

Jake grabs her hair tighter and gurgles contentedly, as if he never doubted it for a moment.