The Seven Steps to Closure (35 page)

‘You were too lost to realise you were lost. It made me so sad watching you. You got smaller and smaller and then one day you stopped shining.’

‘Mother,’ I said saddened, ‘why didn’t you say something?’

‘Some things you have to realise yourself, and until you do, you drive anyone who tries to tell you away. I’d already lost so much of you I didn’t want to lose all of you.’

We sat in silence holding hands.

‘So this Matthew,’ she finally continued, ‘he lets you be yourself?’

‘Even better, he likes who I am.’

‘I like him already. When do I get to meet him?’

‘You’re not.’

‘What?’

‘Didn’t Lil tell you about the radio comp?’

‘Yes. Surely you’re not going to let a little thing like that get in your way?’

‘Mum, he’s getting married.’

‘Married, Shmarried. It’ll all work out, just you wait and see.’ She kissed me on the forehead and climbed out of bed leaving me sitting there bemused.

* * *

It was 6pm on the eve of Nat’s birthday and Nat, Dinah, Elaine and I were at the Sydney Convention Centre waiting for a medical convention Alistair and Gloria were attending, to finish. Gloria had met us out front and advised us that it had run over time.

‘Alistair has to present certificates to the newly registered doctors,’ she advised us as she ushered us into the conference room.

What she had failed to mention was that the speaker before the registration ceremony was attempting to break a Guinness Book record for the longest and most boring lecture ever given.

‘Blah blah blah blahblah blah,’ he said as I fought my sinking eyelids. ‘Blah blah blah blaaaaaaaaaaaaaaah.’

Elaine elbowed me in the ribs as I felt my head rolling forwards. ‘Wake up sleepy,’ she whispered.

I straightened up my head with my hands and then said, ‘Why does Alistair have to hand out the certificates?’

‘He’s the current president of the Australian Medical Board.’

‘Impressive,’ I said.

‘He tells me it’s nothing special. They take turns doing it.’

Eventually the ‘blah blahing,’ stopped and the lights in the room were turned up.

‘Shhhh,’ said Gloria, leaning towards us, ‘here they come.’ A line of people filed out onto the stage.

‘That’s Alistair,’ Elaine whispered proudly, pointing to a tall, dark haired man in a finely cut suit.

‘Cute,’ I whispered. ‘I can’t believe we haven’t met him before.’

‘Well, you know, I didn’t want to rush things.’

‘You spent Christmas with each other’s families,’ I said, a little miffed.

‘Yes, but I’ve met them before.’

‘Twenty years ago.’

Alistair’s deep voice boomed out through the microphone as he started to present the registration certificates.

The rest of the room applauded politely as each name was read out, effectively muffling the gasp that Nat gave as Alistair called out Ricardo Gonzalez.

‘It can’t be,’ she said, leaning towards the stage.

I was just as astounded as she was as we watched Ricardo shake Alistair’s hand, take his doctor’s registration certificate and re-join the rest of the group on the stage.

‘What the fuck is going on?’ Nat said to Elaine.

‘How the hell would I know,’ Elaine responded. ‘He’s your boyfriend.’

‘What’s wrong?’ asked Gloria.

‘That’s Ricardo, Nat’s ex, the cleaner,’ Dinah told her.

‘Seriously?’ Gloria asked. ‘He’s pretty cute, for a guy.’

Even from the back of the room you could tell that Ricardo was smoking hot.

‘Well,’ I said to Nat, ‘guess now we know what his secret was.’

I watched in dismay as Nat’s blue eyes filled with tears.

‘Don’t cry,’ I said. ‘It’ll all work out.’

‘How?’ she said. ‘I behaved so horribly; accusing him of being unfaithful and kicking him out.’

‘You said he left.’

‘He did. But I didn’t try to stop him.’

‘Nat, I’m sure he’ll forgive you.’

‘As if he would want me when he could have anyone,’ she gestured to a gaggle of female doctors clustered around the foot of the stage, all apparently staring at Ricardo.

‘Well, I guess we’re about to find out,’ I said, indicating Elaine who was approaching Alistair.

‘Shit,’ said Nat, starting to stand up.

I gripped her arm firmly. ‘No you don’t,’ I said.

We watched Elaine smoothly move through the crowd to Alistair’s side. She whispered something in his ear and, taking her hand, he drew her over to Ricardo, who was talking to the other newly registered doctors. Nat tried again to break free from my grip.

‘Stop it,’ I advised her firmly, watching Ricardo talk to Elaine. Elaine turned towards us and pointed at Natalie, and Ricardo immediately headed in our direction.

‘Well, that’s got to be good,’ I said to Nat.

‘You don’t know that,’ she said, sounding distressed. ‘He could be coming to ask for the rest of his things.’

Ricardo stopped a couple of metres short of us, and stood silently, staring at Nat. He opened his mouth to speak but no words came out. The look on his face revealed such intense longing that I felt my heart clench.

Nat met his eyes, a look of shame on her face. Her eyes started to well up and she looked away, blinking rapidly, to stop the tears falling. Then glancing up shyly and meeting his gaze again, she said so quietly that I had to strain to hear, ‘I’m sorry.’

‘Shush,’ he said, closing the gap between them and pulling her into his embrace.

‘No really, I am,’ she said.

‘Don’t,’ he whispered gently as he stroked her face. Then he kissed her. It was so passionate and personal I felt embarrassed witnessing it – his hands moving from her face to her hair and down to her back where he crushed her to him, her dress clenched in his fists.

Finally, they stopped – both of them panting for air – and he bent and touched his nose to hers. ‘I’ve missed you so much,’ Nat said.

‘Never again,’ said Ricardo, shaking his head, ‘I can’t be parted from you ever again.’

And the kissing resumed.

When they were at the staring-at-each-other-hand-holding stage, Alistair cleared his throat to get their attention. ‘Should we all go to dinner?’ he suggested.

Ricardo looked a bit uncomfortable ‘I don’t want to intrude,’ he said, gesturing to all of us.

‘Don’t be silly,’ I said. ‘Anyway, it’s for Nat’s birthday.’

‘Why didn’t you tell me?’ Nat asked him while we walked to the restaurant in Chinatown.

‘Well,’ he said thoughtfully, ‘I didn’t want to look like – how do you say it in Australia? A looser.’

‘Loser,’ said Nat. ‘Why would you look like a loser?’

‘Cleaning toilets and pretending I was a doctor.’

‘But you wouldn’t have been pretending.’

‘How could you have been sure?’

‘I would have believed you.’

‘And if I didn’t get Board Membership in Australia, would you still have believed me?’

‘But you have a degree.’

‘Anyone can forge something like that these days.’

‘I see your point, but I would have believed you,’ she insisted.

When I finally got home, it occurred to me that I had become the odd one out. I would probably become the hanger-on, inviting myself on my friend’s dates and just generally being wherever I wasn’t wanted.

‘Oh well,’ I said to Bad Bunny as I rolled over and punched my pillow. ‘Hopefully Ricardo, Alistair or Gloria will get desperate for a bit of alone time and set me up with a yummy doctor of my own.’

But as I drifted off to sleep it was Matt’s face that I saw, and it was Matt that I found myself dreaming about.

* * *

‘I can’t listen,’ I said to Dinah.

‘Shhhh, you’ll miss it,’ said Sue.

‘I don’t want to hear it,’ I said.

‘Well why are you in here?’ she asked me kindly.

‘The cake’s in here,’ I said, ladling some more into my mouth.

Sue smiled at me and squeezed my hand. ‘I can tell you who won if you want.’

I thought about it, realising that I didn’t want to hear it because if I didn’t, I could pretend it wasn’t real. But that wouldn’t change anything. Matt was about to announce which of the five, lovely contestants he had chosen to marry. Maybe he wouldn’t choose any of them. A wild fantasy popped into my mind of him denouncing all of them and instead declaring his love to me. I knew it was a long shot, but I decided to stay.

As the segment started, Sue reached over and turned up the radio. Rana raced into the tearoom and said, ‘Did I miss it?’

‘Just starting,’ I told her from between clenched teeth. She smiled sympathetically.

The cheery radio announcer reintroduced each of the contestants and replayed the interviews. Finally, after what felt like an eternity, he said, ‘All righty then the King is ready to make his announcement. Which contestant have you decided to make your Queen?’ I decided I hated the chirpy radio announcer.

None of them,
I willed Matt.
None of them.

‘Contestant number three,’ Matt said.

I sank back into my seat, totally deflated. He had done it, he had picked his bride and it wasn’t me.

‘Which one was that?’ Sue asked. ‘Not the pina colada chick?’

‘No, that was number one,’ Rana advised her.

Dinah was watching as I struggled to control my facial expressions. Reaching over she deposited another piece of cake onto my plate.

‘Thanks,’ I said, pushing it around with my fork. ‘It was the one that thought Italy was a continent,’ I advised them. I had logged onto the radio station website and, sadly, memorised all the interviews.

‘The one that thought
Mission Impossible
was a James Bond movie?’ Sue confirmed.

‘Ahuh,’ I said through a mouthful of cake. I swallowed it and then put my fork back on my plate. ‘This has got to stop,’ I said to Dinah while gesturing at my plate.

‘No more comfort food?’ she said.

‘Well, not as much. I need to wean myself off it. Otherwise in a year’s time I’m going to be ten-tonne-Tara again.’

She smiled sadly at me. ‘Everything will work out for the best,’ she said wisely.

‘I know it will,’ I said looking at her. ‘But I also know that it won’t happen by itself. That’s something I learnt from The Seven Steps to Closure. I need to be proactive if I am to get better.’

‘That’s an important lesson,’ she said.

I nodded my head. ‘I just need to remember it.’

* * *

I was at Bar Blue with the gang, celebrating New Year’s Eve. The end of the year had gone so quickly. That’s always the way with a year though isn’t it? It starts off at a crawl as you recover from Christmas and the New Year festivities, then all of a sudden the Easter eggs are on the shelves. You have a few long weekends to soften the middle of the year and then you find yourself staying up late on the 30th of June trying to get your tax return done, so you can get your money back as fast as is humanly possible. You tell yourself you’re only half way through the year, but the days start flicking by faster and faster. Halloween speeds by like an eerily lit orange train, and then all of a sudden the Christmas carols are playing in the department stores.
It’s only the beginning of November,
you tell yourself indignantly.
Still plenty of time to get ready for Christmas.
But every year without fail, you find yourself, with a few hundred other equally frantic people, in the days before Christmas, trying to find the perfect present for everyone in your life. And every year you fail, because the perfect presents have already been purchased by the super organised people of the world, and all that’s left on the shelves are bed slippers, underwear, socks, daggy C.D’s and bad paperback novels. And although you plan the perfect Christmas dinner – with wonderful bon bons and Christmas themed tableware, in the end it is easier to go to your parents’ for lunch – where your poor mother slaves in the summer heat, over the biggest roast turkey you’ve ever seen. And by the time it is ready, no one is hungry, having filled up on grog and snacks, and everybody is too hot to eat. You don your paper hat and play with your pathetic little plastic top that you won in your bon bon. Your New Year’s resolution is to be more organised and lose weight.

‘This year,’ I said to Gloria and Dinah, ‘I am going to lose weight.’

‘You mean next year,’ Gloria slurred. ‘Cause it’s not technically this year till next year.’

I burst out giggling, ‘Gloria how can it be next year when it’s this year?’

She looked at me for a while; I could see her brain trying to function through the champagne induced fog it was currently operating under.

‘I don’t know,’ she finally said.

‘You mean that you’re going to lose weight next year, because you only have one hour and thirteen minutes to lose weight this year,’ said Dinah.

‘Yes, I see what you mean. That would be quite a weight loss challenge,’ I said before breaking into such hysterical giggling that I fell off my stool and onto the floor.

‘I’m okay, okay,’ I announced loudly as I jumped to my feet.

I could see the bouncer on the door of Bar Blue eyeing me off, and I don’t think it was my body he was looking at. I gave him a cheeky wave and a smile, really not wanting to be thrown out only an hour before the New Year countdown.

‘Seriously,’ I said, ‘they serve you alcohol and then complain when you get drunk.’

‘It’s quite a conunbum, I mean cobumrum, no, no I mean co-nun-DRUM,’ said Gloria triumphantly.

‘Gloria,’ I giggled, ‘you’re really funny when you’re pissed.’ We clutched onto each other laughing so hard we both fell onto the floor. I saw the bouncer shaking his head in dismay as Dinah helped us up.

‘I’m going to be more organised,’ said Dinah, after we had regained our seats.

‘I’ll help you,’ said Gloria. She leaned towards Dinah for a kiss.

‘I’m going to collect toilet rolls and make my own bon bons next Christmas,’ I announced loudly, hoping to break up the snog.

Elaine and Alistair, and Nat and Ricardo were off close dancing. I’d gotten up to dance with them initially, but then the music had gotten slower and I had found myself swaying on the spot by myself, trying to work out how to leave the dance floor without looking like some sort of sad tosser. I had finally realised there was no possible way to do it without looking like a sad tosser, but that swaying on the spot by myself looked even sadder, so I had left and crashed Gloria and Dinah’s private conversation. They had very kindly included me in their group, so I would be damned if they were going to spend the next hour and eleven minutes snogging in front of me. They could snog at the New Year and not before.