Versace Sisters (25 page)

The cyclists' bells behind her forced Bella to the side of the
Centennial Park running track. She'd left Parklands restaurant
two kilometres ago and was feeling quite chuffed that
she hadn't stopped for a breather yet.

Since her tentative Palazzo Versace epiphany, Bella
had re-discovered so much about herself. And one of her
most exhilarating realisations was that she loved to run.
She'd stopped her daily jog several years ago when Curtis
had cringed at her ruddy-cheeked appearance and sweaty
armpits.

But now she was back on track, beating the asphalt
with little care that wet strands of hair plastered her face
and neck. It was so lovely to be back in Sydney and she
couldn't believe she'd been avoiding the city for so long.
But while the spectre of her failed marriage had loomed,
and as her sister had grasped onto her like a drowning
woman, it had been a difficult place to enjoy. But now that
both situations had eased, she felt free to revel in Sydney's
remarkable views, architecture and entertainment.

Bella was enjoying her sister's company more than ever
since the dynamics of their relationship had shifted. They
were now more like equals than big sister and little sister,
and able to enjoy a healthy friendship.

Bella was also relieved to see that Sera had been able
to accept their mother's limitations and manage a warmer
relationship with her. She was never going to be an ideal
mother – her needy and demanding behaviour would be
likely to continue – but with her daughters now ringing
her on alternate days she spent her phone conversations
talking more and complaining less.

*

The restaurant was coming back into view and Bella was
thrilled at how much faster her time was getting. She didn't
run to keep her figure trim, she ran because she loved the
power of pounding the pavement. It was her meditation.

A horse clopped past and blew an equine raspberry in
her direction. Bella laughed and brushed the droplets of
horse spit from her face.

She wasn't rostered on with Air Australia for a whole
week and was using her free time to meet up with one of
her old friends each day. There were a lot of new baby
and house-warming presents to buy. There was so much
to catch up on. Her next flight was to Hong Kong on Saturday
and for the first time in years she felt disappointed
about leaving town.

Bella increased her pace at the final one hundred metre
mark and sprinted to complete the circuit. She walked in
a circle, hands on hips, until she stopped panting. Wiping
the sweat from her forehead with her forearm, she cringed
as she noticed the streak of grime left on the back of her
hand. She wiped it off with her T-shirt. It was going into
the wash anyway.

A bus full of office Christmas party revellers unloaded at
Parklands for their end-of-year celebration. Bella's breathing
eased off as her heart rate slowed.

A great idea suddenly flashed in Bella's mind. A girls'
weekend – just Bella and Sera – in Hong Kong would be
perfect. This time, without a massive fight. She could book
them both in at The Peninsula, they could go shopping,
and it would give Sera a much-needed break. And besides,
now that Sera didn't need her so much, Bella was free to
give her treats whenever she felt like it.

Bella pulled her iPhone out of her back pocket and rang
her little sister with the exciting invitation.

Sera flew out of the childcare centre and rushed to the car.
Right, six glorious hours to do ten hours' worth of jobs. The
painters were putting on the final coat today, so she had to
duck back home to let them in. She'd have to ring Joan in
the hospital and see how the nurses had offended her today.
The new furniture was being delivered this morning and
Telstra had promised to arrive sometime between nine am
today and Christmas to install a new telephone outlet.

Now, if she could will her mobile to not ring, she might
have a chance of getting everything done. She glared at it.
For such a small piece of technology, it was a godsend and
an almighty headache rolled into one.

As if on cue, the little bugger trilled. The caller ID
announced that it was Tony. She smiled, he'd been so
adorable lately, but he wasn't adorable when she was this
busy and she knew he only rang when he wanted her to
do something.

'Hi, honey,' she chirped into the phone, determined not
to let him sense her angst and stress.

'Hi, honey,' he repeated. 'Listen, I need you to do a
favour for me.'

Oh, good God, she thought, how on earth will I fit
this in?

'It's quite important. I need Mum's health card, health
insurance policy and membership card. I was on hold with
the insurance company for twenty minutes, so there's
been no joy there and I need to know her level of health
insurance.'

Sera knew Tony was reaching boiling point with his
mother's hospitalisation. 'The surgeon wants to do her hip
replacement tomorrow and the hospital needs this sorted
out today.'

Having spent the last two days running about after
Joan – ferrying licorice allsorts, slippers and clothing to and
from the hospital – Sera had had quite enough. But she
smiled instead, hoping it would sweeten the tone of her
response.

'Of course. I was on my way back to the house anyway.
Where's the paperwork?'

'She says it's in a pink box on the top shelf of her closet
in an envelope with my name on it. Can you please bring it
to the hospital? You were planning on coming in, weren't
you?'

'Yes, yes, of course,' Sera lied, and turned the car in the
direction of home.

Back at the building site, she dumped her day's collection
of renovation swatches and samples on the hall table
and went straight to Joan's room. It was nice to walk into
the room and not have it smell like a second-hand shop.
The usually dim space was bright and cheerful since she'd
pulled the curtains all the way back and left the window
ajar.

She opened the closet door and clucked in horror at
its tightly packed contents. An array of navy blue, teal
and maroon assaulted her stylish eye. Coogi knitwear,
parachute-silk leisure suits and bucket-loads of boucle
fought for hanger space.

She saw a pink box buried beneath a pile of orthotic
footwear on the bottom shelf. That must be it. The box
was full of memorabilia; photographs, newspaper cuttings
and greeting cards. How bloody disorganised was this
woman? Hadn't she heard of a filing cabinet? Or at least a
scrap-book?

She flicked through the sepia-toned memories swiftly,
searching for the envelope. She smiled at the yellowed
snippet cut from the classifieds of March 1968 proudly
announcing the birth of her husband. Finally, at the bottom
of the box, she found a dog-eared envelope with the name
'Tony' on the front.

Opening the envelope, she found several pages of
handwritten paper, worn thin on the folds as if it had been
handled many times over the years.

She read the first line: 'My darling Tony, this is the
hardest letter I've ever had to write . . .'

Sera hurriedly folded the letter shut. This wasn't for her
eyes. This was obviously an intensely private missive. She
couldn't read this letter . . . could she?

It was impossible. She was torn. But she couldn't stop
herself. Shelving the guilt she was feeling about prying into
Joan's personal life, she re-opened the letter. After all, she
assured herself, it was addressed to her husband and they
happily opened each other's mail.

It only took a few lines to realise that the letter was
not directed to her husband at all. As she read on, Sera
started to shake her head. 'No,' she said out loud. 'No, it
can't be true, it just can't be.' By the time she reached the
last line, Sera fell heavily back against the wall as if she'd
been shot.

Her family was about to change forever.

*

Three weeks later Joan was ready to come home. Sera
collected her and settled her in, and Tony whipped home
from work briefly to greet his mother, kiss her on the
cheek and drop off a bunch of flowers. Just enough time
to win brownie points but not long enough to endure her
tirade of complaints.

As soon as he left the house, Sera locked the front door,
took the telephone off the hook and walked into Joan's
room.

The patient was sitting up in bed supported by a tower
of feather pillows. Magazines were strewn across the bedspread.
The pen in her hand flew across the
New Idea
celebrity crossword, proving that her intimate knowledge
of the famous was on par with any paparazzi.

She didn't look up as Sera entered. 'Tea please, Sera,' she
ordered, her pen didn't pause, quickly answering 'Antonia'
to 'sister of Dead Calm redhead'.

Sera ignored her mother-in-law's request and pulled the
desk chair up to the side of the bed. Leaning forward, she
gently took the magazine from her mother-in-law's grip.

Joan looked up over her bi-focals in shock at such
defiance.

'We need to talk,' Sera said.

Joan went white and her hands flew to her lips. She
knew.

Joan's eyes watered as she stared out of the window, the landscape
blurring to indistinguishable colours and shapes. She
sighed deeply and then looked back at her daughter-in-law.

Sera was shocked. Years had melted from Joan's eyes.
They were softer, younger. Her familiar steely stare had
disappeared. Sera had never seen her looking so fragile;
almost beautiful.

'It was different in my day, love,' Joan started. 'Girls
were raised to be dutiful women. Sure, there was a wave of
bra-burners out there, but we all thought they were crazy.
We were the good girls – the debutantes – and besides,
why would you want to run around making speeches,
having a career, doing it all when you've still got to put a
roast on and get the mending done?

'Career women were frowned upon in my set. I married
young, was really forced into it, you know, not in the
arranged marriage way, mind, but the women of the family
and the rest of our community all decided that because
Barry was a CPA – a reliable, hard-working type – he
was "a catch". In those days your husband just had to be
a good provider. Forget about your best-friend, soulmate,
kindred-spirit rubbish. I tried to get a job in the beginning.
Just as a nurse, you know, but Barry wouldn't have it. My
place was in the home. It was the only real row we ever
had in our entire marriage.'

'You never had a blue, during the whole time?' Sera
was astonished.

'Just that one. And it was a doozy, let me tell you. He
punched a hole in the wall of our beautiful kitchen. I'll
show you where later. I quickly learnt how to keep the
peace. What's the point of screaming the house down every
second night? Young people today have no restraint.'

Joan described her years of cleaning, shopping and
cooking and how she tried to fill the empty hours with
her needlework. She desperately wanted a baby to fill the
lifelessness of the house in Paddington, but the years went
by and pregnancy evaded her.

'You have to understand, love,' Joan explained to Sera,
'my marriage was like living in domestic handcuffs. Lust
and passion were merely the stuff of romance novels. And
what in the hell was an orgasm? I had no idea!'

Sera sat back in her chair and listened to the story from
so long ago that had never been told.

*

Joan was desperate to love. She'd never truly loved
anybody, never given herself up completely and thrown
herself into a relationship with that urgent need to sacrifice
all for another being.

After eight years of failing to get pregnant, she sank into
a depression. She'd given up and could barely keep the
house running as she lived with the daily pain of her childless
state. Barry became increasingly hostile with his wife,
blaming her for their barren union. He began avoiding the
silent house as much as he could, spending all his time at
the office or at the club.

Joan was desperate to feel better. She'd spent two years
grieving her apparent infertility, cycling through emotions
of denial, shock, anger and finally the dark hopeless place
called grief, where every day is bleak and interminable.
When she came out of the tunnel, she realised there was
nothing in her life. But Joan was a survivor and turned
towards her beautiful Paddington terrace house. It became
her baby. She threw herself into beautifying the property.

She made curtains, crocheted doilies, put up wallpaper,
macraméd hanging basket holders, nurtured her maidenhair
ferns, and baked beef Wellington. And bit by bit, what
had started as a coping strategy became a way of life. She
experienced little joy or passion but she soon became able
to get from dawn to dusk without wanting to kill herself.

Then one day her husband decided to embrace the trend
for outdoor cooking and bought one of the new-fangled
barbecues. The back door of the Paddington terrace house
led directly to lawn and clothesline, so he planned to install
a patio to house the new equipment. Joan was given the
job of project manager, which was a relief because she'd
painted, papered and knitted every square inch of the interior
of the house and was looking for a new target for her
homemaking skills.

The lawn was cleared, the Hills Hoist removed and the
ground levelled in readiness for slate crazy-paving. Barry's
boss recommended an Italian chap for the job: 'You know
what those wops are like at stonework, old man,' he had
advised. 'Have you heard of St Mark's Piazza in Venice?'

Antonio turned up at eight am on day one to be briefed
by the man of the house. Barry instructed Joan to bring
coffee. She carefully mixed a Nescafe and cringed when
the new Australian grimaced at his first sip. He smiled in
apology and said that he might just have a glass of water
instead. It was a challenge, she decided.

By the end of the week, while Antonio laboured in
the forty-degree Sydney heat in the north facing backyard,
Joan had discovered how to buy coffee beans and grind
them to perfection. In a small Italian delicatessen she found
a Bialetti aluminium coffee maker that sat on the stovetop.
She enjoyed such a frisson of satisfaction when the coffee
began to release its rich aroma and Antonio would call out
from the construction zone, 'Ahhh,
bella
, the coffee smells
magnifico
!'

She would deliver it to him and watch him savour every
sip. She revelled in his clear affection for the cup of black
ink. She'd never met anyone who so thoroughly embraced
life; whose every waking moment was directed at discovering
something new and wonderful. She marvelled at this
man of passion.

But she particularly marvelled at how another human
being could be so impressed with her doing something as
simple as making a coffee. '
Grazie, bella signora
' were the
words Joan lived for. She scoured Italian cookbooks at
the library and began bringing Antonio little treats with
his morning coffee. Biscotti, pasticciotti and, of course, his
favourite – cannoli: a fried pastry shell stuffed with a sweet
ricotta filling. She made it so feather-light he said it was
almost as good as his darling mama's in Positano. He asked
her to call him Tony, like his friends did back home.

His kind words became a drug to Joan. She would whip
through her household chores by eight o'clock every day so
that when he arrived she could start her baking and present
him with her offering by morning-tea time. She would
then spend the rest of the day sitting near him and listening
to his rich voice as he sang Italian operettas, the Beatles, and
even some Doris Day.

They talked about everything: the state of the world,
the state of the Royal family, even the state of her vegetable
garden. He encouraged her to plant zucchini, a
vegetable not widely used by the Australian housewife in
the 1960s.

Joan didn't know she was falling head over heels in love.
How do you know you're flying if you've never done it
before?

As the patio came to its inevitable conclusion, Joan
suggested to Barry they really needed a retaining wall to
stop the backyard from encroaching on their spiffing new
courtyard. He readily agreed, because, after all, Smith from
the office had just installed a retaining wall.

Day two of the building of the retaining wall arrived
and so did Antonio, complete with a bunch of sweet peas
and an embrace for his
bella signora
that caused a flush
of heat to sweep through her core. The next time she
brought Antonio his morning espresso and placed it on
the pile of bricks beside his work area she laid a hand on
his shoulder. He turned from his crouched position and
looked up. He stood slowly and wrapped his arms around
her. The wall did not develop much further that day. As
the sun dropped behind the west fence of the backyard, it
was only the threat of a home-coming husband that tore
them apart.

Antonio was desperately in love with Joan. He begged
her to leave her husband and be with him. But she refused
to even consider it. Even with her recently unleashed
passion, Joan's sense of duty was tattooed on her soul. Her
parents, her in-laws, her local community, would be so
torn apart with disappointment and hurt should she dare
follow her heart – she just couldn't do it.

She said no to Antonio and the tears tumbled from her
face to mingle with his on the crazy paving at their feet.

Antonio closed up. He completed the retaining wall
without another word to his
bella signora
and when it was
done he left forever.

Joan sank back into her familiar dark depression. She
stayed in bed most days; glorious sleep was her only friend,
the only escape from the reality of having lost her love. She
maintained the household with bare minimum effort, just
so Barry didn't notice anything was amiss.

Antonio tried one more time, a few weeks later, to
convince her to leave. He was out the front of her house
one afternoon when she dragged herself to the corner shop
to buy food for her husband's dinner. He leapt out of his
truck and came over to her. She was shocked into silence:
she'd thought she was never to see him again. She felt her
resolve weakening and put her hand out to stop him. It
rested on his hard chest.

'You must listen to me, Joan,' he said.

She looked at him mutely, her eyes filled with pain and
tears.

'I am going back to Positano. I cannot stay here in your
beautiful country one more day without you. Every ray
of sun reminds me of you, I can't even enjoy my espresso
anymore because it makes me think of you. I leave tomorrow.
You must come. You must come with me.'

'I can't,' she said. Her whisper barely made it to his ears.

He turned and walked back to his truck and drove
away.

*

Three weeks later, Joan realised she was pregnant. That
morning it felt like someone had turned a light on. Her joy
was practically hallucinogenic. The sun was warmer, the
colours more colourful, the outlines on the leaves sharper.
And the crazy paving was the craziest, most delectable piece
of stonework she'd ever seen.

The only minor downside, of course, was that she had
to force herself to have sex with her husband that night.

Naturally Barry was thrilled to become a father. And,
when he wasn't at the office, he would occasionally even
hold the baby – when Joan wasn't feeding or changing
him.

Infant Tony grew into big boy Tony then into a
young teen. Joan and her son were inseparable. Tony and
his father, however, were always at loggerheads. They
didn't agree on anything and Barry's strict parenting techniques
set up an impenetrable barrier in the father–son
relationship. When Tony, at age sixteen, announced he
was quitting school to take up a builder's apprenticeship,
the camel's back collapsed.

A screaming match of hideous proportions ended with
Tony leaving the family home and moving into share
housing to follow his own dream, rather than his father's
dream that he should go to university.

Eighteen months later, with not a word between the
two men, Barry died of a massive heart attack while yelling
at the office boy at work. Tony, with dry eyes, attended
the funeral.

*

Joan had told Sera her story while lying back on the pillows,
her eyes closed as if seeing the series of events taking place
all over again.

Now she opened her eyes, and looked at Sera. The
transformation was complete. A smile played at the corners
of her mouth. Her dark green eyes twinkled as the beautiful
memories faded slowly. But the secret was out. She was no
longer the gatekeeper of the family scandal. Let the repercussions
commence.

'But the letter I found?' Sera asked her. 'You never
sent it?'

'I was torn, Sera, what was I to do? I loved him so
much; he needed to know he had a son. But how could
I do that to him? Offer him a son he couldn't have? The
scandal, Sera, the dreadful scandal. You must realise how
ostracised I would have been by my community.'

'There would have been a way, surely.'

'Sera, you don't think I've thought of that, over and over.
The number of times I've regretted my decision. The great
shame I've had to live with, it tears me apart every day.'

'Why didn't you tell him after Barry died? Why didn't
you go to Antonio then?'

'Because I had kept it a secret for too long. My parents
were still alive, so were Barry's: imagine the betrayal! And
I thought Antonio would hate me for not telling him nineteen
years earlier, when we first conceived Tony.'

Sera leaned over to her mother-in-law and gave her an
embrace. 'Well, it's out now. It must be such a relief for
you.'

'Yes, Sera, it is a relief, thanks for letting me get all that
out and for helping me keep this secret. Now I won't feel
so alone.'

Sera frowned. 'Um, Joan, you are going to tell Tony,
aren't you?'

Joan's eyes widened in horror. 'Oh God, no! Sera, you
mustn't. I couldn't, you can't, it would destroy him to
know he's illegitimate.'

'Oh for goodness' sake, Joan, we're not living in the
Dark Ages. Illegitimacy is completely a concept of the past.
Half the mums at childcare aren't married and no one even
notices.'

'But to know he's been raised in a lie, that I've lied
about his father. He'll hate me, he'll hate me!' Joan started
to sob hysterically, tears running down her powdered
cheeks. She clung to Sera as she begged. 'Please don't, Sera,
I couldn't bear it if my Tony hated me.'

'Joan, calm down,' Sera handed her a box of tissues
from the side-table. 'I won't tell him if you don't want me
to. But I think you'd be very surprised. Besides, it would
be very important for him to understand his heritage. He's
half-Italian, his father's a stone-mason – that's all very
exciting news. It explains so much; his passion for life, his
precision in his work and love of creating. I really think
you need to consider it.' She got up and slipped back into
nurse mode. 'But more importantly, right now you need to
heal, you need to rest and let that hip of yours mend.' She
got up from the bed and fussed around the room; tossing
out tissues and picking up empty teacups. She opened the
bedroom door to leave.