Chapter 32 #2
‘I had thought about leaving. Things got pretty bad between us. And I finally told your dad how miserable I’d been, how alone and resentful I’d felt.
And that if something didn’t change, I was scared that all the simmering anger would metastasise.
And for a while, things got better. He pulled back at work for a bit, travelled less.
And we decided to have another baby. We were so excited.
We spent the whole pregnancy talking about how this time it was going to be different.
Your dad was going to drop his caseload, and I was going to have another go at getting into speciality training.
We were going to do a better job of sharing looking after you, and go on family holidays and—’
‘I don’t remember Dad ever being home,’ I said.
‘I still don’t think he’s ever changed a nappy.
And he didn’t change at all. So, for a while I got angrier.
And then I just couldn’t handle all the feelings anymore.
I emotionally checked out of our marriage,’ Mum said in a flat voice.
‘But the story had a happy ending – because you became my life. And the life that the two of us had together was magic.’
Even though I wasn’t looking at her face I could tell that we were both smiling as we remembered.
‘I didn’t expect to fall in love with another man.
I didn’t even know that I ever wanted to again,’ Mum said.
‘As you were reaching the final years of school, I realised that you were almost grown up. Well, it hit me that you’d be leaving soon, and that you couldn’t be my whole world anymore.
That you were going to have your own life.
‘Hamish and I had known each other for a while. I think we sensed a loneliness in each other and eventually we became friends. I didn’t mean for it to become anything more, not until you were older at least. But then it did.
‘I wasn’t going to leave your dad or make any changes to our life until you’d finished high school. But one day your dad found messages and then it all came out, and our marriage ended.’
I continued to stare straight up at the ceiling as I processed her version of the story.
‘Do you believe in the curse?’ I asked after a pause. I was sure she knew what I was really asking. Did she take responsibility for the decisions she’d made, the actions she’d taken?
‘I know Mum did,’ she said slowly. I was relieved that she hadn’t belittled the question or made a joke.
‘Her relationship with my dad was so dysfunctional that I think that it helped her to believe that she wasn’t wholly responsible for a marriage that had made her so miserable and that would have been so difficult to leave. ’
She sighed and gently shook her head.
‘But no, I don’t,’ she said. ‘Mum and her sister lost the men they were going to marry in a war. My cousin got engaged because she thought she was pregnant and then when she wasn’t she moved on.
‘And I think I ended my engagement because... I thought that love was meant to be this dazzling, all-consuming force. And I felt that when I met your dad. I suppose I believed that it wasn’t right to be with someone when I was able to feel the way I did about him.’
‘You really loved Dad?’ I asked, though I already knew what her answer would be from the warmth in her voice as she remembered.
‘So much,’ Mum said, and I could tell that for a moment she’d drifted off into memories of heady days.
‘Except what I didn’t understand then was that all the qualities that I found so intoxicating when I fell in love with him – ambition, drive, focus – would be the ones that made our marriage toxic in the end. ’
‘I’m angry at Dad,’ I said. I pursed my lips together as if I might still be able to catch those words and shove them back in.
But it was too late, they were out there now.
I’d known it for a long time but had been too afraid to admit it.
Matt had called him self-centred, and Nick had called him self-absorbed – it had felt like somehow this had been enough of a green light to feel what I’d tried not to feel, at least openly.
‘I know,’ Mum said.
‘Matt says that love is showing up. And Dad didn’t show up for us,’ I said. ‘But then... you didn’t show up for me either. Why didn’t you stay when I asked you to stay?’ I felt like every piece of oxygen in my lungs had been expelled with that question, the one that had haunted me for so long.
‘At the time, I convinced myself that I was doing what was best for you.’ Mum began to answer my question straightaway in whole sentences, as if she’d had the answer ready, had spent a long time thinking about it.
‘I knew that if I insisted that we stay in our house your dad would force it to be sold. If he couldn’t have it, he wouldn’t let me have it either.
And it was your final year of school, and I knew how hard you needed to study and focus to get into med, and I wanted you to have as much stability and support as possible. ’
‘But it wasn’t the house that was home, Mum. It was you ,’ I said.
‘I know,’ Mum said, and I could see she was trying desperately not to cry. ‘You were my home too. And I’m so sorry I hurt you.’
For so many years I’d believed that Mum hadn’t cared, that she’d fallen madly in love and been reckless and done whatever she wanted, not worrying about who got caught in the crossfire or if my life imploded as a result.
But she had cared. She’d made a mistake, but from a place of confusion and concern and hurt.
And love. And I now knew that it was possible to make a mistake, or lots of mistakes, which hurt the person you loved the most. Even if that’s the very last thing you wanted to do.
I opened my mouth to say something but instead a howl came out.
Mum held me until the tears stopped flowing. I had no idea how long I’d cried for – it could have been minutes or hours.
When my breathing finally returned to normal, I cleared my throat. ‘I think my engagement ended because... I fell slowly and deeply and madly in love with the one man I wasn’t supposed to... my fiancé,’ I said, almost in a whisper.
‘Oh, darling,’ Mum said in a soft voice. She began to stroke my hair, just like she used to do when I was a girl.
‘I thought Matt was the safe guy. I thought there would be limits on how much I could love him. But the more I got to know him, the more our lives intertwined, the more I just... kept falling deeper and deeper in love with him,’ I said.
‘It snuck up on me. And then I loved him so much that I couldn’t imagine life without him.
And that terrified me. I was so scared of how much I loved him that I began to pull back.
I don’t think I really knew I was doing it. ’
I sniffled then sighed.
‘He called off the wedding because he thinks I don’t love him enough. But the truth is, I was trying to hide the fact, maybe from him, I think mainly from myself, that I loved him too much.’
I bit my lip to stop myself crying again. Mum didn’t jump in to fill the silence.
‘Why did you bring up the curse after I got engaged to Matt?’ I asked. I knew my thoughts were careering in a way that wasn’t close to linear. But I needed to keep asking all the questions.
‘I only mentioned it a few times as a joke. To try to cheer you up when there were hiccups during the wedding planning,’ Mum said. ‘You have many strengths, but a relaxed approach to event planning isn’t one of them.’
Even though my body was emotionally short-circuiting, I laughed.
And then Mum did too. And soon we were both hysterical.
We both tried to speak but we couldn’t get anything out between guffaws.
I hadn’t laughed this hard since... well, I couldn’t remember.
I’d probably last laughed like this with Matt.
He was always able to make me laugh, belly laugh, even when I was at my most wound-up.
‘You’re right, Becs. You weren’t imagining it, I probably did start to bring up the curse over the last few weeks,’ Mum said when we’d both caught our breath.
‘You kept mentioning it whenever we talked about wedding plans. And I started to wonder if everything was okay with you and Matt. So maybe I used it as a way to see if you wanted to talk about whatever you were feeling. I wanted you to know that if you changed your mind about him or about the wedding then it wouldn’t be a big deal.
That plenty of women in your family hadn’t made it down the aisle either, me included. ’
She sighed and then reached for my hand, the one with no ring on it anymore, and pulled it to her chest.
‘I should have just asked you straight out if you were okay, if everything was okay,’ she said.
I finally looked up at her through my puffy eyes.
‘Oh god, Mum, you’re in pain,’ I said. I sprang out of bed, grabbed the packet of painkillers and her glass of water. ‘You need to take this.’
‘I’m okay,’ she said, but I knew she wasn’t.
‘I love you, Mum,’ I said, and pushed a tablet into her hand. I looked down at the packet of Endone in my hand. If I took one, would I stop feeling all the feelings that were swooshing around me? In spite of myself, I smiled. No, not feeling hadn’t worked out that well for me.
I put the packet back on the bedside table. Life wasn’t so bad that I had to steal my mum’s prescription meds. And anyway – it was time for me to feel some things.