Chapter 3 #3
“Shut up, both of you,” Ivy rolled her eyes. Justin Winters was not interested in smashing with her. Or even touching her, or looking at her. Also, “smash” was a revolting euphemism for sex.
“Will someone answer me, please? What is Ivy going to ‘smash?’ And what does that mean, exactly?”
Next to her, George snorted, then sat up straight and answered their father with a saintly expression on his face. “It means to do something very well. We’re talking about Ivy’s new job. She’s going to be brilliant at it, like she is at everything she attempts.”
Ivy attempted a smile and took a large swig of her wine.
Her brothers certainly seemed confident in her, but then, they had no idea what this last week had been like.
Would they still be confident if they’d seen her scurrying desperately after Justin, scribbling down whatever crumbs of information she could gather as he glowered and ignored her?
“How is it going, darling? How was your first week?” her mother asked from the head of the table, as she reached over her plate and started serving out of a large wooden salad bowl.
Judith Page was pale and petite, with a shoulder-length bob that she’d finally let go grey after years of dyeing it a dark reddish brown.
She wore bold, thick-framed glasses that Ivy hadn’t liked as a kid but now recognized as stylish.
Judith had been so attached to them that after she’d had her cataracts done a few years ago, she’d had clear lenses put in the frames so she could keep wearing them like she’d always done.
“It’s the same as the paper but not, and she’s working on a profile of a Justin Winters, age 33,” Luke supplied, saving Ivy from having to answer her mum.
“Oh, he’s the one who got in that terrible dust-up at that bar,” Judith said, and Ivy nodded.
“That was mental,” George said, swallowing a swig of beer. “Does he know he’s in a ballet company, not a boxing company? Guy’s lucky he still has a job.”
“What would you know about having a job?” Luke retorted, and George flipped him off across the table.
“Georgie, please,” Judith admonished.
“I have a job, thank you,” George said, in an exaggeratedly polite tone.
“Tutoring on the side while you finish your third master’s doesn’t count,” Luke said.
George had always loved school. Loved it so much that at 29 he hadn’t brought himself to leave yet.
Every time he finished one degree he just started another.
“What’s this one in, comparative historical ethnomusicology? ”
“Piss off,” George muttered. “We don’t all want to get paid millions to gamble with other people’s money.”
“Georgie, don’t swear at the table. Luke, leave your brother alone. You know that education is important in this family. Your father was the first Page to go to university, and your grandfather always expected you three to go.”
“Yeah, he expected us to go to uni… and then leave uni,” Luke said. “You gotta come out of the womb some time, Georgie.”
“Drop it, Luke,” Ivy said, not willing to listen to the boys bicker about this for the hundredth time.
Luke leaned back in his chair, at least temporarily willing to let the conversation lie.
It was true that Opa had felt very strongly about all three kids going to uni, one of the reasons she suspected he’d been secretly relieved she hadn’t gotten a company contract at 17.
He’d hoped to go to university himself, before all the Jewish children had to be evacuated from Vienna, and he’d found himself separated from his family and living on a farm in the English countryside.
By the time the war ended and he’d finally made it out to Australia, he was too old for uni and he had to make a living.
So he went to work in a brick factory in Erskineville.
It wasn’t far from the University of Sydney by bus, but it might as well have been a million miles away.
“The first week of work was hard, but I’ll get used to it.” Justin’s scowling face swam up in her mind, his eyes hard and accusing. She suppressed a groan at the thought of having to see it again on Monday morning.
“First weeks are always hard,” her father said, arriving at the table with a platter heaped high with barbecued sausages and vegetables in his arms. He set it down on the table and Luke lunged for a pair of tongs to serve himself, but his father grabbed them first and turned to Judith.
“Your usual, darling?” he asked, and she nodded up at him, beaming.
He proceeded to serve her, placing exactly one-and-a-half sausages, two pieces of red capsicum, and three rounds of eggplant on her plate.
When he was done, he kissed the top of her head and said, “bon appetit.” As always, Judith turned her face up and gave him a soft peck on the cheek, and thanked him.
Ivy used to find this routine a little odd and, when she was a teenager, frankly embarrassing.
Her parents were always touching, kissing, and calling each other by endearments, no matter how much their teenage children groaned and begged them to stop.
Now, though, Ivy thought it was sweet and romantic.
Aspirational, even. Her parents had been married over three decades, and they were still affectionate and tender, still so gentle with each other, like their love was new and precious.
Her dad untied his apron and hung it over the back of his usual chair. He sat down and handed the tongs to Luke, then watched in amusement as his younger son helped himself to what looked like half of the remaining food. “Leave a little for the rest of us, would you?”
“I’m a growing boy, Dad,” Luke said, flashing the cheeky smile that had gotten him out of trouble since he was three.
Her dad turned to face her, his cheeks still a little pink from standing over the barbeque in the heat of the day.
He had gone grey long before Judith had, and his hair was thinning on top.
With every passing year, he looked more like her grandfather, and Ivy tried to remind herself that he was still young.
He still had a full, round face that matched Ivy’s own, and when he smiled across the table at her, she could see where Luke got his someone-else-must-have-broken-that-vase grin.
“First weeks are always hard, love, you’ll get used to the place, and then you’ll, uh, ‘smash it.’”
Ivy nodded and took another sip of her wine.
As problems went, a family that believed in you even when they didn’t have good reason to wasn’t exactly a problem.
There were worse fates than supportive parents who thought you could do anything you set your mind to.
But everyone in the family had their roles.
Luke was the roguish, shit-stirring baby who was probably going to end up making more money than all of them combined.
George was the eternal student, the mild eccentric who’d happily live in a falling-down shack if it meant he could stay suspended forever in academic adolescence.
And Ivy? Ivy was the example-setter, the eldest daughter who never complained and succeeded no matter what.
The one time she’d deviated from that role, it had nearly crushed her.
Not just the failure, but the disappointment and surprise on her parents’ faces when they realized that she wasn’t going to square her shoulders and soldier on this time.
She would never forget the weight of that disappointment.
And she knew she couldn’t bear to burden them with it again.