Chapter 24 #2
‘But what is love, pet? Being slowly driven crazy by someone? Losing your identity as you get pulled into their stratosphere of what they want all of the time. Their needs, their problems. I have enough of my own thank you. I’ll use my energies to look after myself.
We enter the world alone, and we die alone.
Who said we had to couple up in the middle? ’
Melody doesn’t want to die alone. She can’t even sleep alone. ‘I thought you enjoyed travelling with him.’
‘We went where he wanted to go all of the time. If we chose my spots then I couldn’t stand the complaining so I went along with his because it was easier. I slowly disappeared, Melody, my soul was being zapped, sucked into his. That’s what love is. A kind of vortex where you lose yourself.’
Melody stares at her, aghast. She somehow doesn’t believe anything she’s saying. ‘Is there somebody else?’
‘Well yes, there is as a matter of fact.’
Well now it makes more sense. ‘Who?’
‘The third party is Belinda Crean. I forgot about her. So I’m taking care of her now.’
Belinda Crean is her own name. Melody can’t argue with that.
Side bar, but, ‘Why did you give me Dad’s surname?’
‘Because he was your dad. Correction, he is your dad, but that’s debatable, isn’t it? I would have also taken his name but he wouldn’t marry me.’
‘Didn’t or wouldn’t?’
‘Wouldn’t. I proposed!’ she says, laughing, biting a biscuit. ‘Did I never tell you this? We were in an Irish bar in Kaiserslautern, Germany, after a gig, and I proposed to him in front of everyone. The band, the crew, the girls.’
‘Were you drunk?’
‘No. High as a kite.’
‘Where was I?’
‘You were there, in the buggy. So technically he turned us both down. He didn’t want to be tied down.
He was quite keen on a blonde named Daisy then, he used to see her when I was putting you down for the night.
But it didn’t stop him marrying three times after that, did it?
The thing about your dad was that there was never a disconnect. He liked to keep people hanging on.’
Melody freezes, wondering if that’s what she had done with Sam.
‘He didn’t leave me, technically I left, but he didn’t give me much choice.
It was shortly after the failed proposal that I came back here and moved in with Nana, but as you know she and I were never the best of friends.
I sometimes wondered if we were better off with him and his indifference, instead of her obvious disapproval.
She was a complicated woman, tough as anything but fragile in many ways.
She drank too much and it sent her doolally.
We never saw eye to eye, she was incapable of agreeing with anyone but she had a tough life herself. But Nana was good to you.’
Melody remembers cigarette smoke and baking. She remembers watching ash fall from the cigarette hanging from Nana’s mouth and into the flour, and then searching for the ash in every bite of the baked apple tart.
The mood becomes sombre as Belinda thinks of her mother.
‘If she hadn’t been my mother I’d have had more compassion.
Women like her come into the office every day and I help them, I don’t think I had a helpful word to say to Mum once.
I think, Melody, the older you get, the more you admit truths about yourself because hiding things inside yourself kind of zips you up.
’ She pulls up an imaginary zip from her crotch to her neck and she holds her hand around her neck as if she can’t breathe.
‘Now that Derek’s gone I can hear myself think, and I can say it out loud, without having to care about what he thinks of me. ’
‘Do you think that the wild side of you is coming back?’
‘I don’t think wild is the right word. Free. We all should be free to please ourselves, shouldn’t we?’
‘Do you not think that you can have both, be yourself and be in a relationship?’
Belinda studies her, curious. ‘Are you reconsidering it?’
‘No.’ Yes, maybe. ‘It’s just that I gave that advice to this guy who came out of a relationship recently and thought it made sense. I almost believed myself.’
‘Yes, tell me about this guy, is this the one who kept you company on an alone night?’
‘It’s actually very funny how we met.’ Melody giggles. ‘I got stuck in the revolving door with my scooter at his office building. He was in one section of the door and I was in the other. We were separated by glass, which is how we first met.’
Belinda smiles. ‘That would be a nice story for the podcast. The meet-cute thing Prunella does.’
‘Oh, I quit the podcast.’ Her chest is tightening. This is what she came here for. She’s ready for her mother’s help now. She needs to unload this and be fixed.
Belinda barely reacts. ‘I see. And how is Sam?’
Melody isn’t sure if her mother heard what she said, but now that they’re on the issue, she needs to discuss Sam as well, so her mother can fix that too.
‘I think I wanted him to kiss me today. And I got fired from the food truck. Sam and Louise want to do it alone.’ She waits for the mum medicine.
‘Well that makes sense,’ she replies practically, unsurprised.
Does it?
‘What wife wants her husband’s ex-girlfriend hanging around?’
‘I’m not just hanging around. We’re in business together. Or were.’ She feels like crying again. The rejection is so hurtful. ‘I feel like I’ve had a falling-out with my best friend and now he’s made a new best friend and it hurts.’
‘Yes, I suppose that is what has happened,’ Belinda says thoughtfully. ‘But it won’t hurt forever. Look how Sam has moved on. You will too.’
Belinda looks over Melody’s head at something. The clock. She stands up, ‘I better get back to it. Thank you for visiting, love, it’s good to see you looking so well.’
Melody is momentarily stunned but stands up too, feeling rushed out of there. She quickly wipes the tears from the corners of her eyes, picks up their teacups and saucers to carry them to the sink.
‘No need to do that, I’ll do it later. The beds are calling me, I want to get it done before we lose light.’ She’s already putting her mucky gloves back on.
Melody watches her mum. So independent, so ready to race ahead with her newfound freedom. Melody slowly grabs her coat and her bag, not wanting to leave.
‘By the way, we don’t enter the world alone,’ Melody says. ‘I was with you.’
Belinda pauses, then slowly removes her gloves. She gives Melody a proper long hug this time and holds her grown up daughter for a beautiful moment in the silent kitchen.
‘Oh, my love. You’ll figure it out,’ she says warmly, and kisses her nose. ‘By the way, there’s a box at the door for you. It’s Derek’s but he said he wanted to give it to you.’
On the floor by the front door is an unsealed box. Melody pulls back the inner and outer flaps, and sits back on her heels when she reveals what’s inside.
Derek’s record player.