Chapter 19
Fran offers to drop us off, to give Dad time to settle in back home amongst family, but I insist he joins us. Dad agrees.
‘I owe you a beer for the ride,’ he says, his voice tired.
The living room is immaculate, empty, the late-afternoon sun setting through the decorated windows, and I ask Dad if he needs anything as he heads to his bedroom for a rest.
‘I’m alright, love – make sure you give Fran that beer. He’s a good lad.’
I agree, and by the time I am passing Fran the green glass bottle, Olivia and Maeve have appeared from their room.
‘How’s Dad?’ Olivia asks.
‘He’s okay, gone for a lie-down. What about Mum?’
‘She’s at the grocery store. Luke is lying down too. Hey, Fran.’
‘Hey, Olivia,’ he replies.
‘Thanks for being there for Dad, and for Nora. You’re a good friend.’
Fran nods; this is something he himself understands to be true.
‘I’m going to wrap some presents, do you want to do yours with me?’ Olivia asks, pointing to the wrapping paper on the bench.
Maeve is beaming at the word ‘presents’ and I cannot wait to give her mine.
Fran is admiring my window when I ask if he would mind, and when he says he would not, of course not, I collect my bag of gifts from my room, leaving him there to chat with Olivia and Maeve.
By the time I get back, he and Maeve are by Olivia’s window, reading a book, one of Maeve’s favourites, about a little mouse; she knows every line.
Every so often she reaches out to touch one of the animals on the windowsill, and I think again how well Olivia has done.
With the window; with her daughter. My type-A sister has taken over the floor with neat piles of presents and rolls of paper, ribbon, sticky tape, and gift tags laid out neatly on the coffee table for us to share.
‘It’s great to see Fran again,’ she says, as though he is not sitting metres away and able to hear every word.
I smile and nod, and she smiles wider. She clearly knows about the feelings involved.
Olivia knows a lot more than I have given her credit for.
In the corner of my eye I see Fran grinning, putting on a squeaky little voice for the character of the mouse.
Everything is right; this is what Christmas should be.
My sister and I wrap our gifts, piling them under the tree one by one until there is barely space left under there.
Olivia asks me to close my eyes while she wraps my gift, and it is such a good idea, I request the same once she is done.
I wrap the book I bought for her, a new edition of one she gave to me when I was small, and curl the ribbons around it with the scissors until it looks just right.
We are almost finished when Luke emerges from his room, hair messy and his face pulled. The room retreats from his expanse.
‘Dad’s home, then?’ he asks, and I nod in response.
‘Actually, I need to have a word with you. I ran into Levi O’Donnell at the servo, remember him? He was in my homeroom back in school.’
My blood freezes, and I nod again, slowly this time.
‘Well, I’m glad you remember the guy you fucked out in public at the pub the other night. I half thought you might have been so off your head you wouldn’t,’ he says, his voice harder with every word.
‘Luke, watch your language,’ Olivia interjects.
‘Sorry Maeve-y, it would be a shame for you to learn so soon your aunty is a whore.’
‘Seriously, Luke. Take it outside if you’re going to talk like that. Or, better yet, don’t talk to her like that at all.’
I stand, doing my best to avoid looking at Olivia, Maeve, or Fran.
‘Do you have anything to say for yourself? And Fran sitting here, too, probably no idea there’s something seriously messed up with your head.’
‘Stop,’ I say, because it is all I can say.
‘Like you’re one to talk,’ Olivia says, now standing too.
‘What’s that supposed to mean?’
‘We met your little friend this morning, trying to sneak out. You’re the one who’s married, you’re the one who should have something to say for yourself.’
I am no longer a participant in this row, though I am both subject and observer. Fran is pressing buttons on one of Maeve’s light-up toys to keep her attention elsewhere.
‘Laura and I broke up. I’ve done nothing wrong,’ Luke spits, as though his sleeping with my classmate is somehow not at all comparable to my sleeping with his.
Before anyone can say another thing, Elsie walks through the front door, arms laden with grocery bags.
‘I need a little help, here,’ she says, stopping as she senses discord. ‘What’s going on?’
No one says a word. The silent tension builds until Maeve bursts into tears. Olivia crosses the room to pick her up off the couch, and Fran stands.
‘I’m going to go,’ he says, taking steps towards the door.
‘You would be proud to learn your headcase daughter has been soliciting the . . . services . . . of older men around town late at night,’ Luke says, careful not to swear again in front of Maeve, or Mum, and risk losing the moral upper hand.
‘Just as proud as you would be of your married son sneaking young girls into his bed, I’m sure,’ Olivia replies, still bouncing Maeve on her hip to soothe her cries.
Mum is quick to shut it down.
‘That’s enough. What a fine show of yourselves you’re making in front of our neighbour, what would –’
‘SHUT UP!’ I scream, all energy from the meltdown I did not have at the hospital ready to erupt.
Luke makes an ‘I told you so’ face to Elsie, and it is more than I can handle.
‘Cover your ears, Maevey,’ I say, voice shaking, and she does as I ask. ‘I can’t believe I am the one this family acts ashamed of, when you are right there,’ I hiss at Luke. ‘And I would be more upset if you liked me at this point, so you can go fuck yourself, Luke.’
Nobody moves or says a single word.
‘Don’t worry, Elsie, I am going to my room. I know how upset it makes you when someone exhibits poor mental health in your presence.’
Without waiting for a response, I flee to my room, leaving Fran upstairs in the mess of my family.
I strip off my clothes and climb into my shower, sitting on the tiles until the scalding water has covered my skin.
My eyes start to sting and my body aches with the force of how much I cry.
This is what Christmas is actually like.
My crash-out does not summon happy memories; instead it has me searching for those dreadful enough I may have actively hidden them from view.
While my graduating summer with Fran was one of the best, that Christmas was one of the worst. Elsie did not mention our late-night kitchen meeting again, but she carried the same energy towards me into the next day’s festivities.
I had no idea what had brought on her anger, or how to stop it being directed towards me.
It was Olivia’s first Christmas in London, and Luke had stayed in Sydney because his work had become exceedingly busy that month.
Grandma Sue was with Uncle Sam’s family, as per the yearly rotation.
Dad worked right up until late on Christmas Eve.
Perhaps when added together, all of these variables created the equation that resulted in me being the problem, or perhaps I had done something else entirely, of which I was not aware.
Knowing I had done wrong, or been wrong, I stayed in bed until nearly 11 a.m., resting, hiding, and it was only the irate rapping on my door that roused me, sent me jumping to my feet and into a more full-scale panic.
‘Yep, coming, just getting organised,’ I called back, throwing piles of clothes and books and paper into my wardrobe and ensuite – anywhere I could conceal my mess.
Elsie opened the door and looked around my bedroom, taking it all in without reaction.
My paint-stained sleep T-shirt and bird’s-nest hair did me no favours, contrasting so thoroughly with her crisp white linen pants and red blouse.
She kept her hand on the doorknob, and took a few breaths before she spoke.
‘Lunch will be ready at one, and I don’t think it’s too much to ask that you make an appearance before then, if not to give me a hand, then at least to exchange gifts with your father and me,’ she said.
‘Okay, I’ll be ready soon. I will jump in the shower and come up straight after that,’ I replied, my pulse building in my neck.
‘You should open up your windows to air this room out, it stinks,’ she said, disgust in her voice.
‘Does it? I can’t smell anything,’ I replied, when I obviously should have just said, ‘Okay.’
‘It smells of sex in here, it’s putrid,’ Elsie muttered, and closed the door as she left.
Confused, I spent more time than I should have sniffing every corner of and item in my room, trying to detect this apparent fragrance of fornication.
My nose was powerful; I was the one Mum usually asked if she wanted confirmation of mould, or dust, or bushfire, or expired milk.
It found nothing. I smelt my own body as best I could, and while it was a little stale, it was not that, or anything that would have been picked up from half a room away.
All the while, a sinking dread set in, a certainty that I had been found out, that Elsie had somehow discovered the truth about what Fran and I had done the night before.
But that was impossible, and anyway, I had done nothing wrong.
We never had the sex talk in our house, not that I remember.
My parents relied on school to cover that part of our education, and the entirety of our Catholic teachings on the subject constituted one health lesson about life-threatening STIs and the inevitability of teenage pregnancy for those who made bad choices.
The boys and girls of our grade were split up for the class, and it was impressed upon us young women that sex was something that happened to us, more than something we could actively participate in.
It was something to hold close, to not hand over until you were really sure, and if you handed it over, you were worth less after that – unless you married that first person, I suppose.
The boys were taught to put condoms on bananas; I do not think shame featured so heavily on their curriculum. Different playing fields, yet again.
In the shower, I puzzled over the conundrum, and it stayed in my mind as I dressed, and took myself upstairs. Dad was sitting on the lounge, comfortable with his cup of tea and the news. Mum was chopping vegetables for a salad at the counter.
‘I couldn’t find the smell you were talking about,’ I said, hoping to ease her worries of a malodorous failure on my behalf, hoping that was all this was about.
My room was always untidy, but it was also very clean. I wanted the air between us to be clean, too.
‘Nora!’ she said in shock – an admonishment, a warning.
‘Is it getting musty down there?’ Dad chimed in.
‘You should run the air-conditioning for an hour or two to dry it out – it’s the dampest room in the house.
I don’t think the builder put great insulation in the walls when we had it built in, to be honest. He gave us the best quote, but I think he cut some corners. ’
‘No, it’s not damp,’ I replied, unsure of what I should or should not say next.
‘We bought the dehumidifier last year, remember?’ Elsie added, explaining everything and nothing to Dad.
‘So, what’s the smell then? Has something died?
I hope we don’t have rats again – this place was overrun with them when we first bought it, wasn’t it, Els?
But we’ve been getting regular pest treatment every year, so if there are rats I’ll be asking for my money back, and a free service, at the very least.’
Still, Elsie did not elaborate further. Dad had turned from the television to our conversation, and I did not know how to avoid answering a question. I did not know how to shut up.
‘Mum thinks it smells like sex, which is a weird thing for a person to think a room smells like, and I haven’t had sex in there recently, so I have no idea what might be causing the smell,’ I blurted out.
If I had not been holding the full attention of my parents before this response, I certainly was afterwards.
‘Nora, don’t be so foul,’ said Elsie, turning away as though she could not bear to look at me.
‘What do you mean by “recently”?’ Dad asked, at nearly the exact same time.
‘You’re the one who said it smelled like that, not me,’ I said, choosing to reply to the less awkward of their responses.
Mum looked at Dad, Dad looked at Mum, and they continued communicating whatever they needed to communicate to one another in increasingly tense silence. I waited for someone to break it, and when no one did, I tried to do it myself.
‘Can I help you with the salads?’ I asked, and Elsie looked at me as though I had suggested adding bodily fluids to the balsamic dressing.
‘You can get out of my sight, and come back when you’re ready to apologise for speaking to your father and me like that,’ she said, clutching the salad bowl in her arms.
I looked to Dad, who would not meet my eyes, his own back on the TV as though nothing had transpired.
He would not have my back, I understood; he never could when it counted.
That was their deal: he worked and lived the frictionless life he wanted; she was in control of everything under this roof, including me.
It was little wonder Luke and Olivia had left as soon as they did.
And so I went back downstairs and stayed in my room, racking my brain as to how she knew about what I had shared with Fran, when all the other times I had done it, she hadn’t had a clue.
It was suffocating, the constant surveillance and judgement – to have someone seemingly know all, and understand none of it.
I could not stop ruminating, frozen that way, still in my bed when I heard Mum placing plates on the counter, even when I knew they must be eating without me, even when dessert must have ended, even when the sun had set.
Missing out was my punishment, and I accepted it.
That night I scrubbed my room from top to bottom, culled my wardrobe, sorted my bookshelf, had an everything shower, and still could not rid myself of the feeling of being unclean.