CHAPTER 48
Turns out, Alex-the-woman is as much of a legend as Alex-the-imagined-man.
She was posted to Iraq (signals division), did a stint driving trucks in Mount Isa (she actually understands Maxy’s job) and then moved to Sydney and started an interior-design agency, specialising in custom carpentry.
When she comes inside, she helps us rearrange the furniture in the living room so the dining table can sit next to the window.
She explains that the wingback chairs will look better next to the bookshelf because it will create a reading nook, and she suggests we get rid of the coffee table altogether because it’s too big for the space.
She doesn’t mention that it’s also fugly, and we don’t mention that we hate the sight of it anyway.
Maxy helps her carry it out and then there’s an unceremonious dumping of it on the kerb.
Jessie posts it for free on Facebook Marketplace and within thirty minutes, an enterprising duo with a van emblazoned with ‘Your Place Or Mine’ have lugged it away.
The curtains are open, the dining table is dusted, the coffee table is gone and we have a bloody reading nook like some bourgeois family on Grand Designs who’ve converted an abandoned warehouse using eco-friendly mud from a Mexican sinkhole.
What have we been doing for six years? This room has been the Voldemort of our lives—the Room That Must Not Be Named—but Alex has fixed it in thirty minutes.
We unearth the cork-backed Wimbledon-scene placemats that we haven’t used in years, and Jessie finds some old jam jars and fills them with eucalyptus branches.
Dad carries in a metal baking tray of sausages and steaks, and Maxy follows with the potato salad.
Alex has brought two other salads: a mango-and-macadamia coleslaw that looks incredible, and a broccoli-and-quinoa salad topped with flaked almonds, mint, lemon and labne.
The ice in the water jugs sparkles in the sunlight.
As we sit down to eat, Maxy regaling us with stories from the mine site, I feel something inside me shift.
I don’t know if it’s being in this room, or having had a proper cry about Mum; I don’t know if it’s admitting my darkest secret and realising I had nothing to do with Mum’s death after all; I don’t know if it’s being with my family again, or sitting down to a meal that feels worthy of Christmas Day.
I don’t know if it’s one of those things or all of them, or any other factors that my brain can’t pinpoint, but something within me has opened.
Dad passes me the coleslaw and I pile my plate high with colours: yellow mango, purple cabbage, golden toasted macadamias and julienned threads of bright-orange carrot.
Jessie leans her head against my shoulder before reaching for the water jug.
It makes me think that even if she’s still pissed with me on some level, it’s sandwiched between layers of love.
Tempers may flare, jokes may bomb, we may still annoy the shit out of each other sometimes, but at our core, we’ll always be magnetically connected, drawn to choose each other every time because we know each other, and we understand how lucky that makes us.
As we clear up after dinner, Dad unloads the dishwasher and Alex repacks the World’s Best Dad mug into the secret drawer under the rangehood. So, she already knows where we keep the special mugs. What else have I missed?
I rummage in the cupboard, searching for the cardboard case we store the Wimbledon placemats in.
Every shelf is filled with sundry junk, each item a gateway to a memory.
A macaroni keyring I made for Father’s Day, the plastic semi-circle of a Hot Wheels racetrack that arrived in Maxy’s Santa sack one year, a long-lost glitter ChapStick (the long-lost glitter ChapStick?).
There’s also a wonky, overexposed photo of Mum and I beaming after we both won club champs, our foreheads sweaty and cropped off by the amateur photographer (Maxy).
I surreptitiously slide the photo into my pocket.
I’ve missed remembering. I’ve closed myself off from my past for six years, trying to race ahead of life before it could catch up, thinking this would make me happier—but it didn’t.
When I first started playing juniors, Mum would tell me to relax into the rhythm of the game.
The greatest tennis players can last five sets because they know how to rest, she explained.
They know when to attack, and critically, when to switch to autopilot so they can regain their strength in preparation for the inevitable onslaught.
Sometimes, my opponent would smash a ball cross-court, and all I needed to do was hold the racquet so the ball ricocheted back across the net, effectively reversing the aggression.
If I could stand my ground long enough, there’d be an unforced error in my favour.
You don’t always have to try to beat them, Mum would tell me. Sometimes, they beat themselves.
I slide my hand into my pocket, feeling the cool edges of the photograph like it’s a secret talisman.
Since Mum died, I’ve hustled as hard as I could, telling myself I was trying to finally make her proud.
But there was a more insidious reason too.
I kept myself busy, constantly looking for the next task and deadline, so I didn’t have to stop and feel a pain that was magnified by my guilt.
As I slide the Wimbledon placemats back into the box and return to the living room to find Jessie, it occurs to me that maybe now is the time to stop trying so hard. Maybe it’s time to let the universe deliver a few unforced errors in my favour?
★
I locate Jessie pouring our gum-leaf table decorations out the window into the garden bed below.
‘Jessie, I’m so sorry for what I said about your job,’ I say, crossing the room to her as she shakes the water from the last of the glass jars.
When she turns to face me, her head is haloed by the evening sun. ‘Dude, don’t worry.’
‘No, Jess. What I said was so shit. I realise that and I’m so, so sorry. It’s like I had to reach peak douchebag before I could realise how much I’ve been taking you and Dad and Maxy for granted.’
Jessie wraps her arms around me. ‘Don’t stress, Millsy-moo. You haven’t been that bad.’
‘Not ten dicks out of ten?’
Jessie squeezes me tighter. ‘Maybe seven.’
I sob-laugh and nuzzle deeper into her embrace as her mermaid hair finds ingenious ways to insert itself into my nostrils.
As we cling to each other, I hope with all the desperation in my heart that she understands that every time I call her to chat about fashion or food or work, I’m calling because I want to hear her voice, because there’s no one else I’d rather listen to, or be listened to by, and that I’ve only ever wanted to be her best friend and make her proud.
‘Actually!’ Jessie exclaims, pulling away. ‘In all this drama, I forgot: I am super pissed with you.’
‘What?! Why?’
‘You didn’t tell me about your creepy boss!’
At that moment, Maxy arrives at the door. He grimaces. ‘Shall I moonwalk out?’
‘You told her?!’
Jessie crosses her arms. ‘So yeah, now that you mention it, you are in my bad books.’
‘I can never win!’
‘No, you can’t,’ sniffs Jessie. ‘Maxy and I will always beat you because we have been alive longer and are therefore much wiser. That’s why you have to trust us, dumbarse.
You need to talk to us so we can help you.
Not because we think you’re incompetent—but because we love you.
If anything, I baby Maxy way more than I baby you.
I still text him after every night shift to check he gets home okay, and I still post him those free NRL cards I get from Coles. ’
‘That obviously doesn’t leave this room,’ mutters Maxy.
‘My point is,’ Jessie continues, ‘we’re family, Mill, so stop with the secrets. It doesn’t make you stronger to deal with stuff by yourself.’
I nod slowly. ‘Okay. So, full disclosure … the Digital Revolution budget has majorly blown out and—’
‘No!’ Jessie covers her ears with her hands. At Maxy she hisses, ‘If she starts talking about the policy advice, knock me unconscious!’
I laugh. ‘No need! I’m leaving now. I’ve got to organise a press conference with the Prime Minister.’
Jessie and Maxy share a look, and I feel a familiar, pleasurable pang of irritation. Some things change but some things never do. My siblings will never stop looking out for me, and that will never stop making me feel like the luckiest, most exasperated girl in the world.
As I leave the room, Maxy calls out, ‘If you need me to egg your boss’s house, I’m only a phone call away.’
‘You’re a winkipop,’ I call back, smiling. ‘But don’t worry, I’ll be fine.’ And I know I will be because even though she’s gone, Mum’s advice is always with me.
You don’t always have to try to beat them. Sometimes, they beat themselves.