Almost Mine (31 page)

After a silent pause he answered me. ‘I need it by lunch.’

‘I’ll be back by then. Thanks, Nick.’

His “you’re welcome” was another humph.

I hovered in the door way awkwardly. ‘Your keys?’ I said.

Without a word he stood and reached into his jeans pocket. I met him half-way across the office floor and took them when he handed them to me. His lips curved and my insides zinged in the anticipation that he may actually smile at me.

‘Remember that it is my car,’ he said with veiled warning.

‘What’s that supposed to mean?’

‘It means that not everybody came to work today.’

I recoiled from him as if had just spat in my face. I thought with a comment like that I would have preferred it, even if I did deserve it. ‘Is that what you think of me? You think that I would use your car to pick up someone who hadn’t come to work today and we would stain it on the side of some road somewhere?’

His look was repentant. ‘I didn’t mean—’

‘Yes you did.’ I dropped the keys into my bag. ‘Don’t worry; I will have your precious car back to you just as it was before I had the nerve to ask for it.’

‘Cate,’ he called after me but it was too late. I had walked across the driveway and climbed into the Jeep before he had a chance to stop me.

As I drove toward Dr Crawford’s office I smiled as I replayed what had just happened with Nick and how my uncontrolled irritation had got the better of me. Despite the fact that it was warranted, I could now elatedly tick off mood swings on my lengthening list of symptoms.

Then my stomach lurched. What if Nick initiated his plan before I had a chance to save us? I hoped Dr Crawford could confirm my suspicions and give me the trump card that I needed to save Nick from himself before he ruined everything. And as I drove on, my determination rose once again. I had to wait six weeks — in my calculations until June eighteenth, our fifth wedding anniversary — to reveal my secret, so Nick had six weeks to reveal his, and as I drove I formulated my own counteractive plot.
Game on, Nicholas Andrew Mathieson.

I walked without direction toward the main township. I wanted nothing but to clear my head, to carefully script tomorrow’s anniversary dinner plans in my head. On autopilot, I pushed open the side gate of Dad’s house and walked around to the back door because I knew that it would be unlocked.

Nausea rushed my feet and I pushed past Dad in the narrow hall as I ran to the bathroom.

‘Sorry,’ I said through my fingers as they covered my mouth. I didn’t mean to, but I slammed the door behind me in my urgency and retched into the toilet.

There was a quiet tap at the door. ‘Are you ok, love?’ dad said.

I flushed and rinsed my mouth in the sink, opting not to use my old tooth brush that dad hadn’t brought himself to throw away in the last five years, instead using my index finger and some toothpaste to freshen my mouth. Then I kicked my shoes off because as weird as it was, my feet were so bloody hot all of the time these days. Being pregnant was having such an odd effect on my body and each day I marvelled at every new change.

I came out of the bathroom to where Dad was waiting in the hall way.

‘Everything ok?’ he said.

‘Fine, Dad. Brilliant, in fact.’ I squeezed passed him and went into the kitchen where I switched on the kettle. ‘Do you have any bread left?’

He had followed and planted himself on his chair at the small table. ‘The loaf you bought the other day is in the freezer.’

I pulled the brick of a loaf out and a sprinkling of ice fell to my bare feet. My toes scrunched at the coldness. ‘Toast?’

‘No thanks, love.’

‘Tea?’

‘Please.’

In habitual silence, I prepared my breakfast while dad read the paper. I sat on the chair opposite him and tried to force down some food, cursing Dr Crawford for promising me that the constant “morning” sickness that I felt would subside by three months. I was in half a mind to sue him, and in my sometimes cantankerous state, I might just do that. I almost laughed out loud when I imagined how Nick would have reacted to my constant irritability of the past couple of months. He would have been positively and adoringly fretful as he walked on eggshells around me. Lucky I’d spared him the carnage.

Dad closed the paper, expelling a deep breath, and folded it in half. He leaned back from the table and crossed his arms. I was taken aback when he looked me directly, intensely in the eye.

‘Why are you here?’ His question was so accusing and I felt unexpectedly chastised. I swallowed down my toast and for the first time in my dad’s presence I felt unwelcome.

‘Well, long story short, Nick and I have been having some trouble,’ I began; my voice sounded small under his interrogative gaze.

‘So, why are you here?’ he asked again.

My brain had frozen. I couldn’t speak.

‘Do you think that running away will solve your problems?’ he said reproachfully.

‘Dad, it’s not like that. Let me tell you what’s been happening.’

He leaned into the table. ‘Do not run away from what you have.’

‘I’m not running away, Dad.’

He shook his head, dismissing me. ‘Whatever it is, Cate, fix it.’

I watched his face shift from scolding frustration to the anguished one that I was used to, and I knew that he was begging me not to end up sad and alone like him.

No longer stunned, I had a sudden rush of realisation. ‘Tell me what happened all of those years ago.’ He swallowed hard and he shrugged as if he didn’t know what I was really asking. ‘Tell me why my mother left. And stop playing with that.’ I reached for my dad’s left hand as his thumb bent to the torturous ring on his third finger, invading his space and doing it without caring that it would make him uncomfortable

‘There are some things that have nothing to do with you.’

What!!!
‘I was left without a mother! How does have nothing to do with me?’

‘Do not raise your voice to me, Catherine. You would never understand, anyway,’ he softened.

‘Maybe when I was five I wouldn’t have understood, but I’m an adult now, Dad. I think I can handle it. Please tell me why such a selfish, self-regarding woman still has a constricting hold on you.’

‘Cate, stop.’

‘I have never asked you these things before because talking about her hurt too much, but now I think that it’s time that I know exactly who my mother was.’ His inner struggle was hard to watch, but, however painful it was, it had to end. My voice was soft, coaxing, like I was trying to talk a scared child out of a safe hiding place. ‘She doesn’t deserve to consume your every thought anymore, Dad. Plus, I think that knowing will help me to sort things out with Nick…I feel like he wants to run away from me and I need to know how to stop him.’

When he spoke it was to the inanimate, folded newspaper in front of him. ‘I stumbled.’

I waited…and waited…

‘What does that mean?’ I finally spoke because he was transfixed by the past.

‘It means that I had her, she was mine, but I couldn’t hold her back.’

‘She was unhappy?’

‘She was an artist.’

I was confused. ‘That’s relevant because…’

‘She represented life itself. She couldn’t sit still, not even if she was painting. She’d be dancing around to her records as she painted. She was a natural.’

‘I remember Van Morrison playing all of the time.’

‘It was our song, I guess.’

A vivid memory played… ‘You used to sing that to her.’

He was taken aback and he finally spoke as if he was actually having a conversation with a real person and not a shadow in the past. ‘Do you remember that?’

‘I don’t remember a lot about her, mostly because I refuse to, but I remember how the two of you laughed. It’d be the middle of the night and I’d wake thinking that there was some kind of party in the next room. I used to creep out of bed and crouch in the doorway and watch the two of you dancing, drinking the Mathiesons’ wine, laughing. I loved seeing my mum and dad like that.’

‘We knew that.’

‘Why didn’t I get into trouble?’

‘I wanted to tell you off, but your mother wanted you to see what love looked like. She said to me,’ he paused to get the wording faithfully right, ‘“Jimmy, it’s our duty to teach our lovely princess of a daughter that there can truly be a happy ever after.”’

My stomach flipped. How could such sweet words come out of such a callous woman? ‘You were her prince?’ I indulged him.

‘So she said…in the beginning…then I turned into an ogre who sucks life out of anything beautiful.’

‘What happened, Dad?’

‘When you’re as plain as me it’s difficult to hold such a spirit back.’

‘So she did just pack up and leave, then? She rejected us both?’

‘I shut her out.’

‘It must have been impossible to satisfy such an obstinate woman.’

He shook his head. ‘She wasn’t like that.’

‘History contradicts you, Dad.’ He shrugged. ‘I knew that Nick was a lot like you, but I guess I never knew how deep your similarities ran; why must you both play the martyr all of the time?’

‘Fix it, Cate.’ His eyes burned to emphasise his need for me to never let history repeat itself. ‘I will never forgive you if your marriage ends because the two of you just gave up. Nothing is ever that bad that it can’t be sorted out.’

‘Well that’s hardly true—’

‘Catherine!’ His open hand suddenly slammed onto the table and his burning, pleading eyes bored into mine. When he spoke it was through gritted teeth. ‘I mean it.’

Unruffled by his outburst, I continued. ‘No one can ever really know what goes on between a husband and wife behind closed doors. I’ve place too much pressure on him over the years. I’ve been such a burden on him, not one that he deserves.’

He scoffed and shook his head. ‘Nobody knows that more than me.’

‘Tell me.’

He contemplated, but maybe today, around the small intimate dining table, was a perfect place for confessions. When Dad spoke I felt my own confession simmering toward the surface.

‘I drifted away from your mother, not the other way around. I loved her, but when I watched her paint or sketch, or sit cross-legged in the back garden gazing up at the sky, all I saw was a caged bird.’

I didn’t want my next question to come out as insensitive. ‘But why did she leave me?’

‘Since you were born she told me that she thought that you’d been here before; you were mothering the children in the street before you could walk. Do you remember when you and Nick were three or four years old and he fell off his bike?’

I shook my head. ‘No.’

‘He’d scraped his knee very badly and you ran into the house and fetched Dettol and band aids and cotton balls and cleaned him up. You always tried to fix everything.’

It all became clear. ‘And that’s why she left me with you?’

‘She knew that I needed you more than she did. She didn’t reject you, love; she was trying all she could to save me.’

We sat as we digested everything. It took a few moments while I relished in the fact that I was having an actual conversation with my dad, and it took me by surprise that it
loosened my tongue. It dislodged the heavy, painful ball of fire in my stomach that dictated every decision that I had made since she left.

‘She made me feel worthless,’ I said. ‘You have no idea the consequences that her actions played in my life.’

‘I’m sorry.’

‘You didn’t leave me. I should have been happy just to have you in my life, but she turned me into this horrible, ugly, sad person. All I’ve done for my whole life was to think only of myself. My singular goal led me to a person like Roy with whom I did despicable things just so that he wouldn’t run away from me like she did. And then I focussed my attention on doing everything that I could to make up for what I had done in order to satisfy him, ruining my life and taking Nick down with me.’

‘What are you talking about, Cate?’

You’d think I would be used to it, but now my own mouth had run away on me and I couldn’t think of any lie quick enough to sate my father’s harsh glare. I know his anger was focussed on Roy, but I had to be assured that when this secret came out, I had it within me to take full responsibility for it.

My whole body trembled and I thought I might throw up again. I didn’t want to tell my father what I was about to. It made me ill to think of what I had done, let alone voice it. Redemption? Is that something I needed in order to move on? I could never absolve myself, but would my dad’s reassurance bring me peace from this?

How could I even begin telling my father this...?

The entire day ten years ago circled vividly in my head.

It was windy, it was cold, and the heavy clouds in the leaden sky were on the cusp of rain. It was eight thirty, and the beginning of a hideous Friday morning.

I waited for the attending doctor in a sterile and clinical operating suite, and it took me by surprise that such a feeling of instant panic could overwhelm my nervous system to the point of picking at my cuticles until blood trickled from my fingers. I couldn’t remember a time when I had ever felt so fragile and exposed, out of control and extremely unnerved. It was as if I had been knocked for a six and didn’t know how to regain control of myself once more.

My eyes explored the suite as I lay back on a forty-five-degree-angled examination table, coming to rest on a small instrument table just to the right of me. I tried to convince myself to look away, that there was nothing to see here. However, like a car crash that held your attention as you slowly drove by, my eyes were transfixed by the stainless steel, duck-billed apparatus, and long suction tube. An uncontrollable shudder overwhelmed my body, and the more I tried to stop my legs from trembling, they only trembled with more vigour. If my feet hadn’t already been placed in the stirrups that angled my legs in the correct position, and if I hadn’t already been administered a sedative that had slowly disabled and incapacitated my body, I would have been off that bed in a flash and running for the door.

‘Excuse me,’ I said to a nurse who had been shuffling paperwork around a bench across the room. My voice sounded as if it came from the other side of the small room, and I fought hard to focus on the plump woman. It was a fight to keep my eyes open, because each time I blinked, my eyelids seemed heavier and heavier, as if a kilogram of weight had been added each time they pressed together. The nurse took a couple of steps over to the middle of the room where I was lying and I hardly felt that my heavy hand was being lifted and gently enveloped in a warm grasp.