Nikki Gemmell’s Threesome: The Bride Stripped Bare, With the Body, I Take You (64 page)

Your world detonating.

With knowing. Realigning.

You had always thought your father didn’t love you anymore. Had always thought your stepmother had won, that you had lost that particular battle from the moment she arrived in your life. Had always thought he never cared enough about your study, work, life; it was why he never went to speech nights or father–daughter dances, to formals and school masses.

Because he
couldn’t
.

Couldn’t talk to those people. Didn’t want to be showed up. Didn’t understand that world, was
afraid
of it. You squeeze your eyes shut on hot tears. That little, little man, who you once thought so huge, untouchable, heroic. Remembering how he used to talk to you when your stepmother wasn’t around – how he still talks to you when she isn’t around – remember that, remember it, nothing else.

The purity at the messy, shocking, reeling, cluttered heart of all this. Hold onto it, nothing else.

It is like bursting through the surface of the water, after a drowning, a near-death; bursting through it with a great zooming rush into the air, the light.

‘Why didn’t Tol explain any of this?’ you ask, rubbing your eyes. ‘I went mad with it. For years. All the uncertainty, the not knowing. There was just one measly note that told me nothing, really. It ate me up.’

‘He couldn’t tell you. He was too injured, at first. It was only luck that I found him. I’d driven up to check on the manuscript, time was running out. I found him on the verandah, a day later. He’d crawled that far, as far as he could get before collapsing. He was in hospital for so long. In and out of consciousness. He refused to press charges, of course. He couldn’t write to you. His hands were no use. He was a cripple. He pleaded with me to go back to his typewriter, get something to you, anything. He trusted me to do it. I’m hopeless at these kinds of things. He wanted you to soar, to live your life strong –’ he paused. ‘But I was so furious, at the whole thing; the loss of his manuscript, his hands. I – I bashed something out.’

‘What? But …’ You murmur, your mind whirring. Tol, Tol. ‘Where is he? I need to see him.’

Julian puts his arms around you. Fatherly, firming.

‘Come back tomorrow.’

You take a deep breath. Wipe your hands furiously across tear-stained cheeks. Right. OK.

‘Thank you, Julian,’ you say, businesslike, firm.

He walks you to your car. Smiles the old smile, from the very first time you met him at this place. As you shut your door he yells out.

‘Tol wanted you to have a life. He was mortified. Your father’s words really shook him. He’s the best person I know. The most generous.’

You nod. ‘Yes.’

As you drive past you idle the car. One last question.

‘What’s his real name?’ Because you always wanted to know, and never asked. What on earth was it short for?

‘Ptolemy. He
hated
it. It never went down well in an Aussie playground.’

‘Ptolemy,’ you repeat in wonder and laugh. No wonder he didn’t let on.

‘We all have to carry burdens from our parents,’ Julian grins. ‘He wanted to spare you that one.’

You honk your horn in gratitude and speed off, your hand butting the night air in farewell.

Scarcely able to concentrate on the road, veering and wildly correcting yourself as the car sluices off the dirt; stopping abruptly at a roo, its eyes silver coins in your headlights and then driving on with a frantic, churning heart. At all of it.

To your father, to your jumbly tumbly boys. Your stepmother is out, visiting her sister. You stride in the door of your old home feeling like icy water is washing over you, gasping for breath, voice. You look at your dad – on his fake-leather recliner rocker he’s so proud of – with various little men perched on him or scrunched beside him; four cheeky little boys at home, alone, with the run of the house and gleeful with it. Your father’s flannelette pyjamas are poking from his trouser legs and all four of them are devouring the Batman movie,
The Dark Knight
, with shiny eyes, you’ve never allowed your boys to watch it. Even your youngest, Pip, is still up and they’re all pleased as punch they’ve been allowed to stay awake so late, it’s the latest they’ve ever been up in their lives.

You stand there, your heart thumping. So much to say to this old man before you and yet in the heat of the moment, you can’t. Just can’t. All you remember are Julian’s words; that in his violence was a supreme act of love. It was the only way he could express it. Tol had to respect that.

And the sight of all of them together, soldered by blood, your blood, is breaking you.

With happiness.

Because your father only became alive to you, fully human, when you had these kids; he could only relate to you, understand you, when you were a mother. But the intensity of the loving never changed.

And now you understand.

At last.

He told you once – in those reeling days after the locked gate, when he was driving you the three-hour trip back to school – that you must never, ever care for a man more than he cares for you.
Treat ’em mean keep ’em keen and never forget it
, he had ruefully laughed and later you had written his words down. He told you that if anyone ever hurt you he would hunt them down and kill ’em and you saw but did not truly comprehend then that he was scared of the enormity of his love for you, and you held that in your heart for a while but then life took over, and you forgot.

But now.

You understand. That some things in life, you must let go.

You bury your face into the snuffly, lovely, giggly warmth of the boys as you pour them into bed. Your stepmother not only bathed them but washed their hair before she left for her sister’s. You smile your gratitude, a warmth towards her nudging through you. It is how she speaks to you, by these solid, simple gestures; how she has been speaking to your father their entire married life.

You do not hate her, at all, oh no. You are intrigued by her. She is a type of woman you didn’t know still existed; a woman who has devoted her entire adult life, completely, to one job and one only.
Wife
. A woman from a generation that put themselves last. And what you both know is that you would never want to be her. That you will manage your own life rather than let someone else do it for you. It is unspoken and enormous between you – your difference.

You pity her. She is not educated, not particularly intelligent; your father has told you with relief that she is a simple woman.
You sensed it even at fourteen, the narrowness of her world. Not a reader, no friends beyond family, no curiosity or greed for a wider life. You pity the fear that has dictated her choices in life. Of her husband. Of divorce. Of risk. Of work. Of her watching stepdaughter – suddenly, vividly, hugely, in her life. Who never saw her acutely enough.

Her childlessness. Children of her own never came and you never discussed it with her and can only imagine the vastness of her silent anguish over the years, at the core of her life, and you wish you’d been there for her at some point; that she’d allowed it, that you’d been able to talk about it at least. But she wouldn’t have wanted that. She has devoted her whole life to her allotted role within matrimony and she does it with rigorous attention and grace.

You are grateful for her. For your father’s sake.

For she is the best type of wife for a man like him.

There is a dignity to it. You curl your body around little Pippy and smile, breathing in deep the smell of his cleanliness.

A new heart. At last.

Radiant with relief.

You have your father’s love. It is like a banner, proud in its breeze, flapping across your wounded soul in this enormous, shifting night. His immense love, and your stepmother can never take that away from you and she knows it as do you, now, and it is enough.

You are free.

You have worked and had children and travelled and lived a life of varied and extraordinary experiences, that a generation ago could scarcely be imagined, and for years you never saw the richness of it. How lucky you are.

But now this.

You are learning gratitude, at last.

And with that comes release.

Dressing carefully the next morning, as carefully as if you are preparing for a wedding, a formal, the greatest interview of your life. Applying make-up which you rarely do now, changing outfits – once, twice – going back to what you had at the start. No make-up. A simple shirt. The woman you once were. Honest.

Need him to clearly see your face. The living in it. The change. The strength.

But as you drive up Woondala’s driveway you are crying, don’t know why; a great letting go, perhaps, a floodtide washing through you. Your whole past in this drive and your future. Between the magnificent Slaty Gum by the property’s gate and the knife-leafed wattle at the back, you were made, once, you feel that.

A letter is on the doorstep.

Just that.

No Julian. No Tol. No cars. The house as empty as a church.

After the shock, you realise you expected this.

Nothing more. Of course.