The Family Tree (2 page)

Then Christmas, too, was past, gone in a blur of tinsel and a flash of epileptic fairy lights, and it seemed like the seventeen hours she'd been awake that day had been condensed into three at the most. And she fell into bed on Christmas night with the sort of weariness that saps bones, and then opened her eyes on what felt like the next morning only to discover that it was New Year's Eve. Already. Because life wasn't just passing quickly, it was roaring past with a velocity that was downright terrifying. Like a hurricane that probably wouldn't stop until she was ready for a nursing home. Then time would go back to normal, and she'd sit at the window in her wheelchair with a crochet rug over her lap wondering where the years had gone, and why they were now limping past as if ancient themselves.

And when the elderly Kate tried to live in the past, there would be this huge black hole in the latter half, containing only a blur of momentum with occasional events standing out as atypical peaks in a flow chart. Like when Shelley announced that she and Daniel, her live-in partner of the past year, were separating and, oh by the way, she was pregnant. Or the day Jacob declared that he was giving university a miss in favour of becoming a professional Internet gamer and yes of
course
he had thought it through. Or like 18 June just gone when she'd stood in her father's bedroom and wondered, desperately, whether refusal was an
option. Or whether it would simply leave her with a far larger burden of guilt, exacerbated by the understanding in his eyes.

But the main problem was the whirlwind. Definitely. And even if its momentum had increased post-June, the fact remained that it had been eddying before that. And, strangely, she seemed to be the only one affected. So that they were all busily
living
life, while she was simply providing sustenance, like bloody pancakes. And being the wind beneath their wings wasn't as fulfilling as it was cracked up to be. No, she wanted to
have
the wings. So that not only could she, too, fly, but she could also use them to beat everybody over the head until they started picking up after themselves, and feeding themselves, and generally caring for themselves so that she could get something done. Something for herself.

Like maybe write a book.

And that, she suspected, was the crux of the problem. Not her life itself, or even her father, but simple run-of-the-mill frustrated ambition. Because there had always been a book, or several, curled up somewhere within her, just waiting for extraction. Years ago they had been friendly entities, which lent her a sense of warm security with the knowledge that one day the time would be right for their birth. As a university student she had spent her spare time in smoky dark cafes with fellow literary souls pretending to be tortured by talent. Feeding off their collective angst to produce obscure poetry and agonisingly dark prose. And if somebody had told her then that she would end up editing other people's work, she would never have believed them. Because back then she never doubted that her drive was unstoppable and her destiny was assured. She
would
get that writing career started as soon as she finished university, and then it was after she had spent some time in Europe, and then it was after she had worked in the publishing industry for a while, and then it was after she and Sam had bought a house, and then it was after the kids were older, and then it was never. And never was now.

The bottom line was that she was Katherine Rose Painter, who lived at 23 Haverlock Lane in Lysterfield – a wife, mother, freelance editor
and a failed writer. With no one to blame but herself. She could have paused at any point and made time for writing. But it seemed that whenever the chance arose, she went a different route. And it had been
her
who wanted to start a family sooner rather than later, and
her
who insisted on having another child when Shelley was only two, and then
her
uterus that hospitably made room for two eggs at the same time and therefore put an end to even the concept of free time for the foreseeable future.

So twenty-five years after Kate started working in the publishing industry as a stopgap until she wrote her first novel, she was still working in it. Only these days she worked from home, either editing or, more often than not, writing up reports on other people's manuscripts. Each one representing a stranger who was waiting, somewhere in Australia, to discover if they would be published. And no matter the standard of their work, they had each accomplished something she hadn't – they'd written a book.

But, along with the gradual acceptance that she herself was never going to join their ranks, there slunk a bitterness that underscored everything else. So that the shadows of what she had
failed
to achieve were now discolouring what she had, like her happy marriage and her reasonably affluent lifestyle – with spacious home, swimming pool, block of land in the country – until their edges were blurred. Once, she thought, she would have used humour to cope, but now it seemed as if everything was beyond a joke. And it was simply too hard to pretend there was nothing wrong. As if the months weren't flying past, and she wasn't the only one who was being left in their wake just staring at the calendar and fighting back the tears.

T
hey had planned a low-key New Year's Eve that year, inviting only Kate's cousin Angie and her ex-husband, Oscar. Shelley was leaving the baby with them while going into the city for the fireworks, and both Jacob and Caleb had other plans also. So, like many other evenings, it was to be just the four of them, sitting on the decking by the pool, enjoying a barbecue and some nice wine. Then later, after Emma was put down for the night, they would relax even more, maybe play some cards or simply lean back and effortlessly allow the final minutes of the old year to slide past.

An hour or so before her guests were due, Kate smoothed the last of a mudpack around the curve of her chin and then peered at the mirror. Cracks were already segregating her crow's feet and creating a fault line between her eyes, the whites of which looked rather rheumy against the richness of the mud. Her light brown bob was pinned back but strands had adhered themselves to her skin in feathery clumps. Kate grimaced and the mud fissured even further. In the background she could hear Caleb playing his guitar, badly, while from the lounge room floated the sound of an early evening game show, complete with canned laughter and adenoidal compere.

Kate put a hand on either side of the basin and leant forward, noting that her eyes were now exactly the same shade as her skin, which was gradually resembling a
National Geographic
exposé of soil erosion.
Or an analogy for her life. Kate took a deep breath and consciously tried to relax. She had ten minutes to while away before a guaranteed glowing complexion so she sat down on the side of the bath, picking idly at the hardened mud on her fingers and flicking the flakes into the bathtub where they dissolved quickly into the puddles of soapy water. She watched the water turn brown and, with a sudden memory flash, recalled the mud pies she and Angie used to make as children. Clad only in knickers and dirt whilst patting their concoctions into containers and then scattering seeds on top before leaving them in the sun to dry. A rush of nostalgia warmed her, bringing a smile to her eyes. It had been an idyllic childhood, long on freedom and short on accountability: the despair of the neighbourhood women and the envy of their offspring.

It had also been an unusual upbringing, even by today's standards. After a complicated miscarriage led to the death of her mother when Kate was only three, her father had sold his Gippsland farm and moved back to Ferntree Gully, where he had been born and raised. The plan was for James to buy into his brother's profitable market garden and build on the property, thus giving Kate a sister figure in her two-year-old cousin, Angie, and a mother figure in her Aunt Sophie, a generous woman who was known to bend over backwards to help anybody out.

What was not general knowledge at the time was that most of Sophie's recent bending over had been of the extramarital variety. This involved a twice-weekly trip up behind the radishes to meet a neighbouring market gardener whose only claim to fame, until then, had been the tendency to pop out his glass eye after a few drinks and put it on somebody's shoulder whilst saying: ‘Watch it, mate, I've got my eye on you.' Sophie clearly thought the joke had a certain longevity because, within a few months, she took off with her one-eyed paramour to places unknown.

In a time when a man bringing up a child alone was rather unusual,
two
men bringing up
two
children, both girls, was rare indeed. Nevertheless James and Frank decided to stick it out. While Kate and Angie were still small they simply tied a rope around each child's waist and
then leashed them to the nearest fence post while they worked. As the girls grew, the market garden became their personal playground: acres of freedom where the only rule was not to harm the produce. Long, lazy hours spent playing by the creek or at the orchard or, more often than not, at That Bugger's neighbouring property where the blackberries had taken over much of the garden and the empty, echoing house was an ideal venue for fertile imaginations.

Neither father ever remarried, although Kate's Uncle Frank brought a procession of girlfriends home over the years. But, perhaps still scarred by his wife's particular brand of neighbourly largesse, he shied away from any meaningful relationship. Nor did Sophie ever return; even That Bugger's land was sold in the mid seventies and subdivided into house lots. It was the obvious success of this venture, followed relatively quickly by Frank's first heart attack, which led to the brothers doing the same with the market garden, making a tidy profit and retaining only the house and about half an acre to retire on. The tidy profit had also financed a year in Europe for Kate and the birth of
Fully Booked
, Angie's bookstore that was still thriving in central Boronia. And it was just after Kate had returned from Europe and was settling into her new publishing job that, while visiting her father one weekend, she started chatting with a young builder named Sam who was working next door. And the rest, as they say, was history.

‘Mum! Angie'n' Oscar are here! And can you hem up my black jeans for me?'

Kate jerked into alertness and jumped up, staring at her reflection in the mirror. Large sections of mudpack were now flaking forward and, with her facial muscles firmly plastered into position, she couldn't have answered Shelley even if she wanted to. Kate picked up her watch from beside the basin and read the time. And then read it again. Five twenty-one. How could that be possible? Even now it seemed the thin gold hands had a speed out of sync with reality. Five twenty-two, five twenty-three.

Kate dropped the watch and turned on the tap, filling her cupped hands with cold water and splashing it onto her face. Flakes of mud
pack fell into the basin, their edges quickly melting as they leaked a rich chestnut-brown. After the water finally ran clear, Kate groped for a towel, dabbed her face dry and stood back to examine it. Predictably enough the promised glow was simply a dull crimson sheen, like old beetroot, especially around her nose. She sighed as she clipped her watch back on, without looking at it, and then unpinned her hair, brushing the mud residue out before disguising her new sheen with moisturising foundation.

‘Mum! Didja hear me? I need my jeans hemmed before I go out!'

‘Here, Shell, let me do them.'

The low,
rescuing
tones of Angie mellowed out Shelley's demands and then their voices faded into the background of music and television. Kate wrapped the towel around her and took a deep breath before padding quietly down the passage to the master bedroom. There were clear signs that Sam had already changed, as a T-shirt and overalls were abandoned by the bed with grey-white socks sticking out from the pant legs. Kate knew that if she picked up the overalls a pair of jocks would also fall out. Because her husband had the rather odd talent of being able to shed his clothing like a snake's skin and, like a snake also, he'd dump them wherever they fell.

Feeling a shaft of annoyance out of all proportion to the deed, Kate collected the bundle and threw it into the clothes hamper. Then she dressed herself, neatly but casually, in a khaki layered skirt and a loose crushed-cotton cream shirt. For once, contemporary fashion was ideal for women in their late forties with a slight spare tyre, less than slim thighs and an almost pathological hatred of ironing.

Kate flicked off the game show on her way through the lounge room and then continued into the kitchen where she poured herself a glass of water and then gazed through the scrim-covered window at the decked area outside. The decking abutted the entire rear of the house, with the barbecue at one end near the sliding door and the cedar outdoor setting. Three wide steps led down to a forked path, one side heading straight towards the hinged, childproof gate in the swimming-pool fencing, and the other meandering off to the right until it reached
Shelley's bungalow at the far corner of the garden. The bungalow itself was mostly obscured by a high jasmine-covered trellis, but the dark green Colorbond roofing was visible, juxtaposed against the cobalt blue of the sky.

It had been a beautiful day, warm without being overly humid and with a light wind that carried the scent of the jasmine up to the house. Threads of smoke came from where Sam was firing up the barbecue; Oscar stood next to him, leaning against a pillar. Apart from the fact Sam was slightly taller and a little more solid, the two men were very similar looks-wise, both with olive skin and short, dark hair that had not yet receded but was beginning to sport flecks of grey over the ears. The type that looked distinguished on a man, but unkempt on a woman. Their personalities, though, were
very
different. Sam was a quiet man, self-contained and easygoing, yet a hard worker who enjoyed manual labour so much that, years before, he had thrown in an architectural degree in favour of a career as a builder. On the other hand Oscar loved nothing better than a deep philosophical discussion in which he solved the ills of the world by pontificating about each and every political or social dilemma. He was saved from complete pomposity only by a keen intelligence and the occasional ability to laugh at himself.