The Family Tree (9 page)

‘And rather excited about it too, by the sound of you.'

‘Ha, ha. Actually I was up in Melissa's room, cleaning and packing.'

‘How's it all going?' Kate spoke more seriously, trying to strip the lilt from her voice and infuse it with compassion.

‘God, Kate!' Angie sounded surprisingly irritated. ‘I don't have cancer, you know. My daughter's staying in London and I'm getting a boarder in, that's all.'

‘Hey, I was just trying to be sympathetic! I thought it might be hard, packing up all her stuff.'

There was silence for a moment and then Angie sighed. ‘You're right. Sorry, I'm just being touchy. And yes, it is a bit hard. I thought I'd accepted her staying over there, but . . . I don't know.'

‘Do you want some help?'

‘Actually, I wouldn't mind. It'd be fun then. And we can have lunch together.'

‘Sounds great,' Kate spoke firmly, turning her back on the state of the lounge room behind her, and the pile of editing still waiting on the
desk. She flopped down onto a lounge chair and put her feet up on the coffee table. ‘I'll be over in about an hour. But first, let me tell you my news.'

‘Can you grab lunch on the way over?'

‘Sure. Now listen –'

‘Something nice to give me energy. But don't forget I'm on a diet.'

‘Okay already!' Kate tried not to snap. ‘
Now
can I tell you my news?'

Angie laughed. ‘Sure.'

‘Well, guess what? You've got yourself a tenant!' Silence greeted this announcement. A silence that stretched for several moments until Kate's smile slid slowly from her face. ‘Angie? Are you still there?'

‘I'm here.'

‘Well? Aren't you going to say anything?'

‘Um . . . I take it you mean yourself?'

‘Of course I mean myself!' Kate's frown deepened as the silence stretched once more. Then she had a horrible thought. ‘Don't tell me you've already found someone!'

‘No,' Angie sounded hesitant. ‘It's just . . . is this like a trial separation?'

A surge of relief eliminated Kate's frown. ‘Of course not. I'm simply taking a few months off, like long service leave, to see if I can finally write that book. It's a hiatus of sorts. That's all.'

‘A hiatus, hey? And Sam's okay with this?'

‘He's not exactly ecstatic, but he understands. Sort of.'

‘I see.' Angie sighed quite clearly. ‘So you want my spare room?'

‘Yes! Although I must say you still don't sound too happy about it. In fact . . .' Kate laughed lightly in an attempt to take the accusation out of her words, ‘. . . I'm beginning to get the feeling you don't want me there at all.'

‘No, it's not that.'

Kate picked up on the cautious note of her cousin's voice and interpreted this as an attempt to avoid offence. Yet her desire to be cautious itself spoke volumes. She took her feet off the coffee table and leant forward, speaking tightly. ‘What is it then?'

‘It's . . . it's not that I don't
want
to live with you. It'd probably be kind
of fun but, see, it's so out of the blue that I can't help thinking this is all, well, like some sort of post-traumatic thing.'

‘Well, it's not.'

‘But, Kate, look at it from my perspective,' Angie spoke almost pleadingly. ‘There's no denying that last year was the year from hell. From the diagnosis onwards. Then there was . . . what happened at the end.
Nobody
can go through something like that without some repercussions. And you have to admit that you've been rather . . . well, withdrawn since. Gone into your shell.'

‘That's only because it's neater than this place. More cosy too.'

‘And every time someone says anything about it you make a joke,' continued Angie smoothly. ‘To try to head things off.'

Kate felt an instant bubble of anger. ‘Your point is?'

‘Well my point is . . .' Angie hesitated again and then continued in a rush. ‘I don't want to feel responsible if your marriage goes belly up because of this. To be brutally honest, I don't think you need to move out as much as talk to someone. And stop using humour as a shield.'

‘I see.'

‘I've offended you, haven't I?'

‘Good heavens, no. Why would you think that?'

‘Because you're talking in that constipated way you get when you're annoyed.'

Kate stood up and stared unseeingly towards the lounge room windows. ‘So now I'm constipated as well as mentally unstable. Thank you very much.'

‘I didn't
say
that. I said –'

‘Never mind. And don't worry about the spare room, I'd hate to put you out.'

‘Kate! Come on!'

‘I've got to go, Angie. Speak to you later.' Kate pressed the End button and then flung the phone down onto the couch. It bounced against the armrest and fell back into the gap between the couch cushions, its emerald-green light flashing like an SOS beacon. She stared at it for a few moments and then stalked into the kitchen where she filled the
kettle from the tap and thumped it down onto a hotplate. Why did everyone keep linking what happened to her father with her desire to write? It wasn't as if this was something new, she had
always
wanted to write. And she
couldn't
do it here.

Kate glanced angrily around the room to underline this last thought. The usual haphazard mess. And although the house was quiet at the moment, she knew this wouldn't last. Jacob would surface to play either loud music or loud computer games, or both, while his brother would most likely rouse himself just as friends arrived, and then they would spend the day lazing on the decking. The females standing up to stretch their lissom bikini-clad bodies, while the males watched through half-lidded eyes and, every now and again, launched themselves into some rough
loud
game in which something always ended up getting broken.

Kate strongly suspected that Angie actually had no idea what it was like to exist in such a household.
Her
daughter was so undemanding and independent that she probably cut the umbilical cord herself. And she was now settled in London, with an excellent job, an excellent partner, and all the other excellent incidentals that came from being a perfect offspring. Life was a bit different with three not-so-perfect children, and a husband whose organisational skills were left at the building site each day. It had nothing to do with her father or her inclination towards humour. What Angie didn't seem to understand was that humour was keeping her
sane
. Without that she wouldn't just have crawled into her shell, she'd have filled it with concrete and then flung it, and herself, off the nearest mountain. Maybe one near the writers' retreat so that all the young up-and-coming authors could get some new material.

Kate stared down at the unlit hotplate and her anger suddenly evaporated, leaving behind a void that made her feel slightly nauseous. She closed her eyes and felt self-pity begin to trickle into the space and, while it didn't make her feel less ill, it at least gave her something to focus on beside the reality of her situation. It just wasn't
fair
.

This last thought was still resonating bitterly when the phone rang, its sound slightly muffled by the couch cushions. Kate stayed where she
was and listened while the phone rang steadily three times and then the answering machine cut in.

‘Hello Kate?' Angie's voice came with a metallic echo as it was routed through the answering machine. ‘Are you there?'

There was a long, whirring silence as Kate walked slowly out from the kitchen to stare at the phone, still blinking away amidst the cushions.

‘C'mon, Kate. We need to talk. There's important things at stake here . . . like my lunch. Does this mean I have to make my own?'

‘Damn right,' said Kate towards the phone.

‘Look, I've been thinking about it and actually I'd
love
to have you move in. It was just you took me by surprise before and . . . well, I suppose I worry about things. Although you must admit . . .' Angie hesitated for a moment. ‘But that's beside the point. Because if that's what you want, then let's go with it. And it's your choice after all. In fact, when I think about it, this could be really great. Living together again, after all these years!'

Kate nodded, because she wholeheartedly agreed.

‘Come on, it'll be like we're kids again!'

Kate finally smiled, with both affection and relief, as she moved across the room to pick up the phone and press the button. The answering machine immediately turned itself off with a loud click.

‘So?' asked Angie with echo-free clarity. ‘What do you say?'

‘I say . . . are you sure?'

‘Absolutely!'

‘And am I allowed to make the occasional joke instead of exploring my feelings?'

‘As long as they're good ones.'

‘Then let's go for it!' Kate sat down on the couch and hugged her spare arm across herself. ‘Because you're wrong, you know, this is something completely separate. And just imagine! It
will
be like we're kids again. Except I'll try to be better at sharing. But think about it . . . no responsibilities, no noise, no demands,' Kate took a deep breath and then let it sigh out. ‘Bliss. Complete bliss.'

I
n the end, it was a lot easier to leave than Kate had imagined. Even though she knew she was being melodramatic, every time she had laid her head down on her pillow over the last few weeks she had been immediately diverted by a steadily less realistic fantasy. It had started relatively low-key, with her walking to the door with a suitcase in either hand, while five pairs of eyes stared at her expressionlessly from the lounge room. Then, just as she was turning away, she would notice a small but significant tear trickle down Sam's cheek. From this rather inauspicious although relatively heart-wrenching prospect, she had graduated to an Oscar-winning epic that included integral wires being removed from her car so she couldn't leave, Jacob running away to join the army, little Emma suffering from an obscure medical problem (which turned out to be infantile depression), and everybody forgetting to feed Hector, who wasted away with an accusing look in his eyes. And of course, as she finally left, she glanced back to see a small but significant tear trickle down Sam's cheek.

Reality was nothing like this. Instead, Sam went off to work as usual, without betraying by a single word, or action, or small but significant tear, that he knew what was happening that day. Shelley wished her good luck, Caleb offered a hand, and both Emma and the dog ate a hearty breakfast and showed no signs of either depression or neglect. The only one who gave any cause for concern was Jacob, who still hadn't emerged
by the time Kate was ready to leave. But closer examination revealed that the boy wasn't so much unable to face his mother leaving as reluctant to face the day full stop. Kate left him sprawled across corrugated sheets in his darkened room, which smelt vaguely of perspiration and leftover food, and then she continued absconding, not only minus any heart-wrenching farewells, but minus any audience at all.

Admittedly the entire process was made considerably easier by the fact that this was only a temporary move and therefore required no division of furniture and other things. Indeed Kate took very little, not only because she didn't need to but also because, with guilt heightening her awareness, she sensed that the less she took, the more reassured Sam would be about her return.

She was also fortunate in that her father's worldly goods and chattels were still stored underneath her house. With Caleb's help, she had extracted his old walnut desk and, over the course of a week, sanded it back and then restained it. Then it was simply a matter of delivering it to Angie's unit together with the few boxes of personal effects that she was taking, and she was in. And out.

So, on a rather humid Monday morning at the start of February, after having spent the past three days in a whirl of cleaning, Kate picked up her handbag and a plastic carrier containing a few last-minute oddments, including the now-read
So you want to write? Then enough with the excuses – just do it!
, and then closed the door on an almost obsessively tidy house. Twenty minutes later she was parking outside the unit in Boronia, leaving just enough room for Angie to manoeuvre into the carport when she got home from work.

Kate got out of the car slowly, trying to savour the moment so that in the future she could picture this arrival like a snapshot that heralded a new phase in her life. A new phase that was all about
her
, and what
she
wanted. And maybe, years after she was gone, there would be a tasteful brass plaque on this ordinary suburban unit that read
Katherine Rose Painter lived here
, or even
KR Painter lived here
. Then some enterprising builder would, in the inimitable fashion of builders everywhere, purchase the now ageing units and try to bulldoze them to make an
obscene profit. And the KR Painter fan club would mobilise in protest, picketing the building site, waving placards, organising a petition and maybe even chaining themselves to bulldozers in desperation.

A grin spread over Kate's face and then she shook her head slightly. There were four two-storey red-brick units, set out in two pairs sitting in an L shape, with each unit separated from its twin by a double carport. Edged grassy areas contained a variety of plants and shrubs, with bottlebrushes clearly in the ascendancy, and a lovely yellow-tipped wattle sagged cheerfully over the bank of letterboxes by the road. Angie's unit was at the rear, right in the corner of the L shape, and promised a privacy and seclusion that was exactly what Kate needed.

A nearby bird started a loud, undulating warble that seemed to echo in the silence surrounding the units. Using her key, Kate let herself in and closed the door behind her, immediately shutting off the bird-song in mid-warble. Where the silence outside had been pleasant, the silence inside was almost uncanny. Kate took a deep breath, the absolute stillness making her feel light-headed. And it tasted wonderful. She dropped her things in the foyer and looked around with new eyes.