Chapter 20

chapter twenty

Father’s Day

On Father’s Day morning, Joy woke late and well rested. She was sprawled facedown right in the middle of the bed like a child. There was a little circle of saliva where she’d dribbled onto the sheet. Stan wasn’t there. Spring sunshine poured through the window, warm on the skin of her legs, which were bare beneath her t-shirt. She could smell jasmine from the garden and bacon from the kitchen. Savannah must be cooking breakfast.

She was getting far too used to having someone cook and clean for her. This was what it must be like to be a celebrity. No wonder they were so charismatic and cheerful on talk shows. Joy could feel herself becoming more charismatic and cheerful by the day.

In fact, Savannah seemed to treat her and Stan as if they were talk show guests and she the host, fascinated by the intricacies of their celebrity lives. She wanted to hear everything about them: their tennis, the tennis school, the club, the children. She asked questions Joy was sure her own children had never bothered to ask: When did you know you were right for each other?

‘The first time I saw her,’ said Stan. He was sitting when he said this, and Joy was standing, and he grabbed her by the waist and pulled her to him so that she landed on his lap.

Joy saw their marriage through Savannah’s young, interested eyes: solid and valuable, like an antique, burnished with age and wisdom. Savannah probably coveted a relationship like theirs. A relationship that produced children and a beautiful house and a successful business and shelves full of framed photos of birthday parties, Easter lunches and Christmas mornings.

Joy stood under the shower, tilting her face up to the spray, and thought about the shameful moments that were never photographed:

her own face ugly with rage, spit flying from her contorted mouth,

the back of Stan’s head as he walked away,

sitting in a car on the side of the road, four children silent with shock in the back, while her heart thudded in rapid time with the click-click of the indicator.

She shuddered and got shampoo in her eye. Of course, they wouldn’t share the nasty secrets with Savannah. There were limits to their honesty, no matter what was going on with their elderly frontal lobes.

The shampoo stung like hell. She blinked furiously and massaged in the expensive volumising conditioner her hairdresser, Narelle, had told her to use every third day. Narelle’s recommended haircare regime was complex, but Joy got a lot of compliments for her hair and she loved Narelle like a sister, or the way that sisters should love each other. Her own daughters absolutely loved each other but one was generally offended or incensed or bewildered by the other one at any given time.

The price tag for the shampoo was still stuck on the back of the bottle. Stan would say, ‘What’s it made of? Gold dust?’ Joy peeled it off with her fingernail, rolled it between her fingers, let it fall and nudged it with her toe down the drain.

Yes, Savannah certainly did not need to know how many times Joy and Stan had fallen in and out of love over the last fifty years, how there were times when Joy hated Stan so passionately it made her sick to the stomach, how when the older three were very little they’d talked seriously and matter-of-factly, almost pleasantly, about separating, how Joy had believed it was definitely going to happen, how Brooke was a surprise baby conceived during their surprise reconciliation, how it had truly felt like a brand new relationship, how getting so close to losing each other had made them settle into something deeper and richer, but then, yet again, they’d lost their way, and all that love and happiness drained slowly, imperceptibly away, as if there was an invisible tiny leak.

Amy once told Joy that she had no idea how lonely it felt to be single. Joy had wanted to tell her that you could still be lonely when you were married, that there had been times when she had woken up day after day crushed with loneliness, and still made breakfast for four children.

She didn’t say that to Amy. She said, ‘Yes, darling, you’re right. It must be so hard.’

You couldn’t share the truth of your marriage with your adult children. They didn’t really want to know, even if they thought they did.

There was one year, the really bad year, when both her mother and Stan’s mother were sick, and then both of them died within three months of each other. As only children, Joy and Stan had to grieve alone. That was when Joy made a secret plan to leave. Her idea had been to wait until Brooke finished high school, at which point her mothering duties would be discharged. It had given her pleasure to plan it all out, even to imagine the pain of it, like a sadomasochistic fantasy.

But then: Brooke finished high school and they were good again. Maybe even better than they’d ever been. They got back into doubles and won tournament after tournament. Winning seemed to permeate everything: their sex life, the business. Joy focused on squeezing money from the tennis school. She opened the café and the pro shop, she introduced the holiday camps. That’s what happened. You had a long streak where you felt like you couldn’t lose a point, until you did.

Now here they were. She couldn’t exactly say if Savannah had caught them on an upswing or a downswing, or if they’d finally found an equilibrium that would last them until death did them part. Sometimes it felt like their relationship ebbed and flowed over a day, or even a conversation. She could feel affection followed by resentment in the space of ten minutes.

She went to rinse off her expensive conditioner and then remembered Narelle had told her to leave it on for at least three minutes. She decided to spend the three minutes doing ankle dips with her eyes closed, which was what Brooke had told her to do every day, to improve ‘ankle mobility’. She wasn’t nearly as obedient with her daughter as she was with her hairdresser and she wanted to be able to truthfully tell Brooke today that she’d been doing her exercises. She bobbed up and down on one leg, eyes shut, hands outspread just in case she needed to save herself. (Brooke might not approve of her doing these exercises in the shower.) If Stan came in and caught her doing her wobbly naked bobbing, he would laugh and laugh.

Would today be okay? She felt strangely nervous about it.

Of course, the boys had already met Savannah when they helped her pick up her things, and that had all gone fine, although it turned out the ex-boyfriend hadbeen there, but he hadn’t given them any trouble and everyone’s limbs were intact.

Perhaps Savannah and the girls would become friends? Probably not Brooke. She was so busy with the clinic and she could be stand-offish. On the other hand, Amy collected new friends of all ages, wherever she went. She once made such good friends with her Uber driver that the driver parked her car and joined Amy and her other friends on their night out, and it was all thanks to this nice Uber girl that Amy had found her current share house!

Maybe Savannah could move into Amy’s share house if another room became available?

Although, frankly, Joy was in no hurry to have her move out.

Joy stopped bobbing, rinsed off the conditioner and gave herself a final blast of freezing cold water, which supposedly caused her stem cells to form brown fat instead of white fat, and brown fat was good, apparently.

She would ask Brooke about brown fat today, and Brooke would probably laugh at her and say she’d got it all wrong. Joy tried to make Brooke feel clever and medically qualified as often as possible. Brooke was clever and medically qualified, just desperately in need of approval, and desperately trying to hide the desire so naked on her darling frowny face. If only she’d wear a little lipstick.

Joy dried herself briskly. Goodness, she really did feel nervous.

Was she worried the children would notice the misalignment between the good-humoured, loving selves she and Stan were portraying to Savannah, and their true selves? The ones they’d grown up with? But come on now, they were happily married, for the most part, and they were good-humoured and loving, or Joy was, anyway.

All four of her children each fervently believed in separate versions of their childhoods that often didn’t match up with Joy’s memories, or each other’s, for that matter. Sometimes one of them would tell a story about an incident that Joy was positive never happened, or at least not in the way they described it, because she had biographical facts at her disposal: ‘But we weren’t even living in the Fairmont Street house then!’ ‘But your grandmother wasn’t alive when you turned thirteen!’ And sometimes they’d argue about which of them was the villain or the victim, the martyr or the hero. ‘That wasn’t you that got stung by the bee, helping Grandma after she fainted at Troy’s party, it was me!’ And Joy would think, It was Logan’s party, not Troy’s, and there was no bee, it was a wasp, and no-one got stung, Amy just thought she did, and none of you helped, and Grandma didn’t faint, she passed out drunk.

Her children refused to be corrected. That’s what they remembered, therefore that was what happened, and when their memories didn’t match up with each other’s, they held on tight to their versions of the stories, as stubborn as their damned father.

Although sometimes one of them would get a far-off look, and you’d see something click into place, and they’d re-examine a childhood event with grown-up eyes and say: ‘Wait a minute, maybe Grandma was drunk that day?’

Joy put on her dressing-gown to go into the kitchen. For the first few days Savannah was staying Joy had made sure she was fully dressed before she left her room each morning, but it was funny how quickly she’d begun to feel relaxed around her. Most house guests, no matter how pleasant, gave you a sense of something being out of place, so that you only relaxed fully when they were gone, but Savannah had slotted into their home so seamlessly.

Joy noticed that Savannah never closed her bedroom door at night. Not even a little bit. She went to bed with the door wide open, so that if Joy went to bed later than Savannah it was like walking by the bedroom of a small sleeping child. ‘Good night!’ she’d call out, if Savannah had the bedside lamp on. ‘Good night, Joy!’ Savannah would call back cheerfully. ‘Sleep tight!’

It came to Joy with sick clarity that the poor child had probably learned the art of fitting in when she was growing up. She hadn’t said all that much about her childhood but she had told Joy that she’d grown up in the foster system. She said some of her foster homes were great, fantastic! But some were not so great. She’d been moved many times because there were relatives who agreed to take her on but then it didn’t work out, or they changed their mind. She said that to be honest, those were the living situations that were not so great. Savannah didn’t know anything about her biological parents, although she vaguely remembered some supervised visits with her biological mother, but those had stopped when she was very young, and now she had no idea, and not much interest, as to the woman’s whereabouts.

Joy combed her wet hair. She’d blow-dry it after breakfast. She was starving. She looked at herself in the mirror. Did Savannah cook for Joy and Stan to make them like her? The awful thing was it did make them like her.

Was that another hair on her chin? For goodness sake. Where were the tweezers? She put on her glasses, leaned in close, and removed it with one tiny violent tug that brought tears to her eyes.

It would be terrible if Savannah was cooking to buy their affection. They weren’t fostering Savannah, she was a grown woman, but still, Joy needed to be mindful of her background.

She readjusted the tie of her gown. A day like today would be so hard for Savannah. She would have to see Joy’s children celebrating their father with gifts and jokes, when she had never had a father herself. Joy had never had a father either, but she had grown up in the one home, with a mother who loved her (albeit in her own peculiar, not especially loving way) but most important of all, Joy had had beloved grandparents who’d more than filled the missing father gap. Poor Savannah had grown up with no stability.

Joy walked into the kitchen to find Savannah breaking an egg into the frypan with one hand.

‘Good morning, Stability!’ cried Joy emotionally. She blushed. ‘I mean Hannah, I mean Savannah!’ Good heavens.

Stan, who was sitting at the table eating bacon and eggs and doing the crossword, looked at her over the top of his reading glasses. ‘Are you having a stroke?’

‘Morning, Joy!’ Savannah lifted another egg from the carton between her fingertips. ‘One or two eggs today?’

‘Oh, well, just one would be lovely, but you know you really don’t have to make us breakfast every day! Especially when you’re making lunch!’ Joy hovered uncertainly by the stove. It didn’t feel like her stove anymore. It had never respected her the way it respected Savannah.

The kitchen smelled of baking. She could see something cooling on a cake tray under a sheet of aluminium foil.

She glared at Stan. ‘I’m not having a stroke. If I was having a stroke you should ask me to raise my right arm.’

‘Raise your right arm,’ said Stan.

‘But I love to cook,’ said Savannah earnestly. ‘It’s a privilege to cook in a kitchen like this. Please let me cook.’ Her eyes, with those rabbit-like white eyelashes, held Joy’s. Sometimes Joy found her direct eye contact almost unnerving. She had to look away first.

‘Oh, well, of course you can cook. I love that you cook! Thank you!’

‘One of your eyes is bloodshot,’ said Stan to Joy. ‘Is that a sign of a stroke?’

‘I got shampoo in my eye,’ said Joy irritably. ‘Happy Father’s Day.’

‘Thank you,’ said Stan. He finished his last mouthful, put down his knife and fork and fastidiously patted his lips with the cloth napkin Savannah had laid out for him, as if he were the king of bloody England. ‘Best Father’s Day breakfast I’ve had in my whole life.’

‘Gosh, that’s high praise.’ High praise your grown-up children probably don’t need to hear. Joy had a flash of memory of Brooke on tippy-toes by the stove, her tongue stuck out the side of her mouth, as she attempted to flip the side of an omelette she was making Stan for Father’s Day.

‘What’s this?’ Joy lifted the corner of the sheet of aluminium foil. The smell was heavy, sweet and familiar.

‘Chocolate brownies,’ said Savannah, and it was so silly and melodramatic how Joy’s stomach lurched, as if Savannah had said, ‘Snake!’ or ‘Fire!’ not ‘brownies’.

‘Lovely,’ she said. She avoided looking at Stan. ‘How lovely.’

She distracted herself by opening the refrigerator door too fast, which sent that damned souvenir magnet rocketing towards the floor, taking with it a recycling notice from the local council that Stan had busily laminated so they could keep it forever (instead of recycling it). She caught the magnet just before it fell. The magnet was a souvenir from the London Eye, and it showed a photo of Joy and Stan, arms around each other on the Eye, pretending to be smiling retirees on the trip of a lifetime (when in fact Stan couldn’t stop complaining about the cost of the tickets).

When they’d bought that magnet, Stan said it was too heavy for a fridge magnet. ‘It’s not fit for purpose,’ he’d said, dismissively, infuriatingly, because Joy wanted so badly to take it back to Sydney, to put it on their fridge as photographic evidence of the kind of holiday they didn’t really have, and it worked, because she’d overheard Savannah asking Stan about it, and he’d gone on about the magical views of London. He’d actually used that word: ‘magical’.

The views had been magical. What was the harm in it? Why not rewrite the memory and remember it as a perfect day? What was the actual benefit of accuracy when it came to memories? What would her dear sweet little memoir-writing teacher have to say about that?

She replaced the fridge magnet and council notice and thought about how she should really throw away the London Eye magnet and use Indira’s lovely flower magnet, but she was holding an unreasonable grudge against that magnet for not being the ultrasound picture she’d expected. She’d hidden it in a drawer so it wouldn’t hurt her feelings every time she looked at it. She planned to tell Indira the magnet was far too pretty for the fridge and that she had it sitting on her dressing table. Joy was an excellent liar when feelings were at stake. Indira would never check.

She opened the fridge once more and stared without recognition at its contents. Everything was unfamiliar because Savannah had gone to the shops yesterday afternoon and done all the grocery shopping for today. Joy had been feeling a little off, and it had been such a relief when Savannah suggested it, although she said she wasn’t comfortable taking Joy’s credit card, but Joy knew she could trust her, and just to be very sure, she’d already had a quick look at her balance online and Savannah had not bought herself tickets to France.

She closed the refrigerator and pivoted to face Savannah. ‘Actually, we might have quite an abundance of chocolate brownies today, because Amy always brings brownies for Stan. They’re his favourite . . . and they’re kind of Amy’s signature dish.’

‘Oh no!’ Savannah’s face fell. ‘Her signature dish?’ She lifted the sheet of aluminium foil and considered her brownies. They were neat little rectangles. Amy’s brownies were always misshapen and lumpy, and were actually a bit too sweet for Joy’s taste, although she joined in the family chorus of approval.

‘That’s okay. I’ll freeze them,’ said Savannah decisively. ‘No problem! Keep them for a rainy day.’

‘That might be best. I feel terrible after all that work,’ said Joy. ‘But –’

‘Absolutely not,’ said Stan.

They both turned to look at him.

‘You can never have too many brownies,’ said Stan.

You most certainly can, thought Joy.

‘We’ll have a taste test – see which ones are best.’ He grinned. He was in an excellent mood. ‘Isn’t that Amy’s chosen profession? Taste testing? We’ll have a bake-off!’

‘You are kidding,’ said Joy.

Stan gave a one-shoulder shrug that reminded her of Logan. ‘Why not?’ he said.

‘Because we’re talking about Amy.’

‘I don’t want to rock the boat.’ Savannah wiped her hands on her clean apron.

Oh, she was so mature. So much more mature than Joy’s own daughter, who was older than Savannah, who had grown up with all the privileges.

‘You won’t rock the boat,’ said Stan.

‘Well,’ said Joy.

‘Amy is thirty-eight years old,’ said Stan. ‘Not eight years old.’

‘She’s thirty-nine,’ Joy corrected him.

Stan ignored her. ‘So two people made chocolate brownies. This is not a crisis.’

Joy wavered. Maybe it was silly to make Savannah hide her freshly baked brownies. Amy would understand. She might even laugh at Joy for worrying about it.

‘We can’t pander to Amy’s moods,’ said Stan. He spoke lightly, but Joy had spent fifty years forecasting his moods. She knew his patterns. She could see the tight clench of his teeth in the line of his jaw. He’d decided he wanted to make a point of this, as if he were still a young father and this was a parenting decision he’d made, and as the man, the father, the head of the household, his word was law, as if there was still a possibility of shaping their children’s behaviour like they’d shaped their tennis, with the correct combination of rewards and punishments, and appropriate bedtimes, when in fact Joy had long ago come to the realisation that all her children’s personalities were pretty much set at birth.

Stan had always fought so hard against Amy’s mental health issues. He thought he could just make her stop and be normal through sheer force of will. ‘I just want her to be happy,’ he’d say, as if Joy didn’t want the same. ‘We don’t tell Brooke to just stop having a headache,’ she said to him once, but he didn’t get it.

She remembered how Stan used to admonish Amy to ‘Wrap it up!’ when she was a little girl and took too long to get to the point of a rambling senseless story, or ‘Slow it down!’ when she became so deliriously excited her words ran together. Amy’s face would fall, her mood would crash and she’d abruptly stop talking, like a tap had been turned off.

‘She sounded like a crazy person, I couldn’t understand a word she said,’ Stan would say afterwards, defensively, guiltily. Joy hadn’t understood a word either, but she didn’t care, she didn’t try to make sense of it, she just enjoyed watching Amy’s animated face as she talked her nonsense and enjoyed the fact that she was happy for a change.

But Amy was doing well right now. There hadn’t been any ‘troubles’ for a long time. She was ‘in a good place’, as people said. Joy liked the sound of this new counsellor. Roger. Joy had been to school with a nice boy called Roger.

Anyway, the truth was that Joy could never accurately predict what would upset Amy. Joy had often got herself tied up in knots over some issue she thought might set off Amy, and been completely wrong. The trick with Amy was to go along for the ride with her. Let her talk crazy-fast when she was happy. Let her be sad when she was sad, and resist the urge to list all the reasons why she should not be sad.

‘It will be fine, Savannah,’ said Joy. ‘The more brownies the better!’

The risk of upsetting Stan outweighed the risk of upsetting Amy. The risk of upsetting Stan had always outweighed the risk of upsetting any of the children.

Nearly always.

A hot sour feeling blossomed across her chest like heartburn or a heart attack; at her age either was always a possibility, but she ignored it and sat down at the table to wait for her breakfast to be put in front of her. She resolutely turned her head away from her mother-in-law’s china cats. Sometimes they seemed to watch her, the way her mother-in-law had once watched her, with pure malice.

She placed her hand lightly on Stan’s forearm and said, ‘Maybe change into that blue shirt, darling. The one Amy gave you for Christmas.’

‘It’s too tight across the back,’ said Stan.

‘I know,’ said Joy. ‘But wear it anyway.’