Chapter 24

chapter twenty-four

Logan sat upright and stoic after his announcement, his forearms on his armrests as if he were strapped to the electric chair. Even the dog seemed shocked and gazed steadfastly at the wall as if to point out this awful business was nothing to do with her.

‘Eh? What’s that?’ said Stan confusedly.

‘Now just seemed like as good a time as any to mention it,’ said Logan.

‘Oh, Logan.’ Amy looked back down from the balloon. ‘We love her.’

When Logan had arrived today and said that Indira was at home sick, Joy had a thought, a deliriously hopeful thought: Maybe she’s feeling sick because she’s pregnant.

That cryptic look on Indira’s face the last time Joy saw her had not been the indication of a special secret announcement she was waiting for the safe twelve-week mark to make. She’d been getting ready to leave. The flower magnet Joy had so hoped was an ultrasound picture had been a farewell gift.

‘I loved her too,’ said Logan.

‘Did she know that?’ asked Amy.

‘Should have put a ring on it.’ Troy shook his head in mock exasperation.

‘Says you,’ said Logan.

‘I’ve been married.’

‘You haven’t stayed married.’

Brooke opened her mouth as if to say something and then briefly closed her eyes.

‘Have you got a migraine coming on, Brooke?’ asked Joy. A cramping sensation hit her lower abdomen again. She suppressed a groan. ‘You mustn’t drive home if you do. You must never drive when you’re suffering a migraine.’

‘I’ll drive her home,’ offered Savannah.

‘I don’t have a migraine!’ snapped Brooke. ‘We’ve talked enough about migraines today.’

Joy didn’t believe her. She really didn’t look well. ‘If you do, maybe you should stay here. Grant won’t be much use to you if he’s sick.’

‘GrantandIhavebrokenuptoo.’ Brooke spoke so rapidly it took Joy a moment to separate out the words.

‘I beg your pardon?’

Brooke exhaled, and her shoulders sagged. ‘It’s a relief to say it.’ She looked at her father. ‘Sorry to ruin Father’s Day.’ She looked at Logan. ‘Although Logan started it.’

‘It’s alright, sweetheart,’ said Stan with deep sadness. He patted Brooke on the shoulder before slumping back in his chair. ‘These things happen.’

Joy said, ‘You mean you’re getting a divorce?’

‘It’s just a trial separation for now, but . . .’ Brooke squinted as if at a sudden bright light. ‘It looks that way.’

Joy should have realised this was more than a migraine. The poor girl looked exhausted, pale and haggard, with dark circles under her eyes, and her hair was just so lank.

Troy put his arm around his sister.

‘How long?’ he asked.

‘We’ve been separated for six weeks.’

‘Six weeks?’ Joy didn’t mean it to sound like an admonishment, but how could Brooke have been separated for six weeks without saying a single word about it to her parents?

‘Was it all the pressure you put on yourself with that damned clinic?’ Now she was accidentally giving away her hatred of the clinic. She was getting this all wrong. This was becoming one of those pivotal life moments she would wish she could go back and do again so she could say all the right things. She put her fingertips to her hairline. She was sweating. Food poisoning? Savannah’s roast chicken had been so wonderfully tender! Was this the price you had to pay for tender chicken? It was too high a price!

‘I should have helped out more at the clinic,’ she said to Brooke. She should have! Grant probably felt neglected. ‘I should have insisted.’

‘Oh, Mum,’ said Brooke wearily.

‘I can’t believe you never told me,’ said Amy.

‘Can we not make it about you, Amy?’ said Brooke.

Amy’s face crumpled. ‘I just meant I could have helped you.’

‘Okay, well, thank you, I’m fine.’ Brooke massaged tiny circles in her forehead with her fingertips. ‘I’m sorry. I just wasn’t ready to talk about it. I thought we might . . . work it out. Nobody needs to get upset.’

Savannah had folded her napkin into a neat square, concealing her mostly uneaten brownies. What must she think of them all? It was embarrassing to remember how she’d worried that Savannah would be envious of Joy’s loving, stable family.

‘Well!’ Joy said to Savannah. ‘I hope this isn’t too awkward for you. All these upsetting announcements on Father’s Day!’

‘Sorry, Dad,’ said Logan remorsefully. ‘I didn’t mean to ruin Father’s Day.’

‘Neither did I,’ said Brooke. ‘Sorry, Dad.’

‘No-one needs to be sorry,’ said Stan. He looked at the balloon floating above his head, grabbed for the end of the string and pulled it down. He clutched the balloon like a child in a stroller being pushed around a fairground.

‘What are you doing?’ Joy asked him.

‘Holding my balloon,’ said Stan.

‘Do you actually need me to give you all some privacy?’ asked Savannah. ‘I could go to my room –’ She corrected herself in a sudden fluster and glanced at Amy. ‘Not my room.’

‘We don’t need privacy,’ said Stan. ‘We’re fine. These things happen. It’s no-one’s fault.’

‘Of course it’s no-one’s fault,’ said Joy doubtfully, although she’d quite like to ascertain where the fault did lie in each of these break-ups.

‘Does anyone need –’ began Savannah.

‘We’re fine,’ Stan cut her off.

There was silence for a moment. Stan kept idiotically clutching his balloon. Joy didn’t know if it was fury or nausea rising in her belly. Was she about to vomit or yell, faint or cry? All of them seemed like possibilities.

Troy said, ‘Seeing as the curve balls are coming from every direction, I might throw one more.’

‘Fabulous,’ said Joy through gritted teeth. ‘You do that, Troy. Throw us another curve ball. You throw it right at me, darling.’

‘Right, well, okay then, Mum,’ said Troy. He actually looked nervous. It couldn’t be another break-up. He wouldn’t bother telling them. He was in and out of relationships all the time. ‘I was considering keeping it a secret, but to hell with it. I could do with your advice.’ He moved his glass to one side, sloshing red wine onto the white tablecloth. Was he drunk? Was Joy herself drunk? She really did feel very strange indeed.

He said, ‘So, you remember Claire?’

‘Well, for goodness sake, Troy, yes, we remember Claire,’ said Joy.

Claire was Troy’s ex-wife, once a much-loved member of the family, just like Indira and, to a lesser extent, Grant. It was like a death each time her children broke up with someone, and over the years there had been many, many deaths.

(She would write that in her memoir: When I look back over the last decade, it’s like looking at a battlefield strewn with the corpses of all the perfectly lovely young men and women who have been in unsuccessful relationships with my annoying, ungrateful children. What would the little innocent teacher think of that? She did say to try to be colourful.)

Troy said, ‘So, I saw Claire when I was in the States –’

‘Are you getting back together?’ Amy’s face was full of foolish hope.

‘Of course they’re not getting back together,’ said Joy, to conceal her own foolish hope. Surely not. Hadn’t Claire gone off to Texas or somewhere like that – somewhere that made you think of cowboys – and married an American cardiologist? A friend of a friend from when Troy and Claire lived together in the US?

‘No, she’s happily married, permanently settled in the US,’ said Troy. ‘She’s ready to have a baby.’

‘Well, I’m not surprised. She was ready to have a baby with you all those years ago,’ said Joy bitterly. Claire and Troy had been in the process of going through IVF when their marriage broke up. Apparently Troy had been unfaithful and at the time Joy had been so angry with him she hadn’t been able to look him in the eye for a good six months. She shivered violently. It was too hot or too cold in here.

‘So, she and her husband have been trying for a long time now and apparently they haven’t been having any luck,’ said Troy.

‘Oh no,’ said Brooke. ‘Tell me she doesn’t want to use –’

‘Yes,’ said Troy. He looked at his sister, who seemed to have guessed something that Joy couldn’t even imagine. ‘Yes, she does.’

‘Use what?’ asked Stan.

‘Well, we’ve kept our embryos on ice all this time. From when we were doing IVF. Claire has been paying the storage costs. Anyway, now she’s wondering how I would feel if she . . . tried her luck with one of those.’

Joy felt like she was stumbling about in the dark for a light switch. ‘You mean Claire wants to have your baby? But I don’t understand, why can’t she do IVF with her new husband? Make some new . . . embryos?’ She tripped over the word ‘embryos’. When she was getting pregnant, there had just been babies or no babies.

‘She had low ovarian reserve back when she was doing IVF with Troy,’ said Brooke, who remembered everyone’s medical histories. ‘She’s probably got no more eggs.’

‘But you’d be this child’s father,’ said Joy, and she saw Troy as a baby: the cutest and naughtiest of her babies. He’d wail so loudly each time he woke you’d think he was dying, and Joy would go running, tricked every time, and the instant she picked him up the crying would stop like a switch had been flicked and he’d smile that heart-melting smile, crocodile tears still wet on his fat rosy cheeks.

‘She wants her husband to formally adopt the child as soon as it’s born,’ said Troy, and Joy heard him trip on the word ‘husband’ in the same way she’d tripped on ‘embryo’.

‘But could you be involved? If you wanted to be involved?’ asked Amy.

Troy shrugged. ‘She says it’s up to me, but what would be the point of me turning up every few months and taking the kid out to McDonald’s like some sad divorced dad? Better if it just thinks the cardiologist is its father, don’t you think?’

Joy was on a boat being rocked about on a stormy sea.

She met Stan’s eye. He looked stunned. She could tell he didn’t really get it. The brand new possibilities and dilemmas created by modern technology, modern science and modern thinking were beyond him.

‘You like this idea?’ asked Logan.

‘No, I don’t like the idea at all,’ said Troy, and there it was: a flash of anguish. ‘To be frank, I hate the idea.’

‘Well, then, mate, you’re not obliged –’

‘But it could be Claire’s only chance to have her own biological child.’ Troy lifted his hands in a hopeless gesture of surrender. ‘Her only chance. Ever. How can I take that away from her? When those embryos are just sitting there? It would be so cruel.’ His voice dropped and he moved his wineglass around in circles on the red wine stain on the tablecloth, as if he could rub it away, which he couldn’t. That stain would be there forever.

Troy added in a small remorseful voice, ‘Especially after what I did to her.’

Oh, for goodness sake.

This was exactly how Joy used to feel when Troy got in trouble as a kid, and he’d sit there in front of her and Stan, head hanging, hands dangling between his knees, looking so sad, remorseful and bewildered, as if the actions he’d taken hadn’t been his choice, not really, but he was once again stuck with their consequences.

‘I think I have to say yes, don’t I?’ He looked up the table at Joy. ‘Don’t I, Mum?’

Joy sighed. She put a hand once again to her burning cheek and shuddered. She was freezing.

‘Don’t you think, Mum?’ said Troy. ‘I have to say yes?’

He needed an answer. He’d always looked to her, not his father, for answers to the moral quandaries in which he found himself.

I stole this CD, Mum, and now I feel bad about it. Should I just take it back to the shop and tell them? But I kind of scratched it.

‘Oh, Troy.’

Joy thought of Claire’s parents. She and Stan had met them only a handful of times but they’d liked them. Uncomplicated and kind people. They’d even played doubles against them. The mother, Teresa, had a nice double-handed backhand. Joy had been mortified when her son had broken Teresa’s daughter’s heart like that. She’d phoned her and told her she was so sorry and she was ashamed of Troy, and Teresa had been kind and gracious. If the situations had been reversed Joy would have been well mannered too, but cool and snippy. Now that nice woman would get Joy’s grandchild, and Joy wouldn’t be allowed to see it, to hold it or know it. What if the baby had Troy’s smile? And Claire’s beautiful red hair? Joy would have especially loved a red-headed grandchild!

‘Yes,’ she said to Troy. ‘You’re right. You have to say yes. It’s the right thing to do.’

‘Well, I don’t know,’ began Stan uneasily.

‘It’s the right thing to do,’ Joy hissed at him.

He shut up.

Yes, this was the right thing to do, but it was also the wrong thing.

What if this child, this dear little red-headed child who she already loved but might never meet, turned out to be Joy’s only grandchild?

She said suddenly, ‘Maybe you should all go home now.’

Everyone stared at her.

‘I’m not feeling the best,’ she said. ‘I feel like I’m coming down with something.’

All of a sudden she recognised the combination of symptoms she’d been experiencing for the last few days. What a foolish old woman she was. She had a damned UTI, just like the one she had on her honeymoon, because of the recent unusual sexual activity.

Now she was furious with Stan, sitting there like a silent, stupid monolith at the end of the table with his balloon, contributing nothing except a UTI! At her age! She picked up her glass and took a long drink of water, although that ship had clearly sailed. She needed antibiotics, and it was Sunday, so she couldn’t go to her lovely GP, Susan, she’d have to go to a medical centre, and she’d have to tell a kid straight out of medical school about her sex life.

‘Dammit to hell,’ she said to Stan.

‘Eh?’ said Stan. ‘Why are you looking at me? What did I do?’

‘Well, for one thing, you killed Dennis Christos!!’ she said, and it was so strange because she hadn’t even been thinking about poor Dennis, what with everything that was going on, but the accusation had been sitting there these past six months, ready and waiting in her subconscious for just the perfect moment.

‘Dennis Christos died of a heart attack!’ Stan responded instantly, without any confusion at all, conclusive proof of his guilt.

‘You made him think he was going to break your serve and his poor heart couldn’t handle it!’

‘He could not really have believed he was going to break my serve,’ scoffed Stan.

‘You let the game get to love–forty!’ cried Joy.

‘Well, I’m sorry,’ said Stan, sounding not at all sorry.

‘Don’t apologise to me! Apologise to poor grieving Debbie Christos!’

‘Never admit liability, Dad,’ said Troy. ‘That’s my tip.’

‘I bet it is,’ said Logan.

‘Dennis Christos once made a very inappropriate remark to me,’ commented Amy. ‘If that makes you feel any better, Mum. Very inappropriate.’

‘Should we give Dad our gifts before we go?’ asked Brooke anxiously.

‘What have I done wrong?’ The words exploded from Joy without her permission.

Everyone looked at her like stunned bloody mullets.

‘You haven’t done anything wrong, Mum,’ said Amy soothingly.

‘Then how is it that not a single one of you can maintain a long-term relationship? Did your father and I not set a good example to you? Of a good marriage?’

Her children all dropped their heads as if she’d called for volunteers for an unpleasant task.

‘So your dad and I weren’t perfect,’ she said. ‘But, well, we weren’tthat bad, were we? Are you punishing us for something? For what? For making you play tennis? We did not make you play tennis! Never! You loved tennis! You were all so talented!’

‘We’re not punishing you,’ said Troy. ‘That’s crazy talk, Mum.’

‘It’s just bad luck,’ said Brooke. ‘Bad timing.’ She shot Logan a steely look. ‘I couldn’t believe it when I heard that Logan and Indira had broken up too.’

‘Mum,’ said Amy. ‘You will get to be a grandmother. I mean – obviously I won’t have kids, but someone will.’ She indicated her sister and brothers. ‘One of them will! In the normal way. Not like what Troy is doing. Which is obviously weird and upsetting. But you will get a proper grandchild. I promise you.’

‘How can you promise me that, Amy? I don’t see your brothers and sister rushing to agree with you! And what do you mean, you obviously won’t have children? Why not? Anyway, why are you talking about grandchildren? Have I mentioned grandchildren? Ever? Not once!’ Joy’s whole body burned and shook with the injustice of it. ‘Never once! Did I? Well, did I?’

If she wasn’t to be rewarded for her forbearance, it should at least be recognised.

‘You never did, Mum,’ said Brooke, and she sounded so sad, as if she might cry, and also frightened, as if Joy were drunk or mad or sick.

‘Just like you never said how much you wanted us to win,’ said Troy, quietly.

Joy stood. Her legs were wobbly. The only person whose eyes met hers was her damned husband.

She could see what he wanted to do right now. She could see it settle over him: a deadly stillness, or silence, like everything was shutting down. It had been twenty years since he’d done it but she still recognised the signs. She always used to know when it was coming. She’d see it before the children did, and if she acted fast she could intercept, she could avert the crisis. The feeling had been like running to catch something before it shattered, except you weren’t allowed to run. Maybe it was how bomb disposal people felt.

But she was no longer in the business of bomb disposal. She was too old for it and she could not believe she had ever put up with it in the first place.

‘Don’t . . . you . . . dare.’ She pointed a shaky finger at him. ‘Don’t you even think about it.’

She swayed on her feet. The ache of grief and humiliation spread not just across her stomach but all the way up her left side.

It was Savannah who got to her first, and supported her with a surprisingly strong grip.

‘Make them all go,’ Joy said to her. ‘Make them all go home.’