Chapter 46

chapter forty-six

Last October

Stan didn’t gasp or swear at Savannah’s revelation. He didn’t ask for clarification or proof, or call her a liar. He seemed to know instantly that this time Savannah was telling the truth. Perhaps he’d always suspected, although he had never once asked or accused Joy.

He said, ‘Excuse me,’ to Amy’s besotted young man, who had been hovering in the doorway of her old bedroom, watching these dramas unfold, and who obediently stepped aside to allow Stan to make his silent, stately departure.

They heard the front door shut.

It was strange how very familiar it felt to Joy after all these decades; the wheel of time spun smoothly back and her children were still her children, still looking to her to explain their father’s actions, to make them normal and acceptable. She could feel all those old phrases springing automatically to her lips. Don’t worry. He’ll be back. You know how he is. When your dad gets angry and upset he needs to get away and clear his head. It’s nothing to get upset about. Let’s go have ice-cream!

‘Is it true, Mum?’ Logan spoke first. ‘Did you tell them to leave?’

‘Oh,’ said Joy distractedly. She was thinking about Stan. It was all very well when he was thirty and forty and even fifty but he was too old to walk dramatically off into the night now he was seventy. He had medication to take. ‘Yes, well, that part actually is true. Don’t worry, he’ll get over it, but did any of you park in the driveway? Your father won’t be able to get his car out.’ It was a cool night. He wasn’t dressed warmly enough. He was wearing jeans and slippers.

‘Why would you do that to Dad?’ Brooke asked Joy. Her eyes burned with the betrayal of her beloved father. ‘Dad was the one who discovered Harry. He should have been his coach. How could you take that away from him?’

‘Who would have coached you? If your dad was travelling the international circuit with Harry?’

‘You would have coached us,’ said Brooke uncertainly.

‘When? How?’ If her children ever had children they might at least have an inkling of how Joy had staggered beneath the weight of her responsibilities through those difficult years.

‘But it was Dad’s dream,’ said Brooke. ‘You took away his dream.’

‘What about your dreams?’ Joy held out her hands to indicate all four of her children.

‘It didn’t matter, we were never going to make it anyway,’ said Brooke.

‘But you didn’t know that back then!’ cried Joy. ‘This is what you all forget. You all wanted it. You like to pretend you were doing it for us, but you damn well were not.’ The fury rose within her chest. She knew her children better than they knew themselves and she saw their childhoods so much more clearly than they could. ‘You all wanted it. I know you did. The sacrifices you all made.’

Her voice broke. She remembered the weeping blisters on Amy’s right palm (‘It’s like she’s been doing manual labour!’ said Joy’s mother, disgusted); the sad complicated resignation on Logan’s face when he told Hien he’d have to miss his eighteenth birthday party because he’d be away competing in a tournament in Alice Springs; Troy at twelve, his cheek cushioned on the placemat at the dinner table where he’d fallen asleep while he waited for dessert; Brooke, tiny and determined on the court in her pyjamas and sneakers, getting in some practice before breakfast.

The pain, the exhaustion, the relentless travel; the parties and dances and school events they all missed: what if her children had endured all that and then seen their father by another player’s side as he won the grand slam titles they’d all dreamed of winning?

It would have been unendurable.

Back then it was a choice between her children’s happiness and her husband’s dream, and she was a mother, so there was no choice, not really. She chose her children.

Remembering the day she’d done it was like remembering the day she’d committed a crime, a tiny crime without a weapon, as fast and simple as extinguishing the flame of a candle between her thumb and her finger: a fierce tingle of pain instantly gone.

She’d picked up the phone when no-one was at home and called Harry’s dad, Elias Haddad. Elias was betting everything on his son’s tennis. He’d given up his job so he could be his manager. He was living on his savings.

Harry’s mother and sister did not figure in Joy’s thinking back then. They’d never existed for her.

‘Elias, I need to tell you something in strictest confidence, something my husband would never tell you,’ she’d said, and she spoke fast, without letting him speak, her eyes on a funny photo that sat on her desk of her sons, nose to nose, funny because they were glowering at each other like two boxers.

She’d always got on well with Elias. He was chatty and charming in that European way. She’d been able to convince him not to call the police when Troy attacked Harry. She said it would serve no purpose and take up Harry’s training time. She apologised profusely on Troy’s behalf. She pretended it was about jealousy and he seemed to accept that.

Now she said, ‘If you and Harry are serious about his tennis career, and I know you are, you need to leave Delaneys.’

‘Leave you guys?’ he said, and the surprise and alarm in his voice pulled her up short, but she barrelled on.

‘Yes, leave. Move to Melbourne. I’m going to give you the name of someone at Tennis Australia. Call her as soon as you put down the phone. She’s seen Harry play. He’ll get noticed. He’ll get the wildcard entries at the Open. He’ll be anointed. He’ll become one of the chosen ones. It’s all about the politics, Elias.’

She and Stan had always told the children there were no such thing as the ‘chosen ones’, there were no favourites on the circuit, it didn’t matter where you lived, or who you knew or who your parents knew, all that mattered was how you played – but there were politics in tennis. There were politics in everything.

‘More importantly, he’ll get the kind of coaching he needs, the kind we can’t give him. We’d love to keep him, of course we would, and please don’t mention it to Stan, because I’m afraid my husband can’t be objective about this. He wants what’s best for Harry, but he also wants what’s best for himself, and that’s keeping Harry. But the truth is, Delaneys is holding him back, Elias, and I can’t sit here and let that happen to your son. It’s time to take the next step.’

She knew that Elias would instinctively understand who to charm and when, just as his son was able to strategise so brilliantly on the court. Elias might even have come to the decision to move Harry on from Delaneys himself if she hadn’t suggested it.

Elias did everything Joy told him to do and he played it perfectly. He never said a word to Stan about Joy’s betrayal. He winked at Joy whenever he saw her, as if they’d enjoyed a secret tryst. It made her feel as if she had slept with him.

She later learned that Elias was a ladies’ man who often juggled multiple beautiful women, so keeping secrets came easily to him.

For a long time she’d assumed Stan would discover the truth, and she’d been ready for it, ready to defend herself, but he never did, and after a while she let her guilt (not regret, she never once regretted it) drift gently into nothingness like the tiny black curl of smoke from that snuffed candle.

She’d worried that Harry’s memoir might reveal her secret. It had never occurred to her that her house guest, who had pretended so convincingly that she didn’t even recognise Harry’s name, would reveal it.

‘How did you know this?’ she said to Savannah.

‘My mother told me,’ said Savannah. ‘Dad couldn’t send any child support money for about six months. He said it cost a lot to relocate to Melbourne, and my mother said, “Why are you doing that?” And he said, “Joy Delaney said it was the right thing to do.” I remember it word for word. Mum had to get a second job to help pay for my ballet lessons.’

‘“Joy Delaney said it was the right thing to do”,’ repeated Amy. ‘Wow, Mum. That’s . . .’ She shook her head. ‘Wow.’

After all these years, it was not Stan but their daughter looking at her with accusing eyes. She wanted to shout, But I did it for you! She tried to speak reasonably but she couldn’t keep the emotion out of her voice. ‘I was not going to let you watch your father take some other kid to the top!’

‘Better some other kid than no-one at all,’ said Logan. ‘Harry would have won more grand slam titles by now if he’d stayed with Dad. He’s never won a French Open title.’

‘Harry never had the patience for clay,’ said Joy querulously.

‘Dad would have given him the patience. He’s never been as consistent as he should have been,’ said Logan. ‘He needed Dad.’

‘You needed him,’ said Joy. ‘You all needed him.’

‘No,’ said Logan. ‘I didn’t.’

God almighty, she couldn’t make him see. He was looking at this from the perspective of the thirty-seven-year-old man who had left his tennis career behind, not the seventeen-year-old boy who still saw tennis in his future.

‘Fine then, I needed him,’ said Joy. ‘I had four children, all playing competitive tennis, and a business to run. I couldn’t do it on my own. You must remember what it was like.’

But she could see by their faces that they were blissfully oblivious to what it had been like.

She thought of a night when Troy had been playing all the way out at Homebush in a tournament that ran so far behind schedule he didn’t even get onto the court until midnight. Stan was with Troy, Joy was at home with the other kids. Logan was worryingly sick with a temperature. She didn’t sleep that night. She baked thirty cupcakes for Brooke’s birthday the next day in between tending to Logan, she did three loads of laundry, she did the accounts and she did Troy’s history assignment on the Great Wall of China. She got seven out of ten for the assignment (she was still furious about that; she’d deserved a nine). When she thought of that long night, it was like remembering an extraordinarily tough match where she’d prevailed. Except there was no trophy or applause. The only recognition you got for surviving a night like that came from other mothers. Only they understood the epic nature of your trivial achievements.

What had been the point of it all?

And yet, how could she have done any of it differently?

When it came to tennis at the level her children played, you were either in or you were out, and they wanted in. It would have been easier if they’d all been a little less talented, a little less driven, if they’d reached number one in the local district but gone no further.

‘Anyway, might I remind you that you all hated Harry Haddad,’ said Joy. ‘With a passion.’ She glanced at Savannah, who had closed the lid of the wooden chest that contained all her secrets and was now sitting on top of it, as if she were waiting for a bus. ‘Sorry, Savannah, but they did hate your brother.’

‘Oh, that’s okay, I hated him too,’ said Savannah. ‘For years, whenever his face came on the television, I screamed.’

‘You literally screamed?’ said Amy with interest.

‘I literally screamed,’ said Savannah.

‘I didn’t hate Harry,’ said Logan. ‘I envied him, but I never hated him. I would have liked to have seen Dad keep coaching him.’

‘That’s what you think now, Logan,’ said Joy impatiently. ‘But when you were a teenager you thought very differently.’

‘I hated him,’ said Troy. He leaned against the wall, his head perilously close to the sharp corner of the framed print of a crying mermaid that had always hung in Amy’s room, which Joy found depressing but Amy loved. Troy blazed rage and venom straight at Savannah. ‘I think you did the right thing, Mum, because obviously these charming people have no problem cheating, lying, scamming –’

‘Okay, that’s enough now,’ said Joy.

‘What? We need to show good manners to her?’

Troy had such passionate yet fluid convictions about justice and morality. His teenage drug-dealing empire was perfectly acceptable but Savannah’s scamming him for money was not; cheating at tennis was an unforgivable sin, but then he’d gone right ahead and cheated on his lovely wife.

‘Look, if you’re going to get all worked up about it, I’ll transfer the money back to you,’ said Savannah to Troy. ‘I just needed some cash to re-establish myself.’ She sounded as if she were talking to a sibling about a loan she hadn’t repaid. Was this her way of admitting that she’d lied to Troy when she made those dreadful accusations about Stan? What if Troy had actually refused to pay up? What would she have done next?

Had Savannah understood the power of Joy’s secret she’d just shared? Would Joy have paid up if she’d attempted to blackmail her? Possibly.

Joy’s head spun. She couldn’t align Savannah the sly blackmailer with the Savannah who had nursed Joy so tenderly when she came home from the hospital.

‘Keep it,’ said Troy viciously. ‘We just want you out of our lives.’

‘That was my intention,’ said Savannah. She stood and picked up her handbag, the new one Joy had bought for her with the crossover strap. ‘I mean, to get out of your lives. This was only ever temporary.’

She sounded like she was trying not to cry and Joy knew perfectly well that it could be fake emotion, or someone else’s emotion she was channelling for her own purposes, but her heart still broke for her.

Only ever temporary. Was that the way this child lived her whole life? This child who had been starving in their midst and they’d shouted at her, ignored her, refused to help her. Joy remembered how she’d slammed the laundry door with her foot. She couldn’t see the child’s face in her memory, just the outline of a little girl, her features a blur, but she could certainly remember the savagery with which she’d slammed the door in a child’s face.

They hadn’t known she was hungry. How could they have known? But Joy prided herself on being observant. She wanted to go back in time and do all the things the sort of person she thought she was would have done: feed the kid, listen to her, rescue her from her awful childhood.

‘Well,’ said Joy. ‘You don’t need to go right away –’

‘Mum,’ said Brooke. ‘I think she probably does need to go right away.’

‘Yep,’ said Savannah. She looked at Joy’s children. ‘It’s been a blast, guys.’

‘Where will you go?’ asked Amy.

‘She’s fine,’ said Troy abruptly. ‘She’s got money.’

‘I am fine,’ said Savannah. ‘I’ll be back at some point to pick up my stuff.’ She smiled radiantly at Joy, and now she was a dinner party guest taking her leave. ‘Thank you so much for your hospitality.’

‘It’s been my pleasure,’ said Joy automatically, but truthfully, because up until tonight it had been her pleasure. Her absolute pleasure.

For an excruciating moment they all held their positions, as if they were actors in a terrible theatre production and someone had forgotten their lines. Joy wouldn’t have been surprised to hear an audience member cough.

‘I’m very sorry,’ said Savannah suddenly, her eyes bright with unshed tears. Joy would never know if they were real or fake, if she truly was or wasn’t sorry, because Savannah suddenly patted the side of her handbag decisively, drew herself up, and left the room, left the house, exit stage left, just like Stan. She disappeared into the dark night from where she’d first come.