Almost Mine Read online

  Determined not to wander aimlessly through my young life, and determined to bury the irreversible things that I’d done, over the next three years I cleaned up my act. I discarded the pointless pain-relief that I was terrified that I’d become too dependent on, and prayed that Roy would follow suit. We moved into a place of our own and, with Roy flying tandem, we set off on the journey of life.

  Disappointingly, though, Roy wasn’t very good at living up to my expectations. Before he left for the last time three years later, the plan had been for us to find a place to live on the coast, line up jobs, and then we’d be all set up to get married and start a family. We’d live happily ever after, loving it up in the sun until it made us old and wrinkly. Instead, he’d ignored me that night, not counting the abrupt grunts that were indirectly thrown my way, and packed everything that he felt important enough to take with him, which apparently wasn’t me. I had sat on the edge of our bed, initially confounded by Roy’s sudden backflip, but then I shook myself back to reality.

  I am disposable.

  ‘Will you at least tell me why this time?’ I asked him, pointlessly. I didn’t expect that I would get an explanation; he never bothered to give me one any of the other times of the past, I guess, all up, five years, that he’d behaved this way. So, when he’d stopped in the door way that he was about to walk out of and turned slowly back toward me, glaring at me as I sat anxiously, I held my breath, begging him to give me something, just a hint of how I could make him change his mind. And only after his eyes burned a scarring hole in my heart, did he answer my perfectly reasonable question.

  ‘I’m twenty-eight and you’re barely twenty-two, Cate. I’m just sick of feeling so fucking old.’ He let out a deep resigned sigh and held my astonished gaze for a second. Then he left, closing the door to our flat, and to me, and moved to the coast on his own. And once again Nick was steadfast at my side, openly willing to give me anything that I needed.

  Chapter 3

  About a month or so later on a cold Wednesday morning in April, I fell to my knees in the bathroom, vomiting so hard that I thought my spleen would be next to splash into the toilet. Staring down at what I hoped were the last remnants of my stomach floating in the bottom of the porcelain bowl, I tasted the sour aftermath and shuddered at the bitterness. As I tried to decide whether or not the vomiting had subsided — and as disgusting as it was to see regurgitated raisin toast in the Caroma — I read the regurgitation like tea leaves. I began thinking about my life and how, after Roy had left me, I had found myself in this less than ideal, but not at all unwanted, situation.

  By now you know enough about me to understand that I wasn’t very good at making the “right” choices. In all honesty, Roy had pushed me toward dependable, trustworthy, ambitious Nick, to finally repeat the perfect performance of five years earlier. It’s not like I cheated on Roy when I’d spent those nights wrapped up in Nick’s arms, wrapped up in his body, creating this baby that made me throw up every ounce of food that I was lucky enough to feel like eating. So why, now that Roy had returned from the sunny coast a few days ago, begging for my forgiveness, did I feel as if I had betrayed him?

  I wiped my mouth with the back of my wrist before flushing, and pushed myself up from my knees. After taking a short sip of water from the bathroom tap, I took a long hard look at myself in the small cabinet mirror in the small bathroom of the small cottage that I still shared with my alcohol-dependant Dad. I wouldn’t dare call him an alcoholic; we Alexanders never admitted defeat. What we did do, though, was bury our truths deep, covering them with tid-bit nonsense that distracted the people that we knew; watch our right hands sing and dance while our left hands wilt lifelessly. Dad muted himself with alcohol to disguise the loss that tore him to shreds, and I would do anything, sacrifice anything, to keep anyone in my life who loved me, all the while pretending that I didn’t care for love at all.

  I peered closer into my reflection and tried to envisage myself with Roy years from now. I tried to imagine him without his innate ability to make me feel worthless, and I didn’t know if it was a good or bad thing that the image just refused be conjured. It just wasn’t there. And so that only left Nick’s face, remaining the only certainty as to how my life could play out. But could I use whatever affection that he had for me as a means to get what I want? Could I use the only person who said nice things to me like that?

  I watched my face as my brows crinkled with indecision and I shook my head free of the clouded mess. The only matter that left no room for discussion right now was that I was starving for a crispy bacon sandwich smothered in tomato sauce. The rest could wait until I’d had enough perspective to make the right life-changing decision, which at twenty-two was a daunting position to be in.

  I spanned my fingers over my abdomen and instantly a smile spread across my lips. Roy or Nick, as harsh as I sound I didn’t really care. My baby was alive and growing within me and that was all that mattered.

  I was living with my dad again now that I no longer had my flat that I had shared with Roy; that had been re-leased to other tenants the Monday after he left.

  I sat out on the ageing, creaky, back steps as I watched the wildflowers in my dad’s garden sway lightly in the winter breeze, and tried to enjoy my morning juice — which would have usually been coffee but maternal instincts had prevailed and I’d had given that up.

  The sun was shining down on me and I lifted my face to it and closed my eyes, trying to imagine if this was how it would have felt to wake up a month ago, when I should have lived about 600 kilometres away from where I was right now. More than being disappointed with the fact that my life had been unexpectedly and selfishly turned upside down, what had hurt most that night when Roy had left was that he had taken back his promise to give me what I wanted more than anything else. He’d promised me that he’d make up for everything that he had put me through. He’d make up for all of the ugly fights and ugly words and ugly demands. He’d promised to make me a mother, and he’d been very convincing. He’d bought a conception book and everything. But like all of his whims, Roy was onto the next big idea in a flash and the book began gathering dust within the first few months. The changing of his mind so flippantly was more crushing to me than I could have imagined.

  My dad stretched the squeaky screen door open, allowing it to snap closed with a homely thud as he lowered himself next to me. ‘Bacon’s ready, love.’

  ‘Thanks Dad.’

  I passed on the warmth of the sun to my much loved dad by way of a wide smile as I took the plate from him, indulging in my first satisfyingly devouring bite.

  Jim Alexander sat next to his only family, sucking in a deep morning breath of nicotine, and then frantically waved his hands around, redirecting the poisonous cloud of smoke from me. ‘Sorry,’ he apologised sincerely as he stood and took a few steps down the stony path.

  He was a man of few words, but when Dad did speak you knew that it meant something of value. He refused to waste his own time, or anybody else’s, with useless drivel. If what you were going to say didn’t mean anything worthwhile, then you would be warned with a short grunt not to waste your breath. I remembered my dad always being this straightforward, but since my mother had left I wished that I could have a conversation with him that didn’t have to be thoroughly thought through. I wished we could just have a chat about something wistfully daydreamy, and not have our only communication to be about what was for dinner or what was on TV that night or why he couldn’t have another beer despite the fact that he’d had twelve already. Other than when he’d get his next alcohol fix, the only topic that Dad seemed to get animated about was Roy. But ironically that was a subject that I refused to talk to him about.

  So we co-existed in habitual quietness. It was peaceful but frustrating to me at times; my distracting right hand danced considerably more than his. I was hoping that just this one time he would be open for a discussion.

  ‘Nick asked me to marry him,’ I casually ventured between mouthful
s of breakfast. Truthfully, it was not a marriage proposal as such; there was no down-on-one-knee with a ring out stretched before him. It was more of a casual request, a blasé idea even, that I could take or leave. Perhaps it was just the nerves that Nick had pointlessly tried to hide from me that had made it seem like an indifferent postulation, and it left me wondering why he couldn’t say what he really felt, like he had once before. Did he share my fear of rejection?

  Dad took the last drag of his cigarette before dropping it to the ground to smother it under his foot, and slowly blew out the last of the morning ritual. It was the only time he smoked, foolishly believing that his body actually needed this routine just so that he could get through the rest of the day, that, and a beer or twenty-four on the back porch after dinner.

  He sat next to me on the step again, but he remained quiet for a minute or two before speaking. I hoped he would give me what I needed.

  ‘Your mother made me the happiest man in the world when she said yes to me,’ he obliged without looking my way, as if speaking to an unseen person in the mid-distance. He thumbed his gold band, slowly turning it on his third finger. It was heartbreakingly sad to watch just how much he still missed his wife. After everything horrid that she’d put him through, he was still lost in her. ‘At first, she didn’t love me like I loved her, but she married me anyway.’ He finally glanced my way, smiling briefly.

  ‘Are you saying that I should accept, then? You think I’d be happy?’ I called his bluff. He pondered.

  ‘I think that it’s foolish to believe that love is the only tie that holds two people together. Unlike your mother and me, you and the Mathieson boy are friends first, and that’s the most important way to start something like this, otherwise…’ he paused and drew in a deep breath, blowing it out slowly, ‘…otherwise…’ he couldn’t continue as his eyes welled. It was at such heart-rending times as this that I hated my mother more than I thought I was capable of hating anything. I hated her for still having a hold on my dad, for torturously stealing away my only family and his loyal heart; she is, or was, in no way deserved of such an honour. Even after all of the years of trying to figure it all out, of trying to comprehend why he couldn’t finally let her go, I was still at a complete loss.

  Dad was a catch in his day. I’d found boxes of photos in the roof one year while I was retrieving the Christmas decorations. Before the sorrow lines dragged his mouth into a concrete frown and his eyes drooped as if they had been crying for a lifetime — maybe they had — he was quite dashing. With looks like that I was convinced that he could have had his pick of any beautiful, heart-of-gold type of women. Instead, he was dealt a joker, a dud. And now, watching him still mourning in the back garden that had not changed since she had left, my hatred, for a mother that never was, still grew.

  Dad let out another deep sigh and stood before holding out his hand. ‘I’ll wash that for you, love.’ I gave him the empty plate to him and then I heard the light thud of the door closing behind him.

  I closed my eyes and lifted my face to the sun again and thought about what would hold me to Nick if it wasn’t love. And the only answer to that question was the possibility of the big family that I’d always dreamed of, and, to this lonely heart of mine, that was more important to me than anything else.

  The Alexander/Mathieson wedding was planned for June eighteenth, so with less than one week to go there were still many final preparations to get organised. Putting a wedding together in less than eight weeks was a big enough task as it was.

  Day five of the countdown meant that I was having my final alterations done on my dress, which brought me to a pedestal in the Mathieson’s living room, being poked and prodded with dress pins that seemed to be magnetically attracted to my skin.

  Lucy, my only bridesmaid, stifled her laughter from the cushioned La-Z-Boy in the corner of the room as a flash of light sparked from her Nikon, capturing me as I bit my lower lip attempting to divert the stinging pain from my ankles.

  I couldn’t quite pinpoint my reasoning, but Lucy irritated me more often than not, which made trying to be her friend, well, a little trying. I did consider that perhaps she irritated me because she insisted on calling me Catey instead of my much preferred Cate. But I wasn’t known to be that petty. All I knew was that it really, really bugged me. It’s a respect thing, you know? I’d asked her to call me a particular name and she obviously refused. Irritating!!

  Nick, Lucy, and I all attended the same high school, and the three of us hung out a lot, but in her huggy, air-kissy way that she was with only Nick, Lucy always made me feel like I was the third wheel. To be completely fair, besides gluttony, being paranoid is a trait that I would probably use most to describe myself, so perhaps our stand-offish relationship was more a reflection of me rather than her. It was safe to say that she was mostly Nick’s friend, and I didn’t really have any of my own, so Lucy was my only choice for a girl in a pretty dress to stand next to me while I became Mrs Mathieson.

  Lucy made a modest living out of creating timeless memories for people, and I had begrudgingly allowed her overzealousness to have free reign on what should be etched in history and what should be left to speculation. We obviously had differing opinions about what served as a fondly smiled-upon memory to bore the grandchildren with in the years to come, and what should most definitely be burnt at the first possible chance. This lip-biting pic, in my opinion, was already ash as far as I was concerned.

  ‘Not pinning you, am I love?’ Nick’s mother asked as she continued to efficiently work.

  ‘No, Mrs Mathieson,’ I said brightly before begging inwardly for mercy. Lucy snorted and I threw her a rueful ‘you’re next’ look, which wiped the smile swiftly from her pixie face.

  Even though it was a given that Lucy would be responsible for digitally capturing our nuptials, Nick’s mum had been instrumental in the planning of the other million details of the wedding: creating a breathtaking dress, organising the celebrant, and offering the winery’s wistful allure as a lovely backdrop for the momentous day. Then there were the flowers, the jewellery, the suits, the ring, the invites and the other million and three things that all needed to be coordinated if this day was to be perfect.

  The matriarch of the Mathiesons had obstinately hinted for the past twenty-two years that Nick and I partner up, so now that it was finally happening she had unleashed the exhilaration that had been building for a lifetime. It wasn’t a completely unreasonable assumption to make; Nick and I always gotten along well and, most importantly to the family orientated population of Shady Valley, for the most part our moral compasses pointed in the same direction. We believed that above all else, family must always remain at the forefront of our focus. But despite our compatibility, I had told her, and Mrs Mathieson begrudgingly agreed with a deep sigh, that when it’s forced it just won’t work. So for the past five or so years she’d only made subtle quips about how perfect it would be if her dreams came to fruition.

  Mrs Mathieson was never obscure about what she wanted, or afraid to broadcast our engagement to the entire country; apparently announcing it to even the national papers seemed a completely appropriate response to the news. I was surprised that CNN hadn’t run a five minute story at prime time. But since then, Nick had had a few gentle, carefully chosen words with her and Mrs Mathieson had thankfully kept her ecstatic ideas relatively curtailed. Her presence could be overbearing at times and I had to remind myself that Mrs Mathieson had never had a daughter of her own, and all of her daughters-in-law lived interstate. The fact that I was marrying into the family, and that we were going to live locally, was the answer to not only Nick’s prayers but his mother’s as well.

  ‘And stop calling me Mrs Mathieson. Please call me Mum,’ she went on through thin lips, pressing the pins between them.

  ‘Ok, Mum,’ I obeyed. Mrs Mathieson stopped hemming, holding her position as if she was frozen in place. Then she looked up at me, her eyes brimming with tears.

  ‘What is it?’ I i
nvestigated my champagne silk, strapless, baby-doll dress that accentuated my full breasts and then fell elegantly to my feet. Had I bled from my pincushion legs and ruined the masterpiece?

  ‘I’m so sorry, sweetheart. I didn’t mean to be so…so…Mrs Mathieson is fine, or just Beth.’ She elegantly lifted her petite, sixty-year-old frame from the floor. Lucy handed her a tissue and she dabbed her lightly made-up face.

  ‘It’s ok,’ I gently reassured her. ‘I really don’t mind.’

  ‘No. I should never have been so rude as to suggest such a presumptuous thing,’ Beth apologised through sorrowful sobs. I lifted my dress and stood down from the pedestal of a timber stool, making me a good foot shorter that I had just been. I stood in front of Beth and took hold of her hand.

  ‘You have been more of a mother to me than anyone else. So please believe that I don’t mind,’ I said. I loathed the fact that I people-pleased, but better to do that than have them dislike me.

  Beth hugged me, gently though; the dress was a delicately embroidered piece. ‘Oh, Catherine, thank you.’

  ‘It’s ok.’ I threw Lucy a mischievous grin. ‘Now, come on, let’s get this dress finished so that Lucy can have her turn.’

  ‘Oh, yes!’ Beth said excitedly. ‘I can’t wait to see how that mulberry silk looks against your stunning ruby red hair.’

  From the La-Z-Boy, Lucy rolled her eyes. ‘I’m beside myself with anticipation.’

  After Beth had closed the door behind us, farewelling us with some left-over casserole to supplement my dad’s lack of healthy cuisine, I could feel Lucy watching me inquisitively as we strolled down the lavender-lined path.

  ‘How are your ankles?’ I asked her.

  ‘I’m thankful that my dress is floor length, I can tell you that much; she’s a fucking sadist!’