Moonlight Sonata

by Eileen Merriman

  ‘I’m fine,’ Lola says, but her voice sounds odd, as if she’s on the verge of tears.

  He runs his fingers into her brow line. ‘Hey, what’s up?’

  ‘I just — today I—’ She turns her head away.

  He filters through the events of the past twenty-four hours, trying to work out what she could be so upset about. ‘Aimee and I did break up,’ he says. ‘In case you were wondering.’

  ‘I wasn’t — I mean, I heard.’ He hears her inhale. ‘Was she really angry?’

  ‘Yeah.’ Noah contemplates telling her that Aimee broke up with him rather than the other way around, then decides there’s no point going into details he’s pretty sure Lola doesn’t want to hear. He reaches for her, his lips grazing past her ear. ‘Are you sure you’re OK?’

  ‘I’m OK,’ she whispers, but still, he’s not convinced.

  ‘Lola,’ he says, finally working out what this might be about.

  ‘Yeah?’

  ‘We don’t have to do it, if you don’t want to. There’s no hurry.’ That’s not entirely true. They’ve got three more nights before he has to leave, three more nights where they could be having amazing, mind-blowing sex. But there’s no way he wants to go through with it if Lola’s having second thoughts.

  ‘That’s not it.’ She takes a deep breath. ‘Sorry. I’m just really tired, you know?’

  ‘I know.’ He kisses her, and he can’t help it, he cups her breast. She’s wearing really short boxers and a camisole top, and her nipples are so beautifully soft. Were soft, but are hardening to his touch. And now Lola’s kissing him, her tongue sliding between his lips. He can’t figure her out, but he’ll go with it, at least until she pushes him away.

  Lola doesn’t push him away. After a couple of minutes, he says, ‘Shall I get—’, and Lola says, ‘Yes,’ and he doesn’t think he’s misinterpreting that. So he fumbles with the condom, and he doesn’t know if he’s doing it right, how is he supposed to know? But she takes him in her arms, and he tries to be gentle, so gentle, even though the most amazing feeling in the world is powering through him. Through us.

  Lola gasps. They lie still, breathing in, breathing out, and all Noah can think is, I’m inside her, oh my God, I’m inside her. If this is all they get to do, then he’s OK with that. No, he’s ecstatic.

  ‘I love you,’ he says, kissing the side of her neck.

  ‘I love you too,’ Lola says, moving her hips ever so slightly, and he realises she doesn’t want to stop, so they don’t, not until. The. End.

  Not the end. The beginning.

  There’s no way they can turn away from this.

  Chapter 22:

  MOLLY 2009

  The candle on the mantelpiece guttered in the breeze coming through the window. Outside, a torch was bobbing along the periphery of the section, one of the children searching for the others in their game of Spotlight.

  ‘Is Austin OK out there?’ Molly asked, after hearing a semi-hysterical squawk from Ants and Kiri’s four-year-old.

  ‘I’m sure he’s fine,’ Kiri said, glancing at Ants. ‘He loves playing with the big kids.’

  ‘He’ll sleep in.’ Ants was looking out of the window, but not at the torch, Molly didn’t think.

  Hazel sipped on her tea. ‘The children play so well together, don’t they?’

  ‘The blondes and the brunettes,’ Sully said, flipping the cap off a beer bottle.

  ‘It’s all my fault,’ Kiri said, elbowing her husband. ‘Maybe you should have married a blondie, Ants.’

  ‘Opposites attract, right?’ Molly said, watching Ants stand up and saunter over to the fireplace, as if he weren’t listening.

  Ants ran the tip of his finger through the flame. ‘Got any more candles, Mum?’

  ‘I don’t think so. Why?’

  ‘Just wondered.’ Ants picked up the photo of their father on the mantelpiece. It had been taken six years ago, five years before his death. In the picture, their father was embracing a very large, very dead snapper. ‘What do you think he would say if he saw us now?’

  ‘He’d ask why we hadn’t got the whisky out yet,’ Sully said, and Hazel gave him a disapproving look.

  ‘How many of those have you had now, Simon?’

  ‘Settle down,’ Sully said, doing a closed-mouth burp. ‘I’m sure he’d want us to celebrate his anniversary in the appropriate fashion.’

  Ants didn’t say anything, just set the photo down and wandered out to the front balcony.

  Their mother pursed her lips. ‘I don’t think that’s any excuse for you to follow in his footsteps. If you’re not careful, you’ll end up in an early grave too.’

  ‘He died of cancer,’ Molly said, her eyes following Ants. If only Joe were here, rather than flitting between war zones. Sometimes she thought her twin had a death wish.

  She tuned back into the conversation in time to hear her mother say, ‘How’s Chloe?’

  ‘She’s fine.’ Sully drew back on his beer. ‘Her mums and babies yoga class has really taken off.’

  ‘Baby yoga?’ Richard, sitting beside Molly, looked intrigued. ‘What do the babies do, sun salutations?’ He nudged her. ‘Molly loves yoga.’

  ‘It would be fine if they weren’t so fecking obsessed with downward-facing dog,’ Molly said, rising to her feet. She heard the others laugh as she joined Ants on the balcony. Early April, and they were still in short sleeves. She missed the winterless North, sometimes.

  ‘Nice out here,’ Molly said, propping her elbows up on the railing.

  ‘Sure is,’ Ants said. He’d always been the least verbose of all her brothers but, even so, she’d never seen him so quiet.

  ‘I miss him too,’ Molly said, and, beside her, she heard Ants breathe out. She touched his back.

  ‘Do you want another drink?’

  Ants shook his head. There was a yell from the backyard, followed by a cheer.

  ‘My turn,’ she heard McKenzie call out, followed by the scuffling of an identified child along the fence line. Tom or Noah judging by the size, but it was hard to tell in the dark.

  Molly’s eyes fell on the gap between the houses across the road. A sliver of ocean was just visible, silver-tipped waves moving ceaselessly beneath the starry sky. From the lounge below, she heard the opening triplets of the ‘Moonlight Sonata’. It had been their father’s favourite piece of music.

  ‘I think they loved each other,’ she said. ‘In their own weird way.’

  Ants nudged a foot between the balustrades. ‘Do you think Dad really had an affair?’

  ‘How am I supposed to know? I was only six.’ She glanced over her shoulder, but the others had gone, presumably to listen to their mother’s tribute to their father. ‘Did Dad — when Mum was away, were there other — you know, women?’

  ‘There was a lady with buck teeth who used to come over sometimes,’ Ants said. ‘Dad would leave us with Grandma, and they’d go off to the RSA.’

  ‘Buck teeth?’

  ‘Well, they weren’t that bad, but we had to find some flaw or other.’ Ants touched his thumb to his own front teeth and gave her a grin. ‘We called her Bugs.’

  ‘How come I never heard about this?’

  ‘It didn’t last long. I was, I don’t know, twelve when she stopped coming around.’

  Molly performed a rapid calculation in her head. ‘Two years before we came back.’

  ‘Yeah. She was the only one we knew about. I guess he must have been lonely, all that time without Mum.’

  ‘I guess.’

  Ants looked at her, then said, ‘He could fix anything. Broken radios, cars, anything around the house. I used to think I had the coolest dad in the entire world. Until Mum came home and called him a drunk.’

  Molly didn’t know what to say to that. It was the first time she’d heard Ants say anything against their mother.

  ‘I don’t think they should have got back together,’ Molly said, although she hated to think what would have happened if they hadn’t. Whe
re would she be now? Maybe she’d be touring the world as a concert pianist. Maybe she’d be a bitter, twisted version of her mother. An argument from when she was thirteen years old echoed in her head.

  You’re meant to be on my side, Molly, but you fight me all the way.

  I never wanted to be like you, Mum. I’m not you.

  Ants’ voice sounded very far away. ‘Do you remember when Mum made his nose bleed?’

  ‘When she threw the apple at him,’ Molly said. How could she forget?

  No one must ever know.

  Ants squeezed the back of her neck. ‘I was so happy when you came back, you and Mum. We all were.’

  Molly swallowed. ‘Me too.’ And she really was. If only her parents could have kept a lid on their arguing, things would have been perfect. But she was starting to think there was no such thing.

  Ants pushed away from the railing. ‘Are you coming downstairs?’

  ‘Soon.’ Molly watched him walk down the stairs, then turned to face the sliver of sea again. Her mother had reached the second movement in the ‘Moonlight Sonata’, a movement that Molly had once heard described as ‘a flower between two chasms’.

  A flower. An apple. Blood and the filaments of DNA, spiralling through all their cells. The ties that bind, tangled and inseparable.

  No one will ever know.

  ‘They never will,’ she murmured and went to join her family below.

  Austin poured water from a tiny teapot into an even tinier cup and gave it to Molly.

  ‘Here’s your cup of tea,’ he said, his chubby cheeks shining in the autumn sun. ‘Do you want a bikky?’

  ‘Yes please,’ Molly said, pinching the handle of the cup between finger and thumb, her pinkie sticking out. After accepting a lumpy circle of purple play-dough, she leaned forward in her deckchair. On the street below, the older children were kicking a soccer ball between the various items of clothing they’d used to mark out the goal posts.

  ‘Ah,’ Kiri said, joining them on the balcony. ‘I see Austin’s already made you a cuppa.’

  ‘I could do with a coffee as well,’ Molly said, accepting a steaming mug from her sister-in-law.

  ‘You should try one of these bikkies,’ Austin said, pushing an orange blob of dough at his mother. ‘They’re really good.’

  Suppressing a smile at Austin’s mirroring of his grandmother’s mannerisms, Molly looked down at her watch.

  ‘Fifth of April,’ she said. Oh. Crap.

  ‘Comes before the sixth,’ Sully said, strolling out with his baked beans on toast.

  ‘Very funny.’ Molly gazed back into the lounge, where Richard was sitting at the table with the newspaper. ‘Fourteen years today,’ she said. And they’d forgotten, both of them.

  ‘Fourteen years?’ Kiri paused. ‘Oh my God, it’s your anniversary today, isn’t it?’

  Molly swallowed. ‘We’ve been so busy,’ she said. ‘I guess we both forgot, what with coming up here and all.’ There was a hollow sensation in her gut, one she’d been aware of in recent times, but hadn’t really paid much attention to. Is this what was destined to happen to their marriage, a gradual disintegration rather than a fiery crash and burn?

  ‘You should go out tonight,’ Sully says. ‘We can look after Noah.’

  Molly snorted. ‘Where to? The RSA?’

  Sully licked tomato sauce off the back of his wrist. ‘Life has moved on a bit since you left, believe it or not.’ He reloaded his fork and raised it to his lips. ‘There’s a new restaurant on top of the hill, even has a wine list.’

  ‘Yeah, you get two choices, red or white,’ Kiri said, elbowing Molly.

  ‘Whatever.’ Sully sniffed. ‘You think everything’s so much better in your big cities, but we’ve got it all here, minus the traffic.’

  ‘The Auckland traffic is one thing I’m not missing.’ Kiri sipped on her coffee. ‘Oh, another bikkie, thank you, Aus.’

  ‘It’s chocolate chip,’ Austin said, then leapt to his feet and ran inside.

  ‘But anyway,’ Kiri said, ‘you and Richard should definitely go and celebrate. Noah will be fine with us.’

  ‘I’m sure he will.’ Molly forced a smile. ‘Thanks.’

  Sully was right; the restaurant wasn’t bad at all. The meals were a third of the price of anything they’d get in Wellington, and the venison dish was the best Molly had tasted in some time.

  ‘Fourteen years.’ Richard clinked his glass against hers. ‘Did you think we’d make it this far?’

  ‘Did you think we wouldn’t?’ Molly sipped on her Pinot Gris.

  ‘I don’t know,’ he said, swirling the wine around the base of his glass. ‘Guess everyone has rough patches, right?’

  ‘That’s what relationships are about,’ Molly said. ‘For better or for worse.’ She set her glass down. ‘Even though that’s a terrible cliché.’

  Richard grinned and raised a fist to his chest. ‘Love hurts.’

  ‘Love conquers all,’ Molly said.

  ‘Love at first sight,’ Richard replied and tilted his head to one side. ‘Was it?’ She hadn’t seen his eyes twinkle like that in such a long time, hadn’t even known she’d missed him looking at her that way.

  ‘You made me my first cappuccino,’ she said, unable to make sense of the conflicted feelings swirling through her. ‘So, I guess it was.’

  ‘So really you were in love with my coffee first.’

  ‘I really was,’ Molly said, sneaking her hand onto his knee. Richard laughed and curled his fingers around hers.

  ‘You’re my one and only,’ he said. ‘Is that a cliché too?’

  ‘I think so. But I’ll let it pass.’ Molly took another sip of wine. ‘Love is blind.’

  ‘Absence makes the heart grow fonder,’ he said, as the waitress set his dessert in front of him.

  ‘Of someone else,’ they chorused, and Molly tried not to think too much about that, about who Joe might be fraternising with on the other side of the world.

  ‘But really,’ Richard said, once they’d moved onto a wonderfully decadent dish of deep-fried ice-cream, ‘we made something wonderful, didn’t we? After all that time, when we thought we’d never have children.’

  Molly set her fork down. ‘Something wonderful,’ she repeated, remembering the way she’d felt when she’d first held Noah, as if her reason for being had finally arrived. ‘Yes, he really is.’ And she thought of Noah’s golden limbs, his spiky blond hair, the salt-and-vinegar scent of his skin.

  She’d been so worried, throughout her pregnancy and Noah’s toddler years. But so far, at least, it seemed her fears were unfounded.

  Consanguinity. A fancy word for inbreeding.

  ‘That nearly derailed us, didn’t it?’ Richard asked. ‘The infertility thing.’

  Less than half of children born from incestuous unions are completely healthy.

  But Noah wasn’t just healthy, he was a happy, bright, extroverted kid. So maybe, just maybe, what she and Joe had done wasn’t so evil after all. Because without Joe, she would have no reason to go on. And if they weren’t hurting anyone, if they were happy, then wasn’t that all that mattered?

  But are you happy? Are you really?

  Richard touched her wrist. ‘Sorry. I didn’t mean to upset you.’

  ‘Oh, no.’ Molly picked up her fork. ‘No, I was just thinking … well, I’m glad we didn’t give up.’ And because the alternative, as always, was impossible, she tipped forward to kiss her husband and told him she loved him.

  It wasn’t a lie. It was just that some loves were bigger than others.

  Chapter 23:

  LOLA

  The first streaks of daylight are oozing into the sky when Lola finally gets into her own bed, see-sawing between heady exhilaration (we did it, oh my God, Noah and I did IT!) and panic (oh my God, we had sex, and what if someone finds out?). And threading through that are the images of the scene she’d stumbled across the previous afternoon.

  It can’t be true. They must have been play
-fighting.

  In the nude?

  And the noises they were making …

  Stop it, stop it.

  Lola’s brain won’t stop buzzing. She needs to talk to Noah. But she’s already tried, and she couldn’t find the right words.

  When Lola finally drifts into sleep, she dreams of blood moons and Molly-Joe Siamese twins, their faces running together like wax. When Lola looks in the mirror, she sees that her face is in two halves, too.

  The other half is Noah.

  And then it just happened. A New Year’s miracle.

  Barely formed thoughts bubble like thermal mud, bursting before she can grasp what her dream-brain is trying to tell her.

  It’s always the same, no beginning and no end.

  ‘Lola.’

  Lola opens her eyes. ‘Huh?’ Her mother is bending over her, looking worried. Lola frowns. ‘Did you just shake me?’

  ‘I was checking you were OK.’ Kiri sits beside her. ‘Do you know what time it is?’

  ‘Urrgh.’ Lola turns toward the wall. ‘You have no idea how long it took me to get to sleep.’

  ‘Lola, it’s half-past eleven. Have you taken your insulin this morning? Or eaten anything?’

  ‘I will. As soon as I get up.’ Lola rolls onto her back, blinking at the ceiling. ‘I can’t believe you woke me up.’

  ‘Lola,’ her mother says. ‘I’m going to ask you a question. It might seem a weird question, but I just need to know.’

  Oh … crap. Lola swallows. ‘Spit it out,’ Lola says over the cacophony of blood rushing through her ears in time with her heartbeat, oh-God, oh-God, oh-God. She feels her mother’s fingers on her arm.

  ‘You’re not on some sort of diet, are you?’

  Lola slips her arm out of her mother’s grasp. ‘Diet? What are you talking about?’

  ‘I just noticed you haven’t been eating much the past few days,’ Kiri says. ‘I know how image-obsessed McKenzie is, and I was worried you were trying to follow in her footsteps.’

  ‘In her footsteps?’ Lola forces a laugh. ‘She’s the last person I want to be like.’