by Debra Oswald
Every Christmas, there was always another parcel tagged ‘For Grandma, Merry Christmas from Hamish and Fergus’, even though the two boys played no part in selection, purchase or wrapping the gift. This parcel would always contain candles and lovely bath oils chosen by Josef because he knew his mother enjoyed such things.
After the exchange of gifts, there was an awkward silence, which Josef valiantly tried to fill by pointing out things around the house. Heather looked panicky, trying to think of a way to make conversation.
‘Oh, Roza, is that a new painting?’ she asked.
‘No, no, very old. But I have moved it from that far wall to this one,’ Roza replied. Her habit was to move artworks and ornaments to different spots around the house several times each year so the eye could fall upon them freshly.
‘Ah. I didn’t notice that one when I was here the other day,’ said Heather.
Heather talked as if she visited Roza’s house often, but in truth, she only visited twice a year – Christmas and Joe’s birthday. But they all went along with the fiction that they spent lots of time together. Such fictions lubricated the social occasions in many families, those events where each individual would rather not be there, everyone trapped and pretending.
Roza did make occasional visits to town. She would go to watch the boys play sport or perform in school concerts, and then she would treat them to iced chocolate in a cafe afterwards. This was a way to spend time with her grandsons without having to enter Heather’s home, and all that entailed.
Leaving Heather to pretend interest in some artwork or other, Roza made an excuse to go into the kitchen to check on the food. From the stove, she could look back into the lounge room to see Hamish and Fergus setting up the Mouse Trap board on the carpet.
She searched the boys’ faces for signs of Josef inside them somewhere, willing the genetic material to push its way through their skin. Joe made some efforts to influence his sons in positive ways but really, for the sake of peace, he gave in to Heather and her choices again and again.
Roza was heartened to see the kids giggling together over the game. She regretted that Josef had been an only child. Siblings could share the burden of their parents’ fears and expectations. She wished Joe had had the benefit of that. She wished he had that now.
Then, a moment later, Roza observed Hamish snatch a red plastic piece from Fergus, and soon they were squabbling, whining for fizzy drink, dobbing on each other, both telling shameless lies to their mother, Hamish glowering at Fergus with hateful focus, as if his survival depended on destroying his younger brother.
As the afternoon wore on, the bickering would worsen. Heather aggravated the problem, playing the two boys off against each other, shaming one child while praising the other for some goody-goody posturing. It must be said that, regrettably, Josef did little to improve things, adopting a neutral, diplomatic role, only stepping in to negotiate the ceasefire terms. And through all this, there was nothing a grandmother could do or say.
Roza loved Hamish and Fergus fiercely, no matter how obnoxious they might one day become. It wasn’t their fault this situation was allowed to go on. And however Roza might twist her thoughts and opinions, however much she might wish to cut dead her feelings for these difficult children, nothing would ever dissolve the visceral love for her grandsons.
*
Christmas Fucking Day. Sheena regretted she’d ever accepted the invitation to the old lady’s house – an arrangement made before the kissing display had started.
The night before, she had contemplated giving Kieran a lecture about keeping his paws off the girl, but her brother’s brain was too flooded with infatuated chemicals to process sensible thoughts. And anyway, the pashing in the orchard hadn’t escalated into anything more. Kieran wasn’t famous for self-restraint, so it had to be the girl who was maintaining those boundaries. Most likely, the whole business would stay at this teen-princess level: just kissing and besotted staring. Nothing to panic about, however nauseating it might be to witness.
This morning, Sheena had let Kieran have a sleep-in until eight, which he declared to be the best Christmas present he’d ever received. They picked fruit until midday, when Celia brought down ham-and-salad rolls for everyone. Then at three they all knocked off work to get ready for dinner at Roza’s.
Sheena did have one more crack at wriggling out of the invitation – surely Celia would prefer they didn’t go – but Zoe pushed for the day to run as planned.
So now here they were, Sheena and her brother – having washed off the sweat from the day’s picking and put on the least-crappy clothing they had – walking down the slope to Roza’s front door.
Kieran carried a box of wine and soft drink that Celia had brought to the yard earlier. Celia’s arms were full, encircling a huge ceramic bowl of chicken salad. Zoe carried a platter with a dessert under a protective mesh cover to keep off insects. That girl always looked pretty, even when she was sweaty and filthy, so now, strolling along in a silky, flowered dress – a Christmas present, apparently – she looked like a film star in a movie about a fairy princess from the fucking forest.
‘Merry Christmas,’ Sheena murmured, adding to the chorus of season’s greetings burbling through Roza’s living room.
Sheena did not want to be here. Socialising wasn’t exactly her strong suit. And today, with all the unsettling shit going on, it felt like the floor could fracture and collapse underneath her any second. She was sneaking looks at Celia, to suss how angry she was about the kissing business and what that would mean. She kept an eye on Zoe too, wondering how the princess was going to play it this afternoon. She flashed warning looks to Kieran – Behave yourself. And all the while, she fought the urge to bolt out the door and drag her brother with her.
Sheena heard her own voice come out with thin, breathy politeness as she was introduced to Joe’s wife, Heather. ‘Lovely to meet you.’
Heather had a pointy face like a fox, a face that would’ve been considered pretty in high school. Now she looked too sour to make anyone say ‘pretty’. She was wearing so much make-up, with foundation and powder caked on her foxy little features, Sheena could smell it when she walked past. Heather’s dyed-blonde hair had been given a determined going-over with a curling wand and then lacquered into submission with hairspray. Her beige skirt came with matching waistcoat, worn over a pink blouse that tied at the neck with a bow.
Not that Sheena had any right to be snide about this woman’s grooming choices, given she herself was standing there with mousy roots coming through her cheap black dye job, zero makeup to cover her sun-damaged skin, and wearing a tatty shirt over black jeans.
‘Shauna, is it?’ said Heather. ‘Hello, Shauna. Merry Christmas.’ She retracted her apricot-frosted lips to show her teeth in an unconvincing forgery of a smile.
Sheena figured Joe hadn’t told his wife very much about the two pickers from Celia’s place who would be joining them for Christmas dinner, because Heather was eyeballing them with a mixture of disbelief and alarm. And when Kieran galloped over to join the two boys on the floor – ‘Mouse Trap? Mad! I’ve seen the ads for this on TV!’ – the woman looked downright scared. She thought Kieran’s trashiness was contagious, infecting her precious high-class kids with low-life germs.
‘You boys should pack that game away,’ she said. ‘We’ll be eating soon.’
Hamish whined in protest, but when his mother glared at him, he shut up.
Fergus was busy sulking about the game being shut down, so Zoe coaxed him to show her how the Spirograph worked. The princess was sweet with both those boys. Sheena figured they were like cousins to her.
Celia swept through the living room, making an effort to smile, as if it was her duty to keep this event sailing breezily along despite the discomfort squirming close under the surface.
‘Can I pour anyone a glass of wine? Sheena, have you tried one of Roza’s yummy cheese pastries? Ooh, Heather, did you make that dip? I love the way it’s shaped like a Chri
stmas tree!’
After some polite eating of hors d’oeuvres, Celia gave Hamish and Fergus presents, which they unwrapped with mumbled thanks then quickly tossed into a laundry basket with the rest of their haul.
‘Thank you,’ said Joe with a wincing smile, embarrassed by his sons’ lack of manners. Sheena saw Celia smile back at him – Don’t worry about it.
The adults apparently had a long-standing agreement only to give presents to the children. Because Zoe still counted as a child, Roza gave her a diary, with ‘1977’ in embossed numerals nestled in silver curlicues on the midnight-blue hard cover, the edges of the pages marbled with red and blue.
‘It’s such a beautiful thing, Roza,’ said the girl, then she laughed. ‘All my secret thoughts can go in here.’
Joe gave Zoe a globe of the earth with a light bulb in it, so the oceans and continents were illuminated from the inside.
‘I wanted to give you the whole world,’ he joked.
‘Oh, wow . . . thank you, Joe,’ said Zoe. ‘I love it.’ She spun the globe on its metal stand so the world flew round, patches of colour bouncing across her eyes as the different countries flicked past. Chances were a girl like Zoe would end up going to a fair number of those places.
When they sat down to eat, the nine of them just fitted around the fully extended dining table, with extra chairs brought in from other rooms. Kieran and Zoe chose seats on opposite corners, as if they’d agreed this beforehand. Presumably they knew they couldn’t keep their paws off each other if they sat side by side.
There was a lot of strange food on the table Sheena had never seen before in her life. But some of it – like Roza’s stuffed red peppers – was better than you would think just by looking at it.
Kieran was making an effort to display proper manners at the table, his eyes darting around the huge amount of food laid out, his hands twitching to stop himself grabbing for stuff. As he tasted each dish, he blurted out compliments – ‘Roza! You’re the best cook in the world!’, ‘Did you say this is a duck? I’ve never eaten a duck before!’, ‘Celia, your chicken salad is – far out, that is good.’
He struggled to keep smiling as he chewed a mouthful of the food Heather had contributed. Everything she cooked was oddly gritty and left a chemical coating on the inside of your mouth. Even so, Kieran managed to find a way to praise her – ‘Food built to look like an igloo – that is mad! That is the coolest thing I’ve ever heard of.’
‘Thank you,’ said Heather and did a weird tight thing with her mouth. She didn’t want to receive compliments from a yobbo like Kieran. The way she acted, you’d think he’d just spat in her face.
Sheena wasn’t the most diplomatic person on the planet – she knew that. But even she was shocked by how openly mean Heather was about Roza’s food, poking at it as if insects were about to crawl out. She winced when she tasted some of the dishes and turned to Joe to pull disgusted faces, trying to recruit her husband to make fun of Roza’s cooking. As if that was ever going to happen.
Over dinner, Heather launched into a boastful monologue about her kids, bragging about school results and sporting achievements, with sniggering comments about the inadequacies of their classmates thrown in.
Sheena watched Celia, who was making the appropriate impressed noises in response to Heather’s unabashed skiting. Celia could easily have boasted about Zoe too, but she had too much class to do that.
At one point, Roza asked everyone to raise their glasses for a toast. ‘I just wish to say that I’m very happy to have you all around my table to share this Christmas meal.’ There was a chorus of ‘Cheers’ and everyone took a sip of wine or beer or lemonade.
Once the desserts and sweet things were on the table, Heather pulled Joe aside for a hissed private conversation. She was spraying dirty looks at Kieran, whispering about him to Joe without even trying to pretend she wasn’t. The woman was cranky as shit that her husband had allowed a pair of scumbags to come to their family event.
Sheena tried to catch Kieran’s eye to remind him not to be a dickhead, but he was preoccupied, raving to Celia about the pavlova being ‘incredible – I wish I had better words – just – ahhh – incredible’.
At least he wasn’t pashing that girl in front of tight-arsed Heather and her precious kids. Thank Christ.
*
Celia was only there for Roza’s sake, to help soak up Heather. And for Joe’s sake, to help control Roza’s tongue around Heather. And also for Heather’s sake, to offer some neutral ground within the difficult territory of her mother-in-law’s house.
Every year, the occasion would start out on a gust of goodwill, then drift into a strained evening that everyone wanted to escape. And today there was the added strain of Zoe and Kieran. Even though that seemed on pause right now, the worry was still humming under everything.
After they’d eaten, Roza put one of her Elvis Presley Christmas albums on the record player – she was a big Elvis fan – which blessedly covered over any uncomfortable silences.
Joe was in the corner being berated by Heather. He was still and calm with her, as he always was, as if he could absorb his wife’s irritable mood into his body to save innocent bystanders copping a spray from her.
Celia felt bad for her. Roza would be a difficult mother-in-law to please and Heather did make some efforts, however clumsily. And she was in an especially tetchy state this year because she hadn’t been forewarned that two itinerant fruit pickers would be additional guests at dinner. Joe would have wanted to avoid an argument by not telling Heather beforehand, but that struck Celia as unfair, leaving his poor wife feeling ambushed and off kilter.
When Fergus turned up the volume on the Elvis record, Heather spun round to snap at him, ‘Turn down the wailing from that disgusting man!’
But before the kid had a chance to do as he was told, Kieran turned it up even louder.
‘This is the most excellent Christmas I’ve ever had in my life!’ Kieran proclaimed.
It was cramped with so many people in Roza’s living room, but Kieran found space on the available patch of carpet to start dancing, gyrating his hips Elvis-style. Heather fired Joe a look, as if the tattooed hoodlum cavorting in front of her children was his fault.
Kieran caught Zoe’s hand to draw her over to join him. He spun her round until she was laughing dizzily, then the two of them twisted back and forth, playful and silly.
The next track was Elvis doing a bluesy number, ‘Merry Christmas Baby’. Zoe and Kieran stayed on the dance floor, swaying to the slower beat, gazing at each other. They weren’t blatantly kissing in Roza’s living room as they had been in the orchard all morning, but anyone could see how they were with each other, the infatuated intensity, the way Zoe leaned her face close in to the scoop of Kieran’s neck to whisper something to him and giggle.
Heather turned to Celia and raised her eyebrows. Celia didn’t want to stand there and cop Heather’s questions or disapproval, so she grabbed an empty food platter to carry out to the kitchen.
Once she was out of Heather’s eye line, Celia took a breath to steady herself. She didn’t give a toss what Joe’s wife thought. In fact, she’d never cared much what other people thought about how she should raise her own child. Let people like Heather clutch their fistfuls of opinions. But right now, Celia had to work out how to handle this and having Heather sneering at her didn’t help.
She deposited the platter on the sink and headed for the back door to reach the open air so she could think. She stepped onto the porch to discover Sheena was standing out there, alone.
Celia attempted a smile, a smile of solidarity. She was hoping she and Sheena could handle this together, as the two responsible adults in the story.
She flicked her head in the direction of Kieran and Zoe dancing in the living room. ‘So.’
‘Yeah,’ said Sheena, not giving much away.
‘Has Kieran had a serious girlfriend before now or . . .’
Sheena bristled. ‘If you’re trying t
o pump me for information, forget it. He’s not telling me anything you can’t see with your own eyes.’
‘I’m just trying to get a sense of —’
‘They’re not fucking on Kieran’s bunk bed, if that’s what you want to know.’
‘Fair enough, Sheena. I don’t think it’s weird for me to be concerned about my daughter.’
‘Hey, no offence to your daughter, but I’m not too stoked about this either, okay?’
‘Why do you say that?’ asked Celia.
‘Look, Kieran got himself in some trouble in Sydney so I’m —’
‘Trouble?’
‘I’m just trying to keep him settled, and this doesn’t help.’
‘Maybe it’d be best if you tell me —’
‘Best thing is if I wrench him off your daughter quick smart and haul him to the cabin,’ said Sheena, then dodged back into the house before Celia had a chance to ask another question.
‘We better go, Kieran,’ Sheena announced. ‘We’ve gotta wake up dead-set early tomorrow.’
She thanked Roza for having them, muttered a general goodbye, and steered her brother out the front door at remarkable speed.
As the last of the daylight faded, Celia was washing up in Roza’s tiny kitchen while Joe dried the dishes. Roza, exhausted by the effort of having everyone here, had been persuaded to go to bed. Zoe stayed in the living room, playing Mouse Trap with Hamish and Fergus, while Heather reclined in an armchair, nursing a bilious headache.
Celia turned to Joe but she kept her voice soft, knowing Zoe could emerge from the other room at any moment. ‘Kieran’s been in some kind of trouble,’ she said.
‘Like what?’
‘The sister just said “trouble”. That’s why they’re on the road. Kieran calls himself a “fuck-up”. You’ll think I’m neurotic —’
‘I don’t think that,’ said Joe. ‘But I doubt there’s any reason to panic.’
