by HC Michaels
Meanwhile, Tony lived a life of luxury with precious Sandra. Even her two adult sons were well-off. She was the only one left destitute by the divorce.
She knew Theo’s first wife had also been left destitute. She’d seen her a few times outside the house dropping off Amber in her Corolla, wearing her K-Mart clothes. Theo didn’t seem to care. He was just like Tony.
She’d first met Theo a very long time ago at a party, but as he didn’t remember her, she kept this information to herself. Nobody wanted a housekeeper who had a connection to their life. Particularly if that connection went by the name of Bruno Martini, who Tony had happened to go to school with. She had a better chance at keeping her job if she just kept her mouth shut.
She screwed up her nose at Skye’s photo in a frame next to Theo’s side of the bed. She could only just see it poking up above all those pillows that were her morning headache of a jigsaw puzzle. She had to be careful to place each one in exactly the right position if she wanted to avoid another bed-making lesson from Skye.
Skye smiled at her from behind the glass frame. She really was a beautiful almost-bimbo. Perfect teeth, dainty features, eyes the colour of the ocean and a figure like some kind of supermodel. No wonder Theo hadn’t been able to resist her. Not many men would be able to. At least he hadn’t been married at the time, she supposed.
“Lucky bitch,” she said to Skye’s photo. “Enjoy it while it lasts.”
Her mobile phone buzzed in the pocket of her apron, making her jump. It was a text from Skye.
Skye Manis
Won’t be home until late. Forgot to tell you the microwave is filthy. Please clean. Thx.
“Thanks, my arse,” muttered Linda.
She paused as she reached the bedroom door and smiled. The microwave could wait. Now she knew Skye wouldn’t be home for hours, there was something else she’d much rather do first.
Linda sat down in the chaise longue in Skye’s dressing room with the leather-bound diaries in a pile at her feet.
She picked one up at random, her foot drumming nervously on the plush carpet. It was wrong to invade Skye’s privacy like this, but the temptation was too great. Besides, when you hand-washed someone’s underwear there weren’t really too many secrets between you. There could be no surprises in here.
She looked at the date on the first entry.
2 May 1989
How strange. That date was far too early for Skye to have been writing diaries. She wouldn’t even have been born.
She looked inside the front cover and found a familiar name scrawled in red pen.
Clara Butterford
Skye’s mother.
Linda’s shoulders slumped. She wasn’t interested in reading the diaries of some crazy old bird. Still, it wouldn’t hurt to skim through them a little. It sure beat cleaning a microwave.
2 May 1989
I thought when I was appointed as a principal dancer with the Australian Ballet that my life was perfect. Wrong! Wrong! Wrong!!!!!!!! When that happened, I hadn’t even known what it was like to be happy. I wasn’t even properly a woman. I hadn’t met Jacques. Well, actually I had met him. We had all met him. He is the most respected artistic director in town. But now ... now I have really met him. I have met every part of him and he made my body dance in a way it never has before. I accidentally told him that I love him right after we made love. It just slipped out from underneath my happiness. I nearly died with embarrassment in case he didn’t love me too, but he tucked my hair behind my ear and said, ‘Me too, ma cherie.’ I never meant to love him. I mean, he has been with so many women before and I have only been with him. (I refuse to count Troy because he turned out to be gay so anything that happened between us doesn’t count.) But to think that with all the women he’s had, I am the one he loves! Me!!!! Hearing those words from him was like a receiving a standing ovation. It was the same buzz. Maybe even a bigger buzz. Jacques loves me! And I love him.
Clara xxxxxx
Linda yawned as she skipped through the next few pages—they were filled with the same kind of gushing phrases and exclamation marks —until she found an entry that held the promise of some drama.
21 July 1989
Jacques has returned to Paris. He didn’t even say goodbye. Not a note, not a phone call, not even a message passed on through a friend. Did I mean so little to him? Why did he tell me he loved me if that was his plan? Technically when I think about it, he didn’t actually say he loved me. He said, ‘Me too.’ But still, doesn’t that count??? He wasn’t talking about the weather, was he? He said it. I didn’t imagine it. I even wrote it down in this diary so I wouldn’t ever forget. I found out about it at rehearsals today. A group of girls were talking about him and one of them asked me if it had been a teary farewell. I didn’t even have a clue what they were talking about. I must have looked like the world’s biggest idiot. I had to go to the bathroom to vomit. I haven’t stopped vomiting since. I haven’t kept anything down for three days now. I have thought about following him to Paris to confront him, but opening night is next week. I would be thrown out of the ballet and I’ve worked too hard for that. I will not let him ruin my life. Mark my words. I am going to dance and dance and not give that liar another thought. I will show him what he is missing out on. When he comes back to Melbourne, he will be begging me to take him back.
Clara xx
In the next few entries, Clara seemed to be trying to prove to herself that she wasn’t thinking about her runaway lover. She wrote about the ballet, other dancers, movies she’d seen and what she ate for breakfast. There was page after page outlining every banal detail of her life. It was no wonder Jacques chose Paris over her company. She was about as interesting as watching television in a blackout.
Things started to get interesting again in October of that year.
3 October 1989
I am in a nightmare. Please, wake me up! I can’t believe this is happening. I’m pregnant. Like, actually, properly pregnant. Five months gone and the doctors say it’s too late to get rid of it. It is Jacques’s (of course). I wish it belonged to anyone else. Even Troy. I would happily have Troy’s baby, if it meant it didn’t belong to Jacques. No, that’s not true. I don’t want a baby at all. I never have. I have been drinking raspberry leaf tea by the bucketful. I heard it can bring on a miscarriage. With me, it only seems to be making the pregnancy stronger. It looks like the only way to get rid of this baby would be to kill myself. If only I noticed what was going on earlier. I thought I was vomiting because Jacques left me. I haven’t even put on any weight, nor have I had regular periods since I got serious about ballet. And my back has been aching, but I thought it was just because of all the extra rehearsals. The doctor looked at me like I have lost my marbles. I hate it when people do that. I don’t know what to do. Jacques still hasn’t come back from Paris. I heard someone say that he’s staying there for good. They said he’s getting married to some French ballerina. That can’t be right. He’s not the marrying kind. If he was, then he would have married me.
I wish you could tell me what to do.
Clara
Ouch! Linda couldn’t image how Skye must have felt reading that. To know that your mother not only hadn’t wanted you, but she’d thought about killing herself to get rid of you. That must lodge a pain deep in your soul. It was surprising Skye wasn’t even more messed up than she already was.
The way Clara had talked about getting rid of Skye, reminded her of the callous way Tony had severed her from his life, only somehow it seemed far worse. Husbands promised to love you forever, but often that wasn’t the case. But mothers ... If you were supposed to be able to count on anything in life, it was your mother’s love, wasn’t it? Even her own sons, who’d treated her far from well in the past few years, were still the only people in the world she’d throw herself in front of a train for without a second thought. They were her children. She loved them, even if she didn’t always like them.
Concerned about the time and wanting to read m
ore, she skipped forward to November.
12 November 1989
I wish people would stop expecting me to be happy about this baby. Who in their right mind would be happy about the end of a career they love? I have worked so hard to be on that stage. I have danced with broken bones, fevers and blisters the size of the Sydney Opera House. I have said no to every dessert and glass of wine ever offered to me and yes to every rehearsal request, interview and photo opportunity. I have missed out on sleep, weekends away with my girlfriends and dates with rich and handsome men. I have turned my body into a machine, able to endure crippling pain while projecting an image of serenity and grace. Nobody realises what sacrifices I have made, unless they are a dancer themselves—and they are too busy celebrating my demise as they rub their hands together thinking about what opportunities that opens up for them. I know, because I have been in their shoes. When Miranda broke her leg all those years ago, I could not have been happier. It was the best thing that ever happened to me. This is the worst. I know I will never dance the same again. I can feel my body crumbling as my stomach begins to expand. It is betraying me in the same way Miranda’s leg betrayed her. I wrote to Jacques and told him. I’ll copy out his reply here:
No, that isn’t a misprint. HE DID NOT REPLY. That’s how much he cares. This baby is sucking the life out of me already and it hasn’t even been born. Does thinking that make me a bad person?
Clara
Personally, Linda thought it possibly did make Clara a bad person. It wasn’t the baby’s fault, even if that baby had grown up to be somewhat a bad person herself.
She wondered if she was being harsh. Was Skye really a bad person? She was shallow. And selfish. And rude pretty much all of the time. But it wasn’t like she’d robbed any banks or killed anyone. Perhaps she wasn’t a bad person. Just a bit of a bitch.
She flipped forward to the entry announcing Skye’s birth.
17 February 1990
The baby came early, of course. It’s a girl. I have called her Skye. I always liked that name. I thought if I gave her a name I like then maybe I will like her too. Besides, Skye suits her. She is everywhere I look, her presence hovering over me night and day. Sometimes she’s sunny and bright and other times she’s dark and menacing. It has been six weeks since the birth and my body is a wreck. The actual birth wasn’t too much of a problem. The doctor said he has never seen anyone cope with the pain so well. I am told she is a pretty good baby. Makes me wonder what other babies are like. This one cries and poops like she is worried it is about to be outlawed. Maybe she will be a ballerina and can take over my career. She has taken over everything else, she may as well take that too. I am not sure she has the legs for it though. I know she’s just a baby, but they are kind of chunky. Perhaps I am just not used to seeing so many rolls of fat on a person. She looks a lot like Jacques. She has his eyes. I still think about him all the time, hoping he’ll come back. I sent him a photo of Skye as an enticement, but so far his response has been the same as last time. Nothing. I wonder how many other ballerinas he’s knocked up. Skye probably has half siblings all over the world. At least she will know she won’t have any siblings courtesy of me. I will never repeat this mistake. Never.
She’s crying again. I wish she would stop.
Clara
Linda put the diary down. Oh, how she’d love to take these home and read them properly.
She noticed a diary on the bottom of the pile with a red piece of paper sticking out the top. It must be some kind of special entry.
It wouldn’t hurt to read just a little more.
13 March 2015
I am losing all sense of myself. It is like having a loose thread on a favourite sweater and the more you pull at it, the more the sweater begins to unravel. So, you tuck the thread through a loop and tie a knot. Some days the thread manages to remain in place and other days it pulls itself loose, making the hole bigger and bigger, until you are forced to accept it’s ruined. My mind is that sweater. I am unravelling and no matter how hard I try to stop it, the damn thread just keeps pulling loose. I don’t want to live like this. First, my body was stolen by my child and now my mind is eating itself alive, determined that soon there will be nothing of me left. It frightens me so much that I can no longer sleep at night. Can I keep any part of myself safe? No!!!! I must hand my mind over to the place my body went years ago. It is sitting there in the junkyard next to my career.
I tried to take my own life today. It wasn’t the first time. It wasn’t even the second. But I just couldn’t go through with it, while there is still so much of me here inside my head. I need to wait for the golden moment. That perfect moment in time when I’m insane enough to want to kill myself, yet still sane enough that I know how. I would love to know when that moment will be. If only I could set my alarm and do what I wasn’t brave enough to do today.
Life isn’t fair. I need to stop expecting it to be. It’s not a movie. It’s not going to have a happy ending. I know Skye thinks I was a terrible mother. I was. I am still a terrible mother. I wish I hadn’t been. Maybe then I could ask for her help to finish me off if I don’t manage to do it in time. It’s ironic really. I am wishing she loved me more so that she would kill me. As it stands, she hates me far too much to ever possibly consider taking on a task like my murder. Pity. I’m not even sure that’s true. She’s always wanted my attention. I’ve been the one unable to give it to her. When her father broke my heart, he broke it for good. Nobody has been able to make it work again. Not even our daughter. Especially not our daughter who looks at me with his eyes. He left without giving me a second thought, leaving me with a souvenir that would keep him in my life every second that I have left. Maybe this dementia will be a blessing. Maybe it is the only way I’ll ever be able to forget about Jacques.
Clara
26 September 2015
This will be my last entry. I look at these dairies and I know they are mine, but wreading them is like eavesdrooping on a stranger.
I am forgetting how to write. How to spell. How to wread. It’s humiliating.
As my sane mind drawes to a close, so do the entrys in these dairies. My only freinds. My record that I ecisted.
Goodbye.
Clara
Linda wondered if perhaps some lives were best left unrecorded. She felt sick.
Imagine keeping diaries like these hidden in your closet. Skye had obviously been reading them recently. How disturbing.
So much made sense now. Skye must have married Theo as a substitute father figure. And she visited her mother every week still hoping to gain acceptance from her. Or maybe it was to torture her? Maybe she visited her and slipped laxatives into her coffee and thumbtacks into her bed.
Linda put the diaries back the way she’d found them and went downstairs to clean the microwave, feeling far less resentful about it than she had an hour ago.
20 Days Before The Break
Skye liked a lot of things about her job, but in particular she liked that she wasn’t expected to make too many appearances in the office. Usually she just dropped in to say hello if she was in town shopping or if a staff meeting was called. She’d hated being tied to a desk all day when she worked at the call centre.
Her boss, Mariana, had never been to her house, but had called the day before to ask if it was all right if she came over for a coffee.
Skye had hesitated. She wasn’t sure if she wanted Mariana to see where she lived. It was never a good idea for your superiors to be aware you were doing better financially than they were.
Mariana had the team over for drinks last Christmas and had swanned around like her house was a palace. It was a lovely home, but the almost-actual palace Skye lived in was in a completely different league.
If Mariana saw where Skye lived, she might feel bad about her own home. That wasn’t good for Mariana, and it certainly wasn’t good for Skye.
“Why don’t I come past the office?” Skye had suggested.
“Don’t be silly,” sai
d Mariana. “It will be easier for you if I come to you. You’ll be swamped with people and questions if you come in. Let’s keep it low key.”
She reluctantly agreed and now found herself waiting in the kitchen, one eye on the video screen of the security camera pointed at the front gate, and the other on the oven, making sure she didn’t burn the scones.
Mariana loved scones and Skye loved baking. It was a win-win. She wouldn’t eat any of them herself, but the fun was in the making. She could bring any leftovers into the nursing home to share with the other residents
She felt good today. It was nice to be up and out of bed, pottering around her house like normal. It wasn’t at all difficult to pretend that nothing was wrong with her.
The doorbell rang at the exact moment the oven bell went off.
“Linda!” she called out of habit, before remembering she’d sent her to the shops with a list a mile long, certain to keep her busy for hours. It was bad enough Mariana was about to see the size of her house. She didn’t want her to know she had a housekeeper. She hadn’t heard the gardener around today, which was a bonus. Although one look at their grounds would be enough for anyone to figure out they had some help in that department. The lawn was like a golfing green and the garden beds were bursting with flowers and neatly pruned hedges. They were clearly tended to by someone with not just a green thumb, but an entire green hand.
