“Yes please. And Chapatis to go with it.” Becky stood up and filled up the jug. “Cuppa? Oh, that reminds me. I brought you back some very fancy green tea from Cairns.”
Uncle Steve plucked his spectacles off his nose and placed them back in his shirt pocket. “Oooo. Presents. I love presents.” He rubbed his hands together enthusiastically. “Well, what are you waiting for? Go get it, and let’s give it a try.”
Chapter 19
Fallout.
BECKY JENSEN’S FACEBOOK STATUS: I regret everything.
Becky blinked awake, then sat up on the couch. She rubbed the sleep out of her eyes with the palms of her hands, then picked up her phone and checked for messages again. If she woke up in the middle of the night, she’d check her phone, just in case she had missed a call from Gary.
She knew that they had agreed on a clean break - it had been her idea to begin with - but that didn’t mean he couldn’t contact her to see how she was going, did it? Fair enough, she hadn’t contacted him either, but still… She tossed the phone back on the sofa, then rubbed her eyes again. She let out a long sigh, then screamed. She really thought she was going to be okay, but then all of a sudden, the depression had set in, and everything had turned to shit. Even at twenty-eight, finding out you were adopted was a big deal to get your head around. She told Uncle Steve and Clive that it was just jetlag, and that she’d be fine in a couple of days, but she knew that was a lie, and she suspected that they knew it was a lie, too.
She looked at the clock on the wall. She should call her father back. “Tomorrow.” I’ll call tomorrow.
She had fallen asleep on the couch again last night. She hadn’t slept in her own bed since she’d been back. She’d get a new bed when she was up to it, one that wouldn’t have any traces of Roger lingering on it. She had begun to purge the entire apartment of anything that reminded her of Roger.
She looked at the chaos surrounding her. Piles of books, CDs, videos, clothes, shoes, tennis rackets, stereo, fishing poles, a soccer ball, lingerie – anything that reminded her of Roger was stacked in piles on the floor around the apartment, or spilling out of garbage bags, ready for goodwill. If Roger couldn’t be bothered to collect his belongings while she’d been away, then that was his problem, not hers. She would trash the lot of it.
She reached across the coffee table, which was covered in dirty plates, mugs and empty cereal boxes, and picked up the small white stone Gary had given her. She turned it over in her fingers, then pressed the cool surface of the stone to the centre of her forehead, and closed her eyes.
Gary’s words reverberated in her mind. “It’s one of a kind, like you. And who knows, we might be the only two people on the entire planet who have ever held it.”
“I miss you so much,” she said, lying back down on the sofa, then pulling the blanket back up under her chin, the stone still clutched in her hand. On the coffee table, her eyes rested on the black beanie Clive had been wearing the day before.
Green Park was far from deserted, even for a winter’s evening in January. The sun had been out for once and had melted some of the snow on the ground. Londoners strolled about, making the most of the break in the weather. Clive sat next to Becky on the park bench, his gloved hands cradling his polystyrene coffee cup.
Becky took a long sip of her drink. “Thanks for this,” she said, holding up the cup. “And for getting me out of the apartment.”
“No problems.” He waited for a moment, then said, “So, Beck, how did it go with your uncle? I mean your dad?”
“My uncle,” Becky said, correcting him.
“I thought you said he was your dad.” He leaned back on the bench, his long legs thrust out in front of him. He wore a black beanie, which was pulled down over his ears, the collar of his jacket turned up against the wind.
“He is. Uncle Steve is my biological father, but my dad will always be my dad. Just like my mum will always be my mum.” She looked at him. “Does it sound confusing to you? It sounds confusing to me.”
Clive nodded. “Yup. I’m confused, but I know what you mean. So it’s all good with you guys then, you and your uncle?”
“Yep. It’s still a bit weird when I think about it, which I’m really trying not to, but first and foremost, Uncle Steve is the man he has always been, my Uncle Steve. I love him dearly, and I would never let anything jeopardise that. If it wasn’t for him, I wouldn’t be here. As long as he is in my life, regardless of his title, I’m happy. I’m more than happy.”
Clive smiled. “Takes more than one, if you know what I mean.”
Becky froze as he lifted his hand and brushed a stand of hair off her face, then tucked it behind her ear. If he noticed her slight flinch as his gloved fingers touched her cheek, he made no outward sign of it.
“You mean Elise?” she said.
He gave her a sideways glace. “The last time I checked, it still took at least two people to conceive a child. So how did your talk with Elise go?”
Becky sipped on her coffee, remaining silent.
Clive tuned to study her face, then frowned. “You haven’t spoken to Elise yet, have you?”
Becky shook her head, refusing to meet his eyes. She watched a man jogging past with his large, gangly dog. A deerhound, she surmised, as the dog bounded along with pronounced grace, while vapour blasted from his nostrils, reminding her of Falkor, the luckdragon from the movie The Never Ending Story. It was the first movie she could still remember watching with any clarity as a child. How simple and magical everything was when you were just a kid, she mused. Sighing, she murmured into her coffee cup. “It’s complicated.” She hesitated for a moment, then choked out, “Elise gave me away. She lied to me.”
“I’m sorry about that, but how is it any more complicated than talking to, and forgiving your Uncle Steve? The way I see it, he lied to you too, only he’s been doing it to your face for nearly thirty years.”
Becky shot him a dark look. “Twenty-eight years. And that’s different.”
“How is it different? A lie is a lie.”
He wanted to tell her that Mandy had been crying on his shoulder the entire time she’d been away, and that she would never forgive herself for betraying her best friend. “Too little, too late,” he had told her. “It would be nothing short of a fucking miracle for Becky to forgive you, Mandy, for what you and Roger did to her. Even I’m having trouble looking at you right now.”
Becky inhaled deeply, then quickly exhaled, her breath ghosting in front of her. “I don’t know. It just is… different. It’s hard to explain, Clive.” She thought for a moment. “Plus, I feel really embarrassed that I just up and left, too, without saying goodbye to anyone. I just snuck out like a coward, and they were all so nice to me.”
Clive rested a hand on her shoulder. “I think they would forgive you, Beck. Especially after what you’d just found out. Don’t you?”
Becky lowered her head and talked in a small whisper. “What if she didn’t tell me because, after she got to know me, she realized that she still didn’t want me to know that she was my mother? Like I might want something from her? What if she really likes her uncomplicated life, just the way it is? What if she didn’t tell me because that’s the way she wants to keep it, and she was just curious about how the kid she abandoned all those years ago turned out?”
“That is a lot of what ifs,” Clive said. “But what if you are totally wrong? What if she thought that you wouldn’t want her as a mother? What if you just talk to her? Then at least you would know.”
“I don’t know if I could handle being rejected a second time.” She shook head. “I really don’t want to talk about it anymore.”
Clive shrugged. “I get it. But how will you ever know, Beck? Right now, all you’re doing is torturing yourself with a bunch of what ifs. I’m sorry to keep harping on about this, but I really think picking up the phone and talking to her is far less complicated than not talking to her. At least that way you’ll know once and for all. You talked to your
Uncle Steve and everything worked out… That’s all I’m saying. I won’t mention it again, unless you want to talk about it.” He glanced pensively over the white surroundings. Farther into the park, an abandoned snowman had begun to lose its rotund shape. “I imagine all this sleet and snow is a lot different to the weather in Australia right now.”
“Ha. That is an understatement.” She pulled her thick woollen scarf tighter around her neck, then looked up at the skeletal tree branches reaching our like bony fingers above them. “It is sooo different there this time of the year. So green and so bloody hot, scorching hot, but beautiful, too, you know?”
An image of Gary sitting in the lake as he cast stones out across the surface of the water, sprang into her mind, making her smile.
Clive looked at her. “It’s good to see you smile again.” He put a hand tenderly on her arm, his eyes drifting to her lips.
“It feels good to smile,” she admitted, just before the smile slipped away. “We should walk.” She stood up, waiting for him to join her.
“Good idea.” He stood up next to her. “You finished your coffee?” he asked, holding out his hand.
Becky nodded.
Clive took the empty cup from her and volleyed it into a trash can, then reached for her hand, but she quickly thrust her hands into her pockets.
“So cold,” she said, quickly looking away. “Hyde park?” she asked. From where they were standing, the coloured lights and sounds emitting from Hyde Park resonated in the air around them. She felt the weight of the past days lift slightly from her shoulders. Talking to Clive, and sharing her concerns with him, had helped more than she thought.
“Ice-skating?” he asked, readjusting his collar.
She nodded enthusiastically. She hadn’t been ice-skating for what seemed like forever. Ice-skating was something she’d actually been better at than Mandy. Then she thought about how she felt thinking about Mandy, and was smugly taken aback when the memory hadn’t torn at her heart. Perhaps, in time, all could be forgiven, and they might be able to be friends again. Not good friends, but friends. She pulled her hand out of her pocket and brushed wayward strands of hair off her face, then pulled up the hood of her jacket.
Without warning, Clive pulled her into his arms and looked at her for a long moment, his questioning gaze fixed on her eyes. Then, slowly, he leaned down and kissed her gently on the lips. When Becky did not pull away, he kissed her again, with wanting and determination.
For a moment, Becky didn’t move. She was a frozen, unyielding statue. Then all of a sudden, swept up in memories of her teenage crush, she found herself melting into his arms. She wrapped her arms around his neck and kissed him back as an icy wind whipped around them, cocooning them in a white mist.
Within moments they parted, and the magic was gone. They backed away from each other, both suppressing a smile, until they wrapped their arms around their stomachs, and burst out laughing.
“I have never kissed my sister, but I think if I had, it would have felt just like that.” Clive said, stepping from one foot to the other as though he were walking on hot coals.
Becky nodded agreeably. “Arrrrrr. Oh my God. I know. And I don’t even have any brothers or sisters… That I know of. The way my life has been going lately, anything is possible.”
They laughed again, shaking their heads, wiping their mouths on the back of the gloves.
“Friends?” Clive said, holding out his hand.
“Friends,” Becky said shaking it. “Come on. I want to kick your arse in ice-skating.”
“I don’t think so, Jensen,” he said, using the name he’d called her as a teenager. He wrapped an arm over her shoulders. “But I will sure let you try.”
Becky rolled onto her back, turning her face away from Clive’s beanie sitting on the coffee table, so glad at least she had one friend she could rely on, but somehow, it just wasn’t enough to pull her out of the rut she’d found herself sinking further into. Tomorrow, she told herself. She lay motionless, her eyelids still heavy from drifting in and out of restless sleep. With the blanket still up under her chin, she blinked silently up at the ceiling and waited for sleep, but there it was again, a knock on the front door. She hadn’t imagined it after all. She rubbed her eyes with the ball of her hands, wiped a slick of saliva off her chin with the neckline of her t-shirt, then picked up the remote from the coffee table and switched off the muted television.
More knocking.
“Okay, okay. I’m coming. Jeez, just give me a sec…” She threw off the blankets. Setting the white stone back on the coffee table, she heaved herself off the sofa. Stepping over a pile of clothes, she walked to the hall mirror, pulling her pink, floral pyjama bottoms up as she went. She stared at her reflection in the mirror for a moment, then dragged her fingers through her matted hair. “What’s this?” she muttered, peeling a string of spaghetti off the front of her t-shirt, then dropping it into one of Roger’s shoes. Cupping a hand over her mouth, she smelled her breath. Not good. She would try and remember to stand downwind.
She opened the door a crack, then peered around it. Rolling her eyes, she closed the door. Felicity. What the hell did she want?
“Open the door, Becky. We have to talk.”
Becky leaned her back up against the door. “No we don’t. We don’t have anything to talk about. Go away.”
“Yes we do. It’s about your mother.”
“Which one?” Becky replied.
“I’m not going to have this conversation with you through a closed door.”
Becky sighed, then unlatched the security chain and pulled the door open.
“Thank you,” Felicity said, walking in. Her eyes swept over the apartment. “Love what you’ve done with the place. Very dystopian.”
“Thank you. It was exactly the look I was going for.”
Felicity nodded. “Good to know. It’s always nice when a plan comes together.”
Becky looked at her through narrowed eyelids. Is that what my father was to you, a plan? she wondered. Becky walked over to the sofa and, with one sweep of her arm, cleared the empty pizza boxes, chocolate wrappers, cereal boxes, and milk cartons off the cushions, and onto the floor.
“Take a seat.” She sat down on the opposite sofa where she’d been sleeping since she returned from Australia, and folded her arms across her chest, a defiant look on her face. “So, what is it that you could possibly tell me about my mother, other than that she was everything you’ll never be? You know it’s only a matter of time before my father wakes up to you.” She spat out the words, using them like a weapon.
Felicity flinched, then sat down, continuing to scan the dishevelled apartment. “I was wondering why you’ve been avoiding your father.” She found a vacant spot on the coffee table and set down a paper bag. “Pastries,” she said with a quick smile.
Becky shrugged. “Not hungry. I haven’t been avoiding my father. I’ve been avoiding you.”
Felicity looked down at her hands, then back up again. “Okay, you don’t like me, I get that, but do you really have to be such a bitch about it? I’m thinking about William here, not me. Can’t we just try to get along for your father?”
“Why are you really here, Felicity? I know there isn’t anything you could possibly tell me about my mother that I don’t already know, so spit it out. I’m busy. And do you really have to sit there like that? You look like you’ve got a broomstick shoved up your bum.”
Felicity made an effort to slouch, but the relaxed posture only made her look as though she were in pain. “The stick shoved up my bottom, as you so eloquently put it, was from years of private schooling, and a sharp crack on the wrist with a cane every time I didn’t sit up straight in my chair, so you’ll have to forgive me if it makes you feel uncomfortable.”
Becky sat up a little straighter on the sofa. “Okay then. I didn’t know that. I’m sorry. I would be black and blue if I’d gone to a school like that; I slouch all the time.” She squirmed on the sofa and looked absently
around the apartment. “The kids at school used to call me Becky Blowjob. I know that isn’t the same thing, but,” she shrugged. “I guess school has a way of torturing us all in some way or another, whether it be physically or mentally.”
Felicity rearranged herself on the sofa, then readjusted the layers of green scarf swimming around her neck. “Do you mind if I take off my jacket?” she asked, her arm already out of one sleeve of the brown leather jacket.
“Please do. You’re making me feel quite overdressed,” she laughed, looking down at her grubby pyjamas. “So why would my mother want you to talk to me, and not my dad?”
“Your mother and I were friends.”
Becky made a choking, laughing sound. “I don’t think so. I knew all of my mother’s friends, and you were definitely not one of them.”
“Who do you think hired me to work in your father’s office? Your dad? Well, he didn’t, Victoria did. Three years ago.”
Becky stared at Felicity warily, but said nothing. She sniffed, then folded her arms across her chest.
“We met in hospital, when Victoria was first diagnosed and undergoing treatment for her cancer.”
“Were you a nurse or something? One of those candy-stripe people?”
Felicity sat in silence for a long moment, then she placed her hand up on the top of her head, and slowly removed her long, red curls, exposing a partially balding head with a splattering of red hair. She deposited the wig on her lap. “I was diagnosed with cancer six years ago. I’m currently in remission, but my hair is taking its time growing back. Apparently my hair follicles got “burned out” and shut down, so it’s going to take some time. Hence the wig.” Felicity stood up then and walked to the hall mirror, positioning the long, red wig back on her head. She fluffed the curls with her fingers, then pushed her fringe to one side. Satisfied, she went back to the sofa and sat down.
About Three Authors Page 27
