Versace Sisters

by Cate Kendall

  Now, if she could will her mobile to not ring, she might have a chance of getting everything done. She glared at it. For such a small piece of technology, it was a godsend and an almighty headache rolled into one.

  As if on cue, the little bugger trilled. The caller ID announced that it was Tony. She smiled, he'd been so adorable lately, but he wasn't adorable when she was this busy and she knew he only rang when he wanted her to do something.

  'Hi, honey,' she chirped into the phone, determined not to let him sense her angst and stress.

  'Hi, honey,' he repeated. 'Listen, I need you to do a favour for me.'

  Oh, good God, she thought, how on earth will I fit this in?

  'It's quite important. I need Mum's health card, health insurance policy and membership card. I was on hold with the insurance company for twenty minutes, so there's been no joy there and I need to know her level of health insurance.'

  Sera knew Tony was reaching boiling point with his mother's hospitalisation. 'The surgeon wants to do her hip replacement tomorrow and the hospital needs this sorted out today.'

  Having spent the last two days running about after Joan – ferrying licorice allsorts, slippers and clothing to and from the hospital – Sera had had quite enough. But she smiled instead, hoping it would sweeten the tone of her response.

  'Of course. I was on my way back to the house anyway. Where's the paperwork?'

  'She says it's in a pink box on the top shelf of her closet in an envelope with my name on it. Can you please bring it to the hospital? You were planning on coming in, weren't you?'

  'Yes, yes, of course,' Sera lied, and turned the car in the direction of home.

  Back at the building site, she dumped her day's collection of renovation swatches and samples on the hall table and went straight to Joan's room. It was nice to walk into the room and not have it smell like a second-hand shop. The usually dim space was bright and cheerful since she'd pulled the curtains all the way back and left the window ajar.

  She opened the closet door and clucked in horror at its tightly packed contents. An array of navy blue, teal and maroon assaulted her stylish eye. Coogi knitwear, parachute-silk leisure suits and bucket-loads of boucle fought for hanger space.

  She saw a pink box buried beneath a pile of orthotic footwear on the bottom shelf. That must be it. The box was full of memorabilia; photographs, newspaper cuttings and greeting cards. How bloody disorganised was this woman? Hadn't she heard of a filing cabinet? Or at least a scrap-book?

  She flicked through the sepia-toned memories swiftly, searching for the envelope. She smiled at the yellowed snippet cut from the classifieds of March 1968 proudly announcing the birth of her husband. Finally, at the bottom of the box, she found a dog-eared envelope with the name 'Tony' on the front.

  Opening the envelope, she found several pages of handwritten paper, worn thin on the folds as if it had been handled many times over the years.

  She read the first line: 'My darling Tony, this is the hardest letter I've ever had to write . . .'

  Sera hurriedly folded the letter shut. This wasn't for her eyes. This was obviously an intensely private missive. She couldn't read this letter . . . could she?

  It was impossible. She was torn. But she couldn't stop herself. Shelving the guilt she was feeling about prying into Joan's personal life, she re-opened the letter. After all, she assured herself, it was addressed to her husband and they happily opened each other's mail.

  It only took a few lines to realise that the letter was not directed to her husband at all. As she read on, Sera started to shake her head. 'No,' she said out loud. 'No, it can't be true, it just can't be.' By the time she reached the last line, Sera fell heavily back against the wall as if she'd been shot.

  Her family was about to change forever.

  *

  Three weeks later Joan was ready to come home. Sera collected her and settled her in, and Tony whipped home from work briefly to greet his mother, kiss her on the cheek and drop off a bunch of flowers. Just enough time to win brownie points but not long enough to endure her tirade of complaints.

  As soon as he left the house, Sera locked the front door, took the telephone off the hook and walked into Joan's room.

  The patient was sitting up in bed supported by a tower of feather pillows. Magazines were strewn across the bedspread. The pen in her hand flew across the New Idea celebrity crossword, proving that her intimate knowledge of the famous was on par with any paparazzi.

  She didn't look up as Sera entered. 'Tea please, Sera,' she ordered, her pen didn't pause, quickly answering 'Antonia' to 'sister of Dead Calm redhead'.

  Sera ignored her mother-in-law's request and pulled the desk chair up to the side of the bed. Leaning forward, she gently took the magazine from her mother-in-law's grip.

  Joan looked up over her bi-focals in shock at such defiance.

  'We need to talk,' Sera said.

  Joan went white and her hands flew to her lips. She knew.

  ~ 51 ~

  Joan's eyes watered as she stared out of the window, the landscape blurring to indistinguishable colours and shapes. She sighed deeply and then looked back at her daughter-in-law.

  Sera was shocked. Years had melted from Joan's eyes. They were softer, younger. Her familiar steely stare had disappeared. Sera had never seen her looking so fragile; almost beautiful.

  'It was different in my day, love,' Joan started. 'Girls were raised to be dutiful women. Sure, there was a wave of bra-burners out there, but we all thought they were crazy. We were the good girls – the debutantes – and besides, why would you want to run around making speeches, having a career, doing it all when you've still got to put a roast on and get the mending done?

  'Career women were frowned upon in my set. I married young, was really forced into it, you know, not in the arranged marriage way, mind, but the women of the family and the rest of our community all decided that because Barry was a CPA – a reliable, hard-working type – he was "a catch". In those days your husband just had to be a good provider. Forget about your best-friend, soulmate, kindred-spirit rubbish. I tried to get a job in the beginning. Just as a nurse, you know, but Barry wouldn't have it. My place was in the home. It was the only real row we ever had in our entire marriage.'

  'You never had a blue, during the whole time?' Sera was astonished.

  'Just that one. And it was a doozy, let me tell you. He punched a hole in the wall of our beautiful kitchen. I'll show you where later. I quickly learnt how to keep the peace. What's the point of screaming the house down every second night? Young people today have no restraint.'

  Joan described her years of cleaning, shopping and cooking and how she tried to fill the empty hours with her needlework. She desperately wanted a baby to fill the lifelessness of the house in Paddington, but the years went by and pregnancy evaded her.

  'You have to understand, love,' Joan explained to Sera, 'my marriage was like living in domestic handcuffs. Lust and passion were merely the stuff of romance novels. And what in the hell was an orgasm? I had no idea!'

  Sera sat back in her chair and listened to the story from so long ago that had never been told.

  *

  Joan was desperate to love. She'd never truly loved anybody, never given herself up completely and thrown herself into a relationship with that urgent need to sacrifice all for another being.

  After eight years of failing to get pregnant, she sank into a depression. She'd given up and could barely keep the house running as she lived with the daily pain of her childless state. Barry became increasingly hostile with his wife, blaming her for their barren union. He began avoiding the silent house as much as he could, spending all his time at the office or at the club.

  Joan was desperate to feel better. She'd spent two years grieving her apparent infertility, cycling through emotions of denial, shock, anger and finally the dark hopeless place called grief, where every day is bleak and interminable. When she came out of the tunnel, she realised there was nothi
ng in her life. But Joan was a survivor and turned towards her beautiful Paddington terrace house. It became her baby. She threw herself into beautifying the property.

  She made curtains, crocheted doilies, put up wallpaper, macraméd hanging basket holders, nurtured her maidenhair ferns, and baked beef Wellington. And bit by bit, what had started as a coping strategy became a way of life. She experienced little joy or passion but she soon became able to get from dawn to dusk without wanting to kill herself.

  Then one day her husband decided to embrace the trend for outdoor cooking and bought one of the new-fangled barbecues. The back door of the Paddington terrace house led directly to lawn and clothesline, so he planned to install a patio to house the new equipment. Joan was given the job of project manager, which was a relief because she'd painted, papered and knitted every square inch of the interior of the house and was looking for a new target for her homemaking skills.

  The lawn was cleared, the Hills Hoist removed and the ground levelled in readiness for slate crazy-paving. Barry's boss recommended an Italian chap for the job: 'You know what those wops are like at stonework, old man,' he had advised. 'Have you heard of St Mark's Piazza in Venice?'

  Antonio turned up at eight am on day one to be briefed by the man of the house. Barry instructed Joan to bring coffee. She carefully mixed a Nescafe and cringed when the new Australian grimaced at his first sip. He smiled in apology and said that he might just have a glass of water instead. It was a challenge, she decided.

  By the end of the week, while Antonio laboured in the forty-degree Sydney heat in the north facing backyard, Joan had discovered how to buy coffee beans and grind them to perfection. In a small Italian delicatessen she found a Bialetti aluminium coffee maker that sat on the stovetop. She enjoyed such a frisson of satisfaction when the coffee began to release its rich aroma and Antonio would call out from the construction zone, 'Ahhh, bella, the coffee smells magnifico!'

  She would deliver it to him and watch him savour every sip. She revelled in his clear affection for the cup of black ink. She'd never met anyone who so thoroughly embraced life; whose every waking moment was directed at discovering something new and wonderful. She marvelled at this man of passion.

  But she particularly marvelled at how another human being could be so impressed with her doing something as simple as making a coffee. 'Grazie, bella signora' were the words Joan lived for. She scoured Italian cookbooks at the library and began bringing Antonio little treats with his morning coffee. Biscotti, pasticciotti and, of course, his favourite – cannoli: a fried pastry shell stuffed with a sweet ricotta filling. She made it so feather-light he said it was almost as good as his darling mama's in Positano. He asked her to call him Tony, like his friends did back home.

  His kind words became a drug to Joan. She would whip through her household chores by eight o'clock every day so that when he arrived she could start her baking and present him with her offering by morning-tea time. She would then spend the rest of the day sitting near him and listening to his rich voice as he sang Italian operettas, the Beatles, and even some Doris Day.

  They talked about everything: the state of the world, the state of the Royal family, even the state of her vegetable garden. He encouraged her to plant zucchini, a vegetable not widely used by the Australian housewife in the 1960s.

  Joan didn't know she was falling head over heels in love. How do you know you're flying if you've never done it before?

  As the patio came to its inevitable conclusion, Joan suggested to Barry they really needed a retaining wall to stop the backyard from encroaching on their spiffing new courtyard. He readily agreed, because, after all, Smith from the office had just installed a retaining wall.

  Day two of the building of the retaining wall arrived and so did Antonio, complete with a bunch of sweet peas and an embrace for his bella signora that caused a flush of heat to sweep through her core. The next time she brought Antonio his morning espresso and placed it on the pile of bricks beside his work area she laid a hand on his shoulder. He turned from his crouched position and looked up. He stood slowly and wrapped his arms around her. The wall did not develop much further that day. As the sun dropped behind the west fence of the backyard, it was only the threat of a home-coming husband that tore them apart.

  Antonio was desperately in love with Joan. He begged her to leave her husband and be with him. But she refused to even consider it. Even with her recently unleashed passion, Joan's sense of duty was tattooed on her soul. Her parents, her in-laws, her local community, would be so torn apart with disappointment and hurt should she dare follow her heart – she just couldn't do it.

  She said no to Antonio and the tears tumbled from her face to mingle with his on the crazy paving at their feet.

  Antonio closed up. He completed the retaining wall without another word to his bella signora and when it was done he left forever.

  Joan sank back into her familiar dark depression. She stayed in bed most days; glorious sleep was her only friend, the only escape from the reality of having lost her love. She maintained the household with bare minimum effort, just so Barry didn't notice anything was amiss.

  Antonio tried one more time, a few weeks later, to convince her to leave. He was out the front of her house one afternoon when she dragged herself to the corner shop to buy food for her husband's dinner. He leapt out of his truck and came over to her. She was shocked into silence: she'd thought she was never to see him again. She felt her resolve weakening and put her hand out to stop him. It rested on his hard chest.

  'You must listen to me, Joan,' he said.

  She looked at him mutely, her eyes filled with pain and tears.

  'I am going back to Positano. I cannot stay here in your beautiful country one more day without you. Every ray of sun reminds me of you, I can't even enjoy my espresso anymore because it makes me think of you. I leave tomorrow. You must come. You must come with me.'

  'I can't,' she said. Her whisper barely made it to his ears.

  He turned and walked back to his truck and drove away.

  *

  Three weeks later, Joan realised she was pregnant. That morning it felt like someone had turned a light on. Her joy was practically hallucinogenic. The sun was warmer, the colours more colourful, the outlines on the leaves sharper. And the crazy paving was the craziest, most delectable piece of stonework she'd ever seen.

  The only minor downside, of course, was that she had to force herself to have sex with her husband that night.

  Naturally Barry was thrilled to become a father. And, when he wasn't at the office, he would occasionally even hold the baby – when Joan wasn't feeding or changing him.

  Infant Tony grew into big boy Tony then into a young teen. Joan and her son were inseparable. Tony and his father, however, were always at loggerheads. They didn't agree on anything and Barry's strict parenting techniques set up an impenetrable barrier in the father–son relationship. When Tony, at age sixteen, announced he was quitting school to take up a builder's apprenticeship, the camel's back collapsed.

  A screaming match of hideous proportions ended with Tony leaving the family home and moving into share housing to follow his own dream, rather than his father's dream that he should go to university.

  Eighteen months later, with not a word between the two men, Barry died of a massive heart attack while yelling at the office boy at work. Tony, with dry eyes, attended the funeral.

  *

  Joan had told Sera her story while lying back on the pillows, her eyes closed as if seeing the series of events taking place all over again.

  Now she opened her eyes, and looked at Sera. The transformation was complete. A smile played at the corners of her mouth. Her dark green eyes twinkled as the beautiful memories faded slowly. But the secret was out. She was no longer the gatekeeper of the family scandal. Let the repercussions commence.

  'But the letter I found?' Sera asked her. 'You never sent it?'

  'I was torn, Sera, what was I to do? I loved him so
much; he needed to know he had a son. But how could I do that to him? Offer him a son he couldn't have? The scandal, Sera, the dreadful scandal. You must realise how ostracised I would have been by my community.'

  'There would have been a way, surely.'

  'Sera, you don't think I've thought of that, over and over. The number of times I've regretted my decision. The great shame I've had to live with, it tears me apart every day.'

  'Why didn't you tell him after Barry died? Why didn't you go to Antonio then?'

  'Because I had kept it a secret for too long. My parents were still alive, so were Barry's: imagine the betrayal! And I thought Antonio would hate me for not telling him nineteen years earlier, when we first conceived Tony.'

  Sera leaned over to her mother-in-law and gave her an embrace. 'Well, it's out now. It must be such a relief for you.'

  'Yes, Sera, it is a relief, thanks for letting me get all that out and for helping me keep this secret. Now I won't feel so alone.'

  Sera frowned. 'Um, Joan, you are going to tell Tony, aren't you?'

  Joan's eyes widened in horror. 'Oh God, no! Sera, you mustn't. I couldn't, you can't, it would destroy him to know he's illegitimate.'

  'Oh for goodness' sake, Joan, we're not living in the Dark Ages. Illegitimacy is completely a concept of the past. Half the mums at childcare aren't married and no one even notices.'

  'But to know he's been raised in a lie, that I've lied about his father. He'll hate me, he'll hate me!' Joan started to sob hysterically, tears running down her powdered cheeks. She clung to Sera as she begged. 'Please don't, Sera, I couldn't bear it if my Tony hated me.'

  'Joan, calm down,' Sera handed her a box of tissues from the side-table. 'I won't tell him if you don't want me to. But I think you'd be very surprised. Besides, it would be very important for him to understand his heritage. He's half-Italian, his father's a stone-mason – that's all very exciting news. It explains so much; his passion for life, his precision in his work and love of creating. I really think you need to consider it.' She got up and slipped back into nurse mode. 'But more importantly, right now you need to heal, you need to rest and let that hip of yours mend.' She got up from the bed and fussed around the room; tossing out tissues and picking up empty teacups. She opened the bedroom door to leave.