The Secrets Mothers Keep

by Jacquie Underdown

  Pia scouts around for a tissue, finds one in her handbag, which is sitting on the end of her bed, and wipes her eyes. “I’ll try, but she’s her own woman. She’s never listened to anyone, you know that.”

  “I know. But it’s worth a shot.”

  Pia ends the call and slumps back against the bed. For a long moment, she can’t do anything but cry, big noisy sobs and shuddering breaths. Rationally, she knows she’s overreacting, but she can’t help it.

  No doubt about it, she has to be pregnant.

  Nan bursts through the bedroom door. No knock to announce her. Pia sits up and meets Nan’s stern gaze.

  Zero sympathy is reflected back, only slight irritation can be found in Nan’s expression. “Whatever is the matter, girl?”

  Aunt June follows behind Nan into the room. Her face shows no sympathy either, but her head is slightly lowered as she scrutinises Pia. This outburst is highly out of character and Aunt June is obviously wondering why.

  Pia blows her nose into the tissue then hands Nan the phone.

  Nan scoffs the moment she looks at the image. “The sooner your mother gets here the better for all of us. If this is what you’re crying over, then you’re wasting your tears. Now pull yourself together, there are more important things to get upset about than Lily-Rose behaving like Judy Garland on a good night.” She hands the phone to Aunt June on her way out of the room.

  June stares at the screen for a long moment. The corners of her mouth twitch, then a laugh escapes. She looks at Pia. “I’m sorry.” But then another laugh leaks. “Oh, Lily-Rose, what have you done now?” she says to the screen, then hands the phone back. “Don’t worry about it, she’ll work it out. But your Nan is right, the sooner your Mum gets down here, the better.”

  Pia takes a deep breath and scrubs her hands over her face.

  Aunt June sits beside her. “I think the real question is, what’s really upsetting you? It’s not like you to get upset over something like this.”

  She can’t meet Aunt June’s eyes; they possess a quality that syphons the truth from her. “Nothing is wrong.”

  Aunt June stares at her with a look that says, ‘I wasn’t born yesterday’. “Come on, get up and follow me to my reading room. I’m going to do a quick tarot reading.”

  Pia scrunches her face up and shakes her head. “Please, no. I don’t—”

  “It’s not an option.” Aunt June stands and starts for the door. She has a soft, innocent face and is at least a head shorter than Pia, but when Aunt June wants something, she usually gets it. “Come on. If you’re not going to tell me what’s happening, then I’ve got other ways to find out.”

  Pia rolls her eyes but stands nonetheless.

  “And don’t think I didn’t see that, Miss.”

  “What?” Pia asks, her pitch too high for her feigned innocence to be believable. She has always wondered how Aunt June manages to see everything even when she’s not looking.

  “You know what.”

  Pia shakes her head and follows Aunt June to the kitchen—a huge square room, cordoned off from the rest of the house by three walls and big double doors. Benches and green Laminex cupboards line two of the walls, along with double sinks and a gas oven with stovetop.

  The reading room is the long kitchen table, which sits against the side wall, dressed with candles and a pink silk tablecloth.

  Aunt June gestures for her to take a seat. “We’ll make this quick,” she says assuming the seat opposite Pia and reaching for a box of matches.

  Pia nods. “Yes, please.”

  Aunt June strikes the match and lights the wicks of six candles that are half-melted and sit in the centre of the table. She hands Pia a tall pack of tarot cards. “Shuffle for me please and try and place your intention into the cards.”

  Pia stops her eye roll mid-roll—she can hardly tease her aunt because so many times when Pia believed an incident or worry or anticipation was only perceivable inside her own head, Aunt June would intuit it. Like when she wanted to break up with her first serious boyfriend and Aunt June had rung her unexpectedly and, without any context, simply said ‘It will be fine. You have the courage to communicate your own wishes and achieve satisfactory results’.

  It had given Pia the strength to tell Ricky that it was over. And he had handled the break-up conversation well as Aunt June had predicted.

  Once the cards are shuffled, she places them on the table.

  With a quick swipe of her hand, Aunt June spreads the cards in a long arc. “Choose three only.”

  Pia does as she is told, picking three cards from the pack. Her intention isn’t to let Aunt June in on the enormous matter of being pregnant yet, not when she is still trying to process it all, so she chooses cards that are her second or third impulse rather than her first.

  She hands them to Aunt June who places them one by one on the table in front of her.

  Aunt June inspects Pia out the corner of her eyes. “Hmm, okay, just as I suspected.”

  “What?” Pia asks, inching closer to the cards. The scent of mild candle smoke fills the air.

  “You want to draw the final curtain on someone from your past, but something is keeping you connected.”

  Pia maintains a completely impartial face.

  “And whatever this ‘something’ is, will also affect an upcoming relationship.” Aunt June narrows her eyes as she studies the card, then holds her hand up as if it to say, ‘don’t interrupt me while I’m contacting the spirit world’. “Are you sure?” Aunt June whispers to herself or some unseen entity, then nods.

  When she looks at Pia again, sympathy dwells in her green eyes. “And I’m sorry to say, but the next man you fall in love with will be the last. That can be a blessing or a curse; the universe hasn’t decided yet.”

  Pia sags in the chair and clasps her hands in her lap. She hasn’t considered that aspect of having a child. Undoubtedly, being a single mother (because she already knows Ben will never be told about this baby) will affect all future relationships.

  Her first instinct is to disregard what Aunt June is saying as gobbledygook, but her scepticism has proven foolish before. Like the time Aunt June had said to Pia that she would be taken off her feet. Three weeks later, she broke her ankle while running a cross-country race for her university team. Then it was predicted that Pia would be moving overseas. Within a couple of months, she had won a scholarship to study her Masters in San Francisco.

  Aunt June looks to the last card and her lips curl upwards. “Ah,” she whispers. “So it is. Your appointment today will prove positive.” She winks. “If you get what I’m saying.”

  Pia gasps. “How do you know about my appointment?”

  Aunt June taps her nose. “I am aware of many things. You should know that by now. Now out with it.”

  Tears sting Pia’s eyes. She stares at her hands, hoping this emotional bullshit passes quickly. If she has to be like this for the rest of her life, she’ll scream. “I think I’m pregnant.”

  “To Mr Polyamorous?”

  She lifts her gaze. “Yes.”

  “He doesn’t know, and you’re not going to tell him?”

  “That’s right.”

  “He has a right to know,” Aunt June says with an arch of her brow.

  “I know, but he’ll make trouble.”

  Aunt June stares at the candle flame for a long moment. “Yes, he’ll make a lot of trouble. Some men have enormous egos that make them behave like apes.”

  Pia furrows her brow as she recollects the image she had of Ben when he presented her with the polygamy rating sheet—a big hairy ape. Perhaps Aunt June does have access to another plane where she intuits all this.

  “So how do you feel about the baby?” Aunt June asks.

  A slow smile creeps onto Pia’s face. “Now that I’ve had a seventeen-hour flight to ponder over every last detail, I think I’m okay with it.”

  Aunt June smiles and places her hand over Pia’s. “I’m okay about it too. In fact, I’m
over the moon.”

  “I may not have a partner, but I do have my family to help.”

  The candles flicker casting waves of shadow and light on the walls. Aunt June closes her eyes, then grins. “You never know what the future holds.”

  But what will her Mum think about the news?

  Nan?

  Dad?

  Oh god. The smile disappears from Pia’s lips. “You have to keep this a secret for the time being. I need to work out how I’m going to handle everything first.”

  Aunt June nods slowly. “My lips are sealed.”

  Chapter 11

  Mary

  Mary is to collect Lily-Rose today from the Launceston airport. She should be happy. She should be. She is. Of course she is happy to have her daughter home after thirty years.

  Already the manor is alive with Pia’s fresh presence. Now with Lily-Rose, who is such a lively spirit, always has been, it will be like old times.

  But maybe that’s the reason for this other emotion that kept her from her sleep last night. A discordant tugging that sits above her navel, reminding her too much of old times. Reminding her that there are unspoken matters she has buried deep inside her flesh and bone for half a century.

  As the past accumulates, it calcifies in Mary’s joints and around her heart. Her knee and fingers are stiff of late. Trudging up the stairs is becoming difficult.

  Then, last night before heading to bed, she walked past the mirror that hangs in the hall outside her bedroom. When she saw her reflection in her peripheral, she flinched. Her face was pale, so many lines and furrows. Such a disconnection to how she perceives herself from the inside out. Her breath was stolen for a second or two as she attempted to reconcile whose this face was.

  But enough of that. Dwelling on such superficial things is never helpful. Dwelling on anything difficult is never helpful. She is one to know.

  They arrive at the airport by noon. A small airport. Barely busy. The reason Lily-Rose chose it—to keep her identity as hidden as possible. Mary sits with Pia and June in the arrival’s lounge that has a view of the tarmac, and they can see the big planes as they arrive. People mill about. Official sounding voices blare over the speaker system.

  The false brightness of airports and the smell of fuel fumes always gives Mary a headache. She rubs her temples.

  “You okay, Nan?” Pia asks.

  “A slight headache, that’s all.”

  Pia rustles through her bag and passes Mary a tab of paracetamol. “Take some.”

  “I don’t take pain medication.”

  Pia’s eyes widen. Her voice rises an octave when she asks, “You don’t? Not even Panadol?”

  Mary shakes her head.

  “So you suffer through it?”

  Mary nods.

  “I’m going to get you a bottle of water,” Pia says, standing.

  “That would be … lovely. Thank you.”

  June leans across the space between them. “Don’t look now, but there is a reporter to our right.”

  A man stands near the arrival tunnel, camera at the ready. “Let’s hope Lily-Rose is dressed appropriately then.”

  It still dumbfounds her that paparazzi hide out and chase Lily-Rose around the place with cameras. It’s hard to believe that anyone is worthy of that much attention let alone Lily-Rose, who, in Mary’s mind, is still the little girl she raised, trudging around the house with her too-big high heels on her feet and her pearls around her neck, not an actress revered by starry-eyed filmgoers.

  She touches the string of pearls as they sit flush against her chest.

  When she watches Lily-Rose acting in a film, though, she’s no longer her daughter, but someone else entirely. It means she never confuses Lily-Rose with the characters she plays.

  Pia returns with a bottle of water. She uncaps it and hands it to Mary. She is thirsty, she realises as she eagerly takes a mouthful. “Thank you.”

  “No worries, Nan.”

  Lily-Rose arrives soon enough. She exits the plane, which they can see through the big windows, and swings her hips as she struts across the runway wearing a short white mini skirt, a low cut white blouse, a colourful scarf around her head and big black Audrey Hepburn sunglasses.

  Mary rolls her eyes. “I assume that costume is meant to be inconspicuous?”

  Pia laughs. There’s a nervous edge to it. “Probably.”

  June leans across Pia, brow furrowing. “She does realise what she’s wearing does absolutely nothing to hide who she is?”

  Mary rolls her eyes again. “I’m certain that’s the point entirely.”

  “She always has to look good. The media is brutal,” Pia says.

  The reporter rushes to the entry doors, camera up to his eyes, waiting.

  Mary gets to her feet, straightens the creases in her skirt. “There’s a difference between looking good and purposefully drawing attention to oneself. I think you can agree that your mother has accomplished both today.”

  Security guards stroll through with sniffer-dog Beagles attached to leashes. They sniff at the carry-on bags and legs of passengers as they come through the big double doors, checking for fruits and vegetables that are not permitted into Tasmania.

  Lily-Rose strolls through to the arrivals lounge; the camera flashes. She stops, takes her glasses off and poses with a carefully placed hand on her waist and subtle tilt downwards of her chin.

  Beagles approach from the right.

  One sniffs her handbag, then promptly sits.

  The security guard grips Lily-Rose’s elbow and leads her off to the side. The cameraman click click clicks capturing everything.

  Pia turns to Mary. Tears are rolling down her face. “I should help her.” And races ahead to assist her mother.

  Mary sighs as she turns to face June. “What is wrong with that girl? Since when does she cry at the drop of a hat?”

  June shrugs. “No idea.”

  “Come on then. Let’s go find a seat, this will take a while.”

  * * *

  When Mary opens the front door to let everyone into Viewtree House, Lily-Rose is still grumbling about the fine she was given for possessing prohibited items—carrot sticks.

  “I told them they need to provide healthier food options on the plane,” she says. “Not everyone has the luxury of eating shit food and never seeing their dimpled arse on display in a magazine.”

  “Quite a luxury,” Mary says as she waits for everyone to enter, then closes the door behind her. She realises when Lily-Rose’s lips part and eyes bulge as she looks around the place that it’s been years since she’s been home. Quite obviously, it’s a shock.

  “Oh, Mum, no wonder you’re renovating. How can you live like this? It looks like one of those old haunted houses from the movies where everyone ends up murdered by poltergeists.”

  “Not everyone has the luxury of millions of dollars like you do, darling.”

  Lily-Rose furrows her brow, narrows her eyes. “But I assumed … I thought you had money… from Dad—”

  “He died forty years ago. Money only goes so far.”

  Lily-Rose doesn’t speak for a while, but Mary can see her mind ticking away, for she always looks off to the left and a blank seriousness shapes her features. “Is that why you asked us to come here?”

  Mary stands erect, lifts her chin high. “Yes.”

  “You’re … broke?”

  “Yes.”

  “Don’t you get a pension or something?”

  Mary rolls her eyes. Anyone who says fame and money doesn’t disconnect people from the reality of the majority is a fool and should be taken out back and shot. “It barely covers living expenses, it certainly doesn’t pay for major renovations.”

  Lily-Rose unties her headscarf and runs two hands through her blonde hair. She’s razor-thin—all sharp lines. “You should have told me.”

  “Well, you know now. You all know now.” Mary cringes when the last word cracks—not sure if it’s from emotion or age. Either is just as b
ad.

  Mary heaves herself upright, forces her shoulders back. Shortness of breath accompanies her racing heartbeat. One little truth is now out there. She is broke—has been for nearly half a century. So what of it? It doesn’t make her any less human.

  An aching desire to escape the staring eyes assessing her rumbles up from inside. She says nothing more, turns and strides away. Mary tries her best to keep the limp from every second step up the staircase as her knee pulses with pain.

  By the top, her chest is tight, aching.

  Maybe this is a bad idea to invite them all to live here. She’s not even sure all of them are capable of living under the one roof. She presses her hand to her chest and rubs at the blossoming throb. But short of selling the place, there are no options left.

  Chapter 12

  June

  Four people turn up for June’s yoga class this morning. She holds two a week, Tuesday and Friday mornings at ten in the small local hall. Mostly four or five people show, sometimes none if the weather is particularly cold. She’ll do the class anyway, with or without participants.

  Her yoga classes are an idea she came up with two years ago after she retired. Not that she worked more than twenty hours a week in the last decade of her working career, but to go from that to nothing threw her equilibrium out.

  Since she was seventeen, she worked as a receptionist in professional offices. As the years went on and her skills advanced, she progressed to office manager at the local health centre here in town. It was a small close-knit team, but enough people to keep her socially engaged. As soon as she retired, as most of her colleagues were younger, all of that came to an end.

  Teaching yoga classes were an excuse to escape for a few hours and interact with people. Spending all day at the house with Mary would have sent her to an early grave.

  After a tough class, mostly intermediate to advanced positions, her body and mind are buzzing with health. That’s the other benefit of yoga—it has helped stabilise the irregular peaks and troughs in her mood. Might be a placebo effect; she doesn’t care as long as it works.