Family Drama 3-in-1 Box Set: String Bridge, The Book, Bitter Like Orange Peel

by Jessica Bell

I take a deep breath. Trying not to scream. But as soon as I will the anger to subside it’s replaced with a grief so heavy I can’t even hold myself upright. I can’t decide whom to cry over—Alex, or my mother. Oh, Mum. Just when I started to understand … Was my understanding the only other thing left that you needed in this life? Was it your cue to leave? The room spins and I lower myself to the couch. Serena doesn’t move.

  “Please,” I beg, putting two pillows over my ears. “Please!”

  But instead of giving me the remote, she pulls the TV plug out of the wall and walks out onto the balcony, sliding the glass door closed behind her. She turns her back to me—looks out into the square.

  I watch, stunned that she finally gave into my pleading. She buries her face in her hands, and her shoulders shake up and down.

  Day Four:

  The phone rings. I look at Serena and shake my head. I’ve ignored every single call since the accident.

  “I’m answering it,” says Serena, picking up the cordless and holding it in the air as if giving me an opportunity to take it myself. I flick my hand with dismissal.

  Beep.

  “Hello? … I’m sorry, Melody can’t come to the phone right now, but maybe I can take a message? … Oh … Oh … well, I think she finished them before … yes, yes, indeed … I’ll get them posted off tomorrow morning first thing … yes, okay, I’ll tell her … Oh, thank you … yes, that’s great … Mm-hmm … she’ll appreciate that … Yes, thanks for understanding, Jodie. Bye.”

  “Fuck. I forgot about the proofs,” I say when Serena hangs up.

  “Don’t worry, she was fine. I’ll just post them off tomorrow. She also said you’re welcome to take your old job back, as they’re unable to wait for you to fill the position in London.”

  I smile, and give a half nod, feeling queasy over my disgusting infatuation with Richard Viadro. Why couldn’t I just appreciate what I had?

  “She did say, though, that Mr. Viadro welcomes an application from you for any other position that might arise in the future.”

  “Okay … let’s talk about something else?”

  But we’re interrupted by Dad walking in the front door with two big bags from the local Zacharoplasteio. He holds them up with a big grin. The first I’ve seen since the day he arrived in Athens.

  “I’ve got cake,” he says with a half-possessed wink. “Let’s make ourselves fat.”

  Day Five:

  “I want to sell this apartment,” I say to Serena while she washes some dishes. She nods as if she knows I won’t do it. “And I need your help. I can’t handle going through all the paperwork. I just want to move out and forget about ever living here. I’ll give you power of attorney.”

  Serena pauses, scratches the side of her nose with sudsy fingers. “Are you sure?”

  “Yes. And I need you to call … you-know-who. I can’t bear to speak to him.”

  “Who? Charlie?”

  “Yeah.”

  “I already have.”

  “Oh?”

  “Yeah. Don’t worry about anything. Just, you know, let yourself heal.”

  “Let myself heal?” I scoff. “Let myself heal,” I repeat sarcastically as I walk out of the kitchen. “Huh. That’s a good one.”

  Day Six:

  “Mummy!” squeals Tessa, from a wheelchair, as I enter her hospital room.

  “Oh my God! You’re speaking?” I bend down to give her a big squeeze and cup her face in my hands. “She’s speaking,” I exclaim to the orderly, who looks young enough to be my son, as he fiddles with the height of Tessa’s chair.

  “She’s speaking,” nods the boy with a wink. “When you have minute,” he whispers, “Doctor wants speak you about your daughter’s ‘wheelchair situation,’” he quotes with his fingers, and winks again.

  Wheelchair situation?

  “Your daughter and I, we did go for walk, just now. She like wheels, very much.”

  “Oh?”

  “Yes.” He winks again. “Will fetch Doctor. Will be just, one, two minute.”

  The orderly leaves, and I squat down to Tessa’s level and take her hands.

  “How are you feeling, Blossom?”

  “Good. Look, Mummy, I’ve got my own personal car!”

  I can’t help but laugh at her enthusiasm. “Well, yes, I suppose you do. But you’ll have to learn how to drive. Have you got the patience?” I ask, trying to swallow the wretchedness of the situation and stay upbeat for Tessa’s sake.

  “Yeah-eah! Everyone’s got more patience than you, Mummy.”

  I wince. “Yeah, I suppose you’re right … um … Blossom, I have to speak to you about something.” I sit on her bed and pull her chair close to me, so our knees touch. “Something that isn’t very nice and you might get upset.” I pretend I’m talking about going to the ice cream parlor to avoid an outbreak of tears.

  “Mummy, don’t worry. You’ve told me already.”

  “Pardon?” Yeah, when you were in a coma.

  “It’s okay. Papa and Betty are happy now. They told me so.”

  “What? They told you—”

  In prances the doctor, stethoscope dangling around his neck like a gold medal.

  “Good afternoon, ladies!” He puts his hands in his coat pockets, leans forward and swings his buttocks side to side as if preparing to role-play a dog.

  “Hi. What’s this situation, the orderly said you needed to speak to me about?”

  The doctor puts his hand on my upper back and walks me to the door where he obviously thinks Tessa won’t hear.

  “Your daughter didn’t suffer any spinal injuries. So her paralysis is temporary, initiated by psychological trauma.”

  “You mean she’s … pretending?” I gasp, wondering why the hell Tessa would want to do something like that. The doctor laughs.

  “No, no, no. She’s not pretending. It’s very real. But she is very likely to walk again, with rehabilitation. And she’s young. Children always recover faster. She’ll be fine. With the right support, and love from her parents. She’ll be fine.”

  My throat tightens at the word “parents.” Tears form behind my eyes. I look at the ground and take a deep breath. Smile a forced smile and thank the man.

  I go over to Tessa and take the handles of her wheelchair.

  “Right. Let’s go for a spin together then, huh?”

  One Week Later:

  Tessa is due home tomorrow. I want to jump with joy and celebrate, but I feel numb. I’m living the life of an empty shell. My body has been taken over by a person I don’t know. And this person drags the real me along to watch. This person forces me to become reacquainted with daily routines I wish I could turn to glass and smash against a wall. I watch my limbs move—do all the things a human body is supposed to do when it’s alive, but I’m not alive. Not really.

  I can’t imagine ever feeling alive again.

  I lie in bed with the duvet puffed up beside me, pretending it’s Alex. I can still smell him on our sheets—the sheets I refuse to change. I imagine listening to his rhythmic breaths and little interrupted wheezes like the ones puppies make when they’re dreaming and flinching their paws. I used to lie awake at night wishing he would shut up. Now I lie awake at night wishing I could hear just one little wheeze.

  I place myself a little farther away from his side of the bed than I would normally sleep so that, in a realistic situation, I wouldn’t feel his body heat. Keeping my eyes closed, I visualize an image of him next to me. I convince myself if I stretch my hand over, I’ll be able to touch him. Then I stretch my hand over—but not all the way—I stretch it to almost where he would be, and then, with my eyes remaining closed, I picture him only millimeters away from my fingertips, and if I really wanted to, I could just reach a tiny bit further and touch his precious skin.

  And I fall asleep, with Alex just millimeters out of reach.

  Twenty-eight

  Two months later:

  Serena is in the kitchen with Tessa making dinner. She has pro
pped Tessa up on five thick couch cushions in her wheelchair so she can reach the counter and help slice vegetables. I eavesdrop from the entrance of the living room while Dad sits on the couch flipping through my old photo albums.

  “Serena, Papa was smart. He had a very important job. Did you know he had a very important job, Serena?”

  “Um, no. Why was it so important?”

  “Well, he was always writing emails to people. And you know where?”

  “Where?”

  “To other countries!”

  “Really? Wow. That’s sounds very important.”

  “Yeah. Papa was a very important man.”

  I’m picking at my fingernails when I realize I’m smiling.

  I sit next to Dad on the couch. He’s staring at a photo of me, him and Mum on the island when I was small. Mum, so beautiful, so young, so healthy, is holding me in her arms under the sun—her apricot-colored dress flowing in the breeze, with huge Janis Joplin type orange-rimmed spectacles balancing on the tip of her nose as she eyes the camera from above the frames. She looks so free and happy—a few years before being diagnosed with bipolar.

  “Tessa’s got Mum’s smile,” I say, stroking my finger over her face.

  Dad coughs up a little melancholic laugh while shedding a few stray tears salted with memories.

  “Whatcha thinking about, Dad?” I ask, rubbing his upper back.

  “Uh, nothing …” he replies, tilting his head to the side, wiping tears into his hair by his temples.

  “Sure you are. Tell me. I can handle it.” I nudge him gently with my elbow.

  “Orh. Just how happy I was when I met your mum,” he sniffs. “Can you remember much of when you were that young on the island?”

  “Yeah, quite a bit,” I nod, as I try to convince myself I do. Funnily enough, I get a flash of her laughing and throwing me up in the air—catching me just before hitting the ground.

  “Your Papou and Yiayia always asked me when Betty and I would have a second kid.”

  “Oh, yeah? Why didn’t you?”

  “I didn’t think Betty could have handled it. She started getting depressed, you know, and I didn’t think it would have been good for her. Or for the kid … Sweetheart …” Dad looks me in the eyes. “I’m sorry you had to go through so many horrible things with her. And I’m sorry I wasn’t more supportive of you. But I was just … you know … trying to get a grip on everything myself, too.”

  “I know, Dad. Don’t worry.”

  Serena pops her head out from behind the kitchen door.

  “Why don’t you go and stay with James on the island for a while? It’d do you and Tessa good, I think. I could stay here and sort out a sale for this apartment, if it is, in fact, what you want to do.”

  “I’m not sure, anymore, though. Maybe I’ll keep it.”

  Serena nods and disappears into the kitchen again.

  She has asked us to go home with her, back to Australia—for the three of us to live in the house she inherited from her grandfather. I feel I’d be intruding, but she keeps insisting it’s big enough for a family of ten, hates living in it alone, and had decided to put it up for rent before she came here because she hardly uses any of the rooms. But if we go with her, she said she’ll remove the ad.

  I don’t know what I want. I don’t know what would be the right thing to do. I’ve spent my life running away from pain. Would moving back to Australia be a repeat of the same thing? Maybe I should just keep living here, in this apartment—face-to-face with reality. I don’t know if I can leave Dad either—living in that big house in the middle of a mountain all alone. Who would help him if he fell down the stairs, or locked himself in the garage?

  Tessa rolls into the living room with a plate of chicken curry on her lap.

  “Here, Grandpa. Here’s your curry.” Tessa hands Dad a steaming hot plate on a brown rubber-based tray.

  “Thanks, Cherry Pie,” Dad replies, kissing her on the forehead.

  Reminded of Alex and the forehead kisses he used to give Tessa, I swallow so hard, trying to inhibit tears, that everyone turns their heads.

  “Don’t worry, Mummy,” Tessa says. “I’m going to bring your curry in too-oo.”

  Silently shaking myself from despair, I call out for Serena. “Can you help her bring them in? She has to do it one by one!”

  Serena yells back, “Let her do it. It’s good exercise. She wants to anyway.”

  Tessa rolls back into the kitchen and returns to the lounge with another plate of curry on her lap. But this time it’s resting on a tea towel—the tea towel Alex incessantly kept by his plate when we ate dinner.

  “Papa told me to tell you he loves you very much, Mummy,” Tessa says as she hands me my curry. I freeze, plate mid-air. Dad’s mouth is contorted mid-chew. I can even hear Serena holding the pot still above her plate, ready to fill her dish.

  Silence.

  “Tessa? Blossom? He spoke to you?” I whisper, bending down close to Tessa’s face.

  “Yeah,” she shrugs as if it’s completely normal, her eyes shifting left and right as if thinking she might have done something wrong.

  “When?” I quickly stand and look around the house to see if I can catch a glimpse of him.

  “Just now. He helped me make the curry with Serena.” Tessa frowns. I hear Serena put the pot back on the stove. She pauses at the living room doorway, and eats standing up, unfazed. Does she know about this?

  “Does he speak to you often?” I take hold of the wheelchair and wheel her around the house in a frantic search for some physical evidence. I have to convince myself what Tessa is saying is true. Dad is about to get up and follow me, but he changes his mind after Serena flashes him a look.

  “Yeah, all the time,” Tessa says. “When you put me to bed, he comes and sings the sweet dreams song with us. Mummy, he sits right next to you. He puts his hand on your tummy.”

  At the thought of such a thing, I abandon Tessa in the corridor, run to our bedroom, and bury my head into Alex’s pillow, still clothed in the same pillowcase it was in when he died. And I cry

  And cry.

  And cry.

  Half an hour later Serena taps on my door. I don’t say anything, but she comes in anyway and lies next to me. My breath must stink because after initially lying on her side to face me, she turns onto her back.

  “Bad breath?” I ask, candidly, squinting with curiosity.

  “Um … yeah,” Serena chuckles. “I’m sorry. I’m sorry.” She laughs even harder—so hard she brings her knees to her chest to accommodate it.

  I don’t manage a laugh, but I do summon a little smirk as I get up to brush my teeth. Serena turns onto her stomach, takes the duvet with her, and rolls up into a human-sized cocoon. When I get back from the bathroom, she’s still lying there, hidden under a big pile of feather-down and soft pastel aqua linen.

  “Did you eat your curry?” I ask. I hear a muffled “yep” before she exposes her teary face. I’m about to ask what’s wrong, but notice mascara stains all over Alex’s pillow. I panic, snatch it out from under her head and stare at it in my shaking hands. Serena sits up, opening and closing her mouth like a fish out of water. I rush the pillow to the bathroom and try to soak up Serena’s tears with my bath towel in frantic desperation. Unable to control my anger, I yell, sitting on the bathroom floor, hugging Alex’s pillow as if it were my own child and someone was threatening to take it away.

  “You’ve ruined it! You fucking bitch! You’ve destroyed Alex’s pillow!”

  Serena kneels down to try and comfort me, but I push her out of the bathroom with my feet—she topples backwards and lands on her back with a thud. I slam the door closed, mortified, humiliated from my own aberration; my heartless ingratitude. Eyes wide with shock, I cover my mouth with rigid fingers, push my top lip into my teeth to stunt whatever other slander I might utter during this irrational tantrum. I couldn’t expect anything less than verbal abuse in retaliation, but after all that, Serena still remains calm and
apologizes to me.

  “Melody?” she whispers through the keyhole. “I’m sorry.”

  I stand up and open the door. She’s bawling—make-up running all the way down to her chin.

  “No, Serena. I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.”

  Twenty-nine

  I had always dreamed of hiring an old beat-up Volkswagen van, with a mattress in the back, and taking a three-month road trip around Australia. So that’s exactly what me and Alex did, before we had Tessa. We drove from Melbourne to Darwin and flew back to Athens from there. I had always wanted to see Alice Springs with my own eyes—the TV never did it justice.

  After reconciling with Serena, I have a nap and I dream of the night me and Alex camped, in the middle of nowhere, probably illegally. Surrounded by vast nothingness—a fierce silent roar—more powerful than any sound this earth is capable of spawning.

  Imagine standing in the middle of a field. Imagine red dirt. Distance and more beyond it. Imagine searching for the end of this distance, where the stars join to it like pins to a tent in loam. Imagine looking up to a cluster of approving eyes. Lying naked beneath them with the man you want to spend the rest of your life with. Imagine a silence that echoes the touch of your hand to his cheek. Imagine existence being loud and small, the way the Sun lights up the Earth. Imagine you are the Earth and he is the Sun, that silence is tangible, and the stars are the souls of your previous lives. Imagine distance is the place you’ll find life and death, where soil is your skin, and the dry fields your bones. Imagine love is the desert.

  I wake up when it’s dark, still clutching onto Alex’s pillow. Serena is lying next to me, examining my face with remorse.

  “G’day stranger.” She strokes my hair.

  I sit up and look at the stained pillowcase and suddenly remember.

  “I’m so—” I croak, attempting to apologize again for my behavior.

  “Don’t worry, I understand. I’m sorry. I wasn’t thinking straight.”

  We lie there, for too long, on our sides, like fresh lovers wondering who is going to make the first move.