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

by Jessica Bell

  Eydie towers over Beth with her arms on her hips. Beth wipes away some escaping drool from her chin with a shaking hand, jagged nails embedded with grit.

  “Darl, I can’t ... I can’t ... remember.”

  “This’s bullshit.” Eydie flings open the alcohol cabinet door. A hinge pops and flies across the room. She clutches the necks of as many bottles as she can, carries them into the kitchen, slams them on the kitchen bench, and then fetches the rest. She unscrews their caps and throws them at Beth’s chest. Beth hardly moves, but blinks on each impact, sniffing.

  Eydie pours the alcohol into the sink. One by one.

  I’m gonna make this fuckin’ hurt, ya fuckin’ selfish cunt.

  Beth cries for her to stop. Her cries screech as she clutches at her hair, grey tears streaming down her cheeks.

  “Darl, please, stop! I threw them away. Please!”

  “You what? What the fuck did ya do that for?” Eydie slams a just-emptied bottle of supermarket gin on the counter. “Well, tell me where the fuck he lives. Tell me. Now!” Beth looks at Eydie in silent horror. Eydie can see her reflection in Beth’s eyes and wonders if she can see what she sees—a distorted fishbowl image of her daughter’s disappointed yet hopeful face.

  Beth shifts her gaze from the last full bottle of alcohol by the sink to Eydie’s blazing eyes. Beth still doesn’t say a word. Eydie grabs Beth by the shoulders and shakes her. “Tell me where he lives, for Christ’s sake!”

  Beth takes a quick breath, bringing her tears to a halt. “With his brother. Near Phillip Island. But please, take me with you. It’ll be—”

  “It’ll be what?”

  “Safer that way, darl.”

  “Safer? Safer than all this?”

  Eydie pulls a bottle of water out of the fridge, grabs Beth by her upper arm, pulls her forward, and shoves her into her bedroom. She throws Beth on the bed. As she closes Beth’s hand around the bottle of water, she says, “This is for your own good, Ma. One day you’ll thank me. I promise.” Beth glares at her, a silent plea for just one more glass. Eydie walks out of the bedroom, and flicks the latch closed on the outside of Beth’s sliding bedroom door. A door with a safety lock.

  Among the cheerful sounds of squealing children, in the street outside her house, she can hear the fading sound of Beth’s angry fists banging.

  Banging.

  And they don’t sound as threatening as she’d thought.

  Because she’s finally going to meet family she can trust.

  Eleanor

  Yet another letter has arrived from Roger’s brother, Samuel. Eleanor sits at her desk after a six-hour surgery and pulls it out of the patent-leather bag Ailish bought her for her birthday. The style doesn’t suit her, she thinks, but it’ll do, if only because it’s big, black, and bold enough to bang a mugger over the head with.

  Four other unopened letters from Samuel hide in this bag. They’re wrapped inside her lucky orange scrub cap, the spare scrub cap she likes to use for concealing such unwanted business, hoping the psychological charm of it might make the inconvenience disappear. So far, Samuel has sent one every quarter. The first, a year ago today.

  “Ugh.” Eleanor grabs a scrunched-up over-used tissue from her pocket and blows her nose. It sounds like a lawnmower struggling to get started. She takes pride in not caring for discreetness, especially when it comes to natural bodily functions. She opens her desk drawer in search of the sample perfume she received at Myers. She’d only paused momentarily at the Estêe Lauder stand, when she thought she’d seen Roger entering the department store.

  She dabs the perfume, multiple times, on every pressure point until the inch-long, ten millimeter-wide glass capsule is empty. The stench of formaldehyde has been invading her nasal cavity since early morning. She’d promised to teach her ill resident’s new interns how to suture. When am I ever going to learn how to say no? She sniffs her wrists. Great. Now I smell like a cadaver dumped into a jasmine bush.

  She leans back in her chair and pulls her thin, limp grey-blonde hair into a tight ponytail, tight enough to give herself a temporary face lift. She inspects her hands. Her short nails and dry eponychiums stand out against her raw skin.

  She glances at her bag and bites the last remaining free edge from her digitus quintus. She spits the nail into the air. Either read them now, or throw them away and risk not knowing something vital. Such as “he’s dead.” Gee, that’d solve everything. Not that my therapist would agree.

  She pulls all the letters out of her bag and places them on her desk in chronological order. Grabs her sentimental rusty scalpel from the pen jar.

  She stabs at the first letter, denting her desk.

  Why did I give him money?

  Stab. He doesn’t deserve it.

  Stab. Not.

  Stab. One.

  Stab. Bit.

  An ear-piercing scrape rattles the desk as she drives the scalpel along the surface as if butchering flesh. Her face burns. She realizes she’s holding her breath and lets out a heavy sigh.

  Eleanor speeds through each letter, anticipating the clincher, but they only contain the mundane content she has been expecting, and wonders why she even bothered getting so worked up about it.

  Letter 1: “… thanks for the funds … much appreciated ….

  Letter 2: “… medical expenses paid. Thanks again ….

  Letter 3: “… thanks so much for your help all these months, nursing Roger is getting easier by the day ...”

  Letter 4: “… all back to normal now … Is there anything we can do to repay you?”

  “Yes. Learn how to use email,” Eleanor grumbles as she rips the first four letters in half and throws them into the wastepaper basket by the wall. “This one better be good.”

  Letter 5: “… Can Roger see Ivy? … I know we had an agreement, but perhaps you can make an exception? He misses you all ...”

  “No way.” Eleanor tears the fifth letter into the tiniest shreds possible and throws them into the air. As they waft down around her, like multiplying white blood cells, Ailish barges in, her hair revolting from its usual precision.

  “Hi,” Ailish pants with narrow eyes. She pushes fly-away strands of hair behind her ears.

  “Hi yourself,” Eleanor says, blowing a fragment of paper away from her face. “Why were you running? And where have you been lately? I’ve been trying to contact you for ages.”

  “Why?”

  “What do you mean, why?” Eleanor closes the door behind Ailish with her shoulder. She remains leaning against the door, looking Ailish up and down. She looks exhausted. That makes two of us.

  “I mean, is there any particular reason why you wanted to contact me?” Ailish puts her hands on her hips, then immediately returns them to her sides, as if conscious of her aggressive stance. She glances around the office and takes a seat at Eleanor’s desk. A bead of sweat trickles down her temple.

  “Are you okay?” Eleanor asks, feeling Ailish’s head for a fever.

  Ailish pushes Eleanor’s hand away as though fending off a fly. “I don’t need you to play doctor with me anymore. I just want … need your candor.”

  Eleanor crosses her arms under her breasts and scoffs. How dare Ailish claim she’s been “playing doctor”? She sacrificed her own heart to help her. “What’s going on?”

  Ailish’s jaw clenches as she stares into the stuffy air between her and Eleanor. She licks her lips and folds her hands in her lap.

  Eleanor crouches, balancing with one knee on the ground so that their faces are level, and rests her hand on Ailish’s thigh. Something must be up. She shouldn’t judge this haughtiness. She won’t make any assumptions.

  “You can tell me anything, Allie. You know that, don’t you?”

  “I spoke to Eydie this morning,” Ailish barks, maintaining eye contact with Eleanor as she stands and backs toward her old small black couch in the corner. The only nonsterile-looking piece of furniture in the room.

  Eleanor sits, crosses her legs, sha
kes her foot. She knew this would come out eventually. She doesn’t even know why she kept it a secret. It was pointless. But she believes people feel more in control if they have secrets, independent from the world’s demands. So she allowed herself the luxury. After all, she doesn’t owe Ailish anything.

  Ailish wipes sweat from her top lip and rubs her fingers on her skirt.

  “Look.” Eleanor sighs. “Constance sent that letter to us both. Okay? I’m sure it was the least she could do after favouring you over me, don’t you think? And trying to use you to push me out of her and Roger’s lives? So can we forget about it? It doesn’t matter anymore. Really. Let the past be the past. We’ll keep trudging forward. All right?” Eleanor robotically repeats the exact advice her therapist had given her the day after Ivy announced Kit’s endeavor to seek out Roger.

  Ailish’s face contorts like a confused little girl. “Eleanor, I ….

  “Don’t. Allie, don’t. It’s fine. Really. Constance may have been lovely to you. And I’m sure she was capable of it. But she was an outright bitch to me, and I wouldn’t be surprised if the whole relationship she had with you was some sort of manipulative scam to get rid of us both. I guess she got what she wanted, huh? I never told you this, but she tried to get custody of Ivy right after Roger left you. Can you believe that?”

  “What?”

  “Exactly. And why Ivy? Why not Kit or Eydie?”

  “Eleanor.” Ailish shakes her head and swallows.

  “She’d always had a bone to pick with me ever since Roger and I got married. She did it out of spite. She was not a nice woman. Believe me.”

  “Why didn’t you just tell me you received the letter?” Ailish breathes so deeply through her nose, her nostrils close. “We could have taken Ivy and Kit to meet her together. You know, when they were little.”

  Eleanor stops shaking her foot. “Why didn’t you tell me you received the letter?”

  Ailish bites her bottom lip and scratches her right eyebrow. “Well, I didn’t want to upset you. But you told Ivy, though, didn’t you? Didn’t you think Kit had the right to know too?”

  “Allie.” Eleanor clears her throat and rubs the back of her neck. “Wasn’t that your responsibil—.

  “I’m just hurt that you thought you needed to keep it a secret from me, that’s all,” Ailish interrupts, clearly trying to avert any blame that might scathe her own ego. “Especially seeing there were evidently no consequences in telling me about it since you knew I’d received the letter anyway.”

  Eleanor laughs and uncrosses her legs. She leans forward like a mechanic with greasy hands hanging between her knees. “Me? Keeping secrets from you? Please tell me you’re not serious.”

  Ailish nods curtly. “Yes. Yes, I am serious.”

  Just tell her you know.

  “Oh, for God’s sake, Allie. I know your affair with Roger didn’t last only one week. All right? I knew that since I walked in on you and Roger in my bed, and it was not the first time I saw—.

  “Stop!” Ailish begins to cry, and fiddles with her bra strap while looking at the ceiling.

  “There’re some tissues in the second drawer,” Eleanor says, scratching at an outbreak of eczema on her left palm. Anger broils in the rear of her nasal cavity. But she doesn’t want to get angry. She’s over this. She got over this a long time ago and hid the fact that she knew about Ailish’s affair with Roger to protect Ailish from the memory of him. Not for any other reason. So why is she feeling angry now? Has she been protecting Ailish’s heart in an attempt to protect her own? Because now that the words have been spoken, the memory smells like dead bowel.

  “Thank you.” Ailish pulls a tissue out of the box and blows her nose, hardly making a sound, just the slightest of squeaks, like the scuff of a surgeon’s sole against the hospital floor.

  “Allie. I don’t care. Can you understand that? I don’t. What happened with us and Roger doesn’t matter anymore. I just want my daughter to be happy. And if you’re going to let Kit ruin Ivy’s chances of getting her life together, I don’t know how I’ll forgive you for that. You had your chance to allow Kit to meet Roger so many times before we lost track of where he was. You should have taken advantage of the opportunity when you had the chance. And why didn’t you?”

  “You can’t stop Kit from finding her father. She deserves to meet him no matter what. I’m certainly not going to get in the way.” Ailish pulls herself together, wiping her eyes dry and redoing her hair. “In fact, I’ve decided to help her.”

  “Roger’s an arsehole. It’s useless. He won’t want to meet them. Believe me. Don’t you think he would have tried to contact them if he did?” Roger was the sweetest man I ever met. He was fragile. You suited him, Allie. You suited him a lot better than I did. I devoured his soul like a praying mantis during mating season.

  Ailish rolls the desk chair closer to Eleanor, pointing her finger at her and clenching her teeth. “He was not an arsehole.” She stands and hovers over Eleanor like an irate boarding school teacher. “We loved each other.”

  Eleanor stands in defense and cranes her neck forward. “And do you think we didn’t love each other? Is that what you’re trying to tell me here? That you have more of a right over him because you loved each other? For crying out loud, Allie, what planet are you living on? We were married. With a child. You and your student crush took away my life. And I have never blamed you for it. Ever. I put all the blame on Roger. Was that a mistake? Should I have put the blame on you?” Eleanor tilts her head to the side in question, her heart racing against the clock. “I helped you give birth to my husband’s daughter! And now you want …”

  Eleanor closes her eyes and takes a deep breath, trying to lower her voice, to control her shaking hands. She puts them in her pockets. The last thing she needs right now is to make a mistake on the operating table because she is upset about something that happened twenty-five years ago.

  I made my bed. I chose to lie in it. Cut Allie some slack.

  “What is it that you want from me now, Ailish? Why are you here?” Eleanor whispers, supporting herself against the wall by the door. She squeezes her nose.

  “I want to know where Roger is,” Ailish replies, gripping the handle of her handbag so tight her knuckles turn white. “I want to speak to him before Kit does. I have to protect my daughter. I want to make sure she doesn’t get hurt anymore than she already has.” Ailish glares at Eleanor as if willing herself to breathe fire. “And the reason for that is my business.”

  Eleanor swallows. She couldn’t possibly tell her where he is. Then Ivy would know where to find him. How horrible for Ivy to see him so weak, when he used to be so strong. It just wouldn’t be right.

  “You do realize that Ivy has just told Kit she doesn’t want anything more to do with her? She’s devastated, Eleanor. They were peas in a pod growing up. And I’m going to do my best to make her happy again. I’m going to get her what she wants. Surely you can understand that. I’m sure that’s all you want for Ivy too. Happiness?”

  Ailish looks at the ground, squints at something, and moves toward the door. Eleanor steps in front of her as she begins to bend down.

  “I’m sorry to hear that. But you know Ivy’s still having a hard time after the divorce.”

  “Ivy is a grown woman,” Ailish snaps.

  So is Kit. Eleanor is tempted to ask Ailish what she means by that, but decides against it, hoping to cut the conversation short before it gets out of hand. “I don’t know where Roger is. Sorry. Now if you’ll excuse me, I have some paperwork to get done.” She opens the door for Ailish to leave.

  “Fine,” Ailish replies without parting her teeth. “But first tell me …” Ailish bends down and picks up a shred of paper, the size of her thumb. Her cheeks turn pink; her nostrils flare. Eleanor can hear the saliva build up around the walls of her mouth. “Would your paperwork have anything to do with this?” Ailish asks, holding the shred of paper close to Eleanor’s nose.

  It reads: “Can Roger see I
v….

  Before Eleanor has the chance to speak, Ailish’s hand makes a clean swipe across her cheek. Eleanor holds her own hand against her hot stinging flesh, and wonders why she hadn’t had the nerve to make her presence known, and do the same thing, the day she found Ailish fucking her husband up against his office wall. She also wonders why she let the affair continue for three years before plotting the day she would catch them in the act and reveal his infidelity. But what she wonders the most is why she gets such a thrill out of soothing her patients’ pain, when she can never soothe her own.

  “Allie,” Eleanor whispers, still holding her hand to her cheek. “I think you might need to sit down for this.”

  Kit

  The sun bleeds an orange glucose shard of light through the blinds. The TV screen is layered with dust, no longer camouflaged by night. For Kit’s entire life, the TV has sat in this exact position. In the corner. On a mahogany treasure chest with an intricately designed rusty metal latch. Not once in her twenty-five years has the furniture been moved around. She can’t even remember the rug under the coffee table being removed, or steam-cleaned. But somehow everything has remained spotless, soulless, covered by an invisible sheen of emotional filth. A happy homemaker’s cocoon inhabited by the manically depressed who succeed in making others believe they are perfectly fine. Kit is not an exception.

  Kit watches commercials in mute—graceful images of happy blonde, blue-eyed nuclear families eating Vegemite sandwiches in abnormally green and ridiculously large grassy backyards. Images of overenthusiastic teens throwing Frisbees and rubber balls for golden retrievers that don’t need to be given orders, and of blue heelers herding sheep like obedient robots. Of young, outrageously cute crystal-eyed siblings hugging and kissing each other, as if they’ve never thrown tantrums over toy-snatching. Of parents looking impossibly content, barbequing up a feast for their statistically calculated 2.5 kids, under an unnaturally cloudless sky. All in all, a stereotypical view of Australia, distorted by blank sound, with raging lawn mowers as a backdrop.