‘Because I’ve had my heart broken, believe it or not,’ Annalee snapped.
‘Yes, but how would you know howIfeel? You don’t know me, don’t know me at all.’ It didn’t feel good to state, but it was no less truthful for that.
‘What are you talking about, of course I know you!’ Annalee shook her head at the absurdity of it all.
‘But you don’t, do you? Not really,’ Tawrie pushed.
‘What are you getting at?’
And then it happened.
The volcano of honesty that Tawrie had regularly smothered with short replies or by removing herself physically from a situation, dousing the flames of truth that had been bubbling in the base of her gut for as long as she could recall, came firing out. All of it.
It was as if someone had lit the fuse and there was no going back, no slowing down and no time to offer things in a considered manner.
‘I have no ... no memory of you.’
Annalee laughed out loud. ‘No memory of me? I don’t get it, I’m right here.’ She tapped her fingers over her heart as if she had to make sure she was present. ‘I’m right here.’
‘No, Mum, you’re never right here. You’re always planning your escape, hatching a plan to get to the pub, or into some bloke’s car or on to a beach, on a jaunt, a jolly, away, away from me.’
Annalee’s eyes brimmed. ‘No, no, Taw, never away from you.’
‘Yes. Always away from me and then always returning drunk, slurred, blurred, gaze askew, clothes twisted, not present, stumbling up the stairs to bed, sometimes alone, often not. And I tell myself that you’re a grown woman who can do what she wants with whoever she wants. I’m not your jailer or your judge, but one thing I know for sure, is that ...’
‘What?’ Her mother’s voice no more than a whisper, her pitch dismissive. ‘What do you know for sure?’
Tawrie found it easier to look towards the window where a gentle breeze brought the curtains to life. ‘I know that if I was a mum and my child had lost their dad, I’d be there, with her, holding her, telling her everything was going to be okay.’
Annalee too turned to face the big window with a view of the ocean, like her daughter, it seemed, taking comfort from the possibility of escape. Tawrie could make out the tremble to her frame.
‘What if you knew itwasn’tgoing to be okay? What if you knew nothing was going to be okay ever again?’
‘Then all the more reason to stay close and hold them tight.’
Annalee now faced her. ‘You think you have all the answers.’
‘No, no I don’t think I have any of the answers.’ This was her truth. ‘I sometimes think if it wasn’t for Nan—’ She bit her tongue, there was a fine line between honesty and cruelty and Tawrie Gunn had never been cruel.
‘I think that too. What would we do without her?’ Annalee gave a forced, ugly smile and wiped the tears from beneath her eyes where thin remnants of mascara pooled, mixed with dried blood.
‘All my memories from before Dad and after, they’re all of her, with you on the edge, stumbling in and stumbling out.’
‘You have no idea! None at all!’ her mother shouted.
‘I know you’re always pissed and wobbling upstairs, or downstairs or tripping out of pubs and spraining your ankle on kerbs, blacking your eye on walls, or falling down the bloody steps to the beach or shitting yourself so Nan has to scrub up your mess! I know all of that! And I know I sit in my room or work in the café instead of doing what I think I’d be good at just so I’m close enough to come and mop up after you! You think that makes me proud? You think I like being your daughter?’
‘Get out!’ Her mother extended her damaged digit towards the door. ‘Get out, now!’
Tawrie stood, welcoming the chance to get out of the room, to get away from the woman who invoked such a reaction, and to calm down.
‘I don’t know who you think you are, Tawrie, but you have no right to speak to me like that!’
‘No right? And what rights do you have? You’re not a mother, not in the way I deserved. And I wonder if you were a wife in the way that Dad deserved.’ Her mother’s eyes grew wide and her swollen mouth fell open. Tawrie had gone too far and she knew it, but the bull was battering the gate and in one more sentence it broke free entirely and came charging. ‘Did he get into that boat to get away from you? I mean, is that why he sailed all the time? Jesus, can you blame him? Look at the state of you! If I could escape I bloody would! And do you know what? I just might!’ She practically bolted across the bedroom floor, cracking a china plate beneath her foot,and stomping on clothes, cigarette packets and empty beer cans as she went.
Annalee’s sob was loud and visceral. It made Tawrie gasp as she slammed the door behind her.
Leaning now on the banister at the top of the half landing she did her best to catch her breath as her tears fell.
