Page 62 of Marley
What the fuck’s happened?
“What the fuck, George? What’s wrong?” I started to move towards them, a million and one thoughts rushing through my brain. No one spoke. The only sounds were my sister’s sniffs and sobs.
“Will somebody please tell me what the fuck is going on?”
Jimmie was crying too and goose bumps prickled my skin. Something bad happened ... my mum, my dad, Bailey? I can’t move. I opened my mouth to again ask for answers, but nothing came out.
All my mind was acknowledging was the fact that Maca was holding my sister in his lap. After all these years, all this time apart, they were finally here, together.
It was all gonna be okay. Life was gonna go back to the way it should always have been.
“The letters, Jim?” Maca questioned. “All the letters. You told me that she got them.”
Jimmie looked past me to Lennon, then back to Maca. I’m totally lost as to what is going on.
“She did.” She said to him, then turned her gaze to George. “You did.” The tone of her voice made it sound like she was almost pleading with her to confirm what she was saying. “Your mum said that they upset you so much, that we weren’t to talk about them.”
Georgia’s mouth opened and closed at least three times. It was almost comical to watch, except there was nothing at all funny about what was unfolding.
“No, no, Jim.” My sister shook her head. “I never knew. I never saw a single letter.”
“What?” Maca,, Jimmie, and Len, all seem to say at once.
George looked wide-eyed at all of us in turn. I’m not sure if she thought that we all thought she was lying, but she continued to confirm her story. “She told me that Sean phoned for a couple of weeks and that my dad threatened him; that he’d then stopped calling and that was it.” Her eyes moved between each of us again. She looked small and fragile sitting in Maca’s arms. He was bigger built than the last time they were together, and she was skinnier—a lot skinnier—and I was only just realising it then.
“Georgia, I swear to God, I called your house four or five times a day. I begged them to let me talk to you. I wrote letter after letter, begging you to see me.” I was witness to his side of the story and knew for sure that everything he was telling her was the truth.
So what the fuck happened? Why did G not get any of his letters? There had to be a simple explanation to this because my mum and Dad would never lie about that shit. They knew what they were both going through, what they’d continued to go through.
I started to feel a little dizzy and light headed as fear unfurled in my belly. Something wasn’t making sense.
Everyone was quite for a while, all of them probably trying to work out how the fuck this has happened. None of us wanting to think the worst; that it could’ve been done deliberately.
“G?” Maca said quietly. “I love you, babe, but your arse is fuckin bony and mine is going numb.”
“Fuck, I need a drink. Shit’s gonna go down if Mother’s done this on purpose,” Lennon said from beside me.
“No shit,” I replied, following him back to where we had left our bourbons.
We sit down on the much talked about sofas and each drain our glasses. Len tops them up this time. “I can’t believe this,” he stated.
“It’s gotta be something simple. Mum’s not a spiteful person. She was pissed off with Maca, but she’d never go out of her way to keep them apart.” I said, unsure of who I was trying to convince more. My eyes met Len’s and he looked as concerned as I felt. “Would she?” I questioned him.
“I have no fuckin clue, mate.” He took a sip of his drink. “I feel like I don’t know anything right now.”
My mind starts to race with thoughts of something strange that happened last year. My mum had asked me to keep the address of where we were living from Georgia, which was odd because she still wouldn’t talk to me at the time anyway. Then she’d flipped out when Georgia had apparently found it out. She’d said at the time that my sister had been behaving a little erratically, and that she had been asking for our address. She was worried that Georgia was gonna turn up and cause a scene and it could all end up in the papers. I’d shrugged it off at the time. I assumed my mum was over reacting to something G may or may not have said, but what if it had just been another way of keeping Maca and G apart?
I had an uneasy feeling in my belly and my chest as I watched Maca carry my sister into the room and sit her in his lap when he sat down of the sofa. The sensation wasn’t caused by watching those two together—that was great to see—it was the thought that my mum could’ve done something really horrible.
I moved to the armchair to give them some room as Len passed them both a drink.
I wanted to smile every time I looked at them together but I was feeling sick with nerves that life might be about to come crashing down all around us again.
Georgia was rambling on about the fact that this must all be some kind of mistake, that our mum knew the mess they were both in and that there was no way that she’d deliberately keep them apart.
“You okay, big brother Marley?” George asked.
No, I’m not, really. I’ve finally got my family all back together and it was suddenly looking like it could fall apart again. I didn’t want to tell George what else I knew, but I wasn’t lying to her. I wasn’t losing her again, especially if she and Maca were gonna work things out.
