Page 101 of Power Moves
‘One and the same,’ nods Dad.
‘What are the chances!’ cries Maxy.
‘But …’ Jessie’s gaze cuts between us all. ‘Why would she let a grudge like that get in the way of her whole life? Her whole future?’
Dad puts his arm around my sister. ‘She didn’t,’ he says. ‘She got a second opinion from a lovely immunologist at the Nepean Hospital who’d never played tennis in her life, and then she got a third and fourth opinion from two doctors in the city. Mum wasn’t sitting around waiting to die because of old Winkipop.’
‘When did she go to all these appointments?’ I cry. ‘Why didn’t she tell us?’
‘Because she hated to talk about it. She hated to think about it, Mill. She tried to pretend it wasn’t happening.’
‘But what if Winkipop could have helped her?’ Maxy asks, his voice quiet.
‘Maybe he could have, maybe he couldn’t have. There are so many doctors in this world. She couldn’t go to all of them. At some point, you have to surrender. We can’t control everything.’
My whole face is hot. I’m not sure if I’m one single teardrop or if I’m covered in torrents of them. I’ve never cried for Mum before, but now I don’t know if I’ll ever be able to stop. It feels like a release, but it also feels like white-hot pain scorching every atom of my body. The faces of my siblings mirror mine. There’s disbelief and total understanding. Our stubborn, brilliant, kind, clever, ridiculous, grudge-holding mum is gone.
Dad draws us in again and this time we slide together like Tetris blocks. I rest my head on Dad’s shoulder. Jessie does the same. We stand like this for a long moment, each of us lost in thought, each of us unwilling to let go. When Dad eventually pulls away with a bittersweet smile in his eyes, the energy in the room feels both less andmoremelancholic. It’s as though we’ve somehow peaked properly. We reached Everest six years ago but we clambered down again as fast as we could, desperate for the normality of base camp. Now, we’re back on the summit, but this time we’re assessing the view, posting a flag, feeling the wind on our cheeks.
‘I love you guys,’ I say, my throat like lead. ‘And I love you, Mum.’ I tilt my head up to the sky, hoping she can hear me.
‘Same,’ says Jessie thickly.
‘Copycat,’ says Maxy, bumping Jessie’s shoulder. ‘But yeah, same.’
We all start laughing quietly, unsure whether it’s disrespectful to the moment or the best idea ever.
‘Poor Alex,’ I mutter, glancing towards the kitchen. ‘Do you think she’s still here? Or has she realised we’re a family of psychos and decided to bail while she still can?’ I catch Dad’s eye. ‘Sorry for ruining today.’
‘I’m sure she’ll understand,’ smiles Dad.
‘Not if she has frostbite,’ points out Maxy. ‘Do you think she managed to work out the gas heater on the deck? It’s freezing out there. I’ll go help her now.’
‘No need,’ says Dad, striding over to the window. He opens the curtains and the western sun streams into the room. ‘We can eat in here.’
CHAPTER 48
Turns out, Alex-the-woman is as much of a legend as Alex-the-imagined-man.
She was posted to Iraq (signals division), did a stint driving trucks in Mount Isa (she actually understands Maxy’s job) and then moved to Sydney and started an interior-design agency, specialising in custom carpentry.
When she comes inside, she helps us rearrange the furniture in the living room so the dining table can sit next to the window. She explains that the wingback chairs will look better next to the bookshelf because it will create a reading nook, and she suggests we get rid of the coffee table altogether because it’s too big for the space. She doesn’t mention that it’s also fugly, and we don’t mention that we hate the sight of it anyway. Maxy helps her carry it out and then there’s an unceremonious dumping of it on the kerb. Jessie posts it for free on Facebook Marketplace and within thirty minutes, an enterprising duo with a van emblazoned with ‘Your Place Or Mine’ have lugged it away.
The curtains are open, the dining table is dusted, the coffee table is gone and we have a bloody reading nook like some bourgeois family onGrand Designswho’ve converted an abandoned warehouse using eco-friendly mud from a Mexican sinkhole. What have we been doing for six years? This room has been the Voldemort of our lives—the Room That Must Not Be Named—but Alex has fixed it in thirty minutes.
We unearth the cork-backed Wimbledon-scene placemats that we haven’t used in years, and Jessie finds some old jam jars and fills them with eucalyptus branches. Dad carries in a metal baking tray of sausages and steaks, and Maxy follows with the potato salad. Alex has brought two other salads: a mango-and-macadamia coleslaw that looks incredible, and a broccoli-and-quinoa salad topped with flaked almonds, mint, lemon and labne. The ice in the water jugs sparkles in the sunlight.
As we sit down to eat, Maxy regaling us with stories from the mine site, I feel something inside me shift. I don’t know if it’s being in this room, or having had a proper cry about Mum; I don’t know if it’s admitting my darkest secret and realising I had nothing to do with Mum’s death after all; I don’t know if it’s being with my family again, or sitting down to a meal that feels worthy of Christmas Day. I don’t know if it’s one of those things or all of them, or any other factors that my brain can’t pinpoint, but something within me has opened.
Dad passes me the coleslaw and I pile my plate high with colours: yellow mango, purple cabbage, golden toasted macadamias and julienned threads of bright-orange carrot. Jessie leans her head against my shoulder before reaching for thewater jug. It makes me think that even if she’s still pissed with me on some level, it’s sandwiched between layers of love. Tempers may flare, jokes may bomb, we may still annoy the shit out of each other sometimes, but at our core, we’ll always be magnetically connected, drawn to choose each other every time because weknoweach other, and we understand how lucky that makes us.
As we clear up after dinner, Dad unloads the dishwasher and Alex repacks theWorld’s Best Dadmug into the secret drawer under the rangehood. So, she already knows where we keep the special mugs. What else have I missed?
I rummage in the cupboard, searching for the cardboard case we store the Wimbledon placemats in. Every shelf is filled with sundry junk, each item a gateway to a memory. A macaroni keyring I made for Father’s Day, the plastic semi-circle of a Hot Wheels racetrack that arrived in Maxy’s Santa sack one year, a long-lost glitter ChapStick (thelong-lost glitter ChapStick?). There’s also a wonky, overexposed photo of Mum and I beaming after we both won club champs, our foreheads sweaty and cropped off by the amateur photographer (Maxy). I surreptitiously slide the photo into my pocket. I’ve missedremembering. I’ve closed myself off from my past for six years, trying to race ahead of life before it could catch up, thinking this would make me happier—but it didn’t.
When I first started playing juniors, Mum would tell me to relax into the rhythm of the game. The greatest tennis players can last five sets because they know how to rest, she explained. They know when to attack, and critically, when to switch toautopilot so they can regain their strength in preparation for the inevitable onslaught.
Sometimes, my opponent would smash a ball cross-court, and all I needed to do was hold the racquet so the ball ricocheted back across the net, effectively reversing the aggression. If I could stand my ground long enough, there’d be an unforced error in my favour.You don’t always have to try to beat them, Mum would tell me.Sometimes, they beat themselves.
