Kara was tipsy.
Maddie sat in her high chair, singing a loud toneless song to herself. She had to tilt her head up because her green paper crown was too big for her and had fallen down over her nose.
Gemma herself had slipped into full-on giggly, girlish Gemma. She could hear herself talking nonstop. Chatter. Chatter. Ha, ha, ha. Shut up, she thought, shut up for God’s sake, but it seemed she was trapped in her own inane party personality.
As food began to circulate around the table, Lyn and Maxine both hovered just slightly above their seats, ignoring their own empty plates, hands poised like frenzied conductors, ready to pounce triumphantly on any unmet requirement.
“Nana, have some salad dressing!” ordered Lyn.
“Cat, pass your father the turkey!” called out Maxine.
It was a mystery to Gemma why they cared so much. Nobody was hungry. It was too hot.
“More wine anybody?” asked Frank.
“Yes, please, just a little drop, thank you, Frank,” slurred Kara in a fake elegant tone and dissolved into hysterical giggles, slumping across the table.
“Would someone take her glass away?” implored Michael.
Maxine said, “I warned you hours ago she was drinking too much.”
“A little drop won’t hurt her.” Frank leaned over with the wine bottle.
Lyn snapped, “Dad! She’s fifteen!”
“Well, you three could sure put away the booze when you were fifteen.”
“You see, I’ve always had an interest in lepers,” Nana Kettle told Dan.
“I beg your pardon?” Dan looked dazed. His paper crown was leaving a stain of red across his forehead.
“Lepers!” chimed in Gemma. “Nana has always had an interest in lepers. It means your present is probably a donation on your behalf to the Leper Foundation. That’s what she gave Michael last year. Don’t you remember, Dan? We couldn’t stop laughing.”
“Gemma! Now you’ve ruined the surprise!” said Nana Kettle crossly. “Goodness me! Don’t listen to her, Michael.”
“I’m Dan.”
“I know perfectly well who you are, Dan, for goodness’ sake.”
Nana Kettle turned to Gemma.” I told that new young man of yours you were a butterfingers! Did you hear me?”
“I did hear you, Nana.”
“I think he agreed with me. He seemed a very sensible fellow, don’t you think, Dan?”
Dan’s hands clenched tight around his knife and fork. “Very sensible.”
“His sister was a pretty girl,” observed Nana Kettle. “Very pretty girl. All that lovely dark hair. Don’t you think, Gemma?”
Silently Gemma shrieked, Shut up, Nana! I will have to break up with him, she thought, I will. Her eyes were drawn irresistibly to Cat.
“She was gorgeous, Nana.” Cat’s face was hard. “Absolutely gorgeous. Don’t you think, Dan?”
“Oh, Christ.” Dan put down his knife and fork and dropped his head in his hands.
“Headache, dear?” asked Nana sympathetically.
There was a noise down the end of the table. Frank stood up and carefully tapped his fork against his glass.
He grinned self-consciously, boyishly, as everyone turned to face him. “I’ve got an announcement to make. It’s going to come as a bit of a surprise.”
“Good news, I hope,” said Michael with a hint of desperation. His purple crown was balanced precariously on his springy new haircut.
“Oh very good, Mike, mate. Very good.”
Gemma was barely listening to her father. She was wondering whether Dan really was having an affair with Angela, and if he was, then what? The thought of lugging around a secret of that magnitude made her feel ill. She was in the middle of giving Dan a private, powerful death stare to convey, “If you are having an affair, I know you are and you’d better stop,” when her father’s words penetrated her consciousness.
“Maxine and I are dating again.”
Maxine and I are dating again.
Nobody said a word. From the house, the saccharine sounds of Michael’s Christmas CD became audible. Sleigh bells rang and somebody dreamed of a white Christmas.
Kara hiccuped.
“You’re dating.” Cat leaned forward to look down the length of the table at Frank and Maxine.
“We’ve been seeing each other socially for quite some time now of course,” said Maxine in a voice that sounded bizarrely too young for her, like one she’d put on to imitate what a very rude young girl had said to her in the supermarket. “And a few months ago we began a—well, I guess you could call it, a relationship.”
“I think I’m going to be sick.” Cat pushed away her plate.
“We didn’t want to tell you earlier, until we knew for sure.” Frank placed a hearty, proprietary hand on Maxine’s shoulder. Maxine looked up at him, her face flushed with girlish color.
“Sure of what?” asked Lyn faintly.
“Well. Sure that we were in love. Again, of course.”
“I am going to be sick,” said Cat.
“Excuse me,” Lyn stood up. “Excuse me for a minute.” She threw down her napkin and walked off the veranda, pulling on the glass sliding door unnecessarily hard.
“Goodness me, you girls are crotchety today!” said Nana Kettle.
“But this is good news!” Frank put his wineglass down and leaned forward with his hands clutching the sides of the table, a perplexed frown creasing his forehead. “You’re happy for us, aren’t you, Gemma?”
“I’m very happy for you,” said Gemma truthfully, but she had that slightly off-balance feeling she used to get when she was at school and Cat or Lyn gave a teacher a different answer from the one she would have given. No, she’d think. I’m sure that’s not right. But how could we have got it wrong?
When their father first moved out of the house at Killara and into his new flat in the city, six-year-old Gemma wasn’t particularly concerned.
In her mind it was somehow vaguely linked to his blown-off finger from Cracker Night. It was like when she or one of her sisters got sick. They had to move into the little room next to Mum and Dad’s with the sofa that turned into a bed. That was so your nasty germs didn’t float up your sisters’ nostrils.
Probably Daddy had to sleep somewhere else for a little while because he didn’t want to infect anybody with his horrible sick finger.