“Don’t,” he said sharply. “Don’t even talk about her. Don’t—Jesus.”
He took a deep breath and puffed up his cheeks to blow out. I remembered how we used to say to Jack, “Deep breath, deep breath,” when he was having a tantrum and trying to learn how to control his anger.
“Do you remember—” I started to say.
“When is this ever going to end?” Now he was using this fake, flat, reasonable voice.
I said, “I won’t ever stop loving you, if that’s what you mean.”
He said, “You don’t love me. You don’t even know me anymore. You love my memory, that’s all.”
I said, “You’re wrong.”
He sighed and said, “Fine, you love me, but what’s the point? I’m marrying Ellen.”
I said, “I know. Congratulations, on the baby too.”
His face changed again, and he said, “How do you know about the baby?” And then he said, “Don’t tell me. I don’t want to know.” He pushed himself away from the car and walked off.
I called after him, “Do you remember when Jack ate pizza for the first time?”
And then suddenly he stopped and went still, and he turned around and yelled, “Yes, I remember! We had some happy times! So what? So what?”
He lifted his palms in the air, with his fingers splayed, and I saw his hands were trembling.
“This can’t go on,” he said, and he really sounded quite strange. “This has to stop.”
“I know,” I said, and I sounded and felt perfectly calm. “You have to come back to me.”
The plate Ellen had thrown against the wall was one of her grandmother’s. It was part of a set that her grandmother had received as a wedding present from her own parents. Ellen loved that dinner set. If there was a fire, she’d run back to save it. She couldn’t believe that she’d thrown one of those precious, irreplaceable plates against the wall. And over such a silly, trivial thing. It wasn’t like Patrick had just announced he was having an affair. They’d just had a disagreement over conflicting social engagements!
She did not behave like that. Imagine if her clients could see her!
She knelt down on the floor and regretfully picked up the broken pieces.
“I’m sorry, Grandma,” she said out loud. “That was really embarrassing.”
She saw an image of her grandmother in the spirit world (she would be busy helping out on some spirit world committee; she had always been a very civic sort of person), looking up from her paperwork to observe Ellen over the rims of her glasses. “That’s not like you, darling.”
“I know,” said Ellen. “It’s so strange!”
The phone rang. It was her mother.
“I just broke one of Grandma’s plates,” Ellen told her. “The wedding present set.”
“Those plates always gave me such a musty, fusty feeling,” said Anne. “I’d keep them handy for throwing against the wall whenever you have an argument with Patrick. Not that you’d ever do anything like that, would you? I guess if you two have an argument you just meditate together, or chant or align your auras or something.”
“I actually did throw it against the wall,” said Ellen.
“You did?” Her mother sounded impressed.
“Yes,” said Ellen. She was suddenly furious with her mother. “And Patrick and I do not chant or meditate together and I do not believe in auras, well, not as an actual physical manifestation, and anyway, you don’t align your auras, you align your chakras. If you’re going to be cutting, at least get your terminology right.”
There was a pause.
“I didn’t mean to be cutting,” said Anne in a softer placatory voice. “I’m sorry. I thought I was being witty. Actually, your father, ah, David, made a comment last night. He said I could be a bit ‘sharp’ at times. Perhaps he has a point.”
For some reason her mother’s apology made Ellen feel even angrier. “Well, I assume you’re not going to change your personality to suit a man!” she snapped. “You drummed that into me from when I was eight years old! When Jason Hood wanted to sit next to me at lunchtime, I told him that he couldn’t because he might repress my personality. He said he wouldn’t press anything and then he blushed and cried and ran away.”
Anne giggled. “Actually, I never said anything of the sort. You would have got that whole repression lecture from Melanie. I never believed any man was capable of repressing my personality, thank you very much.”
“You might be right,” sighed Ellen, although she was sure it had been her mother. That was the problem with having three mothers; they all got mixed up in her memory. She pressed a fingertip to her forehead. “I think I have a headache. What were you calling about?”
“Well, I just wondered if we could change this weekend’s lunch. David and I have been invited to go up to the Whitsundays for a long weekend on a yacht, a sixty-foot yacht, if you can believe it! Some friends of his from the UK are in Australia at the moment. Bankers apparently. Very wealthy. By the sound of it they’re weathering the financial crisis rather well.”
There was an undercurrent of pure pleasure running beneath her mother’s normally clipped, cool tone. It occurred to Ellen that this was the sort of life Anne had always been meant to lead. Drinking champagne on a yacht, chatting with bankers. Next it would be shopping in Paris.
“David didn’t want to put off our lunch, but I said you wouldn’t mind. Of course, I didn’t tell him that you were totally blasé about the whole event.”
“It’s fine,” said Ellen, but she was hurt. Her father had got a better offer. After all, he could meet the daughter he’d never met any old time. And now she would have no excuse not to go up to the mountains on Sunday and meet Colleen’s parents. Wonderful.
“Are you sure?” said her mother. “You sound upset. You’re not upset, are you? Because it was me who said we should accept the invitation. I know it’s horribly superficial of me, but I have to admit it just sounded so wonderfully … decadent, I guess is the word.”
Her mother’s honesty and slight embarrassment made her sound vulnerable. She was never embarrassed. Ellen’s heart softened. She took a deep breath. For heaven’s sake. Her emotions were skidding about all over the place.