Marshmallows for Breakfast (26 page)

CHAPTER 22

A
shlyn was sobering up and it hurt.

No one could understand how much it hurt. It was turning her inside out, ripping every nerve from her body, molecule by molecule. Kyle could see her agony. Her face was puffy, her skin an off-key green, her navy-green eyes marbled by encroaching sobriety, her hair, which she hadn't bothered to wash in a few days, hung in greasy clumps around her face. Breakfast had been quiet, Ashlyns pain subduing everyone. The children, although only five, knew that it was important to be quiet in the mornings. Mumma liked the quiet in the mornings and if she didn't get it, she would be miserable.

Kyle had nothing to say to the mess of a woman in front of him. Ashlyn couldn't have talked if she wanted to. They ate their cereal and toast and drank their orange juice and tea in virtual silence, the only sounds the clink of cutlery against crockery, the slurps of drinks being drunk, the settling of items on the table. After everyone had eaten, Kyle had picked up his mug which was half full of coffee, and escaped upstairs to his office.

He didn't have a project to work on—ever since the incident with the big project he hadn't been given anything of significance, but he needed to escape. He sat in his leather chair, flicked through a few trade journals, read the paper, listened to the radio. An hour or so later he ventured downstairs, knowing from how quiet the house was that Ashlyns suffering hadn't ended and the kids were probably keeping out of her way. As he approached the kitchen he heard Summer's bright, lively voice
talking, chatting, questioning. Summer was an exhausting child, there was no mistaking it. She liked to talk. She liked to be answered. The ultimate in torture for Summer was to be ignored.

Ashlyn stood at the sink, her back to Summer, her hands submerged in soapy water. She was dipping plates, giving them a cursory once-over with the soft yellow pad of the sponge, then dumping the plates on the metal rack with bad grace. Why she was bothering Kyle didn't know.
Probably finding something else to bitch about,
he thought. Her life was so rotten, after all. That's why she drank. Everything including him—
especially
him—was so awful she drank. He didn't know then, of course. He just blamed her, blamed himself and then blamed her again for making him blame himself.

“But Mumma, why is the grass green?” Summer asked.

“Chlorophyll,” Ashlyn croaked, harassed by her daughter's constant questioning. “It makes grass green.”

“But why green, Mumma? Why not blue like the sky? Or yellow like the sun. Or pink like my party dress?”

Ashlyn inhaled deeply, irritated. “I don't know,” she replied, her tone adding, “And I don't care.”

“But Mumma …”

That was it for Ashlyn. Enough was enough. “Shut up, Summer,” she snapped. She threw down the plate she was halfheartedly washing dirty dishwater splashing out of the sink, slopping onto the kitchen floor, onto Ashlyn's suede skirt and cotton gypsy top, into the toes of her sandals. “Look what you made me do!” She indicated her soggy top and ruined skirt. “Shut up about grass. About the sea. About everything. Just shut up.”

She swung her head to her daughter, glared bleary-eyed at the girl sitting at the table, raised a wet hand and moved it in a slight chopping motion to emphasize how serious she was. “Just shut up.”

Summer froze. She knew her mother's voice when it was like this. She knew it could go either way right now. At times like this, Mumma would sometimes shout. Would sometimes take her arm and shake her. Would drag her and shut her in her bedroom until she did what she was told. Summer knew when Mumma had that look on her face and that tone in her voice that she had to be very quiet. Very careful. She had to stay away.

Ashlyn glared at her daughter, daring her to disobey.

Summer's bottom lip curled up into her mouth and she bit down on it. She didn't mean to be naughty. She didn't mean to make Mumma mad. She'd only wanted to know about colors. Dad was never there to ask and Mumma knew everything. Jaxon. She decided she needed to talk to Jaxon. To find out what he was doing and to ask him why she always made Mumma cross. He didn't seem to do it as much. She picked up Hoppy, the rabbit that had replaced Winter, her rag doll ruined by red vomit, and slid off her seat. Abandoning her drawing papers, her pens, her books, she wandered out into the garden, the last place she'd seen Jaxon head for. Jaxon would play with her. He'd explain to her why she was so naughty.

Ashlyn watched Summer leave the room and Kyle, who had been lurking unseen in the doorway, watched Ashlyn. A host of emotions was spreading throughout his body. He'd spent his childhood being told to shut up by his father. He'd spent all his youth being afraid to speak up, afraid of incurring wrath with the wrong word. That wasn't going to happen to Summer. No matter how annoying she was, she had the right to speak. Always.

He stepped into the room and the atmosphere became charged the second she saw him. A flicker of anxiety crossed her face, wondering whether he'd heard, and then it was replaced by indignation: so what if he heard? She hadn't done anything wrong.

“This has got to stop,” Kyle said, his voice a low growl. He didn't know where the children were and he didn't want to scare them by shouting at Ashlyn.

“What?” she sneered, immediately on the defensive.

“Don't act dumb,” Kyle said, his voice still low. “All of this has got to stop. You have got to stop doing this.”

“Doing what?”

“You've just scared the living daylights out of Summer.”

Ashlyn rolled her eyes. “Right, and you know how a five-year-old thinks, do you?”

“I don't need to know how a five-year-old thinks to know that you're terrorizing all of us because of your drinking and that I've had enough. This has got to stop.”

“I'm terrorizing this family?” Ashlyn slapped her dripping wet hand against her chest, incredulous at what she was hearing.
“At least I'm here,”
she spat. “At least I don't spend every spare second at work or hiding upstairs.”

“Yes, at least you're here. You're here to drive the car drunk with our son in the back, and crash it into a tree, and pretend it didn't happen. You're here to throw up on our daughter in the middle of the night because you're so drunk but you don't bother to apologize. You're here to dance on the table at my last work party and then fall off and twist your ankle. You're here to make phone calls in the middle of the night to your mother but leave me to explain what they were about. Yes, you're here, Ashlyn, and aren't we all so grateful for it.”

The indignation Ashlyn felt melted away into hard disbelief, made her angry.
“I. Said. I. Was. Sorry,”
she hissed. Her body stiffened, her top lip curled back into a sneer. “Is that how you make yourself feel like a man, Kyle? Remembering every little thing I've ever done wrong?”

Is drinking how you feel like a woman?
Kyle almost spat back at her, but pulled himself up short, stopped himself. “If you were really sorry, Ashlyn, you'd stop drinking.”

Her eyes rolled upwards again and Kyle felt the urge to shout at her. To tell her to stop acting like an oblivious teenager, to take this seriously.

“I don't drink that much,” she said. “No more than any other normal person.”

“Normal?” Kyle's voice rose a notch. He stepped forward, grabbed Ashlyn's arm. It was the first time he'd ever grabbed her like that. He tugged her towards the kitchen door, not looking at her shocked face, not caring that her body had gone stiff under his hold. Kyle wrestled the back door open, dragged her out into the light, not caring that she gasped and cringed at the brightness outside. He pulled her across the path outside their house, onto the lawn, then pulled her left towards Summer's cubby house, the large plywood hut that he'd designed and built. The red roof came off, the back of it had hinges that allowed it to be folded back like a concertina. Behind the cubby house was a flower bed that was planted with thick shrubbery and violets.

“That's normal is it?” Kyle spat, letting go of Ashlyn.

Amongst the greenery of the shrubs were five green bottles. Five green beer bottles carefully placed to blend in amongst the leaves. Ashlyn's heartbeat quickened. How had he found them? She'd only put them there temporarily. She couldn't very well put them in the recycling box because Kyle would see. She couldn't put them in the bin for the same reason. He wouldn't understand. He didn't understand. He didn't know what it was like and all he did was look down on her so she had to hide the evidence. And not even in the studio because she suspected he went looking through there, too. This was her temporary hiding place, you couldn't see them unless you were looking. And why was he looking? Why was he always checking up on her? Making her feel bad. It wasn't like she was doing anything wrong.

“Hiding bottles is normal, is it?” Kyle repeated.

“I wouldn't have to hide them if you weren't such a drink Nazi,” Ashlyn accused. “You're always on my case every time I even look at a drink so I have to hide them. If you didn't do that, I wouldn't have to do that.”

For a moment, Kyle wavered, wondered if she was right. If he didn't always notice when she drank, would she be hiding the bottles and sneaking over to her studio to drink? Would she be that bad if he wasn't that bad?
Stop it,
he told himself.
Stop it.
She drank too much. Normal people could stop after a couple. Normal people could go for a few days without needing a drink. Normal people didn't
need
a drink. Normal people don't commit so many crimes against their loved ones and their own personal values while under the influence or coming down from the influence
and still go back for more.

Kyle's wife was an alcoholic.

Every time he thought the word, what came to mind was an old man with grime-smeared features, dirt- encrusted clothes, sitting in the gutter, swigging from a can of extra strength. The reality was an alcoholic was his bright, vivacious wife—the woman who could stop a room simply by walking into it, who could walk around the supermarket in jogging bottoms and sloppy T-shirt and blend in, who had given birth to his two children.

The woman Kyle loved was an alcoholic. He had to accept that. After all this time he had to accept that. She had to accept that. He had to force her to accept that. This was the moment he had to step up. Stop pretending the life they'd been living these past few years was fine. He owed it to Jaxon. He owed it to Summer. He owed it to himself. He owed it to Ashlyn.

“It's not my fault,” Kyle stated, steeling himself. “It's not my fault. You're an alcoholic, Ashlyn.”

She rolled her eyes, shook her head.

“You're an alcoholic,” he repeated. “You have to get help.”

“Grow up,” she spat and turned on her heels and marched back into the house, slamming the kitchen door behind her. Kyle stared after her. Not sure of what to do. He didn't want to argue with her, but he'd started on this path. He'd started on this path of honesty so he had to follow it and see what lay at the end.

Her hands were submerged in the washing up again. She lifted a plate, snatched up the sponge and started scrubbing at it.

“Ashlyn—”

“I don't want to talk about this anymore,” she interjected. “You've obviously got some sort of problem and you're trying to push it onto me.”

“If you don't get help, I want you to leave,” Kyle said, only a touch above a whisper. He wanted to know what it sounded like out loud. He'd never said it aloud. It was something that had crossed his mind a few times, but had been fleeting and whimsical. He had never grabbed hold of it and held it, turned it over, run the fingers of his mind over the grooves of the words, examined it and got to know it. Got to know what the meanings behind the words were. What every word would result in.

He said it quietly, but she heard. She heard and she gasped. Ashlyn threw down the plate, not caring this time that water splashed out onto her. She spun to look at her husband. He was standing perfectly still, his feet placed firmly on the varnished wood floor, his arms folded across his chest. He'd lost weight, she realized. She hadn't looked at him properly for months. Why would she look at him when he was always there? He was a presence, one that was part of her life; a shape, a form that answered if she asked a question, who asked questions and waited for a reply, but didn't need close scrutiny. Every day she'd been sleeping beside this man and he'd changed. Kyle had lost weight and she hadn't realized. His face was thinner, he had shadows under his eyes, he'd had his hair cut, not razored but shorter. And he was missing something. His confidence? His laid-back air? The light in his eyes? Whatever it was that made him Kyle had gone. Had it disappeared overnight, or seeped out over the past few months when she hadn't been looking? A thought niggled at her conscience: maybe it was something to do with her. Maybe she had done it. No, that was nonsense. It wasn't her fault. If Kyle had changed, it was down to him. And she resented him for making her think it could be her fault. Yes, he'd changed, he made her feel rotten. All the time he made her feel rotten. He used to make her feel wonderful, he used to complete her. She used to think she'd die without him. Now he just made her feel awful. Is it any wonder she needed a drink or two? When this man did that to her?

“What did you say?” she breathed.

“I said …,” Kyle hesitated, could he say it again? Could he go through with this? “I said … I said …” He bit down inside, of course he could go through with it. He had to. “I said if you don't get help I want you to leave. I'm not putting the kids through this anymore. I'm not going through this anymore. Get help or leave.”