Tiddas (25 page)

‘And this is Japanese sansho pepper, wasabi and grated daikon,' he said to the wide-eyed women.

The tiddas were soon all happily full to the brim.

‘I cannot eat another thing!' Izzy said. ‘And I didn't even try everything!'

‘You're eating for two, remember,' Veronica said.

‘I know but I've been suffering from congestion and between the nasal strips and nose spray I'd really like to lessen the chance of getting it today.'

Izzy thought back to the night before when she felt the baby moving. She had described the sensation, which she could only interpret as butterflies fluttering and a tickling, bubbling feeling, for Asher. She couldn't believe the months of sleepless nights with anxiety had turned into nights of sharing a new life growing inside her.

‘But, there's suika watermelon coming; it's jelly, sorbet, mousse and marshmallow.' Nadine had really checked out the menu. She seemed less animated and more interested in food
than drink today too, which the others were all happy about. Maybe her behaviour had altered after the warning from her mother-in-law and the scene at the ball.

‘Excuse me for a moment, will you?' Ellen got up from the table.

‘Off to ring that fella, are you?' Izzy asked.

‘What?' Ellen seemed preoccupied. ‘No,' she frowned.

‘Time for presents then,' Izzy said, reaching for a box wrapped in pink with silver ribbon billowing down the sides. ‘As soon as I saw these, and I knew you were serious about your artwork, I had to get them for you. I hope you like them.'

Veronica looked like a young child getting her first shiny bike on Christmas Day. She unwrapped the parcel carefully, slowly revealing the Japanese printing blocks Izzy had bought at the markets one Friday night after work.

‘And here's mine,' Xanthe said, handing Vee a wooden box that had been wrapped in lime green tissue paper and secured with a raffia bow.

‘I am seriously lucky, thank you,' Veronica said.

‘You haven't opened it yet,' Nadine laughed.

‘I'm lucky just to be here, with you girls, eating, drinking, getting presents.' She peeled the paper off gently and opened the box to find a necklace and pendant.

‘The artwork is licensed by Emily Kame Kngwarreye and it's called Bush Yam Dreaming.' Xanthe was proud of her choice of gift.

‘I love it,' Veronica said as she took the pendant out of the box.

‘I'm sorry I couldn't afford the real thing for you, but I can't afford it for myself either,' Xanthe smiled.

‘Can you do it up for me please?' Veronica held the ends of the necklace at the back of her neck and when Xanthe stood up to walk around the table, Veronica saw Ellen walking towards her carrying an easel with a huge red bow on it.

‘I know you've probably got one, but when a handyman came to hang your painting at my place, I told him about you, and he said he knew someone who custom made these, and he was really cute, and the guy who made them was even more cute and I really love you, and I know you can't do batik prints on this but I thought you might paint me a picture, one day. I have more walls to fill.' Ellen was breathless by the time she finished her very sincere spiel.

Veronica was speechless with the gift, with the story, with the thought.

‘I love you girls so much, really. This is my best birthday ever, and I hate saying that given I've had forty of them and more than twenty with my sons, but seriously, this is fabulous.'

N
adine sat in the cremation circle of the Brookfield cemetery and sobbed. She knew it wasn't unusual to see people there distraught with grief and crying, so she felt safe from judgement, from people asking questions, from anyone looking at her oddly or with concern. For all they knew she was paying respects to her own lost loved one. In some ways she was; she'd lost herself over the years. Today she mourned for the hours, days, weeks she'd lost to hangovers, and worse, the lost moments of time she couldn't even remember.

In recent weeks Nadine had found some level of personal enlightenment about her behaviour, but she had also become paranoid, believing everyone in Brookfield hated her, or at least didn't really like her much. The truth was hardly anyone
in her local area knew her beyond what they read in the paper about her books, or what she had to say in the occasional radio interview, which was really only marketing.

What many didn't know about Nadine – including her tiddas – was that she felt deep guilt, shame and regret. No-one really knew this side of her because those emotions never translated into actions. And her internalisation of her feelings was what had so often driven her to drink.

Nadine never found it difficult to justify having a wine or two: it helped her creativity, it gave her confidence when doing book talks, she had to celebrate a release or a good review or a generous fan letter. She needed it to relax, to sleep, and to deal with the stress of deadlines. And quite simply, she liked the taste of a good old Mudgee bush vine cab sav.

Richard had rarely said anything about his wife's drinking, and his mumbled sentence at the NAIDOC Ball was the first time he'd voiced his thoughts out loud to Izzy. He loved Nadine unconditionally and her daily indulgence had simply become part of their routine. Occasionally he would leave the
Local Bulletin
open at an article about drug and alcohol dependency, but whether she saw it or not, Nadine never mentioned it. And so neither did he.

It was a grey, overcast day that had no spark to it at all. Richard had dropped his wife and her laptop at the General Store at 10 a.m. In recent weeks Nadine had been making more of an effort to drink less and be more involved with the kids, sitting and watching telly with them of an evening rather than staying at her desk or going outside by herself
with a glass in her hand. But even that morning, the winding roads had played havoc with Nadine's hangover. The kids had been silent in the back of the car. There'd been no outings to the club with them in recent weeks though, not since the NAIDOC Ball.

As Richard drove off, Nadine had decided to sit at the store for a while before heading to the cemetery. With her laptop still in its case she'd let those senses functioning well enough do to their thing; she'd listened and watched, simply observing, as writers did. Birds chirped and whistled as the sun had struggled to find its way through the clouds. An ambulance had flown past to a car accident.
Or perhaps
, Nadine had thought to herself,
it's heading to the home of another Upper Brookfield retiree who's so fat they can't climb their own driveway without having a heart attack
. A four-wheel drive towing a ride-on mower had cruised past, closely followed by a noisy, mustard-coloured Passat pushing its way up the Brookfield Road incline.

A tanned and buffed tradesman had been having a smoko in his ute by the side of the road but Nadine had barely noticed him. Rather, she'd tasted the strong beans in her black coffee and devoured a locally produced chocolate treat from the fridge of gourmet goodies in the store. As far as junk food went, that was the extent of it for Nadine, and even then she consumed an organic variety whenever she could. So good on the food she was, and yet so bad on her intake of alcohol.

At that moment, time had seemed to stand still, reminding Nadine of how she liked the quiet life of Brookfield. She didn't need Ellen's partying existence, the mothers' lunches
that Veronica missed, the career trajectory that Izzy craved or the coupledom bubble that Xanthe had. In her own way, Nadine had a little bit of everything, even if she wasn't always conscious or appreciative of it.

As an author, she stuck to her routine most writing days. She would get up and organised and head out for the day when Richard took the kids to school. He would drop her at the General Store where she would order her coffee and nibble on her obligatory chocolate. She would punch the keys on her laptop until her fingers and back ached.

The locals would come and go, buy a coffee, a newspaper, a pie or toilet rolls. It was an old-fashioned general store and while the houses in the area were being updated and modernised, the little store wasn't. As if they were characters in her books, she wondered what their individual back-stories were – why they wore bright pink floral gumboots with shorts, or carried man-bags or wore chunky gold rings on their pinky fingers. And as she watched a fit, young, good-looking tradesman lunge past she wondered why he ordered a burger instead of having a lunch box like other workers.

Nadine always returned a smile if offered one herself, but there was often a hint of something less than generous in it. She didn't really care to make any more friends, or even acquaintances, and having to talk to hundreds of people at a time when on tour meant that some days she just didn't want to talk to anyone at all.

While she'd waited for her laptop to boot up, she'd skimmed the
Local Bulletin
, read an advertisement for an
indulgent high tea, and wondered what her husband was doing.

While she mightn't take much notice of what he did with his time, she knew she didn't need much more in her life apart from him and their kids, her books and a good bottle.

Most mothers would have the three Rs as a mantra in their home. Not Nadine; hers were the three Cs: chocolate, caffeine and cab sav . . . and not necessarily in that order. Happy Hour at the Brookfield Community Hall was the only ‘community activity' that Nadine wanted to participate in and she even kyboshed the potential for that by getting embarrassingly hammered at the first one she went to. Richard had banned her himself, and swore they would never go back.

Looking at the massive white face of the watch her husband had given her three Christmases ago, she'd started counting down the minutes to when she would have the taste of Mudgee grapes swirling around her tongue again. Her hands were shaking and she didn't want them to be. She didn't like being conscious of her mistakes, and especially not of the pain she had been causing her family and friends for so long. She'd let her appearance go a bit lately too; she needed to get a haircut, her lip waxed, some new product to smooth into the multiplying lines around her eyes. And then a woman in bicycle shorts and Crocs had walked into the shop.
Well, I could look worse
, Nadine had mumbled to herself, the unkind thought bringing a momentary smile to her face.

Then Nadine had felt a wave of something sweep over her: fear, inadequacy, depression, sadness? She wasn't sure,
but she'd felt the need to get up. She'd gathered her things and strolled over to the cemetery, and before she'd found a bench to sit down on, she was in tears.

Today, she cried for herself, but in previous years the cemetery had been a place Nadine would visit for inspiration and ideas, gathering material for her novels, reading and memorising headstones, creating scenarios and plots for another book. She knew her process was a morbid, selfish and disrespectful one – she wasn't completely oblivious to her own behaviour except when she was drunk – but she continued with this sort of ‘research' anyway.
It's the right of the writer in the pursuit of creative inspiration!
she'd bullshit to herself – and anyone else, if she had to. Today though, there was no bullshitting, just tears. She felt sad and emotional, distraught not at an actual death, or her inability to finish the manuscript she was currently working on, but at the story she had written and created for herself, the one that was causing immense pain to those she loved.

With her nose running and eyes swollen behind her huge black Prada glasses, she stood up and walked slowly through the cemetery, her body feeling unusually heavy although she had unintentionally lost weight over the past ten days. She looked at the oddly designed, arty headstones on some of the graves. Two things had stood out to her about the Brookfield cemetery when she first scouted it: the installation-art style of headstones, and the noticeably young ages of many buried there.
Why?
She was curious about both.

And then her own sense of mortality kicked in. She panicked, and texted Richard to see what time he'd be there
to pick her up. Richard, her rock, was the only one who ever made her feel completely safe.

‘I need to talk to you,' Richard said to his younger sister for the first time in his life.

Izzy knew what it was about. She'd been feeling helpless but wanted to support her brother. ‘I was going to call you,' she said softly.

Silence hung in the air at both ends.

‘I thought I'd come and look at your plants on Thursday. Sorry it's taken me so long.'
Men never really say what's on their minds
, Izzy thought.

‘Maybe we could get a bite to eat too?' he added.

‘Actually, I just got some free tickets to a show at the Powerhouse on Thursday.' Izzy looked at the email notifying her that she'd won an online comp. ‘Why don't you come with me?'