Authors: Lea Darragh
‘There you are, Nick. You rushed off so quickly. I’ve been looking everywhere for you.’ She chimed her ownership as if she were not speaking to her married employer. I don’t care how good a friend she was to him before she came to work for us, she shouldn’t barge into a home that was not her own demanding my husband’s attention.
Lucy waited expectantly at the entrance as his eyes darted from her and then to me, his resolute gaze stopping my heart all together. I understood that his attempt to end us had just walked through the door.
To understand how we found ourselves in such an arm wrestle for our marriage, I need to start this story from where it all began, from when we were five years old and I found in Nick the best friend that I would ever have.
We lived where we still do now, in a little secluded town called Shady Valley situated at the foot of the Blue Mountains; and when the sun shone around these parts it was well known that you take every advantage of the warmth. So that’s why Nick and I had found ourselves enjoying the bright outdoors one early November morning. I had been chasing butterflies, in my favourite yellow dress, as they fluttered and floated between the lavender and gorgeous daphne in my back garden. Nick had come over and asked me if I wanted to help him build a cubby under the lilac bushes that bordered my home from his. He was a nice boy, was always friendly toward me — not like his boisterous older brothers — so of course I was delighted to spend time with him.
We sat obscured, cross-legged in the lilac bushes, giggling and quarrelling about my sixth birthday that was only three sleeps away. I wanted a Spice Girl-themed party while Nick rolled his eyes and groaned, assuring me that an X-men dress up would be heaps more fun. I knew he was itching to wear his Wolverine costume any time he got the chance so we decided to compromise. I’d allow him to come as a super hero — or whatever Wolverine was — and he wouldn’t complain, not even once, if I came as Baby Spice to his sixth birthday, which pretty much followed mine. Pinky swear. The deal was done. We always had such fun together.
Delight soon halted at the sound of smashing and screaming that came from inside my home. We remained unmoving, frozen in shock as we sat cross-legged in our cubby.
I began to cry, because for the very first time my father yelled at my mother and she screamed back at him. I attempted to crawl out and to run home but Nick held my arm and stopped me.
‘Please stay here,’ he urged.
I nodded as tears streamed down my face.
Finally, the yelling and screaming from inside my home faded and the screen door snapped angrily shut behind my mother as she stormed out, dragging after her a heavy suitcase and the stained face of a helpless woman, her tiny frame hauling both of them with great effort into the family car. My mother waited behind the wheel, staring at the screen door, as Nick and I silently watched her. Then, as if leaving the trembling girl in the lilac bushes behind was of no importance, my mother simply turned the key and drove away, taking any semblance of love, worth and belonging with her.
That was the last time that I ever saw her. And it was then that I completely shut down. Every birthday since then I wished that she would return, and Nick would sit with me on my front porch, sometimes as Wolverine as he attempted to save my world, and sometimes not, as I waited for my only birthday wish to come true.
‘She probably just needs a holiday,’ Nick offered.
‘From me?’ I cried.
‘No. Not from you.’
‘Then what from?’
He shrugged. ‘I don’t know.’
The years passed at a snail’s pace for me…
At seventeen, after leaving eleven years earlier, my mother completely finished me off.
There had been two revelations the night that I was told that she had died. The first had brought me to my knees. The car had impacted the concrete highway barrier with such force that the woman who used to be Mrs Alexander had been killed instantly. My mother was dead, taking with her any of the hope that I had kept veiled with misery since she had left us. I had felt hollow for most of my life, but upon learning that I would never get the chance to tell my mother how she had stripped me of my deserved right to a mum, I was completely destroyed. I would never have the opportunity to yell and scream and cry and have my mother tell me how sorry she was. I would never hear her explain or take everything back, to have my life feel full and the world feel right again, just like it was when I was six years old; to feel normal and to not have the memory of Nick and I in the lilacs where she left me. Now that there would be no closure, I actually understood just how dead a person can feel, and I kind of envied the fact that she was the one buried in the ground, relieved from the pain.
The second revelation that kicked me while I was down had been that she had been travelling with her two teenage children. They had survived the night but had both slipped from life in the early hours of the following day.
To give myself a reason to get up and function each day of my life, I had convinced myself, desperately romanticised it, if you will, that my mother was a free spirit and that being tied down with a family was a life that she couldn’t conform to. I could forgive that, maybe one day. But knowing that she traded in the life that she had for another husband, other children, effectively discarding me and my Dad like old trash, it was obvious to me that my mother wanted a family, just not the one that she already had.
I was so confused. How could I figure this out if the only person who had all of the answers was dead? How could I get back any feeling of belonging if the person who stole it from me had buried it with her?
The only consolation on the night that I learned the truth was that I had Nick, the only constantly empathetic person in my life. So, on that warm summer night that contrasted the cold storm in my heart, I sat with him, with someone who might actually love me, and drenched my despair with anesthetising wine.
It hadn’t been planned, but after sitting on the porch of the work shed down at his family’s winery, Nick had kept me comforted and consoled as I cried drunkenly onto his shoulder. One thing had led to another and I had placed my bottle of Merlot — filched from the conveniently unlocked cellar — on the top step, leaving it behind as I indulged my hot feet in the cool, sprawling lawn. I gazed up at the huge full moon that seemed close enough to reach up and touch with my fingertips, and, as if mesmerised by it, the moon’s proximity affirming that I was actually part of the world and not a worthless piece of rubbish, I unabashedly removed my fuchsia camisole, slowly followed by my short denim skirt and then... From the corner of my eye, I watched Nick as he gazed at me, awestruck, as my naked body swayed tipsily in the gentle breeze, audibly catching his breath when my last stitch of clothing had been aimlessly abandoned. I began dancing naked in the moonlight as if the ritual would exorcize the deep pain of rejection. Then I had beckoned him with a persuasive finger.
‘You’re drunk,’ he concluded as he approached me, shrugging out of his pale blue shirt, leaving him naked from the waist up. He wrapped the shirt around me in an attempt
to keep my modesty intact. I remember gaping at his perfect body in absolute bewilderment, and I wondered why I had at all times held him at arms’ length. ‘Come and sit down.’
I didn’t move. ‘I need this, Nick. Prove to me that I’m lovable.’
When he finally kissed me it was if my soul was reaching its fingers out to his entire body, magnetically pulling his mouth to mine.
‘Please,’ I whimpered when he tried one last time to step away. But his herculean efforts proved futile, just like I hoped they would.
‘I love you, Cate Alexander,’ he murmured, and as soon as the words left his lips I took advantage of his closeness and pressed my lips against his soft, warm mouth. I couldn’t believe he’d finally admitted it; to come out and actually vocalise his feelings for me after keeping them protectively voiceless for so long. His mouth moulded perfectly against mine as he used such an intimate act to articulate the way he felt.
He’d made love to me that night with reckless, unprepared passion, throwing caution to the wind. He laid me down in the plush green grass underneath the blossoms as we both gifted our first sexual experiences to each other. He was gentle and considerate, holding himself on his forearms above me, softly crooning my name and gazing with breathtaking reverence into my eyes. I believed every word that he said.
‘Have I taken advantage of you?’ He was mortified when I cried afterwards.
‘No.’ I pressed my salty, tear-stained mouth to his. ‘I’m crying because I’ve never felt anything like that before. I’m crying because you’ve given me hope.’
Nick was the only one that I could count on for even the smallest, seemingly insignificant things. He was kind, considerate, and within the lifetime that I’d known him, I’d learned that he was the most trustworthy, secure person that I would ever know. He was tall, dark, and handsome, not unlike in the fairy tales that I’d given up reading as a child. He was a real life Prince Charming, and my heart couldn’t help but to flip flop on occasions when he’d have the courage to smile or wink at me. And patience, well, Nick’s ability to wait his turn was nothing short of remarkable. Maybe it had something to do with being the youngest of five brothers; he really had no other choice in the matter. He truly was perfect. I could never say enough good things about him, which only compounded my confusion as I realised that it was me taking advantage of him and not the other way around.
But then Roy Ellis came along, and because the thought of being with Nick scared the shit out of me, I opted to spend my time with someone who would break my heart but would do so with obvious predictability.
He was useless. Well, not entirely useless, but when it came down to the all-important, can’t-live-without necessities, requirements, or whatever you want call the relationship deal-breakers — he was useless. He was always late. It was only a small thing, but it maddened me no end, and, if he did shock me with punctuality, he’d be either drunk or high. He was a great deal older than me, by that I mean mid-twenties, so he had earned the prerogative to make his own choices, even if they disregarded anything that may involve me.
Though he wasn’t my only option, I found myself clinging to him like wet moss to a tree. Roy, with mysterious dark eyes, leather jacket and stick-it-to-the-world tattoos, distracted me from the adolescent life that I refused to remember. He was a dangerous contrast to the sheltered life that I was idling within, to the fluffy, reassuring, suffocating-though-well-intentioned families that I was stifled by within this cold mountain town. He was my only sanctuary from teenage angst that was too overwhelming to deal with on my
own and I appreciated him beyond words for drawing me away from myself. I was especially appreciative that he’d noticed plain old me amongst every other girl around town that threw themselves at him.
I knew that Nick had been in love with me since we had played together in my shady overgrown cottage garden, or, as we grew, had lazed shoulder to shoulder against the pink blossoms, daydreaming at the winery…or maybe I had concocted a cruel fantasy that somebody as amazing as Nick could love somebody as disposable as me. At least then I’d have something to fall back on. That fanciful notion was worth clinging on to while I messed up the rest of my life with Roy, who wanted what he wanted and would go for it at any cost, sometimes at the expense of my wilting self-esteem.
So even though I knew that Nick was the sensible choice, I convinced myself that Roy Ellis was actually the one for me. He was fun and adventurous. He never tired of exploring his surroundings, and never said no to a good party. I had never experienced the kind of social life that Roy had introduced me to, and as a teenager with a quietly drunken and grieving single Dad, I was grateful for the distraction. I was grateful not only to him, but to the little white pills that he provided. Teamed together, they abetted my escape from a world that didn’t consist of crying into my pillow each night as I begged for sleep to take me to some place better than this.
Roy had barely been in town two seconds when he’d made more friends than I had made in the seventeen years that I had lived in Shady Valley. It had really only been Nick, his friend, Lucy, and me, behaving the way that was expected of us; being sensible and responsible was how the three of us lived and learned. But with Roy I had popularity, albeit shallow, and, what I thought at the time, real fun and a real life.
I always assumed that Shady Valley was a serene, humble little town hours from anywhere that resembled a night life, but I came to realise very quickly that there was a huge underground party scene that was kept well hidden. If you weren’t into partying, you wouldn’t even know that it existed, which is why, up until Roy blew into town like a whirlwind, I spent my nights watching the latest DVD releases or having sleep-overs with Nick and Lucy, playing board games followed by actual sleeping, if you can believe it. No spin-the-bottle, no drinking games, no nuddy runs in the snow. It never occurred to us to sneak out to find the nearest party hot spot because such a thing simply didn’t exist.
Roy exposed me to a new world, and once he was soaked into my life, I never wanted him drained from it. Until, after the better half of a year of being his girlfriend he regularly expunged himself. Out of self-preserving desperation and because gluttony was a deadly sin that I possessed, I always allowed him to come crawling back — or did he let me come back?
But as I fell heavily from the drug-induced highs, and after his idea of a fun night escalated from relatively innocent house parties to crashing parties and initiating fights with anybody and everybody, including me, my tolerance waned and bitter reality dawned on me like a blinding ray of light.
One Sunday morning when I was barely eighteen, after I’d come to on the back lawn of my Dad’s cottage wearing only a short skirt and a hot pink, lacy bra, snippets of the self-harming scene of the night before had throbbed in my aching head.