CHAPTER 34

Claudia was the first to arrive at the restaurant, wearing a sweeping strapless purple dress. It was almost a gown, but her lack of jewellery made it a dress. She was trying to go for Kim K simplicity but her hair was not sleek enough and the dress needed tailoring. The overall effect was one of cluelessness. It would show up well in photos against the restaurant’s wall of hanging plants, so, small mercies. She had managed to slip past her exuberant mother and aunt with her dress and shoes and make her way to Dylan’s hotel, which he had managed to rent just for the afternoon under the guise of an odd kind of romance. Any excuse to be away from Claudia’s family.

Claudia had silently got ready while Dylan played her songs from niche bands in the nineties (Mclusky, Guided by Voices, Pissed Jeans). It was nice but Claudia was gloomy. She walked through the doors of the restaurant reeking of apprehension; it shrouded her as she made her way directly to the long table without bothering to ask the waiter about the reservation. Nobody else was bothering to sit eleven people in the middle of September.

A girl of about nineteen approached her wearing black pants that were slightly too long and leather shoes that she obviously used to wear to school the year before. She smiled widely as she pulled a notebook from the pocket of her white shirt.

‘The Carter table?’

Claudia nodded. ‘I’m evidently first to arrive.’

‘Are you getting married?’ the girl asked, holding her pen over her notepad as if interviewing Claudia, not preparing to take her order.

Claudia nodded again but didn’t say anything.

‘That’s so exciting! How long did it take to find your dress?’

Claudia smiled weakly. ‘A couple of tries.’

The girl cocked her head and let out a sound, something like a blissful groan and a clucking. ‘You’re nervous! It’s so cute! I can’t wait to get married. Is your sister Zoe?’

Claudia looked around the restaurant, willing one of her family members to appear. The country town politeness did not return easily to her when she was home and she hated small talk. She didn’t even want to make eye contact when telling someone to get her a wine. Nobody materialised; there was nobody to save her.

‘Yes she is; can I have a glass of pinot grigio?’

‘I love her flower business!’

‘Her flower business?’ Claudia finally looked at the girl properly. Her greasy fringe was trying hard to cover a breakout and her eyes were the same colour as the plants behind her.

‘Yeah, I follow it on Instagram; it’s very cool what she’s doing.’

More to add to the list of things Claudia did not know about her sister. She’d been mysterious when she was getting dressed to go to parties when Claudia was thirteen. Back then Zoe seemed like a person who was only fully formed when away from her relations. Everyone suspected there were entire aspects of her hidden from the family and only coming into full view once they were not there to witness it. Claudia remembered being shocked when she saw her sister order a passionfruit juice. They had never known she liked passionfruit. It went further than material tastes. It seemed that, away from her family, Zoe read different books, watched different television shows, had an entire set of political beliefs they were not allowed in on.

She had not only somehow managed to maintain the emotional distance as an adult, but also created a new physical one. The family barely knew what she did for a living and Claudia would bet $500 nobody even knew exactly what her degree was in.

And now Claudia was being told she ran some kind of business. They vaguely knew she was a florist but that was the extent of it. Of course they had asked her about her work, but the family were used to Zoe’s easy dismissals. A question about how she was going always seemed to turn into a discussion about what was for dinner that night or some recently released movie. It’s easy to get away with in a large family, being deliberately obtuse. When there are so many people vying for a place in the conversation, distraction is a daily occurrence. And that was before the chronic self-obsession was factored in. She was like one of those riddles that gets more complex the closer you look at it, that opens up double the amount of unsolvable aspects once one part has been figured out.

The girl interrupted Claudia’s thoughts. ‘We don’t have any pinot grigio.’

‘Of course, I’ll just have chardonnay,’ Claudia said, pulling out her phone. ‘What did you say the Instagram was?’ The waitress told her the pun in the hushed tone of someone who was saying a password out loud for the first time.

Claudia had just brought the page up and was scrolling through photos of roses dip-dyed in food colouring to turn the tips shades of blue, green and red when she heard her name shrilly called out across the restaurant. She winced. Without looking up she knew it was her aunt and that her aunt had been drinking.

Claudia had taken a seat in the middle of the table out of a sense of duty, since the dinner was supposed to be for her and Dylan, and from her vantage point had a direct line of sight to the front door of the restaurant, as well as through a window to part of the car park.

Mary made her way across the maroon carpet with Rachel clutching her elbow. They were both wearing high heels they were clearly unused to and Mary had even put on a push-up bra to give the effect of two slightly milky orbs spilling out of a black sleeveless top, which was tucked into a mid-length skirt of the same colour. Next to her, Rachel watched her feet as they took each step; she was wearing bright red patent leather heels that had seemed such a good idea in the shop.

Without hesitating, the two sat down in the middle of the table in the prime position directly across from Claudia. ‘Of course,’ she whispered to herself.

‘Hello darling.’ Mary’s cheeks were flushed and an unsure hand had applied liner to her lids. ‘We’re first here!’

‘Yes, so far everyone is four minutes late,’ Claudia responded as the waitress gently put down her wine in front of her.

‘Can we get a bottle of prosecco, sweetie?’ Rachel said, looking up at the girl. The girl nodded, carefully writing the order in her notepad and scurrying away.

Over her aunt’s head Claudia saw Zoe and Phinn walk in together with Poppy slightly behind them. She looked at her mother as she spoke to her aunt. ‘No funny business tonight.’

Claudia enjoyed the spectacle of watching her siblings when they didn’t know they were being observed. It was like seeing yourself on film: familiar but not quite like you imagined. Perhaps a bit more clumsy. She saw Zoe squeeze Phinn’s upper arm as she turned to say something to Poppy, and from Poppy’s reaction she knew it was an inappropriate comment, most likely about Mary. Zoe was making peace with Poppy; she had obviously not been in a good mood in the lead-up to the night and Zoe was trying to diffuse her before the dinner. Claudia could tell all of this from the few steps they had taken, just before Zoe met her eyes and waved enthusiastically. This was the tribe for which she knew all the codes, the secret signals, the language. That you cannot choose your family is such a pathetically obvious statement, but it is often forgotten what else you can’t choose. You can’t choose to fully and wholly extract yourself – you can sometimes, if you’re lucky, choose to learn the language and signals of another group, but you’ll never be properly fluent. Not only does the language have to be learned from birth, but you have to help create it as well.

Zoe, Phinn and Poppy formed a line as they arrived at the table, swarming on three seats across from Claudia. ‘You can’t sit there. It’s reserved.’

Zoe raised an eyebrow. ‘Reserved for someone more important than the bride’s sister? The maid of honour?’

‘I don’t have a maid of honour,’ Claudia said, without having to even form the words in her brain before they were out of her mouth.

‘As a matter of fact, yes,’ Mary said, ignoring Claudia. ‘It’s for my plus one.’

Zoe laughed cruelly and nodded to Claudia before moving down a seat, not-so-secretly pleased to be saved from an evening next to Mary.

Claudia narrowed her eyes. ‘Are those my earrings?’

Zoe touched the toucans studded in her ears. ‘I found them at Mum’s.’ She turned to Phinn and they began what looked like a serious, hushed conversation that Claudia assumed was just about which drinks to order. She tried to think of the last time she saw her older sister with a bunch of flowers but couldn’t come up with anything. She thought, perhaps, maybe it was Zoe who had sanctioned her decision that daisies would be the easiest, prettiest and most understated flower to have at her wedding.

Poppy sat at the end of the trio, fiddling with her phone and whispering, as an aside, that she would drink whatever. Claudia thought just a few years back to being Poppy’s age and what it was like: the uncertainty, the hope. The realisation that you don’t have all the time in the world, that it does matter if you leave things for a few days or a few months. Every word you don’t write, or sing, or film is in fact a backwards step, a black mark against your supposed fate. She remembered it dawning on her that perhaps her life would in fact be ordinary, that maybe she was not destined for specialness. She remembered it was hard letting go of the hypothetical futures with friends: ‘when you’re a graphic designer for Vogue and I’m a famous writer we will …’ ‘when I’m in charge of the company and you are based in Los Angeles …’ It was harsh realising some things were irrevocable, that sometimes they had messed up, but she didn’t remember being as mean about it as Poppy was. Perhaps because, secretly, in the bowels of her soul, Claudia was not shocked.

‘Are you, Claudia?’ Mary drew the attention of others at the table back to the bride to be.

‘Hmmmm?’ she responded noncommittally, trying to convey flippancy.

‘Are you changing your name?’

Claudia laughed. ‘No, I’m not, I’ll still be Claudia Carter.’

‘Such a good feminist,’ Poppy called sarcastically down the table. ‘You’re still getting married but it’s okay, it’s tantamount to the third wave, because you’re not changing your name.’

Zoe winced and Claudia’s nostrils flared. ‘Excuse me?’

‘What? I’m just saying, you must be proud you’re not changing your name. It must make you feel like a good feminist. Even though you’re still getting married.’

‘What do you mean “even though”?’

‘Well, it’s still an oppressive institution, any way you look at it. It’s oppressive for women; you can’t erase its long history. And you’re choosing to take part in something that deliberately excluded queer people for so long, so I don’t really find it tenable that you could pretend you’re not taking part in something archaic and harmful. But hey, love is a compromise and feminism now is just a series of personal choices that conveniently benefit the individual.’

Zoe tried to intervene. ‘Come on now, I don’t think Claudia’s marriage is a political act.’

‘But that would mean the personal isn’t political,’ Poppy responded, staring at Claudia.

Claudia responded by snorting, ‘A lot of people don’t have time for the “personal is political” because they’re focusing on things that matter, like legislating on reproductive rights and marching for fair conditions for the working class. I know it must feel so nice to think at this point in history your identity is unimpeachable and righteous but, Poppy, let me tell you, some people have real problems and your unblemished soapbox is an illusion.’

Phinn visibly bit the inside of his cheek trying not to laugh as he turned his head from his youngest sister so she couldn’t see. But with his eyes he said to Claudia: ‘Owned.’ Claudia quickly looked down at her hands so as not to provoke her sister further with her satisfaction while Rachel slammed both of her hands on the table.

‘Enough!’ she yelled, but her children were silenced anyway by the arrival of chinking glasses and a promising bottle. The young waitress looked at Zoe adoringly as she poured red wine that seemed to be within the price range of ‘I know I’m not paying for this’. Zoe nodded to her in thanks while Phinn leaned back to allow his glass to be poured and pulled Poppy’s next to it. Poppy ducked her head to look at their mother, who still had the secret power of ending arguments when she truly wanted to invoke it – the wedding eve dinner of her daughter being such an occasion.

Before she could launch into a mini-lecture, though, two male hands landed on Rachel’s shoulders, causing the entire table to jump in their seats. ‘RA-CH-EL,’ the voice that belonged to the hands boomed. ‘I see nothing has changed.’

Wearing an ill-advised and ill-fitting powder-blue suit with an Akubra on his head, it was their uncle Mick. He leaned down and kissed Rachel on the cheek as she laughed, and then turned to Mary and kissed her on the mouth, as an almost undetectable groan rippled down the table. Mary blushed and pulled her beaten handbag off the table. ‘Here’s your chair, darling.’

‘And here’s the beautiful bride!’ he responded, leaning across the table to give Claudia a kiss as she patted his back in reply. ‘Hello Mick.’

He let out a satisfied sigh as he sat down and bellowed to nobody in particular, ‘A schooner of Guinness, please,’ then turned to the Carter siblings on his left. ‘How the hell are you? I haven’t seen you since the official shunning!’

‘Well,’ Phinn said, breaking the silence, ‘I missed the official bit.’ The girls, who had suddenly found the patterned walls so fascinating, waited for Mick’s permission to laugh before they joined in his chortling.

Claudia relaxed. Maybe the worst was over.

Through a mix of shame and champagne, Mick’s presence righted the topsy-turvy balance caused by people at a table who are far too intimate to be polite to each other and have spent enough time together in a week for age-old resentments to be at precise boiling point. The Carter siblings and Rachel were all too embarrassed by their treatment of Mick over the past few years, and shy from the lack of contact, to truly be themselves with him around. Mary was giddy to the point of being sick and did not seem to have the capacity for her usual barbs and varied hypocrisies.

So it was to an unusually subdued group that Dylan’s father and stepmother were introduced when they at last entered the restaurant thirty minutes later. Claudia’s furious text messages with a running commentary on the time had been studiously avoided by Dylan, and Claudia couldn’t even manage a pissed-off glance in front of his parents.

Yvonne and Jerome had arrived in Winston that afternoon and spent a blissful few hours gossiping with their son before the dreaded formal proceedings. They had not been given fair warning on what to expect but the Carter charm could be deployed on a whim and they would not have to face the reality of the family that evening. Instead they got a sparkling and entertaining alternative.

Rachel was the first to rise from her seat and embrace the couple. ‘It is so lovely to finally meet you. Claudia talks about you all the time. I am so sorry her father can’t be here to see you as well. How was your trip?’ she enquired as she squeezed each of them, and Dylan gave Claudia a peck on the forehead. The couple could barely mutter a greeting as the rest of the Carters descended upon them, a rampage of hugs and compliments. Dylan pulled out the two chairs that had been left empty next to his own and ushered his dad and step-mum into them, at which point an expectant silence fell.

Yvonne smiled finally. ‘Lovely to be here.’

Mick cleared his throat. ‘I was just telling the rest of them, I devote about 35 per cent of my day to not being Catholic, to not blessing myself, to not offering a compromise with God for anything, whether it be for my daughter to survive or for the light to change to green quicker. I want to thank God for everything: for Mary, for my sisters, for my father, for my job, for my city. It takes enormous concentration to remain ambivalent on the subject of religion.’

Jerome smiled weakly. ‘My father thinks we might be part Jewish,’ he responded.

Mick seized upon it. ‘Aha! Then you would understand perfectly the daily battle of the cultural Catholic to steer clear of any actual God.’

Jerome signalled for the waitress and ordered more red wine for the table. He was sitting next to his son and directly across from Zoe, for which Claudia privately thanked God, Allah and Oprah. Zoe could chat at any level: rich boomers loved her, country people loved her, Nationals voters loved her, socialists loved her, teenagers loved her – everyone could chat to her. She leaned across the table and asked Jerome how he and Yvonne had spent the afternoon, securing at least twenty-five minutes of the couple feeling comfortable.

Claudia checked her phone. It was now fifty-seven minutes since the supposed start of dinner and still there were empty chairs. She suddenly grabbed Dylan’s wrist underneath the tablecloth and leaned over. She whispered sharply, ‘Nora isn’t here.’ Confused, Dylan looked over at the bar of the restaurant where the waitress was fetching the fifth bottle of wine for the evening and back to Claudia, repeating her statement to her as a question.

‘Nora isn’t here?’

‘Nora isn’t here.’

Claudia tried not to sound betrayed and focused more on the alarm. Nora had taken on the role of bridesmaid over the past few months. She had taken Claudia out to a champagne lunch and made her feel excited and special when all she felt was clichéd and put upon. She had picked her shoes and booked facials. She had told her, ‘It’s one day,’ when Claudia had tried on the bridal persona of melodrama, and now Claudia sat facing her mother and wretched aunt and her siblings, with Dylan and his parents on one side but nobody on hers. Nora was supposed to be on her side. Now she was an hour late and counting.

Claudia stood up with her phone. As she excused herself to go and make the call she looked through the windows to the car park and saw Nora. Nora sprinting across gravel in black-and-white heels so high that Claudia could almost hear the crack of her ankle if there was one misstep. She saw her stop outside the door and look down at her gold dress. It was not the green dress for the festivities Nora had showed her earlier and it was not very Nora. It was not very appropriate. From the table it looked like it was made of gold lamé and it scooped down across her chest before joining at the back where it scooped even lower, stopping just above her hips. The dress ended mid-thigh and, beneath, her hastily self-tanned legs glistened. She tugged at the hem and touched her long hair, which in stark contrast to the dress was blown out in understated loose curls. Nora seemed to take a deep breath and pushed the door open, entering with a smile already plastered across her face. Claudia waved mutely from the table and sat back down as Nora picked her way carefully through the tables. She stopped just behind Mary and waved. ‘Sorry I’m late, everyone, I have no decent excuse, I must buy a bottle of champagne to apologise.’ She leaned down and kissed Rachel. ‘You could be the younger sister of the bride!’ she offered as penance, and then gave Mary a quick peck and squeezed the Carter siblings’ shoulders before making her way round for introductions with Dylan’s parents. Finally she sank down next to Claudia. Her lipstick, a deeply uncharacteristic shade of pink, was already smudged around her lips, as if it had been applied by a delighted four year old.

‘I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry,’ she whispered. Claudia leaned in and smelled something sour on her breath: toothpaste from five hours ago and bubbles upon bubbles upon bubbles.

‘What are you wearing?’ Claudia hissed.

Nora looked down and seemed surprised by what she saw. ‘I hated the green dress. I decided it was so boring.’ She giggled and ushered the waitress over. ‘Have we started on the champagne yet? It is a celebration. Can you bring me a bottle of champagne?’

The waitress’s eyes widened and she picked up a menu from the table. ‘What kind?’

Nora glanced at the list and giggled again. ‘None of this is actually champagne, you know?’ Claudia elbowed Nora but she seemed oblivious, studying the list more carefully. ‘This is actually quite good, mostly Tasmanian sparkling – hard to find on a decent list actually.’ She looked at the waitress and gave her a crooked smile. Claudia noticed her mascara had fallen beneath her eyes and was smudging along with the eyeliner. If Claudia had been in the mood, she would’ve enjoyed the spectacle of her uptight friend in such disarray. ‘We’ll have the Arras, thank you,’ Nora finally decided. Before Claudia could grab Nora again she had leaned across the table. ‘Rachel, you look ravishing. That is exactly your colour.’

And Rachel, easily flattered, was soon deep in conversation about what shoes she would be wearing the next day. Claudia sighed and looked down the table. Mary and Mick had their heads close together, a beast mutated from a family but sharing no actual genes themselves. Poppy was steadfastly ignoring any attempt by Phinn to broker peace for the evening, between Zoe and Poppy or just in general. Claudia watched as she downed a glass and swiftly refilled it. Claudia hated the way her younger sister drank: it was quick and stupid and if anyone dared comment she showed her defiance by aggressively speeding it up. To Claudia’s right Dylan was chatting with his mother while Zoe occasionally interjected. It was a moment in the evening when the family was behaving in a way that Claudia assumed almost every other family behaved. Civilly.

The young waitress, a constant presence, hovered at their elbows, eager to take the first order. Claudia counted the bottles on the table and looked at her watch. It was an hour and twenty-seven minutes since their booking had begun, there were seven bottles on the table and they hadn’t even ordered dinner. She nodded to the waitress and interrupted the conversations flowing around her. ‘Time for dinner?’ It was posed as a question but everyone knew it was a command.

The waitress returned from the kitchen with two bottles of Mumm and delivered them to Dylan, who took one and loosened the cork, letting it go off with a POP that silenced the chattering table. Claudia raised an eyebrow as Dylan poured her an almost-overflowing glass and handed the bottle to the waitress to finish pouring the rest of the table. He must have arranged for the bottles to be brought to the restaurant earlier in the day; they were not usually served. Her family and his parents looked at him expectantly as he took a long sip.

‘I want to say a few words,’ he said, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand and looking down at his fiancée. ‘Claudia and I agreed there would be no speeches tomorrow, but I couldn’t let the occasion go without briefly saying something about Claudia. Mostly, that I love her. I think it’s an easy enough thing to say; it’s important to show as well. I hope that by marrying her she can see it as my most public declaration and demonstration of what she means to me. When I met Claudia I was a very lonely man. I did not really know that. It was not something I gave much thought to, but having her in my life has revealed so many things to me. How fun life can be; how stupid it is to be too cool. Not that she isn’t cool, but she never feels too cool to show how she feels – to be joyous, to be furious, to be sad. It may be clichéd but I did not even know I had the capacity for so much demonstration of love – let alone the love I feel for her – before she showed me how to show it. The joy of saying “I love you” every day; the joy of showing you are excited to see someone just because they’re walking through the door at the end of the day. I didn’t even know the proper joy – to my great shame – of hugging someone so much.’

Dylan looked down and gently touched Claudia’s face.

‘We are each other’s subtexts. All of my unspoken thoughts and motives, what I really think and believe, it is in you. Life without you would be like walking along without my arm, you are such an essential part of me now.

‘I love you.’ Dylan glanced around the table before looking at Claudia again. ‘Despite everything, I love you.’

The two kept looking at each other, smiling, until Mick finally finished Dylan’s speech for him.

‘To Dylan and Claudia,’ he said, raising his glass. Everyone at the table obediently raised their champagne flutes.

‘Cheers,’ Claudia said, clinking with Dylan’s glass and leaning in to whisper in his ear.

The rest of the table could not hear what she said.

The food came out, stodgy and warm with piping hot plates. Overdone steaks and steamed vegetables were a staple of the venue. But nobody complained and most people seemed to be forcing something into their stomachs without being rude or inappropriate. Dylan and Mick’s parents created a stricter atmosphere: whenever there are witnesses, everyone has to be on their best behaviour.

They would’ve made it through dessert too if Rachel had just eaten her lasagne.