My sister Venn was born three years before me. My parents couldn’t decide on a name so they drew a Venn diagram with the intersection of two circles holding the names they both liked. Unable to choose one of those, they decided to call her Venn. I’m not sure if it’s connected to her naming in any way, but diagrams have continued to play an important role in Venn’s life. She draws them to make sense of tricky things – to manage disruptions before they have a chance of causing chaos. Another coping mechanism of hers is to go into the bush and meditate on the natural order. But her innate sense of balance and harmony went totally whack when my parents split, and her diagrams failed to diminish the resentment she’s been feeling towards Dad since he moved out. So she turned again to the healing power of nature.
Tonight, while Dad was cooking dinner, Mum called – purportedly to find out how my first week at Crestfield had gone, but really to bang on about the wellness retreat Venn had talked her into going to.
‘It began with something called “beneficial deprivation”,’ she said. ‘Which meant we weren’t allowed to drink anything except a fermented kale tonic that tasted a little more fetid than swamp water. They confiscated all electronic devices for three hours of communal silence, which just made me want to scream. As soon as I got my phone back I packed your sister into the car and almost escaped, but she talked me out of it. And I’m glad she did because the next morning, during a hot stone massage, I worked through some anger issues.’
‘I didn’t realise you still had them?’ I said, restraining the level of sarcasm in my inflection.
‘Neither did I, until Revati made the stones too hot and burnt my back. I overreacted, which made her cry, and then I cried. Even though I’d been scorched, I couldn’t stop apologising. Talking it through, I realised I’d been conditioned to make other people feel better – especially men. Despite your father’s significant contribution, I’d blamed myself for our marriage failing. I felt guilty for working too hard at building the business and neglecting you in the process.’
‘I hardly felt neglected.’
‘In hindsight, your father and I had been drifting apart for a couple of years. The surprise-party business with Maëlle was simply the final straw.’
Now is a good time to tell you about the party.
In April last year, Maëlle Beauvais – so Frenchy, so chic – had glided into Signal Bay with a joie de vivre that instantly captivated us all. Her family in Paris had hosted my sister as an exchange student a couple of years before, and we reciprocated the favour during Maëlle’s gap year. Madly intelligent, politically engaged and insatiably curious about our suburban existence, she made us believe we were far more interesting than we really are. Mum was delighted to have an eager sous-chef in the kitchen; Maëlle conversed in French with Venn while shopping or drinking coffee at La Poule en Étain, helping Venn prepare for her looming final French exam while simultaneously endowing my sister with a sophisticated Parisian je ne sais quoi by osmosis.
I bonded with Maëlle by teaching her to surf, which garnered greater respect for me from the line-up, especially from Tom and Coops. Though realistically there could never be anything between Maëlle and me, I basked in the tanning lamp of false kudos that came with letting people speculate. Disconcertingly, Dad seemed to be relishing her attention as well. He and Maëlle shared a love of Scrabble, and would continue playing into the night after the rest of us had given up. Perhaps she was simply eager to please everyone, I thought.
But Mum wasn’t thrilled by their late-night games and soon my parents’ arguments, private but audible, flared up again. So whatever possessed Dad to enlist Maëlle’s assistance in preparing a surprise dinner party for Mum’s fiftieth when she’d flagged her desire to let it pass quietly is beyond my comprehension. The plan was for Mum’s business partner, Morgan, to take her for Friday drinks while the rest of the team took the stealth route to our place for the ambush. It quickly backfired because she declined his invitation, pissed off that Emma, Jules and Penny had abandoned her with a stack of work. Initiating Plan B, Morgan sneaked down to the car park and deflated one of her tyres. Instead of accepting a ride, Mum called the NRMA. Unable to endure her darkening mood after waiting for almost an hour, Morgan let the cat out of the bag. Mum cancelled roadside assistance and accepted Morgan’s lift, promising to act surprised on arrival.
Back at Signal Bay the guests had by now been drinking for hours and, having eaten only Maëlle’s delectable but insubstantial canapés, some of them were on the looser side of tipsy. Roger Harris, our next-door neighbour, was legit shit-faced. His foxhound Dougal was barking and whimpering with canine FOMO, so he let him into our backyard. After scrapping with Gus and chasing Venn’s cat Oscar up a tree, Dougal foraged about, humping anyone or anything in his path. Eventually he found his way into the unguarded kitchen, pulled Maëlle’s mustard-encrusted lamb rack off the bench and wolfed down half of it before being caught. After Dad and Roger Harris debated the ethical and health ramifications of serving the salvaged remains without informing the guests, Dad ordered ribs from Jeb’s Smokehouse.
Maëlle was dejected about the lamb, so Dad took her into the living room for a consolation dance. The song was ‘Burn’ by Usher. Wrong track – too slow. And in one of those moments of perfectly bad timing that would have you calling out ‘Bullshit!’ in a film, Dad dipped her at the exact moment that Mum walked through the door.
‘SURPRISE!’ we all yelled.
Surprise all right.
For the duration of the night Mum maintained perfect composure, faking gratitude with the fixed smile of an event professional. But during breakfast one week later, without warning she suggested to Maëlle that it might be a good time to move on and see more of Australia, especially the Northern Territory, which boasts an abundance of crocodiles. She didn’t pinpoint that particular danger but the inference was there, leading me to believe that something more than the dancing had tipped her over the edge – something I’m yet to uncover. There was no chance of Maëlle staying in the house, it seemed, so she left.
Venn was naturally devastated by her friend’s eviction. As the HSC approached she broke up with her boyfriend of three years, Elliot Grobecker, and hardly left the house. She refused Mum’s refreshment visits, and reheated meals when it suited her. Venn had always been a top student, but I observed her confidence subsiding with each exam until she seemed like a wreck.
On the eve of her final one, her anger suddenly turned towards Dad. And when he left the family home, she began restoring her relationship with Mum. Organising the retreat was her latest effort and, judging by my phone conversation with Mum, it seemed to have worked wonders. She reeled off a list of all the therapies she’d had, culminating in a volcanic clay body mask.
‘As Revati applied the cool clay I felt truly cherished for the first time in God knows how long, even though I’d paid for it. We all need to be touched, Lincoln. It’s built into our DNA.’
I thought about that night at the party with Nicole Parker. The last time I was touched, it didn’t end well.
‘At the end of the treatment, Revati asked me what I wanted most from the universe. I said a single word: “release”. And she whispered one word back: “granted”.’
I wanted to ask who’d appointed Revati as Master of the Universe. Instead I also uttered a single word, ‘Wow!’
‘It is “wow”, isn’t it? But enough about me. How was your first week?’
‘Great. I feel like I really belong at Crestfield. I’m cherishing the experience.’
‘Darling, that’s wonderful. Revati said my renewed energy would radiate in ripples of influence. How are you coping with your father?’
‘He bought me a bike today.’
‘You see? The circles of influence are expanding and multiplying.’
My lies were the only thing expanding and multiplying. But I didn’t want to burst Mum’s bubble with the truth. Her post-retreat euphoria would probably deflate of its own accord in three days max.
Hovering near the phone, trying to catch snippets of conversation, Dad had forgotten about the fish frying in the pan until the acrid smoke drew him back. Mum never wants to speak to him unless it’s logistics. Whatever really went down between them, I feel sorry for him at times.
I wound up the call with Mum, promising we’d talk soon. Dad and I ate dinner watching a film about a deranged clown who goes on a killing rampage, which made swallowing the blackened kingfish even more difficult. Possibly triggered by the actor’s believable performance, Dad said, ‘Lincoln, I don’t want you going within a mile of that old crank’s junkyard again. Do you understand me?’
‘We already live within a mile.’
‘Don’t go there.’
‘I wasn’t planning to.’