22 December
Three days until Christmas
‘What do you mean you’ve decided to get married next week?’ Anse asks the following morning morning. He’d gone to bed frustrated and unsatisfied and woke up feeling same. Not even his morning coffee had calmed the storm of his emotions, and now he weaves through the early morning traffic on his way to work with his mother’s tinny voice on the other end of his car’s speaker.
‘Well, Pete and I thought about it last night,’ his mother says. ‘All of us are together for the first time in years. What a better time to do it? Daniel agreed.’
Of course, Daniel had a hand in this.
‘And we thought Luciano might make the dinner for the reception. It would be small. Just our family, and him, Ellie,’ she continues. ‘We have to find a venue. Oh, and I’ll need a dress. Pete of course needs a suit, and he’ll likely talk to you about being a groomsman.’
Groomsman.
‘You’re quiet,’ his mother notes. ‘Don’t you think this is a good idea?’
He turns into his office carpark and finds a space by the entrance—a perk of being so early. ‘It’s a lot to arrange in a handful of days, Mum. And Luciano and I had planned on taking a break after Christmas.’
‘Well, Daniel suggested we might go to Ellie’s beach house for the wedding after Christmas. We could all stay there.’
He wants to say that they’d planned to take a break alone but doesn’t.
Anse runs a hand over his face and puts the car in park. ‘I’ll think about it. I’m at work now, so I have to go.’
‘Well, okay,’ his mother replies. ‘We’ll talk more about it tonight.’
He hangs up the phone without a goodbye and sinks back into his chair. A mixture of guilt and annoyance swirls in his gut, and the worst part is that he doesn’t know why he’s so annoyed. His mother and Pete had been planning to get married for years, and their Oslo wedding had only been hindered by a pandemic. It made sense to do it where everyone was gathered, and he liked Pete.
But his mother has often swanned into his life and made things difficult, always changing plans at the last minute, aggravating him with her flightiness. Why had he expected what was supposed to be a quiet Christmas to be any different?
Now they’re roped into an impromptu wedding.
It’s still early when he swipes into his building, so as he makes a coffee, he calls Luciano.
‘Hmm, what?’ he hums sleepily.
‘I feel frustrated with what Mum is doing.’
He hears blankets rustle and move, and then Luciano sighs down the phone. ‘I could tell something was bothering you.’
‘And I feel bad I’m so frustrated by it,’ Anse says, running his hand over his face. The coffee machine whirls to life and begins slowly dripping espresso into his mug. ‘Does that make sense?’
‘I suppose she did spring it on us quite suddenly,’ Luciano admits. ‘But that’s the nature of elopement. Maybe you should call Daniel?’
‘Daniel won’t understand,’ Anse blurts before thinking. He presses his palm into his eye socket. ‘Daniel’s always been my mother’s favourite.’
‘I’m sure she doesn’t have favourites,’ Luciano replies but it feels half-hearted.
He’d always known Daniel was her favourite son. He’s easy-going, spontaneous and a natural conversationalist. Exactly like her. Daniel and his mother were wildflowers growing in the same field, and he had often felt like the weed between them, suffocated by their brilliance.
‘Maybe I’m overthinking it,’ he lies. The heavy feeling in his stomach is all too familiar. He is used to being the odd one out. ‘I’m probably just tired. I suppose I’d planned a quiet Christmas, and now it sounds like it will be anything but.’
‘We’ll still find time for each other,’ Luciano says. ‘It’ll be nice.’
Anse hums and wedges his phone between his shoulder and ear as he takes his coffee back to his office. A colleague passes him in the hall, smiling tightly. His office is friendly enough, but sometimes he misses the comradery of the embassy. He misses Hannah. After everything that happened during COVID, he’d been grateful to find any new job, but it’s been a while since he’s worked in such a large organisation, and he hates to admit that there’s an element of himself that wants to be friends with people at the office. He wants to feel like they need him.
‘I better go,’ he tells Luciano. ‘I have at least fifty Christmas cards on my desk to open.’
‘Oooh, from anyone famous?’ Luciano asks.
Anse scans the pile. ‘Not anyone interesting. Politicians. Old board members. What’s your day look like?’
‘I’m gonna go down to the markets soon,’ Luciano hums. ‘After a shower. And coffee. I’ll see you tonight?’
‘Yeah, sounds good. Love you.’
‘Love you too.’
He places his phone down on the desk with a sigh. The guilt at being annoyed at his mother hasn’t dissipated. Anse stares at the stack of garish Christmas cards and the kangaroos wearing Christmas sweaters stare right back. Who had decided to print a series of Christmas cards with kangaroos in Christmas sweaters? Famously, an animal from a hot climate.
With a resigned sigh, Anse grabs a card from the top of the pile, an expensive ballpoint pen, and finds where he was up to in his vast ‘must give Christmas card’ spreadsheet.
* * *
Anse finishes work at four-thirty with the promise that he’ll drop the last of the Christmas cards in a post box on the way home. As soon as he walks out the door, he’s hit with the still, stifling December heat. Sun beams down, unencumbered by clouds. Anse throws his gym bag onto the passenger seat door and cranks the air conditioner.
It’s a short drive from his office in Manuka to the shore of Lake Burley Griffin. Daniel waits by the edge of the water, watching the black swans glide past.
The sun glimmers off his mostly grey hair, which he’s grown out to around his ears since Ellie got pregnant. Daniel thinks it makes him look youthful and fun, like a kid at a music festival. Anse thinks it makes him look unkempt.
‘I heard you didn’t take the news well,’ Daniel says as Anse meets him.
He knows he can’t lie to his brother; Daniel knows him too well. So instead, he decides to be truthful. A noble decision, to be sure.
‘I’m annoyed she’s sprung this on us,’ he admits as they begin their brisk walk around the lake. The air smells of fresh water, eucalyptus, and sunscreen. On a Friday afternoon, the path is busy. As they chat, they overtake an old woman walking her terrier and the dog lunges forward to sniff Anse’s ankles.
‘I think it’s nice they want to do something when everyone’s together,’ Daniel says because of course he does. ‘You know how Mum is. She goes with the flow.’
‘She’s asked Luciano to cater the wedding.’
A frown crosses Daniel’s features. ‘I didn’t know that.’
‘And he’ll say yes because of course he will,’ he says. ‘But I know he needs a break. Even if he won’t say it.’
‘I’ll talk to Mum about it,’ Daniel promises. ‘I think she just got caught up in the moment. We were talking about it in the car on the way home and suddenly it’s happening.’
They jog up the steps to the first bridge, the wind whipping their conversation away as they cross over the water.
As they come down the stairs again, Anse says, ‘Obviously I understand why she wants to get married.’ He’s not heartless, he wants to add. The past few years have been hard on everyone. It’s only natural they make the most of the time they’ve been together. ‘I just don’t know how we’re supposed to pull things together.’
‘Ellie’s already organised a celebrant, apparently,’ Daniel says. ‘A friend of a friend who lives down the coast. And Mum’s gone to get a dress. I’m taking Pete for a suit fitting tomorrow. Maybe you should come.’
To a suit fitting? ‘I don’t know…’
‘It’d be nice to get to know him,’ Daniel says which Anse knows is code for he’d like to get to know you.
Maybe he should make the effort.
‘Text me the time and address and I’ll check in with Luciano.’ A cyclist passes them, his bell ringing out a second before he zooms past. ‘How’s El feeling?’
‘She says she’s getting some cramping,’ Daniel replies. ‘But it’s hard to know if it’s the real thing. Oh!’ he hits Anse’s shoulder with the back of his hand. ‘Remember to go get your whooping cough shots. Ellie is being super selective about who sees the baby that early. Family only.’
It still hasn’t settled that in barely a month’s time, Anse will be an uncle. He’ll stare into a baby’s face and see part of his own reflected back at him. Technically, he is a de-facto uncle to Corina and Rohan’s son, presuming that he and Luciano eventually get married.
When he’d looked at Zayn for the first time, he’d seen so much of Luciano: his dark curly hair, his large brown eyes, his determined little frown when he didn’t get what he wanted. Holding Zayn, it hadn’t been hard to picture the day that this could be them, looking down at a baby one of them had genetically fathered.
‘Speaking of weddings,’ Daniel continues. ‘You thinking about… you know… making things official?’
Anse blows a sigh out his nostrils. ‘Thinking about it more and more. How long did you wait to ask Ellie?’
‘If you’re saying you’re ‘waiting’ then you already know you should. It isn’t so much about the time, it’s about the feeling.’
‘But do you think Luciano will think it’s too soon?’
If he acted on feelings alone, he would have proposed the night he returned from Canada, when he’d shown up at Luciano’s doorstep in the rain and begged for another chance.
He would have proposed the night Luciano’s team won the grand final and he’d had too many drinks, but they were both in too high spirits to care. They’d fallen asleep on the floor in the loungeroom, having dragged the mattress to sleep under the air conditioning.
He would have proposed when Luciano had arranged a hot air balloon tour for their second anniversary. In fact, he had thought Luciano was going to propose that day, and he’d spent the entire time in the air anticipating the moment.
‘Does he want to get married?’ Daniel asks.
‘He does,’ he replies, but it doesn’t come out as confident as he’d hoped it’d be. ‘Well, I’d assumed he does.’
What if he’s assumed wrong?
‘It’s a lot of work. Formal and informal.’ Daniel claps him on the shoulder. ‘But it would take the pressure off the whole visa thing.’
Anse still has twelve months remaining on his visa, thanks to the pandemic, but they’d been talking more and more about permanent residency. It makes sense: everyone he loves to now lives within a twenty-kilometre radius; why would he go back to Austria?
On the lake, a black swan glides across the water’s surface, leaving ripples in its wake. The sun is still bright and glorious, but eases slowly closer to the horizon, throwing dark blues and light yellows into the dusk sky.
What if Luciano doesn’t want to get married? They’ve never openly discussed it before. They probably should have. But with the restaurant and the pandemic and Anse’s jobs, it had felt enough to just be together.
And if Luciano doesn’t want to get married, then that will be enough. They will still be enough together.
‘Have you thought about kids?’ Daniel asks.
Fuck.