"Do you think he did it?” asks my mum.
“Yes I do actually.”
“I think so to” she said with no judgment.
I always liked him. There is a strength and a kindness about him, the benevolent patriarch. But it wasn’t until I lived with them that I saw the look he would get in his eyes while he waited for his wife to come home. He would put a few more cubes of ice in the glass of scotch, skim some papers, documents, watch the news and look up every time he heard the sound of a beamer.
One day we were standing in the kitchen talking about his salad days. He told me of his first love, a French and feline creature. “Her accent… so exotic. She was brought light into any room. Cosette.”
“What happened?” I asked.
“She went back to France. Sometimes one tends to wonder. What if.” The spell broke. "But isn't life great now?" he said cheerfully. "Good family, good times!"
A few nights later I was taking a break from study, final year psych exams, up to my eyeballs in psychometrics and frottage. I came downstairs to find him in waiting mode, nursing his glass of scotch. “What are you doing?” I asked as I plonked myself on the opposite end of the couch. “Missing my girl” he said with a soft face, a wistful smile similar to that which he made when he told me about Cosette. The one who loved him the most, perhaps.
On Sundays he say to whoever was around “I’m going to the fish markets, the bakery, the deli… I thought I'd pick up some sandwich stuff, ciabatta, sashimi, oysters, salads… it will all be here is you’re around later…? Maybe some sparkling rose! We could all have a glass in the front garden…” Sometimes the kids would show up and he would smile and joke, watch them nibble, feast and catch up, ask everyone about their little projects, friends, make Dad Jokes, compliment his wife. A lot of the time he would just spend watching them talk, smiling.
“Here’s an idea!” he said, more than once. “How about we all go to the beach house the weekend after next! Bub and Emmy will be finished with lectures and Mum can sort something out.”
“Don't be ridiculous Scano, the decorators have gutted the place and are doing up the deck, I’ve a meeting with the Sacre Coer exec and I’ve got clients to see.”
“I’m already going away with Greg.”
“I’ve got uni games.”
There were several variations of the hopeful ballet set to the score of Vivaldi’s autumn and I just watched, if I was there, as it played out over the course of a sumptuous feast. The gardenias averted their fragrant gaze. The glittering fountain poured her effervescent droplets, sparkling in the late summer sun, each one whispering please do this for him, all of you, any of you. The birdsong chimed in with their observations. How sharper than a serpant’s tooth…
One Saturday morning I did the Good Weekend quiz on him, as was my habit at the time whenever I read the paper with people. We arrived at the question “What is your favourite sound in the world.”
“Scano” he said with a smile.
I read everyone’s Chinese horoscopes for the year over dinner one night. His was something to do with it being a year of wealth and prosperity. “So where is the cash then Scano?” asked his wife. She was joking, but not entirely.
The first time she was going to take me to a party I arrived downstairs in a black dress and gold shoes with a leopard print scarf in my hair. We both gasped, as she was wearing the exact same thing, her scarf around her neck, all of it a more expensive version. “How funny would that have been, if I just met you there?”
“Oh dear” she laughed, and readjusted the roses in the hallway while I quickly changed.
The hostess of the soiree almost dropped her drink when she saw me. “Oh my God. Its like looking at Suzi 25 years ago.”
“You should have seen us in our matching outfits!”
A few people made similar comments. I didn't see the big deal. A couple of brunette women of the same height and size. Suzi always gave me the knowing smile of a mother, psychologist and woman. We had a strange friendship. She gave me sexed up expensive red lingere for Christmas and used to take me shopping to Scaninfy me, get rid of the short shorts and punk princess look, replace them by Max Mara and Saba in demure shades of white and blue, bit by bit. I drew the line at nautical sh*t. We would sit and debate the meaning of ‘love thy enemy’ and whether Jesus was the Jungian before Jung, and meant “love thy shadow self”, where we all sat in Maslow’s hierarchy, Goffman’s discourse.
There was a big kerfuffle for a few weeks as the main family home was gutted and refurbished. At the end it looked exactly the same – everything was new – the light fittings, carpet, door knobs, handles. But you wouldn’t have known it had actually happened unless you were really looking. There were some new internal lights in the kitchen cupboards which made the glasses sparkle. The door handles were, well, nice. And new. And the same.
We had dinner one night when the works were complete around the long table in the dining room. It was the night that Ryan and I were scheduled to cook. We made BLTs.
“This is an interesting choice for dinner” said Emmy. Everyone poked their BLT with silver fork and decided to get on with it.
“All these paint fumes and chemicals from the refurb are very bad for us all. We are all going to eat only organic food for a while and drink lots and lots of water and pomengrate juice to counteract the toxins. Also, since Emmy and Matt have moved home and Ryan and Caitlin are staying for a bit there are a lot of us in the house, I want us all to think about our aspirations of how we will live together. Our aspirations of a home.”
She took me shopping with her for vegetables on a Saturday. Ryan came as an afterthought. We popped into Fratellis where every piece of fruit was perfect to look at. A wacky place where I ran into Elizabeth Auswald (“the third, in roman numerals please”) from the convent and Chantalle’s barrister dad, who I had an odd little friendship with (despite not particularly liking Chantalle) after he fell for the ‘did you know gullible is not in the dictionary?’ joke. He was holding a dictionary at the time.
“Mum, this apple is $5. This is stupid” said Ryan. “Why don’t we just go to that supermarket next door?”
“I do not intend to step foot in that ghastly place” she said. “There are boxes all over the floor and it is staffed and populated with fringe dwellers of society.”
“Its Rose Bay!”
“Well, fringe dwellers of the eastern suburbs, I don’t care. I’m not going there.”
We went for coffee afterwards and she waved a manicured hand around in exasperation. “Daddy really needs to start making some money this year” she said. “What I make wouldn’t even cover these groceries. Hopefully the Noosa development will come off. You should be working with him on this Beetle. It ought to be even bigger than the Marga project last year.”
She came home one night with her dress half unzipped with the last of the champagne giggles, had a glass of water and retied for the evening with a whimsical “goodnight!” and a wave of the hand and she headed for the stairs. Her husband looked on sadly and went back to his documents. I put my head down and read my text book.
“Its someone from her work” explained Ryan when we were getting ready for bed. “Bub found messages in her phone. Dad met him one night at an office party but, remarkably, held it together. Not like all those years ago when mum figured it out about the receptionist.”
They had all been kids at the time. She had been pretty, bubbly, and affectionate with bright, red shiny hair. Whenever the kids went to visit their dad at work she would greet them with a big smile, sometimes candy. Once day Suzi dragged them all into the office and lined all 4 children up, in height order, in the reception area. Her face cool but eyes wild as she stared at the red head, bubbly no more.
There was silence, a few moments of waiting, the red head waiting, afraid. Suzi finally snapped. “This is his family! This is what you are messing with.” Her voice escalated. “THIS is what you are messing with!”
Scano, emerged from his office and begged “Suzi, calm down, calm down, please!” He looked around relieved to see no clients in the waiting room.
“No, she should see what she is f*cking, Like, the WHOLE picture, the WHOLE FAMILY.” She looked back at the girl who was looking at Scano with fear.
I don’t know how that story ended, if he ever admitted or confirmed the affair, but apparently their relationship changed that year. Suzi went back to study, hired more nannies, put extra effort into her already fabulous gleaming hair, svelte figure, tasteful and distinctive style, long manicured nails, independence.
I don’t know if he did it or didn’t do it and its none of my business. However something about the way he reaffirmed his family values every day, waited up for her each night, swallowed his disappointment and kept on trying suggested he had, in his mind at least, something to atone for. “The wheel is come full circle, I am here.” I still think he deserved better.
