The Forever and The Now, page 22
Siobhan’s eyes were glassy with tears, and I heard Mum blow her nose. “Are you grateful for that? About me?” she asked softly.
“Of course.”
It was like a volcano erupting. “Then why in the ever-loving fuck haven’t you ever told me all of that?” she yelled, the force of her words rocking me back on my heels. “And that’s why you haven’t lost Kate, you idiot, because you’ve told her just enough to keep her on the radar. So now you are finding her. Tell her why you love her. I know you did in your vows and probably when you were getting together, but tell her. Show her! See her!” She choked on a sob. “And why the fuck am I telling my big sister all this shit when you should know it. You say you do, but you don’t and it’s taken some therapist to suggest three months apart so both of you can get your GPS out and find each other. Fucking hell, you two belong together. I’ve never seen a more perfect, forever, death do us part couple. Find her.” Her hand over her mouth, holding all the sobs at bay, meant that mine could fall freely, and I hiccupped through each one. “Say something.”
I blinked frantically. “I’m sorry.”
“Good start. But wrong answer.”
“Thanks?”
“Keep going.”
The words spilled out. “I’m grateful for you and J and Mum because you see me and I need to appreciate that the scrutiny is based on love, not judgement. I’m grateful for the day that I met Kate when she dropped her drink on her skirt and that our love developed slowly and gently and that she’s the sweetest, sexiest, loveliest person in the world. I’m grateful that she chose me. That she continues to choose me.”
Siobhan’s outline, in fact the entire kitchen and dining room—Mum had disappeared into the furniture—dissolved as a waterfall of tears hampered my sight.
“And that’s the right answer.” Siobhan thumped her fist on the bench. “Have you ever said all of that to her? All of that? And more, because there should be more. And not just words.” I wondered if she and JJ had been chatting.
I shook my head. “Bits and pieces.”
Siobhan scoffed. “Find some of that fucking awful craft glue and stick those pieces together. And again…why am I, the youngest sister, telling you this?”
“Because I’m a clueless idiot.” Murmurs of “Yep” and “Yes, love” came from opposite ends of the space as Mum and Janine bookended the intervention.
“Exactly." Siobhan pushed off the counter and walked over to the cupboard containing the eclectic assortment of mugs. Her route took her past my spot, and I put my hand out, but she twitched away.
“Don’t touch me. I’m so mad at you.”
“Okay,” I whispered, withdrawing. Then I made eye contact with Mum and Janine. “Why don’t I boil the jug and make everyone a cup of tea?” I knew our intervention was drawing to a close. We’d all said what we needed to say. We’d all heard what we needed to hear. And I was so grateful for all of it, no matter how uncomfortable it had been.
“Yes, thanks,” Janine replied, checking on her anxiety muffins through the oven’s glass door. Mum nodded and smiled that Mum-smile as if cups of tea were the laying down of arms.
I tilted my head to catch Siobhan’s eye. “Tea?”
“Yes,” she said abruptly, staring at the cups. “I hate you.”
“I hate you, too.”
I opened my arms and moved forward at exactly the same time that Siobhan spun and threw herself at me. Our embrace was tight and full of so much love that no other emotion could have wedged itself between us.
After a moment, Janine joined in, then Mum, and we held on, each of us at various stages of tear-leakage.
“Thank you,” I said, which seemed to be the cue for disentanglement.
“I don’t want another one of these for a while, you hear? From any of you,” Mum announced, then grinned at our aggrieved expressions.
Siobhan held my hands. “I’m sorry for being extra, extra sweary with you.”
My mouth dropped open. “You…just apologised for swearing, Shiv.” I shook my head in wonder. “Well, fuck me.”
Siobhan squeezed my fingers. “Kate’s got that bit covered, I think.”
A divining rod. I studied my phone. Definitely a divining rod, the way I was waving it about in frustration, in the hope that I’d find something, maybe see a sign. I paced around the lounge of the apartment, nearly tripping over my suitcase, which I’d packed last night in the excitement of returning to Kate.
And here I was, Sunday morning, suddenly nervous and creating then deleting texts as if I was an author writing their first draft.
When would you like me there?
Gah. That sounded like a pest controller asking when they should arrive to spray the roof cavity.
Delete.
Is it still okay to come over?
Oh, look. I was a fourteen-year-old with the self-esteem of an artist with imposter syndrome.
Delete.
“Just turn up, McIntyre, for God’s sake,” I informed the blank screen.
Then the phone vibrated in my hand, and a text magicked itself into the middle of the black.
I’ll see you soon? At the house?
My heart flipped over. Kate had said ‘the house’, not ‘her house’. But then why would she? But she could have. It’s been her home for three months. Maybe in her mind it was now all hers and I didn’t belong th—
The follow-up text saved me from my brain.
I’ll see you soon? At home?
The words were perfect. And I cried. Again.
I stood outside the front door of our home, the late afternoon sun casting shadows across the deck and rocked my feet in and out in indecision. For a dreadful moment, I wondered if Kate even wanted me back at all. My eyes closed in resignation.
Should I knock? That seemed a little silly. Send a text? Something like, “I’m here.”
Oh my God.
I glared at the lead-light glass in the door, gearing myself up to give my brain an intervention all on its own.
“The door’s open, Bron. Stop standing there thinking things.”
Well.
I crossed the threshold, deciding that my suitcase could be left to the elements on the porch, and gently closed the door behind me. Kate was standing not five steps away, but I didn’t take those five steps. Those five steps were necessary space simply to say;
“Hi.”
“Hi back.” The smile, slight and warm and tentative and relieved and so much more, grew on her lips.
“How’ve you been?” The ridiculous question skipped away from my mouth but I left it to fall pointlessly to the floor because I felt dizzy and I couldn’t see anything in the world except Kate’s beautiful, dark-brown eyes.
“Missing you.”
We Built
May 1 to July 31 of the fourth year of the now
Our first night together after the break was an odd combination of shyness and familiarity. I knew the house, the bedroom, the walk-in robe—all the clothes from my suitcase reclaimed the spaces they’d left behind. But I felt uncomfortable in my skin as if I hadn’t quite worked out how to wear it while moving about in the familiarity. I think Kate felt the same. So that night, after touching faces and sharing smiles of relief and disbelief and tenderness at the known and delight in the new, we slept like sea otters, holding hands, loathe to drift apart.
By morning our bodies had relaxed into their Bron and Kate shapes so the design for our forever drew its first lines on the drafting board.
It was just as well we’d both taken a day off work because we needed time to reacquaint, to reconnect, although our breakfast consisted more of superficial catching up rather than eating. I think I ate cereal? Who knew? It was more important to hear Kate retell her last three months at work, her weekly coffee catch ups with Janine—we grinned at that; both of us knew we’d been eavesdropping on each other—and her incredibly fragile relationship with her mum that still needed access to a metaphorical sewing machine and the medicinal threads of contact and communication.
We companionably completed the necessary, such as hanging out the washing, and split some tasks, like the grocery shopping, when one—Kate—needed the space to breathe.
The gentle kissing wasn’t awkward like I’d feared, although our first kiss started with our lips forgetting their shapes, but finished with such unity that our smiles lit up each other’s faces.
“Hi,” I said very quietly.
“Hi back.”
We prepared dinner together—a chicken and vegetable stirfry—and when I wielded the large knife, Janine’s utensil-laden tongue-lashings sprang to mind. I attacked the ends of the snow peas, and recounted my interactions with Janine, her dangerous kitchenware, the enlightening conversations with JJ, the Great Intervention, and Siobhan’s expletive-packed, pointy-sharp diatribe.
Kates eyes were wide. “Siobhan actually said that?”
“Yep.”
“Wow.” Kate slid the peeler across the skin of the carrot. “Your family interventions are brutal.”
I laughed, laying the knife on the wooden chopping board. “They are. At least you had your intervention.” I flicked my fingers in the air and air-quoted. “With a couple of McIntryes at a nice cafe, indulging in Devonshire tea on coordinated crockery.”
Kate giggled. “I hardly call morning tea with Janine, and occasionally Michelle, an intervention.”
Sidling across, I bumped her shoulder. “I’m proud of us.”
She leaned in. “Me too, sweetheart.”
I smiled at the chopping board, then picked it up and tipped the vegetables into the preparation bowl. “Long way to go, I guess.”
Kate snuck her arm about my shoulders. “I want a long way to go. It means I get to go there with you.”
“Sap.”
Kate snorted. “Yes and proud of it, thanks very much.” We shared a brand new grin that fitted like very old jeans.
I dug about in the pots and pans drawer and fished out the large wok. “So many people are cheering us on,” I said contemplatively, plonking the wok on the gas burner, and swirling cooking oil into the base. “Pretty much everyone, even Neil.”
“Neil?”
“Oh! I didn’t tell you.” I waved the oil bottle about, and Kate took it from my hands, twisted the cap back on, then leaned into the bench to listen, smiling gently, with her dark eyes twinkling, and her hair loose about her face. I nearly lost my train of thought. God, she was perfect. “I ran into Neil and we had a bit of an argument about you, and then some more arguing…also about you, then a bit more arguing about…you.” Kate rolled her lips in. “Then he kind of, but not quite, said congratulations on our wedding which seemed to be the catalyst for him just,” I shrugged, “deflating, sort of like he’d lost a prize.”
Kate hummed. “Yes, he’d see it that way. Women are trophies according to Neil, but at least he wished us well, sort of.” She pushed off the bench, turned on the stove, and heated the wok.
“I think he felt compelled to. You’d given him new instructions for life only days before I gave him a bollocking in the middle of the footpath on Graham Street.”
Dinner was lovely. Not just the food, but the conversation. It ebbed and flowed and eddied when we fixed on a topic that swirled and whirled then tossed us away to a new discussion point.
“I love you.” The words fell out of my mouth mid-eddy, mid-ebb, mid-flow and Kate paused, her mouth open to add to our chat, chopsticks halted mid-air so that the food fell off.
“I love you, too,” she said, placing the empty chopsticks across her bowl.
I mirrored her movement. “How did you know I’d come back?"
“You promised.” Her gaze was intense.
I held it, then breathed out carefully. “I’d like to try something.”
Kate cocked her head.
I waved my hand. “It’s not weird or anything. It’s a strategy, a technique that Janine spoke about ages ago that she uses with clients. I don’t know the name of it, but essentially we sit opposite each other for five minutes and look at each other’s eyes, and nowhere else. Just sit, be, and focus. Thinking stuff about that person, thinking about yourself, thinking about each other together. Thinking whatever you like. But you can’t speak and you can’t break eye contact.” I gave a self-deprecating smile. “Blinking is fine, obviously.”
Kate frowned, then took a deep breath. “Can we hold hands?”
“Absolutely.”
Another deep breath, and it occurred to me that perhaps Kate knew about this strategy and was freaking out.
“Are you?—We don’t have to do this, sweetheart. It was just an idea,” I said.
“No, no. I want to. Let’s move our chairs over.” She stood, grabbed her chair and set it in the middle of the kitchen, so I followed suit, then we faced each other. Kate looked as petrified as I felt. What a raw and intimate journey to embark on right after chicken stirfry. Right after a three month break. But I was determined to try this. It had landed at the front of my memory bank when my brain was going through a spot of interior decorating.
“If you want to stop.” I reached for her hands, holding them lightly at our knees which touched as if kissing. “Then just say the word.”
Her lips twitched. “Like a safe word?”
I rolled my eyes. “Kate.”
“Sorry. Okay.”
Placing my phone on the floor beside my chair, I set the timer for five minutes.
“Ready?” I squeezed her hands.
She nodded, so I leaned down and tapped start.
At first, probably the first twenty seconds, I fought against the urge to look away. Staring into someone’s eyes is confronting. I knew if I tried it with any of my family members, I’d never last a minute. The vibrations of energy, the unspoken words of decades, the layers of sibling sensibilities would impact on the efficacy of the exercise. Staring into Kate’s eyes wasn’t confronting but it was challenging. I wanted to look away to gather my thoughts. I wanted to look away so my gaze could travel across her face.
But I didn’t because the brown, all the darks and lights and the circles of walnut and caramel and flecks of gold and the love and the colours and the affection and…and…a treasure chest opened and the oddest thing happened. Our blinking synchronised. I knew this because Kate wasn’t blinking while I held her gaze. We were closing our eyes at the same time.
The weighted silence that had settled on my shoulders, pricking at my awareness of the house creaking, the fridge humming, the lorikeets in the trees, was brushed aside by a silence that was tender and delicate and very faint tears in those eyes that held mine lost their balance and slipped over the edge. Then Kate invited me in to wander inside her gallery.
I love you, Kate.
I see you.
You are my person.
I’m so sorry I took our love for granted.
I’m sorry I hurt you.
Your smile is sunshine.
I love the way your chin lifts when you’re determined to prove a point.
I love the way—
The colours in Kate’s eyes coursed together and through the prisms in my tears those colours became rays of light.
Then I simply breathed. And cried. And breathed. And gradually, as if my brain knew what was required, I withdrew until my hands felt hers again, the fridge hummed, the house creaked, and the timer went off. And I breathed.
Kate sat back and scrubbed the heels of her hands into her eyes. I wiped at my tears with quick finger flicks. Then we stared at each other.
“Kate.”
She reached up and held my face, smoothing her thumbs over my cheeks. “Sweetheart, I saw you just then and it was glorious. You. You are glorious. And do you know what else I saw? I saw you seeing me.” Her smile wobbled.
Ah, more tears. I swallowed heavily. “That’s all I’ve ever wanted to do and I nearly ruined it.”
“You weren’t entirely to blame. It’s difficult to see someone who keeps running away.” Kate’s head tilted a little to reinforce her statement.
“When I looked at you just now, I saw the you I met when that orange slushy splattered your skirt. I saw the you who made me—makes me—origami cranes.” I twisted my fingers into hers. “I saw the you who I want to walk through life with, and all the reasons why I want to do that. We’ve got years and years, Kate, and I want to see you every day of every month of all of those years. I choose to see you.”
“Oh, Bron,” Kate whispered. The timer may have stopped but our gazes were still locked.
“You’ve always been braver than me,” I said, giving a slight nod.
The features on Kate’s face knotted in incomprehension. “You’re exceptionally brave.”
“No. Well, maybe. But not really. I was—I am—petrified of losing you. I hate that phrase ‘feel the fear but do it anyway’.” I made an indistinct noise in my throat. “It’s stupid. I felt my fear, but didn’t do it anyway because that lacks true motivation. It lacks reason. I felt my fear and did what I needed, because it wasn’t about fear, really. It was about love. It is about love, because you were right about us. You were right about me. You were right about…” I gestured to the door knowing that she’d understand the vague nature of it, that it encompassed the contemplation, the comprehension. “You were right about all of that.”
Kate leaned forward and brushed her lips to mine. “So were you. You were right to do what we did. It takes strength, and we’ve got that strength. Honey, I’m not perfect or that strong if I’m honest. I simply needed. But mostly I wanted. You.” She kissed me again. “I want you.”
I slid forward on my chair, so my knees intertwined with Kate’s, bringing our lips and faces and smiles closer. More accessible. Soft.
“It’s called the mutual gaze.” Kate drew back and rested her hands on my thighs.
“This?” I pointed vaguely at our eyes. “How did—?”
