The Ties That Bind Read online

  The wind picked up, making the heat more intense. ‘Jade,’ Helena said, ‘come, my girl. We must go.’

  Her grandmother usually had a special quality of making light of any situation, but in that moment she seemed muted with fear. Jade helped her into the car. She kissed the dogs and took in the scent of their fur.

  Helena reached her hand to the seat beside her, gesturing for Jade to sit, but instead Jade slammed the door.

  ‘Jade,’ Helena called out with a look of horror on her face. ‘Get in, we must go.’

  Jade went to the driver’s window. ‘I’ll be right behind you. Go, Dad. You need to go now.’

  ‘No, Paul. We can’t go without her. Please, make her come,’ Helena pleaded with her son.

  ‘Dad, listen to me,’ Jade said defiantly. ‘You need to go now. YiaYia, I promise I won’t be far behind.’

  Jade could see the fear and uncertainty in her father’s eyes as he accelerated slowly. Guilt and anxiety crackled in her chest, but she held her ground.

  Helena wound down the window and yelled Jade’s name into the wind. ‘Jade, please come, agapi mou. You can do nothing to save the house if the fire front hits!’ She turned her head out of the car window to face Jade, who stood in the middle of the dusty road, unflinching.

  ‘I’ll catch up,’ she called through the howling wind. ‘Go, Dad, please. I’ll leave in five minutes.’

  Helena’s dark skin was streaked with tears. ‘Please, Jade,’ she begged, her voice full of anguish and helplessness.

  ‘Just go. I’ll leave soon. I promise.’

  It was the first time she had ever lied to her grandmother. Jade knew that if the fires came, she’d stay and fight.

  2

  COURTNEY watched her son through the kitchen window as he played in the garden with his best friend, Dean. Matthew was smaller than most boys his age and next to Dean he looked like a little brother.

  The two sat in the garden pulling apart an old bicycle that her husband David had been planning to throw out. She didn’t know what they intended to do with the pieces once they had dismantled the thing, but she hoped they wouldn’t be scattered across the garden like abstract sculptures.

  Matthew was deep in concentration. He squinted his dark-blue eyes under the glare of the sun and scrunched up his nose. His blond, sun-streaked hair was trimmed short on the sides and spiked up in the middle, a style he insisted on. He sensed her watching him. ‘Okay, Mom, I’ll put sunblock on,’ he yelled from across the garden without shifting his attention from the bicycle. He wiped his white-and-navy shirt with his hand, leaving a print of oil and grime.

  ‘Oops.’ He grinned, looking up when he realised he’d added an extra stripe to his shirt and just in time to see Courtney fold her arms. Boys, Courtney shrugged. There was no use telling him to clean his room, or not to get his clothes dirty when he played in the mud, or not to eat something once it had fallen on the ground. He’d do it all anyway. ‘You can’t wrap him in cotton wool for the rest of his life,’ David had told her on the day Matthew started to walk. ‘Let boys be boys.’

  And though Courtney did her best to be a calm mother, her struggle to fall pregnant made her even more protective of her only child. She looked out the window and saw clouds forming. Seeing the boys playing in the garden, with the impending rain, made her think of her childhood here in Miami and how she used to race into the backyard as heavy clouds appeared, ready to catch whatever fell from them. When Courtney was in kindergarten she had been like any other inquisitive child, eager to know where babies came from. She watched Dumbo and decided that children came from a frothy blue sky on the backs of giant storks that dropped them, wrapped in cloth, with a note to the prospective parents.

  For a long time after Courtney saw the movie, she would lie on the grass waiting to see babies appear in the sky. She was afraid a parent might not be looking when their baby-to-be was released from the bird, so she had her arms outstretched ready to catch the delicate blanket as it fell. Courtney believed wholeheartedly that babies came in this way until her mother, concerned with how much time she spent outside baby-watching, was forced to tell her gently that it wasn’t the case.

  So, when Courtney and David started trying for a child, the film had stirred in her imagination again. Then an art curator in her mid-twenties, she found herself again lying on her back on the grass looking up into the sky – except this time she was praying for a baby of her own.

  Courtney had never expected that she would have trouble conceiving. It wasn’t in her plan. She was healthy, fit, young and ready.

  It didn’t take a few months like she’d imagined. It took two painful years, during which time she endured stimulated cycles, egg pick-ups, failed embryo transfers and three miscarriages. Unaware of Courtney’s fertility problems, her friends would ask her often about when she planned to start a family, so Courtney learned to lie and say she simply wasn’t ready yet. For a while, she couldn’t face going to her friends’ birthday parties for their children. The Miami Art Gallery was her refuge. She was failing to become a mother, so she compensated by working longer and harder than anyone else in the gallery.

  She could only understand then how desperate her parents had been to adopt her, having had their own infertility woes.

  After nearly two years of trying, she gave up on IVF and had started to look into adoption when, against their expectations, she fell pregnant naturally. Throughout her pregnancy, she couldn’t shake the fear that at any moment she could lose her child, despite the obstetrician reassuring her at every check-up that her baby was healthy. Thankfully, in the final trimester, her fears began to fade.

  When Matthew was born, he sent calm through her. She savoured the early mornings when she’d raise him delicately out of his bassinet and hold him to her chest, feeling his tiny warm body against her. Even now, as she watched her ten-year-old son play, she wondered if she would ever shake that maternal protectiveness.

  A ball hit the window and jolted Courtney from her thoughts. ‘Sorry!’ Dean yelled. She knocked on the window to get Matthew’s attention. Taking his cue, he propped the remaining intact bits of the bike against a palm tree and walked inside, his shoulders slouched and his expression disgruntled from being interrupted. As he walked through the open glass doors to the living room, she emerged from the kitchen holding sunblock and scooped him up for a kiss.

  ‘Mom,’ he said, squirming away from her embrace. ‘I’m too big for you to pick me up. Dean will see.’

  With as little effort as possible, he put the sunblock on, deliberately whitening his eyebrows and leaving a drop under his nose to make Dean laugh. ‘You look like an old man,’ Dean teased.

  ‘Hey, Mom, when I go to Dean’s house after my game today, can I give him his present early? We kind of want to play with it,’ he said, a dead giveaway to Dean if he didn’t know already what he was getting.

  Courtney sighed as she remembered the PlayStation game she had promised Matthew she would buy for Dean. ‘Sweetie,’ she said in a measured tone, ‘do you think you can give it to him next week instead? You wouldn’t mind, would you, Dean?’

  ‘But, Mom, you promised,’ Matthew said, irritated. She hated disappointing him but it just wasn’t top of her priority list with the biggest exhibition of her career opening later that month. ‘Surely there are other games you can play?’

  Matthew crunched up his face. ‘But we wanted to play that game,’ he grumbled.

  Matthew rarely got irritable but apparently PlayStation games were the highlight of any preteen’s life. ‘I’ll get it sorted, little man. Don’t worry.’

  He took an apple from the fruit dish on the dining room table and took a loud bite.

  ‘Matthew, don’t you think you should get cleaned up for your soccer game? And what do you plan to do with the bike now that it’s in pieces on my lawn?’ Courtney looked outside to the mess they’d made.

  The boys glanced at each other and grinned.

  ‘Well, you have ten mo
re minutes to tidy up. Dean, will you be ready to go? Your mother asked me to drop you home. I’m just going to read through my speech one more time and then we’re leaving.’

  ‘Can’t he come to the game?’ Matthew asked.

  ‘No, sweetie, he has guitar practice today; another time. And remember I may be late to your game today because I have to take Grandpa to the doctor first. But I’ll definitely be there before the second half.’ Matthew shrugged, so she patted him on the back. ‘I’m sorry, sweetie,’ she whispered to him so Dean wouldn’t hear. ‘I’ll get it.’ He ignored her, a clear signal she was in his bad books. She suppressed a smile as she watched him try to play it cool in front of his friend.

  When the boys returned to their dismantling activities, she settled at the dining table to go through the notes for her curatorial speech that would open Gabriela Fresca’s exhibition, The Elements. The title was a reference to the elements the artist had used to create her works and to the four elements of nature.

  Gabriela was an up-and-coming artist, born in Cuba, who was rapidly gaining attention in the Miami art community for her firm grasp of many different artistic mediums and her ability to continually challenge form and structure. Courtney had seized the opportunity to be the first gallery to do a full exhibition of all her works, from etchings on wood to oil paintings and photography. But it hadn’t been an easy sell to the gallery director. Courtney had worked hard to convince him that this relatively unknown artist would drum up enough interest to justify an exhibition. She knew that her reputation, and that of the gallery, was at stake.

  The thought of delivering the opening speech made Courtney queasy. She hated public speaking but she’d found herself having to do it too many times in her life. Whenever she thought about it, she’d visualise herself standing on the podium gazing at the sea of people, her hands shaking so much she wouldn’t be able to hold her cue cards, her voice stuck in her throat and her mind going blank with panic. Of course, she worked herself up into a state like this every time and, without fail, the nerves would disappear when she entered the room. As she scribbled on her notes, she reminded herself of this, but it did little to resolve the tightness in her chest.

  A scream from the garden startled Courtney. Her heart immediately started racing and she tried to stop herself from imagining the worst, like she so often did. ‘What happened?’ she yelled as she raced out the living-room doors and into the garden.

  ‘Matthew hurt himself,’ Dean said, clearly panicked.

  When she drew closer, she saw Matthew holding his knee as blood gushed.

  ‘I was taking the bike spokes apart and,’ he was struggling not to cry in front of Dean, ‘and I couldn’t get the wheel to come off and so I yanked it hard and one of the metal rods came loose and flicked into my knee, see.’ He pointed at the thin straight line of the cut.

  ‘It’s okay,’ Courtney said, trying to calm him as she inspected the wound. ‘It just needs some disinfectant and a bandaid.’ She smiled warmly at him, wiping tears from the corners of his eyes. She kissed him gently on the forehead and helped him as he limped inside, Dean following closely.

  Courtney turned the television onto the sports channel – his favourite – and came back with a small bowl of diluted disinfectant, a cloth, cotton wool and a few bandaids.

  David was right, she told herself as she dabbed softly at the wound. She had to let boys be boys and not worry so much. It was the only way they learned to stay away from danger.

  ‘Ouch, Mom, that hurts,’ Matthew winced, pulling his leg back but remaining focused on the television. She held the cloth there, waiting for the bleeding to stop. It had already been close to five minutes, so she was surprised the cloth was soiled in blood despite the tiny wound. She could see the blue-black arms of a bruise already forming. She continued to dab the cut until she noticed six or so other bruises on his legs and arms.

  ‘Where are all these from?’ she asked, trying to hide the sudden alarm in her voice. He turned to face her and she thought she detected a glint of enthusiasm in his eyes.

  ‘Dean and I are having a competition to see who has the most bruises, and so far I’m winning.’

  ‘Is that so?’ she said, unimpressed.

  Dean grinned cheekily. ‘I’ll catch up,’ he teased.

  Matthew pointed to a circular bruise on his right ankle. ‘This one happened at school when I dropped my books on my leg between Maths and Spanish class.’ The bruise was probably a few days old; it had faded from purple to mustard yellow with grey edges.

  He continued to go through the origins of his bruises, while she carefully placed a small piece of cotton wool over the cut and covered it with a bandaid. By the time he finished narrating the bruise stories he seemed to have forgotten about his latest wound.

  ‘Now, boys, you do realise bruises are not war wounds. They are not medals to display on a mantelpiece. They are not cool. So, from now on, can you find another way to compete against each other?’

  Dean looked down as if he were counting the scuff marks on the floor.

  ‘You’re not in trouble. It’s not like you’ve cooked instant noodles in my kettle like last time,’ she teased.

  ‘Come on, Mom, it was a good idea at the time.’

  ‘Yes, it was lovely; I can’t tell you how much I enjoyed the taste of chicken stock in my tea,’ she said, grinning. ‘Okay, Dean, we better get going. Matthew, why don’t you get changed into your soccer gear before Dad gets home?’ She kissed him on the head. ‘Good luck, sweetie. I hope your knee doesn’t hurt during your game. I’ll see you at half-time.’

  Courtney left the house with Dean and, moments after the front door had shut, she forgot all about Matthew’s bruises; she had already panned them off as boys’ play and nothing more.

  Despite her father’s protests that he didn’t want her with him at his doctor’s appointment, Courtney went anyway and sat in the waiting room, hoping he would come around. But her father was getting more stubborn with age and he stood firm. In his mind, he was the parent and he didn’t need to be looked after by his child. When Frank walked out of the doctor’s office, his lips were pressed tightly and he avoided eye contact with her.

  ‘What did he say?’ Courtney asked.

  ‘Nothing.’ His answer was clipped.

  ‘Come on, Dad, he must have said something.’

  ‘We’re going to miss the second half of the game. Let’s go,’ he said, reverting to his habit of shutting her out to hide the fact that he was upset. The last thing he wanted was sympathy. So, Courtney decided to drop the subject for now and raise it with him again when he was in a better mood.

  Even after all the tests, it was still hard for him to accept that he was in the early stages of Alzheimer’s disease. She hoped Matthew’s game would cheer him up, or at the very least distract him. Frank never missed any of Matthew’s games. In fact, it was the highlight of his week. Now that he had retired as a vet, he had very little to fill his time. Having only one grandchild meant that he more than spoiled Matthew.

  ‘Now we’re late,’ her father said as he walked hastily to the car. ‘You know how much Matthew relies on our pre-game good-luck handshake.’

  They had made up an elaborate shake before a game in which Matthew went on to score three goals. Believing the handshake routine had given him good luck, they made it a tradition that they tried to do before every game.

  Courtney hopped into the driver’s seat, stopping herself from helping her dad into the car. He hated being treated like a charity case just because his memory was going. He had been so fit and healthy in his younger years that his mental deterioration was a touchy subject. ‘It’s Matthew’s first game of the season,’ Courtney said, trying to distract him from his dark thoughts.

  ‘You think you need to remind me of these things?’ he snapped. ‘I’ve got it down in my diary with a big smiley face.’

  ‘I’m just impressed you know what a smiley face is.’

  ‘Well, don’t be. I’
m a lot more hip than you give me credit for. Although this music on the radio, it’s dreadful. They should have a station that plays hits from my day, before they had all this fancy technology.’

  ‘Dad, you’re showing your age,’ she teased. ‘But all right, I’ll change it to AM.’

  Courtney flicked the station from FM to AM and left him to switch through the stations until he reached NPR – the national station that delivered breaking news.

  ‘You happy now?’ Courtney joked.

  ‘I’ll be happy when I’m in that stand watching Matthew score all the goals.’

  Courtney laughed. ‘You know he can’t be the best player every match?’

  ‘Of course he can,’ Frank said, unflinching. ‘He’s my grandson.’

  ‘I don’t know who’s worse, you or David,’ she said.

  Her father turned the volume up as the news shifted to world headlines. In Australia, the state of Victoria is being battered by the country’s worst ever wildfires, with the death toll rising above thirty and expected to soar. Record-high temperatures and strong winds have proved a lethal combination, with 200 fires recorded in the Silver Creek region.

  Courtney changed the station looking for something a little cheerier, but her father immediately interrupted her.

  ‘Hey, put that back on,’ he insisted. ‘I was listening.’ He tensed up as he flicked through the stations trying to find it again.

  She tapped her hand impatiently on the steering wheel as the traffic banked up at the lights. ‘Since when are you so interested in world affairs?’ He switched it back but by then the announcer was on to the next headline.

  Frank stared at the dashboard as if looking for a rewind button. ‘Did you hear where that was?’ he asked.

  ‘Something about deadly wildfires in Australia. Nothing here, Dad, don’t worry.’

  ‘Oh,’ her father said, exhaling, ‘I was just checking.’