Page 3 of All That We Never Were

We talked all through the meal: about the family’s café, the surf season, the most recent contagious illness my mother had heard about. The one thing we didn’t touch on remained hovering in the air, however much we tried not to pay attention. When it was time for dessert, my father cleared his throat, and I realized he was tired of pretending nothing was going on.

“Oliver, have you really thought about this?”

We all looked at him. All of us but his sister.

Leah didn’t take her eyes off her cheesecake.

“The decision’s made. It’ll pass quickly.”

My mother got up theatrically and brought her napkin to her mouth, but she couldn’t help sobbing, and she walked off to the kitchen. I shook my head when my father went to follow her and offered to calm the situation myself. I took a deep breath and leaned on the counter next to her.

“Mama, don’t do this. This isn’t what they need right now.”

“I can’t help it, son. This situation is unbearable. What else can happen? It’s been a terrible, terrible year…”

I could have bullshitted her, could have said, “It’s no big deal” or “Everything will be okay,” but I couldn’t manage it, because I knew it wasn’t true. Nothing would ever be the same. Our lives didn’t just change when the Joneses died in a car accident; they became different lives, with two absences that were always profoundly present, like a suppurating wound that never closes.

From the day we set foot in Byron Bay, we were family. All of us. Despite the differences: The Joneses may have gotten up every day thinking only in the now. My mother might have spent her every waking second worrying about the future. They might have been bohemians, artists used to living in nature, while we only knew life in Melbourne. Maybe when they said yes, we said no; maybe we contradicted each other in arguments that lasted till dawn on the nights when we had dinner together in the garden, but still.…

We had been inseparable.

And now it was all broken.

My mother wiped away her tears.

“How can he even think of leaving you in charge of Leah? We could have worked something out. We could have done a quick renovation in the living room, splitting it so she could have a bedroom, or we could have bought a sofa bed. I know it’s not the most comfortable thing and she needs her space, but no matter how good your heart is, you can’t even take care of a pet.”

I raised an indignant eyebrow.

“I’ll have you know I’ve got a pet.”

“Yeah, what’s it called?”

“It doesn’t have a name. Yet.”

Actually, it wasn’t my pet. I wasn’t really one for owning living creatures, but now and again, a scrawny tricolor cat with a hateful face would show up on my back porch for food and I would give it the leftovers. There were weeks when it came by two or three times, and others when it didn’t bother.

“This is going to be a disaster.”

“Mom, I’m almost thirty; I can take care of her. It’s the most reasonable thing. You all spend every day at the café, and when you don’t, you’ve got to take care of the twins. And she’s not going to spend a year sleeping in the living room.”

“What will you eat?” she asked.

“Food, damn it.”

“Watch your mouth.”

I turned around and left the kitchen. I went back to the car, grabbed the wrinkled pack of smokes from the glove box, and walked a few streets down. Sitting on the curb, I lit a cigarette and stared at the branches of the trees quivering in the wind. This wasn’t the neighborhood we had grown up in, the one where our families had grown together until becoming one. The two properties had been put up for sale; my parents had moved to a small one-bedroom house in the center of Byron Bay, close to the café they opened more than twenty years ago, when we settled here. They didn’t have any reason to go on living in the suburbs when Justin and I were gone; they had lost their neighbors, and Oliver and Leah had moved to the house he rented when he wanted his independence after the two of us finished college.

“Thought you quit smoking.”

I squinted my eyes toward the sun and looked up at Oliver. I exhaled a drag while he sat down next to me.

“I did. A couple of cigarettes a day isn’t smoking. Not the way a smoker smokes, anyway.”

He smiled, grabbed the pack, and lit one for himself.

“You’ve stepped into some shit, haven’t you?”

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