Days 158 and 159

Writing exercise – of four types, a conversational piece, maybe

…

Sunday lunch could be the best of times or the worst of times.  Any family gathering at my parents’ house was a trial, one that eventually drove me away.

I had stopped turning up at the family residence for the weekly gathering simply because the ritual cross-examination of why I was not like my brothers and sisters, married with three point two children, got too exhausting.

It meant that I rarely, if ever, got to see my nieces and nephews or my brothers, sisters, brothers-in-law, sisters-in-law, and well-meaning but over-the-top parents.

Moving to the other side of the country had a lot to do with it.  The rest of my family had stayed put, making their lives in the one place they all professed they could never leave.

Only one other sibling had attempted an escape, my younger sister Eileen, but two weeks after she left, she came home.  I knew something bad had happened, but she never said anything and never left again, except for the odd trip to the state capital for work.

But like all good things that came to an end, it was approaching that time when I would have to go back, if only once, because it was time.

…

I might have returned home earlier had it not been for an entirely unforeseen event.

I never had any intention of looking for, or becoming involved with, any other person, not to the extent that it would require explanation of my rather odd, to me anyway, circumstances.

Yes, I harboured the same hopes and dreams of meeting ‘the one’ as everyone else had, but the idea of subjecting them to the rigours of the family third degree was the single limiting factor.  I could not say I was an orphan, but then I didn’t think it would be a selling point that I was the second youngest of fourteen children, with twelve of the thirteen others married with a collective twenty-six nephews and nieces.

What was probably the worst aspect, this group turned up every Sunday for lunch, all fifty-four of them, unless a major calamity prevented their attendance.  As you can see, with odds of fifty-four to one, the Spanish Inquisition would have been a kindergarten outing by comparison.

But to say I missed them may have been the case, but that they missed me more was becoming very hard to ignore or put off.

Perhaps they had missed making my life hell, because over the past three years, there had been many phone calls and messages and one visit by my eldest brother, the self-elected spokesman, he said, the peacemaker, who had come to take me home.

It was the last time we spoke. Civilly, anyway.

That was a year ago.

Things had changed during that year, though I was not sure whether for the better.  I had met someone, yes, a woman named Catherine, Katerina if I wanted to call her by her Russian name, which I didn’t, one who was perhaps as skittish as I was at the whole dating and sharing your life thing.

Our first meeting was fascinating because her Russian accent was intoxicating, and I told her at the end of the night that she could read me War and Peace, and I would listen to it all night.  I think that I realised she used her Russian heritage to put off potential suitors.  I told her it wouldn’t work with me.

We both started out playing the orphan card, and as the dates piled up and the little pieces of our sad lives leaked out, it became apparent we both had suffered the small-town, large family, endless expectations things.  She had been expected to marry her high school sweetheart until she found out he was secretly cheating on her.

When she told her parents and they confronted him, he denied it and made her look like she was just spiteful because she didn’t want to marry him.  The other girl could have him, and she left on the next bus out.  It was no surprise to learn the other girl hadn’t married him, nor had any other.

From there, with cards on the table, we just clicked.

But like all good things, it, too, should have ended because I was one of those people who never finished what they started.

…

A Saturday morning, not generally a work day and the day we set aside for everything that couldn’t get done on a weekday, came after an extended evening in the pub.

We rarely stayed beyond a drink or two, but others we knew, just back from a long holiday, dropped in on the off chance we would be there, and it turned into dinner and more drinks.

It never affected Katerina. I was guessing it was something to do with her Russian heritage and vodka, and the explanation I missed when I had to go to the bathroom. I was not so lucky.

She was up and about, and I heard the buzzer, usually someone trying to get in after they forgot to take their key, and I thought no more about it.

Five minutes passed, and then Katerina was standing in the doorway, her half-hostile, annoyed expression glaring at me. It was one of those expressions you could feel.

“Some silly girl at the door says she is your sister.”

“I don’t have a sister.”

“I say this, and she says, ‘go tell that annoying bastard Eileen is here’.  So, annoying bastard, who is this Eileen?”

“One of the thirteen other siblings I try very hard not to admit I have.  They’re like debt collectors. You can never really escape them.”

I climbed out of bed and went out.  She stayed back at the door but was still visible from the front.

I opened the door and there was Eileen, my youngest sister, the last born and the most spoiled.  Given the age differences between me and my other siblings, she was the only one I could relate to.

“What the hell, Robert?”

“What the hell, yourself?  Didn’t I make it clear to Prince Walter that I had disappeared through a portal to another dimension?”

It was an attempt at a joke that he couldn’t and wouldn’t understand.  He had no sense of humour at all.

“That dumb shit doesn’t work on me.  Are you going to leave me standing in the passage?”

“I’m thinking about it.”

“Oh, for fucks sake Robert,” then brushed past inside.

Katerina was watching with a bemused expression.  Perhaps this was her family, too.

I could see Eileen giving her the traditional family female death stare.  “Who is she?”

“She is standing right here, and I can hear and see you.  A warning word, my other job is a bouncer at a nightclub, and you may, depending on what you say next, find out how I treat recalcitrant customers.”

That notion of not wanting to meet her in a dark alley was right.  Katarina was a gym freak.

It was amusing to see Eileen think before she spoke next.

Then, with a glance over my shoulder at Katarina, she said, “As I said at the door, I’m his sister, Eileen.  I’m surprised he didn’t mention me.”

Katerina looked her up and down.  “He mentioned all of you, but I think his description may have been a little harsh.  You only seem a little bit bitch from hell.  I am Katarina.  Bigger bitch from Siberia.”

I smiled.  She could be a fascinating companion, more so after a bottle of vodka, and especially when she related tales of being in the Russian army.  I could never tell if they were true and never dared to ask.

Eileen didn’t know what to do or say at that point. She was a hugger, and for the first time, I saw her hesitate.

Instead, she said, “Wow.  The others are going to shit their pants when they meet Katarina.”

“And you know that’s never going to happen.  That unappreciative, condescending collection of hypocrites doesn’t deserve anything from me and nothing for Katerina.”

She switched her death stare back to me.

“Dad’s dying.  Earlier in the week, the final diagnosis gave him four to six months, if he’s lucky.  We don’t believe he’s lucky.  He has to go to the hospital next week, and I honestly believe he won’t be coming out, Robert.  We gave him a wish, the one thing he wanted most of all, no matter what it was, and we would grant it.  He wants to see you one more time before he dies.”

That was saying something. When I left, he told me I could die in purgatory, after hell froze over, before he wanted to see me again.

“You were there when I left?  He was the one who drove me away.  Along with everyone else, including mother, who, I might add, spent every last breath making you the spoilt brat you are.”

“You need to get over it and yourself.  I was not spoiled.  When I left, I made a fool of myself and was raped.  It was the worst experience of my life, and my mother nearly fought a losing battle when I tried to kill myself.  I thought I knew everything, but I knew nothing.  Perhaps I should have told you, and you wouldn’t have left.”

Well, if nothing else, it was typical of how my family handled trouble.  My brother could have explained everything when he came, but he chose not to.  He was the same man as my father, uncompromising and a hard task master.  I was sure that if my father, and in turn my eldest brother, could whip us for our sins, he would have.

I shook my head and looked at Katerina.  She went up to Eileen and hugged her. 

“It is a terrible thing, what men can do to women.  We go find this lowlife and teach lesson, no?”

“Too late.  God has a way of sorting out these problems. He was killed in a crash, chased by the cops while kidnapping an underage girl he had got pregnant.  Leopards and spots, my father says.”

That would be him.  A saying for everything, not a solution.

“There is no God, just karma.  But the story doesn’t change people, as you say, leopards and spots.  Nor does death. They are still the same people as in life.  You need more compelling reasons.  I have the same family, which is why I left Russia.”

Eileen glared at me.  “Who is this woman?”

Katerina put her angry face on again. “When you live my life, you can dare ask.  You have delivered a message.”  She went to the door and opened it.  “We will discuss, let you know.”

“Robert?”

“Where are you staying?”

“The hotel up the road, not far from here.”

“Good.  I’ll call you.  I assume your cell number hasn’t changed?”

Her annoyance changed to surprise. I was not sure what she was expecting, but it certainly wasn’t the open door.

“Is that it?”

“Like the rest, your expectation is that I would just fall into line. You could have called me.”

“You wouldn’t answer.”

“Perhaps, perhaps not.   But I will call you.”

“We can talk now?”

“No.  You can’t just turn up on my doorstep and expect I’m going to drop everything.  I now have a life, one I like, free of all that obligation and expectation.  I don’t have to meet anyone’s standards other than my own and of Katarina, as it should be.”

“He’ll be very disappointed if you don’t.  Everyone will be.”

“And there’s the emotional blackmail.  Go now before I simply refuse, and you will have wasted your time and money.”

She looked at me with anger and just a little of what my brother had in his eyes the last time I saw him.  Hatred.

“I don’t understand why you hate us so much.”

“You should be asking them, not me.”

A final shake of the head, and she left.  It was not what I wanted, but it was the right thing to do.  Something I had learned while away from home, that decisions were not mine alone when there were others involved, something my father never practised.  It had always been his way or no way.

I leaned against the door and sighed.

“You think her story is true?  She is quite manipulative, as you said.”

“Maybe.  My father taught them well, her especially.”

“What do you want to do?”

“Go back to bed and pretend it didn’t happen.”

“Shopping or bed, I know which I prefer, but it doesn’t resolve the problem.”

“Then I make a call to a friend who will know what’s really going on.  Then bed, then we talk, then we take her to dinner and send her back with the good or bad news.  It’s up to you, too.”

“It is, after all, your family.”

“And yours for better or worse, if or when we decide to make this permanent.”

“Does that mean we have to go to Siberia to see mine? It is not something I would ask of you.”

“I’d love to see Siberia.”

She laughed.  “You are funny, boy Robert.  No one loves to go to Siberia, especially Siberians.  Make the call, and then I will make you forget Siberia exists.”

…

©  Charles Heath  2025