Free Eating the Underworld by Doris Brett

remained in love for more thanfour decades of marriage.
    Over the last few months, I have been pleading, cajoling and arguing as I try to dissuade my father from his plans to divest himself of his assets. Because he is living in New York with his wife Dorka, he says he doesn’t need them. He is acting in this with his typical generosity and wish to help, but I remain uneasy. I know that he is living comfortably in the present, but my worry is for what might happen in the unknown future. I try to set out my concerns as logically as I can.
    â€˜What if you’re left on your own, if Dorka dies, and you need money?’
    â€˜I’ll be fine,’ he says, ‘Dorka has left in her will the house here in Queens for me to live in as long as I want.’
    â€˜What if you get sick and need money for medical treatment?’
    â€˜If I get sick and don’t have the money, I’ll kill myself.’
    Problem solved. Just the right answer to calm a daughter’s heart.
    I continue my attempts to persuade him. Finally, he agrees to modify his actions so as to keep some assets intact for himself. I am enormously relieved.
    A few weeks later, he flies back to Australia with Lily and her husband David, on a brief visit. The night before his return to America, he arranges to come over to my place. He has something to tell me, he says. I am puzzled by what it may be, but pleased to have this extra time with my father.
    When he walks in the door, his face is set. He wastesno time in telling me that he has decided to go ahead after all and sell all his assets. I am horrified. I make a last attempt to persuade him to keep some intact for himself. But he gets angry at me. I respond in kind. And then suddenly, like a monster Jack-in-the-box that has been coiling, half-hidden beneath the layer of the last couple of years, it all erupts. My father is shouting at me enraged. Accusations, denunciations; things I simply don’t recognise.
    â€˜You are a bad daughter!’ He is screaming at me. ‘You are the cause of the trouble in the family!’
    I step back, speechless. I assume he is talking about the one time I spoke up publicly in my mother’s defence and the rift it caused in the family.
    â€˜You are a bad daughter,’ he screams again.
    I can’t believe what he is saying. I find my voice again. All the unspoken hurts I have been feeling come to the surface. I start yelling my own accusations. I am as stunned as if the world had tipped upside down; become a fun-house mirror in its most frightening distortions. Our shouting intensifies. My father is purple with rage. He is glaring at me as if I am a stranger, an enemy. My father has never looked at me like this before, I have never experienced this in him. I am becoming hysterical. I feel as if I can’t bear to see any more.
    â€˜Get out of my house!’ I scream. The words jump out of my mouth. It is too late to retrieve them. I don’t mean them. I can’t believe I’m saying this to my father.
    I keep talking. Try again. ‘Look what we’re doing toeach other,’ I say. ‘What’s happening?’
    His response is the same angry litany. We continue like this for another fifteen minutes. Finally, I am exhausted.
    â€˜Dad,’ I say. ‘This may be the last time we see each other. You’re going back to America. You’re seventy-seven, you’re not planning to come back here again. I can’t get to America in the near future. We may never see each other again. Do you really want to leave it like this?’
    He shrugs. ‘If it has to be, it has to be.’ And he walks out of the house.
    I am in shock. Not just for myself. Amantha, his grand-daughter, is upstairs. This might be the last chance he has to see her and he hasn’t even said goodbye.
    I am crying in a way that I haven’t cried since childhood. Martin, who has been upstairs and heard everything, comes down to comfort