Family Saint

My dearest, closest friend,

As my confidante, at my stage of life, I wish to get a few things off my chest. This in strictest confidence, you will understand.

Every family has a family saint. There is one person who can do no wrong. In my family it is the first-born of my sisters Stella. Inventor of the Taco, Mother of a child per Immaculate conception. These are just two of her many miraculous achievements, too many to list here… that is if you are to believe either or both of our parents. 

Educated by the nuns in an all-girl school, Stella set about making the lives of the teachers a living misery. Most years our parents found themselves sitting in the office of Mother Superior at least once, to plead why Stella should not be expelled.

It ended inevitably in Year 11. Stella settled a schoolyard dispute with a Prefect by delivering a Right Cross a cage fighter would have been proud of. The prone Prefect was ambulanced to hospital. She was kept overnight for observation.

There was nothing for it now. Stella had to be expelled. Her final year was spent at a government school. This was a quiet school year by her standards. It was also here she discovered boys. 

This led to nights where, forbidden to go out, she would silently climb though a bedroom window to rendezvous with boys in cars. The silence of her sisters, her roommates, bought at fist point. The pattern of our family bully was established.

I was working and responsible for clothing myself. Come mid-week my newly purchased boxer shorts and socks were missing. Stella had decided what was mine was hers, men’s boxer shorts and men’s socks. 

Some of my 45 RPM records went missing. She had taken them to parties at friends’ houses and left them there. Henceforth my wardrobe doors were chained and padlocked.

The week before school breakup Stella was called to the principal’s office. She was told the end of year flour fight she had organized was to be cancelled. Needless to say, Stella came home from her last day of school covered from head to foot in flour. 

In those days there was about a month before the exam results were published in the morning newspaper. On the important morning, Stella approached Mum holding the newspaper open at the page showing her Passes. And then this - she told Mum, “I want to be a schoolteacher.”

This was such a hideous announcement. To us, this was like a Jew wanting to join the Nazi Party. Or a black person wanting to join the Klan.

After Mum had regained her composure she said, “You will make a good schoolteacher. You are the biggest bloody know all in the world.”

The shock of Stella’s announcement reverberates across our family to this very day.

***

I moved interstate to be joined later by Dad, post-divorce, his divorce.

Time goes by. Eventually we learned Stella had given birth to a child. Her pregnancy obviously the result of an immaculate conception, concurred both our parents independently.

Stella quickly transferred out of the city to a rural school. By this time, correspondence between her and me was limited to an exchange of birthday cards and Christmas cards.

Stella found a rural sucker – let’s call him Diego – to marry her.

About 3 years later she wrote to Dad saying she was filing for divorce because “Diego comes home from work and punches me”. Somehow this was my fault. Dad turned on me accusing me of being in on it, prior knowledge, aiding and abetting etc.

We came to learn what Stella should have written was, “Diego comes home from work and punches me… every time he catches me in bed with some random, I brought home to shag”. She was always the master of the half sentence.

There followed a series of marriages and divorces. Our family in-joke became, Stella had worn a rut between the Registry Office and the Divorce Court.

Somewhere along the way I married. The following Christmas Mum invited us back to her home State for a family get together. She booked a table in the Grand Ballroom of the five star Excelsior Hotel for an elaborate buffet Christmas lunch.

The entertainment was a quintet playing Polish Polka tunes. They were highlighted by Stella suddenly standing on the table to perform an impromptu striptease. Her performance was interrupted at a crucial stage by a female security person. Stella was escorted to an alcove to get dressed. Fully clothed she was allowed to return to the ballroom on her undertaking to be of good behaviour. “Stella had to strip because she was frustrated in her latest marriage,” was how Mum immediately excused our Saint’s behaviour. 

Upon returning to my home, I told Dad of Stella’s public performance. He held up his hand in my face, refusing to hear a word against the family Saint.

Stella’s social climbing inspired marriages continued. Our family observed each of her husbands as more mature, and more wealthy, than his predecessors. Her last husband was a member of the landed gentry. Mum commented, “Stella aimed her vagina with increasing accuracy.” This excused all, apparently.

When Stella’s final husband, previously a bachelor, predeceased her, she attended his funeral in the morning. In the afternoon the reading of his Last Will & Testament.

To her horror her husband bequeathed just about everything to his family members; the share portfolio, bank bonds, racehorses, farms, livestock, real estate investment portfolio etc.

O yes, Stella was remembered. She to enjoy their Mercedes-Benz cars, which were to be passed to his family members when she was finished with them.

Similarly, their matrimonial home. She was to live in it but upon her passing, title to pass to his family members. He also bequeathed Stella $900 in cash. To many this summed up what he had found himself married to.

Our Saint was not going to take this laying down. This called for immediate action. 48 hours later Stella was sitting in the State Capital office of a high-profile, celebrity lawyer. He accepted her brief. He contacted the lawyer of the other Party, being the family members. It was mutually agreed Mediation would be preferred.

And so it came to pass, Stella could keep everything – provided various of the young in-laws were compensated in cash, within 12 months. Let’s just say, the in-laws were to have their mortgages cleared.

Assets were realized to honor her half of the agreement. Stella then left the rural district never to return.

In the Capital, she bought a celebrity style, luxury apartment for herself in a trendy inner suburb. Next a substantial house in an exclusive suburb as an investment. This generated attractive rental income.

Her new jet setting lifestyle now included First Class travel to join her friends for the running of horse races around the world, plus trips to many other exotic destinations.

Somehow, somewhere, sometime, someone in our family made a sarcastic comment to Stella about how hard she had worked to build her fortune, albeit in a less than honourable manner. Suddenly we family members received a letter from her celebrity lawyer advising any and all future communication must be conducted on a lawyer-to-lawyer basis. 

This explains why we only recently learned she passed 2 years ago.

Thank you greatly for reading this letter. I feel much better now for having written it.

Yours faithfully

Barry O’Farrell (@BarryO_Tweet) a member of the Fellowship of Australian Writers (FAW), is an Australian who, in his retirement, enjoys comedy with his daughter, collecting Trivia questions, solving Wordle, and being alert to inaccuracies in Wikipedia.  Barry’s stories have appeared in White Enso (Japan), Bindweed Magazine (Ireland), Elsker Publishing House (UK), Books Ireland (Ireland), and many other periodicals, plus the anthologies FUTUREVISION and MORE SCRIBBLES FROM THE SUBURBS.  Barry’s story QUIZ was chosen for both Covid-19 themed anthologies OUR INSIDE VOICES and QUEENSLAND MEMORY.