Honeybee

by Craig Silvey;

  I don’t know how long it lasted, but it was the longest time of my life.

  Then Vic went still. He settled onto the bed. I didn’t want to look up. I squeezed Vic’s hand, but he didn’t squeeze back. He was gone but I wasn’t ready to know it yet.

  After a long time, I let him go.

  I stood up. The room was almost dark now. I looked at Vic. His mouth was open. His eyes were closed. He didn’t look peaceful. But he didn’t look afraid, and he didn’t look like he was in pain. He was just gone.

  I wiped his mouth and his cheek with a tissue. I went around the other side of the bed and smoothed out Edie’s nightgown. I took the empty white box and the silver sheets and I put them in my pocket.

  I felt numb.

  I didn’t know what to do.

  As I was putting the stool back under the vanity table I saw the piece of paper with Peter’s number on it.

  I felt like I was outside of my body again. I watched myself walk down the hallway and pick up the telephone. There was no dial tone. I realised I had never once heard it ring.

  I didn’t have a choice. I used my own phone to call Peter’s number. It rang out and went to voicemail. I didn’t leave a message.

  I sat on the floor in the dark. After a while my phone rang. I watched myself answer it.

  ‘Hello?’ said Peter.

  I didn’t say anything.

  ‘Hello, who is this?’

  I couldn’t talk.

  ‘Sam? Is that you?’

  ‘He died,’ I said.

  Then I hung up.

  And I watched myself leave the house.

  Nobody saw me walk down the street. I kept my head low and stayed in the dark.

  My phone rang again. It was Peter. I switched it off.

  I walked without any direction. I followed my own feet. When I reached a main road, an ambulance passed by with its lights flashing. I hid behind a bus stop. I wondered if they were going to Vic’s house.

  I felt like I was floating. I was weak and dizzy and tired. At one point I heard a car blaring its horn and I looked up and realised I was in the middle of the road. The driver swore at me then drove away.

  After a long time I recognised where I was, and I knew where I was taking myself. A little while later I was standing on the Clayton Road overpass.

  I stood where Vic had been that first night and I looked down over the rail to where he would have landed. I took the white box and the pill sheets out of my pocket and dropped them over the edge.

  I saw a cigarette butt next to my foot. Then I looked across to where I had been standing before Vic saved me.

  Vic had wanted to leave me with hope, but I couldn’t feel any. Nothing was different, except now my friend was gone and the world felt emptier than ever. I wanted to cry, but there was nothing left in me. I had promised Vic I would try, but I didn’t know how to do that. I didn’t see how anything would ever get better.

  I thought about Vic’s secret, how killing that girl had haunted him for all those years. It must have hurt to carry it on his own for so long. Not even Edie had known about it. He had seemed so relieved when he told me, like a curse had been lifted.

  I sat down and thought about that for a long time.

  When I stood up, I knew where to go.

  Tidings of Comfort and Joy

  It was late when I came back to the street. I didn’t see any police or paramedics outside Vic’s place.

  All the lights were off at the Meemeduma house. I hopped over the side gate and walked towards the backyard. I stopped outside Aggie’s window. Her desk lamp was on, and I could see her studying through a gap in the blinds. I tapped lightly on the glass but she didn’t hear me. I tapped a bit louder and startled her. She pulled back the blinds. When she saw me she put her hand to her mouth and opened the window.

  ‘Sam?’

  ‘It’s me.’

  ‘Sam, I’m so sorry.’

  ‘What are you sorry for?’

  ‘You don’t know?’

  ‘Know what?’

  ‘Oh, Sam, I have really awful news. Vic died tonight. An ambulance and the police were over there a few hours ago. My mum went to speak to them.’

  ‘The police were there?’

  ‘Yeah, I think they were talking to the neighbours about notifying next of kin and stuff like that.’

  ‘Do they know how he died?’

  ‘I think he was really sick. He must have just got back from hospital. Come around to the back door so I can let you in.’

  ‘I don’t want to wake anybody up.’

  But Aggie had already left her room. She slid open the glass door at the back of the house and rushed outside and wrapped me up in her arms.

  ‘I’m so sorry,’ she said. ‘I know he meant a lot to you.’

  I hugged her back. We held each other for a while. When she pulled back to look at me she had tears in her eyes.

  ‘Where is your hair? Look at your arms. You look like you’ve been kidnapped by neo-fascists.’

  ‘I shaved it off.’

  ‘You sure did. Maybe don’t do that again. It really doesn’t suit you. Come inside.’

  Aggie took my hand and led me into her room. She sat down on her bed and crossed her legs, then she patted a spot beside her for me to do the same.

  ‘It’s so good to see you. Sam, I’m just … mortified. I said some unforgivable things to you, and I regret it so much. I was so shocked and overwhelmed. And I was angry. And when I get angry, I’m capable of being really hurtful and inconsiderate. I mean, like, don’t get me wrong, I’m still upset with you, but I know I overreacted. I’m so sorry.’

  ‘Don’t be sorry.’

  ‘Too late, buddy. Anyway, where have you been? I’ve been trying to find you. Do you know how many Sam Watsons there are on the internet? There’s a lot. It’s like you vanished to another dimension. I honestly thought you were in jail. I even called remand centres pretending to represent a legal aid office to see if you were there. Like, I actually did that. But you weren’t at any of them. What happened after you got arrested? Did they charge you?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘So what happened?’

  ‘They let me go.’

  ‘Seriously? So did your parents get you out? Do you have a team of lawyers or something?’

  ‘No. It wasn’t anything to do with the bank. And I don’t come from a rich family. I don’t have any money.’

  ‘Sam, you don’t have to play humble. I’m not envious, and it doesn’t change my opinion of you.’

  ‘It’s the truth. I’m trying to tell you the truth.’

  ‘Maybe we just have different definitions of wealth, but in my world people who can afford to wear a twenty-thousand-dollar luxury timepiece are pretty financially stable.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Your watch. Well, you’re not wearing it now, but the one you usually have on.’

  ‘What about it?’

  ‘I noticed it the first day you came over, because it’s a fucking Cartier and you got brownie batter all over it and you didn’t even care, and I was like, who is this guy? And so I googled the watch, because maybe it wasn’t as expensive as I thought, right? Nope. Twenty-three thousand dollars. I thought maybe it was a fake or something, but then you told me about your parents and this big deluxe property in Sydney, and it all made sense.’

  I put my hand over my wrist. I had been wearing twenty-three thousand dollars. I thought about what that money could have done. I could have given it to my mum. She could have left Steve and had enough for us to get by for a while.

  ‘I don’t have it anymore.’

  Aggie shrugged.

  ‘I don’t like you because of your watch, Sam.’

  ‘It was fake. I mean, everything was fake.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘I mean … you were so nice to me, and I’ve never really had a friend before, and I thought if you knew the truth about me you would stop liking me, so I lied to you.’

&
nbsp; ‘About what?’

  I took a deep breath.

  Then I told her where I came from, and how I got here, and I only stopped because Aggie was so upset.

  She gave me another hug.

  ‘Oh my God, Sam. I had no idea. I really didn’t. I couldn’t see past any of my own petty bullshit to see that you were really hurting. I’m so sorry.’

  ‘Stop saying sorry.’

  ‘Sorry.’

  We lay down on the bed and Aggie kept her arms around me.

  I felt a bit better. I had told her a lot, but I hadn’t told her the whole truth about who I was. I hadn’t told her how I hated my body. I hadn’t told her that I stole clothes and cosmetics and dressed up in them. I hadn’t told her that I burned myself. I hadn’t told her that I helped Vic die.

  ‘I’m not going to stop being your friend,’ she said.

  ‘Really?’

  ‘Nope. I’m stuck to you like a limpet, so lump it.’

  ‘What’s a limpet?’

  ‘I actually have no idea. It’s something my mother says sometimes.’

  ‘Please don’t tell her anything I told you.’

  ‘What if she can help?’

  ‘She can’t.’

  ‘But what are you going to do?’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  Aggie sat up.

  ‘You can stay here. Live with us.’

  ‘I can’t do that.’

  ‘Sam, I’m serious. My parents can, like, informally adopt you or something. Or formally. They love you. We could do a direct trade for Dylan. Believe me, nobody would mind at all.’

  ‘You can’t do that.’

  ‘Of course we can. I’m not being polite or making an empty promise. For all our faults, of which there are many, we’re at least stable and very boring people. You could live here and

  go back to school and be safe. You’ve been through so much.’

  ‘I can’t.’

  ‘Sam, surely you’re not going to go back there.’

  ‘I have to.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘I can’t leave my mum. I can’t do it. I need to be there. I need to help her.’

  ‘There are organisations and resources and facilities that can help her, Sam. You don’t have to do it on your own.’

  ‘We’ve always done it on our own.’

  ‘So what are you going to do?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ I said.

  But I did have an idea. I just couldn’t tell her.

  When Aggie fell asleep, I got up from her bed. I wrote her a note with my number on it, then I left through the back door. I walked a few blocks and turned my phone back on to call a taxi. There were missed calls from Peter. He had left messages which I couldn’t bring myself to listen to. He had written a text too.

  I deleted it.

  The sun was coming up when I got home. I curled up in my bed but I couldn’t sleep. I kept thinking about Vic. I imagined the paramedics finding his body and reading the note and lifting him off the bed and wheeling him out. I wondered if they were doing tests on him. I wondered what happened when somebody died and they didn’t have any family or friends to call. I wondered where Vic would be buried. I wondered if he would have a funeral, and if anyone would be there. It made me so sad that I started to cry again, and I buried my head under my pillow.

  For the next few days, I tried to pretend everything was fine.

  I bought groceries and pushed the full trolley all the way home. I cleaned the bathroom and the kitchen. I cooked my mum her favourite meals, like chicken Provençal and beef bourguignon, but she didn’t eat much. I picked up her clothes and washed them. I waited for her to tell me that she was having a baby, but she never did. She was tired and irritable. She left the house a few times, but I didn’t know where she went.

  Peter kept calling me, but I wouldn’t answer. I tried to keep myself busy. I trained in the backyard. Whippy came over a few times. As soon as I saw his van out the front, I left and went to the vacant house.

  One night, when Steve and Dane and Mark were in the lounge room drinking, I overheard them talking about breaking into Rosso’s house. I sat down in the hallway to listen.

  They planned to steal an old van and go to Rosso’s around nine o’clock on Christmas Eve. Steve would cut off the power and the phone lines, so there was less chance the alarm system could alert the security dispatch. To be safe, he said, they shouldn’t spend longer than ten minutes inside.

  Steve wanted to vandalise Rosso’s house as much as steal from it. Mark was in charge of doing all the damage. He was going to slash open the upholstery on all the furniture and the beds, spray-paint the walls and the clothes in the wardrobes, and fill the drains and toilets with expanding foam and turn all the taps on. He would pour bleach over the carpets. It made Steve laugh. He called his brother the Minister for Mayhem.

  Dane was going to take a couple of big bags in with him and fill them with jewellery and laptops and cash. Steve told him to make sure he stole their Christmas presents too.

  The first thing Steve said he was going to do was go into the backyard with a bat and deal with the dog. It took everything I had not to go out there and plead with him not to hurt Snags, but I stayed quiet.

  Steve was also going to search for a set of spare keys to steal one of the cars in the garage. Mark asked if they should bring me along, because that was something I could do. But Steve said he didn’t want me there, and he didn’t want me to know anything about it.

  The day before Christmas Eve, Steve and my mum were sitting on the couch sharing a cigarette. I stood in front of the television and asked if they wanted to go to the Carols by Candelight in Fremantle the following night. I said I would make a picnic.

  I knew Steve wouldn’t agree, but I hoped my mum would. She didn’t want to. I said we could have ice cream on Bathers Beach afterwards. She screwed up her face and shook her head.

  I was surprised when Steve insisted that she go with me. They almost had a fight about it, but she gave in.

  On the morning of Christmas Eve, I put my tablet and some clothes in a plastic bag and hid them in the vacant house. Then I went home and made shortbread biscuits and baguettes. We didn’t have a picnic basket, so I packed them in an empty cardboard beer carton. For a rug, I packed a couple of old bathroom towels.

  Steve drove us down to Fremantle just before sunset.

  He was agitated. He honked the horn a lot and yelled at traffic. He dropped us off near South Beach and gave my mum fifty dollars for a taxi home. He said he was going Christmas shopping and would be out late. Then he drove away fast without saying goodbye. I watched until the car was out of sight.

  It was a nice night. It had been a hot day, and there was a cool breeze. My mum was wearing a cotton floral dress, and she had put make-up on for the first time in a while.

  We found a spot on the grass near the back of the crowd. There were families with young children, and lots of people had brought their dogs. I worried about Snags.

  I laid out our towels and we sat down. I looked around. There was a woman behind us breastfeeding her baby and rocking gently back and forth. She caught me watching and smiled at me, and I blushed and turned around.

  My mum looked bored.

  ‘Do you want a baguette?’ I asked. ‘They’re sliced pear, Jarlsberg and smoked chicken.’

  ‘Not right now.’

  I looked towards the stage. To one side, there was a group of small kids in matching reindeer costumes and a man in a Santa Claus outfit getting them ready to perform. I pointed them out to my mum.

  ‘Look over there. Remember the honeybee?’

  She nodded, but she seemed distracted. She was looking over the heads of the crowd.

  ‘Is there a bar here?’ she asked.

  ‘I don’t think so.’

  ‘Can you get up and have a look?’

  ‘Are you sure?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘But isn’t it bad?’

  ‘Excuse me?’<
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  ‘I mean, because you’re pregnant.’

  That got her attention. She looked right at me.

  ‘I told Steve not to tell you.’

  ‘He didn’t. I just suspected. And now I know.’

  ‘I was going to tell you, but it’s still early. Are you excited?’

  ‘I don’t know. Not really. I want to go back to how it was. When it was just us.’

  ‘Well I don’t. Ever.’

  ‘But everything was better then.’

  She looked annoyed.

  ‘No it wasn’t. You don’t know how hard life has been for me. I had to do it all on my own. We had nothing. And why would you want to go back? You’ve got everything ahead of you. You’re lucky. I worked hard to raise you so you could do things for yourself, so you could have all the opportunities I didn’t have.’

  ‘Like what?’

  She laughed to herself, but she didn’t find it funny.

  ‘How much time you got?’

  ‘Tell me.’

  ‘Jesus, I don’t know. Go to new places, see things, have adventures, all the stuff that girls want to do when they’re young. I missed out on all that because I had to grow up so fast. Having a baby on your own is like being tied to an anchor. You can’t go very far.’

  ‘I’m sorry,’ I said.

  ‘You asked,’ she said.

  We were quiet for a while. She rubbed her bare arms.

  ‘All I ever really wanted was to run a boutique with all my own designs. People would come in and try on stuff that I’d made and I’d make them feel pretty and stylish and they’d walk out feeling good about themselves.’

  ‘Why didn’t you?’

  ‘Because I had to look after you. You don’t get it, Sam. I never had enough money to save. There was never enough time to study. I could never have what I wanted.’

  ‘Maybe you still can. Maybe I can help you. We don’t need Steve. I can help with money. I can put in more effort. You don’t need to worry about me at all. I can find us a place to stay in a nice neighbourhood, and I can help pay for it so you can study and do what you want.’

  She shook her head. She was angry.

  ‘I’m not leaving Steve.’