Cherry Beach

by Laura McPhee-Browne

  Instead I sat there, and when a waiter came by I asked for the bill.

  That afternoon I walked around, not wanting to go back to Marjorie and not wanting to sit down anywhere and be still with myself.

  Toronto seemed to be full of joy. As I walked along Ossington I looked for someone else walking on their own and couldn’t find anyone. There were couples and families with prams and pinwheel hats and ice cream, and groups of friends laughing at themselves in a way that made my whole torso throb to be feeling the way they were feeling.

  I didn’t miss Melbourne, not really, because if I imagined myself there I saw myself doing the same thing. I was losing Hetty, and I had lost the one girl who had ever wanted to kiss me when she was sober, and I didn’t have anyone I could call. The only thing that seemed slightly positive was that if I kept walking, maybe I would shake something off; maybe the part of me that never got things right would get too tired and die, leaving a shell I could fill with other people’s qualities. My body was blue then—I could see it along my arms and in my fingers, despite the autumn sun—but moving felt like it could take the cold away, so I kept going.

  I decided to move towards another part of the city. I hadn’t been up past Bloor Street to Bloordale, but had heard from Dill and Robin that it was a place you could walk around and feel like you were in a different time, somewhere small and slow and serious where marble fountains in front gardens and Our Lady of Lourdes statues stood curved and proud, dry and slightly damaged.

  There wasn’t so much joy as I crossed over Lansdowne and entered Bloordale. The people walking here were older, more grey in their hair and their skin, and they had a purpose or conviction that made me feel as if it wasn’t the weekend here like it was further downtown, or that these people had responsibilities beyond a working week. There was no ambling, just the shuffle of older legs and tired feet on concrete.

  Most of the people were on their own like me, and I finally let my shoulders down. I could imagine what it would be like up here in the winter and maybe even what it would be like after it snowed, white covering all the surfaces of each tiny house, the small sidewalks swept for those who could get themselves out. I remembered what Faith had said about Bloordale—that she knew I would like it, and that she knew that because it was odd and modest and yet proud in its own way, just like me.

  I walked slowly through the quiet and thought about what Faith had said about Hetty, and how much more she must have felt that she hadn’t yet said, and how much I regretted telling her it wasn’t fair when I knew it was fair and she was so gracious. I thought these thing and sighed, feeling the regret seep through me. I knew too that she had been telling the truth when she said she would rather be free than beautiful, though she was both.

  Ruining this, this thing we had had, had been my destiny. There was no point being disappointed. I couldn’t maintain Faith. She was above and beyond and outside of me, even when I had had my fingers inside of her and had made her whine down to the bottom of her throat.

  SOUND

  deeper than a bight, wider than a fjord

  When I finally headed home to Marjorie it was past dinnertime and I could see lights on inside from down the street as I got closer.

  Steph and Robin were in the kitchen, which was soft yellow and smelt like oranges. It was very cold that night, though it was still only autumn, still fall, and they were making mulled wine on the old brown stove. I took a mugful and they asked me to sit.

  ‘Are you okay, Ness?’ Robin asked, turning towards me with his slight face.

  The fatigue rushed up and I started to cry. I felt Steph take my cup and Robin come up to rub my back, and heard Whitney mewling below me.

  ‘Hetty’s upstairs,’ Steph said from above me.

  It was a shock to hear she was back. I had imagined she would stay at Rick’s for days, too ashamed or sick or apathetic to make the journey back to us. Robin and Steph knew Hetty had been struggling, and I wondered what she’d said to them when she got back, if anything.

  I looked up through the wet of my tears and saw them both half-standing, half-crouched, hovering for me. It felt good—they were such good people. I hoped they didn’t regret letting us live with them.

  ‘She seemed okay, you know. Just so you know,’ Robin told me.

  ‘Thanks,’ I said.

  I didn’t want to go up and find her. We sat, and I felt the tears dry on my face and my cheeks shrink slightly from the salt, and Robin poured more steaming wine into his cup and told us about the new guy at his work who had asked him out for coffee. Everyone wanted to have coffee with Robin. He was so pretty and delightful. I imagined kissing him and tasted the memory of honey. The wine warmed my hands but I didn’t want to drink it. Hetty was probably drunk up there, lying on our bed with one long leg crossed over another, wishing she was somewhere else. For once, it felt pathetic to try to join her.

  ‘Let’s go to Sneak’s,’ Steph said.

  Sneak’s was Sneaky Dee’s: a tacky Mexican cafe with five-dollar breakfasts and two-dollar beers that stayed open late and had a dance floor upstairs that nearly broke through the ceiling every Saturday night. I had been there with Hetty soon after we had arrived and it had been boiling in the small room that held the dance floor above the stairs. Hetty’s face had shone as she bounced up and down, her hair flicking at me and sticking to my chest when she twisted. I’d vomited in a gutter on the way back to Jo’s and we’d laughed, arms over shoulders, at the mess of ourselves. Maybe it would be good to go there again and shake off some of the loss that was clinging to me.

  I realised then that they were both quite drunk, the heat of it coming off them. Steph’s eyes flicked from Robin to me as she tipped her cup up into her mouth. Robin pulled me up and danced me across the floor.

  ‘Hey, Ness,’ I heard from behind me as Robin tipped me down towards the ground and pulled me back up to swing me out again.

  Hetty was standing at the entrance of the kitchen. She looked tired and tall and very thin, and her hair was looped up above her head and pinned so it looked like a private nest. She was instantly familiar.

  We stepped towards each other and moved into a hug and I felt her neck cool against my cheek. She put her hands on my shoulders, moved me back and looked at me, as if she hadn’t seen me in so long, which she hadn’t, and as if I was worth seeing again. I watched her face through the wool of hair which had fallen across mine. She was smiling and crying. She always cried.

  ‘I’m so sorry I haven’t checked in.’

  I didn’t want to say that it was okay, but I hadn’t had any practice telling Hetty things she didn’t want to hear.

  ‘You don’t have to say it’s okay. I know it’s not okay.’ She pushed my hair back, tapped her finger against my nose. ‘How are you?’

  I didn’t want to talk about how I’d lost Faith before I’d even really had her or how I was exhausted from worrying about Hetty being in some unmoved jerk’s room curled up like a scared child or how I wanted to leave Toronto because it felt like I’d never be a part of the city but I’d never felt a part of Melbourne either or that I was truly wondering what the point of anything was, really.

  ‘I’m all right,’ I said.

  ‘Ness…’

  I turned to see if Robin and Steph were listening. They were standing next to each other at the stove, Robin stirring the saucepan of wine, Steph leaning against him.

  I turned back to Hetty, who was looking at me, waiting. ‘I don’t want to talk about anything, Het.’

  She sighed and pulled her jumper sleeves down to cover the whole of her arms. ‘Rick told me you and Dill came to see me.’

  I pictured Rick sitting on that bed next to Hetty after she had finally woken up, telling her with his hard voice that two of her weird friends had knocked on his door asking for her. There was something about him that made me wonder what he’d done in his life, and how bad it had been. And that bed had been so grimy.

  ‘We came to see if you were there beca
use we didn’t know where you were. You missed work and weren’t answering your phone. If you hadn’t been at Rick’s I would have had to call the police.’

  I didn’t want her to feel guilty but I didn’t want her to do it again either. I knew that since we were little I’d given Hetty more kindness than was good for her. It was almost like it had turned her into a spoilt child.

  ‘Why did you do that? What happened?’ I asked, my voice louder now.

  She was looking down, at the floorboards or at her feet with their chipped yellowed nails. People like Hetty didn’t have to make sure they cleaned themselves up so that people wouldn’t think them lazy or ugly. The world thought them exceptional and beautiful anyway.

  ‘Hetty!’

  I was sick of her avoiding everything. It hurt me too much and it was selfish. Her family had given her safety in numbers. Over here she only had me, and she was neglecting that.

  ‘Sorry. I don’t know,’ she answered finally, her voice a small bird in a high tree.

  ‘You don’t know?’

  ‘No. I’m sorry.’

  I turned away from her and walked towards Robin and Steph. ‘Are we going out?’ I said.

  They were excited, the two of them, and they jumped and clapped a little. We got ready quickly, leaving Hetty to stand where she had been standing looking at the floor and then move to the couch in the living room, where she curled up into a ball and kissed her knees again. I didn’t go to her and I didn’t ask her if she wanted to come with us. I wish now that I had, but at the time the anger in me was churning and I wanted to be away from her again.

  Sneaky Dee’s was heaving, and so full of heat I had to wipe the sweat off my upper lip as soon as we had pushed our way in. Robin and Steph were completely possessed by then, in a way that made me feel invisible, which was fine. It was enough that I’d cried in front of both of them and let them see how weird things were between me and Hetty.

  The music was familiar but I couldn’t find the tune and then I couldn’t see Robin or Steph and there seemed to be big, wide men all around me, so wet with sweat it was spraying off them as they moved. It hadn’t been a good idea to come. I was tired and heavy from seeing Hetty even though it meant she was safe, and I couldn’t bear Steph and Robin seeing any more of my vulnerability.

  I let myself move slowly towards the stairs, trying not to push at anyone on my way, despite seeing the lights in people’s eyes that covered their pupils and meant they wouldn’t have noticed someone trying to make them move anyway. The door to the street was heavy and I pushed at it until a bouncer opened it for me from the other side, smiling with his cheeks at me.

  It was brisk outside, and I breathed the night in deep. I’d go home and lie with Hetty. She would be sad that I’d left her at home and hadn’t wanted to talk to her. I still didn’t want to, but maybe we could listen to some music and fall asleep together.

  I wondered how Faith was, what she was doing, as I walked towards Marjorie. I missed her cool fingers. I hoped she knew that I was in love with her. I knew then that I was and even though it hurt it also felt huge, like a sunflower in bloom. Maybe I’d text her in the morning. That way, she wouldn’t have to answer me.

  All the lights were off when I got back to the house. I could smell the mulled wine still sitting, no longer warm, on the stove. Whitney came to say hello as I stood in the bathroom, cleaning my face with one of Hetty’s baby wipes, the ones she used to take off her mascara that made her smell like powder. I brushed my teeth slowly, watching my cheeks move a little as I edged the toothbrush back and forth, back and forth. Hetty was terrible at brushing her teeth—would say she hated it, it was boring, she couldn’t bear to do it. Would drag herself to the bathroom once every couple of nights to do a half-hearted job. Despite this, her teeth were royal, white, clean. Mine were crooked and slightly stained—too big for my mouth.

  I could see the lump of Hetty in the bed when I opened our bedroom door. She shifted, whimpered and put her hand up to shield her face from the light.

  ‘Sorry, Het.’

  ‘It’s okay,’ her sleep voice said.

  BRACKISH

  where the two waters meet

  The next morning, early, I woke up and saw that Hetty wasn’t beside me. I was puffy in my fingers and eyelids and feet, as if the night before had flooded inside me and needed to be wrung out. There weren’t any messages from Faith, and even though I hadn’t let myself wish before I checked my phone, I had hoped anyway that she might have reached out during the dark, perhaps missing me.

  I could hear the faint echo of voices downstairs, and perhaps the flight of Hetty’s, and lifted myself up to go down and see how she was. Light streamed in through the window where the curtain hadn’t been pulled across completely. It was bright on different parts of me as I walked around trying to find something to pull over my legs.

  Whitney met me on the stairs and we padded down to the kitchen together. The radio was on, and Dill and Hetty were sitting at the table, eating toast and nearing the end of laughter that seemed relaxed, happy. Dill smiled at me, patted the seat next to him. ‘Nessy. How did you sleep?’

  ‘Good, thank you.’

  Hetty looked up from spreading peanut butter on her slice and smiled at me. She looked very tired, her eyes lidded and her lips bruised. I wanted to go over and cuddle her and tell her everything would be absolutely fine and that she could lean on me, but I knew that couldn’t be true, at least the everything-would-be-fine part. I sat down and let Dill pour me a coffee from the drip jug. Hetty went to the fridge and got the milk, pouring just enough into my cup.

  ‘Hetty’s been telling me that she’s looking for a new job,’ Dill said, presumably trying to get Hetty and me to talk to each other.

  I was shy behind my sheet of half-asleep. Hetty was inspecting her breakfast as if she had never eaten peanut butter and didn’t know what toast was. The kitchen sat still around us.

  ‘Yeah, Het?’ I asked.

  She looked up at me again, this time with no smile.

  ‘Yeah.’

  Her voice sounded a bit thick, like she had a sore throat or a blocked nose. I wondered if she had finally realised Elaine was mean and not much else, or whether she’d been fired after missing a shift and calls and everything.

  ‘How come?’

  She didn’t answer. Just sat there, eyes back on her toast.

  Dill put his hand on her arm and lowered his voice this time when he spoke, almost cooing. ‘Tell her.’

  I heard a small sigh come from her mouth and saw her shoulders rise and then drop beneath her thin dressing gown. I loved that gown. It was made of bright-pink polyester, fuchsia perhaps, and had a round, decadent collar darted with yellow cotton flowers. Hetty had found it in an op shop in Croydon when we were younger and used to drive out there in my mum’s car on Saturdays to buy lots of things we would never wear. She had held that pink up against her and asked me whether she should buy it, shaking her head as if she didn’t want to hear me. I had whooped yes and pulled it from her to wrap around myself. It smelt like potpourri, no matter how many times she washed it, and had no lining.

  She looked hard at me now.

  ‘Elaine died. She died, and Ronnie’s won’t be the same without her.’

  Her mouth was round for the ‘on’ in ‘Ronnie’s’ and ‘without’. It sounded like she was singing me a strange song.

  I didn’t understand. Elaine had died? I looked at Dill, who was looking at me with a face that was worried, that had probably been worried in that way since he had started having breakfast with Hetty. His eyebrows told me now that he was confused.

  Hetty didn’t elaborate. I noticed her fingers picking at the edge of her piece of toast. The peanut butter had melted and was thickening again and she hadn’t had a bite yet.

  ‘Elaine died? Oh, Hetty. How did she die? That’s so awful.’

  ‘Yes. It is awful,’ Dill said, raising his eyebrows at me.

  Hetty didn’t look up or answer ag
ain. The worry grew in my stomach.

  ‘Het? What happened?’

  She looked at me harder and clicked her tongue. ‘How would I know? I wouldn’t know. No one will tell me!’

  The worry spun now, up my arms, down my legs, around and around in my stomach. Her voice was still thick, and it seemed more like a thickness in her head now, that had filled up her throat and her nose too: that was suffocating her.

  ‘What do you mean? I don’t—’

  ‘I got to work and they said she was dead. That’s it. I can’t go back there. It’s diseased. I felt like it was diseased and now I know it is.’

  ‘But you love it there, Het. You love working there.’

  ‘Elaine’s gone,’ she said, and now there were tears rolling fast from her eyes. ‘She’s gone.’

  Dill and I looked at each other, and Hetty cried and held her face with her hands, and I saw the tears running through the gaps between her fingers and imagined how warm they must be. The peanut butter spread so carefully against her toast had congealed. My heart hurt desperately for her and I was starting to feel sick again, though I didn’t yet understand what was happening.

  We sat with Hetty until she stopped crying. She told us she was going to get dressed and go out to find another job.

  ‘I think I’d like to work in the Eaton Centre,’ she said with her hands on her hips after getting up from the table. ‘It’s magical there.’

  Hetty hated shopping centres.

  ‘I went swimming there the other day, Ness, did you know that?’

  I shook my head. There were no swimming pools at the Eaton Centre, unless she meant in the hotel that sat at the top of it. She couldn’t afford to swim there. I looked at Dill but he was furrowed and watching Hetty like she might explode.