Cassandra

by Kathryn Gossow

  ‘Eat something,’ Poppy whispers, kneeling beside her.

  ‘I have,’ she lies.

  ‘Don’t tell fibs.’ He holds his hand out so she can pull herself up from the floor.

  The sunlight shreds the room. Poppy loads a plate with egg on white bread and ham sandwiches with too much butter and chocolate cake.

  He leaves her there, standing, the plate in her hand. A breath like a sob churns from her stomach to her throat and she covers her mouth.

  Mrs Lever’s hand rests on her shoulder. ‘Come on dear, come and sit with your Aunty Ida.’ She takes the plate away and pulls a chair up to the wheelchair. Cassie sits and takes Ida’s hand and pulls it into her lap and rests her head on Ida’s shoulder.

  ‘It’s not fair,’ she says, because she knows Ida won’t hear her. Ida’s hand trembles and Cassie squeezes it tight.

  Down the hall, the men have spilled out onto the veranda. Instead of tea, they have beer in glasses the pub lent out for the occasion. Someone tops up her father’s glass and pats him on the back. He stares ahead and beer sloops over his glass.

  The space under her skin is like an empty black hole.

  Her mother appears at the door. She’s reapplied the lipstick she has taken to wearing lately. It is like a wound across her too-pale face. Her eyes search the room until she meets Cassie’s gaze. She walks to Cassie, Mrs Lever speaks to her, but the words don’t seem to penetrate. She pulls Cassie from the chair and takes it for herself, grabs Cassie around the waist and sits her on her knee, draws her close to her chest as though she is a little girl again. Cassie snuggles her face into the smoothness of her mother’s neck. The vacuum fills for a moment with soft light, though her skin prickles with heat. Her mother twirls Cassie’s hair into a long twist and kisses the top of her head. She starts to rock, as though she holds a baby, not a teenage girl.

  Cassie lifts her head.

  ‘Did you eat something? You should eat,’ her mother says.

  Cassie nods.

  ‘Good, good.’ Her mother’s eyes look to the distance and her hands become slack. Her knee relaxes and Cassie feels herself slipping off. The screen door creaks with a new arrival. Cassie looks to the door, but it is only one of the teachers from the primary school. It is not so far for Athena to come. Perhaps Athena thinks she is not welcome. Cassie looked for her after the service and at the gravesite but couldn’t find her in the crowd.

  The afternoon extends, its too-bright sunshine an unwelcome spotlight on the house, until eventually the light and the wake attendees trickle away.

  ‘So much food,’ Mrs Lever sighs. ‘I’ll look after it. Don’t you worry.’

  No one pays any attention to her.

  ‘I’m going to lie down,’ her mother says. ‘I want to try and sleep.’

  Ida has fallen asleep in her chair. Cassie and Poppy rouse her and help her into bed.

  Her dad turns the TV on and stares at the bright flickering cartoons.

  Cassie trails behind Poppy into the kitchen. He pulls a tea towel off the rack and lifts a plate from the dish drainer.

  Mrs Lever slaps his hand. ‘You go sit down.’

  ‘Don’t be stupid, woman,’ he says and wipes the plate.

  ‘Can I help?’ Cassie asks.

  Mrs Lever leaves the sink and puts her wet hand on Cassie’s shoulder. Humidity slides down Cassie’s back.

  ‘Why don’t you go sit with your dad, keep him company?’

  Danger Mouse, one of Alex’s favourite shows, blares from the other room.

  ‘I think I’ll go for a walk,’ Cassie says. ‘Clear my head.’

  Shadows spread over the grey grass, lie frozen over the garage wall. The drama has been played out for real now. They are just shadows. Like they always should be. How could she have known what they meant? What is the clue, the key she missed? She should have asked the tarot. Too late.

  She wanders through the gate, past the woodpile. The puddle of water they call the pond, brown and muddy, chirrups with green frogs. There was a summer when she and Alex collected tadpoles from the pond and put them in empty jam jars to wait for them to become frogs. The jars sat in the laundry, the tadpoles swimming among the floating sediment. They forgot the jars and when they looked again, the water had evaporated and the tadpoles were mush at the bottom. Alex poked at the mush with a stick as if that would bring them back to life. She can’t remember who cleaned up the mess. Was it her mum or Alex? She wanders along the bush track. A black cockatoo swoops in front of her and lands in the she-oak. He ruffles his brown-black feathers and the flash of his red tail bleeds into the dusk. He cracks a seedpod in his formidable beak and the noise splinters the still air. He doesn’t have a care in the world, she decides. Not a care. The last sun shines a halo on the hill rising behind the house. The horse in her dream is real. Alex’s accident has convinced her to believe in the black stallion. He is the impending storm. A real storm perhaps. How could she know? Alex was the one to ask. The complete hopelessness of it sinks deep. In that second she understands how a person would think it was better to be dead than to struggle any longer.

  She saved Poppy’s life. She killed Alex.

  She follows the track past the old shearing shed until she can see Athena’s house. The lights blink yellow and beacon-like in the twilight. Thinking only briefly of the dark when she will have to walk home, and her lack of a torch, she decides to work it out when the time comes. The thing is to talk to Athena. Athena is the only one she can tell this all to. She follows the goat track Athena wore through the grass. She thought it may have grown over with lack of use, but she can see the way clearly. She reaches the barbed-wire fence. The wires where Athena crawled through are more stretched than she remembers. Cassie’s dad will be up here fixing it soon. Before it gets worse. She slides between the wires and walks towards the house. She pulls on the waistband of her too-tight skirt. She should have changed. The hem of the skirt is a riddle of cobbler’s pegs. Athena’s father has let the weeds on the fence line go. Poppy will be unimpressed when they spread to their side. She pulls the spurs, but the clumps are too many. She leaves them and they scratch her calves as she walks. The garden in the centre of Athena’s drive blooms with the geraniums Ida gave Athena. Around the house, December lilies rescued from the overgrowth scream pink and red and white.

  Shadows move behind the curtains. She climbs the sandstone steps and a chill wind follows her and climbs up to her shoulder blades, sits there like a fiend waiting for something to happen. She takes a deep breath and lifts her fist to knock.

  Her hand stops, fist poised mid knock. A noise behind the door, a choking sob, a hiccup of sorrow she recognises. A slice of light knives through a gap in the curtain. She slides along the veranda wall and peers through the gap. Like the first time she came here, the realisation washes through her like a flood. She sees the same things she saw the first visit. The old-fashioned overstuffed armchairs, a graceful black woman holding aloft a lamp, a row of blue bottles sitting on the mantelpiece, and the thing from the future. The woman with the short red hair sitting in one of those overstuffed armchairs sobbing. Her shoulders shuddering. If she turned, would her vermillion lipstick be smeared? Sickness rises into her throat, a lump of acid. Her mother is asleep, resting in her own bed. But no. Since when did her mother ever come to this house? Did she come to see Athena? A deeper voice travels through the walls and Athena’s father steps into the room. He sits on the edge of the armchair and hands her mother a glass, a hand on her shoulder, his fingers caressing her neck. The liquid in the glass flashes red like firelight. Her mother takes the glass and looks up at him. She says something, quiet, her lips barely moving. The phosphorous smell of a match being lit burns the inside of Cassie’s nostrils. Athena’s father bends and kisses Cassie’s mother on the lips. His fingers spread along the back of her neck, through her hair. Steaming tears fill Cassie’s eyes. A new movement c
atches her attention and another person steps into the centre of the stage. She’d been there all along, in the corner. The three of them embrace. A comforting, comfortable embrace of people used to each other’s company. Her mother, Athena’s father, and Athena.

  The words from one of her dreams trickle down the window pane. ‘Don’t worry, Athena knows.’

  ~ 30 ~

  Tarot’s Return

  Zombie-like, she walks back down the hill, stumbling on rocks and roots in the dark. Her house is hushed in blackness, Mrs Lever gone, Poppy and her father watching the news. She stands before her parents’ bedroom door. In a flourish, she flings it open and snaps on the light. The bed empty, ruffled carefully. She backs out, stands in the middle of the hall. The television drones. Poppy coughs a rattling cough. She backs across the hall and leans on the door opposite, her eyes still on her mother’s empty bed. She turns the knob and backs into the empty room behind her. She turns and closes the door. In the darkness, Alex’s room is like being under the blankets too long, airless but safe. She climbs into his bed, the burs in her skirt tearing at her skin, the air squeezed from her. She heaves in a heavy breath and the tears stream from her. She hugs the pillow and allows herself to cry. The fingers curl around the cracks between the ceiling and the walls and watch her.

  Her mother is there the next morning, helping Ida from her bed. Ida is pale and her mother wants to take her to the doctor. She’s been sleeping so much lately. Hardly eating. Her mother’s red hair sticks up, askew and uncombed. Bed hair. Bitch. Pretending she cares when she is just thinking of up the hill and Athena and Athena’s father and an easy family. Not this broken sick one. Cassie prowls to the kitchen and makes a strong black coffee.

  ‘Is that all you’re having for breakfast? I can make you scrambled eggs.’ Her mother leans on the kitchen chair, her fingers spread on the chair’s spine. Her nails are freshly painted. When did she do that? This morning? The day after she buried her only son?

  ‘I want to go away to school.’

  ‘You still want to go?’ Her mother stands upright, the blood draining from her face. A red-haired vampire.

  ‘Why wouldn’t I go? It’s not like you actually want me here.’ Cassie stands, takes the coffee from the table and turns towards the door.

  ‘Cassie,’ her mother’s voice cracks.

  Cassie turns in the doorway. She meets her mother’s eyes. Her mother’s lips straighten into a thin line. ‘Leave Alex’s room alone,’ she says, her eyes not leaving Cassie’s. Cassie spins away, sloshing coffee on the floor.

  In Alex’s room, she runs her fingers over the spines of the books on his shelf and smiles to herself. They are in alphabetical order. No, she revises her observation, categorised by subject and then in alphabetical order. She checks the top drawer of the desk. Pens, pencils, rubbers, thumbtacks in neat rows. The second drawer, a collection of screwdrivers, bolts, screws, bits and pieces from things he’s pulled apart and never put back together. The third drawer. Empty. Odd. She looks under the bed, beneath the clothes in the dresser drawers, the bottom of his wardrobe. The top of his wardrobe, under his mattress. Nothing.

  She sits on the bed. It creaks beneath her, the sound familiar and ancient. Could Poppy or her dad have got here first? She pulls her knees up to her chest. It makes sense. They would want to see what he had predicted. Could she ask them? She didn’t think she could even say his name in front of them. It sticks in her throat like a clawing beast holding her flesh with its talons. A hollow feeling inside her, as though someone has spooned out her insides. It occurs to her, there will be no more memories. No more opportunities to build times when she can say, Alex and I, my brother and I. There were so few.

  She rolls onto the bed and pulls the sheets over her face.

  The stallion looms over her, his colour storm-cloud black and blue. The muscles of his chest sculptured like rippling rocks. He raises his hooves over her, poised for longer than it is possible for a horse to bear its weight on its hind legs. She thinks, when he comes down he will crush my skull and I will be dead. And I will know what it is to be dead. He crashes to the ground. She twists her head away from him. The ground shakes, and earthquake cracks split earth around her. Her ears explode with the noise of the earth shaking and the thunder of the stallion thrashing as he bucks and dances over her body.

  She wakes, the familiar prickles like hot needles all over her body. Alex’s room lies silent around her. Her skin burns with adrenalin and her heart thumps, ready to flee. There is nowhere to go.

  She wanders from the room, the air like thick sludge around her. Her head tight, liable to burst.

  Poppy is in the kitchen. She hovers in the doorway.

  ‘I made lunch,’ Poppy says. ‘Grilled tomatoes, bacon, egg, beans. Sit down.’

  Cassie sits in a chair. The plate of food steams in front of her like a pile of fresh cow dung.

  ‘Where’s Mum?’ Cassie pushes the plate to the middle of the table.

  ‘Having a lie down.’

  ‘Did you check she was really there?’

  Poppy pushes the plate back to Cassie. ‘Where else would she be?’ He hands her a knife and fork. ‘Eat.’

  Cassie stirs and twists the beans in a circle on the plate. She lifts a forkful to her mouth. They stick in her mouth like paste.

  ‘Drink of juice?’ Poppy asks.

  ‘Coffee,’ she says, ‘please.’

  She washes the beans down and puts the fork on the plate and takes a breath. ‘Did you get his notebooks?’

  Poppy rubs the callous on the side of his finger. ‘Notebooks?’

  ‘From his room. There’s an empty drawer.’

  ‘That’s what you’ve been in there for?’

  Cassie picks up the fork and stabs the over-cooked egg, ripping it in half.

  ‘I haven’t been in Alex’s room,’ Poppy says.

  ‘Do you think Dad has them?’

  ‘Why?’

  Cassie shrugs. ‘Just because.’

  Poppy sighs and scrubs at the yellow stains on his fingertips. ‘A few weeks before … the accident … we cleared the firebreak. Burned those old tree stumps.’

  ‘I remember,’ Cassie says.

  ‘I went up later, to check on the fire. Alex was up there.’

  ‘A huh.’

  ‘He was burning his notebooks.’

  A lead weight drops inside Cassie’s stomach. ‘Why?’

  ‘I don’t know. Your brother … your brother …’ Poppy presses the bridge of his nose with his fingers and gulps. Cassie stands and wraps her arms around him. His shoulders lift and heave and drop again. He pats her shoulder and pushes her away.

  ‘Eat,’ he says. ‘I won’t let you leave the table until you eat.’

  Cassie forces food into her mouth. Her father pounds up the front stairs and she hears his work boots tumble against the wall as he throws them off. He sits opposite her. She smiles a small smile at him and he nods, his eyes fixed on the plate of food Poppy hands him.

  ‘Thanks Dad,’ he mumbles, eating the plateful and scraping the last of the egg and bean sauce off the plate with buttered bread.

  Cassie slumps in her seat, watching.

  When he finishes, without a word, he leaves the table, puts on his work boots and she hears his footsteps go back down the stairs.

  She scrapes most of her food into the bin and washes her and her dad’s dishes. Poppy still sits at the table, his round shoulders hunched. She rolls her hands across his back as she leaves the room.

  She stands outside her mother’s door. Motionless. Listening. At last the bed creaks and she hears the sheets rustle.

  She returns to Alex’s room. Takes a book from the shelf—Weather Patterns on the Australian Continent—and sits on the bed, crossing her legs beneath her. She reads.

  A thumping on the door rouses her several hours later.<
br />
  Her mother. ‘Get out here and help Ida to the toilet. I can’t be expected to do everything.’

  Cassie opens the door. Her mother, arms across her chest, turns, looks her up and down.

  ‘And you had better start packing your things for school if you think you’re going.’ She turns her back to Cassie and strides down the hall.

  Cassie locks her hand around Ida’s. ‘Hello, Aunty.’

  ‘Cassie, dear, help me from my chair. I want to walk.’

  Cassie tucks her arm under Ida’s arm, the faint smell of old wee burning her nostrils. She pulls gently, Ida is a dead weight, immobile. ‘Stand now, Aunty.’

  ‘Yesth,’ Ida says, but it takes some seconds before she moves and stands to her feet, wobbling. ‘Just hold my arm, sweetie.’ She shuffles, head bent forward, her shoulders hunched. At the doorway they stop. Ida looks at her feet and her breathing becomes shallow.

  ‘Just a step, Aunty, lift your foot.’

  Impatience wells up in Cassie, the chair would be so much easier, but the doctor said she shouldn’t come to rely on it.

  ‘Just a step, Aunty, through the doorway. We’re almost there.’

  A hesitating foot lifts and trembles and they lurch through the doorway. Cassie tightens her grip with the sensation that they will both fall to the floor.

  ‘Okay, turning now.’ Cassie pivots and directs Ida towards the bathroom. Ida counts under her breath, each step a milestone.

  In the toilet, Cassie helps Ida with her pants and eases her onto the seat.

  ‘I’ll put these in the wash, okay, Aunty?’ she says.

  Ida nods, her eyes wet, and Cassie closes the door. Her mother watches from the hall.

  ‘What?’ Cassie says, throwing the underwear into the dirty clothes basket.

  ‘You have to wait for her to finish,’ her mother says.

  ‘I know,’ says Cassie. ‘It’s not like I haven’t done it all before.’

  ‘Just so you know,’ her mother says, turning back to the kitchen.