Cooee
Page 29
I turn on my heel and stride to my car. It’s hard to stride in the black patent high heels I’m wearing, but I manage it pretty well. Out of the corner of my eye I catch the expression on his face as I move away. It’s quite blank.
It’s that blankness, I think, that finally pierces my armour, triggers the reaction I turn out (to my surprise) to have been suppressing all along.
As I drive home I think about Dominic’s blank face, about Dominic’s refusal ever to engage with me, to talk with me, to love me. It comes to me that the blankness will last forever, that it will never be replaced by concern or responsiveness or even friendliness. My only son will stare blankly at my face for the rest of his life. He will never love me. I discover that tears are slipping down my face, slowly at first and then faster and wetter and heavier until I can scarcely see the road, the traffic.
By the time I get home my face is smeared with mascara and snot and my sobs are out of control, causing me to shake violently. Somehow I park my car and I stumble inside my house where I weep and weep and weep. I weep for my son, for the relationship I will never have with him. I weep for my love, who lies dead because I killed him. I weep for my sister, whose absence I suddenly feel like a cavernous and painful rupture in my heart. I weep for my lostness, for my aloneness, for the final disappearance of hope from my wilted life.
Later that evening I sit alone, sipping my brandy. I wonder wearily what Frank is doing; in some sense I realise that I am waiting for Frank, that now I am always waiting for Frank. I feel exhausted, depressed, betrayed beyond all bearing.
Who has betrayed me? I don’t know, but I am sure it is the sourness of betrayal on my tongue, the flat acrid taste of the disappointment betrayal brings, a taste like wine gone bad.
I also feel guilty. It is my fault that Max has never had a funeral, never been farewelled, celebrated, squabbled over. Max has had no decorous grave, no purifying flame, no sober headstone. Nobody has played Vivaldi for him; nobody has shown photographs of his childhood to an appreciative and tearful congregation; nobody has delivered a eulogy. There he lies, or what’s left of him, in a hole of rubble. Does he know, I wonder? Does he care?
As always, the brandy helps. It dulls the edge of the pain. I know it dulls the edge of thought, too, but there is nobody now to care whether my thoughts are muddled or not. Its consoling warmth is miraculous; miraculous, too, the steadiness and ease with which it seeps through my body. It comforts and pillows me; it insulates me from my own loneliness.
And still I am listening for the knock on the door, the knock of a man who will tell me that he knows what I am guilty of, a man who will neither compromise nor negotiate, who will arrest me and deprive me of everything.
Perhaps Borrow will die before I have to desert him. He is an old dog. He creaks; he totters, a little, especially on the left rear leg, where he had the operation a few years ago. His eyes are clouded. He’ll die, soon: he’ll die, selfishly, and leave me all alone.
And Sophie will grow and become different, and — perhaps, probably, certainly — love me less. Already I have alienated her. For God’s sake, I think, I’ve snapped at her once — after years of love and devotion and gentleness and constancy. But that one lapse was enough: already, her disengagement has clearly started.
As we both grow older, I suppose I shall have to try to retrieve the relationship. I’m not certain that’s possible. I’m still angry with her. I have the right to be angry with her. As she grows into adulthood, as she becomes a mother herself, it seems inevitable that we will drift from each other. It requires so much energy to remain close with people, to have quarrels with them and forgive them and reconcile with them.
Maintaining relationships is like maintaining cars: you have to keep servicing them, repairing parts, mending tyres, polishing and replacing and tightening. Not enough people care about their relationship with me. Not enough people love me, or love me enough. Nobody wants to polish up the screws, the nuts, the bolts. Nobody cares about making sure the components are tight enough, making sure everything’s in working condition.
Maintaining bodies is problematic, too, of course. My own body is starting to give way. I’m only in my mid-fifties, but I can feel it through me, the grim loosening, the start of the slow vicious collapse. I grow old. Nothing is left for me but growing older. I’ll mutter, when I’m old, like a witch, and my great-grandchildren will be frightened of me, especially if I’m in prison. And it’s quite likely that that’s where I’ll be.
I’ll grow hairs on my chin. My body will weaken and creak, its bones slowly corroding, disintegrating until they snap like celery, and my mind will fray and crumble like old lace. And then I will be dead, too. All quite deadybones.
Surely, surely, I have deserved better than this. Haven’t I?
About the author
Vivienne Kelly has spent most of her working life as a university administrator, and is currently a freelance researcher based in Melbourne. Her fiction has appeared in Best Australian Stories, and in 2008 she won The Australian Women’s Weekly/Penguin short story competition. Cooee is her first novel.
Contents
Title Page
Copyright Page
Dedication
Part One
Part Two
Part Three
Part Four
Part Five
About the Author