by Lucy Clarke
A rusted pickup pulled in on the other side of the pump, music blaring from rolled-down windows. Surfboards were slung in the back and in the passenger seat a girl of about Mia’s age sat with her feet propped on the dash. Her toenails were painted electric blue. A man stepped out in scuffed flip-flops, his heels cracked and dirty. He flicked open the fuel cap and clunked the nozzle in. As she watched, she wondered if he was anything like Noah, the enigma in Mia’s journal whom her entries were weaved around.
Katie felt intrusive reading some of the intimate descriptions of their romance, yet was also glued to the pages as she discovered her sister’s growing feelings. She’d read that the day after Mia had been reunited with Noah, she had climbed into the passenger seat of his van, which smelled of neoprene and warmed surf wax, and they’d bounced along unsealed roads, dust flying in their wake, till they reached an empty beach. They swam out to a tiny island where they stripped off their swimsuits and lay drying on the sun-baked rocks. Noah talked to her about spearfishing and a shoal of Spanish mackerel that had coiled above his head like a silver whirlwind, far too beautiful to spear. She talked about traveling and the ocean, and of books by Hemingway that had given her a thirst for both.
Mia wrote pages and pages about him, decorating the entries with swirling doodles that blossomed from the margins. She detailed every interaction and transcribed verbatim a conversation about music. Other entries were overshadowed by doubt as she questioned why Noah preferred to sleep alone each night, or interpreted his quietness as a cooling off. Finn featured only as a passing comment, and Katie found that she missed the descriptions of him.
Ed bent his head to the window. “Would you like anything?”
“No, thanks.”
She watched him walk into the kiosk, swinging the car keys around a finger. She turned in her seat and reached for Mia’s journal. Pulling it onto her lap, she opened it at the latest entry. The date caught her eye: “Christmas Day.”
She remembered that they had spoken that day. The phone had rung just as she was leaving the apartment, and she’d run across the hall with her handbag bouncing against her hip. She was thrilled to hear Mia’s voice, but what should have been a festive chat turned sour. The journal entry would contain Mia’s frank opinion on the conversation and the thought of reading it filled Katie with dread. She bit down on her lip, knowing that this phone call was only a prelude to their final devastating argument weeks later.
When Ed returned, he placed a handful of mints between them. “The chap said we’re only a couple of kilometers from the hotel.”
She nodded.
He started the engine and then glanced at the open journal. “What is it?”
“Nothing,” she said, closing it and putting it away.
“Katie?”
She swallowed. “I think Mia’s next entry is going to be about an argument we had. I remember her phoning me from Margaret River.”
He pulled out of the garage, accelerating sharply to slip between two cars in the fast-moving traffic. When he was back in his lane, he said, “And you think it’ll be difficult reading about it?”
“Perhaps.”
“What was the argument about?”
She hesitated. “Sister stuff.”
“When was this?”
“Christmas.”
His eyebrows rose. “Just after I proposed.”
“Was it?” she said, hoping to keep her tone light.
They drove the rest of the way in silence.
Ed stopped the car alongside a tall manor house with a regal green front door and brass knocker. There would be no dorm beds or guitar playing here. “I’ll check in and take the bags up. Why don’t you stroll into town to clear your head?”
“I think I’ll just take a shower. Cool off.”
“A walk might do you good. You could have a look at the restaurants, too. See where you fancy going for dinner.”
“Okay,” she agreed, unclipping her seat belt.
“If it will help, why don’t we read that entry together when you’re back?”
Katie smiled, but she had no intention of reading the journal with Ed. How could she when the argument had been about him?
*
Katie wandered through the small town of Margaret River, glancing into shop windows. Heat radiated from the sun-baked pavements and the metallic bodies of parked cars, and she felt the prickle of perspiration at the backs of her knees.
She passed an art gallery with a sleek navy sign and framed paintings of white sailboats in the window. She paused, admiring the soft curves of their sails, full and proud with wind, and the skill with which the artist had captured the shimmer of evening light reflecting off the water.
A bell announced her entrance into the gallery, causing a redheaded man to look up from his book. He smiled, said, “Afternoon,” and then returned to reading.
Paintings filled the crisp white walls and she chose to look at one positioned beneath an air-conditioning vent, grateful for the chilled air against the nape of her neck. The painting was an abstract of a woman’s hand. From the fine lines running over her knuckles and the ridges in her short nails, Katie guessed it belonged to a woman in her fifties or sixties. The hand clasped a cheap pen, the plastic end chewed and splintered, incongruous against the refined poise in which it held the pen above quality writing paper. The painter had obscured most of the words so that the eye was drawn to only one phrase: “When we were young.”
Mia used to be a great letter writer; Katie had forgotten that. When Katie was away at college she had been the recipient of many of them. While they fought face-to-face, and phone calls proved disastrous, in letters they shared an easy dialogue. Mia’s style was conversational, darting from one thought to the next, her digressions amusing Katie, who would read them greedily. Katie would write back, sharing secrets of men she was in love with or nightclubs she’d visited, painting a colorful picture of college that she hoped Mia would admire. Yet when they saw each other, even if the visit fell on the heels of a warm and intimate letter, they somehow reverted to form and would find themselves bickering within hours.
Katie moved on, gliding from picture to picture, enjoying the range of paintings displayed in the small gallery. At the back of the room three shelves were filled with art supplies and she found herself picking up a tube of acrylic paint. She had the sudden urge to dab a new brush deep into the paint and slide it across a clean canvas. At school she’d shown a flare for art, able to be bold on the page in a way that seemed out of reach in person. She loved the quiet of the art room with its square desks and the sharp smell of white spirit. Mia was furious when Katie gave it up, deciding that it wouldn’t be as well received by the college admissions system as good grades on her history exams. She’d rolled her talent away, along with her paintings, and hadn’t thought about it since.
She picked up a set of twelve acrylic paints housed in a silver tin, along with a pad and two brushes, and went to the front desk. The man placed his book facedown and ran the items through the register. She returned to the hotel with the supplies tucked underarm like a secret.
At the reception desk she was handed her room key. “Your husband has already gone up, madam.”
She blinked, taken aback.
“Sorry,” the receptionist said. “Have I made a mistake?”
“No, no. It’s fine,” Katie replied, touching her collarbone. “Thank you.”
A thick oak door opened into their room. It was airy and bright and a wrought-iron bed stood proudly in the center. Her backpack was propped against it, the buckles open and a peach blouse hanging out. She wondered why Ed had started unpacking it. He stood with his back to her, his shoulders hunched as if he was grasping something.
She stepped into the room, closing the door behind her.
“Katie!” he said, spinning around.
Now that he was angled towards her she could see he was trying to conceal whatever was in his hands. She glimpsed a flash of something sea blue a
nd immediately she knew: Mia’s journal.
The scene came into focus; he clasped the journal in one hand, and a fistful of cream pages in the other.
“What the hell are you doing?”
A loud rap at the door startled her. She snatched it open as if the two events were connected, and found a maid holding two plump white pillows.
“Extra pillows for you, madam.”
Katie didn’t move to take them, or step aside from the doorway to allow the maid in.
After a moment she heard Ed’s voice. “Yes, thank you. Could you leave them outside?”
The maid looked affronted by the request and Katie heard the soft flop of the pillows on the landing before the door clicked shut.
She turned to Ed. His hands were now behind his back, like a playground thief. “I asked you a question.”
His mouth opened and closed, but he said nothing.
She put down the paper bag of art supplies, then crossed the room. She stood in front of him and held out her hand.
He shook his head. “I won’t give it to you.”
“Won’t?”
“Sorry. I know that sounds—”
“Give me the fucking journal, Ed.”
He swallowed. “Do you trust me, Katie?”
She remembered discovering Ed flicking through Mia’s travel journal in London. At the time she’d thought he’d been checking there was nothing in it that would upset her—but now she began to question what his motives really were. “Before I walked into this room, yes, I trusted you. But right now? No. No, I don’t.”
“You’ve already been through enough.”
“You’re right, I have. So I’ll ask you one more time: give me the journal and whatever you’ve torn from it.”
He hesitated.
“Now!”
Reluctantly, Ed passed it to her.
Her heart cracked at the sight of Mia’s careful script ripped from the journal. It was as if Ed had yanked the hairs from Mia’s head. “What have you done?” she asked, her voice stretched thin.
When he didn’t answer, she lowered herself onto the bed and brought the pages into her lap. Very carefully, she smoothed them out.
“Please,” he begged. “You don’t want to read that.”
14
Mia
(Western Australia, December Last Year)
Merry Christmas!” Mia said, tucking the phone between her ear and shoulder.
“Mia! Thank God I didn’t miss you! I was literally walking out the door. Hold on a sec,” she said, and then called out, “Ed! It’s my sister. Come back in—I’ll be a few minutes.” There was the tread of feet and the click of the door closing, followed by Katie’s whisper, “Will you let your mother know we’ll be late? I don’t want her to think we’re being rude.”
Katie: considerate, organized, punctual.
Mia heard Ed’s footsteps move along the hallway and into the living room. Another door closed. She imagined him wearing a dark overcoat over a V-neck sweater by a quality label, Ralph Lauren or John Smedley perhaps, dressed ready for Christmas lunch with his parents. She hadn’t been to Ed’s family home, but from Katie’s accounts she imagined a holly-and-ivy wreath hung on a solid oak door, a table already laid with a silver dinner service and three sets of cutlery, and bottles of red wine warming on a hearth.
“Where are you?” Katie asked.
“Margaret River. It’s on the west coast of Australia.”
“And right now, this second? I want to picture it.”
“In a phone booth outside a hostel. You’ll laugh—it’s actually a red English phone booth. The colonial thumbprint still holds strong.”
“What can you see?”
She glanced through the weathered glass panels. “Blue sky. Eucalyptus trees.” She stretched away from the phone to stick her head out, looking towards the branches of the trees. “And two kookaburras.”
“The birds that laugh?”
“Yep.”
“I can’t even imagine. Are you having a wonderful time?”
Mia pushed her hair away from her face. She thought of Maui and the cold truth that’d sunk to the pit of her stomach, and the brooding month that followed when she was listless and swollen with inertia. But she also thought of skydiving, of swimming in the Pacific, of making love to Noah beside a beach fire. “It’s more than I could have imagined.”
“Good. That’s really good.” Then, “Oh, Mia, it doesn’t feel right being apart at Christmas. I miss you so much!”
She smiled, warmed by the way Katie’s thoughts always tumbled out so openly. When Mia was younger she had been embarrassed by her sister’s earnestness; now she admired it. “I miss you, too,” she managed.
“Where are these stacks of postcards I was promised?”
“I’ve bought them. Well, two. One in California and another last week in Perth. I just haven’t written them.”
“Well, hurry up. I love getting mail from you.”
Each time she’d sat down to write them, she’d found her pen hovering over the blank space, unsure where to begin. There were a thousand things she could tell Katie about her trip so far, but it was the things she couldn’t say that filled her head.
“What time is it in Australia? Have you had Christmas lunch?”
“It’s six. And lunch was a burnt sausage in a roll.”
“No? Mia! It can’t feel like Christmas at all.”
“It doesn’t.” Which was exactly what she wanted. Christmas had always been a huge occasion in their family. Last year had been the first without their mother. Katie had foregone Christmas with Ed’s family to spend it in the apartment with Mia. She put on an apron and an air of determined optimism, and did her best to conjure a festive atmosphere. Despite her efforts, grief clung to them both, exacerbated by the wine they washed back to fill the silences. After lunch an argument erupted, and they spent the rest of the day in separate rooms.
“Finn still insisted on swapping stockings,” Mia offered.
“Tell me it was a clean sock this year?”
“He claimed so, but he only packed two pairs and he hasn’t done any laundry for a week. The jury’s out.”
Katie laughed. “What was in it?”
“He couldn’t find any satsumas, so he wedged a banana at the bottom, which meant I got a banana-flavored pack of cards, a banana-flavored travel book about Samoa, and a banana-flavored bangle.” She lifted her hand and admired the chunky sea-green bracelet circling her wrist.
“How is he?”
Katie rarely asked about Finn, but perhaps the distance made it easier. “He’s good. Making friends wherever we go. On Wednesday he had everyone at the hostel drinking homemade punch and limboing beneath a belt he’d tied to two poles.” She’d arrived as everyone was dispersing and was sorry to have missed the fun. When Finn asked where she’d been, a flush crept up her neck as she answered, “With Noah.”
“I can’t be too much longer as Ed’s waiting,” Katie said, “but I’ve got news!”
“Okay … ”
“On Friday, Ed and I went for dinner at the Oxo Tower. Do you remember it? We took Mum there for her fiftieth.”
“With the waiter who thought the three of us were sisters.”
“So Mum left a 20 percent tip.”
“He’s probably tried that every night since.”
Katie laughed. “It was a different waiter this time—but he got an even bigger tip.”
“Why? Did he say you look like Scarlett Johansson?”
“Even better: when he brought out dessert my plate was decorated with these beautiful swirls of melted chocolate—and in the center was a ring box. Mia, Ed proposed! He got down on one knee and asked me to marry him!”
Sunlight fell through the glass panels of the phone booth, illuminating Mia’s fingers as she pressed them to her mouth. Katie and Ed were engaged. Heat prickled across her skin. She wedged her foot in the door to get air.
Her response was important—every moment she
hesitated would be counted. Her silence stretched out. A taut wordless void opened up between them.
It was Katie who spoke first. “Mia?”
“Yes.”
“I’m engaged.”
“Yes.”
A pause. “That’s all you’re going to say?”
“No … sorry … I was just thinking of what to say.”
“ ‘Congratulations’ is common.”
“Of course! Congratulations!”
“I wanted you to be a bridesmaid.”
She swallowed. “Great … ”
“You’re not happy for me?”
“I am—yes. I am.”
“That’s odd, because it sounds like you’re disappointed.”
“Sorry. It just took me by surprise. I didn’t realize things were so serious.”
“You wouldn’t since you haven’t called in seven weeks.” Her retorts were whip-like in their speed and sharpness.
Mia forced the door wider, jamming her knee through the gap.
Katie’s voice became a low whisper as if her mouth was pressed close to the receiver. “You’ve never liked him, have you?”
“It doesn’t matter what I think.”
“It seemed to when it came to my last boyfriend.”
The lash of the remark struck hard. “That was completely different!”
“How?”
“You were deliberately trying to hurt me.”
Katie sighed. “Everything will always be about you.”
“No—”
“I just want you to be happy for me. Can you be?”
She wanted to share her sister’s happiness and tell her that she loved her, but the memory of what she’d done caught in her throat, blocking her words.
“Merry Christmas,” Katie said, and then the line went dead.
*
Mia remained in the phone booth. She felt a familiar tightening in her gut, a cold twist of guilt. Katie had always dreamed of getting married—and now she was engaged. For most sisters that would be cause for celebration and breathless questions about the engagement ring, the wedding date, plans for a venue. But Mia did not think to ask any of those things; she thought only of what had happened in a darkened corridor with the bitter taste of vodka lining her throat.