The Dark Part of Me

by Belinda Burns

  I jabbed the doorbell a few times but there was no answer. Hollie slept at odd times of the day so I went around the side, which was always unlocked. I went in through the parlour, filled with tall palms, gold-framed mirrors and white wicker furniture, and headed up the marble stairs to Hollie’s bedroom on the top floor. Her door was closed. I knocked softly, and when there was no reply, pushed inside. The room was dim with the crimson-brocade curtains drawn against the western sun. On the dressing table, a single candle flickered, dappling the fairies, goblins and fire-breathing dragons which stared out from the forest wallpaper, unchanged since she was a little girl. I padded across the rug to her canopied bed but it was empty, the cream-lace spread smooth without a wrinkle. I blew out the candle and threw open the curtains. The view through the window was too perfect; the top half of a giant orange sun caught between the crimson folds of the Great Dividing Range. I left Hollie’s bedroom, heading further down the muffled hall. At each door, I stopped and listened, my ear pressed against the heavy oak. All sounds were deadened, sucked up by the thick carpets, the velvety wallpaper, the mustiness.

  At the furthest end of the hall was Mrs Bailey’s bedroom. The closer I got to it, the faster my heart pumped. It was the last place I wanted to go but I had a feeling Hollie was in there. I stopped at the door first and took a few deep breaths to calm my nerves. I closed my eyes and strained for the tiniest noise. The tick of a clock. The shouts of kids playing in the street. Nothing. It was enough to send you crazy, the quiet.

  My memory of Mrs Bailey is pretty sketchy, but I remember the way she used to stand, tall and willowy on the deck, gazing up at the bush, smoking with her long black cigarette-holder, her dark hair flying in the warm wind. She seemed to float through the house in her pale, chiffon dresses. Wherever she went she left the same faint smell of cinnamon. She was nothing like your typical burban mum. She never did tuckshop or reading group and I never once saw her in the kitchen. Apart from her parties, she never had any female company around. She must’ve been lonely with Mr Bailey often away, or depressed, or maybe, like me, she wished she were someplace more exciting. Perhaps she was just plain old nuts. Whatever, Hollie and I were only six years old the day we found her.

  Danny is waiting for us by the tennis courts. ‘You’re late,’ he grumbles, holding his watch up to Hollie’s face. ‘You’re always late.’ But we run fast and make it to the bus, just in time. Hollie and I are puffing. Danny dumps us at the front and heads down the back to his grade-four mates. Tomorrow it’s Ekka Holiday and it’s noisy like a Friday. The bus swings out onto Moggill Road. Hollie leans into me, squashing me against the glass.

  ‘My mummy’s a famous actress,’ she whispers in my ear. ‘She’s being Titania, Queen of the Fairies.’

  ‘No, she’s not,’ I say, because my mum doesn’t do anything special like acting in plays or dressing up or throwing fancy parties. My mum just works in an office and cooks dinner and yells at Dad and worries about me having clean hands.

  ‘Is too,’ says Hollie.

  ‘Is not,’ I say.

  We keep this up until the bus drops us at the bottom of the hill. Hollie strides ahead in a huff because I don’t believe her mummy’s as famous as Judy Garland or Audrey Heartburn. Danny talks to me, though. As we trudge up the steep hill, he tells me how his mum is taking him to the Ekka and he’s going on all the scary rides in Sideshow Alley and he’s going to get the Transformers bag and the Violet Crumble bag and stuff himself on hot dogs and fairy floss and strawberry-farm ice-cream. And I’m getting really jealous because Mum won’t take me because she says I’ll get sick from all the germs even though I’ve begged her a squillion times to take me just once to see what it’s like.

  ‘Mummy’s home!’ Hollie yells back at us.

  Mrs Bailey’s big, white car is parked on the drive with its windows so black you can’t see inside. Danny uses his special key to unlock the front door and we all clatter inside and up the marble stairs.

  ‘Mummy!’ Hollie sings out.

  ‘Mum!’ says Danny.

  There’s a whiff of homemade biscuits in the air but the house is silent. Hollie and I go into the kitchen where there’s a huge plate of chocolate-chip cookies on the counter top.

  ‘There’re still warm,’ says Hollie, gobbling one down.

  ‘But your mummy never cooks biscuits,’ I say.

  ‘She must’ve gone for a walk,’ says Danny, flicking on the telly. Monkey Magic is just starting. I sit down beside him, my mouth full of biscuit, waiting for the bit when the giant egg cracks and out pops Monkey.

  ‘I’ll check upstairs,’ says Hollie. ‘She might be having a nap.’ She trips up the staircase, singing the school anthem we’d learnt in music class that day. ‘Daily we go to our school on the hill. Ready to try hard and work with a will.’ Overhead, her footsteps pad, dull and muffled along the hall. The monkey intro finishes and the princess on her donkey and the pig-snout man are wandering through the wilderness. Danny turns to me, his finger pushing up the tip of his nose, and snorts. I laugh, and reach for another cookie.

  Hollie screams. She is screaming. One big, long scream that doesn’t stop. Danny tears off the couch and I follow, flying up the stairs. Hollie’s scream is coming from Mrs Bailey’s bedroom at the end of the hall. The door is open. Everything slows right down. The cookies gurgle and melt inside me. My legs are heavy, my fingers thick and fat, as I bound down the hall. And still Hollie is screaming, but Danny doesn’t scream. He doesn’t do anything, but stands frozen in the doorway as I hang back in the hall, not wanting to see what they are seeing. But something pulls me inside and I’m staring at Mrs Bailey’s waterbed and the blood and the gun and Mrs Bailey’s head all blown up into little red bits on the white, satiny pillows and on the lovely, purple walls.

  Hollie blamed it all on her father. Over the years, she’d convinced herself that he’d been having an affair even though there was no hint of it in the suicide note. When Mr Bailey was at home, Hollie rarely spoke to him and if she did it was only to call him a liar or a traitor or a spineless, philandering cheat. It was no wonder he kept such a low profile around the place. He spent most of his spare time locked away in his home cinema watching Westerns or in the cellar tending to his prized collection of Bordeaux.

  Sometimes, I wondered what Hollie and Danny would be like if it hadn’t happened, whether they’d be a bit more normal. Every year, just before Christmas, Hollie hosted a kind of do in memory of her mother, who used to love throwing fancy-dress parties. She wanted to be just like her mum. Often, I’d find her in Mrs Bailey’s boudoir, flopped on the bed reading poetry or dressed up in her dead mum’s outfits. The room was spacious and high-ceilinged, done out in sumptuous Hollywood glam circa 1986: the carpet white shag-pile; the curtains plush, gold velvet. One side of the room was fitted with floor-to-ceiling mirrored doors behind which Mrs Bailey’s designer outfits and theatre costumes were stored. Centre-stage was the giant circular waterbed, piled with fluffy, pink cushions and covered in a glitzy white satin bedspread (the blood dry-cleaned out). On either side of the bed were two black lacquer bedside tables, which gleamed from Hollie polishing them every morning. On one table there was a steel-stemmed lamp. The other was scattered with Mrs Bailey’s things as she’d left them: a slim volume of Elizabeth Barrett Browning’s poems; a red silk scarf; a scotch glass with a few sips still left in it; a solid gold zippo; a framed black and white photo of Mr and Mrs Bailey on their wedding day. The way Hollie used to keep it like a shrine gave me the heebie-jeebies.

  I turned the cut-crystal doorknob and pushed inside. The air-con hummed full-blast and it was cold, icy. The curtains were drawn back, but the room was cast in deep shadow. Rubbing warmth into my arms, I stood, blinking. I looked over at the waterbed. Hollie was sleeping on her side, facing away from me. The tiniest breath quivered up and down her slip of a body. Her boy-hips barely dented the chintz. She was wearing one of her costumes: a long white muslin dress with a high collar and a row of p
earl buttons up the back. Her dainty feet, small as a child’s, poked out from the hem of her skirt and her thick, black hair cascaded down the side of the bed.

  I tiptoed towards her, then stopped. There was someone with her. A man. Hollie had a man in bed with her. She was pressed up against him, one arm flung about his middle. Sweat broke out from each root of my hair, instantly cooled by the air-con draught. I darted to the end of the bed to take a closer look. The man slept, lying flat on his back with his arms pinned to his sides.

  Danny.

  Danny. Fuck. It was eight years since I’d seen him.

  With all the buzz of Scott phoning, I’d clean forgotten he was getting out. Not that Hollie hadn’t told me a million times. She’d spent the past month getting ready for his homecoming; spring-cleaning the house, buying him designer clothes to wear, planning an elaborate dinner party for his first night home. She’d even bought him the latest PlayStation as a welcome home present, charging it to the family Amex which Mr Bailey paid off each month, no questions asked.

  I snuck round to his side of the waterbed and knelt down to look at him. From a scrawny teenager, he’d become a fully-grown man, although still gaunt and skinny. He’d be twenty-two, the same age as Scott. His face was pale and angular, framed by a shock of matted hair so black it was almost blue. There was something girlish about his long, thick eyelashes and his lips, which were too red for a man. He was like Hollie with short hair. But he was not so much feminine as androgynous, sexless. He had on a crisp white shirt, open at the neck, and black tailored trousers. His feet were bare and bony, his toenails painted with emerald-green varnish. Although he was fast asleep, his hands, large white hands, fluttered by his sides as if he was having a bad dream. Fuck, those hands. I got a bit freaked thinking about what they’d done.

  Outside, it was getting darker. The sky was turning a deep, backlit indigo that made me uneasy. Dusk was seeping into the room and the air felt suddenly old and stale like the inside of a church. I looked back at Hollie and Danny sleeping in each other’s arms, like Romeo and Juliet. Like twins. They both looked so peaceful. They had a certain aura of innocence, the faintest white glow about their skin.

  ‘Oh, Danny. Danny.’

  I started but it was just Hollie sleep-talking. Her eyes were closed. Danny didn’t stir. If it had just been Hollie there, I would’ve woken her, but I didn’t want to disturb Danny. He gave me the creeps. Instead, I sat down at the mahogany desk under the window and wrote Hollie a note with her tortoise-shell fountain pen:

  Hey Hols,

  Didn’t want to wake you. You must be so happy Danny’s home. He looks just the same but a bit more manly, don’t you think? Guess what? Scott’s back, too! He called me at work and invited me to a party so I won’t be able to come to your dinner tonight. Sorry. Promise I’ll make it up to you with some Shakespeare on the weekend.

  Love lots

  Rx

  I folded the note in half and laid it next to Hollie’s head. Pillow marks creased her cheek and I was struck by how little she had changed since I’d first known her. Not thinking, I leant over and kissed her softly on the lips. She opened her eyes.

  ‘Rosie,’ she murmured sleepily, looking up at me with clear blue eyes.

  ‘Go back to sleep,’ I whispered, creeping backwards towards the door. ‘I left you a note.’ I knew she’d be upset about me not coming to dinner and I didn’t want to get into an argument with her. She pushed herself upright and I thought how beautiful she was with her angel face so pale she couldn’t sit in the sun, and her lips like the pink inside of seashells.

  ‘Look.’ She beamed across at Danny, who was still fast asleep, tranquil as a carved knight atop a sarcophagus.

  ‘Don’t wake him,’ I said.

  Absently, Hollie picked up my note from her pillow. I paused, my hand resting on the doorknob, waiting for the inevitable storm. She read it quickly, her smile fading to a look of hurt and confusion and then anger. Crumpling the note in her hands, she crossed the carpet and pushed me outside into the hall, closing the door gently behind us.

  ‘Hollie, please, try to understand,’ I entreated, but she pulled me down the stairs into the parlour where we stood face to face, about a metre apart.

  ‘I can’t believe it. After the way he’s treated you. You’re going to go crawling back to him just like that. I won’t let you do it. I won’t let you make such a fool of yourself.’

  ‘But he rang me,’ I protested, lamely.

  Hollie scoffed, theatrically. She looked just like her mother. ‘He never loved you, Rosie. He just used you for sex.’

  ‘Like I didn’t want him too! For fuck’s sake, Hollie, I’ve been celibate for two whole years.’ I sighed, realizing it was a pointless argument. ‘Not that you’d have any idea what I’m talking about. You haven’t even pashed a guy, let alone rooted one.’ It was a low blow, one which I immediately regretted.

  Hollie turned on her heel and was flying, two steps at a time, up the marble staircase. I called out to her, pleading with her to forgive me, but all I heard was the door to Mrs Bailey’s bedroom slamming behind her.

  4

  When I got home, Mum was on her knees rolling out the plastic runners across the lounge room carpet. It was a ritual which went back a long way in our household, as long as I can remember, and meant only one thing – that someone was coming over, a rare occurrence which caused Mum great anxiety and an entire day of preparation.

  Mum has a ‘decontamination procedure’ of military precision: clear plastic covers with elasticated edging for the couches; disposable plastic tablecloths; a hand-made sign positioned in the entry at direct eye-level – ‘Welcome to our humble home. Please remove your shoes before entering’ – then an arrow pointing down to a pair of ‘jiffy’ slippers vacuum-sealed in a plastic bag. In the bathroom, she disguises industrial-strength anti-bacterial liquid in a Palmolive ‘Gentle On Your Hands’ pump container, places a scrubbing brush next to another sign which reads, ‘Please Use Vigorously’, and hangs disposable hand-towels.

  ‘Expecting visitors?’ I asked.

  She spun around. From under her bathrobe, I caught a glimpse of black lace.

  ‘Oh, no one in particular,’ she said, smoothing out the runner with her hands.

  ‘C’mon, Mum. You haven’t let anyone in the house since the plumbing broke last year.’

  Mum got to her feet. With android meticulousness, she scanned the room for any remaining tasks. Satisfied, she turned back to me. ‘I’ve got a date.’

  ‘Who? How?’ Mum hadn’t dated since the sixties.

  ‘Sit down and I’ll tell you.’ She dragged me onto the plastic-covered couch. ‘I’m really excited.’

  ‘I don’t have much time.’ I glanced at my watch.

  ‘Sit down.’ She patted the seat beside her.

  I sat, my thighs squeaking hot and sticky against the plastic.

  ‘I went to see Clive this week.’

  ‘I thought you were done with him.’

  ‘No. He’s got this new therapy he thinks could really help.’ Her cheeks were flushed. Her eyes glittered. ‘It worked on one of his other patients, a woman who couldn’t stop pulling out her hair. She was a lost cause, but then Clive recommended she join a dating agency.’

  ‘Come off the grass.’

  Mum wasn’t listening. ‘Clive calls it his love therapy technique. Learning to love again. You know I never loved your father. But now Clive says it’s time I went out and found myself a nice man, before it’s too late.’

  ‘That’s great, Mum.’ I stood up but she yanked me back down.

  ‘So, this morning, I went to a dating agency in Spring Hill. A lovely woman called Jeanie asked me all these questions like, “What’s your favourite movie?”, “Are you an early morning person?” and “Do you like spicy food?”, and inputted my answers into a special computer which came out with my “compatibility partners”. It was all very hitech.’

  ‘I’m sure.’

  �
��Then I watched the videos and picked out my favourite one.’

  ‘Did he say how big his—’

  ‘His name’s Andy Bronson and he’s a widower with no kids. His first wife died of cancer, very sad, but now, three years later, he’s ready to move on. He’s into ballroom dancing and fine dining. He’s after a sensitive, caring woman who’s not too tall.’

  ‘What? Is he a dwarf?’

  ‘Don’t be smart. He’s picking me up for dinner at eight so I need you to help me decide what to wear.’

  She pulled me into her bedroom. Arms crossed, she stood in front of the built-in wardrobe, her pastel suits hanging like corpses in see-through plastic body-bags.

  ‘I’m going for classy and sophisticated.’

  ‘Mum, can’t you do this yourself?’ It was already six-thirty. ‘I’ve got to get ready, too.’

  She turned around sharply. ‘Why? Where are you going?’ Like I didn’t have a life.

  ‘Just out. With friends.’

  ‘What friends?’

  I stared back at her, defiant. ‘You don’t know them.’

  ‘Don’t lie to me, Rosemary. I know you’re going over to Scott’s. He rang here this afternoon looking for you.’ My heart sang with those three little words – ‘looking for you’. She turned back to the wardrobe and started throwing suit after suit down on the bed. ‘I hope you’re not going to jump straight back into bed with him. I hate to think where he’s been putting his thingo. Bet he’s picked up all sorts of venereal diseases overseas. I read in the paper that syphilis is making a comeback.’