Breathing Under Water

by Sophie Hardcastle

  ‘How was it?’ Jake asks.

  ‘We went to physics,’ Toby says. ‘Mr Davis started talking about inertia and—’

  Mia interrupts. ‘I told him to fuck off.’

  Jake blinks and offers her a cigarette. Mia removes her beanie, exposing the shaved scalp and bandage patch, and for the first time in her life takes one too. With her right arm still wrapped in a sling, she struggles with her opposite hand, dropping the cigarette into her lap. Jake retrieves it and holds it to her lips, lighting it with a match, a fleeting flame. Like me, she coughs and splutters at first, then sinks back into the upholstery.

  ‘He’d die if he saw us smoking, Grace,’ she says.

  A second passes. I swallow, my heart beats, and I breathe out. In the uncomfortable silence, Mia starts to laugh. The sound is crude and horrifying and magnificent.

  I start laughing too, and then Jake, and Toby, louder than the thunder in the sky. And soon, I’m not sure if I am an angel laughing or if I am simply rain.

  Back in the house, we watch a mindless reality TV show, all four of us piled onto the same lounge room couch, because Ben hated reality TV and somehow that makes us think the contestants’ banal conversation won’t remind us of him, but everything does.

  Uncle Mark and the girls are on their way back to the city, but Kate has stayed behind. She arranges a cup of dandelion tea, a flower and some biscuits on a tray and climbs the stairs, taking them to Mum, who has gone back to bed. By the end of the TV program she returns with the tray. I watch her tip the tea down the sink and brush the half-eaten biscuits from the plate into the bin.

  ‘I’m going to heat this up,’ she calls out to us, holding up another lasagne. The freezer is full of food the neighbours have brought around. ‘Or do you want a casserole? I think this one is fish.’

  When I don’t respond, I hear the words, ‘Lasagne it is,’ escape under her breath.

  As we watch another episode in the TV marathon, the rich aroma of baked cheese floods the kitchen and flows out through the living area, until Kate draws the lasagne from the oven, serving it onto warm plates. She offers one to each of us, then sits in the armchair with a slice for herself. Shovelling pasta, bolognaise and warm, gooey cheese into her mouth, she nods her head, swallows and says, ‘This one has some merit, good flavour – I wonder who made it.’

  ‘Mum’s is better.’

  She looks at me. ‘I know, baby.’ Coffee bags beneath her eyes. ‘We’ll have her cooking again. Promise.’

  On the TV, one of the celebrity contestants has a meltdown because her tailor has messed up an alteration the day before the big event. Chewing the stringy cheese until it is soggy mush in my mouth, I watch her hunt in designer boutiques for a new gown, an emergency replacement, her grief a futile cry, contained behind a screen. I wish mine was that simple.

  A while later there’s a wary knock at the door, so quiet I’m not sure I heard anything at all. The second knock is louder. Kate calls, ‘Come in.’

  Harley opens the door and slides in. He’s wearing a jacket over his school shirt and pulls the hood down, eyes fixed on the tray in his hands. ‘My mum made these – she’s at work, so I thought I’d bring them round.’

  ‘Hey,’ Jake says, but Harley’s eyes look past him, past them all, until they land on me, blue electricity burning my skin.

  Kate jumps up and thanks him for the flatbread and dips. She tries rearranging some of the bowls and containers in the fridge, then the freezer, before turning to him. ‘Looks like we’re out of room – this doesn’t need to be refrigerated, does it?’

  He shakes his head, not breaking his stare.

  ‘Okay, great,’ she says, placing the tray on the kitchen bench next to the plate of muffins, a box of biscuits and the platter of sandwiches. ‘What’s your mum’s name?’

  ‘Nila.’

  ‘I’ll tell Mel.’

  Eyes lingering on mine, Harley says, ‘I should go.’

  Jake turns to him. ‘Nah, dude. Stay. We’re watching hot dumb chicks.’

  He shakes his head, pulls his hood up, says goodbye and slips back out into the rain.

  ‘What was that all about?’ Mia says over her shoulder.

  I shrug, turning my attention to the woman on screen in the glamorous emerald dress, its scooped back, the gold necklace, the fake eyelashes, desperate for a detail to distract me from Harley, from the way he’d just stared at me … a stranger.

  Come the weekend, the front door flies open, swinging on its hinges. I look up to see a hot pink pair of gumboots step into the house. ‘Where’s your father?’ Sasha asks, taking off her yellow raincoat. ‘There’s no ute in the driveway.’

  It’s the first time I’ve seen her since the funeral. She’s left Pa in his nursing home in the city and come down to give Kate a hand in the fight to revive my mum.

  ‘He’s at work,’ I say, mixing chocolate powder into a cup of milk.

  ‘On a Sunday?’

  ‘He’s always there.’

  Sasha glances at Kate. Putting on the kettle, Kate answers with a kind of I’ll tell you later purse of the lips.

  My grandmother, who refuses to be called Nan, has wild white hair and wears bright red lipstick. She unwraps the orange sequined scarf from around her neck and dusts her hands together. ‘Right, well. Where is my daughter?’

  ‘Bed,’ Kate admits.

  ‘Still?’ Sasha huffs, rolling up her sleeves. ‘She needs a reason to get up. A bloody good one.’ Striding into the kitchen, she pulls out half the pantry, along with bacon, eggs and sausages from the fridge. For almost an hour, I watch her parade around the kitchen, mixing, blending, chopping and frying, throwing herbs and spices in every direction. Finally, she plates up a monster breakfast – baked beans, toast, marinated mushrooms, hash browns, poached eggs, hollandaise, sausages, grilled tomato, avocado on toast and crispy bacon, with a side of pickled vegetables and a freshly squeezed fruit juice. To top it off, she paces out into the rain, returning with an auburn banksia flower to lay on the platter.

  ‘Breakfast, like I keep telling you lot, is the most important meal of the day,’ Sasha declares, before picking up the tray and marching her seventy-six-year-old legs up the stairs.

  Kate plops a marshmallow in my half-empty chocolate milk, and we sit down on the couch. I wonder what Dad’s parents would say if they were here, if they hadn’t left him all those years ago with tombstones to visit and this big white house on the headland. Would my grandfather have held Dad, or would he have sat in his wheelchair wondering where he was and why he’d been brought here, like Pa had last week? I wonder what Dad’s siblings would have done if he’d ever had any. Would they have fussed the way Kate does?

  My aunt and I have just started an episode of an old cartoon when we hear music booming from the floor above. It’s loud enough to drown out the television, but Kate and I just sit there, watching episode after episode, listening to the stamping of dancing feet and Sasha belting out choruses.

  When we reach the credits of the fifth episode, Sasha parades into the lounge room with Mum trudging behind, head down, yet showered, clean and out of her pyjama robe for the first time in two weeks. ‘Grace, get dressed,’ Sasha orders. ‘We’re going to lunch.’

  ‘I don’t want a bloody discount!’

  ‘Mum, please. Stop,’ Kate begs, tugging on Sasha’s sleeve.

  ‘We don’t need people feeling sorry for us,’ she says and slaps the full amount for the bill and a tip on the counter, picks up her bag and charges out of the restaurant.

  When we arrive home, Dad’s Rodeo is parked in the driveway. He and three friends sit on the verandah steps drinking beer, quiet and still, staring at a silver sea. They each acknowledge us with a nod and slight curl of the lips. Inside, Sasha complains, loud enough for them to hear, ripping into Dad for ignoring his responsibilities as a husband and father.

  Then she turns to the pantry. ‘Enough of the frozen sympathy dishes – tonight we’re cooking our own dinner,’ she ann
ounces and begins organising ingredients on the bench.

  For the next few hours, I sit at the bench with Mum and watch Kate and Sasha juggling spices, chopping vegetables, crushing garlic, wrapping raw tuna in foil. The room is fragrant with lemon and coconut milk and I see Mum breathe it in, a flicker in her eye. With her fingers, she combs her blonde hair into a ponytail, fastening it with a hair band. Like a fish released back into the sea, she takes over the chopping board and sets to work.

  As dusk falls, Sasha lays plates on the table and Kate goes outside to get Dad for dinner. Returning alone, she grabs a blanket from the hall cupboard and walks out to the shed where he’s passed out and drapes it over his tired bones.

  Tonight, Sasha sleeps in bed with Mum, as I imagine she did when Mum was little and had a nightmare.

  Sixteen

  THE SHRINE

  I’m not sure if I’m ever going to get used to the way they stare at me in the halls, in the classroom, in the yard – the poor girl who lost it all. I see, in their eyes, a battle between what is polite – turning the other way – and their intrigue. I see the slant of their mouths, the anxious tapping of their feet, as if my grief highlights the fragility of their own lives. Perhaps tonight they will make an effort at dinner to give thanks for their loved ones.

  In the yard, I share my lunch with Toby and Mia, Sasha having stuffed my lunch box to the brim with leftovers from the trays, plates and dishes full of food our neighbours have given us. We eat muffins with raspberry and white chocolate filling and scones with strawberry jam, until the box is empty. With so much inside, we should be full.

  ‘Only one more class and we’ll have survived a whole day at school.’ Mia’s soft voice carries no sense of triumph.

  Kate is reading on the verandah when I dump my schoolbag at the front door.

  ‘Where is everyone?’

  ‘Sash is out shopping, your dad’s at the factory – he left before we woke up this morning – and your mum is inside. She’s on some sort of mission.’

  I cock my head in question.

  ‘She’s cleaning, and cooking, and god knows what else. Hasn’t stopped all day. I don’t know what was better, lying in bed or this.’

  Mum acknowledges me in the lounge room with a quick hello before pressing on with the vacuuming. As I walk down the hall to my room, she follows behind, the nozzle at my heels.

  For the first time in days, I can see my floor. Every ornament on my bedside table has been straightened, the photo frames aligned, my books stacked in order by size. She has wiped down my desk and dusted the windowsills. I’m suddenly not sure where I am permitted to step.

  At the end of the week, Mark calls from the city. He’s been juggling his business and the girls, but now Daisy has gastro, and she needs her mum. From my room, I hear Kate crying for the first time as she packs her things. Sasha has already left, gone to visit Pa in the nursing home. Dad has taken to sleeping in the shed. When Kate leaves, the house is so clean, so empty, you’d swear no one lives here. She leaves me in a museum.

  I first notice the smell when I step out of the bathroom after a shower amid clouds of hot steam. Though subtle, I know something is rotting. I walk down the hall and shiver. Something is rotting in Ben’s room.

  With each day that passes, the smell becomes more potent, until I have to hold my breath as I walk down the hall.

  When I tell Mum, she says I’m imagining it, and for a while I believe her.

  It’s not until the laundry toilet beside the shed breaks the following weekend and Dad comes into the house to use my bathroom that I learn this stench of decay is not a product of my imagination.

  ‘What the hell is that?’ Dad yells over the TV.

  Mum steps out of the kitchen, pulling off her oven mitts, and hisses, ‘What?’

  ‘That disgusting smell.’

  ‘I don’t know what you mean,’ Mum says. ‘I can’t smell anything.’

  Cheeks flushed, Dad storms around the house, searching every room until he arrives at Ben’s door. ‘It’s coming from in here.’

  I jump off the couch, following Mum as she chases after him. Dad goes to open the door.

  ‘Don’t you dare,’ she warns.

  As he turns the handle and goes in, I shudder.

  Mum hurls abuse from the hall until he steps out, minutes later, with a plastic bag. Inside it, a ham sandwich, hairy and spotted purple, green and blue.

  Mum grabs at his arm, but he shakes her off. As he carries the sandwich into the kitchen and dumps it in the bin, she follows, screaming at him, pounding his back with her fists, frail arms flailing. ‘How dare you!’ she cries. ‘How dare you!’

  I watch helplessly, hands over my ears.

  Dad yells something back, the words muffled, and shoves her. She throws a container from the bench, plastic bouncing off his chest, brown rice is scattered like dirt on the floor.

  He punches the wall beside the fridge, fist cracking the plaster. ‘It’s not a bloody shrine!’ he bellows. ‘Ben isn’t coming back!’

  Seventeen

  BLIND DANCERS

  I don’t know what aches more, falling asleep and dreaming of him, or lying still in black hours, thinking over and over about how it could have happened differently … The what ifs are infinite.

  One tiny variation – a traffic light, a struggle to find a park, a delay in the office where they picked up the hampers. Just one tiny variation to make that day the same as any other.

  Pulling my blanket over my head, I think about when we were little and still sharing a room. How we’d swap beds and hide beneath the covers to fool our parents when they came in to say goodnight. How Ben would check under my bed for monsters. I think about the glow-in-the-dark stars we stuck to our ceiling. Ben had used superglue, to Dad’s sheer horror. I think of how I’d wake from a nightmare and hear his breaths, slow and even, like gentle waves lapping on the shore, a lullaby to put me back to sleep.

  Peeling back the blanket now, I stare out my window at tiny stars burning holes in the skin of the night. Tiny stars, impossibly far away.

  Mia corners me in the hallway. ‘Where did you go this morning?’ Her cheeks flush red with anger when I play dumb. ‘I know you skipped class. We had English first period.’

  Students pour out of classrooms, the hallway seems to shrink.

  ‘Exams are in three months, Grace.’ She pushes her fringe out of her eyes. ‘It’s fucking hard for all of us, okay? But you don’t see me or Toby wagging every second day. You and Jake will fail.’

  I look down at my sneakers, at their dirty, loose laces.

  Mia sighs and stomps away while I collect my bag, slamming my locker. Two girls jump with fright at the sound and then exchange whispers. I turn and bolt, shoving people out of my way, making for the exit.

  The footpath out the front of the school is crowded with students waiting for their buses. I pause a moment, trying to decide what to do, where to go, when I see Jake pull up to the kerb. He reaches across and opens the passenger door. ‘Get in.’

  We pull away and I reach for a water bottle at my feet. ‘This safe to drink?’

  He shrugs, knees steering the wheel as he uses both hands to spark a match and light his cigarette.

  ‘Whose car is this?’ I ask.

  ‘Mum’s.’

  ‘What’s wrong with your ute?’

  ‘I’ve got an empty tank.’ He winks. ‘Mum won’t notice anyway. Gone away again.’ He offers me a cigarette, then smashes his hand against the radio. ‘Piece of junk.’

  We drift through the backstreets in silence. I don’t ask where we’re going because I’m not sure it even matters.

  When the winter sun falls behind grey hills, Jake pulls into my drive. We pass Mum asleep on the couch, flour in her hair, and a hundred or so muffins neatly aligned in trays on the bench. Jake flops down on my bed, the creak of the mattress the only sound in this empty, polished house.

  ‘There’s a party tonight, a warehouse party,’ he says. ‘You
should come with me.’

  I reach into my closet and yank a pair of black jeans off a hanger. He plays with the lamp on my bedside table, flicking the light on and off while I pull on boots, a lace top and a beanie.

  ‘Sexy,’ he says, his smile teasing in the pervading shadows.

  Jake parks with two wheels on the kerb.

  ‘I don’t know how you got your licence.’

  ‘Neither do I,’ he laughs and pulls a plastic bag from beneath his seat. ‘Supplies.’ Jake winks and turns on the light above the rear-view mirror. Holding the bag open, he reveals a bottle of vodka and a saddy of pot, as well as a saddy with a couple of pills.

  Jake locks the car, and I take the bottle he offers, unscrewing the cap. The rancid smell already burning my nose, I take a swig. My throat burns. Grabbing it back, Jake takes a swig too, then arches his neck and howls at the moon.

  By the time we arrive at the party, music thumping, screams curling in the night, my stomach is hot and legs wobbly. Jake pulls me aside at the warehouse entrance, fumbling in his pocket for the sachet. ‘Here,’ he says, and I hold out a shaky hand. ‘Trust me,’ he smiles and I do, taking the pill he places in my hand, popping it in my mouth and washing it down with another swig.

  Inside, the roof is barely visible through the haze of blue smoke. Couches line the perimeter; the dirty walls are covered in graffiti, and beer cans and glass crunch beneath every step. When I breathe in, the air is dank with beer, sweat and wet tobacco. I turn around, realise I have already lost Jake.

  I sway, knocking into people. I lose myself to the hour. And then it hits me, like a phosphorescent wave in a midnight sea, so cold it almost feels hot. Toxic bliss. Someone pushes me, and I push back, forcing my way into the crowd of blind dancers. The beat grips me, thick and heavy, as a strobe throws light in wild bursts. Faces are contorted, jaws swing loose from ears, eyes are red, half-closed, with astounding black moon pupils. My limbs thrash, my body whirls, my hair whips, and I laugh, an ugly sound, but magnificent, too. I stumble, fall, and a man with rough hands grabs my arm and hoists me to my feet. I loop my arms around his neck and press myself against him as he slides his hands over my hips and grabs my arse, his breath hot against my shoulder. I reach up and cradle his jaw, pull his face to mine, his lips hot and hard. It is my first kiss, fierce and blistering.