Reaching over the bench, I pick a few petals off the flowers he’s brought in from the yard and garnish each plate.
Morning tides glisten as I help him stand three camping chairs and the pop-up table under the fig tree. We spread a tablecloth and lay each plate down, placing the bunch of wildflowers in an old glass jar as the centrepiece.
As we wander into the house for the juices, Mum appears from the stairwell in her dressing robe with frizzy hair and pale cheeks. I assume she didn’t get much rest last night, she looks exhausted. Rubbing sleep from her eyes, Mum notices the dirty pans stacked in the sink, the fruit and vegetable scraps scattered across the bench. She glances from Dad to me with a crease in her brow.
‘You’re not supposed to come down yet,’ he says.
‘What?’
‘I’m not ready.’ Stepping forward, he lays gentle hands on her shoulders and steers her back up the stairs. ‘Five minutes!’
As Mum traipses back up to her room, I take the juices out to the table, grab Monty’s bowl and fill it with dog biscuits from the pantry.
‘One last touch.’ Dad plugs our family iPod into the speakers.
The opening verse of Pina Colada plays through the living room.
He turns up the volume, as Mum reappears, her smile, though weak, is a beautiful curve on her lips.
She whispers along with the chorus.
The spinach is soggy, the tomatoes so overcooked they’re watery mush, and the mushrooms and bacon barely edible, but the air is clean and the sky is blue. Rays of light streak between branches, specks of sunlight on our skin like tiny stars.
‘Sorry, it’s not great,’ Dad says.
Mum smiles, shy, her eyes like ocean rock pools. ‘It’s not all bad.’
In the house, the song plays on repeat.
Dad reaches into the pocket of his board shorts. ‘I have this,’ he says and draws out a ring. ‘I think it belongs to you …’ He holds Mum’s wedding ring tight between his thumb and index finger, smiling uncertainly. ‘You know I’m not good with words, and I doubt I even deserve it, but if you can somehow forgive me … I would really like for you to take it back.’
The tide rises and water spills from the rock pools, tears running across her cheeks.
‘You’re my lovely lady, Mel.’
I think of Sasha when she crouched in her yellow gumboots.
Sometimes, they wander back.
Mum breathes in and holds out her hand. A warm breeze lifts her hair off her shoulders. Dad touches his lips to the back of her hand, warming honeycomb, and slides the ring back onto her finger.
Thirty-Nine
IN THE WATER
Answering my call, his voice is hoarse. I try to guess how old he is, and as he asks who’s calling, I bite my tongue to avoid laughing at the absurdity of his contact name stored in my mobile – GUY #5.
‘It’s Grace,’ I say. ‘Grace Walker.’
‘Grace! How are ya?’
‘I’m looking for Jake. Have you seen him?’
Of all the people I have called this morning, GUY #5 is the first to give me a clue. ‘He picked up off me last night – him and a few boys were going underground.’
I don’t think to ask where or what underground is. ‘Know where he is now?’
‘Nope, sorry. You could try Henry,’ he says, ‘I’ll message you his number.’ Once GUY #5 hangs up, I wait for his message then key in the new number and see Henry is already saved in my phone as GUY #9.
‘Hello?’ he says. GUY #9’s voice sounds young, compared to the others. Before I can even ask, I hear Jake in the background.
Pulling up to the kerb, my stomach knots, sensing this is the kind of street a local would know to bypass. Switching off the ignition, I wind up my window. ‘You should probably stay here.’
Harley glances at the shabby fibro house with its front yard of yellow grass and patched dirt and then glances back at me, eyebrows raised. ‘Seriously?’
I nod.
‘I don’t want you going in there alone.’
‘Okay,’ I resign. ‘But when I find him, I need to talk to him alone or he won’t listen to me.’
We’re careful not to tread on glass as we walk down the driveway toward a house with a boarded window and a flyscreen front door left wide open. As we draw near, I hear chatting and the faint vibration of music behind the house, and we opt for the side path, squeezing between two rubbish bins overflowing with beer cans and pizza boxes.
I hear Jake laugh and tell Harley, ‘Wait here, I’ll be fine.’
The backyard is concrete, with a broken basketball hoop above the garage and a rusty Hills Hoist. Boys with clenched jaws lounge on tattered camping chairs. Jake raises his sunglasses and swears. ‘What are you doing here?’ he sneers.
I crouch beside him, almost certain that none of the other guys here have even noticed my arrival.
Jake takes a sip of his beer and burps. Skin is flaking from his lips and nose.
‘You’ve got to stop, Jake.’
‘Stop what?’ he snaps. ‘We can’t just turn this off. We can’t just press a button and bring him back …’ He shoves me, knocking over his beer. ‘I thought we were in this together.’
I shove him back, almost pushing him out of his chair. ‘We are, Jake, and that’s why I’m not gonna let you die in some gutter!’
Passing through fields along the highway back home to Marlow, two clouds part and I recall a story Dad used to tell. If there is enough blue sky to make a sailor a pair of trousers, the weather will turn out fine.
‘My dad came back,’ I say.
Jake is in the front passenger seat, Harley in the back. Jake winds down his window and dangles his feet out. ‘Yeah? What’s his story?’
‘He was ashamed, I guess. Knew he’d fucked up and was too embarrassed to come home.’ I glance across at him, but his eyes are fixed on the road ahead. ‘He had some heart scare …’
‘He all right?’ Jake says. I hear the concern in his voice. He has started to thaw. He is here, where he should be, in the seat beside me.
‘Well, he’s off the booze. Mum’s got him on some mad juice detox.’
Jake laughs. ‘Bet he’s loving that.’
‘Doesn’t really have a choice. The doctors said he can’t work so he’s at home all day every day … at Mum’s mercy.’
‘She’s punishing him. I would.’
‘I thought the same, but I’m realising no one is good, Jake. And no one is bad. Everyone is both.’
He says nothing.
‘I guess Mum still sees the good,’ I say.
Jake is silent a moment before looking over his shoulder at Harley in the back seat. ‘And what’s your story, best looking?’
‘Jake,’ I stress, warning him to play fair as I glance in the rear-view mirror.
‘It’s fine, Grace,’ Harley says, and turns to Jake. ‘You two were closest to him … I gave you space. I had to.’
Turning back to the dash, Jake shuffles in his seat and kicks his legs up once more, hanging his feet by the wing mirror. ‘Well,’ he says at last, eyes fixed on pea green hills in the distance, ‘don’t fuck Grace over.’
Mum insists on writing birthday invitations and riding to each of my friends’ houses to pop them in their letterboxes. ‘You only turn eighteen once,’ she says.
‘We’re having a barbecue …’ I remind her. ‘At the beach. It’s hardly a party.’
Ignoring me, Mum licks the final envelope seal, runs her fingers across its edge and pops it in her bicycle basket with the others. ‘Come on,’ she says, motioning toward my bike, balanced against the shed. ‘You might not think it’s anything special, but you’ll look back one day and see, for more reasons than one, it was worth the celebration.’
Together, we sail down High Street, and as golden light bounces off her naked shoulders, I realise I’d forgotten how beautiful my mum is.
When we’ve delivered the last invitation to Toby’s house, we pedal back up High Street,
stopping every few shops for Mum to greet someone. I don’t mind. She buys me lemonade and I cruise along by her side, listening to the way she inspires laughter, crafting something out of nothing.
Back home, Mum lathers homemade choc-hazelnut spread on slices of spelt toast and lays them on a plate between us. When Dad pulls up a chair beside me at the kitchen bench, Mum hands him a glass. Ice cubes bob in a sea of juice. ‘Carrot, ginger, cucumber and apple.’
As Dad sits down, he takes a gulp and, for the first time since the detox started, swallows without scowling. Instead, he thanks Mum. Something passes between them on a breath of sea air. Respect.
A wad of creamy chocolate softens in my mouth as Mum places her hand on mine. I love the way her rose gold wedding ring wraps her finger. Brushing my knuckles, tiny bone hills, she says, ‘We have something to tell you.’
Dad rests his elbows on the bench, rocking his weight forward.
‘Ben’s savings …’ he says. ‘We’ve transferred the account into your name.’
I don’t know what to say.
Dad’s laugh rouses Monty from his nap beneath my feet. ‘Hon, you all right?’
Nodding, I recall I never actually asked Ben how much was in his account. Dad pats me on my back, jiggles my shoulder. I try to figure out how much it might be, all his endorsements, all his sponsorship deals, and all his prize money … I lose track before I even consider the first major contract he signed at fifteen.
‘We trust you’ll be responsible,’ Mum says. ‘And if you want to put some away in a locked account, you know, or invest in something, Uncle Mark can help.’
‘But at the end of the day, it’s yours,’ Dad says.
‘Thank you,’ I say at last. I bite down on my toast, crumbs bouncing off my plate.
Dad rubs my back. ‘Don’t thank us.’
I remember the knot I had in my stomach when they told us the exam results were going to be released on our birthday, Ben’s and mine. I’d been so sure one letter in the mail would make our eighteenth either the best or worst birthday I’d ever had. Ben was completely unfazed. At recess, he’d reclined against the pine’s great trunk, munching on his muesli bar, joking with Jake, his voice as calm and as light as late summer dusk. An exam mark wasn’t going to define him. Nothing anyone could say or do ever would.
He’d already done that all on his own. He was the sun, catching fire on the horizon.
Mum rouses me from my sleep. A peach sunrise stains my bedroom walls. ‘Here,’ she says, as I rub my eyes, and holds three envelopes out in front of me. Dad strolls in behind her and plops himself down at the end of my mattress.
Opening the first envelope, pink with my name scribbled on it, I draw out a birthday card. Opening it, glitter falls out, rainbow flecks in morning light, and as it starts to play a sassy musical number, I realise that I’ve left him behind at seventeen.
Under the message – which I’m almost certain Sasha wrote with a glass of whisky in hand – is her signature and, in the same handwriting, Pa’s signature.
The second envelope is sky blue and contains a card from Mum, Dad and Monty with a picture of a mermaid. The third is white with my name and address printed on a sticker on the front.
I open it and unfold the piece of paper inside. Mum rests her hand on my leg as I read my score once in my head, once aloud. Reaching forward, she wraps her arms around me, her tears warm on my naked shoulder. ‘I’m so proud of you,’ she whispers, and it doesn’t matter that my score is barely a pass. A number cannot define me.
Just after three, the clouds part and liquid gold pours through the opening. ‘See,’ Dad says. ‘It’s clearing.’
Mum, in the yard with a picnic basket in one hand and a beach towel slung over her shoulder, points to the sky. ‘Told you … There’s no way he’d let it rain on your birthday.’
Under a pine where the park meets the sand, we unroll picnic rugs, set up the barbecue and arrange camping chairs. Dad runs across the road to grab a bag of ice and fills the esky. When Mia arrives with her family, Jackson carries a plate of fairy bread, her dad a sixpack and her mum a fresh fruit salad that she places beside my mum’s pavlova. The vibrant jumble of watermelon cubes, sliced strawberries and juicy mango cheeks makes my mouth water as Mia hands me a present. Putting it down at my feet, I hug my best friend. Her skin is as hot as a roaring westerly and I tighten my hold, suddenly appreciating how difficult it must have been to wrap one present instead of two.
With little encouragement, I open the envelope and laugh at the flying unicorn on the card’s rainbow cover. Inside, it reads Happy 5th Birthday, only she’s crossed out the 5 and written 18. Mia shrugs with a guilty grin. ‘All the birthday cards our age were boring.’
I unwrap a box and find, inside, a necklace. Hanging on a thin silver chain is a tiny stone pendant. I glance up to see Mia reach inside her shirt and lift out the same stone pendant dangling from an identical delicate chain around her neck. She rubs her finger over the stone on her necklace, and then touches the stone on mine. ‘Larimar,’ she says, her ears shining pink in the late afternoon sun. ‘It’s the stone for the sky and the sea. The Atlantis stone.’
As we embrace, her shoulderblades dig into my forearms; she’s lost weight over the winter.
‘I got offered a scholarship to study a combined degree,’ Mia says. ‘It’s a bachelor of law and bachelor of international studies. Quite a mouthful to say, ay?’
I feel the weight of this news, but it’s not painful.
‘I’m moving to the city, Grace. I’m going to live with Jackson while he does his honours year.’ Mia takes both my hands, I feel her heartbeat in her fingertips, quick and jumpy. Is she afraid? Is she afraid I’ll hate her for leaving me, like I’d hated him?
I wonder then if Mia had hated him too. Has she forgiven him?
‘Are you okay?’ she says. My cheeks are wet. Tears drip from my chin, full and heavy like droplets from leaves in the silence after a rainstorm.
I nod. ‘I don’t hate you,’ I say.
She’s crying now too.
‘Mia, I’m really proud of you.’
Dad lights the barbecue as Jake skates through the car park, clutching a wrapped gift. Toby, his parents, and his younger sisters arrive soon after with a present, a bowl of coleslaw and a handful of balloons, which Toby’s mum ties to the branches of a nearby pine. Their puppy, bouncing with a bandana tied to its collar, runs rings around Monty as he waddles behind Mum. I sit on the picnic rug and Jake insists I open his gift first.
I give him a cheeky smile. ‘But Mum always said read the card first, and you haven’t given me one.’
‘I’m shit with words – just open it!’
I cross my arms.
‘Fine! I love you, I love you, happy birthday, you’re a bloody ripper, blah, blah, et cetera, et cetera!’ he says and starts tearing at the wrapping paper as I laugh and squeal. It’s a pack of twenty-four cinnamon doughnuts, and he’s the first to take one.
Toby’s family have all signed his card, including his youngest sister, who has spelt her name wrong. Before I unwrap his gift, I ask him how his exams went.
He gives me a grin I’ve never seen before. ‘I’ve been offered an early placement for a bachelor of advanced science.’
Mia wraps one arm around his shoulder, holding him in a headlock, ruffling his hair, jiggling his lanky arms. ‘He’s going to move in with us!’ She plants a slobbery kiss on his forehead and he squirms. ‘Roomies!’
Toby wriggles out of the headlock and I congratulate him before unwrapping his gift. Holding up my new wetsuit top and bikini bottoms, I thank his family over and over, feeling very chuffed.
‘Nila!’ I hear my mum say and glance up to see the Mathews walking through the park. Nila kisses Mum on the cheek and hands her a bowl of couscous. Behind her, Ryan pushes his dad down a paved path, the wheels of his chair digging in as they cross the grass.
Harley says hi to my mum, kneels at my side, kisses my cheek and hands me a bunc
h of flowers. Daisies tied together with a fine blue ribbon.
Dad turns sausages, flips patties and browns onions with a ginger beer in one hand and tongs in the other, laughing and chatting with the other dads. He’s wiry and a shoelace belt holds up his shorts, but there is colour in his lips, his skin, his hair.
I load my plastic plate with salad and couscous to please Mum before smothering my sausage sandwich with tomato sauce and oily onions. When I take my first bite, juices spill down my chin and I lick my lips and my fingers. My hair is matted at the nape of my neck, wet after our swim, and I glance down repeatedly to admire my new bikini bottoms. In the pine trees above, cockatoos gather, flapping and yapping. I imagine they are laughing and carrying on about all the things they’ve seen today.
Beside me, Jake chews with his mouth open, crumbs flying.
‘You smell different,’ I say, taking another sniff and learn it’s not so much a new smell but rather the absence of one. It’s an absence of dirt, an absence of sweat, an absence of tobacco. ‘You quit smoking?’
He smiles, his lips glazed with barbecue sauce. ‘Five days now.’ We high-five. ‘Piece of cake, really.’
‘Speaking of cake,’ I hear Mum say. She takes a mud cake out of its container and pokes it with candles.
Ever since I can remember, we’ve always put twice the number of candles in our cake, saying that twins live two lives in one. I want to thank her for making this year no exception, but the words don’t find their way out. Mum pulls a box of matches from the picnic basket but I stop her before she sparks the first light, announcing that I’m going to make a speech. Everyone gathers round as I reach into the basket and pull out three envelopes.
Starting off, I thank everyone for coming, and for the delicious food. One of Toby’s little sisters burps and turns bright red when we all laugh.
Breathing Under Water Page 23