Please Don't Leave Me Here

by Tania Chandler

  They look perfect together: a couple on a department-store catalogue cover. Their cheeks are pink from the weather, or maybe the alcohol they had with dinner; a few raindrops glisten on their shoulders. They’re standing so close together that Brigitte can’t tell who is holding the folded black umbrella between them. She looks down at her tatty slippers, track pants, and faded Nick Cave T-shirt.

  ‘Aidan’s told me all about you.’ Megan holds out her hand to shake, displaying perfect fingernails.

  Brigitte frowns.

  ‘Good things.’ She smiles. ‘You’re still shaking, you poor thing.’ She places her other hand on top — no wedding band — and sandwiches Brigitte’s hand between her manicured ones. ‘Want us to come in with you for a while?’

  Brigitte shakes her head and pulls her hand away. ‘I’m fine. Might just have a drink to calm down.’

  ‘Good idea,’ says Megan. ‘Have you got some Valium or something?’

  Aidan gives Brigitte a stern look. She gives him a wide-eyed What? look.

  ‘Aidan will come over and check on you later.’ Megan looks at him. ‘Won’t you?’

  He nods. Tears prickle Brigitte’s eyes, and tickling the roof of her mouth with her tongue doesn’t stop them. She turns and hurries into the house before Aidan and Megan see. She locks the door as they walk to the bungalow.

  She stops in front of the fridge and rests her forehead against it for a few minutes. He’s probably kissing Megan out there; she’s sucking his soft, full lips. Brigitte opens the fridge door and takes out a bottle of wine. Now he’s peeling the clothes off her perfect, strong body — no kids, plenty of time for the gym, flat stomach, no scars. Brigitte puts the wine back and slams the fridge door shut. Now he’s fucking her. Brigitte stands on a step stool to reach the bottle of Johnnie Walker in the top cupboard. She pours herself a glass, a big one, and washes down a couple of painkillers with it.

  Banging on the back door wakes her from her stupor. She’s on the couch with a drink still in her hand, and she spills some on her T-shirt as she gets up.

  ‘Are you OK?’ he says when she opens the door.

  She looks around him. ‘Has she gone?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Did you fuck her?’

  He sucks in his breath and shakes his head as he exhales. She can’t tell if he’s exasperated or amused.

  ‘Did you?’ She sounds crazy and jealous, but she can’t stop herself.

  ‘None of your business. And why do you even care?’

  ‘I don’t.’

  ‘Was there really somebody in the backyard, Brigitte? Or did you just want to ruin my night?’

  ‘Go away, Aidan.’

  He holds up his hands and walks away. ‘Lock the door and go to bed,’ he says without turning.

  When he’s gone, a voice in her head says, Why don’t you just tell him how you really feel?

  She doesn’t answer.

  18

  She dreams of Nana and Papa’s old house. The back gate is never locked. It’s been raining, and moss grows in scattered patches along the path beside the house. Nana always says, Be careful, don’t slip. The screen door bangs behind her as she goes into the kitchen. The horse races are on the radio, and Nana is sitting at the red Laminex table studying the form guide. Papa puts pieces of wood into the fireplace; smoke mingles with the aroma of cake baking in the oven.

  Kurt Cobain stands in front of the fireplace, wearing the brown sweater. ‘I miss you.’ He holds out his arms. The safety and comfort in his embrace are even warmer than Nana’s baking. The mantel clock chimes. Strange — it hasn’t worked for years.

  Through the window, she sees a black car with tinted windows double-park across the road. A big man in a leather bomber-jacket stomps into Nana’s kitchen. ‘Go and pack your stuff. We fly out tonight.’ His voice is gravelly. He takes off his hat, and she can see that part of his head is missing; there’s blood and smashed brain inside. He’s holding a large shard of something that looks like glass. She looks around for Kurt. He’s gone. The lights go out.

  She runs out the back, and the screen door bangs. She slips on the moss. Crash. Her bones crack. She can’t get up, and keeps slipping. It’s not moss. It’s liquid — dark and sticky, all over her clothes, her hands.

  Fuck! Get it off me! She sits bolt upright in bed, and pulls off her nightshirt — it’s drenched in the liquid, and her skin is covered with a film of it. Where’s Sam? Oh God, oh God, oh God. She swipes her hands together and rubs at her face until her eyes adjust to the darkness, and she sees that it’s sweat, not blood. And Sam’s not here.

  On the clock radio, 1:08am glows red. Her heart pounds; pain courses through her body. Drip, drip, drip: rain leaks through the hole in the roof.

  She feels for her slippers under the bed, pulls her dressing gown from the back of the door, and tiptoes out, avoiding the squeaky floorboard in the hallway. Clang! Shit, she’s kicked the saucepan that’s been catching the rain. She freezes and waits. There are murmurs from the twins’ bedroom, but neither wakes.

  She takes a Valium and two painkillers, and wanders through the house. In the lounge room, she flicks through the TV channels: there’s nothing on but infomercials. She takes one of Sam’s cookbooks from the shelf. He liked to buy them, but never had time to cook. One day, he said. She should bake a cake for the twins. A voice in her head says Sam would like her to do that.

  The fluoro tube in the kitchen flickers, threatens to die, and then comes on, assaulting her sand-papery eyes. She finds all the ingredients for the chocolate cake-with-glaze recipe — except for ground almonds. It won’t hurt to leave them out. She pulls down the blinds so that Aidan won’t be disturbed by the light. She melts chocolate and butter in a saucepan, adds it to eggs, sugar, and flour, and beats by hand so she doesn’t wake the kids with the electric mixer. She pours the mixture into a cake tin, and lights the oven. The recipe says: Light the oven first, then cook at 160 degrees for 45 minutes. She should have read the instructions properly. Oh well. She licks the wooden spoon. Life’s too short to follow instructions, Sam used to say. Sometimes you have to go with your instinct. Sam should have listened to instructions and waited for backup in Chapel Street.

  The big man in the leather bomber-jacket with the smashed head walks through the mist of a dream down the path beside Nana and Papa’s house … Brigitte shakes herself awake; she was nodding off on the couch. The smell of baking — starting to burn — fills the house. She stumbles to the kitchen.

  She opens the oven door, reaches for the cake tin with her bare hands, and recoils in pain. The burn across her fingers smarts. She stares at it for a long time, watching it start to blister.

  She turns her attention back to the cake, and removes it with a tea towel. It’s dark brown and crispy on top, but not cooked in the middle. She runs a knife around the sides of the tin where it’s stuck, and shakes it onto a chopping board. It sinks in the middle, deflating like a punctured lung. Maybe the ground almonds and the oven temperature were important, after all. Stupid, can’t even make a cake: Joan’s voice in her head as she slides the failure into the bin.

  She’s too awake, hyper-awake. She needs more Valium.

  Back to the cookbooks. She finds — hidden among Sam’s beautiful, arty books — a ratty old one with curling yellow pages and a photo of orange pots and pans on the front. She recognises this book from her childhood, but has never noticed it on the shelf before. Folded inside the cover, on transparent airmail paper, is a handwritten recipe for butter cake. Nana’s? It couldn’t be Joan’s. Joan didn’t bake. The paper is so brittle, Brigitte is afraid it will crumble in her hands. It smells faintly of vanilla essence — from long ago. She holds it to her nose, closes her eyes, and tries to conjure an image of Nana. She can’t see her, but she remembers her smell: vanilla, Joy perfume, licorice chews. Nana must have l
eft that recipe in the book for her to find.

  A car’s backfire rings like a gunshot in the quiet night. What’s that in the window? Not the dark figure again? No, it’s her reflection; it startles her. She closes the curtains in case she sees something else — she’s not sure what — in the grey emptiness. Nana’s recipe trembles in her hands as she heads back to the kitchen.

  Her first butter cake breaks when she takes it out of the tin. It goes in the bin with the chocolate cake. But the second one is perfect. Nana would be proud.

  As she takes the third cake out of the oven, she hears the first train leave the station: it must be 5.00am. She tidies the kitchen, returns Nana’s recipe to the old cookbook, showers, and gets ready for the day.

  19

  She dreams she’s running from the big man with the smashed head. He chases her past a row of empty seats and a fish tank. There’s a spray of broken glass. Everything turns red.

  Kurt Cobain stands at the top of the stairs, wearing the brown sweater. ‘Please don’t leave me,’ she yells up at him. But it’s too late; he’s turning away as the tram slows for the stop out on the street.

  Then she’s lying on the road. Car tyres are going past, slowly. Somebody is screaming. A siren howls.

  Sweet voices of little children are singing ‘Morningtown Ride’.

  She’s standing beside the bed, with no memory of how she got here. It’s not morning. The sleeping tablets aren’t working. She’s lost some time. She looks at Sam’s side of the bed, and thinks about Aidan out in the bungalow. Maybe she should make another cake.

  She walks through the quiet house, and checks on the twins: they’re sleeping soundly, with their lips parted and little chests rising and falling in perfect rhythm. She stares down at them for a long time. She’s forgotten what she was doing. Then she remembers, and goes to the lounge room.

  She finds Nana’s butter-cake recipe in the old cookbook, and takes it to the kitchen. She lights the oven, and gathers the ingredients. Shit — they’re out of eggs. She taps her fingers on the kitchen bench, and checks the fridge again for eggs. Still no eggs, but the cool, frosty bottle of white wine in the door looks inviting. Should she drive to the 7-Eleven for eggs? No, she can’t leave the twins alone. Calm down, she tells herself, turn off the oven, take a Valium, and write an article — or Parenting Today won’t give you any more work. She leans on the fridge door, traces a line with her index finger through the frost on the wine bottle, and answers the voice in her head: ‘Yes, a glass of wine would be lovely, thank you.’

  She opens the bottle and pours a glass. She places it next to the recipe on the bench. In the harsh, buzzing light of the flouro tube, she sees it’s not handwriting on airmail paper. On closer inspection, it’s just a recipe from the internet, printed on copy paper. The floor seems to fall a little beneath her feet, like in a lift. She downs the whole glass of wine, and pours another.

  In the lounge room, she turns on the TV with the volume off, and sits on the couch with her laptop, the wine glass balanced on one of its arms, and a cushion behind her lower back. She plugs in her earphones — Nick Cave. She yawns, and checks her email: spam, bills, a kinder notice …

  Enough procrastinating. Time to work now. She writes: FUN ACTIVITIES TO SHARE WITH THE KIDS.

  HOW TO MAKE BATH BOMBS. Yes. Good idea. The twins love making bath bombs with her. Well, they used to.

  Want to make bath time fun for the kids? Or perhaps leave an impression at the next school fete? Then why not make your own bath bombs? They are fun, simple and inexpensive to createeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee

  Her finger has lingered too long on the key.

  Rage is on TV. It must be late. Days and nights are blurring into one. Yesterday is just part of today, and today is part of tomorrow.

  Concentrate. Finish the article.

  The best thing about bath bombs is you’re only limited by your imagination. Think of fun frothy baths ‘bombed’ with colours and flavours. Chai aromas (cardamom, nutmeg, ginger and black pepper) are very popular on the craft market scene. If you don’t want to use food dye, opt for natural col …

  She can’t keep her eyes open — she shouldn’t have taken so much Valium. Can’t focus, too blurry.

  Somebody is in hospital. Nana? No, it’s a man. Sam? The curtains are drawn around their sick bed. Death bed? There’s a black cross on the floor. She’s looking down on all of this, and thinks she’s seen it before. An old Jesus-scarecrow man wearing a Santa hat walks through a field of poppies. He climbs onto a crucifix, and crows peck his hands.

  Kurt Cobain’s here, in a transparent silver jacket. He’s out of focus, except for his eyes — they’re too blue. And the surreal orange sky behind him is too bright. A little girl in a Ku Klux Klan gown and conical hat jumps up to reach for foetuses hanging from a dead, gnarled tree. Brigitte’s eyes keep going in and out of focus. Hallucinating? She knew this would happen. She should never have gone to Dodgy Doctor Rhys. The little girl looks like Phoebe. Her hat blows off — into a pool of water. No, it’s blood. Her costume turns black, and now she’s standing on the cross in the hospital. Kurt Cobain smiles from a room lined with star-shaped flowers.

  Brigitte rubs her eyes, and takes some deep breaths. It’s OK. It’s OK. It’s not an hallucination, and not a dream — just an old film clip on Rage. ‘Go away.’ She pulls out the earphones and hisses at the TV screen. ‘Leave me alone.’

  ‘Brigitte.’ Aidan is standing in the doorway.

  She jumps, and drops her laptop on the floor. ‘Fuck, you scared me. What are you doing in the house?’

  ‘Heard a noise, saw the light on. You forgot to lock the back door. Anybody could’ve come in.’

  She picks up her laptop.

  ‘What are you doing?’ he says. He’s wearing a pair of grey track pants tied loosely at his hips.

  ‘Nothing. Just working, writing an article.’

  ‘It’s 3.30 in the morning.’

  ‘Is it really that late? Early?’

  He’s still standing there. Why doesn’t he go away?

  ‘You all right?’

  She nods and smiles sweetly. She can’t let him guess that she knows what he’s up to. He’s bugged the house, tapped her phone, placed plainclothes cops in the houses along the street to watch her, and set up a covert website about her and a dedicated Crime Stoppers line. He knows what happened to Eric Tucker.

  ‘Make sure you lock the door behind me.’ The light from the TV reflects on his naked torso. He looks down at her and frowns. ‘Sure you’re all right?’ He’s talking in some code now, but he can’t outsmart her.

  ‘Get out of my house, Aidan.’

  20

  Brigitte pushes a supermarket trolley aimlessly around the plaza. The twisting involved in controlling a trolley hurts her back more than anything, but not today — this morning she took enough medication to stop the pain. She can’t understand why she didn’t think of this before.

  Giant gold-and-silver decorations hang from the glass ceiling, and she sings along with ‘Winter Wonderland’. She’s done the grocery shopping — extra flour, eggs, and butter for more cakes — and bought wine and the last of the twins’ presents from Father Christmas. Still, she feels she’s forgotten something. If she keeps wandering around, maybe she’ll remember what it was. Something from the chemist? The newsagent? The butcher? The crowd of shoppers is reflected on the ceiling — people walking on the roof. It’s too bright, and she can see auras. A headache claws at the right side of her head; it’s going to turn into a migraine. She always gets migraines at Christmas time. Maybe she should go back to Dodgy Doctor Rhys for some migraine medication.

  She gives up trying to remember what she’s forgotten. If it was important, it’ll come back to her. Things always do. Don’t they say that? Sam’s not coming back. How can they have Christmas without
him? Maybe Aidan will join them? No, he’ll spend Christmas with his wife. She thinks about his lips, his deltoid muscles, the tattoo on his arm — whatever it says, his ... Stop it. Stop it. Stop it. She shakes her head.

  Kurt Cobain walks with her. Sometimes she sees him, but usually he’s just a voice in her head.

  ‘You were thinking about Aidan again, weren’t you?’ Kurt says.

  She doesn’t answer.

  ‘I know you want to fuck his brains out.’

  ‘I’m too tired. Go away.’

  ‘So cheating on your husband was OK when he was alive—’

  ‘Cheated,’ she says. ‘Just one time. And it wasn’t my fault. He took advantage of me when I was drunk.’

  Kurt knows she’s lying. ‘But it’s not OK now that he’s dead and couldn’t care less?’

  ‘Leave me alone. I’ve got a headache.’

  ‘Please don’t tell me you think you’re in love with Aidan.’ Kurt laughs. ‘And let me guess, you don’t deserve him? Just like—’

  ‘Shut up.’

  ‘You should tell him the truth,’ he says quietly, seriously.

  She suspects Aidan already knows the truth. About everything. But she keeps that to herself.

  ‘Let’s talk about this in the car,’ Kurt says.

  An old Italian man sitting on the bench seat outside the donut shop, with a salami and a packet of dried apricots on his lap, is watching her. He shakes his head and looks away when she meets his gaze. She’s been talking out loud again.

  A wave of heat assaults her as she exits the air-conditioned shops. Fuck. She can’t remember where she parked the car. The migraine’s in full swing, and the back pain’s creeping up — the medication must be wearing off. The bitumen would be a nice, smooth place to lie down on and cry, but she keeps stumbling with the trolley, her left eyelid twitching, stars swirling in her peripheral vision. Kurt doesn’t know where the car is either. He says he’ll go have a look and come back if he finds it.