And then, like a slice of light parting the clouds beneath heaven, like one of the rapturous pictures hanging in the Sunday School room where Jesus looks up, his face radiating bliss, Julia’s station wagon pulls into our driveway. I can almost hear a choir of angels heralding her arrival.
I jump to my feet, my mood instantly lifted, and hurry to meet her. It will feel so good to press her body against my chest. If she lets me kiss her, it will take away this pain. Her vibration, like a tuning fork, will align my cells again.
But it is Bryant who gets out of the car.
‘Where’s Julia?’
He jumps at my voice. ‘Shit, you scared me.’
‘Is Julia here too?’
A kookaburra, in the tree above us, begins to laugh.
‘No, of course not. She’s at home with the kids.’
‘Is she coming later?’
Another bird answers in the distance and then the sky is full of laughter.
Bryant closes the car door with his hip and folds his arms. ‘Now why would she do that, Tom?’ There is something different about his energy tonight, almost antagonistic.
I feel my cheeks go red.
‘Anyway,’ he says, Mr Happy again. ‘I’ve got something for you. It will make you feel fantastic.’
A small flicker of hope catches in my chest. ‘Will it make me hear again?’
‘Hear?’ He purses his lips, thinking. Then smiles. ‘Anything’s possible.’
Julia
In the back of her mind, she knows this is a stupid thing to do. The fumes alone are likely to knock her out. And the label has a thousand warnings: what to do if she spills this, breathes this, swallows this, gets it on her skin. For the first time, she can observe her actions with a sense of distance and realise the extent of her obsession. A small voice cautions that this isn’t normal.
She takes the lid off the pot anyway.
If the warnings were many, the instructions are few. It says to apply a thin, even layer. But she has tried the ‘thin’ approach before with too many products and nothing has worked. It’s time for serious measures.
Dipping the paintbrush into the pot she scoops out a large mountain of goo and slaps it against the tiles. The fumes quickly find their way to her brain and her eyes start to water. Too bad. She scoops out another mound and presses it into the grouting around the top of the bath. On a mission now.
As she removes the paintbrush a third time, a splash falls on her left hand. She pauses for a second, uncertain, and then her skin starts to burn, viciously, and she springs to her feet.
Ensure gloves and mask are worn while handling.
She runs to the basin and holds her trembling hand under cold water.
‘What on earth are you doing?’ Barbara’s face appears in the mirror behind her. ‘Let me see.’
‘It’s nothing. Really.’
‘God, how can you breathe? Come out of there before you pass out.’
Julia follows her motherin-law into the kitchen.
‘Show me.’
Julia extends her hand, which has blistered in a red patch the size of a large egg.
‘You silly girl. What were you thinking?’
Julia shakes her head. It’s blatantly obvious that she wasn’t thinking. ‘I wonder why Bryant isn’t back yet.’
Barbara gives a breast-inflating sigh but doesn’t answer. She removes the first aid kit from the kitchen dresser and rummages through the assortment of bandages and ointments.
Bryant disappeared not long after lunch; probably ran straight into Summer’s arms again.
Barbara smears Julia’s hand with a pale yellow ointment and rubs it gently over the burn. The pain is bubbling upwards, making her dizzy. She turns away.
She remembers Summer’s smile, her confidence. A baby is curled up and growing inside that woman, and there’s a good chance Bryant is the father.
‘You’ll probably have a scar,’ Barbara says, as she winds a bandage around Julia’s hand and secures it with a clasp.
Who cares? The pain is nothing compared to the ache in her heart.
All she ever wanted was a regular little family; the kind you see on TV, the kind that passes you happily in the supermarket. It’s been her only dream. Family, laughter, a peaceful home life. Surely, that wasn’t too much to ask.
She takes her hand back from Barbara and holds it against her chest. ‘I’m going to walk into town and look for Bryant. He’s been gone for hours.’
‘I think my son needs some space.’ Barbara puts the ointment back in the first aid kit. ‘And I’m sure you had a nice break the other night.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘You know what I mean. Your little dalliance with the milk boy.’
‘Nothing happened.’
‘Oh, please.’
‘I assure you nothing happened.’ Although let’s face it, she had wanted it to.
‘Let’s be honest here,’ Barbara says. ‘Tom is a gorgeous young man, any fool can see that. God, if I was thirty years younger, I’d be running after him too. But Bryant has sacrificed a lot for you, Julia. A career in medicine, the chance to make money, travel.’
‘I didn’t stop him from studying medicine,’ Julia says, shocked that her motherin-law could believe something so ridiculous. ‘Bryant never wanted to study medicine. And he never expressed an interest in travelling.’ Her hand feels like it’s on fire now. She blows on it gently.
‘That will probably get infected, you know.’
Julia’s eyes are beginning to water from the pain and she brushes at them with her good hand. ‘I never stopped Bryant from doing anything. He wanted to marry me.’
‘And look where it got him,’ Barbara says. ‘In this horrible, horrible place, trying to make a living doing yoga. Yoga, for God’s sake; that’s not a job for a man.’
‘I didn’t take advantage of Bryant,’ Julia says. ‘I had a great life of my own before I met him. And it was his stupid idea to move to Lovely and do yoga.’
‘How dare you judge him?’ There is fierce desperation in the older woman’s eyes, fear of contradiction in her voice. ‘Bryant is a wonderful man, just like his father. In fact, if more women had husbands like Bryant, the world would be a happier place.’
Julia has the sense not to contradict her. There is a line waiting to be crossed; words bursting to be spoken that once uttered will be instantly regretted. Your son’s not so perfect. Your son’s an idiot who’s sending us bankrupt. And he’s having an affair with the butcher’s wife. He’s probably the father of her baby.
But Julia’s done enough damage by telling Charlie. She will say no more. She picks up her handbag from the side table. Barbara watches; she seems about to say something. Julia hesitates.
For a moment they stare at each other, silence building. Another language is being expressed here, Julia realises; deeper than words or body language or facial expressions. An ancient female language. She intuits layers to be unravelled; an immense vulnerability. And for the briefest moment Julia can really hear Barbara. Don’t hurt my boy.
She imagines a time in the future when Oscar is married, with kids of his own. A time when his happiness is dependent upon the kindness of a wife. How helpless will Julia feel then? What pain will she have to endure if her son is hurting at the hands of another woman, and she can do nothing to stop it?
Letting her heart soften, Julia smiles at Barbara. The last thing she wants to do is hurt Bryant. She tries to convey that message back to her motherin-law, a reassurance, but already the connection between them is dissolving.
So she says, aloud, ‘I won’t hurt him, Barbara.’ And smiling still, as a mark of her sincerity, she opens the front door and steps outside.
Behind her, before the front door closes, she hears the words, ‘Yes, you will.’
Tom
No matter how many times I swallow, my mouth remains dry and the inside of my head is as empty as the creek-bed behind the railway yards.
Bryant is
laughing through the blue smoke. ‘I told you this would make you feel better.’ He holds a loosely rolled cigarette between his fingers. I sit on my old mattress, my back slumped against the wall; Bryant is on the floor surrounded by the cushions from the couch. ‘Other cultures use this plant to expand consciousness,’ he says. ‘I thought it might be the key to unlocking your memory.’
‘I’m not sure I want it unlocked. I really just want to hear again.’
He crawls over and sits beside me. ‘Of course you do. And I want to help you. Perhaps we should do another regression. It seemed to work last time, didn’t it?’
‘I think so.’
‘Your third eye chakra is nearly open, Tom. A little bit more energy work and I reckon we’ll be able to fix those headaches completely.
Here, have some more.’
He passes me the cigarette and I suck on it cautiously, then cough. This cigarette is making me feel really weird.
‘The thing is, Tom, I feel a very strong connection to you. You must’ve felt the energy between us.’
A heavy pressed-down feeling has captured my arms and legs; I don’t think I could lift my limbs if my life depended on it. I attempt to wriggle the fingers on my right hand and, although they move a little, it takes a momentous effort.
‘There’s this theory, see, about soul mates,’ Bryant is saying. ‘How they always manage to find each other even if they are born on different sides of the planet, or are different ages or from different cultures. Or even …’ Here Bryant smiles. ‘The same sex. That’s right, Tom. Nothing stops them from being together.’
He leans towards me. ‘We were drawn together like magnets. Remember? You were getting pushed around in the mall by those two men. I came over and you gave me this look, like, I don’t know, like you were overjoyed to see me again.’
I close my eyes and the room does a revolution beneath me. When I open my eyes, Bryant’s face has moved closer still.
‘And when I saw the pain you were in; God, it went straight to my heart. I knew it was my destiny to heal you, Tom. I’ve never wanted to heal anyone so much in my life.’ He waits for me to speak, but I’m not sure my mouth will work.
He rests the cigarette on the window sill behind me and puts his arm around my shoulder. ‘Tom, have you ever wanted to join with someone so badly — so badly — that it hurts you here?’ He places his hand over his heart.
Now, that is a feeling I understand and I nod my head, remembering Julia’s beautiful face and the way she felt in my arms.
‘Oh, Tom,’ Bryant says, in a smiling rush. ‘I knew it. I just knew we were on the same page.’
‘I feel bad about it though.’
‘No.’ Bryant places his hand on my leg. ‘Never feel bad about those feelings, Tom. They are perfectly natural.’
‘I thought you might be angry.’
‘No, no, no. And no.’ He pats my leg in time with the words. ‘In fact, I’m overjoyed.’
‘Really? What about when she leaves you?’
His eyebrows do a funny thing then; they ascend, higher than I thought possible on a forehead. ‘What?’ he says.
‘When Julia leaves you,’ I explain.
‘And?’ He still seems baffled.
I take a breath. ‘And I thought you might be angry.’
‘What? Start from the beginning. What are you talking about?’
I’m starting to feel nervous about this now. Paranoid about the way he’s looking at me. ‘Well … Julia loves me,’ I say. For some stupid reason I figure that if I can deliver these words slowly enough, they will have less of an impact on him. ‘And I love Julia.’ I shrug my shoulders, feeling awkward. ‘And she’s going to leave you.’
‘What? No.’ The cigarette is forgotten behind him, smoke curling into his hair, like probing ghost fingers. ‘No, Tom. There’s no way you’re in love with my wife.’ Then he waves his hand around, dispersing the smoke, laughing at the absurdity of it.
‘I am deeply in love with her.’
His laugh is dying.
For all this man’s wise words about souls and energy, he can really be quite naïve sometimes. ‘Bryant, your wife is all colour and light and beauty. How could anyone not love her?’
A flicker of annoyance flares in his eyes, then is gone. He reaches over and smoothes a curl of hair away from my forehead and allows his hand to brush down the side of my cheek. ‘But you haven’t made love to her, have you? You just imagine it, right?’
There is a sharp edge to his voice this time, despite the smiling lips. My heartbeat quickens. I don’t like this Bryant. I prefer the yoga one. I make another attempt at swallowing. Can he see inside my mind, like Mother?
‘Tom?’ He traces the curve of my neck with his finger. A vein on the side of my neck is pulsing too fast. He lifts his eyebrows at me, waiting.
‘I …’
‘Go on.’
‘I kissed her.’
The muscles around his mouth tighten. ‘Really?’
‘I’m sorry.’
He swallows. ‘There’s no need to apologise, Tom,’ he says. ‘I’m fine.’ But his eyes aren’t involved in the smile anymore, and one corner of his mouth is trembling slightly.
‘I thought you wouldn’t care.’
‘You’re right.’ He turns his head away and looks intently at the back wall. ‘I don’t.’ But Bryant doesn’t realise how sad his shoulders look.
What a fool I am. To imagine he wouldn’t mind. I guess I just wanted Julia so badly I couldn’t think about anyone else’s feelings. I place my hand on his arm. ‘Forgive me, Bryant. I was stupid.’
He turns back to face me. He looks into my eyes for a long time, searching for something. I let him search. What’s he searching for? ‘You’re not stupid, Tom,’ he says, with an aching voice. ‘On the contrary, you’re magnificent.’ He smiles and smiles at me. I try to smile back, but my lips are poor liars and refuse to contradict the feelings of my heart.
‘You look exhausted, my dear boy,’ Bryant says, after a while, and he pats my back. ‘Why don’t you close your eyes? Lean against me. And I’ll help you relax.’
I close my eyes.
‘I bet no one understands you,’ Bryant says. ‘But I do. I know what it’s like to be out of the ordinary, to have your heart beat in a different rhythm from the rest of the world.’ One of his arms is firm around my shoulder. ‘Let go of all the tension, Tom, and think of something that makes you happy. Imagine yourself lying somewhere beautiful in nature. Relax.’
My mind is filled with an image of Julia. She is as real as my own skin. I imagine her beneath me and I breathe her in. My arms lift her away from the ground and press her close. I kiss her. There is a low moan in my ear; soft kisses on the side of my neck. I feel myself glowing from the image.
‘You’re the most beautiful man I’ve ever seen,’ she murmurs.
I hesitate. Her voice is too deep, too masculine.
I open my eyes and the world tumbles into bizarre clarity. Bryant’s lips are close to mine, and he has a look of longing on his pale face. His hand, on my thigh, is trembling.
Julia
She wanders through the mall, feeling faint and wobbly. Cicadas are the only creatures with energy and they buzz a cacophony in the heat. Further up the street, coming from the pub, she can hear the twang of a guitar, a tuneless female voice. Joe’s place is closed, although she spends a moment staring past her reflection to the huddled shape of the espresso machine with an ache in the pit of her stomach.
She feels transparent and in substantial. What does she think she’s doing? Wandering, drifting like this? Bryant could be anywhere.
Almost every shop has one of his brochures stuck in the window; his over-enthusiastic, slightly cross-eyed face grinning out from every angle. The shop fronts, the ones not boarded with metal shutters, have home-made bargain and sale stickers plastered across the glass. Some still have Christmas decorations up, dusty and faded; she suspects they stay there all year long.
Unexpectedly, she feels a rush of pity for these people, for their clumsy decorations, their gloomy mall with its vandalised street lights and sad supermarket, for the effort they’ve made without reward. Do the traders wonder how they will meet the rent repayments? Do they lie in bed worrying if they’ll get enough customers through their doors each week to cover overheads? Why in God’s name would they run a business here?
She sits on a bench and stares at her feet, considering what to do.
Her burnt hand is pulsating in rhythm with her heart. She has no idea where her husband is. With Summer no doubt. Probably making love. God, don’t think about that.
But it’s not Bryant she’s searching for, is it? Be truthful, Julia. It’s Tom. That constant ache inside. A fever tempered, but not extinguished. If only she’d never set eyes on him. She listens, straining for a hint of his song. Scared to hear it, yet disappointed beyond measure when the night yields only insect calls. What a joke her life has become. Married to a man who doesn’t love her (who probably never did). Lusting after a man who is like a time bomb about to go off. It’s pathetic. What can she do that she hasn’t done already? What would someone else in her situation do? After a while, she groans. It’s no use, her mind is numb.
The music from the pub swells into a raw crescendo, someone is screaming the lyrics to a Bon Jovi song. She listens for a moment, her muscles tensed with indecision. Then she gets to her feet.
The pub sits on the corner. It’s by far the oldest building in town and actually has some character, made of heavy bluestone with a squat veranda on three sides and strung with fairy lights. Metal tins filled with dirt sit on either side of the door and are studded with cigarette butts. Two women in tight jeans and even tighter T-shirts lean against each other, giggling about something. One of them has bare feet and dirty toenails. Both hold bottles of blue liquid. Julia feels as though she’s intruding, but the one with greyish red hair smiles and lifts her chin. ‘They’re feral in there tonight, love.’
The other one laughs. ‘Aren’t they always?’
The pub is a dark cave with a roof of grey smoke. There is a circular bar of brown wood dividing the room. She can see two pool tables against the back wall with men leant over them, concentrating, beer bottles like platoons of soldiers on every flat surface. Laminated tables and vinyl chairs surround the stage. The decor would be funky in Fitzroy, some place like that, but here it’s just old fashioned.
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