A Place for Sinners

by Aaron Dries

  Drowning. Drowning.

  Fingers touched her elbow. She turned and saw her brother, panting and afraid. He glared at her as though he didn’t know what to say or do. So he simply pulled her into a hug instead. Amity felt his pulse on her cheek.

  Isn’t this what’s supposed to happen?

  This final question wouldn’t be answered until the seven-year-old returned to school, as she watched the wave of parents coming to pick up the other students. There she would stand, the only one left on the hopscotch squares, head slightly tilted to one side. Not all the longing in the world would make her father walk through that gate, not all the longing in the world. This wasn’t what was supposed to happen. She was different now and always would be.

  Chapter Two

  Caleb

  1

  There were stories about Dean Collins in a number of the newspapers, and the same photograph from the social worker’s flash card wound up next to all of the articles. One by one, Janine scissored them into Memory Lane albums she kept in her closet, which was still full of her dead husband’s clothes.

  Photographs from Amity’s first communion were also within the albums. The faded yellow wash of the Polaroid didn’t do her daughter’s dress justice. So many people had commented on how beautiful she’d looked that day, with Janine nodding through their remarks, accustomed to hearing their thinly veiled pity.

  On another page: Caleb’s sports ribbons. Strips of cheap cotton in a spectrum of colors trapped under wax paper.

  There was another cutout, only the edges of the trim were not as neatly aligned as those of the other stories. This article looked as though it had been excised from the newspaper in a hurry, or in secret. The story was about Dean’s best friend, Clover, whom Janine never spoke to again. And it wasn’t as though she’d never had the opportunity. He’d approached her at Dean’s funeral, only to have her turn her back on him; he’d turned up drunk at their house in the middle of the night a week afterward. Janine had seen him through the parlor window, caught a whiff of his whiskey funk, and ignored his weeping. She’d almost called the police. Resisted. It was hard to articulate why she never wanted to see him again; the man had saved her daughter’s life, after all. Perhaps it boiled down to Dean’s relationship with the drunk, to her jealousy—that old, deep pain. But then again, maybe it was just because she didn’t much like black people.

  Clover hung himself from the rafters of his neighbor’s shed. No suicide note, no good-bye. All he left behind were a series of unfinished renovations and the few tattered blue tarps shielding them from the weather.

  Other photographs were tucked away in an old Quintero 25s Panetelas cedar cigar box, which had a rendering of a small island overlooked by a dawning sun on the lid. She had found it in the deposit bin at work and hadn’t even bothered putting it into the inventory. The moment Janine laid eyes on the delicately painted palm trees, those exaggerated and almost biblical rays of sunshine, she’d known it would be perfect for hiding ugliness. The photos themselves were fading, unlike the scars they depicted. Doctors at the hospital had taken them during Caleb’s stay, post-car crash. There had been no lasting damage to her son’s nasal cavity or upper palate; just the crooked nose remained.

  The cigar box collected dust in the bottom drawer of Janine’s tallboy. She had only opened it three times. Once to tuck away the photos; again to throw in Dean’s wedding and engagement rings; and another time to tuck away his weathered Sunday missal, which she found in the garage two summers after his death.

  Janine never tossed anything away. Not then, and not in any of the following years.

  Her small world was now crowded with trinkets, books and oddities, and it didn’t take long for the Collinses’ home to look like the back room of the thrift store she still worked in. Despite her children’s protests, she continued to bring home other people’s trash and make it her treasure.

  “Ma, one of these days we’re going to come home and find you buried under a collapsed pile of shit,” Caleb had said more than once. “It’s chaos in there.”

  “It’s not shit. And it’s certainly chaos,” she would reply. “It’s memories.”

  “Yeah, but Ma, only a portion of those memories are yours.”

  2

  The counselor’s office was crowded with messy papers and coffee cups. Motivational posters plastered the walls, screaming at Caleb to TRUST himself, to STOP WISHING AND START DOING. He both hated and loved coming to this cramped warren in Lismore’s seedy backstreets, which was a half-hour drive from where he lived, still with his family on Yarran Street.

  It was May 1, 2013. Caleb was twenty-six, and his father’s headstone had been lost among the tumbleweeds and dusty fake flowers of the Evans Head graveyard for thirteen years. This was the same number of years that he’d been seeing help, starting with psychiatrists, continuing with court assigned social workers, and now community counselors.

  “When Ma gets all distant, she might as well be in another country.” Caleb knotted his hands across the taut pull of his tattered blue jeans; he’d bought them at his mother’s thrift store because he couldn’t see the sense in dishing out a hundred bucks for a new pair. The way he was dressed in general, with his signature plaid shirts and the Converse Chucks bound together with gaffer tape, not to mention the designer stubble, all contributed to an air of ruggedness that was instantly undermined by the fragility in his voice.

  “Kids at school used to call me Monster Mash. And there was this one guy, Steve Grafton—who’s now got three kids and a wife with a drug problem, by the way. Steve. Man, what a piece of work. He’d press a finger to his nose and would bend it sideways like it was the funniest thing ever. Strange thing was that everyone laughed anyway.”

  “Did you ever confront him?” the counselor asked.

  “Confront him? I punched him square in the jaw!”

  A cloud of dust on the sports field. Two crying kids, one more beaten than the other.

  Caleb found a puppy on the way home from school that day. It was shivering and afraid, just like him, huddled in an alleyway near their house. It looked sick. He picked it up and cradled it. The puppy stuck out its pink tongue to lick his hand. It had only known him for two minutes and loved him already, leaving Caleb to wonder why people couldn’t do the same. Did the dog care that his nose was out of joint, that he didn’t fit in? No, it didn’t.

  He made it a bed out of cardboard boxes and lined it with some of his father’s old T-shirts. The dog would live in their garage, and as far as he was concerned, his mother never need know. He fed it water from a Tupperware container and tried to get it to eat a couple of leftover sausages, but with no luck.

  Amity kept her distance through it all. The little girl didn’t like dogs very much. Caleb couldn’t blame her.

  “Well, if you’re going to confront your mother, do us all a favor and don’t punch out her lights, okay?”

  “Dude, I so feel like doing it sometimes. Don’t worry; I’m all talk. But going to tell her about it tonight. It. Or maybe I’ll wait until tomorrow. She gets in these moods after work. Oh, bugger, I don’t know.”

  His counselor, Danny, looked tired—not bored. And to be honest, that was increasingly rare. Seasoned visitors to the Australian Mental Health system became very good at differentiating those who were good at their jobs from those who just didn’t care.

  Danny was different. There was nothing artificial about him, or controlled, plus he was relatively young, which helped. He was also kind of cute in his own nerdy way. But it was his deep, melancholy eyes that Caleb responded to the most, empathy without effort, leaving him to wonder if Danny was one of those counselors who entered the field because he’d once required the service of a counselor. Yeah, he’d met those kinds of people, too.

  “What do you think her reaction’s going to be?”

  “Oh, Jesus. She’s going to—damn, I don’t know. Crumble.” His voice faltered, but he straightened in his chair. Defiant. “It wouldn’t be
the first time, trust me. I don’t care. But the tickets are booked. We’re going.”

  “You really don’t care?”

  “Well, of course I do. I just say I don’t.” Rain pelted against the small window. “How can you sit in a room like this all the time, Danny? I’d go batshit crazy.”

  “You get used to it, and I don’t know if I’d want anything more, really. If I had a bigger window I’d only end up staring through it all the time. Not a good habit, you know. Focus.” He crossed his legs and laced his hands over one knee, an effeminate gesture.

  Caleb smiled. “Can I ask you something?”

  “Sure.”

  Caleb wanted to ask—despite his instincts being sharp and often correct—if his counselor was gay, too. Of course Danny knew about him, it was just that Disclosure Street, to his frustration, appeared to be a one-way road. Not that Caleb was interested, and it certainly didn’t bother him, but he couldn’t help but imagine that some of the other clients he passed in the hallways might find it uncomfortable, to say the least.

  “Do you ever just want to cut and run?”

  Danny smiled, semi-coy. “Not anymore. I’m a getting a little long in the tooth to start over again.”

  “Again?”

  “We reinvent ourselves all the time. It’s just that sometimes we make a decision to. It’s a necessary evil. It’s not running away, if that’s what you mean, or are afraid of.”

  Lightning flashed so close the community center shook.

  “Christ, that landed right outside,” Danny said, and then returned his attention to his client. “You’re not going away for forever. Your ma will survive.”

  He bent down to kiss the dog goodnight. It looked up at him with wide, shaking eyes. It didn’t understand anything, and for that Caleb envied it. The next morning, he woke and tiptoed into the garage with a saucer of milk. The dog was dead.

  “And you better get used to this rain, Caleb.”

  “Why’s that?”

  “Thailand would be coming close to its wet season, right? At least I think so.”

  “You’ve been there? Awesome. When’d you go?”

  “God, a long time ago. Just after high school. I haven’t traveled since. I find it very easy to admire those who do. Bottom line: color me green.”

  “Come with us, Danny! You, me and Amity, dancing in some sweaty bar, fighting off the lady boys and drinking Red Bull and vodka from a novelty-size bucket.”

  “Watching me dance is like watching one of those wacky, inflatable guys you see on those car dealership ads. It isn’t pretty, trust me.”

  “Ah, don’t worry about it. Being yourself means never having to be pretty,” he said. Exhale. A short laugh. A beat of silence. “Tell me things are going to be okay with Ma. She wigs out easy, and when she does, she’s like that crazy chick in Misery.”

  “Caleb, if I had a crystal ball I’d sit here and predict your future. And I’d charge you through the nose for it, too. But I don’t, mate. Sorry, it just doesn’t work that way. All I can do is look you in the eye and recommend that you be honest with her. That, and dump any sledgehammers you’ve got lying around. Pronto.”

  “Ha. You want to talk about honesty. Well, honestly, this is all a case of now or never. The timing is perfect. Amity and I are both single, so we’re not leaving anyone behind. She’s a graphic designer who works from home, plus she’s managed to save up some funds; and my bosses have traveled in the past, so they totally understand and are flexible; they get that this is something we need to do. And that’s such a blessing. Ha, and to think I ever doubted working at their Lismore practice.”

  “So how is work going at the moment?”

  “It’s good, but physiotherapy kind of plateaus out, you know.”

  “I’m sure it’s a case of the people you work with keeping things interesting.”

  “Oh, for sure. And you know, they’re good to me, which is a first. And even better, my job is secure. See, that’s what I mean! Both Amity and me, the stars have aligned, but that won’t always be the case. Gee, it makes me feel all butterflies-in-the-stomachish.”

  “Caleb, if I only had a mirror right now I could show you your face, and you’d know, beyond a doubt, that you’re making the right decision.”

  “Thanks, mate. Mirrors, crystal balls, you got nothing, mate. Budget cuts, hey? But you’re right. I know you are. What’s the saying? The world is my oyster!”

  “So don’t be surprised if it makes you gag once in a while.”

  “True! Well, it doesn’t have to be easy; it just has to happen. And what’s the alternative? Staying in Evans Head forever? Not bloody likely, thanks. I really can’t express how much I hate that place. Even the mention of our names gets all the old biddies chatting. ‘Don’t you go wandering, or you’ll end up like poor Amity Collins.’ ‘Don’t drive when you know you shouldn’t, or you’ll end up like crooked-nosed Caleb.’ It’s awful. Oh, you wouldn’t really get it—”

  “I do, trust me. Some people are just too big for small towns. They don’t understand that you and your sister didn’t ask for your histories. So let them gossip among themselves, and feel safe in knowing that they live lives that are about as big as that damn town. Okay? Just don’t snap and king-hit them like you did Steve Grafton. Biddies break easy.”

  Cool blue shadows ran the length of Caleb’s face, over the crescent curve of his nose. “I think I’ll miss our talks.”

  “You can always come back. That’s the good thing about choices: you can always make the right one.”

  “I don’t know if I will, Danny. There are very few people, besides Amity, that I really trust, and you’re one of the…select few. And that’s great! It’s awesome having someone to talk to, but I, I, really don’t like how, well, dependent I’ve become on it.”

  His counselor stilled. Nodded.

  “Danny, you don’t need a mirror to show me that I’m doing the right thing.”

  “So say it.”

  Caleb took another deep breath and his smile faded, revealing the serrated edge of emotion beneath. “We’re going away, Amity and me. We’re going to go away for six months, all through Southeast Asia, starting in Thailand. Our tickets are booked. You can’t change our minds.”

  “Good,” Danny said, punctuating the word by slamming down his coffee mug. He crossed the room in three strides and opened the door. “Now go tell your mother that.”

  3

  Moths beat at the window, hungry for light and desperate to escape the rain. The electronic clock beside Amity’s bed splashed a soft, red 10:48 p.m. across her face. She sighed, rolled onto her side and stared at a crack in the wall.

  The day had been hot and the roads steamed when the rain arrived, forming an eerie mist that stunk of wet earth and ozone. As it crept in through her bedroom window and into her lungs, it unlocked memories hidden inside with shapeless fingers.

  The echo of a gunshot. A hurt that never healed.

  She traced the crack with a fingertip as lightning flashed, throwing enormous, writhing moth shadows over the wall, over the calendar on its hook. Landmark dates branded with crosses: a dentist appointment, the last of her pretravel vaccinations. She didn’t bother marking down her twentieth birthday; it was still two calendar pages away. After all, there would be no big party this year, not in Australia anyway. Amity dropped her hand and studied her fingernails, each of which were painted a different color, as though in an attempt to express a facet of her personality she couldn’t enunciate with her voice.

  Fights were the hardest conversations to understand. Hand signs lost in waves of emotion, forcing her to have to lip-read, which she was good at—within reason.

  Mouths opening and closing, cracked lips pulling back to cry as hand-signals floundered in the air and died.

  Uu. Annt. Eee. Mee. These were the syllables she’d caught. “You can’t leave me.”

  These silent words cut through her. Guilt for blood.

  Eeee.

  “Please.�
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  Amity and Caleb’s conversation with their mother about their upcoming travel plans had not gone well, culminating in Janine’s storming from the kitchen. They hadn’t really expected otherwise, just hoped. Caleb had reached across the table and taken his sister’s hand. A little “stay strong” squeeze. And Amity had needed the reassurance as she stood and stalked down the hallway into her mother’s room, the labyrinth of junk. The stench of old newspapers and musty boxes clawed at her sinuses, sending her into a sneezing fit she couldn’t hold in.

  There were old dolls with missing eyes and beaten-in faces. A mounted deer’s head lay sideways across a harpsichord that no longer worked. Hundreds of books piled high in crooked towers. Records. Odd shoes. Paintings, all of which looked as though drawn from the same sun-bleached palette. It all didn’t just make Amity angry; no, it went so much further than that. It depressed her.

  The four-post bed sat in the middle of the room. It was rare that Amity ever saw it made, and that night had been no exception. Her mother sat there, surrounded by tissues, the Memory Lane volumes on the knotted blankets beside her. Rosary in hand.

  It took five minutes for her mother to soften; only then did the book close. The stalemate was over.

  Sitting there, saying nothing, Amity was reminded of the first few signs she’d been taught in those Auslan lessons they had taken as a family.

  Left hand palm up, as though receiving Eucharist. The fingers of the right hand touching slightly. Thrust forward.

  This was the sign for “help”.

  Palms up. Thumb to fingers pinched together. The knuckles of each hand just touching. And then let them go and drop.