Summer Cannibals

by Melanie Hobson

  The truth, of course, was somewhat different. That night, they’d surprised him too—and when put against what he was outside for, their infraction didn’t merit punishment. Didn’t even warrant consideration. Because upstairs, where he’d left her, his wife—for the first time in many years—was silent. He had made her so, the fact of it laced across his knuckles and the flats of his hands and even his elbows. He didn’t know why his elbows were bruised, one of them scraped and bleeding, and even sitting alone under that dark sky, he couldn’t work it out.

  Jax stretched out on one of the chaise longues in the sun to dry off. The approaching meet up with that old boyfriend had been unplanned—just a coincidence that he should email her out of the blue concerning the very same weekend she’d be back in town. He lived in another country now too, and was back just for a week. How could there be anything illicit about that? And sure as shit, she’d thought, I’ll need a break from all this. This being the house, the family and whatever histrionics her little sister was going to unleash.

  She flexed her toes and crossed both arms over her chest, stretching them, her muscles sore from paddling the day before. Because her last-minute trip to Canada was not a reason, her husband had announced, for all of them to suffer. He’d insisted they stick with their plan for a family paddle in the Gulf of Mexico before dropping her at the airport to make her flight. She couldn’t say no, because he’d dangled her sudden trip home as a sort of bargaining chip. If you get that, then I get this.

  They were a perfect family. Good looking and symmetrical—their children like golden twins, a boy and a girl, exactly two years apart to the day. They were all-American: healthy, home-packed lunches, PTA membership, field trips for enrichment, team sports and a musical instrument. They were the family everyone looked to; the benchmark for how to make it work. Never mind that sometimes the dishes went unwashed until there was nothing left to put a sandwich on. That the same happened with the laundry, with the tables and the couches, with the bedroom floors. That they would find themselves, sometimes, waking to a house so filled with detritus that they would have to spend weeks sorting through it, closing their doors to visitors lest anyone find them out. And all of it Jax’s fault because, as well as her job (which was barely even that—a few hours downtown in the library’s public relations office), she volunteered in community theatre writing plays that, if they were staged, sent the house and everything in it to hell. Her husband, the source of their steady income—a high school biology teacher—treated it as an experiment. Stood back, observed, and did nothing to help. The conclusion was always the same, the half-life of domestic harmony being constant, and still he did nothing to intervene, as if the natural processes at work were paramount. From the outside, they were the family, and the couple, that you dreamt of being: solid and happy and overflowing with love. From the inside, they often were barely standing.

  She’d felt her anger start as the storm rolled in, out at sea. They’d slipped their kayaks under the mangroves to the flooded clearing at the islet’s centre because it was calm in there and protected. The sandy bottom was clouded with stingrays like captives in a touch-tank.

  What is this place? the kids said. Let’s name it!

  They named everything. The places their kayaks touched weren’t named on maps because they were sandbars that shifted, oyster reefs that grew and fell away, islands that were so barren no one had ever thought they deserved a spot on a map except as a numbered hazard to steer around, and so they named these places for themselves: Drift Dive Point where the current was so strong they could jump in and ride it with the fish, Turtle Island where their son had found the dead sea turtle washed up. Lizard Lagoon, Collision Channel, Crab Cove …

  Mangrove Millpond? Jax said.

  But the children were already shouting out their own names.

  Stingray Sea. Stingray Shuffle. No. Stingray Council. Let’s call it Stingray Council. It’s where they meet and decide things like where to hide. Yeah. And how to ambush us, the kids shouted, feet trailing over the side, their hair flaxen coronas, giggling as the rays’ pectorals tickled their skin. Afraid of nothing.

  Stingray Council, Jax said, bringing her kayak around. Perfect. Daddy, mark it down.

  The Gulf had started heaving when they were three miles out. They’d seen the clouds gathering before they launched but had gone out anyway because more often than not summer storms in Florida pass quickly. Not a reason to cancel the day, their last chance to paddle mid-week before school started.

  Maybe we should just stay here? Wait it out, she’d said, hooking her hand around a mangrove root to steady her boat.

  No, it’s fine, her husband replied, reaching for his bag of trail mix, nonchalant, his life jacket undone, his skin bare as if the sun and a sunburn would be fine too.

  And a melanoma? she’d wanted to shout. I suppose that would be fine as well.

  Her anger was sudden, violent, surprising. But coherent. She wanted to punish him. To ruin his moment, to make him sit up and put his back into it like their little boy had done out there in the waves, to be the man he wasn’t, to reward nothing about him until he understood once and for all how it was for her. How easy he had it. How much she’d given him so that he could sit there, unconcerned and confident, the world lying down for him.

  With a powerful sweep of her paddle, she’d spun her boat and surged toward the opening and out to sea, leaving him behind.

  You’ll have to help me, she shouted to her son in the bow seat, grabbing the mangroves to leverage the boat out, the incoming tide trying to keep them in. Hard left, hard left! she yelled as the front of the kayak exited the tunnel. But it was the sea in the end, with a blow, that knocked them toward land. Her husband’s boat had come alongside them, closing the gap so there was no water to put her blade into, and she saw him flick his eyes at his biceps as if being strong, being able to propel the boat easily by himself, was the point. As if those muscles, bigger than hers, were something he’d invented rather than something ordained at conception.

  It seemed grotesque and repulsive to be this way and she hated him even more for it. With a single stroke her husband’s kayak had knifed free of them, straight into the waves, two boat-lengths away already, and they battled on separately, their boats diverging as he arrowed straight for the jutting mainland and the cover of land. Jax had to let the waves and the incoming tide help her press on over the open water, trusting the Gulf to carry her and their son to land.

  When she finally reached shore she knew that she’d beaten him. Behind her, just rounding the point and following the shoreline, was her husband’s kayak with their daughter huddled up front. She would be cold, no fat on her, lips blue and skin mottled and a foul temper to match, but first this—Jax’s obscene glory at having beaten him. For once, having shown him what she could do.

  It was when the boats were loaded and they were in the car and ready to leave for the airport, the kids changed and dry and in the back seat reading their books, that her husband started things up again.

  I should probably get changed too, he’d said. As if he’d just thought of it, with his hand at the ignition. Do I have anything dry to change into? he asked her. Innocent. Of everything.

  Jax imagined taking the driftwood at her feet and pushing it into his face. It was sharp enough, and she had the rage to drive it home. She imagined a foot at his throat. She imagined his hands pinned to the steering wheel. She imagined her children continuing to read.

  10

  Georgina looked down at her sister lying in the sunshine and thought how lucky she was, that she still looked as fit as when they were teenagers. Even given all the booze and drugs she’d taken, and the two babies—both of whom she’d breastfed for years. Jax: always so fucking perfect, and always sure to let you know. Georgina lowered the blind because there’d be more than enough of that in the coming days. More Jax, and how she was better than all of them. She turned back to look at Pippa, still crashed out on the bed, and noted the ba
ckpack dropped on the floor and so empty it was pushed halfway under the bed without even scraping the box spring. Evidently she wasn’t here to stay. What had their mother even meant? Nothing about this seemed planned out at all.

  Margaret was in the kitchen, complaining to herself about how hot it was and making another attempt at a list for the grocery store because Georgina had let her down by not getting everything she needed. Where was the bag of flour? Or the currants? Where were the tins of tuna fish in olive oil or the saltines? Where, in fact, was that eldest daughter?

  She put the kettle on. It was the third time she’d set it to boil without using the water for anything. She opened the cupboard where they kept the cereals as if she might, for the first time in her life in that house, pour a bowl of cornflakes to eat. She was like an automaton, her pattern of movements along pre-set vectors, and when Georgina came in it was to find her mother motionless, smoke swirling from her right hand—a brief pause before starting again: list, kettle, cereal, list, kettle …

  Pippa’s sleeping, Georgina told her, getting past her mother to the other side of the room near the back door, leaning up against the bench.

  Well, Margaret answered, you saw yourself what she was like.

  And Jax is sunbathing, Georgina said, looking over at the windows fronting the pool. Guess there’s not enough sun where she lives.

  She’s always loved that pool. Go and see if she wants tea, Georgie.

  Margaret’s tone softening at the thought of all her children in the house again.

  And take her a towel. That little girl is always forgetting her towel.

  They had their tea out on the porch, the three of them, Margaret listening as Jax talked about what she thought was wrong with Philippa, discussing the toll the pregnancy had taken, reminding them both that her own pregnancies had been so hard that after the second one she’d sworn off them forever. And Pip’s had five, Jax said. Georgina sat there thinking what bullshit that was, but not saying anything because it would just give her sister the opening to gloat that having a mere one baby didn’t qualify you to speak about pregnancy.

  Being here will help, Georgina offered up instead. Knowing that was what their mother believed—and their mother smiled, seizing on it.

  Yes, she said. Time in your own bed always helps, don’t you think? It’s important for us to keep things as normal as possible.

  So I should steal some of George’s clothes? Jax grinned. Or Pip’s jewellery?

  Just being a family.

  Georgina swirled what was left of her tea.

  Not sure how Dad’s tour fits in with that.

  Is that why he asked me to help him in the garden today? Is there a tour group coming?

  Tomorrow, Margaret said. Apparently. She flicked her ash over the porch railing. I’ve told him to cancel it.

  The two sisters said nothing, because this was the natural ebb and flow of that household. They knew that once the rancour reached the point it could no longer be contained by a veneer of civility, it would explode and take their parents on that familiar track of violence to acceptance that their marriage was built on—and which they both seemed to need, because the blow-ups always signalled a return to tenderness. A honeymoon that might last for a year.

  David put Jax to work, as he’d said he would, pulling weeds in the topiary garden. It was adjacent to the terrace where the refreshments would be served and so it was imperative it look perfect, nothing out of place. When the people stood with their cold drinks and canapés, trying to imagine all of this belonging to them, David wanted them to realize they’d never have a chance because absolute beauty such as this was earned, not bestowed—and there was no one who worked harder at that than he.

  She’ll come around, he’d said when Jax mentioned his wife being unhappy about the tour. She always does. That’s her singular talent, isn’t it?

  He’d smiled, looking at this daughter who was the closest he had to a son, her forthright confidence what he associated with boys. In truth, he loved all his girls—but this one perhaps more.

  Do you remember, Jax asked him then as he stooped to pull a weed to show her what she should remove. That time you caught us sneaking back in? Me and Pip? We’d been out all night, she said. She could tell he didn’t know what she was talking about, was still bristling with all the unfinished jobs he had to do, his mind focused on the present. On the dandelion in his hand, on setting her up to work effectively.

  You never got us in trouble, she said, her tone a mix of admiration and astonishment.

  Children, he responded, have one fatal flaw. They believe they are the centre of the universe when in fact, if they exist at all, it’s somewhere at the outer limits.

  Easier just to let us go, eh?

  David shrugged. You always were hard to crack. There was most likely something more pressing I was dealing with.

  At four in the morning?

  David put the weed in his pocket and slapped both hands against his legs. No harm in a bit of fun, he said, as if he might throw her to the ground and wrestle her. As if they were mates, and he understood, and he was envious. Wishing that night had been his.

  And Jax grinned, because here was the father she loved. The man she would always defend because he laced his punishments for her transgressions with the sense that he knew full well why she’d done what she’d done—and he didn’t really disapprove. He encouraged it.

  Before long, Georgina was out there too, summoned from the house where she’d been lying on her bed in the same clothes she’d arrived in the day before. Taking a moment for herself because she already knew how this day was shaping up and that it would continue to gather confusion until it was a Tower of Babel leaning into its own destruction.

  Edging, her father said, leading her to the parterre and instructing her to chisel every rounded inch of it until it was scribed perfectly into the soil.

  Like an architect’s final plan, he said, handing her the edging tool.

  Or a yantra, she replied. Knowing the comparison was well outside his Western frame of reference and thrilling, like a child again, at the momentary pause of his incomprehension before he nodded impatiently.

  Yes. That’s right, a yantra. Sweeping one arm at the scope of the work ahead of her before marching off to another part of the garden, out of sight.

  And collect the turf, he called back. Toss it over.

  Like all the sisters, Georgina was familiar with the various gardening tools and how to use them, having spent many paid and unpaid hours working these grounds. And she knew that the rhythmic plunge-tilt-leverage of edging was less taxing than a lot of other jobs her father could have given her—like the weeding he’d stuck her sister with—and as long as she stayed focused and kept the garden’s shape, didn’t wobble, here was another chance to rest. To think about things, clear her mind, to just let the hypnotic repetition of the movements at the border of this impossibly beautiful grouping of flowers ease her tension. Because she had something to work out, if only she could let it come to the surface. Some problem of her own, she suspected, even if she couldn’t name it. But it was there, like a blister forming.

  Georgina toiled until there was enough sod cut for her to stoop and bundle it up, a shedding crumbling dirty armful pressed to her chest, the smell of it strangely appealing because her hunger for something like this, for something tangible, was keen. When was the last time she’d handled anything real? The flowers had been a start, but her mother had ruined that. Here, her father was giving her another chance.

  Margaret, standing in one of the living room windows, watched Georgina as she walked around the terrace, past the topiary, and out of sight to the cliff, where Margaret knew she’d throw the sod over the fence. Where they threw everything they didn’t need anymore. She turned her attention to the clipped hedges where her other daughter was, her body appearing every so often to stand up and stretch. That one’s approach never as diligent as Georgie’s. And Margaret found herself filled then with such a
sudden love for these imperfect girls that when Georgina reappeared and stopped a moment to talk with Jax, Margaret went to the terrace door to call them in so that she could wrap them, like babies, in her arms and smother them. But by the time she’d fiddled with the key and turned it in the lock, they were gone: Jax to the weeds, and Georgina out front with one knee cocked above the foot plate of the edging tool, back at work.

  Darling, Margaret called out from the terrace, fluttering her hand at Georgina. Wanting to draw her back. Knowing that Jax, at the sound of her mother’s voice, would have sunk even lower to the ground to hide. That Georgina would be more likely to come.

  I need help, Margaret explained. Something I can’t do by myself, Georgie.

  But it was not just a single task she had in mind, it was a whole long inexhaustible made-up list of them to keep Georgina out of the garden until David noticed that she’d abandoned her post and defected back to the house. His wife, resisting him.

  Georgina! he’d yell from the doorstep, into the house, pulling her back outside. I need you out here.

  And so the afternoon went. Even Jax, who was so practised at evasion, was included in her parents’ tug-of-war between house and grounds, a string of half-finished jobs she and Georgina kept being brought back to and told to complete. And rather than voice their mounting frustration they turned it on the chores, attacking them with an intensity that took even their parents by surprise. Making them wonder, for an instant, who these women were … before immediately relegating them to childhood again. Unruly wayward girls who needed marshalling. And, perhaps even more than that, batons to be passed and sometimes dropped.