Pulse Points

by Jennifer Down

  The spare key’s been moved from under the mat at home. Lally whispers, Knock, Sam, and I say, Fuckoff will you, Lally. We go around the back and I try to do the security door quietly. But inside the washing machine’s banging against the wall, and there’s a smell I can’t work out, like cooking. I realise I never checked if there was a weird car out the front. I get the maggoty feeling inside me. Lally’s starfish hand grabs a fistful of my T-shirt. We move towards the kitchen like we’re chained together.

  I don’t recognise Nan at first. It’s been a long time since I’ve seen her. She’s wearing shorts. Her legs are like two brown sticks, speckled and skinny.

  ‘I thought you two had run away,’ she says, and holds out her arms for a hug. I want to ask what she’s doing here but I don’t in case that’s rude. Lally’s eyes are moving from me to Nan. Finally she says, ‘Where’s Mum?’

  ‘She’s in bed. I thought we’d have some lunch, then we’ll go and get some shopping done. Then we’re going to pack. You two are coming with me for a bit. Come up and visit Granddad.’

  ‘Do we have to go?’ Lally asks.

  ‘Yes,’ Nan says. ‘But it’s gunna be a good time. We’ll make an adventure.’

  The next morning she wakes us so early the birds aren’t even up. Lally’s dead weight. Nan has to tug her arms into her windcheater, shove her feet into her sneakers. There’s all dust and hair and grot in the Velcro straps and it makes my tummy swim. We kiss Mum goodbye. She’s even sleepier than Lal, but she stands in the doorway to wave us off, pulling her dressing-gown cord tight. Her teeth are chattering so loud I can hear them.

  In the car Lally falls asleep again straight away, mouth open. Puffer fish. Once in a while a snore catches in her throat, and Nan and I do little smiles at each other. Then I fall asleep, too. When I wake up there’s a bit of dribble crusted at the corner of my mouth and I hope Nan hasn’t seen. It’s just getting day. There are light streaks in the sky. The clock says 6.46. We pull into a McDonald’s. Lally wakes up when the car stops, says, Where are we. Nan says, I’ll show you. Inside we get a whole serve of pancakes each. I finish Lally’s and then we pretend the empty white containers are UFOs. Nan spreads out a map on the table.

  ‘We’ll see how we go today,’ she says. ‘Maybe we’ll get to Dubbo. Maybe Coonabarabran.’ We’re going all the way to Toowoomba. Her fingernails are the colour of clam shells.

  ‘Where are we now?’

  ‘Shepparton. See, near the border of New South Wales.’

  We’ve never been out of Victoria. I can tell Lally doesn’t get it. There are lots of things I know and she doesn’t, since I’m four years older.

  The car trip takes forever. I move to the backseat. Me and Lally play that game where you make up a story by saying a word each at a time.

  ‘Once.’

  ‘There.’

  ‘Was.’

  ‘A.’

  ‘Ugly.’

  ‘Very.’

  ‘Lally, that doesn’t make sense.’

  ‘It does if you say little next. Once there was a ugly, very little…’

  She starts cackling again.

  ‘You’ll lay an egg,’ Nan says.

  When the stories get too rude, we lower our voices until we’re whispering, and then we’re not even joining our words to make a story anymore, just saying the worst ones we can think of. Pissbuggerbumshitdickarseweebastardfuck. I know the real worst word, but I don’t say it. That’s another thing Lally doesn’t know.

  We drive all day. I’ve never been in a car for this long. I reckon even Nan’s got the wriggles, because she starts saying, Not much longer. I sleep. When I wake up we’re pulling into a car park in front of a giant satellite dish. Lally’s sitting with her face pressed to the window.

  ‘What is it?’ she asks. ‘Sam? Is that a spaceship?’

  ‘It’s a satellite,’ I say, even though I’ve never seen one that huge so I might be wrong.

  ‘It’s a radio telescope,’ Nan says. ‘When they first walked on the moon, we all watched it on telly. And this station was the one with the signal that went out to the whole world. Even America.’

  The place is empty. There’s a visitors centre with a café, plastic chairs and striped umbrellas, but it’s all packed up for the day. Out the front are two smaller satellite dishes, both white, facing each other. They’re far apart, maybe the length of the school oval.

  ‘If you go and stand in front of one, Sam,’ Nan says, ‘and Lally, you stand in front of the other, and you whisper into the middle of the dish, you’ll be able to hear each other.’

  I don’t believe her, and I can tell Lally doesn’t, either. Nan just smiles. ‘True,’ she says. ‘Gotta whisper, though.’

  Lally looks from me to Nan, then trots off. I head for the other dish, feeling dumb. I lean in close.

  ‘Hi, Sam,’ I hear her say.

  ‘Hi,’ I whisper back.

  ‘I can hear you,’ she says. It sounds like she’s right in my ear. I turn around to look. She’s standing in her purple tracksuit facing the other dish. Her hands are cupped like she’s telling it a secret.

  ‘Can you hear me, Sam?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Do you think Mum’s sad because we left her?’

  ‘No, Lal.’

  ‘When do you think we’ll go home?’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘Do you think she knows where we are?’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘Do you think she misses us?’

  ‘Yes.’

  I glance over my shoulder. Nan’s waiting with her arms crossed, but in a nice way, like we’ve got time.

  We keep driving to Dubbo. It’s dark when we get there. We’ve been in the car the whole day. I ask if we’re gunna sleep in the car and Nan says no. We drive around some more looking for a motel. There’s no room at the first two. ‘Like the story of the baby Jesus,’ Lally says, and Nan laughs. ‘You’ll lay an egg,’ Lally dares, and I tell her not to be cheeky but Nan just keeps laughing until she’s wheezing. We find a motel. There’s a paper strip across the toilet seat. I crack Lally up by pretending it’s a present wrapped up for me. We go for tea at a Chinese restaurant with thick red carpet. Walking back to the motel we stop at a payphone so Nan can call Granddad. Lally’s pretending to smoke again, cloudy breath. I’m hopping from foot to foot. Nan doesn’t seem to feel the cold at all. The orange phone booth light hangs over her.

  In the dark, later, Lally says my name. ‘Do you think we could make them dishes?’ she asks. For a second I think she’s talking about the beef and black bean we had for tea.

  ‘What are you talking about, you whacker?’

  ‘The whispering satellites.’

  ‘Go to sleep, Lal, chrissake.’

  ‘If we could make that in our house,’ she says, ‘we could talk without Mum being angry.’

  When it’s Easter I’m twelve and Lally’s eight, and we’ve been in Toowoomba for almost a year. Lally pissed the bed every night for three weeks, but Nan never got angry once. I think I’m meant to remember Mum’s face but it’s sort of swirly in my head. We got used to here fast. We got used to Granddad, with his menthols and radio and pill pack that the pharmacy girl drops in every week. His funny sayings like colder than a frog’s fart. He teased Nan about believing in baby Jesus until Lally announced she believes in baby Jesus, too. He took us to the pet shop in town and bought us a guinea pig. We did a vote and named him Harry. Granddad loves shows and stories about mysteries, but not the sort police detectives can solve. His favourite mystery is about two guys who died on a hill in a jungle in Brazil. No one knew how they died but they were found wearing raincoats and eye masks, like what rich ladies wear to bed in the movies, only made out of lead. One of them also had a note that read: 16.30 be at the determined place. 18.30 swallow capsules, after effect protect metals wait for mask signal. That’s the part that really gets Granddad going.

  It’s April when the phone calls begin. Mum starts wantin
g to speak to me and Lally. It feels sad, like she’s left out, so I try to make it sound like things are boring. It’s sort of true, but I like it. The weeks have a regular heartbeat. Tuesdays we go to the RSL because it’s eight-dollar seniors’ meals, then Nan plays the pokies. Thursday’s pension day, which is groceries then fish and chips. Friday’s swimming practice.

  Lally and I are playing Power Rangers in the backyard. It’s her favourite game but I hardly ever play it with her because I’m embarrassed. Granddad says, Mum’s on the phone and we ignore him for a bit but then we go in. Straightaway Mum’s voice sounds different, like she’s swallowed some colour. She asks heaps of questions. It reminds me of when she was in love with Gary and she laughed all the time. She says, How about if I come up to visit. Nan and Granddad are smiling at me and Lally’s going, What, what Sam, what’s she saying. I don’t know why, but my guts go sicky. I talk a bit more, then I push the phone at Lally. I lock myself in the old outdoor toilet. Bad watery shit comes out of me and I know it’s because I’m guilty about not wanting Mum to come.

  After tea Nan and Granddad tell us we can play in the backyard a bit longer, but Lally and I squat on the bricks under the kitchen window so we can hear them talking inside. It smells like rain even though a storm hasn’t come yet. Nan and Granddad are talking back and forth, but not in a way of arguing. They keep saying She and I can’t work out if they mean Mum or Lally or someone else. They keep saying Custardy. The crickets are so loud it’s hard to hear much else.

  ‘What’s custardy,’ I say, even though it’s not like Lally would know. But she puts a finger to her lips.

  ‘It’s who owns the kids,’ she whispers.

  ‘How do you know that?’

  She shrugs. It pisses me off, the way she knows something I don’t, the bored way she explains it. I’m suddenly so mad that my body can’t hold it in. I reach out and shove Lally hard. She flies backwards and lands on her bum on the bricks. Her head hits the corner of the card table. She scrunches her eyes closed. I wait for her to cry, but she doesn’t make a noise. The floodlight flicks on and Granddad’s in the doorway.

  ‘Come on, it’s dark. Jump in the bath, Lal.’

  She trails inside after him. Doesn’t look back.

  We walk home from school trying to solve the mystery of the lead mask men. Lally reckons the masks were like sleeping masks, only magic, and instead of putting the men to sleep, they sent their souls somewhere else, like heaven maybe, except their bodies got left behind. We’re crossing under the rail bridge, almost at the big park on O’Quinn Street, about to cut across the grass when I feel a tap on my shoulder. Tegan Foster’s standing there with her little sister, who’s younger than Lally. She says Hey and I say Hey back even though I just saw her at school. Her bag hook’s near mine.

  ‘What are you guys talking about?’ she asks. Lally starts telling her the whole story. Sometimes I have to interrupt because she leaves out important bits. I feel dumb, though, and when Tegan looks at me it feels like my face is shrinking. She’s standing with her hand on her hip. I wait for her to laugh, but she just says, Maybe they were time travellers, and the pills sent them—she waves her hand. The four of us stand there. Tegan’s sister says, Are we going? and Tegan says, You guys go and play on the playground. Lally looks dubiously at the patch of tanbark, but the two of them take off running, schoolbags jumping up and down on their shoulders.

  Tegan says, C’mere, and starts walking back towards school, towards the low rail bridge. I’m following her brown ponytail, blue scrunchie, past the beams painted red and white stripes, past the sign that says LOW CLEARANCE 2.6M, through the broken bit of the wire fence, up the muddy rise over the stones and pieces of glass and dirt until we’re right underneath the train tracks. We both have to crouch. I can feel the sweat pricking the behinds of my knees. Then she kisses me. It’s sort of a surprise but sort of not. Her mouth is warm and I hope I’m doing it right. I keep my eyes closed so I can concentrate. She says, Open your teeth, dummy, and I unclench my mouth a bit, and her tongue goes in. I’m holding both Tegan’s hands. I don’t remember grabbing them. It feels like an earthquake’s coming, but then I realise it’s only a train going over us. We stop kissing to listen. This close, it sounds like the end of the world. Suddenly Lally’s standing down below, near the hole in the fence.

  ‘That playground’s shit,’ she says. Tegan laughs and drops my hands. She says, ‘Where’s Jadie?’ We crab-crawl back down the slope and walk back towards the park. Tegan’s sister is waiting by the dunny block with its painted mural. After that, Tegan and I hold hands sometimes at school when we line up for assembly. Some days after school we go to sit in the concrete pipes to kiss. Lally knows she’s not invited.

  We have a working bee to get ready for Mum. Granddad shows me how to mow the lawn. We’re out the front doing the edges when Nan starts yelling. We both run, but I’m fastest, and when I get to the backyard I see her holding Lally by the shoulders and she’s screaming, What have you done, what have you done. She’s shaking Lally so hard that Lal’s head is bobbing on the stalk of her neck. I look to see if Lally’s peed but she hasn’t. Nan’s the one who’s upset. Lal just looks bored.

  ‘Stop, Shirl. What happened?’ Granddad says. And that’s when I see Harry the guinea pig in the fresh-cut grass by Lally’s feet. Dead.

  Nan lets go Lally’s shoulders. ‘She had it like this’—she’s speaking to Granddad, holding her hands like there’s a sandwich in them—‘and she squeezed it till it died. She looked right at me.’ Her voice is high and rattly. Lally bursts into tears. They’re terrible sobs that come up out of her legs.

  ‘All right,’ Granddad says. ‘I’m sure it was an accident. It’s all right.’

  In that second I see Nan decide it was an accident, too. She takes Lally into her arms. Later Granddad and I put Harry in a tissue box and bury him under the hibiscus.

  School breaks up on Friday. On Saturday Mum arrives and says she’s taking us back to Melbourne.

  2016

  The day Sam was discharged, we waited all morning for the specialist to come in, then the surgeon, then we waited for the paperwork. No one seemed to know what was going on. Lunch. He was supposed to be gone by then. I had to argue until he got a meal. He had a spoonful of mashed potato and pushed the rest away. A shift change. I waited by the nurses’ station, ready for a fight. He stood beside me. He leaned against the wall. His face was pinched and grey.

  I was so full of rage that I didn’t notice him fading. When I turned he was sitting in a plastic chair by the elevator, barely upright. His earlobes poked out from his woollen hat.

  Outside he ripped the plastic band from his wrist. He wanted to go to his ex-boyfriend’s house. They’d been separated for six months by then, but they were still close. He phoned a cab.

  ‘At least let me come with you,’ I pleaded with him. ‘Theo would hate to see you pull up in a taxi by yourself. Just wait five minutes and let me call work.’

  ‘I’ve waited all fucken morning. And I want to go by myself.’

  ‘Will you please do this one thing for me.’

  ‘I just want to go,’ he said.

  The taxi arrived. I put his bag on the seat beside him, tugged his beanie down to cover his ears. He was crabbed like a frightened child. He weighed fifty-eight kilos.

  At home I moved from room to room. I kneeled beside my bed and thought about saying a prayer, but I wasn’t sure what to ask for. I called Sam. It went straight to voicemail. Just making sure you got to Theo’s okay, I said. Text me YES when you can.

  There aren’t many photos of us as kids. A few of Sam as a baby, another series from when I was born. Then a big gap, like we didn’t exist for a while. There are a few pictures from the year or so we spent living up north with Nan and Granddad. Nan had a little compact camera. I remember the mechanical buzz it made when you slid the front part open. She used to give me her empty film canisters to keep stuff in—sequins and tiny pebbles, apple seeds, knock-off Po
lly Pocket dolls and accessories that Nan bought me, which I never played with because I thought they were naff, but couldn’t bear to throw out.

  My favourite photo from then was taken when we went on holidays to Tewantin. There was this weird, dusty old bottle museum, a house full of old glassware and beer paraphernalia, and in the yard was a big bottle two storeys high, constructed from old glass stubbies. You could walk around inside it and climb a winding stairwell to the top, where a metal slide curled around the exterior of the thing. They gave you hessian potato sacks to sit on so you’d go really fast. I remember being scared but not wanting to let on to Sam. Somehow Granddad knew, and he made it seem like he wanted to have a go. He climbed to the top with us, and we watched Sam shoot down the warm metal. Then Granddad got on the sack and sat me between his knees, and we slid together. We must have done it dozens of times—me by myself, eventually, and Granddad, too, like a big kid, over and over. I remember his knees being sore by the end of it from climbing the stairs. Even Sam didn’t get sick of it. Inside the big bottle it smelled earthy. The air was yellow through the glass, swimming with dust. At one point all three of us squished onto the same hessian sack and slid down together, and Nan got a picture. Granddad’s at the back with his arms in the air, mouth agape, like he’s on a roller coaster. Sam’s in the middle, with one arm around me. He’s laughing. He was always such a serious kid that it’s almost a shock to see. He’s not worried, or playing it cool, or pretending he’s too old for slides. And there’s me in front. I’m missing my two front teeth, which you can see because my mouth’s wide open, eyes shut tight like I’m really cackling—You’ll lay an egg, Nan used to say—and my hair’s a dirty blonde bowl cut, stringy fringe, wonky off-centre part.

  You wouldn’t recognise either of us now if you saw that photo. My hair darkened as I got older; puberty gave my face a new hard shape. Sam looks like a young man dying of blood cancer. So I don’t recognise us in the picture, but I like having proof of that day: the blinding joy, the thrill of the hot winding metal, our tangled arms. I try to remember that version of my brother.