Night Swimming

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Night Swimming Page 14

by Steph Bowe


  Clancy has a steady hand with liquid eyeliner because he’s constantly practising costume makeup. Not being able to draw on a cat-eye with a tiny eye-texta is hardly a hindrance to my everyday life, but I still envy his ability to wield an eyeliner and create a symmetrical look without having to wipe it off umpteen times.

  Clancy sits in front of me on the bed. I hand over the eyeliner and stare into the middle distance over his shoulder, trying to keep as still as possible.

  ‘How would you feel if I was gay?’ I ask. ‘Actually gay.’

  Clancy doesn’t pause, hand steady as he draws on the eyeliner. ‘It’d explain how you’ve managed to resist my many charms.’

  ‘Seriously.’

  He pauses. Drops his hand and considers me. ‘That’s probably the stupidest question you’ve ever asked me. You ask some very loony questions. As if it would change anything. You’re my best and closest friend and I’ll love you no matter what, until we both die, and possibly afterwards, depending on the existence of an afterlife. All righty? How would you feel if I were straight?’

  ‘I…wouldn’t care. I don’t care. It makes no difference.’

  ‘That’s good. Because I am a bonafide heterosexual. I can’t guarantee it’s not a phase and that I won’t, you know, discover blokes when I move to Sydney. But right now? It seems like an accurate descriptor.’

  ‘Should I throw you a party?’ I ask.

  Clancy smiles and starts on the other eye. ‘You should. And I know: I know how much you love Claire, at least. I know you were upset.’

  ‘I’m not upset. I’m happy. I’m an almost aunt.’

  ‘Stay still. I know you were sad when Nathan and her got together. It’s okay. I’d be sad too. It’s not selfish of you or anything.’

  ‘It’s not like it was ever going to happen,’ I mumble.

  ‘Doesn’t mean it didn’t matter. I’ve felt more heartbroken over actresses I stalk on Twitter and that’s even less likely to happen.’

  ‘That’s creepy.’

  ‘Not gonna deny it.’ He hands me back the eyeliner. ‘There, done, terrific. I could have a career as a make-up artist. One way to start off in the city, I guess.’

  ‘Thank you. I know you’ll make it big in the city no matter what you do.’ I give him a hug. He’s put on some sort of cologne, way too much of it.

  ‘I know,’ he says. ‘Just don’t touch the hair.’ I’m not sure if he’s kidding or not, but I laugh anyway.

  ‘I think I’ll ask Iris for a dance tonight,’ he says. ‘It might even be the right time to ask her out. But I digress.’

  I search through the mess of my closet for a pair of flats and pretend I don’t hear him. I ignore the lump in my throat.

  There’s a knock on the open door. I look up to see Mum wearing her nicest plaid shirt and darkest jeans. ‘I’ve got this cake from the bakery, size of a bloody house. Ridiculous. Almost dropped it in the driveway, bringing it in. Could either of you help me get it out to the car? Cost a fortune.’

  Clancy gets up. ‘Sure, Jess.’

  ‘Thanks, Clancy. Where’d you get that dress, Kirby? Looks like something I wore when I was pregnant with you.’

  ‘Op shop. I didn’t know you wore dresses.’

  ‘Christ, probably is mine. Their selection must be pitiful if you’re buying our own clothes back. Seems stupid to donate them to begin with.’ She shakes her head, turns and leaves.

  Clancy grins. ‘Your mum’s funny,’ he says as he heads after her.

  I better do something with my hair. I’m not sure exactly what. I think it might be unsalvageable. Something that looks marginally less like a bird’s nest would be ideal.

  A few minutes later, Nathan charges into my room, a cup of tea in his hand. He will be no help with my hair. He is pacing. He tells me he’s drunk five cups of tea in the last hour. He has three sugars in his tea, so he’s probably pre-diabetic at this stage.

  He stops pacing and sits on the blanket box I’ve had since I was a kid, teddy-bear fabric on the lid. He tries to loosen his tie and smooth his rumpled suit. From my bed, Marianne raises her head to glare at him, then returns to her nap. Nathan is breathing shallowly. I tell him to take deep breaths. It’s easier to tell others what to do than do it yourself; your own anxiety seems so insurmountable, whereas in other people it seems like a passing thing they needn’t stress over.

  ‘It’s real now, isn’t it?’ he says.

  ‘What is?’

  He scratches his face. ‘Engagement. Wedding. Baby. Marriage. Adulthood.’

  I want to say, It’s been real for a while, she’s seven months pregnant, but I don’t think that would be helpful. Instead, I ask, ‘What are you worried about?’

  ‘I’m not ready for it. For any of it. I have read, like, five books on parenting—and you know how I am with my dyslexia—and I feel less prepared. There is so much to stuff up. I don’t want to be divorced by the time I’m thirty. I want to be in my kid’s life.’

  I model some deep breaths. He copies, eyes mad. When he has calmed down a little, I tell him, ‘It’s all going to be fine. Claire’s a wonderful person and you’ll look after each other and the baby, and everyone in the family will look after you. Everyone in town. Okay? Don’t stress about this party. It’s a bit of fun. And the wedding will be, too. It’s only as big a deal as you make it.’

  He seems to calm down. ‘You’re as much my sister as Alicia is, Kirb,’ he says. ‘You want to be ring-bearer at the wedding?’

  ‘Claire’s been hinting I might get to be a bridesmaid,’ I say. ‘Maybe even maid of honour. Ring-bearer’s a bit of a demotion, right? Maybe we could rig something up with Stanley? He could carry the rings. But, I mean, that’d be really nice. You’re a cool cousin. You’re the closest thing to a sibling I’ve got. Thank you.’

  Nathan smiles, lopsided. He takes another deep breath, sculls the remainder of his tea and stands up. ‘Time to round up the troops then.’

  Saffron Gate is strung up with fairy lights, garlands, and paper letters spelling out ‘Nathan and Claire’ across the back wall. It feels like the entire town is here. It’s even busier because it’s the school holidays, so the kids who board are here too. ‘Looks nice,’ Mrs Lee concedes, before lowering her voice. ‘Don’t know about the food, though.’

  Mr Lee nudges her. ‘Winnie. Shh.’ Purple Emperor is closed tonight, as most of the town is over here. Mrs Lee is still annoyed with Claire for choosing Saffron Gate, but she’ll have a couple of wines and get over it.

  It turns out Iris is within earshot. She is wearing a green dress patterned with tabby kittens. She has her hair up in a loose bun, wisps falling around her face. Her glittery eyeshadow sparkles every time she blinks. She is spectacular. ‘We’ll do our best, Mrs Lee. Decorations are all my mum.’

  Mrs Lee doesn’t blush, but I can tell she’s embarrassed. She purses her lips in an awkward smile. Clancy mouths an apology to Iris, then steers his parents to the other side of the room, saying something in Cantonese. Overkill, I think.

  And I’m left standing next to Iris. Fortunately, Iris’s mum is making a beeline for us.

  ‘Kirby! Of the goats.’ She sweeps me into a hug, and Iris smiles sympathetically at me over her shoulder, as if everything is still normal between us. ‘What a lovely dress! How’s your finger?’ I’d rather she never knew about that incident, as unlikely as that would be.

  I hold out my hand. I don’t trust myself to speak. The stitches have been taken out, and the scar is fading already. I don’t have as much feeling in that finger as the others, but it doesn’t worry me.

  ‘Dad’s been cooking for days,’ explains Iris. Thank God Iris is helping out in the conversation department.

  ‘Things seem to be going well, don’t they?’ says her mum, beaming. I nod in agreement. ‘Lovely to have you, Kirby, thank you so much.’ I’m not sure what I’m being thanked for so I just nod again. She and her serene smile swan off to greet someone else.

  Iris and I are a
lone. We’re not really—it’s a small restaurant, half the town is packed in, so the next person is barely an arm’s length away—but it sure feels like we’re in our own little bubble, cut off from everyone else. I knew that eventually I would have to speak to her, but was hoping that I could put this moment off until I had worked out what to say. I anticipated feeling ready several years from now.

  ‘Your dress looks amazing,’ says Iris. ‘You look so unlike yourself wearing make-up.’

  ‘Thank you. Clancy’s work.’

  ‘I could tell. Very much similar to how he did his, for the play.’

  ‘Does it look bad?’ I ask.

  ‘No. You could never…you always look beautiful.’ She gives a wry smile. ‘I don’t know if I should say that. I don’t want you to feel uncomfortable.’

  ‘It’s fine,’ I say. ‘Are you still upset with me?’

  She shakes her head like this is a bizarre question. ‘No. Of course not. You’re my friend. That’s important. I wouldn’t want to make you unhappy.’

  She’s so sincere I could cry. I extricate myself before I do. ‘I have to give Claire her present.’

  She nods. I head across the room and hover near Claire and her little brother, Jonah. I already gave her the present at the house earlier, but Iris doesn’t know that, and now she’s too busy circulating with platters of food to notice.

  ‘Isn’t this whole night so beautiful?’ says Claire. She also looks like she’s about to cry. At least she has pregnancy hormones as an excuse. She only has about two months to go. I think this is going to be an emotional kind of evening.

  ‘Beautiful,’ I say. I’m about to park myself at the table, between Grandad and Irini, and stay as far from Iris as I can for, say, the next century, to try to reduce my torment, when Clancy lunges towards me and drags me into the corner.

  ‘Tonight’s the night, Kirb,’ Clancy whispers to me, conspiratorial. ‘Me and Iris. It’s gonna happen. I can feel it in the air tonight. Like that Peter Gabriel song, with the drum bit at the start.’ He does an air-drum solo, do-do do-do do-do do-do.

  ‘Phil Collins. What’s going to happen?’

  ‘I am going to declare my feelings!’

  After what I told him earlier in the evening I thought he might have clued into the fact that I’m keen on Iris. Love is blind and all that. Of course, it’s not like we have anything going on, or will have anything going on. I rejected her. It’s over. After all, Clancy fell for Iris months ago and he is perfectly entitled to declare his love to her, and I only feel a little bit like I’m going to vomit at the thought of the two of them together. I never really asked if Iris was not keen on boys in general. She could be bisexual, after all.

  Of course it’s possible she’d go out with Clancy. They have a lot more in common than she and I do. It’s difficult to compare our looks given our different genders and ethnicities, but Clancy is probably better-looking than I am. I’m not difficult to beat in that department, and he’s certainly got good hair and his face is symmetrical and he’s got this skinny muscular thing going because he is constantly dancing.

  Not that it matters. They can go out, if she likes him, which I already know she does, although, whether she meant romantically, I couldn’t be sure. I have no involvement. I am their mutual friend. I own nobody. I’ll be best woman at the wedding. It’s cool. I’m cool. Totally indifferent.

  Clancy has been prattling on about his planned pronouncement of passion the whole time I’ve been thinking my wretched lovelorn thoughts. I nod like I’m listening.

  Mrs Down hands me a glass of champagne which I drink, even though I am not a drinker (at least not since an unfortunate cask wine incident at Nathan’s twenty-first), just to be polite. Besides, it’s bad luck not to drink the champagne, or eat the cake, or something like that. Despite my fairly solid height-to-weight ratio, and the extraordinary number of mini-samosas and chicken skewers I have eaten, that champagne goes directly to my head.

  So that I, the girl who dances only when absolutely no one is watching, dances in the middle of the very crowded, very small Saffron Gate restaurant. Everyone is watching. And cringing, most likely, because I dance with much the same finesse as I eat: none at all.

  And I forget how badly I stuffed up with Iris, and that I obfuscated the truth with Clancy and he’s probably going to win her over, and that Grandad might be going into aged care, and that Mum wants Mr Pool to sack me and doesn’t even really want me involved in her life or vice versa, and that my dad sent me a form letter in response to me reaching out to him in a heartfelt way. My cousin is marrying my second-best friend and I’m really enjoying this chicken skewer and I’m dancing and I’m talking to all these people I never see anymore because they’re off at school and I love everyone, and right now, none of it matters.

  Jonah and I have an incredibly epic disco dance-off to the Bee Gees, then Jennifer Logan’s little sister and I do the robot. Mrs Kingston and I alternate between the Sprinkler and the Shopping Trolley dance moves for about three songs, until Mr Kingston wheels her away. She has had several more alcoholic beverages than me. Ginny Kingston, their latest grandkid, begs Nathan, who is wielding the iPod connected to the speakers, to put on the Hokey-Pokey (naturally he obliges her; she’s an adorable kid), and I guess it all devolves from there. Even Mr Pool gets up for the Macarena, while Mum appears incredibly unimpressed.

  So I am out of breath and grinning like an idiot. When I turn to see how Grandad is faring, the light has gone in his eyes. He’s staring into the middle distance, still sitting up—he’s got great posture, he thinks posture is the most important thing—but he’s simply not there. He’s shaking, like an epileptic—not that I’ve ever seen anyone have a seizure, or that he’s ever had a seizure—but then he goes completely still. I look at his knuckles gripping the table, twice the width of his fingers, gnarled and white, and I try to get a sense of how long he’s been out for, but I have no sense of time in the state I’m in. It could be five seconds or five minutes and I panic that I’ve been staring at him, doing nothing for too long, and that he has just died in front of me.

  ‘Grandad, Grandad, Grandad,’ I shout, standing in front of him. Mum looks at me from a few metres away and I can tell that she knows what is happening.

  In a flash, Mum is kneeling at his side, trying to bring him round.

  ‘Call Triple-Zero,’ she says. Her voice is level. My mum is the best person to have in an emergency situation. She is unfailingly calm.

  Everyone goes quiet and still around us. I fumble for my phone, dial clumsily.

  Iris is out of the kitchen, landline pressed to her ear. ‘I’m already through.’

  I hang up on the woman asking me if I want ambulance, police, or fire assistance.

  I sit down again. Iris hands the landline to Mum, who speaks to the operator.

  ‘Come back, Grandad,’ I whisper. ‘Come back to us.’ I can see Mum’s lips moving, too; she is not religious, doesn’t pray, but perhaps she is making an exception now.

  Grandad blinks and stares at me, dazed. Conscious. I am vibrating with panic and horror and relief and concern. He looks around, confused. I am terrified something has happened to his brain. It can’t be a stroke because that’s all left side; he’s still symmetrical.

  I squeeze his hands, which are warmer than mine. My arms shake. I am blinking back hot tears, smiling to reassure him and to cover my terror. I must just look like I’m baring my teeth.

  ‘I must have dozed off,’ he mumbles.

  Mum speaks louder than is necessary. ‘You had a fit, Dad. You gave us a bit of a fright.’ She is still on the line to Triple-Zero. She tells them to cancel the ambulance.

  Then she says to me, ‘I know he seems fine now but we have to take him to Sydney and get him assessed. The ambulance will take too long to get out here, so I’m going to drive him. We’ll probably be gone overnight, so you and Nathan have to stay and look after the house and the animals. All right?’

  ‘I’m comin
g,’ I say.

  I’m convinced she’s going to argue with me. But she doesn’t. She just nods. Maybe she needs me as a buffer between her and Grandad.

  ‘I’ll take Grandad to the bathroom before we go,’ she says. ‘Long trip. I’ll tell Nathan he’ll need to hold down the fort.’

  I nod. ‘I’ll wait outside.’

  And then I’m sobbing on the footpath outside Saffron Gate, shivering in the wind in my very lovely op-shop dress, my perfectly applied eyeliner probably now a splodgy mess. Grandad is fine. I shouldn’t be this upset.

  Iris appears at my side, digging around in her bag. ‘I am prepared for every eventuality,’ she says. ‘Hence the necessity for a bag the size of a small car.’

  She produces a packet of tissues and hands them to me. ‘I don’t want to fall into the trap of attempting to comfort you and then ending up kissing you. I’ve seen enough movies to know the danger.’

  I would laugh if I didn’t feel like I was going to vomit.

  ‘I’m sorry about Cyril. You must’ve been terrified. Must still be.’

  I nod. ‘He just wasn’t there,’ I say, through tears. ‘Just, gone. I thought it was all over.’

  She rubs my back. How quickly the mood of the evening has changed. Mr Lee is helping Nathan get Grandad to the car. Everyone is gathering on the footpath.

  I can see Mum squeezing Mr Down’s hand. ‘Thanks for looking after them, while we’re gone,’ she says. Like Nathan and Claire are just kids.

  Grandad rides shotgun, on account of his bad knee. A quarter of an hour later, he doesn’t remember his episode. Mum drives like a crazy woman. I chatter awkwardly in the back, trying to defuse the atmosphere, trying to subdue my anxiety.

  Sydney is a ghost town when we drive in at 4 a.m., the streetlights still glowing, the streets wide and empty, and that vague pre-dawn light blinking out the stars.

  Under the fluorescents, Grandad looks sallow, but Mum looks even worse. After four hours at the wheel, it’s not surprising. She stumbles over to speak to the man at the desk in Emergency. Grandad and I sit on the hard plastic chairs; Grandad sort of falls into his chair, since he can’t bend his right knee. The whole row shudders. We sit there a long time, the underwire of my bra digging into my rib cage.

 

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