He’d phoned an ambulance and sunk down by the car door, clumsily making the sign of the cross, kneeling on the gravel.
Suppose the car had been newer, with a catalytic converter. Suppose someone had got there sooner, or she’d been called into work.
Audrey was sick with it.
The Wednesday morning after, Adam sat at Audrey and Nick’s kitchen table. When he didn’t have a cigarette between his knuckles, he kept his palms flat on his thighs. His shoulders were square; his knees shuddered.
‘We all saw her on Sunday night,’ he said. ‘She stayed over at mine, for fuck’s sake. I didn’t realise.’
‘None of us did, mate,’ said Nick.
‘Yeah, but you’d fucken think somebody—she changed, somebody should have noticed. There were all these signs. We just ignored them.’
Audrey realised she’d been holding her breath. She thought she was going to say something reassuring, but she just gasped: ‘Her poor parents.’
Adam covered his eyes, let out an animal noise.
Audrey touched his arm, but he drew back. ‘What’s wrong with you both? Why aren’t you crying? This is sad!’ he yelled. ‘She’s—so—selfish!’
He would not be held. He crouched on the floor and sobbed.
After the funeral they all hobbled back to the Shields’ house, the backdrop to Katy’s first milk teeth and last day of secondary school.
Audrey shut herself in the bathroom and sat on the edge of the tub. Here was the bud of every drunken misadventure they ever had. See her bending into the mirror, smudging black dust beneath her eyes, see her with her knickers around her ankles as she schemes from the toilet, see Adam leaning out the window with a sneaky cigarette. Audrey lying in the empty bath, laughing at them, always the first to get drunk.
Audrey put her face to one of the big towels, tried to breathe through the thickness.
Nick was talking to friends when she returned. C’est un vrai gentilhomme, her mother always said. Audrey knew he was overcome. She’d seen him standing with his hands in his pockets outside the church. He’d held her while the pictures of Katy played on the screen. He said it was okay when she didn’t want to look.
Audrey watched everyone in their black clothes. Every day from now on was just further away from Katy. It was a carsick feeling; it was weak arms and enervation. She’d eulogised her friend, bastardising Montesquieu: Here rests a girl who never rested before. Her father would’ve been proud. His was the only other funeral she’d been to.
‘You all right?’ Nick asked when they were alone.
‘Are you?’
‘Yeah.’
He watched her watching the mourners, leaned close. ‘All these people loved her,’ he said in her ear.
All the years, all the love: all wasted.
They limped outside. The city was spread below them, a neat grid of lights. Its golden veins stretched out to the suburbs. This is my favourite view of the city, she’d said at the Backwash, and Audrey had said Mine’s Ruckers Hill. This one.
Nick turned the car keys over in his hand. Neither of them moved from the verandah. The trees rustled, the leaves stirred. All the world was alive.
They stood still in the dusk, faces jaundiced by the streetlight.
At home Audrey stood in the kitchen. Nick switched on the kettle, loosened his tie, went to get the mail. He took a knife from the drawer and slit open an envelope. Audrey studied his face, the awning of his brow, his throat. He had the purposeful Adam’s apple of a thin man. His hair always needed cutting.
He stacked the rest of the mail on the table and glanced at Audrey. ‘You did good today.’
‘What did we do after Dad’s funeral?’ she asked.
‘What?’
‘I don’t know what to do,’ she said. She was fixed to the spot. ‘I can’t believe I have work tomorrow.’
He looked at her carefully. ‘How about if I run you a shower.’
‘It’s okay, Nick. I’m fine.’
He followed her into the bedroom.
‘There was a Lou Reed doco on SBS,’ he said. ‘After your dad’s. We came home and we were both spent, and we watched that. You were worried Sylvie would—you know—so you kept calling her.’
‘That’s right,’ Audrey said.
‘You were wearing that dress.’
Audrey reached behind for the zip and tugged at it.
‘Could you—’ She turned her back to Nick. His body appeared behind hers in the mirror. She was still wearing her heels. Even with the false height, he was a head taller. He brushed her hair to the side and caught her eye in the reflection as he fiddled with the dress.
He smiled. ‘You always want to try yourself before you let me help you.’
She felt a release. Nick drew the zip all the way down, kissed the back of her neck, her spine. The dress was slipping off her shoulders and Nick’s mouth was there and she was surprised, then, at how close she wanted him. But in the shower, when they fucked slowly, wet skin on skin, Audrey thought it made sense, after all, since there was nothing left to say.
Months afterwards, that was how she recalled it. But things might have been different.
Strange Triangles
Audrey could hear voices inside before she rang the doorbell. She banged on the glass pane. Giddy laughter: her brother’s, and a girl’s. The rain fell while she waited on the front stoop. St Kilda was straggly in the wet.
Bernie escaped when he could, like Audrey, like Irène. For a while he’d shared a flat with some other lost boys, but he lived alone now. He was happier in his new house, a squat weatherboard with a rotting verandah and a lone fig tree in the front yard. Audrey brought him frozen meals and paid what remained of his rent after the government allowance he got for living out of home as a student. He attended school occasionally. Their mother thought he was responsibly passing his VCE. She lived alone now, too, in the old house in Tyabb that was too big for one person. Since their father had gone, relief leaked from the whole edifice.
‘Bernie?’ Audrey set her umbrella down by the door and let herself in. ‘Hello?’ There was music coming from the bedroom, summery guitars and a man’s voice. The music of her childhood, a song her father had listened to.
‘Come on,’ the girl was laughing. ‘Fair’s fair.’
‘Fair, I’ll give you fair in a minute.’ There was a squeal.
Audrey went to the kitchen and made an instant coffee. ‘Hey. Bernie,’ she called again. Someone turned down the music, and her brother appeared in the doorway, all swagger and grin. He was wearing a pair of socks, underwear and a dress shirt.
‘Good morning,’ he said brightly.
Audrey nodded at the doorway.
‘Company?’
‘My girlfriend,’ he hissed, ‘is in that room.’ He ripped open a teabag with his teeth.
‘Girlfriend.’
They stood, contemplating the cheerful, tuneless singing in the next room.
‘I don’t have any money for the train. You owe me,’ the girl’s voice called. She w
as happy; Audrey could tell without seeing her face. ‘Bernard, you owe me / some money.’
Audrey raised her eyebrows at Bernie over the top of her mug.
‘Can I ask you a favour?’ he said in a low voice. ‘Can you lend me some, quick?’
‘What?’
‘I just need forty bucks.’ He saw her face. ‘Please.’ Audrey fumbled for her purse. ‘Thanks,’ he said. He kissed her cheek. ‘I’ll pay you back.’
‘Bern, Bern, Bernie-e-e / I know you think it comes for free / But you owe me some motherfucking money / For that motherfucking E…’
‘For what?’ Audrey said. Too slow: the girl drifted into the kitchen and Bernie slapped the notes into her palm.
‘See?’ he said. ‘I told you I’d come through, so you can stop singing and catch your train.’
‘Hullo,’ the girl said, looking at Audrey. ‘I’m Hazel.’
‘Audrey. I’m Bern’s sister.’ They smiled at each other. Hazel put the money into her pocket. She was a schoolgirl and a beauty, long-limbed and unhurried. She leaned against the fridge and held out a hand for Bernie’s tea. The three of them made a strange triangle.
Audrey turned to the sink and rinsed her mug.
‘I’d better go. I’ll see ya,’ Hazel said.
‘C’est ça? Tu t’en vas?’ Bernie asked.
‘I don’t understand,’ Hazel laughed. ‘I’ll see you tomorrow night.’
‘See you, Hazel. Nice to meet you,’ Audrey said.
‘Yeah, you too,’ the girl said, and left, her light hair hanging down her back.
Bernie and Audrey listened for the door to open and close.
‘God, you’re a shit,’ Audrey said, following him into his bedroom. His mattress was an island in the middle of the floor, sheets and blankets puckered. Beside it, an overflowing ceramic ashtray from the Big Pineapple. Damp teabags sat sourly in mugs. Books were piled in towers around the room. Junot Díaz, Alice Munro, a book of Diane Arbus pictures, school textbooks with weak, fat spines. The window was stripped of curtains. An enormous Egon Schiele print was peeling off the wall.
‘You’re a shit,’ Audrey repeated, picking up a crumpled piece of paper and pitching it at his head. ‘I’m a little fucked-up French boy. Come around to my flat and we can listen to New Order together while we get high.’
‘Don’t be a cunt,’ Bernie said, dropping to the mattress. ‘The girls like it.’
‘Yeah, you like it,’ Audrey said, nudging him with her toe. ‘Don’t ever trick me into lending you money again.’
‘It was just one pill.’
‘That’s all it takes, idiot.’
‘T’es pas ma mère.’
‘No, I’m not, so stop acting like a child.’ She picked up the ashtray. ‘Go to school or something.’
‘Go to school!’ Bernie sat up. He laughed and hung his head. ‘I’m sorry, Audie. I’m really stoned. Hang on, isn’t it Saturday?’
‘Just testing.’ She touched his soft dark hair. ‘I made you some more meals. They’re in the freezer. You look skinny. And answer your phone. Maman was flipping out.’ She picked up a small yellow book from the floor: Zola’s L’Assommoir.
‘Was this Dad’s?’
‘Yeah.’
‘Can I borrow it? I haven’t read it in ages.’
‘Yeah.’
She put the book in her bag, carried the ashtray to the kitchen and dumped the cigarette butts into the bin.
‘Thanks,’ Bernie called from his room.
The music came back on, louder than before.
Audrey drove to Adam’s. She parked beneath a spindly eucalypt and climbed the concrete stairs with one hand on the banister. She heard music pouring out from the apartment. The security screen trembled with the noise. Adam opened the door wearing nothing but a pair of briefs.
‘You told me you gave up wearing those last year,’ Audrey shouted over the music.
‘I like my tighty-whities,’ Adam said, ‘and if I want to wear them—’
Audrey shut the door behind her. She turned down the speakers. ‘Been practising your killer moves?’
Adam shrugged. ‘This morning I got up and went for a run, boiled an egg, had a shower, put on some Pulp. I just feel really good.’
‘Dancing in your undies.’
‘Yeah. I thought I’d go out tonight, too. She wouldn’t want me sitting around. That’s what everyone says. You know, keep busy.’ He was running a hand through his hair over and over as he spoke. Audrey’s eyes flickered to his pupils. ‘I read on the internet about carbon-monoxide poisoning,’ he went on. ‘It’s a peaceful way to go. I think that’s important. It’s just like going to sleep. You don’t feel your central nervous system start to collapse. You don’t know, but your blood’s toxic.’
‘God, Adam,’ Audrey said, ‘you don’t need to read that.’
He crumpled to the floor. She crouched beside him.
‘Who found her?’ he said. ‘She wouldn’t have even looked the same.’
Audrey pictured Katy’s face, discoloured and horrific. She sat down hard. Adam was sobbing. ‘This is the worst feeling. I can’t fucking stand this.’
Audrey clambered to turn off the music. ‘I’ll make you a coffee.’ She couldn’t look at him, so pitiful in his boyish underwear. He got up and stood before her, shrivelled and tentative, waiting for direction. ‘Put some clothes on, for God’s sake,’ she said at last.
They sat at the kitchen table.
‘She hated your tighty-whities,’ Audrey said.
Adam laughed thickly. ‘She made me give them up. My New Year’s ressie last year. I kept a couple pairs.’ He wiped his nose. ‘She didn’t hate many things, though, did she?’
‘Just yappy dogs.’
‘Milky tea.’
‘Voyeuristic television programs.’ Audrey looked down at her mug. Toxic blood.
‘Did you say you were at Bernie’s before?’
‘Yeah. He had a girl over.’
‘Tell me,’ Adam said.
‘I don’t know what to tell. He’s a deadshit. Everything’s such a battle with him.’ Adam was holding his glasses in front of his face. There was a fingerprint smudge on one of the lenses.
‘Come on,’ Audrey said. ‘Let’s go out.’
Adam shook his head. ‘I can’t.’
They stood in the doorway of the apartment.
‘It’ll get better, Adam.’
‘Yep.’
She touched his arm. ‘Call. If there’s anything.’
Outside it was warm and raining. The bitumen was steaming. Could it still be the same fuggy Saturday? Audrey slid the key into the ignition. She wondered if Adam was watching her from the window, and waved in case.
He’d made her look at photos. He took out a Kodak packet from the chest of drawers, and suddenly Katy was there. Ashy blond hair that caught the sunlight, heavy-lidded eyes, strong shoulders. She pulled a face at the beach, next to Adam; she stood seriously on the s
and alone, looking down the camera lens with her unfashionable sunglasses; she was vicious playing Scrabble with Audrey, Emy and Nick in her lounge room; she paused to smile mid-conversation, holding a plastic takeaway container in one hand, a fork in the other.
Adam was looking for a clue. There was nothing there. I want to talk to that guy she was seeing, he’d said. Jarrod. Where can we find him? I bet her parents don’t even know. Katy was spread all over the table in little six-by-four squares. No crime scenes; there was no detective work to be done. Audrey longed to open the kitchen window and press her face to the fresh air.
She wanted to tell Nick about it as they walked to Smith Street for dinner, but she couldn’t explain it. Looking at pictures with Adam didn’t sound so unreasonable.
The restaurant light was dim. Audrey traced her fingertip over the laminex tabletop where her wineglass had left a ring of condensation. She thought to say I went to visit Bern and Adam today, and Bern was high and Adam was something else, and neither of them was wearing pants, and I had to shout at them both just to get in the door. Nick would see the funny side. He always said it was Audrey who’d shown him how to laugh at bleak things, but she was sure she’d learned it from him.
The food arrived. Nick waited until the waitress left before he spoke. ‘I don’t know why I said my day was all right,’ he said. ‘It was shit.’
‘How come?’
‘A woman in Fairfield tried to hang herself from a light fitting and it fell out of the ceiling.’ He nudged his beer bottle. ‘And an OD. We got there too late. The father found a note.’
‘Are you all right? Does Tim know what happened?’
‘No.’
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