‘I was trying to get that whole Princess Di thing you do,’ Bern grinned, giving her a nudge. ‘Oh, little me, I’m so demure.’
‘Fuck off. We can’t all be Nick Cave.’
She couldn’t meet her own eyes. It was her likeness, but it was not familiar. She was used to the bump in her nose, the lines of her body, but something in her welled up in protest. She tilted her head at the canvas.
‘It is weird,’ Bernie said. He cleared his throat. ‘It has to be weird to see yourself, or a…representation of yourself, like that.’
Audrey looked at him. ‘I guess it is.’
‘One afternoon I was having a really bad time of it, and Hazel came over for a smoke. I should’ve known, because I don’t like weed. But I had this complete dissociative thing, where I couldn’t see myself in the mirror. I felt like I wasn’t my body.’
‘Bong on,’ Audrey said. She instantly wished she hadn’t made a joke of it. She wanted to tell him about that night at the Brunswick Green when she’d looked at her reflection in the bathroom cubicle and hadn’t recognised herself, or the time she’d been driving and had sensed a divergence, sure the petrol tanker had collected her car, certain she was dead.
She turned from the painting. ‘Is it weird sleeping in here, with all of them?’
‘It’s sort of nice,’ Bern said. ‘They’re keeping me company.’
The final canvas depicted their father reclining on a sofa chair. Audrey recalled the image from an old photo taken several Christmases ago. Bern had made him disarming. He looked like a simple man, a minor character from a play. ‘That was the one that NGV wanted to exhibit,’ said Bern, ‘but I asked if they’d show the family portrait instead.’
‘Where’s that?’
‘Painting room. They’ve taken over the house.’
Audrey followed him. The largest canvas occupied almost an entire wall. Sylvie the matriarch sat squarely. Her face was regal and serene: only the cigarette between her fingers hinted at anxiety. Beside her sat Irène, whose hard face was relaxed into a smile. In the back, Audrey and Bernard. Bern with a sheepish grin, leaning on Sylvie’s chair. Audrey laughing openly, unexpectedly. They were a family.
‘I’ve never seen anything better than this,’ Audrey said. She couldn’t stop staring.
He was bashful. ‘I’ll go and finish the tea. You can look around, if you want.’
She went over to the desk by the window and opened one of his black folios. The entire process was detailed, from its inception to the final toilsome stages. Digital photographs of the paintings at various stages in the process had been pasted in, altered, painted over, annotated. Bern’s handwriting spilled over the pages.
Maman was the easiest to paint. She’s so animated ALL THE FUCKING TIME, which makes her an easy subject. I didn’t notice it until I started watching her more when I was preparing this folio. You can look at her at any given moment, and she’ll have some incredibly expressive face on. Irène was okay once I captured that intense motherliness. This year I felt like she stopped being my sister, now she’s really just Zoe and Lucas’s mum, but that’s alright, I was never that connected with her anyway. After she had Lucas I went to visit her one day and her tits were leaking—I would really have liked to paint that, but she would have been offended by it. She thinks she looks frumpy, but I’m happy with the final product…
How invasive it seemed, Audrey thought, how clinical, that this had been inspected and marked. She flipped through more pages. Photos of her: a few with Nick, some miscellaneous family shots, a few ballpoint pen sketches of her own face.
She closed the folio and retreated to the kitchen.
‘You’re pretty clever, Bern.’
‘It’s just art.’ He turned from the sink and handed her a mug. ‘Don’t get excited.’
It was a long way back out to Tyabb without a car. Audrey hadn’t done it since school: she couldn’t believe how far she’d commuted those months before she’d left home. Train to the end of the line, then the sporadic bus, then the phone call to come and pick her up. Sylvie had huffed—The schools are all the same, you will meet the same friends at school here, it’s ridiculous, this travelling, hein, you sleep in your friend’s house more than at home—but when her father picked her up he was kind. Those were Audrey’s gentlest memories of him. It was winter when they moved out there. It was usually dark by the time she called. She’d wait for the car in well-lit spaces, under shop awnings or in phone booths. She pulled the sleeves of her rugby jumper over her hands, hopped from foot to foot. She only felt safe when the slowing headlights belonged to her parents’ decaying Holden Commodore. When it was her father behind the wheel he’d lean in for a kiss (shocked, every time, by her cold cheeks) and blow a hot breath in her ear. Sometimes he’d stop at the servo and buy her a bottle of orange juice or a bag of chips. He respected her stubbornness, her tenacity, in making that stupid trip.
She caught a cab home. Sylvie was there, skirt and flesh-coloured stockings and the bank’s garish black-and-yellow shirt, watching the evening news with the captions on.
Audrey sat on the arm of the couch.
‘How was work?’ she asked.
Sylvie pushed her lips out and made a little putt sound. ‘Just the same. What did you do today?’
‘I rode to Balnarring and went for a swim first thing this morning. I must have just missed you. Then I went to Bernie’s. I saw his art.’
‘If he spend as much time on his schoolwork as he spend painting,’ Sylvie said. Audrey waited for the end of the sentence but it didn’t come.
‘I don’t think it matters about his score,’ she said. ‘The course he wants to do, they don’t care what he got for accounting. It’s about his art.’
‘You always defend him.’
‘He’s smart in the ways that matter,’ Audrey said.
‘On verra.’ Sylvie fiddled with her earring, trying to unscrew the back. The tiny pin fell away, and she swore. Both women dropped to their hands and knees, looking for the piece of metal. Audrey pinched it between her fingers. ‘Tiens.’ They faced each other, sitting on the rug.
‘How were you swimming?’ Sylvie asked.
‘What?’
‘You said you went to swim this morning.’ Sylvie sounded suspicious. It was such a funny thing to mistrust that Audrey had to suppress a grin.
‘Yeah, at Balnarring. In Sydney my house is close to the sea baths, almost across the road. I’ve been trying to swim every day.’
Sylvie sat back on her heels. ‘How did you learn?’
‘Nick taught me. Ages ago.’
‘It’s a good thing to know,’ Sylvie said. ‘I wish I learned.’ She had lipstick on her front tooth. Audrey felt a pinprick of sorrow.
‘I could teach you,’ she said. ‘I’m not very good. But we could try.’
‘I’m too old now.’
‘Fifty-three isn’t old. You can learn.’
‘I’m embarrassed,’ Sylvie said.
‘We can go early in the morning before anyone’s there,’ Audrey said. ‘Only if you want to, though. I don’t want to fight you about it.’
‘I want to,’ she said. ‘But not in the sea.’
‘Okay. We’ll find a pool.’
Sylvie turned the earring over in her fingers. In a second she’d get up and find her cigarettes. We can do it, Audrey wanted to say.
Adam phoned. The outdoor cinema was showing Mulholland Drive. They had a few beers in the courtyard of the Standard, then walked over to the old convent. Adam stopped to piss in an alley near the train station and Audrey hissed Shush, can’t you do it quieter? The whole of Collingwood can hear you taking a slash, and he hollered Do you hear the people sing, singing the songs of angry men, and Audrey started to laugh helplessly. They marched over to St Heliers Street arm in arm, picked their way to a pair of seats, clinked their bottles of cider together.
‘I saw Bern yesterday.’
‘How’s he doing? When does he find out about uni?’
‘Not till January. I think he’s put VCA down first.’ Audrey dug at the label on the bottle with her thumbnail, tried to peel it off cleanly. ‘I saw his paintings. They were unbelievable. I was a bit thrown.’
Adam glanced at her. ‘How so?’
‘I don’t know. He’s just always been the baby, this artsy little shit, you know, making zines and taking photos. But he’s actually good.’ The sky was darkening. She watched two bats arc from one tree to another. ‘He just seems so old and so together since I went to Sydney. But it hasn’t been that long.’
‘Maybe I should buy up now,’ Adam said, ‘if he’s going to be the next Brett Whiteley.’
It was still warm when the film finished. They walked over to the grounds so Adam could have a cigarette. From the top of the hill the city seemed close. Audrey looked at the patterns the old factory chimneys made. She paced back and forth, walking the line where the paved area finished and the garden began. There was a small sign warning of snakes in summertime.
‘You know that scene with the opera singer, where she falls over and you realise it’s been a tape all along?’ Adam said. ‘It just terrifies me. I always sit there waiting for something awful to happen. There’s something really sinister about it.’
‘I know what you mean. It’s sort of—emotionally gruesome.’
Adam nodded, grimaced. The breeze blew light and hot, but Audrey saw him shiver. She thought of Nick.
Audrey chose an indoor pool in Hastings. They went on a weekday evening, parked in the lot between the recreation centre and the foreshore. The day had been overcast. The floodlights were already on. It was a bleak foreshore, gentle and grey, no waves. The boats barely moved. Sylvie looked out at the jetty through the windscreen. Her mouth was set.
Audrey worried she’d pushed her into it. ‘We don’t have to do this,’ she said.
‘I want you to teach me.’
‘Okay.’
The air inside the complex was warm and chemical. In the change rooms Sylvie sat on the bench, towel around her like a shock blanket, while Audrey shrugged out of her shirt and jeans.
‘I brought you some goggles,’ she said.
‘I need to put them—?’
‘You don’t have to put them.’ Slipping into Sylvie’s speech patterns. ‘You don’t have to put your head under at all. It’s up to you.’
The pool was almost empty. The swimmers at the far end made it look like calm work, stroking in the roped-off lanes. The water fell away from their bodies cleanly.
The water was chest-high at the shallow end. Sylvie lowered herself to her chin. She kept her mouth above the water. Audrey watched her testing it out.
‘Come and hold on to the edge,’ she said. They stood side by side. Their knuckles made a mountain range. ‘Take a big breath, and blow some bubbles. You don’t have to go right under. Just like this.’
‘Like a crocodile,’ Sylvie said. She didn’t smile. She took a lungful of air, put her mouth to the water and exhaled.
‘Good—you’re doing good. You can put your nose in. Nothing bad will happen. The water won’t go up.’
She made Sylvie kick her legs out behind her, still holding on to the edge. ‘Just be calm. You don’t need to kick that hard. You don’t want a big splash.’ Her mother’s body was tense and determined.
‘Do you want to try floating?’ Sylvie wiped her nose with her wrist. ‘Come on, it’s good. I’ll be next to you. You can stand up here, anyway.’ She flailed to right herself the first few times her feet left the pool floor. Audrey kept saying Relax, just try to relax, even though she knew it was impossible: she remembered the terrifying feeling of imbalance. She put a hand under the small of Sylvie’s back, another hand under her skull.
Sylvie smiled up at Audrey, suspended and weightless.
‘It’s good, isn’t it?’ Audrey said. ‘You’re doing a good job. Can I let go? You’ll be okay by yourself—’ She took her hands away very carefully, one at a time. Sylvie floated by herself for a moment. Then she turned her head and water rushed in at her mouth and nose, and she panicked. Audrey grabbed her under the arms.
‘Laisse-moi, bon sang.’
‘It’s okay if a bit of water goes in your face. Your mouth was closed. It’s okay.’ Sylvie clutched the lane rope. Audrey could see her standing on her tiptoes. She tried to remember how Nick had taught her, what he’d done differently. All she could think was how safe she’d felt. ‘I’m sorry, Maman. I’m sorry you got a fright. Maybe I’m not the best person to teach you. Maybe we should get proper lessons.’
‘You’re a good teacher,’ Sylvie said. ‘I’m old and trying to learn. It takes me a lot.’
‘I won’t let anything happen to you.’ They stood, warm water to their necks. ‘Do you want to try putting your head under?’
‘Okay.’
‘Then we can go home. Let’s hold hands instead of the side of the pool. We’ll go under on three, okay?’
Sylvie nodded. Audrey counted and they sank below the surface, gripping each other’s wrists. Audrey saw her mother’s face through a swarm of bubbles: eyes shut tight, mouth sealed, hair streaming in the blue chemical space like an effigy of the sun king.
There was a funny English word Sylvie used to describe Australian Christmases—uncivilised, Audrey thought, or maybe barbaric; she couldn’t remember. It was funny when Bernie mimicked her, but the actual conversation was tedious, and they’d had it a thousand times.
Audrey heard Sylvie moving around the house at six in the morning on Christmas Day. The air was already settling warm in the rooms. The white cloth was on the dining table, the good cutlery set out.
She went to the kitchen. ‘Merry Christmas, Maman.’ Sylvie was alight, smiling, her hands stained with beetroot juice. She pushed her hair back from her face with a flexed palm. The bench was littered with ingredients and objects that did not match. The room smelled of coffee and rosemary. ‘Can I do anything to help?’ The cutting board was floured. A tray of vegetables sat, sliced and seasoned, ready for the oven. The turkey was defrosting in the sink, water rolling off its plastic skin. Sylvie broke eggs into a bowl.
They took turns to shower. Afterwards Audrey sat on the edge of the bathtub and let her mother plait her hair into a crown on top of her head. When Syl
vie was finished they stood before the mirror, Sylvie behind, with her hands on Audrey’s shoulders, inspecting her handiwork. ‘Voilà,’ she said, pleased, ‘like a déesse.’ Audrey thought that her face was too exposed, but she kept it to herself. She squeezed Sylvie’s fingers.
Before lunch Zoe taught her father how to play Go Fish, and Irène watched them. Audrey sat on the couch, watching Irène. Bernard turned up Elvis Presley’s Blue Christmas and crooned along with deadpan sincerity, swivelling his hips for Hazel. Sylvie put together the feast in the kitchen. When Audrey offered to help, she didn’t seem to hear. Her hands worked neatly; she counted and mumbled to herself as she arranged the food. Audrey tried to cut the turkey in elegant slices, but it came away in shreds and thin wedges.
‘I’m doing a shit job of this,’ she said. ‘What do you want me to do with the stuffing?’
‘I’m going to have to toss these ones,’ Sylvie murmured. She was mixing pretty vegetables, broccolini and beans and asparagus and potatoes in butter and parsley. She pitched the spoon at the sink. ‘Putain, I’ve forgotten the bread rolls. It shouldn’t be taking this long. Put the plates and we can serve. Which one for Zoe?’
They sat down at last.
Irène turned to Sylvie. ‘Did you forget the ham.’ They did not look at each other, mother and daughter. Sylvie pushed back her chair with the furious shame that only women recognise. Her napkin slid to the floor. Doesn’t matter, everyone was saying. We don’t need the ham. There’s plenty of food here. There was nothing for Audrey to do but she went to the kitchen anyway, stood beside her mother so that the others couldn’t see her from where they sat at the table. Sylvie’s head was bowed.
Audrey reached for two plates, washed two serving forks, unwrapped the package of ham David had bought: it was sliced ham from the supermarket, meant for packed lunches, not Christmas lunch. Sylvie set the plates on the table. Audrey stared at her sister, but Irène was inscrutable.
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