‘It didn’t work out too well with him not knowing, did it?’
‘Don’t punish me,’ she said. ‘I’ve been flogging myself enough as it is.’
Jordi frowned. ‘So is that why it’s over? Because you’re a Wallace?’
Callista curled around her knees, miserable. ‘It’s probably the way it all came out that finished it,’ she said. She could remember Lex’s face, white with fury. There had been hatred mixed with all that emotion. Hatred and accusation. She couldn’t see how they could go back after that. ‘Damaged goods,’ she said.
Her tears turned off and weariness set in. Jordi went inside and brought out two glasses of water. He sat back down beside her on the lip of the deck.
‘Dad asked me to help out on the boat,’ he said.
‘What’s wrong with that?’
He spat on the grass. ‘I’m used to going it alone. It’s better that way. Nobody relies on me.’
‘Barry relies on you.’
‘That’s different.’
‘No, it’s not.’
He glared at her. ‘I have my own way of dealing with things.’
‘And how’s that?’
‘It’s my way,’ he mumbled.
‘I thought the boat would make you happy. Not so lonely.’
‘I’ve got happiness, in my own way. I don’t need you interfering in my life.’
‘What? It’s my fault Dad asked you to help?’
‘Mum said you talked to her about it.’
‘For God’s sake, Jordi. I was only trying to help. Same as you help me. I won’t get involved next time.’
‘Good.’
‘Won’t you give it a go?’ she said hesitantly. ‘You might actually like it. And it’d get you away from the servo a bit. You can’t pretend you enjoy it down there.’
He said nothing.
‘Please?’
‘I’ll think about it.’
She put her hand gently on his arm and he let her leave it there for a moment.
‘We have our own path, you and me,’ she said quietly. ‘Our own way.’
Jordi looked at her. ‘No,’ he said. ‘You have your path, and I have mine, Callie. I can’t bear the load for you. I have enough of life to carry for myself.’
She watched him sitting there on the step, with his scrawny shoulders squared and his lips firm. There was so much strength in that bony frame and those wild, determined eyes.
‘I don’t know how to fix things with Lex,’ she said.
He glanced at her. ‘That’s easy. Like the storm. Let it blow over.’
‘It wasn’t supposed to go this way.’
‘No,’ he said. ‘But life was never supposed to be fair.’
He pulled a joint out of his pocket and lit it.
‘I’m done with talking,’ he said, taking a drag and passing it to her.
They sat for a long time, breathing the bush, watching the light, and drifting into an easy, mindless haze.
After Jordi left, Callista pulled her paints drawer out from under the kitchen sink. Her good paints were stored there, the expensive ones, the ones she saved for best. Dumping the drawer on the table, she threw aside the dusty old cloth covering it. There was an unexpected tingling energy in her fingers as she rolled a few paint-blotched tubes in her hands. She looked at the paints like they were foreigners, not quite connecting with them. Minutes passed as she went through the contents of the drawer: tubes of oils and acrylics, half-cleaned palette knives, new and neglected brushes, a handful of broken sketching pencils, scraps of charcoal, chips of dried paint.
She allowed time to wash over and through her, and waited for the magic to emerge. She emptied her mind until her focus was centred on the tubes of paint and all she could hear was the whisper of her own tremulous breathing. Beneath her skin large events were waiting to disgorge. Huge dark emotions and happenings were brewing. Thoughts and visions shuffled across her mind: order and disorder, love and terror, fear and disappointment, loss. Flashes of angst. Lex. The storm. The black wind on the beach that night.
She wiped the dust from her palette and cracked off the dried clots of paint. It had been a while. More carefully now, she went through the paints. Some were useless, dried out from the last time she had frenzy-painted and forgotten to twist the lids on tightly enough. What a waste. But there was enough.
The old excitement welled in her fingers and tickled in her chest as she began squeezing colours onto the board: black, blue, violet, white, red, yellow. From those she could mix the strong steely blues and turgid purples that she remembered in the sky before the storm as it thickened with furious clouds and stretched itself vertically and horizontally in the escalating winds.
She clunked a canvas onto her easel. Frantically, her hands scattered amongst the brushes in the drawer, scuffing over stiff tips and shakily selecting large sizes. Everything within her was coarse and urgent.
It was then, with a handful of brushes clutched in her left hand, that she caught sight of her reflection in the mirror. The wildness in her eyes almost frightened her and she noticed the panicked thumping of her heart.
Slowly she placed the brushes on the table. She lifted the mirror down and set it on the easel. Staring at herself, she slipped off her clothes and stood squarely naked in front of the mirror, resting the palette on her right arm. She dipped and swirled one brush, coated it in black. Wildness surged in her, primitive and strong. She dabbed the black on her breasts, covering the generous bulges of creamy flesh, then made a sludge of grey on the palette and slicked it over her nipples. Concentrating, focused on colour, she mixed blue-black and swiped it repeatedly over her abdomen, up to her chin, dots of it over her face.
Panic blossomed.
She squeezed out more black, painted her arms and legs with it. Then another large squeeze of black slathered thick and slick onto the V of her pubic hair. She caked it—feeling hate and dread and fear and loss and loathing, the choke of grief, rising from the ground up through her feet, blasting out through the top of her head. Her hands were trembling. Her chest constricting. Shivers of horror ran down her back.
She reached skywards as she coated her fingers. Her heart pumping. Eveything breaking out of her, swamping her in black.
Then all collapsed to silence, and she fainted on the floor.
Evening woke her with its cold touch. Her body was stiff but light. The paint was caked and congealed all over her. It was going to be a task to get it all off in the shower. Colours cracked as she shifted to a sit. She pulled up on a chair. The cold had seeped deeply through her and her movements were awkward. But she climbed the steps on feet that seemed unweighted, and the shivering could have been happening to someone else.
After the shower, with skin scrubbed red, she drank a contemplative coffee out in the peaceful dark of the deck. Bush sounds eased through her, the smell of the trees at night, the crackly, busy quiet.
Then she removed the mirror, replaced the canvas on the easel and meditatively linked with the storm inside herself so that it could begin the slow process of showing its face on canvas.
Eighteen
Sash came around the day after the funeral. While Lex was putting the dishes away, she sat quietly on the couch playing with two Barbie dolls. Mrs B was due home within the next couple of days and Lex hadn’t finished fixing things at her place yet, so he was a little impatient with Sash for turning up when he wanted to get things done. He felt guilty too, for being annoyed with her. She asked so little of him, playing there by herself, immersed in her imaginary world. After he’d tidied up, he sat down on the couch and watched her.
‘What game are you playing?’ he asked, trying halfheartedly to be interested.
‘Families.’
He stared out the window for a while then tried again to engage with her. ‘Which one’s the mummy?’
‘This one.’ Sash lifted a Barbie with a glittery purple dress and thick blonde hair.
‘Of course,’ Lex observed. ‘Mummies dress like that all the
time. Which one’s the dad?’
‘This one.’ Sash raised the other Barbie, naked with obvious plastic breasts.
‘How can you tell that one’s the dad?’
‘Her hair’s cut short.’
‘Who are the kids?’
‘Me and Evan. I don’t have enough Barbies so I just have to pretend.’
‘Sorry. I’m not up on these things. You’ll have to forgive me.’
She stopped playing and looked at him for a moment.
‘They said stuff about “‘forgive” at church yesterday. “Forgive” and “sins”. What does that mean?’
‘Sins are when you do something that you know is wrong.’
She nodded. ‘Like when I hit Evan.’
‘Something like that.’
‘What about forgive?’
‘Well, you forgive someone if they do something wrong to you or hurt you, and they’re sorry, and you want to let them know you’re okay with that.’
Sash frowned. ‘I don’t want to forgive my dad. I’m not okay with what he did.’
‘That’s all right. Sometimes it takes time to be ready to forgive.’
She went back to playing her game.
‘What’s happening?’ Lex asked.
‘The dad has been away from home for a long time and has just come back again. See, they’re going to kiss and make up.’ Sash pressed the dolls’ faces together. ‘And then they’re going to get married again.’
‘I see.’ Lex’s heart crushed in his chest. Poor kid.
‘My dad’s not coming back home,’ Sash said. ‘I think he’s forgotten me.’
‘How could he forget someone like you?’
‘He forgot my birthday. That’s what I can’t forgive him for yet.’
Lex turned cold. He tried to be light, shift the topic a little. ‘Did you just have a birthday?’
‘Yes, I just turned six. But my dad didn’t send me a present. He didn’t even send me a card.’
He looked at her, feeling useless. ‘It’s pretty hard to understand,’ he said. ‘But sometimes grown-ups get so caught up in their own lives and troubles that they forget things that are usually important to them. Even birthdays of people they love.’
He ruffled Sash’s hair and went to make a cup of coffee. He felt sick. What choice did a kid have when a parent walked out? Sure, kids were resilient. They coped because they had to. What did they understand of the complexities of adult relationships? Thank God his relationship with Jilly hadn’t come to that. But then, perhaps Isabel had taken flight before it did. What had happened to them after she died?
It was as if the foundation of their entire relationship had died with her. Jilly had blamed him. She’d flayed him with words until he was stripped to the bones. At first he hadn’t responded. He’d just watched this alien person battering him, until one day his teeth had started talking, using the same language as her—the language of the doomed; cruel things that couldn’t be taken back. Between them they crushed the soul of their relationship, that fragile shell of mutual respect. Past that point, there was no fixing it.
Frank brought Mrs B home the next day. Lex saw the car pull up and rushed out to help, but Frank was already guiding the old lady towards the house with a hand beneath her elbow. She looked weak and frail, her face thinner and paler than usual, her back more hunched, as if life was getting heavier.
‘They kept me in bed too long,’ she was saying. ‘It’s no good for the bones, wasting away in bed. Old people like me need to be up and about.’
‘You needed to rest, Mum,’ Frank said, nodding at Lex. ‘They were worried about pneumonia.’
‘I can breathe, can’t I?’ she snapped. ‘It’s obvious I don’t have pneumonia.’
‘You were bruised after the fall.’
‘Yes. Well, I suppose that’s true.’ She turned to Lex. ‘Lad, it’s good to see you. Can you come over for a cuppa shortly? After Frank sets me up in bed? They’ve softened me up so much in hospital my legs are like jelly.’
Lex waited at home for thirty minutes, reading yesterday’s newspaper, then he went back to see her. Frank was wandering around the yard piling up sheets of corrugated iron that had blown around in the storm. He waved when he saw Lex.
‘Just let yourself in. She’s in her room. Her cup of tea will need a top-up by now.’
Lex went in via the front door. He found the teapot on the kitchen table and carried it tentatively down the hallway. He’d never been this far into the house before and somehow it felt like an intrusion.
‘Mrs B,’ he called. ‘It’s Lex.’
‘This way, lad.’
He followed her voice into a dim bedroom. She was propped up with pillows on a big old four-poster bed. The curtains were drawn and the lamp beside the bed lit the room in dull sepia tones.
‘More tea?’ he asked.
‘Please.’ Mrs B indicated her cup on the bedside table. Her face was shadowy and haggard in the subdued light.
‘Can I open the curtains?’ he asked.
‘Want to see what the storm’s done to me?’ she said.
‘I already know what it’s done to you.’
‘Open them,’ she said. ‘So I can see what it’s done to you.’
Lex dragged the curtains back and sat on a chair near the window. Mrs B’s eyes regained some brightness as she burned them accusingly into him.
‘Where’s the girl?’ she asked.
‘Who? Callista?’
‘Yes.’
Lex hesitated. ‘We had a disagreement.’
Mrs B’s lips pressed together into a flat line. ‘What about?’
‘I didn’t know who she was.’
‘You didn’t know she was a Wallace?’
‘No.’
‘Does it matter?’
Lex stiffened. ‘Yes, I think so.’
‘You think so.’
‘It matters,’ he said firmly. He’d thought Mrs B would be nicer to him after the accident.
She pressed further. ‘Why does it matter?’
He thought she ought to know why it mattered. It was obvious and he wasn’t going to spell it out for her. She was being difficult and provocative after a forced week in bed. He was surprised when she started laughing.
‘And are you telling me you came to this with no baggage?’ she cackled.
He almost managed a smile. ‘None, of course.’
The old lady squinted at him. ‘How did you know I’d gone over the cliff?’
‘Your headlights flashed through my window. You must have been all over the road. It’s amazing they let you have a licence.’
‘You should have tried driving in that,’ she said. She leaned back against her pillows and lifted her cup to take a sip of tea. ‘So,’ she said. ‘The argument.’
‘Not worth discussing.’
‘You’re very quick to write the poor girl off.’
‘Poor girl!’ He gripped the arms of his chair and leaned forward. ‘Hardly.’
Mrs B tut-tutted. ‘So much anger.’
Yes. She was right. So much anger. He was seething with it. It burned through his trousers, burned him off his seat, pushed him to lean out the window trying to feel the breeze on his face. He could explode in this room.
‘Anger is good,’ Mrs B said.
‘Good?’ Lex turned back to her, disbelieving.
‘Yes, good,’ she said. ‘Anger means healing.’
He snorted. ‘Anger means anger,’ he said. ‘Callista lied to me.’
‘And have you been entirely honest with her?’
She kept pressing him with these invasive questions. He looked away. ‘She knows everything now.’
‘Everything,’ Mrs B echoed.
‘Everything she needs to know.’
Mrs B sighed and set down her cup on its saucer. ‘I need to tell you about the Wallaces,’ she said. ‘So you can understand some things.’
‘Not now.’
‘Why not? It won’t wear me out, if that’s
what’s bothering you.’
‘You should rest.’
‘Rest! I’ve been resting for a week in hospital.’
‘I’ll bring you back some dinner tonight. When Frank’s gone,’ Lex said. ‘We can talk then.’
‘You make sure you come,’ Mrs B said querulously.
‘I wouldn’t want to see a sick woman starve.’
Lex walked off some of his anger on the beach then he cooked a chicken curry for dinner and took it around to Mrs B’s at about seven o’clock. She was sitting at the kitchen table in a blue dressing gown.
‘I feel better already, being at home,’ she said. ‘Frank helped me have a bath, and then he was happy to leave me for the night knowing you were bringing me some dinner.’
‘Good,’ Lex said. ‘We’ll be sure not to wear you out too much so I don’t have to carry you back to bed.’
Mrs B’s eyes flashed at him. ‘I won’t be letting the likes of you carry me.’
He smiled.
‘What have you brought me?’ She tried to peer into the pot.
‘Chicken curry,’ he said. ‘Mild. It’s my specialty.’
‘What else do you cook?’
‘Chop and three veg. But don’t hassle me. I’m learning. My wife used to do all the cooking.’
‘Wife.’ Mrs B raised her eyebrows. ‘That’s the first mention.’
‘Well, it’s out in the open now, isn’t it? After the storm.’
‘Does she know?’
‘Yes. Callista knows.’
‘Ahhh.’ Mrs B nodded to herself. ‘The argument.’
Lex served some rice and then the curry. ‘How much does an old woman eat?’ he asked.
‘Not as much as a strapping young lad like yourself.’
‘A bit too strapping these days, Mrs B,’ he said. ‘But not young anymore. I’m coming up to thirty-nine this year.’
She snorted. ‘Don’t complain till you have cause to, lad. It’s boring when the young indulge themselves.’
He smiled and pushed a plate towards her. ‘I’m indulging you tonight.’
‘No.’ She wagged her head at him. ‘This evening’s talk is a necessity. Perspective is what an angry young man like you needs. And perspective is what you’ll have by the time you leave here tonight. I’m going to tell you about the Wallaces and me.’
The Stranding Page 18