Elsewhere in Success

by Iris Lavell

  ‘Vengeful?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Maybe I’m the one who’s vengeful. Is that what I am?’

  ‘That’s interesting. Are you?’

  ‘No. I don’t think so.’

  ‘Neither do I.’

  ‘I know it’s not all my fault.’

  ‘Yes, that’s right. It’s not your fault Louisa. You didn’t set out to hurt him.’

  ‘He was just a boy.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘It’s not his fault either.’

  ‘No, it isn’t his fault.’ Lucy smiles and places her hand over Louisa’s. ‘I want to say something more, something personal, Louisa. Is that all right?’

  ‘Of course.’

  ‘I like you. I really do. I’m not sitting here in judgement. How can I? I can teach you some techniques for managing your stress or shifting your habits of thinking if you want to work on that, but I don’t have any profound or miraculous answers. I wish I did, but I don’t. All I can really do is be a witness, and if you like, to let you know what I think or what I’ve learned through the years that might be helpful. It might not be helpful. I could be wrong. I make mistakes. There are no guarantees, are there?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Awful things happen. People do horrible things. I don’t know why. Power seduces, I suppose. They’re looking for short-term gain, or revenge. Or they just don’t care. Life goes haywire. Or maybe it doesn’t. It’s life, not some sort of utopian ideal. We can’t make it what it isn’t, whether we want to or not. Believe me I’ve been down that track myself. It led to a dead end. Now all I do is to try to live in peace, and once something is beyond my control, I try to think about it differently, and not to suffer over my own suffering.’

  ‘Your suffering?’

  ‘Yes, I lost someone dear to me. It’s really hard.’

  ‘I’m sorry.’

  Lucy nods.

  Louisa says, ‘I am getting better. I don’t dwell as much as I did.’

  ‘I know. I think you are too. I feel that you are starting to come back into the present. That being said, I want you to do something for me every morning when you wake up, until you come to see me next time. Will you do something for me?’

  ‘Yes. What do you want?’

  ‘You have a lot of different types of birds around where you live don’t you?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Every morning, as soon as you wake up, go into your garden for five minutes, on the clock, and listen to the birds. Count how many different calls you can hear.’

  ‘You want me to count the birds?’

  ‘That’s right. Report back. I’d be interested to know.’

  CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE

  When Harry visits Adam in Fremantle, they walk to the hospital gardens, where Adam sneaks a cigarette. Adam tells him he’s no stranger to this place and asks if Harry knows what it’s like to feel so bad you want to die.

  ‘I went through a bad patch when my first marriage broke up,’ Harry says. ‘I felt like topping myself, but I couldn’t be bothered.’

  Adam laughs. ‘You’re kidding, are you?’

  ‘Yeah. But I had fantasies of ... never mind. Water under the bridge so to speak.’

  ‘So how did you get through it?’

  ‘I generally find exercise is the best thing,’ says Harry. ‘I feel okay most of the time now. That proves it works, eh? I do a bit of jogging and I’ve taken up weights lately.’

  ‘Yeah, I should look after my health more,’ says Adam staring at the cigarette in his hand. He throws it on the ground and grinds it out. He’s dressed in jeans, a black T-shirt with a peace sign, and expensive-looking sneakers. ‘They don’t like us wearing pyjamas all day so they make us get dressed,’ he says. ‘I don’t usually wear them anyway.’

  They spend nearly the whole time talking music, and Harry promises to bring his sax next time for a jam. He’ll have to drag it out first and have a blow so he doesn’t make a fool of himself, he says.

  At some point they get to talking about whether Harry has any kids. He tells Adam about Bella and how he hasn’t seen her since she was around four.

  ‘I’ve thought about her a few times lately,’ he says.

  ‘Why don’t you get in touch?’

  ‘I wouldn’t know how,’ says Harry. ‘She could be anywhere.’

  ‘She’ll probably be on Facebook or something.’

  It hasn’t occurred to Harry. The possibilities start to grow in his imagination.

  ‘I don’t know how to get on,’ he says.

  ‘I can show you.’ They are back on the ward by this time. Adam gets out his laptop and signs him up on the spot. And there she is. A version of Yasamine, and himself he supposes, but better looking. Beautiful, in fact. His daughter.

  ‘Look, you can send her a message,’ says Adam. ‘You just put it in there.’

  ‘I’ll think it through.’

  ‘Fair enough.’

  The time skids past and Harry feels great when he finally leaves with a promise to come back next day. He will keep this promise, is looking forward to it, and sees the possibility of a friendship developing. He pushes Bella out of his mind for the moment, focusing instead on Adam.

  He’ll get his sax out again to see if he can still play. He could even make an effort to catch up with some of his old friends. He has Ziggy’s card from when he and Louisa bumped into him that night. Ziggy was just the same, a bit older. They were the best times, those summers. Great memories.

  One hot evening late one January everyone was sitting on the front veranda of the old weatherboard house in East Vic Park. Yasamine told him she was pregnant and they invited friends over to celebrate, Harry’s music buddies, their partners, and Yasamine’s bridesmaid, a sullen woman who didn’t really get into the spirit of things. A couple of the guys brought along their instruments for a jam. Yasamine was in a good mood, singing ‘Fever’ along with the old Peggy Lee standard. The guys indulged her request and complimented her on her voice, which indeed had a nice texture to it. She became self-conscious when everyone grew quiet, and she drifted off pitch. Harry found it endearing.

  The music had gone well into the night. Harry remembers the improvised feel of their lives as they were back then. There was no worry if someone wanted to crash on the floor for the night, rather than drive home under the influence. Next day they usually went down to the cafe strip for an early lunch and sat there nursing a coffee or two well into the afternoon.

  They were good, lazy times, and he remembers the neighbours, all fairly young and tolerant, coming across with bottles of wine to join in the small party. Nobody got very drunk, just relaxed, and they passed around a couple of joints. That was as far as anything went. They kept to their own partners. It wasn’t the rock-and-roll lifestyle people imagine. They just liked the music. They liked messing around, experimenting, inventing.

  He and Yasamine talked about how when the baby was born, if they felt like it they’d just take off on the road somewhere, head off to America, New Orleans, not be tied down by conventional expectations. It would be good for the kid, teach him to be flexible, adventurous. Then Bella was born. He loved her – of course, who wouldn’t? If he is honest with himself there was also resentment.

  It beats him how so much can change after you have a baby, and why you feel you have to follow the usual paths. Yasamine forgot all about New Orleans and just going where the mood took them. Then it turned out that Yasamine didn’t really like jazz. Or even Madonna. Truth be known, she was a closet country music fan.

  Dear Bella, I haven’t used this so-called social networking thing before, so here goes. How are you? You might be wondering who I am and why I am writing to you. You won’t remember me probably, and I don’t know what your mother has said. Last time I saw you, you were just short of your fourth birthday. I remember you had beautiful long curly dark hair and your mother’s dark eyes, and that people used to say that you had my mouth. (Let’s hope not!) Anyway your old man
is still alive and kicking. Yes, that’s right, the original model that your mum got fed up with. She had every right, what with the way I was headed, but I turned out better than expected and I have a good job, and I’m not some old drunk. What about you? Are you married with kids? Am I a grandad? I wasn’t going to get in touch – not that I didn’t want to. I didn’t think I had the right. I still don’t know if it’s right. I don’t even know where you are. I met this young bloke recently – it’s a long story and I won’t bore you with details – he said I should be able to find you on the internet and bang! There you were. If you don’t want to contact me that’s fine: I won’t bother you again and no hard feelings. No worries, but if you do want to give me a call sometime, I’ll send my number. You can call but not one of those texts. I’m still getting the hang of that little screen so I might accidentally delete you. I hope your mother is well. Say hi for me if you want and tell her I’d be happy to hear from her, but don’t feel obliged. Enough said. I hope to hear from you soon. All the best, Harry (your biological father) O’Keefe P.S. Do you still have Dolly Pink?

  Harry writes his letter as a practice run, with no real intention of sending it. His finger twitches, he presses return, and the message disappears into cyberspace.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR

  Somehow now with the baby coming, and everything that has been stirred up by the other night’s adventure on the bridge, Louisa feels a sense of urgency in getting herself straight.

  ‘It’s not easy,’ she says.

  ‘The more you avoid it, the more power you give it,’ says Lucy.

  ‘Tom used to say darkness has its own beauty.’

  ‘What are you thinking about?’

  ‘I’m thinking of the painting that Tom did, the day he brought the flowers home.’

  ‘Can you describe it to me?’

  ‘It was a picture of a car crash. There were flowers strewn across a car that had been twisted around a lamp post, and a young man’s um blood-streaked hand hung from the broken passenger window. On the ground was a package tied up in brown paper and string, and another hand, a woman’s hand, was reaching into the frame towards it. He used watercolour – it was all done in a delicate watercolour. He called it Still Life.’

  ‘Still life?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Whose hand do you think it was, the one reaching in?’

  ‘I don’t know. I’ve thought lately it was mine.’

  ‘And the package?’

  ‘Not what it must have meant to him when he painted it, obviously. This package of pain that I’ve been carrying around.’

  ‘Why don’t you ever play your saxophone anymore?’ she asks Harry one day.

  ‘I’m thinking of selling it,’ he lies.

  ‘That would be a terrible shame. I wish you would start playing again. I think you’re just being stubborn.’

  ‘Takes one to know one.’

  Still, the exchange surprises Harry because of what he has been thinking and feeling lately. Whether he is still capable of playing. She definitely has some sort of sixth sense. She might even know about Carole, or suspect. Is she telling him it’s okay, forgiveness is possible, that history doesn’t have to weigh a person down as much as it does? She’s letting him know that everybody makes mistakes, that nobody’s perfect.

  Something still holds him back from getting everything out in the open; about Carole, about why he doesn’t play anymore, if only he knew himself, and about the changes that are happening to his heart. It’s possible that some things just can’t be said in so many words.

  Louisa goes into his study, climbs up, pulls the case down from the top shelf, and places it on the kitchen bench. ‘Anyway, suit yourself. I’m going out for a while as soon as I get changed,’ she says.

  ‘Where?’

  ‘My new painting class. Remember? Lucy suggested it.’

  ‘I get it,’ says Harry, ‘you think playing would be therapeutic for me.’

  ‘It’s not all about you, you know, Harry,’ she says. ‘But yes, I reckon it would.’

  ‘Just checking,’ he says. ‘Sometimes I can be a grumpy old bastard.’

  But she has already gone.

  It is difficult to tell where the music is coming from. Snatches of sound move across cold dark air. Louisa winds her window down and turns the engine off. The sound is drifting out, originating from somewhere in the house, possibly the back room. Harry is playing, softly at first, but as her ear adjusts, Louisa can hear the notes greet one another, tentatively, and then as the closest of old friends. He is improvising, floating long, sad notes into the night. A melody is emerging; each note follows the one before like a story, vulnerable, erratically spaced and breaking like a voice, releasing years of feeling. The sound is not perfect. He might be losing his breath or perhaps the notes have congregated in irregular pockets throughout the house so that the music escapes in uneven rushes into the darkness. He is feeling his way, but the music is all the more moving for that.

  Louisa sits in the car for a long time, on the brink of a discovery. What is it? Something that music can get at, but words cannot.

  Hi Harry, Thanks for the message. I thought of looking you up, then I wondered why I should bother. It’s not like you did. True I wanted to fill in gaps. Not when Dad was alive. I didn’t want to hurt him. Don’t get the wrong idea. He was the best father. The best. Even when my sisters were born he never once gave me the feeling that I was less important and I knew he loved me the same as them. Mum is devestated as you can imagine but my sisters both had their kids early so she has plenty to keep her busy, she’s an awesome Nanna and Mum, but she gets arthritis and has to pace herself. I didn’t know if I should tell her about this but she was alright with it only worried for me but I told her I’d be alright. Mum never talked about that part of my life and I never felt like I could ask her, she always says you can’t keep looking back or you’ll miss what’s right in front of your nose. Since Dad died she forgot her own advise. I have lots of things to say and want some questions answered, which I think is probably the least you could do. Mum said not to open the can of worms but I make up my own mind about that. Send me your number. Or not. I can’t promise anything. I hope you are having a good life and I might talk soon. Regards, Arabella Smith. I can’t believe you remembered Dolly Pink.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE

  At the second meeting of the art class the teacher has brought in branches of bougainvillea, wet with spring rain, which she places on a blue velvet cloth. The moisture makes random spatters of dark spots on the already-dark material. Louisa feels ill when she looks at it, but she is determined not to turn away. Not this time.

  At the end of class she stands back from the work and is startled to see that there is an explosion in what was intended to be a benign depiction of branches. Her eye travels across the canvas to the depths of the painting. Hidden in thick swirls of paint turned to mud, shapes emerge. An interplay of destruction and human matter slips in and out of visibility.

  She is unsettled and fearful. She focuses, desperate to see bougainvillea, but her eye travels to the outer perimeter, where she has inadvertently painted layers of despair. Death is hidden in the greenery.

  Louisa had a premonition, but the trouble with premonitions is that they can only be called such after the event. This one happened about a year before Tom died. He had asked her to film him as he tried out for an important belt in karate.

  Through the camera she saw something, or an echo of something, as if another time and her immediate impressions had become entangled. She recalls a sense of unreality. She remembers feeling sick. Still holding the camera to her face, she stumbled into one of the plastic chairs that had been placed around the perimeter and continued filming.

  None of it made sense. For the first time since she could remember, everything had been good. She had a new love in Harry. Tom was happier than she had ever seen him. She fought to comprehend what was happening.

  Afterwards when it was too
late to do anything else, she played the images over and over, reviewing what the camera had caught that day – Tom’s struggle and desperation to succeed. How in his exhaustion he fell down, tried to get up, fell down again. She was searching for a clue, but something was missing. She recalled how she’d felt driven to put the camera down and rescue him, to hold him and tell him that it was going to be all right, but it wasn’t allowed. He would have found it humiliating. It was her need, not his.

  Tom was achieving manhood and he wanted the proof, so she kept filming. She felt heavy with grief, though there was nothing yet to grieve. She remembers fighting back tears when his name was called.

  ‘Thomas Bradley Peters. Congratulations.’ They presented him with his new belt and hung a medal around his neck for his courage.

  Later, when what had been foreseen finally occurred, it seemed like a rerun at first. Everything was familiar. Holographs surrounded her. She felt that she had to put her hand right through them to discover their true nature. She put out her hand and discovered their true nature.

  At that moment she ceased to feel anything, but it was only a temporary reprieve. She hadn’t escaped. As soon as she decided to go on living, the pain hit her like a king wave.

  For a long, long time it was as if Louisa hung there uselessly in her own life, feeling nothing, watching from a distance as her apparently unnecessary life continued. It is how she imagined the last of a species might feel – the vestige of an age that had already passed.

  There are snatches of memories. She remembers sitting at the funeral with the medal hung heavily around her own neck, her lips kissing the cold metal, her face burned with tears that wouldn’t stop. She has an impression of Victor near the back door at the funeral as she turned to leave. She seems to remember the warmth of Harry’s hand on her upper arm as he helped her into the car afterwards. Time must have passed. Meredith looked back at her as she walked away from the house after the tea and sandwiches that her mother had insisted on. Did she have something left to say? She didn’t seem able to find the words. Meredith left with Todd a little over a year later, with no plans to return.