I looked at him.
He watched as I drew back.
Hold it in, he told me.
I did.
When I get back, his words a faint whisper, right there, next to me, it’s gonna be different. I’m going to get a job, my own place, make some money, and he sighed, then maybe, some day, I’ll come and live in a place like this.
He looked at me as I passed the joint back to him, and I watched as he pinched it between thumb and forefinger, drawing back with a sharp intake of breath.
What are you going to do, oh, Ur-su-la? and he grinned as he pronounced each syllable of my name separately, sing-song, the smoke coming out from the base of his throat in one thick stream.
Well, Mitch-ell, and I giggled, I think I’m going to be a famous actor, or a writer or a singer.
He laughed. Piece of piss.
That’s what I reckon, I told him.
What about your brother? he asked.
I stared up, high up, at the night sky and tried to see the patterns that I knew were there. An artist, I said. He’s going to be an artist, and I did not know if I should say any more. I did not know if Simon would want me to tell.
And Evie?
I shrugged my shoulders and looked out across the garden, the gate now visible, and beyond that the road, and somewhere that line of willows, and beneath that, the creek. I don’t know, I told him. She could be anything.
Anything at all, he said.
And in the silence, I watched him lean forward, looking straight ahead. You know what my sister does? he asked.
I didn’t.
Manages a shop. Menswear. She got away from home young. Left us as soon as she could.
And he moved towards me, just for a moment, hesitating, everything still as I waited and he waited, both of us, unsure, so brief, that I found myself wondering if it had ever happened. Good luck to you, his voice soft, and the grass damp between my toes, just the light from the stars and the tip of that joint, with the house behind us, solid and dark, and the pair of us, sitting side by side, hip to hip, on that step.
I think it’s gone out, I whispered, holding it between my fingers.
And as he leant forward to light it again, I watched as the match burnt and then flickered out.
Because his mouth was on mine.
And I could feel his hand brushing, a slow rush, just the surface, the inside of my leg.
And I didn’t want him to stop. The warmth of his mouth, the smokiness of his breath, the cool grass beneath my feet and the brush of his hand, all of it, while overhead the night was still and dark.
I’ve gotta go, I whispered.
Why?
I couldn’t answer.
And as I shifted my leg from his, as I stood up, I felt the cool that comes just before dawn, unlocking my fingers from his and turning to walk back up the stairs, towards the house, unable to tell him that it was too much. All of it.
So I didn’t say anything.
I just left him, the door clicking softly as I opened it, closing it behind me, leaving him out there.
Alone on the bottom step.
With the night slowly lifting towards day.
twenty-three
Vi still believes in marriage. Despite the fact that it was clearly a disaster for her.
Sometimes she stops what she is doing and looks up from the box she is sorting. She lifts her glasses onto the top of her head. Her eyes are cloudy now. Where they were sharp and intense, dark stones, they are milky at the edges and the whites have yellowed.
She stares across at me and I know she is about to make one of her pronouncements. I brace myself.
Her voice has always been deep, but it has lost some of its richness and it cracks, breaking in the middle of certain syllables, as she tells me that it would be a pity if I didn’t get married.
Really, she says and she reaches for my hand.
I try to explain that I don’t see any need for marriage, that it is not an institution that means a great deal to me, nor, I would have thought, to her, but she doesn’t listen.
You don’t have to take all that dogma so seriously, and she waves her hand through the air, impatiently, dismissively. Marriage is whatever you want it to be.
I can’t help but remind her that it was hardly one of her life successes.
That was your father, she tells me with some irritation.
I ask her what is wrong with living with someone.
Nothing, she says. Nothing at all. It’s just not the same. And then she looks at me again, and tells me that she wasn’t intending to be disparaging about my relationship with Marco.
I know, I say, irritated with her now.
The way I felt about Marco is a totally separate issue. I know it was serious for you and I am not dismissing that.
I bend down to a box and start pulling out the next bundle of files, dusty and creased at the edges, not wanting to look at her and not wanting to continue this conversation.
I know she never really liked Marco. She never used to tell me this, but when he finally left, she said that she had always thought he was wrong for me.
I was surprised. With his impeccable working-class credentials, I would have thought he was perfect.
You never had that spark, she said. You were never right together, and then she turned back to whatever it was that she had been doing at the time.
She was right.
Not that I had ever talked to her about our relationship. I doubt whether I ever even told her I had started seeing him. His name just replaced the person before, just as his had replaced someone else’s name before him.
But with Marco, I did try. I wanted something solid. I did like him and, on the whole, we got on well. He was good to me. The problem lay not just in our fights, nor in our differences, which were probably no worse than most people’s. There was, as Vi so delicately put it, a lack of spark.
Why don’t you ever want to have sex? Marco would complain as I would push him away, again and again.
How do you tell someone that you are not attracted to them?
There was something in the heaviness of his body, in the thick solidity of him, that I felt would smother me, suffocate me, and I would pull away.
But how was I meant to say that?
So I would lie, over and over again, until even the times when I did give in, when I would sink into his arms, even when I wanted to, would seem a lie.
When I told Marco it was over, that there was someone else, he asked me who it was.
I refused to say.
Is it serious? he asked.
I said I didn’t know, it might just be a sex thing; it was too early to tell.
He looked at me dumbfounded. But you’re not interested in sex, and there was complete disbelief in his voice.
And then he hated me for what I had done to him.
Because he, too, had lied to himself. He had refused to see how things were.
I would kiss Anton in secret. I would meet him where no one would see us. I would wait until I heard Louise’s footsteps on the path. I would plot and I would plan.
You can’t tell, Anton had said, horrified, when I had told him it was finished with Marco. About us.
Sitting out on the edge of the cliff, watching the afternoon light hit the north point, his face, which in its reflection had been so alive, so mobile, froze with fear. Holding his hand but knowing he was no longer there. Feeling his fingers in mine and then feeling them uncurl, one by one, feeling the shift in his body, away from me.
And as I lay in my bed and remembered this, as I thought about the decision I was making, I noticed that the rain had stopped.
It was the quiet that had woken me, the still that had come after what seemed to be days of a relentless downpour. Nothing. Just the sound of the sea.
I got up and I opened my front door. I could smell the freshness of the night. It was clear now, clear enough to see the stars.
At the end of the building I could see the light on i
n Mouse’s room. He never turns it off. It burns all day and all night. I have never asked him why. And as I stood on my doorstep, one foot in, one foot out, the door to. Mouse’s flat opened, slowly.
We looked at each other.
Still up? he asked.
Can’t sleep, I told him.
He was smoking a joint. He held it out towards me. Beneath my feet, the path was still damp. I walked towards him, and I took it from his fingers without a word.
I looked up at the night sky and I remembered. Sitting out on the steps with Mitchell. All those years ago. Waving his hands in the air, the tip like a pointer in the darkness.
I turned to Mouse and then looked behind me at the emptiness of his flat. Burgled? I asked him.
He took the joint from my hand.
Yeah, and he drew back, sucking it in, holding it in.
This is what happens to Mouse. All the time. It is usually one of the many who knock on his door late at night, shouting out his name: Mouse, Mouse, let me in.
Find the guy?
He shook his head.
And we smoked in silence, not speaking as we watched the night sky slowly fade; tentative sunlight after days of rain.
twenty-four
Sometimes in the morning it is difficult to think about what you have done the night before. It is difficult to reconcile those actions with who you are during the day.
I left Mitchell sitting on the steps as the darkness slowly faded.
I lay curled up in my bed, listening to Evie asleep next to me. I was tired but not tired. I was wrapped in the thought of him, wrapped in the feel of him, wanting to sleep, but wanting to stay awake, as it all floated, exciting and terrifying, backwards and forwards through my mind.
And that was how I stayed, as I listened to the birds singing in the trees outside the window, sharp and piercing, cutting through the first morning light, the first pink in the sky, the clarity of the blue, until at last I fell asleep, closing my eyes to the sounds of the others getting up.
When I woke it was past midday. When I woke the sun was high, burning hot in the sky. I looked at the empty room. I heard the still of the house. And I did not want to think about what had happened the night before.
The note on the kitchen table told me they had all gone to the beach. They would be back in the afternoon.
I was surprised Vi had gone, and I checked her room. The neatly made bed, the piles of papers, the books covering the floor, the stale smell of the ashtray, the row of high-heeled shoes.
I turned on her transistor and twisted the dial away from the national radio station to the local one, the tinny sound of pop music blaring out as I sat on her bed and lit one of her cigarettes.
The taste was foul. My throat was dry and thick, but I did not put it out; I persisted. Watching myself smoke in the speckled, scratched mirror that hung on the front of the wardrobe. My reflection swam in the glass. Yellow and hazy. And I stood up and stepped back. To see all of me. Narrowing my eyes. Imagining myself in another body confronted with me, there, in front of me.
The sunlight was slanting in through the doors that opened onto the courtyard, making it difficult to see who I really was, to see any more than just an outline. Short, skinny; curly black hair. I leant closer to the mirror, blowing out the smoke in a thick choking haze that hit the glass and dispersed in a grey fog. Peering closer. Dark eyes like Vi’s, big mouth, long slightly hooked nose.
You have a face that you will grow into, Vi once said to me. You’ll see.
I drew back on the cigarette and held it in, watching myself, turning to one side and then the other, smiling as I flicked the ash into the ashtray.
I had once asked Simon if he thought I was good-looking.
What do you mean? he had said.
It was the day I had first kissed a boy. After school, behind the library. A dare. We had to do it for five minutes, in front of an audience. When we had finished, he had followed me home, finally summoning the courage to ask me if I wanted to go to the pictures with him.
I didn’t.
It was his best friend I liked. And he only had eyes for Alana Smythe, tall, blonde and tanned.
You’re just you, Simon had said.
But am I good-looking? I had persisted. If you weren’t my brother, would you like me?
But I am your brother, he had said, finding it impossible to comprehend my question.
I looked at my legs in the mirror, pulling my shorts up to reveal the tops of my thighs.
I lifted my T-shirt and looked at my breasts. Small, barely there.
Vi had laughed when I had asked her if I could buy a bra.
What on earth for?
All the other girls had them.
And when I had shaved my legs for the first time, she had given me a long lecture on male fantasies, male desires, male notions of how a woman should look and act.
Then why do you wear high shoes? And those dresses?
She had told me she was old enough to make her own decisions. She wore what she wanted to wear; she had never dressed for a man and she never would.
But what if I like smooth legs? I had persisted.
She had told me I was being ridiculous. There was no hair there in the first place. She didn’t want to argue any more.
Similarly, when I first got my period, I asked her to buy me some pads. She came back from the shop with a box of tampons.
I can’t use those, I had said.
I had heard the girls at school. You could lose your virginity if you used a tampon, their mothers would never let them, and as for the idea of putting your finger inside yourself – they would wrinkle their noses in disgust.
Vi told me to stop being so silly, and she laid the instructions out across the kitchen table, leaving me to work them out.
I put my cigarette out and lit another one.
Practice.
The taste was not getting any better. But my technique definitely was.
And I sat out in the heat of the courtyard, where the weeds pushed up through the stone flagging, where the sun could tan my legs, where I could still see myself in the reflection of the glass doors.
But out there in the brightness of that day, in the sharpness of that sunlight, staring up at the sky, I would find the night before slowly creeping back in. And I would catch my breath, just for a moment, with the whisper of a blade of grass, a leaf brushing the side of my legs, I would feel it all come back and I would close my eyes and stop breathing. Because all that was day, all that was solid seemed to slide away from me, drain like blood, until I was there again under the night sky with his mouth on mine.
Their room was on the other side of the courtyard. Their door squeaked as I opened it. Rotten wood straining on rusted hinges. Their beds were unmade, their clothes were scattered across the floor.
The glass door that separated them from Evie and me was closed.
I had watched them through it, their light on, ours off. Their bodies illuminated. Ours in darkness. Stripped down to their underpants. Simon, tall and slim, still like a boy. Long-limbed and slender. Mitchell, also thin, but with a breadth in his chest and strength in his arms.
I looked at his things and I looked at Simon’s, already blending into each other – socks, jeans, T-shirts, tangled together. I picked through them, wanting to find some clue as to who he was.
The indent of the mattress from where he had slept.
The twist of the sheets at the foot of the bed.
Cigarette butts in a saucer.
A silver marijuana leaf on a piece of leather thonging.
A torch that was sticky-taped together.
All this.
And nothing.
I followed Evie’s path, the one that Simon had made for her that morning, across the front garden and out onto the dirt road, turning towards what remained of the orchard at the side of the house.
The trees were gnarled and twisted, stunted by years of neglect, with small clusters of tart apples and woody pears.
I climbed the nearest, as high as I could go, perching myself up there so I could see it all. The red roof of the house, the gentle roll of the paddocks, the bare branches of the gums, streaky-barked, the tumble of boulders down the side of a hill, the line of willows that marked what I knew to be the river, and the twist of the yellow dirt road, winding its way back to Candelo, to the highway, to the coast, to where the waves crashed against the shore.
I wanted to be able to see when they came back.
But I did not want them to see me.
I did not want him to see me.
Not straightaway.
And with my back against the smooth branch, I stayed there, listening to the rush of the leaves overhead, letting myself drift in and out of the day that I was in and the night that had just passed.
twenty-five
When I made my decision, it was not as though there was a decision to make. It was suddenly clear. The indecision I had been lost in no longer made sense. It no longer seemed possible that I could not know.
I sat on the damp front step of Mouse’s flat, sharing a joint and remembering Mitchell, and as I looked out across the garden, as I watched each tree, each bush slowly taking shape in the beginnings of the day, I knew that I could not do it. Not on my own.
Letting myself into my flat, I saw it all in the half-light from the window. Two small rooms, with my clothes on the floor, my books stacked underneath the windows, the dishes in the sink, the chaos that had surrounded me since Marco had left. The chaos that was there before he had turned up in my life. The chaos in which he had attempted, unsuccessfully, to make a small dent, an impression of change.
Outside, the sun was now streaking the ocean crimson, the line of sky skirting the horizon impossibly rich in its blue.
When we first started living together, I would wake Marco to look at the dawn.
I had never watched that transition from night to day with Anton. We had never had a full night together. But I had with Marco, often. He would open his eyes momentarily, grunt in appreciation, and then go back to sleep. I would stay up watching, the great ball clinging to the lip of the sea, held there for just a moment, before it slowly separated, rising towards morning.
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