Lullaby

by Bernard Beckett

  ‘What about your father?’

  Maggie took the sheet back. There was a moment when the ends of our thumbs brushed against one another. Funny, the things you remember. A thousand little anchors, holding you in place.

  ‘He wrote lists, maybe you read them.’

  ‘No.’

  ‘He liked lists. Actually, it was a spreadsheet. The number of times he got up in the night for us, how long we fed for, whether we burped or pooed, how many minutes it took to get us back to sleep.’

  ‘Why do you think he did that?’

  ‘I dunno,’ I said.

  Maggie waited. She was very good at waiting.

  ‘I think he liked the idea of being the very best father he could be, that a part of him wanted to believe he worked harder than other fathers. I think he probably liked having twins, because the game’s got more points in it that way.’

  ‘You make it sound like pride,’ Maggie said.

  ‘It was pride.’

  ‘Perhaps it was just generosity.’

  ‘I think it was both.’

  I didn’t want to her to understand him. I’ve always felt the need to keep him for myself, and for Theo.

  ‘Tell me how your parents died.’

  ‘I don’t see how that’s—’

  ‘It’s an important part of your story.’

  ‘I thought this was about my brother.’

  Maggie shook her head. ‘It’s about you. You’re his closest living relative. We can’t proceed without informed consent.’

  ‘If this was about informed consent,’ I said, ‘you’d be informing me. But you’re not, you’re asking me questions.’

  ‘Okay, it’s about more than consent.’

  ‘You lied.’

  ‘Sure, if you like.’ It didn’t seem to worry her. ‘It’s not about informed consent, it’s about capacity for informed consent. That’s my job, to see if you are capable of knowing what you want.’

  ‘Is anybody?’ I asked.

  ‘There’s a scale.’

  ‘You have to make sure the trauma hasn’t affected me.’

  ‘Your twin brother is dying,’ she answered. ‘If the trauma hadn’t affected you, there would be something seriously wrong.’

  ‘You need to be sure my decision can’t be challenged in a court.’ I knew a little bit.

  ‘That’s part of it.’

  ‘How am I doing?’

  ‘Until you asked that question, very well.’

  This time her smile was different. Like she’d just realised how nervous I was, how much I needed her to like me.

  ‘So how did they die?’

  ‘Picnic, lightning.’ Her fault, for encouraging me.

  ‘You know, I’m sure I’ve read that book.’

  ‘I only saw the movie. It was lightning though. We don’t know the circumstances. Only that Dad was driving, and for some reason he stopped and got out, even though it was pouring with rain. He was in the middle of the road when they found them, and she was half in, half out. Like she’d got out to drag him back in, or to see what he was doing, or…He had a torch. People had theories. I don’t think they were arguing. Neither does Theo. They didn’t argue much. With everybody else, all the time, but not with each other.’

  ‘What did they argue with other people about?’

  ‘How do these questions help?’ I asked. ‘What do they have to do with judging whether I’m in my right mind?’

  ‘If I have to explain every question—’

  ‘Just this one.’

  Maggie considered it, or considered me. I’ve never been that good at holding eye contact, especially when there’s silence. Three beats, and I have to talk or look away. Apart from with Theo. Theo was like looking into a mirror.

  ‘We ask about your past because it gives us a sense of how you see yourself. And the more we talk, the less guarded we become. In your case, your parents died suddenly. So this question can give me an idea of how you cope with loss. Essentially, I’m building a picture of you, and comparing it to reference pictures: of people who are suffering but competent, and of others who’ve lost their frame of reference. It’s imprecise, but it’s what we have. Is that enough information for you?’

  I nodded.

  Imagine playing chess, and your opponent starts explaining all their moves to you. How insignificant would your skills have to appear to them, before they would be prepared to do that?

  ‘You’re recording this?’

  ‘I’m sorry, I thought you’d been told.’

  ‘Yeah, I had.’

  ‘For clinical review, should my findings be challenged. In those circumstances the only person to access this would be another psychologist.’

  I nodded.

  She left a gap for another question.

  I let it close over.

  ‘So, your parents, what did they like to argue about, with other people?’

  ‘Education, politics, how to raise children. The environment.’

  ‘And you miss them?’

  ‘Of course I miss them.’

  And, even though it was exactly what she wanted me to do, I slipped into a story. I needed my parents close.

  ‘I remember one morning, a month before they died, we had breakfast together. That was unusual. Mostly it was four people running late, each sure the other three were deliberately making them later. But this day there was a strange coincidence, like when a room full of conversation suddenly falls silent, and we all sat down together at the table, by a window, looking out over the water. I watched people pushing into the wind, hurrying to get to the station, too busy to notice how beautiful the ocean is when it’s wild. The radio was on. We were the only people I knew that listened to radio. There was a panel discussion about the upcoming election. Theo asked Dad what something meant, I don’t remember what, something to do with economics. And Dad liked to lecture. In his head, I think he saw it as a discussion. We didn’t mind. He knew a lot of stuff, and it made us feel important, that he would want to explain it to us. He got up, turned off the radio, called up his work and told them he wouldn’t be coming in that day, because he had an infected toe. We told him that was worst excuse we’d ever heard, and he replied that it was so bad they’d assume it was true. He liked doing stuff like that, fake grand gestures. As if he saw himself as impulsive and reckless, when really he worked each day as a food technologist, rode in on the commuter line, paid his bills on time, slept with a hot-water bottle between his feet seven months of the year, and waited for lightning.

  ‘Mum did the school call, told them something important had come up in the family. Then we got five hours on the foundations of political economy. By the end, all we wanted to do was get up and run around a field. But we didn’t, because there was no way to do that without it making him sad. He wouldn’t say anything. He’d try to hide it from us, the way a father should, but we always knew. One Christmas, Theo and me got these amazing helicopter things, but Mum hadn’t realised you had to buy bat
teries separately. That’s how my father looked when we failed to meet his hopes for us, like they’d left out the batteries. Sorry, I don’t know why I told you that.’

  ‘He sounds like a great father,’ Maggie said.

  ‘No he doesn’t, but it’s nice of you to say it.’

  There was thick snot mixing with my tears. And talking about my parents was the easy part. I’d had a while to get used to it.

  ‘And when they died, they were having a weekend away, is that right?’

  ‘They often had weekends away.’

  ‘Away from what?’

  ‘Us. It started when we were little, when our grandparents were still alive. Back then, I think they did them to survive. And later they became like holidays.’

  ‘You don’t feel guilty?’

  ‘Why would I?’

  She was trying things out, seeing which wires were still connected.

  ‘Well, if they hadn’t been away that weekend—’

  ‘I didn’t cause the lightning. Guilt would be ridiculous.’

  ‘That’s a very adult response.’

  ‘Thank you.’

  2

  When I was fourteen, I had a teacher who looked just like Maggie. For an elective. I did codes, Theo chose cooking. The codes teacher was like Maggie. Not in the way I look like Theo. If you analyse it, feature by feature, nothing matches up. But considered as a whole, they’re the same person. They have the same feel about them. I only had that teacher for three months, but she was my favourite. I had a sort of crush on her.

  ‘Did the death of your parents make you and Theo closer, do you think?’

  ‘We were already close.’

  ‘That doesn’t answer the question.’

  ‘Have you heard of the Pauli exclusion principle?’

  I hoped she hadn’t. I hoped it was the sort of thing only people with mothers like mine knew about.

  ‘If any two electrons are too close,’ Maggie said, ‘then the combined probability of them being anywhere cancels out. It’s only through being apart that they can exist at all.’

  ‘It’s why you and I don’t fall through the floor.’

  I was disappointed—I wouldn’t get to explain it to her.

  ‘Even though we’re mostly made up of empty spaces. Because there’s a limit on closeness,’ I said.

  ‘Do you believe in God?’ Maggie asked.

  ‘I think we’ve got more important things to talk about,’ I said.

  ‘More important than God?’

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘I was wondering, when your parents died, if you didn’t blame yourself, perhaps you blamed Him? Maybe it made you question His existence?’

  ‘No,’ I said. ‘I’ve never believed in that sort of a God.’

  There was a knock at the door. An old guy, older than my father would have been if it hadn’t been for an electrical storm, waited at the end of his trolley.

  ‘Tea, coffee, biscuit?’

  ‘I’d like a water,’ Maggie said.

  ‘Same, please.’

  The man poured two glasses of water. We both got a biscuit we hadn’t asked for. The man moved slowly, like he had a pain in his shoulder. He smiled at us, longer at me than at her. Maybe because I was the patient, or because he knew the whole story: identical twins, orphans, one of them in a coma, an experiment. It’s the sort of thing people talk about.

  ‘This biscuit is awful,’ Maggie said, when the door had closed again.

  ‘I like it.’

  ‘Excellent.’ She passed me hers.

  I put it in my mouth and explored the bite mark with my tongue.

  ‘What happened to you, once your parents had gone?’

  ‘There was money. And the house was paid for. We own it, really. Once we’re twenty, it’ll…’

  I hope it never happens to you. I hope death never comes so unannounced. But if it does, this is how it will be. Without warning, the smallest thought, the least consequential sentence, will take your feet from under you, and you will fall, and keep on falling. Your head will hurt, the world will go small and dark, and your eyes will fill with water. Sometimes, you will vomit.

  Next thing, you’ll be on your knees, wiping dribble and bits of somebody else’s biscuit from your chin, apologising for being disgusting, even though you both know you can’t be held responsible.

  ‘No, please, it’s absolutely fine.’

  There was a spot, about as big as a thumbnail, on her skirt, and I was trying to wipe it away with my sleeve. She was pulling back, but politely, careful not to push me away. The pool on the floor between us spread. I remember it was mostly clear. I hadn’t had much to eat, since I heard. Maggie stood.

  ‘I, I’ll get somebody. I won’t be a moment.’

  She hurried out and I finished her water. I considered leaving, but couldn’t think of anywhere to go.

  The first few passes of the cleaner’s mop drew up most of the vomit: viscous, helpful stuff. I watched her swirl it into the bucket, then pull the mop back through the ringer. I remember thinking it was like a mathematics problem from school. The next splash of the cleaning water must have been part vomit. There’s no escaping that without a second bucket. And cleaners never have a second bucket. Slowly, one cycle at a time, the floor and bucket vomit ratios were equalising. If the bucket contains fifteen litres, and the vomit has a volume of 1200mL, and the mop on average transfers 400mL of liquid, write a differential equation to describe…I didn’t go that far, but I was aware that part of the cleaner’s task was to spread my vomit over a wider area.

  ‘But you weren’t left to live alone in your house,’ Maggie said, when the cleaning was finished. ‘You were only twelve.’

  ‘Our auntie was in charge. Our uncle wanted to move in with us but there was a line she wouldn’t live beyond, so many thousand kilometres from the equator. I can’t remember the exact number, but we were on the wrong side of it. It was to do with mosquitoes. She had a map, showing the progress of tropical diseases as the climate warmed. I don’t know if it’s true, I don’t know that much about diseases. But we never saw any mosquitoes near our house, and the people we knew died of normal stuff, and lightning.’

  Maggie didn’t smile. ‘So you think your auntie was using the mosquitoes as an excuse?’

  ‘No, I think she really believed it. She was that age, the generation that grew up online and lost their perspective. I think she thought if she came to look after us, ultimately a mosquito would kill her, and it would be her own fault for having been so careless. So she hired a—we never knew what term to use—a nanny, an auntie substitute, a Mrs Struthers. I guess my auntie didn’t worry quite as much about the mosquito getting Mrs Struthers.’

  ‘Or you.’

  ‘We didn’t take it personally.’

  ‘What was Mrs Struthers like?’ Maggie asked.

  It was a difficult question. I’d always had so many different feelings about Mrs Struthers, and no matter how I tried, I could never get them to line up.

  ‘Kind. But she
had too much time for us. I think that was the main thing. Normally parents are busy earning a living so they can look after you, but in Mrs Struthers’ case, looking after us was how she earned her living. I don’t think that’s the ideal balance. Luckily, she couldn’t tell us apart, or we might have suffocated.’

  Maggie nodded. A nod was different from a smile, was different from a stare, was different from the deliberately suspended moment before she exhaled, was different from the first joint of her index finger pushing briefly against her top lip. I had no idea what the differences meant. Possibly they all said the same thing and the only real variable was the length of the pause. Considering the urgency, she did a lot of pausing.

  ‘How did your mother feel about you being twins?’

  ‘Are you going to ask about our father, too?’

  ‘Your parents. How did your parents feel?’

  ‘I don’t know. I don’t know how to answer that.’

  No pause. Not even long enough for me to blink.

  ‘Did they treat the two of you differently?’

  ‘They tried to.’ I corrected myself. ‘Mum tried to. We weren’t allowed to wear the same clothes. Not just at the same time, I mean we had entirely separate sets of clothes. Right down to the cloth nappies we wore: his were blue, mine were red. Or that’s the way I’m told it. If people referred to us as the twins she corrected them, made them say Rene and Theo.’

  ‘Not Theo and Rene?’

  ‘Probably she mixed it up.’

  ‘Do you think she loved one more than the other?’

  She doesn’t like you. And she doesn’t not like you, either. She’s doing her job.

  ‘I don’t know. Maybe. But if she did, she was good at hiding it.’

  ‘Did you wonder if it was you?’

  ‘No.’