The Whole of My World

by Nicole Hayes

  ‘What’s for dinner?’ I ask, changing the subject.

  ‘Pizza,’ Dad says, smiling at Tara. ‘Do you like pizza, Tara?’

  ‘Yes, Mr Brown. I love it!’

  I can’t ignore the pang in my chest. Pizza is still very much a novelty in our house. Fish and chips on a Friday is fine, not flash or special. But pizza is a birthday thing. A special event. But here he is, offering it up on a normal Saturday night just because I have a friend over. Maybe this matters to him more than he’d let on.

  ‘Awesome!’ I cry, way too enthusiastically. He’s trying. Maybe it’s just because of Tara, but I don’t care. I’ll take what I can get right now.

  Tara shoots me a weird look but lets it pass.

  ‘Why don’t you two get sorted before dinner?’ Dad suggests.

  I show Tara to my room. ‘I’ll set up your bed,’ I say, before heading into the spare room. Dad stores our stretcher bed under the single bed against the wall. I hesitate only briefly when I lift up the bedspread, the familiar tiger-emblazoned bedsheets still in place as if Angus is about to slip in between them at any moment. It’s the only thing Dad hasn’t changed. I don’t know when we stopped calling it Angus’s room.

  I drag the stretcher to my room and open the squeaky hinges while Tara studies my Glenthorn memorabilia approvingly. I unfold the bed and give Tara a clean set of sheets. I return to the spare room to straighten the bedspread when I see an old metal Arnotts biscuit tin protruding from under the bed. The stretcher must have knocked it free on the way out.

  I remember the tin. Mum used to keep her sewing odds and ends in it. Buttons and thread, scraps of cloth and other bits and pieces that needed to be altered or mended. I stand there for a long minute deciding what to do. It’s hidden there, out of the way. Deliberately out of the way. I glance over my shoulder. I can hear Dad moving around in the kitchen and Tara is still busy in the next room. I shut the door behind me and sit on the bed, setting the tin on my lap. The edge is rusted, the corners rough from age or dampness. The lid doesn’t loosen easily, but after a solid tug and a neatly split fingernail, I manage to pry it loose.

  Inside are photographs – lots of them, of all different shapes and sizes, from different eras and with different textures and shapes. Small square black-and-white photos with a shiny surface and grainy faces; larger, round-cornered colour ones; and older sepia-style photographs that look like they were taken by a professional. Most of them, though, are more recent. The only pictures I knew we still had that were taken before the accident are the ones in my room – the one of the whole family on the beach and the photos in my mum’s book. I never knew what Dad did with these ones, and I never asked. Part of me couldn’t bear to see them anyway. The other part of me couldn’t bear to see Dad look at them.

  But here they are.

  I take a handful out and splay them on the bed beside me. The first ones are black-and-white images of Mum and Dad when they were young – all those bold 1950s clothes – the hats, the sunglasses, the tiny belted waists and tight busty sweaters. There are also photos from their wedding day – Mum looking stunning in ivory silk, her rich, luscious hair curling gently around her olive skin. She looks like a movie star. Dad stands tall and straight, barrel chest thrust out, chin high and strong, so proud and in love. He’s staring adoringly at my mum as though there is nothing else in the world more beautiful – more important – than this woman standing beside him. It’s intimate, the way he’s looking at her. No one else exists.

  I wonder what that would feel like. To have someone look at you like that.

  The photos change as the years shift from the 50s and 60s to more recent ones. Some of them seem to have been taken on the same day as my photo – Angus and me at the beach, Mum and me on a cliff’s edge looking out over London Bridge in Sorrento, Dad with his back to the ocean, the waves lapping at his feet. There’s also a shot of Mum, Angus and me outside Luna Park. It’s just the three of us – Dad is taking the photo – and yet we look so complete, as though the four of us are so strong and united that he doesn’t even have to be there to be included. We’re smiling at him, grinning hugely, having just come out of the Giggle Palace or the Big Dipper – I can’t remember which.

  That’s a family.

  The door to the spare room opens and I startle, knocking the tin off my lap. I stoop to cover up the evidence, worried it’s Dad, already seeing the horror on his face in my mind’s eye, at the same time hating that I feel like a trespasser in my own house.

  Tara stands in the doorway, curious but reluctant to come in. ‘What are you doing?’ She sees the photos and instinctively bends down to try to help me clear them off the floor.

  I push her hand away. ‘I’ll do it,’ I say brusquely, glancing over her shoulder to make sure Dad doesn’t come in.

  She sees this and rises to shut the door. Then she bobs down on the floor again and, ignoring my objections, helps me return the photos to their box.

  I seal it shut, feeling something heavy and dark shift inside me. I don’t want to put the tin back, hidden away, out of sight. I have no idea if Dad would check or if he even remembers the tin’s here under the bed. I want to slowly and indulgently sift through them all, one by one, to recapture this part of my life – our life – that has been stolen away. That I gave away. I drew a line too. And here it is in front of me.

  ‘Let’s go. Dad’ll want to get the pizza.’ I tuck the tin under my arm, pulling my jacket loose to cover it.

  ‘Okay,’ she says simply, eyeing the Arnotts tin. I know she wants to ask about it, about the photos, but our silent agreement on all things private prevents her from speaking, and for this I’m extremely grateful.

  In my room, I slip the tin under a pile of clothes in my wardrobe, placing some shoes and clothes in front of it so that, even if Dad happened to open my wardrobe, he’d have to actually go hunting in order to find it. Dad is a lot of things – difficult, distant, uncomfortable, intensely private – but he’s not a snoop.

  I shut my bedroom door behind us, ignoring Tara’s ever-watchful gaze, and we go to find Dad to ask him if it’s time for pizza.

  Tara is extremely polite to Dad throughout our whole meal of Hawaiian and Capricciosa pizza. Excessively polite. I wonder if she’s doing this for me, or because the St Mary’s girl inside her still beats on despite her nearly pathological hatred for teachers and their rules.

  The other thing I notice is that, although Tara and Dad have so much in common – their love of football, their shyness, their quiet certainty about anything that doesn’t involve feelings and emotion – you wouldn’t know it to look at them right now. Instead, their difficult silences become more obvious. Mum always said that the things you really dislike in other people are often the things you dislike about yourself. Maybe that’s what’s happening here.

  After dinner we watch the replay with Dad, then tell him we want to watch the end of Hey, Hey it’s Saturday in my room. By the time we’re ready for bed, the show’s almost over. I turn down the volume so that it’s barely audible, then we both slide into our beds.

  ‘Your dad’s really nice,’ Tara says suddenly.

  ‘Um, yeah. He’s okay.’ I wonder if she’s being sarcastic, and wait to see if there’s more to come.

  ‘Your mum was really pretty.’

  I’m used to the lump that forms in my throat at the mere mention of Mum, but hearing Tara say something so unexpected and generous strikes me almost physically. ‘Yeah,’ I manage to whisper, after a while. I’m not sure she hears me because there’s another long silence.

  ‘What was it like?’ she says, as the Hey, Hey credits roll up the screen.

  ‘What was what like?’ I stretch my feet out under the sheets, pressing them against the ‘hospital corners’ Dad insists I use when I make my bed, trying to loosen the edges.

  ‘When she died,’ Tara says simply.

  The words sit in the room, loud and sharp in the quiet dark. They have a shape and form, a presence that
towers over us both, given life by Tara. There’s no answer to that question. ‘I don’t like to think about it,’ I say, and it’s possibly the truest thing I’ve said in two years.

  ‘Who was the kid?’ Her voice is so soft and gentle I almost answer. Almost confess.

  ‘What?’ I punch my pillow, pretending to shape it for my head, even though it was perfectly fine the way it was. I make a show of pressing it flat, smoothing it out, twisting my shoulders one way then the other, to get comfortable. There’s no way I’ll sleep tonight.

  ‘In the photos . . . there’s a kid. Ten or eleven maybe? With you and your mum.’

  I think of the photo and the broken frame in my drawer. I’ve bought a new frame to replace it, but every time I look at the shattered glass and those sunny, smiling faces in the photo, it just reminds me of my argument with Dad. And I chicken out.

  ‘He looks the same age as you,’ she continues, those eagle eyes narrow and fast on me.

  I could say it now. Just come right out and say that he’s my brother, Angus. My twin. The piece of me that’s missing. The other half of Dad’s and my grief. The person everyone around here is looking for and half expecting to see whenever we walk into a room. Even now, after two years, not really believing he’s gone. I could tell her that I miss him every day, just like I miss Mum. That I still expect him to bang on my door in the morning to make me kick the footy, or race him to the car, or wrestle with him over what we’re watching on TV.

  My lips move to shape the words. I train my mind on saying it just right – the right order, the right tone – dreading the pity I’ll see when I do, but knowing there’s really no way out of this unless . . . I lie. ‘Nobody,’ I say, the words coming from outside my body, in complete betrayal of what’s in my heart. ‘Just a family friend. Don’t even know him anymore.’

  ‘He’s cute. Is that Josh – the guy you talk about?’ she asks, watching me closely. I stare at the TV, my focus so concentrated that my eyes sting. I do something that’s half a shake of the head and half a nod, hoping it’s vague enough to mean nothing but clear enough to shut her up. ‘What time do you have to go tomorrow?’ I ask, the edge in my voice carrying all the warning Tara needs. I cross the room and turn off the TV, slipping back into bed without looking at her.

  There’s a quiet sigh. I can hear her shrug, if such a thing can be heard. ‘Any time. There’s no rush.’

  The following week drags on impossibly. Even the next weekend’s footy does nothing to ease the suspense. Glenthorn isn’t playing, so I have to contend with watching the Warriors win the preliminary final. At least we now have an opponent for the big day, so that’s settled something.

  By the time the Monday of grand final week arrives, it feels like we’ve been caught in a time warp. All I want is for Saturday to come, but instead I’m faced with a whole new week of suffering the excruciating experience of St Mary’s girls chatting about their dream man, their dream car, their dream date . . . Even their dream clothes. I watch them in awe. It’s like they don’t know what’s happening outside. Don’t they feel it? All the excitement and tension? Sometimes I think I live in a different world to them, one that only Josh and Tara – and Mick – operate in. Except, thanks to Josh and Ginnie, these two worlds have collided and there’s nothing I can do to wind it back. If there was any doubt of this, Ginnie Perkins kills it before recess in a double period of English Lit.

  Ginnie’s been on holidays with her family – Surfers or Noosa, or somewhere sunny and expensive, her rich tan glowing against the rest of the girls’ wintry pale skin. It’s her first day back, and I haven’t missed her one tiny bit. The minute I sit down, Ginnie saunters over to my desk and smirks, reminding me why I hate her so much.

  ‘I know a secret,’ she hisses, not pausing for even a second before taking her seat across the room in a perfect hit-and-run.

  I have no idea what she’s talking about but the possibilities are both endless and terrible. As I open my exercise book to review our homework, dread settles heavily in the pit of my stomach. Literature with Miss Whitecross is a complicated experience for me normally. I love the books we’re studying – The Great Gatsby, Memoirs of a Survivor, A Difficult Young Man . . . I don’t even hate The Watcher on the Cast-Iron Balcony, even though everyone else does. But for reasons either alphabetical or coincidental – the process of selection seems to change but the result doesn’t – I generally end up in Ginnie’s group, which always ends in everyone doing what Ginnie wants to do the way Ginnie wants to do it. This is frustrating enough without the secret Ginnie thinks she knows hanging over me.

  As usual, Miss Whitecross divides us into groups and, as usual, I end up with Ginnie. But also, unusually, Tara is in my group too. Just seeing these two sitting so close to each other bothers me, knowing their history, and how Tara feels about her. Throw in Ginnie’s triumphant declaration earlier, and I know the day can’t end well.

  We’re supposed to choose one of the books we’ve studied, and answer a related question. I’m leaning towards discussing the symbolism of the green light in The Great Gatsby, but I know Ginnie will want to do A Difficult Young Man because she’s already pronounced Dominic Langton a ‘major spunk’.

  True to form, Ginnie chooses Martin Boyd, and the question is a tricky one – to explore the idea of ‘geographical schizophrenia’ in A Difficult Young Man. But at least Ginnie’s read the novel, which I’m not sure applies to the alternatives. And Tara hasn’t read any of them. The process will be the same anyway: Ginnie will take over the discussion, I’ll pick up the crumbs and the rest of the group will defer to Ginnie with puppy-like adoration (Caroline Hall, Debbie Assange and Justine Deckland) or disinterest (Anna Barnes and probably Tara, because she doesn’t care enough to argue).

  We work through the exercise, jot down points of discussion and Ginnie typically appoints herself as public speaker, which is fine by me. Ginnie does her bit, as do all the other group representatives, and the class is going more smoothly than I’d expected. I begin to relax, just in time for the usual wind-down of the double period. Miss Whitecross likes to take this time to explore some of the issues that came up. It’s my favourite part of the class because everyone gets involved, and even Ginnie steps down from her pedestal long enough to seem like a normal person.

  A Difficult Young Man has captured everyone’s interest. Dominic does sound like a spunk, I have to admit, and the Langton family are about as strange and fascinating as any I’ve encountered, so I don’t mind when the conversation moves towards this novel, directed largely by Ginnie.

  ‘I think Boyd’s obsession with his family, his brother in particular, is kind of weird,’ Ginnie says, and looks at me.

  I’m not sure if she’s asking me a question or addressing the class, but everyone seems to think I’m supposed to respond, so I do. ‘There’s some autobiography there, isn’t there?’ I say. ‘I guess when your family is as complex as theirs – and as big – it makes sense that a writer would want to write about it.’

  Ginnie’s smirk is horrible. I mean, truly horrible. ‘You’d know all about that, Shelley. Wouldn’t you?’

  I study the novel, staring at the pages in the hope that I can avoid answering, but the class is eyeing me curiously when I look up. ‘I don’t know what you mean,’ I croak, barely above a whisper. But I know exactly what she means.

  ‘I want you to focus on the story, Ginnie,’ Miss Whitecross interjects, sensing that something is going on. ‘What about this family makes it so worthy of a novel?’

  Ginnie turns to Miss Whitecross, that smile now magically innocent. Ironically, it seems more hateful than the knowing smirk. ‘It’s just that with Shelley having a twin brother, she’s in a unique position to explain the brother relationship.’ Ginnie is beaming now – the heat of it radiates across the room, zeroing in on me.

  ‘What?’ Tara turns to me, ignoring the entire class, as though we’re the only people in the room.

  Words die in my throat.

&
nbsp; ‘I don’t see how –’ Miss Whitecross tries again.

  ‘What twin brother?’ Tara shouts.

  ‘Girls!’ Miss Whitecross rises from her desk, but no one’s listening to her or paying any attention at all. They’re all looking at me and Ginnie. And Tara.

  ‘She hasn’t told you?’ Ginnie says to Tara, those great big eyes as innocent as a shark’s. She turns to me then. ‘I’m sorry,’ she says, smiling, ‘I didn’t know.’

  I want to kill her. In that sudden, hateful moment, I want to kill her.

  ‘Everyone, quieten down. I’m surprised at you, Ginnie.’ Miss Whitecross looks at Ginnie, the tiny frameless glasses perched on the tip of her nose, killing any hope she’ll be taken seriously.

  Ginnie does a reasonable impression of looking ashamed. ‘I didn’t mean to, Miss,’ she says, offering another apologetic smile.

  ‘No,’ I say, my voice sounding cold and hard and foreign. ‘I don’t have a brother. Not anymore. My brother, Angus, is dead,’ I finish, turning to Ginnie with a level gaze.

  Miss Whitecross gasps. ‘I’m sorry, Shelley. There’s no excuse for this. Ginnie, apologise right now!’

  But I’m not listening. I have eyes only for Ginnie Perkins. I watch my words settle on her, keeping my gaze as steady as a surgeon’s knife. She flinches, as though she’s been struck. She didn’t think I’d answer. Or maybe she didn’t know. For a tiny moment I’m enormous beside her. She meant to hurt me and wanted my reaction. I decide right then that I won’t give her the satisfaction. I tilt my head, stand as tall as my stature will let me and wait for her to speak. If this moment is going to end, she’ll have to end it.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ Ginnie says flatly.

  I study her, my gaze unflinching. Her eyes flicker, her mouth twitches. She pulls at her hair, twisting it nervously. I think she means it. Or regrets it, anyway. I nod, just barely.

  Tara is watching us both, hurt and anger plainly written on her face. ‘What is she talking about?’ she asks, her voice barely above a whisper.