Portraits of Celina

by Sue Whiting

  “You sure?” Mum says.

  I attempt a smile. “Yep. Please. I’ll catch up in a minute.”

  “Can you show us your boats?” Seth asks Oliver.

  Oliver hovers near me, hesitates.

  “Yes, I’d like to see those,” says Gran, who is staring intently at me. “Lead the way, Oliver.” And thankfully the group heads for the boatshed.

  Once they disappear from view, I hang my head between my knees and suck in heavy gulps of air.

  That moment – that long, breathless moment I locked eyes with Oliver’s father – replays in my head. And I am sickened and shamed to the very centre of my being.

  A splash of cold water on my face does little to restore my composure. I look at my reflection in the bathroom mirror. I am pale and wild-eyed – as if I have just seen a ghost. The thought sends a shiver surging through me. No ghost to be seen – but somehow I feel a ghost is almost certainly involved. It’s how and why that is puzzling. I swirl a gulp of water around my mouth, spit it into the sink then ready myself. Smile, I tell myself. Walk confidently, I urge. Don’t wobble.

  The gabble of dinner conversation and laughter wallops me as soon as I open the bathroom door and my knees threaten to buckle. You can do this. You have to do this. Swallowing bile, I head down the long hallway, through the sliding doors and out to the front patio. I walk as though drunk.

  The night is closing in and I welcome the shadowy ambience. Lighted orbs like pale moons wash the table of expectant faces in a dusky other-worldly glow.

  “Here she is!” says Annie. “Perfect timing. Bob’s getting the steaks off. We’ve left you a seat next to Oliver.”

  Gran slides her chair back and catches me by my arm as I pass. “You sure you’re okay, sweetheart?”

  Not trusting myself to speak, I nod, give a rubbery smile and slip onto the remaining seat.

  “Dig in, everyone,” calls Annie as she and Bob bring plates of barbecued meat and bowls of salads and breads to the table.

  Oliver passes me a bowl of green salad. My fingers quiver as I take it from him and I curse my hands for betraying me. I pass it quickly on to Seth.

  “Not hungry?” says Oliver, startling me.

  “Ah … no … yes … ah …” Here I go again – the blathering idiot strikes once more. “Just serving Seth first,” I say and pluck out a lettuce leaf with some tongs and pop it onto Seth’s plate.

  Seth scowls. “Don’t want that. Let me get my own.” He tosses the leaf onto my plate. I raise my eyebrows at Oliver as if to say “Kids!” then fix my concentration on filling my plate with salad that my swirling stomach has no interest in receiving.

  I push carrot and beet around my plate, letting the babble of voices flow over me as I try to collect myself. I am sitting so close to Oliver, I can feel the heat of his arm next to mine, yet it is the man at the head of the table, the man whose twinkling eyes keep sneaking glances at me, who is causing me so much anxiety that I feel it as physical pain. And each time I catch his eye, it’s as though I have woken from a dream; the kind of dream that only moments ago was vivid and real, but is now, in the light of day, vague, dangling out of reach.

  A loud shriek of laughter startles me and I look up to see everyone roaring, Oliver’s hissy laugh the loudest of all.

  “And now they call it the Undy Tree,” Gran is saying between wheezes. “There’re dozens of pairs hanging up there above the van – a bit like a colony of rainbow bats.”

  “All sounds rather colourful and exciting,” says Annie.

  “Colourful, maybe. Exciting, not so. These people are pretty sad cases, actually. Breaks your heart sometimes.”

  The conversation turns serious and I fake interest, but it’s only a cover to watch Bob: the way he sits upright in his chair, how he has left his steak until last; the way he seems to cock one ear towards whomever is speaking. I am bizarrely fascinated.

  Then Mum asks about people using the lake.

  “Just us,” says Bob in a croaky voice, and I so want to stroke that face. “Oliver mainly, for training. There’s no other access. That’s why the National Parks and the council have been trying to get their hands on the gorge and the land around it – to give the lake public access. But somehow Pop keeps dodging them.”

  “They’ve been at me to sell up too,” adds Gran.

  “No public access?” says Mum, her eyebrows knitting together. “Well, that is strange, isn’t it, Bails?” My nerve endings prickle as Mum brings me into the conversation. “The other night – late – Bayley saw someone on the lake. When she went to investigate, she bumped into a man near our jetty.”

  “Perhaps it was Bud,” suggests Gran.

  Annie screws her nose. “Possibly – he does go out on the lake occasionally. But at night?” She looks to Bob for his opinion.

  “Doubt it. It wasn’t you, was it Oliver?”

  “Nah – Bayley told me about it the other day. Reckon it must have been Pop.”

  “Yeah, the man was old, I think, wrinkly,” I say, the words catching on my dry throat. “He grabbed my arm – his hands were thick and scratchy and he had a scary, kind of raspy voice.”

  Bob and Annie chuckle. “Certainly wasn’t Bud, then,” says Annie.

  Their laughter makes me feel silly. “Why?”

  “Bud is mute,” says Bob. “Hasn’t uttered a word in, what” – he turns to Annie – “ten years or more?”

  Annie nods. “Yep. It must be. Hasn’t spoken since, Hetty – Bob’s mum – passed away,” she explains, lacing her fingers through Bob’s and smiling up at him with empathy. “Hasn’t been quite right since Hetty passed – that’s why we came back. To help out, you know.”

  “What man?” Seth kneels up on his chair and tugs at his earlobe. “You didn’t tell me.”

  “Oh, it’s nothing, Seth,” says Mum. “Bails and I forgot about it until now. Didn’t we, Bails?”

  “What about Amelia? Did you tell Amelia?”

  “Amelia,” says Annie brightly, obvious in her attempt to steer the conversation in a different direction. “She’s your oldest, isn’t she, Kath? Where’s she tonight?”

  Seth plops back down on his chair. “She’s at home. She didn’t want to meet any dumb country bogans.”

  “Seth!” Mum and Gran say at once.

  Oliver hisses. And Bob and Annie laugh out loud.

  But I am reliving that night by the lake. Holy mother of God. Holy mother of God. No! If no one has access, and it wasn’t Bud, the wacky pop, or anyone else from Lakeside – then who was it?

  twenty

  Seth is asleep, his head resting heavily on my shoulder. I heave him off and open the car door. My shoulder kills.

  The house is in total darkness.

  “Carry Seth in for me, will you, Bails?” says Mum and she hurries up the front steps.

  “Come on, Batman,” I say. “Time for bed.” Without opening his eyes, Seth climbs into my arms. I groan under his weight as I swing him out of the car.

  “The front door’s been left wide open,” Mum calls.

  “Amelia would forget her head if it wasn’t screwed on,” says Gran with fake levity, breaking into a slow run to join Mum who is stopped, hesitating, at the front door. Gran pushes past Mum and flicks on the light switch. “Amelia, are you up?” she calls.

  I lug Seth up the verandah steps and follow Mum and Gran inside. Asleep, the kid’s a dead weight. I am just delivering him into bed when I hear Mum’s panicked voice. “She’s not in her room.” Followed by the rush of footsteps thudding back downstairs. “Amelia! Where are you? Amelia!”

  I close Seth’s door behind me and join Gran and Mum as they flick on light switches and tear around the house in search of Amelia.

  We find her in the kitchen. The stench of alcohol announcing her presence well before we spot her: slumped in a chair, her face planted in a bowl of noodles on the table, her fingers wrapped around a near-empty bottle of vodka.

  Mum shakes her shoulders roughly. “Amelia!
Wake up! Amelia! For God’s sake, wake up.”

  Amelia turns her head to one side, opens one eye and squints at Mum. “Heys, Mum … shor home,” she slurs.

  “You’re drunk!” Mum accuses.

  “No kiddin’,” says Amelia, bringing her head out of the bowl, strands of noodles hitching a ride on her curls. “Geshh ya can get pisshed in the counshry, ash shwell as the sheety.” She lifts up the vodka bottle and stares at it.

  Mum draws in a deep breath, her eyes blazing, and for a brief moment I think that she is about to lash out at Amelia – to slap her drunken face. Instead, she turns and strides out of the room.

  Amelia tries to stand up, trips over the legs of the chair, or her own feet, and ends up sprawled out on her back on the linoleum.

  Gran drops to the floor and kneels beside her. “Give us a hand, Bayley,” she says.

  At the sound of Gran’s voice, Amelia turns on her side, curls into foetal position, and slurs, “Gooshnight, Gran.”

  I want to leave her there. But Gran won’t have a bar of it. She flips into Soup Van mode and tends to Amelia with both tenderness and firmness.

  It takes a wet face cloth and much cajoling before she is able to coax Amelia off the floor and lead her to the lounge room sofa to sleep off her binge.

  “I hope she has a whopper of a headache tomorrow,” I say as Gran and I plod upstairs.

  “There are few sureties in life, Bayley,” says Gran. “But a headache tomorrow for Amelia is most definitely one of them.”

  “Good,” I spit. “She deserves it.”

  Once again, I am too rattled to sleep. I sit cross-legged on top of my doona, desperate to sort out the stuff racing around inside my head.

  He is old enough to be my father. He is Oliver’s father. Where do my supposed feelings for Oliver fit into this?

  I get up and start to pace.

  His eyes held me like freaking magnets. My heart leaped out of my chest and all I wanted to do was rush into his arms and hold him to me. Why?

  And what about him? He was acting weird too. Much the same as Deb – that shocked, stunned, I-think-I’m-seeing-a-ghost-so-let’s-smash-a-bottle-on-the-floor reaction. But why didn’t he say anything? He must have known Celina; they would have been around the same age, probably went to the same school. A “Gee, you look familiar” or “You remind me of someone – sorry for staring” or a straight “You’re the spitting image of Celina O’Malley” would have sufficed. But no, he said nothing. The whole evening, in fact, was plain disturbing.

  I stop pacing and stand in front of Celina’s portrait. Just like Bob’s, her eyes draw me to her – they are mesmerising, and I feel as if each tiny piece of crushed bluish crystal is trying to tell me something.

  The blood drains from my face. A collage, made from bits and pieces. Did Oliver’s pop make this? And if he did, when did he make it? Before she died or after? I suppose it doesn’t matter much, but it sure shows the talent of “old Bud” – this portrait seems to capture more of Celina than any of her photographs.

  Sheesh! Can my life in this cottage by the lake get any more baffling? It’s all freaking me out, and I am very weary of pretending that nothing is happening.

  Perhaps I am having some kind of breakdown. Perhaps it’s the stress of the year. Mum has crumbled, Amelia’s out of control and Seth has withdrawn behind his Batman cape. Maybe it’s my turn.

  If only it was that simple.

  Still too wired to sleep, I sit at my desk and boot up my laptop. Maybe Deb has emailed back.

  Automatically, I log in to Facebook and am surprised to see that Loni is also logged in. A message pops up.

  Loni: Hey.

  Loni! How I miss her. I’d give anything to be back in Cronulla with her now – even if my life was screwed up there. Anything would be better than the weirdness that surrounds me here.

  Me: Hey. Wotcha doing up?

  Loni: Nothing. What about you? Don’t you have to be in bed at sundown in the country so you can get up at dawn and milk those cows?

  Me: LOL. That’s why I’m up – putting on the wellies and milking apron now. It’s my hot new look.

  Loni: Miss you, Bails.

  Don’t say that. You’re killing me. I try to compose myself then reply: Same. What’s happening with Johno?

  Loni: Yolanda took him back.

  Me: Bitch.

  Loni: Reckon. How was the hot neighbour?

  Me: Oh, you know …

  Loni: Spill.

  Me: The usual. Wild sex in the haystacks, while the olds were chewing baccy and downing whiskey.

  Loni: Yay you. When can I come?

  Me: Please come soon, but I have to say haystack sex is overrated.

  Loni: Good to see that you’re still totally cracked. Miss you.

  Me: Yeah.

  Emotion swells into my throat. I have to log off or I am going to tell Loni everything and then Loni will know for sure that I really am cracked. And I don’t want that – Loni is the one person I have been able to depend on these past months.

  With tears brimming, I write: Gotta go – can’t make those poor cows wait too long. Their udders will be scraping the dirt.

  Loni: Poor things. Go rescue those tits. Love you. Bye.

  Me: Bye XXX

  I flick out before I change my mind and go straight to my email account.

  And at last there is a reply from Deb.

  Hi Bayley,

  Sorry it has taken so long for me to reply. I’m a bit of a Luddite and always forget to check my emails.

  No problems with asking questions – it’s actually good, because since you visited, I’ve been remembering a whole stack of things that I haven’t been brave enough to think about for a long time. I’ve even been in touch with Suzie. She’s some hot shot lawyer in Melbourne. Not much in common these days. Still, it was good to make contact.

  Celina was such a wonderful friend and although the time of the Peace Sisters was cut short, we did have a fabulous life together, with many rich experiences and such a unique and special bond. I had forgotten about that – grief for Celina swamped it and left behind a gaping hole.

  Lord! Sorry for rambling. In answer to your questions, Celina disappeared without a trace. Nothing was found. The possibility of her running away was explored briefly, but those who knew her well also knew that she loved her life here too much to run away. She simply had no reason. She had us all under her spell – we would have done anything for her. And Robbie – Robbie was the love of her life.

  Ah, Robbie exists. I didn’t make him up. I am not sure if I am relieved or freaked by this revelation.

  Poor, sweet, adorable Robbie. When Celina disappeared, he couldn’t function – withdrew from school, sport, everything – withdrew from life actually. In hindsight, I think he was probably suffering from depression. His family ended up taking him on a long overseas trip and then he finished school at a boarding school in Sydney. I didn’t see him again until about ten years ago when he came back to help out after his mum passed away. It was great to see him happy again. I remember thinking Celina would have been stoked to see him finally getting on with life. You may have met him – Bob Mitchell over at Lakeside.

  Wow, for someone who hates email, I have been rabbiting on.

  Positive energies to you, Bayley.

  Deb X

  So Bob is Robbie. I slide this fact into my brain to see where it fits with the other pieces of Celina’s puzzle.

  Bob is Robbie.

  Bob!

  Of course.

  He is so great, Bayley. Wait until you meet him. You’ll love him to bits.

  twenty-one

  “Wake up, Bayley! Wake up!” I open one eye to find Seth on his knees bouncing on the bed beside me. “Why are you asleep in your clothes?” Seth doesn’t give me the chance to reply before he launches back into his plea for me to wake up – now. “Hurry! Oliver is coming over in the big rower to get me and take me back to Lakeside so we can go kayaking. Like he promised. He�
��s nearly here. Hurry!”

  I sit up and rub my eyes. My head feels heavy and my mouth furry. “Promised?” The word comes out as a croak.

  “Last night in the boatshed. He said he might and now he is! Come on, get ready.”

  “Why? Make sense, Batman.”

  “Amelia’s sick and Gran says she’s not allowed out of the house, and I can’t go by myself. Gran says. And I don’t know where Mum is. So if you don’t go, I can’t. Please, come on, hurry.”

  Bob is Robbie. Last night’s revelation thumps me and I am not sure I want to go anywhere near the Mitchells for the time being. At least until I have sorted out what is going on and how I feel about it. I am sure my reaction to Bob had everything to do with Celina. Was I seeing him as if I was Celina? Through Celina’s eyes? Feeling her feelings? Was she driving my reaction? And what does that mean? Did Celina’s spirit slip inside me somehow? Is it still there? I shudder. That is too frightening even to think about.

  And then there’s Oliver. I’ve blown it there without a doubt, acting like an absolute nutter again. I really can’t face him so soon.

  Seth looks at me, eyes pleading, fingers reaching for his ears. I want to say no, but I can’t bear Seth’s disappointment. I cave. “Okay! You win. I’ll go.”

  “Yo, Batman, put this on.” Oliver helps Seth thread his scrawny arms into the armholes of a life jacket.

  Seth tries to squirm out of it. “I can swim. I don’t need this on.”

  “Yes, you do,” I say. “Gran said.”

  Seth groans.

  “Rules of rowing,” adds Oliver. He clicks the safety buckles into place and directs Seth to wade out to the boat.

  It is already warm. The air is sticky and thousands of screaming insects are making such a racket that I am secretly pleased at the thought of Amelia having to cope with a hangover in this weather.

  I swing my bag onto my shoulder and follow Seth, holding out of the water the long cotton overshirt from the peace chest that I am wearing over my swimmers. I am hot and restless and welcome the coolness of the water washing around my legs.