by Dick, Amanda
“What are you doing?” I ask, wiping my eyes in the dark.
“I was going to ask you the same question.”
There’s no judgment, no amusement, just concern. I don’t answer him, because how can I?
“I’m just trying to understand,” he says.
There is hysterical laughter in my head. Good luck with that. Then the laughter dies away and it’s just the two of us again, sitting in the silence. It swirls around us, but it’s strangely comforting, like a confessional.
“I can’t sleep in a bed,” Luke says from out of the darkness.
Our arms are touching and I can feel the heat of his body seeping into mine.
“I’ve tried, but I can’t. I always wake up on the floor. I think that’s why I prefer camping to sleeping inside. It suits me better.”
I sniff, wondering why he’s telling me this.
We sit there for a long time, not speaking. The tears stop. My mind is still. The fears come back.
“I’m scared I’ll forget all the important stuff,” I whisper, because apparently we’re sharing. “These holes in my memory – what if I forget about James, or Kieran?”
I feel him sigh but he doesn’t make a sound. I feel like he’s waiting.
“I write everything down,” I whisper, staring into the darkness in front of me. “I have notebooks full of memories just in case the real ones get swallowed up in the black hole inside my head.”
He shifts beside me, and I feel his hand on my leg. He follows it until he finds my arm, then my hand, and he pulls it away from my leg, holding onto it gently. He’s warm, when I feel ice cold, and his warmth spreads through me.
“I don’t know how you feel,” he says, his voice almost a whisper. “No one does but you. That’s all yours, just like what happened to me is all mine. But I know what it feels like to try so hard to keep it together when you’re really falling apart.”
My eyes fill with tears again.
“I don’t want to fall apart,” I whisper, because this is my greatest fear and saying it any louder is tempting fate.
“Then don’t.” He squeezes my hand. “Fight it. Don’t stop fighting it. You can make it through, Sian. You’re strong enough. You’ve come this far.”
“I feel like I’m drowning in it,” I half-gasp, half-sob, because I’ve never said that aloud before either.
“In what?”
“The sadness.”
It’s more than the sadness, it’s the fear, the grief, the shame, the anger, the longing for what I had and what I’ll never have again. It’s more than any of those things, but one word is all I can manage.
“There’s a trick to it,” he says, reaching over to drape his arm around my shoulders.
I fall sideways, leaning into him.
“To feeling the sadness, but not letting it suffocate you.”
“What is it?” I mumble, only half-listening as I draw in the warmth of his body.
“I have no idea. Time, I guess. Determination maybe. Willpower. Recognising the fact that your life is different now, and embracing what you have. You don’t have to forget them, Sian. Just let them go. It’s not the same thing.”
I know that’s my problem as the words linger in the air around us. I don’t want to let them go. Not yet. What scares me most is what if the memories I have of them are taken from me before I’m ready? What will I be left with?
“I left the potatoes in the fire,” he says, squeezing my shoulder. “They should nearly be done. Come back with me, have something to eat. You’ll feel better.”
I nod into his shoulder, because suddenly the last thing I want is to be sitting in this wardrobe in the dark, waiting.
We climb out of the wardrobe together, and he helps me up. I’m surprised to see that Geezer has followed us, standing guard at my bedroom door. I fondle his head as we pass, and wash my face in the bathroom before we head back to Luke’s.
We don’t talk on the way over, but he lets me help him wrap sweetcorn in foil and place it in the fire, and pours me another mug of wine. We watch the flames as the steak cooks on the cast-iron grill, and then I help him dish everything up. We sit on the grass, eating off our laps. The mood is sombre, but not awkward, and I’m grateful for that. He doesn’t try to make small-talk and I’m incapable of it. I think that’s what I like the most about him. He reads me. He knows when I need the silence. It’s like being alone, only with company. The silence is the same, but the fact that I’m not by myself makes it bearable, even comfortable.
The sun is low now, sitting just on the hills opposite us. It’s always fascinated me, how it seems to defy gravity. Sometimes it looks like it’s falling from the sky, sometimes it looks like the ground is rising up to meet it. Luke feeds some of his steak to Geezer, who takes it delicately, then swallows it without chewing. The day should be cooling off a bit now, but the fire throws out a lot of heat, and I find myself kicking my shoes off and burying my toes in the cool grass.
“Do you swim?” he asks.
I turn to him, and he’s watching me as he rubs Geezer’s belly.
“Sometimes. Doggy-paddle mostly. You?”
“I practically grew up in the water. Lake Lure, near where I’m from, was right on my doorstep as a kid. My Mom used to joke that I was born with gills.”
I smile, because he seems content. I wonder what he was like as a kid, whether he was this intense, or if it was the military and what happened to him that made him this way. Sometimes I can see glimpses of a more mischievous nature beneath the serious façade, and it makes me curious.
“How old are you, if you don’t mind me asking?” I say.
He lifts an eyebrow at me, that crooked smile playing on his lips.
“Wow, that kinda came out of the blue,” he says. “I’m thirty-one. I’m not going to ask how old you are, because I was always taught you never ask a lady her age.”
I laugh at that, because I haven’t actually felt like a lady in a really long time. Plus, that sounds like something Grandad would say.
“I’m twenty-seven,” I say, picking at the leftover corn on my plate.
I thought he’d make some comment, but he doesn’t. I look up, and he’s just watching me with this look on his face that I can’t quite decipher.
“What?” I ask, too curious to let it lie.
He shakes his head, feeding another piece of steak to Geezer. Apparently neither of us was particularly hungry tonight, although the food was really good. An appetite isn’t something I have a lot of these days.
“Do I look older?” I ask, trying to make a joke of it.
It’s true, I probably do look older. Grief can do that to a person, age them, slingshot them forward in years. It’s the learning, the wisdom that comes with losing people you love. It’s the kind of wisdom I wish I didn’t have, but I don’t really care if I’ve got more crow’s feet, or am much paler than is natural even for a redhead. I have no control over how my body converts my grief into the physical. I don’t even care that it does.
“No, it’s not that,” he says gently, swapping his attention from Geezer to me. “I was just thinking how young you are to have been through what you have.”
I don’t have a response for that. I didn’t plan on being a widow at twenty-five. No one does. I can feel myself getting pulled into the myriad of what-ifs that plagued me for months after I woke up, and I fight it. I don’t want to think about that now.
“How old were you, when you had your accident?” I ask instead.
“Twenty-six.”
“A year younger than I am now.”
“It’s different,” he says, turning his attention back to Geezer.
“How?”
“I was fighting for my country. I signed up. I knew the risks.”
“Did you?”
“Of course I did. We all did.”
“Was it worth it?”
He looks at me, and I suddenly want to take it back. His eyes are steely blue, like icy granite.
&n
bsp; “What are you asking me, exactly? If I’d do it again, knowing what I know now? If that’s what you’re asking me, the answer is yes. I would.”
I’m afraid to look away, but then, just as quickly, he changes. The ice melts, the granite crumbles.
“War is hell. That’s not just a cliché, by the way – it’s real. I lost a lot of good friends and I’ve got more who put themselves in harm’s way every day. Death changes you, I don’t have to explain that to you. It doesn’t hurt any less just because it happened in combat.”
“I’m not suggesting it does,” I say quietly.
I don’t mean to insult him. I just want to know if losing friends the way he did hurts any less than what happened to me because the cause was something he believed in. I didn’t believe in any cause, and losing James and Kieran has no upside for me. There is no silver lining. I can’t hold up my beliefs and say ‘this is why it’s all worthwhile’. I wish I could. I wish I could find the reason, understand why it happened and what I’m supposed to learn from it.
He stands and picks up a nearby bucket, throwing water over the fire. It hisses and crackles, the acrid smoke acting like a punctuation mark.
“I’m sorry,” he mumbles, standing there, staring at the fire as it takes its final, gasping breaths. “I didn’t mean to come on so strong.”
I pull my knees up, hugging them. He doesn’t move. I wonder what he sees, when he looks at the glowing coals. Does he still feel the heat from the desert that day?
“It’s okay.”
He looks over at me as if he wants to say something, but he doesn’t. Instead, he comes over and sits down beside me. We both look into the fire as if it’s going to provide us with answers of some kind. Instead, all I can see are questions.
“Do you ever wonder why you were spared and they weren’t?” I ask.
He doesn’t say anything for so long, I wonder if he’s going to answer me.
“I used to,” he says finally. “Not any more. There’s this famous quote that says ‘The only time you should ever look back is to see how far you’ve come’. I try to live like that now. I spent far too long wondering why I survived that blast and all it did was make me feel unworthy. I’m not unworthy. I deserve to be here. I’m honouring their lives by living mine. They’d do exactly the same thing, I know they would.”
The dying fire blurs in front of me and I pull my legs up tighter, resting my chin on my knees.
“You’re worthy too, Sian.”
This time, it’s me that doesn’t answer him.
Chapter 17
I don’t sleep well that night. I toss and turn, dreaming of fires and explosions. I have several dreams, all short, sharp and violent. In one, I bury myself beneath a dead soldier to avoid a roving army of faceless warriors. In another, I’m being burned alive as I hide in a funeral pyre, set alight with countless others. I wake with a jolt before dawn, exhausted.
Sitting on my bed, I watch as the sun rises, chasing my nightmares away. I feel sick just thinking about what Luke might’ve been through. It’s the first time I’ve felt such a strong wave of empathy towards anyone else since I woke up in the hospital. Since that moment, I’ve been consumed by grief and fear and guilt and sadness – so consumed, it’s blocked everything else out.
Sometime during the past few days, amid endless ups and downs of my own, I’ve developed a pocket of empathy that is rapidly filling up. It sounds odd, but it gives me hope. Maybe I’m not drowning in this sea of sadness after all. I’m not stupid – I don’t expect everything to magically be alright again. It never will be and I know that. I’m forever changed, I’m not who I was, and I’m not sure who I will be when all this is over. I can just feel that this is a period of adjustment now, not a permanent condition. Whether he’s aware of it or not, Luke’s responsible for opening a door, and I’m standing there on the threshold, staring into a future I wasn’t sure I’d ever see.
For the first time in a few days, I take my little paper boat out onto the lake and light the candle. I push it towards the sunrise with hope. I don’t cry. I watch it float and I think that maybe there’s a message for me there. Maybe I can float too.
Ana phones over breakfast. She’s gentle, testing the water, but I’m not angry at her anymore.
“Today’s a good day,” I say.
She seems relieved. She says Chris called her last night, that he tried to call me but I didn’t pick up. I must’ve been at Luke’s. She seems relieved about that too. Chris is coming back this weekend, on his way down to Wellington. When I hang up the phone ten minutes later, I’m looking forward to seeing both of them.
I spend some time writing after breakfast. My latest notebook is filling up fast. I need to get another one, so I add it to the list on the fridge while I remember. There’s quite a stack of notebooks now. Nine to be exact, all of them filled with memories. I stare at them, piled into the built-in bookshelf underneath the window. Who knew that so many memories could fit into such a small space? It makes me think of my brain, of its actual size, and how many more memories are in that small space. How many more notebooks will I need to get them all down on paper?
I make a quick trip over to the store after breakfast, picking up the few fresh supplies I need. Milk, bread, cheese, eggs and a fresh new notebook. Luke is busy working on the cottage as usual, and he waves when I come back. I return the gesture with a smile.
I’m making a sandwich for lunch when I look up from the kitchen and see Geezer. He’s sitting at the French doors, waiting for an invitation. I call to him and he comes right in, gently taking the offered biscuit out of my hand. He hangs around most of the afternoon, and we sit outside and listen to Luke hammering next door. It’s become a kind of soundtrack, Luke working. As I sit here trying to keep things together, he’s over there tearing things apart. Does it make him feel better, ripping down something old and useless to create something new and useful? I could understand if it did. Creating something from nothing must be a kind of tonic in itself.
I’m considering taking a walk along the track when I look up and see Luke ambling over the lawn towards me. He looks like he’s just had a shower, or a swim, with his hair all wet and slicked back like that. I like it. It suits him.
“Hi,” I say, as he climbs the stairs up to the deck.
“Hey. I wondered if he was over here.” He smiles, scratching Geezer’s head. “He’s not being a nuisance or anything is he?”
“Course not. I like the company.”
“You can come over any time you like, y’know,” he says, fixing me with one of his direct stares, the ones that seem to see right through me. “I don’t mind. In fact, I like the company, too.”
I falter for a moment, not sure if there’s a hidden meaning in there somewhere. Now and again I wonder, but he’s never so much as made a move on me, so I’m probably reading too much into it.
“Okay. Thanks,” I smile.
I indicate his wet hair with a wave of my hand.
“And if you want to use my shower, it’s yours anytime.”
He slides a hand through his hair, which is black and shiny when it’s wet.
“Thanks. I usually bathe in the lake. A hot shower’s a bit of a treat.”
“That sounds okay for summer, but what about when the weather cools off?”
He sits down in the deck chair beside me and leans back with a sigh.
“Excellent point, although winter seems so far away at the moment, doesn’t it?”
“Do you think you’ll be able to live in the cottage once the winter comes?”
“I hope so, for the worst part of the winter anyway. I’m nearly done re-framing the inside. Then comes the roof, then the outer walls and windows. Once it’s weathertight, I hope to move inside and continue working on the finer points – like inner walls.”
He smiles over at me, and it’s one of his genuine smiles, the ones that he doesn’t give very often. I smile back at him, weirdly content.
“Ana phoned this mornin
g,” I say, filling him in. “Chris is coming this weekend, on his way back to Wellington. Apparently he’s had enough of his parents already.”
I joke about it, but I can’t help feeling a stab of jealousy.
“Great, looking forward to catching up.”
“Do you want something to drink?”
“No, I’m good. I was actually wondering if you wanted to take a walk along the track. Feel up to it?”
“That’s funny, because I was just thinking about doing that.”
We set off around the back of the house towards the track, chatting easily as we walk. Geezer bounds ahead, but we keep him within our sight, just in case. When we get to the rock, we both stop for a break, resting against it and taking in the view. Conversation dies off, and I think about the last time we were here. I’m not the only one.
“You scared the shit out of me the other day,” he says quietly.
The sounds of the bush surround us. Birdsong, cicadas, the breeze as it ruffles the canopy of trees above us.
“I’m sorry.”
“I’m not telling you because I want an apology, or because I want you to feel guilty about it.”
“Then why?” I ask, turning to him.
“Because I care, and I want you to be honest with me.”
“I told you, I wasn’t trying to –”
“Yeah, yeah,” he runs his hands through his hair with a sigh. “I know. Next time, just talk to me – come find me. I’ll sit with you. I’ll, I don’t know, make you a cup of coffee, or get drunk with you – whatever it takes. We’ll talk, or we won’t talk, it’s up to you. Just… no more heart attacks, okay? Friends don’t do that to each other.”
His eyes lock onto mine and I can see it there, deep down. A pain that I recognise. A fear that’s familiar. A promise that he means to keep. It’s so solemn, so heartfelt, that all I can do is nod.
“Come on,” he mumbles, pushing away from the rock. “Let’s get out of here. This place gives me the creeps.”
***
We walk most of the way home in silence, lapsing into conversation every now and then. We don’t talk about what happened at the rock again.