Straightening my nightie, I padded quietly out of the room and up the short flight of stairs to the attic.
I flicked on the light and rubbed my eyes. Must get a shade for that bare bulb. There was a brass doorknob on the door, with a twist-button lock. I locked it. From the parkland across the road, the chattering of early morning birds made it feel like the country, almost.
The Pac King box was where I’d moved it to — behind a tub of Christmas decorations and a cluster of pink charity-donation bags. My pulse quickened as I dragged it out and found The Poem.
… If only again the fire would alight
& lead us back to the place where we fell
Down the stairs with so many stars lit bright
Nothing ever looks the same in the light
You’ve forgotten all the things you told me
In the Hedera helix green & white …
What things had Dean Cola told me in the Hedera helix green and white? What, what, what? Why couldn’t I remember? What the fuck even is Hedera helix? I kicked the box.
‘Everything all right in there?’ Christos coughed outside the door and twisted the knob.
‘Yes.’
‘It’s very early. Why’s this door locked?’
‘Is it? I’m just putting some clothes in the bags.’ I rustled one.
‘Need some help?’
‘No thanks.’
One last chance for us, or forever wish
Remember & search for remnants of this
Down the stairs with so many stars lit bright
In the Hedera helix green & white
‘DEAN COLA,’ meows The Great Catsby. I’m sure I locked him out. How did he get back in? Catsby, get out of here! Too late. He is the same colour as the smoke filling the room, and he is disappearing. A big hand punches through the stained-glass Jesus in the door, thousands of fragments shatter to the floor. The hand feels for the deadlock on the inside. The police? The fire brigade? Christos? Smoke eddies into my nose, my mouth, my lungs.
I woke up coughing. The dream had been so vivid — the old kitchen back home at Broken River Road, the stained-glass door that for a while I’d believed was Jesus. My beloved cat had died in the fire; I’d killed him instead of myself.
I swung my legs over the side of the bed and sat up. The room spun, the bed swashed and buckled like a boat on rough sea, and I had to lie back down. Nausea gripped my stomach; I rolled over, drew my knees to my chest, and moaned into the pillow.
I was down to half-tablets every third day now. The serotonin party in my brain was winding down, the last stragglers staggering into their transporters and heading off, leaving massive wreckage for the dopamine to kick around.
The truck mows down pedestrians like a computer game, and then gobbles up the white lines on the highway that stretches ahead forever. The driver proffers a packet of cigarettes and a lighter. It’s shadowy in the cabin; I can’t see his face.
‘Where we heading, Dad?’ I light up and suck in smoke; it tastes like chocolate and swirls like cocoa mist deep into my lungs.
‘The river,’ he says.
‘What for?’
‘Tea.’ He flicks his cigarette butt out the window. In the rear-view mirror, I see it burn and take the form of a giant human figure that sets fire to everything in our wake.
‘Sid?’
I heard the fan start, smelled brown, and felt the threat of vomit. Christos was many shades of brown: from his tobacco and leathery aftershave to the residue of smoke in his hair.
‘Sid. Sid!’ He touched my shoulder.
‘Stop it, Chris. I don’t feel well.’
The bed dipped as he sat on it. ‘Bit depressed?’
‘Just a bug.’
‘Not going to work today?’
I shook my head, eyes closed, face against the pillow.
‘I’ll take a carer’s day off.’
‘No. Please, I just need quiet and sleep.’
‘It’s all right. Negative symptoms are to be expected sometimes. All normal.’
Normal!
He stroked my hair. ‘Want some toast?’
I groaned.
‘I’ll see if I can come home at lunchtime.’
I felt the bed spring back, heard him towel his hair and take clothes from the wardrobe. ‘Can you turn off the light and fan, please?’
A bird, holding a caterpillar in its beak, flies in through the window. It lands on my naked belly, looks at me with human eyes, tick-tocks its head, and drops the caterpillar. The caterpillar grows bigger as it digs a hole and burrows through my flesh. It finds my stomach and builds a cocoon that squeezes up against my heart. Lub dub, lub dub, lub dub. Dean Cola, Dean Cola, Dean Cola.
The fucking fan. Christos must have turned it down instead of off. The sound hurt my head. I stumbled across the room — the ground undulating beneath my feet, my legs threatening to collapse — and smacked the switch.
The short distance to the bathroom was a mirage. I curled my toes in the shifting sands of the carpet and steadied myself against the wall as I inched forward. I had to stop for a rest on the desert-floor, slipping in and out of lucid dreams again.
Sitting on the toilet, I bent forward and held my head in my hands. I’d been constipated since the hospital, but now it all exploded out.
I wanted to clean the toilet and have a shower but knew I couldn’t stand up for that long. I made the journey back to bed. The room smelled grey — of sweat and fear and nightmares. The white sheet was streaked with blood. Every part of me vibrated like the inside of a just-rung bell. Stifling a scream, I looked down and realised what had happened.
I found a sanitary pad in my handbag, stuck it to a pair of fresh underpants, and put on my Supergirl shortie-pyjamas. Attempting to change the bed linen was exhausting; I got as far as peeling off the bottom sheet and protector before collapsing on the bare mattress.
I watched myself from above, where I was levitating on the ceiling. It wasn’t I on the bed anymore. It was She.
Gareth Maher and some other boys from back home stand beside the bed, watching her bleed onto the white sheet. ‘He only said to scare her,’ one of them says.
She wormed her finger along the grooves of the mattress, lost it in the diamond pattern. She reached towards the bloodstained sheet. Reached over the side of the bed.
Reaches into the fire for Dean Cola.
Dean Cola, Dean Cola, said the fan. But the fan was off.
SHE IGNORED the doorbell at first when it woke her. It rang again. And again. Fucking salespeople. She opened her eyes. There was an untouched sandwich and a glass of water on the bedside table. Christos must have come home at lunchtime — she thought she’d dreamt that. Growling, she got up, pulled on gloves, and went to answer the door.
The natural light hit like a brain freeze, but she was surprised by the lack of chemical haze in her head. The worst of the withdrawal symptoms must be over, senses reawakening. She squinted and shielded her eyes. Aubrey, in a shell-pink sweater and denim shorts, a big sticking plaster on her left knee. She was holding an exercise book and a pencil case. One earphone was stuck in an ear, the other dangling by her side.
‘Hey, Sidney. Why are you wearing pyjamas?’
Sidney glanced down at her Supergirl T-shirt and shorts. ‘I like them.’
Aubrey raised an eyebrow.
‘I’m not feeling well. I was resting.’
‘Hangover?’
‘No.’ She crossed her arms over the red S-shield on her chest. ‘Why aren’t you at school?’
‘It’s four thirty. Would it be OK if I come in and do my homework till Mum gets home?’
‘Not today, Aubrey.’ A small electric zap in her head.
‘OK.’ Aubrey sighed and looked at her sneakers.
‘Oh, all right. But on
ly if you’re very quiet.’ The room clouded with apple green as Aubrey followed her inside.
‘What are you listening to?’ Sidney slumped on the sofa.
‘Taylor Swift.’
Sidney screwed up her face.
‘My mum hates her too. She only listens to classical music.’ Aubrey pocketed her earphones and sat next to her.
Sidney remembered her mother’s record collection. Some rock’n’roll, but mostly truck-drivin’ albums. Faye’s favourite country tear-jerker to blubber over was ‘Mama Hated Diesels’: some Australian guy singing about the suicide of a single mother jilted by a trucker; she’d been flaggin’ diesels down on the highway. It must have reminded her of Sidney’s dad, Billy. Faye had his name tattooed above a rose on her ankle. Billy had been a truck driver. Faye had met him at the truck stop where she’d had an after-school waitressing job. He hadn’t done anything romantic like dying with the lights on the hill blinding him; he’d just knocked her up and never come back.
‘What music do you like?’ Aubrey said.
Sidney shrugged — she didn’t really know. The music catalogue in her head ran out in the early nineties, with the tears down Sinead O’Connor’s cheeks. Christos had programmed a soft-rock playlist on her phone: songs about glory days and boys of summer, but those songs left her cold. ‘What happened to your knee?’
‘Fell over at school.’ Aubrey opened her exercise book and pencil case.
Sidney closed her eyes. Another head zap. And a wave of nausea, but only a small one — more neap tide than tsunami.
‘How do you spell “watch”?’ Aubrey said.
Sidney opened her eyes. ‘What do you mean, how do you spell “watch”?’
‘Is it W–O–T–C–H?’
‘No. W–A–T–C–H.’
‘Thanks.’ She wrote in her book. ‘How about “rollercoaster”?’
‘You should know how to spell those words.’
‘I can’t spell. I’m stupid.’
‘Don’t be silly. Just sound it out.’
‘Doesn’t make any difference. I have dyslexia.’
‘What are you working on?’
‘A narrative. A memoir about my dad taking me to Disneyland.’
‘When did you go there?’
‘Never. I’m making it up.’
‘But it’s meant to be a memoir. Maybe you could change it to Luna Park?’
‘Haven’t been there either.’
‘And I thought I was the only one.’
‘You and I should go there, then.’
Sidney raised her eyebrows.
‘Deal.’
‘No.’
‘Yes, deal.’
She sighed. ‘Maybe, but only if you let me help you with your spelling.’
SHE CAUGHT the 8.16 am city train — stopping all stations, and then running via the city loop. Community gardens, peppercorn trees, small backyards, and towers of million-dollar apartments — familiar, comforting, and hypnotic.
Forever wish, remember and search for remnants of this … Our story? She was able to recall it now, without the syrupy fog of the meds in her mind, the start of it anyway, the safe part. She told it to Dean Cola — she wasn’t sure why — as if he was out there somewhere, needing to hear it from her point of view.
Jay Jays disco back home, New Year’s Eve, 1988. You were standing at the bar, or beside the dance floor. In my mind’s eye, there is nobody else around, but there must have been. You would have had a mate with you, and Petra, my high-school best friend, would have been there for sure. Were Petra and I dancing, or on our way back from the ladies’? Had you beckoned to me? Bought me a drink, made small talk: the weather, football, the possibilities of the incoming year? Danced with me. Did we kiss at midnight? Yes, I’m sure we did. Perhaps I’d been the nearest girl when the DJ counted down the New Year, and you’d swooped, scooping me into an opportune pash. Or maybe I, overcome by joie de vivre, had initiated that kiss. Picturing my shy teenage self, that seems unlikely.
Lost in Jay Jays, looking for Dean, she almost missed Southern Cross station.
Walking up Collins Street, she sensed the collective breath-holding at the sounds of car horns, brake screeches, a distant siren’s wail. There were fewer city workers in force than usual for the morning rush. Every third or fourth shop was closed.
She thought of Dean Cola again when a grey-suited man rushed past, bumping into her. Dark hair, tall, substantial. He dodged and wove gracefully through the thinned-out throng, looking at his phone. What kind of work would Dean have done?
Outside the Anpat-Enlaw building, a few bunches of flowers had been laid as a memorial to the Collins Street victims.
Waiting for her computer to start up, Sidney watched a window washer, dangling in his safety harness on the building opposite. He turned his head, made eye contact, and seemed to mouth the words Dean Cola. She knocked over her jar of pens.
‘I’ve moved all our old materials into the S drive,’ Ros said.
‘I thought you said we weren’t using the S drive anymore.’ Sidney tidied her pens.
‘Only for old materials. And you won’t have access to it anyway.’
‘What if I need to cross-check something?’
‘Then you’ll have to get IT to organise access. All the old files are saved in a folder labelled X files.’
‘With Mulder and Scully?’
Dee tittered, but Sidney’s attempt at a joke was lost on Ros. She’d have been watching Murder She Wrote back in the nineties.
What had Dean watched on TV? She remembered the smell of his family’s shop, Cola Hardware: paint, wood, fertiliser, espresso coffee, and the smoky-metal fumes from the key-cutting machine.
The shop was attached to your house. I can’t remember if it was at the back or upstairs. Video nights were a thing back then. Popcorn and a splash of bourbon or vodka in a bottle of soft drink. Southern Comfort. I think you drank Southern Comfort. Sweet, peachy-bubblegum flavour on your lips. Your arm draped along the back of the sofa, waiting for the right moment — the scary part of a horror movie, or the soppy bit in a rom-com — to make a move, staring at, but not really watching, the screen in awkward silence. No, you were never awkward.
‘Sidney … Sidney?’ Ros placed a hard copy of her updated style guide on Sidney’s desk.
‘Yes, thanks for that, Ros.’
By lunchtime, her fingers were stiff, her hands aching. Her pod mates asked if she’d like to join them for lunch at the Japanese restaurant around the corner. No, she wanted to get her work finished so she could leave early and avoid the rush at the gym.
When the pod had left, she did some hand stretches, opened a can of Diet Coke — Coke, Coke, Coke, that’s what his mates called him — and washed down a Panadol. She googled Hedera helix. Common ivy. She had a quick glance behind her, and typed Dean Cola into the search bar. She stared for a couple of minutes at the two words and blinking cursor. Wriggling her toes, holding her breath, she clicked ‘Enter’. The search revealed that on Facebook Dean Colacicco was a bodybuilder in a white singlet, living in Toronto; Dean Colangelo had a violin as his profile picture; and Giovanni Cola had a bulldog. Further down were profiles of Coca-Cola employees; a page with a black-and-white photo of James Dean sitting on a Coca-Cola fridge outside a shop; and a video of James Dean in a Pepsi-Cola commercial.
A further search came up with college and university deans, and Earl R. Dean, the guy who designed the original Coca-Cola bottle.
Of course, Dean wouldn’t have an internet profile. Silly to have looked. He had a sister. Kelly? Sally? No. Shelley. She returned to Facebook and typed Shelley Col—
‘What are you doing?’ Ros said.
She spilled her drink on her hand. She thought Ros had gone to lunch too.
‘Nothing.’ She closed Facebook, changed her gloves, and went bac
k to copyediting materials for a Certificate III in Hairdressing.
She drifted down the street towards the station. It was one of those late-summer, egg-yolk-coloured afternoons where everything seemed to be wilting. Not a breath of air.
She was too tired for the stairs at Southern Cross, let alone the gym. The escalator felt as though it was going backwards.
Through the train window, she noticed the graffitied warehouses and dodgy asbestos skillions more than the new apartments. At Jolimont station, there was a sign: a billboard advertising Coca-Cola — a group of shiny young people suspended in time, mid-jump inside a giant see-through Coke bottle floating on the ocean. Open a Coke, open happiness. She closed her eyes.
She was jolted awake at Collingwood to another sign — they were everywhere if you were looking for them — her phone buzzing with a Facebook friend request. She didn’t often get those. Petra Sommer! Why now, after all this time? The universe at mysterious-way work. She checked out Petra’s profile as the old Collingwood football ground flashed by outside the window. The twenty-one years in which they hadn’t spoken had not been as kind to Petra’s face as they had been to Sidney’s. Petra’s hair, now worn in a gamine style, was faded to rust and peppered with grey; her freckles had joined together on leathery skin. There was a body of water behind her that looked like the lake back home.
Perhaps Sidney’s long-lost bestie was a friend of Dean’s friends, or of his friends’ friends? His mates hadn’t liked Sidney. Why was she bothering with this? Accept? Dare she? Take the boat back down that river? Her finger hovered, before pressing ‘Confirm’.
WHEN YOU crash through the morning harsh and light
Do you remember how they played our song
In the Hedera helix green and white
She opened her laptop on the kitchen table and googled the top songs of 1989. Madonna’s ‘Like a Prayer’ was number one. That was definitely not ‘our song’. ‘If I Could Turn Back Time’ by Cher? Maybe. ‘All I Want Is You’, U2? Yes! Maybe. No. None of the songs on the chart rang the bell she’d hoped for. None brought back forever wishes or stairs and stars.
All That I Remember About Dean Cola Page 3