‘Be careful,’ she said as he rushed off — it was dangerous out there. Something Christos would have said. She sipped her wine.
Sirens screamed outside. Giant hailstones battered the awning. Sidney squealed like a child and jumped up to look at them smashing down on the cars parked along the street. She pressed her face to the window, watching the hail pile up like snow. She traced a finger through the condensation her breath created on the glass, hoping Dee and Dave were OK out there. And Aubrey and Sophia — she hoped they were safe inside their houses.
She sat back down on the sofa, watching water gush over the gutters, and took out her phone. Six text messages, and three missed calls from Christos that she hadn’t heard over the storm; a text from Aubrey (were r u?); and a voice message from Sophia. She replied to Aubrey’s text first. And listened to Sophia’s message: Hello, my darling. Sid? Sid? You there, Sid? Sophia here. Lemons in the kitchen for you, my darling. I come over tomorrow. Some crackling and breathing before she hung up.
And then she called Christos.
‘Why aren’t you answering your phone! Are you all right? This storm!’
‘We had a drink after work, but I’m leaving now.’
‘Who are you with?’
‘Nobody.’
‘I thought you said …’
‘Dee and Dave.’
‘Who’s Dave?’
‘You know Dave from work.’
‘You’re not supposed to be drinking with your meds.’
Oh, but they’re such good company. ‘Just one glass of wine.’
‘I’ll come and get you.’
‘Aren’t you working?’
‘Where are you?’
‘I’m fine. I’ll get the train.’ The street was flooding.
‘It’s all right, I’ll pick you up.’
She sighed and told him which pub.
A Coca-Cola can floated past. She finished her wine, and poured more into her glass.
There was a man in blue jeans and white T-shirt — out of place in suit-land — with his back to her at the bar. Dark hair, tall, substantial. She tried again to remember Dean Cola’s New Year’s kiss. And a time before she was afraid to be touched — when two bodies together formed more than just the sum of their cold, wormy parts. How it felt to want, to ache. When a day was agony, and a week was eternity. To melt, warm and smooth, like caramel, into strong arms where it was safe to be weak for a while. Turn around, man at the bar. Please, please look like Dean Cola. Turn around. Turn around.
The fire truck pulled up quickly in the loading zone across the street. Air brakes hissed. Christos, in yellow overpants, blue T-shirt, and red suspenders, stepped down backwards from the driver’s side, and barrelled through the water and hail. He looked so important; the thought of him slipping over made her smirk.
The bar hushed as the big firefighter entered, chewing gum. He scanned the room until he clocked Sidney by the window. He strode across, blocking her view of the man at the bar, who was turning around.
Christos frowned at the wine and candle on the table, and held out his hand for Sidney.
There were two other fireys — Nick and Darren — in the rear cabin compartment. Christos told Darren to get out and drive so he could sit in the back with Sidney. Sidney climbed into the centre seat, where Christos said she wouldn’t be seen from the street, behind a mix of small equipment: torches, radio handsets, helmets, and a pile of protective clothing. It smelled of smoke and dust. Nick, who had been October in last year’s MFB calendar, turned from the window and winked. Sidney looked away, remembering Christos’s annoyance after Nick had shown her at the annual Firefighters’ Ball how he could make his mermaid tattoo swim across his pecs.
There was constant radio traffic as they drove out of the city. Christos talked about fires, accidents, disrupted public transport, motorists trapped in flood waters, and other dangerous things the storm had caused. Dangerous things in general. Darren coughed a lot — Christos said he had ‘Greenworld cough’ too, from the fire at the garden centre a few months back. Half his crew had it.
The hail had turned to dirty grey sludge. A distant streak of lightning broke the sky. Christos squeezed her leg. Nick cleared his throat. She shivered.
‘Cold?’ Christos said. ‘Turn on the heater, Darren.’
Darren double-parked in front of Sidney and Christos’s townhouse; Christos ordered him and Nick to wait in the truck.
As he ushered Sidney inside, Christos began to cough.
Bent over, he grasped the kitchen bench, knocking Sophia’s lemons and sending them rolling on the floor.
‘Are you OK?’ Sidney asked.
He pointed at the sink.
Stepping over lemons, she walked across to get him a glass of water.
ALL THAT I REMEMBER ABOUT DEAN COLA CONT.
In the part of my memory where I keep you, it is always summer, always hot.
Our autumn is in a place I had avoided going, until my previous psychiatrist guided me there during hypnotherapy.
Maple leaves lay like pieces of an impossible jigsaw puzzle in the yard at Broken River Road. Darkness crept over them as I watched for you through the big front windows of the house.
Mum, Nan, and Pop (and I think Auntie Stella, who was staying with us) had gone away for the weekend — across the New South Wales border to play the poker machines, which were illegal in Victoria back then. Local travel agencies would organise bus tours and gambling weekends away.
You said you’d pick me up at seven for Sandro D’Angelo’s party. The clock on the VCR displayed eight. I cried because you’d let me down. Again. But then I reapplied my make-up, in case you showed up after all. I might have had a glass of Mum’s whisky while I waited. I sat on the sofa, writing in my diary. A poem. The Poem, I think.
Catsby was still alive. He smelled of a particular brand of flea powder — I can’t remember which — that was like talc and mint leaves. I couldn’t see his scent as a colour (no synaesthesia yet), but rainbows emanated from his fur as I stroked him. I was sick but hiding it well. It’s called the prodromal phase. I like the word prodromal — it reminds me of dromedary. And palindrome. Palindromedary: CAMEL EMAC. I shouldn’t have been left on my own, and I shouldn’t have been going out anywhere.
I can’t remember what time I saw the headlights of the Cola Hardware pick-up truck finally turn into our long dirt driveway. You didn’t come in; you beeped the horn at the gate.
I was so happy that I ran out without my jacket. I had bruises on my arms, but I’d covered them with camouflage make-up, so I could wear the red dress my mum had made. I hoped you’d say you remembered it from New Year’s Eve, but you didn’t. And you didn’t apologise for being late.
You smelled of clean and that Fruit Tingle cologne.
I was aware of every breath, every swallow, every gurgle in my stomach as we drove into town without speaking. The highway, the airport, the caravan park. I wanted the radio or some music on, but was too shy to ask. There was a tear in the seat — I don’t know if it was leather or vinyl — and the edge scratched the back of my knee. The chicken shop, the lake, the showgrounds where we’d kissed on New Year’s Eve.
Sandro D’Angelo’s house was double-storey, on a corner, opposite a park or sports reserve. Hotted-up cars, panel vans, and utes lined the street, parked with two wheels up on the footpath. It was cold; I rubbed the goosebumps on my arms while I waited for you to lock the car.
We could hear laughter and conversations in voices raised above the music — heavy metal — as we walked up the street towards the party. The smell of wood smoke. A terracotta-coloured driveway led to the backyard. Small shrubs, or maybe succulents, grew in a triangular pebble garden. Crimson and white flowers bloomed along the fence. Chrysanthemums, dahlias, and salvias (or something like that). You knew all about plants and told me their botanical names.
There was a drought; those flowers shouldn’t have been there. And it was dark, so I’m not sure how I could have seen their colours (if they were there) or that of the driveway. Moonlight? Front-porch light? Reality or reflection? I wanted you to hold my hand, but you didn’t. The side gates were open.
In my first hypnotherapy session, this was as far as I allowed the psychiatrist to guide me. In subsequent sessions, we went further.
AUBREY AND Sophia watched Sidney slide the aluminium wire at a forty-five-degree angle through the soil and into the root ball of her new bonsai tree, a five-year-old juniper in a shallow ceramic pot. She wound the wire gently but assertively around the trunk, avoiding the branches. Using both hands, she bent the tree left, right, left.
Aubrey gasped.
‘Don’t worry. The tree might look fragile, but it’s actually really resilient. Very strong on the inside.’ When Sidney was happy with its shape, she looked in the gardening box under the bench for the finer wire for the branches. She couldn’t see it, frowned.
‘What’s wrong, my darling?’ Sophia said, proffering a packet of cigarettes. Sidney took one, and Sophia lit it with a match.
‘I didn’t know you smoked,’ Aubrey said.
‘Only with Soph.’ Sidney pushed away Sophia’s hand when she held the cigarettes out for Aubrey. ‘I can’t see the wire I need.’
‘Maybe check the shed?’ Aubrey said.
‘I go in and make a shandy.’ Sophia headed towards the back door, her black summer dress from Kmart revealing bony brown knees. The Greek tradition was to wear black for three years after the death of your spouse, but Sophia had donned it every day for twenty-one years. She walked with a limp, her left leg damaged — broken in three places in a fall down the stairs just before Giannis had died.
After too many shandies one afternoon, Sophia had touched her throat absently and told Sidney that Giannis had not been a good man. Lucky she’d had Christo to keep him under control.
‘You want a shandy?’
‘No thanks.’
‘Bree?’
‘No!’ Sidney answered for Aubrey.
The ‘shed’ was a two-by-two-metre steel cupboard at the back of the courtyard. She found the wire and other gardening paraphernalia in there. And Nan’s missing red tea canister — filled with an unopened bag of dried sphagnum moss, which she’d forgotten about. She took it and the wire back to the bonsai.
She butted out her cigarette in a broken terracotta pot, and wired the branches, two at a time — one on the left of the trunk with one on the right — carefully avoiding the delicate shoots. ‘It’s about creating character, balance, and harmony.’ And perspective — the neat front viewing angle was very different to the denser back. When she was happy with the line, she started trimming for the perfect silhouette: removing any branches pointing directly forwards or up or down.
Sophia was sitting at the antique-stone-finished table under the ‘Cairo’ gazebo from Bunnings, both far too big for the tiny space. She’d fallen asleep already. A fly buzzed around her glass of half-beer-half-lemonade.
‘The Satsuki azalea and silver birch were the first ones. Where I used to live, there was a trash-and-treasure market on Sundays at the old drive-in.’ Her hand cramped as she trimmed. ‘Mum bought them there when I wasn’t much older than you.’ She put down the trimming shears and rubbed her fingers.
‘Can I have a go?’ Aubrey said.
‘No.’
‘Why not?’
‘This is my saikei planting.’ She pointed to a tray of soil and rocks surrounding a miniature banksia, Huon pine, and Tasmanian tea-tree. ‘It means “planted landscape”. It’s an illusion. The landscape’s depth and distance are created the same way an artist does in a painting, with scale and placement of objects to trick the eye.’
‘Why isn’t it green like the others?’
‘I think it looks more authentic without the moss.’ A warm breeze ruffled the tiny leaves and the strands of hair that were escaping Sidney’s ponytail. Her cheeks felt pink. She took a sip from her water bottle. ‘Aren’t you hot?’ She eyed Aubrey’s long-sleeved Wonder Woman top. She certainly smelled hot — sweaty. ‘You can borrow one of my T-shirts or singlets if you like.’
‘I’m good. Have to go soon anyway.’ She pulled her sleeves down further. ‘You like old things, don’t you?’
‘What do you mean?’
‘Bonsai, books …’
‘I like some new things.’
Aubrey raised an eyebrow.
‘Taylor Swift.’
‘Really?’
‘Uh-huh.’
‘And the old clay houses and coffee tins. And Christos.’ Aubrey giggled.
‘Hey, watch it.’ Sidney glanced at Sophia, snoring. ‘You’re getting a bit cheeky. Christos is not old.’
‘What happens if you stop torturing the bonsais?’
‘I’m not torturing them. I’m recreating nature in perfect miniature. Torture is what you’re doing to that poor spider.’ She pointed at the jam jar in which Aubrey had imprisoned a huntsman earlier.
‘You mean Harriet. Would the trees die if you, like, stopped caring for them?’
Sidney sighed as she heard Christos calling her name, arriving home from work. She started packing away her gardening tools. ‘Out the back!’
Sophia woke up and reached for her shandy.
‘See ya,’ Aubrey said. ‘I can let myself out.’
Sidney heard Aubrey and Christos greet each other perfunctorily as they passed inside.
‘You forgot Harriet,’ she called, but Aubrey didn’t reply.
Christos stepped out the back door holding a tin of paint, which he left on the step. ‘Why is she always here?’
‘Your mum?’
He looked up, saw Sophia, and strode over to hug her. They spoke to each other in Greek, and then she said she had to go home to make dinner and feed Basil, the cat. She double-kissed Sidney, and told Christos there was cake for him in the kitchen.
Christos walked his mother out — a giant dodo and a little blackbird. He returned with a thick slice of karithopita, and surveyed the bonsai. ‘They’re looking good. So are you.’ He patted Sidney’s bum. ‘How many times you been getting to the gym a …’ His gaze fell on the jam jar as he shoved cake into his mouth. ‘What’s in there?’
‘Harriet.’
He grimaced.
‘I told Aubrey to let her out. It’s cruel.’
‘Just give it some breathing holes.’
She tried to twist the lid off the jar, but it was too tight. Christos recoiled when she held it out for his help. She tried harder, hurting her hands as the lid came loose. Christos shrieked and coughed when she released the spider into the garden, near his feet. She laughed and shook her head, and asked what the paint was for.
‘The nursery.’
‘The what?’
‘You want the good news or the bad news?’
‘The bad.’ She pulled her gardening gloves from over her everyday gloves.
‘This cough I got from the Greenworld fire, doc reckons it might be a chest infection. Have to have an X-ray.’
She frowned. ‘I’m sure it’s just a cold.’
‘And the good news is I got my fertility test results back. There’s nothing wrong with my sperm!’ He bear-hugged her from behind. ‘Come on, Sid. Think of how a baby would make our life better. That’s why we bought this place.’
We? She couldn’t remember having much say in it while she was stuck in the psychiatric unit.
‘The extra room, the park across the street. Imagine a little kid running around.’
She could imagine worse things, of course, but not many. She pushed back, pushed him away, harder than intended. He wobbled, off balance, as she turned. The hurt puppy-dog look on his face made her soften. What happens if you st
op torturing the bonsai? Would the trees die if you stopped caring for them? She trusted Christos would look after her if she went mad again, when nobody else would. She’d have to watch herself, curb the cockiness, or Christos would realise she was off her meds. Maybe let him believe she’d rethought her stance on having a baby. She looked down at the tin of paint. The same custard yellow as the walls in the psych unit. She pulled up her shorts; the waistbands on all her clothes were getting loose. ‘It’s a nice colour, Chris.’
He grinned proudly as he carried the paint inside.
ALL THAT I REMEMBER ABOUT DEAN COLA CONT.
We went through the gates at Sandro D’Angelo’s house. People — mostly young men, your football mates, not many girls — were standing around a fire in a forty-four-gallon drum. Gareth Maher was there, but aside from him I didn’t know anybody.
You left me alone while you talked with your mates. I’d started hearing Voices. I believed alcohol and drugs caused them, which was partly true. Voices don’t usually make sense, but that night they were telling me to go home. Or maybe it’s intuition I’m remembering. Either way, I didn’t listen.
The men puffed out their cheeks and rolled up their sleeves, revealing hairy forearms. They talked to each other out the sides of their mouths, eyes yellow in the firelight like wolves’. They vanished momentarily each time the breeze blew a veil of dirty smoke in their direction. I drank more than I should have and shared a joint with a wolf who laughed at his own blonde jokes.
I was relieved when Christos turned up. A familiar face, somebody safe. He kissed me and told me how beautiful I looked in that red dress. He was wearing a brown aviator jacket. I think he let me wear it because I was cold, but that was later in the night. He’d been hanging around me for weeks, months, but I’d thought it was my best friend, Petra, he’d been interested in. That was a lie I’d told myself — I knew it was me he’d wanted all along. Or perhaps everybody (except me) knew that — it’s hard to remember. I’d made the mistake of letting him kiss me one night at Jay Jays when I was drunk, and he’d read more into it. He was sweet and charming, but I only wanted you.
All That I Remember About Dean Cola Page 7