Dark. Headlights illuminating a bubble of road and barren orchards. The softness of Dean’s flannelette shirt. His body, his mouth. Stories about his mad grandfather at a nature park in the Tasmanian wilderness. Rain on the road. Alcohol in my belly. Car heater blowing on my feet. Cold and warmth. Frost and fire. Skyline and stars. The smells — the colours — of metal, petrol, Fruit Tingles, and heaven. Silver, purple-bronze, pastels, and blue. And — true or false — that’s where it stops, where I wrench my hands from the wheel. Push the flaps back down hard on the box. Blocking mechanism in place. Oh, yes, I love a metaphor (and a simile). I have many for memory and time — rivers, cameras, boxes, rubber bands — but my favourite is this: something that can be folded like a blanket or piece of paper. Perhaps the inside of the fold is what Aimi means when she talks about forgotten or unknown memories with no pull or push from the future or past. Folded. If there was a way to unfold time, safely, I could remember what happened between driving in Dean Cola’s car and the fire at Broken River Road.
She deleted the last three paragraphs and replaced them with:
I would like to let my mum know that she was right: Christos is a good man. He’s taking care of me, as always. We’re thinking about starting a family. Better late than never.
And saved it as ‘Homework for Aimi’ on the desktop, so Christos wouldn’t have to search through her files to find it.
‘BE ABOUT five minutes,’ the pharmacist said as he took Sidney’s prescriptions.
She nodded and sat on a chair next to the shelves of vitamins and hair dyes. She inhaled the aromatherapy oils vaporising on the counter — orange, lavender, and perhaps patchouli — and stared at the fragrances locked in the glass cabinet.
Down the stairs with so many stars lit bright
I walked with you until you were sober
In the Hedera helix green and white
Don’t you remember how I held you tight
And didn’t let you fall as we stumbled
Down the stairs with so many stars lit bright
If she recited The Poem in her head often enough, she wouldn’t forget it. A woman with balding grey hair wheeled her walking frame towards the prescriptions counter.
When you crash through the morning harsh and light
Do you remember how they played our song
In the Hedera helix green and white
If only again the fire would —
‘I just got me make-up done.’ The balding woman parked next to Sidney and plonked her bum down on the walking frame’s seat. ‘Whatcha think?’
Sidney looked at the woman’s flaky red skin. ‘I think you look beautiful.’
‘Now I’ve got me face all nice, I need to find a man,’ she said loudly. ‘Men. Ones with nice arses.’
‘Whatcha want a man for, Coral?’ A greying blonde woman wandered over. The daughter?
‘Only ones with nice arses.’
‘My husband left me and moved to Tasmania,’ Coral’s daughter told Sidney.
Sidney frowned. A lot of signs were pointing to Tasmania.
‘Best place for him, love,’ said Coral. ‘Now ya just haveta find a new one with a nice arse.’
Coral’s daughter snort-laughed.
‘Nice arses!’ shouted Coral. ‘Nice arses!’
Sidney glanced at the pharmacy assistant, who was striding towards the cosmetics aisle, ignoring Coral.
‘Sidney Loukas,’ called the pharmacist.
She was going to ask him if he knew what blood in mucous might indicate, but, when she stood, she could see the pharmacy assistant interrogating an auburn-haired girl in school uniform. Aubrey! Sidney walked over. ‘Which colour did you choose, sweetie?’
Aubrey looked up, her face as red as the box of make-up the pharmacy assistant must have caught her taking.
‘Bring it over and I’ll pay for it with my prescriptions.’
The pharmacist repeated her name.
‘Thank you.’ She took the Derma Camouflage Crème from the pharmacy assistant and collected her tablets.
Aubrey didn’t speak as she followed Sidney to the front counter. Sidney glanced at her while she paid; she was biting her bottom lip, fighting back tears. Sidney handed her the paper bag containing the make-up, and Aubrey rushed out into the shopping centre.
‘PERHAPS IT was a Calvin Klein?’ The skinny fragrance consultant eyed Sidney’s jeans suspiciously.
Women’s wear, next stop. ‘I tried all those.’
The consultant passed Sidney a jar of coffee beans for sniffing to refresh the sense of smell. She sprayed fragrance onto a card and swapped it for the coffee beans. The card smelled brown, like Christos. Sidney shook her head. ‘No. I’m looking for something old. From the 1980s.’
The consultant sprayed Drakkar Noir onto another fragrance card. Green and grey: herbs and dirty soap. Chlorine and semen. He only said to scare her. Is this scary enough? Sidney’s stomach convulsed. She dropped the card and snatched up the coffee-bean jar, inhaling deeply until the nausea settled.
The consultant’s tattooed-on brows arched, and she asked if Sidney was OK.
She nodded and placed the coffee-bean jar on the shelf. ‘That fragrance brought back bad memories.’
The consultant nodded sagely. ‘There’s a powerful link between scent and memory. Certain fragrances can remind us of past experiences — even more than cues from other senses, like seeing or hearing. Are you sure it was a male fragrance?’ She sprayed perfume from a star-shaped bottle.
Sidney took the card cautiously, but, when she sniffed, she wanted to eat it.
‘Berries, vanilla, sandalwood …’
You told me I smelled like heaven.
Sidney’s heart flipped up against her throat. ‘I came looking for Fruit Tingles and you’ve shown me heaven!’
The consultant frowned and blinked at the same time, and then mirrored Sidney’s ebullient smile. Undecided on whether to keep clawing at a sale to the crazy lady or to call security? ‘Angel is very unique,’ she said. ‘The first gourmand fragrance by designer Thierry Mugler.’
Celestial blue swirled dizzily around Sidney. ‘It’s very strong.’
‘Yes, some people find it a little overwhelming. Perhaps you’d like to try the Angel hand cream?’ She glanced at Sidney’s gloves. ‘Or the body cream?’
Sidney took out her credit card. ‘I’d like to purchase the whole range, please.’
At the counter, the consultant handed Sidney a blue star-shaped cushion. ‘Your free gift.’
‘A tautology.’
The seller of heaven now looked blank.
‘Free. Gift.’
Swanston Street shimmered in the heat, even though autumn was close enough to kiss the leaves on the trees. Workers, shoppers, and tourists bustled towards the train station. Cigarette smoke mingled with the smells from shops — sushi, deep-fried food, bath products. A kaleidoscope of colours. A street artist scratched a chalk portrait of James Dean onto the footpath; a busker sang ‘Roadhouse Blues’. High-visibility work clothing was on special at the souvenirs-and-cheap-crap shop.
You would have looked good in one of those vests. Yellow. And maybe a beanie. Doing some kind of manual work. Silly, a blue-collar job after uni would have been unlikely. Perhaps you would have enjoyed gardening around our little house in Hobart.
A homeless man wearing one of those vests was sitting on a sleeping bag in front of a door that said: Fire safety door. Do not obstruct. He was conversing with beings nobody else could see. The cross hanging from the gold chain around his neck flashed in the sunlight.
‘Don’t stare,’ said a woman dragging a child by the hand.
Sidney turned and walked back to the man. ‘Who are you talking to?’ she said.
‘I can see their auras.’ He stared, unblinking, at passers-by.
‘It’s OK.’ Sidney smiled, placed her Angel cushion next to him, and sat on it. She crossed her legs, the department-store bag of heaven in her lap. ‘I can see the colours of smells.’ His was not pleasant.
He shrank away from her. ‘Your aura’s black.’
‘I don’t think so. It’s usually rosy pink.’
‘You shouldn’t be here.’ He started slapping his face.
‘Do you have somewhere you can go? Somebody to look after you?’
‘Jesus looks after me.’
‘I can help you catch a taxi, or —’
‘Jesus drove past in the truck. I seen him. Lookin’ for you, She With The Black Aura.’ He slapped his face harder and yelled at her to get away from him.
People were slowing down to watch. Sidney stood, left her cushion, dropped a twenty-dollar note into the man’s bag, and hurried away.
‘No light on the road for She With The Black Aura,’ he shouted after her.
Rattled, she rounded a corner, and slunk out of the daylight into an arcade from the late 1800s. A group of tourists were pointing cameras around. With her back against the carved-stone wall near the lift, she tried to breathe away The Heaviness filling her body. A sparrow hippityhopped past her feet. Too many colours in the mosaic-tile floor: blue, brown, and white swirls melting with green leaves.
One. I can feel the weight of the shopping bag on my arm.
Two. I can hear cafe cutlery clinking, conversations echoing, music playing faintly and unclearly, crackly, lost between radio stations.
Three. I can see my reflection in the watchmaker’s shop. Blackness surrounds me. A trick of the light. Just a trick of the light.
Not now. Please not now.
The toyshop looked safe. The door tinkled as Sidney hurried into the small space crowded with cabinets, tables, and floor-to-ceiling shelves of ceramic, metal, plastic, and glass figurines. Dolls and soft toys hung from the small white staircase. Behind the counter sat a homely man with arms bigger than Christos’s, and hair the colour and texture of two-minute noodles.
‘Could I please sit down for a minute?’ Sidney dropped her bag of heaven to the floor, and slumped onto the chair next to the counter. ‘I’m not feeling well.’ She put her head in her hands.
Four. I can feel the cotton of my gloves against my cheeks and forehead. Safe. My hands holding me make me safe. I am safe.
The shopkeeper must have gone upstairs; Sidney heard the stairs creak as he returned with a glass of water.
‘Thank you.’ Her hands shook but felt lighter.
Five. I can see hundreds of tiny people, animals, birds, insects, fairies, mermaids.
‘They’re beautiful.’ She left her water on the counter and walked across to peer into a locked glass cabinet.
‘Yes,’ said the shopkeeper. ‘Those cost more. The ones on the shelves are cheaper.’
‘Can I see that one, please?’ She pointed to the miniature blonde girl in the red dress.
The shopkeeper took a key from the cash register and stepped across, more bounce in his gait than Sidney had expected. The cabinets rattled; he was far too big for the shop. He was wearing pink lip gloss and smelled like raspberries. His giant hand unlocked, entered, and extracted the figurine from the cabinet.
Sidney cradled it carefully in her hands, rocking it slightly. You are safe.
‘Careful,’ the shopkeeper said. ‘You break it, you have to pay for it.’
She looked up at him.
‘Just joshing.’ His forget-me-not-blue eyes glittered. ‘Not.’
‘How much is she?’
‘Fifty dollars.’
‘And the boy with black hair?’
‘Do a deal for you, honey — two for eighty.’
‘What about three?’
‘Three for a hundred.’
‘I’ll take the glass spider too.’ For Aubrey.
The spider had a tag attached: This amber-glass spider is working hard spinning her intricate web to catch her prey. Some people live their lives like the spider. Others live like the fly — hopelessly caught in other people’s webs. This beautiful figurine will bring you the courage to be a spider weaving a web of your own.
‘Like me to wrap them for you?’ said the shopkeeper.
‘Yes, please. The couple separate to the spider.’
As the shopkeeper expertly wrapped and sticky-taped, Sidney caught her reflection in the mirror behind the counter. A rosy-pink glow with celestial-blue striae, like veins in a nipple.
She couldn’t find her purse. The shopkeeper smiled patiently as she rummaged through her handbag: book, pens, phone, house keys. ‘Don’t tell me I left it …’ She shook her bag, dug deeper, and found her purse. It had slipped into the back pocket.
‘You all right, honey?’ the shopkeeper said.
‘I don’t know.’ Her purse had been with her birth-control pills, which she couldn’t remember having taken for a while.
SIDNEY MASKED the last of the architraves in the spare room. She slipped the tape roll over her wrist like a bangle and climbed down the ladder.
The traffic report finished on the radio; the program returned to Gideon Lowe — driving you home with the big stories of the day, plenty of music, and lively talkback.
Hot afternoon breeze fluttered the drop sheet as Sidney laid it out. ‘Once again, the issue of mental illness and public danger has hit the headlines, following the deadly rampage in Collins Street,’ said Gideon Lowe. ‘It was reported that William Goddard was released from psychiatric care with no ongoing support in the community despite concerns about the risk to himself and others.
‘Goddard ran down pedestrians, injuring twenty-eight and killing five, including a six-month-old baby, before crashing his truck into an office building. He died at the scene.’
Sidney opened the custard-coloured paint, stirred it with a butter knife, and poured it into a tray. Her mouth watered.
‘Last year, police dealt with almost five thousand people so disturbed they had to be taken to mental-health triage centres. In 2008, of close to four thousand incidents where force was used by or against police, around 15 per cent involved offenders with mental health problems. At least 20 per cent of murders are committed by mentally ill offenders. Police say that it has been left up to them to tackle these problems on the street since the closure of many of Victoria’s mental-health institutions.’
Almost. Close to. Around. At least. What kind of stats are they? Sidney coated a brush with paint. Resisting an urge to lick it, she climbed back up the ladder. Christos would be so happy with her.
‘Is the real issue our inability to deal with the mentally ill, and is the problem getting worse? My line’s open and I’m ready to take your calls. Good afternoon, Sandra in Kew.’
Sidney painted below the cornice.
‘Hello, Gideon. Thank you for taking my call. The problem is we’re not putting enough money into looking after people with mental-health issues in the community. Can I share a personal story?’
‘Go ahead, Sandra.’
Sidney climbed down the ladder for more paint.
‘I have a sick child,’ said Sandra. ‘Well, he’s a grown man now. He was at risk recently so I called the CAT team, but, as usual, they never turned up. They’re just too busy. A very kind policeman picked up my son and took him to the hospital.’
Sidney moved the ladder along to the next section of wall and climbed back up.
‘My son was so frightened, and he was behaving in a way that was also frightening to the other patients. He was released after just ten days, Gideon. Now I’m talking about somebody who was as ill as you can possibly be. There was no aftercare. No support. I tried to put him back in the hospital, but they wouldn’t take him. He ran out of medications, but he
was too sick to get a new prescription. If he didn’t have me and my husband … I don’t know what would happen. He’d be on the streets. Or worse.’
Is that how it had been for Faye too, with me? But without a partner to help.
‘Thank you for sharing, Sandra,’ Lowe said. ‘We have a lot to learn. We need more discussions about this issue in the community. More of your calls coming up after the weather. On duty at the bureau today, Jacob Field. Is it going to be hot again tomorrow, Jacob?’
‘Good afternoon, Gideon. We’re expecting a partly cloudy morning, and then another sunny day with northerly winds turning north-westerly at twenty to thirty kilometres an hour during the day. A top temperature of thirty-five degrees. It’s currently twenty-nine.’
‘Another scorcher on the way. Thanks, Jacob. Time is 5.10, and I have Grant from Narre Warren on the open line.’
‘Yeah, hi, Gideon. Long-time listener, first-time caller. Bit nervous.’
‘No need to be nervous, Grant.’
‘Well, ever since the government decided we should close the old lunatic asylums and provide care in the community for the mentally disturbed, the public’s been at increased risk.’
Sidney stopped painting mid-brushstroke.
‘I think the idea behind that policy was to try to normalise the mentally ill as much as possible and to give them a chance to lead free lives like sane people.’
Sidney stomped down the ladder and threw the brush onto the drop sheet.
‘But there have been tragic consequences, like Collins Street, from that enlightened approach. Paranoid schizophrenics, for example, might be all right in the community if they stuck to the drugs they’re prescribed by their doctors. But not all of them do, and it’s impossible to regulate. Have you seen the new movie Cleave?’
‘No, I haven’t, Grant. But I know mental-health organisations have condemned that particular film for depicting people with schizophrenia as violent villains, and for trivialising complex mental illness.’
All That I Remember About Dean Cola Page 9