And just then, Graham arrived. “I wondered if you might want to come and stay with me until you go to Melbourne,” she said, and yes, I did want that.
“It’s not that I don’t love you,” I said to Tim and Janet. “But being here, I’ll just wallow in my memories and grief.”
“Yes, it’s much better that you go and wallow in your memories and grief with Graham,” Tim said with a smile.
I collected an overnight bag, hugged the others and left.
Graham drove us away, and I started talking about Lyndon. It wasn’t a conversation but a rant, and by the time we reached her house, I noticed that she was quite pale. My hand flew to my mouth.
“Oh God. I’m sorry, Graham. Me, me, me. I’m behaving like a child. I’m sorry. Don’t worry, that’s it. I’m done shouting about Lyndon.”
She looked relieved. “You’re angry and you’re grieving,” she said, excusing me. “I get it.”
“Yeah, well, time to stop being so pathetic. Time to woman up and wear the big-girl panties.”
We laughed and my heart lifted for a moment. Once inside, Graham poured me a large glass of wine.
“Here’s to Jason,” I said. “What a man.”
Graham clinked her glass against mine. “Do you want to watch it?” she asked. “Or is that too morbid? It was incredible. The whole world talking about us! We don’t have to watch the ending.”
“I’d love to see it,” I said.
We watched it three times in a row. A sense of peace settled upon me. “I was a part of that,” I marvelled.
“I know, amazing, isn’t it? Trish and I were on the bridge, and it was incredible. I did something Jason wouldn’t have wanted though. I kept my T-shirt. A lot of people did. I couldn’t bear to part with it.”
“I don’t think he would have minded. Why don’t you come with me to the funeral?”
She shook her head. “I didn’t know him, so it wouldn’t be right. Will you be okay though?”
“Oh yes, I will be fine.” I looked down at my foot. True Love. “I won’t let him down. He would have wanted me to live life and enjoy it and not use his death as an excuse to sink into depression. That would have disappointed him, I think. Yes, I’ll be fine.”
44. LYNDON
THE DAY OF THE FUNERAL arrived. My bag was packed. After the beach party, I was going to go back to Sydney. And I hadn’t thought further than that.
I had no idea why, but I was looking forward to seeing Margaux. I was surprised by that. I hoped I could make it up to her—my tactless interrogation at such a bad time. She’d been right, I’d been just like Adam, and it was one of the things that always annoyed me about him: his little-boy characteristic of needing to know every tiny thing at the first possible moment. I had done the same thing.
I was the first one at the RSL on Gallipoli Parade, but it soon filled up with bodies packing together. It was standing room only. I kept looking around for Margaux. I had saved her a seat. I finally saw her and I managed to catch her eye. I waved at her to come and sit with me.
She seemed uncertain, but she came and sat down. I didn’t know what to say to her. But then, the service started and we couldn’t talk anyway.
Margaux was holding it together, but her tears started to fall. I moved closer to her and took her hand, and for a moment, we were together like we had been for all those years: a unit, a couple, a team, a world unto ourselves. Then she had to take her hand back to blow her nose, but I hoped that perhaps we could be that couple again. A part of me would always feel betrayed that she and Jason had been in love but that was my ego talking. I had loved him too, and I had to focus on that when bitterness rose in my heart.
We walked to the beach together. There were hundreds of people. We couldn’t get near the front so we stood on the outer edge, in the park where I’d first met Jason. We caught whispers of the ceremony on the breeze. Margaux grabbed my hand, and I held on to it tight.
We didn’t go into the tea tent but sat down at the bench with neither of us sure what to do next. We saw a police officer rushing up to people, frantically asking questions. Someone from the barber shop pointed to me. Surely, they couldn’t still want me in connection with the protest? And why was there only one officer?
She rushed over to us, asking if we were Margaux and Lyndon Blaine, and we said yes. She told us that our son Adam had been in a terrible accident and was in intensive care at Sydney Hospital.
She said she would drive us to the Apollo Bay airport where a helicopter was waiting to take us to him.
“A helicopter?”
“Your son’s boyfriend organized it. You have to get there as soon as you can.”
“I was so cruel to him,” Margaux said on the way to the airport. “I kept telling him he was too needy, and I was impatient with him.” She was sobbing silently, her body shaking, her face a waterfall of tears.
“I was too,” I told her. “I always was. It wasn’t your fault. We love him. He knows that, right? He knows how much we love him?”
“I don’t know,” Margaux said, shaking her head. “I really don’t. Oh, I hate myself for how I treated him. And I shouldn’t have let him go skydiving.”
Adam’s parachute hadn’t opened properly, and the tandem jumper’s chute had also malfunctioned. The tandem jumper managed to navigate them to the ground as best he could. He had broken a few bones and would be fine, but Adam had broken his neck and was in a coma. They couldn’t say how extensive the damage would be or if he was even going to wake up.
I tried to comfort Margaux as best I could, but I was sick with guilt. I hadn’t wanted to return to my old life with my family, but now that it was being taken away from me, it was the only thing in the whole world that I did want.
“He’ll be okay,” I said to Margaux. “He has to be.”
45. MARGAUX
WE WERE SITTING in Adam’s room, waiting for him to wake up. Praying for him to wake up. Rick, Lyndon, Tim and Janet, Graham and me. We were all praying. Wake up Adam, wake up. The doctor had told us that when he wakes, his neck would heal and there would be no paralysis. Now, all we needed was for him to wake up. But the doctor couldn’t say how long it would take.
Two days passed. We fell into a timeless zone of blinding fluorescent lights, bad coffee, and twisted naps in iron-framed chairs. “If it takes longer for him to wake up, is that a bad thing?” I asked the doctor.
He shook his head. “No. It doesn’t mean anything. It just means he’s healing in his own time.”
“What if he dies from the blow to head?” I asked Lyndon. “Of course I am relieved he’s not paralyzed, but what if he just never wakes up?” He had no answers. None of us did.
Trish came to visit; she even laid her hands on him. I prayed for her to heal him. Anita popped by and she was restrained and bearable.
“Adam?” Lyndon was talking to him. He was in the chair next to the bed. “Come on, my boy, wake up. We need you to wake up.” Lyndon was crying. “I am so sorry I was such a bad father,” he said, taking Adam’s hand. “I need you to wake up so I can be a better father to you. I want to make you happy. All I ever wanted was for you to be happy. No, that’s not true. I didn’t want or care about anything, really, except being left alone to live in my head by myself. But I don’t want that anymore. I want to have a real relationship with you, and Rick. And Helen’s pregnant and she needs you too. We all need you. Please my boy, please, forgive me and come back. Rick needs you and loves you. I need and love you, and your mother does too. Please my boy, come back. It’s time to come back. We’re a family, and we can’t be a family without you.”
At this point, we were all in tears. Maybe it was our collective pain and love that jolted Adam back to life because his hand moved, and then he blinked, and then his eyes opened, and when we all broke into a raucous cheer, he was startled but he gave us a cautious smile.
“Hi,” he said. “I thought I was dead. I don’t want to skydive again.”
Rick howled, then laid his head tenderly on Adam’s chest.
I found myself in my husband’s arms.
“I meant what I said,” Lyndon said, holding me close. “And I’m sorry I was such a selfish husband. I want to have a real relationship with you. If you leave me, my life will be all the things I thought I wanted, full of uninterrupted solitude and silence. But I don’t want that at all. I miss you so much. I miss your great big laugh and the way you do things. I miss looking at you. Margaux, I am sorry. Please can we try again?”
I answered him in the best way I knew. I kissed him like a teenager and when we finally pulled apart, the whole room applauded.
“Jeez, guys, get a room,” Adam said, with a grin. “And can I please have a grilled cheese sandwich and a Coke? A man’s dying of hunger here!”
“I am sure we can manage that,” Lyndon said and we went to the cafeteria to find a grilled cheese sandwich for our son. While we were waiting for our order, Lyndon looked down at my foot. “Nice tat,” he said. “You going to let me do one on you?”
“You never know,” I said, smiling. I took his hand in mine. “But I have learned one thing from all of this. Anything’s possible if you’re willing to take a chance. And I’m willing to take a chance on you and me.” He leaned into me, and I knew we were both thinking about the man we loved, the man who would live in our hearts forever.
“We’ll do him proud,” Lyndon said, and I nodded.
I looked down and my eyes filled with tears. True Love. It was all the proof I needed that anything, indeed, was possible.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
Many thanks as always to my beloved Inanna Publications for this and all the books. You make my most important dreams come true. Thank you dear Luciana Ricciutelli, editor-in-chief at Inanna Publications, for your marvellous editing and your constant faith in me, and endless thanks to Renée Knapp, Inanna’s tireless and talented publicist.
Thank you to my lovely Bradford Dunlop for eternal patience and support and endless thanks to my family, always.
Thank you Colin Frings for this lovely cover! And to Glenn Larkby for letting us use the artwork.
Thanks to Robert Teixeira, for help with researching anarchism. Robert Teixeira is interested in history, theory and practice of anarchism and is involved in queer community advocacy and politics. Thanks to Toronto Police Services Forensic Specialist, Detective Ed Adach, for his help with the crime scene.
Many thanks to all my early readers for their kindness and loving support of this book: Heather Babcock, Brenda Clews, SK Dyment, James Fisher (The Miramichi Reader), Elizabeth Greene, Nate Hendley, Dietrich Kalteis, Fran Lewis, Sylvia Maultash Warsh, Shirley McDaniel, Myna Wallin, and Ruth Zuchter.
Sadly, I lost my Queenie this year, and I say a big thank you to Isabella Creamy Diva, the best furry little friend ever. I will always miss you.
What a great writing community out there too: The Crime Writers of Canada, The Sisters in Crime, Toronto Chapter and National, the Mesdames of Mayhem, The Short Mystery Fiction Society, the International Thriller Writers, Noir at the Bar, the Junction Reading Series, and the Toronto Public Libraries.
And thank you to my patient friends who understand that I need to write above all else and forgive me for missing out on birthdays and dinners and the normal ways that most people hang out!
I acknowledge research from the following:
“Madness” in Australia: Histories, Heritage and the Asylum, edited by Catharine Coleborne and Dolly McKinnon (University of Queensland Press, 2003).
Online research for the following was referenced and fictionalized: transhumanism, eco-eroticism, tattooing older skin, toilet paper as a biodegradable resource (“Littleton TP’s its own streets as a way to fill cracks – single-ply only,” by John Aguilar, published in the Denver Post, November 3, 2016), Callan Park Hospital, Chelmsford Sleep Therapy, eco-erotica, spells (How and Why to Case a Magical Circle: 6 Simple Steps by Tess Whitehurst ) and “Sydney’s Shameful Asylums: The Silent Houses of Pain Where Inmates were Chained and Sadists Reigned” by Ben Pike, The Daily Telegraph, in Australia, on March 2, 2015.
Quotes from Mahatma Gandhi and Emma Goldman found online, various sources. Definition of occult as per Wikipedia and various online medical journals. Thanks also to the Australian Truck Drivers’ Memorial for information about the Australian Truck Drivers’ Memorial Wall.
Thanks to Liz Worth and her book Going Beyond the Little White Book: A Contemporary Guide to Tarot, copyright © Liz Worth (Standard Copyright Licence) (Lulu Publishing Services, 2016). All misinterpretations about tarot are my own.
Photo: Bradford Dunlop
Lisa de Nikolits is the internationally-acclaimed, award-winning author of eight previous novels: The Hungry Mirror, West of Wawa, A Glittering Chaos, The Witchdoctor’s Bones, Between The Cracks She Fell, The Nearly Girl, No Fury Like That, and Rotten Peaches. No Fury Like That was published in Italian in 2019 by Edizioni Le Assassine under the title, Una furia dell’altro mondo. Her short fiction and poetry have also been published in various anthologies and journals across the country. She is a member of the Mesdames of Mayhem, the Crime Writers of Canada, Sisters in Crime, and the International Thriller Writers. Originally from South Africa, Lisa de Nikolits came to Canada in 2000. She lives and writes in Toronto.
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