Dancing on Knives

by Kate Forsyth

  Sara gripped her fingers together. ‘Where’s Dad’s motorbike then?’ she asked. ‘Is it there now?’

  The twins both shrugged.

  ‘It’s pissing down out there, Sar, we really didn’t look.’ Dylan kicked off his boots.

  ‘What a stink!’ Dominic said. ‘When did ya last change your socks?’

  Dylan thrust one foot into his twin’s face and Dominic made a fake retching noise. ‘Poo-whee! Get it out of my face, you bastard.’

  Dylan promptly thrust both feet in his twin’s face. Dominic thrust them away. Beer spilt.

  Joe said, ‘Shut up, you two, I can’t hear the telly!’

  The twins grinned and settled down, one at either end of the couch, their legs stretched out. Then all three were quiet, eyes fixed on the television.

  Sara could not sit still. She drifted to the window again, and then out to the front door, opening it against the drive of the rain and looking out into the empty yard. She chewed her thumbnail, going up the stairs to her half-sister’s room, automatically counting every step. She stood outside the closed door, listening, but could hear nothing but rain and wind. So she raised her hand and knocked. There was no response. After a while Sara turned the door handle and looked inside. The room was empty.

  Sara’s agitation was increased a hundred-fold. She did not know what to do. She called Teresa’s name, looking around the room as if her half-sister was three and might be pretending to hide. She then searched the whole house. Though if Teresa was not in her room, where else would she be? All the time Sara’s breath came with difficulty. Her mind threw up terrible phantoms from the deeps but she tried to suppress them, telling herself it was just the usual anxiety that shook her so, that her father would be home soon, Teresa laughing in the shelter of his arm, and they would mock her for imagining such things.

  Just after midnight, Sara heard the roar of the farm truck labouring up the hill and saw its twin headlights sweeping through the trees. She went running out to the front door, but stopped abruptly just inside its shelter, looking out at the rain, hands huddled into the sleeves of her jumper.

  The Dodge jerked to a halt in the wide parking bay, tyres scrunching in the gravel. The headlights illuminated the long darting strokes of rain into falling lines of quicksilver. The truck door opened and a stick-insect of a girl fell out, only managing to save herself from falling in a puddle by grabbing at the window frame. She laughed immoderately, hauled herself upright and stumbled through the rain and up the stairs, tripping over the broken step to land on her knees at Sara’s feet.

  ‘Tess! What are you doing out at this hour?’

  The girl looked up through spikes of short black hair. Her green-blue eyes were heavily fringed with black, mascara streaking down like a lugubrious clown’s makeup. Her eyelids were silver, and her red lipstick was smeared on her chin. She was dressed in a short black skirt under a shiny plastic coat, a purple top of sparkling nylon tied up over a black bra and fishnet stockings that were torn up one leg. On her feet were enormous cherry-red Doc Martens, and black studded bracelets clashed together on her thin wrists. Apart from the vividness of her eyes, gleaming like opals in her thin, sallow face, her most striking feature was the high-bridged, aristocratic nose.

  ‘Whoops, busted!’ she laughed, and got to her feet with some difficulty, using the verandah post to drag herself up.

  ‘But where have you been? What were you doing driving, for God’s sake?’

  ‘Didn’t really expect me to stay home on a Friday night, did ya? First day of the long weekend and all.’ Teresa looked at Sara through one eye, then the other, then shut both, only managing to keep her balance by hanging on to the post.

  ‘You’re drunk!’ Joe said contemptuously from the doorway. Behind him stood the twins, grinning.

  ‘Maybe just a bit tiddly,’ Teresa replied with slurred dignity.

  ‘You’re absolutely plastered.’

  ‘Drunk as a skunk,’ said Dylan.

  ‘Pissed as a parrot,’ said Dominic.

  ‘Shut up, you two. It’s not funny.’ Joe turned to his half-sister. ‘What the hell do you think you were doing?’

  ‘You didn’t really expect me to hang around here on a Friday night, did ya?’ Teresa said. ‘It’s like a goddamn tomb here and you lot are the fucking walking dead.’ She thrust her hand through her hair so it all stood up in spikes.

  ‘Where have you been?’ Joe was so furious he could hardly speak.

  ‘Raging my socks off at the golf club, the hotspot of Narooma night life,’ Teresa sneered. ‘Man, it was packed! All the terrorists on the loose, it was hopping.’

  ‘How did you get in?’ Joe shouted. ‘You’re only sixteen, and it’s a licensed bar!’

  Teresa preened herself ostentatiously, running her hands down her sides and across her bare midriff. ‘Don’t ya reckon I look eighteen?’

  ‘You look like a whore,’ Joe said. ‘Where did you get those clothes?’

  ‘Nicked them,’ Teresa grinned. ‘Hot, aren’t I?’

  Joe lunged and seized her by the arm, dragging her forward. His movement was so violent that both Sara and Teresa flinched, though Teresa recovered almost immediately, jerking her arm free and shouting, ‘Don’t touch me!’

  ‘Get to your room, you stupid little brat,’ Joe hissed. ‘Don’t you realise what trouble you could have got into? Parading around town all tarted up like that, drinking underage, stealing the truck and driving under the influence …’

  ‘Why shouldn’t I use the truck if I want to!’ Teresa cried. ‘It’s not stealing when you or Dylan or Dominic want to use it, is it? I live here too, remember? I’m meant to be part of the so-called family – why shouldn’t I use the truck if I want to?’

  ‘Because you haven’t got a licence,’ Joe yelled back. ‘And it’s a bloody farm truck, to be used on the farm. When do you ever lift a finger to help around here?’

  ‘Why should I?’ Teresa shot back. ‘It’s not like I belong here. I’m only here till my mum comes back and gets me. Frankly, I can’t wait. I hate this place and I hate you!’

  ‘Stop it!’ Sara cried. ‘Stop shouting!’

  Teresa pushed past her three half-brothers. ‘I’m going to bed,’ she said. ‘And not because he told me to but because I want to. I’ve danced my socks off and I’m tired.’

  They heard the clump of her boots on the stairs, a bang as she bumped into the table on the half-landing, another thump as she made it to her room.

  ‘Why do you always have to yell at her like that?’ Sara said, her voice swimming with tears.

  ‘Why?’ Joe yelled. ‘For fuck’s sake, Sara!’

  ‘Don’t yell at me. What have I done?’ Sara paused in the front door and looked back at him. ‘And I told you Dad didn’t come back and take the Dodge. He’s still out in that storm somewhere.’

  She did not wait for him to answer but made her quiet way through the dark front hall and up the stairs, automatically counting each step. She knocked on Teresa’s door. There was no answer. ‘Tess, are you OK?’

  ‘Sure,’ came back the answer a few seconds later, in rather a muffled voice.

  ‘Can I come in?’

  ‘I suppose so.’

  Sara pushed the door open. Teresa lay flat on her back on the bed, her arms and legs spread. She had managed to take one boot off. It lay on the floor amidst a clutter of dirty clothes, magazines, school books and a half-empty school bag, its contents disgorged across the rug.

  ‘The whole room is going round and round,’ Teresa said with interest, staring up at the ceiling as she waved one hand around vaguely. ‘Round and round and sort of up and down. And the bed feels like a water bed, sort of rocking. Whoa …’

  ‘Tess,’ Sara said in distress. ‘Why do you have to make Joe so angry? How could you do such a stupid thing?’

  ‘Why shouldn’t I? No-one cares what I do.’

  ‘I do.’

  ‘OK, sure, you care a bit. No-one else does.’

&nb
sp; ‘Dad cares.’

  ‘Dad doesn’t notice a thing when he’s painting, you know that. I could jump off a cliff and he wouldn’t even look up.’

  ‘Oh, Tess, that’s not true.’

  ‘Sure it is. Whoa, I wish the bed would stop heaving about.’

  ‘How much have you had to drink, Tess?’

  She laughed. ‘You think I remember? The whole night’s a bit of a blur. Oh oh, I think I’m going to puke.’

  Teresa sat up, her hand flying up to her mouth, then she leant over the side of the bed and vomited all over the school uniform lying beside the bed. ‘Good shot,’ she said, wiping her mouth. ‘Oh, I don’t feel so good now.’

  ‘I’m not surprised,’ Sara said. As Teresa flopped back on the bed she went to the bathroom and got a wet face-cloth. First she washed Teresa’s face, smearing the towel with black, then she cleaned up the worst of the mess, rolling up the school uniform and dropping it out in the hall. ‘Come on, you’d best sleep it off,’ Sara said, taking off Teresa’s other boot. ‘Let me help you out of these clothes first. They stink!’

  ‘Worked up a bit of a sweat,’ Teresa said. ‘And I seem to remember smoking a lot too.’

  ‘You’re an idiot,’ Sara said. She managed to drag off the coat and helped Teresa take off the skimpy, glittering tie-up shirt, passing her an old T-shirt from the floor. ‘Did you really steal the clothes?’ she asked in some distress.

  ‘Nah, of course not. They belong to a girl at school.’

  ‘Then why in God’s name did you tell Joe you stole them?’

  ‘Wanted to piss him off,’ Teresa said, flopping back on her pillows, her hands over her eyes. ‘Oh, my head!’

  ‘But why?’ Sara sat at the end of the bed, her hands clenched together at the juncture of her breasts. ‘Why do you always have to fight with him? You know how much I hate it.’

  ‘Oh, all right, I’m sorry, Sar. But, God, he shits me, the way he carries on. Anyone would think I’d committed a crime!’

  ‘You did,’ Sara said unevenly. ‘You’re only sixteen, Tess, you aren’t allowed in a bar. And you drove back absolutely plastered …’ She stopped, unable to speak.

  ‘I was all right. I wasn’t going to have a crash, or anything.’

  ‘How do you know? I bet you my mum didn’t think she was going to have a crash either! She knew that road a hell of a lot better than you do, and she at least had her licence!’ Sara pressed her hands against her eyes and tried to count her breathing, but the hot turmoil of tears defeated her.

  For a little while the only sound was the stifled gasp of her crying, then Teresa said in a tone of long suffering, ‘OK, OK, I’m sorry. I won’t do it again – at least, not this weekend. I’ll be good, I promise.’ She rolled over, knees curled to her chest like a child. ‘Do you think you could let me go to sleep now? I feel seriously sick.’

  Sara nodded and got up, wiping her eyes with the back of her hand. She said rather hesitantly, ‘You didn’t give Dad a lift into town by any chance, did you, Tess?’

  ‘Nah. Why? Dad not come home yet?’

  ‘I’m really worried about him. He’s been gone for hours and hours, and you know what the Elephant is like. I’m afraid he’s broken down somewhere or had a crash.’

  ‘Didn’t see him on the way home,’ Teresa said thickly. ‘Though, mind you, I was not seeing that well.’ She giggled inanely and began to sing, ‘Blinded by the grog …’ Her voice slurred into silence.

  Sara sighed and shut the door gently behind her. She gathered up the foul-smelling bundle of clothes and made her way downstairs to the kitchen, again silently counting the number of steps.

  Hail began to clatter on the roof. The wind swept around the old house, rattling doors and windows, poking cold spectral fingers through every gap and hole so that the torn nylon curtains lifted and drifted. In the harsh light of the bare bulb the kitchen looked uglier than ever. The floor was covered in worn and cracked laminex of a particularly hideous pattern, the table had the same pseudo-wood top as the coffee table in the living room, and the seats of the four chairs were covered in orange vinyl that matched the formica on the bench-top. The sink had been installed by Sara’s grandfather in the days when her mother had still been a little girl, and was lifting away from the chipboard beneath, while the round-shouldered fridge was the colour of soured cream.

  Sara threw the pile of washing through the door into the laundry, looked at the pile of dirty dishes all over the orange bench and sighed a depressed sigh. After a moment she reached up and took down the wooden box hidden on the shelf. Her fingers touched the carved curlicues tenderly as she sat down at the table. Gently she opened the box. A faint evocative scent of cinnamon, saffron and bay leaves rose from within, a smell that conjured powerfully the ghost of Consuelo Sanchez. Sara inhaled, holding the sweet, dusty spiciness deep in her lungs as if it was incense, her fingers resting on the silk-wrapped cards within. After a long moment she let her breath escape in a sigh, took the pack of cards out and unwrapped it from its shroud of silk. She turned the first card over.

  It was a card of the Minor Arcana. A woman awakening from sleep in the dead of night, covering her face in despair, nine swords hanging over her head. It was the Nine of Swords, a card that meant suffering, loss, desolation, the death of a loved one. Sara’s heart gave that terrible familiar lurch. Her blood pounded in her fingertips, cold prickled her skin.

  ‘Dad,’ she whispered. ‘Where are you?’

  The Sanchez family had always lived by the sea. Augusto boasted the blood of Andalusian pirates flowed in their veins. Sara’s earliest memories were of sea-sparkle, sea-slither. She liked to lie at the very edge of the water, translucent waves running cold, delicate fingers all over her body. She liked to float on her stomach, her face below the water, watching her shadow darken the world below, like a cyclone moving in. She liked to twist and writhe through the water, legs pressed together, pretending she was a mermaid like La Sirenita in the story her grandmother used to tell, who lived in the depths of the clear blue sea, deeper than a hundred church steeples all stacked one on top of another.

  Augusto had first come to the south coast in search of the sea. He had heard its beaches were clean and empty, and its ancient landscape crying out to be painted. He had only meant to come for a few weeks, to visit his sister Juanita who had just given birth to a little girl she had named Gabriela. ‘But then I met your mother,’ he would say with a shrug. ‘Somehow I found myself hitched.’

  Sara guessed that Augusto had never wanted to be married. Perhaps he and Bridget had been happy at first, though. She could imagine Augusto spending his days painting, swimming, strumming his guitar, and playing with his new baby boy, Pablo. She could imagine Bridget trying to make them a home, trying to make her family like him.

  There was little chance of that, however. The Hallorans did not approve of artists, and Augusto enjoyed shocking and provoking them. He thought the Hallorans were as provincial beige as their couch, and told them so. Bridget’s elder brother, Alex, in particular conceived an intense dislike for Augusto and the brothers-in-law argued every time they met. So, by the time Sara was born, Augusto was ready to try his luck in the big city.

  All the important art dealers were based there, Sara knew, along with the galleries that could launch a painter’s career, the journalists and curators who could nurture it, and the art prizes that could make a painter a household name. Augusto had begun to build a reputation as an art student in Melbourne, having paintings hung in several exhibitions and winning a minor prize or two, but four years and two children had made all the difference. Students Augusto had once sneered at were now better known than he was. He had to find himself a studio, show his work to galleries, attend openings, get involved with artist-run spaces, make contacts, put together an exhibition, and start selling paintings.

  Augusto had sworn that he would never return to Melbourne, so he set his heart on Sydney. Despite Bridget’s reluctance to leave her home and her anxie
ty about how they were to manage financially, the whole family moved to Sydney before Sara had turned one.

  The next few years were spent in cheap rental accommodation by the beach first in Coogee, then Maroubra. Then Augusto declared his hatred for the eastern suburbs and they moved across the Bridge to leafy Wollstonecraft, where they lasted only six weeks before Augusto decided he was unable to paint because he was severed from his spiritual connection to the sea. By this time Bridget was heavily pregnant with the twins and losing her early infatuation with the idea of being married to an artist. After long, bitter arguments they agreed to find a flat by the sea in Manly, close to the hospital, shops, and a good primary school for Pablo, who would be starting in kindergarten only a few months before the twins were due to be born.

  Sara could remember bright snatches of that time. She remembered how enormous her mother had been. Fingers swollen up like sausages, face round and red as an Edam cheese, feet so fat she could not stuff them into shoes. She remembered how her mother had to go to hospital long before the babies were born. Sara remembered how frightened she had been.

  Augusto had frowned. ‘Things are happening for me at last,’ he said. ‘I’m painting better than I ever have.’

  ‘But, Gus, I need you,’ Bridget said, tears rolling over her cheeks. ‘Who’ll look after the kids?’

  ‘I’ll ring my mother,’ Augusto said.

  Consuelo caught the train from Melbourne to Sydney, sleeping bolt upright in her chair, wrapped in her old Spanish shawl. She changed trains at Central Station and caught the ferry across to Manly where Augusto and the children met her at the wharf.

  ‘Shouldn’t you meet her at Central?’ Bridget had asked, sitting up against a pile of pillows, looking rather less round and red in the face after two days in the air-conditioned comfort of the hospital. ‘After all, she is getting rather old now.’

  ‘My mother escaped the Spanish Civil War, alone, on foot, pregnant and with a toddler in tow,’ Augusto said. ‘She had to climb the Pyrenees in winter. I think she can manage to find Manly on her own. Spanish women are bred tough, you know. Not like you soft Aussies.’