“Yeah, I stopped all that business in the ring a while back.”
“Why’s that?” she continued. She wasn’t sure if she was pushing him too far. Asking for information that he wasn’t willing to divulge. Too anyone. But there was something about the intimacy that had taken place between them. He’d been inside her, on multiple occasions. And it was different to the rest. He’d made her come. He’d held her close. He had shown her love that she hadn’t experienced in a sexual way, never really, to be exact. There was something unspoken between them.
“I don’t think I was ever good enough.” He finally said.
It was an unanticipated response. She tried to recalibrate, and figure out where to go next.
A siren blared outside the house, but they were cocooned in that perfect space. Redfern and its miscreants were far away.
“What do you mean?” she asked.
“I mean exactly that. I was never good enough. It’s hard saying it even now. But it’s okay. I’m better at other things, I guess.”
She kept stroking the number.
“Like teaching?” she asked.
“Yeah, like teaching.”
There was a long pause.
“Sometimes you have to be a hero in an unexpected way.”
She turned around and lay on her back, still naked. She liked that idea. Unexpected heroes. But how to do that?
She pulled the sheet over their heads.
“Maybe we can hide out here for a while?” she turned her face in his direction. She couldn’t quite make out his dark eyes but she knew he was burning a hole into her very centre with them. She didn’t mind it at all – she was happy to let herself burn.
“Sounds like a plan to me,” he said. He rested a hand on her stomach, and stroked the smooth flesh of her belly.
“You know, I was worried about what you would make of this,” she said – time for her own admission.
“What do you mean?” he rested his body on his forearms, his wide chest within arms reach.
“This pound of flesh.”
He furrowed his brow. “You are joking.”
“Not at all. I don’t look like I used to,” her voice grew quiet. Unintentional. Visceral reaction.
“But you’re so beautiful.”
“Not anymore,” she said wryly.
“Yes, you are. But it’s not just your face – although you have a beautiful face too,” he placed his full palm across it. She laughed underneath. “And you have a beautiful figure,” he ran the palm of his hand down. Past her neck and clavicle, in between her breasts and down to her stomach again. “It’s more than that. Like I said before, there’s a gentleness to you ... and a fierceness. I adore it.”
He said the last three words quietly, and her blood ran smooth.
She turned her face away from him for a moment.
“Why are you so kind to me?” she asked.
He paused. “Why are you so kind to me?” he responded with a question. She snapped her head back, his eyes were inches away from her own.
She threaded her hand with his. She wanted to learn all those patterns on his form. The natural and the unnatural. The ones that had been inked by another man's hand, and the gentle undulations that were part of his original skin, that had creased with age. She wanted to memorise all those components and keep an image of them always in her mind – to replay, and keep close to her heart.
“I’m not sure ... there’s something about you. I can feel you on my skin,” she said suddenly. The words were strange leaving her lips. She wasn’t even quite sure what they meant, but somehow they expressed how she felt for him. She could feel him on her skin. Like she knew him now, but she’d known him before, and always would. Something primitive, an undercurrent that pulsed under her very skin and within her veins.
She knew him.
He sighed, like he were pleased by the revelation.
“I’m the same. I can feel you on my skin.”
His hand pressed down on her belly and warmed the flesh beneath it. It’s where it belonged. Where it had always belonged. She knew that now that she had felt it, once it was removed, she would always ache for its presence. It was like the final piece in a jigsaw puzzle that had always longed for that particular piece.
She closed her eyes and felt oddly at peace.
Outside a siren blared, and a man screamed.
Inside the world was perfect. Silent and complete.
32
The good ones
(2017, Redfern)
The next morning she walked the familiar path to collect Evie from Chris’s. Down Elizabeth Street, past the Vietnamese doctor and the vet that was never open, right-hand turn and onto Phillip Street. The sky was a brilliant blue and it arched over her infinitely.
She had a palm over the back of her neck. Moments and memories from her night with G raced across her mind, like a kaleidoscope of images. The way he had first kissed her. How he had undressed her carefully, as though she were something supremely precious that needed to be unwrapped. The way he had kissed her shoulder. Traced a line across her clavicle. The look on his face, calm, but desirous. The way he had pressed her naked frame to his naked frame. Like they could wait in that spot forever. A perfectly unified form. The scrape of his chin against her neck. Telling a story with his lips. The way he had held her in his arms when he entered her. The way they had lay in bed for hours talking. Telling stories. Learning each others bodies. Drinking in every detail, like it was finite and they had to get their fill now.
The way he had looked at her when he left, and interlaced his fingers with hers. Cool to the touch now, different to last night, less urgent and more secure. The way he had kissed her goodbye – one time, one single time on her lips. But lingered. That was enough. That was more than enough. That was everything.
She closed her eyes momentarily. Stopping on the street to savour the memory.
Sometimes memories were good.
She opened her eyes and refocused on the street ahead. Returning to this reality. But this reality with the memory of him still fresh, was a good one. A perfect one even. She turned the corner again, through their front gate, up the stoop, and knocked on Chris’s door.
She smiled when the door opened, and shared a few words with Rosie. A laugh. Tilley raced out and into her arms, and then they started the walk back home.
She held Tilley’s hand loosely. It occurred to her that she felt happy. She had caught herself in one of those supremely rare moments. Yes, this was it – this is what happiness felt like. She’d had brief glimpses of it before, but she had never let them blossom within her. She had never let them catch alight. The thought of them burning out, or being extinguished was too much for her. Having known happiness and lost it was worse than never having known it at all.
But now she let herself dwell in it. Like flowers being spread in a garden, it spread across her soul and covered all the barren territory that had been left behind. All the cemeteries and their grave stones. She let them be covered by grass and sunflowers -the brightest she could imagine.
She’d never let herself be ferried about by love. She wasn’t that type of person. She was too pragmatic. Too capable of closing off7 emotions before they burned her. She had been surrounded by too many burnouts to make the same mistake. But maybe she’d been wrong, maybe instead of focussing on all the darkness and all the hate she should have been focussing on love.
Tilley scurried inside to shower and get ready for school. Evie made a tea and sat on the front step of the terrace watching the traffic go by.
Maybe this is all she really needed – G, Tilley and the memory of Benny. The good ones. She would weed out the bad ones. She would set them aside to remind herself that life was short, exquisite and singular.
Yes, that’s how it would go.
33
Because he was a bloke just like me
(2017, Bronte)
She had told G that seeing her father twice in a week was too much. That she
needed to see him in small doses. Once a week seemed like a lot. Almost more than she could muster. But that day after she dropped Tilley off at school, she decided she would skip out on work and go and see him. She had the overwhelming sense that she should seize the day, that she was on a path now, and she might be able to race to the conclusion. She called in sick and drove out to the hospice.
It was a Friday. Everything was strange about that day. Different. It smelt fresh and unique. That was rare for her. She felt like she had been moving through the motions for years now. Living in the beige. Nothing was expressed in a brilliant colour anymore. Everything was the same. Like it only touched her on the periphery and never penetrated the surface. But today ... was singular, distinctive – in its colour, taste and feel. Tilley rarely slept at a friend’s house on a school night, Evie never had a man in her bed and she certainly never skipped out on work. She was a regular. A constant presence, even if her work admittedly was lack-lustre. She was simply there. Filling that seat. Going through the motions. She was breaking all the rules now.
The hospice was different on a weekday. Strangely, there were more visitors. More bustle. More life. She wondered if people saved their weekends for the living, not the half dead. What a terrible thought.
The nurse behind the desk recognised her and waved a hand towards her to stop her as though she had something to say. Evie neared the desk, instantly uncomfortable. She didn’t like dealing with any of details around her father’s death, or the final moments of his life. It made her feel strangely responsible — and she didn’t want to be responsible for him, she wanted to maintain her distance. Being responsible was, well ... akin to knowing someone well, to having affection for them. She and her father didn’t have that bond. They never had.
The nurse smiled at her, “How are you doing darling?” she said, her voice low, probably from smoking cigarettes. Her face was old and lined, weathered, but her eyes were a bright blue. Like the sky outside.
“Good,” Evie said – unwilling to enter into any pleasantries.
“He was unwell overnight – we’ve had to stabilise him, and now he’s on a fair bit of morphine. He’s in and out,” she said. She went to reach for her hand, which had been resting on the counter, but Evie pulled it back. She didn’t want the sympathy. In fact she didn’t need the sympathy.
“How long now?” she asked, finding her voice. Not because she cared so much, but because she only had limited time to extract information from him – to get the answers she needed. He couldn’t just go and die on her when she had made so much progress. Was that a selfish thought? Yes, but it was warranted after all these years.
“Not long now. Sometimes it’s a few days, sometimes it’s a little longer. Sometimes they cling on for a few more weeks. He’s a tough old bugger so it’s hard to say,” the nurse said, her eyes soft, kind.
They were almost too much to take. Evie felt tears involuntarily spring to her eyes. She wasn’t quite sure why. It was such a ridiculous response to that information. Maybe it was because she needed those answers to move forward. Maybe it was legitimately because he was her last living relative. Her family unit – Ben, her mum and Greg – had been locked together in their awful reality for the first twenty years of her life, and even in the time that transpired after that she’d felt under their thumb. Swollen with their memories. Even though she hated him, his death would have an impact on her. Quite suddenly and unexpectedly she realised it might destabilise her.
She blinked the thought aside. Not possible, not after everything that had happened. Not with G by her side. No, she could move forward. She had to move forward.
“There, there,” the nurse had said, handing her a wad of Kleenex. Such a perfunctory response to tears. She supposed they were common here and an individual answer was virtually impossible.
She nodded her head, turned on her heels and walked steadily down the corridor.
She paused at his door today. No brave swagger. No direct walk straight in to get the answers to her questions. She waited. Her heart beat heavily in her chest. She could hear it in her ears. Take the plunge Evie, do it, walk in or walk away. She stepped over the threshold – through that liminal space and over to the other side.
The blue curtain was pulled around him today and the television was off. She pulled the curtain aside with unsteady hands. There he was, lying almost flat. His eyes were closed and his breath so quiet, so soft, like it might stop at any moment. He had taken a turn for the worse. His skin was pulled taut and his cheekbones were raised high like the pyramids of Giza. His lips were parted revealing his yellowing teeth, clenched tightly together. Cancer was like that, she had witnessed it with her mother, sometimes it took everything from you and so quickly. Seemingly overnight. He looked like a mummy. She would have thought him dead, but his chest was still rising and falling ever so softly. Maybe that was the oxygen, not even him breathing.
She leant over him to inspect that face – it didn’t seem so evil now. Not at the end. There was a strange vulnerability to it which kicked her in the stomach. She didn’t want to think of him like this. Weak, defenceless, exposed ... he was an arsehole, that’s how she wanted to remember him.
He must have sensed her presence or felt the soft hairs on her head tickle his skin because he blinked his eyes open.
“I’m not dead yet,” he rasped at her. She leant back quickly, so quickly she banged her head on the overhead light.
He didn’t say anything else and she wasn’t sure if he was capable. So she just sat down and didn’t say a word. She stared at him, that quiet sack of bones. He was so small now. The cancer had shrunk him into a tiny body. She barely recognised the man that he had once been – the one who had scared her, who had left her terrified. Was he still in there? Was he still that person? Or was that person available only at a certain time and place – in her childhood and now, in her memories? Reality was a slippery sucker – it didn’t really exist at all.
She watched and waited, for hours. His breath continued to rise and fall, but he didn’t say another word, not another sound, and she was afraid to ... lest it tip him over the edge. Into the darkness. Into the abyss. Where would he go, she wondered? All that darkness, energy and violence? His physicality was so brutal – it was like he only belonged in this one place. In this torrid, angry, menacing world. He didn’t belong in silence, in time, in space. She didn’t believe in God. Not after everything that had passed. But she couldn’t imagine him disappearing into that cold, silent embrace either.
Don’t go Dad, not now. She caught the words in her head, and she was bemused by them. What did they mean? Why, after all of this, did she still want him nearby?
The nurse dropped offlunch. A couple of sandwiches with ham and cheese and vegemite. A soup, and an overboiled meat dish. She inspected all of it, and decided she should eat something. She nibbled the vegemite sandwich and then returned it to its plastic wrapper, virtually untouched.
She sat back down, and the time continued to tick forward. It was afternoon by now, she would have to go pick up Tilley. Despite knowing that, she couldn’t break her vigil. His eyes remained closed, his breath weak.
She pulled the curtain open a fraction so she could keep an eye on the clock. 2.05. It seemed like weeks had gone past since the events of this morning or of last night. Like she had dropped into some sort of silent vortex. Where everything stood still. Everything always stood still around Greg – and everything always stood still around death. So, it didn’t surprise her that this was the perfect storm.
She kept an eye on the clock to remind her that they were still of this world. Partaking in this very space.
At 2.36 he spoke.
“Why was I so hard on Ben?” the words weren’t spoken at anyone at all and they were barely a whisper. She leant in to listen further. So close to him she could smell the saline and morphine they had pumped into his flesh ... and something else ... death. That was familiar too. She held her breath. Lest she startle him, but mo
stly because she was afraid of the response.
“Because he was a bloke, just like me. My dad was tough on me, I was tough on Ben,” he glanced over at her, but his eyes didn’t register. He looked at somewhere over her shoulder. A specific point that captured his complete focus.
“He was a little shit – just like me.” He gave a short gasp, she supposed it was a laugh, the only one that he could manage. “I was afraid he’d turn out like me ... he did turn out like me. Worse though, hey? He’s dead, isn’t he – and I’m still here.”
His eyes snapped back down to her own now. Blue on blue, like he was registering her presence.
“He’s dead, isn’t he Eve?” he asked, his face looked perturbed, like he wasn’t at all sure of it.
She sat up slightly, ever so slightly. Christ, he was going to make her say it. He was going to make her articulate those words that she hated so much.
“Eve?” he continued, hand searching for hers. The skin on them was paper thin and they had moved his cannula a few times. He had several blown veins on his wrists and hands – large dark stains. They didn’t even look like bruises. They looked like someone had coloured his skin with an aubergine texter.
“Eve?” he repeated, barely a whisper.
One, two, three, four, five ... it was time to say it. She had to.
“Yes Dad, he’s dead.”
He closed his eyes for a second, and nodded his head a couple of times. Then nothing more. Silence. She waited there his hand still on hers. Waited for something more, but he’d lapsed back into the coma, the darkness, whatever it was.
She glanced back at the clock. 3pm. She was going to be late picking up Tilley.
She slipped her hand out from under his, and left the room.
34
I'm in trouble
(Dreamspace)
In the car it was difficult to focus on the traffic. Her mind kept drifting back to that hospital room, back to that bed, that face, those words. Again the kaleidoscope of memories drifted in and out of this reality. She thumbed through them trying to find the one that made sense. The thing is, she was sure there was one or maybe two which would make this story all come together in a cohesive narrative. If she could find it, then she could understand. But which one was it? And did she still have it in her possession? Was it still part of her faculties, or had she blocked it a long time ago?
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