Candelo (17 page)

But I am your brother
, he had said, finding it impossible to comprehend my question.

I looked at my legs in the mirror, pulling my shorts up to reveal the tops of my thighs.

I lifted my T-shirt and looked at my breasts. Small, barely there.

Vi had laughed when I had asked her if I could buy a bra.

What on earth for?

All the other girls had them.

And when I had shaved my legs for the first time, she had given me a long lecture on male fantasies, male desires, male notions of how a woman should look and act.

Then why do you wear high shoes? And those dresses?

She had told me she was old enough to make her own
decisions. She wore what she wanted to wear; she had never dressed for a man and she never would.

But what if I like smooth legs?
I had persisted.

She had told me I was being ridiculous. There was no hair there in the first place. She didn't want to argue any more.

Similarly, when I first got my period, I asked her to buy me some pads. She came back from the shop with a box of tampons.

I can't use those
, I had said.

I had heard the girls at school. You could lose your virginity if you used a tampon, their mothers would never let them, and as for the idea of putting your finger inside yourself – they would wrinkle their noses in disgust.

Vi told me to stop being so silly, and she laid the instructions out across the kitchen table, leaving me to work them out.

I put my cigarette out and lit another one.

Practice.

The taste was not getting any better. But my technique definitely was.

And I sat out in the heat of the courtyard, where the weeds pushed up through the stone flagging, where the sun could tan my legs, where I could still see myself in the reflection of the glass doors.

But out there in the brightness of that day, in the sharpness of that sunlight, staring up at the sky, I would find the night before slowly creeping back in. And I would catch my breath, just for a moment, with the whisper of a blade of grass, a leaf brushing the side of my legs, I would feel it all come back and I would close my eyes and stop breathing. Because all that was
day, all that was solid seemed to slide away from me, drain like blood, until I was there again under the night sky with his mouth on mine.

Their room was on the other side of the courtyard. Their door squeaked as I opened it. Rotten wood straining on rusted hinges. Their beds were unmade, their clothes were scattered across the floor.

The glass door that separated them from Evie and me was closed.

I had watched them through it, their light on, ours off. Their bodies illuminated. Ours in darkness. Stripped down to their underpants. Simon, tall and slim, still like a boy. Long-limbed and slender. Mitchell, also thin, but with a breadth in his chest and strength in his arms.

I looked at his things and I looked at Simon's, already blending into each other – socks, jeans, T-shirts, tangled together. I picked through them, wanting to find some clue as to who he was.

The indent of the mattress from where he had slept.

The twist of the sheets at the foot of the bed.

Cigarette butts in a saucer.

A silver marijuana leaf on a piece of leather thonging.

A torch that was sticky-taped together.

All this.

And nothing.

I followed Evie's path, the one that Simon had made for her that morning, across the front garden and out onto the dirt road, turning towards what remained of the orchard at the side of the house.

The trees were gnarled and twisted, stunted by years of neglect, with small clusters of tart apples and woody pears. I climbed the nearest, as high as I could go, perching myself up there so I could see it all. The red roof of the house, the gentle roll of the paddocks, the bare branches of the gums, streaky-barked, the tumble of boulders down the side of a hill, the line of willows that marked what I knew to be the river, and the twist of the yellow dirt road, winding its way back to Candelo, to the highway, to the coast, to where the waves crashed against the shore.

I wanted to be able to see when they came back.

But I did not want them to see me.

I did not want him to see me.

Not straightaway.

And with my back against the smooth branch, I stayed there, listening to the rush of the leaves overhead, letting myself drift in and out of the day that I was in and the night that had just passed.

When I made my decision, it was not as though there was a decision to make. It was suddenly clear. The indecision I had been lost in no longer made sense. It no longer seemed possible that I could not know.

I sat on the damp front step of Mouse's flat, sharing a joint and remembering Mitchell, and as I looked out across the garden, as I watched each tree, each bush slowly taking shape in the beginnings of the day, I knew that I could not do it. Not on my own.

Letting myself into my flat, I saw it all in the half-light from the window. Two small rooms, with my clothes on the floor, my books stacked underneath the windows, the dishes in the sink, the chaos that had surrounded me since Marco had left. The chaos that was there before he had turned up in my life. The chaos in which he had attempted, unsuccessfully, to make a small dent, an impression of change.

Outside, the sun was now streaking the ocean crimson, the line of sky skirting the horizon impossibly rich in its blue.

When we first started living together, I would wake Marco to look at the dawn.

I had never watched that transition from night to day with Anton. We had never had a full night together. But I had with Marco, often. He would open his eyes momentarily, grunt in appreciation, and then go back to sleep. I would stay up watching, the great ball clinging to the lip of the sea, held there for just a moment, before it slowly separated, rising towards morning.

As I closed the curtains so that I could sleep, I saw myself, momentarily, reflected in the window.

I did not have the courage.

I was a fool for ever thinking I had.

And when I woke, three hours later, I rang the clinic and made an appointment.

She gave me a day and a time. She told me not to drive and she told me to bring clean underpants and sanitary pads.

I hung up and did not know what to do next.

It was the day before the funeral and I had no work. No audition to prepare for. No friends I had arranged to visit. Nothing.

I heard Mouse slamming the bathroom door and I heard Louise coming down the path and past my door. As I got up and searched for my swimmers on the floor, I heard her going up the wooden stairs, sagging after all the rain; I heard her key in the lock, her footsteps down the hall, in their bedroom, and the thud of her shoes as she took them off, one by one, and climbed into bed to try to sleep.

The path to the beach was still wet. Dripping branches had been tossed, pulled and flattened, making certain places almost
impenetrable. Clumps of blood-red lilies with thick purple leaves bent at their stems. Nasturtiums and morning glory in a tangled heap of destruction, and great pools of rain that soaked up through my sandshoes.

Below me I could hear the sea.

I could hear it before I saw it.

The thunder of the waves, white and wild, over the rocks, slapping up against the base of the path, almost licking the edge and then pulling back.

And I stood there, looking out, watching the ocean and, in the distance, Anton, walking towards me. Watching him without realising it was him. Seeing him just as I would see anyone coming back from a swim, hair still wet, towel over his shoulder, T-shirt damp.

He looked at me and I looked at him.

And I did not know whether he, too, remembered the times we would meet on the stairs, when we would swim together, when he would tell me that he had hoped he would find me waiting for him.

Rough
, he said, searching for conversation but only finding that one word.

I know
, I said, equally devoid of anything to say.

Salt clung to the tips of his eyelashes, white on black. Seaweed still curled around his wrist.

How are you feeling?
he asked, and it was the kind of question I would expect from him. General. Floating. Failing to alight on what was at hand.

I told him I was fine, and as I moved to walk past him, he put his hand on my arm.

Can't we talk?
he asked.
Not today, Louise is at home, but tomorrow?

His fingers, still icy from the sea, were wrapped around my wrist, heavy and cold. I moved away. I took one step back and I told him I was busy tomorrow, I had a funeral to go to, I had nothing to say.

And as the waves slapped against the path, he tried to tell me how sorry he was. He tried to say he had never wanted this to happen, but each sentence seemed to drift off, useless words carried away with the breeze, until finally he just said he was sorry again.

And I could see he was.

But it didn't mean much. Coming this late.

He moved to go and I watched him walk away, just for a moment, until he disappeared around the bend in the stairs, and I turned back towards the ocean, towards the pool.

Vi has always believed that you should talk to young people as adults, that you should treat them as equals.

I have seen her with children, young children, answering their questions with an earnestness that makes no sense to them.

Why?
they ask, over and over again, and Vi will explain, in detail, usually managing to slip a political message into her answer.

As we got older, she thought it was important to keep up to date with what interested us: music, films, books. She would try to ask questions. She would set aside time to get to know us.

I could not bear it. When she made an effort. To relate.

What's this you're listening to?
she would ask, putting her head around my bedroom door.

Music
, I would tell her.

And she would respond with equal sarcasm.
Really?

Although Simon also saw through her attempts, he would
usually try harder. He would tell her who it was. He would even get out the cover and show her, or perhaps play her something else. She would sit and listen, occasionally tapping her foot in time to the beat, nodding her head in appreciation, until after a few moments it was clear that she was bored and wanted to get back to work.

Vi tried with Mitchell. To enter his world. To talk to him on his level.

And it was excruciating.

I could hear her as I let myself into the house, her voice deep and earnest, echoing from the kitchen up the long dusty corridor, and I cringed.

They were back from the beach. United by sunburn, sand and the sea, they barely noticed I was there.

Saved you some
, and Simon glanced up for a moment as he pointed at the fish and chips, cold and greasy, spread across the kitchen table.

Evie was kneeling on her chair with her clothes stuffed up her T-shirt, pulling faces at Simon and Mitchell. Vi was leaning against the cupboard, her hair awry from swimming, a hint of colour in her face, as she rolled another cigarette and asked Mitchell about his interests; her face intent and serious as he told her the bands he liked, as he listed them for her.

I knew she didn't know any of them, but she nodded all the same, knowledgeably, occasionally turning to Simon,
You like them too
, seeking confirmation that she knew what Mitchell was talking about.

It was when she asked him if he was interested in a career in music that he grinned, the white of his teeth startling against
the tan on his face as he thought about the combination of those two words, ‘career' and ‘music'.

Don't know
, he said, the possibility of it opening up before him. Exciting him.
How?
he asked.

Vi wasn't stumped.
What about some of the community arts access programs in your area? There have been some excellent ones started up by this government
.