How it feels (30 page)

   You know what's funny? When you started writing to me about the dreams you'v e been having, and how Stuart is talking to you, well I too had been dreaming a lot, and mostly of you. Not in a dirty way! But you're in my dreams now, last week I dreamt I was in a car and I asked the people in the front if they knew where you lived and they said yes. I asked them to go past your house. I was clearly worried about you. They drove to your house and you came outside and got in the car with us. We didn't say anything in the car, you just looked very cold, so I took your hands and rubbed them, and you smiled, it was really nice.

   Dreaming really fascinates me, and I have read a bit about it in the past few years, though Gordon would hate me saying this to you as he thinks it is all rubbish – astrology, dreaming, all of that ‘weird shit'. You say Stuart is ‘visiting' you, but Neil, have you ever thought about ‘projection', that you're actually manifesting Stuart yourself? You are asking him into your dreams because you miss him so much and you want to connect once more and make sense of why he departed so swiftly? I am not trying to undermine what you have been experiencing – you're going through so much, and I don't want to sound in any way patronising or too opinionated – but I have always sensed (from what little I have seen of you in the last six years) that you blame yourself for Stuart's death. That you going off to university and putting on shows, and especially being the last one he spoke to on the phone before he did that horrible thing, that it is somehow your fault. Neil, please know that this is wrong. Stuart decided long before that day, be it consciously or unconsciously, that he was going to take his own life. Nelly, I have so much to say about this, I feel so strongly about it, but I can't write it all out here. I wish I could see you and tell you everything I think, as you know how deep it runs for me, when boys go away who shouldn't. I am still putting it together myself, where I went wrong, and what I could have done to keep Tommy here, but at the end of the day you have to let them go, and know it was not you who led them to it. There is something in them, Neil, a voice or a darkness.

   So don't blame yourself. For Swanna, for Stuart, for any of these things. I don't blame you. Gordon doesn't blame you. We just love you. And we love you because we know you and we saw what a beautiful friend you were to him. You were the joy of his life, and I don't think a day went by where Stuart could ever believe that a guy like you would choose to hang out with a guy like him. He was a cocky guy, very arrogant and showy and extroverted, but this was all on the surface, it was all bluster and coolness, and I couldn't help but see through it all to the scared little chap inside, with all his bundles of fear and anger wrapped up and hidden away.

   I am so sorry for raving on here – I just feel so deeply about it all, for obvious reasons, and as always, you are in my thoughts.

   I look forward to hearing from you, clever one, and all our love to Swanna. I so hope you two can find the light again…

   Yours,

   Courtney.

   Oh! PS Neil, the engagement party (yes, you heard it here first) is on 25 September at Mum's house, as apparently we are renovating our place (again!!!!?). I would so much like you to be there, and who knows, a trip home could be the best thing for you. Friends, family, ocean breeze…

 

Emails flowed with obsessive constancy for weeks and days, lifting me out of abject numbness and alcoholism, and into the light again. I had fuel in me; I was loaded once more with something to look forward to, something to think about on the number 8 bus to Bethnal Green, and something to keep me afloat in the house I shared with Swanna and her heaving clouds.

All the footsteps of my daily go-go somehow led to the checking of email. Wherever I was, a percentage of my attention was lost in the flow of them, one eye was always on that screen. On the Tube I would draft my next email in a Moleskine notebook, later typing it onto the computer when Swanna was asleep or out buying turmeric, polenta and haloumi.

And there was
so much
to relay, back and forth between Courtney and me. We had always spoken freely and easily with each other, but this, this frenzy of stories and thoughts and jokes and anecdotes, well email had set us free, it made it even easier to be candid and take risks with each other. She was not the screen, the screen was not her face, her face would never appear and I would never hear her breath in the mouse, and so I wrote with abandon. Limitless honesty and insight jetting out of my skull down my veins into the keyboard and away. I unravelled all the entrails of my fears and movements, my dream-life and my life-life, and she questioned and replied with such detail and compassion I simply could not tell her enough. I fell asleep with sore hands and woke with a million expectations, rushing to take that obligatory piss and then straight to the inbox to see what she had thrown out overnight, and she always had, she never missed a day, she was mad with it too, revealing so much to me in the tennis of it all; the frustrations she endured living so close and constant with her mother; the daily involvement made her feel so ‘trapped', but she loved Nina, and she knew she was needed at this time. She spoke of Gordon sparingly, and mostly of how brilliant and stoic he was, and how busy. She loved how proud he was of her, and protective, but sometimes (and I adored such admissions the most) she wished they talked more and about deeper things, and once she even admitted the sex was pretty infrequent and that he often fell asleep when they sat down to watch a DVD, especially if she had chosen the film and it was a foreign drama. This was her brand of admission, always restrained, unlike my flurry of disclosure and mess, but I loved it, and I sailed about the house and the brightening city with abandon, and it wasn't long until Swanna sensed there was something new in my life. I should have known she would go looking, trawl through every email and come to all sorts of conclusions from the space between our lines. She was searching for clues that I was still in love with Courtney, and whether they were literally there or not she found them, and there was no way of convincing her otherwise.

But before this, before things blew up and I was ordered out of there, Stuart ceased visiting me. He made one final appearance, this time without his dancing shoes on. Gone was the usual assuredness that pushed out of his big chest, instead he stood in the doorway with a slouch. He said he was glad I was writing to Courtney, and that finally I was moving in the right direction. Backwards, into life. Then he told me the wildest thing. He told me he had seen Tommy, Courtney's brother, and Tommy had asked him to pass on a set of blessings to give to me to give to her, as he was not allowed; he had been turned off all contact after they discovered him trying to break into Bianca's mind.

For days I deliberated, drinking beer at the Gun on Mare Street and pounding my fists into passing posts, wondering if I should tell her about the connection or not. The word ‘Tommy' was enough to bring Courtney down from any high, his death would remain an open wound for the remainder of her life on earth, and I so loved our correspondence and felt so worried this revelation would ruin the whole thing. We were beautiful friends once again, and in the end this was what propelled me to tell her; she believed in the dead, and their role in the lives of the living, and I simply couldn't withhold something of such meaning from her. She was the closest person to me and she had saved me from despair, she deserved all I knew, and when I told her she responded with such poise and calm it occurred to me she knew this was going to happen, and in a way it was why she had been writing to me all along. Besides – and this may sound a little fucked up – my ego roared at the idea of having this in store, of Courtney
needing
me, the super-connector, the people portal. And so I wrote with controlled exaggeration, passing on dreams and conversations Stuart had enjoyed with Tommy that never actually took place. I desperately wanted to give Courtney what she wanted, which was to see and feel her brother again, and so I became him, and it filled me with the most glorious, erotic and satisfying charge.

Tommy spoke through me now; he was my newest and most preferred role. Stuart had simply told me to tell Courtney that Tommy loved her and missed her lots, whereas I relayed so much more to her, inventing an entire narrative of life for him in heaven. The Bianca quest, his gothic band, his regrets and his desire to spend time with her once more. Boldly, as time wore on and Courtney began to feed off my letters as if her only life source, I insinuated, in the tales, that Tommy was not necessarily sold on Gordon as a life partner for his sister, and that he strongly believed she was bigger than Cronulla, and one day she should break out, and unshackle herself from the burdens of family and career, for there was ‘a big world out there', Tommy said (through me), ‘and these duties and burdens such as mum and your marriage will keep you from it girl'.

I ate my breakfast silently at the bench across from Swanna, then caught the bus to Liverpool station and walked across Millennium Bridge to the Tate Modern. I had not been for a year or so and was very excited to see the big, bold building again.

The Tate was quiet on a Tuesday, just some old women and a small school group, so I took longer than usual scanning the new works and the photography, snaking my way up to the Rothko room, my favourite room on earth. Mark Rothko was a deadset genius, so, typically, he had killed himself. He worked mainly with red, which isn't even my favourite colour, but sitting in this small space, surrounded by it, I felt like I was being swallowed up by a giant Shiraz, or by the blood of the gods. Swanna had brought me here the first time. She told me to peer into the maroon and just wait, breathe and wait for them to take hold, and they did – the paintings became red doorways to a deeper red universe, which led to more red and then more deep darker red. There were thousands of layers of red inside a Rothko, and if you trusted him, he would let you see and taste them all. The paintings were brilliant secrets that spoke of a rich darkness in all of us, and I let them have me, on my own in the middle of London.

I was feeling pretty alright, leaving the Tate and wandering along the Thames to Embankment station. London was magical in the summer, business people ripping off their shirts at lunchtime and stretching out their arms, basking in the mere murmur of sunlight on the city. Sitting up there had reminded me of what a girl I had in Swanna. Who else would take you to such a cool place as the Rothko room? Who else would even notice what the reds could do to you if you stared at them long enough? As I hopped on the Tube I wondered if there were quality flowers on sale today. I'd stroll past Columbia Road on the way home and find out. I'd bring her back to life, I knew I could.

I walked in the door carrying a huge bunch of sunflowers and some white roses that were really fucking expensive. The house smelt of dead air and milk and straightaway I knew something was wrong. I heard scratching in the back and followed the sound. In the study was Swanna, dressed in a bra and singlet, sitting at my desk scrolling through a long email I had sent to Courtney a few days before. I held up the flowers. She didn't move, she just stared at me, her eye make-up smudged with wetness.

‘Flowers, for you,' I said.

She stood up, wiped her eyes.

‘I went to the Rothko room today,' I continued.

She spoke in a hushed voice. ‘So I'm this “walking dead person in the house”, am I? The crazy girlfriend who shops all day like a fucking psycho, is that me?'

‘Swanna, I didn't ask you to read my email…'

‘Ha! You didn't ask me? Of course you didn't fucking ask me! I'm out there dealing with this little fucking tragedy that happened, trying to keep us healthy, trying to keep my head above water, and you're in here writing to your ex-girlfriend about her dead fucking brother and your fucked-up girlfriend. I mean, who the fuck are you, Neil?'

‘Swanna, it's just emails.'

‘It's just fuck!'

‘I've been having these dreams.'

‘You didn't tell me about any dreams. Me!'

‘You don't talk!' I screamed.

Swanna took the white roses from me and bit into them. She chewed and swallowed all the petals then ripped into the stems. I pulled a stem out of her mouth and she bit my hand.

‘Swanna, come on, this is ridiculous,' I said.

She adopted a coquettish little voice and tilted her head to the side, green mush in her mouth. ‘ “London is so beautiful, Courtney, you'd love it here.” '

‘I was just trying to let her know there was life outside Cronulla.'

‘Life in your fucking trousers?'

‘She's stuck in the place, and I care for her.'

‘You do or her dead brother does? I can't tell the difference!'

‘I can explain all of that…'

‘You sick fuck.'

‘Swanna, I try to connect with you and you just ignore me, so I reached out to a friend. What am I meant to do?'

She pointed at the screen. ‘That's not
writing
to someone, that's a whole lot more than writing, that's cheating and manipulating… Oh yes, and now I see it all so fucking clearly! I'm the funny little Indian that cheered you up after your friend's suicide, helped you attain your fame and notoriety abroad, and she's the little suburban angel you're going to go home for. She has the hold on your heart, am I wrong? Am I fucking wrong? This was your plan all along.'

She wasn't wrong so I didn't tell her otherwise. I bit into one of the flowers myself then spat the petals onto the ground. I left the house we had found together one rainy Wednesday hand in hand.

When I came home my study was smashed up, the computer in a million pieces with a well-arranged selection of flower petals on top of it. Written on the wall in red texta was: