The Beginner's Guide to Living (13 page)

“Better not keep Taryn waiting,” I say, staggering every movement so I don't lose the juice. “You know how women are.”

“Yeah. You all right to get yourself over there?”

“Sure, Dad.”

“Then I think I'll get myself another beer.”

*   *   *

When I get to Taryn's, Ray and Sandy are watching some show about art. No sports in this house. Taryn pilots me into the kitchen, pours a glass of water and drops something in. She hasn't kissed me yet.

“Here, drink this. Gastrolyte. It'll rehydrate that brain of yours. Tastes like sweet aspirin, but as long as you don't chuck it up you'll be right.”

I do as I'm told. It's fizzy and foul, but a small price to pay.

“So, how was Adam this morning?”

“Don't know. He was gone by the time I got up. Was it awful?”

“Yes. What happened? Are you usually like that when you're drunk?”

“God, no.” I reach for her hand, but she's removed from it. It's just flesh.

“Well, how am I supposed to know? I didn't recognize you last night.”

She's thinking, she hardly knows me; she's thinking, she's made a mistake. “Things have been a bit messed up lately,” I say.

She frowns.

“No, I don't mean us.”

“Why did you hit him? Do you know that much?”

“Not sure. I haven't hit him for ages, not since we were really little, and that was mostly defending myself. Maybe it's got something to do with how he's been since Mom died. I thought he'd be more supportive but he's been a real prick.”

Her hand has life in it again. She reaches over and touches my face, strokes my cheek with the back of her hand. God, she's so gentle, the perfect antidote to life. “You should talk to him about it.”

“Yeah, maybe I will.”

“So, do you think that head of yours can handle a little music? Samara and I have been sorting out our favorite music; we're going to make a CD.”

“Sure.”

Taryn leads me to Samara's room. She's sitting cross-legged on the floor next to her stereo—I remember the last time I saw her like that, but that's as far as it goes.

“Heard you went on a bit of a bender last night.”

“Yeah, and paying for it.”

Samara laughs. “Karmic, definitely karmic.”

“What are you listening to?”

“Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan.”

“Who?”

The flash from the flint of the lighter annoys my brain as Samara lights some more incense, the wailing of the music only making it worse. “Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan. He's a qawwali singer.”

“Well, that explains everything.”

“Sufi music.” She looks at me with a grin. “The mystics of Islam.”

This is all doing my head in—the part that's still alive. “Yeah, I know what a sufi is,” I say, even though I don't.

Taryn: “Jeff Buckley was into Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan.”

“Is that what got you into, what's it called?”

“Qawwali? No.” Samara hands me the CD cover. It's got writing I don't recognize and it looks pirated. “Actually, I first heard it when I was in Pakistan, hanging out with these drug lords. Don't ask.”

As if I was going to. Samara stretches on her back, her hair fanning around her, probably dreaming of tall, dark guys doing coke. I recognize the incense, forget its name. Taryn lays her head against mine. The music stretches around us, sounding of deserts, of birds soaring above sand—the lonely search for something real on a Saturday afternoon.

*   *   *

Memory.

A Saturday in June. Dad and Adam have gone to a football match but I didn't want to go because Adam's team is in first place. I hear music filtering from the living room—Mom's sprawled on the couch, her arms stretched above her head.
“Oh, hold me like a baby.”
I watch her without moving, mesmerized. “I thought you were reading in your bedroom. It's Suzanne Vega,” she offers over the music as she straightens her shirt.

Apart from Pop's funeral, that's the only time I heard my mother sing.

LIFE'S LONGING

S
UNDAY MORNING,
Adam wakes me, a red bruise trailing the bone of his left cheek. “So, what happened, Will?”

“I don't know, I just lost it. You okay?”

“What's going on? Is it exams, or is this about Mom?”

“You really want to know?”

“Asked, didn't I?”

So, I tell him, everything, from the wake with the sinister great aunts, right up to the party at Ritchie's, and he listens, doesn't say a word. Doesn't even nod.

“That's quite a story,” says Adam, once I've finished. I wait for him to comment, to offer some kind of judgment on the saga of my grief. He shifts at the end of my bed. “I've been thinking.”

“Yeah?”

“About why I stayed?”

“Okay.” I can tell he wants me to haul it out of him but I reckon it's time he did that himself.

“It's got something to do with what Mom said the last time I saw her.”

“Uh-huh.”

Adam taps his fist gently into his hand. His bruise is almost flattering on his cheek. “She said that, with me gone all the time, it felt like we were no longer a family. That something was coming undone.”

“She always was good at explaining that kind of thing.”

“Yeah, she was.”

He sits unmoving on the end of the bed, and I know the longer the silence, the less likely he is to speak. “Adam…”

“Listen, you going to the christening today?”

“What christening?”

“Our new cousin. Rachel's baby son. Didn't Dad tell you?”

“Nah. Nobody tells me anything.”

“I've got a couple of spare shirts. You could borrow one if you want.” Adam looks at
The Tibetan Book of Living and Dying
on the stack by my bed. “So, do you reckon you're getting close?”

“To what?”

“To finding an answer.”

“Not sure there is one,” I say picking up the book. The gold lettering of the title is hard to decipher in the light sifting through the curtains.

“Do you think I could borrow it?”

“Go for it.”

He flicks through the first few pages. “
Impermanence
, huh?”

I shake my head as he shoves the book under his arm and leaves, absently stroking the bruise on his cheek.

*   *   *

Aunty Rachel is hyper when we get there, scuttling around making sure everyone knows everyone else. Turns out it's not technically a christening—it's called a naming day instead. The baby's almost three months old. My cousin was born exactly one month before my mother died. His life will always be a calculation of that.

“Your mom and I were raised Catholics, but we both gave that up a long time ago,” whispers Aunty Rachel to Adam and me. When she says
mom
her face goes rigid and the baby starts to cry. It's kind of ugly as far as babies go, basically a collection of pink rolls of fat. And it's very loud.

“Was I like that?” I ask Adam.

“Not unless I pinched you.”

“Bastard.”

“As far as I remember you were a pretty quiet baby and you weren't that ugly.”

“Sssshhh.”

Aunty Rachel herds everyone into the back garden to a wooden arch shrouded in roses. I remember Mom always loved it, wanted Dad to build one at our place, but he never did. “Welcome, everybody, to Sam's naming day,” she begins.

She looks proudly at Uncle Derek who's trying to smile above Sam's squawks. He gets to hold the baby. Uncle Carl and his wife, Catriona, are there with their three little kids; all my cousins are younger than me. There are heaps of people I don't know, which reminds me of the wake. Thankfully, no great-aunts. And there's Dad, gawking at that archway, not listening at all.

Aunty Rachel squints at Sam's din. “The following is a passage from Kahlil Gibran.”

Your children are not your children.

They are the sons and daughters of Life's longing for itself.

Dad turns to Adam and me, a triangle of glances that we hold as my aunt reads poetry and my cousin wails.

*   *   *

After the ceremony, everybody goes inside to have something to eat.

“You coming?” asks Adam. He looks good in his suit.

“No. I think I'll stick around outside for a bit. Don't think I can handle Aunty Rachel.”

“Sure, I'll bring you back something to eat if you like.”

“Thanks.”

A couple of my little cousins are kicking a soccer ball around the backyard and it's getting a bit rough. One of them, Essie, comes over to me—I think she's about four. “What's your name?” she asks, rocking on her shoes.

“Will. I'm your cousin, remember?”

“Maybe. What are you playing?”

“I was thinking.”

“Why?”

I smile. “Adults like to think about things.”

“Are you an adult?”

“Sort of.”

“What are you thinking?”

I look over at the rose arch. “I was wondering what it would be like if my mom was here.”

“Where is she?”

What do you say to a kid? Essie's staring at me, waiting for an answer. “She's dead.”

“Is she in heaven?”

“I don't know. What do you think?”

“Maybe she's in that rose. The white one.” She points to the archway.

“Oh, yeah. Why's that?”

“My mommy is beautiful like a rose.” She grabs my hand and leads me over to the roses. “Can you pick one? The pointy bits hurt my fingers.”

“You mean the thorns.”

She nods and points to one that's still opening. “That one, please.”

I bend it at a joint but it doesn't come easily. I go carefully so as not to bruise the petals and finally it breaks off. Its center has a tinge of pink.

“Here you go.”

“She's in there,” says Essie, lifting the rose to me.

“Who?”

“Your mommy. Look.”

So I look, the scent of the rose rising to my face like sweet wet grass. There's a beetle crawling among the petals; it keeps slipping. “There's a bug in there,” I say.

Essie nods and waits, and I allow myself to slip into her logic, a mother, a flower. If she stood under this rosebush long enough maybe they share something on a molecular level, some of her memory is held in its water. But I know that's not what Essie means.

“So, you think my mom is in this rose.”

“Yes.”

“So do I,” I say.

Essie strokes the rose, careful not to crush it. “You can keep it, I have a mommy.” She lets it drop into my hand, and runs off to join her two brothers who are wrestling over the soccer ball on the grass.

Adam comes over carrying a napkin and a plate piled with food. “Getting a bit claustrophobic in there. Rachel was talking about Mom and started to cry so I left her with Dad. Probably do them both good.”

I take a bite of a chocolate éclair.

Adam frowns. “Oi, you're meant to eat your veggies first.”

“I've been having an interesting conversation with Essie. She reckons Mom's in that rose.”

“Kids, huh?”

Adam picks up the rose, holds it to his face, a petal brushing his bruise. He breathes in deeply, turns to me. “Come on, eat up. We should be getting home.”

*   *   *

Essie's last comment to me as she left with her brothers: “We don't know when we will die, but our bodies do.”

DERVISH

T
HEY SAY IF YOU HEAR
about the same thing three times in a row, you should take note. Mystics. That's the word I seem to be hearing right now. I found this site about whirling meditation, guys spinning around and around. Faster and faster they go, arms wide, long hats pointing to the sky, sometimes for an hour, till, through loss of ego, they reach the
perfect
. No sitting in mountain caves, they just twirl, mystical white spinning tops, and when they return from wherever it is they go, they press their belly buttons to the earth, and are ready to love, to serve. Dervishes, they're called, a kind of Sufi. What some people won't do to get closer to the truth. And me, what do I do? Read a few books from the library, surf on the Net. Where's the passion in that? I feel itchy, on the inside. I need action. To whirl myself into a frenzy. To
feel
what it means to be alive.

*   *   *

In my notebook, I copy a quote from Rumi, founder of the Whirling Dervishes:

If your knowledge of fire has been turned to certainty by words alone, then seek to be cooked by the fire itself. Don't abide in borrowed certainty. There is no real certainty until you burn; if you wish for this, sit down in the fire.

Take the day off from school with me tomorrow. There's something I want to do.

♥ Will

Such as? I don't want to sound like your dad, but do you think it's a good idea with your exams coming soon? Besides, I've never skipped class.

T ♥

Good time to start. Anyone home at your place tomorrow?

Yeah, Dad. He's working on an article all day, he said. I don't know. I don't think it's a good idea. Come around after school.

T ♥

Will? You still there?

The girl at the checkout looks younger than me and for an instant I get this premonition of what life might be like if I fail my exams, if I don't do what everybody says I should. To hell with it, I could be dead tomorrow. I need to treat life like those Buddhist monks I read about who turned their teacups over every night before they went to bed and let their fires go out because they knew there was no guarantee they'd ever wake up.

“That'll be $9.80,” says the girl, shoving the spray can into a bag.

I give her a ten-dollar note. “Keep the change.”