Sweet Damage

by Rebecca James

  She paced the hall, back and forth, back and forth, then went into the living room and turned on the television, but she couldn’t sit still, couldn’t concentrate. In the kitchen, she buttered a piece of bread, placing some ham and a slice of cheese on top. After three hasty bites she threw the rest in the bin. Her stomach was knotted, closed up tight, and food was intolerable. She drank some more vodka and went back to wandering the house. As the hours ticked by she started feeling worse, more miserable, angrier, until she was overcome with an unbearable sense of powerlessness, a conviction of her own irrelevance. She could die and who would really care? Nobody needed her, nobody loved her.

  Nobody.

  She can’t remember much more. She remembers being in the bathroom at some stage. Staring at herself in the mirror, weeping and drunk on valium and vodka.

  ‘I didn’t do it,’ she tells him.

  But even as the words are coming from her mouth she can see Tim doesn’t believe her. He turns away, mutters something vague and incomprehensible. His cheeks grow red.

  He blushes because he thinks she’s lying. He’s embarrassed for her. That’s the kind of person Tim is.

  20

  IT DOESN’T TAKE AS LONG TO CLEAN UP THE MESS AS I THOUGHT IT would. We sweep all the broken plates and glass into a thick bin bag, wipe down the surfaces. Anna brings an armful of towels. We use them to dry the benchtops, the cabinet doors, getting down on our hands and knees to dry the floor.

  When we’ve finished, the kitchen is immaculate and we’re both sweating and puffed with exertion.

  ‘We could have some breakfast,’ I say, collapsing onto a chair, looking at Anna properly for the first time since we started cleaning. ‘But we don’t actually have any food. Or any plates to put it on, for that matter.’

  ‘We could have coffee,’ she says. ‘I saw some unbroken mugs still in the cupboard.’

  I make coffee, sit opposite Anna. I’m surprised to see that she’s crying.

  She tries to hide it. She blinks, looks away, picks up her mug and puts it to her lips.

  ‘Are you okay?’

  ‘I’m just sad,’ she says eventually. ‘Very, very sad.’

  *

  When we’ve finished cleaning the kitchen I go up to my room. I’m tired from the events of the past few days, the late nights and disturbed sleep, and I collapse across my bed, close my eyes. I think about Anna smashing up the kitchen. I try to envision the scene in my mind: Anna with a crazed look on her face, eyes wild, throwing things in an insane frenzy. She seems so timid and restrained, so lacking in vital force, that it’s hard to imagine her summoning up the required passion for such an act. And that in itself is alarming. Has she got two completely different sides? Some kind of split personality? Am I living with some kind of psychopath?

  Should I be worried?

  For the first time, I wonder if I should pack my things and go. Maybe I should have taken more notice when Fiona told me it was okay if I wanted to move out. I should have at least used it as an opportunity to ask a few questions. I should have asked why she felt the need to warn me like that.

  Despite my fatigue it’s impossible to sleep so I get up, sit at my desk. I click onto the internet, intending to google agoraphobia to find out whether Anna’s strange behaviour is some kind of expected symptom, but find myself logging onto Facebook first. I torture myself for a minute by looking through Lilla’s photos and am startled when a message from her appears in the little chat box at the bottom of the screen.

  Hey Tim! Watcha doin’ on Facebook? Thought you hated it!

  I feel as embarrassed as I would if she’d walked in and busted me masturbating. The only dignified response I can think of is to muddy the water with the truth.

  Staring at photos of you, of course. What else would I be doing?

  Ha, ha. I knew it. Well, EACH TO HIS OWN, as my nan would say. (You big freak.) Hey, anyway, I was thinking. Got some free time tomorrow morning? Catch the ferry into the city with me on my way to work?

  Ferry? What happened to your car?

  It’s in the car hospital for a few days. Nothing terminal. So, what do you think? You’ll have to be up early. We could have coffee in town and talk about your birthday party.

  What birthday party? I’m not having a party!

  Let’s talk about it tomorrow. We’ll need to catch the 7.30 ferry, so you need to be at Manly Wharf at 7.15. Don’t be late! xoxoxox

  I remember my promise to keep in contact with Fiona and Marcus and open my email account. I send a note explaining what has happened over the past few days – Anna crying and confused at night, the trashed kitchen. I try to keep it brief, my tone as calm and matter-of-fact as I can. I already feel like a jerk writing to Anna’s friends behind her back, I don’t want to make things worse by sounding melodramatic.

  Fiona responds within minutes.

  Thanks for letting us know, Tim. Do you think we should call a doctor up to the house?

  I’m not sure. I don’t feel in a position to answer that question. You should probably decide. You know a lot more about this than I do. To be honest I’m starting to feel a bit uncomfortable with this whole situation – me emailing you behind Anna’s back and everything. But I’ll certainly let you know if things get any worse.

  Okay. Thanks, Tim. And we understand your hesitation but please don’t worry about contacting us. Remember, we only have Anna’s best interests at heart!

  21

  WHEN HER FATHER DIED, FIONA AND MARCUS STEPPED IN TO HELP. FIONA organised the funeral and wake – she made all the phone calls, drove Anna to appointments, arranged flowers and food. Marcus sorted out the will and finances, made sure Anna had immediate access to her inheritance and to the title on the property.

  After the funeral they started coming to the house several times a week. Sometimes Marcus would call in on his way home from work. He’d have a beer or a coffee at the kitchen table, tell Anna about his day, ask about hers, make sure she was okay. Fiona would come for morning or afternoon tea and they’d sit in the kitchen and talk. On weekends they’d walk down to Manly and go to a movie together.

  Her old friends came to visit too, but suddenly their preoccupations didn’t match Anna’s. She didn’t want to go to nightclubs and dance, didn’t want to watch second-rate bands and get drunk on vodka. She started making excuses, making up reasons why she couldn’t go out or why they couldn’t come over.

  At weekends Fiona and Marcus came to the house together. The two of them would cook for her and they’d spend hours playing board games or watching movies. They’d stay so late they’d often end up sleeping over, taking a room each. Anna would go to bed on those nights feeling safe and content. She’d lie back and listen to the noises Fiona and Marcus made as they got ready for bed, the rush of water from a tap, the creak of floorboards, the flush of a toilet, and feel comforted and less alone. It was nice having them around. And it was especially good to wake up to the sound of other people in the house, the smell of toast and coffee coming from the kitchen.

  In a way it made perfect sense, their developing friendship. Despite surface differences, they actually had a lot in common. Like Anna, Marcus and Fiona were basically alone in the world. They had no extended family, no relatives.

  Anna treasured their relationship, she felt protected and cared for and understood, but she was curious about them, and wanted to know more.

  One Saturday night when they were playing Scrabble, she tried to get them to talk.

  ‘You know, you guys know all about me, but I know hardly anything about you. Tell me about your childhood,’ she said. What she knew wasn’t pleasant. Their mother had been a drug addict, a petty criminal, and had given up custody of them when they were very young. They had never met their father, had no idea who he even was. They’d been raised by their elderly grandmother.

  She noticed Marcus glance at Fiona. He cleared his throat. ‘Perhaps another time,’ he said.

  ‘Please,’ she said. ‘It’s okay. Wh
atever happened, you can tell me.’

  Fiona’s face closed over and a terrible, haunted look came into her eyes. She stood up so abruptly that her chair nearly tipped over. Anna could see her hands trembling. Her voice, when it finally came, was artificially bright. ‘Oh. Look at the time! We really have to go now. Thank you for dinner, Anna.’

  And there was nothing Anna could say that would persuade her to stay, nothing she could do that would remove the stony look from Fiona’s eyes.

  *

  The next few days were torturous. Fiona wouldn’t answer Anna’s calls or respond to her texts. Anna went to their house on the Monday but nobody answered the door. She thought their friendship, which had come to mean the world to her, was over. But Marcus turned up on Wednesday evening with a bottle of whisky. They sat at the kitchen table and drank a shot each in near silence before he started to talk.

  ‘I know people wonder about me and Fiona,’ he said. ‘I know people wonder why we’re so close. Most siblings our age don’t share a house, or work together the way we do. We had a miserable childhood. I’ve told you that before, haven’t I?’

  ‘Some of it,’ she said. ‘A bit.’

  ‘You know we lived with our grandmother. Mum just dropped us off for a visit one day and never came back. Fiona was four and I was two. Grandma didn’t want us, she made that clear from the beginning. And when you’re a kid there’s nothing worse than not being wanted. We assumed that Grandma would eventually abandon us too, so we became very insecure.’ He spoke mechanically, in disjointed sentences, and it seemed to Anna that he was forcing each word out. He clearly saw the whole conversation as excruciating, but necessary, and she had to resist the urge to tell him not to worry, to leave it all unsaid.

  ‘We were always anxious,’ he continued. ‘We worried that we might come home from school one day and find that Grandma had moved out. Or that she might have changed the locks so we couldn’t get in. And she played on our fears, she enjoyed making us feel bad. Every second thing she said was some kind of complaint about money, what a burden we were, how much we cost her, how wicked and selfish we were.’ He laughed bitterly. ‘Other kids at school complained about not getting enough toys for Christmas. We spent the whole Christmas break trying to lie low so Grandma wouldn’t notice us, because if she did, we’d get an earful about how hard the year had been, how much we’d sucked out of her, how ungrateful we were, stuff like that. We learned never to expect anything, or ask for anything. We learned to keep quiet and keep ourselves to ourselves.’

  Anna knew how much it was costing Marcus to tell her this. He was a proud and private man, and she was flattered that he trusted her enough to be so frank. But she knew that if she appeared too horrified by his story, or overly sorry for him, he would shut down and tell her nothing – he hated drama and he would hate even more to be pitied. She tried hard to look interested and sympathetic, but not too curious or shocked.

  ‘Fiona used to have these dreams that Mum would come and get us, that secretly she wanted us and was saving money, building a house so she could fit us in. I had to remind her that it was Mum who’d left us there. Being reminded of the truth used to make Fiona so angry and upset, she’d almost throw up. And then she’d get furious with Grandma and make up stories about poisoning her.’ He smiled, shook his head. ‘We did have some fun with those stories, imagining her dead and us living in the house alone. Never going to school, eating chocolate biscuits for dinner every night. It’s sad, but the best fun we ever had involved nasty fantasies about Grandma. And in our defence, she really was an old witch.’

  ‘She sounds terrible.’ Anna suppressed a shudder.

  ‘Anyway, the truth is that when I think about it now I can almost understand why she was so mean all the time. Being lumped with two kids when you’re already sixty-three wouldn’t exactly be the biggest joy in the world. I’ve been able to get over my bitterness in a way. Move on a bit. I don’t even think about Grandma much anymore.’

  ‘And Fiona?’ Anna asked. ‘Does she feel the same?’

  ‘Not quite. She’s still very bitter – as you saw on Saturday night. The whole thing upsets her so much. She can’t really talk about it. She just won’t. It’s understandable, though. You see, it was much easier for me than it was for Fiona. It didn’t matter to me that I didn’t have nice clothes or nice things. The boys didn’t really care that I wore my school shorts on the weekend, or if my shoes had holes in them. The girls cared, though, and they were much crueller. And I had something else that Fiona didn’t have. I had her. An older sibling. She looked after me, made me feel safe. Fiona had nobody to do that for her. Home was miserable, school was a social disaster. She never learned to trust anyone.’

  ‘That’s so sad,’ Anna said.

  ‘Yes,’ Marcus agreed. ‘Anyway, I wanted to explain things to you. So that you understood what was going on the other night. Fiona’s embarrassed about her behaviour, and very sorry.’ He lifted his hand, palm out, when she started to object. ‘Still, I think it would be much better if you didn’t say anything. Don’t mention the war, so to speak. She’ll be over it soon. We’ll just forget it ever happened.’

  ‘Of course,’ she said.

  ‘It must seem odd to you at times, the fact that Fiona and I spend so much time together?’

  ‘No.’ She shook her head. ‘I’ve never really thought about it.’ And it was true, she’d been too busy enjoying their company to question things.

  ‘You see, Fiona and I have this history in common that nobody else can quite understand. I’m still the only person who really gets her. I’m the only person she can count on to care about her.’ He frowned deeply.

  ‘I don’t know how she’d get by without me. Or I without her.’

  I care, Anna wanted to insist. I care too. But she kept it to herself. She would have plenty of time to prove herself.

  22

  I DON’T SLEEP WELL THAT NIGHT. I’M IN BED BEFORE MIDNIGHT for a change, but every noise, every creak and groan of the house, has me sitting up in bed, heart racing. I’m too wired to sleep, every cell alert and ready to react. I hear a faint, repetitive banging in the hallway and jump out of bed and switch on the light, my fists raised defensively, only to find it’s the bathroom blind being blown against the windowsill. At around two a.m. I give up, go downstairs to the living room and watch the second half of a foreign crime movie on SBS. The effort of reading the subtitles makes my eyes ache and I doze off, waking with a start when a gun goes off on screen.

  I go back upstairs and toss and turn restlessly for a couple of hours, only properly falling asleep when the sun has started to rise and I no longer feel intimidated by the dark. I get up reluctantly at twenty to seven when my phone alarm goes off.

  Only Lilla could convince me to sacrifice sleep for such an early-morning trip into the city. A pointless ferry ride.

  I have a quick coffee in the kitchen standing up, leaning against the bench. I look out at the sky, the clouds moving across it, forming shapes and visions, illusions. I remember the first time I went in a plane as a kid, being so disappointed at the way the clouds seemed to dissolve into nothing as the plane flew through them. Up close they had no substance at all.

  It’s already hot outside, and I feel immediately enveloped by the humidity, as if somebody has thrown a damp blanket over me. I walk down to Manly, arrive five minutes early and wait for Lilla, who is, typically, five minutes late.

  I’ve caught the Manly ferry into the city hundreds of times, but I’ve never done it in peak hour before and I’m surprised at the crowds of people getting on, the push and crush of bodies, the grim faces, the boring work clothes. The general mood of miserable resignation reminds me why I’ve never wanted this kind of life.

  ‘I feel like we’ve teleported to London,’ I say to Lilla, as we move slowly along with the crowd.

  ‘You haven’t even been to London, you dick,’ she says. ‘It’s just people going to work, Tim. It’s what people do. They grow up. Get
real jobs.’

  ‘Whatever,’ I shrug. I’m not in the mood for an argument about my choice of occupation. It’s okay for Lilla. She’s always known she wanted to do something with art. She studied Fine Arts at uni and though she didn’t ever finish her degree it still helped her score a job with an acquisitions firm in the city. It’s only a secretarial position at the moment – but Lilla’s nothing if not ambitious and I believe her when she tells me she’ll climb her way to the top. Lilla’s one of those rare, lucky people. She knows what she wants. Not all of us are that certain.

  We board the ferry and she drags me up and outside, to the bow. It’s less crowded out there. I guess it’s too windy for the office types. We go and stand right at the front, holding onto the railing.

  ‘I hope it’s rough between the Heads,’ she says. ‘I love it when it tips to the side and everyone gets scared.’

  But the water is calm and the ferry moves smooth and slow. I can feel the sun on my face, my arms, little prickles of heat on my skin. It’s going to be a scorcher of a day.

  ‘Aren’t you glad you came?’ Lilla grins at me.

  ‘It’s just a ferry ride,’ I say, shaking my head. But I am glad. I always enjoy the ferry – the lazy way it moves through the water, the half-hour of suspended time with nothing to do but stare out at the view, the small private boats, the other ferries going past on their way back to Manly. Lilla waves at every boat that passes us, both her arms stretched out straight and high, a big happy grin on her face. For someone who likes to pretend she’s so cool, she certainly knows how to act like a dopey little kid.

  ‘So, how’s it going at the house?’ she asks.

  ‘Pretty good,’ I say. ‘Apart from all the weird stuff.’

  ‘Weird stuff?’

  She’s interested, as I knew she would be. Her eyes go wide and she drags me over to a seat.