by Kate Ryan
Her mother had inflicted scores of lessons on her at that pool. It was one of her things. All children in Australia must learn to swim. There were so many things she insisted on, felt the need to constantly police or remind Ali about: nutritious meals eaten at the table, not too much sugar, road safety, teenage drinking, violence on TV, too much TV, sufficient sleep, bullying, the importance of reading, fresh air, exercise, the perils of peer pressure. David’s way of bypassing Diane’s control was retreating into silence. Ali had Jessie: her brothers, her mother, her ramshackle house, the story of her. How much she wanted Jessie’s story to be hers.
As a girl, Aggie had been a swimmer. Jessie dropped this astonishing piece of information at her feet one day. ‘Got to state level. Crazy, huh? Cal told me and I didn’t believe him, but then I found the trophies. Who’d have thunk it, lazy pothead that she is!’
The water was cold, and it shocked her awake, excited her. Tam and Ed and Patti seemed almost unreal, a long way away. She thought of how comfortable Jessie was in the water, in a way she never was. The water cushioned Ali, and she watched the bubbles of air spreading as her hands hit the surface. What held bodies up, what kept them alive? She imagined Aggie like one of those old-fashioned synchronised swimmers in a sculpted flower cap: languid, beautiful, completely absorbed in her own pointless, graceful activity.
When Aggie was still caring for Jessie at home, Diane had encouraged Ali to visit. They kept her there for a few months, maybe three, when they still thought things might get better. They got a hospital bed with a hoist positioned above it. A wheelchair was parked in a corner and all Jessie’s precious things — her rocks and fishing rods, her fossils, the books she couldn’t read — were packed away somewhere in boxes or thrown away, never, Ali assumed, to be looked at again.
Ali had welcomed her mother being there. She was a connection with the world that was still safe. Her linen shirt and her well-cut grey hair, her capable hands resting in her lap. Aggie would chat away as if Jessie’s pale, thin body wasn’t even there. ‘She’s doing well,’ she said. ‘Not talking yet but she moved one of her legs the other day. Several times. We’re supposed to rub different fabrics and textures against her face, the occupational therapist says. To stimulate her senses.’ Diane nodded sympathetically, and Aggie excused herself and brought in lemongrass tea in little cracked cups, and dry sesame biscuits that Ali shovelled down because she could not think what else to do. Sometimes she got up and went out into the garden, though now it felt haunted, tainted. But it was better than hearing her mother’s sympathy, or Aggie’s new sense of purpose. Better than sitting in that room as if Jessie wasn’t there. And always the fear of coming one day and Aggie knowing everything.
It was David who’d stopped the visits after a while. Ali’s sleeplessness and inertia were too hard to ignore. ‘It’s not good for her.’
‘But they were so close.’
‘We can visit and help, but not Ali. It’s too much for her.’
She listened to all this, lying in bed, apparently asleep late on a Saturday morning. It was the day they usually went to see Jessie, and the seeping dread was in Ali like poison. She heard her parents opening cupboards in the kitchen, the clinking of plates being put away. She slept so little at night now that she was always tired, but hearing David’s words, she was on high alert.
‘Maybe you’re right,’ Diane said.
Ali was so relieved that she let herself stop listening and fall back into sleep. She slept until early evening. When she got up for dinner, for the first time in so long, she savoured every strand of her mother’s spaghetti bolognaise.
The next week Diane said, ‘I’ll go and see Jessie by myself today, sweetheart. You need to get ready for high school.’ She paused at the door and looked over at Ali, who was lying on her bed pretending to read. ‘So many exciting things ahead of you.’
Ali blinked her tears away. She didn’t see Jessie again until she was twenty.
At first, there was nothing. Reading was lost to her. All she wanted to do was watch TV and sleep. Diane let her. Every day she came home and watched whatever was on: AddamsFamilyBradyBunchGetSmartSimonTownsend’sWonderWorldBeverleyHillbilliesHogan’sHeroes. The canned laughter, the predictable plots and the familiar theme songs were like sedation. At dinner, in the brief period before she took herself to bed, she opened and closed her mouth and blocked Diane’s attempts to draw her out like defensive tennis. ‘How was school?’ ‘All right.’ ‘Are you excited to go to high school?’ ‘No.’ ‘How are you feeling?’ ‘Fine.’
At school Mrs Bradley let her fall asleep at her desk and not participate. She knew this had been discussed — not putting pressure on was part of the healing process, Diane had said, a description that made Ali seethe with silent fury. Outside the classroom she made no overtures of friendship to anyone, went to the library every lunchtime and recess. She and Jessie had always kept themselves apart but now she was completely alone, something she had never been before; like some fat kid or someone whose parents were crazily religious, not letting them wear jeans or cut their hair. A bit wrong, to be avoided.
Nights were the worst. Sometimes, lying awake, she convinced herself that someone would find a cure, and then Ali would teach her to read. She lay very still when her mother came to check on her, breathing evenly as Diane pulled the doona up. She wanted her to leave.
But when she did, Ali felt utterly alone.
‘The worst of it is that your father has been forgetting things,’ Diane was saying. Ali turned her head, conscious of her mother’s strident voice, afraid of hurting her father.
‘Where is Dad?’
‘Asleep. I’ll wake him just before we need to go. He gets exhausted these days.’
Diane arranged three biscotti on a plate and put it in front of Ali. ‘The memory loss will accelerate, the doctor says.’
Ali nodded and sipped her tea. She felt herself rebelling into semi-muteness as she had always done, leaving Diane to sum up the state of things. She tried to remind herself that she was a middle-aged woman, and her mother was old. Immaculate as she was in her floral shirt, her expensive trousers, her beautifully cut white hair. There was no denying that she was a tiny old lady. The years had gone, and Jessie was dead.
They had made her go to a psychologist, Esme of the goggly blue eyes; yet another thing she would have told Jessie. Who in hell is called Esme now? they might have said. She tried to get her to play games, draw. ‘Can you tell me a little about what you’re thinking? How are you feeling today, Ali?’ Ali looked around at the little-kid drawings on the walls. She wasn’t a child any more, she wanted to say, so how could she play? The closest thing she came to saying something was when she drew patterns of water, patterns of leaves. It was what she saw behind her eyes, and sometimes what she dreamt. But when Esme asked her what they were, she said nothing at all.
She dreaded the appointments. Even the chance to be alone with David on the trip to Merimbula, even the ice cream or cake, whatever she wanted afterwards, even, or especially, the special dinner. Diane’s intense, loving gaze, oozing sympathy as soon as they got in the door, glancing at David over her shoulder. ‘Darling,’ she said, crushing Ali in a perfumed hug, ‘how did you go?’
How could she say any of it? If only she hadn’t suggested it in the first place. If only she had been clearer, stronger, braver, less envious of Jessie. If only Jessie had learnt to read. She was tortured by the idea of the Golden Book, that Jessie’s family would read her looping writing, her meanness, her fury, her way with words. Her mind would circle over and over these things, and it seemed that even in sleep she was trying to work out what to do. How had it happened? Maybe she could fix it all, get the real Jessie back from wherever she had gone. She thought of stealing the book, and planning this allowed her to sleep. Sometimes the repetitive thoughts were like voices, coming from a place that was part of her and Jessie too. She began to wonder whether
she had done it on purpose, after all, had really wanted to hurt her. And in the morning, drugged with pure exhaustion, she knew nothing could be done.
27
Ali saw a tiny frown cross Diane’s face as she brushed dandruff from David’s shoulders. ‘There you are, darling. Good. We’ll have to head off soon.’
‘Hi, love,’ David said. ‘Nice you could come.’ He had already forgotten Ali had arrived the day before. She glanced quickly at her mother, who gave a half-nod, half-grimace.
‘Hi, Dad.’ Ali leant over to hug him again. She felt the boniness of his chest, and she was afraid. He would be the first to go. She remembered a time when he had taken her and Jessie to Eden. He had been picking up a book from a second-hand bookshop. His friend Jack, who owned the shop, had rung him to say something had come in. What was it? Burke’s diary? Scott’s last Antarctic expedition? Ali remembered him standing in the doorway. ‘Don’t suppose you want to come along, girls?’ They were watching TV, lying on their stomachs, a rainy, boring day. ‘Maybe we’ll get ice creams on the way back.’ Ali had started shaking her head, but Jessie leapt up. ‘Sure.’ Ali sat in the back seat and watched Jessie’s pale pointy face turned towards David. Chatting, chatting. About how she was going to travel when she finished school. How she would go to Africa and Iceland and Guatemala and Tibet and maybe Russia. David nodded, his hands firm on the steering wheel. ‘Sounds great, Jessie,’ he said. ‘I bet you will.’
Ali steeled herself to enter the church, to make her mind go blank. Her mother, of course, was a gift. She was already moving ahead, walking determinedly between the rows of school-like chairs. Above the altar was a Day-Glo banner, Jesus Loves Us All! Diane spotted some seats in the middle of the left-hand row and marched in, Ali following with David. She felt eyes on her but she didn’t look around, not yet. Once she was seated, she became conscious of a certain set of shoulders, a face in profile that morphed into someone from the past. She saw an old friend of her parents, a fellow teacher, Barry someone, who raised his hand. Ali was reassured by his familiar gawky smile.
They were early, and she saw Aggie come in before any of the others. She made her way to the front, still upright, regal, aware of herself. Her hair was long and silvery-grey, done up with a tortoiseshell clip. She wore a cheap-looking black dress with a rose design on the breast, a shawl around her shoulders. Ali was disappointed in Aggie’s clothes; she’d always had a way with them, and now that was gone. But then Aggie spotted Diane and stopped. Ali was closest, and Aggie turned her dark eyes towards her first. They were smudged with black eyeliner, gleaming like night pools. Ali had been standing in front of a Spanish Madonna in Barcelona when she went overseas, finally, at thirty — luminous eyes, a calm, oval face, the sweep of hair pulled back in a blue veil — and she knew it was her.
‘Darling,’ she whispered, gathering Ali into her breast. Without warning tears came — the smell of her, cloves and a complex musky smell, as if she had done that layering of scent thing that Dolly magazine urged on girls in the 1980s. Make yourself mysterious, alluring, irresistible! Hadn’t she and Jessie laughed about that very idea?
Ali released herself from the hug, murmuring, ‘I’m so sorry.’
‘She had to go,’ Aggie said, almost brisk now. ‘It’s a relief, really.’
Ali shifted to let Diane squeeze Aggie’s shoulder. ‘My dear.’ Then she saw Matty standing in the aisle waiting for her. He leant over to kiss Ali on the cheek. ‘Hi, Ali. Diane, David. It’s Matthew. You probably don’t remember me?’ Ali was amazed he even knew her parents’ names. ‘Thanks so much for coming.’
He was the surprise: smooth cheeks and expensive cologne, hair greying at the temples, an elegant suit. Ali remembered Diane saying in the wanted/hated bits of information that she dropped about Jessie’s family from time to time, ‘He’s done very well.’
‘Lovely to see you,’ he said.
Ali smiled briefly. How lovely could it really be?
While her parents were talking quietly with Aggie, she saw Eli. At first, she wasn’t sure. His head was down, slightly turned away. But then she noticed the shoulders, and something graceful and almost feminine about the arch of his neck. He was wearing a navy shirt and black pants, for all the world like the computer programmer he was. She wondered what had happened to philosophy.
She struggled to remember the woman he was talking to — a round, middle-aged woman in a white shirt and red beads. Not Star? Yes, it was her. The slim hippie girl was gone, and she was ageing, ordinary, as they all were. Ali looked towards Eli again and then away.
The minister smiled too much. In his white, shiny short-sleeved shirt, he went on and on about Jessie finding God’s love and being made whole again. Ali felt her anger growing; there was nothing about the real Jessie. She looked at Aggie, who was smiling and nodding, while next to her Matty appeared blank and unmoved. Then suddenly there was clapping and singing, and a young girl’s pure voice rose, singing Celine Dion’s ‘My Heart Will Go On’. The song was over the top, but Ali’s eyes filled with tears again and she took in the bleeding obvious. Aggie had found God.
Once Ali had stopped going to see Jessie, no one from Jessie’s family came to see her.
Time passed. And then she was at high school, and doing all the things that Jessie was never going to do. She was catching buses and making new friends — clever Netia, and funny Susie, and shy, interesting Grace, and none of them was like Jessie. Boys — Jamie McMurty and Carl Balsamo and the others — and getting her ears pierced, first with a needle and ice, getting infected and her mother furious. Then the fix-up job at the chemist, laughing, the gun at her ear, the clamp of pain and the sting of antiseptic on her lobes.
‘Don’t try it at home again, girls,’ the chemist lady said, her eyes wide, swept with blue eyeshadow, and Grace and Ali stumbling out into the street laughing.
On and on. Fighting with her mother, and writing essays on Romeo and Juliet, and school excursions to art galleries in Canberra and getting car sick on the bus, and smoking at Susie’s house and laughing at her jokes, and going to the beach and the pool and films and horse-riding, and kissing Carl, his breath so warm and his tongue in Ali’s mouth in the backyard of his house, in a corner in the dark, the first teenage party, drunk on Mr Balsamo’s homemade wine. All of the things and more that Jessie would not do. She thought she forgot it all, but then the bleakness would come down on her at strange times. After the kiss with Carl, when he was wanting to kiss her again or go with her to get milkshakes or to the pool and she would suddenly not want to — no reason, no excuse, just the prickle of self-loathing, the wave of emptiness, the turning away, the turning into herself, against herself. And the tiredness coming down.
Or getting stupidly drunk again and again, and Grace looking after her while she vomited and cried. Or blacking out completely. Once with Carl in the park, in the tunnel drinking. Him pretending to count the dark freckles on her arms and legs, and her tugging at his jeans, laughing, and him smelling of beer and cigarettes, and groaning, and her saying ‘don’t stop’ and then him saying something, something she didn’t like, and suddenly she was screaming, screaming at him in that tunnel as if she would never stop. And him wrenching his T-shirt out from under her, crawling out of the tunnel, shouting ‘You’re a fucking nutcase! What’s your fucking problem! ’ And leaving her there.
And the tunnel closing in, remembering Jessie in there with her, and it was like someone was standing on her chest and she felt the vomit rising in her. And rolling over and out of the tunnel, and vomiting again and again, until she thought she would die of tiredness, her stomach spasming until only bile was left. And then waking with vomit in her hair, freezing, the light leaking into the sky. And later Grace trying to talk about what she said, about her friend, and Ali not remembering that she had even talked about her and shutting down again. Knowing that Grace and whoever else couldn’t possibly understand. And doing all that many t
imes with friends and boyfriends, until she realised that, like Jessie, she was never going to be what she might have been before.
She imagined Jessie. Even without seeing her, she was always with her. When she heard the Paul Kelly song about the woman who was found drowned and left in the water while the men drank beer and fished; when she saw a mother feeding a girl with a disability in a café; when she saw something on TV about the cliff divers of Acapulco; when she had to turn away from boys leaping out into a crystalline sea. In art class, looking at Munch’s painting Puberty, she thought, this is what Jessie looked like, but this is what I felt like. Then she thought about the uselessness of Jessie imbibing food, of her hair continuing to grow, her nails, the functions of the body, her lungs, her heart. In all this, Ali was alone.
28
The wake. A red-haired boy of about fifteen was sitting sideways in an armchair, eyes locked on his iPhone. She saw Debra, Cal’s wife — her mother had not-so-subtly pointed her out — hiss in his ear. He shrugged. Cal’s youngest, she supposed.
Debra was tall, with blonde hair in a thick ponytail. She wore a plain black dress with a round neckline, and her forearms were freckled under a tan. She looked like a former netball player, and Ali realised that she was exactly the kind of person she would have expected Cal to marry. There was a table with teapots, coffee plungers, cups, plates of sandwiches and cakes. Pouring herself tea, Ali thought she saw Cal out of the corner of her eye. She had another quick glance and then she was sure. He was talking to the pastor, laughing, and he looked up and saw her. She had no choice but to go over.
