Moonlight Sonata

by Eileen Merriman

  Molly shrugged. ‘I think I lost them.’ The shoes had been pinching her feet, so she’d taken them off soon after arriving at the stadium. Perhaps they were still nestled in the grass, or maybe someone else was wearing her scuffed buckle-ups.

  Damn, they’d been a good find at the op shop.

  ‘Here.’ Shane tugged a crumpled tissue out of his jeans pocket. ‘Need this?’

  ‘Thanks.’ Molly tore a square off and stuck it over the cut.

  Joe hoisted her back onto her feet. ‘Want a piggy-back?’

  ‘Yeah.’ Molly leapt onto his back. Joe staggered slightly, then stood upright, his arms cradling her legs.

  ‘How much further?’ he asked.

  ‘I dunno,’ Shane said. ‘Maybe three k?’

  ‘Three k?’ Kat sat on the kerb. ‘Let’s get a taxi.’

  ‘Yeah, if you want to wait for an hour.’ Joe lumbered forward. ‘Jesus, Lolly, how much do you weigh?’

  ‘Less than you.’ Molly tugged on Joe’s left ear, giggling. ‘Giddyup over that way, Mr Ed, I spot hot chips.’

  ‘You’re going to pay for this,’ Joe grumbled. ‘Big time.’

  It was close to one am by the time they arrived at the darkened bungalow, home to Shane’s widowed aunt. Shane jumped over the gate to the front path and began rummaging in his pockets.

  ‘Crap,’ he said. ‘Can’t find the key.’

  ‘Can you knock?’ Molly sat on the front lawn, dew soaking into her jeans. Her skin felt grimy, her hair greasy. The weed had worn off, and all she wanted was to go to sleep.

  ‘Hell, no, I’m not going to wake her up at this time of night.’ Shane stood beneath the outside light, stacking the contents of his pockets on the porch — his wallet, a bottle cap, a lighter, a pair of screws. ‘Shit, hope it’s not lying in the middle of Mount Smart Stadium.’

  Joe yawned. ‘It’ll be safe if it’s anywhere near Lolly’s stinky shoes.’

  ‘Bags not walking back there,’ Kat said, joining Molly on the lawn.

  ‘Settle down, here it is.’ Shane turned and fiddled with the lock before stepping back to let them in.

  Molly limped inside, wrinkling her nose at the mothball scent. ‘Who’s sleeping where?’

  ‘Ssh.’ Shane opened a door to his left. ‘There’s two singles in here and a fold-out couch in the next room. Maybe you girls want to share the couch?’

  ‘Ah, you guys take the singles,’ Joe said. ‘We’re used to top-and-tailing, right Lolly?’

  ‘Fine,’ Kat said after a moment’s hesitation, and Molly felt a twinge of satisfaction at her friend’s obvious disappointment.

  ‘Toilet’s at the end of the hallway,’ Shane said, pointing. ‘And the bathroom’s next door.’

  A few minutes later, Kat said ‘See you in the morning’ — rather insincerely, Molly thought — and strode into the room near the front door. There was a squeak of bedsprings, followed by a thud. ‘Ouch, I hit my fucking head.’

  ‘Ssh, would you?’ Shane griped, following her in. ‘You’d better not jump my bones either.’

  ‘You should be so lucky,’ Kat said, and now she sounded really pissed off. Suppressing a smile, Molly walked into the other room, where Shane’s aunt had made up the fold-out couch with pink bedsheets and a frilly salmon-coloured bedspread. Joe was in there already, peeling off his jeans.

  ‘Maybe I should have let you top-and-tail with Kat,’ Molly said, stepping out of her jeans and climbing beneath the covers.

  ‘I was just being friendly.’ Joe flicked out the light and climbed in beside her.

  ‘With your tongue.’

  Joe bumped a finger down her spine. ‘I kept my tongue to myself, actually, although I can’t say the same about her.’

  ‘Ugh,’ Molly said, her brain slowing. The last thing she heard before she drifted off to sleep was the bedtime rhyme they’d been reciting to each other ever since they were little kids.

  ‘Night, night, Lol, don’t let the bed bugs bite.’

  Molly woke with a start, her heart galloping, her foot throbbing. She blinked into the darkness, listening. There it was again, a squeal of tyres, followed by shouting. Then the car was gone, and all she could hear was her heart — her heart and the slow, even breathing of her brother beside her.

  Auckland. Concert. Of course.

  Her mouth was dry, so dry. After crawling to the end of the couch, she felt her way to the door and inched it open. A clock was ticking, somewhere. She shut the door behind her, then made her way to the toilet and peed. The melancholy was back, thick and cloying in her head and in the back of her throat.

  Molly hung her head in her hands. Why was everything so much worse at three o’clock in the morning? Hot tears dripped onto her thighs. She’d had such a good night, why was she crying?

  What if nothing ever feels this good again? What if it’s all downhill from here?

  After flushing the toilet and washing her hands, she drank straight from the tap, the clear cold bursting into her head. She was wiping her mouth dry when a light tap on the door made her start.

  ‘Lolly? Are you OK?’

  Molly opened the door. ‘I’m fine,’ she said, a shudder rippling through her.

  ‘Just checking,’ Joe said, brushing past her and shutting the toilet door behind him. Molly shuffled back to the bed and climbed back in, drawing the covers up to her chin. A couple of minutes later, Joe crawled back in beside her, nudging into her back.

  ‘You’re shivering.’

  ‘Always happens when I’m tired,’ she mumbled, as Joe drew her near and tucked his chin into her shoulder. She closed her eyes, trying to concentrate on her breathing, but it was no good. The tears were escaping again, the hollow feeling that had been growing in her gut all year threatening to engulf her.

  ‘What’s wrong?’

  ‘Nothing,’ she whispered.

  Joe kissed the side of her neck, fanned his fingers across her belly. ‘Is it about next year?’

  ‘No. Yes.’ She took a deep breath. ‘I think … I’ve got something to tell you.’

  She heard her twin’s breathing hitch in concert with hers. ‘Like what?’

  Molly turned and pressed her nose into his. ‘So, I applied to Vic Uni.’

  ‘In Wellington?’ Joe drew back.

  ‘Yes, in Wellington.’

  ‘But — I thought we were going to Auckland Uni,’ he said in an accusing tone.

  Molly hunched into herself. ‘I need to get away.’

  ‘From me?’

  ‘No, from them. Mum. Dad. Especially Mum.’

  ‘Jesus, Lolly, you’re telling me now? It’s fricking November.’

  ‘Yes, I’m telling you now,’ Molly said, her voice loud, too loud. They fell silent for a while, listening, but there was just the ticking of the clock in the hallway, the stutter of their breathing.

  Molly said, ‘Will you come with me?’

  ‘To Wellington? It’ll be cold. And windy.’

  ‘Please.’ Molly was trembling again, emotions too big to name coursing through her.

  ‘Jesus,’ Joe said again, but his palms were cupping her face, his lips on the side of her mouth. ‘You already know the answer, don’t you?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ she whispered.

  ‘You know I’d follow you anywhere,’ he whispered back. Molly turned her head, and their lips met. And maybe it was an accident, that was what she would tell herself years later, but her body was already thrilling to his, as if her flesh knew something her mind didn’t dare contemplate.

  Joe breathed out and into her mouth.

  ‘I evol uoy,’ he murmured. She tipped her head back, twisted her body into new shapes as they wrapped around each other; closer, closer, until her flesh parted between his hands like the segments of an orange.

  As they lay together afterwards, separate once more but newly whole, Molly linked her little finger around Joe’s.

  ‘Pinkie swear that you’ll never tell anyone,’ she said.

  ‘Pink
ie swear,’ he echoed and brought his lips to her ear. ‘Promise me you’ll never love anyone like you love me.’

  ‘I promise.’ Molly lay her head on his chest, listening to his heart and hers, their ancestral beat. ‘I pinkie swear it.’

  The first drops of rain began to hit the roof.

  Chapter 31:

  MOLLY

  Molly is standing in her old bedroom, looking out of the window, when she sees them. Lola and Noah are crossing over the front lawn and out onto the street. Her son is barefoot, dirt and sand tracking up the backs of his legs.

  ‘Thank God,’ she whispers, before hurrying down the hallway and into the room Joe has been sharing with Sully. Joe is sitting on a bed, looking intently at his laptop.

  ‘He’s back,’ she says.

  Joe breathes out. ‘Good.’ They look at each other, and Molly, hearing a squawk of laughter from the kitchen, closes the door behind her.

  ‘I think we need to talk to him together, don’t you?’ Joe asks.

  ‘To say what?’

  ‘I don’t know. I asked Lola if she could keep it quiet for now. Maybe we can say it was a one-off, that we were drunk or something.’

  Molly slumps against the door, and Joe pushes the computer off his lap. It’s not enough, and they both know it. Nothing is enough to explain this.

  Everything we do comes back to this.

  ‘He’s walking to the beach,’ she says. ‘With Lola.’

  Joe rubs his hand over his nose, his eyes, his mouth; a gesture that reminds her of the monkeys. See no evil, speak no evil, hear no evil.

  But we’re not evil, we’re not.

  ‘Shall we go?’ Joe asks.

  They walk without speaking, without touching. Molly’s worry for Noah has been superseded by a blind panic about what will happen if the rest of the family finds out about her and Joe. Will they be cast out, never to be spoken of again? Will someone tell Richard? Will Richard tell the world?

  When they reach the sand, Molly stops to take her jandals off, squinting into the unexpected sun. Joe follows suit, his head swivelling.

  ‘There,’ he says, pointing at a pair of bare-limbed teenagers running into the waves. ‘That’s them, isn’t it?’

  ‘Yes.’ Molly picks up the pace, drawn again and again to the way Noah and Lola are bobbing in and out of the waves. The sea is like a washing machine, wild and chaotic.

  ‘Do you think they should be out there?’ Molly asks, at the very same moment Joe says, ‘Ah shit, there’s a rip.’

  Her stomach plummeting, Molly waves and yells at Lola, who is swimming towards the current tearing between the breakers, and, oh God, Noah’s going after her. What are they doing? How could they be so stupid?

  ‘Get out of there!’ Joe is yelling and yelling, but it’s too late. The children are drifting fast, so fast and it seems only seconds pass before she can’t see them at all. Joe shoves his phone at her, blurting, ‘Call for help,’ and he runs into the water, barely stopping to pull his shirt over his head before leaping in after them.

  Shaking, Molly fumbles the phone and drops it in the sand. Falling to her knees, she picks it up. She tries and fails twice to unlock the screen, succeeds on the third attempt. It seems to take another forever to dial the emergency number, forever for someone to answer and her to spit out, ‘Emergency at Tern Bay, they’re in a rip, please send help right now.’

  But of course it’s already thirty years too late.

  They find Noah’s body first; a full two hours after the volunteer surf lifesavers tear out in their inflatable rescue boat and bring Joe back to shore. Joe is expressionless, his breathing wet, and when he holds Molly she feels nothing, nothing at all. Because of course Noah could still be alive, drifting far out to sea, and it’s not until they bring his body back —

  Eyes open, black holes for pupils—

  And he’s cold, so very cold and when she presses her lips to her son’s forehead his skin has turned to marble, his flesh to stone.

  That, that, is when Molly begins to scream.

  Cursed, they are cursed. It’s her fault, hers and Joe’s, for the sins they have committed. But did those sins start when she first let him enter her body, in the way no brother ever should? Did they start when she let him hold her on those long, dark nights as their parents raged outside their bedroom door, when he kissed her as a lover would?

  The dive team don’t find Lola until two days later, her body bloated, her skin macerated. Ants has to identify her. He goes to identify his dead daughter, and when he returns home he vomits and vomits.

  Their mother says, ‘Suffer little children, and forbid them not, to come unto me: for of such is the kingdom of Heaven.’

  Joe says, ‘Stop pretending to be fucking religious.’ He steps out onto the balcony and throws his empty bottle of whisky onto the driveway. He’s coughing, his skin flushed, but he won’t see a doctor. Instead, he drinks from the minute he wakes up until the minute he topples into bed. Sometimes that only takes two hours. Other times he doesn’t go to bed at all, just flakes out in one of the deckchairs outside.

  Richard, who drove back from Auckland as soon as he heard, earning his first-ever speeding ticket in the process, says, ‘I can’t stay in this house a second longer,’ and retreats to a hotel while the rest of the family plan for a double funeral.

  As for Kiri, she just cries and cries and cries.

  Molly thinks preparing for funerals is just something to do until you don’t feel like slashing your own wrists anymore, although she’s not so sure that feeling will ever go away.

  Richard gives a speech at the funeral. Joe sits beside Molly, and when Richard says ‘my son’, Joe grips her thigh so firmly that he leaves bruises. But she’s past caring what happens to her own flesh anymore. All she can think about is Noah’s marble skin and bottomless eyes.

  I was there, right there, and I watched you drown. I never deserved to be your mother.

  Her mother wants Molly to play ‘Amazing Grace’, but Molly refuses. She’ll never touch the piano again. So Hazel plays ‘Amazing Grace’, and the whole congregation sings except for Molly, who runs outside and screams until the song has finished.

  Her blood has turned to seawater. Her heart is a jellyfish, flaccid and shapeless. But still, it keeps beating. It just won’t stop.

  Lola and Noah share a pamphlet for their funeral. Their photos sit side by side, and beneath each photo, a date of birth and a date of death. They are smiling, unknowing.

  After the funeral, everyone goes back to the beach house, where they eat and drink and talk inanely, including friends and neighbours Molly hasn’t seen in years. It’s perfectly acceptable to get drunk when your children die, and they all do. Molly spots a swollen-eyed Austin in the garden, downing a glass of wine in three swallows, and that’s OK too. One does what one can to get by.

  Ants, his speech slurred, stumbles up to her and says, ‘Winston Churchill said, when you find yourself in Hell, just keep going.’

  Oh, but it burns.

  Richard wants Molly to come back to the hotel. Back to the hotel for one night, before they travel to Wellington.

  Molly says, ‘I just need one more night here. My family needs me.’

  Richard doesn’t say anything, but she knows what he’s thinking. If it weren’t for her family, if they hadn’t stayed on for those extra days, then Noah would still be here.

  ‘I’ll pick you up in the morning’ is all he says.

  That evening, when Molly goes to throw her serviette in the rubbish, the Christmas fairy’s decapitated head stares up at her. It’s giving her the creeps, so she pushes the head to the bottom of the bag with a wooden spoon, ties the bag up and throws it in the outside bin. She won’t be surprised if the fairy sneaks into her nightmares later.

  That night, the last night, Joe comes to her. He curves his body around her, and they lie like that for hours, listening to the house creak, to their hearts beat, to the cicadas counting out the endless seconds and minutes
and hours.

  The first light of dawn is filtering into the room when Joe says, ‘I got a text from Richard last night.’

  ‘A text? What did it say?’

  ‘He asked what my blood type was.’ Joe’s voice is clearer than it has been in days, slow and measured.

  Molly’s body goes rigid. ‘Your blood type,’ she says. ‘What did you tell him?’

  ‘I said I’m type A.’

  Molly sits up, shivering. ‘And did he reply?’

  ‘No.’ Joe slides his legs over the side of the bed and sits up, very slowly, his hand to his head.

  ‘Joe,’ Molly says, but he’s pulling his shirt on, leaving the room. A moment later, she hears a murmur of voices from the kitchen, Joe exchanging morning greetings with their mother and Kiri.

  Molly lies back down, pulls the sheet over her head. She lies there for another hour and a half, her jellyfish heart twisting with dread, until her phone rings.

  It’s Richard, who, like Molly, is type O.

  Chapter 32:

  JOE

  ‘How did he find out?’ We’re sitting in the cave, Molly and I, watching the incoming tide. My head is thick, and my eyes are burning, as if the salt never washed away after that last, terrible, swim. I couldn’t reach them. Too late, it was all too late.

  If I’d only—

  If we hadn’t—

  ‘His friend, Jeff, works at Auckland Hospital.’ Molly’s voice is dull. ‘Richard asked him to … Do you really want to hear this?’

  ‘He asked him to look up Noah’s records,’ I say. ‘Right?’

  I feel Molly’s swallow in the back of my throat. ‘Right,’ she says.

  ‘From the — autopsy?’ I hate that word, slicing my son to pieces. A piece of liver, a section of heart.

  My heart. Our heart. It can’t go on.

  ‘No. From when he broke his leg that time. When he was thirteen.’ Molly’s knees are drawn up to her chest, her arms wrapped around her legs. If I shut out the world, we could almost be back in our childhood wardrobe, covering each other’s ears as our parents went to battle.