How Bright Are All Things Here

by Susan Green

  ‘You should have told him it’s a manual,’ said Anne. ‘I’m sure their cars are both automatic.’

  ‘He’ll work it out.’

  ‘I thought we were all going together. After lunch. That’s what we agreed. Bliss won’t be expecting him.’

  Paula said nothing.

  ‘Well, I hope he’s in a better mood with Bliss. I hope he doesn’t upset her.’

  ‘Anne, they’re both going to be upset. He’s always blamed her.’

  Anne’s puzzlement was genuine. ‘For what?’ she said.

  WARM AND WONDERFUL

  Seeing Tom, even though I was expecting him, was a shock. My heart fluttered madly and I had to ring for some Anginine. He was still that same insanely beautiful Tom, but how he’d aged! A ruined cupid, I thought, or Apollo left out in all weathers. We talked. It was good to talk, but I seem to have no reserve left. I blurted things out, things that I always meant to leave unsaid. I cried a little. And then to learn that the business with Emory Hayes was nothing – nothing at all!

  It was all about Caroline.

  Tom went from adult (his discussion of Mr Hayes was remarkably detached) to stubbornly, inconsolably childish.

  ‘You kicked her out,’ he said. ‘You and Dad.’

  ‘She left.’

  ‘She left to get away from you. She couldn’t stand it any more, the way you treated her. In a way . . .’ He stopped. ‘Sometimes . . . Sometimes, Bliss, I think that you are responsible for what happened.’

  ‘What do you mean? Her death?’

  The expression on his face said, yes, that’s precisely what he meant. I thought that was a bit harsh. Rough trade was always Caroline’s downfall, and at the end she liked them to come in pairs. So to speak. If she shoots up in a caravan in Shepparton with a couple of teenage petty crims and then chokes on her own vomit, how is it my fault?

  ‘Tom, darling, I did the best I could. We both did.’ Alec and I tried love and money and anger and tears; we tried interstate and a new start, we tried back home and a job and a car. ‘Your father and I –’

  ‘He wasn’t her father and you know it, Bliss. Caroline told me. Dad couldn’t love her because she wasn’t his child. And neither could you.’

  ‘What?’ I looked at him to see if he was joking. He wasn’t. ‘Tom, what do you think I am – some kind of monster? She was a child, for Christ’s sake. A child who’d lost her mother. I’m not denying that I was often angry with her, and I hated what she did; I hated the drugs and the lies and the way she fell back, again and again. And, yes –’ I was starting to feel terribly weary – ‘she broke your father’s heart and I was bitter about that, but Alec and I never stopped loving her.’ I let that sink in for a bit. ‘As for this other thing, this fantasy she had about Alec not being her father – Caroline was lying to you. And if it is what your mother told her, then she was lying too.’

  He stared at me and I thought of the years that we lived in the same house and the different universes we had inhabited.

  ‘It was one of Dad’s engineers. He stalked her for months and then he raped her.’

  Oh, Caroline! You were always one for melodrama, weren’t you? And Tom, beautiful Tom, how could you believe such tripe?

  ‘Tom, your mother was –’ I was proud that I didn’t say she was a madwoman – ‘very sick indeed.’

  ‘How do you know it isn’t true?’

  I was losing patience. ‘Because your father said so, and he, of all people, would have known.’ It was, as they say, bleeding obvious that this was just one more of Caroline’s fantasies.

  ‘Caroline said –’

  ‘Tom, listen: this came up regularly over the years, especially when she was unwell. Alec explained to her again and again that he knew, absolutely, that he was her father. He had no doubts, Tom. None. He explained to her how Nina, in her illness, told stories to make sense of the chaos she experienced. I thought Caroline accepted that. I thought she believed him. If she told you anything different, she did so in the full knowledge that it wasn’t true.’

  ‘Oh, Christ.’ He sat down suddenly on the end of my bed.

  I cried. He cried. We hugged. Like warm, wonderful human beings. Just like on Oprah.

  REUNION

  Tom was sitting by the bed. His hand rested on Bliss’s arm and her skin against his looked dingy and mottled. The room was not overheated but as Anne and Paula walked in there was exhaustion in the air, a feeling of lassitude and drained, empty calm.

  ‘It’s the girls,’ said Tom, leaning in towards Bliss.

  Bliss nodded. Her eyes were red-rimmed and watery.

  ‘I’ll get us a cup of tea,’ he said.

  ‘Are you okay, Tom?’ whispered Anne as he passed her, but he ducked away and went in search of the urn. She turned to the room and announced, ‘It’s lovely that Tom’s here, isn’t it?’

  Bliss, slumped against her pillow, didn’t answer. When Tom returned with mugs on a tray, her eyes were half shut and she shook her head. Lunch arrived only minutes later. It was a thick orange-coloured soup, a buttered triangle of brown bread, some cut-up apple.

  ‘Too much,’ Bliss whispered, turning away.

  ‘Come on, this looks delicious,’ said Anne, positioning her chair at the bedside. ‘I’ll help you.’

  ‘No, thank you.’

  ‘You have to eat, Bliss. Here.’ She dipped the spoon into the puree and held it out. For a second Tom thought she was going to nudge the spoon against Bliss’s lips.

  ‘Anne, dear –’ Bliss spoke so clearly they could all hear the effort – ‘I’m not at all hungry. But I am very tired.’

  ‘I think that means you’d like us to go,’ said Tom.

  ‘No, Tommy, I’d love you all to stay. But you see how I am. Goodbye, darling Paula. Anne, dearest.’ She was dismissing them. But before Tom left the room, she held out her hand, ‘Could you help me with the pillows, Tommy? Thank you. Yes, that’s right.’ And then she began to tell him something about the jacket and his father, but by now her voice was a thread and her words were disjointed. When he leaned down so that his face was close to hers, pity and revulsion fought with each other.

  It was shallow of him, he knew, to fear it so much. It happened to everyone.

  Golden lads and lasses must,

  As chimney sweepers come to dust . . .

  ‘Shut up, Tom.’ He could hear Bliss’s creamy voice. ‘It’s poetry. It’s culture. Listen.’ He could see her, cigarette in one hand, Scotch in the other, in something dramatic – an orange caftan over a turquoise slip, a red trouser suit. ‘William Blake, darlings. He was a mystic, a poet, a genius . . .’

  Caro used to laugh behind her back.

  ‘Who does she think she is? A fucking one-woman Royal Shakespeare Company?’

  Yes. Bliss had always put on a good show, with her lotions, her foundation and powder, her red lips and nails. She was L’Air du Temps and cigarette smoke, saying, ‘Thank God you’re gorgeous, Tommy, or how would I put up with you?’ Saying, ‘Don’t be boring, Tommy. That’s the worst sin.’

  Now look. There was almost nothing left. The word ‘husk’ came to mind. Husk, or shell. Something dry and emptied, ready to shrivel into dust and blow away. How biblical, he thought. In the morning it is green, and groweth up: but in the evening it is cut down, dried up and withered . . . Ironic, wasn’t it, that his mother’s funeral was a stinking hot day in the middle of a heatwave and all the roses on the coffin wilted?

  ‘Thank you for coming, Tommy,’ she whispered.

  She was grateful to him. It was pathetic. He was pathetic, all these years, with his habit, his gnawing vice, his little sealed casket of blame and guilt. He’d convinced himself he was only coming to Melbourne to get his hands on the loot. As if. His other self – better, higher, more real, whatever – took one look at those piteous eyes drowning in tears and what could you do? You drop your bundle, you confess. He’d even told the secret, the haunting, terrible secret, the one he’d sworn to Caroline never
to reveal. Stupid, he knew. But there was a part of him that was forever childish and stupid, forever spinning and golden and free with his sister, his not-quite-twin, his other half. Caroline.

  Bliss had been rear-ended by a taxi in Glenferrie Road only a couple of hours before they got the call about Caroline, and Tom had prayed – actually prayed – that it was a mistake, that the cops had mixed it up, that Caro had whiplash and a written-off hatchback, and Bliss was dead. If his prayer had been answered then, would Caro still be alive? Unlikely. Even Tom had to admit that she had a date with death. Like the appointment in Samara; if not an on-site van in Shepparton, then somewhere else, sometime soon. She’d never been going to make old bones and there was nothing on earth he could have done about it.

  ‘Goodbye, Bliss.’

  He made himself kiss her. Her cheek felt insubstantial, like creased tissue paper, like a fallen petal. There was a whiff of urine under the clean chemical smell, and under that something else, something more troubling. It made him think of Roly, and cancer, and things inside you growing where you can’t see. Anne had talked about geriatric depression, medication, therapists, as if there was time to fix her. As if there was anything that could be fixed.

  He kissed her again. ‘See you tomorrow.’

  ‘Well, will we have lunch or not?’ said Anne.

  ‘I bought some food,’ said Paula. ‘Bread and dips and salad. It’s in the fridge at the flat.’

  ‘I want something hot,’ said Anne. She sounded petulant.

  ‘I need a drink,’ said Tom.

  They found a little Italian place nearby. Tom ordered a small carafe of house red for himself and a glass of chardonnay for Paula. Anne made a point of not drinking and driving; she had soda water. Paula and Anne both chose the risotto. Tom’s penne alla arrabiata was decidedly short on chilli so he asked for some on the side, and then, kicking back with his second glass of wine, he studied his sisters. It was spooky how every now and then there was an expression, a gesture, a likeness. Oh, Caroline. Even before the talk with Bliss, she’d been on his mind. A couple of times he’d sensed a kind of flicker in the air, as if he’d just missed seeing her across the street, turning a corner, reflected in a shop window. A tricky girl, in death as in life. He felt as if she would just walk in off the street and sit down, and they’d all be together again.

  All together . . . How long had it been? God only knows, he thought. And then, God had been there too, or at least he was invited. It was Caroline’s funeral.

  ‘What is it?’

  Tom didn’t answer Paula, but dipped his fork into Anne’s risotto. ‘I’m thinking about Caroline,’ he said, without looking at her. ‘Ah, yes, Paula, the skeleton at the feast. This is good, Anne. Eat up.’

  Paula put her wineglass down and placed her hand over her brother’s. He knew what she was going to say before she said it. He knew the look. ‘Oh, Tom.’

  ‘She’d be fifty-three now, wouldn’t she?’ began Anne solemnly. ‘If she –’

  Tom ignored her. ‘Do you remember the school concert, and Caro tap-dancing in my footy boots? And the nativity play?’

  ‘When she stuffed those kittens down her jumper . . .’

  ‘. . . and Mum just strolled up onto the stage and put them in her handbag?’

  Anne reached into her tote and pretended to check her mobile. There were more stories, more anecdotes. More of the shared childhood; the big kids, Paula, Tom and Caroline.

  Never her. Never Anne. She was not part of these tales, never had been. Her birth was the line, the marker, the curtain dropped like night. There was then, and then there was after. She was on the wrong side of family history.

  Paula attempted to draw Anne back into the circle. ‘You’d just had Jake, hadn’t you, Anne?’ It was so obvious it hurt. ‘I remember him at the funeral screaming for a feed, poor little thing.’

  Anne struggled to say something, but Tom got there before her.

  ‘Remember Bliss?’ said Tom. ‘With two black eyes and a neck brace. How she hated that.’

  Paula shook her head. ‘I don’t think she cared, Tom.’

  He motioned to the waiter for another carafe. ‘You know, at the time I thought that if Bliss had died, Caroline would have lived. As if there was some sort of weird symmetry of fate, as if you could bargain. You know, I promised God – not that I believed in him, but that’s how fucked up I was – that if it was a mistake, I’d give up something, anything, whatever it was that was most precious to me. I said I’d give up Kelty – remember him? Or a leg. Both legs. My dick, even . . .’ He took a reckless swig and drained the wineglass. ‘D’you want to know what Bliss and I talked about? I bet you do. I bet you’re dying to know.’

  Anne shrugged. ‘I guess so.’

  ‘What, Tom?’ said Paula.

  ‘We talked about Mr Hayes. D’you remember him? The teacher with the red MG?’ It was harder than he’d thought it would be. ‘He . . . ah, how do I put this? He used to suck me off.’

  ‘Tom!’

  ‘What would you prefer, little Annie? Something coy? He interfered with me?’

  She knew he thought she was being prudish, but she was thinking about her own sons, and adults, and damage. ‘It was abuse; sexual abuse. It’s a crime. Isn’t it, Paula?’

  All Paula could think of was how beautiful Tom had been. The jaw, the cheekbones, the long, long eyelashes, the almost unbelievable perfection of him; even at fifteen, there should have been an entourage, lights and cameras, a stylist seeing to his cuffs and school tie. Ah, Tom bursting out of himself with life and eagerness and hormones. Who at that age didn’t have hormones running the show, whether raging or smouldering or damped down with guilt and self-consciousness? She’d been at teachers’ college. She hadn’t known. She should have known.

  ‘He didn’t force me. Actually, I felt really sorry for the guy. He was so pathetic, going down on his knees, begging and pleading – oh, Anne, you should see your face. Anyway, Bliss thought she was somehow responsible. Thought he got to me through her. Didn’t protect me, blighted my life, that sort of thing.’

  ‘Well, has it?’ said Paula.

  ‘You must be joking. The whole sex thing was exploding since I was eleven or twelve. Christ, Paula, I was wanking myself silly, alone and in company. Mr Hayes, well, he used to buy me things, and . . .’

  ‘Tom, this is awful,’ said Anne. ‘You have to tell the school. It’s your duty to tell the school. They have to know that one of their teachers was a predator. There may have been other victims. Really, you have to –’

  ‘I don’t have to do anything, Anne. In my scheme of things, Hayes doesn’t count. He never did. It was Caroline. I always felt that Bliss drove her out. I know – Christ, everyone knows – Caro was hard work; she could be bloody awful. But . . .’ With a noise between a gulp and a sob he refilled his wineglass. ‘Did Caro ever tell you the thing about Dad, Paula?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘What thing?’ asked Anne.

  ‘And we never talked about it, you and I.’

  ‘No,’ said Paula. There was so much they’d never talked about. With their mother, with Caroline, where would they even begin? She agreed with Dr Chen that sometimes, really, there was nothing to be gained by a continual excavation of the past. But now Anne, her cheeks flushed, was looking from her to Tom and back again, wanting to know, wanting to be part of it all.

  ‘What thing about Dad?’ she said. ‘What thing?’

  ‘You tell her, Paula. I’m going for a slash.’

  ‘D’you have to be so crude, Tom?’

  He pushed his chair back abruptly. ‘Yes, Anne; I do.’

  Paula waited for him to leave, but before she could say anything, Anne burst out. ‘Why is he so horrible to me? I haven’t done anything. He treats me like –’

  ‘He’s upset, Anne.’

  ‘Yes, but that’s no reason to take it out on me . . . And what thing? Why won’t you tell me?’

  ‘Caroline had this bee in her bonnet
that Dad wasn’t her biological father. It was something Mum told her.’

  ‘But why?’

  She sounded like the little girl who was always left out, and Paula spoke tenderly. ‘I don’t know. To hurt Dad, perhaps. Mum was sick. She was really sick for a long, long time.’

  ‘But I don’t get it . . . Is Tom saying . . .’ She searched for the right words and didn’t find them. ‘Caroline wouldn’t have been a druggie if Bliss had – what? I was there. I remember. There was nothing Bliss could do with her. Or Dad. She was out of control. She was awful.’

  ‘I know.’

  ‘And this other thing. Do you think Tom believed Caroline?’

  ‘Yes. I think he did.’

  Tom took a piss, put the lid down and just sat.

  Fuck you, Caroline, he thought. You didn’t have to lie to me. What was it for, anyway? Drama? As if that was in short supply.

  Now that he allowed himself to feel, he felt betrayed.

  The toilets were outside, off the back courtyard. A couple had been sitting out there in the cold, smoking over their coffees; when Tom came out of the men’s they were gone, and a little waitress was there with her tray and dishcloth, cleaning up the table.

  Impulsively, he ordered a coffee. The girls would wonder where he was, but he needed some breathing space.

  Oh, fuck you Caroline. Why didn’t you just stick to the dope? Tom had never even been tempted. Coke and dope and the odd hash cookie, okay – but not that. Never that. He could get his jollies without sticking a needle in his arm. It was one of the most sinister things he’d seen in his life, coming into Caroline’s kitchen and finding her and Dom there, by candlelight, she with the belt around her upper arm and Dom with the needle and the spoon. Ten years later, she looked twenty years older. More. At the funeral parlour, they’d done the best they could with her, but she was ravaged and gaunt, slightly greenish and bruised-looking under the make-up. Definitely dead. It was the first time he’d ever seen a dead person, and he was surprised at how you could tell. She was gone. He’d touched her face, but he couldn’t kiss her as Paula had done. He’d gone into the toilets at the undertaker’s and thrown up repeatedly.