Cherry Beach

by Laura McPhee-Browne

  ‘You need to let her go, Hetty. She’s nasty.’

  ‘But what if she’s right?’

  ‘Her saying things under her breath isn’t your fault! It’s weird, and she’s manipulating you because she’s cruel.’

  Hetty started to sob then, her thin body shaking with the effort of it, and I put my hand on her shoulder to steady her. I’d never seen her so fragile—Elaine had swallowed her whole.

  I got us some glasses of bourbon from a bottle someone had left downstairs at the party, and gave her one to wet her lips with. She was murmuring, and after we drank she lay and slept quickly. It was nice to have her there next to me while I sat and looked at a book, not reading the words, waiting for Faith to reply. If I could have made her stay there forever I would have. She huffed little snores and occasionally moved herself over and around and back and forth, as if it was hard to stay still for the dreams.

  Faith replied suggesting we meet for rice and beans and kingfish on Queen Street the next day, followed by ice-cream sandwiches. My stomach jumped about. I hoped she wouldn’t realise I was boring.

  I lay down in the moonlit, street-lit room and thought about Elaine and Hetty. In the same way that Hetty helped me smile, the way her personality and how she talked and moved made me feel pleasant and calm, Elaine moved me to lurch, to feel a tightening in my chest that I didn’t fully understand but that was hard not to react to. I didn’t often hate people, and it usually took a lot more rudeness than I’d had from Elaine before I became impatient. I would have been glad never to see her again, and could feel myself becoming more protective of Hetty. I wanted to drag her body away from Elaine’s—to show her what I could see from where I was standing.

  I remembered, lying there, the book my mum had often had on her bedside table when I was growing up. She’d told me one afternoon to have a read of it, after I’d sat on the frill of her doona and told her I was having problems with a girl at school who I believed was too bossy, too confident of her own power, more popular than I thought she deserved to be. Mum had listened—she was a good listener when she was well enough, nodding often with her soft head—and then she had asked whether I thought it could be possible that there was a part of me that wanted to be confident, to be brash, to not always worry what others were thinking inside their heads, the way this girl was. I didn’t think I did, and I said so. Mum picked up the book and handed it to me. She told me to read it, and shook herself down under the covers again for a bit more sleep.

  The book was called The Dark Side of the Light Chasers. It told me that everyone has a shadow, and that we can hide our shadows so well, bury them so deep, that when we meet someone who has embraced theirs we might become defensive, hostile. I imagined now what it would be like to drop my layers and be like Elaine—direct, unsentimental. Maybe my shadow was sick of hiding, and recognised in her something true. I fell asleep before I could decide on a way to find out.

  WELL

  an issue of water from the earth

  I grew very fond of my Marjorie housemates.

  Ingrid was easy to be around and so open about how she was feeling at any moment, on any day. She was pretty and petite and kind, and sometimes had her best friend Jill with her, who was tall and solid. They included me easily in their conversations, and asked me questions as if they cared about me. Ingrid was Whitney’s real owner and loved her with a silly ferocity. She was the reason Whitney’s belly hung low and round when she walked, from too many fish biscuits.

  Robin was always getting up very late or very early and wearing beautiful outfits he had made himself out of shiny paper or mosquito netting. His irreverence was the kind that could become sincerity very quickly, and he seemed to really like me; he would touch me on the arm often, and look into my eyes to see how I was really feeling. Robin and Clark were close, and I wondered if Robin loved Clark the way I loved Hetty.

  Clark was straight, and attractive in his asymmetry and the way his body moved like a flag on a boat in a windy sea. He was tall and his limbs were long, and he had crooked teeth and big, bouncy hair. His laugh was like the call of a walrus and he didn’t seem to take anything seriously. I didn’t often see Clark alone—he worked late into the night as a pharmacist at a twenty-four-hour clinic on University Avenue and had a lot of friends. He was nice to be around because he made fun of himself: it reminded me of Australia. He was less conscientious than the others, and more brash and nonchalant. I relaxed in his company.

  The relationship that Clark had been in with Steph before they both lived at Marjorie had been a long one. I couldn’t imagine them together, despite Ingrid and Robin and Steph herself telling me they were inseparable for four years. Steph was calm and contained, her body athletic and her face quietly handsome. She had toast-coloured skin and blond hair, and paused throughout conversations in order to hear and understand. I liked her immensely, but often felt shy when I was with her—large in my movements, loud in my voice. Of all of them, I wished I knew Steph best. She seemed to have so much to her that I felt sad I might never know.

  Dill was home more than the others. He worked part-time standing behind the counter at BMV Books, the cheapest bookshop in the city, and was trying to write a novel the rest of the time. He spent long hours at the kitchen table, tousled, sipping at drinks he seemed to take longer than necessary to prepare. He was a joy to come upon, would joke about the cliche he felt he was and slurp at his mug and make me laugh even when I had hoped no one would be home, or out of bed, so I could slink back upstairs and keep to myself.

  He was writing something about how it was to be an uncommon type of boy, then an uncommon type of young man; how it was hard to go against the way men were expected to be, and how other men could push this and make it worse. He told me he didn’t really expect the book ever to come to anything, but he wanted to write it so his dad could read it one day, and the men he went to school with, and maybe some of his male teachers. He said they hadn’t understood him because he wasn’t quite the same, and it had taken him until now to know that that was their fault, not his.

  I was almost in love with Dill in that way that means you think someone is wonderful but know you would never actually need to hold them. His face was dear, with a large mouth and white teeth and cheeks that stretched when he laughed, and he listened and spoke; just enough of each. Sometimes we would talk to Whitney, who liked to be near us and would curl up against one of the legs of the kitchen table or in one of our laps. Dill would ask her questions in his regular voice and answer them in her little voice, then would ask me questions in her little voice so that I had to answer: sweet, silly questions like, ‘What is the thing you most love about my fur?’ When he got up to pour more hot water into his cup, or to make toast with butter and banana and honey, I would watch his body when he wasn’t facing me. He moved beautifully, and was both small and broad-shouldered.

  Early one afternoon when we were the only ones home and Dill had asked me to sit with him because he had run out of ways to try to write, I told him about Faith. She was always at the front of my mind, and Dill indulged me, asking me question after question about what she was like and how I felt about what she was like, and smiling big and creased at my answers. He didn’t seem to know or not know that I liked girls, just knew and didn’t know and was okay with whatever it was that I was. I told him Faith was very beautiful, and that he would think so too. He told me that of course she was.

  ‘I thought maybe you loved Hetty,’ he said, after I had finished.

  I was embarrassed. My feelings for Hetty must have been so obvious. I thought I hid it well, by moving my eyes the right way and looking at the right things at the right time, catching glimpses of Hetty and smiling only sometimes when she said something gorgeous. It was hard to learn that I wasn’t controlling what I put out into the world.

  Dill rubbed my hand where it lay limp on the wooden table.

  ‘I shouldn’t have said that. I’m sorry.’

  I didn’t want someone to feel b
ad because I was unable to keep myself inside my skin. I was spilling out around myself and making people uncomfortable, and to realise it made my face feel hot and red.

  ‘No, Dill, don’t be sorry. It’s not your fault I’m pathetic!’

  I wanted him to know I didn’t have illusions that Hetty and I would be together, that she would ever love me in that way. He would understand that it was complicated if I explained, but I didn’t feel like doing that. I did want to make sure he didn’t feel sorry for me, because that made me feel awkward and soggy and dull, and I knew I didn’t need his pity. I was moving further away from Hetty’s body every day. It felt like one of us was swimming and the other was nowhere near the water.

  ‘You’re not pathetic. At all.’

  ‘It’s sort of complicated. I mean, I do love her, but the feeling isn’t like what it used to be. And I don’t want to be with her or anything—’

  ‘I get it,’ he said, and gave me a bright grin. ‘She’s a babe. But she’s crazy too, right?’

  I had wondered if others had been noticing Hetty’s skittishness. She was moving closer to some imaginary light since she’d met Elaine, and the drugs weren’t helping. I didn’t know what she was taking or how much, but some nights her bright round pupils and the crashing of her teeth against each other worried me.

  ‘She’s been funny lately,’ I said.

  ‘Yeah. I’ve noticed that. It’s like she’s always on her way somewhere but she’s not really sure where she’s going.’

  ‘I know. I’m worried about her.’

  We talked about Hetty for hours that day. Dill told me he had a big crush on her, and that she had seemed to have one on him too, but over the past few weeks he hadn’t been able to crack her face or feel like he was really speaking to her. She would flit in at night and sleep all day. He’d hoped they might kiss, and talk more, and he was sad that they hadn’t—he’d wondered whether she was just trying to tell him without telling him that there was no chance.

  I told him that it was more than him and her, and that I would talk to her about our worry. Then I felt anxious for the rest of the day, like we had spoken about something that hadn’t really been true but now was.

  That night it was just me and Dill and Robin at home, and we sat in the living room with bowls of a dark curry that Robin had made, full of vegetables I almost recognised. He cooked well, Robin—cooked often for us, never fazed by extra mouths. He seemed to be able to make something good out of anything we had in the fridge. I’d often watch him in the kitchen, chopping and scraping and inspecting, and finally stirring and tasting. His instinct for texture and heat reminded me of a cat.

  Whitney would sit near him on the kitchen floor as he danced the floor back and forth with pinches of salt and wooden spoons. Occasionally she would stand and make her way towards his legs, if they were still, and she would rub against them ferociously. Robin’s legs were thin, like the rest of him, and he would laugh at how close she got to toppling him over.

  That night we talked about Robin’s new boyfriend. Robin told us that when he was with Josh, he often wondered if he even liked him, but he would let Josh kiss him and plan their next date together, and introduce Robin to all his friends. Robin said he often did this—chose men who were not quite what he wanted, so he would not need to be so scared and sad if one day they were gone. I understood this.

  Dill asked questions. He had a different way of being in the world from Robin and me. He was confident, hoping and trying for what he really wanted, and wasn’t disordered in the way he thought about himself or what he deserved.

  Robin tried to explain to Dill how it felt to be constantly wary of affection because it felt too good to last, and then I tried to explain it, and Dill seemed to understand as much as he could by the time we had finished and there was no more curry and Robin presented us with a bottle of wine from the fridge. I remember the way Dill tried to say there was no reason for us to doubt that we were loveable, and that we both laughed.

  Then Hetty walked in. She was a little wobbly as she moved towards the table, but after she sat down she seemed to still. I reminded myself to ask her directly what she was using, when we were alone. I hadn’t wanted to force it out of her, but it wasn’t possible to keep pretending nothing was going on when every time she came home she flopped around like a caught fish.

  Hetty eyed us all, with our glasses of pink drink, and told us she was tired. There was no nod towards me, no hint that she cared. I was extra-sensitive around her these days, waiting for signs and clues and declarations that would prove the strength of our friendship, but she wasn’t giving me anything.

  Robin asked her questions, slowly, and Dill and I watched. Hetty crossed one leg over the other and then swapped them, running her fingers through her flattened hair.

  ‘I’m so tired,’ she said, after Robin had asked her how her work at the bar was going.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ she said, looking at me. ‘I’m always complaining.’

  ‘No, you’re not,’ I said, trying to hold her eyes with mine. ‘You’re not.’

  ‘It feels like I am.’

  Hetty said this as if it should be light, but there wasn’t quite the energy needed in her voice. She rolled back her shoulders one by one, their peaks just skin over curved bone. I kept hearing what sounded like small sighs, but her mouth was closed, her eyes lazy.

  I looked at Dill. He was looking at Hetty with something sad around his mouth, and his eyes. She hadn’t acknowledged him once that I had noticed, and I could imagine his heart would be hurting. She was almost being unkind. Dill didn’t say anything, didn’t ask her any questions. He seemed to have accepted that he wasn’t really in the room.

  ‘I got a new tattoo!’ Hetty exclaimed, out of nowhere, after Robin had stopped asking questions and I had started rubbing at Whitney’s neck to distract myself from the silence.

  Instantly I felt hurt that she hadn’t asked me to come with her to get it. We would never have done something like that without the other when we lived in Melbourne. Every memory I had that was special had Hetty in it, and now she was making all these memories without me, as though it was necessary or normal. I tried to soothe myself. Things were different now, and that might be okay.

  I looked up and saw that she wasn’t pulling up her top or rolling up her sleeve or her pulling her skirt back. She was just sitting: still lazily, still a little bit slumped.

  ‘Where? What did you get?’

  She shook herself out of something and smiled. ‘On the small of my back.’

  Hetty stood up, and turned around. She was wearing a long singlet that covered most of her skirt and was made of something like jersey. She pulled up the back of the singlet and exposed her pale pink-white skin. There was no tattoo—just a few small freckles and the surface of her.

  ‘Ha ha.’ Robin was standing in the doorway to the kitchen now, and said this in a long, flat voice a little different from his usual one.

  ‘Is it okay? Do you like it?’

  Hetty kept standing there with her spindly arms holding up the jersey that had been covering nothing, and I felt a deep sorry feeling and realised that I had never felt sorry for her before. There was no tattoo. Why was she confused?

  I wished Robin and Dill would leave. I wished, even though I valued them so much, that they had never been there at all. Hetty’s body and mind seemed to need privacy.

  She let one of her hands touch the small of her back softly, and said Ouch in a tiny voice that made me scared. My heart started to beat so fast I could feel a pulsing in my eyelids. I looked over at Robin, who motioned at Dill to come into the kitchen with him. They closed the door.

  ‘Het, sit down, babe,’ I said.

  I walked over and gently helped her pull her top back down and get herself onto the couch again. She made a few small noises and leaned over to pat Whitney, who was curled on the carpet below us.

  My mouth felt so dry I had to drag my tongue around in it, dispersing what moisture
was left. I wanted to know why Hetty was so often out of it these days, and what she had been taking. It felt like I needed to be the kind of friend they have in American movies—kind, strong, sure. A friend who could do an intervention.

  ‘Het, what’s been going on lately? You’re different.’

  She looked up at me from where she had sunk down into the folds. She was shaking her head.

  ‘Nothing, Ness. I’m just drinking too much, I guess. You know how I do that sometimes.’

  Her hand came up as if to touch my arm but dropped back down. Everything about her seemed to be fading.

  ‘Have you been eating enough?’

  Hetty had always been funny about food. She was the kind of person who didn’t think of eating very often, and when she wasn’t going well it dropped from her mind completely. She enjoyed the taste of delicious things when she did sit down to eat them, but could go days without doing so. I had often wondered what she did with all that time so many of us spent thinking about, preparing or eating food. She’d laughed and shook her head when I told her I envied her. She had told me many times she wished she loved food too.

  ‘Yes. Elaine makes me a toasted sandwich every night at work.’

  ‘What does she put in it?’

  Hetty sighed. ‘I don’t know, Ness. Baked beans, cheese? One time she put eggs in there for me and they cooked fluffy and hot.’

  She moved her head against the couch cushion, like a cat against a leg. Her eyes were closing.

  I wondered if I should tell her there was no tattoo on her back. I was worried she would be scared, or wouldn’t understand, or would say something that made even less sense.

  ‘What have you been taking, Hetty?’

  ‘What?’ She lifted her head up and took in my expression. ‘Nothing.’

  There was a long silence. I was determined not to fill it.

  ‘I took some mushrooms with Elaine a few times, but that was weeks ago.’

  I hadn’t known this, but it still didn’t explain why Hetty was balancing on the edge of something now, or had fallen in.