There was no answer. I didn’t leave a message, didn’t feel like there was a point. Hetty was a dandelion of energy and fever dreams, and she wouldn’t be checking her voicemail.
I walked towards the lowest level, where the food court was. Down an escalator, then some stairs, then another escalator. Maybe I could sit and think up a plan before I started my search of the shops above. It was noisy and messy in the food court. People sat at square tables with rectangular trays in front of them. They seemed to be talking and eating at the same time, having conversations I would never hear. I could smell fried-chicken batter—all-spice, stale oil—and boiled hot dogs. I still wasn’t hungry.
Hetty loomed in front of me just as I finally found a table with a chair waiting, one not filled by a warm, strange body. My insides yelped, as if this was actually the greatest shock so far.
‘Ness!’
She seemed to be puffing slightly, and had two round red circles for cheeks. Hetty’s face didn’t redden the way mine did—her nose didn’t swell and glow, just stayed small and pale, leaving only her cheeks to pretty with the colour. She looked gorgeous.
‘Ness, I’m so glad I bumped into you!’
She pulled at my arm, dragging me towards a salad-bar counter. There was no acknowledgment that it was remarkable that we had in fact bumped into each other, or that either of us was there at all.
‘I’ve just ordered something. I haven’t eaten in a while.’ A laugh showed in her neck, stretched and rippling.
I heard her name called out from behind us and turned to see a woman waiting behind the counter with a tray. Hetty didn’t seem to hear.
‘Het, is that yours?’ I asked her.
She spun around, hair flying. ‘Oh, yes! Yes!’
We sat at a table that still held the trays of its previous tenants, abandoned. There was an empty McDonald’s chip box and a half-eaten sandwich. I could see the edge of some ham at one end of it, pink and curled like a tongue. Hetty shovelled salad into her mouth, the dressing leaving an oil slick on her lips.
Now that I had found her, and so soon, I didn’t know what to say. I felt as if it wouldn’t really matter if I was completely honest and told her I was worried she was ill, and that I thought she needed to stop her life and her bizarre plans and seek help. She wouldn’t be affected by it, because she wasn’t really there. I wondered where the real Hetty had gone—was she still there, just below the surface, or was her soul resting somewhere else, waiting?
‘I’m really worried about you, Hetty,’ I said carefully, wanting to make ground while I had her in front of me, before she flew away again.
She kept shovelling, then wiped her mouth with the back of an elegant hand.
‘Have you been feeling unwell lately? Tell me what’s happening. You seem very different.’
It was strange to admit to her that she wasn’t herself. It could be the catalyst for her to explode, or to pull off her face like it was a mask and reveal the face of La Ciguapa or a banshee, predicting her own death and leading others towards theirs—as if our lives were a horror movie and this a scene near the end.
Hetty looked up at me from her plastic plate and swallowed. ‘I’m just feeling good. Different in a good way. Well, mostly good. I think I’ve decided who I want to be, and it’s tiring, but that’s the way it should be, shouldn’t it?’
She hadn’t quite finished the mouthful of food she had taken before I asked my questions, and as she talked I could see bits of corn and the white green of baby-cos leaves in her mouth, opening and closing. I wanted to look away. Hetty didn’t eat with her mouth open.
‘There’s nothing wrong. You don’t need to be threatened,’ she spat.
Threatened. She thought I was jealous of her, jealous of this jangled energy that was spinning her out into oblivion. Jealous of her chaos and her fake friends and the delusion she had draped all over herself.
‘I’m not threatened! Jesus. You have no idea what’s actually going on anymore.’
The comment bounced off her and she resumed shovelling the salad, holding her hair back with one hand, barely chewing.
‘Hetty. I think you need to see a doctor. I can’t help you, and you need help.’
This time she didn’t look up. I watched her jaw move up and down, and her throat get big like there was an animal in there and then not big as she swallowed the vegetables down. She finished and kept her face towards her plate.
‘I’m not going to bother explaining it to you.’ Her voice was low, each word sounded out as though I was stupid. ‘I’ve been lucky enough to be given this chance. I’ve heard things you wouldn’t dream of. Don’t take this away from me.’
I shivered all the way from my neck to the bottom of my spine. I didn’t want to bring her to me and cuddle her anymore, tell her it would be okay. I wanted to get away from her, and she wanted that too. Tears welled in my eyes as I watched her stand.
‘You’ll understand soon,’ she said to the side of my face, as if I was gone now and she was talking to a faint idea of me. Then she turned and walked away, and I started to cry. The tears were only thin, and I didn’t make any noise as I let them come out and gulped and choked a little. My body was too tired to give the act of sorrow anything more.
I cried those thin, quiet tears all afternoon and all night, though nobody seemed to notice. Hetty didn’t come home for dinner and she wasn’t back by midnight. I swatted the buzz of worry away and didn’t move or look at my phone. From our bed I watched the sky out the window, blue-black and familiar like any night sky in any country.
I tried to remember other times when Hetty had been mad, even just almost-mad. I knew it wasn’t the right word but I couldn’t figure out how else to think about her, with those eyes. She wouldn’t go and see a doctor, ask for a diagnosis. She probably thought I needed one.
I wished again that we were stronger people, she and I. That we had built up a level of fight within us and within our relationship that I could lean on. Instead, Hetty told me to leave her alone and I simply did. It was pathetic.
I lay in my softest T-shirt and thought about the months before we had flown to Toronto, sifting through the memories. Hetty had still been grieving Sean, despite the muck that covered everything they had shared and everything about him.
A few months before we set off, she had told me she wanted to bury the letter he’d left for her—a suicide note that had blamed her for his death—and that she was sure this would help with the pain and the guilt and the mire he had left on her vision of everything.
We drove one misty morning to the park that edged the Yarra River in Fairfield and walked through a section that wasn’t really meant for walking, dense with the low branches of yellow gums and ironbarks, riparian shrubs and shoots of feather-spear grass. Hetty was soundless in a different way to her normal quiet: as though she had forgotten I was there. She stopped with certainty at a spot that looked just like every other spot, and asked that we stop there. I sat and she kneeled to dig up a small bit of earth, telling me this was the place she had imagined, and that the pain might be able to rest here.
I understood then what she was doing, or I thought I understood. I couldn’t access her grief for the loss of Sean, but I believed in it and wanted it gone. We took the dried bits of plant she had chosen—rosemary, lemon balm and sage—from their plastic bag and placed them in the small candle lamp she had brought. She asked me to fold up Sean’s letter and I did so carefully, even though I wanted to rip it up and scream at her to let him go in the same way he had let her go—as if she didn’t matter, as if he wanted her to suffer forever. She was crying when I handed her the small folded bit of notepaper, grubby from all our fingerprints. We had decided together what she would say that morning, and now she said it carefully. No apology. I couldn’t let her say sorry to him.
‘Goodbye, Sean. That’s all now. I can’t give you anything else. I really do hope you rest in peace.’
Then we lit the letter and the sticks and leaves with
a lighter, and watched the bundle flame and smoke and become crisp and then nothing, and Hetty buried all of it in the sticky soil, and we sat.
It got cold we sat there so long, even though it was January and the sun was high until late. Hetty suggested we go get drunk, and leaving the car behind we walked all the way to Collingwood in the dusk, and drank beer out of sweaty jugs at the Grace Darling. She did drink heavily that night, and she told me all sorts of things Sean had done to her over the years, things that made me press my nails into my palms so hard that blood appeared.
I lay on the bed in Toronto and wondered how she had been well for so long, with such a monster hanging over her. It was no wonder things were unravelling.
MEANDER
the river flows in sweeping meanders
After four days I realised that this time no one knew where Hetty was—not Rick, not Elaine, not anyone who lived at Marjorie with us, not me. We had a house dinner and Dill cooked and no one ate very much, and we talked about what Hetty had been like lately and what we could do when she came back again, and it felt a little bit okay for a while and then bad again after everyone went on with their nights and I was alone at the kitchen table with Whitney below me. She seemed to know something was wrong and kept kissing my legs with her tiny mouth, but I didn’t feel better because of it; I felt as if I was useless.
I could hear the muffled bawl of the wind outside and wondered if Hetty was ploughing through it to somewhere or if she was safe and warm. I was beginning to understand what the winter would be like—short of breath, desolate, washed out. The fall was lush and invigorating, but it was coming to an end.
The next morning Hetty still wasn’t beside me, and when I texted Elaine her reply was the same as it had been for days: No word here. I put the phone down and heaved myself up to dress for work, deciding what to wear through the murk in my head. It rang as I scuffled through my clothes drawer and my heart lifted—if it was Hetty I would love her and thank her and help her come home with my kindness. I promised myself this as I went to answer it.
It was Faith. I heard my voice when I said hello, soft and not a question, just a statement. I heard Faith reply the same way.
I had missed her, and told her with my insides stammering. She told me she’d missed me too. She asked me how I was and I told her I would tell her when I saw her and then I asked if I could see her and she said of course.
We agreed to meet that afternoon in the place that I thought of as the mini-amphitheatre, to the side of the Ontario College of Art and Design building, where older people in bright loose outfits did tai chi in the mornings and later students sat smoking after class. It had sloped edges and what could be a stage at the centre. It was near Cafe Art Song, and Faith was planning to spend the day taking photographs of people outside the small, old-fashioned mall across the road.
When I arrived at work my mind was full of Faith and Hetty, and I was glad we were busy. There were a few groups of students from a high school nearby who had spent the morning at the art gallery and needed lunch, and they stayed for almost two hours: one harried teacher and fifteen young people. Then we had a few small groups of older couples who wanted coffee and cake, and the rest of the day passed quickly.
After I’d finished my shift, I saw there was no word from Hetty but Elaine had tried to call me. I knew I should call her back, that if she was calling and not texting there must be news, but I wanted to hold out and see Faith first. It was busy on Dundas Street and the sky was yellow where it wasn’t grey-blue. I loved it like that.
I saw Faith waiting at the edge of the mini-amphitheatre before she saw me. She was sitting and watching a mother and child playing near her, and she was smiling. Faith didn’t scroll through her phone when she was out in the world. She liked to take in what was happening around her. I had noticed this and told her I knew it about her. She had been surprised, and genuinely interested to know that this was rare. Most of the people my age I saw around Toronto and Melbourne had their eyes turned down and their hand holding their phones so they could see the screens, despite the glare of the sun they weren’t acknowledging, or the beginning of the dusk they wouldn’t witness. Faith wasn’t like other people.
Before I got to her she looked over and saw me. She smiled even more and I could see she really was glad. I felt sick with relief.
‘Ness,’ she said when I had joined her and we were hugging. She breathed it into my hair and my ear, and it was so instantly mollifying I realised just how much I had needed her these past few weeks.
‘Oh,’ was all I could say for a while, and we stayed close together until I wondered if I was suffocating her and moved away.
She looked excited: flushed cheeks and wisps of hair blowing up against her face. It felt wonderful to be near her again after time apart, and I hoped I didn’t look too tired or dirty. I smiled too, letting the breeze that circled us do its dance. It was important to just be there with Faith, and I tried to let go of my worry about Hetty.
‘How are you?’ Faith asked me, her eyes searching.
‘I’m good. I missed you. I’m okay. But how are you?’
I wanted to say nothing or not very much and just have our eyes looking at each other, but too many words stumbled out. It was so strange to see her after all the thoughts I’d had about her since last time. She seemed hyper-real somehow, and my palms were lightly sweating.
Before she could answer I spoke again. ‘I like your coat.’
She was wearing a loose dark-red trench coat made of a soft, brushed fabric. It made her look even smaller than she usually did, as if she was hiding. I wanted to rub the material against my cheek, my neck.
‘Thank you,’ she said, pulling at the two parts of the collar, bringing it in towards her clavicle. ‘It’s from the Leslieville Value Village.’
‘Ah. Because no one but you would understand this red,’ I said, and pulled her to me again to kiss her forehead. I felt shy around her despite how brief the break between us had been, and I wanted to touch her and kiss her somewhere dim and private.
I pulled away from her and looked at her face, still pink, still shining. ‘Can we go back to yours?’
She shook her head quickly, firmly, and I felt everything inside me drop. I shouldn’t have asked. It was too much. She had never planned to sleep with me again, just wanted to make sure I was okay—to be friends, or something horrific like that.
I heard her sigh slightly. ‘Not today,’ she said. Her eyes were sad.
‘Of course, of course—sorry. I shouldn’t have said that.’
‘No. It’s okay. I just can’t yet.’
‘Of course. You don’t have to explain—’
She took me by my shoulders with her small hands, lightly. ‘I want to, Ness. But I need to know that I can without feeling anxious again.’
‘Anxious?’
I waited and watched her but she didn’t say anything. She was looking at her hands now, and I didn’t want to disturb her.
Around us, people sat or stood against the circle of the amphitheatre. The mother and child had left. There were students a little way around. Two girls, both wearing thick-heeled boots, both smoking long thin cigarettes. I could smell clove in the air.
Finally, Faith looked up at me again. ‘Anxious about Hetty.’
She looked so worried, standing there. I felt a wave of something roll through my body, almost like nostalgia. Hetty. Faith’s idea of Hetty, as a beautiful tall creature dripping with other people’s tears. Swimming the length of a pool filled with blood in a bikini. I wished she knew Hetty the way I did. Knew the pool was actually full of rainwater. She would one day, if I could just behave myself.
‘Oh, Faith. Please don’t be anxious about Hetty—’
She was shaking her head and looking at her hands again. I needed to stop saying Hetty’s name. This wasn’t about her—or maybe it was, but I wanted that part to be over.
‘I understand, though. I do,’ I said.
She looked up and sm
iled.
‘Will we stake out the Korean supermarket for Margaret, then?’
She nodded and laughed, a peal against the dusk that had arrived around us. I took her hand and we turned and started up towards Bloor Street. The sky was pink now, edged with purple.
On Bloor we took a streetcar along to Koreatown. The supermarket was lit up against the dark of the sky, and we walked inside and took a basket each so we could move through the aisles and wait for her without looking like we weren’t planning to buy anything.
I chose a box of biscuit sticks tipped with pink frosting, the front depicting a panda with a smile and a strawberry hat, and gave it to Faith. She solemnly placed it in her basket and nodded, making us both laugh. No one noticed us; the supermarket was big enough. There was a delicate, tinkly song playing on the speakers and the air was crisp.
I was happy to be there, physically and mentally separate from my worries about Hetty. There, under the fluorescent lighting, with tiny Faith in her soft coat, I felt happy and silly. We wouldn’t see Margaret Atwood, because those kinds of things didn’t happen to me, and what would she be buying at this time of the night? I imagined she would have had an early dinner of vegetables and legumes, and would now be writing at her desk, a sprawling mahogany one, maybe with a view of a tree, maybe with a cup of something. No one seemed to shop at this hour, aside from older men who had forgotten to eat. I watched one shuffle past us, his sandals barely lifting off the linoleum floor for each step.
In the noodle aisle we kissed, and Faith moved her hand under my jumper and then my T-shirt to find my stomach skin. I still felt like I became a glow-worm when she touched me. It was delicious and overwhelming, and I wanted to ask if we could go outside and stand beside a shopfront in the dark so we could kiss more and touch more away from the gleam.
I didn’t say anything. I could feel Faith’s body poised to jump away from me if I pushed too hard. She was springy in her shoulders and her eyes were bright.
Cherry Beach Page 13
