Steeplechase

by Krissy Kneen

  I remember the steeplechase. I remember how she told me that horses died, riders died. She said this as she set the jumps for us to hurdle. When a horse fell and broke its legs they would shoot it dead where it was, pointing a gun right at its brain. I remember her saying this.

  ‘No. That was you with the steeplechase.’

  ‘Sure. I set the jumps up but you were the one who did it. I just stood at the edge and watched.’

  That’s not how it was at all. I remember it so vividly it might be yesterday. I remember her winning, and how slow and stupid I felt when I gave up jumping and just stepped over each of the makeshift jumps.

  The drinks arrive in tall frosted glasses, I can smell the alcohol, gin perhaps, a hint of lemon.

  ‘Maybe I did the nutmeg, I don’t remember, but the steeplechase was you.’

  ‘You were pretty brave.’

  ‘I was set upon.’

  She laughs. ‘I was proud when I read about your show.’

  ‘What show?’

  ‘You know, with the posers, Nancy what’s-her-face—’

  ‘Gato.’

  ‘And the paedophile geek-boy.’

  ‘I can’t believe you read about that.’

  ‘Becca, the world is the tiniest little place. In London I bumped into this boy who was in the cage next door to mine for a whole month. What are the odds of that?’

  She turns slow circles around her ear and I am stumped for a moment until I realise she is making the sign for madness. The cage must be the psych unit she was kept in, a locked ward. I hold my glass more firmly. Van Gogh and his ear, Fairweather and his raft, Emily and her hot air balloon.

  ‘So. Was it public art?’

  ‘The dirigible?’

  I nod, although the story I heard was about a hot air balloon made of all of the canvases that were in her hotel room, glued or sewn together. I shudder when I imagine the height she fell from.

  ‘Nah,’ she says. ‘Transportation. But I want to hear about your exhibition. The critics raved about your work. I bet Nancy Thingo was furious. All that hype and bluster. Then someone comes and blows it all away with some great paintings. Did you enjoy yourself?’

  There is a slow thudding in my temples.

  ‘Not really.’

  ‘Well, we’ll have to fix that. This one will be loads of fun. I am so glad you came. I was hoping you would.’

  She holds her glass up and bumps it against mine.

  We talk about art. My art first, which is a surprise. She knows a few of my paintings and I can’t imagine how she managed to see pictures of them at all.

  ‘The internet,’ she says, ‘is an amazing place.’

  We talk about her art. She seems less interested in this.

  ‘No one sees my art anymore,’ she says. ‘They just see my signature on the bottom of the canvas.’ I glance down at the table, refusing to meet her eye.

  In the toilet I feel my shoulders relax a little. A vague pain behind my temple. There is a sign telling me to put my paper in the basket not in the toilet bowl. The basket is full of paper. There is a suspicious smell from inside it, urine and shit and I try not to look too closely inside it to where some of the paper is streaked with blood. The walls are painted a dark red and there is gold writing on them, I wonder if these are more instructions on using the room but it is impossible to know. I throw my toilet paper into the basket with an odd feeling of guilt, even though I am doing exactly as instructed. I can sense my grandmother watching me, not an unfamiliar feeling.

  I rinse my hands at the sink and pat my face, which is sweaty and swollen looking. I look like my sister. We look like my mother. I smile into the mirror and my sister smiles back.

  I breathe deeply, a slight hesitation before opening the door.

  ‘You can’t put the paper in the toilet?’

  ‘Nah. Old sewerage system. Can’t even do a shit in some pubs. There’s this one place that has a sieve in the bowl and a sign that says You shit you pay. They’ll charge you, too.’

  ‘That’s crazy.’

  She leans in close to me and I can smell her perfume, woody, musky, expensive probably. ‘If anyone’s afraid that China’s going to take over the world,’ she says, ‘they’d better think again. No country can be a superpower till they get their sanitation under control.’

  I laugh. She grins. She settles back in her seat and just as I feel myself relaxing she begins to ask about home.

  ‘I visit Oma sometimes,’ I tell her.

  Her face is noncommittal. ‘Does she even know you’re there?’

  ‘Yes. She does. She can’t really speak.’

  ‘Nice place?’

  ‘Public health. Okay I suppose. They have a garden.’

  ‘You were always a good girl.’ She sucks down the last of her cocktail and turns towards the bar. She puts two fingers in the air, an impolite sign or just the number of cocktails she is ordering.

  Isabel says, ‘Coming up.’

  ‘Becca the good sister.’ And I don’t know if she is being nasty or just stating a fact.

  ‘Hard job,’ I tell her. ‘Someone’s got to do it.’

  ‘That’s what Raphael says. And anyway, you do it with such style.’

  The drinks arrive and I take a large sip of mine as she launches into a monologue about the other artists in the group exhibition. Raphael says. I want to wind her back, lay those two words out on the table as a valuer might lay out diamonds, holding them up to the light, hunting out imperfections with a magnifying glass. My mouth is sealed and I just nod and nod and when she says ‘—don’t you think?’ I can think of nothing to say to her at all.

  ‘I’m pretty tired,’ I say instead.

  ‘First time overseas for you.’

  And how does she know that? How does she know so much about me?

  She downs the last of her cocktail. Mine is already empty.

  ‘I want to pay my way when I’m here.’

  She shrugs, ‘I know how much you earn.’

  ‘How? How do you know that?’

  ‘We’re sisters aren’t we?’ and she slides the money across the counter before I can protest any more.

  It is nice riding in the dark. It is hot still, but the edge has worn off the day. A slight breeze lifts my hair away from my neck.

  We turn a corner. There is a flash of light. Fire, flame. Some small wisp of brightness drifting skywards. I slow down to see a woman and a man squatting, they hold a match to something and it burns between their fingers, lifting off into the air. I glance behind me, the bike swaying, just a little snatch of fire drifting upwards and the couple watch it as it burns away to darkness. I look to my sister, a bright beacon, and in her wake I will not be lost.

  Her flat is still tiny. We lock the bikes together in the courtyard and then we are inside where it seems I have nowhere to stand while she puts the kettle on and begins to make tea.

  ‘It’s really good to see you,’ she says. ‘I should have called you sooner. I’ve spent all this time thinking you probably wouldn’t want to see me ever again and then here you are.’

  I sink into one of the lounge chairs. My feet don’t quite touch the ground and I would love to tuck them up under me but the chair is white and even in my socks I might mess it up somehow. She puts a cup of tea down on the table beside me. White with one. Like my grandmother, she knows almost everything about me; but not quite.

  ‘There’s only one bed.’ She nods towards the staircase, so steep that it is almost a ladder. ‘We’ll have to be in the same bed. Is that a problem?’

  ‘No.’

  The tea is too strong. She used to know exactly how I like my tea. I suppose that was years ago. I hold the cup to my face and the steam curls up to my sweat-slicked skin. Our grandmother used to say that hot drinks on hot days cool you down.

  ‘I could have bought an extra mattress…’

  ‘No, it’s okay. Same bed is fine.’

  ‘I might have a shower first if that’s okay.’

/>   ‘Of course.’

  ‘Really. It’s great to have you here.’

  ‘Thanks. It’s good to be here. Honestly.’

  She takes a step towards me and for a moment I think she might kiss me on the lips or hug me, or even stroke my hair. Instead she takes the cup from my hands even though there is still an inch of dark hot liquid in the bottom of it.

  In the doorway to the bathroom she stops and turns to me. ‘Oh,’ she says, ‘don’t rinse your toothbrush under the tap okay? It’s easy to forget how toxic the water is.’

  ‘Oh. I think I did that before.’

  ‘Really?’ she shrugs. ‘Ah well.’ And then she shuts the door behind her and I hear the sound of the shower turning on.

  It is a long time before I can sleep. It is the heat of course but it is also Emily, lying so still it seems impossible that she is sleeping. I remember lying on my side and watching her, the still, stone statue of her, the sheer weight of her sleep. I am jittery like I used to be. I can’t settle. I realise I am waiting. There is that whirlpool in the pit of my stomach. She smells clean, like hand cream, almond milk perhaps. My eyes are closed but she is there. I can feel her, the heat off her. I kick the sheets off my shoulder and sigh. Outside there is the sound of traffic, bells, car horns, a restless city standing vigil with me.

  I wake to the feeling of her hand on my knee. I can’t believe I managed to find sleep at all but now I am awake and the palm of her hand is touching my knee and my body is humming with the heat of it. I open my eyes but hers are closed. She is asleep of course. She has rolled over in her sleep and her hand has fallen onto my skin and she does not even know. I hold as still as I can. My leg is shaking a little. When she rolls the other way the loss of her touch is an unexpected disappointment.

  Sick in Beijing

  I am sick. I open my eyes and I know it instantly. I suppose it was something we ate, but I can hear my sister shuffling around in the next room and she sounds well enough. The bedside clock glows with the numbers 3:00. Early morning then, and Emily up and stretching canvases by the sound of it. A waft of oil paint and I think I might throw up.

  I miss John, a brief stab in the chest, but now I have to get to the toilet and even the act of sitting up unsettles the world as if it were a boat. I cling to the edge of the bed, one hand on my stomach. I am seasick, but worse. I hurl myself at the door, but there are the tall stairs which might as well be a ladder and I turn and ease myself down them stair by painful stair. I am a balloon and there is too much helium inside me. I am floating and stretching and I am afraid that I might burst before I get to the bottom of the stairwell.

  When I emerge from the bathroom my sister is standing in the lounge room with her hand on her hip. She almost glows with her own good health. She is wearing makeup. Her face is a flawless mask of powder and paint. Her hair is carefully pulled back and pinned. She is wearing a red tunic over black trousers. Red suits her. I suddenly see again the great beauty that she was. She smells of linseed oil and even this, one of my favourite smells, is making me want to vomit again.

  ‘See? You washed your toothbrush under the tap.’

  ‘I thought it might have been what we ate.’

  ‘You can’t touch the water. Don’t open your mouth in the shower, don’t let a drip of it remain in the bottom of your glass when you rinse it. You should boil the water before you wash the dishes.’

  ‘Okay.’

  ‘Breakfast?’

  ‘It’s 3am.’

  She stares at me, sizing me up.

  ‘Dry toast and tea? We’re up anyway.’

  ‘Maybe.’

  She turns towards the tiny kitchenette, fills the kettle from the plastic drum of water and sets it on the stove. I am damp. My shirt is soaked in sweat. My skin is slick with it. I sink into one of her white couches and it is just like it always was, I am messing her place up, even my skin on her couch is causing damage. I remember the line stretching from one side of the room to the other, the chaos held back by a simple strip of duct tape like a force field. I am in her space now.

  ‘You’re not going to throw up on my couch are you?’

  ‘I hope not.’

  ‘Well don’t.’

  I stare at the bathroom door. I will launch myself towards it at the slightest indication. The smell of the bread toasting is a comfort. Maybe I am hungry. Maybe it will just be the one time and it is out of my system for good.

  ‘Raphael says I should put a skull and cross bones on the tap so that you remember not to go near the water.’

  ‘Emily…’

  She brings me a plate, dry toast, and it does look good.

  ‘Hmm?’

  She sits cross-legged in the other couch and catches the crumbs on the plate raised under her chin.

  ‘Thanks for the toast,’ I tell her.

  ‘I’ve got to go out.’ She licks the butter off her fingers.

  ‘It’s dark outside.’

  ‘Did that ever stop you and Raphael?’

  I put my head in my hand. ‘Emily. Can you hear yourself?’

  She leaps forward and hits the plate from my hand. I flinch. The plate crashes to the tiles. Shards of it slide under the chairs. She stares at the pieces of crockery on the ground.

  ‘Don’t bother to thank me.’ The door slams closed behind her and I hear her rattling the bicycles. She has taken nothing, no purse, no handbag.

  It is dark outside but there is still the sound of traffic.

  I am overcome by a wave of nausea and hold onto the arms of the lounge chair till it passes. In the bathroom the wall of the shower cubicle is a gaping hole with a frame of shattered glass. I wonder again what might have happened. How long has she been like this?

  I find a dustpan and brush under the sink and tie the shards of plate in a plastic bag. I do remember. I suppose I will never be free from memory. I drag myself up the too-steep staircase, hand over hand, only realising when I have settled into bed, that I should have looked for a bucket.

  There is a glass of water on my sister’s side of the bed. I reach for it, sip. I put the glass down beside the packet of tablets. Clozapine. The tablets are in a blister pack with the days of the week beside each one. The packet is pristine. None of the little capsules have been popped. I shake one of the packets and hear the delicate rattle like a snake ready to leap up and bite me.

  Van Gogh with his ear. Ian Fairweather with his raft. Emily Reich and her dirigible although I always thought it was supposed to be a balloon. All I know is that it didn’t really fly.

  I suppose it is the madness that lends her greatness. I suppose that she needs her madness now when she is getting ready for such a big exhibition. The memory of my own recent failure in the art world comes back at me suddenly like a splinter, forgotten, then knocked against a wall. I never read the review Emily was talking about but I can’t see how it could have been so favourable.

  I lie back on my side of the bed. I am exhausted and I can feel myself falling back into sleep. I look at the clock. 3.45. What does my sister do in Beijing at 3.45am? Opium dens? Cock fights, illegal gambling? None of these would be surprising.

  Rain

  My grandmother rarely listens to the radio. Natural disasters make her suddenly interested in the world outside the house.

  There was another time, a flood, the road cut off and a warning that the town, which is on a flood plain, might be evacuated. My grandmother refused to be moved. She talked to our mother although my mother could not talk back. She talked and my mother began to smile as if she recognised the sound of our grandmother’s voice and was pleased to be consulted. I listened as our grandmother came to the same idea again and again. We would not be evacuated. We would stand our ground. My grandmother dragged a ladder into the house and magically a trap door appeared in the ceiling that had never been there before. I followed her up into the loft. A hot crawl space and the sound of the rain like horses galloping across the roof.

  Her torch lit up a horror show of cobweb
s, broken toys, boxes labelled books and papers and tax. A furry arm protruded from a garbage bag. I scratched at the plastic till the hole was large enough to rescue the stuffed rabbit. A vague memory, the rabbit, clean and alert on a pink pillow. My pillow? My sister’s? I put the rabbit under my arm and my grandmother tutted at me.

  ‘Bec, drop it. That’s full of dust mites.’

  I dropped the rabbit and brushed the invisible mites from my clothes. My scalp began to itch, irritated by the idea.

  ‘It’s okay,’ I said. ‘I don’t want it anyway.’

  The lights from the torch swung in wild arcs into the far corners of the roof.

  ‘What are you searching for?’

  ‘Snakes,’ she told me, and then she laughed. ‘We won’t want snakes up here if we have to sleep in the roof.’

  ‘Why do we have to sleep in the roof?’

  ‘Go back down, Bec,’ my grandmother said in her speaking-to-the-dogs voice, but I was already balancing on the top step of the ladder. I am not especially frightened of snakes but the thought of them up there somewhere in the dark made me uneasy.

  That last time when it flooded, I watched as she packed other people’s paintings into wooden crates. One of the paintings was of a woman without clothes on. Oma rarely let us see the paintings because they were too precious to hold up in the light. Something about the woman’s body made me uncomfortable, the sleepy abandoned pose, the slight parting of her fleshy legs, the way her breasts drooped heavy and low. I stared at the painting and began to feel a little upset in the stomach but also kind of warm and like I wanted to fall down sleeping too. The naked woman in the painting had that effect on me, like Dorothy walking through the field of poppies, barely able to hold up her head. I wanted to lie down in the same open-limbed way, cup one of my tiny breasts in my hand, just like the woman was doing.

  Oma put the painting gently in its crate. She made me hold the plastic in place as she pushed the staple gun down hard, wrapping the paintings in a waterproof layer. It was not enough, of course. Even with the wooden crates and the plastic and storing them in the roof, they would still be ruined if the flood waters got up high enough. We would be ruined. Each one of these paintings was worth more than we could ever earn in all our lifetimes. These are the most important things in the house she told us, and I glanced towards our mother, standing at the window, staring out as if she were measuring the rain, counting the drops one by one. I wondered how I would protect Emily from the flood. I imagined pinning her down, wrapping her in plastic, storing her in the roof with the priceless paintings. I remember thinking that just this once my grandmother was completely wrong.