Steeplechase

by Krissy Kneen

  I let her hold me. I close my eyes and clench my bowels despite the pain. I breathe through my mouth. When she is done she pushes herself up, using my shoulders. I keep my head bowed and my eyes closed and only open them when I hear her shuffling steps disappear out the entryway. And then I feel the embarrassing hot rush from my own bowels. It is some relief but I find that I am crying anyway. There is only a handful of days till the exhibition opening and then I will leave. I will go home and never accept an offer from Emily ever again.

  I lean the bicycle against hers. It takes up all the courtyard. I have to sidestep the bikes to reach the door. There is something slipped under it, a letter. I recognise the handwriting because I have marked enough of his exam papers. He has tiny writing, the g is old fashioned, looping back on itself. He has a neat script and it is easy to read his name printed on the back.

  I open the door and sit at the small table, rushing to open the envelope, tearing it, wrestling the paper out and onto the flat surface in front of me.

  Inside John has written a short letter.

  Dear B

  I find that I am missing you very much. It is a shame you left exactly when you did. There was no time for a reconciliation. I have regrets. I think you do too. Classes are not the same without you, Old Paddy makes us do cut and paste like in kindergarten. Collage he calls it. What is this? The seventies?

  Anyway, I walked past your place the other day and noticed that your jasmine was drooping. There has been no rain. I came back with a jug of water and now your jasmine and I have become great friends. She opened some flowers for me the other day. I enclose one here. I do hope the inclusion of this bud does not mean we have trouble with customs.

  I hope you are enjoying your time with your sister. I hope you don’t mind that I tracked down her current address. The internet is an amazing thing is it not?

  I hope to see you on your return. I miss you greatly. I have already mentioned this but it is worth repeating.

  Regards,

  J

  I fold the letter and put it in my pocket. I feel slightly better now. Still light-headed, still dizzy. Collage. The thought of it makes me smile, and the way he would say it, what is this? The seventies? He writes exactly as he speaks. Another one of his endearing qualities. I take the letter out of my pocket again. I read. His voice in my head. His clear, unique voice. I want him to be here. I want him to be sitting at the table with me, joking, lightening the mood. His cheerfulness protects me. I hold the letter to my nose. Sniff the paper. There is no trace of the scent of him at all. It smells like paper and perhaps a hint of dust, and I am strangely disappointed.

  Incantation

  We sit at the table and wait for Emily. Oma has her binoculars by her plate. She stands once again and moves to the window. She stares out into the growing dark. There is nothing to see. The rain alone would be enough to obscure the fenceline. Our mother seems agitated. She stands, and Oma grabs at her elbow, pushes her roughly back down to her seat. She opens the pot steaming on the stove and there is a deep rich smell of cardamon, basil, onions. She dips the ladle and scoops up the vegetable stew and slops it onto the plate in front of mother, who picks up the spoon and stares at it as if she has never seen one before.

  I know how she feels. Dinner is ridiculous. Emily is still outside somewhere in the dark and here we are sitting down as if everything is ordinary. I chew at a mouthful of the stuff. Everything tastes like this, the same spices every night, the same vegetables, pumpkin, carrot, celery. I put my spoon back on my plate and chew until there is nothing I can do but swallow. The food is all in a lump. I feel it travelling too slowly down my oesophagus. I feel it stopping, swallow several times in an attempt to get it down. Just this one mouthful is a struggle. I look at the pile still on my plate. I glance out the window. It is almost completely dark. There is no moon. Rain is a blanket between us and the sky.

  ‘May I be excused for a moment Oma?’

  She frowns. She was already frowning, her head tipped in the direction of the window as if waiting for something to appear in it, some spectre of my sister, pressing her hands against the glass.

  ‘Why?’

  ‘To use the bathroom?’

  I do not need to use the bathroom, but I need a moment to myself before I attempt another spoonful of food.

  She nods. Pushes her own food around on her plate as if the whole pot is spoiled. I shove my chair back and walk down the corridor to the bathroom. It feels like the house is a boat. I touch the wall lightly with my fingers for balance. The world is on a tilt but I am not sure which way it is tilting. It feels like the brushing of my fingertips against the faded paint is the only thing keeping me upright. The close walls of the toilet are a relief. I can lean one way and the cool wall is there to meet my shoulder. The other side is equally close, and if I lean forward far enough I feel the top of my head brush comfortingly against the door. I have been alone with a boy and Flame is dead and my sister is missing and nothing will ever be the same again.

  I lean far enough forward to push the top of my skull against the door. I reach out with my elbows and press against the walls. Blood thuds in my head. Blood rushes to my face. I feel dizzy but there is an odd calmness in this feeling of suspended motion. Perhaps I can just sit here and do nothing for a while.

  John and Raphael

  When Emily does not return I wander back to the little café down the road. The waitress seems to remember me, although perhaps she is just over-friendly to any middle-aged western woman. I suppose we all look kind of the same.

  I have his number on my phone. The phone itself is dutifully unlocked for overseas calls. If you need me for anything. Ed raised an eyebrow. Go, Bec. Go. The university won’t fall down without you.

  It is a simple thing to call his number, adding the appropriate prefix. I could ask him about the jasmine.

  I dial and the ring tone is unfamiliar, a reminder of the distance between us. Even his voice seems far away, shrouded in static. It reminds me of the voice I dug out of the silence between the disconnected tones. It reminds me of Raphael. John is real, I remind myself. Raphael is not.

  ‘Hey.’

  And I say, ‘Hi.’ There seems to be a delay, but when his voice comes it is a sweet solid thing.

  ‘Nee how,’ he says. ‘That’s hello isn’t it?’

  ‘I think so.’

  ‘I’ve been practising in case you decided to call me. Invite me to run away with you to China. I assume that’s why you’re calling me now?’

  ‘Sure it is,’ I tell him. And then, ‘Actually I’m just checking on my jasmine.’

  ‘Oh.’ The delay is thick with all the miles between us. ‘Really?’

  ‘Maybe. I just got your letter.’

  ‘I like letters. Don’t you? Better than emails, except you have to wait a while.’

  ‘Unless you send them priority post.’

  ‘Yeah. It is kind of expensive but if I sent it regular mail you would be home before it arrived.’

  ‘It was a nice touch. Despite the expense. Thank you.’

  ‘My plane ticket will be more expensive. I might have to borrow some money from my mother.’

  ‘Well, don’t go borrowing it just yet.’

  ‘That’s a shame. I was hoping this would turn out to be that call. I’ve been poised for it, you could say.’ I smile. This banter is normal. John is normal. This is the world I have come from and the one that I will return to afterwards.

  ‘My sister’s a bit crazy,’ I tell him.

  ‘Oh really? Emily Reich is crazy? You should tell the media about that. Stop the presses.’

  ‘Yeah, okay.’

  ‘Your sister is a schizophrenic, Bec.’

  ‘I know.’

  ‘So does everyone. Women’s Weekly knows that, Channel Nine News. Basically everyone in the western world knows that. Maybe half of China by now.’

  ‘I suppose I’d forgotten.’

  ‘Are you okay though? She hasn’t hurt you?
’

  ‘No. She hasn’t.’

  ‘Cause I am not joking. My mum will be happy to buy me a ticket. I can be there in twenty-four hours—except waiting for the visa. God, how long did that take? Ages.’

  ‘I’m fine.’

  ‘It’s no problem. I would love to come to China.’

  ‘So you can see Emily Reich?’

  ‘No,’ and then a little pause. I can hear him breathing, a real live person breathing. ‘To see you actually.’

  My turn to pause, my turn to breathe into the phone. His turn to listen to my breath grow heavy with worry.

  ‘John.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Did you have an imaginary friend as a kid? Someone you really believed in?’

  ‘No. But I jumped off the roof of a car once because I thought I could fly.’

  ‘What happened?’

  ‘I fell down.’

  ‘Did you hurt yourself?’

  ‘Of course I did. Bec, is there something wrong? Because if Emily hurts you I am going to come over and kill her. And then I’ll steal all her paintings and flog them off on the black market and be really rich and marry you and live happily ever after.’

  I should be laughing; would be if it wasn’t for Raphael.

  Raphael is all grown up now. He is a flesh and blood man settling down on the chair across from me.

  ‘Hello?’

  Too long a pause this time I suppose, but I open my mouth to reassure John and find that I am lost for words.

  ‘Bec?’

  ‘John.’ A thin sound summoned from the sudden void in my chest.

  ‘Seriously, I am hours away. Should I hit Mum up? She’ll be so cool with it. If I tell her I have a girlfriend she’ll mortgage her house for joy.’

  ‘No, John. It’s fine. I’ll call you later.’

  ‘You better.’

  ‘I will.’

  ‘Bec?’

  Raphael reaches out a hand and touches mine. His hand is warm and real. John’s voice is a little distant thing on the end of a bad line, barely audible at all as he tells me, ‘I love you Bec. I really do. I miss you a lot.’

  ‘Okay,’ I say, and then, hurriedly, ‘Bye.’

  Raphael is here at the table with me. He turns and with his free hand, the one that isn’t slipping his fingers between mine, he waves to a waitress. She sees him. She can see him. Raphael speaks to her in Mandarin and she nods.

  ‘She can see you.’

  He grins. ‘Of course. I’m not invisible.’

  He holds my fingers between both of his hands. He strokes the inside of my palm.

  ‘I missed you Bec,’ he says.

  ‘But you aren’t real.’

  ‘Aren’t I?’

  The waitress puts two glasses on the table. I watch as he takes money out of his pocket, places it in her hand. He says something to her and she laughs. I look down to where the glasses are sweating on the table. I can smell gin. My stomach twists against itself. ‘You are an illusion,’ I tell him when the waitress is gone. ‘You are imaginary.’

  He shrugs.

  I put my hands over my eyes and begin to count down from twenty. I know how to do this, but I haven’t done it for years.

  ‘What if I’m not imaginary? Isn’t there even some potential for doubt?’

  ‘Seventeen, sixteen.’

  ‘What if I followed Emily here to China? Have been following her since that night in the barn?’

  ‘Eight, seven.’

  I keep my eyes closed and my hands over my ears till the sequence of numbers is complete. He is a product of my own doubt. I must be strong in the knowledge that he will have disappeared. I am cured. I know what is real and what is imagined.

  He is gone, of course, but his glass is still there on the table. I pick it up and turn it in my hand. A lip print on the glass. I wonder how I managed to magic that up. Did I drink from both glasses? Am I so hell bent on this self-deception?

  When the waitress passes I hold my hand up and she pauses, smiles, hurries to my table.

  ‘Hello, how are you today?’ She is sweet and bright and pretty. John would like her, I suspect.

  ‘Did you see the man who was here?’

  She seems concerned. Her brow furrows.

  ‘You like to order?’

  ‘No. Did you see a man here with me?’

  ‘I am sorry.’

  I point to the other glass, the lip print, the water sweating down the side and pooling at the base.

  ‘Man,’ I say, miming a beard although Raphael was clean shaven.

  ‘I am sorry,’ she says, and I nod.

  ‘Drink?’ she asks. I shake my head. Two drinks are more than enough for me. I sip at his glass, Raphael’s glass, although it isn’t his glass at all. I expect the alcohol will make me feel worse, but the gin settles quietly into my body. A slight numbness. A pleasant relief.

  My phone buzzes and for a moment I know that it will be Raphael. It is John, of course. I click through to the message. I just said ‘I love you’, in case you missed it. Don’t know what I expected to happen. An earthquake? The end of the world? Instead it feels normal. Ordinary. Because it is true I suppose. You don’t have to love me back, by the way. Just thought you should know.—PS It took me 8.5 mins to compose this text message—should have taken 30 secs.

  Sweet John. I close my fingers over the phone. It feels hot in my hand. I finish the last of Raphael’s drink and push the glass away from me. I clutch the phone closer to my chest and the heat of it is comforting as I start to drink the second glass of gin.

  Confessions

  I crawl into bed and drag the thin sheet up over my head. The heat hasn’t let up. I scratch at my ankle. There are red welts there, some fungal infection from the sweat trapped under my sock. I am tired of waiting for my sister to return. Tomorrow I will find my own way to Tiananmen Square, the Summer Palace, the Forbidden City. Even if I am ill I will find my way there slowly. Stopping when I need to. I will take the bicycle. I have three more days in Beijing and then I will have to return home.

  I turn over onto my side, shift again, there is no breeze and it’s impossible to settle. The sheets are already soaked in sweat. There will be no sleep. I feel the rough carpet under my feet. I open her top drawer. Her clothes are neatly folded, they smell lightly of lavender. I am ambushed by an odd sense of longing and, surprisingly, a sudden urge to paint.

  Her studio is the only other room in the house. The smell seeps out above the closed door and when I turn the light on in the hall I can see that there is no wall above it, just a rent in the wall, an odd rough-edged space. It is as if she tore that part of the wall free with a hammer and perhaps she did. The paintings she has made for me seem too large to fit through an ordinary doorway. I can imagine Emily tearing the plasterboard free with her bare hands. Strange to find the door open. Our grandmother used to lock her studio when she left it and somehow I expected Emily would do the same.

  Linseed oil, turps, paint. This is where I come from. The smell of the womb. If you cut a vein our blood would spill out alizarin crimson, cobalt blue. The colours of our tiny cloistered world. There are lines on the walls, dry paint where paintings were leaning against them until recently. When she was a child my sister would never spill out over the edges of a work. In this way she has become more like me. I trace a damp umber line, rubbing the pigment between my fingers. My own studio is similarly scarred by lines of errant paint.

  There are stretched canvases resting in a bundle. Pristine, primed. I wonder if she still stretches them herself. Good craft right from the beginning. I touch the smartly stapled edge of the fabric, the stiff sealed surface. The work of an expert. My sister’s work.

  The brushes have been carefully cleaned and oiled and wrapped in a slightly damp tea towel. I unwrap them and bring the tips of the bundle to my nose. So beautifully soft. Softer than the brushes I can afford. Only the best. The paints are carefully sealed and ordered in their box, from the deepest colours, black, blue
s, browns, to the lightest whites.

  I uncap a deep rich brown and squeeze a worm of it onto the palette she has left there, resting on the table with the rest of her equipment. I take a canvas and turn it and rest it against the wall. I sit, cross-legged as I used to sit when I was a child. I feel the shift of focus in my eyes, my vision switching from the room to a place somewhere near infinity. I take a deep breath heady with the scent of colour. And I start to paint.

  My hands smell of oil. I hold my fingers to my nose and the smell is calming, almost as pleasant as a lullaby. The scent of viridian—a day inching towards evening after rain—cadmium red—the picked clean salt-bone scent of some remnant of sea life. His hair is bleached blonde like a skeleton plucked from the ocean. His eyes are like algae. I let my eyes re-focus on the canvas and there he is, Raphael. The painting is nowhere near complete, but the face is particularly well realised, the eyes. The eyes are exactly right.

  ‘You haven’t captured the line of my jaw.’

  He is there behind me. He is a shadow at first, a lean, a sharp jut of shoulder. He steps forward into the light from the lamp and there are the eyes from my painting. I have a creeping feeling that if I turn around now the canvas will be blank, just a smudge of background colour and a white space in the shape of a person. He is here in person. I am struck again by how physical he is. The air moves when he does, there is a stirring when he raises his arm and points. I remember how his lips felt against mine. The physical representation of a shared madness, a folie à deux.

  ‘You are not real.’ This is the mantra. I have learned it by heart. I now know what I must say, If he ever comes back, close your eyes and tell him he is not real. He is your sister’s imaginary friend. Count back from twenty. He will disappear.