Like I Can Love

by Kim Lock

  Fairlie feels nothing as she pulls into the gravel drive, the tyres crunching as she gazes up at the house that has been like a second home to her for almost her entire life. Inside, she will smell the familiar scent of stone and memories, a century of life whispering from the walls adorned with so many photographs of Jenna.

  But when she finally steps from her car, and slams the door, and hears the birds twittering in the wattle where she knows she will find a littering of rusted, forgotten Matchbox cars if she digs in the steel-coloured sand at its shallow roots, she feels a surge of nervous anger in her chest. When she swallows, it tastes coppery.

  At the top step, the front door is open.

  For a moment the two women stare at each other. Fairlie takes in the face of Evelyn Francis, once almost as familiar as her own mother’s, now framed with silvering hair tucked behind an elegant neck. Red knitted cardigan drawn tight across narrow shoulders, bird-like arms. The rise of proud cheekbones, the confident jut of a slender chin. Evelyn is a projection of intelligence, of shrewdness, but there’s a disguised depth to her gaze and a filtered note in her voice suggestive of a hidden backlight, an inner glow. All of this is carefully controlled, perfectly balanced. Fairlie realises she has never considered Evelyn as flawed or fallible or capable of mistakes in any way.

  Sweet Jesus, Fairlie thinks, how things change in a heartbeat. Is this what happened to Jenna four years ago? Is this how she had felt – as though the earth had begun to spin backwards?

  ‘Fro Winter,’ Evelyn says. Her voice is unchanged, and as its calm, assertive melody drifts across the verandah, something inside Fairlie jolts.

  ‘Evvie,’ she says.

  Evelyn watches her. ‘It’s okay,’ she says with a dry smile. ‘I know it’s been a while, but loyalties lie where they will. So,’ she says, her spine lengthening. ‘You’re here. Come in.’

  The hallway is dimly lit. Slate tiles covered with a Persian hall-runner of maroons and ochres, worn dull with footfalls. There, a few steps in from the door, is the small scorch mark that Jenna had made with a dropped candle when she was ten years old.

  ‘I’d like to say “what brings you here”, but it sounds boringly clichéd, don’t you think?’ the older woman says as they enter the kitchen.

  Fairlie doesn’t know how to respond.

  ‘There’s no need to stand there like a visitor.’ Evelyn gestures to the table, bare apart from a pair of knitting needles and a ball of red yarn, what looks like a half-finished scarf.

  ‘Can I offer you tea?’

  Nausea washes over Fairlie and she feels at once exhausted and beyond frustrated. Sure, I’d love some tea. By the way, Jenna killed herself and left me a note and lo and behold we’re actually twin sisters. Which means you’re my mother. What the actual fuck? But an Earl Grey would be ace.

  ‘Sure,’ Fairlie croaks. ‘Tea. Super.’

  Evelyn fills the kettle; glasses clink in the sink with the sound of rushing water and it’s all maddening to Fairlie. She finds herself looking at the photographs atop an antique buffet running the length of the far wall. A dozen small, framed images aim towards the centre of the room. One is a photograph of Jenna as a toddler, grinning widely, her chubby cheeks flushed pink as she holds her hands together under her chin, cupped around a pink camellia bloom. In another photograph, Jenna is older, in her late teens, her arm slung casually around Fairlie’s shoulder. Their faces are close to the camera, both smiling with the blithe indulgence of adolescence.

  Everything is different. Everything. Oh, my God.

  There is a picture of Henry as a newborn. But it isn’t a photograph – it’s a clipping from The Border Watch. The local paper had run a short story after Henry’s birth on the success of a regional vigneron, now staring a family. arkacres ­celebrates new drop the cheesy headline read.

  Evelyn sets a teapot on the table and sits down, lacing thin fingers beneath her chin. ‘So,’ she says.

  Fairlie picks up her cup. It’s empty. She sets it back down. A pause bloats between them, heavy and electric. Fairlie says, ‘Jenna left me a note.’

  Evelyn watches her, says nothing.

  ‘There was a key with the note.’

  Evelyn pours tea; Fairlie’s first, then her own. Perfectly composed, she asks, ‘A note? What does it say?’

  Fairlie watches the curlicues of steam from her cup. ‘The key is to a self-storage unit, just up on Bay Road. It’s a budget, dodgy place,’ she adds, as though that somehow matters.

  Evelyn blanches. She reaches for her cup but her fingers tremble and tea sloshes into the saucer. She blots it up with a tissue.

  ‘You know what?’ Fairlie says, brightly. ‘Excuse me a sec. I’ll be right back.’ She slides from her chair and hurries down the hall, out into the afternoon. A clammy, lukewarm breeze pushes her hair around her face as she strides to the car.

  Clutching Jenna’s She’s Apples box to her chest, she returns to Evelyn, who waits serenely in the kitchen.

  ‘Here.’ Fairlie drops the box on the bench. It thunks onto the laminex with the harsh, undeniable snap of a bomb bay door dropping open. Everything surrounding it would be altered. Evelyn stares into the box, her hands clasped at her chest.

  ‘I suppose there’s some things,’ Fairlie says, her tone loaded, ‘that we need to discuss.’ One by one she lifts the items out: jewellery box, folder of birth certificates, the A4 envelope as yet unopened by Fairlie.

  Propping her hands on the countertop, Fairlie fixes Evelyn with a hard stare. There isn’t anything more she needs to say.

  Just like Fairlie did, Evelyn first picks up the jewellery box. She opens it and falls still.

  Briefly, Evelyn’s shoulders hitch. With the tips of her fingers she strokes the ankle bands; the demonstration is exquisitely tender, as though the bands are made of delicate silk threads.

  ‘Well,’ she says softly. ‘I suppose now you know.’

  ‘Now I know?’ Fairlie fumes. ‘Know what, exactly? Evelyn, is this legit?’ Fairlie snatches up the manila folder and waves the birth certificates in the older woman’s startled face. ‘Because if it means what I think it means . . .’ She can’t finish.

  ‘Fro, I’m so sorry you had to find out this way.’ Evelyn gathers the identity bands into one hand and shows them to Fairlie on an extended palm. ‘Two of these were Jenna’s.’

  So it’s true. It’s true. And Fairlie can’t bear it.

  ‘And the other two . . .’

  ‘They’re yours.’

  *

  The whiskey burns away the lump in Fairlie’s throat. They’ve moved into the lounge room. Abandoned the tea. A bottle of Johnnie Walker Blue sits on the coffee table. Fairlie grips an empty tumbler and stares at the bottle.

  Evelyn glances at her hands. ‘It should never have gotten to this,’ she says. ‘If I had known she was struggling so much . . .’ Jenna’s mother closes her eyes, coming as close to tears as Fairlie has ever seen her. ‘Oh, Jenna. Henry. I’m sorry.’

  Fairlie swills her drink. ‘All these years,’ she says, not quite trusting the sound of her voice. ‘All these years and no one said a thing.’ It doesn’t sink in, floating like oily murk on a pool of water. ‘Those birth certificates – they’re actually real? You’re my . . . and I’m your . . .’

  Evelyn nods. ‘And Jenna is your sister. Your twin.’

  ‘But . . .’ In her mind’s eye Fairlie conjures Jenna: milky-skinned, lithe and gangly, impossibly round blue eyes behind that straight dark fringe; and then Fairlie looks down at her own bare arms, her corpulence deflating into the couch, nutty-brown skin and thick fingers. She pats the explosion of curls atop her head. A memory of the two of them as teenagers skims across her mind: Jenna striking poses in shop windows, Fairlie admiring Jenna’s reflection while consciously avoiding her own.

  ‘How?’ Fairlie says weakly.

  ‘
You read that article,’ Evelyn says. ‘About mixed race twins.’

  ‘I did. But I don’t understand.’

  ‘Well.’ Evelyn drops her eyes, clears her throat. ‘When two eggs are released, and two different men –’

  ‘I understand the mechanics, Evvie,’ Fairlie breaks in, holding up a palm. ‘I just don’t understand anything else. How. The situation.’ Her jaw aches. ‘My mother – what about my mother? I assume she knows?’

  Evelyn nods. ‘Yes. Of course she does.’

  Fairlie opens her mouth, closes it again.

  ‘I tried,’ Evelyn says softly. ‘I tried so hard. For six months. I was desperate to make it work.’

  ‘But it didn’t.’

  ‘No.’ Evelyn looks at the bottle on the coffee table. ‘It didn’t.’

  ‘Bloody hell.’ Fairlie takes a drink, winces, sloshes in more whiskey. ‘Bloody hell.’ She huffs out a long, trembling breath. ‘All right then. You’d better tell me what happened. And I mean all of it. You’ve got twenty-six years worth of explaining to do, Evelyn. I want to know. You owe it to me. And you owe it to Jenna.’

  So Evelyn begins to talk.

  Dear Jenna,

  On the night it would all change, I slurred awake to a velvety black and the sound of the wind howling at the window panes. There was a snap of lightning, the crash of thunder, the shudder of the glass and then – your shrieks carried into the room.

  My body felt swampy and leaden as I sat up. What time was it? Almost 3 am. Only ninety minutes ago, I’d been up attending to you. Again. Alongside me, Stephen muttered something incoherent and I stifled a broad wave of resentment as the temporary, sleep-induced blindness slunk off and reality came rushing back: hurt. Exile. Pattie. Him. In hospital, pumped full of painkillers and antibiotics as his body lay bruised and torn, his bones broken, all because of my selfishness, my lust and greed and petulant inability to understand reality.

  The years-long depth of Pattie’s suffering, alone and in silence, as her longing to create life dripped from between her legs month after month in bloody waste.

  And here: me. Crippling shame.

  I was tired. I was tired of waiting for Stephen to hate me, and I exhausted myself waiting to hate him. Because I couldn’t, Jenna – I didn’t hate him. Instead, I loved him and it shackled me. Sleep deprived, yes; tired of running alone after the babies all day, yes; but most unbearably I was tired of upholding all the lies, tired of using the walls of my house to hold off the weight of the world.

  In the nursery, I lifted you from the cot but you refused to be placated; you stiffened in my arms, face screwed into a furious knot. I pulled aside my gown but you turned away, little beast, refusing the comfort of my breast.

  A whimper sounded from the other cot. I stilled, my attention refocusing. The other whimper grew, rolling into a cry, and as a shower of rain rushed against the windows, both of you yelped in tandem. The urgent, impatient sound of it threw spikes along my nerves.

  ‘Please,’ I moaned.

  You babies cried on. I hiked you higher onto my hip and reached into the second cot with my free hand. I hefted her onto my other hip and your concerto cries whistled into my ears and rattled my brain.

  The rain drummed on the walls of the house, its roar the accusation of thousands of lips; the charge was clear and it cut to my marrow: they knew. Everyone knew. They would always know who I was – that I was no one, really, just another set of lungs sucking the air and another body to warm a man’s bed.

  I felt the sobs of my babies rack my body, I let your cries pummel my heart into a fleshy pulp. My knees crumpled under the weight of my own shame, the realisation of my own selfish idiocy.

  Stephen was devastated. My lover could die. Pattie was driven to despair.

  Jenna, I saw it so clearly right then: this would never work.

  I only became aware of my own cries when Stephen was a sudden silhouette in the doorway. Three strides across the room and he was beside me, on his own knees, his face a mask of misery in the flashing light.

  Automatically he put his hands out, as though to comfort us, but I saw him freeze, I saw his expression twist with anguish as he restrained himself, lowering his hands back to his sides. He looked away.

  I was alone. I was so brutally alone, my arms weighted with the consequences of my own humanness. ‘Please, take her,’ I begged.

  Stephen’s eyes shot from child to child, finally resting his gaze on me.

  ‘I can’t,’ he said. ‘I just can’t.’

  And as you girls cried on, my own sobs cut like knives in my throat, and I knew then what I had to do. I had to leap. I felt like I’d been stalked to a cliff’s edge by wolves. You may think I had a choice, but it was leap and maybe survive, or face the pack and be torn apart.

  So, here’s what happened.

  My rap on the door was loud and harsh, and the baby jumped in my arms. But I bent my head, whispering into the blanketed bundle, and the child stilled, as she always did – so easily placated, so trusting.

  Rain sluiced my face, dripped from my hair. I hammered on the door again, harder, gripping the child in my arm.

  Pattie came to the door in her nightgown, her voice high with alarm. She dragged me in out of the storm.

  ‘It’s the middle of the night,’ Pattie cried. ‘It’s pouring. What on earth are you doing here?’ Then her voice faded. ‘Who is . . . that?’

  I extended my arms, and was surprised at how easily they floated to my dear friend, as though buoyed on the air. I said: ‘You have to help me.’

  ‘You mean,’ Pattie’s voice snapped tight, ‘it’s yours?’

  I nodded.

  ‘And Jenna is . . .?’

  ‘Her twin sister.’

  Pattie staggered backwards. ‘You had twins?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘But . . .’ She looked panicked, her eyes darting between me and the child. ‘How can she be . . . How?’

  ‘It’s possible.’ I whispered it.

  Pattie’s body was rigid, her hands clenched and unclenched at her sides. Then, she closed her eyes and when she opened them again, there was something new there. One door closed, but another opened.

  I held firm, against the myriad bewildered accusations ­Pattie flung at me, against the gut-wrenching rip of my every muscle fibre, yanking me away, out the door, begging me to return home with our baby.

  ‘What do you need from me?’ Pattie croaked.

  ‘I need you to take her.’ Finally, my voice cracked. ‘I can’t do this anymore, Pat. Please take her so I can make it all go back to the way it was. To the way it’s supposed to be. Not like this anymore.’ I was weeping now, tears falling onto the blanket wrapping my sweet, sweet baby.

  And as my bones gave way, and I sank to the floor, my child was lifted from my arms and the emptiness flayed me open.

  Before I hit the floor, I prayed. And I told Pattie: ‘Her name is Fairlie.’

  And now you know.

  Love, Mum.

  18

  THEN

  Jenna stood in the centre of the living room, staring down at her bare feet on the plush carpet. She ­wriggled her toes and watched them sink into the soft wool, but she didn’t feel it; they looked like someone else’s toes, in someone else’s house.

  A cloud of bright sunlight streamed through the bay windows and glossed the polish of the piano, warmed the leather couch. Henry was lying on his belly on the floor, kicking his feet to The Wiggles on TV.

  But Jenna was cold. And as she stared down at her pale toes she realised she had forgotten who she was. Who was this person, standing in this room, watching ambivalently over this child? A living-dead creature shuffling from one room to another. What motivated her? What maintained her? She couldn’t remember the last time she had laughed. And she realised she didn’t care. Images came to her in laz
y flashes: Ark, a random midnight years ago while the rain hammered on the roof, standing in the pool of light from the open fridge and laughing with her as they’d taken bites of mint chocolate straight from the block. He had wrapped his strong arms around her and she’d thought she would never fall. The heat of his body, the earthy smell of his skin. There had been a time when Ark’s love for her had seemed so certain, so completely flawless, so forsaking that she’d wondered if she was dreaming.

  The image of this unconditional midnight embrace engrossed her until she was roused by movement in the doorway. Ark trudged into the living room. Exasperation heaved from him in a sigh and Jenna followed his gaze to Henry’s mess: Lego strewn in a wide half-circle, chewed crescents of apple skin scattered from an upturned plastic bowl.

  Ark turned on Jenna with a scowl, leaving the beginning of his sentence unsaid as he gestured at the floor. ‘And you’re just standing there?’

  Jenna’s fingernails cut into her palms. She said, ‘I want to separate.’

  Ark flopped onto the couch and kicked off his shoes. Henry jumped up and toddled to his father, launching into an immediate babbling rhetoric about the dead grasshopper on the back step.

  ‘Separate?’ Ark picked up the television remote, aimed, and The Wiggles flicked into an image of prawns sizzling on a hotplate. ‘Separate what?’

  ‘Us. I would like for us to separate.’ The cliché sounded so frail it might dissolve in the bright beams of sunlight.

  ‘This again.’ Ark rolled his eyes. ‘Whatever, Jenna.’

  ‘I’m serious.’

  He turned up the volume. ‘You’ve probably got your period. You say this every month. Go take a couple of Panadol and lie down.’ Henry was trying to take the remote control from Ark’s hands, demanding the return of his television show. Ark feigned defeat against Henry’s strength, animatedly giving up the remote. Henry crowed, clambering over his father’s body.

  Jenna grimaced. ‘I mean it this time.’

  He looked at her sideways; the sudden flash of his attention skittered her nerves. Henry tugged at his hands.