The Things We Promise

by J. C. Burke

  Mr and Mrs C were only just back from holidays and already we were dumping our problems on them. Like always, just one tap on their door and they were there. Mr C in his new orange Hawaiian shirt, Mrs C with her black apron back on.

  ‘Is no problem. No problem, cara Maryanna,’ Mr C told Mum. ‘You no go on your own. You and me will drive together and get Bill. Bring him home. All will be good. You will see.’

  For some stupid reason Mum wanted to put on lipstick before she left. She was turning the flat upside down because she didn’t know where she’d put it. I found it in her handbag along with three candles. My mother really was losing it.

  Mrs C and I waved them goodbye. Then I put the kettle on.

  We drank tea. I showed Mrs C my formal dress, pinned onto Neuta. Her big hands rubbed up and down the velvet as though it was a dog she was patting. ‘Beautiful. Beautiful,’ she kept saying. I even told her that Ralph and I were going to the formal together.

  ‘You will be like Cinderella at the dance,’ Mrs C said, pinching my cheek. Then she leaned over and gave me a kiss that prickled against my skin.

  Mrs C wanted to know why she hadn’t seen Andrea at our place much. She asked if it was because of ‘the AIDS’.

  ‘Probably’ was the one-word answer I returned.

  We went into the living room and sat on the couch. I dragged the heater closer to our feet and we watched Tales of the Unexpected in black and white.

  Next to the stack of CDs still on the floor was a small triangle of fluoro green material. Most likely from Vanessa’s Wham! T-shirt. Had that really been just this afternoon? Only six hours ago that we were laughing, playing music and cutting our T-shirts for summer.

  I was asleep on Mrs C’s lap when the thud of the front door closing downstairs woke me. The echo of footsteps trudging up the stairs and the sound of my brother weeping came closer and closer until it was here on our doorstep and sadness walked into our home.

  Billy stood in the living room, Mum and Mr C on either side of him. His shoulders were slumped, as though it was an effort to stand. His face turned down to the floor like it was too much of an effort to look at us. I noticed a small patch of grey hair like a tiny hat on the crown of his head. He lifted then dropped his arms as if to say he was sorry. Or maybe he meant it’s too hard ? Then he shuffled out of the room and we heard his bedroom door click closed.

  Before that moment, I had been certain that I’d already seen the best that sadness had to offer.

  25

  ALL WEEKEND, BILLY STAYED IN HIS bedroom with the door closed. He asked us to give him space, to respect his privacy, to leave him alone.

  It was pretty hard. Especially in the quiet of the night, when I lay in bed and listened to him cry through the thin wall that separated our rooms.

  The next Friday, exactly a week since we’d cut up the T-shirts in our living room, I woke early to the sound of feet padding up and down the hallway. I didn’t know what the actual time was because last night when I’d tried to set the alarm on my clock, I’d pressed the wrong button and couldn’t be bothered fixing it. Now it said 9.21 a.m., which it definitely wasn’t. Up the road, the highway was still quiet.

  The feet padded past my room again but I couldn’t tell who they belonged to or where they were going. When I heard a light turn on, I knew that was in the kitchen because it always buzzed for the first few seconds.

  I hadn’t decided who I wanted it to be. Mum or Billy? There was a plus and minus to both. But I was curious and wide awake so I went to suss out the situation.

  Billy was sitting at the table, steam rising from a mug of tea. The first thing that struck me was that he wasn’t drinking from his I Love New York mug. It was the Ghost-busters mug that Aunty Penny had bought me at the movies. His fingers were pressing along his neck as though he was trying to find a spot that hurt.

  He sighed. ‘Hi, Gem,’ he said as he looked up at me. ‘I just made myself a cup of tea, but it’s probably not a good idea. My mouth’s a bit sore. You have it. I haven’t touched it.’

  That seemed like an invitation. Not the ‘please leave me alone’ request that I’d copped all week each time I popped my head around his door to say hi or see if he needed anything.

  I sat down and Billy slid the mug of tea across the table. I wasn’t sure whether to speak or not. Perhaps the invitation had conditions and silence was one of them?

  ‘I had a look at your dress before,’ Billy said. ‘It’s coming along. I love the way Maryanne’s putting bone into the bodice. That’s very haute couture.’

  ‘It holds my boobs up better,’ I answered.

  ‘Were you planning on bare legs?’ he asked, the tips of his fingers still poking at his neck. ‘Because I was thinking those lace tights I bought you last Christmas could be nice.’

  ‘What’s up with your neck?’

  He moaned. ‘Nothing. So lace tights? Or have you lost them?’

  ‘I haven’t even worn them!’

  ‘Okay. Sorry.’

  Silence. Not too long. But long enough.

  ‘Have you tried the earrings on?’

  ‘About a hundred times.’ I smiled. Billy smiled back. Real and true, this time. ‘I actually took them to school to show Louise and Vanessa.’

  ‘You’re hanging out with Vanessa now, are you?’

  ‘I’m getting to know her,’ I said. ‘She’s cool. Louise is cool too.’

  ‘Andrea?’ Billy asked. ‘She’s like the elephant in the room, Gem. I can’t believe in the whole three months I’ve been here, I haven’t seen her once. I kind of miss her annoyingness.’

  I sighed. ‘Well, she’s still annoying.’

  ‘Has she mentioned me doing her make-up since you sprung her at the hairdresser?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘And you haven’t busted and told her that you saw her?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘I’m impressed.’

  ‘You told me not to make a big deal so I didn’t.’

  ‘So, how’s spunky Ralph?’ he asked.

  ‘Good.’

  ‘Don’t let him get too comfortable. Keep him on his toes.’

  ‘Is that big brother advice?’

  ‘Yes.’ Billy smiled. ‘Especially as I hear you’re going to his place today after school. Meeting the parents!’

  ‘Just his dad will be there. His mum will be at work.’ I yawned because I was trying to convince myself that I wasn’t nervous about it. ‘Really …’ I yawned again. ‘It’s no big deal.’

  I wasn’t positive but I thought I saw Billy roll his eyes.

  ‘What?’ I frowned.

  ‘Nothing. I’m just …’ He paused. ‘Happy for you. He likes you. He copped a beating for you. I bet those black eyes have gone all yellowy green and look disgusting.’

  ‘Well, I don’t think he wants any concealer for them if that’s what you’re about to suggest?’

  ‘It wouldn’t work anyway. Bruises are hard to cover.’ Billy sighed. ‘Easier to cover those Kaposi bastards.’

  ‘Have you ever had to do make-up on someone who’s been bashed up? Like a celebrity?’ Billy wasn’t a gossiper, but every now and then he’d let a story slip. ‘Maybe someone I’ve heard of?’

  ‘Saul.’

  ‘Saul?’

  ‘The day I found out I’d tested HIV-positive, I punched him in the face. He ended up looking a lot like Ralph.’

  Never had I dreamed that Billy would tell me how he ended up with AIDS. He’d made it clear that he didn’t want to talk about it. I’d wondered often enough but I didn’t want to know. That was the truth. I don’t remember when I decided that. It was just that if I knew that Saul had given it to my brother, would I still miss him? Would I still get that ache in my chest when I thought of him? Would my earrings suddenly seem less beautiful?

  ‘I can hear you thinking, Gem.’ Billy’s fingers were tapping the table.

  ‘No, you can’t.’

  ‘Yes, I can, and I didn’t get HIV off Saul,’ he sa
id. ‘If that’s what you’re thinking.’

  I shuffled around in the chair.

  ‘I gave it to Saul.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘That’s the truth. And I have to live with it. Or not.’

  I couldn’t think of anything to say and I was starting to feel sick in the stomach.

  ‘You’re the first person I’ve told, Gem. I haven’t even told Mum.’

  I stood up.

  ‘Where are you going, Gem?’

  ‘Back to bed.’

  For the rest of the night I lay there staring at the ceiling. Now I knew the truth and there was no unknowing it.

  All day, I was like a zombie. My head full of fuzz and my limbs heavy. You could’ve punched me and kicked me and I wouldn’t have felt a thing. I trudged from one class to the next. Half listening to the conversations around me. Feeling like everyone’s life except mine was simple and straightforward.

  Today was the one day I should’ve been buzzing. Leaping over clouds of happiness. Plus Vanessa had castings all day and hadn’t been at school which meant I had Ralph to myself. But I wasn’t. Perhaps I was reserving my energy? Perhaps I was excited but I just couldn’t feel it yet?

  Come on, I kept telling myself. You’re going to Ralph’s place. You’re going to meet his father. Isn’t this everything you’ve ever wanted?

  But when Ralph stopped off at the bakery on the way home, I said, ‘Can I be a couch potato and stay in the car?’

  ‘You okay, Gem?’ he asked. ‘You’ve been kind of quiet.’

  ‘Yeah,’ I answered, sitting up and pasting a smile on my face. ‘Peachy.’

  ‘Sure?’

  ‘Sure.’

  ‘Okay.’ Ralph nodded. ‘Now do you like pink icing or chocolate icing?’

  ‘Both.’

  ‘I won’t be long.’

  I leaned out the window and did my best impersonation of an enthusiastic wave.

  There was Ralph, the guy I had adored since Year 7, off to buy me cupcakes with pink and chocolate icing. Me. Gemma Longrigg. Not Sonia Darue or one of the other prissy girls.

  I watched him walking down the road. His hands in his pockets, his sleeves rolled up. His shirt just a bit too small so that the outline of his muscles hugged the fabric.

  Yet beneath my skin, snuggled under my bones, was a vast plane of flatness. Nothing moved, nothing quivered. The only thing I felt inside was nothing.

  I turned up the radio and lay back in the seat. An almost spring sun glowed through the windscreen. But not even that could warm me today.

  It was back in June when I’d spied Andrea at the hairdresser, her Elizabeth Taylor book on her lap. I was wearing my black-and-white checked coat and on the way to the bakery I had stamped and shuffled my feet through every pile of autumn leaves. On the way home I’d dodged every one of them, choosing to run along the road instead.

  Winter had almost passed. Now the trees were getting ready for the new season. Tips of green sat in the tops of the branches. Soon the leaves would be glossy and green. The branches so full they’d lean over the road casting a shadow that we’d huddle under come summertime.

  ‘Time heals,’ a man with a sleazy voice suddenly told me through the radio. A guitar strummed and birds twittered in the background. It was probably the beginning of some ‘God Loves You’ ad. I wanted to burst onto the radio and tell everyone that time didn’t heal. Time changed everything.

  When Ralph and I reached the gate of his house, with the gold number 36, I suddenly awoke and suffered a case of the jitters. No time to get it together, because when Ralph opened the gate there was his father, as though he’d been waiting for us.

  ‘Hello,’ he smiled. ‘I’m Chris. I’m the father of Ralph.’

  Ralph groaned. ‘Please, Dad. Give us five minutes before you start with the dad jokes.’

  ‘That wasn’t a dad joke. Was it, Gemma?’

  I shook my head, but I actually didn’t know what a dad joke sounded like.

  ‘What’s in the bag?’ his dad asked, opening it and having a stickybeak. ‘Cakes?’

  ‘Lots of them,’ I said. It was about time I spoke. I didn’t want to come across as some dumb bimbo who never opened her mouth. ‘Ralph’s bought so many. You’re going to have to help us eat them.’ It was true. For some reason there were about a dozen cupcakes in the bag, with a mix of chocolate and pink icing.

  ‘I like chocolate icing. How about you, Gemma?’

  ‘Both.’

  ‘But if you had to pick one?’

  I wanted his dad to stop asking me questions. I wanted to check him out. Study his face and see if I could find any of Ralph in there. So far, I’d noticed they had the same nose and dark eyes. He was like a faded version of Ralph.

  I wondered if my dad was a faded version of Billy or me. Did he ever look in the mirror and catch glimpses of us? And if he did, did it make him grimace or feel a pang of regret, even for just a second?

  The front door of Ralph’s house was painted jade green, almost the same colour as one of the swatches Claude had sent from New York. We seemed to have lost Ralph’s dad, who’d disappeared into the garden on the way up the path, and the door was closed and locked.

  Ralph took a key from under the mat, unlocked the door and I followed him inside, down a hallway with walls covered in photos.

  ‘These are way cool,’ I said, stopping at a framed picture of Ralph and Vanessa dressed up as Thing 1 and Thing 2. ‘So cute!’

  Ralph took my hand. ‘Come on,’ he said. ‘You can look at these later.’

  I thought I knew what that meant. It wasn’t the first time a boy had tugged at my hand trying to convince me that there was something better in the next room, which I could clearly tell was Ralph’s bedroom.

  But this time I was wrong. The next room was the kitchen, and sitting around the table were Vanessa, Louise and Justin. ‘Surprise!’ they yelled.

  ‘No way!’ I laughed. ‘What are you guys doing here?’

  ‘Well, I live here,’ Vanessa joked. ‘Hey, did you get food?’

  ‘A dozen cupcakes,’ I answered. ‘From the new bakery.’

  Louise started pulling something out of a bag on the table.

  ‘Speech!’ Justin called, banging a mug with a spoon. ‘Speech.’

  ‘Okay,’ Louise started. ‘We have done something and we think it’s the right thing. But we decided, all of us, that is, that we should check with you first. Of course, if you don’t like the idea then that’s cool bananas. And … here goes.’ Louise reached into the bag and pulled out a T-shirt. It was white with thick red writing: Silence = Death.

  ‘Wow!’ I gasped. ‘That’s … wow. Oh my God, did you do that?’

  All of a sudden everyone at the table burst into talk. Who did what and how they changed the design because someone said this and so they thought of that and everything in between.

  ‘Mr Curtain was our biggest supporter,’ Justin told me. ‘Lucky you’ve been copying my Biology homework for all these years, because he likes you. He said, “That Gemma’s a good girl.” ’

  Louise held up the back of the T-shirt. In the same bold red letters it said, AIDS. Talk about it.

  ‘That’s really, really awesome,’ I told them all. ‘I don’t know what to say.’

  ‘We want to get a whole heap printed so we can wear them to school. If that’s okay with you?’ Louise asked.

  ‘It’s not a fundraiser,’ Vanessa added. ‘More like an awareness campaign.’

  The others were all nodding in agreement.

  ‘Every single person in Year 11 wants one,’ Louise told me. ‘So far, we have ninety-two orders!’

  ‘But aren’t there only eighty-six people in our year?’ I asked.

  ‘Bronnie Perry and a couple of others in Year 12 want one,’ Louise said. ‘Plus Mr Curtain and a few teachers. I have to put the order in as soon as possible. So they’ll be ready for Monday week.’

  ‘I like it.’ I smiled. ‘Simon Finkler will be back at school
.

  A smile burst onto Louise’s face. I had to admit, it was a fitting revenge for the dickhead.

  We sat around the table chatting and stuffing our faces with cupcakes. Justin even sucked the wrappers till there were five tiny wet balls of disgustingness sitting on the plate. I ate half a cupcake and even that didn’t sit well in my stomach.

  When I stood up to get a glass of water, Louise followed me. ‘Are you okay, Gem?’

  ‘Yes. Just thirsty.’

  ‘If you’re not comfortable about the T-shirts, just say. Really. It’s fine.’

  ‘No, I love them,’ I said. It was just us two at the sink. ‘And thanks. I know this would’ve been your idea.’

  ‘We all did it. It was fun. I’m so relieved you’re okay about it.’

  ‘It’s great.’

  ‘Andrea wanted to come today. But she has—’

  ‘State netball trials.’

  ‘She must be good at it?’

  ‘Killer instinct,’ I answered.

  Ralph drove me home. We pulled up outside the park near my place, the one I’d stomped off to that Sunday afternoon when he didn’t notice me because his head was stuck in a modelling catalogue. I hadn’t decided if I’d ever confess to that. Or if I’d ever confess why Fergus Eames had also risked his life to come to my rescue against the Fink.

  We lowered our seats and I leaned across and kissed him. We wrapped ourselves around each other like we could’ve if we’d been alone in his bedroom. I wanted to feel his arms around me. I didn’t want to speak. I wanted to wake my body from its zombified state and feel something.

  Hours slipped by. It was as though we’d been sucked into a pocket where time didn’t move. Where thoughts were muted and words weren’t needed. It was so perfect and so hard to return to real life.

  But then Ralph said, ‘Do you ever see your dad, Gem? You’ve never mentioned him before.’

  ‘I never see him and I never mention him. That’s all you need to know.’

  ‘Come on,’ Ralph said. ‘Don’t be like that. Why can’t you tell me about him?’

  ‘Because there’s not much to know,’ I answered, suddenly sitting up and winding down the window. The heater was blowing into my face and making me feel sick in the stomach. ‘My father’s a dick and he left us because Billy’s a poofter.’