The Things We Promise

by J. C. Burke

  ‘I know. Snow White Red. He showed it to me.’

  ‘Gemma, if you do still want to go to the formal, I could do your make-up. I mean, that boyfriend of yours is pretty gorgeous! I’d like to be seen out with him!’

  ‘Thanks. But it’s okay, Mame.’ I think my eyeballs may’ve bulged a bit at the thought of what my face could possibly end up looking like with Mame at the end of the brush. ‘It’s the last thing I feel like. There’s always next year.’

  ‘Goodbye, my darling. Look after your mother.’

  The sandwiches were eaten. The mourners disappeared.

  Mrs C was sitting in the front seat of the Fiat nursing a bouquet of red roses. Mr C was sounding like a trumpet, blowing his nose into a hanky. Every time I looked at him that hanky seemed to be covering his face. Poor Mr C, who would he spend all day watching TV with now?

  I waved them goodbye because there was no room for me in the back seat of the Fiat. The bunches of flowers covered the entire back windscreen. I wondered where we would put them all.

  Mum and Aunty Penny were leaning against the bonnet of Penny’s car, waiting for me. Penny was telling a story in one of her semi-excitable tones that often escalated into a squeal. ‘Did you see? At the very back of the chapel, Maryanne! Then just over there,’ she said, pointing to the hall. ‘Five minutes ago!’

  For a moment I thought Penny must be talking about my father. I spun around, searching outside, wondering if it was too late to run back to the hall. But a lady was locking the door and no one else was around.

  Then Penny said, ‘Are you sure she’s not having triplets? I have never seen such a pregnant woman!’

  It was Catrina they were talking about. Not my father.

  Deep down, I knew he wouldn’t come. He’d probably known Billy was sick since July or August when he spoke to Mum. He would’ve read my brother’s letter by now. He’d maybe even received it before I made the phone call. Before he’d sailed away on the ship to wherever it is that he went.

  We drove down the driveway, through the gardens of the crematorium. But I wound down the window and leaned out, peering through the neatly clipped hedges, just in case.

  That night, while Sonia Darue and Martin Searles were probably swanning around the school hall as the couple most likely to make everyone pea-green, Ralph and I were sitting around the kitchen table with Aunty Penny and a flat full of flowers.

  Mum had gone to bed. She said she was sorry to be a spoilsport on the night of my formal, but we all told her if there was one night when it was okay to be a spoilsport, this was it.

  Ralph was still in his good outfit that was reserved for weddings and funerals, and the one he said he would’ve worn to the formal but with a bow tie instead. Bow tie or tie was fine with me because he still looked like Johnny Depp at the Oscars. But I had stooped to the lowest form of dressing: an old pair of mustard-coloured tracksuit pants and a black Ramones T-shirt of Billy’s that’d been my guinea pig on our T-shirt cutting afternoon. The neckline resembled a figure eight, dipping too low in the back and front, and the hemline was ridiculously uneven. When I’d put it on this afternoon I’d shuddered at the idea of the quilt panels I’d promised to make. What had I been thinking?

  ‘So, ham and pineapple for Ralph.’ I repeated the order to Penny. ‘And you and me will share a margherita.’

  ‘My half with anchovies,’ Penny reminded me as she handed some cash over. ‘Don’t be too long,’ she told us. ‘Please?’

  I knew exactly what Aunty Penny meant. Our place was quiet and sad. All the flowers did was make it creepier; their sweet scent was strange, overpowering and so unlike the smell of boiling vegetables that our little flat had become used to. It screamed, Something is very wrong in here. Something terrible has happened.

  Ralph and I drove to the Grazia Pizza Bar. The last time I’d been here was with Billy. The waiter had winked at me and Billy had teased me all the way home.

  Would everything feel like this now? Would every place and food and smell have Billy inside its story? I’d always remembered life by what I was wearing, but maybe that’d change. Maybe now, I’d remember life by Billy: Where he was when something had happened. What he was doing. If he was alive. If he wasn’t.

  I waited in the car while Ralph went inside to order the pizzas. On the back seat of the lime mobile was Vanessa’s modelling catalogue. The first time I saw that was the day I found out my brother was HIV-positive. I had thought then that that day was the worst day of my life.

  ‘They said it’ll be fifteen minutes,’ Ralph said, getting back into the car.

  ‘I don’t think I’m hungry anymore. Pizza seemed like a good idea at the time.’

  ‘You have to eat, Gemma.’

  ‘Are you sad you’re not at the formal?’

  ‘Do I look like I’m sad I’m not at the formal?’ Ralph said. He took my hand and squeezed it. ‘I’m with you. In your beautiful formal tracksuit pants the colour of shit. How could I be sad?’

  We started laughing. I climbed onto Ralph’s seat, squishing in next to him. He wrapped his arms around me and I nestled under his shoulder.

  ‘I can’t believe I’m never going to see my brother again.’

  ‘It’s too weird.’

  ‘I’ve been with two people now when they’ve died. That’s weird.’

  ‘You’re amazing, Gemma,’ Ralph told me. ‘I can’t imagine how you’ve got through all of this.’

  ‘I didn’t have a choice.’

  ‘But you’ve been so strong. I’m not sure I could be that strong if anything happened to my sister.’

  ‘It’s not like that, Ralph. It just happens.’

  ‘I guess.’

  ‘Thanks for hanging out with me,’ I said.

  ‘No. Thanks for hanging out with me. I was so sad after Lit Circle finished. I loved listening to you in those classes.’

  ‘Really?’

  ‘Yeah. Not that you would’ve noticed.’

  ‘No, probably not,’ I lied, because Billy had told me to keep Ralph on his toes.

  When we got to the top of the stairs at home, Louise, Justin and Andrea were waiting outside the open door, dressed up to the eyeballs. Louise in her short red Roxette dress, Justin in a matching red tie – and then there was Andrea.

  Andrea wore a strapless full-length hot pink taffeta ‘gown’, because you couldn’t call it a dress. She had white gloves that reached up to her elbows and her hair was in a French roll, held together with a big golden clip.

  ‘Is it okay that we’re here?’ Louise asked. ‘Your aunty said it was but we can go.’

  ‘No way!’ I said. ‘Come inside and have some pizza.’

  ‘We’re stuffed,’ Justin said. ‘School sausage sizzle.’

  ‘Sonia Miss Priss got tomato sauce squirted all down the front of her white “I think I’m a bride” dress,’ Andrea told me. ‘I thought I was going to wet my pants. She was bawling her eyes out.’

  Aunty Penny was calling out for the pizzas. Louise and Justin wandered into the kitchen with Ralph. I stayed behind so Andrea and I could have a private moment. Billy had been right. Whoever did Andrea’s hair and make-up wasn’t worth ruining a friendship over. But I just couldn’t swallow the idea that Andrea and her mother and grandmother hadn’t wanted my brother to touch her. I knew it wasn’t Andrea’s fault. But maybe I wanted her to stand up to them? Her to be the wind beneath my wings for once?

  ‘Hi,’ I said.

  ‘Oh, Gem!’

  We hugged. The hug was long and tight, not awkward like I’d imagined it would be.

  ‘I’m so sorry, Gem,’ Andrea gasped. ‘So, so, so sorry.’

  ‘It’s okay.’

  ‘I can’t stay for too long,’ she said. ‘Mum thinks I’m at the formal. She wanted to come and pick me up early so she could have a squiz at everyone.’

  ‘You’re here. That’s all that matters.’

  ‘I know. It’s just, just …’

  ‘Complicated?’

&
nbsp; ‘You said it.’

  We had another hug. I wondered if Billy was looking down at us, giving me the thumbs up.

  Andrea pointed to the closed living room door. ‘Is that where … ?’ she whispered. ‘Is that where Billy passed away?’

  I nodded.

  Her hands touched the door, her fingertips sliding down the wood as though some of Billy was still left in there. ‘Can I have a look?’

  ‘Sure.’

  I opened the door and switched on the light. The bed sat in the middle of the room. All the pillows were still stacked up in the shape of a pyramid. The Rubik’s Cube sat on the table and next to it was a small tower of silver coins.

  This was the scene of my brother’s final weeks. The last few days I had snuck in here and stood as still as I possibly could. Trying to see if I could find a little bit of him somewhere, floating in the air, like I used to do in his bedroom when he was in New York.

  Aunty Penny was sleeping in my room, so I crawled into bed next to Mum.

  My formal night was over. It could not have been more opposite to what I’d imagined almost a year ago, when Billy had promised he’d come home to do my hair and make-up, plus two of my friends’. My biggest dilemma then had been choosing my dress pattern, finding Andrea a hairstyle and deciding who would be the second person. My biggest dream had been getting off with a guy called Ralph.

  Time changes everything. That’s what I was thinking about when I fell asleep. Sometimes it changes it for the worse. Sometimes it’s for the better.

  32

  NOVEMBER

  THE NAMES PROJECT BEGAN IN OUR HOME on the first Saturday night in November.

  Andrea, Louise, Vanessa and I were sewing the three panels. According to Mum, we were involved in a ‘quilting bee’. And of course, Ralph was part of it too. He was on food and beverages.

  Mum said she’d help if we needed it. But I’d warned the others that she’d be a bossy pain, breathing over our shoulders the entire time. I’d already had to endure three lessons on how to use the sewing machine. I hadn’t gone through all of that just for her to take over. So I told the girls it was better if we tried to do it on our own. Besides, Mum still wasn’t feeling the love with Andrea. But I knew with time, she would.

  Mum was going out to yet another candlelight rally, or ‘vigil’ as she preferred to call it because she reckoned it sounded nicer. Finally I had got to the bottom of all the candles I’d kept discovering around the place.

  When I asked her why she went, she didn’t give me the answer I’d expected. She said, ‘Because I can cry there and no one tries to stop me.’

  Poor Mum. She wore the new wrinkle on her forehead like a battle scar. She called it ‘Billy’s wrinkle’ because it meant that he was always with her.

  Aunty Mame had given me the specifications for our panels. To be honest, when she told me I felt like collapsing in a heap. We weren’t talking little quilts, like the size for a baby. No, we were talking the big brother of quilts. Six foot by three foot. That was the size of each one. Non-negotiable.

  Billy, Saul and Zane’s panels had to be ready by the end of the month because the first of December was World AIDS Day.

  Billy had thought of everything. He’d even left cash for the material for the panels. Mum had bought the fabric and cut the panels out and now they lay across the floor of our living room.

  It was hard to pick the background colour for each one, but after much discussion Mum and I agreed: black for Saul, because he’d been an attorney; bright blue for Zane like the sky; red for Billy because – as Mum said – imagine the world without the colour red?

  I had started three piles of bits and pieces that we could sew onto the panels. Things that told others about who these men were and also what they’d meant to us.

  Ralph had already been sent off to Maccas. We’d all decided to have cheeseburgers for dinner in honour of Zane. Also Ralph’s mission was to come home with something that had the face of the Hamburglar on it because that cheeky look he had reminded me of Zane. Plus Zane loved Maccas.

  ‘This is for Zane’s panel,’ I told the girls. ‘He told me what he missed the most about home was the big sky. I have some leftover black velvet and gold braid from my formal dress and I thought we could make it resemble a night sky with stars.’

  ‘Awesome,’ Vanessa said, and Louise and Andrea nodded.

  ‘This little plastic carrot is from the nose of the bunny he gave me,’ I explained, holding up what looked like an orange triangle. ‘It was coming loose anyway.’

  We’d all voted that Andrea was the neatest with the scissors, so she had the job of cutting out all the letters of their names. She’d already done it at home, with great drama, of course, because her mother had found out what she was working on and flipped out.

  The next day at school Andrea had said, ‘Two words: Elizabeth Taylor. I kept telling Mum she’s an AIDS Ambassador. Did you know that, Gemma?’

  Andrea would never admit it, but I’d known her long enough to be sure that she was quietly impressed with herself for standing up to her mum and I was too.

  Proudly, Andrea presented us with Z-A-N-E cut out in black felt. The letters were as neat as any machine could’ve done. ‘We’re not doing his dates, are we?’

  ‘No, because I don’t know when he was born. The death notice didn’t say,’ I told them. ‘But he lived 937 kilometres away. He actually had that number tattooed on his shoulder. Maybe you could cut out those numbers?’

  ‘Why don’t you do it on this green material?’ Vanessa said, handing it to Andrea. ‘It’s like the colour of the country.’

  Andrea took the fabric with a bit of a grunt. She was, as she called it, having ‘adjustment issues’ hanging out with Vanessa.

  ‘Now let’s do Saul’s,’ I said. ‘You have his name and dates cut out, Andrea?’

  ‘Done,’ she replied.

  I held up a piece of mulberry satin from the lining of my black-and-white checked coat that Saul’d bought me. I had thought, overthought, then overthought some more, about whether the colour was too similar to the spots on his face. Before I could think about it any more, I’d grabbed Mum’s scissors, pierced a hole in the lining and started to snip.

  ‘Maybe this could be in the shape of a heart? It’s from a present Saul gave me and … and I really loved Saul. He was special.’

  ‘I found this picture of Boy George for you,’ Louise said, adding it to the pile. ‘But I don’t know how we can sew it on.’

  ‘Wow, thanks, Louise. Mum and I have heaps of photos we’re going to sort through. Aunty Mame said it’s good to have their faces on their panel. Maybe we can glue this stuff?’

  ‘But poor Zane’s going to get the face of Hamburglar!’ Andrea couldn’t keep a straight face and then we all burst out laughing.

  Last but not least was Billy’s pile.

  On a white piece of fabric, Louise had painted a giant picture of the Japanese make-up brush that Billy had given her. Louise used it every day, working Billy’s magic across her beaten nose.

  Andrea showed us what she’d done: his full name ‘William Gavin Longrigg’, but she’d also cut out ‘Billy’. She said that was because this is what she knew him as.

  Vanessa was still working on her idea for Billy’s panel. She told us that she kept changing her mind.

  ‘You’d better get a move along,’ Andrea mumbled.

  I shot her a shut up look. She took the hint and went back to the cutting of Zane’s numbers.

  The three strips of fabric that Billy had picked from our T-shirt cutting afternoon were also in the pile. No one knew, but I had cut them in half. Mum had her wrinkle. I had three pieces of material that not so long ago Billy had touched with his own hands.

  Some nights when playing with Billy’s Rubik’s Cube didn’t put me to sleep, I would take those bits of fabric out of the drawer. I’d run them across my face, thinking about Billy, wondering where he was now and if he could see me. Sometimes when I woke up in th
e morning, they’d still be scrunched up in the palms of my hands.

  33

  DECEMBER

  TONIGHT I WAS WEARING MY FORMAL DRESS. For the first time since Billy died.

  I stepped into it and Mum did up the zip and brushed down the velvet. I slipped my feet into the black patent leather stilettos and clipped on the Christian Lacroix earrings. Then carefully, with a brush, I painted Snow White Red onto my lips, starting in the middle like Billy had taught me.

  We had finished the panels and sent them off. Today was World AIDS Day, so we were celebrating, ‘formal’ style.

  Ralph appeared at the door. He was wearing his suit with the Rolling Stones T-shirt Billy had given him. Mum and I both lost our breath. The fit was so perfect, for a second it was as though Billy had stepped into the room.

  ‘You look amazing,’ I spluttered, while Mum just stood there nodding.

  Ralph was holding a white rose corsage that he tied around my wrist. He kissed me on the cheek and whispered, ‘You would’ve been the best one there. But I always knew that anyway.’

  Andrea had organised a progressive dinner party, even though none of the courses were taking place at her house. She was kind of still in a fight with her mum, who she kept referring to as a ‘freak from the Dark Ages’. Every time she said those words her lips would narrow and she’d speak from the side of her mouth.

  Entree was at Louise’s. Justin was helping because they were an item now. He said he’d outgrown his crush on Vanessa along with Dungeons & Dragons. Like the night of the formal, Justin wore the same red tie to match Louise’s dress. Now it was so obvious. But it had been lost on me then. Louise said not to worry, that I’d had other things on my mind.

  Main course was at Vanessa and Ralph’s. Vanessa was going to do all her party tricks because tomorrow she was having the gap in her front teeth filled. I liked the gap but apparently it stopped her getting modelling work.