Brigitte opens her eyes. Car tyres are going past slowly. Somebody is screaming. A siren howls. The nurse said the anaesthetic might cause hallucinations. The nurse? But she changed her mind.
The long, lonely wail of an air horn. The hiss of air brakes. A red-and-white Kenworth pulls up across the road, with ‘Dan Weaver’ painted in swirly script on the door. Dan jumps onto the running board, young and strong and handsome. He crosses the road, his hand held out to help Brigitte up. Watch the traffic, Dad. He bends to pick up the yellow bunny rug from a pool of blood.
Warm blood flows down the insides of her legs. Where’s her baby? Where’s Matt? He said he would come and get her. Matt …
In her safe place, Brigitte feels the warmth, the rocking of the truck’s motor.
Red.
Black.
Not going to make it to Morningtown, Dad. It’s too far away.
Blank: everything broken, everything gone.
PART III
2008: Come as You Are (cont)
48
Dull electronic sounds ripple through the amniotic greyness in which she swims. It’s warm and comfortable here, floating.
Blip, blip, blip.
She opens her eyes. The curtains are drawn around the bed. Kurt Cobain sits beside her.
‘What’s going on?’
‘You tried to kill yourself.’ He’s lying. She loves her children; she would never do that. He’s standing up and leaving.
‘Come back. Don’t you leave me here!’ she screams and tries to follow him, but she’s hooked up to drips and monitors.
‘Shh. It’s alright. I won’t leave you,’ says a deep, soothing voice from the greyness.
But she swims back down to Kurt. She hands him the red dog-collar and the key on the letter-J key ring. ‘I kept them safe like you said. I didn’t lose them.’
Kurt puts the key into his pocket, but tells her to keep the collar.
‘Where’s Matt?’
‘Not here.’
‘Can I stay and wait for him?’
‘Don’t know. Might be a long time.’
‘I don’t care. I have to tell him I’m sorry.’
‘We all have things we’re sorry for. It’s just life.’
Kurt fades away, turns into Sam, and Sam turns into Dan. Dan takes the red dog collar. ‘Here, boy.’ Digger comes running, and Dan clips his collar back on. He takes Brigitte’s hand and she walks with him, out of the hospital and along Degraves Street. Nana’s a bit further up, holding a tiny baby swaddled in a yellow bunny rug. Brigitte wants to hold that baby, but Nana doesn’t offer it to her.
‘You should let go, Brigi,’ Nana says.
‘But Matt …’
‘No,’ says Dan.
‘I can wait.’
‘Let go now. You can’t leave your babies. They need you, and that’s more important than something that never was.’
‘You left me!’
‘Let go now.’
A long bleep sounds in the greyness. And an alarm, the sharp scrape of a chair, footsteps running.
She lets go of her father’s hand, forgives him.
***
Blip, blip, blip.
The sounds of muffled voices and echoes disturb the surface tension of the greyness.
Footsteps. Paper rustles. A scrape. ‘It’s OK, mate. She’s gunna pull through.’ The deep, soothing voice is here again. Or still here?
‘Fuck.’ Another voice, louder. ‘What happened? What’d she take?’ Keys jangle.
A third voice, in a foreign accent, says, ‘Zoldipem, dextro-propoxyphene, diazepam, and — ’
‘What?’
‘Sleeping tablets, painkillers, Valium. And alcohol. Large quantities. Lucky Detective Serra got there so quickly.’
‘Fuck,’ says the one with the loud voice. There’s another scrape, a thud.
‘We’ve pumped her stomach, had her on dialysis, and now she’s getting fluids through the I.V.’ It’s the one with the foreign accent.
‘Fuck. God.’
‘She’ll feel terrible when she wakes up.’
‘How long till she wakes up?’
‘Should be sitting up by this time tomorrow. Be home for Christmas,’ says Foreign Accent.
An electronic alarm. Squeaky footsteps.
‘Where’d she get all that shit from?’ Loud Voice says.
‘Had scripts for it all,’ says Deep Soothing Voice. ‘From a dodgy bloke in Richmond who’d have had a visit from one of my mates by now. Reckon the AMA’ll be having a chat with him soon.’
‘Fuck.’ A sigh. More scraping. ‘Where’re the twins?’
‘Campbells’.’
49
Motion. Not swimming. Flying? No, rolling. Wheels, echoes, bursts of light, grey amorphous shadows around, above. An alarm sounds, a telephone rings, a conversation is whispered.
Then the rolling stops, with a click, a jerk.
Crack: a blind furls up. Different shadows move around, attached to the two familiar voices — she recognises them now.
‘How come you’ve got no kids?’ Ryan asks. He’s here a lot.
‘Wife didn’t want them,’ Aidan says. He’s always here. ‘Career more important.’
‘I hear you.’
‘Fair enough, though. Can’t all want the same things.’
‘You wanted kids?’
‘Of course. That’s why she fucked me off in the end.’
‘What?’
‘Nagging, I think she called it.’
‘You do come across as a persistent sort of bloke.’
Aidan’s unfitting squeaky laugh. ‘One of the reasons.’
‘What else?’
‘Preferred architects to cops. And builders, electricians …’
‘How’d you find out?’
Another squeaky laugh, no answer.
A scrape. ‘I reckon Rosie’s having an affair.’
‘Really?’
‘With a woman.’
‘Fuck.’
‘Wish we’d had more kids. Lucky Brigi’s got two.’ A sigh. ‘She will be OK, won’t she?’ Ryan says.
‘Yeah.’
‘Not like — ’
‘It was just the drugs. Doc says she’ll be fine.’
‘Thank God you were there.’
‘Nothing to do with God, mate.’
‘Wish she’d hurry and wake up.’
‘Soon. Just thought of something might help.’
‘What?’
‘Be back later.’ Footsteps.
50
Wheels rattle past. A toilet flushes, water runs, a door opens and closes.
‘Back again? I thought cops didn’t get time off.’ Ryan. A scrape.
‘Been working. Finally closed that case.’ Aidan.
‘Eric Tucker?’
‘Yeah. She didn’t do it.’
A long pause, and then Ryan speaks softly, ‘Are you sure that’s true?’
‘What it says on the file, mate. Has to be true.’
Shuffling.
‘Somebody came in after she left,’ Aidan says.
‘The caretaker?’
‘After the caretaker.’
A bird twitters, traffic rumbles, a plane flies overhead.
‘But Sam …’
‘At first I reckoned Sam covered up for her because he had a thing about domestic violence,’ Aidan says.
‘I knew it had to be more than just because she was a cute twenty-year-old.’
‘Because of his father.’
‘Doug?’
‘Doug’s the stepfather.’
‘I never knew that.�
�
‘Biological father was violent. Hit him. And his mother and sister. Put him in hospital one time when he was a kid. Almost killed him.’
‘God. Poor bastard.’ Another long pause. ‘But how could he have got it wrong?’
‘He didn’t. He wasn’t covering up for her.’
‘What?’
‘Found some old stuff wasn’t meant to be found. Personal documents, that kind of thing. And had a chat with the caretaker’s mum.’
A pause.
‘Tucker was still alive when the caretaker found him, but not when the uniformed officers got there. In his statement, Sam said he was first on the scene, after having received a call from D24 — half an hour before the uniforms arrived. He just happened to be driving past? I don’t think so. Reckon he was paying a visit, and came across an opportunity too good to resist.’
‘But … I don’t understand.’
‘The family took Doug’s name. But Sam’s original birth certificate says Tucker.’
‘What the fuck! He was Eric’s son?’
A shuffle.
‘Tucker had made harassment complaints. Sam was obsessed with him — he’d been stalking him.’
‘Jesus,’ says Ryan, a hand-over-mouth muffled sound. ‘Lucky Brigi doesn’t remember any of it.’
Aidan clears his throat. ‘Are you OK?’
No answer.
Minutes pass in silence. A clock ticks.
A mobile phone rings.
‘I thought you weren’t allowed to have those on in here.’
‘Those rules don’t apply to police.’ He takes the call. ‘Detective Sergeant Serra ... Yep, she’s out of the ICU ... OK, mate. Meet you at the front desk downstairs, escort you up.’ A rustle, a creak, a long shadow. ‘Got somebody here to see Brigitte. Might help.’
‘Campbells are bringing the twins in, too,’ Ryan says.
‘Good. Why don’t you go for a walk? Get some fresh air and a coffee.’
‘I need a drink.’
‘Join you for one later.’ Footsteps.
‘Hey, what’s it say on your arm?’
The footsteps stop. ‘Huh?’
‘The tattoo.’
‘Come as You Are.’
‘The Nirvana song!’
‘Unconditional acceptance.’
‘Really? I love that song, but I thought it was about drugs and guns.’
‘No. It’s about people and how they’re supposed to act. Accept things as they are, and not as you wish them to be. And then look ahead, not behind.’
‘I had you pegged as a dumb cop, mate. Not a philosopher.’
‘Had you pegged as a classical-music geek. Not a Nirvana fan.’
Almost a laugh.
‘And you can tell your grandfather I caught the bastard in the blue Camry.’
A pause.
‘She likes you, you know,’ Ryan says.
‘Bullshit. Hates my guts.’
The footsteps fade.
***
A cart rattles by, and cutlery clangs. The smells of roast meat and vegetables and disinfectant fill the air. She tastes metal in her mouth. It’s so dry — she’s never been so thirsty. The unbearable thirst drags her up through the greyness and into the light. Absolved. Free.
Her head throbs, with the worst hangover ever. Her eyes feel glued together. She forces them open, squints at the light, blinks away the fuzzy edges, and looks up. Into Adonis blue. Time has not faded the colour of his eyes, but life has made lines around them, and around his mouth — from laughter more than from pain. Sunlight glints on the wedding band around his finger. He closes the book he was reading, and saves his page with a handmade bookmark — stick-figure people and hearts lovingly drawn by a child’s hand. He puts the book into his satchel bag and holds it open on his lap.
She struggles to swallow, and looks at the jug of water on the bedside table. He reaches for it, pours a cup, and helps her sit up to drink.
She looks at the tube in the back of her hand; her eyes follow the IV line to the clear plastic bag hanging on the stand beside the bed. ‘Why didn’t you ever look for me?’ Her voice is a whisper, hoarse.
He hesitates and then doesn’t really answer the question. He doesn’t need to — it was in the hesitation. ‘Detective Campbell made it very clear that you couldn’t be found.’
Their fingers touch as he takes the cup and places it back on the table.
‘I kept that photo I took of you at Raymond Island for a long time,’ he says. ‘On the dashboard of my car. It made me sad, but I couldn’t throw it away. I turned it to face the windscreen so I didn’t have to see it and miss you every day. But at night when I drove past lights, your image would flash backwards.’ He closes the flap on his bag, sits on the edge of the chair, uncomfortable. He’s not planning to stay long. ‘In the end, it faded so much you couldn’t tell what it was. I left it in the old Commodore when I traded it in.’
Now is the chance she’s pined for, to tell him she’s sorry. She doesn’t say it.
He’s looking at the scar on her forehead, not at her eyes. Ryan once taught her an acting trick to calm nerves: look just above the brows of your audience members, instead of into their eyes. Most people can’t tell the difference, but she can.
‘It was a long time ago.’ He smiles, but the smile doesn’t reach his eyes. ‘I met your children downstairs. They’re beautiful. You should be with them now. Not me.’
She nods. She has nothing more to say to him.
He puts his bag over his shoulder, looks at his hands, brushes things from his jeans that aren’t there. ‘I’ll go tell them you’re awake.’ He stands up and walks to the door.
‘Matt?’
‘Yes?’ He looks back.
‘Is Aidan here?’
Acknowledgements
I would like to thank my family: Greg, Reece, Paige, Jaime (for their love and patience) and my mother Pam; Henry Rosenbloom and everybody at Scribe; Graeme Simsion (coach, mentor, inspiration); Fran Willcox (for Johnnie Walker, cuffs with buttons, and all the other great advice, and for the encouragement when the chips were down); Anne Buist; Felicity Clissold; Nancy Sugarman; Danny Rosner Blay; Amy Jasper; Allison Browning; Michelle Aung Thin; Jim Brandi; Mark Brandi; Edwina Vance; Meg Dunley; Liz Steele; Baia Tsakouridou; Krysia Birman; Zoe Naughten; Jo Stubbings; and all my RMIT Professional Writing and Editing teachers and fellow students.
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