Perfections

by Kirstyn McDermott

  He grins. ‘Enlighten me.’

  ‘Execution is only half the story,’ she says. ‘It tells the story. But if you don’t have a story inside to tell . . .’ She shrugs. The photo in front of them might be a mermaid’s tail, flash-blurred beneath sun-sparkled water. ‘I can handle a brush very well, actually. Give me a painting and I’ll make a copy so fine you’ll be hard pressed to spot the original. You will, that is; I couldn’t fool an expert. But give me a blank canvas, and I have nothing to say.’

  ‘Frustrating much?’

  ‘Not really,’ Jacqueline tells him. ‘Keeping still, keeping quiet, listening, watching; there’s something to be said for all of that. I like seeing how other people imagine the world. How they make the world.’

  Loki is silent as they move through the galleries. He gives the exhibits only a cursory glance. Mostly, he frowns at his shoes.

  ‘Are you bored?’ she asks after a while. ‘We can leave if you like.’

  ‘I don’t want to leave.’ He stops. ‘Show me your favourite piece.’

  ‘In this room?’

  ‘In the whole gallery. You know, burning building, can only save one thing, blah blah blah. And I don’t want to see the most important thing, or the most valuable thing – I want to see the thing you love most.’

  Jacqueline doesn’t need to think about it. ‘Follow me,’ she says.

  To Antoinette, it reads like a bad joke. To get the thing you want, you forfeit whatever it is that made you want it in the first place? Not quite so simple, according to her mother, but near enough to smell the cigar smoke. There are a few clever, careful women who navigate the process with skill, shoring up what they can, salvaging what remains; or at least rumours of clever, careful women. Sally Paige has never heard a single name herself, only whispers about a sister of an aunt of a cousin who once . . . but it hardly matters. Rumour is poisonous enough.

  Rumour and hope and the stubborn, stupid hearts of girls barely grown.

  ‘But why?’ Antoinette can’t fathom it. The rank unfairness of it. ‘Why do it if you know it won’t work out? If I had known, if you had taught me about this instead of leaving me to scrabble in the dark, I never would have–’

  ‘Don’t go blaming me. We all think we’ll be the one. You would have too.’

  That one clever, careful woman whose love is so strong, desire so bold, whose need is a blistering, unquenchable force that will be ripped from her hands only when they are bloodless and cold. The woman who’ll not only end up with the whole damn cake in her lap, but a silver fork with which to shovel it into her mouth.

  ‘It’s the lie we want to believe,’ her mother says. ‘Love will conquer all.’

  Antoinette feels numb. She presses a hand to her chest, wanting nothing more than to rip through her own skin, to rend flesh and crack rib until her fist closes at last around the Loki-stone and crushes it, tears it in pieces from her body.

  ‘It wouldn’t do any good.’ Sally Paige playing mirrors, spindle-fingers curled loose between her breasts. ‘This isn’t Kmart, dear, you can’t bring him back for a refund. What’s paid stays paid.’

  ‘Do you . . .’ Antoinette wets her lips. ‘Can you feel her? Jacqueline?’

  Her mother nods. ‘Every single day.’

  ‘I don’t understand. Why make a baby – two babies – like that?’

  Because Sally Paige longed desperately for motherhood. Because after almost eight years of marriage and just about every humiliating test and procedure the medical profession could dig up to throw at her, it seemed the only conceivable option. Because when a husband begins to regard his wife like he might a defective washing machine, when she finds his gaze trailing after young lasses with babe-swollen bellies . . . well, it doesn’t take a genius to calculate the end result of that equation.

  Besides, she knew it would work. Sally Paige would be that clever, careful woman that others would come to whisper about. A mother’s love couldn’t be bartered, of that she was certain. It was something innate, a property entwined so irrevocably around the core of her being that having it torn loose was unimaginable.

  Impossible, she told herself. Promised herself.

  Such pretty, sweet-tasting lies.

  ‘All that love,’ she says. ‘All that longing. It went into those babies, every scrap of it. Afterwards, I spent hours by their cribs, looking down at their perfect little faces and perfect little fingers – and they were perfect, those two; they slept through the night from day one, took to the bottle without grizzling – and I would look at them and try to dredge up anything, the faintest spark of feeling, some shred that had been overlooked, left behind.’ She slumps forward. ‘They might have been a couple of plastic dolls for all I felt for them.’

  Antoinette stares at her hands, at the ragged fingernails she can’t remember beginning to gnaw again. A childhood habit, resuscitated for stranger times. She prods at the absence within her, traces its borders. She does possess some kind of affection for Loki, even if it’s not the romantic love that he craves. If there was nothing inside her but indifference . . . she pushes the thought aside.

  ‘Your father adored the twins,’ her mother is saying. ‘To give him his due, he did get his hands dirty those first few months. Changed nappies, fed them, tried to give me time to come around on my own.’

  Antoinette has no clear memories of her dad. A bearded smile. The scent of sweat and spice. A huge hand ruffling her hair. All the pictures in her mind come from photos. ‘But how on earth did you explain it to him?’

  ‘He already knew about whimsies – called me his fairy princess, which I didn’t much care for, but still. The twins were a shock, but once he realised they were here to stay, well, it’s surprising how simple it was. Dr Chiang took care of the paperwork, registered them as homebirths or some such.’

  ‘Dr Chiang? Our Dr Chiang?’

  ‘We went to school together. He’s a good man.’ Her mother smiles. Shallow and slight, but the first real smile Antoinette’s seen cross her face for a long time.

  ‘Does he know? What Jacqueline is?’

  ‘He believes it was an off-the-books surrogacy arrangement, or he lets himself believe it. Stuck by me all these years, in any case.’ She grunts. ‘That’s more than I can say for your father.’

  The question that’s been lurking on the back of Antoinette’s tongue for the past hour creeps forth, no longer willing to be denied. ‘What about me?’ she asks. ‘Am I a perfection as well?’

  Her mother laughs. ‘Don’t be stupid. You’re the one who gave me stretch marks – and haemorrhoids.’

  ‘But you said you couldn’t–’

  ‘I said, I didn’t.’

  More common than she might think, the mysteriously infertile couple who catch pregnant only after they stop trying, once calendars and thermometers and ovulation charts are abandoned, consigned to the scrapheap along with what remains of their dreams. As it was with Sally Paige, her twins barely a year old before their sister took root in her womb, though another four months before she told anyone. Four months weighing a wheelbarrow load of cons against just one hope-tinged feather. That maybe a real child – a child drawn from her blood, born from her body – could summon back all the love she had lost. Summon or seed from scratch, but fix it either way.

  Fix her. Make Sally Paige a mother again.

  ‘Hope,’ she coughs. ‘Once a poison like that works its way into a woman’s heart, there’s nothing she won’t do in chase of it.’

  The morning sickness and swollen ankles, the aching back and a bladder that couldn’t even make it through half a cup of tea after eight months – she gritted her teeth through it all. Told herself that once the baby comes, once she laid eyes on that fresh baby face and smelled that fresh baby smell – her own baby, her natural baby – it would all change.

  Onc
e the baby comes, once the baby comes, once the baby comes.

  But then the baby did come, red and wrinkled and squalling louder than a summer storm, and Sally Paige found herself looking into a crib once more, weeping over yet another plastic doll.

  ‘If I could have been certain . . .’ She flaps a hand. ‘Beggars and horses.’

  Antoinette stares. ‘Are you saying that if you’d known having me wouldn’t have made a difference, then you would have . . . not had me?’

  ‘Don’t take it personally. It wasn’t you, it wasn’t Antoinette. It was just a decision that needed to be made.’

  ‘And you think you made the wrong one.’ She feels sick to her stomach. This broken, bitter woman isn’t her mother; this woman isn’t anyone’s mother.

  ‘The point, my girl, is that you’re not a perfection. If you were, you couldn’t have made that boy of yours.’

  Antoinette can’t even look at her. She doesn’t want to be here, in a house so permeated with deceit it would likely fall down should the truth ever touch it, sitting across from a mother who doesn’t love her, who has never loved her, who has merely dressed the part and learned the lines and followed – badly – whatever maternal script she managed to draft along the way.

  ‘A perfection can’t create another perfection,’ Sally Paige is saying. ‘Or anything else, for that matter. Girls don’t bleed, boys don’t seed, was how your grandmother used to put it. Crude but accurate, and just as well really, if you ask me.’

  Antoinette gets to her feet. ‘I have to go.’

  ‘Right now?’

  ‘I can’t listen to any more of this.’

  ‘Antoinette, wait.’

  She makes it all the way back to her car before Sally Paige catches up, photo album clutched to her chest like a shield. Antoinette rolls down the window. ‘I’m not staying,’ she says ‘I need some time to get all of this straight in my head.’ To stop wanting to throttle you.

  Sally Paige hands her the album. ‘Don’t let Jacqueline know.’

  ‘You have to be kidding.’

  ‘Show her the photos like you planned. Convince her she’s wrong.’

  ‘Why on earth would I do that?’

  ‘So she can live her life. Your sister’s grown up believing she’s human; what do you think it will do to her to find out she’s not?’

  ‘It’s what she already suspects.’

  ‘But it’s not what she wants to believe, trust me.’ Sally Paige rubs at her forehead again. ‘I know you must think me an ogre, but I’ve tried so hard to be a good mother to you girls, both you girls. Despite the obvious handicaps. Please, don’t ruin everything. Don’t ruin it for Jacqueline.’

  Antoinette keeps her eyes fixed on straight ahead. ‘It’s a long drive home,’ she replies at last. ‘I’ll think about it.’

  Jacqueline watches Loki’s face as he moves around the statues, investigating them from different angles. ‘It’s called Nest,’ she tells him. A life-size motor scooter, stylised and reformed to invoke a deer or perhaps an antelope. Some placid but wild herbivore. A mother, lying on her haunch. Propped up on her front wheel as she encourages her newborn – fearful and undeveloped, no trace yet of a saddle and only featureless, black nubs where its tyres will be – to come closer. To settle within the protective curl of her chassis. To be safe. To be loved.

  ‘Patricia Piccinini,’ Jacqueline says. ‘She’s done a series of similar works that zoomorphise the mechanical. It’s what we all do, when you think about it. Our vehicles, our computers, any machine with which we have close and regular contact. We treat them as though they are alive, as though they are sentient beings with personalities of their own. We cajole them, berate them, abuse them, and ultimately dispose of them.’ She gestures towards the statues. ‘Of course, we know machines are not living creatures. But what does it say about humans that we need to create these false personas? Personas we can then so easily abandon or destroy?’

  Loki returns to stand by her side.

  ‘Is it like training wheels?’ she muses. ‘Do we practise on the machines, so that we’ll be better equipped to ill-treat each other?’

  ‘Maybe,’ he says. ‘But none of that is why you love it.’

  Jacqueline stares at the baby scooter. As always, she yearns to pick it up. Cradle it in her arms. ‘The way they look at each other – not that they even have proper faces, only those dials and gauges – but still. That mother-child bond, it’s almost tangible. If you tried to step between them, it would bounce you off.’

  Loki nudges her with his elbow. ‘Go on, you know you want to.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Touch him. The little guy.’

  ‘This is an art gallery, Loki. It’s not like walking through IKEA.’

  He leans over. His breath is warm against her face. ‘Go on,’ he whispers. ‘What would be the harm?’

  It’s only a small step up onto the raised platform. Two more have her crouching beside the baby scooter. The fibreglass is smooth and polished. The warmth is surely a trick of expectation. She runs her hand over the curve of its back. The stubby handles that serve as ears. ‘Beautiful,’ she murmurs.

  ‘Hey! Get off there!’

  Across the hall, a security guard marches towards them. One hand on his radio. The half-dozen or so people in the vicinity have stopped what they were doing and are now staring at Jacqueline.

  ‘Don’t worry,’ Loki tells her. ‘Stay where you are.’

  ‘Miss, you need to get down.’ The guard cultivates a neutral expression but his eyes are flat and hostile. ‘You aren’t allowed to touch the exhibits.’

  Loki’s grin stretches wide and dazzling. I am the friend you thought you would never find, that grin says. And I will be that friend forever. The guard falters. Blinks and shakes his head. ‘It’s okay,’ Loki says. His voice is hypnotic. Sweet and treacherous as honey from wild bees. ‘She isn’t hurting anyone. She can stay a bit longer.’

  ‘No,’ the guard replies. Less command than question. As though he doubts his own tongue. ‘It isn’t . . . she can’t . . .’

  ‘Just a few more minutes.’ Loki keeps grinning.

  Jacqueline turns away from him. Away from them both. Sits down and rests her cheek against the baby scooter’s flank. Closes her eyes. Somewhere deep inside, low in her belly, she feels a shift. A bright flare of pain. Then a settling.

  ‘Take your time, Miss,’ the guard says. He sounds more at ease now. Happily bewildered. ‘You’re not hurting anyone.’

  Antoinette lets herself into the apartment and pauses for a moment, back pressed to the front door while she tries to catch her breath. She’s never lied to Jacqueline before, not about anything so serious as this, and there’s a constriction across her chest like she’s wearing some cheap-arse corset cinched two sizes too small.

  Let your sister live her life. Isn’t that what she deserves?

  Sally Paige’s parting words stuck on repeat as Antoinette drove back to Port Melbourne, because maybe just maybe the woman is right – what benefit would there actually be in laying such revelations at Jacqueline’s feet? If truth can bring only horror and pain, is there any real value in telling it?

  ‘Stop it,’ Antoinette mutters. Stop procrastinating, girlie-girl, and move your arse. Get it over and done with. Stay angry enough, stay scared enough, you might just pull it off.

  Loki’s in the living room, standing alone by the balcony door. He turns as she comes in, glances at the photo album in her hands. ‘Is that . . .’

  ‘Proof,’ Antoinette snaps. ‘Where is she?’

  ‘In her room. She . . . isn’t sure she wants to see you.’

  ‘Too bad.’

  ‘Wait, please wait.’ He moves with the lithe, enviable grace of a dancer, all coiled energy and control, and Antoinette feels that familia
r hitch of wonder and astonished pride. She made this boy, she made him. ‘Be careful,’ Loki says. ‘She’s so frightened, confused. She did seem better while we were out but–’

  ‘You went out?’

  ‘Just for brunch, I thought it would take her mind off things and it did, for a while. But as soon as we got back here she was . . .’ He shakes his head. ‘She’s been sorting through her stuff, like it’s an archaeological dig or something. She won’t say what she’s looking for.’

  Antoinette brandishes the album at him. ‘Which is why I have this.’

  ‘Just don’t forget that you’re her sister.’

  ‘Oh, for godsake.’ She’s barely taken two steps before he’s in front of her again, his hands falling firm-but-gentle onto her shoulders, his face so close to hers she has little choice but to meet his gaze.

  ‘She loves you,’ Loki says. ‘And she does trust you, no matter how confused she might feel. So, whatever you tell her, don’t make it any kind of a lie. You lie to her now, you lie to her about this – that’s not something you’ll ever be able to fix.’ He kisses her brow, then steps aside. ‘Go on. She needs you.’

  Jacqueline has pulled all her clothes from the wardrobe and is busy sorting them into piles on the bed, though if there’s any kind of rhyme or reason to the arrangement, Antoinette can’t figure it. Her sister frowns as she lifts a cream camisole from one pile and places it onto another, brushing the silk with her hand.

  ‘I don’t think I can talk to you right now,’ she says without looking up.

  ‘That’s okay.’ Antoinette nudges aside a pair of slacks and perches herself on the corner of the bed, cradling the album in her lap. The weight of it is a comfort and gives her anxious fingers something to grasp, something to fiddle with, but that’s about all it’s good for. There may be some kind of truth pressed between its covers – a story of one sister who did in fact fall first into the world, who is the oldest by any definition, and of her younger sibling who has never been anything else – but it’s not the whole truth, not by any cruel or desperate stretch.