Perfections

by Kirstyn McDermott

  She glances at the rear-view mirror, at the shape of two dark heads bent close together, and a lump swells in her throat.

  It’s your sister or it’s that boy.

  No choice. Antoinette grits her teeth. No choice at all.

  Sally Paige releases Antoinette’s hand, slumps back against the bedhead with a glare that would strip not only paint but whatever lies beneath it. They’ve been at it for close to an hour, door closed and blinds drawn to block out the glare of the late morning sun that strains her mother’s eyes. An awkward kind of guided meditation that Antoinette finds vaguely embarrassing and, ‘I don’t know what I’m supposed to be doing,’ she protests, shifting her chair closer to the bed.

  ‘Empty your mind,’ her mother says. ‘That should be easy for you.’

  Antoinette takes a breath, reminds herself that, for all the best efforts of the syringe driver and the medication it dutifully doles out, the woman propped up in the middle of all those pillows is frail and sick and in no small measure of discomfort. She nods towards the Dilaudid on the bedside table, the amber bottle as yet unopened in the week since Dr Chiang prescribed it, the small measuring glass unused. For breakthrough pain, his directions careful and firm. Take it as needed and with no less than four hours between doses. It’s very strong stuff.

  Sally Paige is taking the only as needed part very seriously. ‘No,’ she says, not waiting for Antoinette to ask. ‘I’m saving that for when it gets worse.’

  ‘I don’t think there’s rationing in place, Mum. We can get another prescription if you run out.’

  ‘I’m already muddle-headed enough.’ She holds out her hand. ‘Come on then, let’s give it another go before I’m completely exhausted.’

  ‘No.’ Antoinette crosses her arms. ‘It’s pointless. You have to give me more to go on than empty your mind.’

  ‘I’m not teaching you to ride a bike. This should come naturally.’

  ‘Well, obviously it doesn’t.’

  ‘Your connection to that boy, you imagine it as a stone?’

  ‘Like a weight, like a pendulum hanging inside me.’

  ‘Then cut the cord and pass it to me.’

  Antoinette rolls her eyes, exasperated. ‘For godsake, Mum, it’s just a metaphor.’

  ‘Everything is a metaphor.’ Her eyes narrow in thought. ‘That Sharon left her vodka here, yes?’

  ‘What’s left of it. Time to drown our sorrows?’

  ‘No dear. Time to drown your inhibitions.’

  The Smirnoff is stashed in the freezer and Antoinette pours herself a generous shot, sculls it and coughs a little as the alcohol burns down her throat. She pours another, hesitates then takes the bottle and follows the faint sound of the television that drifts from the living room. Jacqueline is curled up on the couch, watching an episode of Mad Men with a hot water bottle hugged to her stomach.

  ‘Still feeling bad?’ Antoinette asks from the doorway.

  Her sister looks around. ‘A lot better. I’m just too comfortable to move.’

  ‘I didn’t know you liked this show.’

  ‘I don’t think I do like it.’ She nods at the bottle of Smirnoff. ‘Going that well in there, huh?’

  ‘Our mother is trying to get me drunk.’

  ‘Your mother,’ her sister corrects.

  ‘She thinks if I just relax and loosen up a little . . . god, sounds like the ending to a bad date, doesn’t it?’

  ‘Makes sense,’ Jacqueline says. ‘You’d been drinking when you made Loki.’

  ‘Yeah. Hey, where is Loki?’

  ‘He went for a walk out back. Don’t worry, he has my phone with him.’

  ‘Cool.’ She raises her glass, downs the second shot and grimaces. ‘Jacqueline, listen. If it ends up I can’t do this thing . . .’

  ‘But you will.’ Her sister smiles confidently. ‘Of course you will.’

  Lina hears the squeak of the screen door out back and reaches for the remote. She’s decided that she doesn’t care for shows about advertising any more than she cares for the carrots and sticks of advertising itself these days. It’s a scary sort of relief, to no longer feel the constant need to question herself. To worry if she’s wearing the right clothes. Choosing the right furniture. Saying the right things.

  Being the right thing.

  Loki is in the kitchen by the sink, staring out the window. His hands are clasped behind his head, elbows akimbo. He’s wearing the red T-shirt she bought him, the one with the bright yellow Aztec sun printed on the front, and it’s riding up his back. Lina wants to press her lips to that pale, exposed line above his jeans. Wants to taste the warm salt of his skin.

  ‘Good walk?’ she asks, taking a bottle of multi-vitamin juice from the fridge. Almost dropping it as Loki swivels around like a startled cat. Anger contorts his features. Jostles with confusion and something approaching dread.

  ‘Where’s Antoinette?’ he demands.

  ‘What’s wrong?’

  ‘Where’s Antoinette?’

  ‘She’s still in there with her.’ Lina jerks her head in the direction of Sally Paige’s bedroom. She puts the juice down on the counter. ‘Loki, please. What’s happened?’

  He licks his lips nervously. Nods, more to himself than to her, then holds out his hand. ‘Come with me, I’ll show you.’

  A few metres into the backyard, near where the grassy lawn ends and bushland begins its subtle encroachment, Lina stops dead. ‘We’re going in there?’

  ‘Not too far. There’s a small hut or something at the very back of the property, just inside the fenceline.’

  He tugs at her arm. She doesn’t move. ‘That’s our father’s old shed. It’s been empty since he left.’

  ‘How long has it been since you’ve seen it?’

  ‘I don’t . . . we never go down there. It’s just an empty shed, Loki.’

  ‘It’s not empty.’

  ‘I don’t really care.’ Her palm is damp, clammy in his grip. ‘Look, can we go back to the house now? Ant might need someone and–’

  ‘Lina, this is important. You need to see.’

  ‘I don’t like it out here,’ she whispers. ‘I really, really don’t.’

  ‘It’s broad daylight. Nothing will hurt you, I promise.’

  She swallows. Feels sick to her stomach in a way that has nothing to do with her body’s newly discovered workings. But she allows him to lead her on regardless. Follows him through the rustle and scorn of the trees, leaf litter crackling dry beneath her sandalled feet. Lina keeps her gaze fixed to the ground. Concentrates on counting her steps, starting over each time she hits ten.

  When Loki stops, she bumps right into him.

  The shed is small and made of wood. Painted in a dull off-grey that might once have been blue before time and sunlight did their work, with a curtain drawn across its single square window. A pushbolt has been installed below the door handle and from this hangs a sturdy, gaping padlock.

  ‘It was unlocked?’ Lina asks, hating the tremor in her voice.

  Loki pulls a set of keys out of his pocket and jangles them in the air. Sally Paige’s keys, complete with the enamelled #1 MUM keyring that Lina remembers buying one Mother’s Day too many years ago now to count.

  ‘Put those away,’ she says.

  He does. ‘Come on. Lina, come on.’

  Reluctantly, she walks the last few steps to the shed door. As Loki eases it open, the clotted scent of roses wafts from the dim and shadowed interior. Roses, and something sharper. Something acrid and stale. ‘Hey,’ Loki calls softly. ‘It’s okay. It’s only me again.’ His arm slips around Lina’s waist, guides her forward. Out of the midday sun, it takes a moment for her eyes to adjust.

  To take in the immense slatted crib that looms along the wall to her left.


  And the shape that lolls, large and lumpish, within its bars.

  Antoinette has been drunker than this – much drunker, oh yes, many times and more – but never ever with her mother around. ‘Stop it now,’ Sally Paige scolds as she grabs her daughter’s arm, and stop what? Antoinette wants to ask, then realises that she is giggling. Has probably been giggling for quite some time.

  ‘Sorry,’ she says. ‘But it’s pretty funny, right? All those lectures you used to give us on the Evils of Binge Drinking and now look: my mother the enabler.’ That withering Sally Paige glare is pretty funny as well and Antoinette has to gnaw on the inside of her lip to keep a straight face.

  ‘Close your eyes,’ her mother instructs once again. ‘Then–’

  ‘Empty your mind,’ Antoinette sings.

  ‘Are you done? Because we can stop right now, if you like. If you care so little about your sister, that all it takes is one good swig of alcohol for you to forget what’s at stake here.’

  Her words sting worse than a slap and are three times as sobering.

  ‘Okay, okay. Sorry. I’ll try probably – properly, I mean.’

  Behind her eyelids, colours shimmer and swirl and Antoinette rolls her head forward, chin bumping to chest as the woozy rush of intoxication tumbles over her like a wave. She feels for the Loki-stone, feels for it and finds it and holds it puzzled within her grasp, unsure just what it is she’s meant to do now.

  Let go, her mother whispers, and the voice seems less inside her ear than inside her head, as her mother’s fingers travel along the skin of her inner arm, feather-light and ticklish, their barest tips trailing hypnotically up and down, up and down, up and down, until Antoinette can no longer distinguish between sensation and touch. Let go, and then an unexpected flare of pain, fingernails pinching the soft crease of her elbow, pinching so hard that Antoinette cries out, and her mother says something else, a word that darts away before Antoinette can grasp it and, pulled along in its slipstream, she feels herself unlock, feels herself open and swell, and her mother is beside her now, beside her and around her and within her, offering, offering, oh–

  The Jacqueline-stone, so bright and clear and blue. Summer skies stretching cloudless and vast, peacock plumage and lapis lazuli and fat-headed hydrangeas full in bloom, and Antoinette reaches out and takes it from her mother, scoops her sister right into herself, a warm new weight hanging safe behind her ribs.

  Now give that to me.

  Loki is silver-smooth. Loki is polished steel and mirrored glass, the windless surface of subterranean lakes, and I’m sorry, she tells him, I don’t have a choice, but it hurts as she starts to pull him free, a deep throb that makes her gasp and–

  Of course it hurts. Did you think it wouldn’t?

  And then Antoinette sees it. That subtle, shifting spark at the very core of Sally Paige, a faint and sickly scrap of yellow that her mother has tried to hide, has sought to veil from her sight, but – oh – she sees it now, she sees it.

  That sole remaining presence, that undeniable second stone.

  Lina stares down at the – creature? child? boy? – curled face to the wall in the crib. Her hands are shaking so hard, she grips the wooden side rail to steady herself. He’s wearing a green pyjama shirt with sleeping dragons on it, and a disposable nappy. The pyjama pants are folded over the end of the crib. Orange socks cover his feet. There’s a blanket, also green, but it’s been kicked into a corner.

  She focuses on these slight, mundane details. Just on these.

  ‘I had to change him,’ Loki says.

  Lina nods. Takes in the brightly coloured boxes stacked next to the tallboy on the other side of the shed. Junior Huggies for Boys. The boxes have Winnie the Pooh on them. Tigger and the donkey as well. A battery-operated room deodoriser squats on top of the tallboy, its rose-scented fragrance not quite masking the more bodily odours that hang in the air. Beside it is a pink plastic radio that she recognises as once having belonged to her sister. There’s no music and Lina wonders if the batteries have run out.

  In the crib, the boy makes a soft, hooting noise and attempts to roll onto his back. It seems to take some effort. That skull so impossibly large for such a small and scrawny body. Like one of those creepy-comical Japanese dolls, all head and black unblinking eyes. Except, no, not these eyes. These eyes are blue, or at least one of them is. The other cloud-spun and milky. Glaucoma perhaps, or cataracts, or some other blinding disease. But still, he sees her.

  Sees her and hoots again, louder this time. Rocks himself from side to side until that great head rolls all the way over and his body follows, flopping ragdoll-like in its wake.

  Lina tries to move away but Loki is right behind her. Hand firm on her lower back.

  ‘It’s okay,’ he says. ‘Lina, look at him.’

  She doesn’t want to.

  Doesn’t want to see those eyes. Or that fine, cornsilk hair cut in ugly, ill-matched lengths. Or that mouth, worst of all, that strange and awful mouth. A round, sucking hole scarcely larger than a shirt button. Lips rubbery and pink, squashed and sealed together at the sides. Glistening with saliva that spills in long strings to baptise the stuffed green frog that the boy holds in one hand.

  The hooting changes, pitches higher. Becomes almost a whistle.

  ‘What has she done?’ Lina whispers.

  On the front of the nappy, Winnie the Pooh and Tigger hold hands. Smile up at her with oblivious Disneyfied grins. Bile rises in her throat. The boy lifts his empty hand. Stubby fingers waggle in the air. Lina reaches towards him. Touches her hand to his. Hooting softly, he curls a fist around two of her fingers. There is almost no strength to his grip.

  ‘Hello,’ Lina says. ‘Hello Charles.’

  Loki slips his arms around her waist. ‘It’ll be okay.’

  ‘No.’ Gently, she extricates herself from her brother’s grasp. Turns and pushes Loki away. ‘That woman did this. Changed him somehow, kept him out here like some sick, unwanted animal.’ A searing, sudden rage boils through her veins. Her whole body is shaking and her fingers ache to find the flesh of Sally Paige’s throat. To rend it to ragged and bloody strips.

  Antoinette shrinks back, uncertain now and scared, pulling the Loki-stone from her mother’s reach even as Sally Paige begins to close around it.

  Give me that. You have to give him to me.

  But Antoinette draws away, draws Loki away, folds herself protectively over him and Jacqueline both. Two within her now, Loki-stone and Lina-stone, knocking against one another in a way that feels right, that feels perfect, and how the hell could she ever have considered giving him up? She will never give him up. And again that flash of yellow her mother is too slow to conceal, too slow or merely unable. Meek little pebble blinking amber and she pushes closer, reaches closer and–

  NO.

  –her mother swats her away. An angry, effortless shove that takes Antoinette by surprise, hits her like a punch in the sternum and she gasps as the connection with her mother is abruptly, painfully severed.

  She blinks, dizzy-drunk and wobbling on her chair. ‘What was that?’

  ‘Nothing you need to lose sleep over,’ Sally Paige tells her through trembling, grey-tinged lips. She looks exhausted, face sheened with perspiration and breath rasping harsh, but deep in those red-lined eyes gleams a cool and all too familiar disappointment.

  ‘I saw it,’ Antoinette insists. ‘I felt it. You have another perfection!’

  ‘That’s none of your business.’

  ‘But you said a woman couldn’t cope with two of them, you said–’

  ‘Does it look like I’ve been coping?’

  ‘Who is it? Where are they?’

  ‘I’m tired.’ Her mother sinks down into her pillows. ‘And now we have to do this all again. Stupid girl, why didn’t you just give him over to me?’

/>   ‘You’re not getting him,’ Antoinette says through clenched teeth. ‘I’ve decided to keep them, both of them. They’re mine.’

  ‘Don’t be so sentimental. They’ll ruin you.’

  ‘I feel fine. No different.’

  ‘Wait till you sober up. Wait till she starts to drain you.’

  Antoinette grabs a glass of water from the bedside table, drinks most of it in one thirsty gulp. ‘You know what I think? I think you don’t know half of what you think you know. I think you’re a bitter old woman who screwed up her life and now doesn’t want anyone else to be happy even for a second.’

  ‘You’re a drunken little fool.’

  ‘And you’re a liar.’ She lurches to her feet, reaches for the back the chair to brace herself. ‘But you know what? Loki and Jacqueline love each other, and I’m not going to take that away from them just because it’s something I can’t have anymore. I’m not you, I’m not going to spoil things for them out of spite.’

  Beneath her fury, Sally Paige seems startled. ‘They love each other?’

  ‘Like Romeo and Juliet, I swear to god.’

  ‘How very apt.’

  ‘Sorry?’

  ‘Two perfections. It can hardly end well.’

  ‘Yeah? Well, guess what? Jacqueline–’

  A commotion of footsteps and raised voices out in the hall catches her attention and she sways around to face the door just as her sister flings it open, panting and flushed like she’s been running. Loki right behind, pleading with her to wait, please Lina, just wait, but she shrugs him off, marches into the bedroom like there’s an entire battalion at her heels.

  ‘Move out of the way, Ant. I am going to kill that old witch right where she lies.’

  — 23 —

  For a few bleary, perplexing seconds, Antoinette is caught between the two of them. Jacqueline screaming at Sally Paige, rapid-fire accusations about Charles and some old shed that make no kind of sense at all, and the older woman snapping back, telling her to calm down, to stop being so hysterical – that word a bugbear of Jacqueline’s from way back, guaranteed to press all the wrong buttons as her mother well knows – and her sister launches herself at the bed, hands outstretched like she wants to tear Sally Paige’s eyes out or worse.