Sweetness and Light

by Liam Pieper

  The mood picked up again. Dad was not so deep into his drink that he didn’t recognise that Anna and Skippy were throwing his boy a bone. He was grateful. To celebrate, he encouraged Skippy to bring out another bottle of wine.

  Connor found that he had, if not a talent exactly, an aptitude for cooking. Specifically, for baking. There was something calming about it – the kneading of dough, the feeling of it stretching and forming under his fingers, the magic of setting it aside then finding it alive with fermentation and creeping out of its tin. The work inspired a pleasant mindlessness that reminded him of the tracts of time he’d once enjoyed in the pool. When he was working in the cafe, nothing came to mind, so nothing bothered him.

  While he worked on the kneading and heavy lifting, Anna fussed around him, mixing flours, dusting pastries with caster sugar, piping icing onto cakes. She sang as she worked, loudly and badly, and as she moved around him her off-key renditions of Cyndi Lauper songs would fade in and out of his compromised hearing. Often they were the only ones in the shop, early morning and late at night, and in those times they enjoyed companionable silence.

  Although wary of his kid wearing an apron, Dad was pleased that Connor had a job. He even started boasting to his drinking pals that his son was a chef and began popping in to the cafe in the afternoon to enjoy a free pie and shoot the breeze with the other customers.

  ‘You’re doing good, Connor,’ Dad told him one day. He’d had a win at the RSL and was feeling expansive. ‘I’m proud of you. Just don’t let anyone catch you icing a cake.’

  He did ice cakes. Anna had taught him the basics of a fondant shell, let him do lettering and simple patterns with a piping bag.

  She called him over one day to help her decorate a children’s cake, a bright ‘HAPPY BIRTHDAY’ in icing and a picture of a cartoon penguin. She showed him how to hold the piping bag to make little roses and flourishes – then handed the bag over to him. He grasped it, hovered the nozzle over the cake, and squeezed too hard. The bag exploded in his hands, splattering the kitchen. He was mortified – expected a cuff over the ear. But when he looked over Anna was rocking with silent laughter. When she saw he was stricken, her laugh softened into a smile and she reached over to wipe some frosting off his cheek, told him not to worry. ‘You just don’t know your own strength, is all.’

  She prepared another piping bag, and with her hands folded over his she squeezed his fingers just enough to let the icing drizzle down onto the cake in delicate spirals. He tried to relax, follow her movements, but he was painfully aware of his body against hers, felt every rebellious nerve in his hands that wouldn’t respond, the involuntary stiffening of his back.

  ‘See?’ she said. ‘Gently. We’re in no rush. We’re having a good time.’ Her voice was warm, her lips inches away from his good ear. Her breath lingered on his shoulder and he could focus on nothing but that, the pressure of her breasts pushing against his back through her apron. ‘Be the way you are when you swim. Don’t overthink it.’

  It was nice to have a place to go. She gave him a key to the cafe so he could let himself in at night, especially when Dad had had a bad day at the RSL and it was not wise to be home. She often left him a little supper – a pie or a schnitzel sandwich kept warm on a plate under tinfoil – and books she thought he might like.

  Some nights she came in to the shop to check on the state of a batter or the frozen croissants thawing on the sink and she’d find him absorbed in a paperback, the cover folded all the way back as he gripped the book in one hand and chewed at his thumbnail with the other. He had confided in her about his hearing, and when she found him lost in a book, she’d creep up on his bad side and surprise him by tapping him on the shoulder or planting a quick hello kiss on his cheek.

  One night, the night of the grand final, very late, when the rest of the town was asleep or roaring drunk, Connor had fallen asleep on a chair in the back room, the book he was reading discarded on the floor. He was shaken gently awake. Anna. He was embarrassed to be discovered that way, apologised, gathered himself groggily. She walked him out, gathered his puffer jacket and helped him shrug into it. He smelled sweet red wine on her breath.

  There, at the threshold, her hands lingered on the lapels of his coat, drew him in for a kiss goodnight. She had been aiming for his cheek but she was a little drunk, he still not all the way awake, and their lips met. He’d never kissed anyone before and shrunk back from the soft shock of it – but not before he understood, in the careless tingling of his every cell, the impossibility of any action beyond leaning in to meet her lips.

  Anna showed him how to bring her to orgasm the same way she taught him to bake; her long, slender fingers over his, guiding him. She lay on her back, hand through his, her head turned to keep her mouth close enough to his good ear that she could whisper instructions and plant kisses on the sun-soaked skin of his throat.

  She shivered, tensed, released – her hand let go of his to bring it up to her mouth so she could bite down on her sharp cry. She paused for a moment, wrecked, breath wild. When she opened her eyes Connor’s face was inches from hers, alert, anxious.

  ‘Did you come?’ he asked so urgently that she laughed, and he was mortified.

  The delight he found in her body was contagious. She revelled in taking her clothes off in front of him and seeing him light up like a puppy whose owner had walked in the door, the sheer gratitude in his eyes. If they weren’t constrained by time – moments they could steal in the back of the cafe after work, in the car when she drove him home – he would happily spend his entire life in foreplay. Never in a rush, never pushing, an animal content to graze; tracing her breasts with his fingernails, biting her nipple. In post-coital lulls he was enraptured as he traced with fingertips her stretch marks, her cellulite.

  He came quickly, far too quickly, but he made up for that by being a quick study. Hand, head, blindfolds and ropes, nothing she proposed shocked him, beyond the logistical challenge of learning how to acquit himself at various positions. At the slightest sign of her pain he retreated, pulled out in a panic. She had to teach him when to be rough. He was a blank slate.

  ‘How many people have you . . . been with?’ he asked her once and, unexpectedly upset, she changed the subject, told him that it didn’t matter, that he was all that mattered. ‘You’re very good,’ she whispered in his ear. ‘The best.’

  That was enough for Connor. He took pride in what he learned he could do, a pride in pleasure almost as strong as the thing itself. He liked being a secret, liked to hold one end of a clandestine pact that would destroy his whole world if it got out. There was a charge in the fear of discovery. Under his clothes, he wore the bruises she gave him like medals.

  The first few times he saw Skippy he was worried his mettle would crack – that something on his face would give him away, that he would be overcome by jealousy. But when he found himself in Skippy’s company, being offered a beer from his dad’s Esky in their backyard, he found nothing had changed. He still liked Skippy – was relieved when he was around. The brooding, malicious drunk his father became when drinking alone was very different around Skippy. With his best mate there, Dad was laid back, friendly – he was at his best when there was a better man around to impress.

  He felt he was slowly figuring everything out – supposed he was not jealous because Anna was not his Anna when her husband was around. In those moments she was a different woman, or play-acting at being a different person entirely. The Anna who came over with her husband carrying a casserole she’d made had nothing to do with the Anna he knew.

  Connor found he could sit at the dinner table across from her, politely pass the peas, meet her eye, and see nothing there of the ecstatic masterpiece she became when undressing in the storage room at work. The Anna who, hours before this particular dinner, had held him down and chewed on his neck, leaving a rich red bruise underneath. She took the peas, absentmindedly traced a finger over her collarbone.

  Skippy excused himself, went to th
e bathroom, and when he returned took note of the hickey on Connor’s neck.

  ‘Hello, hello!’ he said, grabbed Connor by the collar and leaned closer to examine the bruise. ‘What’s this then?’

  For one dreadful moment, Connor was certain he was busted. He was sure that Skippy had found the teeth marks he’d left on his wife’s thigh, or that he would smell her scent on him now, but when he looked over the table at Anna she was smiling conspiratorially.

  ‘You never told me you have a girlfriend, Connor,’ she said. ‘Who is she? Rosie? From the chip shop?’

  ‘Umm . . .’ Connor searched for what to say, but the rest of the table erupted into delighted scandal.

  ‘It was Rosie! Wasn’t it!’ Skippy crowed, giving Connor a congratulatory back slap that jolted him towards his plate. ‘Good stuff.’

  Mum was unconvinced. ‘Rosie? Really? Isn’t she a little bit . . .’ Mum held her arms out, blew out her cheeks, tucked her chin in to make it double.

  Dad jumped in. ‘That doesn’t matter. Nothing wrong with a bit of practice. The ugly girls will do the things the pretty ones won’t.’

  ‘It’s not Rosie,’ Connor murmured, flushed and defensive.

  ‘It was a girl, wasn’t it?’ teased Skippy. ‘Are you batting for the other side, Connor? That would explain all these pictures of muscly young blokes you’ve got up everywhere.’

  This was unfair, as Dad had put up those posters years earlier and refused to let him take them down, even after Connor’s training had ended. But before he could defend himself, Skippy rushed to his defence, sort of.

  ‘Mate, there’s nothing wrong with that. You be you.’ He winked at Connor. ‘Nothing wrong with boys, or with Rosie for that matter. It might be relaxing, all that whale song.’

  Dad laughed, and Connor burned. Anger and embarrassment scrabbled for dominance inside him before both losing to pride, a dozen glowing shades of it, wounded, secret, unvarnished. Here came the jealousy, so unexpected and powerful it broadsided him so thoroughly that his esteem for Skippy was shattered.

  Connor had to physically fight the urge to stand up, to blow up Dad and Skippy’s smug laughter by blurting out his secret. He wanted to tell Skippy every single detail of what had transpired between him and his wife – to stand up tall like the nerds in class used to when tapped by the teacher to recite a times table or a fragment of geography.

  He could have spoken eloquently of all he knew of her, the exalted cartography he’d made of her body – the rising rush of her pulse, the locomotive of her sighs, the constellation of freckles scattered across her chest that he could make join up when he stretched his fingers all the way out.

  He stirred, shifted in his chair so violently it scraped the floor, and it was only catching a secret smile from Anna that stopped him, left him shaking in his seat.

  Skippy reached out, tousled his hair with his meaty, callused palm. ‘There, there, mate. Only joking. You’re one of the good ones.’

  And then, one night, Skippy stopped by the cafe to surprise his wife with a bunch of flowers, let himself in, the bouquet scattering as it slipped from his fingers.

  Dad came to see him in hospital. He was there when Connor woke up, sitting by the bed with his head in his hands. Connor tried to speak, but only a crooked, broken sound emerged, enough to alert Dad that he was awake.

  ‘Connor?’ he said. ‘Can you hear me?’

  Connor croaked, couldn’t work out how to manufacture words.

  ‘Well, boy,’ said Dad. ‘I hope you’re happy. You’ve finally done it. I’m finished in this town. Do you understand? You’ve ruined me.’

  Connor heard the words but didn’t understand them, not really. His thoughts seemed to come from far off, filtered and weak, and he wondered if something in his mind was broken, if he was, after all, retarded.

  ‘You’re dead to me. You get it? You can come home to grab your shit, but then I never want to see you again. You understand?’ He got up to go, turned back. ‘I don’t know what I did to deserve you, but you’re not my problem anymore.’

  When Connor got home, his mum cried out at the sight of him, couldn’t recognise him under the bruising, the disfigurement. His arm was broken in three places – it would heal, but for the rest of his life he would know when rain was coming, when the drop in pressure made the old fractures sing out. The fingers on the same arm were shattered, as was his nose. The cartilage had been re-broken by the hospital to help it into its original shape, but it healed badly and stuck out at an odd angle. He had a long scar running down his cheekbone that would fade with age, and later, in Thailand, at a cheap back-alley dentist, he’d have his teeth fixed.

  But that last day he and Mum just sat at the kitchen table, her crying, him trying not to. Each sob rattled his skeleton, made the nerves along the shattered bones scream in protest.

  Mum helped him pack, alternating between silence and tears. She reached up into a cupboard, retrieved a wrap of green and gold bills held in place by a hair-tie, pressed it into his hand, asked him not to tell his father. She hugged him gingerly around the bandages and fetched the keys to drive him to the train station. Through it all, Dad sat in his lawn chair in the backyard, staring stubbornly at the fence.

  On the Shit-Can-Sen to Sydney, Connor forced himself to get a grip, to stop crying. Whatever had happened to him, worse was happening to Anna right now. He didn’t want to think about it, couldn’t think about it, had to find a way not to. Over the years he’d find that a person could learn to live with almost anything, but in that moment, when the train passed through a tunnel and he saw his reflection in the darkened window, he didn’t recognise the mangled person who stared back at him. He felt overwhelming, profound relief.

  Preparing for Connor’s drug run, Baba has become gregarious, fizzy with excitement. Like a proud parent provisions his child for school, he delivers a worn backpack, inconspicuous and beat up, and travelling clothes for Connor to wear: cargo pants, linen shirts.

  ‘Baba,’ Connor complains, ‘is this what you think white people wear?’

  ‘This is what you wear. You people don’t understand what you look like from the outside.’

  Baba hands him a smartphone, with one number programmed into it. ‘If you run into trouble, if anything goes wrong, call me on this number, nobody else, and I will fix it. Okay?’

  ‘Why don’t you give me a car? Or I’ll take my bike.’

  ‘I’m not putting you on the road. I don’t trust you to not get pulled over. I don’t trust police not to search you. I don’t trust a fucking soul in this world, but I trust Indian Railways. The greatest, the smartest, most loyal minds in all the world belong to Indian Railways. If I had them on my team I’d be king of the world. Nothing could stop me.’

  When he’s excited, Baba models himself on something between an old-time English gangster and a Bollywood heartthrob. He talks very fast, interrupting himself, as though he is not only bored of whatever you might say but also of his own story, can’t wait to get on to the next, even more exciting one.

  ‘And this way, I will know where you are, always – which train, which place – and everyone can rest easy.’ He wiggles his head gregariously, leaving the implied threat hanging in the air between them.

  He is given a thick sheaf of tickets that will take him from Shanti Beach to Panaji by bus, then an auto to Karmali and an overnight train to Mumbai. In Mumbai he’ll make the first drop, then head down to Bangalore for another, and on to Chennai, where he’ll hand off the third and final bag. There Baba’s fixer will provide him with papers and a flight to Bangkok.

  The overnight train from Goa to Mumbai is lousy with tourists and Connor spends a miserable night listening to dirty, beautiful hippies exchanging travel stories in the bunks below him. By dawn he is exhausted and at the terminus he shoulders the crowding auto-rickshaw drivers aside, pushing through to where the taxis wait, keeping a tight grip on his bag.

  Baba’s contact in Mumbai is a bored-looking Sikh sitting b
ehind the desk in a non-descript jewellery store in Fort, sorting gemstones into bags. Connor drops one of the bags of pills onto his desk and the man barely looks up, just waves a hand to acknowledge receipt.

  When he boards the train to Bangalore around noon, he is relieved to find that he is sharing his cabin with nobody. There’s room for four, two sleeper bunks folded against the wall and another two embedded above them, a luggage rack under the ceiling. In all his years he’s never ridden in a sleeper carriage without some nightmare unfolding; drunken buck’s parties on their way to Goa or Kerala, spiritually energised hippies who stink up the cabin with cheap food and half-digested Buddhist platitudes.

  He heaves his backpack onto the opposite bed, lies down on the creaking, worn blue vinyl of his own, and is asleep seconds after the train heaves into motion. It has been this way ever since he was a baby, when the only way his mother could get him to sleep was to drive him in endless, sleepless circles of Newcastle.

  He’s woken by a lullaby, the carriage bathed in soft afternoon light. The train has stopped somewhere, is taking on passengers, including the hawkers who haunt the rail, riding back and forth between cities. They wander up and down the centre of the carriage singing little chants of their goods. A heavy-set man in a tracksuit, carrying a huge metal urn under one arm, is crooning in the aisle.

  ‘Soup,’ he booms, drawing out the vowels a full five seconds. ‘Garam tomato soup. Hot. Hot. Garam tomato soup.’

  The hawker peeks in past the curtain, sees a westerner, and yanks the curtain back.

  ‘Tomato soup, my friend?’ he asks in English.

  ‘Go fuck your mother,’ Connor barks, sleepily, in Hindi.

  ‘And you, sir.’ The man nods, closes the curtain and resumes his keening soup song further down the carriage.

  Connor can’t be sure, but he is convinced that this craggy-faced soup seller is the same guy who worked this train the last time he took it, to Goa from Chennai, all those years ago.