Where Have You Been?

by Wendy James

  He likes the smell of her too. Musk, vanilla, he’s not sure, will have to check with Susan. Though on second thoughts maybe he’ll ask Carly herself. It might be a nice gift for Susan – her birthday’s coming up – a change from her customary floral scents.

  All things considered, Ed’s rather pleased with his new sister-in-law.

  He insists on accompanying Susan when she next meets with Howard Hamilton, though she tells him to go to work, that she’ll be fine, she can handle it, she doesn’t need him holding her hand. Susan doesn’t actually tell him that it’s none of his business, but he senses that she’d like to. He manages to shrug it off, to not take offence – she’s not really been herself lately, and it’s no wonder – and he restrains himself, limits himself to a simple statement to the effect that he’s coming no matter what. That she needs him there to (and here he clears his throat delicately) protect her interests.

  ‘Oh, for Christ’s sake, Ed. It’s Howard Hamilton’s job to protect my interests.’

  But Ed knows that’s not so: ‘The solicitor’s there to protect your mother’s interests, Susan. The interests of the estate. Not yours.’ Ed doesn’t tell her that he still doesn’t trust that greasy solicitor – is aware that for some reason (women!) she has taken to him, has, perhaps, been taken in by him. Nor does he mention (perhaps he doesn’t realise) the fact that part of this eagerness to accompany her is tied up with the prospect of seeing Carly again. Though it’s not like Ed to deny such an impulse. Not at all like Ed.

  Carly is already comfortably ensconced in Hamilton’s office when they arrive. The solicitor stands when the secretary ushers them in, but Carly stays seated, though she smiles and says hello to Susan, who returns the greeting a little too coolly to Ed’s way of thinking. He knows his wife was slightly put out, slightly hurt by her sister’s failure to talk to her during the weekend barbecue, but as he has already, none-too-diplomatically, pointed out, Susan was half-pissed by the time Carly arrived; she was scarcely able to remember her sister’s new name, let alone conduct a meaningful conversation. Now he directs a slightly too-warm smile in Carly’s direction, to make up for Susan’s obvious remoteness; he proffers his hand, and it seems to him that she grasps it eagerly, that she clutches it the way an exhausted swimmer might grab onto a buoy, and that the smile she turns on him as he takes the seat next to her is understanding as well as grateful. Carly is dressed differently again today, though he’s not sure what it is precisely that’s changed. Is it the way she’s done her hair? He can’t be certain but thinks perhaps it looks more stylish somehow; artfully tousled rather than unkempt, uncared for. Or is it the blouse: silk, unbuttoned just enough to allow a tantalising glimpse of cleavage? Whatever it is, she looks different, more conservative, younger somehow, and even more attractive. She leans towards him, her hand still loosely in his.

  ‘I really want to thank you for Sunday, Ed,’ she says in an undertone. ‘The barbecue. It was great. You were great. So warm, so welcoming. I know this is difficult for you both,’ glances briefly at Susan who is talking quietly to the solicitor, ‘but it’s difficult for me, too. Difficult and...’ chair, turns away for a moment as if to compose herself, then suddenly she seems lost for words, her fingers tremble slightly in his, ‘difficult and wonderful. To have a family again ... after all this time.’ She sighs and drops his hand, leans back in her back again, smiling weakly.

  Susan

  She is careful that there is no particular consciousness on her part. Susan is cool, collected, and willing (indeed, more than willing, desperate) to let the whole episode remain what it undoubtedly was. The outcome of some sort of momentary derangement on both their parts. An aberration. An uncharacteristic act of no great significance committed under duress and the influence of alcohol. Meaningless. Best forgotten. Already forgotten.

  It appears that he too has put the incident out of his mind. Howard – Mr Hamilton – is back to wearing his well-cut suits. His hair is brushed back neatly, his handshake firm, his manner briskly businesslike. It would be easy to think that she had dreamt up the whole incident – but then why would she bother? – this conservatively dressed middle-aged man is certainly not the stuff of the even the most desperate housewife’s fantasy. Susan takes the seat furthest from his desk (there are three chairs ranged around his desk, Ed takes the centre chair, the chair closest to Carly) and they exchange pleasantries.

  Howard asks Susan in his dry voice if the traffic was bad. She replies calmly that it was okay, that it was better than last time, better than she’d expected. He asks her, without any change of expression, any sign, if she felt that the barbecue, Sunday’s barbecue, had been a success. He says he is pleased that Ed has accompanied her again, that it’s good that he’s made the time, that this – the business side of her – their – mother’s will, the sale, the disbursement of proceeds – involves him too.

  Susan nods her head, and glances briefly towards Ed who has his back to her, is chatting away to Carly. When she turns back Howard Hamilton is frowning at her, the skin on his wide forehead puckered quite alarmingly. She says nothing, stares back uncertainly.

  ‘Well,’ he says finally, holding some papers towards her (his wrists jut out awkwardly from his well-made shirt; they are surprisingly thin wrists, the bone knobbly through the skin like a child’s). ‘We may as well start. I’d like you to read through this document first and then sign on every page, where I’ve indicated. This first document is to verify your positive identification of your sister...’ The tips of his fingers brush against hers (so contrived, so cliched) as she reaches for the paper.

  His fingers tell her that he hasn’t forgotten. His fingers tell her that neither has she.

  Ed

  The solicitor seems to have concluded his tete-a-tete with Susan, and is speaking loudly, is addressing the three of them, though Ed only half-listens.

  ‘The two of you need to sign these documents and then we can get the house on the market...’

  On Sunday, Ed had been looking hard for a family resemblance between the two women, had failed to find any physical similarities, but had eventually come to the conclusion that there was a particular personality trait they shared: on first meeting it’d seemed that Carly displayed the same sort of self-sufficiency, an admirable and singular toughness, that his wife possesses. But now it seems that he was mistaken, that Carly’s tough exterior is only a veneer, a shell.

  ‘...be certain, but I’ve had advice that properties of this sort are extremely easy to move – they may even have an interested party already...’

  He had no idea she was so soft, so unsure. So vulnerable. ‘...and then another six weeks before the disbursements...’

  His sister-in-law doesn’t remind him of his kindergarten teacher anymore, and Ed can’t imagine why she ever did.

  Carly

  She is surprised that it is so easy. That the tears, the sighs, the show of grateful vulnerability, aren’t more difficult to affect, to manufacture. That occasionally these emotions seem real even to her. She is surprised too that their response – the obvious concern, the generosity, the solicitude, the nauseating sincerity of it all – is so gratifying.

  She thinks she could get used to it, she thinks she really could.

  Ed

  It is Ed who initially suggests that Carly move in with them.

  ‘It’ll be a fantastic opportunity for you two girls to catch up, get to know one another,’ he says. ‘She can have Stella’s room – it’ll be a useful experience for Stell and Mitch, a good lesson – having to share – before they’re too old.’ Adds: ‘And it’ll be good for Carly to be part of a real family again.’

  The positive aspects of such a move present themselves rapidly and he continues to enthusiastically argue his case, though Susan has said nothing yet, has made no sign of dissent. ‘The experience will be good for the kids too. And easier, surely, for Carly, it can’t be healthy living i
n the city – it’s so unsafe.’ He grimaces at the thought of those grimy streets, dingy motel rooms, the untold and unknown dangers lurking in every dark corner. ‘What do you reckon, eh, Suse? Shall we offer to make a home for your sister? I don’t mean permanently, just until all the money stuff’s sorted out. Whadda you think, Suse?’

  He imagines Carly’s response to the offer of sanctuary – her grateful surprise, the shedding of an overwhelmed tear or two, his own solicitous response. Imagines, too, the three of them sitting under the wisteria in the warm spring evenings with glasses of wine, the kids playing contentedly on the lawn, or already asleep; the glance and shimmer of their conversation. It makes a pretty picture. He doesn’t notice – though once he would have been alert to her every mood – the worried frown that passes briefly over Susan’s face, her momentary hesitation, hears only her reply: ‘I was thinking the same thing. Why don’t you give her a call?’

  To Ed’s satisfaction, Carly doesn’t hesitate.

  ‘I’ll bring my stuff over tomorrow, will I?’

  They move the children in together. Clear out all Stella’s drawers, the wardrobe, her desk. Susan changes Stella’s pink floral quilt for a darker, deeper plaid.

  Carly arrives late the next afternoon carrying two green garbage bags. All her belongings, she says. It takes her only ten minutes or so to unpack, to arrange. When Ed looks into the room, later, he can see no evidence of the new occupant. There are no photographs, no casually strewn clothes and shoes, no personal odds and ends. There’s not even a ripple in the surface of the bed covering. It’s as impersonally tidy as a vacant motel room.

  Susan

  Susan knows that there are some days (weeks, even months) when it seems she’s just going through the motions – days when everything is done on some almost unconscious level that requires nothing of her, where everything from early morning yoga, to consoling a temporarily friendless Mitchell after school is accomplished without thinking, automatically, without any reference to a deeper self, a self who’s touched by what’s going on. On these days it’s almost as if that deeper self is absent, has gone elsewhere for refuge, is in hiding.

  After Carly reappears, after she moves in, such days are few and far between.

  She could say that once Carly moves in life goes on pretty much as before. Susan still walks Mitchell and Stella to school at the same time every day. She still has the house to maintain, her one day of work, her walks with Anna. Afternoons, there’s the children’s homework and music and sporting practise to oversee. Shopping on Thursdays, tennis on Tuesdays, meals to prepare. Ed heads off to work, comes home, visits his parents on Wednesday afternoons, surfs and jogs – the same as always. Theirs is essentially the same busy existence that’s replicated all through the Sydney suburbs, regular to the point of monotony. On the surface at least, life does go on pretty much as before. But in every respect that matters, in every respect that will resonate in the future, life has changed.

  The nights for instance – where once it was Ed and Sue, their comfortable old conversations – now it’s Carly and Sue, Ed maintaining a tactful distance when he sees the two of them, intent over a glass of wine, a cup of tea, talking, talking, always talking.

  It is all they do in those first few days. It seems to Susan that there is little time for anything else. Ed, the children, it seems that the everyday routines of her ordinary existence have become peripheral, shadowy, insignificant. For a while at least, they seem part of another life, another world – and she is surprised and a little annoyed that they themselves, the children in particular, don’t seem to have understood this properly, that they still continue to demand her attention, her consideration.

  She is bursting with questions about the past – Carly’s, her own – and finds herself bursting with explanations too. She doesn’t know where to start.

  ‘Tell me about you,’ Susan says. ‘Tell me. I need to know.’

  Hard, Carly tells her, her life has been hard, tough, but no details, please don’t ask, you don’t want to know. Drifting, going nowhere. ‘There’s not much point in doing anything much,’ she says to her sister, ‘if you’ve got no one to share it with. No one to care.’

  Carly had been waitressing at a cafe in St Kilda and she’d seen the notice, serendipitously, while she was scouring the papers for a new job. The notice had been placed in a small local paper, on the same page as the ‘positions vacant’. It had given her something of a shock, seeing her name like that. She hadn’t used it, hadn’t even thought about it, for years. She contacted the solicitor almost immediately – didn’t give herself any time to consider, to think into it. She’d acted on impulse, without considering the consequences, the repercussions. Which was pretty much the same way she made all her decisions.

  ‘But this time it was the right thing to do,’ Carly says. ‘And I’m so glad I did it.’

  ‘I’m glad too,’ Susan takes her hand, squeezes gently.

  Sister.

  Carly

  She stays quiet about the past. This is extraordinarily difficult in the face of Susan’s constant dredging up of memories, her anxiety to know what really happened, what they were really like, who they really were.

  There’s so much she doesn’t remember, such huge gaps in her knowledge, that really it’s easier, it’s safer to stay silent, to shake her head and sigh, to murmur indistinctly: ‘You don’t really want to know,’ or ‘Oh, but it was such a long time ago Susy, why does it matter now?’ or to simply change the subject.

  Ed, of course, homes in on Carly’s discomfort, champions her. ‘Come on Suse,’ he says to his wife, who’s excited by some vague recollection, intent on exploring some new hypothesis. ‘C’mon Suse, lighten up. Leave your poor sister alone.’ And while Susan blushes, suddenly confused and guilty, Carly will reward him with a grateful fluttering smile. At these moments she is all defenceless uncertainty, and Susan a blundering bully.

  At other moments, alone with Susan, she’ll show a harder, sharper edge. ‘Look, Suse, I don’t want to go there,’ she’ll say. ‘Let’s talk about the weather. The children. Politics. The price of eggs. Anything. Anything but the fucking past. ’

  She could, she supposes (and at times she is sorely tempted), she could make it up – who can contradict her? – but really it’s better this way. To remember little and offer nothing. It was all such a long time ago, after all.

  And the little she does tell them about her past is always basically the truth. Oh, sometimes a name will be changed, a place, a time. But on the odd occasion that she reveals anything about her life, she sticks as closely as she can to the real story.

  When all’s said and done, it’s easier.

  Susan

  ‘Tell me about you,’ says Carly.

  ‘After you left...’ Susan starts awkwardly. She doesn’t really want to mention those first days that followed Karen’s, that followed Carly’s, disappearance; knows that it’s all too painful, and she can’t really remember, anyway. So she goes on from there, summarising, glossing over. She recounts the little she remembers clearly of those first few years: her parents’ divorce, her move with her father to Manly, the arrival of Gillian, their mother’s gradual decline, her madness. Carly listens politely, but asks no questions, seems mildly bored, as if Susan’s discussing people she’s never met, never likely to know. Susan had expected something more (what? – some sign of guilt, of contrition? some recognition of her own contribution to their mother’s sad existence?) but she listens unmoved, gives no indication that these people, these stories, have any real connection to her. Eventually Susan gives up.

  ‘How come you don’t want to hear all this stuff?’ she asks.

  ‘It’s history,’ Carly shrugs. ‘It’s over. It’s irrelevant. These people don’t mean anything to me anymore. But tell me about you,’ she says, ‘tell me what you’ve been up to.’

  ‘What I’ve been up to?’
The casual phrase makes Susan, makes them both, laugh. Catching up. They’re catching up.

  Some part of Susan knows that there are things you don’t tell strangers, parts of your life you shouldn’t offer up to people you have just met, even if the stranger is family. Even if the stranger is your own sister. She can see that there are things that should be kept private, or at any rate should only be revealed slowly, cautiously, as a relationship progresses. She guesses that those books Ed is always quoting would counsel caution, taking it slowly, building up a natural, an organic rapport – would advise against taking emotional risks, against leaving yourself vulnerable – but she doesn’t care.

  Susan wants Carly to know who she is, and wants her to know why. She wants intimacy. Instantly. She tells her sister everything. Everything.

  In the mornings Carly sleeps in, is never up before ten, emerges only after the children and Ed have gone. Pads to the kitchen in her t-shirt (why don’t Susan’s breasts sit so pertly? – she’s ten years younger, after all), stretching and yawning, demanding coffee in her huskier-than-usual morning voice (oh her demands are gentle, polite, never seem demands, but they are). Then sits sipping noisily, lights her first cigarette (though it could be her second, there have been times when Susan’s caught a whiff of stale tobacco in Carly’s bedroom, in the bathroom) and sits for half an hour or so, saying little, before she takes herself off for her shower.

  Most days Carly stays home – curls up in the lounge reading magazines, watching television, drinking coffee. She rolls cigarette after cigarette. Occasionally forgets herself, and ashes on the carpet, flicks her butts out the window, or leaves them, smouldering, on the windowsill. Susan invites her to come when it’s time to pick up the kids, to do the shopping, to join her and Anna’s beach walks, social tennis, to go out for lunch. No thanks, Carly says, she’s fine, she’s happy here, would rather not. Is content just mooching around for now. She’s generally finished her mooching by the late afternoon, is up and alert by the time the children get home, ready for drinks and conversation by the time Ed arrives. She doesn’t help cook, never even offers: most nights Susan prepares dinner while Ed and Carly sit at the kitchen table drinking and chatting, helping the kids with their homework.