Whiskey & Charlie

by Annabel Smith

  “Tell me, Juliet, you like him, don’t you?”

  She nodded.

  “Are you in love with him?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “You don’t know? Jesus Christ, Juliet.” Charlie felt like he’d been hit from behind. He beat the heels of his hands against his forehead, as if that might help him to understand what was happening.

  “Stop it, Charlie.” Juliet reached for his hands, but Charlie lurched away from her.

  “Don’t touch me.” He tried to steady himself. “So what about us then? Is this it? Are we finished? Were you planning to tell me anytime soon?”

  “I don’t know, Charlie. I don’t know.”

  “You don’t know much, do you?” Charlie kicked the wall. “I don’t believe this,” he said and then he started to walk away from her.

  “Where are you going?” Her voice was small.

  “Why would you care?” Charlie said without turning around.

  “Please don’t go, Charlie.”

  But Charlie kept walking. He left the only girl he had ever loved sobbing on a street corner, and he crossed the road without looking, because he felt like he wanted to die.

  He thought about going back to the theater and punching Darius, knocking him to the ground and breaking his big, ugly nose. He thought about going to a pub and drinking himself blind. Then he thought about Marco, told himself Marco would be able to make sense of things. Charlie needed to hear that Juliet was right out of order, that he deserved better, that he shouldn’t put up with it. Marco was a straight talker. He would say that Darius was a lowlife, a snake in the grass, and that Charlie would be perfectly within his rights to knock his block off. They would share a bottle of scotch, and Charlie would sleep on the couch, and in the morning, Juliet would call there, looking for him, begging for his forgiveness.

  It took Charlie almost an hour to walk to Marco’s. But when he got there, things didn’t go exactly the way he imagined. Marco listened to Charlie’s tale of woe, and then he gave it to him with both barrels. He said it was Charlie’s own fault that Juliet wanted to leave him, that he had dug his own grave, and if it hadn’t been Darius, it would have been someone else.

  “For fuck’s sake, Marco. My brother’s in a coma. My girlfriend wants to leave me. I came here for your support. Some best mate you are.” Charlie started to walk off down the driveway, but Marco came after him.

  “Don’t use Whiskey as your excuse, Charlie. This has nothing to do with him, and you know it. How long is it since Juliet talked to you about getting married? Eight months? Nine months? How long has she been waiting for you to think about it? How much longer do you expect her to wait? Wake up, Charlie. Juliet’s the best thing that ever happened to you, and if you lose her, you’ll regret it for the rest of your life. And believe me, I’m telling you this because I am your best mate.”

  Charlie stopped walking. “Jesus, Marco, don’t tell me this. I don’t know what to do.”

  “There’s only one thing to do, Charlie. You’ve got to go home and beg for her forgiveness. Tell her you want to spend the rest of your life with her. Do whatever it takes.” Marco grabbed him suddenly, hugged him. “I love you, mate,” he said. “If you mess this up, I’m going to be really disappointed in you. More disappointed than I’ve ever been.”

  Charlie nodded numbly.

  “I’ll call you tomorrow, okay?”

  He nodded again.

  Marco shut the door, and Charlie started walking. He walked up Kerferd Road, through the cool darkness of Albert Park, meaning to turn homeward at Queens Road, or St. Kilda Road, but finding himself inexplicably staying on Commercial Road until he found himself outside the Alfred Hospital. He took the now-familiar path up to Whiskey’s ward, the corridors hushed at this time, quieter than he had ever seen them. At the door to Whiskey’s room, he stopped, momentarily surprised to see Rosa through the little window. He pushed open the door, startling her out of sleep.

  “Charlie! What are you doing here?”

  Charlie kissed her hello. “I came to see Whiskey.”

  “Now? At two o’clock in the morning? What is wrong?”

  “Nothing’s wrong, Rosa. I just wanted to have a think about things…and I suppose I thought…this would be a good place.” Charlie couldn’t believe he had forgotten that Rosa spent all night at the hospital. It struck him how incredibly selfish he had been to show up there in the middle of the night.

  “What is going on, Charlie?” Rosa asked, wide-awake now. “Are you drunk? You look terrible. Where is Juliet? Does she know you’re here?”

  “I’m perfectly sober. Juliet’s at home, I suppose. I hope. We had a fight, if you must know.”

  “You had a fight.” Rosa looked at him suspiciously. “Why would you want to fight with Juliet?”

  Charlie shrugged. Rosa always took Juliet’s side. “I don’t want to fight with her. Sometimes it happens. You should know that. I bet you and Whiskey fight.”

  Rosa looked at Whiskey. “Not lately,” she said, smiling sadly.

  “God, I’m sorry, Rosa, I’m so sorry. I’m upset. I don’t know what I’m saying.”

  “It does not matter, Charlie. I know you do not mean to put your foot inside your mouth. It is true what you are saying. Whiskey and I did fight, because we both were always thinking we were right. If he was awake now, we would still be fighting. But that is another story.”

  “I don’t know what to say. I shouldn’t have come.”

  “Well, you are here now. You might as well tell me the problem.”

  “It’s hard to explain.”

  “I do not think you are the very first man to have this problem, Charlie.”

  “You don’t even know what it is yet.”

  “Of course I know what it is. Juliet is upset with you because you make her wait too long for getting married, yes?”

  “She told you that?”

  Rosa snorted. “She does not need to tell me this. The words are written on to her face, Charlie. It is only you who cannot read them.”

  “Believe me, Rosa, I can read them perfectly,” Charlie said morosely.

  “Then why do you not ask her, Charlie? What are you waiting for?”

  Charlie thought for a long time. “I don’t know, Rosa. I’m scared, I suppose.” Admitting it, he felt broken.

  “What is there to be scared of?”

  “What if it doesn’t work? What if she leaves me? I couldn’t live without her. I’d rather not get married at all.”

  Rosa shook her head. “Don’t be ridiculous, Charlie. What are you looking for, a guarantee? That is something which only comes with a washing machine, and even then it is only lasting for five years. Do you think Whiskey and I had a guarantee? Of course we did not. We hardly knew each other. There is no guarantee when it comes to marriage.”

  Charlie looked at Rosa, thought of all those nights since November, when she’d sat in that room, holding Whiskey’s hand. He thought of Juliet, waiting, waiting. He thought of how he had left her standing on the street corner, crying. He got up and left the room, walked to the end of the corridor, to the window that overlooked Fawkner Park, pressed his forehead against the cool glass, looked out into the darkness.

  “You’re right, Rosa,” he said when he finally came back. “I’ve been ridiculous.”

  “Never mind,” Rosa said. “We all are ridiculous sometimes.”

  “I’m sorry I disturbed you,” Charlie said, and he really meant it.

  “Don’t say sorry to me,” Rosa said. “Go home and say sorry to Juliet. That is the most important thing.”

  Sorry, he thought. It was a good place to start.

  Uniform

  Though it was outside the usual guidelines, in view of the extenuating circumstances, Holly and Chloe had been given permission to enroll for one term at the local primary schoo
l. Juliet had gone with Mike to buy their uniforms. In Quebec, they said, they didn’t wear school uniforms, and they were thrilled with their red-and-white-checked sundresses, their sweaters bearing the school logo.

  Charlie remembered how excited he had been about his first school uniform—dark gray shorts, a lighter shirt, a yellow tie, and a cap. Some time before Whiskey’s accident, Juliet had come across a photo of him wearing it, when they were looking through an old album one night at his mother’s.

  “Their first school photos. I used to have them in a twin frame,” Charlie’s mother said. “No one could ever tell which was which.”

  Juliet looked at the two photos again. She picked Charlie without hesitating. “It’s a beautiful photo,” she said.

  “I’ll make you a copy, if you want,” Charlie’s mother said. “I’ll do one for Rosa too, of Whiskey.”

  “How did you know which one was me?” Charlie had asked her later.

  “I could tell by your facial expressions,” Juliet said. “Whiskey already looked like he’d seen it all before, like nothing could impress him. You looked kind of jumpy and excited, as if being at school was an adventure.”

  Charlie remembered that feeling well. He envied the twins. He had loved school when he was their age, had loved his work at the primary school for the same reason. Watching the kids cutting and gluing, writing in their “diaries,” sharpening their pencils as if their lives depended on it; the hardest decision they ever had to make was who they wanted to sit next to.

  He did not know how his own life had ever gotten so complicated.

  x x x

  When he arrived home from the hospital the night of the play, Juliet was still awake. Her face was red and swollen, but she didn’t cry when she asked Charlie to leave.

  Instead, it was Charlie who cried. He cried when she said that it wasn’t Darius, that as soon as Charlie had walked away from her, she had known she didn’t care about Darius. He cried when she told him she loved him as much as she ever had but she couldn’t wait for him anymore.

  He cried when he told her he was sorry, that he loved her, that he had made a mistake, that he wanted to marry her after all.

  Then it was Juliet’s turn. She cried and cried, and Charlie held her, and when she stopped, she said it was too late.

  Charlie thought of Marco’s advice. He had no pride left because he had done nothing to be proud of. He apologized for all the ways he had hurt her. He begged her to give him another chance.

  Again she cried, again he comforted her, again she said no.

  “Give me two months,” Charlie asked her. “Two months to prove I can change.” He pleaded with her until they had both cried themselves dry, and in the end she agreed.

  x x x

  Whiskey had been in a coma for six months. With every day that passed, the chance of him coming out of it grew smaller, and if he did come out of it, the chance of permanent damage grew greater. Charlie had spent all those months trying to find evidence that Whiskey was to blame for their estrangement, looking for justifications for his refusal to forgive Whiskey, excavating the last twenty-five years of their lives in order to come to some kind of definitive conclusion—which of them was guilty, which of them was not. At last he saw that the truth was somewhere between those things, that it wasn’t all Whiskey’s fault or all his own, that at times they had both done the right thing by each other, and at other times the wrong thing, that they’d both made mistakes and both come good in their own ways over the years and that if Whiskey lived, they’d probably do it all again.

  For months, Charlie had been going to see Whiskey at the hospital once a week, feeling like a martyr for doing so. Finally, he understood what Thomas had been trying to show him: that the accident had wiped the slate clean on both sides, that he had another chance to be the kind of brother he wanted to be, that even if Whiskey died, Charlie had the weeks or days or hours until that happened to begin again, to do things differently.

  And what about Mike? He had put his life, his daughters’ lives, on hold for a year to support a family who had been, only months before, perfect strangers. He had said he wanted to stay until it was over, whichever way it went.

  When Mike first made this decision, he had wanted to rent a small flat for himself and the girls, but Rosa wouldn’t hear of it. She had said she would be lonely without them, that she couldn’t bear to think of coming home alone to that big empty house. So Mike had been taking care of Whiskey’s house, cleaning Whiskey’s car, mowing Whiskey’s lawn. He had been going to the hospital every second day to support Rosa. He had been doing, in short, all the things Charlie should have been doing. And Charlie had resented him for it, felt that Mike’s behavior was only serving to show up his own shortcomings.

  Once Charlie had started working full-time, he had managed to avoid Mike almost entirely, telling himself that letting Mike in would be accepting the terms, agreeing to the exchange—one brother for another—it would be like signing Whiskey’s death certificate. But that was just an excuse. The night of the play, Charlie saw that he was jealous of Mike as he had been of Whiskey, afraid of being compared and failing to measure up, terrified that he would make the same mistakes all over again because he didn’t know any other way.

  x x x

  Eight weeks. Charlie began by handing in his notice at Sierra Education.

  “Charlie, Charlie, Charlie, what are you doing to me?” Ray said when Charlie gave him the letter. “There is a glorious future around the corner. And you’re a part of that, my man, a major part.”

  “My brother’s in a coma, Ray; you know that. There’s a chance he’s going to die. I need to spend some time with him. My girlfriend’s going to leave me if I don’t get my shit together. And I hate this job.”

  It was the first time Charlie had ever seen Ray speechless, and it gave him courage.

  “Four weeks’ notice then, if that’s the way you want it. Your loss, Charlie,” Ray said eventually.

  “I’m not staying here another four weeks, Ray,” Charlie said.

  Ray looked at his monitor, as if a solution might appear there. “I suppose we could get away with two, as you haven’t been here long.”

  “I want to leave today.”

  “Today?” Ray laughed without humor. “Well, I’d like to say yes, Charlie; you know I would. If it was up to me, it would be different, but we have policies and procedures—”

  “I know,” Charlie interrupted. “I’ve read them. All of them. I’m sure I’d be eligible for compassionate leave.”

  “Compassionate leave? Well, we don’t give that out at the drop of a hat, Charlie. It’s reserved for extreme circumstances.”

  “My brother’s in a coma,” Charlie said again, as if Ray hadn’t understood.

  Ray looked back at his monitor. “You win, Charlie. Compassionate leave it is.”

  And at eleven o’clock that morning, Charlie commuted out of zone two for the last time, with a check for a month’s severance pay in his pocket.

  x x x

  The following week, Charlie found a job at a café to tide him over until the start of the next school year, when he might be able to get another teacher’s aide position. On the days when he wasn’t working, he went to see Whiskey. Sometimes he went in the mornings and sat with Rosa or took her seat by the bed while she went to get a coffee. Sometimes he went in the afternoons when Rosa was at home sleeping and Mike was in her place.

  In the beginning, Mike didn’t say too much. He told Charlie about growing up in Canada, about the “sugar shacks” where they made their own maple syrup, about learning to pee his name into the snow. Charlie tried to think of things Mike might want to know, funny stories, things from their childhood. He told him about Bravo, about Whiskey getting caned for Delta of Venus, about the voyage to Australia.

  Mike taught Charlie to play backgammon. They played across the end
of Whiskey’s bed, and Charlie found that when their eyes were on their pieces, there wasn’t much he couldn’t say, which was how, in less than a month, Mike went from knowing almost nothing about this family he had adopted, to knowing just about everything there was to know. He knew about the India debacle, their parents’ divorce, the reasons why Charlie had refused to be a sperm donor for Whiskey and Rosa. He also knew why Charlie and Whiskey had finally stopped talking. Charlie told Mike how, after Whiskey found out about Charlie and Juliet, he had fed his mother all sorts of vicious lies about Juliet, how Charlie’s mother, who was unaware of Whiskey’s hidden agenda, believed every word Whiskey said and refused to let Juliet in the house or even to meet her. Charlie even told Mike the other part of the story, the part he had never told before, and of which he was so ashamed—that after Whiskey got over his anger, he had tried, more than once, to apologize, and Charlie had refused to accept his apology.

  Charlie knew Mike had ignored the advice of every one of his friends who had urged him to let sleeping dogs lie, had told him, without exception, to use his inheritance as a deposit on a house. He knew how devastated Mike had been when Sarina left him with a Dear John letter when the twins were only three months old, how in the six years since, she’d never once been to visit the girls or even phoned them, that all they got was a postcard every now and then. He knew Mike felt that without Charlie and Whiskey and their mother, he and the girls would be alone in the world.

  And by the time they had told each other all these things, it was impossible for Charlie not to think of Mike—if not as his brother—at least as his friend.

  x x x

  Winning Juliet back was the hardest part. She had finished up the term at St. Mary’s and declined the invitation to continue the following semester, so Charlie didn’t have to worry about Darius anymore. But he felt the pressure of the two-month time frame acutely, thought of it like a ticking bomb in a movie, with a countdown timer displaying the minutes and seconds remaining until everyone was blown to smithereens. For Charlie, it was not minutes and seconds, but weeks and days. It wasn’t as simple as taking the back off and poking around inside to work out whether the red wire or the green wire should be cut. There would be no explosions if he didn’t make things right, and it wouldn’t be limbs that were lost. But it would be just as devastating; the time was just as precious.