by Phyllis King
He is a psychiatrist, after all.
To him, why means so many things.
A clinical diagnosis
to be precise.
I can see right through it.
Fifteen years is a long time.
You learn the shades of words.
I am a heat seeking missile
when it comes to nuances.
Why?
‘Because she was a better writer than him
and I have proof
‘Your sister,’ he says evenly
‘Was a paranoid schizophrenic who periodically attempted
to take her life and
dangled you with guilt for your considerable success.’
He kissed my forehead tenderly.
‘Charlotte died because her heart stopped.
You can’t forgive yourself
for being the successful one.
But life is like that.
It isn’t fair.’
When I get to bed, my husband gives me some tablets
for anxiety.
I pretend to take them.
I need this clarity,
this anger.
Tomorrow we bury my sister.
The Funeral
My mother chose a casket,
snub nosed, cushioned lined,
a sleek oak finish.
Almost like being buried
in a bookcase.
And it’s bloody heavy.
A group of six men sway and stagger down the red carpet,
duck under the arch.
Even through tears I scan the crowd.
A surprisingly large group.
Charlotte gathered friends and lost souls.
She sang in choirs, joined community art classes,
theatre groups, writing groups.
Who would come to my funeral?
Work sent a large wreath.
They would be too busy
for my funeral.
I clutch the hands
of my children tighter.
How did I have the time and foresight
to schedule them into the world?
Charlotte wanted children.
The doctors said
the drugs would make them deformed
so she loved mine instead.
I bow my head at the grave site.
My fat tears fall on the rough quartz pebbles.
How can a heart just stop beating?
Her heart was too big
even if her mind was full of demons
Litigation
The view from my office
sweeps across Melbourne.
Stand too close.
The window seems to float.
I could fall down to the soft green
park below.
I would rather, than listen
to a strategy to rescue
a heating company from bankruptcy.
I am not as clever
as I thought.
Two weeks have passed
and Mathew’s wife has refused to call.
I tracked her down.
Told her about Charlotte.
She smiled
and said
‘But I know your sister is dead.’
Walked away, not a second glance.
So to the victor go the spoils
Do not weep, for war is kind.
Followed
I decide to walk to lunch.
A business meeting
at The Latin.
I sensed him behind me
before I turned.
‘Stay away from my wife’ Matthew says.
Cold eyes slice.
He is so ugly now.
‘I know where your kids live.’
Then he is gone
into the crowd.
A passing tram,
I don’t know.
That night
I lock the door
My sister’s heart just stopped
I tell myself
as I tuck the children in.
Frank’s Gym
My personal trainer
has a boutique gym.
Hawthorn.
Me and the yummy mummies.
I warm up on the treadmill after a hard day’s work.
Run a sweat.
Pump the heart.
Keep strong.
Keep thin.
Matthew’s face on the TV screen
smiling
‘War is kind -
it’s from Melville’s “Shiloh, a requiem” he says.
‘Every generation knows war and
this war on terror reaches out
through the media.
There is no distance
even in Australia.’
I stop.
Shiloh.
How could I not remember?
Mrs Harrison
The advantages of wealth are many,
disadvantages few,
if any.
I laugh
to myself - I am a cliché after all -
as the BMW pulls up
outside Mrs Harrison’s house.
This part of Glen Iris I remember
as Burwood West.
Times change.
Mrs Harrison’s house hasn’t.
Thank goodness she hadn’t moved.
Teachers are not well paid
like Collins Street law firm partners.
Like me.
‘I was so surprised by your call, Deborah,’ she said.
Older than I remembered.
Of course.
How many years?
‘It’s such a shock about Charlotte and, of course,
the fact that you are twins.’
A comforting touch on my arm.
We played tricks on Mrs Harrison at school.
Pretended to be the other
but Charlotte’s eyes gave us away.
They were on fire.
Bright
Eager
Liquid in intensity.
Now there was only one of us.
Shiloh
‘Shiloh,’ I said. ‘Was my message clear?’
She offered me tea
in china cups.
Her living room piled neatly with books.
She bit into a ginger nut biscuit and nodded.
‘Melville. Year 12 English Literature:
Foeman at morn, but friends at eve –
Fame or country least their care:
(what like a bullet can undeceive!)
But now they lie low,
While over them the swallows skim,
And all is hushed at Shiloh.
‘Charlotte won the Frances Grady Essay Prize with her
exploration of the effects of war and its irrelevance,’ I
remember.
‘The peace and despair after the great storm of War.
Charlotte had such promise.’
The word filled with more then.
Sadness.
and anger.
A quiet rage at the demons
no medication could erase
without the essence being dissolved.
For that’s what happened.
Darkness lived with brilliance.
Equal measure.
The ying and yang of talent and insanity.
Without one
the other disappeared.
‘I need to know - is this the essay she wrote?
You remember don’t you?’
I am grasping
at anything.
Three years ago
Charlotte had burnt everything she owned.
All her poems, notebooks, music and sketch books
‘I’ll start again, clean.
Call me Phoenix’
Then she placed a plastic bag over her head.
Mum found her
before she turned blue.
Locked up again.
Next time I saw her there were no words.
> The phoenix did not rise
for years.
Mrs Harrison held the exercise book.
She read and nodded.
‘Of course - I could check with the school records
- did we even keep them beyond the winning title,
student and brief abstract - but yes,
this is her essay on Shiloh and war.’
Matthew’s book taunted.
I asked
‘What’s the significance of Shiloh and modern war?’
Mrs Harrison eyed me.
Again I was the fat teenager.
The boring one, the clumsy one,
The one who didn’t understand verse.
‘You did law, not arts, right?’
My $500,000 a year salary and BMW diminished.
She explained:
‘Shiloh was the bloodiest of battles.
A civil war bloodbath.
Two days when death snatched nearly a quarter
of all who fought.
Melville knew what would happen next
would be uglier. And it was.’
‘Mother whose heart hung humble as a button
On the bright splendid shroud of your son.
Do not weep.
War is kind.’
The Literary Editor
Oh yes, Matthew had taken Charlotte’s poems.
A clever twist.
She had seen
those twin towers.
She knew the truth of Melville’s words:
that mothers would weep over shrouds
coloured in the American flag
and wrapped in a Muslim burial.
War is kind to both sides of terror.
My secretary scanned Charlotte’s exercise books.
My interview notes with
what amounted to witnesses.
I am not the jury.
I am the judge
and if no one will listen
then I will be a vigilante.
My sister’s heart stopped
in the middle of life.
A brief shard of clarity.
Insight and words
we wait our lives for.
And Matthew took them
and turned them
in his greedy hands.
I sent the parcel to the Literary Editor of The Age.
Fraud Squad
I enjoyed his demise.
Public humiliation.
The media love a literary scandal.
Ern Mally,
Helen Demindeko,
Norma Khouri,
James Frey.
Matthew can join the merit board.
I read Charlotte the stories
as I sit on her grave.
From the tree
a large crow lands,
black as an Edgar Allen Poe poem.
A literary magazine wants to publish her poems,
the ones written after the fire.
‘But she was a private person’ says my mother.
No
she was a poet.
And these are the words
that outran
the demons.
Words that left clues and tracer fire,
shadows to the truth.
Words to survive her.
A remembrance restored.
Attribution.
I will fight for those words.
They are all I have left
of my sister.
Except for my face
left to sag and decay alone.
<
Fence Hanger
Linda Tubnor
Darcie approached the victim cautiously to avoid startling it. The large testicles came into view and she breathed a sigh of relief- at least she wouldn’t have to check the pouch for joeys. The poor victim, an adult male eastern grey kangaroo, was tangled in the barbed wire strands of the farm fence and hanging upside down. Its legs had been cut back to the bone by the barbs but it was still thrashing around trying to free itself.
This was what was commonly known in wildlife rescue circles as a ‘fence hanger’. Kangaroos and wallabies are excellent fence jumpers but occasionally something startles them and they misjudge the height, with disastrous consequences. Usually the legs go under the top strand, the torso hits and the animal’s momentum causes it to topple over head first in a scissor action, the strands of wire twisted cruelly around the legs.
Darcie quietly and slowly walked closer to the animal so that she could assess the damage. It looked as though it had been here for some time as it was well and truly entangled and was obviously very distressed. Darcie felt sick at the futility of the situation. Without another person to help her, her chances of untangling this beautiful creature without causing more damage were slim. Even if she did untangle it, she’d have to restrain it and get it somewhere for treatment and rehabilitation. She didn’t have any sedatives, and an un-sedated large male in pain would be almost impossible for her to handle on her own.
Then she noticed something which made her blood run cold. There was a gunshot wound in the animal’s shoulder and it was bleeding profusely. This was most likely what had caused this roo to panic and hang itself on the fence which it had probably cleared dozens of times. Darcie fumed. Here was a magnificent adult kangaroo that had managed for years to successfully jump fences, eat the right food, evade predators and cars, and probably sire a few offspring, and some sick bastard had decided to take a shot at it, for whatever reason, and couldn’t even make it a quick humane death.
Darcie knew that the best outcome for the animal was euthanasia. Fortunately she had brought her rifle because unfortunately, most of the times she was called out to rescue an adult roo, a quick death was the best she could do for it. She’d done this far too many times and wished she didn’t have to know where to place the shot. She wished that she didn’t even have to be aware that this sort of stuff went on day in, day out, all over the country. But she did know. And the poor victims, the minority that she managed to get to anyway, were better off because of it.
Back at home, Darcie was still angry at the sheer waste and the unnecessary distress caused to the animal. She always had a sick feeling in her stomach for hours after euthenasing an animal, but this time she couldn’t even console herself that it was just a horrible accident. She knew that someone had deliberately shot the animal, and either was a very poor shot or had purposely tried to make it suffer. She wondered if the shooter had even gained some perverse thrill by staying around to watch the animal thrash on the fence.
She would normally assume the poor shot theory - people often weren’t close enough, couldn’t see properly or their guns didn’t shoot straight. They often knew that the shot wouldn’t be right but, out of impatience, took it anyway and hoped that it would still kill the animal. Well yes, in most cases even a poor shot will kill an animal, but in a manner that would make most people’s skin crawl if they thought about it.
Darcie had managed not to think about it for years. She had lived in the city and seen a lot of road kill on country drives, but had tried not to think too much about the suffering that animals can endure, both accidental and deliberate.
It had always distressed her and made her feel impotent so she just shut it out of her mind.
After moving to the country a year ago though, she had realised that there was no avoiding the facts. She’d decided to direct her distress in a positive way and do something to help. She’d connected with a network of wildlife rescuers and carers across the state, done some basic training, got her gun licence, and was thrust out on her own to be the only thing in the area standing between an animal and a horrendous death. It was a heavy burden to bear and brought her face to face with human cruelty and indifference and sheer bad luck.
There were some happy endings, but only one or two out of her dozens of rescues. Even though finding a healthy joey which is cared for and rehabilitated is a positive outcome, it’s still only a consolation as the joey w
ould have been better off being raised in the wild by its mother.
Darcie didn’t know how she’d manage without the network of rescuers. Many of them were isolated like her and their only means of venting frustration was via an internet forum and the occasional training day. It restored her faith in humans to know that there were other people out there who cared and made sacrifices to do the right thing.
She logged on to the rescue database and filled out the rescue details. She entered the species name and then: ‘Adult male’. Under Cause of Injury she entered: ‘Fence hanger’. Under Fate she entered: ‘Euthenased’.
One night during the following week, Darcie was called about a road kill victim and set out apprehensively to see what she could do. She pulled up in the car behind the lump of fur with the headlights illuminating the scene and got out of the car, donning her fluoro safety vest and gloves.
This was a female wallaby and was definitely dead. Darcie knew it was dead because it had been decapitated. She groaned and wondered whether someone had come here after the animal had been hit by the car and taken the head as a trophy, or whether it had not been hit by a car at all, but had been mutilated and left here. The person who called her had assumed that it was a road trauma victim but that may not be the case.
She looked around for the head and then decided to focus on checking the pouch for young. She opened the pouch slowly and saw a small furry tail. It was definitely old enough, judging by the fur and the size, to be a viable joey. If it hadn’t been here too long, its chances of survival were quite good.
