Candelo

by Georgia Blain

  We won’t be long, Simon promised and I could see he felt guilty. I could see he was torn, but Mitchell was already starting the engine, and with one foot in, one foot out, Simon was telling me that next time I could go with them; that they wanted to surf, I would be bored, they’d be back in an hour or so, the car door finally slamming shut on his words.

  I watched as Mitchell backed away from the house and then, hitting the dirt road, stalled. He turned the ignition again, revving the engine. Warming it up, he shouted back to me, his words carrying to where I stood. I could not see him but I could imagine his wink, as, with one last rev, he eventually drove off, disappearing down the dip in the road.

  And sitting on that verandah, I felt bored and alone.

  Go for a walk, Vi said when I told her I had nothing to do. Take Evie with you. My mother always found boredom incomprehensible. It is a luxury that she used to say she longed for, although I doubt whether she ever meant it.

  I was sitting on the edge of her bed watching her type. Her ashtray was full and the floor was already covered with papers and books.

  Can’t you come? I asked her.

  She butted out another cigarette and finished her sentence, her thin fingers rapid on the keys. Carriage return. Pause.

  And she looked up at me, unsure as to what I had said.

  I repeated my question.

  She was staring into the distance, thinking of her next paragraph, working it out, her brow furrowed in concentration.

  Half an hour, she told me and she began typing again, furiously, not looking up as I sighed, heavily. Not looking up as I closed the door to her room with what I hoped was a pointed slam.

  I knew what half an hour meant. Two hours. Maybe three.

  Evie was asleep. Curled up at the bottom of a cupboard, surrounded by old games – Chinese checkers, ludo, cards, faded cardboard that had curled and browned at the edges scattered around her. I did not wake her. I hadn’t really wanted her company anyway.

  And walking out along the dirt road, I wondered how much of this holiday I would have to spend alone.

  It was hot. Hot and still, and beneath my feet the gravel crunched with each step, stones flicking up behind me and hitting the backs of my legs. If I paused for even a moment, the flies were thick. Black and ugly, swarming across my arms and in my eyes.

  When I left the road, I didn’t really know where I was heading. I just walked towards the line of willows in the distance, a ribbon of dusty green against the faded hills that swelled behind them. I cut through a paddock, lifting up the barbed-wire fence with one hand while I swung my legs through the gap. The ground was uneven and dry, pocked with crusty cow pats. From a distance these paddocks looked like velvet, but close the grass was like straw, sharp against my ankles.

  I hadn’t expected to end up at the creek. I had just walked with my head down, carefully watching each step, so that I heard it before I saw it. The water trickling over rocks and the gentle brush of the sagging willow branches across the surface of the stream that wound its way through the sandy banks on either side.

  The water was shallow. From where I stood I could see the bottom, smooth pebbles dappled with light.

  I looked around quickly before taking my shorts and T-shirt off and stepping slowly out to the middle, the deepest point reaching my waist.

  Lying back with my head against one of the rocks, I let the water wash over me. Above, the sky was brilliant blue, spliced into diamonds by the drooping branches of the trees. And as I stared up, high up, I found that I was thinking of Mitchell. With the warmth of the sun on the tops of my legs and the cool water rushing underneath me, I could see him, sitting next to me on the verandah wall, his thigh resting against mine. Dark-brown eyes staring out from the shaggy fringe of blond hair. Square-tipped fingers and the flick of his cigarette out across the verandah. Smooth tanned skin, the straight flat line of his stomach.

  And slowly I let myself sink down, deep down, my hair cool and wet down my back.

  Coming up for air.

  Before sinking down again.

  Down to where it was cool and quiet.

  And I imagined.

  All of it.

  With the slow swoop of the branches overhead.

  Backwards and forwards.

  Skimming the surface of the creek.

  twenty-one

  There was a time, before Evie was born, when I was obsessed with quantifying Vi’s love for us.

  Who do you love best? I would ask her, over and over again.

  When she would tell me that she loved us equally, I would become all the more insistent.

  But you must love one of us more, I would say, determined to push her towards the answer that I feared, determined to make her say that it was Simon, Simon who was loved best, Simon who was the favourite.

  Sitting under her desk, I used to take out the photo albums and look back over a past that had little meaning for me, despite the fact that it was my past. Faded black and white prints of Vi and Bernard on their wedding day, Vi awkward in a white hat with feathers, gloves and a tiny handbag. Bernard with his arm around her, smiling with the full force of his charm into the camera. Their first house together, picnics on the headland, Vi lying back on a rug, Bernard feeding her strawberries. I would turn the pages rapidly, the tissue thin and dry between my fingers, until I came to the ones I wanted.

  The baby photos.

  Pages and pages of Simon.

  Two of me.

  See, I would tell her, crawling out from where I had been sitting, tugging at her hand so that she would be forced to stop typing.

  She would look down momentarily, uncertain as to what it was that I was showing her, and then turn back to what she was doing. But it wouldn’t stop me. I would count them out for her: twenty-eight pictures of Simon, five of me.

  When she finally realised that I wasn’t going to let it go, she would sit me down and tell me about first and second children, her voice patient and well modulated. A voice she might have learnt from a family therapy book. It’s not that we loved you less, she would explain. But when you were born, Simon was only two and we just didn’t have the time.

  If I dared to ask her now, I wonder whether she would be more honest with me. I wonder whether she would talk about the gentleness in Simon. I wonder whether she would talk about the desire to protect that she always had with him. I do not know. Because to talk about these things would be to hold up their life now. In the same house, but never in the same room, Simon awkward in doorways, wanting to help but unable to, Vi darting nervously around him, a rapid fire of words with no substance as she picks up after him and then is gone without ever having met his eyes once. Short notes left on the sideboard, Simon appearing for meals and then taking them up to his room, Simon sitting at the table, eyes fixed on the paper in front of him.

  When I talk of Vi, people tell me I am lucky. You speak the same language, they say.

  And we do. We know each other.

  Half-finished sentences collide with no need for completion, giant leaps take us to the same place at the same time, irritation flares and then dissipates, one of us lies and the other one knows: this is the bond that we share.

  But.

  It has never meant that we reveal everything to each other.

  I stand in Vi’s garden and I pick herbs for our dinner. Sweet basil, sage and peppery rocket, the last leaves left from the summer. All planted and cared for by Mari.

  I was lucky with my children, I once overheard Vi say. They didn’t fight with each other.

  And we didn’t. Not really. Any attempt I made to fight with Simon would always be stymied by his good nature.

  They liked being with each other.

  And I did. I would follow him, wanting to be a part of whatever it was he was doing, wanting to be there, once again reliant on his good nature, trusting it enough to know that he would not turn me away.

  Which was how he was. Until Candelo. Until Mitchell.

  As I sea
rch for the last of the lettuce, I find myself pulling out the weeds that have begun to grow since Mari has spent more and more of her time looking after Vi. I toss them into a heap, knowing that I am doing this because I do not want to go back inside. I do not want to have another meal with Simon sitting there, silent at one end of the table, eating rapidly, and leaving immediately.

  And as I tug and pull at clumps of sticky green nettles, careful to avoid what I recognise to be plants, I think about what I would be like as a mother. I think about the choices Vi made, and I am overwhelmed by the relentless slide of generations, each replacing the next.

  Her gone and me in her shoes.

  And the decision I have had to make weighs heavily on me.

  twenty-two

  They did not get home until just before dark.

  I doubt whether Vi would have noticed if I hadn’t kept asking her where they were. But as the heat of the afternoon burnt into a soft dusk, as I asked her again and again, she began to look at the clock. She was irritated. And it was building.

  I was giving Evie a bath when I heard the front door slam, followed by Simon calling out, letting us know they were back.

  Evie struggled and squirmed out of my hold. She was out of the bath and running, dripping wet, up the hall towards them before I could stop her.

  Hey there, sexy legs. The broadness of Mitchell’s voice rang through the house as Evie threw herself on them, both of them.

  I’m in the raw, she shouted and I heard the three of them laughing as Evie danced down towards the kitchen with Mitchell behind her, aping each of her moves, kicking his legs out, waving his hands in the air.

  I was angry with them. Still. And standing by the bathroom door, I tried to look unamused but I, too, could not help but laugh, as I watched Mitchell wag his head from side to side, his hair stiff with salt and sand, his face sunburnt, his mouth open in a smile that threatened to split his face in two.

  It was Vi who didn’t find it funny.

  She was in the kitchen, sitting at the table under the harsh fluoro light, as they came to a stop, bags of groceries at their feet, there in front of her.

  I waited for what would follow, part of me wanting trouble. I watched Evie tug slyly, once, twice, at Mitchell’s hand, wanting the game to continue, before she, too, realised the fun was over.

  Vi brushed her hair back from her forehead, took her glasses off, and folded her arms.

  She was silent for a moment.

  And then she told them.

  She had never said they could have the car all afternoon. In fact, she might have wanted to use it.

  She was very angry.

  She was disappointed.

  I listened and I watched their faces. We all knew she hadn’t wanted to go anywhere, but this was what Vi was like. She had decided she was angry and the accuracy of the reason was of little importance.

  She uncorked the red wine and poured herself a glass without offering one to any of us.

  At least you remembered to do the shopping, and she pulled the food furiously out of the bags that lay at her feet.

  It was Simon who went to help her.

  Mitchell stayed where he was, leaning against the doorframe, tapping his foot and scratching nervously at his forearm.

  Evie winked at him and he winked back. Evie stuck her tongue out at him and he stuck his out at her. They were both trying not to laugh. Suppressing it.

  But it was his eyes that gave him away.

  Glassy. Red.

  Out of it.

  I quickly glanced at Simon. He was grinning, from ear to ear.

  And I wondered how long it would take before Vi noticed. Sometimes she was oblivious to what was going on, but at other times, she didn’t miss a thing. Sometimes she couldn’t have cared, at others, the slightest infraction was cause for raging fury.

  It was Evie who gave the game away. Her face close to Simon’s as he unpacked the bags, she recoiled in disgust. You stink She turned to me. Smell him, Ursula.

  I told her to shoosh, but it was too late.

  Vi looked at both of them. Neither of them were quick enough to duck their heads from her gaze.

  For Christ’s sake, and she slammed a tin of tomatoes onto the table. I really would have expected more sensible behaviour.

  But you let us smoke, Simon said, feebly.

  She snapped back at him: Not when you’re driving, and she turned to Mitchell. If this isn’t going to work, then we’d better face up to it now and get you on the next train. He lowered his head.

  If I treat you like an adult, I expect you to behave like one. I can’t believe you would be so bloody stupid.

  He muttered an apology.

  Perhaps we’d better just call it quits, and she lit a cigarette, grinding the dead match into the ashtray as she spoke.

  I looked at Simon. I couldn’t bring myself to look at Mitchell.

  You’re not being fair. You’re blaming it all on him, and Simon fidgeted nervously with the sleeve of his shirt.

  She just stared at him.

  It was my idea. I was the one who suggested it.

  I waited.

  It wasn’t his fault.

  She looked across at Mitchell.

  He didn’t even want any.

  Vi snorted in disbelief. And you held him down and forced him?

  I watched as Mitchell shifted awkwardly from one foot to the other. There was a fine film of sand coating his heels, a trail that led up to his Achilles tendon and petered out at the base of his calves.

  Finally he spoke. He looked across at her and told her he was sorry. He just hadn’t thought. He didn’t know what to say.

  From above, the buzz of the fluorescent light seemed unbearably loud.

  I noticed that Evie still didn’t have any clothes on and I took her hand. Pyjamas, I said, and she tried to wriggle out of my grasp.

  We’ll make dinner, Simon offered.

  Vi took her cardigan from the back of the chair and tied it round her shoulders.

  She was going to have a walk. To the road and back. To cool down. And she stubbed out her cigarette and downed the last of her wine, leaving the room without looking back.

  Don’t worry, Simon said. She’ll get over it.

  And he and Mitchell looked at each other before collapsing into a fit of giggles.

  Jesus, and Mitchell bent over double, holding the arm of the chair, I thought we were done for.

  I stared at both of them in disbelief.

  You know, and Mitchell picked up the shopping from the floor, your mum’s pretty cool For an old bird.

  And as he collapsed once more into laughter, I couldn’t help but smile, and with the start of my smile, I, too, found I was laughing, reluctantly at first, and then louder.

  Until we were all laughing. Simon, Evie, Mitchell and I.

  Backs pressed against the wall, holding our sides, unable to look at each other.

  And laughing.

  ‘In loving memory of Mitchell Jenkins.’

  I read obituaries in the paper and I wonder what they wrote about Mitchell. I wonder who spoke for him. If there was only one. Or columns of messages.

  In loving memory.

  I don’t know what my memory is. One minute I tell Lizzie that I loved him and I remember the intensity of my crush, burning, and then I want to retract my words. It wasn’t love. It seems such a stupid word to have used.

  Because my memory is so confused, I do not know how I would describe it. I am, at times, overwhelmed with shame. I can feel it drain me, empty me, until I am paper dry, flat and without weight.

  In loving memory.

  And my throat closes tight as I remember.

  Mitchell Jenkins.

  He woke me in the middle of the night.

  Tapping in the stillness on the glass door that separated our rooms.

  Ursula, his voice a hiss in the quiet.

  Outside, the sky was clear. Sprayed with stars. Thousands of them smattered across the darkness. And it
was still warm. A soft breeze in the cypress trees, giant dark towers marking the small space that had once been garden, home, to someone, sometime ago.

  Ursula.

  At first I thought it was a dream, a voice from the depths of my sleep, calling me, and I did not move, I just let it whisper. Over and over.

  The tapping on the glass.

  Like rain.

  But there was no rain.

  And as I opened my eyes, I saw him there, on the other side, hissing my name in the still of the night.

  Half asleep, I tiptoed down the hall and out the front door, his shadowy figure there in front of me, leading me. This way. Trying not to walk into things, not sure where I was, not sure if he was sleepwalking or I was, just following, right behind him, opening the front door to the night sky, leading me through, and out to the verandah, down the steps, our feet in the dampness of the grass. Here, he said, and we sat, side by side, there on the bottom stair, with nothing but us and the night, black and still, before us.

  I wanted to see the stars, he whispered, and I did not know what to say.

  With my knees tucked to my chest, I held myself, tightly, rocking myself, as though it was cold, but it wasn’t cold. Each faint breath of air was warm and silky.

  And I watched as he rolled a joint, the quick movement of his fingers, back and forth, until it was smooth and white, complete in his hands. And as he lit it, the tip glowed, fierce in the dark, fiery against the black emptiness in front of us.

  I’ve never been to a place like this before, he whispered, letting out a thin stream of smoke with each word, and he waved his arm, the end of the joint like a pointer in the dark.

  I could feel his thigh next to mine. The smooth hairs on his legs. And I did not move.

  Imagine, all this, and he tilted his head back, breathing in, closing his eyes for one instant, owning all this, and not even living here.

  And as he passed the joint to me, the tips of his fingers brushed mine. You know, at my mum’s flat, there’s no garden, not even a balcony, his words soft, whispered to himself, not looking at me, just staring out at the night, the shapes of the trees more visible, our eyes slowly opening to it all.