by Rachel Ward
I push the door open and go in.
The stale smell fills my head. I can’t tell what it smells of, but it floods me with feelings, things half-remembered. There are two mattresses lying parallel to each other along the walls, with a few feet in between. And not much else. Clothes lying about. Some magazines. Empty cans. A couple of fishing rods propped in a corner.
Two mattresses, no pillows, no sheets like in the hospital, just sleeping bags on the top. One orange and one green. The green one’s mine. How do I know that? I sit down on top of it, then, with nothing else to do, I climb inside, shoes on and everything. I pull the nylon edges up with both hands, so that I’ve just got my eyes and nose sticking out. I’m lying on my side, looking across the room and at Rob’s mattress, his orange sleeping bag crumpled up in a heap.
And now I can hear the zipper ripping up past his face and over the top of his head. See his face, streaked with mud — there one minute, gone the next. Sealed in.
I close my eyes and I’m underwater. There’s a tangle of arms and legs, thrashing in front of me. The water’s pressing down, my lungs are hurting, an ache that’s turning into a pain. I can’t breathe. I’ve got to get some air. I’ve got to …
I open my eyes and it’s just me in this dirty jumble of a room. I’m breathing hard, and the air coming in and out of me feels like it’s secondhand. It leaves a sour taste on my tongue. I think back to my hospital room — how bright, white, and clean it was. It smelled of antiseptic. Now I push my nose into the fabric of the sleeping bag and inhale. It’s the stale smell of old sweat. It disgusts me, but there’s something reassuring about it, too. This is me. It must be — it’s my sleeping bag. This is how I smell.
But who am I? And who was my brother? Did I like him? Did he like me? Not if the memory on the stairs was anything to go by.
I think about what they told me: “Your brother’s dead. There was an accident. He drowned.” Why don’t I feel a thing? I must be a monster, not to feel sad.
I lie still for a while. It’s dark now, but there’s light from the landing coming in through the open door. I look and listen, trying to take it all in — this place. Home. The apartment is quiet, no noise from downstairs, but I can hear the TV going next door, and people walking in the street outside, cars coming and going, doors slamming. There’s a dark patch on the ceiling in the corner above Rob’s mattress. There’s scribble on the walls.
I feel like I’ve landed from another planet, been dropped into someone else’s life and left to get on with it. I want to go back to the hospital. This place isn’t mine. The woman downstairs isn’t my mum. The boy who died wasn’t my brother. There’s been a mistake, a terrible, terrible mistake.
I’m shaking now. I’m scared. I can’t handle this. I don’t want to be here.
My nose catches that smell again, the smell a body leaves in a place when it’s slept there night after night. And it tells me I’m wrong. This place is mine. There’s no getting away from it.
I wrap my arms around myself and curl up tighter in my sleeping bag, but I still can’t relax. Without thinking, I unwind one of my arms and reach under my mattress, and my fingers close around something hard and flat. I pull it out. In the soft light I see the cover of a hardback book. The letters in the title are large, white against black: Of Mice and Men. Lying on my side I open it up and find the first page. The light isn’t good enough for me to make out the type, but I don’t need to see it, the words come to me from somewhere in the fog of my brain:
A few miles south of Soledad, the Salinas River drops in close to the hillside bank and runs deep and green. The water is warm too, for it has slipped twinkling over the yellow sands in the sunlight before reaching the narrow pool.
“For fuck’s sake, Cee, turn the bloody light out.”
“I’m still reading.”
“You’ve read that thing six hundred times.”
“So?”
“So put the bloody light out. I’m knackered.”
Holding the book close to my chest, still cocooned in my sleeping bag, I wriggle across the floor until my face is hovering over Rob’s mattress, his orange sleeping bag. I rest my head down, breathing hard. The material under my nose is rank, as rank as mine, only different. I shut my eyes again and I can hear him breathing.
“Say good night, Cee,” he says. And I know that this is what he does every night. Did. This is what he did.
He’d tell me to say good night first and I’d say, “Night, Rob” back.
And he’d say, “Night, Cee.”
Every night.
I say it now — “Night, Rob” — and I keep my eyes closed, my body lying in the gap between our beds, my head on his mattress.
His breathing is steady and slow and I find myself breathing in time with him. The book falls to the floor and I’m drifting. Drifting slowly off to sleep.
I wake up in a dark, quiet space. I’ve got no idea where I am, what time it is, who I am. And then, slowly, it comes back to me.
My name is Carl Adams.
I’m fifteen.
My brother’s dead.
The last thought rattles around my head. Rob’s dead. Rob’s dead. I know it’s huge, but it’s only words, just words.
I remember falling asleep here, hearing his breathing, his voice. There’s nothing now. No noise from outside, no TV playing. Only a tap dripping somewhere in the flat. It’s a faint sound, but everywhere’s so quiet now I can definitely hear it — and my mind focuses on it. Plip, plip, plip. Like seconds ticking away on a clock.
The top of the sleeping bag is wet where I’ve dribbled in my sleep. I move it away from me, sit up, and wipe my mouth on the back of my hand. My head’s achy and my throat’s dry. I struggle out of the bag and stumble onto the landing. The light’s still on. I head for the bathroom door, where the dripping sound’s coming from.
It’s the cold tap at the sink. I turn it full on, bend forward, cup my hands, and splash water onto my face.
A boy shouts.
A girl screams.
Water’s in my face, my eyes, my ears.
My heart’s racing. I’m close to them now, so close I can see their arms and legs thrashing, see his jaw clenched with the effort, her face contorted with terror.
I jump back from the sink and reach around blindly for a towel. My hand finds the pull cord for the light, I tug at it, and the light clicks on. I grab a towel from the floor and frantically rub at my face, then stare around the room. There’s no one here. It’s only a small room: sink, toilet, bathtub with a shower at one end and a plastic shower curtain bunched up. Black mold between the tiles, and on the ceiling. My heart’s still beating ten to the dozen in my chest.
I was there, in the lake. I was there when my brother died.
I take a few deep breaths, sucking the cold, damp air deep into me, trying to calm down.
The tap’s still running, gushing full pelt into the sink, gurgling down the drainpipe. I don’t want it on my face, in my eyes, but I am thirsty. I turn the top around, cutting the flow to something a bit more than a trickle. I lean over again and hang my head under carefully, turning my face so I can catch the water in my mouth.
It’s cold and clean. I swish it around, squirting it between my teeth, slooshing it over my gums, inside my puffed-out cheeks, then I spit. I swallow the next mouthful and the next, feeling the cool freshness make its way down inside me. I’m ragingly thirsty — the more water I drink, the worse it seems to get. I reach up and increase the flow as I gulp and swallow and gulp some more. Water spills out of my mouth, down my chin and my cheek.
Cee.
Someone says my name — not like the shouting and splashing that I heard before — this is close, here, in this room. I stand up, turn the tap off, and look behind me. There’s no one. I shake my head, dig the corner of the towel into my ears to get the water out.
It sounded like … But it couldn’t be. I heard him last night, though, when I was drifting off. But that’s different, isn’t
it? When you’re nearly asleep, the edges blur, you’re halfway into your dreams, aren’t you? But I’m awake now. The cold water’s seen to that.
Someone’s messing about, playing tricks on me.
I take two paces across the room and yank the plastic shower curtain all the way back. The bathtub is empty. This room is empty. But there was someone … I heard someone.
I go onto the landing, stop for a minute and listen. It’s quiet. Somewhere in the distance, a siren is howling, but even that fades and disappears. I head toward Mum’s room.
I walk softly inside. It’s not as dark as mine. The curtains are open and the streetlight outside is casting a yellow glow onto the patterned walls. The bed is empty. The floor still strewn with clothes and discarded plates.
I know she’s not here, but I still say, “Mum?” into the emptiness. There’s no reply.
I turn and walk back to my bedroom, mine and Rob’s, the room with the holes in the door. The thought of walking back in there makes me feel a bit sick. What if someone’s in there, waiting for me? But the light from the landing shows me that there’s nothing, just the two mattresses — two crumpled sleeping bags.
In the harsh light of the bare bulb overhead, the room looks smaller and sadder than ever. I look at my watch. Ten past three. Must be ten past three in the morning. I cross to the window and part the curtains. I’m on top of the shops, looking out across an empty streetlamp-lit parking lot and a stretch of grass beyond, fringed by terraces of houses. There’s no one about. I rest my elbows on the windowsill, prop my chin in my hands, and stare out. I don’t exactly remember this, but there’s something comforting about it, which makes me feel that I’ve done this before. Stood here. Stared.
After a while, I open the top panel of the window and push it out as far as it will go, fixing it open by slotting the metal peg on the frame into one of the holes in the handle. It’s a still night, but the opening brings some fresh air into the room, and a sort of background hush, nothing you can put your finger on, just the sound a small town makes in its sleep.
No chance of sleep for me. I’m a hundred percent awake.
I start sifting through some of the stuff on the floor. T-shirts, socks, pants. There doesn’t seem to be a dividing line anywhere, nothing to show what’s mine and what’s his. Was his, I should say. And there’s nothing to say what’s clean and what isn’t, either. I’m guessing none of it is.
There are food cartons, empty cans of Coke, and candy wrappers all mixed in with the clothes. It’s like a sort of soup. I start to separate everything out. Socks in one pile, T-shirts in another. Cans lined up shoulder to shoulder. I don’t even know why I’m doing it, but it’s something to do. Patches of floor start to appear. There’s carpet under all this, don’t know what color it started off, but it’s a sort of gray now, with flecks of brown.
I put actual rubbish in an old plastic bag: tin foil, paper, bits of gum if I can get them off whatever they’re stuck on. Soon I’ve cleared about half the gap between our beds. I pick up another little bit of paper, something torn up. I’ve already found some of these, put them in my bag, but now I notice that it’s not just a bit of a magazine. It’s too thick for that, the surface too smooth, shiny. It’s a photo. One side’s white, but the other has part of a picture. I place it in the palm of my hand and turn it around. There’s half a mouth, a chin, shadow at the top of a neck.
I dig about in the rubbish bag and fish out a couple more pieces. I put the three I’ve got on the floor and slide them about, playing with them, trying to make them fit. And two of them do. Now an eye and half a nose sit above the mouth. It’s a girl.
I start scrabbling around for the other pieces. I empty the bag out all over again but there aren’t any more. I leave the rubbish where it is and turn to sifting through the rest of the stuff on the floor. I’m not sorting it now, just working my way through, picking things from one heap and throwing them behind me into another. Each bit of picture is like a prize. Another piece of a puzzle I’ve got to solve. I find two more. There’s a silver chain around her neck, the top of a T-shirt. She’s got two little rings in her right ear, one above the other. I’m missing her left side, though. I keep searching.
The bits are scattered all over the room. I find all of them except two, but they’re both edge bits, so maybe they don’t really matter. After some trial and error I’ve put her face together. She’s a striking girl: long, straight dark hair, parted in the middle and tucked behind her ears, smooth skin — no zits and bumps like me — and beautiful eyes. Deep brown. Dancing with light. You can’t help looking at them. She’s pouting, pulling her cheeks in, looking up at the camera. I think it’s one of those pictures you take yourself, you know, with your arm stretched out in front.
There’s writing on it, too. She’s signed it across the bottom, although that’s one of the bits that’s missing, so all I can see is “Kisses, N —”
Kisses.
The photo is in our room, mine and Rob’s. So who was she sending kisses to?
I look around the room, and I think of what I know about my life, my journey here yesterday, standing in the kitchen watching Mum pour lager down her neck, and then I go back to the photo and I look into the girl’s eyes again, and I so, so want it to be me those kisses were meant for.
But it can’t be. Because the last time I saw her, she screamed at me.
She’s the girl in the ambulance.
The girl in the photograph. The girl in the ambulance. I need to find out who she is. I need to talk to her. Mum’ll know, but where is she, if she isn’t in her bed? I leave the pieced-together photo on the floor and start to head downstairs. I’ve got my foot on the second step when I hear the tap again.
Plip, plip, plip.
I could have sworn I’d turned it off. The washer must be busted or something.
I turn around and go back into the bathroom. Sure enough, it’s the cold tap at the sink again. I twist it firmly and tighten it up. Involuntarily, my shoulders hunch and a shiver runs from the top of my neck to the bottom of my spine. At the same time there’s a loud bang from the hallway, a door slamming shut. My heart stops. I duck out onto the landing and it’s my room, my door.
My heart’s going again now, hard and fast. I can feel my pulse throbbing in my neck. I take a couple of breaths, trying to calm myself down before I tiptoe up to the door, take hold of the handle, and turn it slowly. I ease the door open, peering into the room, and finally edge in, checking carefully behind the door. It’s empty, of course. The only difference is that the photo isn’t on the carpet anymore, at least not all in one place. There are bits on my sleeping bag and on Rob’s and all over the room. Just like someone picked them up and threw them toward the ceiling. Weird.
I put my hand out the open window. There isn’t a breath of wind. I knock the arm off the catch and close it, then I bend down to start picking up the pieces. I could stick them back together with some tape, if we’ve got any. I keep the pieces in my hand and go downstairs, looking for Mum or some tape, or both.
The lights are all on and Mum’s still on the sofa. The sound of the door slamming hasn’t woken her up. She’s crashed out, the hand with its damaged finger flopping toward the floor like it’s pointing at the can that she’s dropped. She’s well out of it.
Seeing her like that brings another memory.
“This is how Dad did it.” The blade of Rob’s knife is digging into my skin, into the crease that marks the last joint of my little finger. His eyes are cold, hard. The wrong word from me now and he’ll cut me.
“Okay, I believe you.”
“Except it was quick, real quick. He got her hand and then brought the knife down, just like this …”
I shudder at the thought of Rob pinning my hand down, shudder at what Mum must have gone through, all those years ago. The memories held within these walls are as poisonous as the air. No wonder Mum blots it out with lager. Maybe I’d be better off doing the same.
I hover in the do
orway, wondering what the hell I’m going to do now. I don’t feel comfortable poking around looking for tape, don’t want to disturb her.
There are family photos on top of the TV. I tiptoe past Mum and examine them. Three portraits in cardboard frames, the same two boys in each one. They make a series, tell a story: my brother and me, growing up. Our life in three snapshots. Infant, kindergarten, high school. Tots, boys, teens.
If we were in a crowd of a thousand people, a million, you’d pick us out as brothers. Same scruffy hair, same narrow gray-blue eyes sloping down at the outside edges, same cheekbones. Brothers, but not twins. Rob’s clearly older — he’s bigger than me in every photo. And there’s a cockiness about him that’s missing in me. In one of the pictures, the most recent one, his head is tipped back a little and he’s looking down his nose at the camera. Only slightly, but it’s enough to say, loud and clear, “Yeah, I’m Rob. What about it?” But my eyes don’t make contact — I’m not looking straight at the camera, but a little bit to the side.
Now I think of the other photo, the one in pieces in my hand. If you added this girl to one of the photos of me and Rob, where would she go? Where does she fit in?
Behind me, Mum snorts in her sleep. I turn around. She shifts a little, moving onto her back, and then her mouth falls open again and she starts snoring loud enough to rattle the windows.
She’s so asleep and I’m so awake. I can’t stay here and listen to this, but I don’t want to go back upstairs and mess about with taps and doors all night, freaking myself out about people who aren’t there.
I stuff the bits of photo into one of the pockets of my jeans and head for the front door. I grab a jacket from the pegs in the hall. Mine or his? Whatever. I put it on. As an afterthought I take another coat, tiptoe back, and lay it over Mum. Then I tiptoe to the door, reach for the catch, and ease it open.
More flowers have appeared in our yard, leaning up against the door. They flop onto the doormat as I open it. I move them into the hall and leave them there, pulling the door closed behind me.
