by Lia Hills
“What about Ray’s?” Dad asks.
“I’m not coming. I don’t even know them.” Adam rakes his fingers through his hair in front of the hall mirror. He looks at his watch then back at Dad. “Tom Wallace is picking me up in about ten minutes. You remember Tom.”
“Yes, I think so. You drive, Will, you need the practice. Not long till you go for your license now.”
Dad drops the keys into my hands and heads out the front door.
“Nice work,” I say, nudging past Adam.
“What?” He raises his eyebrows and goes back to realigning his hair, his reflection blocking mine, except for a slice of my head. He is my brother but he is closed to me.
If I had my notebook I’d write:
3. Why do some get to live, and others die?
Ray’s house is yellow. Below the knocker, there’s a sticker, We acknowledge the Wurrundjeri people as the traditional owners of this land. A political front door. They can’t be friends of Dad’s. It opens.
“Ray, how are you?”
“Good, thanks, Michael. Come in. And you must be Will,” says Ray, shaking my hand. He’s much thinner than Dad. His gray hair is pulled back into a ponytail and he’s wearing a black shirt. I manage a smile as he takes us through to the living room. The walls are crowded with paintings and framed posters, the coffee table full of homemade dips and stuff. The whole house has a congested feel.
“So, Will. Are you still studying?”
“Yeah. I’m in Year 12.”
His ponytail brushing his shoulders, Ray gives Dad a knowing look. “So you’ve got exams coming up soon?”
“Mmmm,” I nod, recognizing one of the posters—it’s of the South American guy from that movie, the one where he becomes a revolutionary after crossing the continent on a motorcycle.
“Taryn!” calls out Ray, and she runs in. I can’t believe it; it’s the girl from the dream. The one who wore white to the wake. “You remember Michael, and this is Will.”
“Hi,” she says, her tooth resting on her lip.
“Hi.” The taste of chocolate in my mouth. I focus on that poster. Che, that’s who he is, Che Guevara, the certainty of his name helping to keep the blood out of my cheeks. But Taryn’s not helping. She’s sitting next to Ray, inspecting us, the way we move, letting her eyes run all over us, and mostly over me.
“Taryn’s a year behind you at school, Will,” says Ray, spilling dip on his chin. “So, Michael, you’re already back at work?”
“Couldn’t see any point in taking extra time off.”
Taryn leans over, her hair so long it sweeps my knee. “Will, there’s something I want to show you.”
She stands, her skirt taking a moment to fall down her leg, and I follow her, because right now she’s my white rabbit, except her hair’s the color of the cat Mom used to have. Marmalade. It was her cat, she always said, because she never had a girl. Figure the logic. I want to ask Taryn where we’re going, except it doesn’t matter; there’s something about her feet, the way they rise up to me naked and pale, a little pink around the edges.
“Thought they might need some time alone,” she says.
We’re in the kitchen, and she’s filling glasses with water, her finger touching mine as she hands one to me. This time my cheeks refuse to oblige. I go for cover at the table that squats in the middle of the room. “Where’s your mom?” I ask.
“She’s late but she should be here soon.”
“Are you an only child?”
“No. I have two sisters, but one’s in India, and the other one is out. Couldn’t do the mourning thing with strangers.”
I want to ask her if she can but the words dissolve as she smiles and hooks her hair behind her ears. Taryn. She has green eyes, freckles on her cheeks, a small scar above her lip—beautiful, that’s all there is to think about her. The sinkhole in my stomach fills a little. I close my mouth.
“I can’t imagine…” She frowns.
“What?”
“Do you want to break things?”
I want to break the whole world open, dig around in its entrails till I find some answers, but I don’t think that’s what she means. Taryn goes over to the bench, draws a psycho-sized knife out of a block, holds it up in front of her before passing it, hilt first, to me. It’s heavy in my hand but it feels like someone else is holding it.
“Cut into the table,” she says, “like this.” She puts her hands, warm beyond reason, around mine and drags them across the surface, slicing a groove with the knife. Her breath smells of lime. Letting go, she whispers, “Go on, it’s all right.”
So I do, I carve into the wood and feel its softness as it gives in to the blade, hardly any resistance at all. If I slip, it’ll cut straight through me it’s so sharp; it won’t worry about flesh and bone, just keep going till it’s made its way to the other side. There’s something gratifying in the way the wood submits.
“I did that when my boyfriend dumped me last year. It felt great.”
I can’t imagine anyone leaving her. She traces her finger over a long groove next to mine.
“Was your mom beautiful? Dad said she was.”
“I…” Someone else is in the reflection of the knife.
“Mom, finally.” Taryn grips her mother’s shoulder. They turn toward me, their mouths so alike, both small.
“Sorry, traffic was a nightmare. I’m Sandra.”
As I put down the knife she holds out her hand. It’s cold. Smooth.
“I’m Will.”
“Will, I was sorry to hear about your mother. I knew Anna well when we were younger. Wish we’d got back in contact earlier, but you know how it is.”
My eye is drawn to the freshly carved groove. It’s about the length of my forearm, the raw wood lighter than the varnished surface, barely visible, the color of flesh. They’re both watching me, these women, and suddenly all their sincerity feels like grabbing. “I should be getting back.”
Sandra nods. “Of course. I’ll be there in a minute.”
She goes over to the sink, her jacket pulling across her shoulders, her hair rolled up in a ball at the base of her neck.
Taryn follows me, touches my arm, whispers, “You know, once you’ve carved into our table, you’re one of us.”
I look at her hand and for a moment it all feels creepy, this family with their table witness to their lives. But she’s close, so close I can smell her, her scent wrapping itself around me, filtering its way in.
4. Is it possible for others to taste your pain?
After dinner, while Dad’s in the bathroom, Ray says, “I know your dad’s a bit on the quiet side, so if you need someone to talk to.”
I look at this man I’ve only just met, his nose that’s lost its way, one of his front teeth dead.
“Will, your mom and I, a long time ago…” He checks the door through which Sandra left. “A long time ago, we were close.”
There’s an unwieldy silence; his confession has no place to go.
“You’ll come back, won’t you, Will?” asks Taryn, and I know I must. There’s something about how they hang together, the way they’re allowing me in.
“Sure,” I say to her.
I want to touch her freckles, one by one. They’re like constellations—make me think that if I joined them together, dot to dot, some map to the universe would appear across her face.
5. When one thing ends, does another always begin?
Dad’s staring into the absence of traffic as he drives us home. His neck looks older, the skin darker—it’s a long time since I really looked at my father, how he holds the steering wheel, pushing it away from him, his obsession with adjusting mirrors as if it will somehow save him from his fate. My father has friends I never knew about and together they have a past, a pool of memories. Jesus, for all I know, tonight I met my mother’s one true love.
Dad stops at the lights. People cross the road in front of our car but they don’t see us, father and son, side by side. Eight days beyond Anna
’s death. On my leg is a CD Taryn slid into my hand as I left. I try to read the song titles in the unpredictable light, to work out which one will give me an answer.
6. How many questions does it take?
THE ULTIMATE TRUTH
THE WIND IS WARM and it feels good to be out walking; at home the walls and floors are made of glue. It’s not far to the local library but even the birds seem to be doing Saturday morning slowly.
As the doors whoosh open, I remember the last time I was here, with Mom, her walking ahead of me, her red hair, just dyed, clashing with her coat, a stack of books in her arms. I almost decide to go home, but picture Dad still ruminating over his cornflakes and decide to stay—besides, last time I checked there were no answers scrawled across my bedroom wall.
There’s a computer free in the center of the library and another one taken hostage by a couple of kids perfecting their vocabulary on sex. I hear them talking about looking up orgasm as I type death in the subject box and hit enter. There are 457 listings—on the first page, some graphic novels and abstractly linked titles, before I find the number that I need: 155.
I look around and remember where things are. Down by the long windows that drop into nowhere, I work my way along to 155, the books on grief, some devoted to dying, some written for kids. I pick one out because of its yellow cover, its plastic spine warm from the sun. The book lists the stages of mourning, each phase spelled out in detail with headings, all so precise, the anatomy of grief, and I have an urge to tear it into tiny, precise pieces, but a lifetime of respect for books works against my desire for revenge. I return it to the shelf, lean against the cookery books opposite, and wonder what to do next. If only there was one titled A Thousand Recipes for Dealing with Your Own Mortality, but chocolate seems to be the main theme here.
The sun through the windows warms my feet through my shoes. Above the books on grief are some on philosophy—by names like Plato, Bertrand Russell, Marcus Aurelius, the same book as Mom’s. Next to it, there’s one called On the Shortness of Life. I pull it out and flick through it till I find this: It is better to conquer our grief than deceive it … But the grief that has been conquered by reason is calmed forever.
This is better—I prefer the sound of conquering to squeezing the havoc in my head into a neat little box. I sit on the carpet and pull out my notebook, with its spiral binding and black cover, about the same size as most of these philosophy books. On the first page, Will Ellis is written in big letters like a title.
I turn to where I wrote my questions and copy the sentences opposite them, the ones about grief, and with each word I feel a part of me loosen, smoothing the jaggedness of my thoughts. The cover of On the Shortness of Life is white, the lettering all embossed, good to run your finger over, and according to the blurb on the back it’s by a philosopher called Seneca. He’s talking to a friend of his, Paulinus, explaining to him about life: It is not that we have a short time to live, but that we waste a lot of it.
Waste. This afternoon I was thinking of having another listen to that CD Taryn gave me, to get past the music and into the words. Maybe go around and see Seb. Is that waste? And how do you deceive grief?
I riffle through the book to see what else Seneca has to say—the problem is he keeps getting off the track, talking about gladiatorial contests and someone called Scipio. An old guy reading a newspaper over by the window tilts forward and farts, turns the page, doesn’t even flinch. Man, the bravado of the old. Here it is: you deceive grief by distracting yourself, says Seneca, by turning your back on the big questions. A man after my own heart. What you need instead is philosophy and reason.
Philosophy and reason.
And I know as I read this that he’s talking about more than one book from your local library, even if it is his. I’m going to need shelves of them, a whole world of ideas to arm myself against ignorance, the kind that lets in pain. That’s if you believe a guy who’s been dead for two thousand years. For only philosophy … can divert from its anguish a heart whose grief springs from love.
Behind me a woman calls out to her daughter who’s tipping books off the shelves, watching them flap like paper birds. She must be about two, the kid, and she’s ecstatic, as if she’s finally discovered why everyone’s so enchanted by books. Her fingers are fat and unruly and there’s chocolate bracketing the corners of her mouth. She hauls out a hardcover book, Mastering Philosophy, and holds it up to me, grinning as she drops it on my leg with a thud. It falls open and halfway down the page it says: The study of ultimate reality.
“Riana.” The woman grabs hold of the kid’s shoulders, and spins her around.
“It’s okay, I’ll pick them up,” I say, rubbing my knee.
“Thanks.” The woman whips her daughter up into her arms and the kid kisses her on the nose, cheeks, eyes and makes her mother laugh. Little but smart. I guess I was smart like that once, when things were simple and life was all about chocolate and keeping out of trouble.
Maybe it still is.
* * *
Dad’s working in his study, Adam’s out for lunch, so I grab a Mars bar and leave a note: Back for dinner, Will.
* * *
At the train station, there’s a guy harvesting dropped tickets, hoping to find one he can use. Hate that—he looks about my dad’s age; he should have the cash. He’s still searching as the train pulls in, and out.
There are a couple of kids I know with skateboards, and we nod, but I don’t want to talk. Instead I look out the window of the train and lose myself in the rattling past of things—people’s backyards, their washing, some woman’s red undies flailing in the wind. I half imagine how that woman might look as I close my eyes, think of Taryn, and that knife, a red Honda crashing into Mom. I open my eyes to a sign nailed up on somebody’s tree: Jesus is coming soon. Prepare for His return.
At the next station, a woman in a bright orange sweater gets on carrying a silver bag in the shape of an egg. She shuffles over to the window across from me, so I have to fold my knees in. On her foot, a tattoo. It says serendipity, which I remember from that film where they fall for each other but leave meeting again to chance.
When I stare at her foot, the woman smiles at me. “Do you believe in fate?” she asks, and for a minute I think she’s coming on to me, but what are the chances of that?
“Fate?”
“Yeah, you know, if things are meant to happen, they will.”
“Don’t know,” I say, looking out the window.
“It’s all about watching out for the signs.” She pulls her bag in closer to her stomach. I can see her reflection in the glass; her nose is pierced and the stud keeps catching the light.
“Signs?”
“Haven’t seen any today,” she says, turning to look at a tall woman who’s shouting down at the other end of the car, shouting at herself. “What about you?”
They keep slapping me in the face, I think, staring at fences, though I’m not sure what you’re meant to do with random pages, a poster about Jesus, and a foot about fate. Where’s the equation? Maybe you need to throw something in sideways, see what comes out. “My mother died. Nine days ago.”
Her hand goes to her mouth, “Oh, really.”
“Yeah, really. Where’s the serendipity in that?” I’m being an asshole, I know, but maybe I can jolt her into some truth.
“I … I’m not sure.” She’s getting up, pulling that bag in closer, its silver strap dangling over her wrist. “Um, this is my stop. Wow, I’m sorry.”
She stoops toward me for a second, and then she goes, steps out onto the platform and keeps walking without looking back, till that tattoo of hers blurs into a smudge. A black cat sitting on a wall watches the train pull out.
* * *
Flinders Street Station is manic, even considering it’s the center of Melbourne. People dodge each other as they go where they need to be, but I can’t get into the flow. I bang into three people, all wearing suits, all women. “Sorry,” I say, “Sorry,” and one
more time. “Sorry! For Christ’s sake!”
My ticket gets stuck in the machine on the way through and some Indian guy in an orange vest has to help me out. I push past the guy selling flowers, buckets of nature lined up against the gray, and then out into the light. People pour down the steps but I let them flood around me—I don’t even know where the State Library is, so there’s no rush. Saturday afternoon and I’m on my second library. Loss does strange things.
It’s hot, hot on my face, on my chest, and the warmth feels good; it’s evaporating something that doesn’t belong. I find a spot on the steps out of the traffic but still in the sun. Below me, there are some emos huddled in as much shade as they can manage, a flock of them all in black like suicidal crows. One of them’s standing up and he’s thin and pale and so vampirish I almost laugh out loud; he’s even wearing a black cape. Wonder if he sleeps in a coffin, bites chicks on the neck. He certainly has them enthralled, with their fishnet stockings and black lipstick smiles. He’s their god, no doubt about it as they watch his every move, the flop of his hair over his left eye, his long fingers that twist and dive as he speaks. He breathes confidence like fresh air. He’s almost wonderful—I want to hear what he’s saying, but don’t want to catch his eye.
And then he flinches. It’s instantaneous, but there’s a glitch in his calm, as if he suddenly remembered who he is and, for a split second, let the world in. He leans back into himself, flicks his hair out of his eyes, revealing his T-shirt underneath the cape. And on it is written: God is dead.
A man going past in a dark suit scoffs, “What would a punk know about Nietzsche?”
The sun steals behind a cloud. One of the emo girls laughs.
* * *
I enter the stream of bodies, make for the pub across the road and exit the heat. As I’m tall for my age, people think I’m older, so I shouldn’t have any trouble getting served. I’ve never tried before but I don’t feel like going to the library yet; I feel like parking myself beside a bunch of guys and drinking beer—making some sense of the signs, if that’s what they are.
