Stop, I say, but I know I have not been heard. Stop, I try again. I block my ears and try to cover my eyes. I cannot bear it. Dorothy, white-faced, unaware of anything that falls outside the small and furious circle of her hysteria.
Run, Frances tells me. But it is not this Frances. It is the other one. Get someone.
And somewhere far away on another planet, the other Elise runs out the back gate and down that other street, where the pine trees also creak and the air smells salty and the road is cracked and potholed. She runs as fast as she can. Not knowing where she is heading until she is there. Knocking on his door.
38
John Mills puts the photographs back in the envelope. I can see him out of the corner of my eye.
And you knocked loud enough to wake the dead, he smiles.
Loud enough to wake the dead.
At first I did not know who you were.
No, he did not know who I was. I remember. He opened the door and I tried to tell him it was my mother, there was something wrong with my mother, but he could not hear me. My voice was too quiet.
I loosen the roots in the pot, shaking it slightly until I can feel the neat mould of soil coming away from the plastic that surrounds it. I am careful as I press it into the ground, gently patting the earth around it to make sure there are no pockets of air.
I left you in the kitchen, he says, while I got changed.
I remember, and I take the next pot of herbs, the mint, from the row at my feet.
He left me sitting at the table, and they were there, a pile of them.
The photographs.
I remember.
I didn’t even think of them, he says. I didn’t even think you might find it strange that they were there. Not until sometime afterwards.
I remember. He was getting changed in the laundry, asking me questions as he fumbled for clothes.
I do not want to talk about this. I do not want him to go on.
And as he asked those questions, Frances’s face stared up at me from that pile of photographs, and my fingers were flicking through them, rummaging through them, aware of him just on the other side of the door, just managing to take the one, my one, and slip it into my pocket before he came out, T-shirt on back to front, tracksuit pants inside out.
He had his doctor’s bag packed and ready and he picked it up with one hand, trying to take my hand with his other.
We should walk, he told me. It will be quicker than getting the car out, and I just nodded my head in agreement.
He asked me if something had happened to upset her and I could not answer him, even though I wanted to. I just nodded my head, up and down, up and down, and when he reached for my hand again, I pulled away.
I remember how quickly he walked, down the road that runs at the back of his house and at the back of our house, the road just there, over the gate. I had to run to keep up with him, but I did not ask him to slow down because I, too, wanted to get there as quickly as I could.
It’s here, I told him when we reached our gate, and I remember both of us, running across these pebbles towards the back door.
Mrs Silverton, he called out, but there was no answer.
Mrs Silverton, he called again, and there was only silence.
We both stood, stunned, in the doorway. She had broken everything. Smashed it all.
Mrs Silverton, he called one more time and he was crossing the floor, china crunching under his shoes as he made his way to the other side of the room, calling out the whole time. Her name. Over and over.
I did not follow. Not even when I heard him find her, there in the lounge room. I just started picking up the pieces. The larger ones first. Half a plate, the handle of a cup, a saucepan, and I put them all, one by one, on the kitchen table.
Elise. It was him, and I stopped what I was doing. Can you bring me a glass of water?
I did not know whether there was a glass. At least, not an entire one. But there was. Forgotten, on top of the fridge, and I had to drag the chair over to reach it.
He was sitting with Dorothy in the lounge room. Her on the couch, him next to her with his arm around her. She had her head down in the palm of her hands and for one moment I thought she was crying, but then I realised she was not making a sound. All I could hear was his voice, on and on, soothing her, and he took the water from me without breaking his monologue. Telling her it would be all right. Over and over again. And he put the glass in her hand as he continued to talk. He put a couple of pills in the other hand, and he instructed her in the same voice to Drink up now. Good, good, that will be better.
Dorothy did as he said.
I remember.
I remember her face when she lifted her head to drink. It was only a moment. In the dim light of the lamp. One small pool in the blackness. It was like a mask. White with a slash of orange on her mouth and two slashes of black to mark her eyes. She was looking at me but she did not see me. Then the mask was down again and the light illuminated nothing but the top of her head. That thick auburn hair.
I stepped back behind the door. I stayed pressed against the wall, not wanting to go back into the kitchen and not wanting to go to my room.
Do you want to tell me what happened?
Frances, she said, and it was all she said.
He was silent. The slow soothing words had been abruptly cut and in their stead there was only silence. Awful, heavy silence until finally he spoke again. But his voice was not what it was. It was cracked and uncertain.
What has happened?
It was Dorothy speaking now, cutting over him. She has gone, and her voice was flat and thin.
And that was when I looked again. I remember, looking around the door because I did not know what was going on, and I saw him and I did not understand.
He looked . . . I cannot think of the word.
Shattered.
He looked shattered.
I did not understand.
I still do not understand.
I remember all this, as I plant the herbs, one by one, concentrating on the ground in front of me, while John Mills talks to me.
I want to, he says, I want to explain, and I decide I will put all the herbs here in this bed, all in a row.
The flowers I will leave for the back fence. I want them to grow tall. I want them to hide us from the road. I want them to hide us from everyone who walks past, from everyone who has ever pointed or stared, from everyone who knows.
39
I could not explain.
When I first told Martin about Frances that night at Marissa and Robert’s, he had asked me how I could bear it. Not knowing.
And he had sat up in bed and wanted to write his list. He had wanted to solve it. This is the way he is. For Martin there is always an explanation.
I tried to tell him I had been over everything. Over and over. With them and by myself, tracing and retracing that day and then the day before that and the one before that and every day I could remember, so that on bad days they all became one and I felt I did not know anything.
I tried to tell him I had envisaged it all, the worst I could imagine and the best.
Frances under the jetty where the Coke cans and cigarette butts bob up and down, up and down on the slippery surface of the sea, thick foam curling around her toes while they held her down, held her under. The boys on the jetty, peeling off their skin-tight jeans, the man in the kiosk, and I would see his long fingernails. I would see things I could not bear to see. I would see him, too. I would see John Mills and I would see those photographs and I would not know what it was I was seeing. I would wake up and I would remember. I would see her on a bus going somewhere, somewhere far away from here, and I would breathe again. It was all right. She had gone but it was all right. And from the next room, I would hear her, Dorothy. Clipping and pasting, clipping and pasting. ‘Similar Stories’ and ‘Possibilities’ piled high around us.
I tried to tell him this but I did not have the words.
He was sitting up in bed. There had to
be a way we could work it out. If we went over every detail. Wrote a list. How can you bear it?
You begin by searching for a defined event and you find you are searching for something larger. You are trying to understand it all. One life and then the lives that connect with that life, and there is no end. There is no list that could encompass it all.
How could I explain?
For Martin, there are only defined events. He would not have understood. He will never understand.
That night was the only time he and I spoke of Frances. He was, I suppose, uncomfortable. He was, I suppose, frightened of how I would react.
I was used to being silent.
But sometimes I wished he would speak. I wished he would just ask me something, anything, so that I could talk of her. I would wait for him to mention her name. I would hope he would mention her name.
But he never did.
And sometimes I hated him for that silence.
In my mother’s back yard now, John Mills waits for me to turn and look at him.
How can I explain? He leans forward to see my face. I do not want him to know that I am anxious he is about to admit something I do not want to hear, something that makes no sense. Because he is a good man. A part of me knows that. A part of me has always known it and that is why I have never really understood why he had those photographs.
It is not what you think it is, he tells me. It is not what you think it is.
And as he tries to talk to me, I am, at first, afraid. I am afraid that he is going to pull all that I have tried to understand back into a single event, that he is going to tell me that there was a defining moment I had missed all those years ago. Something I had failed to see as I lay in my rock pool, my back to the jetty, unaware of what was occurring around me. And I am not sure if I can bear to have it revealed to me.
But he doesn’t.
It is not that day he is talking about. It is not even that summer he is talking about. It is something else. It is another time.
And as he tries to tell me, I do not know how I could not have known. I do not know how I could have failed to see what I know he is trying to explain to me, not just on that day, but on the days before that, and the days after that, and every single day that I had thought about my sister.
Because there was something I had missed. He is trying to explain. He is trying to tell me about her. And with his first words, I know what he is wanting to say, and this is what I cannot bear. To know, and in knowing, having to grapple with how I had spent so long not knowing.
My mother would hold her arms out wide, He loved me, this much, he loved me, he loved me, he loved me . . . while my sister would look on. She would look on, and in her eyes there would be scorn. Anger, contempt and scorn. And in her voice there would be mockery, sneering as she would repeat my mother’s words, over and over again.
I do not know how I could not have known.
I need to tell you, he says, and he speaks softly; he does not want to say this any louder, but with me by the garden bed, concentrating on making each row straight, he is forced to speak up.
Do you remember, he asks me, when your father came home? In that year before he died?
I remember, but I do not know what I remember.
I can feel the sun on the back of my neck. I can feel an ant, crawling from my wrist into the sleeve of my shirt.
I remember but I do not know what I remember.
And he is holding a file out towards me. She was only eight.
I lay the spade down at my feet. He is looking at me, looking straight at me, wanting me to take it from him, wanting me to hear what it is he has to say. And I am surprised at how aged his hands are. White, frail, shaking, as I take the folder from him and step back, back to where I had been standing, by the border of pebbles, smooth and pale under the sun.
I do not want to read what is in my hands. I do not want to see. I do not want to listen. I do not want to know.
My sister. There in his surgery, with Dorothy next to her, and as I read his report, difficulty urinating, unwilling to be examined, he is talking to me, he is telling me. His notes, his words there on the page, a bike accident, and his words now.
You must understand, at the time we knew very little about cases like this. Now, if I were still a doctor, I would have no hesitation in taking it further. All he is saying floats around me and I cannot bring myself to look at him. I cannot bring myself to see what I know I will see.
It was so long ago. I do not know why he is telling me this.
I do not know what he wants me to say.
I do not want to hear what I know I am hearing.
But I keep seeing my sister, I keep seeing her and I am forced to listen. I am forced to listen to all she tried to say. He didn’t love her, he just wanted to stick it into her. And she rolls her eyes in disgust. She rolls her eyes and she dances round and round the room. He loved me, he loved me, he loved me, helovedme, helovedme, helovedmehelovedmehelovedmehelovedme, rolling her eyes and hitching her skirt up, up, up, up, and I want to tell her to shut up, to just shut up, but she doesn’t, she won’t, she wouldn’t.
He loved me. This much.
The paper is dry in my hands. I close the folder slowly and do not know what to do with it. The cardboard is creased, bent at the spine, worn from where it has been opened and folded back. The pages inside have yellowed. Covered in faded blue ink. Words that say nothing.
She came back, John Mills tells me, to see me. Three weeks later, on her own. His hands rest on his inner thighs. The knuckles are white.
I tried to talk to her. His head is bent, low.
I am laying the file down on the ground and I am looking at him. I am watching him as he struggles for his words. I did nothing. It is all he can manage to say.
On the day we learnt that my father died, my sister cried. It was the only time I saw her in tears. I am listening to him and I am remembering. I did it, she tells me. I did it because I wanted it. I wanted him dead. I am hearing her words and I am hearing his words, John Mills trying to say what he needs to say. Trying to explain that this is what he has lived with, knowing but not wanting to know. Hoping that it was not what he thought it was, trying to see, there, in my sister’s face, that she was all right, that it was just a bike accident, nothing else. Needing to get closer, to convince himself that it was not as he knew it was, holding his photographs under the light, laying them out on the table, trying to reassure himself.
Just as I have been doing.
He loved me. This much.
I do not know how I could not have known.
I look out across the yard, past the back fence and to the streets beyond and I am seeing it all as a stranger would see it.
Did she know? I ask him, and I turn my head back in the direction of the house, back in the direction of my mother’s bedroom.
I don’t know.
Was it him?
He shakes his head. I don’t know. It might have been. But I don’t know. It could have been anyone.
It could have been anyone.
And I see them all. The boys on the jetty. Jim Hunt at the kiosk. My father.
I have to talk to her, I tell him. I have to speak to her, and he reaches to stop me as I pass him, but I do not let him.
40
I have told my story. Over and over again.
I have told it in its entirety and I have told it in parts.
That bit again, please, and I oblige.
I can say it forwards, I can say it backwards, and I can say it inside out. I can tell it to them and I can tell it to myself. I can go into every detail or I can tell it briefly, the salient facts, the eyeteeth, the important parts . . .
I have told my story.
Once upon a time, a long time ago, there were two little girls. Frances and Elise.
More times than I could begin to count.
Once upon a time, a long time ago, there were two little girls. Frances and Elise. They lived in a suburb by the beach. A
suburb where the roads stretched long and straight and flat from east to west and from north to south, and where the houses sprawled, one after the other after the other.
In the summer it was hot. Long dry days that scorched the back yards and the small strips of grass by the footpath, burning them into the dirt. The trees sagged and sighed in the heat, and everyone kept their blinds drawn and their doors closed, trying to trap what little cool there was in shaded dusty living rooms.
In the winter, the winds and the rain came, and it was cold. The winds crept in through every crack, under windows, under doors, and they brought the damp and the salt with them. The sea heaved, dark and furious, dragging seaweed up from its slimy depths and throwing it across the cold grey sand.
This was the place where Frances and Elise lived. A long time ago. They knew the streets, and the shops, and the road that led down to the beach, and the dunes, and the miles of sand that stretched long and straight, and the sea, and the jetties, one on this beach, one on the next and one on the beach after that.
In the summer holidays they went down to the ocean. Every day. Walking down the same stretch of road, stopping at the same place near the kiosk to confer briefly, and then they spent the day apart until they came home together, back up the same path, past the kiosk again, and along the same straight flat roads that led to home.
This was the way it was. Each day the same, harsh blue sky, hot white sand, sunburnt noses and small petty fights, over and over.
This was the way it was, until that day.
The day that it happened.
The day that Elise went home alone.
And from then on, she was told to distinguish that day from all the other days because they thought that if she could do that, if she could find that difference, then they would know, they would know. And so she tried. Over and over and over. Tracing and retracing each step, each look, each word. And she knew each element that she sifted. She knew the fights that they had in the morning, she knew the way they walked, she knew the words they spoke to each other before they separated; she knew all those ingredients. But in all her years of sifting she had not known, she had never really known, the central element, Frances.
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