She shrugged. She wasn’t going to provide him with any details. She didn’t even want to think about them. ‘You should get back to work anyway. Maybe spend a day or two with Scott and head back. There’s nothing more you can do really.’
‘This feels weird. I mean it’s horrible, but it’s like—’ He glanced downward, noticed the plasters on her hand. ‘Did you get in a fight with them?’
She examined her knuckles briefly. ‘No, of course not.’ She realised she could well have. It had come close to that when Maxine had charged out onto the verandah. ‘But I spoke to them and they made it very clear that we were to steer out of their way.’
‘Wow,’ he said slowly. ‘Does that go for all of us? Not just Scott?’
‘Well, definitely Scott, and definitely me. I suppose the rest of you could take your chances, but I wouldn’t advise it.’
‘Why you? I don’t get it. Scott, yeah. But why you? Why us?’
‘They think the family, this family, is the root of all evil. Scott was not formed in isolation. As such, I, his mother, made him the person he is, and he in turn corrupted Troy.’ Pam could feel exhaustion flood through her, the sheer fatigue of having to exist in a world not of her making where she was forced to interpret herself through another lens. She leaned against the bench and Simon, not usually a hugger, bent forward and wrapped his arms around her.
‘They are crazy, Mum,’ he said to the top of her head. ‘I mean, that’s just insane.’
‘They are grieving. I understand that. I do. Everyone copes in different ways. They are … he is rigid. He has to find a reason for what happened. Someone to blame.’
‘Copes? That’s not coping, is it?’ He drew away from her so he could speak. ‘I mean, like making up stuff about Troy’s behaviour. I don’t think he was that innocent. Kind of the opposite. I’m pretty sure he was like that when they first came here. I can remember him in year nine. God. He was always, not bad or anything, but you know …’
‘A live wire?’
‘He’s got a personality.’ Simon stumbled there, changed to the past tense. ‘He did. He did have one. Oh shit. But what I mean is, it’s like they’re pretending he’s something he wasn’t.’
‘Hmm.’ She looked away for a moment, her eyes alighting on the dishcloth and she thought it needed a good rinse, perhaps a bleach. Strange brown stains covered its surface. ‘No, I think they truly believe he was like that. They’ve never seen or wanted to see him in any other way. The only explanation for the changes they saw was that somehow other people influenced Troy’s behaviour.’
Simon let out a long sigh. ‘People are bloody weird.’
Outside there was the sound of a car pulling up. ‘I hope that’s your father,’ said Pam. She didn’t think she could bear to see anyone else today. Interactions with the outside world seemed horribly dangerous; she suddenly felt terribly fragile. Simon obligingly stepped into the dining room and craned his head to look out the front window. ‘Yeah,’ he said. ‘Just Dad.’
The slam of a car door. Footsteps on the front porch, the rasp of the door being opened, the way the intrusion of air from outside changed the atmosphere within, like a vacuum being released. She thought about the sounds of the house, how they had grown into it, knew it all, every signal. Cracking floorboards, squeaking, rattling windows and doors. They’d been here for most of their married life. The kids had grown up here, never known another home. Pam felt a ridiculous attachment to the place, as though it was the fifth family member, existing autonomously yet symbiotically with them. She couldn’t imagine living anywhere else. Those big open rooms, the northern aspect at the back on the deck. So many memories. If nothing else, it was where she felt safe. Her fortress. Her castle (Queen Pamela). This at least was her refuge.
April 2016
Melbourne
‘When did you come to Melbourne?’
Lori wondered if Daniel Levandi was asking the question as a cop or as her new best friend. They were crossing the Yarra and she had been thinking that she didn’t often get to glimpse the river, or the view of the city beyond. It always made her feel like a tourist, being a passenger and being able to look out and see it, as opposed to negotiating her way through it as a driver when the only things in her line of sight were boots, badges and tail-lights. ‘I came here in the nineties,’ she said at last. ‘When I was seventeen.’
‘Young.’
‘I suppose. I didn’t feel that young at the time.’
‘No.’ He gave out a small huh. ‘I was the same age when I left home. Just staring straight ahead. That’s all I remember. No idea about anything, which, in hindsight, was my greatest asset. No reflection, just getting ready for the big adventure.’
She glanced over at him, saw his sharp aquiline profile and wondered how old he was. Younger than her she was sure, but maybe not a lot. ‘So what was your big adventure?’
‘Well, I don’t think it ever really eventuated. I didn’t go down the Amazon or anything. But you know, at the time, just leaving my mum’s house was a pretty big deal. I got a job at a fabricators, steel manufacturing. Doesn’t sound that great, does it? But I was free. Free of school, free of my family. I lived with some other guys out near the hills and we did a lot of crazy things, and a lot of boring things, and drank way too much alcohol. Teenagers. Typical. It was a struggle to get to work some days. After a couple of years I could see that none of that was going anywhere. I was bored, to be frank, and I thought bugger this. But I didn’t have any proper qualifications. Someone I knew had joined the police and said I might like it.’
‘And the rest is history.’
‘Yeah. Well, it opened my eyes. To a lot of things. And then one boss in particular said I had potential, encouraged me to go back to study. I had actually been okay at schoolwork, just never very good at applying myself. But I finished a degree in psychology. Now I’m doing law.’
‘Wow. That boss must’ve really have seen something in you.’
‘It wasn’t just me. Management were always looking for people to take on further studies. Still, they must have seen something. Hard for me to know now. I look back on that kid and all I can see is ignorance and naiveté. Guess I improved.’
‘Yeah, well, that goes with the territory, doesn’t it?’
‘What, the ignorance or the improvement?’
She laughed. ‘You’re ambitious, I guess.’
‘You don’t want to stay doing the same thing your whole life, do you?’
‘Depends on who you are. For some people all that moving around is too much.’
‘Most people, perhaps.’
‘So head of Major Collision soon then?’
‘Who knows. I’m open to all possibilities.’
She nodded, taking it all in, wondering at his energy. She’d often felt since the kids that her energy had drained down like a half-dead battery. Some days it felt like enough just to do the basics let alone plot a whole new career.
‘So,’ he said. ‘What was your big adventure?’
‘Adventure? I don’t think that word was in my vocabulary. I didn’t leave for adventure. Escape. That would be my noun, or is it verb, of choice.’
‘Sorry,’ he said. ‘That sounded callous. Clearly things were very different for you.’
She shrugged. ‘In some ways it was an adventure. Not one that I set out on intentionally, like you. After everything that happened, I needed to get away. I figured I could start a new life, be someone else. I came here with almost nothing. A bit of money from my parents. I just survived as best I could. No grand vision.’
‘And did you get to be someone else?’
‘I was never the same person again. Does that mean being someone else?’ They were driving along Brunton Avenue, the MCG on one side overshadowing them, railway lines on the other, layers of city building ahead. Everywhere vast blocks of space, vertical and horizontal lines. You could lose yourself in this city, she thought. Hundreds of people went missing here each year. She could w
ell have been one of them. She had been so alone when she first arrived, anonymous, even though she’d never thought of herself in that way, had always found people to hang out with. But if she’d died or been murdered or taken on a new identity, who would ever have known? Who would have noticed? How easy it might have been to disappear, become another statistic.
‘Listen,’ she said, ‘I have to ask you something.’
‘Yeah?’ he sounded wary.
‘What do you know about me?’
He glanced over at her, eyes narrowed a little, a small smile playing at his lips. ‘That at some point things took a turn for the better.’
‘Huh, well, things turning for the better took a while.’ She stared at his profile, then at the dashboard, then back to him again. ‘But what do you know? Do you, the police, I mean, have information about me? Am I on record somewhere?’
‘Have you been convicted of anything?’
‘No. Why?’
‘Well, if you don’t have a record, there won’t be any information on you as such. I only know what the uniforms told me when they talked to you the other day and from our earlier conversation, and I’ve spoken to some people up at Northam about what happened. Historically, that is. I was looking for what could be relevant to your brother’s accident. That’s it. General stuff, but nothing specific to you.’
Hearing the word Northam, her mind danced to Des Robinson. Was he still alive? Certainly he was too old now to still be in the force. She wondered if Daniel had spoken to him, what he might have said. A flush of shame rose through her body, a physical reaction, as though her corporeal self knew what her mind did not, would not, accept. She stared ahead, trying to still her thoughts, and saw that they weren’t far from the hospital now. A tram running down the centre of Victoria Parade beside them clanged its bell and they stopped behind a stream of traffic. ‘You know, I haven’t talked to anyone about this before,’ she said, wondering why, given the truth of her statement, she was saying this to him. A stranger. A cop.
Daniel had flicked the indicator on and was preparing to cross over the tram tracks. He was watching the car in front inch slowly forward. ‘Come on,’ he said. (Not nearly as impatient as Jason, she noted.) There was only enough room for two cars in the lane, but the vehicle ahead was taking up more than its share of the space. He moved up, as though glued to the other car’s bumper, across the intersection ahead of a wave of oncoming traffic before turning into a side street. ‘Sorry,’ he said. ‘Had to think about that one.’
‘No, we don’t want to all end up in intensive care,’ she said, resigned then to him not having heard her, feeling a slight relief. There were so many reasons not to say anything more to this man.
But as it turned out he had heard her. ‘What “about this” do you mean?’ he said, now they were off the main road.
‘Sorry?’
‘You said you haven’t spoken about this. Do you mean about your brother, or about what happened all those years ago?’
‘Both. I’ve never told anyone about what happened to us.’
‘No one at all?’
‘I left Northam and I slammed the door closed.’
‘But you’re telling me.’
‘Yeah, it seems so. But in a way not really because, actually, you already know.’
‘But if I asked for details, you’d give them to me? You’d expand? I mean, I don’t know much more than the outline.’ By now they had entered the car park. He pulled into a space and turned off the engine.
She took a long breath. ‘Maybe. I don’t know about the details, about what happened. That’s a muscle that hasn’t been used for a long time. I try not to even think about the past. I don’t know what’s left of it inside me anymore.’ She could feel him looking at her now and she wondered if he believed her. (Why would that matter? Perhaps she didn’t believe it herself. That might be more pertinent.)
‘So you don’t have anything to do with anyone you knew then?’
‘No.’
‘And no one you know now has any idea about your life before you came here?’
‘Yep. That’s right.’
‘There’s a real loneliness in that. That must have been hard—maybe it still is hard—to keep the door shut.’
She turned and looked at him then. ‘You might not believe this, but that side of things, that’s been quite easy, mostly. Much easier than the alternative, I believe.’
He stared back at her with an expression she found impossible to read. Pity or even scorn came to mind, but she thought they were probably her own projections. Cops were so good at playing neutral, you could read anything into that look. It was part of the logic. Let people catch themselves out with their own uncertainties, their own falsehoods reflected back to them. Just like psychoanalysis but with quicker results.
‘Until something like this happens?’ he said. ‘You must at least have thought of the possibility of running into someone you knew, somewhere, sometime. It happens even when you’re from out of town. That person you haven’t seen since high school and there they are on the beach at Noosa. Or a family member decides to track you down.’
She shook her head. What had she thought back then? She couldn’t really say anymore. You changed, adapted. Your new life quickly became a habit and soon it was your only life. Something you did without thinking. Like moving out of Darren’s place and never seeing him again. Never seeing Rosie or Schiller once she’d settled in with Jason. Daniel was right. She hadn’t put any thought into wondering about the past, and now she had to accept that it wasn’t hers to control, that the past had a way of catching up with you, whether you liked it or not.
‘You feeling all right about seeing your brother?’
She half shrugged. There was no ‘yes’ or ‘no’ response to that. It wasn’t a simple question. She had already seen her brother, twice now. Each time she had readied herself for the shock of it. But neither experience had been as much of a shock as she’d expected. Given he’d been unconscious it had been, in a way, more like easing herself by increments into a cold sea rather than plunging headlong through the icy waters. Little by little she’d become used to him, in some way getting reacquainted without having to actually know him. Yet this was all deeper than just the fact of seeing him. There was also the question of her willingness to develop a relationship. That she still didn’t know the answer to.
They went in silence from the car to the hospital entrance to the lift and up to the seventh floor. Lori thought she would have some sense of shame about exposing some of her inner self to this policeman, but somehow it felt oddly liberating. This must be what confession was like, she thought. What it did for you, cleansing your soul. This was the power of telling someone who was not an intimate. What she wasn’t sure of was Daniel Levandi himself. She liked him, and he appeared to like her. But she wasn’t certain on a human level, on a real and personal level, that he did. He was a cop. He was always looking for a way into people’s heads. She knew that. He might be looking for something else entirely. Did he suspect her of running Scott over herself? He had asked her several questions about their relationship. Perhaps if she went home now she’d find forensics all over her car, rummaging through her studio. Or maybe he was secretly taping what she’d said and would use it to build a case against her.
They stood outside the door of ICU. She pushed the buzzer. While they waited for someone to come, Daniel went to the windows and looked out.
‘Have you been up here before?’ asked Lori.
‘Yeah, once, a couple of years back.’
‘I suppose you have to see a few people in hospital.’
‘Sometimes. It’s not usually ideal. Especially with head injuries. But then it’s not easy dealing with people after accidents full stop. You’d know yourself from the other side of that exchange.’
The interviews she had endured had been eviscerating. No one realised how intrusive (in the deepest sense of the word) it was to be questioned in those circumstances, to be
asked to expose the most profound, most delicate parts of your psyche: your grief and impotence, your guilt and shame. What were you doing at the time? Were you drinking? Wearing a seatbelt? How fast was the driver going? Did you attempt to warn him? The interviewers picked away at the scab of healing, took her repeatedly back into that night, made her relive it each time they questioned her, which in reality was only two or three times, but felt in her memory like a hundred. What they’d actually asked, and how she’d exactly responded she could no longer recall. Only the feeling of being interrogated by that horrible man, that out of town cop with his shiny lips and doughy body. Her mother in the background with a stony face sculpted by anger and pain.
Behind them the buzzer went off and the door clicked open. They went in and wiped their hands with antiseptic, walked past the nurses’ desk and up to the room. The curtains were open and Lori could see Scott in bed, lying on his back, upper body slightly elevated.
‘He looks like he’s still out to it,’ she said.
Daniel peered past her. ‘He could be dopey for a while.’
‘Dopey?’
‘Not fully conscious. Depends on … well, a lot of things. They’ll tell you, the staff. People don’t just wake up and snap to, in my experience at least. Takes a bit of time, adjustment.’
Inside a new nurse was in attendance. He introduced himself as Malcolm and gave them a rundown of the morning’s events: Scott’s coming to, how responsive he’d been, improvements on the Glasgow Coma Scale, something she’d never heard of, never needed to know about, until four days ago.
‘Not much good for me to talk to him then?’ asked Daniel, after he’d explained who he was.
‘I don’t think so at this stage. He’s still very disoriented. We’ll just have to see how he goes. Physically, though, things seem relatively positive, so we’re happy about that.’
‘The neurologist said his responses from the beginning have been good,’ said Lori.
Malcolm nodded ‘Yeah. He’s had a couple of longer periods of consciousness and he’s responding to commands now, moving his limbs, his face is mobile. Of course we’ll continue to monitor him, I expect to see some substantial changes over the next few days. We’ll be looking at memory deficits, that kind of thing. There’s always a continued risk of swelling, blood clots. We’re not completely out of the woods.’
Life Before Page 18
