by Karen Foxlee
And she felt it was too late to change.
What she missed about her touchable life was her sister, her sister's skin, that day when they had drawn on each other's open palms and for an instant become one another. If only she could go backward, pick over the bones, sift through things, and uncover that point, she would be changed and whole again.
But she knew that was irrational. That part of her had ceased to be.
“Do you know where I can find her in Antwerp? Did she leave a number or address?” she asked the man in Munich over the phone.
“I have no idea, lady,” he replied.
And she knew that Greta was gone for good.
After she had slipped into the memory of her sister's skin and out again she sat on her plastic-covered sofa and rocked slowly. She said I only have myself to blame.
IN APRIL DAD TRIED TO GET MUM OUT OF BED BUT SHE WOULDN'T BUDGE EXCEPT TO GO TO THE TOILET AND SOMETIMES MAKE HERSELF A CUP OF TEA. She didn't have any showers. She smelled like tears.
When I wanted to talk to her I had to kneel beside her bed.
“After RINSE do I turn it to SPIN?” I whispered.
“Yes,” she said quietly, looking at me with her see-through blue eyes.
“Have you got any money for the cafeteria?” I asked.
“No,” she said, and then after a while, when I was nearly at her bedroom door, “I'm a bad mother.”
“No you're not,” I said.
“I am.”
Dr. Cavanaugh was called and appeared at our front screen door pulling up his blue walk socks.
“Here's the littlest one,” he said to me even though I was nearly eleven.
Dad and Aunty Cheryl led him down the hallway into Mum's bedroom. Mum shouted at him. She said the f-word. Dad came back down the hallway and sat in his recliner shaking his head.
“Come on, Jean,” said Aunty Cheryl. “Don't be like that.”
Aunty Cheryl had more makeup on than usual. She'd done her hair. I saw her looking at herself in the glass doors of the buffet.
Dr. Cavanaugh stayed in the room for a while. We could hear him talking very quietly. Mum saved up some more f-words until the end of the conversation.
“I don't know what to say,” said Dr. Cavanaugh when he came back into the living room. “I think we need to let nature run its course. Grief is a very powerful emotion.”
Dad looked at him with his teardrop birthmark and black rings beneath his sea-green eyes.
“She's not eating,” said Aunty Cheryl.
Her hand with its ringless fingers rested at her throat. She held her mascara-coated eyelashes open very wide.
“What about the children?” he asked. “Does she respond to them?”
Danielle and I were at the dining room table pretending to do our homework, only Danielle was drawing a sad-faced girl and I was thinking about something bigger to break. A bike maybe or a car.
They started whispering after that.
Mum stayed in bed.
I didn't need to worry about her accidentally seeing me ride to Nanna's flat. Angela suggested we look inside the box again.
“Why?” I said.
“So we know exactly what we are looking for.”
“I don't think so,” I said. “Let's look for wild horses instead.”
“You can't give up.”
“I'm not giving up.”
“You are. I can tell you are.”
“Well what do you want to know?” I said.
“Tell me about the ballet shoes.”
“That's boring.”
“The half a broken heart then.”
All through March and April Beth lied about ballet. Lying had become much easier for her. The lies didn't press on her stomach so much and make her throw up. She lied a lot. She lied boldly. Sometimes she lied like she wanted to get caught.
Her lying is a fact. It can be verified by anyone because in the end everybody was affected by her lies. For example, Aunty Cheryl saw Beth riding along the highway on a school day and stopped the car and asked her where she was going. Beth said she had two free study periods in the afternoon on Fridays and didn't need to be at school.
“Well why doesn't Kylie ever get these free periods?” said Aunty Cheryl.
“I do art, Aunty Cheryl, and Kylie does all the hard subjects,” said Beth.
It slipped off her tongue easily, she smiled, and there was no stomach sickness. Aunty Cheryl puffed out her chest.
The next time Aunty Cheryl came for Sunday lunch Beth remembered what she had said and called Kylie into her room and told her that if Aunty Cheryl brought the free periods up she had to agree that it was so.
“No way,” said Kylie.
“I'll tell her you know where the picture of Des is,” said Beth.
Des was Kylie's father who'd left before she was born. His photo was hidden behind a baby photo of Kylie next to Aunty Cheryl's bed. Sometimes Kylie said Des was very rich and one day he'd be coming back to get her. Other times she said he was nothing but a mongrel.
When Beth blackmailed her with that Kylie started breathing in and out of her nose.
“These arty-farty subjects give the girls a lot of free time, don't they?” said Aunty Cheryl at lunch.
“I don't know,” said Mum. “You don't do art, do you, Beth?”
Beth rolled her eyes.
“Of course I do art.”
“I thought you had to choose between art and typing?” said Mum.
“They changed stuff around,” said Beth.
“Where are you keeping all the masterpieces?” asked Uncle Paavo.
“Remember when you used to draw?” said Nanna to Uncle Paavo. “When you were just a boy.”
“I never drew,” said Uncle Paavo.
“You did,” said Nanna. “I remember it. You drew machines. Cars and such.”
Kylie eyeballed Beth from across the table. So did Danielle because she was the artist in the family.
So Aunty Cheryl was affected by the lie and Kylie and Danielle. And Mum was too, although she didn't believe for a minute the part about the free periods and threatened to find out, and Uncle Paavo, who every Sunday lunch asked to see a masterpiece, and Nanna, because it made her remember Uncle Paavo before he became very serious and old, and, in the end, even the art teacher, Miss Proust, who was among the teachers at the funeral and who introduced herself as Miss Proust the art teacher: “I never taught your daughter but I remember her well.”
Beth made me lie about ballet. She said she'd tell Mum eventually that she wasn't going to the classes anymore. All I had to do was tell Miss Elise Slater that Beth was sick. Beth said it was simple. She said it was an easy thing to do.
On ballet days I felt sick in my stomach as soon as the school bell rang. I felt like vomiting all the way home in the redback panel van. While we put on our leotards I bent over double and said I couldn't go.
“Don't be stupid,” said Beth. “You just have to do it one more time.”
“I'm going to go to hell,” I said.
“You're already going to hell anyway,” said Beth.
We left home like we were going to ride to ballet. At the end of the road Beth asked me if I remembered what I had to say. I told her to shut up. She went left so she could ride the long way around to Amiens Road. I went right so I could go to ballet. Miss Elise Slater looked sad when I said Beth wasn't coming again because of her concussion from falling over on the basketball courts. Miss Elise used it as an example to tell the class. She said our bodies were our instruments and we needed to look after them.
After ballet I had to ride to Amiens Road and wait outside the house. I didn't go into the yard but just waited on the footpath. I didn't like the house with its blank expression. All of its blinds were pulled down like closed eyes. The front fly screen gaped like an open mouth. I tried to look in but all I could see was darkness.
It seemed to take forever for Beth to come out. I rode in circles on the road. The Nana Mouskouri lady came out t
o talk to me.
“Here you are again,” she said.
“I'm just waiting for my sister,” I said.
“How old is your sister, sweetie?” she asked.
“Thirteen,” I said. “I think when she's fourteen she might be going to get a tape recorder for her birthday.”
“That's lovely,” said the lady.
She asked what my last name was and which schools we went to. The lady seemed very interested in us until Beth came out of the house and then she stopped talking and went inside. Beth told me not to talk to her again. The boy called Marco came out onto the steps to watch her go. He didn't wave. He sat on the steps and watched her walk down the driveway toward me. She climbed onto her bike.
She smelled like Winfield Green cigarettes. Her face looked tired. She opened up her hessian bag and looked for some chewing gum. Saving Marco made her eyes so blue that you had to turn away from them. Her face glowed the way it had the day at the lake.
Miss Elise rang Mum the following week because she was so worried about Beth's concussion. All hell broke loose again. Beth and I had to go to the studio to apologize for our dishonesty. When we walked across the wooden floor toward Miss Elise I saw she had a Kleenex in her hand.
Beth spoke very well. She looked Miss Elise right in the eyes. She told her she didn't feel like dancing anymore but she never should have lied about it. She should have told the truth. I couldn't believe my ears. When it was my turn I couldn't get my words untangled. I said it was wrong, I was sorry, she made me and I didn't mean it, all in the same sentence. Miss Elise looked at me with a cranky face while she waited for me to finish.
In the end she still loved Beth, even though it was Beth who was leaving. Even though it was Beth who organized the lying. Miss Elise put her hand out to touch Beth's face. She touched her on the cheek where the old bruise was nearly completely faded and only the slightest trace of yellow remained.
“You should still do some sort of physical activity,” said Miss Elise, bringing the tissue up to her eyes. “I would hate to see your lovely physique suffer.”
That night I saw Beth pack away her dancing things. She put them all in a box: her leotards, her ballet shoes, her tights, her leg warmers, her black happy shoes. I thought she should look sad but she didn't. It was just another part of herself that she gave away without looking back. She looked almost glad that it was over, that she was leaving it all behind.
“You're not going anywhere ever again until you tell me exactly where you've been going when you weren't going to ballet,” said Mum.
It was a very long sentence for something she already knew.
“Is it that boy called Marco?” she shouted. “Tell me where he lives. You're not leaving this house until you tell me where he lives.”
She went outside and shouted at the boys riding backward and forward past our house.
“Get lost,” she said. “We're not interested. There's nothing here for you.”
Mr. and Mrs. O'Malley came out onto their patio and sat down in their fold-out chairs to watch. Frieda Schmidt, at her letterbox, scuttled back inside her lonely house.
“Jean,” said Dad, but quietly, under his breath.
“Do you understand?” she said to Beth when she came inside. “Never again.”
New rules were going to be laid down. Thou shalt not wear makeup. Thou shalt not wear short shorts. Thou shalt not go anywhere without your cousin Kylie. Thou shalt not use your younger sisters to lie for you. Thou shalt not have a boyfriend. Thou shalt not have friends who lead you astray.
“We didn't pay all that money to Miss Elise Slater for you to go off and do whatever you want. Jim. Tell her. Did we?”
“It's a lot of dosh, sweetheart,” said Dad, looking up from the horse paper. “You shouldn't have just skipped.”
He winked at Beth when Mum wasn't looking.
“Great,” said Mum because she could sense things even if she couldn't see them.
Beth wasn't allowed out for two weeks except to school. Mum picked her up after. Marco rang the house but Mum snatched the phone off Beth.
“Who's this?” she asked. “Why are you mumbling? How old are you? Do you know how young Elizabeth is?”
“Jesus Christ,” shouted Beth.
After two weeks he left something in our letterbox. It was a tiny box. Mum found it first but let Beth open it. Inside was a silver chain with a half-a-broken-heart pendant. It meant Marco was wearing the other half and that they were in love. Her side was engraved with a B.
“5?” shouted Mum. “5? Doesn't he know your name?”
She made fun of Marco then. She said he couldn't spell. Beth closed her door.
“I wish you'd leave me alone,” she said to Mum through the wood.
“I'm not going to leave you alone until you grow some brains,” said Mum.
Beth was kept apart from Marco.
“She'll forget about him,” Mum explained to Aunty Cheryl.
Aunty Cheryl puffed out a cloud of smoke and said, “I hope you're right.”
Mum thought if Beth was kept away from him she would turn back into her ordinary self, back to the way she was before Marco, before Miranda, before the lake. The Beth who laughed with her eyes closed and head tilted back, the Beth who wore embroidered leotards and happy shoes and bobbles in her hair, the Beth who wasn't quite so beautiful. The simpler and not so cunning Beth.
Sometimes Marco rode into Dardanelles Court on his trail bike and did wheel stands. His bike sounded like an angry mosquito. Mum watched him from behind the venetian blinds and shook her head. Nanna stood on the front patio with her hands on her hips. She prayed to Saint Monica, who is the patron saint of disappointing children.
For the whole Easter holidays Mum kept Beth at home. Miranda phoned and when she was told to stay away she appeared at our front door. Mum, hair in curlers, spoke to her slowly and calmly.
“Miranda,” she said. “Things are going to change around here.”
Miranda was not allowed inside.
Beth was restless. Trapped inside the house she couldn't sit still. She stood up and sat down. She lay on her bed and got up from her bed. She started an apple, she threw it away. She sat on the back steps and smoked a cigarette. She held it in between the steps as though it was somehow hidden. Sometimes she was happy. Mostly she was sad.
In the beginning Beth filled up the whole house when Mum made her stay at home. She filled up the house with the scent of green-apple shampoo. It hung in clouds over chairs where she had sat. It stayed at the dining room table after she had been excused.
And her blond hair expanded. It grew longer and thicker. It had a life of its own. It twisted over her shoulders if she did not make a braid. It shone.
When she sat in the little living room she seemed too big for our small house. She distracted people from the television. Dad's eyes moved backward and forward between the screen and her. Mum put down a color and stared.
She moved and talked but the new quietness kept filling up her face. It rested in the wide expanse of cheekbone. In the pale freckles on her nose. It settled in her heavy-lidded blue eyes. It lay coiled in the still braid hanging over her shoulder.
She grew taller and thinner. She shed her childhood like a skin.
She could not be contained.
“What on earth will we do with you?” said Nanna.
On Easter Sunday Uncle Paavo came for lunch as usual. He came on his bike all the way from Memorial North, where mostly the streets consisted of long lines of brick flats with rows of grubby letterboxes and boardinghouses with signs outside that said SINGLE MEN’S ACCOMMODATION—AIR-CON,
COLOR TV.
Uncle Paavo rode all the way along the highway in his pressed polyester trousers and his short-sleeved shirt and with his pen in his pocket and his notepad where he wrote down the prices of everything he had ever bought. He combed his pale white hair across his scalp with a wet comb and some Brylcreem and the sun dried the strands hard.
H
e did not look any different that day. He did not look like he needed rescuing. But I saw the way Beth looked at him, like he was somehow injured, like it was the saddest thing she'd ever seen.
Uncle Paavo's back bones creaked and popped when he took his place at the table.
“Listen to you,” said Nanna. “Your bones talk more than you do.”
“I am getting old as the hills,” he said.
“But we love you,” said Beth, sitting next to him, and she rested her pale long-fingered hand on his arm.
Her hand burned his arm. I could tell it, even though he didn't move his arm away. Tears sprang up into his eyes. No one said anything at first. An uncomfortable silence settled over the table filled up with bread and luncheon beef and Kraft cheese and tinned ham and a lettuce chopped neatly into one thousand pieces.
“Yes we do, Uncle Paavo,” said Mum after a while, and she handed a bowl of potato salad to him, which was his favorite, and Beth had to remove her hand so he could take it.
“Yes,” joined in Aunty Cheryl.
“Make sure you eat some of that lettuce,” Nanna said to Kylie. “It will help your small bones, and you, Danielle, it will make your backbone stronger.”
After that everybody talked about normal things like the price of bread and how much milk children should drink and what was the best time to shop at Kmart and everybody pretended not to notice that he was crying.
Gradually, by the end of the holidays, some of the light seemed to have faded from her. Her eyes were not so blue. Her hair was not so golden. She lay on her bed, curled, knees drawn up to her chin, facing the wall.
“What's wrong with you?” asked Mum. “Come out of there and talk to your sisters. You've been lying on that bed all day.”
“She's sad,” I said.
“She is not,” said Mum. “She's foxing so I let her out.”
“You can't keep me here forever,” Beth said.
If I sat at the bottom of her bed and touched her legs or tickled the underside of her feet she drew them away from me. When she lay on her bed she had her eyes open and her eyes moved backward and forward as though she was watching something. Sometimes her mouth moved around the words of invisible conversations.
