by Dick, Amanda
“It’s okay. Try and relax.”
James is in my ear again, and I can almost feel him behind me, his hands on my shoulders, giving me strength. But it’s not enough, not this time. Far from giving me strength, it just reinforces what I’ve lost. Oblivious to my pain, the conversation goes on around me.
“A little over two years,” I hear Luke say.
I stand up. I can’t deal with this a moment longer.
“Sorry,” I say, flustered. “I just remembered – I think I might’ve forgotten to close the freezer. I should go and check.”
I don’t wait to elaborate. I don’t turn back when Ana calls my name. I walk swiftly to the treeline, breaking into a run as soon as I know they can’t see me. I run across the grass and up the steps until I’m crawling into the bedroom wardrobe on my hands and knees. My heart feels as if it’s going to explode. Sitting on the floor in the wardrobe, I pull the door shut after me and sit on top of the shoes, in the dark, gulping in air as if I’m drowning.
Maybe I am.
Chapter 5
“You going to come out of there?”
I sniff, wiping my eyes. I heard Ana come in a few minutes ago, and I’ve been waiting for her to leave but she won’t. I’m not surprised, just embarrassed. I sigh, swallowing my pride. When I push the door open a few moments later, poking my head out, she’s sitting on the floor opposite the wardrobe, leaning back against the bed. There is no judgment in her expression, just concern. That makes me feel worse. I thought I was past needing this kind of comfort. Looks like I was wrong.
I crawl out, my limbs stiff and sore, feeling like a failure. Turning to sit beside her on the floor, I kick the wardrobe door shut with my foot, taking out my frustrations on it.
“You okay now?”
I want to laugh hysterically at the absurdity of the question, but I don’t. I don’t answer her either.
“Did you check the freezer?”
“Yeah,” I lie.
“Was it open?”
“No.”
She thinks I had one of my memory lapses. I let her because it suits me and I’m a shitty friend.
“I thought you didn’t do this anymore.”
“I don’t. I mean, I haven’t done it for ages.”
My tongue feels like it’s made of cotton wool.
“Then why now?”
Because when a stranger asks me questions that I can’t answer – don’t want to answer – I just want the world to stop spinning, just for a while, until I can get my breath back. Despite everything, I feel justified. I’m not ready to join the real world again. What just happened proves it.
“I don’t know.”
I do know. I just don’t want to say it out loud.
“You’re a shocking liar, babe,” she says gently.
“Where’s Chris?” I ask, desperately wanting to change the subject.
“He’s outside. Why don’t I get you a drink, and you can come out and join us?”
As much as the idea of facing Chris makes me want to crawl back into the wardrobe again, I don’t move. What has she told him? Does he know where I’ve been? Does he know how screwed up I really am?
“It’s okay,” Ana says, reaching for my hand and enclosing it in hers. “He’s not judging you. No one’s judging you here. We love you. We just want to help.”
How does she know always seem to know what I’m thinking? It’s uncanny and it makes my skin crawl at the same time. I need my secrets to stay hidden.
“I know,” I murmur.
I wish they could. I wish someone could, because this is almost unbearable.
“Go and wash your face,” she says, releasing my hand. “Then come outside.”
I haul myself to my feet like a ninety-year-old. I can feel her eyes burning into my back as I make my way into the bathroom, closing the door behind me.
I look like crap and my reflection confirms it. Skin that’s so white it’s almost blue, making the light smattering of freckles I’ve always hated stand out even more. Permanent dark smudges beneath my green eyes. Long, slightly wavy, auburn hair that’s constantly messy because who sees me anyway? I hardly recognise myself anymore.
I wash my face and dry it with a towel, then pull my hair back into a ponytail and twist it into a knot, securing it by pulling the ends through. It’ll have to do. I re-adjust my loose-fitting white shirt, smooth down my three-quarter pants and take a deep breath before opening the door.
This is as ‘together’ as it gets for me. Lock the voices away, act normal – if I can remember what that is.
“Do you see what I mean?” I hear Ana say, and I freeze.
“Yeah,” Chris says, with a sigh that’s only just audible. “Yeah, I see. What can I do? I mean, I want to do something, to help… somehow. I just don’t know how.”
“Welcome to my world.”
My heart races. I should go out there, but I can’t move.
“Should she be here, by herself? I mean, with her memory lapses and everything – is it even safe?”
“She has six-monthly appointments at the hospital. Believe it or not, it’s getting better. I wouldn’t leave her here by herself for days at a time if it wasn’t. Otherwise, I’d have her at my place where I can keep an eye on her. She’s okay, most of the time. I think. I don’t know. It’s hard to tell. She has good days and bad days. Today, believe it or not, looks like a pretty good day.”
“She’s just so… she’s not herself. James would be… he wouldn’t want this.”
The pain in his voice sends shards of glass straight through my heart. He’s getting frustrated – with me. I feel sick. I don’t want them to talk about me like this, but I’m powerless to stop them. All I can do is stand there, trembling.
“I know.”
“What’s up with the wardrobe?”
“She didn’t say as much, but I think it was talking to Luke – about the past, and the present too, I suppose. I mean, it’s hardly the sort of stuff I’d want a perfect stranger to know either, so I suppose you can’t really blame her for freaking out.”
“I mean, why go off and hide in there in the first place?”
“It’s her safe zone.”
“What? I don’t get it.”
“The hiding in the wardrobe. It was her thing a while ago, shutting herself away. Some days, I could barely get her to come out.”
“Fuck’s sake.”
I want to run, to hide, but my heart and my head is pounding so hard that I think I might faint instead. Shame blooms inside my chest, magnifying with each heartbeat. Why can’t I just be normal? Why can’t I get over this?
I stand there, taking deep breaths, until I don’t feel so sick anymore. Two days and they’ll be gone and I can get back to my routine, with no one looking over my shoulder. Two more days of this.
They fall silent and I watch them through the French doors as they sit on the deck chairs in the afternoon sunshine. The white net curtains billow softly in the gentle breeze coming off the lake. The scene before me takes on a dreamlike quality and in the moment, I’m drawn to a previous time, when the four of us were here together. I can almost see James sitting beside them in one of the two empty chairs. The curtains keep shifting, hiding him, but I can feel him. I close my eyes to see him better, because he’s always clearer that way, without having to fight against the reality.
“Sian.”
I open my eyes, and Chris is standing in the doorway, staring at me. His smiling eyes are no longer smiling. He looks broken, and at that moment, standing on either side of the billowing white curtain, I can see his grief as clearly as I can feel my own.
He steps forward and silently draws me into his arms. I let him, because I don’t know what else to do anymore. I can’t hide this from him. I can’t hide it from anyone, no matter how hard I try. It’s why I retreated here, to this place, to try and heal. Only I can’t heal. I can’t forget, because I don’t want to forget. Forgetting is what scares me. Remembering is everything.
> I close my eyes and lean my head against his shoulder as he pulls me closer. My arms find their way around his back. I wish he was James and I don’t even feel guilty about it.
“I’m sorry,” he whispers. “I should’ve stayed.”
I pull away, looking up at him.
“I should’ve stayed,” he says again. “I shouldn’t have gone back to London after their funerals. I should’ve stayed, waited for you. It’s what James would’ve wanted, and I knew that. I just let everyone else convince me otherwise, and I’m sorry. I really am.”
I stare up at him, at those soulful brown eyes that are his entry into any woman’s bedroom, no matter what continent she’s from.
“James would’ve wanted you to do exactly what you did. You came back to say goodbye.” Jealousy catches in my throat but I swallow it down. At least he got to attend the funerals. “You did the right thing.”
“No, I didn’t. I should’ve stayed.”
He’s deadly serious. I almost forgot that about him, the speed at which he can change. Joker one minute, as serious as a heart attack the next. He’s also stubborn.
“You had no idea when I was going to wake up, no one did. You can’t just put your life on hold like that. You were right to go back. You don’t have to be sorry about that.”
He doesn’t argue this time, but I’m not fooled by his silence. He hasn’t changed his mind, and there’s probably nothing I can do to make him. Instead, I pull him closer and he lets me. We stand there like that for a long while, our arms around each other, holding onto the past.
“Man, I need a drink,” he says with a sigh.
I let him go, grateful for the reprieve. My heart can’t stand much more of this. When I look up at him this time he’s smiling again, even through the pain. I know, because I am too.
“I think we can help with that.”
Chapter 6
Chris’s guilt tears me open. I wasn’t expecting it, not from him. I don’t know why, because now that I’m faced with it, it makes perfect sense. But then, sense is something I’ve struggled with for a while now.
Sitting out on the deck taking in the view, I try to see the beauty of this moment. The sun sits just above the hills on the opposite shore, bathing the lake in golden rays. The tuis are singing in the native bush that crawls up the hillside behind the house and the cicadas are chirping up a storm from what seems like everywhere. If it wasn’t for the storm in my soul, it would be peaceful.
“Here,” Ana says, reaching over Chris to hand me a glass of wine. “We were just talking about your new neighbour.”
A part of me wants to call her bluff, but I let it go. They’re trying to lighten the mood. It’s obvious, but I don’t care. I don’t want to talk about what happened either.
“Really?”
“He seems like a cool guy,” Chris says.
“I think he’s gay,” Ana says, before taking a sip of her wine.
Chris nearly bursts something laughing. It’s been so long since I’ve heard him laugh. I didn’t realise how much I’ve missed it. It reminds me of simpler times, but in a good way. I let myself push away the shame of the wardrobe incident, just for a while, so I can bask in Chris’s laughter instead. I feel like I’m swimming through sand most days, the sadness pulling me deeper and deeper by the moment. Yet, here he is, consumed by guilt one minute and laughing the next. I wish I could do that, push away the chains of grief that pull me under, just so I could feel joy again.
“Why?” he splutters, finally getting hold of himself. “Because he’s not falling for your womanly charms?”
“In a word? Yes.”
She’s serious. She might even be right.
“Jesus, arrogant much?” Chris chuckles. “Just admit it – he’s not interested.”
She pouts, surveying the lake.
“Maybe he’s married?” I offer, trying to soothe her.
“I didn’t see a ring.”
“Neither did I,” says Chris. “Maybe he’s got a girlfriend. Or maybe he’s just not looking for anything right now. Give him a break – look at the project he’s taken on. That’s gonna take him years at this rate. Can you see yourself spending every waking moment working alongside him? Because he seems like he’s pretty focused on getting that shit done. No time for fancy dinners or any of that other stuff.”
“True,” she mumbles.
“Think of it as a sign,” he says, reaching over me to clink his bottle with her glass. “To lucky escapes.”
She smiles, and I can tell her ego isn’t as bruised as I first thought.
“To lucky escapes.”
I’m a little in awe of her, of the way she bounces back so easily. Just a few hours ago she was imagining him in a private spa, now she looks like she couldn’t care less if she ever saw him again. I can barely remember life before James. It feels like a distant memory, but someone else’s, not mine. I guess because none of that really mattered much. James was the only one who did, and Kieran. They were my life. Everything before that was just incidental to getting me to that point, a pit-stop between point A and point B.
“Speaking of Luke, don’t freak out, but I invited him over for dinner later,” Chris says.
He looks guilty, but Ana holds her hand up, right at the exact moment that I have trouble breathing.
“Seriously,” she says quickly. “It’s nothing to panic about. It just kinda… happened.”
“It’s my fault,” Chris says. “I didn’t know that you were… anyway. I just thought that he’s a long way from home, and he probably hasn’t had a proper meal for a while. He’s just got that campfire to cook on, and this little gas cooker thing. I know what it’s like, hankering for something home-cooked, y’know? I just thought it’d be a nice thing to do. I felt sorry for him. Call it a bond between travellers or whatever.”
Great. Now I don’t even feel like I have the right to feel betrayed. He’s right, of course. But even so, the idea of having a stranger in my sanctuary is discomforting, to say the least.
“I can go over and cancel if you want,” he says. “Like I said, I didn’t realise, before. And if it’s gonna be too weird, then I’ll make something up – tell him we don’t have enough food or something, I don’t know. But if you want me to, I will.”
“No,” I sigh. “No, it’s okay. I suppose it’ll be okay.”
It’s been a long time since I cooked for anyone other than Ana and I. It already feels like too much trouble, but I’m trapped.
“We’ll all help,” Ana said, as if reading my mind. “We’ll fire up the barbie, and Chris can deal with the meat, I put a load in your freezer earlier, and some in the fridge. We have enough. And I brought fresh veges over with me, so we’ll just do something easy. It’ll be fine, honestly. Nothing to worry about.”
Yeah. Nothing to worry about.
I try to put it out of my mind as the afternoon wears on, but it eats away at me. I’m not used to entertaining strangers. I’m not used to a lot of things now. I guard my privacy like a bouncer at a nightclub. No-one comes in unless they’re on the list. And this Luke, whoever he was, was most definitely not on the list.
I have a couple more glasses of wine, hoping it’ll help. Ana doesn’t make a big deal of it, but subtly takes over the dinner preparations. I let her because it makes us both feel better. Around six, Chris lights the barbeque while Ana and I put the finishing touches on a simple green salad. A pot of new potatoes boils on the stove. Chris has a plate of steaks and some chopped up mushrooms to cook outside. A basic fruit salad languishes in Nanna’s best crystal bowl in the fridge, strawberries, grapes and blueberries swimming in a sea of canned peaches and apple juice. A bowl of homemade grilled cheese sticks sits on the bench. Appetisers, for those who want something to nibble on before dinner, Ana explains. As for me, my appetite is almost non-existent.
“It’s a nice thing, what you’re doing here,” Ana says, prodding the potatoes with a fork. “You’re offering good old-fashioned Kiwi hospitality to
a stranger who’s a long way from home.”
“Except it wasn’t my idea, so I can’t take any credit.”
“No,” she says patiently. “It wasn’t. But it’s your home, and your food. That’s what counts. These are ready.”
She picks up the pot and drains the water out into the sink.
“Can you take this out to Chris? He’s going to finish them on the barbie. I’ll get the plates and stuff out. I think we should eat outside, don’t you? There’s a lovely breeze tonight.”
I take the pot from her without a word. I don’t care where we eat, I just want it over with. I can hear her pulling out plates from the cupboard as I head outside.
“Excellent,” Chris says. “I was just about to ask if those were ready.”
I sit down at the table behind him and pick up my glass, taking a sip. Sociable is pretty much the last thing I want to be right now. It requires an effort I simply don’t have the energy for. I’m really sick and tired of being so sick and tired, but I can barely remember what it feels like not to be.
“Here’s Luke,” he says.
I take another sip of wine, fortifying myself as I glance behind me. Luke is walking over the lawn towards us, the German Shepherd at his heels, a small red bowl in his hands.
“Evening,” he says, smiling as he climbs the few wooden steps up on to the deck.
Chris hands him a beer from the chilly bin filled with ice next to the French doors.
“Your timing is exquisite,” he says. “Have a beer and take a load off.”
“Thanks,” Luke says, taking the beer from him and acknowledging me with a slight nod of his head. “And thanks again for inviting me over. I could smell the steak from over yonder and figured I should get over here.”
He puts the small bowl on the table in front of me, like a peace offering.
“I didn’t have much available to bring with me, but my Mom’d kill me if I came empty-handed. You just don’t do that where I’m from. So… I bought these cherries from one of those roadside vendors on my way into town a couple days ago. They’re really good.”
