Dancing on Knives

by Kate Forsyth

  ‘You don’t understand …’

  ‘No, I don’t. You’re twenty years old, not five. And Augusto’s in intensive care, Sara! What a time to start having hysterics over a goddamn car ride. You’ve got to get over it, Sar.’

  Sara buried her face in her hands, shoulders heaving.

  ‘I’ll make you a cup of tea,’ her cousin said gruffly.

  Tears trickled down Sara’s cheeks. She fought to control her breathing. Why couldn’t Gabriela understand? She didn’t want to be afraid.

  ‘I know it’s not easy, honey, but you can’t live your life like this. The car isn’t going to hurt you – Joe’s a good driver. What is there to be afraid of?’

  Gabriela handed her a cup, and Sara sipped it obediently. It seemed everyone wanted to make her drink hot beverages today, as if that would make her feel better. She remembered how welcome the coffee on Towradgi Headland had been. She had survived that journey, and the hours of waiting that had followed, all by herself in the dark, thinking her father was dead. If she could survive that, she could survive anything.

  Then it occurred to her that, if she went to see her father, maybe he would speak to her, tell her what had happened. The doubts and suspicions torturing her mind might be laid to rest. She sniffled and wiped her cheeks with her fingers.

  ‘Sara, honey, they say the only way to get over your fears is to face them down. I’m not being mean, really I’m not.’ Gabriela knelt on the floor beside her. ‘I know it’s not your fault, everyone’s afraid of something. It’s just your fear – your phobias – they’re ruining your life. It’s like you’re trapped. And your father really needs you now.’

  ‘You think so?’

  ‘I know so. If he could hear your voice, if he knew that you could find the courage to go and see him, think what it would mean to him. He’d know how hard it was for you, he really would. He’d be so proud.’

  Sara let herself dream about this for a moment, but she knew it was no good. She stared down at her cup and shook her head. ‘I can’t. I just can’t. It’s no use talking at me, I can’t do it.’

  Gabriela stood up. ‘I’ll go hang out the washing.’

  Sara leant her head on her hand, as the door banged shut behind her cousin. Then, with a sudden jerky movement, she got to her feet and dug out the box hidden on the shelf. She shuffled her fortune-telling cards, then laid three of them face down on the table. One by one she turned them upwards.

  The first card showed a young woman blindfolded and tightly bound, caged within eight swords thrust deep into marshy ground. Sara had seen this card many times before. The Eight of Swords, a sign of imprisonment through indecision, bondage through fear.

  The second card was the Ace of Wands. A hand came out of clouds, holding aloft a flowering branch. Eight petals blew in the wind. Sara’s eyes widened, her breath caught. It never ceased to astound her, how clearly the cards spoke to her sometimes. The Ace of Wands signified new beginnings, new hope, the start of a journey, an adventure, an escapade.

  Slowly she turned over the third and last card. A skeleton in armour rode upon a white horse, trampling a fallen king as it drew close to a kneeling woman and child. The skeleton carried a flag with a red rose upon it. It was the card of Death.

  Gabriela marched back in, the empty washing basket on her hip. Instinctively Sara swept up her cards and hid them in her lap. As Gabriela stalked through into the laundry, Sara shoved the cards back into the box and quickly hid it again, turning to face her cousin as she came back into the kitchen, feeling a flush of guilt on her face. Gabriela did not notice. She did not even look at Sara, opening the cupboard under the sink and pulling out some detergent and a scrubbing brush with her jaw clamped tightly together.

  ‘I’m going to go,’ Sara said.

  ‘To the hospital?’

  Sara nodded.

  Gabriela sat back on her heels, her face relaxing. ‘Good on you, Sar-bear. I knew you could do it.’

  Sara flushed and felt her mouth curve upwards a little. She looked away, embarrassed.

  Gabriela kept on pulling out cleaning utensils, then stood up and piled them on the bench. ‘I’ll make you all something to eat before you go. It’s practically lunchtime.’ She opened the fridge door and looked inside.

  ‘I’d better call Joe and tell him to come up.’ Sara stood indecisively, not knowing what to do. What would she need to take with her? Most women carried a handbag, but Sara had never needed one. Would she need money? Would she need to get changed? She looked down at her stained tracksuit pants, her shabby ugh boots, the moth-eaten jumper. Yes, she had better get changed, but into what? Sara had few clothes, she had no need of them. The enormity of what she was about to do began to overwhelm her. Her knees trembled.

  Gabriela did not notice. ‘There’s not much in the house to eat,’ she said. ‘I might run into town and get some groceries while you guys are at the hospital, then I can cook you all something yummy tonight. You all look like you need a good feed.’

  Sara clutched the back of the chair. Gabriela rummaged in the fridge. ‘There are some snags here.’ She sniffed them cautiously. ‘They smell all right.’

  ‘Joe bought them on Thursday,’ Sara said.

  ‘That’ll do for lunch then. I can make habas a la catalane. Do you have bacon? Broad beans?’ Gabriela opened the cupboard next to the stove and clattered pots together as she searched for a frying-pan. ‘Don’t you ever clean your cupboards out, Sara? How can you ever find anything in this mess?’

  She stood up with the frying-pan in her hand. Only then did she notice how stiffly Sara stood, her hands clenched together at the centre of her body, her head thrust forward so her hair hung all over her face.

  ‘What’s wrong?’

  ‘Nothing.’

  ‘You sure?’

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘OK.’ Gabriela got out the bacon and grabbed an onion, chopping them up swiftly.

  Sara still had not moved.

  ‘You sure you’re OK?’

  Sara nodded, not looking at Gabriela.

  ‘I’ll call the boys and tell them to come down. Do you want me to ring down to the shed and tell Joe too?’

  Sara nodded.

  ‘OK. Why don’t you go and get changed?’

  Sara went out the door and up the stairs, counting every step carefully. She stood in front of her battered old wardrobe and looked blankly at the few clothes shoved inside. What to wear – a whole new anxiety.

  After a while she got out her white dress and put it on. The dress had been given to her when she was only fourteen. It should not have still fitted, but it did. Her collarbones and elbows looked far too prominent. The only shoes that still fitted her were the red ones, like those a flamenco dancer might wear. Sara strapped them on. They were too tight and hurt her feet. She had to wear them, though.

  Sara stared at herself in the mirror. She looked all wrong. Women her age were meant to wear tight designer jeans and high heels and snazzy earrings, and have their hair blowdried and makeup on.

  Sara did not have any makeup. Her hair had not been cut in more than six years. It hung down on either side of her face, dragging at her cheeks. She turned away from the mirror, filled with a savage kind of self-hatred. Ugly, ugly, she thought as she went back downstairs. The unfamiliar sound of her shoes rapping on the rungs of the steps unnerved her. She felt like she was beating on a drum, saying, Look at me, everyone! Here I am!

  The kitchen was empty. She stood at the stove, stirring the sausages with their beans and tomatoes, looking out at the grey dripping world. She was cold in the thin dress, and the skin of her arms rose up in goose-pimples. She saw Joe come up the path from the sheds, trying to smoke a cigarette in the shelter of his hood. The rain doused the burning ember so that he swore and threw the cigarette away. A few minutes later, Joe came in through the kitchen door, scowling.

  ‘Gabriela says you want to go to the hospital,’ he said. ‘Surely she’s joking?’

  ‘No,’
Sara said defensively. ‘The hospital rang and said it’s OK to go see Dad. I thought we should go.’

  ‘I haven’t got time to be going to the hospital,’ Joe said definitely. ‘Cows still have to be milked, you know.’

  ‘That’s why we have Matthew,’ Sara said with a little edge of sarcasm. ‘I’m sure he can manage without you this once.’

  Joe dug his toe into the dirty lino. ‘I thought you’d be too scared to drive all the way to Moruya,’ he jeered.

  Sara did not reply for a while. Then she said quietly, ‘It might be our last chance to see him.’

  The lines on Joe’s forehead deepened. He dug more furiously at the floor, then said, ‘You really mean it? You really want to go?’

  Sara nodded, though she knotted and unknotted her fingers.

  ‘I don’t think you should,’ Joe said. ‘You’ll only end up having a panic attack and embarrassing us all.’

  Tears started to her eyes. She could not have spoken if she tried. Joe looked away, ashamed. He hated feeling in the wrong. He glanced at her sideways, grunted under his breath and said, as if goaded beyond endurance, ‘All right then. I’ll take you to the hospital, if you’re sure that’s what you want.’

  ‘It is,’ she said.

  ‘I’ll just go let Matthew know,’ Joe said in a long suffering tone and slouched back out the door. Sara pressed her fingers into her eyes. Dominic and Dylan came in together, looking ridiculously alike with their tousled red hair and flannelette shirts.

  ‘Gabriela said lunch is ready,’ Dylan said.

  ‘Just about,’ Sara said, poking at the sausages. ‘Can you call Tessa?’

  ‘Tessa!’ Dylan shouted.

  ‘I could have done that myself. Go and call her properly.’

  With an exaggerated sigh, Dylan did as he was told. He came back in and sat down at the table, then Teresa came in, red-eyed but defiant. She sat down, as Sara got out the plates. ‘We’re going to go to the hospital after lunch, to see Dad, OK?’

  They all looked up at her in surprise.

  ‘You too?’ Dylan said.

  She nodded.

  He looked troubled. ‘You sure? You’ll be OK?’

  ‘I hope so,’ she said, trying to smile. ‘It’s only half an hour away. How hard should that be?’

  The twins stared at her incredulously.

  ‘If it’s so easy, how come you never do it?’ Teresa demanded.

  Sara felt a little spark of anger and tried to grasp it, to use it as fuel to drive her determination. But it was not enough.

  ‘Who am I kidding?’ She sat down, laying her head on her arms, almost in tears. ‘I can’t do it, I can’t go. I’m stuck here forever. I’m such an idiot.’

  ‘No, you’re not,’ Dominic said awkwardly. He searched for something to say. ‘You went up the headland last night, didn’t you? That must’ve been hard. On the trail bike and all, I mean. Car’d be easier, I guess.’

  ‘I guess so,’ Sara agreed without conviction.

  Joe came in again, sat down at the table and pulled a plate before him, helping himself to the sausages and beans. The others followed suit. Nobody spoke. Tiredly Sara got up, rinsing the pan under the tap and wiping down the benchtop. She rubbed her arms with her hands.

  ‘It’s so cold,’ she said. ‘Autumn’s really here now, isn’t it?’

  Again she stood staring out the window. The falling rain filled her with an unbearable melancholy. She wished she could crawl under her doona and stay for a hundred years.

  ‘Aren’t you going to eat something?’ Dominic asked suddenly. ‘It’s been an awfully long day.’

  Sara nodded. ‘I know,’ she said. ‘But I’m just not hungry. I’ll have something when we get back from the hospital. Are you finished? Then go and get changed, boys. You can’t go to the hospital looking like that. You too, Joe. You’re filthy.’

  Joe grunted and got to his feet. He went out without a word. Sara cleared the plates.

  ‘Go on, boys, go and get changed. And comb your hair, for God’s sake. Tessa, you get ready too.’

  Teresa went out, looking morose. Sara sighed, rubbing her arms. She remembered her grandmother’s old Spanish shawl. At least she would not be so cold. She had not worn it in years. ‘Just going to go get a shawl,’ she said.

  As the kitchen door swung shut behind her she heard Dylan say unhappily, ‘Dad must be really bad. If Sara’s going to the hospital – well, she must think he’s going to die.’

  Sara pressed her hands to her eyes and her forehead to the wall. Dad, she thought. Falling …

  ‘I wish I knew what we were supposed to do,’ Dominic said. ‘I wish there was someone we could talk to.’

  ‘Who? We’ve tried to tell Joe what we think but he doesn’t want to listen. He thinks we’re just kids.’

  ‘We are just kids,’ Dominic said.

  ‘And Sara’s no use. No point upsetting her. Besides, what is there to tell? Joe and Dad are always arguing, and Dad’s always flirting around and trying to get up Alex’s nose. What’s so different about yesterday?’

  ‘Nothing, I suppose, except Dad went and fell off the fucking cliff.’

  ‘It could’ve been an accident.’

  ‘I suppose so,’ Dominic said unhappily. ‘It just feels all wrong. Everyone is acting so weird.’

  ‘They are all weird. It’s the fucking Munster family.’

  ‘Yeah, and we’re like the girl, you know, the one that was normal but the whole family felt sorry for her, thinking she was the weirdo.’

  ‘Yeah, that’s us.’

  There was a little pause. Sara, crouching outside the door, felt a terrible sadness and shame. She wished she knew how to make things better for her brothers but knew that in a family of weirdos, she was the weirdest.

  ‘Better do it, I suppose,’ Dylan said and stood up, his chair scraping the floor.

  ‘Yeah, go hop, carrot top,’ Dominic said.

  ‘Drop dead, potato head!’ his twin retorted.

  Together they came out of the kitchen. At the sound of their chairs Sara had slipped away down the hall. Her eyes were stinging with tears of hurt and disappointment, but it was in her mind to show her brothers that she was not as useless as they thought. She went to the living room and found the Spanish shawl and wrapped it around her thankfully.

  All the while she was thinking over everything that had happened, and all that Matthew and the twins had said. She could not help feeling a growing uneasiness.

  She went to Joe’s room and knocked timidly at his door.

  He opened it abruptly, his chest bare, his shirt in his hand. He did not look pleased to see her.

  ‘Joe? Did you know Dad was having an affair? With a married woman?’

  Her brother looked at her doubtfully. ‘I’d wondered if he was seeing someone,’ he admitted. ‘I didn’t know she was married.’

  ‘How long?’ she asked.

  ‘I don’t know,’ her brother replied quietly. ‘A couple of months, I suppose. That’s how long he’s been working again, isn’t it?’ He gave a twisted smile. ‘Gus always paints when he’s getting laid, haven’t you noticed?’

  She acknowledged the truth of this, and wondered why she had not thought of it herself.

  ‘Do you know who she is?’

  Joe got up and went to the wardrobe, rattling the coat hangers as he rummaged through his clothes. ‘Nah,’ he said. ‘Of course not.’ He found his leather jacket and put it on. ‘It could be anyone. Does it matter?’

  ‘No,’ Sara said slowly. ‘I suppose not. It’s just …’

  Joe looked at her suspiciously. ‘What?’

  ‘Well, the boys are right. The whole thing is weird. Dad wouldn’t just fall off a cliff. He wasn’t up there rock-climbing or abseiling or anything like that, he was sketching. He wouldn’t have gone near the edge and he wouldn’t have stayed there after it started to rain. He just wouldn’t. So I can’t see how he could have fallen.’

  Joe came quickly across the room,
blood surging under his dark olive skin. He seized her shoulders and shook her. ‘I wish you’d all stop it! Why do you want to make this so much worse than it is? Accidents happen all the time. People die. Why can’t you just accept that?’

  ‘I don’t want him to die,’ she cried.

  ‘Worrying about how it happened is not going to help him live,’ her brother said brutally. ‘You saw him there, hanging upside-down like that. It’s a miracle he’s not dead already. Please, stop carrying on about how he bloody well fell and start worrying about what we’re going to do now! Because we’re on our own now, Sara, can’t you see that?’

  She wrenched herself free and ran out of the room. Her red shoes rapped sharply on the steps. The sound seemed to make the house darker and colder and emptier than ever.

  Gabriela was in the laundry, putting another load of washing on. ‘I wish you had a dryer,’ she said. ‘I’ll never get anything dry in all this rain. I suppose I’ll have to hang it all on the rack and hope for the best.’

  She saw Sara’s face and said, ‘What’s wrong?’

  Sara hesitated, feeling a tight knot of tension in the pit of her stomach. ‘I don’t know. Matthew said something this morning that’s been bothering me. It’s probably nothing but …’

  ‘But what?’

  ‘Well, it’s just … he said Dad had been having an affair with some woman, a married woman, and that there’d been some kind of trouble with her husband. It probably doesn’t mean anything but I … well, I can’t help worrying that maybe … you see, the telephone wouldn’t work last night when we wanted to ring the police. Dom and Dylan had to ride to Alex’s house to use their phone.’

  ‘It was a pretty bad storm,’ Gabriela said. ‘A branch probably just fell on the line.’

  ‘That’s what I thought but Matthew said … he fixed it this morning, you see. He said the wires had worked loose in the actual connection. He thought it looked like it had been tampered with.’

  Gabriela put down the box of washing powder. ‘That’s a pretty serious accusation.’

  ‘He said he couldn’t be sure but …’