Don't Leave Me Breathless

by A Kelly

  Then he’d navigated the rows of headstones to get to ‘his spot’.

  Thirteen years had passed since Emily’s death. Still, at every anniversary he would spend an hour or so at Heritage Vantage Point, reflecting on the year gone by. The anniversary had always felt like new year to him. Joseph still thought of Emily, but his feelings for her were indifferent. She’d never told him he was a good husband, nor had she ever said she loved him. Maybe she’d never had a chance; things happened too fast, motherhood overwhelmed her, and perhaps he himself had overwhelmed her. Sadly, he’d never known what really went on inside Emily’s head. The drugs had won the fight. Right now, he couldn’t help imagining what his life would’ve been like had he married another woman.

  Joseph and Emily had grown up together. He had been her shoulder to cry on when she lost both her parents in a house fire. A faulty radiator, they’d said, but Emily had always believed it was the towel she’d put over the living room heater. Emily married Neil, a bar tender she’d met in Hobart, and had Carlton. She then divorced Neil and was caught in a custody battle, which she won. Years later, Joseph and Emily reunited and he married her when she fell pregnant with Cornelia – despite Emily telling him the baby wasn’t his a week before their wedding. At the height of Emily’s drug addiction until her death, he’d devoted his life to her care and never stopped being a loving father to Cornelia. Although, along the way, he and Emily lost custody of Carlton following Neil’s claim of child neglect. What would life have been like had he not married Emily? Just like last year, and the years before, on this very spot, he told himself he wouldn’t have married anyone else.

  Looking at what was beyond the Bass Strait, Joseph thought about leaving Penguin, even Tasmania, altogether. Cornelia had left home last year. Apart from his pet supply store and his volunteer work at the animal shelter, there was nothing that tied him here. Maybe it was time; next year he could visit Emily’s grave from Sydney or Melbourne, not just a short drive from his Ellis Creek home. Maybe by then he would have remarried and had a new family; a wife who’d tell him she loved him, and his own children. That made him smile and shrink at the same time.

  Fantasy, that was all it would remain. He was still the same pet-supply owner who was more interested in animals than humans. He swam in the open ocean three days a week and locals had awarded him ‘the best biceps in Penguin’ – but at 47 he had nothing else to woo a woman, let alone a young one who would want to bear his child. The Gillians and Pauline’s mothers from his peak time had already remarried. He had never been interested in them anyway, but he couldn’t help feeling he had passed his use-by date.

  Besides, he’d lived on the mainland in his 20s. He’d been a rising theatre star, though the lights hadn’t shone for long. He wasn’t made for big cities. He was a true Penguinian – a flightless bird who went out to swim and came back ashore. Like many other Penguinians, he’d grown comfortable with his life the way it was.

  The North wind slapped the side of Joseph’s face. Time to go. He still had to clean the house, fill out the damn tax return, and sort out the back orders for Rufus & Coco corn-based kitty litters and Royal Canin Labrador Dog Food.

  ‘Always the same spot,’ someone said from behind him.

  Joseph turned around. Carlton.

  ‘Happy belated birthday,’ Joseph said.

  The boy looked more and more like his mother. Carlton usually turned up on this day; the only time he was able to look Joseph in the eye and ask for money. Joseph always saw Emily in him when they were here, and he never said no.

  He waited for his stepson to tell his heartbreaking story and hint at how much cash he would need.

  But Carlton didn’t say anything. After staring at the Bass Strait, mimicking Joseph’s stance, he said, ‘You still bother bringing her flowers?’

  ‘You turn up to someone’s grave, you give them something.’

  ‘You never loved her.’

  ‘It’s between me and her,’ Joseph said flatly.

  ‘I never loved her.’

  ‘It’s between you and her.’

  ‘Did you hear my dad died?’

  ‘Yes. I’m sorry.’

  ‘I’m not,’ Carlton said. ‘And when you die, I don’t think I’m going to be sorry either.’

  Joseph turned slightly to look at his stepson. He saw a bitter smile from him.

  Carlton continued, ‘I’m twenty-seven years old, and I still wonder why you let me go.’

  ‘I didn’t, Carlton. Your dad took you. At the time your mother was a big mess. Your sister almost drowned because of her. No judge would ever have let me and her retain custody of you.’

  ‘And you think my dad wasn’t a mess?’

  ‘He was your legal guardian. He was a respected teacher. He presented well then. I’ve supported you as much as I could, but I could never be your dad.’

  ‘You didn’t fight.’

  ‘I did.’

  ‘Not hard enough, Joseph!’ He scorned, as if he had a lot to spit out. ‘I remember the days when I called you Dad. I was nine. Four years of calling you Dad – then, just like that, you let me go. My legal guardian? My arse! You chose Cornelia over me.’

  ‘I would have had the both of you. I’m sorry you felt that I didn’t fight for you.’

  Joseph had had this conversation before. He might even have used the same words.

  ‘You’ll never know what he did to me, Joseph.’ Carlton stared at Joseph.

  Joseph’s heart hurt. He did know. Those bruises on the boy’s face, and sometimes broken arms, weren’t results of fights as Carlton had told him. And only recently Joseph had found out other things Neil had done to Carlton.

  ‘That bastard Neil told me something rather interesting a week before he died,’ Carlton said. ‘He said Cornelia wasn’t your daughter.’

  Joseph stepped in front of Carlton and looked down on him. ‘Don’t you dare!’

  ‘You’re so good at showing your weakness.’ Carlton stepped aside as if Joseph had just blocked his view of the Bass Strait. ‘But hey, no one else needs to know. Cornelia looks so much like Mum. She even looks like she has your smile. Sometimes adopted children grow up to look like their adopted parents, no?’

  ‘Why are you here, Carlton?’

  ‘What happened between you and Mum? You never tried for a baby? Mum and Neil kept in touch, you know. Neil told me you were shooting blanks.’ Carlton laughed. ‘But I think you just didn’t know how to shoot.’

  Joseph would slap the boy – but he was Carlton, and Carlton was Emily, and there was only so much that the boy knew. Despite Joseph’s disastrous attempts to make love to his wife, she had borne his child, but she’d lost it, and she’d suffered greatly for it. So he’d stopped trying. Joseph had failed Emily, and there was nothing he could do to make it right, except by being kind to her children.

  ‘I’m leaving, Carlton.’

  ‘Waaiit! Come on, sorry, man.’

  ‘What do you want from me? Huh? From this old man who doesn’t know how to shoot?’

  ‘Come on, man. I said sorry,’ Carlton said and tapped Joseph’s shoulder. ‘Well, you’ve been sending me money. I’m grateful. I’m not here to ask for more. My business is going well. Sydney has worked out better than I thought. I guess you never go wrong with pharmaceuticals.’

  He paused, but Joseph knew there was more.

  ‘I want something else of yours. Something we both cherish. Something that will make it even,’ Carlton suggested. ‘Not your shop, I know it means a lot to you, but I don’t give a shit about it.’ He then stood in front of Joseph, challenging him with a cold stare. ‘I want your house. I had fond memories there. It was our house.’

  ‘Excuse me?’

  ‘I want your house. I want to have a family and live there.’

  ‘You’re welcome to, but you’ll have to buy it off me.’

  ‘Here’s how I’ll buy it, Joseph. Cornelia. Think about her – how would she feel if she found out her real dad was a fo
od court janitor?’

  ‘Carlton, she’s your sister. She loves you. She doesn’t deserve your controversy just because you want to hurt me!’

  ‘Do you want her to feel what it’s like to be betrayed?’

  Joseph burnt inside.

  Carlton yelled, ‘Do you want to feel what it’s like to be betrayed? Just think about it!’ Then he turned and walked away.

  8

  Leave me breathless

  ‘Here we are. Husband and wife.’

  Summer gazed at Bobby. The calluses on his palm rubbed against her cheek. Those hard patches of skin had been there since the first time she shook his hand – an ex-prisoner’s hand. Now she had got used to his touch.

  It was just the two of them in this bedroom; three fewer people than at the registry office where they’d exchanged vows (the celebrant and two strangers acting as witnesses). It was a sunny Thursday afternoon; they could’ve been enjoying the ocean breeze at St Kilda, having a fancy lunch and declaring their union to the Melburnian crowd. They would’ve turned heads, for sure. Summer rocked a body-hugging white lace dress; her back was fully covered, but a plunging neckline at the front showed off her cleavage. Her golden blonde hair was tied loosely in a bun with a thin satin ribbon. All six foot of her shone. On her arm was an athletic man dressed in a charcoal-coloured suit with a white rose in his lapel. He had a warm smile and a pair of blue eyes that would look at her and only her.

  But here they were, just the two of them, inside her one-bedroom apartment; third floor, no other views but the neighbour’s overgrown yard and dog kennel.

  ‘How come I haven’t seen you naked all this time?’ Bobby said. He’d been happy to wait for sex until after their wedding as Summer had successfully played the resistance game, promising it would be extra special when it finally happened. He’d also asked to see all of her while they were still dating. He’d seen the cut on her left thigh, and she’d shyly showed him her breasts and buttocks. That had been all. There had been nights when his desire soared almost out of control, but in the end he’d accepted her as his ‘mysterious, untouchable girl’.

  Now, he was claiming what was his. His hand crawled towards her nape to find the zipper. She twitched.

  ‘You always do that. What is it, Summer?’

  She put her arms around him, opened her mouth and kissed his neck.

  No response. She kept kissing him, almost chewing on his skin. Perhaps she would give him a few love bites.

  ‘Why did you marry me?’ he whispered.

  The calluses on his palm were now rubbing against the back of her neck.

  She took a couple of breaths and removed his glasses. The wire-rim, square-framed glasses made him look like a young professor. Bobby Swinburne could have been a professor – he was articulate and, by his own admission, addicted to encyclopedias.

  Summer swept the back of her hand along the side of his face. Without his glasses he looked like a young man who had nothing to give her but love – untainted and undemanding. But Bobby Swinburne was not that man. He’d hit a grown man, a stocky man – not so hard as to cause his death, but severe enough to make him live the rest of his life with the intelligence of a 12-year-old.

  Why had she married Bobby?

  She wanted to be understood. In his interview, when asked about his scars, he’d said, ‘Humans search for pain.’. She wanted Bobby to share what he thought pain meant, and perhaps tell her if she was even human.

  After Pierre’s death she had studied Bobby in the flesh to find out if her fascination with Bobby had been warranted. She’d surveyed him doing his job as a window cleaner, jogging in the morning, staying in for dinner, sometimes going to the pub on Friday nights with his apparent friend from the local mobile phone shop (his name was Mohammed, or Mo, she’d learned when she’d gone to his shop). It was a different Bobby Swinburne from the one she’d painted while researching him from her flat in Washington DC. Maybe Pierre’s observation about him having borderline personality disorder had been right. But was there more to it? She’d needed to know.

  So she’d arranged a ‘chance’ meeting at a Newcastle café where Bobby regularly had his flat white around 9 (although that morning he had to wait a while to get his usual table, thanks to the influx of customers from the newly docked cruise ship at the local harbour). She’d let her handbag strap hook on his chair, thus yanking her backwards as she walked past. She spilled hot tea over her hand, and she would’ve fallen over, had it not been for Bobby holding onto her arm.

  ‘You okay?’ he had said, wiping her reddening hand.

  That morning they talked Socrates, Jane Austen, Encyclopedia Britannica and even Johnny Cash. ‘I like your accent,’ Bobby had said. ‘I can’t pinpoint what it is.’

  ‘A hybrid accent, I suppose,’ Summer had replied. ‘I was born in New York, but my parents were Australian, and I’ve been travelling around.’

  ‘I thought about leaving Newcastle. Lucky I stayed put,’ Bobby had said.

  Then, in silence, he’d looked at her intently and she’d looked into his eyes; something she’d been eager to do since receiving the fateful email from Pierre about this Hunter Valley man. In the flesh now, between his innocence and intelligence, she found the part of Bobby that was capable of understanding and hurting her at the same time. Those dilated pupils and discreet smiles, they drew her in, begging her to trust him. That was why she’d married him.

  Bobby didn’t know she was the daughter of the man responsible for getting him out of prison. She’d transformed herself into Summer Washington as soon as her father had passed. She’d abandoned law altogether and worked as a karate instructor and a scuba diving instructor. Why had she married Bobby? Perhaps because she wanted to fight her father. He was dead, but in her mind he had an existence that was more than just a memory. And she’d always fought her father – he’d hurt her; he’d cheated on her mother; he’d lied to her about her mother’s health; and when it all got too much, he’d hanged himself. ‘Stop your fascination with him!’ her father had warned. What would he have said now, the great Joseph Pierre Rideau?

  ‘You have something that I can’t resist,’ Summer answered Bobby, very close to his ear. ‘And I don’t want anyone else to have it.’

  Bobby gripped the back of her neck, forcing her to look at him. There was a change in him. The stare didn’t belong to an understanding man, it belonged to a killer. Or maybe he knew part of her wanted to be killed. And if the time was now, there was no one else she’d rather have kill her than Bobby Swinburne. Because deep down he understood.

  Slowly Bobby loosened his grip. He switched his expression to the one he had when he’d said, ‘I’m not a threat’ in that interview. What was his intent? He caressed her cheek and touched her lips. Would he kiss her there? What would happen then? As she grew up and learned things in black and white, she’d dismissed Jake’s love theory. Now she had found science that backed his idea (despite the uncertainty – like anything people claimed as ‘the truth’). Biology said kissing on the lips would make her release pheromones; psychology said people would bond.

  Did she want attachment? Did she want love?

  No. But if her husband was going to kill her soon, it wouldn’t matter.

  Bobby withdrew his fingers from her lips. His hand now travelled down her back. She drew in her spine as he unzipped her dress. Cold air brushed against her skin. Metres of white lace swept down her curves and fell to the floor. Bobby took a step back and gazed at her body.

  ‘Oh, Summer…’ he sighed. His calluses scraped against her nipples, then his lips replaced his hands as he kissed her breasts vigorously. ‘I would do anything for you,’ he said, pressing himself against her, forcing her to draw short breaths. ‘Would you do anything for me?’

  She nodded.

  ‘Say it… say it, Summer.’

  ‘Yes, I would do anything for you.’ Summer tried hard to maintain her ‘hybrid accent’ – Australian American – despite feeling she’d been stripped d
efenceless. Bobby could not know she was someone else.

  ‘Good girl.’

  Summer slowly undressed him. She exposed his cock, which towered almost to his belly button. She moved to lower herself to suck him, but he grabbed the back of her neck to stop her. He looked at Summer while rubbing his fingers along her back as if he were reading Braille.

  He spun her around.

  ‘Who did this?’

  ‘Why does it matter?’

  ‘Answer me, Summer! Who did this?’

  ‘My father.’

  ‘Where’s your father?’ he said, forcing her to face him.

  ‘I told you, he’s dead.’

  He studied her.

  ‘So you don’t want me to touch your back? Is that why you twitch every time?’

  She shook her head.

  ‘Please answer me when I ask you a question.’

  That baby face finally showed eagerness to dominate.

  ‘Summer?’ He clutched her neck. ‘Is this why you twitch every time I touch your back? You don’t want me to touch you here, ever?’

  ‘No, I don’t want you to touch my back, ever.’

  ‘Understood,’ he said and let her go.

  After a moment of silence, he pushed her to the bed, face-down. He sat on her lower back, pressed his left hand against the back of her neck, and rested his right hand next to her shoulder to support himself as he leaned over her.

  ‘Bobby…’ Summer sighed as his tongue ravaged her scars.

  ‘I ain’t touching your back, Summer,’ he said, and kept licking and kissing her back. The grip on her neck tightened.

  She writhed at the sensation. It wasn’t pain, it wasn’t pleasure; rather, it was being loved by a psychopath – or a man with borderline personality disorder. Perhaps this was the start of her journey to destruction. She would get there, she was sure. But how long would the journey be?

  ‘Does it soothe your pain, Summer?’ Bobby stretched on top of her.

  ‘Yes…’ she sighed. She wriggled to give herself room to turn her head towards him.

  Bobby now lay beside her, face to face, eye to eye.