Girl A(79)

She signed, with her face close to the paper.

‘I told her she was going mad,’ she said. ‘We could usually laugh about it, in the daytime.’

She slid the documents across the table. She was looking over my shoulder, out to the hot, bright street. ‘Now,’ she said, ‘I’d like you to leave.’

I nodded. We stood together, in synchrony, and across the table I held out my hand. She took it. An old habit: to shake hands over a deal, at the end of a meeting.

‘The community centre,’ she said. ‘It’s a good idea. I like it.’

‘Thanks. It was my sister, mostly. She’s better than the rest of us.’

She followed me back across the house. I went slower, this time. I took in the bee-print coasters and the dead orchid on the bookcase. I took in the wedding photographs up the stairs, and the light of bedroom windows, falling into the hallway. There was a row of Marvel figurines guarding the fireplace. There was a basket of hats and gloves and sunglasses by the door.

‘It’s hot out there,’ she said. ‘I can get you some sun cream. If you want.’

‘Don’t worry. I’m parked pretty close.’

‘I’m sorry,’ she said. It was easier to be sorry, I thought, with the documents signed, and me on the front step.

‘It’s OK,’ I said. ‘I won’t come back here.’

‘Is there anything that would help?’ she said. ‘I mean – is there anything that you would want to know?’

I smiled. You don’t need to tell me, I thought. I already know. When I was at university, he was learning to ride a bike. In the winter, he plays video games and runs cross-country. He doesn’t think about money or God. He moves easily through the school corridors, and he walks into each classroom knowing exactly who he’s going to sit next to. There’s a five-tier bookcase in his room. I think of you on Sunday evenings, having dinner together, and some nights – I see it – you stay at that table when the meal’s over, talking about the cricket club, or the week ahead. I won’t search for him, any more. I already know.

‘No,’ I said. ‘That’s OK.’

She started to close the door, but as she did, her head moved to fill the gap, and then the crack. I knew that kind of love. Too ferocious for niceties. She had to make sure that I’d gone.

‘Still,’ I said. ‘Thank you.’

In another long night, the baby’s cries came down the hallway, ever louder. Then the door opened, and Mother ducked into the room.

‘Girls,’ she said. ‘Girls. I need your help.’

Her arms were full of blankets, and within them the baby, the little twisting tremors of him. She knelt down in the Territory and unravelled the material from his body, and stepped between us, loosening the bindings.

‘Girls,’ she said. ‘You have to make him stop.’

She looked from me to Evie.

‘Please,’ she said.

Babies were OK, I thought. There had always been one around. I liked their softness and their strange preoccupations. They would laugh at all of my tired games. I lifted the child and lay him in the hollow between my thighs. ‘Hey,’ I said. ‘Hey.’ His eyes veered past me, through the ceiling and the roof. Seeing him here, like this, there was something odd about him. Something missing. I realized then that I hadn’t really looked at him before. There had been a time when I had stopped thinking much beyond our room.

I leaned over and touched my nose against his. He smelt of the house, which smelt of worn clothes; stale plates; shit.

‘Why won’t he stop?’ Mother said.

‘Here,’ Evie said, and peek-a-booed over my shoulder.

‘It’s been days,’ Mother said. ‘Your Father—’

She looked to the door.

‘You’re supposed to be clever,’ she said. ‘Aren’t you? So – fix this.’

I held the baby closer, his head nestled against my shoulder. Crying, still.

‘Not that clever,’ Mother said.

‘I read somewhere,’ I said, ‘that the more a baby cries, the smarter it is.’

I tickled the soles of my brother’s feet. When he writhed, Mother lifted him from my arms and entombed him beneath her blankets. She ignored us now. It was just Mother and the baby. She murmured a prayer, part to God and part to the child, whispering his name. Imploring him to save himself.

For the first two weeks of his life, he had been nameless. The tag on his wrist said Gracie, so the nurses knew which mother to look for when they lifted him from the incubator. When he returned from the hospital, Father declared that he had already survived a fortnight in the lions’ den. He wanted to give him a name which belied his half-formed frame. His tissue-thin skin. As if in naming him, he could reform him, and begin again. My parents congregated in the kitchen, and when they emerged, they declared that they would call him Daniel.





6


Evie (Girl C)


AT THE AIRPORT, I swung the car into the pick-up queue and looked for Evie. I had heard my phone vibrating on the passenger seat, and I was pretty sure that it would be her. The end of the summer, and waves of people returning home, wheeling suitcases and trolleys through the sliding doors. She was sitting apart from them, cross-legged against the wall and with one hand on her rucksack, keeping it close. She wore sunglasses and a hanging white dress, the straps fastened to the bodice with big red buttons. She had bundled her hair on top of her head in a precarious blond turban. I waved manically, as you can only really wave to people you love, and she looked up and tilted her sunglasses down to be sure it was me. I waited for the recognition to click. When it did, she jumped to her feet and darted through two lanes of traffic. ‘You could have got a convertible,’ she said, and kissed me through the open window.