‘Did I say he was nice?’ Devin said. A smile jerked the corner of her mouth upwards.
It took him longer than a week to phone, and when he did, I was out. When I returned from my late stint at the editing studio, Devin was readying herself in my bedroom. Her hair bounced from a fresh condition and blow-dry, she smelled great, and a selection of silver chains borrowed from my jewellery box hung from her neck. ‘You look gorgeous,’ I said. ‘Where’re you going?’
‘I have a date.’ She leaned in to correct her mascara, checking for symmetry. Her eyes were like moons in the sky, but she wouldn’t look at me. My skin prickled.
‘With Auster?’ I swallowed. ‘Did he call?’ The words scraped at my throat and felt like the most difficult ones I had ever said.
‘Mmm-mm.’ She left the mirror just as the doorbell rang.
He looked at her, and then at me. He seemed a little bewildered in his new blue jeans and a branded T-shirt. ‘You’re … not coming?’ he asked, his eyes locked on mine.
‘Cat worked too late. She’s only just got home.’ Now my sister looked me full in the eyes, as though challenging me to defy her words. ‘I didn’t want to put any more pressure on her.’
‘You don’t want to come?’ Auster asked me.
What I wanted was to be alone so that I could cry – a rare thing for me. ‘No.’ I looked down at my work clothes. ‘I’m really not in … a position to go out now.’ I smiled. ‘You two have fun.’
I went to bed early and spent the whole evening trying to sleep, but couldn’t. Eventually I got up and stared at the screen while a movie played itself out on the television. Your career, I kept thinking; just focus on your career; and then, just before midnight, the front door opened.
Devin went straight to my room and closed the door, she didn’t even say good night to him. Auster stood there, framed by the open space, awkward and pulling a hand through his pigeon-wing hair.
‘Do you want to close the door?’ I asked him.
He did. I straightened myself on the couch and he came to sit beside me. I pointed the remote at the screen and turned the sound down. Still he leaned forward, and blew a stream of air through his fist. ‘She’s pissed off,’ he said. ‘I hope it doesn’t last too long.’
‘Why, because you don’t sleep with girls on the first date?’ I said meanly, then regretted it. I saw the confusion on his face.
‘Catherine, I … I don’t think she’s very happy with me.’
‘What happened?’
‘I told her the truth. That I did invite both of you out. But that it was really you that I wanted to see.’
My brain froze. I was numb. I had no idea how to respond. ‘She’s not used to that,’ I muttered.
‘I think she thought it was the other way round. She thought that this was all about her.’
He finally leaned back and looked me straight in the eyes. He drew closer to me and his lips were soft, seeking out mine, only mine. And his hair was silky and clean to touch, just as I had assumed. I was home, and he was too.
Three days later, when we finally left the apartment to try out a real date, I asked him, why not her? It was something that I knew had to live out in the open, if we were going to get it right.
‘Of course she’s beautiful, Cat,’ he said, sinking his eyes into my heart. ‘But as hard as it appears to be for you to believe, you’re the person I want to be with.’
Twenty-Nine
‘I like your hair,’ I said when I saw her, before I’d even said hello. She’d already ordered coffee for herself and she stirred at it absently. Her elbow was on the table, her head resting in the palm of her other hand. My own student days were long over, and in trying to organise some semblance of an adult life and in my new relationship with Auster, I’d been relieved when Devin had decided to move out some months before. I justified it too by thinking that, if she had to pay a full rental, she’d make an attempt to straighten out her life, to earn enough to take care of herself. I hadn’t seen her in some months.
‘I had it straightened yesterday,’ she said, and her hand dropped the spoon into the saucer. It was sleek and smooth, not the hair that I knew, and she looked like someone else. I sat down. The waitress came over with a menu, but I shook my head at her and she retreated to the safety of the coffee counter.
‘How do they get it like that, with an iron or something?’
‘It doesn’t matter. Leave it alone.’ She took a gulp of her coffee. ‘I’m sorry I missed your birthday.’
‘No big deal.’
‘Twenty-five is an odd number. I think it’s unlucky to celebrate odd numbers. Did you do anything?’
‘Auster took me for dinner.’
She pressed her lips and looked away, then scrabbled in her bag and brought out a brush that she ran through her newly-straight hair. As she put it away, I caught a glimpse of the box of cigarettes in the bag.
‘What are you trying to be, Devin?’
‘What?’ She looked at me wide-eyed, as though I was accusing her of something. I shook my head, tried to hide the gesture but not enough to make it imperceptible to my sister. She irritated me.
I softened myself towards her. ‘How are you doing?’ I asked her. ‘You coping with everything?’
‘I’m all right. Thanks for coming.’ Then she looked at me. ‘Please, just have a cup of coffee, Cat.’
I looked at my watch. ‘I’ve got to get to the studio,’ I said. ‘I really can’t afford the time.’
She looked away, wounded by the words as though I had chosen my work over her. In a way, I had. ‘You haven’t been to see Mom in a while,’ I said.
‘Mom hasn’t been to see me.’
I swung around and faced her, unable to conceal my anger. ‘For fuck sakes, Devin! Mom is ill. Mom is in bed. She can’t get up to see you. Much as she’d love to get up and out of her pyjamas!’
Devin shifted uncomfortably, drank her coffee down. ‘It’s difficult for me, Cat. It’s difficult for me to go there.’ She spoke softly.
‘They are your parents, Devin.’
‘I don’t know what that means.’
I wanted to reach in and grab at her selfishness, pull it right out of that beautiful face. Instead she asked me a question: ‘Are you in love with him?’
It cut me to the core, that question. Love. It sent waves of something akin to guilt right through me. I was standing on the threshold of another kind of life and I would step over it without her, I would step into a new world alone. I wasn’t afraid. I wanted it. To join my identity with another’s, erase my own history and over time create a new past linked to someone else. Someone other than Devin or Samuel or Dawn or Marshall. I wanted to put my family at a distance, to merge with the now and live for something different, someone beyond them all. To forget where my life began, and where my sister’s ended.
I laughed, a hollow sound, but her question was not between two girls giggling over a blossoming romance. Her eyes were fixed on my face, as if she was trying to find something she knew she would never have.
‘You know men,’ I said. ‘They come and go.’ But I was lying to protect her from the person we both knew I would become: someone with a life of her own, with no reason to go back.
‘I think Auster is different,’ she said. ‘And you know it.’
‘What do I know?’ I said. I would never tell her the truth of how I was feeling. I could think of nothing else but him.
‘No, Cat,’ she replied, ‘that is my line. Don’t take that from me too.’
I turned my body away from the table and faced the window and what it contained. A tiny bird pecked at something invisible on the ground. It hopped out of the way of the feet passing by. The door to the shop opened with a tinkle of a bell and two more people came in. It was getting crowded, but my sister was an island in there.
‘What did you want to say?’ I asked her.
‘What?’
‘Why did you ask me to meet you here?’
She looke
d to the side; with the curtain of straightened hair, she didn’t look like herself at all.
‘I can’t do it,’ she told me. ‘I can’t go on.’
Something gripped me on the inside and tore at my chest. Fear is something that takes you by surprise, makes you smaller than you imagined. I leaned back in my chair, looked her full in the face; a warning too. ‘Don’t be stupid,’ I said. ‘We all have to go on.’
She laughed. ‘You’re being dramatic. I’m talking about varsity. I’m not interested in calculations and mathematical theories. I don’t want to work with numbers. I’m too old to study now. It’s killing me. I don’t want to go on with it.’ When she spoke, the relief in me reared up. I could suddenly look outside again and appreciate the sunshine.
‘I want to quit,’ she said.
‘You did so well in your mid-year exams. Maths and science is what you’re good at.’ I leaned forward, allowing her in through my eyes.
‘So. You like whales. Did you study marine biology?’
‘That’s different.’
‘Why?’
‘You’re so bright, Devin. Maths is important. It’s taken you so long to get here.’
‘And art isn’t?’
‘But you could do something with your life.’
‘You think just like them. You sound just like them now.’
‘Who?’
‘Mom and Dad.’ She leaned back, folded her arms. ‘I knew they’d get to you.’
‘Don’t be ridiculous. You have a chance to do something. If you quit now, you’ll lose your financing. You’re not serious?’
She looked at me with eyes like stones, then bent her head and scanned the menu. ‘Are you sure you don’t want anything, Cat?’ she asked, as though she’d been distracted, but I knew her better than that. When Devin focused on something she did not let it go. She was trying to tell me something, but already I knew it would be something I didn’t want to hear. Her jaw clenched, and in the fineness of its line I realised she’d lost more weight.
‘Okay,’ I said. ‘Okay. I appreciate your telling me. But what will you do? It took you so long just to get to studying. You’ve finally got some direction, some independence. You could have a life!’
‘It’s not the life I want. I don’t want to do maths just because I’m good at it.’
‘Everything you’ve ever had, everything you’ve been good at, you’ve deliberately thrown away.’
‘It’s too late for what I want, Catherine.’
I played with the milk jug, tilting it and watching the miniature white sea swirling around, disturbed but still contained. The light above reflected in the metal of the jug. ‘What do you want, then?’ I asked her.
‘You know what I want. I want my childhood back. I want to be normal like everyone else. You know it’s too late for me.’
I put the jug down, leaned back in my chair. ‘I don’t know what you’re talking about,’ I said. I looked at my watch. I wanted to get back to work. My mind was on the edit at the studio. ‘If you lose your loan, won’t you have to pay the money back anyway? And how are you paying your rent? Where will you live?’
She looked away, her attention snagged this time by the movement of a man who got up and went to the counter to pay his bill. ‘Marshall has offered me his house for a while,’ she said. ‘He’s offered to cover the money I’ll owe. I can stay there until I get a job.’
‘I don’t believe you!’
‘You never do believe me. You never did.’
It was wrong that I said nothing then. I didn’t ask why or offer her refuge when she needed it so badly while she decided what to do with her life. I let it go, and I was wrong. My only excuse, the one I pull at desperately like a child who reaches for a windblown balloon, long out of reach, is that I was also young, and just making a life of my own.
‘Are you still seeing that guy?’ I asked her instead.
‘What guy.’ She said it like there was no question mark at the end of it. Her eyes were level with the brim of her cup.
‘That guy with the tattoos. The musician.’
She laughed, a bark that came from her throat, a sound that did not suit her fragile being.
‘What is it to you, Cat? Are you going to run home and tell Mom and Dad? Are you going to tell them I’m going to be living with Marshall again? Are you going to run and tell them all how bad I am?’
My eyes filled and smarted and I swallowed hard. ‘Please, Devin.’ My voice was soft and it betrayed me. ‘I’m only trying to be your friend.’
She got up and kicked the chair hard so that it slid halfway back under the table. People all around the room turned to look at us. ‘You’re not my friend, Catherine,’ she said. ‘You’re my sister. You’re my goddamn family. I don’t know what’s wrong with you all, that none of you can play the roles that you’re supposed to. All of you, you all always want to be something else, something other than what you are.’ She turned and walked and my eyes stayed upon the table and I heard the heels of her boots receding on the floor. I admired the bravery in her words. I knew what it must have taken. She stopped, turned, and addressed me again. ‘Hey, Catherine!’
‘What?’
‘Remember when we all lived at Marshall’s, and I tried to kill myself?’
The eyes of the room swivelled back to us.
‘Yes.’
‘Well you don’t have to worry. I’m not going to do that ever again. Ever.’
‘You’re killing yourself by doing this, Devin. You’re killing yourself by going back there!’
‘It’s my home, Cat. You all made sure of that. It’s the only place I belong now.’ Her eyes were fierce, and in her whisper I was afraid. ‘At least he still wants me.’
She left the shop and I watched her from behind, saw her hair fall straight and tamed down her back just before I lost sight of her in the street. It fell sleek to her waist, to the start of her short skirt, and she did not look like herself at all. I glanced around. The waitress’s eyes were on me. I nodded at her and she came over. I paid with cash from my pocket and my guilt for my sister’s coffee.
Thirty
Outside the rain is driving and the world is wet. Beyond the kitchen window the sky is low, a thick grey blanket washed and squeezed so that the excess water comes pouring out. Later it will hang, lighten, lift and dry. A thin blue veil of mist covers the top of the mountain where it will be raining too, but harder and longer than here.
It’s cold outside and I tell Hayley to bring a jersey. We’re at the front door and Auster holds it open for us. He runs a hand through his hair in a double movement, pushing it back and then pulling it forward again. I think he forgets, sometimes, that now it lies further back than it used to. ‘Can I come too?’ he asks.
‘I thought I’d give you the morning to yourself,’ I say, winking at him above our daughter’s head.
He leans in on me and I breathe his nutty smell. ‘I don’t want to be left alone,’ he says. I think he’s going to kiss me but he doesn’t. He still flirts with me without meaning too, even after all the years.
‘Come with us if you want to. We can make it a family trip.’
‘I haven’t seen him for a while,’ Auster says, and goes to the bedroom to fetch his coat.
When we get to the village, the sky is heavy again. I curse myself for forgetting an umbrella and Hayley escapes the car first, dashes through the sheet of cold droplets to the shelter of the overhang at the front door.
There’s nobody smoking outside today. I imagine the sea is wild. Devin liked it like that, never caring if it was too rough to swim. I look at Auster in the seat beside me. He returns my gaze with his eyes full and his mouth half lifts in a facsimile of a smile. Behind him the rain drums hard on the window, begs him to open the door and let it at us. But he’s turned towards me and his eyes look down. ‘Will we ever be alone again?’ he asks.
I hit his shoulder softly with my fist.
‘Come on,’ I say, ‘it’s your turn next.
You run and I’ll lock the car behind you.’
But he doesn’t move, his eyes melt on me. ‘Why is parenting so hard?’ he says. He puts his face into my neck. ‘I wish we were at home. Alone.’ We’re shielded by curtains of rain on all four sides, thick and drawn across the windows. If it wasn’t for Hayley, no one would know we’re here and the thought is briefly seductive.
And then I hear her voice like a thin and silver thread that weaves its way through the strands of rain and calls, though I cannot hear the words. I sigh and push Auster away, lean over his lap and flick open the door. The wind screams with pleasure, slaps a sheet of rain into the car. I push him out and he relents and goes, slams the door behind him and runs to his daughter at the front door and all I see is a long green figure, receding in the mist through the rear-view mirror.
I edge my door open and scurry after him through angled pins of rain that sting my face.
The nurse at reception laughs at the state of our hair and offers us tea in the lounge to warm us up.
‘I’m glad we didn’t go to the park,’ Hayley jabs at my hip with her elbow.
‘Now I wish I’d stayed at home,’ Auster says and he winks, but that’s not for me. It’s for Hayley. He’s looking down at her but she’s oblivious to the depth of his love, how simple and deep it is for all of us.
‘Don’t worry about the tea, we’ll be fine,’ I tell the nurse. He nods and writes my name in a book, and then he tells me that my dad is in his room.
It’s strange how we can know how things are, without having a sense of how the knowing arrived in us. After it happens, I replay the moment again and again, and each time I wonder what exactly it is: is it that his hair looks unbrushed? Can I smell his skin from the doorway? Do I unknowingly catch an obscure whiff of sourness? Of strangeness? Are his eyes heavy-lidded and hooded today, or is the bed unmade? What is it about the picture that tells me all is not right in my father’s world? How is it I sense without words or obvious outward signs the unravelling emotional fabric of this man I know so well?