The message was four days old and while I had been expecting it for some time it was also unwanted. I’m back in range and wish I had never turned the phone on.
‘Your mother is dead.’ Duncan doesn’t waste words as his sense of diplomacy was inherited from my mother (irony alert). There’s a disassociation in his message as she was also his mother, and because of his implied accusation – ‘you were not here and I always have been.’ My instinctive thought is ‘how did she do it?’
Who can blame me for being absent? ‘You destroyed me,’ she would scream, as if I was to blame for her poor choice / for being born/ for the damage she did to herself.
So why am I crying? The world blurs. My mother and I hated each other. That’s not true. We loved each other but we just couldn’t show it. We represented the failure of repressed expectations. I was the problem child and she the lost soul. I became the inversion of her. Mum’s agonies were on the surface for the world to view while mine are hidden beneath layers of bravado.
The news of my mother’s passing raises the expectation that I shall return to the place of my birth for the memorial to the, or rather my, deceased mother, to cope with the inadequate brother who humiliates me, and to comfort the father who has been my source of solace. The wandering daughter: they would ask ‘won’t you ever settle down? and provide us with a grandchild’ as if that was more important than my own wellbeing. They said that with no insight into why I’m running. Death delights in feeding on guilt.
It’s too late anyway as the funeral will be over before I can get there. It would be nice to see Dad again, it’s been a long time, and I know he’ll appreciate my presence. He might even buy me a ticket. Dad has always been a soft touch.
To travel across the country means that I would have to cancel this tour and issue an apology to this couple. The company would no doubt have to provide compensation. Even this end-of-season discount costs a packet for a ‘trip of the lifetime’, if you trust the publicity blurb and I have to admit the views are stunning. I face away from them to dry my eyes. They have noticed, they look concerned and say nothing.
This spot is called the Heaven’s View, not very original I know but the tourists love it, because the gorge plummets into a broad waterfall before blasting into the turquoise ocean. The late afternoon sun transforms the spray into a rainbow.
The ravine walls have more fissures than my hands. Trees have taken root in the cracks. I feel an affinity with those trees and their ability to survive in harsh conditions. The branches are both young and gnarled. I’m too young to be so aged.
Once a guide thought he’d impress some tourist he had the hots for by taking a leaping selfie. But he leant too far out, went over the edge and was saved only by his belt buckle getting caught on one of those trees. His weight was causing the branch to crack. The crocodiles below were nonchalant, acting as if oblivious of the emergency above them. It is probably cruel to say but I was chuckling.
We called for an emergency chopper but no one was optimistic it would arrive in time. What saved him was a truckload of backpackers with an American cowboy on board. She put on a masterful performance: running thirty metres along the cliff edge and then swirling her lasso through the wind to capture the humiliated buck. He didn’t get to win the heifer.
How often have I heard, ‘being a tour guide must be so exciting. You must meet such interesting people.’ It’s the boring ones that say that; the ones that follow me like I’m mother duck and what I don’t get it that they are at least twice my age. At least they are easier to manage than the type who think they know everything and wander off by themselves, getting lost, thinking there’s a coffee shop around the corner and instead they usually just missing stepping on a snake, which panics them.
This is my fourth season and I’m getting tired of the job. There is no more excitement and I feel like I could be back on a process line watching empty cans go past. I could easily walk away except there is nowhere to go.
I text Duncan, ‘Be there soon’.
I have a sense of obligation to this couple that I’m touring. They are a sweet old pair. I don’t mean to sound cruel but they remind me of cane toads. They’ve gone shriveled the way really old people do, as if they are trying to become embryos again. Amina and Mihoul shuffle along in matching khaki safari suits bought especially for the occasion, reeking of urbane debonair imitating rural cool. Amina has leopard skin lapels with a floral scarf. Mihoul’s cravat matches Amina’s scarf. He is the master of the comb over, using the lengthy fronds of his remaining hair to most effect, an attempt to hide his age that reveals how old he is. He has mastered the subtle use of eau de cologne and he actually smells romantically pleasant. Not that I have an interest in anyone his age. Amina and Mihoul whisper into each other’s ears as if they’re trying to hatch some secret plan.
There is something else about them. They carry an inner radiance, a sense of place amongst the madness. They are offering it like a healing spirit and I reach out but it’s elusive and slips away. Now I am the child seeking to comprehend adult talk.
When we first met they said, ‘We’re Mike and Anna Horton.’ I’ve been listening to them talk, trying to decipher their language. Looking in their files I see from the passport photos that their real names are Amina and Mihoul Horvatinčić. I call them that and they laugh at my mispronunciation.
‘Could they get up here?’ Amina asks, pointing to a pair of large crocodile’s sunbaking at the waters edge.
‘Crocs can’t climb cliffs, but I can take you to a crocodile farm,’ I offer, but Amina shakes her head.
‘It doesn’t matter dear,’ she says. ‘We’ve not got much longer to go.’ Which is a curious comment as we’re not yet halfway through the trip.
When we arrived at this point Amina said, ‘Not much longer now dear.’ I thought she was referring to the highest point on the track then they scared the hell out of me walking as if they had no intention of stopping and were going to plunge straight over the edge. By luck Amina stumbled and Mihoul stopped to aid her. I raced to grab and stabilise them. Did I miss something or was that a death walk? How did Mum fulfill her death wish?
We watch the day dying, and it is a stunner of a sunset. Even the fish leap from the water to have a look. A blood-red pumping heart throwing out multi-hued arms that bounce off clouds and fall to embrace us. As Venus winks an evening greeting Amina reflectively says, ‘the gates of paradise are calling us home.’
Amina makes home sound like a desirable future while for me it is a rejected past, one that must still be confronted.
I walk them back to our campsite where Willie has sparked life into a fire. Chairs are neatly arranged, cocktails prepared, and a stew roasts in the coals.
I ask Willie about his home and he gives a hollow laugh turning down his hands.
Duncan is the one who never left home. He is waiting for me at the airport. Of course. Mummy’s dutiful boy still playing the role.
‘Get out of my life,’ Mum would shout at me. So I did, on each occasion venturing further away. I wandered confused through suburbs that all looked the same, lost in industrial zones of brick walls and cyclone fences, and captured by the glaring splendors in shopping centres.
Eventually the police would find me and bring me back. For which I was grateful, I was tired and hungry and scared, although I would never admit it.
‘You’ve got a wild one there, Harold,’ they would say appeasingly to my father, who would reach into his pocket to hand over a thank you gift. No one wants to upset the used-furniture seller, especially the one who doubled as a loan shark, because they never knew when they would need his services.
‘She’s spirited,’ my father would reply, always defending me. ‘She’ll go far that girl.’
I did, as far away as possible.
Duncan and I hug and kiss each other on the cheek more out of obligation than desire. Duncan’s eyes glow. He is happy to see me. When he told me stories that I never wanted to hear I never knew if he had my best interests at heart. Right or wrong, he was incapable of shaking my infatuation with my father’s infallibility.
‘You’ve been there almost three years. Bit of a record.’ He’s digging and I’m going to deny him, shrugging my shoulders. ‘Someone in your life?’
I flash him my calloused hands. ‘You reckon someone would fall in love with these?’
‘There’s always some–’. He halts, because in his case it’s not true. Duncan’s love life has been empty and I’ve no desire to taunt him. Much as I was Daddy’s free spirited girl he was Mummy’s compliant boy; both of them in front of the TV maxing out on soap operas and black forest cake.
In the car a sadly repulsive odour hits my nose creating the image of Duncan sitting in an airport car park wanking. A lonely boy getting off on random passing passengers.
‘I left the window down and it rained,’ he says as a feeble excuse. I want to drive because Duncan can’t, but I know he’ll refuse my entreaties. Possessing a car gives him a sense of power, one of the few he’ll ever have.
‘There’s not been rain up your way,’ he says. I nod, not wanting to engage but obliged to say – ‘it’s coming to the end of the dry.’ My mind has flashed back to Duncan forcing his way into my room. It was the first time I saw an erect penis, and I screamed.
Mum was always inducing Dad to belt me for my many misdemeanors. He did so reluctantly, and lightly. That day he ferociously laid into Duncan, an untapped unconstrained anger. He wasn’t so much belting Duncan as releasing his own pain, something buried deep inside him that he neither knew nor recognised.
Was that when Duncan turned? My memory suggests at some point his storytelling became ugly: suggesting that the bandages around Mum’s wrists weren’t for protection from cooking oil. Duncan insinuated the extended periods Mum vanished from home wasn’t the sort of ‘medical’ Dad said it was. When I got older we would visit Mum on one of her ‘retreats’ onto a locked ward. Duncan would rile me by implying that Mum’s mental state was related to my birth as if somehow I was responsible, setting up the contradicted guilt feelings that continue to haunt me. I still doubt my judgment, not that I would concede that to Duncan. I suspect he cannot trust himself, which is why he never left home.
‘Still driving Mum’s old car.’
Duncan sniffs at the stains on my fingers; that disdainful down-the-nose look he specialises in. I imagine him practicing it in the mirror. ‘Go on,’ he says.
I jump from the car to roll my cigarette, drawing heavily on the first drags and a few hours without one strike’s home beautifully. The skin tingles and the head spins. It wasn’t so bad when airports had a smoker’s lounges but they’ve become so puritanical that even in this dungeon I try to hide what I’m doing. The ceilings tighten like a clamp, with concrete columns of Praetorian Guard, and echoes of the dead awakening from a zombie movie.
Already I miss the prism sky as a pindan track points to infinity before melting into ghost gums. The grasslands resemble a battlefield scarred by erosion trenches with termite mounds as ossified soldiers. When the rains come the grasslands transform into swamps with mega hordes of mosquitoes thriving in the stench of rotting water. This land breathes in a way that demands my immersion. It has the ability to grasp, to penetrate, to give life and to suck me dry. A lover that sweats. Dino sweated.
Oh Dino. Whatever happened to you? We were naïve kids enthralled by forces and fantasies we didn’t understand. We considered ourselves so sophisticated as we built our tragedy.
There is the voice of my turbulent mother screaming, ‘terminate, terminate’ as if I was a Dalek. Even Dad lost it for a while shouting at Mum, ‘You let this happen’. Then he calmed down in an attempt to soothe me, saying, ‘It’s for the best dear. There are things you don’t understand.’ When I turned from them I had to face smug Duncan, almost skipping with delight as he played the patronizing big brother – ‘You’re in real trouble this time.’ I already knew that.
When Mrs. Cociarelli came to the house to sort things out Mum refused to let her in. As Dad was showing her away Mum was shouting, ‘it’s all your fault.’ The mania was taking over. She stormed around the house in wild panic, screaming and wailing, and then going compliantly silent. Finally settled – the mania in her eyes replaced by subdued panic – I seek to console her when she delivers such a drop kick to my gut that as I drop agonized to the floor, I know she’s won. By the time I leave hospital she is again institutionalized as a crying wreck screaming murder upon herself and the rest of the world. Dad finally found me in a different city working in a clothing factory, but by then it was too late. I was not going back.
I wish the Amina and Mihoul had been my family. We quickly become close. Campfires and alcohol can do that. The bounce of the flames penetrates the soul causing people to reveal themselves. Mihoul had bought a bottle of rakija, his homemade fruit liqueur.
They had persistently questioned me about me. They genuinely wanted to know who I was and where I came from; to discover what formed my personality. Aside from superficialities I had stubbornly refused to reveal myself. So, perhaps in hope, they decided to share their own story.
Talk of wars going back centuries usually sounds distant. On TV it is an ethereal other world. Now it stared me in the face and I was incapable of hiding. I softened for this couple who overflowed with compassion. They had become so interlinked as soon as one paused the other picked up as they told a tale of love through tragedy.
‘We try to bury pain with the dead.’ Mihoul was looking into the glowing coals. ‘It penetrates us. We ask the earth to take our pain away.’
Amina picked up the thread. ‘How many people does the ground have to hold? From the time of Creation we have been hiding our history beneath the dirt.’
‘Existence is the illusion that our truths are different, a denial of what we have in common.’
‘We are taught that blood is all. Our family; that we must fight for them as if it is the only bond we have.’
‘I come from a long line of mercenaries and fascists,’ Mihoul spat at the fire in a failed attempt to distinguish the flame, ‘and it gave me no pride to walk away from them. We can leave our past but not escape it. We are bound by what we are.’
‘To leave your own family a person should never be asked.’
Mihoul looks at Amina. ‘Then, I was walking to love so I cannot regret it.’
Amina lightens and her eyes become stars. She has heavy brows and has released her hair so long grey locks fall out from beneath her scarf. ‘Your William Shakespeare, he writes of Romeo and Juliet. We are your Romeo and Juliet. We are the – how you say it? – sustenance the other needs to survive.’
‘We are the witnesses to excess slaughter. We have lost our own children.’
‘What mother should live to see her own children die?’ and Amina’s face drops towards the ground again.
They talk of their love that broke through invisible constructs to defy war and physical barriers – ‘the hate for one that is not your family we teach to babies’. What could never happen became reality. The home and security they had fell apart as ancient feuds destroyed historic buildings and ‘collateral damage’ became a footnote in news reports.
They tell me of a daughter killed by a sniper’s bullet in one country and a son taken out by a king hit in another. ‘We thought we had reached a safe land. Why do they give a cowards punch a royal title?’
Love had driven them into each other’s arms in defiance of their parents, and then indifference had taken their children.
‘Our tree was like a vine and someone came to cut down the flowers.’
‘Petal,’ Mihoul says, looking as if he reads me – am I that simple? – ‘When there is an absence in your heart it is on public display. Cynicism is not a substitute. If you can keep your family then hold them. If you can find love grasp it. Don’t ever lose love because it is the only defence against madness.’
Mihoul on a camp chair, speaks with expressive flourishes of his hands, his voice rises as if speaking to an audience, while his words are aimed directly at me and each is a laser arrow penetrating whatever it is that constitutes my being. Amina on a blanket, her arms wrapped around his legs, nodding in agreement, she looks past Mihoul’s face into the sky as if she could lift us into the Milky Way. Two old lovers have just lectured me sounding like grand philosophers carrying humanity on their backs.
Maybe it was too much rajika that caused us to cry together. Though not Willie. He sat silent yet fidgeting, typically unsmiling, studying them as if he knew every word they said. I look into the depth of his eyes but find no answers. In the night I hear him growling in his sleep– ‘filthy fucking bastard cunts’ – he is curled into a ball and won’t respond to my call. I want to know him but every time I get close an invisible bump deflects me into a void. I cannot reach Willie.
Willie is smooth. A lanky man with neat-trimmed goatee, there is a scar through his left eye but he won’t say where it comes from. He speaks little yet reads in advance our needs and delivers flawlessly. He takes us to look at rock art eons old (bosses instructions): orbless skulls that bore through us. Willie stands tall yet his face is morose. It’s as if he’s proud to be onstage but doesn’t want to perform.
A surprising gust of rain cuts through the night air. A refreshing first downpour of the season.
The smoke from my cigarette is curling towards the car park fire alarm and while setting off a shower could be fun I’m not up to being delayed by pissed-off security guards. Stubbing my fag I jump into the car saying, ‘Let’s get out of here now.’
But nothing is ever fast for Duncan.
Missing another exit turnoff he says, ‘Dad will be happy to see you’, he says, and I know that’s true.
‘How is he?’
‘He did a good job on himself this time.’
‘Will he get better?’
Duncan did his sneering-smirk. ‘You know he’ll live forever.’
An image of Dad pounding along the beach – built like a rock, fierce determination in his eyes, proud smile, clammy hair stuck to his neck. In winter he was lock on the rugby team and in summer reelman with the surf lifesaving team. Women loved him and men were jealous, in my eyes he remains a champion.
‘He’s getting older Chrissie. Recovery takes time. I miss you too.’ The sincerity in Duncan’s voice confuses me.
Duncan has this idea of me leaping from adventure to adventure, one exotic location after another, a fling dumped for the next conquest. When all I was doing was fleeing, searching, trying to survive, seeking refuge. It was one shitty job after another, pawing foremen and manipulative managers, living hand-to-mouth. Duncan has put down roots. For better or worse there’s an inter-dependency that comes with stability. The inhabitants get to know each other intimately. A person builds up history and that gives them an identity. Amongst people who live interdependent quirks and contradictions become tolerated. I’m ephemeral.
‘I’m happy to see you too,’ I say. He smiles, genuinely, and I reach out to touch his hand but he recoils. Same old Duncan.
‘I’ll visit the grave.’
‘There isn’t one.’ Duncan glances sideways at me. ‘Don’t look so shocked. She didn’t have any friends. There’s a plague in the cemetery wall with the ashes. You can visit that.’
Mum would incessantly by flowers, claiming she was keeping them for her gravestone. She placed them all around the house where they’d decay. She probably had dreams of a funeral cortege as crowds lined the street in farewell. I’m not surprised she died alone.
I feared the Horvatinčić’s were determined to go together and leave no trace. They weren’t depressives like my mother even though their behaviour was aberrant. Now that I’ve left I have to dismiss my worry.
Finally Duncan finds the exit gate but he has forgotten to pay for parking and sends me off to do it – ‘well I fueled the car and drove here to fetch you.’ Then we are through and turn onto the highway home – and I wonder why I still call it home when I have been away over half my life.
To return home is to step back in time, go full circle and become what I’d left behind. It’s a tragic reminder that no matter how much I change I am still the same.
Our house is a cluttered mess because my father kept bringing bits of junk home from his second-hand shop. Stuff that he thought were artistic or valuable, he liked, or he had nowhere else to put. Someone had to keep it all clean and dusted and I know it wasn’t me.
There’s a Dali sculpture that is probably fake, a Da Vinci painting that definitely is, and a Constable that may possibly be real. There is a shoe rack, coat rack, wine rack and a bookcase. An old divers helmet, a miner’s lamp and a canary cage (sans canary). There are walking sticks, umbrellas and parasols, a kitsch plaster crocodile, plastic frog, wooden elephants, plus something that always scared me and Dad said was an African voodoo doll. I was pleased my father’s tastes did not include religious iconography.
Duncan has placed Dad in the sunroom next to the oversized porcelain vase with blue inscription. It was Dad’s pride and sat on a pedestal as if it was John the Baptist’s head. He claims it is Ming dynasty but most likely it’s a Hong Kong fraud.
The porcelain ducks in flight are still on the wall. I hated those ducks. They had always seemed frozen in flight, incapable of fleeing, eyes on an unattainable destination. Once Mum caught me outside throwing stones through the windows trying to smash the ducks, giving her another reason to demand that Dad inflict punishment. The dogs were racing so Dad spent the night there, providing both of us with an excuse to avoid pain, because I think the action hurt him more emotionally than it did me physically.
Below the ducks Dad built a long shelf to hold all his sporting awards. I had forgotten he had so many cups and plaques; enough to have kept the brass foundry in work for a couple of years,
The races are on TV, of course, but Dad switches it off and raises an arm to embrace me. I’m quietly grateful he can’t give me his typical crushing bear hug. With his neck in a brace, a leg and an arm in plaster, ribs wrapped and plasters covering his face he looks like a character in some medical soap.
‘Welcome home,’ he says, and I tremble because his voice sounds hollow. I bend to kiss him on the cheek and tousle his faded hair. He has aged. I know to expect that but still it shocks me.
’Just a quick one Dad.’ I don’t want him getting ideas. ‘You’ve really damaged yourself this time.’
‘There’s no old friends left on the force to get me off this time. I’m going to need a driver.’ The way he flicks eyes with Duncan sets off a warning.
‘What were you thinking?’ I ask. My father has committed a mundane act – drank too much at Mum’s wake, drove too fast and steered too slow.
He sighs and gazes unfocussed out the window as if some abstract point will provide an answer. ‘I missed your mother. We were in love again.’
Dad sees me taken back and twists his admission into a joke. ‘And I lost Hawkeye.’ His beloved GT-350 V8 Mustang, vintage classic, the one the whole family had to help keep clean but we were only allowed to sit in on special occasions. He would drive down the road with sound up full singing ‘Khe Sanh’ as if he had actually been there. Purchased in celebration of my birth I had expected Hawkeye’s demise to give my father more grief than the passing of my mother.
That the opposite has occurred is off-putting. This idea of my parents tenderly ageing together as if they are Mihoul and Amina, is absurd. I don’t know if Mum or Dad were ever in love as from the earliest I could remember it was orthodoxy, the habitual fulfilling of expected roles. Along with Mum’s periodic lapses. Now Dad expects me to believe they were late flowering blossoms.
‘Well at least you survived,’ Duncan says. ‘They were getting along you know,’ and I’m disbelieving. ‘Seriously! It was like they had found a new life together.’
I look to Dad for endorsement and he nods. ‘It’s age dear. Causes us to reflect upon things. Your mother stuck it out with me and… I don’t know… we sort of got used to each other.’
‘Then why did she do it?’
Dad croaks a laugh and then speaks as if he doesn’t trust his own words. ‘You’re not the first person to ask that. Believe it or not it happened by accident. Fell and hit her head on the kitchen table. She was going so fine, your mother. Best I’ve seen her in years.’
On a stand next to the bed there is a photo that I have never seen before. There’s no mistaking my parents. Mum the classic virgin bride, which she probably wasn’t, and Dad in a bell-bottomed velvet suit. The flowers in her hair match the bouquet in her hand while Dad has as much hair covering his head as the famous forest on his chest. There’s a display of deep satisfaction on their faces.
I sit on the bed edge and talk about where I’ve been and what I’ve been doing. For some reason I talk about my work, perhaps because it is suitably distant, maybe because Dad mentioned how suntanned I look. Probably because I want him to know I don’t need money. I talk in vague generalities about people and tasks. I don’t want to be specific as that would be to let him get too close. It hurts that I’m afraid of letting anyone in.
I’m still wearing my work clothes and Dad notices the Aboriginal motif monogrammed onto the breast pocket.
‘God do you have to deal with them?’ he says. ‘Are they still looking for a handout?’
As a teenage daughter seeking her father’s affirmation I would have agreed. Now he sounds ignorantly opinionated – a crack in the image I had constructed appears. My brain receives a flash of Willie, cleaning after another tour group has departed and saying, ‘the people who come here carry our soil away and leave behind their rubbish.’
Willie is a survivor. He is forever burying family members, mostly younger than he. They are the ones that couldn’t make it, crushed by a cruel world.
But I doubt Dad would understand and I have no energy to argue. As the sun starts setting I notice Dad’s eyelids flutter so I leave him to have a nap and go to give Duncan a hand in the kitchen making dinner.
‘Surprised you’re not outside having a fag,’ Duncan says, and I am resisting the temptation.
‘I can’t believe what Dad just said. About him and Mum.’
‘It’s true.’ Duncan gave one of his rare smiles. ‘Dad started going out of his way for mother and she relished it. They would go for evening walks along the beach hand in hand, just like they were teenagers.’
‘Oh come on Duncan. They were a habit, and not a very good one at that.’
‘What would you know Chrissie?’ Duncan shot back. ‘People can change. You just don’t want to believe they fell in love again, and that says a lot about you.’
His words hurt. I have always prided myself on being pragmatic. While Duncan stayed at home I was doing it tough. I was the one forced out into the real world.
‘You were always too soft,’ I bite back. ‘It’s nice that you stayed here. Someone had to. You’ve always been wrapped in the family coat.’
Duncan gave me a scathing glance, as if I was a fool. ‘There’s so much you don’t get Chrissie.’
‘Then tell me about it. Come on big boy, give me your worst shot.’
Duncan paused. ‘Your boyfriend won’t be coming round bothering us.’
That bullet was aimed at the heart. I had been avoiding thinking about Dino but as soon as Duncan mentions him I tingle with excitement, suppress it, and look for a way to strike back.
Duncan is preparing a roast, rubbing herbs into the skin, potatoes and pumpkin prepared and waiting.
‘I’ve gone vegan you know.’
Duncan snorts. ‘So you have some weird special diet for your health and you kill yourself with cigarettes.’
I let it go. I don’t want an argument; Duncan’s world is too narrow. That’s the story of our lives. Duncan knew more because he was older. But we always saw things differently. I was the tough one. I was Daddy’s tomboy while Duncan hung around Mum’s apron.
He can’t accept I always had to defend him at school, and that means he is caught between not being able to forgive and knowing he will always owe me. It wasn’t just that he was the fat kid; it was the other school kids reckoned we were rich.
My memory doesn’t recall the steelworks closing, it happened about when I was born, but the ramifications continued for years. Dad was ruthless with people coming in selling off their possessions. Dad would on-sell the best stuff to Sydney dealers and then blow the profits at the races. He’d get too drunk and spend the night sleeping it off in the car. Maybe we were fortunate, because I can remember going to the movies when other kids couldn’t. Dad kept telling us the ones who lived up on the escarpment were rich – ‘look at their houses,’ he’d say wishfully. We lived on the flats like everyone else. We went to the same shops and played on the same teams. We turned up at the same schools where we learnt aspirations were not for us (I was defiant).
‘You and Dad are getting along well,’ I say, trying to be pleasant.
‘We don’t have much choice. There’s no one else is there?’ he cuts back.
‘You’ve been doing a fine job Duncan,’ which is the wrong thing to say because it sounds patronizing.
‘Sure. You go gallivanting around the country or wherever having a hell of a time while I’m stuck here. Who knows what you’ve been up to. Don’t you think it’s time?’
‘For what?’ I’m confused, as Duncan could be obtuse.
‘You’re his child. He doesn’t care for me.’
I’m still confused, or don’t want to acknowledge the implications.
‘I’ve been here my whole life. ‘ Duncan says despairingly. ‘It’s your turn now.’
I laugh – wrong move. Surely Duncan doesn’t expect me to come back.
‘I’ve spent my life looking Mum, and you when she couldn’t. You know Dad … well he was never around. I’ve never been anywhere. I want to see things and you owe me.’
‘You can’t even find your way out of the airport,’ I spit out, immediately regretting it. ‘Sorry. Sorry Duncan. I didn’t mean that. But I can’t. Not after everything… what happened… what they did.’
Duncan moves to put his knife down, an action that starts as a throw but he checks himself to place it on the bench top.
‘What they did!’ And I see Duncan fuming. ‘You’re so selfish – Christ Chrissie, don’t you think of anyone but yourself.’
‘What do you mean? You know what Mum did to me.’
‘And what you did to her.’
Silence.
Our eyes flash daggers at each other.
‘Think about it Chrissie,’ Duncan says softly. ‘When did Mum start getting sick? Straight after you were born. What do you think destroyed the marriage?
In Duncan’s home-truth fable it all started with my birth.
‘I owe you nothing. I’m not responsible for this mess of a family.’
‘A lot of things sent Mum mad, Chrissie. It wasn’t just … you were always too … God you’re naïve.’
That missile causes my brain to hurt. As Duncan turns to place the roast on the rack in that moment I could hold his head inside the oven and let the gas do its business.
Instead my phone rings.
It’s Rosie, the boss’s wife. Rumour has it Rosie arrived on the station escaping a string of failed marriages. Well, she and Bob found something together so good luck to them. Rosie’s ideally suited to the office manager role because she won’t leave air conditioning, spending as much time on her nails as she does the finances. Rosie wears her hair in a beehive, so the staff whisper her nickname: ‘zzub, zzub.’
Rosie wants to know if I have ‘heard from Mike and Anna’?
No.
‘It’s just we cannot find them and there is a letter here for you.’
I agree Rosie can read the letter.
Dear Chrissie,
We cannot fathom the mind of Allah and why the world was created the way it is. We are bathed in beauty and condemned by horror and our mission is to choose which to embrace and why to deny.
We thank you for revealing your soul to us even though you did not intend. It is a beautiful one. We also saw the crying child and want you to know to stay strong. Nothing is forever. Too many times ours hearts have been torn and have found a way to heal. When love comes to you, and it will, do not walk away from it.
Soon we will leave you. Amina has a disease, which means Allah calls her and Mihoul would prefer to be with his Lord than in this life without Amina.
We wait to meet in you in paradise, and desire it to be an eternity till you arrive.
Amina and Mihoul
I am trying to comprehend what they are saying when suddenly it hits me.
‘Shit Rosie! Check the vehicles. See if any are missing.’
‘They’re all there. Willie has looked. But he says the Cessna’s gone?’ Rosie’s query hangs – then I recall Mihoul mentioning he flew the two of them out of the war zone.
My mind fills with an image of a small plane gliding over Heaven’s View as it cruises across the ocean and towards the welcoming gates of a setting sun. Inside an ageing couple with sweet smiles and hands locked together.
‘I hope the plane comes back,’ I say to Rosie without confidence.
Hanging up the phone I’m now desperate for a cigarette. Forgetting Dad’s sensitivities I reach into my bag for the tobacco just as the doorbell rings.
Duncan is busy making a fruitcake, Dad is snoozing, and walking down the passage, flicking on the hallway light switch, I’m like a fifteen-year-old schoolgirl all over again.
As soon as I open the door and see the tousled auburn locks in the porch light I’m gone, taken to another planet, thrown back to pubescence: those first skin-tingling touches when the brain raced to keep up with where the body was going and then leaped ahead to embrace the passionate unknown.
‘Oh Dino.’
Dino can’t stop smiling, a massive grin splitting his face apart, teeth shining through a stubborn two-day stubble. Dino’s a man now.
I remember his nakedness. His cock. The way his hands tentatively reached for my breasts. His hesitation and my urging.
Whatever it is, hormones, time and place, or perhaps the stringiness that comes from flying on a Red Eye, my raging desire is overwhelming.
I take his hand, pulling him into the darkness of the front lawn, teasingly saying, ‘You haven’t been waiting all these years have you?’
‘I never stopped,’ he answers.
‘Oh come on Dino. I bet you’re married with kids now.’
But he’s serious, scarily so. ‘There have been others. Don’t think I haven’t tried. Every time it was you I saw, which is a great way to kill a budding romance.’
Is he really on the level? None of us ever forget the first time but Dino remains caught in juvenile infatuations. He really hasn’t been able to let go. Part of me doesn’t believe and the other part doesn’t want to. Once more Dino enraptures me.
‘I’ve always wondered how you’d turn up and whether you’d still be desirable,’ and in raising the question I know I still want him.
My hands are holding his face. Still I’m taller and older, the one who takes control. My tongue goes into his mouth and he meets me.
We used to make out in the back of the garage, amongst all the unsold beds Dad had stored there. Even then he was well hung. Neither of us thought his twelve-year-old body would produce fertile sperm. I should have known, can’t claim innocence, and ignored so many missed periods that it really was too late by the time reality hit. Not again. We’re adults now and can make our own choices. We don’t have to hide even though I don’t want to be visible.
‘Can we get out of here?’ I ask and Dino leads me through a gap in the oleander hedge and onto the street.
Dino points and now it’s my turn to squeal with delight. Dino’s got a purple passion wagon. There is an image painted on the side – a female shape with over-sized breasts, a cross between malt shop girl and a punk. In the dark detail is hard to distinguish. Not that I’m interested because I’m fastening my seat belt, fingers toying with the purple shag carpet that covers the dash board, and then admiring the dash lights as Dino fires up the engine to emit a deep sonic rumble.
‘I’ve been keeping this for when you came back,’ Dino says.
Nothing has changed. We’ve grown up normal, never been apart, reaching youth and being free of parental controls. As Dino takes us up the escarpment, past all the rich folks houses and into the forest, I run my hand up his legs and kiss his ear.
Dino points to the glove box and I bring out of a bottle of clear liquid. There’s the odour of Mediterranean spirits and as I let the liquid trickle down my throat Dino says, ‘I never stopped loving you.’ He is my Mihoul.
The night was warm and I was burning as Dino and I fell into each other like hormonally obsessed adolescents.
We couldn’t get our clothes off quick enough and, my god, Dino has grown. His body is a mass of hair as my tongue moves up from his groin and into his chest. He’s got wonderful workout muscles, which reminds me of my father and I flee from that thought. Dino goes down on me, massages immaculately, kisses me up the back of my leg, and then I take him in.
Dino is long, smooth, gentle and caring. We work together but of course he comes too soon and I have to speed up to bring myself to orgasm.
We lie there, gasping, our breath easing, my chin resting on Dino’s head. He rolls off onto his back, our hands touching as we look through the trees and into the night sky. Dino says, ‘tell me everything since you left. I want to know it all.’
I tell Dino things I had never imagined sharing – everything that has happened, where I’ve been, jobs I’ve had, people met, every fear and joy, experiences embraced and unwanted. I’m casually chatting with my best friend, my mirror.
‘Tell me about your loves,’ he says. I tease him by running off a long list of names – Jed, Grigor, Lou, Junko, Kariem, Pete, Steve, Sugar, and Lee.
Dino gives a furrowed disbelieving look and he’s right; I am exaggerating. Aside from Lou, and we just sort of unexpectedly fell together and then drifted apart without realising it, I have had lots of sex but love has been in short supply.
‘And what happened?’ Dino asks.
‘What do you mean?’ I sit up and take a swig of grappa. Dino caresses my back with kisses.
‘Why didn’t they last?’
I roll a cigarette asking, ‘do you mind’ and of course he doesn’t. Why has every relationship been short-lived and what does it say about me? Again, the searching for or running from question as I’m reminded of ex-lovers who have remained friends and the ones who will not speak to me.
‘Nothing lasts,’ I say dismissively, unwilling to acknowledge my self-destructive tendency.
‘We will.’ An instantaneous response. Direct at me. Solid.
‘Perhaps it’s because we’re scarred.’
‘No. It’s because we’re – ‘, he looks across my shoulder into the darkness.
‘What?’
‘Nothing,’ and he refuses to explain.
‘So what about you?’
Dino sits up, gives a self-effacing grin, and plays with a blade of grass. ‘Someone paid for me to go to boarding school. By the time I returned you were gone and no one would tell me anything. Your brother even got the cops onto me. I searched but there was no trace of you anywhere. When your mother passed on, I knew you had to return so I’ve been watching.’
Dino goes to say more, stutters, falls silent. I nudge him, he sighs, slaps his knee and then proceeds. ‘I later discovered it was your father … that paid.’
That’s a shock. My father? ‘Why would he? Oh, of course, to get you out of the way.’
That resolved I push on, curious why Dino looks relieved. ‘I can’t believe you haven’t been married.’
‘Almost. Once.’ He cancelled the engagement the night before wedding day. ‘Cynth was a lovely woman. Still is no doubt. But she wasn’t you so I couldn’t go through with it. She has got married now, and has children, which is what she wanted.’
As I stub my cigarette, he taps me on the shoulder so I turn to him. ‘You always wanted more. Which is why I have to let you go and why I can’t lose you.’
We kiss.
Dino’s got a trade. He became a spray painter, an artistic one.
‘It’s you I painted,’ on the side of his panel van.
‘Well you overdid the hair.’
‘I was spot on with the piercings.’
‘And the breasts.’
‘I’ve been infatuated by them,’ and while we laugh together I get a flash of just another male with a breast fetish (implication denial).
I ask about his lovers and it is his turn to surprise me.
‘I stopped having girlfriends. Once I recognised no one could replace you, but I couldn’t tell anyone that… well it wasn’t fair. They would have false expectations for something I couldn’t give.’
‘That is so sweet.’ I can’t stop my self from saying it. ‘And weird.’ We laugh again. ‘So what do you do?’
He shrugs his shoulders and looks at me as if to say, ‘c’mon, figure it out for yourself’. But I don’t believe him. He moved with too much knowledge of what he was doing. Finally he acknowledges what he terms ‘professional visits. As soon as I got too close to one I would go to… let’s say another service provider.’ Even that admission sounds caring.
Dino is fit and handsome. He reeks maleness while displaying a level of insight and empathy I’ve never seen in a man before. I’m wondering if I’m falling in love with a fantasy. But I know what’s beside me is real, and I possess kinship for this man with the abundant heart. His honesty is disarming.
‘Aren’t you cold?’ he asks, rubbing my arm. It’s then I notice the goose bumps.
‘I need some more exercise,’ I reply and after another gulp of grappa I start to blow him.
Quickly he turns hard so I move up on him and again our rolling rhythms flow. This time it’s a giggling romcom-fest, delighted pleasure, trusting, unbridled desire, teeth clacking, arms flaying, orifice exploration in blissful confabulation, the lightning strike of ‘oh baby, wrap my legs around your ears and let me sing you a song of joy.’ It’s passion, lust, love, and sex; all tied up in a great big bundle and set on fire.
It’s that time when the night is dead and dawn hasn’t yet yawned. Dino kills the engine and lets the car roll quietly to a stop in front of our house. I’m hoping the house is asleep, and the solitary porch light is reassuring.
In vain.
As I reach for Dino to kiss him, making plans to see each other again – ‘in a few hours’ – Duncan appears.
‘You just had to do it,’ he says, Strangely, there’s sadness in his voice.
‘We’re in love Duncan. Always were really.’ I’m feeling smug. ‘It’s none of your business.’
‘It’s family business and Dino knows exactly what I’m talking about.’
I turn to Dino who drops his head and blushes. There’s something I don’t know.
‘We’re big kids now,’ I retort. ‘There’s nothing you can do. We make our own choices,’ – such a childish thing to say – ‘and besides, there’s not going to be any surprises. You know the reason for that.’
‘Thank god for that. But that’s not all, is it Dino?’
Again, the pointed accusation.
I must have looked dumbfounded. I certainly felt it. Then Duncan strips my illusions.
‘Where do you think Dad was after the races? Don’t tell me you still believe he was sleeping it off?’
Well yes, in fact I still do believe that.
‘Have you really not noticed the similarities?’
Duncan’s prodding is causing me to step back and reassess Dino, seeing a different sort of familiarity in his eyes. Still I shake my head in denial.
Duncan drops his tone as if he actually regrets having to inform me that, ‘Your father was in bed with Mrs. Cociarelli. Chrissie, you and Dino have got the same DNA.’
‘Then I don’t know where yours comes from because I despise you,’ I snarl back. Except I’m being spun in circles, a spiraling acrobat that’s lost focus and is in free fall.
I turn on Dino, a turbulent fusion of confusion and anger.
‘It’s true. I know,’ he says. ‘I didn’t know then. Honestly. Mum told me later.’ His voice is a feeble defensive whine. ‘But it doesn’t change anything.’
But it does change everything. God, I’ve been screwing my own brother and it was magnificent.
Still, I can’t let go. I won’t show tears. ‘We’re committed. He’s been waiting for me. ‘
Now he has started Duncan cannot hold back on the revelations. ‘Dino’s been in love with every hooker in town -’
‘I know.’
‘And every desperate housewife. Just like Dad there are little versions of him running around all over the place.’
That one hits home.
Dino is leaping from the car looking furious.
‘That’s a lie. Chrissie I told you the truth. You know your brother’s a bullshit artist.’
‘So let’s go across the road and ask Chelsea,’ Duncan says. ‘Your car’s parked in the driveway a lot whenever Jacko is on night shift.
‘Remember Julie Morgan, Chrissie? She married Ian Prentice but one of the kids don’t look much like him. Not that Ian would say anything.’
Dino is charging towards Duncan, furious. ‘I’ll shut you up you fat prick.’
Duncan is transfixed and as Dino raises his fist I force myself between them.
‘Don’t you dare,’ I snarl at Dino. Now I feel his sweat as aggression instead of passion. ‘You leave my brother alone,’ and as I speak I’m thinking of all the times I’ve had to say that.
I can’t tell whether my shaking is anger at Dino or self-pity at my ineptitude.
‘Get out of my life.’
There’s an eerie recollection in those words. I don’t know why I’m saying it. I mean it and I don’t. The same as if I said, ‘Stay with me forever.’
But I repeat it – ‘You filthy lying … get out of my brain forever’ – and I do mean it.
While I’m fierce determination on the outside inside I am falling to pieces. The sweetest night in my memory has become a nightmare and the rediscovered love of my life is revealed as a dishonest fraud. I had opened my heart and in return was fed lies. Lies!
Escape.
I’m in the sunroom.
Dad is still sleeping, so I raise his precious Ming vase above my head and smash it into those fucking porcelain flying ducks. The shattered pieces bring his prized sporting awards crashing down. That wakes him.
‘You knew!’ I scream.
Being roused from unconscious slumber leaves him defenseless. He has no time to put up barriers to camouflage the guilt that flashes across his face.
‘You screwed Dino’s mum. You knew I was having sex with my brother and you kept it a secret.’
Then it hits me. ‘You made Mum mad.’
My kind-hearted father was buying me off while my mother couldn’t cope because she knew what he was up to. And it all began when I was born.
I want to belt my father about his cracked ribs.
Turning I see Duncan standing behind me, his body wracked with tremors. Now I see reason behind his snide assertiveness. He was protecting me and despising me for it.
‘You knew didn’t you?’
He nods, forlorn.
I sigh. ‘You didn’t want me to know?’
He nods again, his shaking more pronounced. I embrace him, scarcely able to get my arms around his body, being comforted as he wraps his arms around me. Our tears fuse into their own waterfall.
All I’ve known is stripped away. I’ve got to get out of here.
Grabbing the car keys off the hook, ignoring Duncan as he shouts, ‘don’t become Mum’, and I am gone.
I drive without seeing, grateful there are no other cars on the road. I don’t remember traffic lights. I don’t recall which side of the road I’m on.
My head is floating with random thoughts. My mother saying, ‘don’t trust him’ as she is being readmitted yet again. The first night I got to Sydney spending it on the train because I was too scared to get off. In a line for a cleaner’s job and getting told it is taken even before I get to the front of the queue. Going to night school to improve my job prospects and discovering people have careers. Gaining an exuberant sense of safety when scuba diving because I was in a hidden world. The first time I got drunk on gin, crying in my drink and swearing never to do it again (a monstrous lie). Blurred faces of clichéd men coming on at me. Thinking I could cock tease that pig and oh god what he did was just so horrible. Eating éclairs on a hilltop as Lou threw daisies over me. Dad lifting me high in the air saying ‘my favourite baby girl.’ Mum holding my hand at the dentist telling me not to worry as there ‘are much worse things in life.’ The hug from Mihoul and Amina when I left (and a flash of worry – what’s happened to them?). Kids at school jumping around my inflated stomach chanting ‘Dildo. Dildo.’ The school advising it was best I didn’t attend anymore. The school counselor leaving his arm around my shoulder just that bit too long. At hospital discharge after the doctor has told me my child rearing days are over. With clients on an all day hike when my period hits and realising how dirty the tampon I packed had become. At a Mardi Gras in some outback town discovering how much brute men like appearing in drag. Followed home by a puppy and Mum helping me to wash it, and then Dad saying our family doesn’t keep dogs – that’s a memory I had pushed away long ago.
The phone has been incessantly ringing. At a point where the escarpment meets the sea I pull off the road to answer, winding down the window to let the cigarette smoke escape.
‘Go away. You deceived me.’
‘The first time I didn’t know. Honest.’ Dino is pained. ‘Yes, I should have told you. I was waiting for the right moment. I was so happy being with you again. I couldn’t let anything interrupt that. And it shouldn’t matter.’
But it does matter. He had a chance to explain – ‘now I know why Dad paid for you to go to private school. Because he’s your Dad too.’
‘I was too scared to say anything.’
‘Not saying makes it a lie.’
I sound bitter when I don’t know if I am or not. I no longer know what I can believe.
‘Every time I was with someone it was you I was looking for. You haunted me. I told you that.’
So now it’s my fault (take a deep breathe).
‘Chrissie. I mean, people say we shouldn’t because we’re related. But it doesn’t matter. If you want children, you can get them from someone else. Or we can adopt. That’s OK. I don’t mind. I want to be with you.’
I stifle a cynical groan. Can’t have children. Tell me about it.
‘I hadn’t expected last night to happen.’ Dino is so intense, believable. ‘I mean I wanted it but thought it would take longer. You took charge again, the way you always do. But it was good wasn’t it? Tell me loved it. I love you Chrissie. I’ll do anything to be with you. I won’t lose you again.’
It was good – very damn good. Brilliant even. On top of Dino, my fingers toying with his hair, his arms splayed, our breathing in unison. There was nowhere else I had wanted to be. All stresses, pains and fears were vanquished.
Last night he promised to let me go and tonight he says he never will. I say I’ll call him ‘before the sun sets’, but I know I won’t.
I’m shaking, uncontrollably teary.
‘It’s in our genes. We have to,’ is the last thing Dino says to me. But it’s not. I can’t accept that we’re just acting out something that has been decided for us. I want choice, and I’ll spite to get it.
It doesn’t matter if our DNA is a match. Whatever it is that makes us lust for each other is irrelevant. I don’t care if Dino has a body just like my father’s. We can do whatever we like because we can take care of the consequences. If we desire we can lie in an open field and make love till our skeletal remains turns to ash.
Yet we won’t. He lied, just to get into my pants. I feel so stupid. And pissed off. I so desperately wanted his love that I ignored the little warnings popping up and now I will never be able to trust anyone. Dino took more than his looks from my Dad – his inability to keep his pants zipped up and his deceptiveness (some inheritance).
I feel like the whole world is full of liars. My Dad and Dino lied to hide their philandering ways. Maybe Dino does love me but it’s too late now. And Dad was prepared to let my mother go mental. Mum was trying to protect me and ended up delivering a cruel blow to both of us. That drop kick to the guts still pains me. Duncan thought he was doing me a favour and that meant we could not trust each other. He was just a small boy trying to be a surrogate father. No wonder he adopted that smarmy superior poise. That was his camouflage. And I am the worst: I may not have known everything but I knew and hid more than enough truths from myself.
A picture floats into my head: purple crocodiles are climbing a ladder made of bed bases. Their fangs drool human essence. Mocking porcelain jockeys ride on their back. I see a small plane flying across an ocean and into the sun. Willie’s elongated arm appears and as he hauls the occupants back to safety berating them: ‘My country is filled with bones. Take yours somewhere else.’
My crocodiles are in a straightjacket beseeching for freedom, and the constraints are being stripped away like the falsehoods I have lived with. My past is redundant.
I don’t need my father. I don’t need Dino. I don’t need anyone. The love I’ve got is for me, its mine, all mine, and no one can take it from me. I am liberated, for sure I am. A free spirit. Hugging myself tightly I recall Mihoul’s words – ‘When you find love don’t let it go.’
There is no rain yet lifting my head into the cool breeze my face is moist.
It is the time when moon lies behind me, a scythe slashing into the horizon burying the past; while before me dawn is a purple curtain opening onto the day’s expectation. I am torn in two directions – the habit to escape or the bravery to return, to face what was before or seek anew. Is that kind of courage beyond me?
We’re all messed up inside and the only thing that makes us human is our ability to hold the pieces together. Willie, maybe I’m beginning to understand. I have been standing in the queue of damaged souls as first light points towards a path called healing, the footprints tell tales of traumas overcome.
There is a familiar-looking couple, stooped with age, walking along the track. The sea breeze lifts the hair off the head of one and flutters the scarf on the other. As they head towards the point where the ocean crashes into the cliff and the sea mists swirl I run along the track, calling.
I see a man with scarred eye and goatee. He is saying, ‘Hmmm, don’t fall over.’
*
A comical, reverential, mystical, silly reflection on life and death and surprises.
Broome, May 2018
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