Perfections (34 page)

‘I had to change him,’ Loki says.

Lina nods. Takes in the brightly coloured boxes stacked next to the tallboy on the other side of the shed. Junior Huggies for Boys. The boxes have Winnie the Pooh on them. Tigger and the donkey as well. A battery-operated room deodoriser squats on top of the tallboy, its rose-scented fragrance not quite masking the more bodily odours that hang in the air. Beside it is a pink plastic radio that she recognises as once having belonged to her sister. There’s no music and Lina wonders if the batteries have run out.

In the crib, the boy makes a soft, hooting noise and attempts to roll onto his back. It seems to take some effort. That skull so impossibly large for such a small and scrawny body. Like one of those creepy-comical Japanese dolls, all head and black unblinking eyes. Except, no, not these eyes. These eyes are blue, or at least one of them is. The other cloud-spun and milky. Glaucoma perhaps, or cataracts, or some other blinding disease. But still, he sees her.

Sees her and hoots again, louder this time. Rocks himself from side to side until that great head rolls all the way over and his body follows, flopping ragdoll-like in its wake.

Lina tries to move away but Loki is right behind her. Hand firm on her lower back.

‘It’s okay,’ he says. ‘Lina, look at him.’

She doesn’t want to.

Doesn’t want to see those eyes. Or that fine, cornsilk hair cut in ugly, ill-matched lengths. Or that mouth, worst of all, that strange and awful mouth. A round, sucking hole scarcely larger than a shirt button. Lips rubbery and pink, squashed and sealed together at the sides. Glistening with saliva that spills in long strings to baptise the stuffed green frog that the boy holds in one hand.

The hooting changes, pitches higher. Becomes almost a whistle.

‘What has she done?’ Lina whispers.

On the front of the nappy, Winnie the Pooh and Tigger hold hands. Smile up at her with oblivious Disneyfied grins. Bile rises in her throat. The boy lifts his empty hand. Stubby fingers waggle in the air. Lina reaches towards him. Touches her hand to his. Hooting softly, he curls a fist around two of her fingers. There is almost no strength to his grip.

‘Hello,’ Lina says. ‘Hello Charles.’

Loki slips his arms around her waist. ‘It’ll be okay.’

‘No.’ Gently, she extricates herself from her brother’s grasp. Turns and pushes Loki away. ‘That
woman
did this. Changed him somehow, kept him out here like some sick, unwanted animal.’ A searing, sudden rage boils through her veins. Her whole body is shaking and her fingers ache to find the flesh of Sally Paige’s throat. To rend it to ragged and bloody strips.

Antoinette shrinks back, uncertain now and scared, pulling the Loki-stone from her mother’s reach even as Sally Paige begins to close around it.

Give me that. You have to give him to me.

But Antoinette draws away, draws Loki away, folds herself protectively over him and Jacqueline both. Two within her now, Loki-stone and Lina-stone, knocking against one another in a way that feels right, that feels
perfect
, and how the hell could she ever have considered giving him up? She will
never
give him up. And again that flash of yellow her mother is too slow to conceal, too slow or merely unable. Meek little pebble blinking amber and she pushes closer, reaches closer and–

NO.

–her mother swats her away. An angry, effortless shove that takes Antoinette by surprise, hits her like a punch in the sternum and she gasps as the connection with her mother is abruptly, painfully severed.

She blinks, dizzy-drunk and wobbling on her chair. ‘What was that?’

‘Nothing you need to lose sleep over,’ Sally Paige tells her through trembling, grey-tinged lips. She looks exhausted, face sheened with perspiration and breath rasping harsh, but deep in those red-lined eyes gleams a cool and all too familiar disappointment.

‘I saw it,’ Antoinette insists. ‘I
felt
it. You have another perfection!’

‘That’s none of your business.’

‘But you said a woman couldn’t cope with two of them, you said–’

‘Does it look like I’ve been coping?’

‘Who is it? Where are they?’

‘I’m tired.’ Her mother sinks down into her pillows. ‘And now we have to do this all again. Stupid girl, why didn’t you just give him over to me?’

‘You’re not getting him,’ Antoinette says through clenched teeth. ‘I’ve decided to keep them, both of them. They’re mine.’

‘Don’t be so sentimental. They’ll ruin you.’

‘I feel fine. No different.’

‘Wait till you sober up. Wait till she starts to drain you.’

Antoinette grabs a glass of water from the bedside table, drinks most of it in one thirsty gulp. ‘You know what I think? I think you don’t know half of what you think you know. I think you’re a bitter old woman who screwed up her life and now doesn’t want anyone else to be happy even for a second.’

‘You’re a drunken little fool.’

‘And you’re a liar.’ She lurches to her feet, reaches for the back the chair to brace herself. ‘But you know what? Loki and Jacqueline
love
each other, and I’m not going to take that away from them just because it’s something I can’t have anymore. I’m not you, I’m not going to spoil things for them out of
spite
.’

Beneath her fury, Sally Paige seems startled. ‘They
love
each other?’

‘Like Romeo and Juliet, I swear to god.’

‘How very apt.’

‘Sorry?’

‘Two perfections. It can hardly end well.’

‘Yeah? Well, guess what? Jacqueline–’

A commotion of footsteps and raised voices out in the hall catches her attention and she sways around to face the door just as her sister flings it open, panting and flushed like she’s been running. Loki right behind, pleading with her to
wait, please Lina, just wait
, but she shrugs him off, marches into the bedroom like there’s an entire battalion at her heels.

‘Move out of the way, Ant. I am going to kill that old witch right where she lies.’

—
23 —

For a few bleary, perplexing seconds, Antoinette is caught between the two of them. Jacqueline screaming at Sally Paige, rapid-fire accusations about Charles and some old shed that make no kind of sense at all, and the older woman snapping back, telling her to calm down, to stop being so
hysterical
– that word a bugbear of Jacqueline’s from way back, guaranteed to press all the wrong buttons as her mother well knows – and her sister launches herself at the bed, hands outstretched like she wants to tear Sally Paige’s eyes out or worse.

‘Lina, stop.’ Loki seizes her around the shoulders, holds Jacqueline to him in that same careful way Antoinette remembers him holding
her
about a billion-zillion years ago, that first night as she fled from him through the apartment. Holding Jacqueline like she might break, like she might break
herself
, he lowers his mouth to her ear, speaks low and soft until finally she stops struggling. But her eyes are still murderous, and they don’t leave Sally Paige’s face for a second.

‘What did you do to him?’ she demands again.

‘Why were you down there in the first place?’ Sally Paige retorts. ‘You hate the bush, you
both
hate the bush.’ Her gazes switches between her daughters, suspicious and cold. ‘He was safe from you there.’

‘You weren’t ever going to tell us about him, were you?’

‘That’s because it doesn’t concern you.’

‘Okay, enough,’ Antoinette breaks in. ‘Can someone
please
let me know what the bloody hell’s going on?’

‘It’s Charles,’ Jacqueline says. ‘She has our brother locked up in that old shed down the back. And she did something to him, he’s not . . . he’s not right.’

‘That isn’t your brother,’ Sally Paige says.

Jacqueline shakes her head, turns to her sister. ‘Ant, you should see this for yourself.’

Antoinette barely gets three steps outside the shed before she throws up. Bent double with hands braced on knees, purging herself of mostly vodka and bile, but also some abrasive lumps that must have been lingering from the toast and eggs she had for breakfast. She couldn’t stay in there, couldn’t look at him for another second–

runstopbadrunstopbad

–bad enough they made her walk all the way down here, practically having to frogmarch her through the damn trees she was shaking so much, and then coaxing her into that shed of which she had no clear memory of ever seeing before and yet, and yet, something inside her was beating its wings in panic–

runstopbadrunstopbad

–because she knew with an absolute and terrified certainty that it was the
worst place in the world
, a place she didn’t ever want to visit again –
again?
– but she let them lead her inside anyway, and there he was – the
charliedoll
– with his grotesque, lollipop head and round, toothless mouth and,
oh god
, the sound that came out of that mouth when he rolled those huge and hazy eyes around to find her standing by the crib, that toneless pan-pipe whistle, the backing track to every childhood nightmare–

runstopbadrunstopbad

–and the memories don’t come flooding back so much as they seep in, drop by torturous drop. Disconnected flashes linked by evocations of terror and dread: abhorrence shadowed in her mother’s face; cicada song and the flicker of sunlight through leaves; a little girl screaming, a little girl that might be Antoinette-that-was; and the charliedoll, the charliedoll, the charliedoll–

runstopbadrunstopbad

–not the whole story, not by a long shot, but enough to realise that somehow this whole sorry, sickening mess can be laid squarely at her own vomit-spattered feet.

‘Are you all right?’ Jacqueline sounds hurt, or maybe just offended.

Antoinette spits and straightens, wipes her mouth with the back of her hand, then wipes her hand on her shirt. ‘I think Mum might be right.’

‘About what?’ her sister asks warily.

‘That’s . . . that’s not Charlie in there. Not our Charlie, not
yours
.’

‘Antoinette?’ Loki steps into the doorway of the shed. ‘What is it?’ There’s a baby’s bottle in his hand, filled with what must be the fruit juice he brought with them from the house. She pictures the charliedoll’s mouth sealing itself tight around that rubbery latex teat and sucking, can imagine the wet, fleshy sounds of his lips and tongue greedily at work, and her stomach rolls.

‘I’m sorry,’ Antoinette slurs queasily, then she bends forward and vomits more vodka onto the grass.

‘He is not your brother,’ Sally Paige tells them. ‘He never was your brother, the same as that pretty boy out there was never
Paul
. Your brother is dead.’

Lina watches her face for any signs of deceit. The woman has been lying to them their entire lives, and Lina trusts her like she would a scorpion. She glances at Ant, hoping again to catch her eye. But her sister is still hunched over in the chair beside the bed. Head in hands, elbows on knees. She’s said very little since Lina and Loki dragged her back to the house and forced half a litre of water down her throat.

Just,
I need to talk to Mum.
And,
I have to know.

She won’t even look at Lina. Wouldn’t look at Loki, either. Didn’t even protest when her mother rasped at him to leave, to get the hell out of her bedroom. He wasn’t wanted there. He wasn’t wanted anywhere. Ant simply stared at the floor. Lina was having none of it – Sally Paige had no right to talk to him like that – but he quickly shushed her.

It’s okay. I’ll go and keep Charlie company.

Lina swallows. The sounds the boy made when they tried to bring him up to the house still echo in her ears. Those high-pitched squeals of distress as he flopped and writhed in Loki’s arms, growing louder and more piercing the further he was carried away from the shed. The situation only made worse by Ant who, with flattened palms pressed to the sides of her head, kept screaming at Loki to turn around. To turn around and take him back right the fuck now.

Can’t you see he’s terrified? That shed is his whole world.

Even returned to his crib, it took a while to settle him. That great head rocked from side to side as Lina stroked his hair. His tiny, skinny body hitched and shook. She found his toy frog tangled in the sheet. Placed it into his hand. He hooted softly, stuffed a fluffy green foot into his mouth and began to suck.

Lina pushes the image aside.

‘You shouldn’t have been able to do it,’ Sally Paige is saying to Ant. ‘Whimsies, yes, but not a perfection – not even a broken shambles such as what’s out in that shed. Good grief, you weren’t even two years old. That you could manifest anything . . .’

Ant mumbles something that Lina, standing against the wall on the opposite side of the room, can’t quite catch.

‘Yes, well.’ Sally Paige says. ‘That’s all so much spilled milk now.’

‘Why does he look like that?’ Lina asks.

‘Do you remember that Baby Alive doll you had? You stuck a bottle of water or what-have-you in its mouth and the damn thing would start suckling it down. Peed it right out through a hole between its legs, so you could change its nappy.’ She shakes her head. ‘Horrible thing gave me the creeps. But my mother thought you would like it, Jacqueline, since you were so obsessed with playing mummies-and-babies.’

Lina frowns. ‘Vaguely.’

‘Doesn’t matter. You didn’t much care for the doll anyway. But your sister was fascinated.’

‘I don’t remember it,’ Ant murmurs.

That doesn’t matter either, according to Sally Paige. The fact is, she loved the damn doll. Would drag it around with her everywhere. Charles liked it as well, funnily enough. The two of them would play with it together, with Jacqueline watching doubtfully from the sidelines. They’d shove the bottle into its mouth and hold it up in the air, giggling as the liquid trickled out its nethers. But if Antoinette loved the doll, then she
adored
her older brother. And when Charles died, when he was no longer around to play dollies and blow raspberries on her tummy and . . . well, she was only two years old, not even. How do you explain death to a toddler? How do explain
gone
and
forever
and
never ever coming back
?

All Antoinette understood was that she missed him.

And, missing him, she
made
him come back.

But it’s hardly straightforward, the creation of a perfection. It requires focus and concentration and attention to detail. Not skills at which two-year-old girls tend to excel, and hence, Sally Paige conjectures, the
charliedoll
. Some freakish, stick-figure amalgam of favourite toy and faulty memory. Not at all what Antoinette wanted. Not her brother, not
Charlie
, and so she stumbled sobbing and horrified from her bedroom to find Mummy. Because Mummy would fix it. Mummy would make it better. Mummy would make the charliedoll go bye-de-bye-bye.

Because that’s what a good Mummy
does
.

Ant lifts her head. ‘You took him from me.’

‘You were more than willing to give him up. He terrified you.’

‘Do you remember any of this?’ Lina asks.

Her sister looks ill. ‘Just . . . flashes. Bits and pieces.’

‘Of course she doesn’t remember,’ Sally Paige snaps. ‘Do you think I would let her carry that horror her entire life?’

One lesson she learned from all those parenting books: the mind of a young child is plastic. Impressionable. It fixates and fears. And it can be made to forget.

Aversion therapy. Hypnosis. Sally Paige playing amateur psychologist. Making sure that Antoinette would from then on associate terror and dread with any whimsical evocation. However transitory, however accidental. A relapse bringing with it threats to take her to the charliedoll, to
leave
her with the charliedoll
forever
, and after a while those threats were all that was needed. Threats and tears and crude hypnotic sessions that helped her youngest daughter to – quite literally –
put it out of her mind
. To stuff all the scary-bad away inside a box. To hide the box inside her heart. To lock the box with a super-secret key. To take that key and–

‘Swallow it,’ Ant whispers. ‘Oh god, I
remember
that.’

‘It was hard work,’ Sally Paige says. As another parent might talk of potty training, or teaching their child to read.

But still, in the end, seven or eight months was all it took. Plus a few more years of careful vigilance, so that by the time Antoinette was in primary school, it seemed to have stuck for good. No more whimsies, no more
talk
of whimsies even. Just a normal little girl, like all the other normal little girls in her year. If somewhat more prone to anxiety and odd, irrational fears. Like baby dolls with glassy blue eyes or the bushland out back of the house. Like being asked to make up stories in class or join in playground games of
Let’s Pretend
.

‘Some of it rubbed off on you as well,’ Sally Paige tells Lina. ‘Fear is more contagious than chicken pox and children are very susceptible to the beliefs of those around them. Especially their siblings, or so the books reckon. It kept the both of you away from
him
, anyway.’