What the Light Hides (16 page)

‘No,' I say.

‘When I was in Vienna last year I went to the Freud Museum. It was an extraordinary place, it was…' My mother stops talking and for a moment it looks as if she doesn't know where she is.

‘What?' I ask.

She shakes her head. ‘Nothing, darling. I'm just tired.'

‘You knew,' I say.

‘Knew what?'

‘That Ben wanted to fly.'

‘But of course I knew,' she says, then realises: ‘You didn't?'

‘He was two months away from finishing his degree.'

‘Ben was extraordinary,' she says. ‘He wanted to live an extraordinary life.'

‘You encouraged him to go.'

‘Yes, I did.'

‘How could you?'

‘How could I not? Ben was…he was the light of my life.' She reaches for a serviette. ‘He was exceptional,' she says and blows her nose, ‘but you couldn't see it, David, you just couldn't see it. You wanted him to be like you.'

I get up from the table and reach for my coat. ‘I'll see myself out,' I say.

She grabs my arm. ‘David, stay. I didn't mean…' She stops mid-sentence, then says, ‘Are you going?'

I don't bother to answer.

‘David.' She follows me down the hallway.

I walk out the front door without saying goodbye. My heart is pounding. I can't even stand looking at her.

Then she calls out, ‘Bring Ben next time.'

I turn. ‘What?'

She looks confused. ‘I didn't say anything.'

I walk back towards her. ‘You asked me to bring Ben next time.'

‘Have you gone mad? Why would I do that?'

‘Mum,' I say and touch her arm. ‘You need to see a doctor.'

Before I know what's happening she lashes out and scratches my face, and I react without thinking. I slap her hard on the cheek, very hard, and she stumbles backwards and only doesn't fall because I reach out to grab her. She stares at me, the skin on her cheek a defiant pink.

‘Mum,' I say.

‘Go.' She wrestles out of my grip. ‘You need to go.'

‘I'm sorry.'

She turns away from me and walks down the hallway.

‘Mum, I'm sorry,' I call out.

She doesn't look back.

Standing outside the gate I dial Neil's number with shaking hands, but the call goes straight to his answering machine. I leave a message. ‘Neil, I need your help. You need to check on Mum. Things got out of hand. I just hit her. Could you please check on her? Please.'

I pass Edda. She is kneeling before a garden bed in her front yard, wearing bright green garden gloves.

‘David,' she says. ‘Are you all right?'

I don't answer, but get into my car and look in the mirror. The scratch is deep. I don't know if it was her ring or her nails that cut me, but it bleeds badly. I drive back to Newtown with an old towel pressed against my cheek.

I'm grateful to find a park right in front of the house. My legs are shaking as I walk across the backyard and once inside I collapse on a chair. A moment later I hear Pat at the door, but don't have the strength to get up.

She sits down next to me. ‘Are you okay?'

I can't speak, just shake my head.

‘That needs cleaning,' she says, looking at the scratch. ‘It's deep.' She walks over to the kitchen and finds a first- aid kit in the cupboard.

Back at the table she pours iodine onto the gauze. ‘It's going to sting,' she says. ‘Do you want me to tell you something while I clean it?'

I nod.

She presses the gauze gently against my cheek and says, ‘I always felt like I was too much growing up. Too loud, too extroverted.'

I try to resist the impulse to push her hand away.

‘I went on my first school excursion when I was ten,' she continues. ‘We drove to Katoomba. A bus full of inner-city kids who had never been out of the city.' She pours more iodine on the gauze and presses it onto the scratch again.

I wince.

‘Are you okay?' She removes the gauze.

‘Yes,' I say.

‘When we finally stood at the lookout point in Katoomba, all huddled together in our green polyester uniforms,' she says, ‘I felt like I was about to fly, and looking back I think it was my first experience of freedom. It was exhilarating. I started to giggle, but the headmistress looked at me as if I were mad. “There is nothing to laugh about, Pat,” she said. “You'll get into trouble in life if you laugh at everything you see.”' Pat puts the gauze down. ‘Done,' she says. ‘I think that's as clean as it will get.'

I lean over to kiss her the way I would Vera.

‘You are so good at taking and appreciating,' Vera once said. ‘Of letting yourself take without being a user.' And I take Pat's mouth now; unselfconsciously I taste her lips for comfort.

‘No,' Pat says, pulling back. ‘I don't want that.'

I sit back, feeling foolish. ‘I'm sorry,' I say.

She looks at me, gauze still in her hand. Her eyes are clear as glass.

I want to add, ‘It's habit. I didn't mean it,' but that will make no sense to her. I feel dizzy. The floorboards of the kitchen start to move and the smell of the iodine is overpowering. ‘I'm sorry,' I say again.

I walk upstairs and hear Pat leave a moment after. Then my phone beeps on the table. There's a voice message from Vera.

‘David,' she says. ‘I'm standing in the garden, in our garden, and the light is so beautiful today.' Her voice sounds infinitely sad. ‘I wanted to tell you that the fat possum that lives behind my studio fell off his branch this morning. He went right past the window and looked so surprised. It was such a funny moment and I wish…' She pauses, then says, ‘this is our home, David. This is where you live. Please come home.' Then she hangs up.

I examine my cheek in the bathroom. The skin is swollen and red, and standing next to the sink I swallow two Panadol. Then I stagger to the bed and lie down.

I long to get in the car and drive back home, but I can't. Vera will know straight away that I haven't given up on Ben. But as I drift off to sleep I allow myself to think about our house and the way it looks at dusk, light streaming through the windows.

The room is cold when I wake several hours later, and the blue curtain billows and sinks in front of the open window. But despite the cold I wake with the memory of a summer's morning when Ben was seven.

It was a hot morning and the window was open. It was still dark, but the first birds were already making a racket. And Vera had said something in her sleep.

‘What?' I asked.

She mumbled into the sheet.

I turned to her. ‘What's the matter?'

‘Sorry?' she said sleepily.

‘You were saying something.'

She stretched and moved closer to me. ‘Did I wake you?'

‘Yes.' I put an arm around her.

‘I was dreaming.' She put her head on my arm. ‘You were on a motorcycle without a helmet, racing down this road, shouting, “Too many kangaroos, too many kangaroos!”' She chuckled.

‘Too many kangaroos?' I smiled with my eyes closed.

‘Yes.'

‘Did I look good on the bike?'

‘Baby, you looked so handsome,' she said and moved closer.

She made a little sound getting on top of me. It wasn't a moan; it was a sound that carried something deeper. And the muscles of her thighs shifted as she moved. Maybe it was because I was only half-awake, but I felt a presence of love moving in us and outside of us. The experience was so strong that I wasn't able to answer when Vera asked if I was okay. All I could do was hold onto her. And then there was a knock on the bedroom door.

Vera pulled away from me, turned on the bedside light and drew the covers over us. ‘Come in, darling,' she called out.

Ben was standing dressed in his school uniform, backpack in his hand.

‘Why are you sounding funny?' he said.

Vera cleared her throat. ‘We aren't sounding funny, sweetheart.' She sat up and looked at him. ‘Ben, it's Saturday, there's no school today.'

‘Yes, there is,' he said.

‘No, not today, but you can play in my studio if you want and we can go for a bushwalk later.'

He started kicking the door, one little tap after another. ‘I don't want to,' he said.

‘Okay,' said Vera. ‘Okay, you have to stop kicking the door. We'll find you something else to do.'

He kicked the door harder: bang, bang, bang.

Vera reached for her shirt and said to me, ‘Why don't you make some coffee, and I'll get his toys. We can sit in the lounge under a blanket and drink coffee while he plays.'

I pulled on some shorts and walked past Ben without looking at him.

It's late afternoon and overcast when I wake. I have slept for hours and wince when I get out of bed. My cheek is sore and the painkillers have done nothing to ease my headache. That summer's morning with Vera seems so terribly long ago. I get the box of Panadol out and standing near the window I pop another two pills into my hand. And then I see Neil in the yard. He is sitting on the plastic table, head buried in his hands.

I open the window. ‘Neil,' I call out.

He looks up. ‘I knocked,' he says. ‘I didn't think you were home.'

Neil is clearly drunk. He reeks of alcohol and as I fill the percolator and add coffee to the filter I wonder if it's even worth trying to get him sober.

‘You knew she was leaving me,' he says and, in an attempt to adjust himself, almost falls off the chair.

‘Yes,' I say and put milk and sugar on the table.

‘Why?'

‘Why what?'

‘Why did she tell you before me?'

‘She wanted me to…to be there for you.'

The percolator starts to gurgle.

‘Someone breaks into our house,' he says, ‘breaks into our house, for fuck's sake, and she wants to leave. How does that make any sense? How does it go from A to fucking B like that?'

‘She got scared,' I say and fetch the coffee.

‘I know she fucking got scared, mate. She's my wife.'

I walk back to the kitchenette. ‘Did you want something to eat?' I ask.

He rubs his forehead. ‘I'm going to lose Jared.'

I grab a couple of green apples from the fridge and place them on the table, even though I am fairly sure Neil won't touch them. Whenever Maria lets him get away with it he subscribes to what he calls ‘the low fruit and vegetable diet'.

‘You're not going to lose Jared,' I say and sit down across from him. ‘You will never lose him. He's your son.'

‘I've put the biggest fucking lock on that door and now she wants to leave me. What am I going to do with that?'

‘I don't know,' I say. ‘Drink your coffee.'

‘She got scared,' he says and drinks a big gulp of the coffee.

‘Yes.'

Then his mouth quivers. ‘It's more than that, isn't it?'

‘I don't know,' I say, thinking that right now Neil looks about ten years old.

‘I'm a failure, mate. I drink too much, and I'm not really good at what I do. I just pretend, I pretend all the time. Maria is the only fucking thing I got right.'

‘Drink your coffee,' I repeat.

‘David,' he says and his eyes start to flood.

I panic. ‘Please, Neil. Please don't.'

But he begins to cry. He cries the way he did as a child: in great big sobs. It sounds like something pulled over a gravelly road.

Later I struggle getting him up the stairs. He falls into a fitful sleep on my bed and I stay next to him in a strange kind of vigil. He mumbles in his sleep, words unintelligible but full of pain. I sit in the stench of alcohol and remember the countless times he sat guard over me as a child and how I would go to sleep on his bed, listening to out-of-tune renditions of ‘Hey Jude' and ‘Sgt Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band'. I thought that he was the bravest brother anyone could ever have.

Now I sit for him, the purpose of which is not quite clear to me. But I know that if I don't everything will come apart. I think of Neil crying and I think of my mother and the way she stumbled when I hit her. I think of Jared holding his teddy and of Pat pulling away from me in the kitchen. And I think of Vera alone in our house.

At dawn I walk downstairs and put on another jug of coffee. Neil joins me not long after with red eyes and stub-bled cheeks. He pulls on his jumper while surveying the courtyard from the open doorway. ‘Man, it's cold,' he says. ‘Cold enough to freeze your nuts off.'

I let him joke, and we drink our coffee talking about King Street, the government, Shaggy's superior style on a surfboard. We talk as if we don't have a worry in the world, the way we did in our early twenties when we were intoxicated with youth, ideals and city life. But when Neil leaves he looks at me and I can see that it's all there, everything we didn't talk about, present and raw.

‘Do you want to stay?' I ask.

He shakes his head. ‘I need to be home. As long as she's there I need to be there too.'

I take a shower. Then I bring the bed linen downstairs and put it in the washing machine. Despite my lack of sleep I feel wide awake. I leave the house as the washing machine moves through its cycle with a low growl.

Pat's house is painted bright blue. As soon as I knock on the door I hear running footsteps and a dog barking. Eloise pushes the door open and an old poodle bounces out and begins to lick my hand.

‘Muuum,' shouts Eloise. ‘The man is here.'

Pat appears at the end of the hallway. ‘I told you not to open the door,' she says to Eloise. ‘Scotty, get back inside.'

‘But Mum,' says Eloise, pulling her skirt further up her round belly, ‘it's the man.'

‘But you didn't know that before you opened the door, did you?' says Pat and sends me an apologetic look that makes me feel lousy.

‘Okaaay,' says Eloise, then she is gone in a flash, down the hallway with Scotty.