I wake up to gentle knocking at my door, and before I have time to respond Jack opens it, juggling a cup of coffee and a half-eaten mandarin on a saucer. He has his laptop folded under one arm and over his shoulders he has draped a yak shawl, which slides onto the floor as he hands me the coffee.
‘Sleep well?’
‘Not really. I let all the feelings in and it felt like absolute shit.’
‘Yes, me too. I wish we could liquefy Alain de Botton and suck him up through a straw, so we know how to deal with nights like that.’
He walks around to the other side of the bed and sits down, propping one of the pillows against the headboard to support his lower back.
‘I want to get your opinion on something.’
He opens the laptop and expands a web page full of Zimbabwean Shona sculptures. He drags a magnifying icon over a stone carving of two lovers entwined.
‘What do you think?’
‘Do you need something like that?’
‘Yes, of course,’ he says. ‘For the mantel in the study.’
‘I thought you were a minimalist now?’
‘Nothing can make me deny my spiritual right to beauty, Lia.’
I look at the sculpture and imagine it nestled between the pieces of smooth driftwood, the giant conch shell and all the chunks of rutilated quartz. I think Jack buys things like this in a bid to weigh himself down. I need it all, he said once. It’s the only way I can feel filled up. His credit card, and the fat veins stretching through him, anchor him to the planet. I must have inherited his need for a canopy in order to feel grounded. Jack needs to acquire things, and I need to be mashed across the bed like a sheet of slate. I sip my coffee. Genetically, we might be closer than anyone else in the family.
‘Is that your mother’s name smudged on the glass, or am I hallucinating?’
‘I wrote it the other night. I can wipe it off, sorry.’
‘Did it help?’
‘More than I thought.’
‘Vincent rang the landline earlier.’
‘He did?’
‘I told him that you were probably going to interview with Clear Skies. He didn’t seem very pleased.’
Clear Skies is a famous chain in the funeral industry. They run late-night ads on television where a child throws some doves in the air, while the numbers for their closest parlours are superimposed across the screen.
‘Did he yell?’ I ask, wishing they would stop antagonising each other.
‘No, he just sighed and said that he wishes you all the best with the new job, but that he’s surprised you would be comfortable working for such charlatans.’
‘Did he say anything else?’
‘Don’t think so, honey … Anyway, like I said, it would be good for you to speak to Shell, the director. The work makes you happy. It could just be something part time to give you a bit of confidence. There’s no need to rush back up north anytime soon.’
‘Does Vincent want me to ring him back?’
‘I didn’t get that impression, no. Oh, and when you do speak to Shell, tell her Jacky boy says hi.’
‘I definitely won’t.’
‘Do it, Lia. She and I go way back.’ He rubs his feet together, pleased with the thought.
A fly lands on his mandarin and he swats it away, which makes it buzz frenziedly between us. Jack tries to catch it in his hand, before batting at it with the back of his palm. ‘You’re ruining our peaceful morning!’ He swats at it again. I’m not sure if people who live alone realise this, but as soon as things don’t go their way, they tend to become incredibly agitated.
The fly soars through the air towards me, and I hit it away. Hitting a fly is different to killing a moth, although neither speak well of my character, it has to be said. I should make room for a bit more tenderness, perhaps.
‘How come you’re single?’ I ask, realising as I do that this is not a great start to my new tender way of being.
He clicks his tongue a few times. ‘I was with a woman for six months or so …’
I know I should ask him who she was and why he never told me about her, but I’m not that interested. She’s gone now, and he’s alone again, and asking intimate questions about how and why and when will only create the impression that we are closer than we are. Exchanging facts is not a bond. I think we may have both made this mistake before in the past.
‘What did she look like?’
‘Pretty but in a forced way.’
She was probably the type who enjoyed brunch. Or having lots of different shoes to choose from.
Jack begins to whistle and my phone beeps with a message from him with Shell’s number, followed by an exclamation mark. He’s settled and comfortable on the bed next to me, and when I glance at his computer screen I see he’s scrolling through a list of albums. He clicks on one and the tinny sound of gamelan music leaks out of the laptop’s speakers. He opens the chapter he is working on and begins typing furiously.
This room wouldn’t have been used since I was last here. He would have closed the door and left it locked up like other parts of the house. But here he is. Opening the curtains and lying in bed with his laptop and fruit. I think he wants to be close to me but he doesn’t seem to want much else. There are so many subjects we could be discussing that might unravel our previous misunderstandings or hurt. I’m sure he would love to ask why I don’t write back to his emails, or why I only ever answer every third call. I could ask him why he is always kind of obsessed with me but preoccupied with things that have nothing to do with me. I could ask why he only feels inspired to write when Simon or I visit. For him it’s enough just to be physically close. Well, fine then. You have to give a little to get a little. I put my hand over his, and he freezes. The typing stops, and we both look straight ahead. It is extremely awkward, but I feel it’s important, for reasons I don’t yet know. I leave my hand on top of his for twelve seconds before taking it away and getting out of bed.
I ring Shell’s number as Jack turns the music down but not off. Picking up some clothes from my case, I hang them in the wardrobe while listening to the dial tone. I am putting my underwear and bathers into a drawer when a woman answers. I introduce myself.
‘I’ve been waiting for you to call! It would be good if you could come in for a chat. Would today suit you?’ Shell says.
‘Perfect,’ I say. We agree to meet around lunchtime.
Jack leaves me to get ready. I brush my teeth and hair, and make sure the hairs of my eyebrows are facing the same way. I pull a dress from the wardrobe and put it on, then pinch some colour into my cheeks. Ready.
Clear Skies is much bigger than Aurelia’s, with a driveway that leads right up to the door for the hearse, and a chapel that seats more than eighty people. I can only imagine their targets for the year in a place this grand. It looks like a high-end function centre, and it’s not immediately clear whether you would host a wedding or a funeral here. There’s an established garden filled with roses and tall lavender bushes. As I walk past a bush, I tear off one of the soft purple flowers and rub it into my wrists.
The first woman I see when I enter is wearing a neat grey uniform and watering a small potted rubber tree. She gives me a broad smile, and even goes so far as to put down the watering can and formally welcome me. Judy could learn from this woman; a little peer-to-peer scaffolding wouldn’t go astray.
‘You must be Jack’s daughter. I’m Barbara,’ she says. She doesn’t drop her smile, but rather extends it further across her face.
The professionalism is astounding. The way she escorts me over to an armchair and hands me a glass of water with lemon in it. The way she excuses herself to go and get Shell. Even the air vaporiser in the room has a selection of oils to choose from. I wander over and add a few to the mix. Rosemary. Grapefruit. Pine. The aroma shifts instantly into something a little more laden, and I step back from the mist, pleased with my contribution.
On the table next to me there are pamphlets and business cards for grief services, as well as advertisements for hand-turned clay urns, celebrants, local mental health services. And, of course, there are the ever-present boxes of tissues placed around the room at strategic intervals. I pull a long, hardy tissue out of a box and shove it in my bag for later, and take one of the cards for a psychic too. My mother would have loved it here.
Shell walks into the foyer at a cracking pace, led by her hand, which I shake poorly. There’s a real art to handshakes and I seem to have regressed with my own. She looks to be in her mid-forties and she’s an odd colour, which sometimes happens when fake tan is applied in dedicated layers. Her skin is a flat caramel with a green tinge, and she has dark lines that run across the inside of her wrist, where the tan has collected. Other than that, she is beautifully groomed and wears a string of pearls over her immaculate grey dress and bolero. I can see why Jack likes her: she radiates that sunny positivity common to women who love watching musical theatre. I bet she would laugh off any miscommunication that arose between them, too. Women like her have beautiful lives.
‘Do you have a mother?’ I ask, realising that, as the first words out of my mouth, they are not a great introduction to who I am.
‘She passed,’ Shell says, sitting on a couch and gesturing for me to sit beside her. She bends down and adjusts her anklet, which is a gold angel on a chain. It might’ve been a gift from her mother.
‘I can’t believe that so many people experience this and still function,’ I say.
‘Jack told me about Josie. I’m so sorry.’
‘How did you cope?’ I ask.
‘Well …’ She crosses her legs, places both hands over her knee and looks up at a ceiling fan, which is turning lazily on the lowest setting. ‘I’m an Aquarius, so it took me a long time to forgive myself. I would be up all night going over every conversation we ever had. I was playing my memories of her on a loop, but not the memories I wanted. They were the ugly ones. The ones where I was irritated by her.’
‘What helped?’ I ask.
‘Nothing really—just time. I miss her, and think about her still, but she’s with me. Sometimes I’ll make decisions that I know she must’ve cosmically had a hand in.’
I see her nostrils twitch as she smells the new aroma I’ve made, but I can’t tell if she’s into it or not.
‘And you would know this yourself, being in the industry, but you’re already a bit paranoid that everyone around you is dying. After my mother went I clung to every person I met. I was a bit possessive, perhaps, as Jack has probably told you.’
‘Did you go to her funeral?’
‘Yes, we had a small one here—it was really special. I was there in the room with her while she was made up, and then my sisters and I all took turns helping to do her hair. She loved her hair a particular way, a very high French twist; we got there in the end.’
I think about what it would have been like to style my mother’s hair for her viewing. How carefully and slowly I would have brushed it out with the blow dryer wand, making it glossy and smooth. A full ritual in itself. I would have loved making her look so beautiful and peaceful. She would have loved it and I needed it.
‘Thanks for seeing me,’ I say. ‘I really want to work here. I’m not usually this open with people I’ve just met.’
‘To be honest, we really need you.’
Shell turns to the receptionist. ‘Barbara, am I wrong, or do we have a bunch of things that need doing now?’
‘Oh, there’s plenty to do!’ Barbara says, lifting up a vase full of fresh flowers. ‘This water needs changing for a start.’
‘I’ll do it,’ I say.
‘Perfect,’ Shell says.
When I’m done with a few odd jobs, I find my way to the bathroom and step inside the first cubicle. I kick the lid of the toilet closed then sit on it. I am not sure if it’s grief, but I have found myself seeking solace in bathroom stalls and I wonder if it’s because they are the only individual-sized room available in public. There could be a market in providing people with calm places to be alone with their thoughts. Maybe then I wouldn’t find myself so close to human waste while contemplating profound things.
I tap my feet on the tiles, grateful that I’m here. My body and mind seem at ease in this environment. I am pleased and relieved. It’s a strange thing to have a physical form that grows and moves around you. I have always been the pilot of this mass, not particularly integrated with it. But now, as I look down at the length of myself, I feel combined. Grieving my mother’s physical form has made me connect to my own. We are our bodies, at the end of the day. I touch my own cheek with one palm. I am using a part of myself to touch another part, I am two parts of a whole. I shake my head, because it’s all quite unbelievable.
I hear the door to the bathroom open.
‘Amelia, I’m so sorry to disturb you, but there’s someone here to see you and, well, we’ve put him in the arrangements office because he was starting to make quite a fuss.’
‘Who?’ I ask, standing up. ‘Who is here?’
I leave the cubicle and find Shell standing outside the bathroom door, nervously dipping a teabag in and out of a large pink cup. It’s shaped like a clam and the handle is a long crab claw. I can tell she loves it. She probably has ten cups of tea a day in it.
‘We’ve tried to calm him down,’ she tells me, ‘but it doesn’t seem to be working.’
I stride towards the office, and as I near it, I hear the honk of someone blowing their nose.
‘Vincent!’ I call.
‘Amelia Aurelia! Let me out at once!’
I can see they’ve blocked him in using one of the ornamental pillars, and I lean it on its edge to roll it aside.
‘This is a new low!’ Vincent says when I open the door. He points to the urn shaped like a weeping cherub. He then widens his eyes while pointing at a minuscule dead spider near the skirting board, before stabbing his finger at a ball of dust under the table.
‘I am not to be detained here,’ he says, now pointing over my shoulder at Shell, who stands behind me. ‘How would you like this to go online?’ Vincent’s eyes are so wide I can see white all the way around his irises, but he doesn’t look angry, just incredibly stressed. I have an overwhelming feeling of tenderness for him and his ability to cause such chaos.
‘I’m going to hug you,’ I say, moving towards him. ‘Stay still.’
Immediately, he drops his hand and closes his eyes, waiting for me, and I embrace him. His body softens against me.
‘Jack has poisoned you against me, hasn’t he?’
I keep holding on to him. ‘No one has poisoned me against you.’
‘And I bet you haven’t thought once about me and my pain.’ Vincent takes a large, shaky breath, and rests his head on my shoulder.
‘I have,’ I say. ‘I’ve thought about it heaps.’
I let go of him, and he pulls a chair out from the table and sits down.
‘Your brother got a python finally.’ He wipes his nose. ‘He named it Jeffrey and won’t put it back in its enclosure.’
‘That’s awful,’ I say. ‘What terrible timing.’ I put my hand on his back.
‘Carmen doesn’t believe animals should be in cages.’ He wipes his eyes. ‘Do you have any idea how it triggers my anxiety to have a snake crawling around the house? I can’t even sit on the sofa anymore because it likes to warm up between the cushions.’
‘Uncool.’ I shake my head and pat him in the same rhythmic way that Vlad patted me.
‘You probably would have sat on the thing by now and broken it. Jeffrey wouldn’t last a day around you.’
Tears run down his cheeks and drop into his lap, soaking into his pants.
‘Why didn’t you come to the funeral?’ he asks.
‘I couldn’t,’ I say.
‘None of us wanted to be there! But you go to funerals because you have to!’
He’s wearing an old skivvy, and as he wipes his eyes on his sleeve, I notice that it’s the one my mother banned him from wearing because he sewed shoulder pads into it. I lean down and squeeze him again.
‘I’m sorry,’ I say, not realising how much I mean this until it’s out, and into his ears.
‘Jack said I can stay with you until my flight leaves tomorrow.’
This is a surprise, and I blink a few times, processing it.
He picks up Simon’s backpacking rucksack and puts it over one shoulder. He lifts his chin, arranging himself in a dignified posture.
‘I am calm, and it is safe to let me out now,’ he announces in a loud voice. ‘My daughter can verify this!’
Shell appears in the doorway, smiling warily. ‘All good?’ She addresses me, but nods towards him.
‘He’s fine now,’ I say. ‘It’s just an emotional time.’
Vincent walks towards the door, stopping to look back at me. ‘I’ll see you at Jack’s.’
I perform some perfunctory tasks over the next few hours while obsessing about what Jack and Vincent might be talking about without my careful monitoring.
I message Jack: How’s it going?
He replies: Yes!
It’s such a Vincent thing to do, to come unannounced and uninvited. He’s willing to risk it all. God knows what is happening between the two of them. As if this family needs any more drama or pain. They are both so unbelievably self-involved. And here I am, the piggy in the middle, trying to mourn my mother in peace. It will be the wedding portrait in the hall that will undo Vincent. My god. I should be there. I take the bins out and wipe all the keyboards with a felt cloth while Shell hovers nearby, asking stunningly probing questions.
As I wipe down the countertop, she washes her hands thoroughly at the sink.
‘So you have two fathers, and you call them both by their first names, but has it always been that way?’
I accidentally drop the cloth and stand staring at it for a moment, before bending down with a groan and picking it up.
‘And your mother died, and now you’re here with your biological dad, Jack, but you missed the agitated one—Vincent—a lot?’
I am still stressed thinking about the two of them at the house. I worry they will be too honest with each other. Maybe they have even begun to blame my mother, or me. I want to adjudicate their meeting; someone needs to stop them from being unkind to one another.
To silence Shell’s questioning for a moment, I tell her about Simon’s throuple, a mistake on my part, as Barbara overhears from the foyer and wanders in, eager to contribute.
‘It’s not such a big deal, though, is it?’ Barbara says, with one hand on her hip. ‘Paul and I are swingers—it’s quite normal these days.’
‘It’s totally different,’ I say, annoyed at myself for bringing it up.
‘Oh yeah—how so?’ says Shell, flicking on the kettle and pulling up a chair.
‘A throuple is an ongoing relationship between all three people,’ I say.
‘I can’t believe that works,’ says Shell, shaking her head.
‘Not necessarily ongoing,’ says Barbara. ‘It can be a one-off event. It’s rare that Paul and I meet up with the same couple. I like variety and Paul is happy to go along with anything.’
‘No, we are not talking about the same things. You’re talking about swinging—a throuple is different.’
‘I mean, there have been some men I’ve wanted to continue seeing—alone, if you get what I’m saying, not even with Paul present.’
Shell nods solemnly.
‘Again, that’s not a throuple—that’s an affair.’
‘Well, an affair never killed anyone,’ Barbara says, taking a mug from the shelf and spooning two sugars into it.
I’m growing impatient, as I need to be home to deal with Vincent and Jack who, twenty-five years after they first met, might finally kill each other. I am shallow-breathing just thinking about what could possibly be transpiring between the two of them. I imagine Vincent tearing the wedding portrait off the wall and smashing it against the banister. And Jack, mortified, cutting his hands trying to scoop up all the broken glass. I imagine them both on their knees, on the cut glass, crying and arguing.
‘I need to go,’ I say suddenly to Shell and Barbara, ‘I need to make sure everyone is behaving.’