I jump the low brick fence at number seven and bang on the screen door. The flat, blue sky is unnerving; it’s painted on, brash and claustrophobic. My phone beeps. It’s the third text from Craig in as many minutes. ‘Jesus, give me a chance,’ I mutter. I turn the handle and enter gloom.
The house is closed against the heat, blinds and curtains drawn. I squint as I make my way down the hallway and past the tiny kitchen, following my mother’s voice.
‘I’m back here,’ she calls.
Mum is down on her hands and knees cleaning the bath. She squirts Jif on a cloth, leans into the tub and rubs. I lean on the doorframe.
‘Hey, you,’ I say. ‘Got a sec?’
The bathroom is oppressive. A drizzle of sweat is visible on her neck and back.
‘It won’t clean itself,’ she says.
Mum has lived on the Gold Coast for seven years. Having emerged from the sand five decades earlier, the city carries none of the burdens of history. People come to catch their breath, worn down by failed marriages, boredom, the cold weather, death. And when it is their turn to die, far from their home towns and small familiarities, they are enshrined in sparkling, smooth-lined crematoriums.
She stifles a groan as she puts a foot out in front of her and uses the bath to haul herself up. I grew to her height – five foot two – but she has been shrinking this past year. She hustles me out of the doorway into the hall. My hair is pulled back in a rough ponytail and I redo it now, pulling the strands quickly through the band and back again, twice. I try to catch her eye. She walks past me with purpose, past the kitchen and living room to the largest of the three bedrooms at the front of the house.
I follow her, hovering.
Her pale green eyes narrow with concentration as she kneels before her dressing table and begins the ritual of unpacking and repacking it. Craig says she is performing this task with alarming frequency. It has grown worse over the years.
‘Got everything you need for the barbie?’ I ask.
‘Yep. I’m all ready to go.’
She is wearing a light cotton dress and her grey-blonde hair is tucked behind her ears. Watching her, I am a child again. She leans into one of the drawers and then twists her head towards me. The lines on her face draw me back.
‘Hairspray,’ she suddenly announces.
‘Hairspray?’
‘If you’ve got biro marks on your clothes, hairspray will do the trick. Just spray it on the stain and it will lift right off.’
‘Cool!’ I say, bemused.
She has tidied her drawer but lingers over the white box tucked under one of her slips. She lifts it gently, sits it on top of the Queen Anne dresser and wipes it with a soft, dry cloth. She draws it to her lap. Inside are my sister’s ashes.
‘We could sprinkle them over the ocean,’ I say.
‘She was scared of sharks.’
‘Maybe in a park overlooking the sea?’
‘She didn’t like to be alone, especially at night.’
‘A rose bush, right outside in the garden.’ I say it forcefully as if it has all been settled.
‘She didn’t want to be buried. She needs to be with her mother.’
Screw my brother and his superior skills in rock, paper, scissors.
Reen bustles up the hallway shouting her arrival. She fills the room as she gives Mum a kiss and flops on the bed. She is flush with life, in a large, fifty-something, ripened kind of way. It’s the mouth you notice first, wide and pouty, always bleeding with bright lipstick. It’s a little too generous for her face but her dark brown eyes rescue her.
Reen lives next door in a one-bedroom unit with Roy. He has emphysema. Their son Cliffy sleeps on the couch in their living room. He has schizophrenia. She says he’s OK when he takes his medication. Sometimes she gets a phone call from the cops saying they’ve locked him up. She says he’s bloody strong when he’s having one of his turns.
‘Can you tell her, Reen?’ I say, emboldened by the prospect of an accomplice. ‘Tell her the whole “ashes in the sock drawer” thing is getting a bit creepy.’
‘I’ll do no such thing,’ she says. ‘Your Mum’ll scatter ’em when she’s good and ready.’
Mum takes the white box and nods at Reen, who follows her. They walk down the hallway to the kitchen door and Mum places the box on the side table opposite. I follow behind, feeling like an afterthought.
‘I want Rachael out here with me today,’ Mum explains to no one in particular.
In the kitchen she takes vegetables from the fridge and places them on the table of the small breakfast nook. Reen miraculously slides into one of the seats, tucking her ample proportions into a seemingly impossible space. I go to the sink and start rinsing the lettuce. Mum is chopping onions for the salad and tears appear. I have never seen her cry, not even when Rachael died. Even at the trial of the drunk who killed her daughter, her face remained smooth and expressionless, as if she was waiting for a bus.
Mum’s other half, Bob, is at the back door taking off his boots. He has been mowing the lawn before the barbecue. Mum says it drives her mad that he leaves it till the last minute. He pokes his head around the doorway and chuckles.
‘What’s going on here? Secret women’s business?’
‘You betcha,’ Mum says, winking at Reen.
Bob is wearing khaki shorts and a black singlet stretched to breaking point over his huge stomach, which looms larger due to his lack of height. He has a grey moustache and is wearing his favourite hat, which rarely leaves his head.
‘I’ll clean myself up and then I’ll fire up the barbie,’ he says as he heads towards the bathroom.
My phone beeps. Craig again. The text reads, All sorted. Shit.
‘Mum, you know I mentioned a bush?’ I try again.
The screen door at the front of the house bangs and we can hear voices in the hallway.
I finger the silver cross hanging around my neck. It was Rachael’s and I’m hoping Mum notices I am wearing it.
Roy and Cliffy appear in the doorway. Roy is huffing and puffing. He leans his small body against the wall, overcome with the exertion of walking from next door. Cliffy is his polar opposite, tall and twitching with nervous energy.
‘OK,’ Mum announces. ‘Officially too many people in the kitchen.’
She squeezes past everyone, carrying two bowls of salad, and we follow, emerging on the small porch. It is a concrete slab with a green shadecloth awning that offers some respite from the Queensland sun. A sea breeze teases us with bursts of cool air. Mum places the bowls on the table, its lace covering flirting with the wind. The esky holds the Fourex on ice, minus the one Bob’s nursing in a Gold Coast Titans stubby-holder. He is provoking the sausages on a large home-made brick barbecue over by the paling fence.
I try calling Craig to warn him. It goes straight to voicemail and I swear under my breath.
‘Craig, it’s me. Call me when you get this.’
‘Where is Craig?’ Mum asks with her back to me.
‘Not sure. He’s not picking up.’
Cliffy is sitting on an old wrought-iron chair he has placed on the lawn. His foot taps the ground in quick, insistent beats as if he is primed and ready to run when given the signal. He pulls off his T-shirt and tosses it over the back of the chair. He has strong shoulders and a surprisingly taut stomach. A tat on his left pec announces, I am God. I wonder if he has stopped taking his medication.
‘Want a beer, Cliffy? One won’t hurt,’ Mum says, handing over the small brown bottle.
‘Cheers, Mrs D.’
Roy and Reen sit side by side in the shade. He rattles with the effort of breathing and she is vigilant, ready to take over if needed. Mum disappears inside and re-emerges carrying the white box. She sets it carefully on a small bench below the laundry window, retrieves her beer from the table and makes a toast.
‘To Rachael.’
‘Hear, hear. To Rachael.’
Everyone sips their beer, including me. Then I take a couple of gulps but it doesn’t help. I text Craig, Abort! Abort!
The gate creaks open at the side of the house and my brother’s face pokes around the corner. He is wide-eyed, his curly brown hair matted with salt and sea. He shuffles forward, dragging a skinny bush, its disappointing foliage wilting in the heat.
‘Ta da!’
Everyone is silent. The barbecue crackles as another sausage pops its skin.
‘What?’ he says.
Mum edges forward on her seat, ready for a fight.
I walk over and try to put an arm around her shoulder. She shrugs me off.
Craig glares at me. ‘I thought you had cleared it with her.’
‘I said I would talk to her.’
‘For God’s sake, Mum, it’s been ten years.’
‘Your point?’ Mum folds her arms and leans back in her chair.
‘Look, I’ll dig a hole right here, we’ll scatter the ashes and you’ll have beautiful roses all year round.’
‘I’m not ready.’
Mum jumps up and grabs the white box.
Craig walks towards her and begs, ‘Please, Mum, give me the ashes.’
‘Back off.’ Mum is sidling towards the door.
Reen is on her feet, covering some of the ground between Mum and Craig.
‘Now, now, she’s your mum. What she says goes!’
For a minute, I think my brother is considering a reluctant retreat.
Instead he says, ‘Reen, stay out of it,’ and walks over to Mum.
He tries to take the box from Mum carefully, gently loosening her grip, but she jerks it back and it falls from her hands. The lid bounces away, the ashes spill out. A sudden gust takes the silver tailings and throws them in the air, lifts them in a shimmering dance and showers them over everything.
The remains of Rachael are in our eyes and up our nostrils and coating our hair. Roy struggles with the new hazard, wheezing and rocking. Reen flaps her hands dangerously close to his face as she tries to clear the air. Cliffy jumps onto the seat of his rickety chair, all elbows and knees, like a giant praying mantis. Bob eases back to the barbecue, tongs in hand, retreating from the menacing grey mist.
Craig and I scream and jump around, flailing our arms as if spiders have fallen from the sky and are running through our hair and across our skin. He leaps from foot to foot, rushing his fingers across his scalp and shaking his head. I frantically wipe my face and arms.
‘Fuck. This is freaking me out!’ Craig calls from beneath his upside-down hair.
‘Jesus, I don’t want her on me!’ Cliffy sprints to the back fence.
Reen shows superhuman strength by lifting Roy off his chair with one hand and turning it 180 degrees before dropping him back onto it. Convinced his fragile airways are safe, she turns her attention to everyone else and, sliding her sleeves up her arms, she lurches towards the swirling debris.
A noise emerges from beneath the cries and the curses. It’s Mum. Laughter trickles out of her as she kneels before the little white box, trying to scoop up what’s left of the pile. She is scraping and laughing and looking at me and I hold my breath, partly because I don’t want to suck my sister into my lungs and partly because I want to remember the sound.
The Life You Chose and That Chose You