five on Sunday morning. He’d told us what we would need to bring: a surfboard and wetsuit, and something we could drop into the ocean to remember Mum and Jazzie with.
I thought about taking Jazzie’s bear, the one Mum had given her when she was a baby and that Jazzie used to take to bed every night, drag to kindy, and play endless imaginary games with. But I couldn’t cope with the idea of Bear being dropped into the ocean. And he probably wouldn’t sink. He would bob around and follow us back into shore, wet and soggy and bedraggled. In the end, I decided on the gold bangle, the one Nan had given Mum when she was a little girl and then Mum had given Jazzie. I thought about the fact that Ray and I would grow up one day and each of us might get married, maybe have kids of our own – maybe a little girl who the bangle would fit perfectly. But the bangle wasn’t for that little girl, it was for Jazzie’s daughter, the daughter Jazzie would never have. It seemed right that the bangle be dropped to the bottom of the ocean, that its life should come to an end with Nan, Mum and Jazzie, but I wasn’t sure what Dad would think.
It was dark and cold outside. The streetlights were still on, and a light drizzle was falling. We piled the three surfboards on top of the car, tied them down and then clambered in, waiting for the car heater to warm us. No one talked.
Uncle Scott met us in the car park.
We squeezed into our wetsuits. The sand was cold under our feet.
We paddled out beyond the breakers, out to where the waves would let us bob on our boards without having to paddle. Then we made a circle of sorts and sat there in the water, straddling our boards.
Dad spoke. ‘We could have done this anywhere. Katie probably would have preferred we went up to the mountains, to some cold, fast-flowing stream. And Jazzie? Well, she would have liked us to go to a theme park with rollercoasters that would make us all scream so she could watch and giggle. But in the end, I decided it needed to be somewhere that worked for all of us, somewhere we felt a connection to something bigger than us.’ He reached into the neck of his wetsuit and pulled out a thin pink ribbon that was loosely looped around his neck. There was a silver key hanging from the end of it. He lifted the ribbon over his head.
‘This was Katie’s key, she kept it in a box on our dressing table. The key’s from a long time ago, when Katie and I first moved in together. It’s the key to a one-bedroom flat that we rented on the beachfront when we lived in Sydney.
‘When we moved into something bigger, Katie kept one of the keys we’d been using for our old place. She told me it was the key to our hearts, the key to the place where we’d first shared our innermost secrets. So, this is what I want to give to Katie, and to Jazz too. To Katie, because my heart was hers long before the key, and to Jazz because the key is Katie and me, the two people in the world who loved her most.’ With that, Dad tossed the key up into the air between us.
It lifted, then dropped towards the ocean, the ribbon twisting in a line behind it. And then, as it plunged into the water, the ribbon spiralled down until it couldn’t be seen anymore.
Dad looked like he might have been about to say a prayer or some sort of blessing, the way he was sitting with his head bowed, but he didn’t say anything, not out loud anyway. After a while, he looked up and turned to Uncle Scott. ‘You want to go next, Scottie?’
Uncle Scott nodded, took a breath, squeezed his eyes tightly closed and then said, ‘Katie was my best friend, my sister, the person in the world who could make me laugh the most. Katie used to joke that she was the reason I could never find a good woman, because no one could live up to her. She was probably right.’ Uncle Scott moved his hands back and forth in the water. ‘Jazz was like a little Katie. Watching Jazz grow up was like being in a time warp, like going back to when Katie and I were kids. She was a whirlwind. No one had the ability to come through my house and mess it up as fast as Jazz did, and no one had the ability to look up at me and smile and say, “Sorry, Uncle Scottie,” in such a sweet, sweet voice that all I could do was bend down and hug her.’
He stopped and reached into the tight sleeve of his wetsuit, prying something from it. He held it up to show us. It was an old wheel, a dusty-red colour, around the same size as a skateboard wheel. ‘This is what I want to give to Katie and Jazz. When Katie was a little girl, she loved to rollerskate. She used to go up and down our concrete verandah for hours, until the mozzies and midges started to bite, or until Mum called her in for dinner.
‘Katie didn’t know I had her skates – they somehow ended up in the bottom of one of the boxes that came to my house after Mum died. I thought about giving them to Katie, but then, when Jazz was born, I decided to save them until Jazz’s feet were big enough.’ He rubbed his thumb back and forth over the wheel then lifted it up to show us all. He kissed the wheel and held it up to the dull clouds above us, before gently plopping it into the water. It sunk so fast it was impossible to follow.
We sat there waiting for the wheel to find the bottom of the ocean and perhaps nestle in next to the key.
Dad splashed water over his face. ‘Ray? You okay to go next?’
Ray nodded. He held up the model aeroplane that he’d been balancing on the front of his surfboard. ‘This was the first model aeroplane I ever made. Mum and I made it together.’ He held it in both of his hands. ‘When Jazzie got bigger, past all that baby stage, we used to sneak into Luka’s bedroom when he wasn’t there and lie down on his bed and look up at the planes on the ceiling. Jazzie loved it most when there was a bit of breeze coming through the window, when the planes wobbled around at the end of their fishing line. She’d lie there giggling and pointing with one finger, saying, “Gook, they flying, gook!” Her favourite one was this one. She loved the red stripes that ran along either side of it.’ Then Ray started to cry.
We waited, bobbing up and down on our boards, until he could keep going.
‘I know I didn’t say it often enough when you were both alive, didn’t even show it sometimes, but I love you both so much.’ With that he threw the plane into the air like you would throw a paper plane. I thought it would land on the top of the water and float, but Ray must have put something in it to make it heavy, because it came back down nose first, going into a tailspin as it sank to the bottom of the ocean.
After a bit, Dad said, ‘You right, Luka?’
I reached into my sleeve and pulled the gold bangle out, holding it up for everyone to see, making sure Dad knew what I wanted to give to the sea. It was hard to talk. I was shivering, even though I had a wetsuit on. ‘I found this bangle at the bottom of Jazzie’s jewellery box, under all the treasures she loved most. It’s the bangle that Mum gave Jazzie. The bangle that Nan gave Mum. The bangle that Jazzie would have given her daughter.’ I stopped, waiting to see if Dad was going to tell me not to throw the bangle in, but he didn’t say anything. I ran my thumb over the smooth gold, feeling the bump of the two dents, trying to find the right words, but they wouldn’t come.
So, I pressed the bangle to my lips and kissed its coldness. Jazzie would have liked me to try and skim it across the surface of the water, to see if the bangle could be bounced like a stone, but it didn’t seem right to separate the bangle from all the other love and sadness that was at the bottom of the ocean. So, I tossed it up high and let it plop into the middle of our circle, watching it plummet the way my heart had the day I found out Mum and Jazzie were gone.
Dad started to sing Nick Cave’s ‘Into My Arms’. His voice low and husky. It sounded like it was full of the clouds and rain that was now splattering the surface of the ocean.
Uncle Scott joined in. Ray in the chorus.
I sat on my new board, my throat thick and heavy, unable to sing anything. By the time they finished, the rain was coming down so hard that we couldn’t see the beach.
Dad closed his eyes and turned his head to the sky, letting the rain splash on his face until you couldn’t tell where his tears finished, and the rain started. Uncle Scott and Ray had their heads bowed to the ocean.
No one saw the two pelicans that circled above us, once, twice, three times, and then, as if in some rehearsed unison, they dipped their inside wings and headed towards the horizon.