Heat and Light (16 page)

The house is on the left side of the road, and I get off my bike and walk it over to the gate. I can hear Sarah’s voice from inside. The gate creaks open and I walk up the steps. It is a cute, chic place, the kind of place my brother and I couldn’t have imagined living in when we were growing up.

The beagle whines from the side, a whimper that increases as I get closer. I see the thump of a tail through the slats.

Sarah greets me at the door and lets me in. ‘I haven’t been here long, so excuse the mess,’ she says. ‘You’re going to see a lot of stuff. It’s mostly my grandmother’s.’

We walk into the small front room, full of clothes and knick-knacks on every surface, and into the kitchen, which is equally cluttered. Large open windows treat the room to sunlight. David is sitting there with an energy drink and his phone in his hand.

‘She passed away last month.’ Sarah is putting the kettle on.

‘Hoarder,’ David says, raising his eyebrows.

I watch my brother closely. He doesn’t look up from his phone screen. He has changed out of his uniform – a red apron and a white shirt with black slacks – to a flannelette shirt and jeans shorts, and his knees bump against the table. He is awkwardly tall, has been since he was fifteen.

‘Have you heard from Mum?’ I ask.

‘Nope,’ he says, his fingers skimming the phone keypad rapidly.

‘How have you been feeling?’

‘Fine.’

Sarah moves beside him and says softly, though I can hear, ‘Do you want some scrambled eggs?’

‘I’m fine,’ he mumbles as he looks up at her.

She walks back to the kitchen. ‘Do you want anything, Jodie?’

‘Just some water, thanks,’ I say.

My eyes catch sight of the bookshelf next to an art deco armchair.

‘You like comics?’

She smiles at me. ‘Yes, I’m a massive nerd.’

‘So does David.’ I look across and see my brother has chosen that moment to slink off, the back of him darting down the hallway like a fish, a great white tuna tunnelling under.

The wallpaper is royal red like a theatre. There are photographs on every wall. I hear a door close. I get up and follow David as Sarah nods her head at me.

I knock once on the door, and I hear David walking around in the room.

‘Dave? Can I come in?’

‘Just a sec,’ he says in a neutral voice, but I remember his tricks.

‘Open the door, please,’ I say.

‘What do you want?’

‘I’m your sister, Dave. I just want to have a chat.’ My words hurt me, the recognition of the sister line.

The door stays closed. After a few minutes, I give up. ‘Okay, I’m going to go see Sarah.’

There is a silence. I wonder if he worries about what I’ll say to her. Is she important to him? But he doesn’t answer.

Sarah is sitting on the table with her back to me, her hands plaiting her hair. I sit down beside her, trying to be unobtrusive.

‘How did you go?’ she says.

‘He doesn’t seem to want to talk to me,’ I say quickly.

‘He’s a boy,’ she says. I wish I hadn’t said anything. She has finished her plait and puts her hands down.

‘How has he been?’ I ask.

‘Good. It’s been good.’

‘I suppose he doesn’t help you with dishes much.’ I try to laugh.

‘He’s done alright so far. He’s been training Scary. And takes her out quite a bit.’

I nod. How do I express my worries to her?

‘Since I’ve find out I’m pregnant I’ve been trying to eat a lot of eggs. It’s good for protein.’

‘Yeah?’ I say.

‘And I’ve been drinking lots of herbal tea. Dave drinks it, too.’

‘How far are you?’ I say. There is no shape to her in the long grey dress, not that I can tell.

‘Only seven weeks. I haven’t told anyone, except my mum and Sharon, the manager at the shop. She’s lovely. And my mum’s excited.’

She touches her stomach and I shake my legs under the table, numb from the shock. Something twists in my gut.

‘Let’s take you to meet Scary,’ she says, getting up. ‘You’ve heard her.’

She opens the screen door and the beagle comes racing in, nose first. She spools around my feet. I pick up her wayward, jumping paws and she pushes her wet nose against the inside of my arm. Sarah steps between us to shepherd her outside into the yard, where there are planter boxes and pots with plants. The garden has a vibrancy, and I’m reminded I couldn’t grow anything on my balcony at home. These last few years I’ve worried that my love for my brother isn’t enough. I couldn’t care for him. I gave up on him. I don’t invest enough. Nothing is nurtured in my care.

Sarah bounces an old tennis ball on the pavement twice and then sends it spinning out onto the lawn. Scary willingly obliges, sprinting forward, though after a few rounds she goes to protect the ball in a far corner by the clothesline. The screen door opens and Dave comes out, hands in pockets. He heads over to play with Scary. He commands her to drop the ball, and shows us the tricks he’s taught her.

‘She’s pretty good now, at listening,’ he says. ‘I get her a sausage roll sometimes, one for me, one for her.’

‘You’ve always liked your sausage rolls, Dave,’ I say.

‘Scary is going to have a heart attack soon,’ Sarah says.

Dave turns his back, suddenly closes off before he’s opened up.

‘Mum and Dad didn’t let us have a dog,’ I say to Sarah.

Until I moved out, I knew about every girl who had broken his heart. He told me nothing, but I gathered from the cars, the glimpses of awkward-looking girls on the street. I knew by absence, what he didn’t say. The days he spent in bed with his headphones on.

Sarah is a year younger than I am but better spoken. Her pregnancy is often on my mind. I can’t think of Dave without thinking of her, her soft voice, her narrow laugh, her hands across her stomach. The smell of her grandmother’s house is of tea leaves and cat food. We exchange numbers before I leave, her handwriting smooth against the faded receipt for a textbook I bought this semester but haven’t yet opened. I open the receipt, when I get home, and put the number in my phone.

Sarah calls me up and says she’s not able to invite me over for dinner because they work every night, but on Friday she has a longer break, an hour and a half, and she likes to make an evening meal of sorts, even at 3 p.m. She likes to try out her grandma’s recipes. Would I be interested in coming?

A routine is formed. On Friday afternoons, after I’ve spent the morning in the library, I ride to Sandgate to have a late lunch at the house with Sarah and David, who have just come off their shift for a break. David tolerates my presence. At the table he eats a sandwich Sarah makes him because he won’t try her cooked food, and then he goes off to his room and his games console. When I ask Sarah if it bothers her, she says, ‘Nope, I’m just glad he doesn’t ask me to watch. So boring.’

Sarah has made us blue-pumpkin risotto, leek soup, fresh oysters, and rainbow trout from the shop. When I arrive she is already busy cooking, and the house is persuasive with smells. I don’t eat like this at home. She uses her grandmother’s place setting, beautiful bowls and serving dishes. They are heavy to carry back over to the sink. David’s letters lie untouched where I put them on the side-table.

When we’ve eaten, usually Sarah and I take Scary for a walk on the beach, as she gets moody when she’s cooped up. This is my one crowded hour with Sarah, and it leaves me wanting more.

After that it is late in the afternoon and I sit at the fish cafe, outside, while Sarah works at the counter and David in the kitchen. The sun sets behind the beach and the figures of the people walking by the water deepen into shadows. I speak to Sarah periodically throughout the evening. They get quite busy with groups sitting down or getting up. I concentrate then on my research. Her voice bathes the restaurant during orders. I don’t see or hear David, but his work comes out in the messily wrapped paper, the grease seeping through, the smell of batter and canola oil. We all walk to the house at closing, around 9 p.m. David usually disappears inside. Sarah sometimes ends up driving me home because she’s worried about me riding my bike in the dark or it is raining. We all seem comfortable in this pattern of Friday afternoons-into-evenings.

Dave says Sarah’s a hoarder like her grandmother. She is always wearing brightly coloured vintage clothing, shiny dresses and floral skirts. Every outfit is a spectacle. I ask Dave if she’s ever bought him anything and he screws up his nose and says he warned her off the first time when she bought a pair of blue hippie pants. Like fucking Byron Bay, he says, but his voice betrays a certain tenderness I’ve seen with the dog. I get a few lines out of him sometimes, but whenever I feel like I’ve made progress, he shuts off from me again.

On a quiet Friday night at the fish ‘n’ chip shop, Sarah comes over to my table and says she picked up a jacket for me at a Vinnies in Redcliffe.

‘Me?’

‘Yeah. It will suit you so much.’ She smiles.

I don’t wear jackets anymore, I don’t wear much really. I like the unisex university T-shirt and the cropped jeans I got in a sale. I don’t pay much attention to clothes. One day Sarah said she liked the hoodie I was wearing. Dave said he liked it, too. It was one of those ones with a sporting team across the front.
Chicago Bears
. I don’t know where I got it or what sport they play. I should have asked them.

We grow so comfortable in each other’s presence, our Friday afternoon routine and phone calls during the week, I start to think what it means. A shaping of a sister-in-law, a dear friend, could this be part of the package of my life? I don’t make friends like this. I smile thinking of her while working on the computer, transcribing recordings. If it is adoration it will be my own mistake.

She brought it up one afternoon, surprising me. She came up with the words. ‘We have a strong bond, Jodie. It’s hard to describe. It’s quite special, and a gift. Overpowering at times. I don’t want you to confuse it.’

We are out on the beach with Scary, low tide, shoes off, walking out through the shallows. Scary runs leadless to the grooves of water, licking the salt with delirium, and when satisfied it won’t kill her, pushes her paws in with abandon, splashing mud droplets onto our clothes.

The sky is filled with red kites, kiteboarders in front of us. There are other dogs, which Scary treats with disdain. And couples with their kids. Scary likes people, especially children. Sarah’s equally noticed by the children. They smile at her, and she talks to them. I’m amazed at her lack of pretension. I think, numbly, Sarah is a carer-type person. She will make a good mother.

We are quiet for a while as we walk. We walk right out. This is the ocean. Sarah scrubs her legs with grey sand, to exfoliate, she says. I copy her. It is only now, on the beach, I see she is beautiful. Radiant, even. And I wonder how I, and my brother, got into her life.

Her compliments flow quickly and easily. Don’t tell me I’m a good person, I think. When all I want to do is complicate things, dirty your heart. I don’t say anything, I just nod and she makes plans for a simple friendship. She talks as if it is easy. But I’ve mistimed love like stepping off a station platform and falling through the gap. Why now do I desire to have my breasts on hers?

‘I’ve got some extra blueberries,’ she says back at the house. ‘Do you want to take some home?’

I put the punnet, chilled from the refrigerator, in my bicycle basket. When I get home, I open and light my unit, and get out a tub of plain yoghurt from the fridge and a white porcelain bowl. In the thick texture of the yoghurt the blueberries open up like stars. The fresh fruit stings my lips. I think about how I don’t eat as much fruit as I should. I eat like a beggar when I’m not with her. She is a connoisseur and when we eat we eat like we’re in love.

‘David knows,’ she says.

More often now, she is upset. She is upset, but she doesn’t say it’s because of David. I worry about her, make sure she’s stocked up with boxes of water crackers and ginger ale for the nausea. I get her books out of the library. When we walk I hold Scary so she has her hands free and has her balance. Her backache is a fixture of my thoughts. I think about taking a massage course advertised on the notice board on campus. Then, what to say to her? Can I massage you? Would you like a massage? Would she lie on her bed, take off her dress? This is all too much to think about.

There are rules to this. In this language, we don’t say ‘attraction’. We don’t say ‘sex’. We don’t say ‘love’.

The next time I see Sarah she opens the door already distracted, and says she’s been crook, she hasn’t made anything to eat. I ask her if Dave is home and she says he’s gone out, and he wouldn’t be working that night. David has started to take off a lot. I don’t know where he goes. Sometimes it is for days at a time. He loads a backpack with his laptop and some clothes. A young man, he can go wherever he chooses. He has enough friends for us to wonder where he is. I don’t know if he sees Michael and the others anymore. I do know he doesn’t like to miss work; he needs the money.

‘Is everything okay?’ I ask.

‘Yes,’ she says.

‘Do you know where he is?’

She shakes her head. I want to smooth the worry on her forehead.

‘If you’d rather be alone, let me know,’ I say with my hand leveraged on my hip. ‘It’s up to you.’

‘No, stay,’ she says. ‘I’ll make you something in a bit. First I want to show you …’

She presents to me the china cabinet of the grandmother who has recently died. I stand patiently and try not to fold my arms as she talks me through each piece, the year and where it was made, how much it was bought for, how much it’s worth now. She shows me the bone china, pressing it up against the light of the pale ceiling bulb. We are close but not touching. There is something about the house – the old woman is still present, it is uneasy but also comforting. I feel she is sitting in the old armchair in the corner, her head against the neatly folded crocheted blanket on the top, her hands on the lap of a cherry-stained dress. Sarah taps me on the sleeve and asks if I want something to eat. She takes out crackers from the cupboard and I watch her smear over plant-based spread and then a thick layer of Vegemite. My mother force-fed me Vegemite when I was a child. I want to tell Sarah I don’t like it but she’s kind to think of me when she’s sick and she’s holding the cracker to my lips and I tell myself to think of something else as I open my mouth, embrace the scent of her buttered fingers and aniseed neck and I hardly taste the Vegemite. My body is heightened until she moves away, sweeping the crumbs off the bench and collecting them in her palm. She shuts the window against the wind. I don’t want to be here when my brother gets home.