Perfections (33 page)

Sally Paige releases Antoinette’s hand, slumps back against the bedhead with a glare that would strip not only paint but whatever lies beneath it. They’ve been at it for close to an hour, door closed and blinds drawn to block out the glare of the late morning sun that strains her mother’s eyes. An awkward kind of guided meditation that Antoinette finds vaguely embarrassing and, ‘I don’t know what I’m supposed to be doing,’ she protests, shifting her chair closer to the bed.

‘Empty your mind,’ her mother says. ‘That should be easy for you.’

Antoinette takes a breath, reminds herself that, for all the best efforts of the syringe driver and the medication it dutifully doles out, the woman propped up in the middle of all those pillows is frail and sick and in no small measure of discomfort. She nods towards the Dilaudid on the bedside table, the amber bottle as yet unopened in the week since Dr Chiang prescribed it, the small measuring glass unused.
For breakthrough pain
, his directions careful and firm.
Take it as needed and with no less than four hours between doses. It’s very strong stuff.

Sally Paige is taking the
only as needed
part very seriously. ‘No,’ she says, not waiting for Antoinette to ask. ‘I’m saving that for when it gets worse.’

‘I don’t think there’s rationing in place, Mum. We can get another prescription if you run out.’

‘I’m already muddle-headed enough.’ She holds out her hand. ‘Come on then, let’s give it another go before I’m completely exhausted.’

‘No.’ Antoinette crosses her arms. ‘It’s pointless. You have to give me more to go on than
empty your mind
.’

‘I’m not teaching you to ride a bike. This should come naturally.’

‘Well, obviously it doesn’t.’

‘Your connection to that boy, you imagine it as a stone?’

‘Like a weight, like a pendulum hanging inside me.’

‘Then cut the cord and pass it to me.’

Antoinette rolls her eyes, exasperated. ‘For godsake, Mum, it’s just a metaphor.’

‘Everything is a metaphor.’ Her eyes narrow in thought. ‘That Sharon left her vodka here, yes?’

‘What’s left of it. Time to drown our sorrows?’

‘No dear. Time to drown your inhibitions.’

The Smirnoff is stashed in the freezer and Antoinette pours herself a generous shot, sculls it and coughs a little as the alcohol burns down her throat. She pours another, hesitates then takes the bottle and follows the faint sound of the television that drifts from the living room. Jacqueline is curled up on the couch, watching an episode of
Mad Men
with a hot water bottle hugged to her stomach.

‘Still feeling bad?’ Antoinette asks from the doorway.

Her sister looks around. ‘A lot better. I’m just too comfortable to move.’

‘I didn’t know you liked this show.’

‘I don’t think I do like it.’ She nods at the bottle of Smirnoff. ‘Going that well in there, huh?’

‘Our mother is trying to get me drunk.’

‘Your mother,’ her sister corrects.

‘She thinks if I just relax and loosen up a little . . . god, sounds like the ending to a bad date, doesn’t it?’

‘Makes sense,’ Jacqueline says. ‘You’d been drinking when you made Loki.’

‘Yeah. Hey, where
is
Loki?’

‘He went for a walk out back. Don’t worry, he has my phone with him.’

‘Cool.’ She raises her glass, downs the second shot and grimaces. ‘Jacqueline, listen. If it ends up I can’t do this thing . . .’

‘But you will.’ Her sister smiles confidently. ‘Of course you will.’

Lina hears the squeak of the screen door out back and reaches for the remote. She’s decided that she doesn’t care for shows about advertising any more than she cares for the carrots and sticks of advertising itself these days. It’s a scary sort of relief, to no longer feel the constant need to question herself. To worry if she’s wearing the right clothes. Choosing the right furniture. Saying the right things.

Being
the right thing.

Loki is in the kitchen by the sink, staring out the window. His hands are clasped behind his head, elbows akimbo. He’s wearing the red T-shirt she bought him, the one with the bright yellow Aztec sun printed on the front, and it’s riding up his back. Lina wants to press her lips to that pale, exposed line above his jeans. Wants to taste the warm salt of his skin.

‘Good walk?’ she asks, taking a bottle of multi-vitamin juice from the fridge. Almost dropping it as Loki swivels around like a startled cat. Anger contorts his features. Jostles with confusion and something approaching dread.

‘Where’s Antoinette?’ he demands.

‘What’s wrong?’

‘
Where’s Antoinette?
’

‘She’s still in there with
her
.’ Lina jerks her head in the direction of Sally Paige’s bedroom. She puts the juice down on the counter. ‘Loki, please. What’s happened?’

He licks his lips nervously. Nods, more to himself than to her, then holds out his hand. ‘Come with me, I’ll show you.’

A few metres into the backyard, near where the grassy lawn ends and bushland begins its subtle encroachment, Lina stops dead. ‘We’re going in there?’

‘Not too far. There’s a small hut or something at the very back of the property, just inside the fenceline.’

He tugs at her arm. She doesn’t move. ‘That’s our father’s old shed. It’s been empty since he left.’

‘How long has it been since you’ve seen it?’

‘I don’t . . . we never go down there. It’s just an empty shed, Loki.’

‘It’s not empty.’

‘I don’t really care.’ Her palm is damp, clammy in his grip. ‘Look, can we go back to the house now? Ant might need someone and–’

‘Lina, this is important. You need to see.’

‘I don’t like it out here,’ she whispers. ‘I really, really don’t.’

‘It’s broad daylight. Nothing will hurt you, I promise.’

She swallows. Feels sick to her stomach in a way that has nothing to do with her body’s newly discovered workings. But she allows him to lead her on regardless. Follows him through the rustle and scorn of the trees, leaf litter crackling dry beneath her sandalled feet. Lina keeps her gaze fixed to the ground. Concentrates on counting her steps, starting over each time she hits ten.

When Loki stops, she bumps right into him.

The shed is small and made of wood. Painted in a dull off-grey that might once have been blue before time and sunlight did their work, with a curtain drawn across its single square window. A pushbolt has been installed below the door handle and from this hangs a sturdy, gaping padlock.

‘It was unlocked?’ Lina asks, hating the tremor in her voice.

Loki pulls a set of keys out of his pocket and jangles them in the air. Sally Paige’s keys, complete with the enamelled
#1 MUM
keyring that Lina remembers buying one Mother’s Day too many years ago now to count.

‘Put those away,’ she says.

He does. ‘Come on. Lina,
come on
.’

Reluctantly, she walks the last few steps to the shed door. As Loki eases it open, the clotted scent of roses wafts from the dim and shadowed interior. Roses, and something sharper. Something acrid and stale. ‘Hey,’ Loki calls softly. ‘It’s okay. It’s only me again.’ His arm slips around Lina’s waist, guides her forward. Out of the midday sun, it takes a moment for her eyes to adjust.

To take in the immense slatted crib that looms along the wall to her left.

And the shape that lolls, large and lumpish, within its bars.

Antoinette has been drunker than this – much drunker, oh yes, many times and more – but never
ever
with her mother around. ‘Stop it now,’ Sally Paige scolds as she grabs her daughter’s arm, and
stop what?
Antoinette wants to ask, then realises that she is giggling. Has probably been giggling for quite some time.

‘Sorry,’ she says. ‘But it’s pretty funny, right? All those lectures you used to give us on the Evils of Binge Drinking and now look: my mother the enabler.’ That withering Sally Paige glare is pretty funny as well and Antoinette has to gnaw on the inside of her lip to keep a straight face.

‘Close your eyes,’ her mother instructs once again. ‘Then–’

‘
Empty your mind
,’ Antoinette sings.

‘Are you done? Because we can stop right now, if you like. If you care so little about your sister, that all it takes is one good swig of alcohol for you to forget what’s at stake here.’

Her words sting worse than a slap and are three times as sobering.

‘Okay, okay. Sorry. I’ll try probably –
properly
, I mean.’

Behind her eyelids, colours shimmer and swirl and Antoinette rolls her head forward, chin bumping to chest as the woozy rush of intoxication tumbles over her like a wave. She feels for the Loki-stone, feels for it and finds it and holds it puzzled within her grasp, unsure just what it is she’s meant to do now.

Let go
, her mother whispers, and the voice seems less inside her ear than inside her head, as her mother’s fingers travel along the skin of her inner arm, feather-light and ticklish, their barest tips trailing hypnotically up and down, up and down, up and down, until Antoinette can no longer distinguish between sensation and touch.
Let go
, and then an unexpected flare of pain, fingernails pinching the soft crease of her elbow, pinching so hard that Antoinette cries out, and her mother says something else, a word that darts away before Antoinette can grasp it and, pulled along in its slipstream, she feels herself unlock, feels herself open and swell, and her mother is beside her now, beside her and around her and within her, offering, offering, oh–

The Jacqueline-stone, so bright and clear and
blue
. Summer skies stretching cloudless and vast, peacock plumage and lapis lazuli and fat-headed hydrangeas full in bloom, and Antoinette reaches out and takes it from her mother, scoops her sister right into herself, a warm new weight hanging safe behind her ribs.

Now give that to me
.

Loki is silver-smooth. Loki is polished steel and mirrored glass, the windless surface of subterranean lakes, and
I’m sorry
, she tells him,
I don’t have a choice
, but it hurts as she starts to pull him free, a deep throb that makes her gasp and–

Of course it hurts
.
Did you think it wouldn’t?

And then Antoinette sees it. That subtle, shifting spark at the very core of Sally Paige, a faint and sickly scrap of yellow that her mother has tried to hide, has sought to veil from her sight, but –
oh
– she sees it now,
she sees it
.

That sole remaining presence, that undeniable second stone.

Lina stares down at the – creature? child?
boy?
– curled face to the wall in the crib. Her hands are shaking so hard, she grips the wooden side rail to steady herself. He’s wearing a green pyjama shirt with sleeping dragons on it, and a disposable nappy. The pyjama pants are folded over the end of the crib. Orange socks cover his feet. There’s a blanket, also green, but it’s been kicked into a corner.

She focuses on these slight, mundane details. Just on these.