The Healing Party
Authors: Micheline Lee
THE HEALING PARTY
Born in Malaysia, Micheline Lee migrated to Melbourne when she was eight. After completing law at Monash University, she lived in Darwin for fifteen years. Her first job was as a criminal prosecutor and her next job was as a painter, holding exhibitions in Australia and overseas. Micheline lives in Melbourne with her partner and son, and continues to alternate between art and the law.
The Healing Party
is her first novel.
Published by Black Inc.,
an imprint of Schwartz Publishing Pty Ltd
Level 1, 221 Drummond Street
Carlton VIC 3053, Australia
Copyright © Micheline Lee 2016
Micheline Lee asserts her right to be known as the author of this work.
A
LL
R
IGHTS
R
ESERVED
.
No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form by any means electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise without the prior consent of the publishers.
National Library of Australia Cataloguing-in-Publication entry:
Lee, Micheline, author.
The healing party / Micheline Lee.
9781863958431 (paperback)
9781925435085 (ebook)
FamiliesâFiction.
Faith and reason.
A823.4
Cover design by Peter Long
Text design and typesetting by Tristan Main
Cover photograph by Karen Ilagan, Getty Images
For Stephen and Mark
Contents
W
HO KNOWS HOW MANY MORE YEARS
I
WOULD
have stayed away had I not received the phone call from Anita.
As soon as I picked up and said hello, she said, âNatasha? Mum has terminal cancer.'
No lead-up, no explanations. It was typical of the way Anita and I talked. Although we could be sweet-tongued with others, we were terse to one another. I leant over the back verandah with the phone to my ear, looking out into the darkness of the garden. The night was cool by Darwin standards. It was early June, the start of the dry, and the usual whirr of fans was absent. I stared into the shadows until the twisted branches of the old frangipani took shape. I listened to the high-pitched scratching of the cicadas until the noise seemed unbearable.
âAre you there?' she said.
âHow long has she got?'
âThe doctor said five months. But you never know.'
âI want to come home,' I said, like a little girl.
âNo one's stopping you. No one has ever told you that you couldn't come home. No one can tell you anything!' She hung up.
*
Four weeks later, after a long day of travel down from Darwin, I stepped off the bus a block from where my parents lived. I had not been back in eight years. In my final year of school, not even waiting to complete my exams, I'd taken off to Darwin, which had seemed to me as far away as you could get from Melbourne without leaving the country. Since then I had met with my family several times, staying with friends or my sisters, but never setting foot in my parents' home.
The rumble of the bus faded. Mid-afternoon and no sign of life in the slow, straight rows of houses. You could wait for a long time for something to happen here.
This was the bus-stop that I had waited at every morning before school. It must have been. That's where it fitted. Opposite, a few doors down, was the Murphy house, and closer to the corner the Jacobs family, who had the child with Down syndrome. I walked past the sites feeling strangely indifferent, until I turned a corner and started to lurch downhill into Aquarius Court. The slope of the footpath seemed innocuous now, but I remembered screeching down with my belly on a skateboard; the treachery of the concrete, my face flying just centimetres above it.
It continued to be called Aquarius Court after Dad failed to persuade the neighbours to support a name change. My sisters and I were sent to door-knock locally with a petition written in his stylish cursive script. The petition stated, âWe, the residents of Aquarius Court, hereby denounce the glorification of astrology and claim the right to a street name that will uphold Australia's Christian values.'
Only the Bolands signed. Mr Boland hooted with laughter when he read the petition. âYeah, why not,' he said. âLet's see where this gets us. This street would be called bloody âAlleluia' if your father had his way, wouldn't it?'
The square houses were set back comfortably from the street, fronted by generous driveways and neat lawns. The three at the end of the court had been display homes. They were cut from the same pattern but had feature entries. Roman columns lined the driveway of the first, and the second was fronted by Japanese black and white screen doors. The house at the end â the one neighbours called the Spanish house â featured a faux-stone portico with archways and a terracotta roof. People always presumed we lived in the Japanese one, but my parents had chosen the Spanish.
It was the first house my parents had ever owned. In Hong Kong, like most people, we rented. When we moved into Aquarius Court, the suburb was new and many of the houses vacant. After the crowded lanes of Hong Kong, our new street seemed silent, huge and unused. The end of the court opened onto a grass oval that stretched out like the vast open plains we had seen in American movies.
Our furniture and belongings arrived from Hong Kong in large wooden crates. Dad surrounded the house with the emptied crates so that anyone wanting to enter would have first to find their way through a maze. For years the crates sat on the clay soil in the front yard, until, one by one, they fell apart, the rotten planks opening like petals of a strange giant flower.
As I approached the house, the neighbours' green, manicured front gardens gave way to my parents' unkempt one. Despite Mum's constant entreaties to Dad to do some work, the garden had never looked any good, and now it looked even worse. An overblown cactus towered up to the roof, and the few trees that had managed to survive were by now scraggly and rugged, and placed in odd spots around the yard. Weeds grew in clumps; otherwise, there were large patches of bare earth.
I stopped at the driveway to check my clothes. This morning in Darwin before my flight, I had pulled on jeans and a black singlet. Over the top of the singlet, I wore a long-sleeved checked shirt left open except where it was tied at my waist. On arriving in Melbourne's cold, I had pulled on my fleece-lined denim jacket. Putting my backpack down now, I untied my shirt and smoothed it down over my hips so that it covered my bum. Then I did up the buttons, leaving only one undone at the neck.
Mum had visited me in Darwin last year. When I picked her up from the airport, she cast an appraising eye over my clothes and told me I looked like a slut. I was never offended when Mum called me this because she pronounced it âsrut' and had a habit of using such words without knowing their full meaning. I answered back, âIf I look like a slut, then you do too!' I was trying to say that she liked to look sexy too, but was just more devious about it. Her tops may not have been low-cut, or her skirts short, but they were nipped, tucked and tailored to show off her shape. Fluttering over her cleavage would be some maddening lace or semi-transparent voile. Her fabrics were soft and feminine and doused in perfume. Long silk skirts with side splits flowed over her legs. They opened when she sat down, causing her to tug modestly at the fabric and draw even more attention to her thighs.
With slow steps, I walked through the Spanish arches and down the path to the front door with its âJesus lives here' sign. I knocked and waited, listening for footsteps. When Dad opened the door, he looked small and ordinary. Gone, I thought, was the scourge, the performer and the visionary. He stood, stooped and sad, making me long to comfort him. At the same time, rising up in me involuntarily as we performed a stiff hug was a faint but familiar repulsion at his touch, and at the sight of his bulging wet eyes and thick lugubrious lips. When I asked how he was, his voice broke and his mouth twisted. âWell, you know how it is. It's very hard. We can only trust in God. It's good you came. Your mother needs you, Natasha.'
Stepping inside, I recognised the faint odour of soya sauce and brushed carpet. The colours in the house, Dad's colours, seemed more gaudy than I remembered. In the entrance a red Chinese lantern hung low from the ceiling, forcing tall Western visitors to duck. An arrangement of ultramarine blue pots sat in a corner on the bright orange carpet. Some of the furniture had been moved around, probably for the wheelchair. I leant my backpack against the carved mustard-coloured treasure chest that had travelled with us from Hong Kong. Dominating the wall behind the chest was Dad's photomontage of the Rapture. Visitors always commented on this work. He had collaged together portraits of nearly a hundred people, including our family, in a swirling mass of humanity flying heavenwards. But it was the ones who were left behind on the earthly battleground to whom the eye was drawn. Partaking of every earthly vice, their faces were contorted in gluttony, rage and loathing.
I followed Dad into the lounge room. There was Mum, beaming her beautiful lopsided smile at me. Her lips rose up on one side and pulled downwards on the other so that it looked as though she was half laughing, half crying. She raised her shoulders beseechingly. Afraid to cry, I focused on her surroundings â the fact that she was in the lounge room where we would never sit unless there were visitors, the maroon vinyl couches that still looked new, and the showiness of the Chinese cabinet stuffed with modernist sculptures created by Dad in the seventies.
Mum had told me she was using a wheelchair now, but I hadn't realised her appearance would be so changed by it. The wheelchair seemed to encase her in steel, its metal sides almost as high as her shoulders, and its spoked wheels bulky and unstylish. It did not matter how beautifully dressed she was, the wheelchair hospitalised and diminished her. Her head jerked forward as though she wanted to rise to greet me, but she remained where she was, sunk in and bound to the chair.
I could barely speak. She looked at me and said flatly, âThat's how it is, my dear.' And then, in a cheery tone, âWe have to bear our crosses. I put my trust in God. He will heal me.'
âAmen,' Dad said. âYes, Lord, we claim the miracle.' I rushed across to my mother so that she would not see the tears in my eyes.
Once when I was in primary school, she had lifted me up onto a high step and I saw the muscles flex in her neck and was aware for the first time that she was young, strong and physical. Now I put my arms on her shoulders and bent low so that she could pat my cheek in the way she sometimes did since becoming born again. As a family, we had seldom hugged or touched before we became Charismatic. Mum's face was still attractive, I noted with relief. Her hair did seem thinner and it occurred to me that this was an effect of the chemotherapy she had started a fortnight ago.
I wondered what Dad was doing, hovering next to me. Then I realised he was offering me an armchair as if to a guest. He waited until I sat down before pulling up a seat for himself.
âHow long are you staying?' Mum asked.
âFor as long as it suits everyone. I quit my job,' I said.
âWhat?' Mum said. âYou quit your job? What for quit your job? No need, la. We are okay â your sisters come every day, and we have a carer, Rosa, in the morning.'
âIrene, just accept,' Dad interjected. âAccept that your daughter wants to help. She's doing the right thing.'
âYou had a nice office. Why leave? You think you can just find another job?'
âOf course she will find another job, an even better one!' said Dad.
âIt will be a different job when I get back, but I'm sure it will be fine,' I said. A few details were enough to satisfy them, and I was glad not to have to explain why I had few regrets about leaving work. âWhat did you have for lunch today?'
âI have taught Rosa how to make Chinese food. Today she made chicken herbal soup. It was quite nice. A little bit salty, though,' Mum said.
âNothing like your mum's cooking,' Dad said. âWe eat very bland food now.'
âYou should learn to eat it, not go out to buy laksa and those oily noodles all the time,' Mum reproached Dad.
I described the baked fish and potatoes they served on the plane, then we talked about the wheelchair and how it got around the house. Dad, looking restless, walked up the stairs to his studio.
I went to make a pot of tea. The kitchen was much cleaner and neater than my mother had ever kept it. Perhaps it was the carer who had cleared the benches and stacked things up in orderly piles. A new poster showed sunlight breaking through clouds. In the bottom right-hand corner were words written in gold letters:
Miracles happen only to those who believe.
As I returned with the tray of tea, Dad called down to me from the landing that overlooked the lounge room. âYou want to see the works I completed today, Natasha?' he said.
âYou are tired, aren't you, Natasha, after the long flight. You should go and rest,' Mum said.
âWhen you see my pictures, Natasha, you will be filled with new energy.' Chuckling to himself, Dad karate-chopped the air with his hands.
It was good to see Dad still had spirit. âOf course. Let's have a look at them,' I said.
While Mum and I were drinking our tea, Dad came down the stairs and spread six large prints on the floor. The energy of the line and the boldness of the colour were striking. Black lines slashed across coloured photomontages of tigers crouching, stalking and leaping. In one print, in the midst of the chaos, a lone man wearing a cross sat on a white tiger. In another print, bare-breasted women tumbled with the tigers.
âWhat do you think? These are my best yet. I feel they are truly inspired. Which do you like best?' He held each of them out in turn. I was immediately nervous about what to say. âPrimal' was how the reviews had described his work, but there had been a perceptible mellowing in his style since becoming Charismatic.
Before I had the chance to respond, he picked up the first one again. âThey are all extraordinary, aren't they?' he exclaimed. âBut if I had to decide, this is the best. Look at the beautiful strong lines and how the colour sings.'
Gazing at the picture he held out to me, I admired the poetry with which he had combined the images of the tigers, and then assaulted this symmetry with his raw, brutal brushstroke.
âYou know, Natasha, my movements are instinctive, this is pure energy,' he said in a hushed voice, slowly shaking his head.
âIt's good, Dad. I really like the tangle of black lines.' I heard the timidity in my voice.
He nodded and said, âYes, a tangle of lines. I said to Jesus, we are your servants, Lord, why have you allowed Irene to be sick with cancer? Do you not want good health and prosperity for us, your followers, so we can manifest your perfection? Then the Lord put it on my heart that He is not a gangster â He does not say, follow me and you have bought yourself special protection! No, it is not like that. He is above petty human calculations. He loves us so much He allows us to tangle ourselves in our webs â like you said, the tangle of lines, see? The cancer may come from my mother's dealings in black magic, or it could be â'
âNo, la, Paul, don't talk like that. Such nonsense, what black magic?' Mum implored.
âIrene, let me speak the truth!' Dad cried. âBlack magic exists no matter what you want to believe. I tell you, the cancer was either a manifestation of black magic or it could be somehow connected to the existence of gratuitous evil. We do not know what goes on in the spiritual realm â there is constant warfare between the good and the evil spirits. An evil spirit can infiltrate at any time that we have left ourselves open to it.
