Heat and Light (15 page)

Sound

Nights blister my fears. One night I wake up to the phone ringing in my hand, buzzing blue. I am too hurled into dread to answer it before it stops. The numbers hold no recognition, no area code or spiritual repetition. 10.30 p.m. A late call. It must be him. Not him, someone who found him. Dead. Crazy. Both. The hospital, the police, one of his mates.

The phone doesn’t have to ring for me to think those thoughts. Sometimes I can’t sleep. But I feel guilty – today, I haven’t thought of him at all. I had an assignment due, and I had a house inspection. I had even baked. Honey oat biscuits out of the oven, a little burnt. Warm things I had made that I put in my palm.

The number doesn’t call back a second time. It takes me almost an hour to summon the courage to dial it back. Only two tries and I’m through. It is a media company wanting to survey me.

‘How did you get my number?’ I say, almost shout.

Still I can’t sleep. I try putting the radio on, pull the volume down so only a sliver of noise enters my thoughts. Living in an apartment block alone sometimes feels like my room could topple backwards off the building and no one would notice. The seven-floor apartment block is a still thing, a lighthouse, and the sea beneath my window is an intangible space. They keep building up from the ground, soon there will be no green space to see, on a campus that used to be known for its gardens. I look into the face of the city and feel homeless.

My brother has been here only once, when I first moved in. He refused to come inside, simply standing at the door, muttering ‘hurry up already’ and tapping at the frame until I had finished getting ready. It had been my twenty-first birthday and we went out to dinner with our mother, a strange thing it had been, the three of us.

It is Friday night and late enough for me to be weary. I walk into the tavern; I’m wearing old jeans, a tired T-shirt I pulled out of the washing basket and tennis shoes in case they enforce closed-in shoes. From the look of it, I didn’t have to worry. I see someone I know from high school wearing a pair of flimsy gold sandals. It is always a surprise to recognise a classmate, I push those years out of my mind. She is drinking with a table of other young women and men I don’t know. This sort of thing is foreign to me, drinking with people on a Friday night. The tavern is crowded with mainly boys my brother’s age. A band is playing downstairs later. Silvaspoon? Stain? Collide? I don’t know the name, it is the sort of heavy metal band I’ve found out my brother liked. As is typical, they won’t start for a few hours, and all the young men, in their early twenties like my brother, are drinking and talking with a sort of characteristic impatience.

I walk from one end to the other – outside, the balcony looks out over a golf course where punters take their hits behind a large net. Not surprisingly, I don’t see him. But, like I hoped, I spot his friend Michael at the table near the railing. Michael has dyed-black hair, a nose piercing and is wearing a baggy white T-shirt with the band and a guitar graphic on it. He is holding a bottle of Stone’s and is eating from a plate of nachos.

‘Hi,’ I say, and too late realise I have descended on him too eagerly.

‘Hey, Jodie.’ He keeps his eyes down.

‘Have you seen Dave lately?’

‘Not really.’ He doesn’t offer me a seat. The girl next to him looks me up and down suspiciously.

‘So what are you doing here?’ he asks.

I still a laugh, looking around. It is a good question.

‘Just … getting a drink,’ I say, playing it cool. ‘Well, I’ll go to the bar, want anything?’

‘No, thanks.’

‘Can I sit down here when I get back? Have a chat?’

‘Umm … we’re expecting someone but until he gets here, I guess that could be okay.’ The girl gives me the look again.

At the bar I find myself in line behind the girl from school, and I have no choice but to acknowledge her.

‘You remember me?’

‘Yes,’ she says, unsmiling.

There is a pause.

‘What are you doing with yourself?’ she asks.

‘I’m doing my Masters. You?’

‘I’m a real estate agent. You here to see the band?’ That suspicious look.

‘I’m looking for my brother. David. Do you ever see him?’

The girl shakes her head.

I am closer to the counter. What can I drink that I won’t taste for weeks to come, like the rum cocktail from the student gathering in West End I should never have gone to? The girl from school orders a gin and tonic. I order the same.

Back on the balcony I ask Michael where David is staying. Michael says he doesn’t know. Ask Dustin, he says. He doesn’t know what days he works, either. ‘I think he’s alright, you know. You shouldn’t worry about him.’ The longest line Michael has given me. I wonder if he knows more than that, if he is capable of more. All these weeks of getting the same answers.

Then he looks behind me and says, ‘Ry!’ and I feel myself get up, grab my white bag from under the table and walk to the car park where I’ve left my bike. Between the tavern and the golf course is an expanse of gold-black grass, and I catch the movement of a rabbit on its way to the other side as I clip my helmet on. The laughter increases above me and the band is still hours off.

The supermarket shelves shine like bone. I stand where the meats are, facing the coldroom door. Every few minutes I feign interest in the chicken drumsticks or the two-dollar unlabelled mince, but the truth is, I’m vegetarian. A while back I saw a figure that could have been my brother, same build. Dark hair. I wait and think about what to do when he comes out of the door. What will he do? Will he ignore me like last time, walking faster with his long legs, a stride no one can match, going down the aisles dispelling bottles of milk into the fridge and then to the next checkpoint, shrugging off my questions until I feel stupid and fall back into a sense of intrusion? There is little point in saying hello, when he never answers greetings, or even pleasantries in phone calls, text messages, emails. And to interrogate would make him retreat. So what can I say – it’s a good day outside and what did you have for breakfast and has it been busy? Have you got your tax file number forms done? No, too motherly. A cool, casual sister would tease him about his uniform, the gloves. No, I’ve tried that one already. He will just walk and keep walking. No calls of Snowman will slow him down.

He had grown taller quickly. The house became his. Sometimes he locked the doors, kept me and my mother out for periods of time. An annoyance. One day I got home from uni, my bladder close to full. I crept around the deck for a bit, calling his name. I got a metal spatula from the barbecue and started to pick at the lock.

‘Jodie.’ His voice came through the gap. ‘Go away. I’m busy.’

‘I live here, too,’ I said, and I pushed the door open. When I saw him I knew he wasn’t well, his hands were trembling and his eyes were rough and red but it was too late, he grasped the spatula out of my hand before I could react. I just looked at him. Three years older, I thought, why this fear. He pushed me against the door. He opened it and slammed it into my rib and I fell back on the deck floor. He kicked me again, and I had seen it before, but now, with the glass door in front of me, I was seeing it done to myself. At the third impact my bladder broke, hot spills of liquid down my thighs. I lay there, on my side, gasping but mute. I told him the next time, ‘You got to stop. I’m your sister.’

I take a pile of unread overdue books back to the library on campus. I go up to the second floor to log on at a computer and check my emails. Two from my supervisor sent last week. I haven’t sent him my proposal yet – last week he had said. I type sullenly back,
Can we meet?
I look at the time. I will leave soon. He wasn’t there yesterday, so he must be there today.

The supermarket on a Monday afternoon is mainly mums and young children in school uniforms pushing the trolleys. I stand in my usual spot. Other workers walk past. How can they not know what he’s really like? Why are me and my mother the only ones who know? Why couldn’t he keep it from us like he could with others, who all say he’s a gem of a boy, bright, albeit unmotivated. ‘Lost’ sometimes. I think I am about to cry when a young girl in uniform with fizzy orange hair comes up to me.

‘He doesn’t work here anymore,’ she says.

I rode through the suburb, left notes, called into cafes, walked through apartment blocks. He was lost and didn’t want to be found. I am his only family in Brisbane now. He is twenty and he must still need his family.

After he had smashed everything left – wood, walls, tiles – in the house we used to live, he had taken off. It has been two months since I last saw him. Every week I do the rounds. It astonishes me to think he may have made his way out of the suburb on his own, carless, when he’d never liked public transport.

I go to the old house, something I have done weekly, to pick up the mail addressed to him or my mother. I have left his mail untouched, a pile of it in my apartment, next to the TV. He’s always been prickly with his privacy. But today I feel myself ripping open a bank statement in the front yard of this place now rented by another family. All the notes I sent –
Dave, I have your mail. Let me know when you want it.
If he asks about the bank statement I will say the postman opened it. On the top line is an employee payment, minimum wage. I look the place up on my phone.

A fish ‘n’ chip shop in Sandgate. He has gone back to the first suburb we lived in. Does he remember like I do, the nights on the beach? Trudging sand through the house and sleeping in our swimwear? Weekly tussles, pulling each other underwater, almost drowning each other. When Dad was alive. The fish ‘n’ chip place is on the corner where we lived. A Sandgate institution. We couldn’t afford to eat there as a family, but Davey and I picked up ice-creams after school with money we got from who knows where. Davey collected bottle tops from the tables outside. He is returning to our old suburb. I’ve heard we all return to water sometime.

The fish ‘n’ chip shop is busy when I arrive and it is a while until I can make my way to the counter. The girl working is tall and thin with long dark hair swept back into a ponytail. She looks around my age, perhaps older. She has green glasses with stickers on the ends and a long neck. She is wearing a black apron over a white T-shirt.

‘Hello!’ She is enthusiastic but genuine. ‘What would you like?’

‘I’m here to see my brother, David.’ A phrase I have said many times, like an imprint. In times like these, I am nothing but his sister.

‘You’re David’s sister?’ The girl smiles. ‘That’s awesome. He doesn’t work today, though. The one day! He’ll be here tomorrow.’

The girl has a warm smile. ‘Come tomorrow. He’ll be here after eleven,’ she chatters. ‘If you have time. What’s your name again?’ It is a shock to see someone so helpful. It is as if she gets it, no explaining necessary.

‘Jodie.’

‘I’m Sarah. David will be sure to throw you some extra chips. Crispy ones.’ She smiles again, showing dimples.

He dropped out of school when he was sixteen and I was so disappointed I rang the school, the principal – would anyone give him a second chance? He had missed too many classes, too many assignments, and I was left to wonder if I should have seen the warning signs more clearly. He hadn’t been to school since March, and I had been consumed with my course. What was the point of me graduating with honours when I’d left him by the educational wayside? What was achieving when your family was sinking? At first it was pride. Don’t be another statistic. Then, it was worry. He didn’t make a secret of what he got up to with his mates.

The next day I get there early, and before the place opens. I sit on the beach. Sandgate pool is behind me, where we both learnt to swim through a school program. I have lost touch, can’t remember the last time I sat next to water and felt it lick my toes like an unloved dog. I hold my shoes in one hand. The sun bows in front of me. There is no one around. I feel nervous energy. On the bike ride to Sandgate I had seen roadkill on the bitumen, the bright orange mess of a possum on its stomach. I’d automatically made a mental note to go another way home.

Sarah smiles at me. ‘Hi, Jodie,’ she remembers. ‘I’ll grab David. He’s not busy.’ She goes around the back. I hear talking and it is a little while before he comes out.

He stands there holding his hands together. I look him over. He frowns and brings his hand up self-consciously, shielding his face with his watch.

‘Dave’s in charge of the spiders – you know, fizzy and ice-cream. I loved them when I was kid. It was his idea to add it to the menu.’ She talks to him and he responds, ignoring me, but I’m touched to see him smile at a person, engage meaningfully. All of his words are traffic for me, however: I only notice his face and his hands and his arms. Part of him looks different, as if a dog came back from a hydrobath, shaved. Exposed. I think of my mother and father. A customer walks in and I rush to say something, ruining the moment.

‘Where are you living?’ I ask him.

His head tilts to Sarah.

‘I had a spare room, and I heard he needed a place.’ Sarah points – ‘I live in that little street, actually. The white house with the balcony and the yellow tree out the front. It comes in handy living close because most of the time we have an hour off between lunch service and dinner. We just go back and take a load off. I have a dog, a little beagle called Scary. He doesn’t like being left alone much, I can hear him from the kitchen here sometimes. You like dogs, Jodie?’

‘I do.’

‘You’ll love Scary. Hey, Dave?’

At that I know I won’t be out of place if I go to the white house at 3 p.m. on a weekday and knock on the door. I dare not look at my brother to see what his face might betray. I am suddenly so full of hope that I ride home with energy and don’t remember the dead possum. I even get some research done that night.

I can’t imagine my brother living with anyone else. He has not learnt how to be an adult. He can’t manage money or time or duties. As far as I know, he still doesn’t have a tax file number. He can’t communicate. He can’t take responsibility for his actions. Living with him was living on edge. How can he not hurt the lives of the ones he lives with?