Perfections (20 page)

Loki pats Jacqueline on the cheek, leans forward and whispers her name, whispers it again and again as if the third time really might be the charm, but she doesn’t respond, doesn’t open her eyes, doesn’t move at all. Just lies there on the couch, a strange and waxen sister-shape silent now but for the shallow rasp of her breath. Antoinette’s stomach sinks. ‘This isn’t right. I’m calling an ambulance.’

‘Wait.’ Loki springs to his feet, snatches her arm before she even has a chance to take more than two steps. ‘It’s okay, she’s going to be okay. I promise.’

‘You can’t know that, Loki. You can’t know . . .’

But he does, or at least he knows something. His gaze shifts between Jacqueline and herself, guarded yet torn, and she can almost see the gears grinding inside his skull as he weighs allegiances, attempts to level whatever complicated scale he’s constructed to keep everything balanced within his head.

‘Loki?’ Antoinette grabs his chin, turns his face directly to hers. ‘This isn’t about choosing a side. We’re sisters; stuff like this has no sides.’

‘She didn’t want you to know.’

The ground tilts beneath her feet. ‘That doesn’t matter. Whatever it is, Loki, you need to tell me.’ Her voice wobbles and she clears her throat, imagines herself not Antoinette but
Sally
Paige, iron-willed with tongue to match. ‘You need to tell me
right
now
.’

When her sister finally wakes up, Antoinette almost bursts into tears. The thin coil of dread that has cinched itself tighter and tighter around her heart loosens, dissolves to relief, as Jacqueline opens her eyes and blinks, glazed and unfocused, at the room about her. ‘Ant?’ she whispers. ‘Did I . . . how did we . . .?’

‘You fell on the stairs.’ Antoinette squeezes her sister’s shoulder. ‘Why didn’t you tell me, you idiot?’

‘Tell you what?’

‘That you’ve been having seizures.’

‘Don’t be silly.’ Jacqueline winces as she pushes herself upright. ‘I must have fainted, that’s all. I didn’t eat very much at breakfast and–’

‘You can stop there,’ Antoinette tells her. ‘Loki’s already filled me in.’

‘Oh.’ Jacqueline tugs at her skirt, straightens the hem along the line of her knees. ‘I asked him not to do that. I wanted to tell you myself.’

‘When? This has been going on for a month or more, he says.’

‘Not constantly. The last week has been the worst by far, and I did mean to tell you as soon as I got back from Brisbane, but then Loki was here and . . .’ Her sister pauses, a frown pinching at her features. ‘In any case, now you know.’

‘And you’re going to see a doctor, right? First thing Monday, you’re going to make an appointment–’

‘I have to go back to work on Monday.’

‘So call in sick, for godsake. This is serious, Jacqueline, you can’t just brush it off like nothing’s wrong. You would have hit your head on a bloody concrete step today if Loki hadn’t caught you. You could be in hospital right now with concussion or a skull fracture or . . . or worse.’ Tears burn angry tracks down her cheeks and she wipes them away with the back of her hand. ‘You and Mum. You’re both as bad as each other with this shit.’

‘We’re not your responsibility,’ Jacqueline says quietly.

‘Responsibility?’ Laughter builds in her chest, bubbles into her throat and she lets it loose; it’s either that or choke on it. ‘You think this is about me feeling responsible? Nothing at all to do with the fact that you’re my
sister
? That maybe, just maybe, I love you and don’t want to see you
fucking die
?’

‘Ant, please. You need to calm down.’

‘You need to see a doctor.’

‘Can we talk about this later?’ Jacqueline stands up, wobbling like some Friday night margarita maiden, downing a drink for every spike-heeled inch stacked beneath her feet. ‘I have a headache coming on.’

Antoinette blocks her sister’s path. ‘When later?’

‘When I
feel
like it.’

Words spat with more venom than Antoinette has ever heard from Jacqueline before and in her eyes a flash of anger mixed with something near to loathing – but just a flash, she tells herself, come and gone so quick she can’t be sure she saw it right, can’t be sure she saw it at all – because now there’s only Jacqueline, that serene and depthless gaze as familiar to Antoinette as her own reflection . . . and yet. There’s an edge, new and startling like a hairline crack in polished glass, visible at just the right angle, in just the right light, but now, forever, impossible to overlook.

‘Ant,’ Jacqueline says. ‘When you made him, was it . . .’

The front door opens and closes, footsteps pad down the hall and Jacqueline shakes her head, raises a finger briefly to her lips as Loki strolls into the living room. ‘Thought I heard voices,’ he says. ‘You’re awake.’

‘I’m awake,’ Jacqueline agrees.

In one hand, he carries a dustpan and the plastic shopping bag he’s filled with ruined pancake and rattling ceramic shards; in the other, what used to be Antoinette’s mobile, the flip-top now irrevocably severed from the keypad. Loki offers the pieces to her on a flattened palm, swings his head from side to side in slow and rueful parody of regret.

‘I’m sorry,’ he says, deadpan. ‘I don’t think it can be saved.’

— 15 —

Jacquel
ine minimises her browser as Loki taps on the study door. Opens it without giving her a chance to answer. ‘You want anything? Tea? Wine?’

‘No.’ She nods at the glass of water by her wrist. ‘I’m fine.’

He doesn’t move. ‘What are you doing in here?’

‘Researching palliative care.’ A lie, but one of omission. She did begin by looking into home nursing services. Hospices as well, because despite what their mother has said, there might come a time for that and there’s no harm in having the information at hand. None of them deem it useful to show costs on their website, of course; she will have to call them on Monday to make such tawdry enquiries. She wonders if she can apply for another credit card.

Loki is still leaning into the room. ‘How are you feeling?’

‘A little better. Tired, but my headache is mostly gone.’

‘You want to do something later? Go out and catch a movie?’

‘I don’t feel that much better.’

‘I could run down the street and rent something.’

She shakes her head. ‘I’m going to have an early night, try to catch up on some sleep.’

‘Okay,’ he says. ‘Maybe I’ll just watch some TV, then.’

Jacqueline swivels in her chair. ‘I don’t need a babysitter, Loki. If you want to go out and do something, then go. You have my blessing.’

He hesitates. ‘Antoinette wanted me to keep an eye on you.’

Ah, yes. Those anxious, sidelong glances as her sister readied herself for work that evening. The whispered exchange of words with Loki at the front door just before she left. A goodbye smile stretched thin enough to snap.

‘Ant doesn’t need to worry about me,’ she tells him. ‘Neither do you.’

He stares at her with those opaque, impenetrable eyes. Jacqueline turns back to the computer. After a moment he leaves the room, the door latching softly behind him. She pulls up the browser again. Thinks for a moment, then types a new string of words into Google. Clicks through a handful of links, all of which prove as useless and irrelevant as her previous searches. Whatever kind of creature Loki might be, the internet knows nothing of him. Or else she simply doesn’t know where – know
how
– to look.

Either way, she is wasting her time.

Frustrated, Jacqueline holds up her left hand and studies again the thin, jagged scar that runs across the pad of her thumb. Faded after all this time but still visible at the right angle. Still clearly there. A fall from a bicycle. A broken bottle in long grass. Mercurochrome and butterfly stitches beneath a gauntlet of white gauze. Fourteen years old, that scar. Evidence of a memory which
must
be real – her sister doesn’t possess such attention for detail.

Of course, the scar remains a part of
her
. It offers no external, conclusive proof of anything. She wishes she hadn’t thrown away the diary kept for those three months at the beginning of high school. A dull record certainly, little more than an itemised account of time passed, but a record nonetheless. Better than the drawer full of pretty, unfilled notebooks she has collected since. Each one bought in the hope it would inspire. Would unlock the creative, whimsical side of herself which so many frustrated art teachers assured her must exist.

Let yourself wander. Draw the first thing that comes to mind; write the first words that pop into your brain.

But her thoughts would remain staunchly unliberated, as blank and empty as the page in front of her.

Jacqueline’s hand trembles. She rounds it into a fist. Enough.

Antoinette is just about to tell the smarmy hipster dickhead in the checked fedora
exactly
what he can do with his prawn and coriander risotto when Michelle nudges her aside with a subtle hip-bump and scoops the dish off the table. ‘I’m very sorry for the inconvenience, sir,’ she says, turning on her best silver service smile. ‘Chef can whip you up another with vegetable stock right away.’

Antoinette’s already back in the kitchen, waiting on the mains for her moon-eyed couple at Table 7, by the time Michelle catches her up. ‘What the hell is wrong with you tonight?’

‘Bloody liar never said a word about chicken stock till he tasted it.’

‘Since when does that matter?’

‘If he changed his mind, he should have just said so instead of trying to make out like he only ordered it because I told him it was made with veggie stock. As if he can even tell–’

‘Some vegetarians can taste–’

‘Vegetarian? Yeah, right. Last time I checked,
prawns
weren’t growing in the fucking dirt.’

‘Hey,’ Michelle says. ‘Don’t take your crap out on me.’

Antoinette presses her lips together, draws a deep breath through her nose and holds it for a couple of seconds. ‘I’m sorry,’ she says at last. ‘I just . . . you wouldn’t believe the week I’ve had.’

‘Honey, you
have
to let him go. He’s not worth your sanity.’

It takes her a moment to realise that Michelle is talking about Paul, not Loki – though the shoe would seem to fit either troublesome foot right now – and Antoinette shakes her head, bites down on the words lining up eagerly at the tip of her tongue. How simple it would be to play the cancer card, the
mother
-with-cancer card at that, a sympathy pass almost too perfect to shuffle back into the deck. But spouting advice to the lovelorn is one thing; dealing with illness and death is something else and, for all the months they’ve waited tables together, she isn’t sure Michelle is that kind of a friend.

‘It’s not Paul,’ she tells her. ‘Of all the stuff I’ve been dumped with lately, Paul’s the very least of it. Believe me.’

‘Well, if you ever need to talk . . .’ The smile on Michelle’s face is fleeting, coloured more by obligation than any deep-welled concern, and Antoinette knows she’s made the right decision.

‘Thanks,’ she says. ‘But I’ll muddle through.’

The service bell chimes and Michelle collects the dishes that slide across the line counter. ‘I don’t doubt it, honey.’

At least that makes one of us
. Dredging up her own version of the silver service smile – dented and tarnished, but the best she’s going to manage tonight – Antoinette grabs her Table 7 mains and follows Michelle back out to front of house. Behind the bar, Jackson catches her eye, brows drawn in silent question as he loads a tray with wine glasses. She shakes her head slightly –
nothing to see here
– then concentrates on making it through the rest of her shift.

Hair dripping cold down her spine, Jacqueline opens the bathroom door and calls Loki’s name. No answer. Calls louder, with the same result. Satisfied that he is still out doing whatever it is that Loki does, she unwinds her towel and returns it to the rail. Flicks off the harsh fluorescent light but leaves the exhaust fan running to dispel the steam, then walks naked through the unlit apartment to her bedroom.

This is the first time she’s been here by herself since returning from Brisbane. The space around her feels swollen with silence. With solitude.

She switches on the beside lamp. The green glow from its shade is a familiar reassurance. All of her sister’s things have been hidden away, if only temporarily. Stuffed into the wardrobe, shoved beneath the bed. The floor is empty and clean, the bed made. A keen new blade waits on the pillow. Unwrapped, fresh from its little plastic case.

Jacqueline sits, crossing her legs beneath her. Smooths the doona where it has rumpled. Holding the razor between thumb and forefinger, she closes her eyes. Breathes. Loosens her thoughts.

And, at long last, allows herself to slide.

Antoinette swears beneath her breath as she pushes through Simpatico’s rear door, wiping at the tears that edge, angry-hot, from the corners of her eyes. Fuck Ronan and his official warnings. Almost two years she’s worked at this place, two years of putting up with shit from prissy clientele and even prissier chefs, of rushing in to cover emergency holes in staff schedules because someone has woken up with a hangover or needs to stay home with a sick brat. Heaven forbid she be allowed to stumble through a couple of bad nights without Ronan feeling it his sacred managerial duty to keep her back for a private reading of the riot act.

‘Ream you a new one, did he?’ a voice asks close beside her.

Antoinette jumps, swears again, as Jackson steps out of the shadows beside the bins. Cigarette smoke – not entirely tobacco; she can smell that much – drifts with him, curls from his mouth as he apologises, says he didn’t mean to scare her.

‘Just be glad I didn’t have my pepper spray handy.’

‘Pepper spray?’ Jackson carefully extinguishes the glowing end of his cigarette against the side of one of the bins before tucking the butt into his sleeve. ‘Had you pegged as being more a switchblade kind of girl. Either that or a katana.’ He mimes a couple of samurai sword passes. Badly.

Antoinette laughs. ‘You should be so lucky.’

‘A guy can hope,’ he says, grinning. ‘You doing anything right now?’

‘Other than going home to crash for about a bazillion years?’

‘Some of the others went down the road for a drink. Thought I’d hang back, see if you wanted to come with.’

Now it’s her turn to apologise. Sorry, really, and thanks for the offer but being around a whole bunch of shiny happy people right now? Probably not such a great idea, she tells him, heading towards her tram stop on the off chance she hasn’t missed the last service and won’t have to flag down a taxi. Jackson keeps pace, keeps smiling, and ‘What about just one person?’ he asks, holding up an index finger even as she turns with
no
already shaping her lips,
no
and
sorry
, but ‘Come on,’ he says. ‘Just me, just one drink. You look like you’re sorely in need.’

And there’s more than a thimbleful of truth in that.

‘Okay,’ Antoinette reaches out to tap the end of his finger with her own. ‘Just one drink.’