Rose Leopard Read online

  ‘Doctor,’ I ask, ‘what is it?’

  Why do you look like that?

  Why do you all look like that?

  What’s that you whisper?

  What’s that?

  No … oh no … not Kaz.

  Not Kaz, Jesus no.

  Not Kaz. oh no no no .

  It can never, was never, going to be like this.

  Six

  The window overlooks a carpark. Rain squalls have left beads of water on the car bonnets and rooves. A light drift of steam rises from the bitumen. Most of the cars are either white or metallic. One is parked at an odd angle; it is metallic orange. Glossy-leaved lilli-pilli trees grow in formation along the perimeter of the car-park. They enjoy all soil and weather conditions and their berries attract native birds. There are wheel-marks on the kerbing. The road out is framed by new traffic lights. There is a roundabout and steel barriers. Other buildings are visible; a civic centre, travel agency, small discount supermarket. A young couple goes into the supermarket. They are tanned, low-slung, probably backpackers. The sky above the supermarket is strange. Parts of it are smoke-coloured, others are so white that it hurts to look. Further on, the weakening curve of a rainbow stretches towards the sea. Out there, beyond the light, are dolphins and fish. Big fish, little fish, carnivores, cannibals, lovers of plankton. Some of them stay close to shore and some swim into the deep. Some hover in schools while others prefer to be alone. It’s all a matter of where they best belong.

  Once, from birth until now, time was linear. We were bound by lines: consequence followed action, daylight preceded darkness and we were governed by the familiar structure of second, minute, hour, month, year. Now I see that we were wronged, duped by time. Now I see that it is a bastardry, this time, an uncaring mockery of the life-patterns that we have always accepted. Now I see that that time is nothing more than a random sequence of flashes in the darkness — some illuminating, some nondescript, some resonant with terror, all lighting the slipslide to oblivion. Time splashes, in no sequence or order. It is not linear and it does not care.

  What else can happen on this day? What else can time bring forth?

  I turn back into that bright room and gorge on sudden details: the neatness of a stray beam of sunlight as it refracts off a curtain rail, thin gold stripes in the wallpaper that remind me of a night-gown my mother wore, electronic clicks and throat-clearings, other noises intruding. For a moment this fascinates me: that in our world, there can never be a total absence of sound. Even now, as I lie across her breast and let hope drag my finger inquisitively to her lips, I am immersed in hummings, the clatter and shuffle of shoes, wind slapping the window panes, other people breathing.

  And I am thinking: Just shut up. All of you, everything, everyone … just shut up! How can she be heard amidst all this noise?

  ‘Mr Daley? Mr Daley, there’s nothing to hear, not any more …’

  Someone is talking … perhaps it is me. Nothing to hear. Well that’s right, isn’t it? Surely that’s right. I can’t hear her, can’t detect any of her; her familiarity, the lift and crack of her voice, the steadiness of each heartbeat, the rustle of fresh morning clothes.

  Can’t hear her. Can only watch her pallid face, think how much it looks like an old painting, Renaissance perhaps, ivory skin with the texture of damask, vague time-cracks in the parchment, features set in ordered restraint. A quaint, elegant beauty: that’s my last Duchess painted on the wall, looking as if she were alive.

  Then I am surrounded, besieged by doctors and nurses and other medics, their own faces grey and drawn, their lips moving quietly, murmuring. There is a heart-drop when Garten says, ‘I’m very sorry. There was nothing … we tried everything. I’m sorry. Nothing we could do.’ Suddenly I feel sick and I want to vomit but there is a hand on my shoulder urging me from the room. The smell of disinfectant, the blinding light. Something primitive kicks inside me — leave the room? Leave her be? My love, my rock, my wife … leave the room?

  ‘I am never leaving! Do you hear me? I am never leaving!’

  I am never leaving … never … never going away … never never never …

  Now, minutes later — maybe hours, maybe days, I don’t know — I stand and watch, feel somehow disconnected. It strikes me that the most amazing thing about a dead body is its stillness. We are as used to movement as we are to sound — but she has neither. Neither! My mind flies back to another time; Otis just born and me sneaking out of my bed in the middle of the night, tip-toeing into the rooms of my children because I was desperate to see their rise-and-fall, tiny chest-cages fluttering and dropping. This is the second movement that a parent learns to love, after the slide of a child’s head as it enters the world, mucky and distorted from the pressures of the womb, strangely elastic until the neck muscles flex and the chin lifts, as if that tiny new face wants to stretch its cheeks and greet our good and glorious world.

  Good and glorious? When so much is a throwing-away process? When parents battle to discard their children’s dependencies, one by one, so that those same children may live without and despite us?

  Good and glorious? When parents die before their children?

  Love words, love Kaz, loved that other time, movement and sound and being alone in the room, a father in the darkness with his children, a father watching the shimmering glow of lamplight cast its whiteness around their eternal rise-and-fall.

  Splash in the darkness.

  Stu’s big voice, thundering down the corridor.

  ‘In here, I think!’ and he is bursting through the doors, my dwarves eagerly behind him. ‘Mum!’ they clatter but it is in celebration, a word shouted with the expectation of shared moments. ‘Mum,’ they want to screech again as they tumble towards her, ‘Mum we had ice-cream and Uncle Stu drove really fast and we went to the park and had a ride on the train —’

  Milo stops, stares, pulls back. His sister’s mouth is open, lips quivering uncontrollably then she yawps, enormous soulful cries that rush from her like old winds released from a forgotten cave. I see Stu gathering them up, shushing and caressing, turning to me, a mask of disbelief blanking his features, then I am pitching forward, screaming: ‘Don’t do that! Don’t pull a sheet over her!’

  Then the words will not come: At least leave her hands free, I want to say. Leave her hands free that I may worship them, rejoice in the temple of her fingers.

  Ah it’s funny, talking of hands, it’s funny because there’s a photograph of you and me, Kaz. You know the one? We used a timer and my new SLR camera, the anniversary present — photography, another one of my unfinished phases — loaded good quality film, snapped pictures of us outside, naked as new-borns, standing together in the wild swaying grass behind our farmhouse. Remember it? I do. I can still hear the crows barking their discordant displeasure but we didn’t care because we were front-to-front, bellies pressed, thighs pressed, arms wrapped and hands fanned carefully across each other’s buttocks. I remember looking down, seeing brown fingers on white little dents. We looked like we were kneading flesh, making loaves of love. Your hands were petite, mine hard and hoary — the stems of flowers, the clods of earth — but we held hard as the camera clicked automatically and we were snared forever in a kind of amalgam made of mercury and steel, quicksilver and ice.

  Remember it? I do. Beyond us the trees roared as a cloud fell, rain spattered our sticky skin then we slid forward and merged. We were centred by desire: writhing, nibbling, tasting, feasting on our juices as the season gathered and rollicked and plunged insanely, and lightning creased the sky.

  The digital clock says 4.11. My watch tells me 4.13 — Tuesday morning. Curious, I think; last day I knew was a Sunday. Fed the children, thought about writing, transported my wife’s hand to hospital in our small blue car.

  I lift myself up. Surprisingly, there are lights on throughout the house — halogens, bulbs, lamps, even a candle smouldering on the kitchen table.

  Throughout the house? Scan the view; it does look oddly f
amiliar. See my windcheater slumped in the corner, worn threads on the couch where I am lying, a devil-shaped splotch of spilled coffee stained into its usual place on the rug.

  My head hurts. I lie back, try to haul in the past two days, find nothing.

  Stu is sitting at the table, back bowed, crazy head slumped forward onto his flabby arms, small snorts fizzing from his lips. I feel a plop of affection: he is wearing the same suit he wore on Sunday. Now it’s crumpled and mussed. His hair is ropey, hanging in impromptu dreadlocks. His skin is seriously flushed. A near-empty bottle of bourbon sits next to the candle, both sentinel and damnation.

  ‘Hey Stu,’ I croak. The roughness of my voice surprises me.

  No response. I get off the couch, stretch, shake the tightness from my limbs, stare down at the same clothes I wore on Sunday. Fading denims, bush-walker socks, blue button-down shirt rolled to the elbows.

  Still stiff, still re-gathering my shape, I creak awkwardly towards Stu.

  ‘Hey!’ I touch his shoulder, shake him, lightly at first then harder. ‘Hey Stu! Hey baby! Wake up. Wake up!’

  BIG bleary eyes flicker, open, widen a little, register my presence.

  ‘Vince.’ His speech is vaguely slurred. ‘You’re awake.’

  ‘Brilliant, Stu. Go on, sit up. I’m not going to talk to your hair-piece.’

  He struggles and groans. Eventually his posture is passably erect. His face is bloated; a rime of stubble is glued haphazardly to his jowls.

  ‘You look like shit,’ I tell him gleefully. ‘You shouldn’t drink so much. Be like me — practise moderation. Learn to stop after the fourth bottle.’

  He stares at me for a while. Within this halo of artificial glare, his eyes are like two spot-lit actors, nervous, bloodless, subsumed by the greater force of the audience.

  ‘It’s good to have you back,’ he says.

  My turn to stare. It’s such an odd thing to say — he’s either mad, indulging in some pathetic attempt at humour, or still pissed. I decide that the latter is probable. So, humour him …

  ‘Merci, mon brave. Ah, where have I been?’

  He doesn’t answer for a moment, prefers to massage his temples, pull a bouquet of errant hairs from his nose.

  ‘Asleep,’ he tells me. ‘I think. Sort of … out of it. Sedated.’

  ‘Pardon?’

  ‘Over there.’ He points to the couch. ‘Asleep, on-and-off, since Sunday night.’

  A thought strikes.

  ‘Stu? Have you been here that long?’ I ask. ‘Thirty-six hours? I mean, why on earth —’

  ‘You don’t … don’t you know?’

  ‘Eh?’

  ‘Vince, you do know, don’t you? You do know what happened … ’

  ‘What happened?’

  ‘Vince … ’

  ‘Stu? What are you on about?’

  ‘You don’t remember, do you?’ He cuts me off again, stands and begins to smooth down his shirt and trousers.

  ‘Remember? Remember what?’

  ‘Jesus, they said this, they said the trauma …’ He stops then and there is such anguish burned into him, such a genuine pain in his twisting fingers and convex shoulders that he mesmerises me.

  A long, stifled silence. Eventually he approaches, grips my biceps hard.

  ‘Remember about Kaz,’ he whispers. ‘Vince, do you remember? At the hospital?’

  I relax then.

  ‘Of course I remember!’ I slip away, cross to the kitchen bench and flick on the kettle. ‘She cut her hand. A temperature too. She’ll be bored out of her mind’

  ‘Vince —’

  ‘Coffee first then rescue. White and one, isn’t it?’

  ‘Vince —’

  ‘Actually, given your condition, I think black and fifteen might be better.’

  But suddenly he is over me, grabbing, shaking, shouting in my face.

  ‘Vince! Listen to me! Listen — to — me!’

  The kettle hums. Around us, the hemisphere stirs. Birds rejoice within each new brush-stroke of light. Wildflowers peep and unfurl.

  ‘She… she died, Vince. Kaz … died. Remember? At the hospital?’

  Deep within my brain I feel an old pressure, fists softening dough.

  ‘Jesus,’ says Stu. He mops at his face like he is wiping spillage. ‘Fucking hell … do you remember, Vince? Do you remember anything?’

  But I can only stare at the steam that shoots forth from the kettle because, too soon, I see it all. There are white faces, a white sheet is covering her face, white tablets sit in white containers. White, the shade of death? And I am standing within an inertia, as if I have been immobilised while everything happens around me. Everything spins, the whole spinning smarting contraption of the world carousels around me and there, on the merry-go-round, is Bernice. Her eyes pop but her mouth is tight with agony. She is followed by Francesca on a beautiful white horse, Francesca who approaches the horror tentatively, as if it is a sea-jelly that cannot be touched. Then I see Amelia, a soft-haired girl whose shining youth has been marred by fresh tears, and finally Stu, BIG Stu carrying the children but carefully because they are fragile, a precious cargo. Do not drop. Do not let go.

  Words, more words, invading me.

  Sign here … dreadfully sorry … and here, please — it’s awful but necessary — and here … thank you, dreadfully sorry, nothing we could do …

  Leaving the hospital: outside, the late afternoon air strikes fiercely at our wounds. The rawness stings before I am in a car, slumped along the back seat, staring at the fabric on the roof. The car jiggles while the radio whispers long-ago love-songs. People are sniffing, traffic passing, light and shadow patching over me in jagged waves … and I don’t know why because I don’t know much of anything, but suddenly I am compelled to find my thumb and suck it, until I sleep.

  ‘Everyone’s still here,’ Stu tells me. He is sipping coffee. I am near the window, alone, feeling giddy. I look outside to the flower garden. The buds are unmoving, opaque. A soft wash of morning rain is on the horizon of the hills.

  ‘The funeral’s today,’ he continues. ‘Francesca organised it. She’s been fantastic. So has Amelia — with the kids especially. Just great with the kids’

  There is nothing I can say.

  ‘Three o’clock,’ he says. ‘In town. Francesca sorted it all out. She’s incredibly strong.’

  I look outside again, see blue-grey eucalypts, the early lilac light of the bush diffusing as the sun slowly rises.

  ‘She should be here,’ I tell him.

  His look is quizzical.

  ‘She loves this place.’ The words tumble from me. ‘She thinks it’s really grounded, I know she does. It makes her think of wood and stone and air, all becoming something beautiful.’

  He puts his cup on the bench where it rattles then is still.

  ‘Vince, we can’t. There are rules, regulations. Bernice wanted … well, a normal funeral she said. That was what she said. ‘‘Normal and dignified, befitting a wonderful daughter—’ They were her exact words. So, service at St Marks, then a procession out to the, um, cemetery.’

  ‘She should be here!’

  ‘Mate, she can’t. We can’t.’

  He comes to me and we stand together then for a moment, watching the sky lift from salmon-pink to lemon, watching but still blind to a flock of birds as they connect in a perfect vee and brace the curvature of the world.

  ‘Where is everyone?’ I whisper.

  ‘They’re all here,’ he says. ‘Come on, I’ll show you.’

  So we traipse haplessly down the corridor of this farmhouse, the place that drew Kaz and me together and polished us clean, and I see my children asleep in their bedroom. Milo is foetal at the foot of the bed, a single sheet flung over his sturdy limbs. Otis hugs the length of the wall. A shroud of hair protects her face, and the doona — her favourite, moons and stars and mythological faces in a cartoon universe — is clumped about her.

  I search for the rise-and-fall then see Be
rnice, sitting in a chair in the corner of the room, knees hugged to her chest. In her hands she clutches the green velour dressing-gown. As I watch she lifts the gown to her face and rubs its texture against her cheek. She rubs it in small slow ovals then dips her head and cries silently, each tear damping the fabric. She cries and looks at me with an awful, empty uncertainty, says nothing, turns away, scuffs at her eyes, watches the children in their beds.

  The door to the guest room is open. There is a double bed within. Francesca and Amelia are both in it, both asleep.

  Looking at them, I see that they are quite different. Francesca is elegant, even in sleep. Her hair is dark and luxuriant. Her wide mouth is held in perfect proportion. She has Kaz’s hands, slim and sensuous. She lies calmly on her side. She is a resolute blend of serenity and discipline; she even manages to sleep with a sort of military synchrony. But her daughter Amelia is not like this. She is somehow looser. Her arms are flung wide. Her auburn hair looks like it has been thrown carelessly onto the pillow. She sleeps on her back, breathes deeply and loudly. One leg is drawn up; one foot hangs from the side of the bed. Her toenails are painted five different colours. She wears a charm bracelet on her ankle.

  Never, I think, have I seen them so close, yet so in opposition.

  ‘Everyone has been fantastic,’ Stu says in a funny, strangled kind of voice but I can’t listen to him any more. I feel trapped, claustrophobic, as if the big blank walls, hinged at the base, are angling in towards me. There is a sudden heat, thick and inexplicable, then I am stumbling away, back down the corridor to a door, any door which will take me outside. I gasp, begin to hyperventilate, rip furiously at the handle and am out in a vast space where there is a sharp scent that mixes wet rotting leaves with baked biscuits. The new sun is risen and it smashes into my cheeks. Now I run away from the farmhouse as if I am on the beach of my dream, past the flower garden, past the old gum tree that was forked by lightning years before, across the glistening dew and wild grass and snails on rocks to the barn where the doors are still open and the ladder lies on its side where I threw it and there is a pair of old shears lying in the dirt.