Goodnight, Beautiful: A Novel (45 page)

He hasn’t bothered to throw on a shirt before answering the door, because I think he has been waiting for me. He suspected I’d come and hoped I wouldn’t. But here I am, so he stands in gray jogging bottoms, bare-chested in front of me.

Fear is implanted in his eyes, on his face; fear and agony and understanding, but quickly they are gone, brushed aside so he can do this. His chest lifts and expands as he takes a deep breath, steeling himself as he crosses the short distance between us. Even though he has managed to hide his feelings, his hand trembles as he reaches out for the buttons on the red and white flower shirt Leo picked out for me the last time we went shopping.

He undoes the small pearly buttons and with both hands pushes my shirt and my denim jacket off my shoulders onto the floor. His hands are still shaking as he peels off my white tank top with the sparkly pink smiling-skull-and-crossbones motif—another Leo choice—and lets it fall away. He pulls me toward him, allowing me to feel the solidity of his body. As I feel his heartbeat, absorb his heat, he undoes my black bra, slips it off.

It’s still there.

I can still remember. It plagued me every step from the hospital to here. And even though I’m doing this, I haven’t forgotten, it’s still there.

Leo
—

Mal’s fingers are on the top button of my jeans. I focus on that. On him unbuttoning me. His hands tugging open my jeans. On kicking off my sneakers, on him pushing down my jeans and taking them off and managing to take off one of my socks in the process. I concentrate on taking off the other sock, while he stands again.

—
is
—

Mal’s hands hook into the top of my plain white panties and tug them down.

—
going—

Mal stops, then. Tenderly, he stares down at me, silently asking if I am sure. If it has truly come to this. If there really is no hope.

—
to
—

My body quails. The next word will shudder through my body and cement it in my mind. Make it real. Confirm what the doctor said. I don’t want it to be real. I want to forget.

Reading my mind, reading my body, Mal’s mouth comes down hard on mine, erasing the next thought. His hand digs into my hair, the other grips the base of my spine, clutching me close to him as he kisses me.

I plunge into the kiss with the passion that comes from grief and terror and heart-searing pain. Our skins meld together, almost becoming one as we kiss. I can feel him, firm and ready, against my stomach and I reach down to touch him. He takes my hand away, kisses me even harder, all the while walking me backwards toward the bed.

—
d
—

The word wells up in my mind and I kiss him more urgently, expelling it from my mind. His mouth still on mine, his tongue still in my mouth, he pushes me down onto the bed, climbing on top of me in one move.

He pauses for a second to tug free the tie of his jogging bottoms and push them off, and then his mouth is back on mine. Slower this time, deeper, but just as unyielding. Constant. Concrete.

—
di
—

He stops for a moment, stills himself on top of me. Everything stops with him. Our eyes lock and I am lost for a moment. I forget. I understand why he offered to do this. I’m not me. I’m not a mother. I’m not a wife. I’m not me. I am a mass of atoms. Only tethered together by this moment.

Now.
It has to be now. Before I come back.

Mal thrusts so hard and forcefully into me, I cry out, and his
mouth comes back down on mine, taking the sound, that little escaping expression of pain, into himself.

I dig my ragged nails into his back, clinging to the muscles that move on top of me, puncturing his skin. His lips close around my right nipple and he bites hard, spreading shards of sweet, physical pain through my body; I sink my teeth into the flesh below his collarbone and he moans loudly. He buries his hands in my hair and clings on tight as he moves; I claw again at his back. He is rough, far rougher than he needs to be.

This isn’t about pleasure and desire and lust. Every brutal thrust is a peeling back of the layers of reality. A shedding of this earthly agony. A quest for that black, hot state of pure, blissful oblivion. We are hurting, so we hurt each other to forget; to become a mass of unknowing, ignorant atoms.

His mouth covers mine again, swallowing my groans, pushing his moans into me. I can feel its approach. The end. The point of no return. It rises up from between my legs, the space Mal fills, and rushes through my bloodstream. I am racing toward the edge, he is racing inside me … I am on the edge … I am teetering on that precipice … And then I am falling. I am exploding and I am plummeting, and then here it is: the void. I am nothing. I am untethered. I am free.

Free.

We come apart so easily, I realize, as he rolls off me onto the bed, flopping back to stare at the ceiling. It felt like we were one for a forever, and now we are two again. Separate. Unwhole. Even our labored breathing is unsynchronized.

“I’m sorry,” he says.

I know.
In my head, I say it. I can’t speak aloud. I can’t do
anything aloud. I have to stay perfectly still, not ruffle anything by speaking or moving, because I can still hang on to the forgetting if I am careful. My scalp tingles from how tightly he clung to my hair, my mouth is still bruised from how hard he kissed me, my nipple still smarts from his bite, the space between my legs still aches from how rough he was inside me. If I hug these small agonies close, I can still forget.

“I couldn’t leave her. That’s the reason why. When she said I had to choose, I knew I couldn’t leave her. I promised I wouldn’t and I couldn’t. She’s like Mum.” He stops. “She’s bipolar.”

Well, of course she is
, I say in my head.
Of course she is.

He explains it all then. How she first told him. The way she tries to control herself. The crises she’s had over the years, the worst being the time he found her in the empty bath with her wrists slashed and an empty bottle of painkillers and an empty bottle of her lithium, after which she stayed in the hospital for two weeks. The abortion at fifteen. How no one can ever know because she is so scared of being judged and labeled a loony.

I listen to his words and with each one Stephanie finally comes into focus.

“She got scared that she would hurt the baby, that’s why she changed her mind,” he says in his tumble of words.

No, she didn’t
, I say in my head.
Stephanie knows that the only person she’ll ever be a danger to is herself. Just as we all are dangers to ourselves whenever we take risks. Stephanie got scared that you would fall in love with me. I would have your baby and you would fall in love with me and you would leave her for me. You would take the baby and go.

“I knew you’d be OK, that you were so strong, much stronger than Steph is. You had all these people around you who would take care of you, and you would survive. Steph has no one but
me. So when she said to choose between her and you and the baby, I had to keep my promise. She had no one else.”

She was never going to let you go. There was never any choice, because she knows you would never leave her. But she had to be sure, when the fears about you falling in love with me started, she had to move quickly. She had to make sure the choice was made before the baby was born. Afterwards, you might have wavered. You might have seen that there was someone out there who needed you more than she did and you might have gone. That’s why you had to shut me out: if you got to know your son, you might have wanted to be with him.

Stephanie was scared. And because of that, because she didn’t trust how much you love her, she had to do what she did. I don’t hate her. I feel sorry for her. Not for her condition, but for her lack of trust in the one person who would always love her. Even if you did want to be with me, you would never leave her.

“Every day for the last eight years, I’ve seen your face, heard your voice as you begged me not to do what I did. It’s tortured me. I want you to know that. I couldn’t ever forget. And every time I heard about you, or saw your mum and dad and Cordy, I would feel sick at what I’d done. I knew you were strong, but I still hated myself.”

“It’s OK,” I say, breaking the spell, allowing the residual pain that has kept me removed to evaporate now that I have spoken and stepped back into this world. “I understand. You should have told me back then, but now I know, I understand and it’s OK.”

“Really?” he asks, turning his head to me.

“Yeah,” I reply. “I understand, so I can let it go.” I close my eyes for a moment. “And right now, it doesn’t matter. Nothing matters.”

He rolls toward me, and I see the mark on his chest—vivid, red and raw—from where I bit him. His back will still have my deep scratches, which drew blood. Stephanie will see them. She’ll see them and she’ll know.
I don’t want her to know.
And I don’t want Keith to touch some newly sore part of my body and know. I don’t want anyone to know. I don’t want anyone to be any part of what we did. It’s ours, ours alone.

I don’t want any of this
, I think.
I just want normal.

He takes me in his arms, cuddles me up, holds me to him. This is what I need Mal for. “I’m sorry,” he whispers. He’s not apologizing about eight years ago. He is sympathizing about now. “I’m so, so sorry.”

Die.

The seams of my mind burst wide open. My pain flooding outwards, the torrent of tears coming thick and fast; my cries loud and uncontrolled.

Leo is going to die.

I cling to him as my sorrow becomes a tsunami, the pain flaying my heart, decimating my mind.

Leo is going to die.

“I know,” Mal whispers into my hair, his voice strong and reassuring as he rocks me in his arms. “I know I know I know I know I know.”

M
um and Dad are first.

Their fingers are intertwined; their hands clasped together as they open the door and step inside. This is the first time I have seen them hold hands. I know my parents have a deep affection, a limitless love for each other, but this is the first outward display of it. They bicker, constantly. Being irritable and mildly antagonistic with each other in public comes easily to them—in fact, the past ten days at the hospital have been the longest they have gone without sniping at each other—but they rarely express their love.

Some time later, they come out, no longer holding hands: Mum’s head rests on Dad’s shoulder, Dad’s arm is locked around Mum. They are supporting each other, holding the other up. They don’t look at anyone as they leave, they simply help each other down the corridor and turn at the corner, suddenly disappearing from here as though magicked into another realm before our very eyes.

Cordy is next.

She takes her entourage, as she likes to call them—Jack, Ria and Randle. Before she reaches for the door handle, she turns to me. Her eyes are already red, her face scored by guilt and remorse. I know what she is thinking, because if I was her, if I was a mother of healthy children looking at me, I would be thinking
it, too:
I’m sorry this is happening to you, but I am glad my children are well and I hate myself for being glad.
I do not want my sister to feel an extra burden; this is awful enough. I smile at her, telling her I know it isn’t her fault. That I would never resent her for having and keeping everything I once had. In response she presses her fingers to her lips and blows me a kiss. My little sister still does that because, as I say, she has never experienced an emotion she has not expressed. I try to widen my smile, before she turns back to face the door and they go inside.

They emerge, each parent carrying a child, each child’s head buried in the comforting hollow between their parent’s neck and jaw. Both children are crying; the adults’ eyes are red and swollen, their bodies stiff and cowed, they meet no one’s eye as they move down the corridor and then vanish, like Mum and Dad.

Amy is next.

Trudy stays frozen where she is, terror streaked on her gamine face, her hands pressed against the wall while panic rages around her. She has known Leo since he was five, at which point she wasn’t enamored with children. Leo, of course, sensed this and befriended her. They got on because they both have a no-nonsense approach to things. Amy glances to her side, her hand ready for Trudy’s. Amy realizes that she is alone. She turns to her and Trudy shakes her head. Amy smiles at her, gentle and understanding as always, she raises her slender hand, her bangles tinkling together, and holds it out for Trudy. Suddenly calmed, as though a wild horse tamed by secret words whispered in her ear, Trudy comes forward, reaches for Amy, and they enter together.

They are holding hands when they return. Amy is dry-eyed and upright, but I know her, I can see she is held together by
nothing more than the desire to not collapse in front of me. She and Trudy wander away, into the realm of the vanished like the others.

Mal and Aunt Mer move toward the door next, and at the same time Keith rises from his seat. I hold him back. He wants the waiting to be over, to go in there and say what needs to be said, but he has to wait a little longer. He is Leo’s dad, it’s only right his be the second-to-last voice Leo hears.

Mal is steeling himself: like a man about to leap from an airplane without a parachute, he takes deep, deep inhalations as he stares at the door. He wraps his arm around Aunt Mer’s shoulders as they walk in. For some reason, I remember that for years I called Aunt Mer Aunty Merry, and she would always smile at me as though I knew a secret no one else had stumbled across. I only stopped because Mum said it made her sound like a drinker.

Keith takes my hand, and kisses a lingering moment into the well of my palm. Jolted, confused, I turn to him and, for the first time, see, experience his grief. Deep and wide; unfathomable. He has been holding it in all this time, not only to protect me, but to protect himself as well. He has been consciously denying it, hiding it, cowering from it because he is terrified. A kind of terror he has never known before. He was in the Army, he works in the police force, he has seen death, he has lived through incredible acts of evil, and yet none of them have been capable of felling him like this. Nothing has been as immense as losing a child he loves; nothing has been capable of removing his future and replacing it with a void. That is why we haven’t been able to help each other, both of us have been keeping ourselves strong separately.