Our Magic Hour (18 page)

Audrey smelled something chemical. She realised she'd knocked over the jar of turps.
‘I can't talk to you about this any more. You look—
maternal
. That was another life.'

Irène had the paintbrush between her teeth. She pulled her hair into a knot.

‘You just need to keep going,' she said at last.

‘I know that.'

‘Do you want a sandwich?' Irène asked.

‘I'm okay.'

‘Come on,' she said. ‘Let's take a break.'

After lunch they climbed into bed without talking about it. Irène held out her arm
for Audrey.

‘You're so little,' she said. ‘I always forget. Spider sister.'

‘It feels so indulgent, being in bed in the afternoon,' Audrey said.

‘I've been doing this every day. It's my routine at the moment.'

Audrey remembered exactly how it felt to be held by Irène. Four years between them.
How many nights crawling into each other's beds, how many times falling asleep on
Irène's lap in the back seat of the car.

‘Remember when we'd go camping and Dad used to squish the mattress in the back of
the van? And it never fit, and we'd always be rolling into the centre towards each
other?'

Irène was still. ‘I don't remember that much,' she said. ‘Not like you. I don't really
have any memory of anything before I was about seven or eight. I used to worry about
it, but I guess it's okay now.' She shifted. ‘My adult memory's great. I know my
Medicare number by heart.'

‘I don't know how true any of it is,' Audrey said. ‘Sometimes it's hard to trust
yourself.'

But she was sure of what she knew, of the residue of their childhood. The long grass
by the drainage canals where she and Irène had thrown stones and bottle-tops. The
smell of chemicals from the photo-processing shop near the Menzies Avenue flat. It
went out of business like the video shops and milk bars. The snooker complex where
she and her sister had waited for what felt like hours, crouched against the wall
with cans of soft drink sweating into their palms. In her mind it was at the intersection
of a highway, set back against a field. For years she'd wondered where it was or
if she'd invented it altogether—though she
knew
the look of tired, smooth faces beneath
the pool-hall lights, because when she sometimes saw her friends playing clumsy billiards
in pubs, the familiarity rushed at her like a king tide; and she
knew
how women's
hair looked under that light—and then one day she'd found it by accident out near
Dandenong, by the bread factory and the railway.

‘You know what I remember?' Irène said suddenly. Audrey had thought she was asleep.
‘Maman and Dad had a tube of KY in the
bedside drawer. I used to check if they'd
used it, to see if they were still fucking.'

Audrey laughed. ‘They fucked
heaps
! I walked in on them so many times.'

‘I know. I heard them. But I used to check when they fought—I didn't get that you
could fight like that and still want to fuck afterwards.'

They went quiet again. Audrey felt Irène's breathing slow. She wriggled to the edge
of the bed. ‘Do you want me to shut the blinds?' she whispered.

‘No, leave them. The light's pretty this time of day,' Irène said. ‘Oh, but can you
set my phone alarm so I wake up in time to pick Zoe up?'

‘I'll get her.'

Irène reached for Audrey's fingers and kissed them. Audrey watched her sister fall
asleep. It happened quickly. Her face turned younger.

Audrey walked to the primary school and waited on the bitumen outside the portable
classroom. There was a series of painted lines on the asphalt, a four-square box,
a hopscotch square. Audrey remembered having to line up for assemblies on cold mornings,
turning to face the f lagpole to sing the national anthem. The windows of the portable
were up high, above eye-level. There was coloured card tacked to the glass inside.

The children came out in a stream of thick legs and enormous backpacks. Audrey watched
Zoe drop her sunhat once, twice; watched her scanning the line of parents for her
mother. Audrey stepped closer, waved at her. Zoe came running.

‘Audrey!' She turned her cheek for a kiss, threw her arms around Audrey's neck. ‘Where's
Mum?'

‘She's at home. I thought I'd surprise you.'

‘Is Nick coming?'

‘Nope. Just me. Have you got your reader?'

‘N-n-n…yes I do.'

They started across the oval towards the back gate. The grass around the cricket
pitch was flattened and muddy, edged with clay.

‘Who'd you play with today?'

‘Veshalini and Jaclyn at playlunch. Why are you wearing that funny shirt?'

‘I was helping your mum paint. I needed to wear something old.'

‘Did you bring my scooter?'

‘Nope. Sorry.'

‘My legs get tireder when I walk,' Zoe said, ‘than when I'm on a scooter.'

‘I'll piggyback you if you get tired.'

‘I'm already piggybacking my schoolbag.'

They pushed through the chainlink gate, stopped at the crossing. Zoe's hand found
hers obediently.

At home they stood side by side in the doorway of the white room. Irène was kneeling
beneath the window. The skirting board was painted along two walls.

‘I said I'd do that,' Audrey said.

Irène held out her arms for Zoe. ‘Be careful,' she said. ‘It's all wet.'

‘Why can't the baby sleep in my room with me?'

‘He'll wake you up all night.'

‘I won't mind,' said Zoe. ‘I can look after him. He won't even know if you're the
mum, or me.'

Irène glanced up at Audrey, standing in the doorway with the schoolbag slung across
her shoulder. ‘Do you want to stay for tea? David's getting pizza.'

‘Thanks, but I'd better go. Adam—um, I think he said he's got something.'

Five years old, standing in the dark corridor at an hour she wasn't supposed to be
up. She'd woken from a bad dream but her parents weren't in their bed. She was almost
in the kitchen doorway before she was awake enough to know it was a bad fight. She
made her feet line up with the heavy shadow. She was scared to look into the kitchen.
Her mother was saying
You make me sick, you're bad for me
, but she was speaking in
French and her voice was muffled, like she was under a blanket, and Audrey knew her
father wouldn't be able to make out the words. There was a yelp, heavy stumbling,
wheezing. She knew if Irène were there, she'd tell her to keep her eyes shut. Then
a thud, and the shattering of ceramic on tile. Sylvie must have hit the cupboard
where they kept the plates and cups. Audrey wanted to look but she couldn't move.
She was sure the whole cabinet must have fallen on top of her mother. She pictured
her legs sticking out from underneath it like in
The Wizard of Oz
.

Her father's face was above her in the doorway. He was breathing like he'd been running.
Audrey's limbs were stone. She felt a hotness on her calf and realised she was pissing.
Her father looked at her feet, at the feeble pool on the lino. Audrey was sure he'd
kill her right there. But he was looking at her face again, and then he was hitting
his head against the doorframe. His eyes were squeezed shut. The banging was rhythmic,
like the sound of the headboard on her parents' bed against the wall when they fucked,
only slower. He kept going even after his eyebrow split open.

Audrey slipped past him. Sylvie was awake. She was sitting with her back against
the fridge. There was a worm of blood from her ear to her collarbone. She had a bag
of frozen peas pressed to her eye. She wouldn't let Audrey see.
Go back to bed. You'll
cut your feet
.
C'est moi qui va nettoyer tout ce foutoir.
The tiles around her were
covered in pieces of broken plates and cups.

In the morning she lay beside her sister. Irène said
Are you sure you didn't dream
it? You don't smell like pee.
But there was blood on the doorframe, dried, with a
few grey hairs sticking out of it. The kitchen tidy was filled with destroyed crockery.
In the afternoon Sylvie took them to the Salvos to pick out new plates. She tied
a scarf around her neck.

I was five years old
, Audrey wanted to say to her sister, and
Why don't you remember
.

She took a week's leave, then went in to meet with her manager. When she stood between
the cubicles saying fast hellos to the others, the familiarity washed over her. It
felt safe, and she almost faltered. But she'd thought about what to say in Vanessa's
office. She was calm and certain.

Vanessa reminded Audrey of every high-school teacher whose class she'd dropped—German,
physics, biology, media—who'd wanted her to keep going.
But you're so
good
at it!
But if you hadn't missed the outcome on thermodynamics, you'd have all As! But if
you just had a bit more confidence!
And Audrey, sixteen, hair falling from its plait,
eyes sliding to the door.

‘I haven't felt competent for a very long time,' she said. Vanessa asked Audrey to
think it over. She said
I'm so sorry you've been feeling like that
and
Are there
things I could have done to support you more?
and Audrey said
No no no
,
it's nothing
to do with you. Truly
. It was easier than she'd expected.

‘When you interviewed me, when I was still finishing uni,' Audrey said by the door,
‘you mentioned the turnover rate in child protection. You said something like
They
get in and get out
.'

‘I said that to everyone I interviewed. Anyway, it's true.' She was smiling.

‘I really wanted to stick it out,' Audrey said. ‘I thought I was going to.'

Vanessa was looking at her closely. ‘You know what you could do,' she said, ‘is apply
for unpaid leave. Do something else, short-term.'

Audrey nodded with a hand on the doorknob.
Yes. That's a good idea. Thanks for being
so good about this. Sorry. Sorry. Sorry.

Outside the day had turned hazy. Walking near the hospital she saw a man with a boy
on his shoulders. As they passed beneath a tree, the child reached up his hands to
shake the leaves hanging overhead, fat with water. It rained on them only.

She saw Nick at a gig at the Workers Club. She turned her head and there he was.
Perhaps he'd seen her first. His face, unsurprised, flashed at her under the lights.
They looked at each other for a long time.

She turned to Adam. ‘Nick's here. I'm just going to go over and say hullo.'

‘Are you sure?'

‘It's okay,' she said. She drifted away.

Nick raised a hand in greeting, in defence.

‘Look who it is,' he said. He opened his arms to her. It was a heavy hug.

‘How have you been?' she asked.

‘Oh—all right.' Audrey looked back to the stage, where a girl was singing, her eyes
closed, her hands suspended in the air as the music crashed and fell around her.
It was a Jonathan Richman cover, but it sounded like a prayer. Audrey was seized
with longing. It was the sound of her infancy, of driving home from the promontory
on a Sunday night, lying on the back seat with Irène. The bush fell away from either
side of the car in streaks of dark scrub through the windows. The high-beam headlights
caught the reflective road signs and beamed them back in emerald flashes. Her sister
would be asleep, heavy adenoidal breathing, but Audrey would watch the film reeling
on in the front: her mother's wild hair, her father's unbuttoned shirt; casual hands
stroking thighs across the centre console and warm rain on the windscreen. They'd
be talking their bastard talk, lightning French and English. Her father singing along
and her mother watching his profile with the kind of love that Audrey had no words
for in either language.

Jonathan Richman would always sound like the end of the holiday. Now the chanting,
over and over again— it was too much under the throbbing lights, too charged.

Audrey turned back to Nick. He was waiting.

‘Let's get out of here,' she said.

‘Yeah, it's a bit intense, isn't it?'

He finished his beer. Audrey looked for Adam, and sent him a signal.
It's okay
. He
gave her a thumbs-up and turned back to his conversation. Nick and Audrey pushed
out of the bandroom, past the bar, onto Gertrude Street. They walked slowly, Nick
wheeling his bike, Audrey with her arms crossed against the cold. The magnolias
were out. Audrey missed living here.

‘How is it with Adam?' Nick asked.

‘It's good.' They passed the second block of flats, and Audrey stopped. ‘Look,' she
said. ‘Someone's having a party up there.' Nick looked up: on the very top floor,
one window flashed coloured lights. They stood there a moment, looking at the little
square blinking pink and green, and kept walking.

‘It's a bit suffocating,' Audrey said, ‘but he means well.'

‘He would.'

‘He makes me chamomile tea before bed. He runs me baths. He bought me a voucher for
a meditation class. Mindfulness. You know.'

Nick glanced at her. ‘Mindfulness,' he repeated. ‘I really cocked up, didn't I? No
wonder it all went to shit. I was doing it all wrong.' They stopped at the lights
and faced each other. ‘I was kidding,' he said, ‘I was only joking, Spence.'

‘I know. I know you were.'

The house was cold. Nick poured wine. The gentle hollows under his eyes were blue.

‘Are you hungry?' he asked, and Audrey shook her head. He made toast anyway, and
cut up some oranges. They ate sitting on the carpet.