The Paler Shade of Autumn (22 page)

He shrugs. “I’ve had many years to come to terms with it.”

A lot of things make sense in that moment, many questions are answered for Autumn: Jet’s fatherly attachment to Darshan and his relentless quest to help children in need, his happiness volunteering at the orphanage, each and every one of these activities making up and compensating for his shortcomings. Even his attitude to women when he was younger, knowing he is incapable of creating life with sex, led him to abuse sex for that which it did offer, gluttonous pleasure, with women he was unwilling to commit to because he would never be able to give them what most women end up wanting—babies.

She leans over and kisses him gently. “I don’t want any secrets between us,” she says.

“Me either. I want you to trust me, to know me completely.” He offers her his hand.

Autumn shakes her head, looking at his hand. “I don’t want to know that way. I want to learn about you in the normal way, where we talk and share our lives with each other.”

He lowers Autumn onto her back in a single move and straddles her. “I know you, Autumn,” he says, kissing her lips. “I don’t know you so well physically, but I know
you
.”

She understands. How else can she explain what exists between them, a passion that transcends beyond the material universe.

“I want you to know all of me,” he says. “I don’t want any secrets between us. I want you to see me for who I am, all of me.”

Autumn does want to see him too. From the moment they met she has wanted it. That’s why she took his hand in the field that day in India and then again under the Bodhi Tree. There is no other explanation. But, with this new quest for normalcy, she believes she must resist, has to restrain from abusing this ability.

“The unknowns are what will make our relationship unpredictable, fresh and new. And it’s not fair to you, I can’t reciprocate,” she says.

Jet shakes his head. “I don’t care,” he says. He kisses her again, her neck, bites at her nipples with his lips. He runs his hands up the length of her arms, pushing them above her head, pinning them gently against the bed by her wrists. Slowly, intimately, he threads his fingers between hers and the images begin to roll towards Autumn like a barrel wave finding its way to the ocean shore. But something happens. Something shifts or opens or closes, she doesn’t know which. Autumn closes her fingers over Jet’s, impelled to hold tight to understand what is occurring. Her eyes widen as the imagines begin to impinge, but they are images, strange images unlike any she has ever witnessed.

They come to her like old, dusty photographs, hazy and lacking full, vivid colour. It’s her and Jet, yet at the same time, it’s not. An old Tibetan couple, with dark hair, eyes, and thickly wrinkled, brown skin, appear in her mind’s eyes. It’s her and Jet, she knows it unequivocally; she and he, in the lifetime immediately before this current life. Autumn is blind, eyes washed white, hair dusted with grey. She is sitting next to a bed, swathed thickly with blankets to keep at bay the bone-chilling cold of winter.

Holding her hand is an old, sickly man, who she knows is Jet. He smells, as he lies supine in the bed, already of death and decay. Anguish fuels every cell in his body, unable to stop his descent into the next life, leaving his much loved wife alone to brave another freezing winter without the ability to see. The old man cries and winces, in so much physical pain and emotional torment.

“When we meet next time, you will be able to see all of me. I promise you,” he says. “You’ll see so much, every colour, every beautiful flower, the stars and the moon and so much more.” He raises a wrinkled, shaking hand to her cheek. “I’ve been blessed to see your beautiful face every day I’ve known you. Next time you’ll get to see mine too, and I’ll have a face and eyes that will set you alight.”

The old man turns his face to the side and she can see the entire left side has been burned, melted away, leaving a pink, puckered and snarled scar that extends from his chin to his forehead.

“I’ve been able to see all that I’ve needed, my love: your kindness, your compassion, your tenderness, your love, and your soul. These are all I care about.”

“Of course you do and I don’t expect anything different from you. But next time, I will give you more. You’ll see the colours of every season.”

“I’ve always wanted to see autumn,” she says. “It sounds so beautiful the way you describe it to me.”

“Then that’s what I will give you—autumn.” The old man twists in pain and an agonising groan rips from his throat. “Find me, princess. Promise you will,” he says, voice barely louder than a whisper.

Her faded eyes begin to brim with tears. “I will. I will find you. I promise.”

“I love you so much.”

“I love you too, my love.”

Autumn snaps her eyes open wider and begins to cry doleful tears of loss. Choking sobs flood her throat, tears spill onto her cheeks and roll down her face.

Jet releases his grip and sits on the bed beside her. “What did you see?” he asks, anxiety expressed in every word.

She clambers to her knees and throws her arms around him, pulling him in tight to her body. “Oh my God, Jet. I saw us. I saw us.”

For a long while, Autumn cannot explain to Jet all that she has seen. She stays wrapped in his embrace as a lifetime of built up loss and grief drains from her body through a bounty of tears. Incessant thoughts weigh heavy in her mind. But along with the thoughts, she finally has been provided with answers. At last, she has a reason, a definite reason why she has the ability to see so much; to see more than the physical. And reconciled are the conflicting emotions she has about Jet and why she feels such a strong spiritual connection with him, why she was drawn to him in India and every day afterwards.

Eventually, Autumn finds the words, delicate enough to tell Jet all that she saw. Jet, of course, shows disbelief, but as the words permeate his memories—even those he has forgotten, lost to another time, another life—he is provided with release and relief and completion. It sets his doubts and endless questioning about Darshan’s short existence straight and solidifies his belief in the solid, unavoidable cycle of life, told to him by Master Shen.

They are both overwhelmed with a sense of equilibrium, as though anything askew or dissonant in their lives has been set right. Jet asks Autumn to describe the sweet, old, wrinkled Tibetan couple for him with all the detail she can conjure and his eyes glisten, empathetic to their meagre existence, their plight, a burnt old man wishing as he dies to give his blind wife a world she has missed out on ever seeing.

As they lie on the bed, face to face, Jet wipes loose strands of hair behind Autumn’s ear. “Could I have somehow wished this insight on you?” he asks.

Autumn shrugs. “I’m not sure. I don’t know the ins and outs of any of this. Multiple lives, strange abilities and why things are the way they are. I’m as new to this as you. But I can guess.”

“What’s your guess?”

“I think, in a way, we both kind of willed it to happen.”

He nods. “Joint responsibility.”

“Yeah.”

He runs his free hand down her face, traces her lips with his finger. “There is no denying you’re autumn. Certainly no paler shade of autumn, either. You’re full of all the vibrant colours, your hair, your eyes.” He kisses her cheek. “Your skin. You’re the most beautiful autumn. Your mother must have had no choice but to call you by that name.”

“It’s bizarre. How did she know?”

He shrugs. “I think I’m even more clueless about this than you.” He kisses the tip of her nose. “All I know is how lucky am I to have you, not once, but twice?” Jet holds her tight in his arms, his eyes heavy with need of sleep and whispers, “Tell me what it was like for you, growing up, having such insight.”

Autumn reflects on the twenty-six years she has lived being able to steal memories and thoughts from others around her. She tells Jet about the first time, at eight years old, when she realised that not everyone was able to do as she does, after she spied the thoughts of a teacher who was preying on young girls, and told her mother about it. Her mother had cried so many tears learning of her gift. From that point on everything changed. Mrs Leone wouldn’t let Autumn touch her hands anymore; some memories aren’t for little girls, despite Autumn having already witnessed many, many things far beyond her years. Mrs Leone would privately rouse on her if she saw her in the backyard with her friends playing patty cake or holding hands with girlfriends as they skipped. Her father ignored that there was anything different, refusing to acknowledge her gift, forbidding any of the family to speak of it and, never again, let their hands collide, even accidentally.

Autumn soon learned that this ability of insight allowed for so much intimacy, seeing so deeply into people’s lives, while concurrently denying so much intimacy, for she couldn’t interact with people as normal people do. She avoided holding hands with friends, avoided having boyfriends in high school. She suffered being called frigid and cold-hearted so she didn’t have to witness teenage fantasies when boys wanted to hold her hand. When they did dance classes for school sport, she would make up reasons to not attend rather than risk being flooded with classmates’ histories and sometimes catching glimpses of those who have difficult childhoods or suffered shameful abuses.

Tae was the only one of her friends who knew of her gift and never once judged Autumn; never took advantage of it by asking her to spy on people and secretly gain information she wanted. Tae never withheld her hand from Autumn, was never afraid to be touched out of fear of what Autumn might see, and she had never told another soul about what she knew, even to this day.

Jordy, despite taking every opportunity available to exploit Autumn’s abilities and have her use them to his advantage, was the only one with whom she could talk freely about it, without any implication that it wasn’t an ordinary part of both their lives, because for Jordy, it has always been a part of their lives, so he couldn’t perceive life being normal without it. Even as small kids, Autumn remembers playing with her brother, holding his hand, telling him his thoughts and he would laugh and giggle when she would recount to him the childish, rude and cheeky things he had done. Then there were the times when he would take her hands and try so hard to do the same but always failed to. Jordy always made Autumn feel special for having it and she loved her brother dearly for that.

Autumn had to grow up fast, bearing witness to images and life situations children don’t normally have to endure or even conceive of. The most difficult aspect of her gift is the additional information she receives about people, especially boyfriends, others would never be privy to. On top of having to take someone at face value, she had to compute all the additional information about their past, the things they withhold, the things they are ashamed of, the things they regret, the secrets kept and, knowing all this, try not to judge them on any of it. This aspect was the hardest thing to deal with and something Autumn struggled with immensely.

And then came Jet, the only man besides her brother and father who knew of her secret and now, having learnt of their long past, knows why she opened herself up to him, when she had never done so to anyone before.

Autumn links her fingers with Jet’s. “Having always inhibited contact with my hands, it feels like such an intimate act to place my hands in yours,” she says, gripping tightly to him. “I’ve never had this much contact with anybody else before, except for my brother when we were younger.” Autumn closes her eyes and it’s almost as though she and Jet are one, their minds syncing together, their emotions intermingling. She can feel his passion for her, can see his intentions, how he perceives her body, her soul and it pleasures her deeply.

Autumn kisses him, presses her naked chest, her pelvis against him. She feels his arousal, coupled with her own, an incredible sensation. “It’s so arousing. I can feel your pleasure and your anticipation.”

Jet swings his body on top of hers and kisses her hard.

“Yes,” she whispers, knowing exactly what he wants. “Yes.”

If Autumn closes her eyes she feels as though she and Jet are the old Tibetan couple again, absorbed with simply being in each other’s presence, holding one another, loving one another with a vivacity that exceeds everything else, even death.

She peers into his beautiful eyes, his handsome face, which does indeed set her alight, exactly as he promised it would and whispers, “I love you.”

Jet’s eyes widen and his lips transform into a dazzling smile. “I love you, too.”

A kiss on the cheek, a whispered goodbye and Jet leaves to fly back to Sydney early Monday morning for the meeting he had scheduled. Autumn sleeps another hour before waking to dress for work. Scott travelled to Sydney with Jet, so he is not available to drive her into the office this time, instead she catches a cab.

Michael texts her at eight as she steps out of the cab onto the sidewalk: he will be in her office with two lattes and something—which he won’t disclose—she will need to be sitting down to see. Autumn bustles down the hall to her office to find Michael sitting on her desk, coffee in his hand and another beside him, along with a newspaper.

“Good morning,” she says.

“Hi. The fact you’re saying ‘good’ morning, means you haven’t seen it yet.”

She drops her bag on the floor beside her desk and takes a seat. “Seen what? And what’s with all the secrecy?”

Michael shifts his bum off the desk and sits opposite Autumn on the leather chair. He reaches for the newspaper and opens it on the desk. “Read that,” he says, poking the page with his finger.

Autumn looks at the page and the first thing she sees is a picture of her and Jet kissing in the ocean. It must have been taken on their recent trip to the Gold Coast. Next is the heading in big, black, print: BLOSSOM BROODS WHILE JET FLIES TO YOUNG MISTRESS.

Then further below is another picture, this one of Blossom, maternally cradling her stomach.

“Oh my God,” she says, looking across to Michael, eyes wide. She flicks to the front page of the newspaper. “The bloody
Australian
,” she says.