Touching Earth Lightly (25 page)

‘Don’t,’ Chloe had said. ‘Here. Have some more cake and don’t say anything.’

She falls in love with Theo as much for his novel as for anything else. The paraphernalia of it attracts her
—
the reference books, the piles of notes, the set-aside times. That he has set himself such a task impresses her. She wants to know all about it, she wants to help if she can. She wants to inspire him.

And for a while she does. At the beginning she can’t do anything wrong; he approves of everything about her. ‘I think that’s very kind,’ he says when she explains about going out with Janey, as her guard dog. ‘There aren’t many people who’d do that for their friend.’

And Chloe thinks,
Well, those are nice words in my ears, but a bit beside the point.
It feels false, if pleasant, to take some credit, to seem saintly and generous, as if Janey has pleaded pathetically, and she has consented. When in fact it isn’t something she thinks about any more than a magnet things about snapping onto the fridge
—
it’s not a matter of discussion or agreement that keeps them together, but an unquestioning force.

People come to dinner, Isaac and a couple from Joy’s work whom Chloe has met before but doesn’t know well. It’s kind of a test run, Chloe feels, a half-throttle occasion to ease them back into proper socialising.

She can’t eat much or say much. The whole thing seems too much of a betrayal of Janey, too much a pretence of normality. Between courses she excuses herself and goes into
the lounge room, sits on the arm of the couch and flicks listlessly through the TV channels. She goes upstairs for want of something better to do, lies on her bed until she thinks she might be missed.

When she comes down again, slowly because the dining room is full of laughter now and she doesn’t want to spoil things for them, to cast a pall over them again, Isaac is seated on the couch, studying CD sleeve notes.

‘So they’ve found who did it, they reckon,’ Chloe says bluntly, pausing at the end of the couch. She has to say
something
about it, acknowledge that they were in this together, clear the way for normality to flow back in between them.

He slides the booklet into the plastic case. ‘Your dad said. A whole gang of them.’

Chloe nods. The abbreviated version of the evening flashes through her mind—a pitiless blackness and spilled cubelets of glass.

‘It would
take
a gang, to knock down Janey.’ His is not a dutiful remark, as was hers. He looks up, and it’s as if Janey, her white feet and head at either end of Isaac’s coat, lies there in the air between them. Beyond her, Isaac is smiling—a curious thing, a new thing, that kind of smile, on Isaac’s face. Chloe feels childish, incompetent to deal with the twin twists of death and life in the air. She is shamed almost to tears.
Yes, but what do we do now?
is the bewildered thought that forms in her head.

Pete comes with her to buy milk. Neither of them speaks, either on the way there or coming back, but Chloe’s glad of him, another pair of eyes besides her own, another set of thoughts—and to be half of a pair instead of a lone figure walking the streets at dusk.

Janey’s mum is in the kitchen making tea, and she looks up at Janey as if Janey’s a complete, and very unwelcome, stranger. Janey once told Chloe that her mother reminded her of an
unborn piglet that had been preserved in a jar, and really, she was right
—
that kind of aimless, vulnerable floating, and the little pink eyes with the pale lashes. She gives Chloe the shivers, and she gives her the same look as she gives Janey, and doesn’t speak to either of them. She doesn’t offer them any of the food she’s cooking, either
—
she cooks for herself and the men. ‘They stopped feeding me when I started going out in the evenings,’ Janey maintains. ‘Reckoned I was getting too fat. Actually, I think they got embarrassed when I started bringing my breasts to the table
—
I mean, covered up and everything, but, you know, there.’

Chloe is aware of Nathan being in his bedroom. She can sense Janey’s dad, too, somewhere out the back. Her role is simply to keep them there, at bay, while Janey grabs some clothes to change into at Chloe’s place.

This house has got worse since she was here last, months ago; the thick air seems too silent, and predatory. And was it always this
dark?
She feels as if she’s ventured into the territory of another species, almost, the atmosphere is so different from that of her own home.

Chloe dreams leaving the crematorium after a ceremony. They hand her the urn of ashes, and she carries them to the car. Sitting between Pete and Nick she checks under the lid, a little pottery lid with a knob, like a sugar bowl. ‘Oh, look, she’s not ashes at all!’ She shows Pete and Nick the little foetus curled up in the jar, suspended in some kind of clear jelly. ‘Oh, cool!’ says Pete, and they all feel more cheerful. It seems they only have to find the right laboratory, the right host womb, and Janey can be grown back again. Chloe replaces the lid and cradles the urn happily. The taxi glides through sunlit suburbs she doesn’t recognise.

Theo relieves her of her virginity almost too gently. Afterwards Chloe lies beside him as he sleeps, wondering why this thing is
made out to be so momentous, this peculiar form of intimacy. It seems about as intimate as watching someone use the toilet, about as pleasurable as someone sticking a wet finger in your ear.

It’s not that Chloe doesn’t get sexual feelings; they just seem to be sited differently from the sensations of this kind of sex, farther forward, and more on the outside. Maybe with practice the two experiences join up; maybe it can be as fabulous as Janey describes it. There must be more to it than Chloe’s just had.

She looks at Theo’s fine Jesus-face on the other pillow. She doesn’t regret that it was with him, but she had just thought there would be more to it, the sex. This was so quick, and … strange, and … and now he’s just asleep …

When she tells Janey the news, Janey wants to know everything. Gradually, reluctantly, Chloe tells her, wondering how she’ll ever face Theo again.

‘He sounds hopeless!’ cries Janey. ‘He sounds soggy, and boring—’

‘He was very affectionate, and very careful not to hurt me,’ asserts Chloe.

‘Careful not to excite you, by the sound of things. And so
serious,
like, “This is my great gift to you.” Like you couldn’t get better from any passing brickie’s labourer.’

‘Please,’ says Chloe, offended. ‘I’m sure it’ll get better.’

‘Maybe. Maybe you’ll both loosen up a bit.’ She looks shrewdly at Chloe, then laughs. ‘I just think you deserve a good time, that’s all.’

‘Well, it wasn’t a
bad
time, and I’m grateful for that
—’

‘Grateful?’
Janey squeaks.

‘Well, I’m glad he didn’t want to do anything weird, you know, like spank me or anything.’

‘Sounds like he could do with a pretty good spanking himself,’ mutters Janey.

Chloe waves the conversation away.

She feels like a blight on everyone’s lives, as if she’s just a cipher for her dead friend, as if she’s death itself, out walking
by day but returning, always returning at night to fill up the house with the black stuff of her dreams and grievings. She carries some infection; the family’s faces change when she enters, from whatever expression to something bland, watchful, analytical—they don’t so much greet her as read her, registering her state, so that they can react or be tactful as she might require. She hates that, hates it and needs it.