What the Light Hides (15 page)

There is a pause, then Neil clears his throat and says, ‘Listen, mate—'

‘Why would you keep something like that from me? What's going on, Neil?'

‘Nothing is going on. It just wasn't up to me to break the news. If it makes you feel any better I asked Ben to tell you.'

‘How the fuck is that going to make me feel better?' I ask.

‘What's got into you, mate?'

‘How exactly is it going to make me feel better that you and Ben are best pals?'

‘We
were
best pals,' he corrects me. ‘All I was trying to do was to be a good uncle.'

‘You took him away from me,' I say and it feels good to get it out. It should have been said a long time ago.

‘What are you talking about?'

‘Always getting together, always lending him books. You even lent them your fucking beach house, Neil. How could you not tell us about Alice?'

He clears his throat. ‘I did tell Vera.'

‘What?'

‘After Ben died I told her. She was happy that he had been seeing someone.'

‘She didn't tell me.' I sit down on the bed; my skin is grey in the overcast light.

‘That's not on me, mate.'

‘Can you stop calling me “mate” for just one fucking moment, you fuckwit? I'm your brother. You should have told me, not her.'

When Neil speaks again he uses that low warm voice of his, the one he no doubt uses on his most troublesome students. ‘Vera was afraid you would try and talk to Alice. And, to be honest, so was I. Alice doesn't need that.' He says her name as if they are close friends and I want to punch him.

I hear him light a cigarette and inhale. ‘Are you in Newtown?'

‘Yes.'

‘Meet me at the Vietnamese place on King Street. I need some lunch. This marking is doing my head in.'

‘What end of King Street?' I ask, already pulling jeans and a sweatshirt out of the drawers. This conversation is far from over.

The restaurant is called Saigon Palace and is near Sydney Park. Plastic flowers hang from bamboo racks in the ceiling and flute music plays on the stereo. An elderly woman with heavy eye makeup sits on a stool behind the counter. She takes her eyes off the TV to hand me a menu as I walk in.

Neil sits at the back. Walking through the restaurant I pass a couple sharing a steaming hot pot.

‘I ordered,' Neil says as I sit down.

The plates glisten with oil. There is pork belly, a beef stir fry, a curry and a plate of greens, and I wonder, not for the first time, how Neil manages to stay thin. He's on his second Carlsberg.

It's clear that Maria hasn't talked to him yet, but I am so angry that I can't feel the slightest bit sorry for him. I stare at him and wait.

He puts the chopsticks down and wipes his mouth. ‘David,' he says, ‘what would you have done if I had told you about Alice?'

I shrug.

‘Would you have gone straight to her place and asked her about Ben?' he continues.

‘Someone should have asked her,' I say. ‘We still don't know what happened.'

‘I asked her, David, of course I did. But they broke up, mate. She didn't even know he'd gone missing.' Neil wipes his forehead with the paper napkin. ‘This damn chilli gets me every time.'

‘I think you should say sorry,' I say.

‘What?' He puts the napkin down. His hair falls in his face.

‘I think you should say sorry.'

‘To you?'

‘Yes.'

‘David, don't be so childish.' He motions to the woman behind the bar. On the TV David Attenborough gently pats a bison, shielding his eyes from the sun.

‘I want you to apologise,' I insist, more loudly this time.

The couple with the hotpot glance at us.

The woman brings another round of beers.

‘Thank you.' Neil looks up at her.

She nods and walks back to her seat.

Neil picks up his beer, then looks at me. ‘All right,' he says. ‘I'm sorry, mate. I mean it. It was wrong to keep it from you.'

‘You saw him all the time, Neil. Why didn't you see that something was wrong?'

‘We didn't speak much towards the end.'

‘Why?' I ask. ‘What are you not telling me?' Then I remember Vera's last exhibition and how they were barely talking and it dawns on me. ‘You had a fight?'

‘It's fucking…we were such good mates.'

‘What about? What were you fighting about, Neil?'

He shakes his head. ‘It was stupid.'

‘Neil, I'm warning you, I have no patience.' I stare at him.

He hesitates, then says, ‘Ben wanted to stop his studies. I tried to talk him out of it.'

‘Stop his studies?'

‘I couldn't talk sense into him.'

‘But why did he want to quit? I don't understand.'

‘He wanted to go back to Rajasthan. He wanted to learn how to fly a plane.' Neil slams a fist on the table. ‘I'm still so fucking angry with him.'

I look at him incredulously.

‘He wanted to fly, David. He wanted to fly and I yelled at him.' Neil takes a swig of beer. ‘There's a small airport near the desert in Rajasthan. You can get a licence for hardly any money. Ben went there when he was doing work for Engineers Without Borders.'

‘I don't believe it.'

‘It was impossible to talk sense into him,' says Neil. ‘I tried. He called me “a fucking imperialist”.'

I almost smile, thinking,
That's my boy
. That would have hurt Neil more than anything else Ben could have thrown at him.

‘I loved him, David. I wasn't trying to take him away from you.'

‘Why didn't you tell me he wanted to go to India?' I say. ‘We could have gone; we could have looked for him.'

‘Don't you think that we would have been on the first plane there if they hadn't found him right away?'

‘You're keeping things from me.'

‘That's all, mate. That's all I know.'

‘You didn't tell me what happened to Maria,' I say.

‘You spoke to her?'

‘Why didn't you?'

He shrugs. ‘There was nothing you could do.'

‘That's not the point,' I say.

He looks at me earnestly. ‘I'm your big brother, remember?'

‘We're not children any more.'

‘I'm still your big brother and you're going through something terrible. I didn't want to burden you.'

The couple across from us gets up to pay.

I look at the leftover food on our table. I have no appetite at all. And then I have a sudden memory of Neil and me, teenagers strutting down Norton Street eating gelato, full of life. Now I just feel sad for both of us.

I look at Neil. ‘I rang mum,' I say. ‘I'm seeing her tomorrow.'

He looks at me in surprise. ‘That's bloody good, mate. Bloody great.' He reaches over and pats me on the arm. ‘I appreciate it.' Then he leans back in the chair. ‘Mate, it's hell without you. She is not easy.' He reaches inside his coat for a cigarette.

‘I'm pretty sure you're not allowed to smoke in here,' I say.

He turns in his chair and raises the cigarette questioningly to the woman behind the counter. She gives him a thumbs up, then looks back at the TV.

‘I come here all the time,' he says. ‘It's okay when there's no one around. You should have the sticky rice dessert. It's good.'

‘I'm fine,' I say.

‘Damn rules,' he grumbles softly. ‘The whole city is turning into a mausoleum. A damn monument to health. But what happens to life, hey? Did anyone ask Sartre if it was healthy to smoke, or Camus?'

‘Probably not,' I say.

His voice gets louder. ‘Every damn picture of Camus is of him smoking and have you ever seen anyone cooler-looking than Camus?'

I think of Neil dancing to the Ramones, pipe in hand, his body tall and thin.

He stubs the cigarette on the plate. ‘What are you doing with the rest of the day, brother?

‘Working on a chest.'

He nods. ‘It's a good little workshop.' He puts the packet of cigarettes in his shirt pocket. ‘Look, mate. Could you let me know if Mum seems different to you? It's probably nothing. I mean, she has just started writing a new book, for fuck's sake, but I'd like to know what you think.'

That night I dream of Ben's hands at different stages: when he was five, eight and ten. And then again when he was eighteen and crying in my arms. In my dream I marvel over the fact that his hands have become those of a man. When I wake the memory of him pushes into the daylight, running ahead of me; a jolting electric shock that tumbles out of bed on unstable legs. How could he not be alive? How could he not be alive when I remember him so clearly? My mother looks the same—tall and vibrant, with the same restless, captivating energy. She is wearing a dark green jumper and jeans and looks at me curiously, warmly even, as if nothing is wrong.

I follow her down the corridor to the kitchen, past what used to be our old rooms, long since remodelled to host visiting scholars.

The door to her room is open. A suitcase sits on the bed.

‘I'm still unpacking,' she says. ‘And freezing. I haven't adjusted to winter yet. Come into the kitchen, I have the heater on.'

The kitchen is one of the few places that doesn't hold books. The back wall has been opened up and the glass doors allow a view of the small concreted yard and the bird shed at the back. She renovated the space after Neil and I moved out, adding new cupboards and a stainless steel bench. In the centre of the kitchen sits the beech table that I made her early in my career, decent but not fantastic.

I unpack the cake that I bought on the way over. It's from the same place as the one Pat bought for us the other day.

My mother puts the kettle on and rinses the teapot in the sink. I can smell the smokiness of the dregs.

‘I know that bakery,' she says and nods at the cake. ‘It's a wonderful place, isn't it? So creative.' She flashes me a brilliant smile, the kind of smile that knocks you sideways and makes you remember long-forgotten childhood dreams; adventures in deep woods or drinking cocoa in a space-shuttle light-years away from earth.

I put the cake on a plate and wonder how she manages to pretend that nothing is wrong and why once again I'm succumbing to her charm. I remember the time we all went out to a Greek restaurant in the city. My mother had turned to me at the table and asked what I thought of her newest book and before I could stop myself I said, ‘I think you're amazing.'

‘Amazing?' She tasted the word and I could see it wasn't to her liking.

On the way home Vera had said, ‘Why would you do that? Why would you open yourself up to her like that?'

‘I forgot,' I said.

‘How could you forget? You spent an entire childhood with her.'

I shook my head. ‘I honestly don't know.'

‘Did Neil tell you that the department lent me a yellow Mustang while I was in Arizona?' My mother reaches for the tea jar.

‘I really don't want to hear about it,' I say.

‘David, please don't be angry with me.'

‘You left three days after the funeral. You just left.'

She walks over and opens the door to the backyard. Cold air rushes in. Two noisy miners swoop over the bird shed.

‘They tease the pigeons relentlessly,' she says.

‘That's it?' I say. ‘You've got nothing to say?'

‘Go and have a look at the birds, David,' she says, without looking at me. ‘I'll bring the tea out in a moment.'

I don't move.

‘Please,' she says.

The door to the shed is open. The smell of hay and bird droppings hangs in the air. There are twelve of them, all in individual cages. They are different in colour—brown, white, grey. Light falls on their beaks and eyes and I think, not for the first time, that my mother and her pigeons make up an unlikely love affair.

She crosses the yard and hands me a cup of tea, then eases a brown and white spotted bird out of its cage. ‘This little one is Harriet,' she says. The bird nestles between her hands, heart beating visibly against her palm. ‘I haven't had time to go down the coast this year. I think they're longing for a big flight.' Then she nods in the direction of the neighbour's garden. ‘Edda was looking after them while I was gone, but of course I couldn't ask her to go down the coast.'

I look at the neighbouring garden with its orange tree and long garden beds covered in nets. Edda is my mother's age and she was kind to Neil and me when we were growing up.

My mother gently caresses the pigeon's head before opening the cage door again, but the pigeon takes off unexpectedly and flutters into the grey sky. We follow its flight past trees and electrical wires and for a wild moment I want Harriet to continue over the rooftops and never ever come back.

My mother remains calm. ‘I went to a carnival in the Arizona desert,' she says, keeping an eye on the pigeon. ‘They had show planes, old ones, and they were spraying yellow and red all over that bright Arizona sky. It was magnificent.'

The pigeon swerves gracefully and dives. ‘Here she comes,' says my mother and the pigeon lands on the ledge and walks straight into the cage.

‘Watching those planes in the desert,' my mother closes the cage door, ‘was my way of saying goodbye to Ben. He would have loved it. It was my funeral for him.' She looks at me. ‘I needed to get away, David. His death took everything out of me.' Her voice breaks. ‘I wasn't sure if I was going to get through the pain of it. Forgive me, you're angry with me, I understand. But just know it was all I could do.'

I don't know how to respond. I stare at the birds and feel utterly alone.

‘Let's go inside,' says my mother. ‘It's freezing out here.'

She cuts the cake at the table. ‘Did Neil tell you that I'm working on a new book?' The knife runs smoothly through the creamy icing. She places a piece of cake on my plate. ‘I'm going right back to the beginning, to Freud. Did you know, by the way, that his couch was filled with horsehair?'