your father and I always wanted the best for you. I just ⦠I donât think Vincent fits into that categoryâ
The deep, resonant silence of two strong minds unwilling to compromise. Beyond my gaze I sensed the same stretch and tension as cat-gut.
Kaz broke it first with a harsh and desperate whisper.
âWhatâs wrong with him? Eh? Whatâs wrong?â
It remains an indelible moment in the coalition of our lives.
Bernice, I imagine, must have half-smiled, hung a tea-towel on the oven-rail to dry and then swivelled with the same portentous menace as a returning cyclone.
âI donât think heâs all there,â she hissed, and I could hear Kaz catch each breath sharply. âI mean, do you honestly think heâs ⦠stable?â
There is an actor submerged within all of us, this trembling desire to turn life into a vast echoing stage, shadowy wings and a transfixed audience. I took my cue and stuck my silly, mad head around the corner.
âItâs true, Bernice,â I rasped. âIâm not stable. But I am a little hoarse.â
Even today â fourteen years on â we laugh about it. But not Bernice. Never Bernice.
I punch more numbers into the mobile.
âFrannie? Vince.â
More coolness. Speaking to Francesca, Kazâs elder sister, is like walking into a fernery; there are fronds that dip and threaten, biting insects hidden in moist places. More than anything, she detests being called Frannie â which is, of course, precisely why we all persist.
A quick summary: Francesca is amidships of her third marriage. This time, the lucky vessel is a stolid and dependable type named Terrence. Terrence does clerical work, adroitly enough to pull a hundred Gs per annum. They have one daughter, Amelia, who was ostensibly sired by hubby number one, an old windjammer called Leo. Blithe, insane and obscenely moneyed, Leo departed this earth weeks after Francesca had given birth. The chap in between I can barely remember. I think his name was Pedro, or maybe Pietro; she met him overseas on a Contiki Tour and he picked his toe-nails with a Swiss army knife.
Amelia seems a pleasant enough girl, given her mother-Gorgon and the fact that sheâs a teenager. Kaz likes her a lot.
âYou have to respect someone,â she once said acidly, âwho was obviously conceived immaculatus. One thing about Frannie, she never liked getting dirty. So, history recognises Jesus of Nazareth and now Amelia of Peregian Waters. This family ⦠we donât know how lucky we areâ
Details, details. Francesca clucks, mentions Terrenceâs Rotary function tomorrow evening, wants to speak to âsomeone in chargeâ. I can feel her blame for Kazâs condition seeping down the phone-beams into my brain. Eventually she says, âIâll get there as soon as is practical,â shouts something about the dog to Amelia and clicks off.
I am alone again.
Thereafter, it all seems to spiral, like a fusion of colours â sad colours, angry, wild, unheralded, unrecognisable colours coming from places I do not know, all spinning through a vortex.
Garten is at my elbow, muttering darkly about âdeteriorationâ and âliver failureâ, kidneys that refuse to work. There is an anxiety etched into his eyes like the whorls of old tribal paintings. I see people hurrying, walls sliding up and down. Suddenly the air feels green, like bile.
âA helicopter is coming,â he says in a curiously blank voice. âWeâre flying to Brisbane. We need specialists, Vince; itâs a matter of saving her now.â
Saving her? And specialists? But Doctor, they make me mad. They make me mad because theyâre so functional and here, now, Iâm feeling helpless and totally non-functional. Iâm grey and Iâm beige, wallowing between real colours.
Jesus, colours ⦠Iâm remembering Brisbane, jacarandas in full purple bloom and that
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