One Long Thread (13 page)

20.

Sally's funeral was held at the Aberdeen church and we were bound to their rituals and rules which seemed strange, at best, and cruel, at worst. As I'd never been to a funeral before I didn't know whether there was anything particularly unusual about the way the Aberdeen did it.

Two rows of seats were reserved for non-Aberdeen members. A member from the council showed Dad and me where to sit and explained that we were to follow the cues from the rest of the congregation. We followed the usher inside and sat together, just Dad and me on a long pew at the back of the church. I had never felt more excluded in my life. I glimpsed Mum at the front of the church. Since our brief moment of connecting the night before, she had slipped back inside her shell. Like she was someone I could never completely reach.

It felt like Dad and I were surrounded by clockwork, something abstract yet well timed and perfectly orchestrated. There was a lot of singing, we were all dressed in black, candles lining the front of the church were lit and their flames flickered and danced behind Sally's coffin, which was open. Our names were not mentioned in the service, I do remember that. Only Mum's. There were places out the front of the church that only she could go and I remember being overwhelmed with the details and deciding to stick close to Dad and stay in my spot.

Throughout the service, the congregation stood and sat, and Dad and I never seemed to manage the routine without being either the last to stand or the last to sit down. This movement seemed to be guided by some secret knowledge that Dad and I did not have. No one attempted to explain it to us.

Somewhere in the middle of the funeral, Brother Daniel climbed the stairs at the front of the church to stand in a box that was gilded with gold leaf, painted with Renaissance-inspired cherubs and symbols. I glanced about the rest of the church and found a similar style repeated on the walls, ceiling and even the windows. None of it looked real. All of it looked sterile and strange, as if I had been dragged back into someone else's life, someone else's past. I didn't belong.

The volume of Brother Daniel's voice and the anger in his words scared me from my haze. He struck an imposing figure, looming over the rest of us, his hands either pointing at us, at the sky, at some symbol or painting, at the Bible he held up. Or his arms were outstretched as widening our own understanding. I don't remember what he said after the first few words, only being aware of a poisonous feeling spreading low in my guts. The tone of his message and his voice was clear. This was a punishment, terrible and tragic, yet a clear message all the same. There was one antidote for the pain of what we all felt. That was to embrace God as he understood him to be – compassionate, all-knowing, all-wondrous. If there was a god, I hoped Sally felt him close to her in the moment of her death. I hoped that God closed her ears to all the spiteful words and thoughts and feeling around her and gave her a feeling of pure love instead.

As we left the church I saw Barry seated on the very back pew behind us. I felt our eyes lock, there was a feeling of strength in that moment, like we had been forever known to each other. I smiled but I was caught in the river of people pushing us through the small aisle of the church, out into the sunshine, away from Sally, away from Barry.

We did not see Sally's coffin lowered into the ground. We had been warned the previous evening that, in the way of the Aberdeen, only those sanctified by faith could be present as a body was laid to final rest. Dad and I just nodded, feeling powerless and small against their authority. The bonds of a father for his daughter, a sister for her blood were a small matter compared with a sinner and her god. It bothered me to think what was said at her final moments. What could the Aberdeen possibly have to share or say to someone we loved, that we could not be present to hear? My only consolation was in knowing that Sally had spent her last years building an immunity to such talk. I'd like to think God might have been there to block her spiritual ears.

Dad and I watched from a distance as her coffin was carried from the church – only the elders were allowed to bear the coffin – and placed in the back of the hearse. The Aberdeen filed into their cars and followed the procession from the church to the cemetery with as much precision as they stood and sat throughout the ceremony. We were mute and empty, Dad and I, as though we were watching a movie play out before us.

‘Who is that?' Dad pointed to Barry, standing at the far end of the carpark, as most of the cars had left.

‘Barry,' I said.

‘I want to meet him.'

Dad walked over towards Barry and I followed. Dad held out his hand and he and Barry shook.

‘I want to thank you, Barry.'

‘No need—'

‘No. I want to thank you for what you meant to her.'

I felt awkward standing there beside them, knowing there was no easy fit between us all. Being reminded that Barry was Sally's boy.

‘I say we go get a beer,' Dad said.

I had never heard Dad talk so much in one sitting to another person. Especially someone he had never met before. Barry sat and listened, you got the feeling he was used to listening. He did it so well.

I sipped my coke while Dad and Barry had a beer. I felt quite forgotten and excused myself to find the ladies bathroom. I felt Barry's eyes stray from his beer towards me, saw his hands fumble against his glass before tuning back into Dad and his chatter about Sally and Amona and our life in Melbourne. I wondered how long I could politely absent myself before causing them to worry. I locked the toilet door and felt myself breathe out long and slow. I began thinking that there wasn't a lot of crying at Sally's funeral. Mum cried. But Dad and I didn't. It felt like tears were held back behind a wall of sadness and the heavy reality of life.

When I returned, Dad turned to me and smiled. I sat down beside him, Barry on the other side. The silence felt uncomfortable, like I'd interrupted a conversation neither of them knew how to return to in my presence.

‘Thing is. A father always dreams he'll meet the most significant man in his daughter's life.' He sipped his beer. ‘I get the feeling I'd have liked you, Barry. I'd have liked you a lot.'

I didn't know what Barry had explained of their relationship to Dad, whether Barry had embellished what they had for his own benefit or Dad had just assumed a storyline of their being together.

‘Thanks for helping Button,' he added. It felt wrong and ill-timed to bring me into the conversation.

‘It was no problems Mr Moon. Really.'

‘Call me Brett.'

Barry nodded.

‘I want to ask you something, Barry. I'm her father. You loved her, right?'

Barry took a while to respond and I could hear Dad letting out his breath.

‘Yes,' Barry said quietly. ‘I did love her.'

I couldn't help but look at Barry and found him looking at me, too, before lowering his eyes.

‘Bloody hard thing to take. Losing her, hey?' Dad continued.

I could feel their grief as if it were a beast holding us down.

Barry nodded again. He drank the remainder of his beer and raised his hand to Dad's shoulder. He gripped my father firmly and the affection of that gesture made Dad cry.

Barry looked at me again and I knew I had made a mistake. It wasn't any feeling of love for me that I felt from him. It was an apology. There would never be, could never be, anything between us. He belonged to Sally. Even more because she wasn't here.

21.

The days and weeks that followed Sally's funeral were a blur. There was never any further mention of me moving to Darwin and Dad and I stepped forward, we opened doors, we ate. But part of us was removed from ourselves, from each other, from the world. And, yet, strangely, we were drawn closer to each other in our silence and grief. Dad and I would be together, without talking, without moving.

I was plagued by nightmares. They would come suddenly, violently, and then leave without explanation. I would go many nights without one, then they would return, worse than before. When I woke drenched with sweat, my heart hammering under my ribs, I would bring to the surface of my mind every memory of Sally that I could. We would be eating at the table, kicking each other's ankles. We would be lying together in bed talking about babies and birth and devouring an entire packet of chocolate biscuits. She would be wearing each of my dresses, twirling and posing, and in each of those memories she was perfect. Too perfect. But the nightmares didn't end.

No matter how much I tried to visualise Sally dressed in that white dress with my silk moth stitched to her bodice in the casket the morning of her funeral, I couldn't.

Dad said I had stood beside her, looking down for a long time, though I didn't remember it at all. I could create a picture of it, I could impose my notion of what it would have looked like, but that memory didn't come from inside. I believed that it happened but it was like my body just wouldn't accept the experience. Dad told me not to worry, but somehow I knew I had to be able to remember her that morning. That without it, my memory of her was incomplete.

22.

‘What do you think, Ruby? Hmm?' Mr Grandy said, showing me the latest delivery of fabrics. I took the end of the chiffon and ran it through my fingers, watching the way it slid, dream-like, floating free from my fingers.

Mr Grandy took his glasses from his nose and rested a finger on his chin as he looked around his shop. ‘Yes,' he said more to himself. He turned back to me and clasped his hands together. ‘We should make a display of red over there,' he pointed to the entrance row of fabrics just behind the window display. ‘Today I feel very Valentino,' he said, exaggerating an accent and flamboyantly waving his hands.

I laughed and remembered how I used to feel before the accident.

He clicked his fingers and I followed him, assisting him in removing bolts of drill and cotton, patterned satins and polyesters. We placed those bolts on the counter while we carried each of the red bolts to that display. There were plain silks and satins, embroidered silks and brocades. Every shade of red, from cherry to maroon and, of course, the colour made famous by the Italian designer himself, ‘Valentino Red'.

‘Have you changed your mind?' Mr Grandy said awkwardly, his mouth full of pins which he took out, one at a time, to fasten each end of fabric back on itself.

‘I just can't do it,' I said, bending to help him with the last of the pins.

‘It's just such a shame, my dear girl. Your formal is a once in a lifetime occasion. You only get one chance.'

I shrugged. I'd already made up my mind. Dad and Amona tried a thousand ways and quiet conversations to encourage me to reconsider, but I just didn't want to go to the formal. I was adamant. They didn't want me regretting it later on; they knew Sally would have wanted me to go. And while they may have been right, I knew I just couldn't. I didn't want to dress up, I didn't want any boy pretending to like me for an occasion that only reminded me of Sally for reasons I couldn't discuss with anyone. It was hard settling back into my normal routine when Dad and I came back home after Sally's funeral.

On the plane coming home I felt a longing for my old life, for everything familiar. But once I returned it didn't feel that way at all. I felt awkward and out of touch with everything and everyone.

I returned to school amid the excitement and anxiety of the imminent end to our school days. The end of high school and the beginning of the rest of our lives had almost arrived. Everyone seemed to be cramming study notes or finishing assignments, filling out application forms and making appointments with the guidance officer and career counsellors.

Becky and Rachel were both applying for courses in hospitality with dreams of touring the island resorts up north where, they assured me, there were bound to be good-looking men. It was as though they'd planned the rest of their lives in the short space without me. They were so excited about the opportunities they could see in their immediate future, they quickly lost interest in Sally and me running away to Tonga. I hadn't told them about Barry.

They were good to me at first and I found their company comforting. They wanted all the details and it felt good to talk about it with them. Sally had once been their friend, too, and we'd shared some tears together. But I couldn't account or explain for why I still felt trapped in the events of those weeks so long after I returned. It only took a few weeks before they seemed to have forgotten that Sally had died, while I could not let it go. I found myself making excuses for why I couldn't spend lunchtimes with them.

By the time the end of the year came rushing towards us in a blur of exams and parties and university applications, it wasn't so easy to lose myself. I took to finding quiet corners and shady spaces in the far corner of the school grounds. I longed for quiet and darkness and space. Strangely, once I was tucked away in some forgotten corner for more than a few minutes, I felt an overwhelming gratitude for what I had, all the people who were in my life and I would dissolve into tears. I felt like a see-saw that had no fulcrum for balance.

Becky came over one afternoon about a month before the formal and, after watching something mindless on TV and finishing an entire bag of Cheezels, she asked me if I would make her dress. She began by describing the design in intimate detail – she had it all worked out – she had even been down to see Mr Grandy about material, which I knew must have been on one of my afternoons off because I hadn't seen her and Mr Grandy had never said a word. From the moment she asked I felt a bitter taste rise up in my throat and all I could think of was how I could get out of it and refuse without ruining what little of the friendship remained between us. Her excitement was palpable, she grabbed my hand and squealed when she described it to me. I realised she absolutely expected me to say I'd do it. But I hadn't touched my fabrics or sewing machine since I'd returned. Every time I thought about it I grew heavy and tired, it just felt too hard.

Dad and Amona had been tiptoeing around that subject. I'd heard them talking about it one night but I was glad they kept their distance and never confronted me directly. If it was meant to return, then it would. At that point I honestly didn't care if I never picked up another piece of fabric in my life. To sew, that is. I was perfectly happy working with Mr Grandy, in fact, on those afternoons and occasional Saturday, I felt better than at any time during the week. Mr Grandy seemed to understand that you couldn't spring back from something like that too quickly. I'd noticed he'd quietly removed any sign suggesting my design services and he'll probably never know how much that small gesture meant to me. Of course the other reason I felt so comfortable around Mr Grandy was in knowing we shared a certain kind of mother. And he knew about Barry.

I told Becky how much I would have loved to make her dress but I just didn't think I could do it after everything that had happened. She blinked at me, clearly stunned, for what felt like an uncomfortably long time without words, before I added to my previous statement by saying that somehow I just couldn't sew like I used to, blithering about how it was wound up with Sally and how I knew it sounded silly, but there it was.

All her excitement, her energetic hand movements stopped. She turned her body to face the television, pulling her feet off the couch to position her body in an overly controlled stillness. ‘Oh,' she said bitterly. ‘So you won't make it for me.' There was no questioning in her voice, no trace of understanding or empathy.

There was nothing I could say.

She stood, announcing she had really better be going, and left. It was not so hard to find reasons to excuse myself from the group during lunchtimes after that. Becky, I'm sure, invented many reasons of her own.

I could not decide if it was a fair and reasonable thing to have said I wouldn't make her dress or whether I was just being mean and unkind because Becky had really given me no choice about the matter at all. It was too much like my mum. If she needed me to do something, give her something, help her with something, believe in what she believed, then there was always something wrong with me if I didn't do it. Too selfish, too unkind, too stubborn.

Mum's latest letter at that time reminded me that she only wanted me to come to the Lord for my own good. She knew what was good for me and so did God, and she would continue praying for me until I matured enough to realise this. I longed for her to talk of Sally but she never did. Not once.

Mr Grandy and I stood looking at the handiwork of our display and I could tell he was happy with the result. He rocked, slightly, on the balls of his feet and puffed his chest out. He was a man of simple achievements and I loved him for his quiet satisfaction. I suppressed an urge to hug him, right there. You could make Mr Grandy's day with a kind word or flattering comment or a simple teacake. He was one person I knew who seemed truly content with himself and his own place in the world.

‘Well, if Valentino Red can't inspire you, my girl, then I truly think there is no hope for you.'

I smiled.

Mr Grandy waved to a customer disappearing out of the front door, the small bell tinkling as the door closed. ‘You know,' he said. ‘I think the classification you girls have for boys is one man short.'

‘Pardon?'

‘Your Romeos and Casanovas,' he said and right then I regretted ever telling him.

‘Oh.'

‘A Valentine, by way of expanding your mind to understand another type of gentleman altogether, takes pleasure in the happiness of others.'

I didn't quite understand. Mr Grandy turned from the Valentino Red display towards the office where he had been printing out some of the latest Valentino designs to hang in the front window.

‘Legend has it,' he continued as he collected his posters then returned down the three stairs to the counter again, ‘that the first Saint Valentine was killed for disobeying the orders of some Roman Caesar-or-other and marrying young lovers in secret. Something about thinking that single men made better soldiers or some-such-rubbish.'

I'd never been one to embrace the romantic notion of Valentine's Day, though, as you can imagine, it had always been one of the major highlights of Becky's calendar year. She'd begin preparing weeks in advance, making a list of potential valentines from whom she might expect some attention. She would highlight the names of particular interest to her, narrowing this list down to the three names to whom she'd entrust with her romantic aspirations. Throughout our entire high school years she never once received anything on Valentine's Day. Even when she was officially dating one of the science students at the beginning of February in grade ten. Come February fifteenth of that year she had dumped him.

I followed Mr Grandy to the window display and held the posters in place while he attached them to the fishing line suspended from the ceiling.

‘Well,' I said, wondering how to accommodate this new information.

‘I'm just saying that some men show their character in ways you couldn't classify as Romeo romantic or Casanov . . .' he stumbled for the correct word ending, ‘. . . ian.'

I laughed. ‘I don't think that's a word.'

‘It is now,' Mr Grandy's mouth creased to one side and his smile made him appear playfully youthful.

‘So what you're saying is—'

‘What I'm saying,' Mr Grandy, straightened up, ‘is that Barry might be thinking he's doing a gentlemanly thing in giving you some space.'

At first I convinced myself that not calling Barry was because of the way my return had become a black hole, pulling me into it. It may have been true, but there were opportunities and moments I could have done what I longed to do and call. Yet it was the one thing I refused myself. And one afternoon at work I found myself telling Mr Grandy about Barry. He had a way of luring me into conversation.

I'd begun identifying boys in my year and considering their virtues. I willed myself to feel something for one of them. That sweeping, silly fluttering I had known once, if only briefly. But I couldn't feel it at all. I knew it still existed within my experience because thinking of Barry brought it back. Sometimes it was only a faded, memory-like feeling. And other times it was louder and insistent. But my emotions were like an arrhythmic ocean, anyway. Running hot and cold, overwhelming and distant at any one moment, any one day.

Eric Barrada seemed like the most logical attachment so at night I willed myself to see him in my mind and imagine the feel of his body next to mine. I tried to convince myself that if I learned how to feel like that, if I prepped my body for that experience, then it might come true. What I wanted was for something, someone, to sweep me away. I wanted a wind to run through me. I wanted the feeling of being propelled forward and lifted up from where I was. But I could not find it.

One evening Dad said I could see a counsellor if I wanted to. He said he'd been seeing someone and it really helped to talk things through. He made it sound as normal and inconsequential as visiting the dentist, though I couldn't be convinced. It would have been one thing to talk about Sally – there was no denying what had happened to her and what kind of effect that might have been having on me and my life – but Barry seemed like something shameful. He was complicated. He belonged to Sally, not me. Perhaps what I feared was being told I was right. That the intensity of what I felt for him was really a reflection of my feeling of loss for Sally. It made sense. And I could see how it might have been true. But it wasn't.

So I'd open my phone and listen to Barry's message over and over.

‘And another thing,' Mr Grandy continued as if our Barry conversation was already over. ‘You should consider a future in this business, you know, kid.'

Mr Grandy had been suggesting in subtle – and not so subtle ways – that I should think about making a step towards a future in the fashion industry. I had trouble deciding what I might do the following week, let alone the next year or the rest of my life. I seemed stuck on a simple wheel that was turning round and round. And there was something comfortable in that. But Mr Grandy could challenge me with ideas whereas Dad and Amona could not.

I wasn't to know then that Amona had taken the liberty of chatting to Mr Grandy – with Dad's encouragement – and through him she gained a quick appreciation for all levels of the fashion business. Mr Grandy knew much more about wider opportunities in fashion, too, given his connections. I wasn't to know then, either, that Mr Grandy had been making some inquiries of his own.