Perfections (17 page)

Jacqueline stares. ‘Did you pay for that? I didn’t see you pay for that.’

‘It was a gift.’

‘A gift? Do you know her?’

Loki shrugs. ‘She said I had amazing eyes.’

Inside the shop, the girl is holding the security clip in front of her face. She looks confused, distracted. Her gaze shifts to the window, to the jacketless mannequin and beyond, to where Loki and Jacqueline stand on the sidewalk. Loki grins and lifts his hand, waves back through the glass. The girl blinks. Her own smile falters and her forehead creases.

‘Come on.’ Loki slips his elbow through Jacqueline’s and begins to walk. ‘You want to grab that coffee?’

‘Did you just
steal
a leather jacket?’ she asks.

‘I told you, it was a gift.’

‘But it must be worth, what? Seven, eight hundred dollars? You can’t just walk into a shop and have a perfect stranger decide to
give
you an eight-hundred-dollar jacket simply because she likes your eyes.’

‘You were there. What did you see happen?’

‘I saw . . .’ Jacqueline shakes her head. ‘I saw her give you the jacket.’

‘Right then.’

‘But I–’

He stops. Places a finger against her mouth. ‘She said I looked good in the jacket. I told her I didn’t have any money. She said I could have it anyway – that I
should
have it anyway. People are allowed to be nice sometimes, you know.’

Jacqueline says nothing. If Loki is lying then so are her own eyes. ‘I’m tired,’ she says. ‘Let’s go home.’

‘Okay.’ As they walk, he catches her hand in his. ‘Was that your artist dude before?’

‘Hmm?’

‘You were looking at your phone.’

‘Oh, no, that was Ant. Our mother wants us over for dinner tonight.’

‘Can I come?’

Jacqueline laughs. ‘You’re
volunteering
for An Evening with Sally Paige? But she hates you.’

‘She’s never met me.’ His voice flattens, and cools. ‘She’s only met
him
.’

Jacqueline winces. ‘I’m sorry, Loki.’ She needs to do better than that. Needs to remember how he feels about Paul. About not being Paul. ‘You realise that we can’t explain you to our mother, though? If you do come, you’ll have to pretend to be him. Let her think you are him. It might be easier for you to stay home.’

‘I don’t mind,’ Loki says. ‘
She
doesn’t matter, what
she thinks
doesn’t matter. Only, I have some memories – of her, of her house – and I need to make them real. I need to make them mine. Understand?’

‘No entirely,’ Jacqueline admits. ‘But it’s important to you, I understand that.’

‘You’ll tell Antoinette? I don’t think she’ll be too happy about it.’

‘She’ll be fine. You can run interference for us.’

‘I’m serious.’ He stops walking, turns to look at her.

And perhaps she can see how someone might be moved to hand over an expensive leather jacket. For those eyes, for those long, black lashes. Those lips, soft and certain to yield if pressed against her own.

You fuck him, you’re so bloody keen.

She moves closer. The air around them stills. ‘Ant might have made you, Loki, but that doesn’t mean she owns you.’

‘I never said she did. I just . . .’ He turns his head away. ‘I can’t hurt her. Not ever.’

‘No,’ Jacqueline tells him. ‘Neither can I.’

Antoinette spots an opening and abruptly changes lanes, resists the urge to raise a middle finger to the jerk in the car behind her who thinks that leaning on his horn will solve anyone’s problems. There was no danger of a collision, not in this peak hour crawl-along, and she still has to get across at least one more lane in the next few kilometres before her exit.

Beside her, Jacqueline sucks air through clenched teeth. ‘Careful.’

‘Anytime you want to learn to drive will be fine by me,’ Antoinette says. Still pissed her sister didn’t take her side in the argument with Loki, those precious fifteen minutes wasted on debating whether or not he should accompany them to dinner with their mother, fifteen minutes that might have seen them get ahead of the worst of the traffic.

Loki leans forward from the back seat. ‘You don’t drive?’

‘It makes me anxious,’ Jacqueline tells him.

Antoinette catches his eye in the rear-view mirror. ‘You didn’t know that?’ He shakes his head, sits back and returns his attention to the passing scenery, what little there is of it out here on the freeway. She still hasn’t gotten a handle on the vagaries of what Loki does and doesn’t already know, the extent of his data cache, so to speak, his pre-loaded software – not that she’ll ever admit to thinking in such terms.

You don’t think I’m a person?

She’s hurt him way too much already.

She glances at Jacqueline, sitting with hands calmly clasped in her lap, face turned to the passenger side window. Her sister is wearing the dress their mother gave her last Christmas, coffee and cream roses on a bright orange background, an ugly combination not helped by pale yellow lace that trims the bodice and runs in triplicate around the hem. For Antoinette, it was a bottle of red wine and –
because you don’t seem too fussy about your figure these days
– a box of Belgian seashell chocolates.

‘You know you only encourage her,’ Antoinette says.

Jacqueline looks around. ‘Hmm?’

‘The dress. You keep wearing those hideous things, she’ll just keep buying them for you. It’s a vicious circle.’

‘No skin off my nose.’

‘Listen, I’m sorry about before.’

‘I’m not the one you should apologise to.’

Antoinette grimaces. Tonight will be bad enough without having Jacqueline offside. Her sister, who knows better than anyone how to handle their mother, how to deflect the worst of her barbs and defuse all the dire and well-hidden explosives that Antoinette would otherwise blithely stomp right over, who somehow manages to keep the peace and her temper both.

‘Loki?’ Antoinette checks the mirror. ‘I’m sorry, okay? It’s just weird, having you meet my mum. Like it wasn’t bad enough the first time.’

Loki grimaces. ‘The first time?’

‘You know what I mean,’ Antoinette says. ‘With Paul, the first time she met Paul.’ Rushing on even as he opens his mouth, even as his eyes flash with wounded, wrathful pride. ‘And, yes, I know you’re not
him
, Loki. Believe me, I know that. But tonight, you’re going to be, right? You have to
be Paul
because I don’t know how else I’m supposed to explain to her that . . . what? What the hell am I supposed to say?
Hi Mum, meet my imaginary friend?
’

‘I’m not imaginary,’ Loki mutters.

‘Calm down,’ Jacqueline says. ‘It’ll be fine.’

‘But what if she sees him and knows? What if she can tell?’

‘She won’t.’

‘You did. You knew straight off, you said.’

‘I saw a lot more of that imbecile than she ever did. Besides, Loki wasn’t trying to convince me he was anyone other than himself.’

‘Neither of you have to worry,’ Loki interrupts. ‘I know how to be Paul. I know how to be Paul better than I know anything else.’

‘Okay, but–
shit
.’ Snug in its nest in the centre console, her mobile starts to chirp and she reaches for it, fingers scrabbling as she tries to keep focus on the exit lane opening up to her left.

‘Give it to me.’ Jacqueline grabs the Nokia from her hand. ‘It’s Greta, should I answer?’

‘God no, just let it ring.’

Greta, again. Add this to the two missed calls earlier today, plus the half dozen or so increasingly urgent texts that followed. Greta, wanting to talk, wanting to meet for purposes unspecified, some mysterious agenda of her own, or maybe in cahoots with Paul on matters more nefarious, and when is she going to get the message that Antoinette is just not interested? If Paul does need to talk with her, he can bloody well get in touch himself, and if not, if it is just Greta with some fresh-killed scheme to get them back together, then she can take a flying–

‘Greta?’ Loki leans forward again. ‘What does she want?’

‘Who knows?’ Antoinette mutters.

Jacqueline returns the mobile to the console. ‘She’s that weird German girl, right? The one who sniffs around Paul like she’s his personal guard dog?’

‘She’s not
that
weird,’ Antoinette says.

‘Remember Paul’s birthday last year? She was wearing that little stuffed bat around as a brooch. A
real
bat, Ant, a real
dead
bat.’

‘So?’ Hackles raised now, automatically defensive. Most of the time, her sister is cool about the whole goth thing, but still there’s the occasional eyebrow lifted over a choice of corset or platform boot, the subtle makeup tips that always favour toning it down somehow, the suggestion from time to time that she consider running a colour other than black through her hair –
you never know, Ant, it might suit you
– and it grates, as much as she laughs it off, it does grate. ‘What’s the difference between a stuffed bat and that jacket Loki has on? It’s all dead animal.’

Jacqueline nods like she’s never before considered this point, and maybe she hasn’t. ‘I suppose that’s one way to look at it.’

Antoinette glances at Loki in the mirror. He catches her eye and grins. ‘Better than wearing a
live
bat as a brooch,’ he says.

‘Hell no, that’d be awesome. You could have it wear a little silver collar and leash, let it fly around and everything. And, hey, it’s way cooler than skulking about with an overgrown mouse on your shoulder.’

‘Oh yeah.’ Loki rolls his eyes dramatically. ‘Rats are so twentieth century.’

‘I’ve changed my mind,’ Jacqueline says. ‘You’re
all
weird.’

And if this is a truce, Antoinette will take it. She doesn’t know exactly what Jacqueline and Loki got up to today, but the new and tender bond between them is only too obvious. Curious looks and cautious smiles, the two of them circling each other like the courtship of strange, uncertain creatures, and part of her is amused by the dance, part of her disconcerted by the flicker of yearning in her sister’s face whenever Loki grins. Yearning enough to cover the cost of the leather that hugs his shoulders like it was made to measure – because no way did some St Kilda salesgirl just hand it over on a wink and a promise, even though Antoinette can’t for the life of her understand why her sister would lie about such a thing.

Unless she fears Antoinette would be jealous.

Which she isn’t, not even remotely. Not of Loki or Jacqueline or whatever might have seeded itself in the soil of their trepidatious hearts, not of
that
at all. But still it sits, raw and chafing behind her ribs, that same familiar anxiety. Paul and Greta; Jacqueline and Loki – and Antoinette shunted straight to a place soundless and cold, the realm of the third wheel.

Stupid. Stupid and insecure. What does she think this is, high school all over again?

Grimly, Antoinette steers the car along the winding mountain road, only half listening as her sister recounts tales of their mother driving like a demon back in the day, rounding blind corners like she owned the road and riding the horn as hard as the accelerator. ‘This, from a woman afraid to set foot in an airport,’ Jacqueline says with a shudder. ‘I used to let Ant have the front seat. Couldn’t bear to see what we might be about to slam into.’

The last of the twilight is fading from the sky by the time they arrive. Antoinette pulls into the car port beside her mother’s old green Commodore and switches off the ignition. ‘Last words, anyone?’

‘Very funny,’ Jacqueline says, unbuckling her seat belt.

Gravel crunches beneath their shoes as they walk up to the front door. Loki grabs Antoinette’s hand. ‘Paul Morgenstern, at your service.’

She smiles. ‘Thanks, Loki. Really, I mean it.’

Jacqueline steps forward, small fist raised, but before she has a chance to place knuckle to wood, the door swings open, spilling a wan yellow light onto the porch.

‘You’re late,’ says the woman standing in the entrance way. The emaciated, spindle-shanked woman whose creased and hollowed face, whose grey and short-cropped hair, bears such meagre resemblance to the mother Antoinette knows, that she finds herself rendered mute, stunned into gaping silence.

‘Close your mouth, dear,’ Sally Paige says. ‘Something will fall in.’

— 13 —

‘I expected you an hour ago,’ their mother says, clasping first Antoinette and then Jacqueline in her awkward, stiff-armed embrace. For Loki, for
Paul
, there’s merely a glare and the curtest of nods. ‘This long in the oven, my lamb will be all dried out.’

Far from it; the roast is pink-centred and pretty much perfect, but their mother still eats very little of the thin sliver she carves for herself. Merely sits at the table with shoulders slightly hunched, cutting the meat into smaller and smaller squares and pushing them around on her plate until they’re barely distinguishable from the mash of potato and carrot and thick, brown gravy. She murmurs a begrudging acknowledgement when Loki compliments her cooking, points her fork at the serving platter and instructs him to help himself when he asks for seconds.

Antoinette doesn’t like the way her mother keeps looking at him. Covert, suspicious glances, as if there’s something about him that bothers her, something she can’t quite put her finger on, but give her a minute . . .

Jacqueline nudges her beneath the table, a light tap of shoe against shin. ‘Don’t you think so, Ant?’

‘I’m sorry?’

‘Our mother’s new haircut. I was saying how much it suits her.’

‘Oh. Oh, yeah, definitely.’

Antoinette forces a smile, studies again the short curls-slash-cowlicks that adorn their mother’s skull. So different from the frizzy, flyaway locks which were a Sally Paige trademark going on just about forever, prematurely grey and falling near to her waist, steel-wool medusa spirals she refused to colour even though they made her look twice her age in a
good
light. Shorn away now, hacked away – Antoinette would lay even money that her mother’s own hands did the deed – leaving this abrupt new style which makes her look so much worse. Thinner and older and alarmingly less substantial without her wild, windblown mane.

But it’s not just the new haircut, emphasising as it does those eyes sunk deep in shadows, those cheekbones knifing through wrinkle-sagged skin, and Antoinette makes a surreptitious count on her fingers. Christmas, the last time they were up here on the mountain – sitting around this table with homemade fruitcake and egg custard thick enough to stand a spoon in – which means not quite two months. Scant time, it seems, for age to steal in and so ruthlessly stamp its mark.

‘It’s easier,’ their mother says, raking bony fingers across her scalp. ‘Too many mornings spent battling the knots and snarls, you get sick of it. I don’t do more than shower and run a comb through these days.’ Wrists balanced on the edge of table, she offers a cool, deadpan stare to both her daughters. ‘Of course, I
have
worn it like this since the new year.’

‘We’d come up here more often if we could,’ Jacqueline says.

Antoinette swallows a mouthful of orange juice, wishing she had thought to bring a bottle of wine. Or vodka. ‘Yeah, we’ve both been slammed with work.’

‘Is this a
new
job, Antoinette?’ her mother asks.

‘No, still the same place. Simpatico.’

‘Oh.’ The waning smile, the lowered gaze; Sally Paige does crestfallen particularly well. ‘I thought . . . I mean, I’m sure Jacqueline is very busy jet-setting about the place with
her
career, but I didn’t think waitressing was that demanding an occupation.’

‘I’ve been pulling a lot of extra shifts lately,’ Antoinette lies. ‘Trying to put some money aside, you know?’

‘It must be a strain, with the two of you to support.’

‘Oh, Mum, can we please not–’

‘Didn’t you tell her?’ Loki interrupts, turning his thousand-watt grin towards the woman now scowling at him from the head of the table. ‘I have a job too, Mrs Paige. So it’s all cool. We’re not exactly rolling in moolah, but–’

‘Really?’ Sally Paige raises an eyebrow. ‘What about your book?’

‘All done,’ Loki says. ‘Sitting with my agent as we speak.’

‘I see. And now you have a job as well.’

‘Yep. Nothing flash, just writing copy for an environmental agency. Ground level stuff, but room to move up if I play my cards right.’ His smile doesn’t waver, not for a second. ‘I know you’ve been worried about me and Antoinette, Mrs Paige – and I don’t blame you being a bit dirty on the guy who stole away your youngest daughter – but it’s all good. I swear.’

Antoinette struggles to keep a straight face. He has Paul down pat and pitch perfect, each idiosyncratic nuance and subtle rhythm of speech, even the way he sits, that same stoop-shouldered slouch that always made her want to rope her ex to a cross-post –
straighten up, scarecrow boy
– his whole performance so uncanny, it gives her chills.

‘Well, isn’t that lovely,’ her mother says. ‘Antoinette, you should take some time off, now that Paul’s working. Come up here and have a holiday with me.’

‘Mum, I told you, I’m – we’re – trying to save some money.’

‘You have the rest of your life to do that. Why don’t you–’

‘Mother,’ Jacqueline breaks in, her foot making a gentle but pointed return to Antoinette’s leg. ‘Ant didn’t want to say anything in case it falls through, but she’s going to apply for university next semester.’

Their mother sits back in her chair. ‘University?’

‘Um, yeah.’ Antoinette scrambles for an answer. ‘That’s why I’m saving all I can now, because I’ll probably have to stop working if I get in. Stop, or else cut my hours right down. You know, so my studies won’t suffer.’

‘I see,’ their mother says. ‘What course are you going to do?’

‘Psychology.’

‘Psychology?’

‘Yeah, if I get accepted.’ Antoinette hasn’t a clue where
that
came from, and even Jacqueline looks mildly surprised.
Psychology
simply the first idea to strap on its skates and glide across her otherwise barren mind, but at least it puts on a good show. Impressive enough to placate Sally Paige while still managing to sound feasible; a course she might actually be able to get into – and complete – a course with a career waiting at the end. Tick, tick, tick.

‘You want to be a psychologist?’

‘Maybe. There, um, there are lots of options, really.’

Her mother contemplates this for a moment before conceding a slight and careworn smile. ‘That’s good, dear. I’m glad to see you finally putting some thought into the future. It’ll happen without you, otherwise, and before you know it . . .’

Abruptly, she clears her throat, then lays her cutlery across her plate and pushes it aside, holds a crumpled napkin to her mouth like she might be about to bring up what meagre amount of food she actually put into her stomach.

‘Mum?’ Antoinette reaches for her mother’s free hand, stricken and trembling on the tablecloth, but physical affection has never been a strong suit in their family and she pauses, never really sure when – if ever – her touch might be welcome. And in that moment of hesitation, Jacqueline is up and by their mother’s side with a glass of juice, pulp sloshing thick and orange up the sides, and Loki too has scraped back his chair – ‘Mrs Paige? Can I get you some water maybe?’ – but Sally Paige just coughs and waves them both away.

‘I’ll live,’ she croaks. ‘I’ll live for now.’ Turning to Loki with eyes reddened and watery, but still sharp, scrutinising his face as she wipes at the corners of her mouth with the napkin, dab dab dab, before scrunching it into her fist. Antoinette feels her own stomach churn.
She can see. She knows.

‘Paul,’ her mother says. ‘I need to talk to my girls for a bit. Alone.’

Loki looks to Antoinette, his face an open question.

‘Mum, he’s part of the family. Whatever it is–’

‘No,’ her mother says. ‘He is
not
part of the family, he’s . . . I’m sorry, Paul, I don’t like to be rude but it
was
meant to be just the three of us tonight.’

Antoinette starts to protest, but Loki holds up his hand, cuts her off with a brittle shake of his head. ‘No worries, Mrs Paige.’ His smile is stiff, marched all the way past polite and back to barely civil. ‘How about I clean up? Let you all get on with talking about whatever it is you need to talk about.’

He picks up the congealing remains of the roast and carries them from the room.

‘Way to make him feel welcome, Mum.’ Antoinette gets to her feet and begins stacking their plates. ‘As per usual.’

Her mother coughs again. ‘I didn’t ask for you to bring him.’

‘He’s my
boyfriend
.’ A dissonant, discordant word because this is
Loki
now, Loki and not Paul, but the track is too familiar, its grooves worn too deep to skip at speed. ‘What part of that is so hard for you to understand?’

‘The part where you let him walk all over you.’

‘I don’t–’

‘Ant,’ Jacqueline says. ‘Why don’t you go and make us some tea? We’ll be in the living room.’
Take a few minutes
, her unspoken subtext.
Take a few minutes and calm yourself down.

Antoinette grabs an armful of dishes and storms into the kitchen where Loki already has the kettle on, cups and spoons lined up and waiting. He’s even found her mother’s tea tray, the one with the border of yellow roses. ‘I’m sorry,’ she tells him. ‘She was truly awful.’

He shrugs. ‘She’s been worse.’

The water boils and Antoinette takes her time making the tea, showing Loki where the dishwashing liquid lives and what Tupperware to use for leftovers, until he takes her by the shoulders and plants an unexpected kiss on her forehead. ‘Get back out there, you.’

She hugs him. A fierce, impulsive embrace that she wants never to break, never or at least not until she feels something more for this inexplicable creature beyond the effortless affection she could almost class as maternal. Because he deserves more, this kind and gentle boy who loves her and has never hurt her, who
could
never
hurt her, because he is
not Paul
.

But there’s nothing, just a cauterised line of scar tissue in the hollow where her heart used to beat. ‘I’m sorry,’ she says again, stepping away.

Loki turns to the sink, turns his back, turns the taps on full.

Antoinette picks up the tray and carries it through to the living room where her sister and her mother wait in opposing chairs, their faces blank and smooth as queens on a chessboard. ‘Here we are now,’ she quips, distributing the cups and settling herself on the middle cushion of the sofa. ‘Entertain us.’

Jacqueline looks puzzled, and Antoinette isn’t surprised the reference is beyond her; it’s hard to imagine a person less interested in music, more oblivious to pop culture of all kinds, than her sister. But the expression on their mother’s face stops her smile in its tracks. Eyes dull, lips drawn tight and bloodless, Sally Paige is a woman resigned. She places her tea on the little round table beside her chair, then considers each of her daughters in turn.

‘I have cancer,’ she tells them. ‘It’s terminal.’

Cancer. Jacqueline holds the word inside her head. Turns it over. Examines its hard, impenetrable surface. It is a stone, that word. Hard and cold. A heaviness in her skull. It sits there, beyond denial, despite her sister’s best efforts to the contrary.

Yes, their mother is certain. No, there is nothing to be done; the thing has worked its way too far into her body. Into her organs. Into her glands. Into every cell it has convinced to turn traitor. No, chemo is out of the question. Surgery, too. It is too aggressive, has been caught too late. It’s all over bar the shouting. Bar what comes next. What comes last.

‘There is
nothing
to be done,’ she repeats as Ant opens her mouth with yet another protest, another
but
, another
what if
, another
have you tried
. Their mother knew something was wrong before Christmas. Well before, she insists. Knew also that it was too late even then. ‘You live in a body as long as me, you can feel when the warranty’s about to run out.’

‘You’re not even sixty,’ Ant says. She wipes at her eyes. Smears a thin streak of black liner across her cheek.

Their mother sighs. ‘Feels I’ve lived a lot longer than that, believe you me.’