The Accident (22 page)

before
after
later

We almost make it out of Singleton before Izzy changes lanes and suddenly swings off the main road, throwing up gravel with her back tyres. Tash, already crying in the back, gets louder.

‘Can you give her the Panadol and shut her up?’

Tash is terrible at taking medicine at the best of times. Right now, she’s confused and upset as well as sick. Kicks me away. Knocks the measuring cup in my hand. Spills all over her and splatters Izzy’s back seat. Stupid kid.

‘Stop it! I’m trying to make you feel better.’

Pour another capful. Sloshes as I pour. She kicks at me again, tears and snot streaming down her face. Starts to howl. I lose it.

‘You don’t want my help? Fine!’ Stupid kid. I’m over it. She’s had enough chances. Time to undo this mistake. Time to get free.

Yank her out of the car seat. She’s scared of the dark, but so what? She’s already crying anyway. Pry her stupid sticky fingers off me and dump her on the ground, in the gravel. Slam the door shut. ‘You can stay here.’

Climb back into the passenger seat and slam it closed after me. Grab my seatbelt and push it into the slot. Still fuming, mad, sick of her, sick of who I’ve ended up being, sick of everything. Kick at the dashboard in front of me. Turn to Izzy. ‘What are you waiting for?’

Her mouth is half-open. Stunned. More than that, shit-scared. Sits for a moment, disbelieving. A funny choked sound comes out of her throat. She pushes her door open and just about falls out of the car, running around the bonnet to the other side, where Tash is.

I still feel numb. Part of me knows how irrational, how irresponsible, how unbelievably terrible my action was. The rest of me is just too tired to care. Who have I been trying to kid? I’m not up to this. Why should I be? I’m seventeen. I’m not supposed to be a parent. I’m still a kid myself.

Izzy—Izzy who is grossed out by runny noses and sticky fingers—stands outside the car with Tash, still screaming away, in her arms. Maybe trying to soothe her, just as likely trying to figure out what to do. I draw my knees up and rest my head between them, arms wrapped over the top, and all I can think of is my bedroom in Terry and Rose-Marie’s house. My bed, my pillows, my doona and blanket. Like a little kid, I suddenly want nothing more.

Hear the back door open. Tash still crying. Izzy strapping her in. Keep my head down, keep myself buried. I know she’s going to ask, to want to know. I don’t know how I can tell her.

My holy grail, my carefully nurtured secret. This is airhead Izzy. How could she possibly understand how desperately I need to see, to know? She can’t comprehend how unfair it is that no matter how much I read and try to remember and try to do the right thing, I’ll never reach that deep recess of my mind where I’ve stored my mother’s face. I’ll never know my real name. If I ever even had one.

The back door closes again, quietly. Hear her climb into the driver’s seat. Doesn’t ask anything. Doesn’t say anything. Just starts up the car and puts the radio on, tuning into a local station.

I think back to my list, to those last four names. Izzy who doesn’t have any more of a clue about life than I do. Easy enough to blame her for all the partying; except I’m the one who got stoned every weekend at twelve and knocked up at fourteen. Probably learned half of what she knows from me.

Terry who really did make me smile. Made me feel like I could be the better person he wanted me to be. Rose-Marie who honestly did think she was rescuing me. Not her fault I kept jumping back into the water. And Tash…

‘Can you take us home, please?’ My voice is small and muffled through my arms and legs.

‘That’s what I’m doing.’ Sounds serious, and mad, too. Doesn’t look in my direction at all. Maybe she’s realising what she should have known all along, that she’d be better off without me. My whole life all I’ve ever done is screw things up, then take off somewhere else and do it all over again.

Completely dark by the time we reach the freeway. Stare out the window, brain still too heavy to think properly. Tash nods off in the back seat. Izzy fiddles with the radio station and her CDs, but doesn’t speak. Guess she doesn’t know what to say. Watch the lights of the cars coming towards us, wondering what sort of people are in them, what sort of lives they lead. Close my eyes and think about the day Tash was born, when I told myself I had to do this right, I couldn’t let this be just another thing I stuffed up.

We reach the end of the freeway and Izzy pulls into a petrol station. ‘We’re just about empty.’

She climbs out to fill up. I unlatch my seatbelt and look back to Tash for the first time since I dumped her by the side of the road. Her face is flushed, dried snot hanging from her nose. Try to remember if the Panadol is somewhere in the back seat or if I threw it out of the car before. Don’t know. Put my hand on her forehead. She jerks awake. My hand is cold, and her face is still hot and sweaty. Must be dehydrated, too. Hasn’t had anything to drink since she threw her Tippee cup at me. She’s awake but groggy.

Izzy opens my car door and hands me her wallet. ‘You go pay. You know my PIN. Get some water, too.’

Obviously doesn’t trust me alone with Tash. I don’t blame her. Some small part of me is actually impressed. Pity it’s taken something like this to get some maturity out of her.

I find the Panadol bottle, with lid tightly fixed, on the floor of the back seat. Offer it to Izzy. She shakes her head. ‘Do it when you get back.’

I get the medicine into her this time, then offer her the refilled Tippee cup and a handful of jellybeans. She sucks at the water for a while but doesn’t eat the jellybeans. Just holds them tightly in one hand, her cup in the other. Feel like I should apologise, but I know it’s not words that people remember, it’s actions. Bit late to undo mine.

They tried and failed to find my parents. Department of Child Services tried, reporters tried, some of my foster parents tried. Nobody ever found anything. I didn’t match any records of missing children. Nobody called up to claim me. Nobody ever wanted me.

The sky is dark with storm clouds when I get home. Seems fitting, symbolic of the shitstorm that is my life, gathering to unleash its grand finale. Front door opens before I can fit my key in the lock. Both Rose-Marie and Terry are there, still in work clothes. Tash is heavy in my arms, not asleep but not fully awake, either. The Panadol should have kicked in by now but she still feels hot.

‘Where—’ Rose-Marie starts the question but then cuts herself off. ‘Is that a rash?’

Start to cry. Not out of guilt, though I feel that, or out of exhaustion, though I feel that too. But because even though I hate her taking control and telling me what to do, she’s the closest thing to a mother I’ve got, and despite all the crap I’ve given her, she actually does care. And Terry, who looks like he wants for all the world to be mad at me, and rightfully so…Takes Tash from my arms and passes her to Rose-Marie, then he opens his arms and draws me against him. I can feel his chest quickly expand and tighten as if he’s finding it hard to get a proper breath. Speaks, his breath blowing my hair. ‘We thought you weren’t coming back.’

Rose-Marie sits Tash on the kitchen counter, under the fluorescent lights. Starts to check her, lifting the long-sleeved t-shirt to see her stomach, her back; peeling back the sleeves to see her arms. Red rash, everywhere. Terry gets a cold washer and the thermometer. I hang back, standing against the fridge, while they discuss the rash: the chances of it being meningococcal, or a symptom of some virus or simply an allergic reaction to the medication the doctor prescribed. They’re quiet and calm, weighing the pros and cons like seasoned professionals. Which they are. Which I’m not.

Terry decides they should take her to the hospital, just in case.

‘Do you want to come or stay here?’

‘I’ll stay.’ My voice, like my chest, is tight. I watch them go, Tash’s head lolling on Terry’s shoulder. Maybe it’s their calmness. I don’t feel worried about her. She’s in safe hands. They’ll know what to do, what decisions to make, how to take care of her. All those things I can’t do.

The house is still and quiet. Nearly ten. I turn slowly. Take it all in, memorise it all. Tash’s drawings on the fridge. The fruit bowl I gave Rose-Marie last birthday and she’s diligently displayed ever since. Typical household hums and tickings and cooking smells. Maybe if I hadn’t been so busy fighting it I would have known this was home.

My bedroom, with bed still unmade after my too-few hours’ sleep. Laptop sitting placidly, power light blinking. Clothes and pyjamas strewn around the place. My picture stuck to the ceiling above my head. Piles of books and magazines. Stuff piled up on my shelves, filling my wardrobe. So much stuff. Who was I kidding? I had it good here. They probably spent twice as much on me over the years as they have on Tash. My own TV, DVD player, fridge, laptop, all the clothes I could ever need…They deserved more in return.

My big travel bag is still half packed from before. Tip the contents out onto the floor. Start carefully repacking, taking only as much as I need. A few pairs of jeans, tops and a jacket, my uniform for tomorrow, shoes.

Never cried before about leaving a house. Pull my bedroom door closed. Start to cry. Can’t stop.

before
after
later

I show Morgan my photos. I spread them out on the spare desk in the darkroom. I’ll have to show Shepherd eventually but for now I only want Morgan to see. As it is I’m nervous as I watch her sift through them.

The photos of me and my scar, and a stack of over a hundred video stills, printed out at Target. Me tearing down my photo wall, and then six of Robbie, the camera right in his face, him giving it the thumbs-up. Last, but not least, another dozen digital prints, these ones different from the rest. Taken with the digital SLR I borrowed from school last year to take photos for my major work, ironically enough, but I got distracted by a thunderstorm, by the lightning bolts shooting through the sky.

Morgan examines everything thoroughly, taking it all in. ‘DSLR?’ she asks finally, pointing to the lightning photos.

‘Canon 600D, 35mm prime lens.’

‘Nice.’

She’s sifted them into the different piles: Robbie photos; lightning, scar, wall. Whether she’s worked the order out or is just guessing I don’t know. I haven’t told her about Robbie; it’s just been easier not to. Today is the third of May. Exactly one week from today it will be a year since it happened. Mum and Alan are going to be in France. I don’t know if Alan planned that on purpose, or if that’s just the way it worked out, but I think it’s a good idea. Mum’s trying to cope better, but I don’t think she’s ready for the anniversary of his death.

Morgan points to the photos of Robbie. ‘Your brother?’

‘Yeah.’

‘He looks like you.’

‘He’s dead.’

She takes the news quietly, as if she somehow already knew. Thinks it through. ‘In that car crash? When your leg was hurt?’

‘Yeah.’

I pick up one of the stills from the video of me tearing down my photo wall. Nearly two hundred photos plastered on that one wall. Two hundred moments in my life caught forever, or at least till I threw them out. Two hundred times my family or friends rolled their eyes and commented that I couldn’t be taken anywhere without taking photos, and holding everyone else up in the process. Our undoing, in the end.

‘You want to hear how it happened?’ I ask suddenly, feeling courageous.

Morgan half shrugs, half nods, serious. ‘Only if you want.’

It’s something I went over again and again while I was in the hospital, five months for it to go round and round my head as I endured surgeries and setbacks and antibiotics for infections and physical rehab. I could have re-enacted it second by second. I recite it slowly, carefully, not so much reliving it but thinking as I speak that this is the first time in nearly a year that I’ve told this story.

It was the night of that huge storm. I was outside, taking photos of the lightning.

My phone, in my pocket, buzzes again. I know it’s Robbie, calling to remind me I have to pick him up. His English class saw a play tonight at the Seymour Centre at Sydney Uni. I should have left already, but…I just need one more.

It’s a deluge. It bounces off every surface, dances, splashes, fills the air. My hair is sticking to my scalp, matted on my face. I don’t think there’s a dry inch of me. One more photo, then a towel, then Robbie.

The camera is barely recognisable, swaddled in plastic bags and Gladwrap, bound with brown packaging tape. A plastic burka. The wind catches under an untaped edge of plastic around the lens and it starts to flap, but the noise is lost in the constant patter of driving rain and the roar of the wind.

There. And I’ve missed it. A crack of lightning ahead, to the right, in what would have been a perfectly framed shot between the two dead gum trees. The roll of thunder follows only a fraction of a second later.

The house phone inside is ringing. Tough luck, buddy. Mum and Alan are out, you’ll just have to wait for me. One more shot. My other hand is reaching for the shutter release, praying for one more strike.

I steady the tripod as a particularly strong gust of wind shakes it, and, when it passes, find the dangling cable. There’s splashes on the lens. Impossible to keep it dry, to find anything left to dry it with. I press it with my thumb, feeling it lock in. One thousand, two thousand…