I don’t know how long I stood there on the other side of the window before deciding to go out onto the terrace. Leah looked up at me and I sank into her reddened eyes. Afraid, ashamed, wanting to run away.
“Last night never happened,” I said.
“Okay. I’m sorry… I’m really sorry.”
“You can’t be sorry about something that never happened.”
Grateful, Leah lowered her head and I stood beside her, looking closely at the canvas. I could see it well now. The gray splashes were stars in a dark sky; the lines falling downward and ending in curls made it seem as though the night were made of smoke. Really, all of it was smoke. I realized that as I saw how it twisted at the edges, as if that gloom were trying to escape the edges of the canvas.
“It’s fucking sinister,” I said with admiration.
“It was…it was supposed to be a present,” she stuttered.
“A present.”
“A present. An apology. For you. Painting, you know.”
“Leah, did you start painting again for me?”
“No. I just…” The brush shook in her hand, and she tried to set it down on the railing, but I grabbed her wrist to stop her.
“I don’t want you to stop. Not because you regret something that never happened, but because I need it. Even if it’s black and white, I don’t care. I need what was there before. To see through you the things I could never find in myself. Look at me, babe. Do you understand what I’m trying to tell you?”
“Yeah. I think so.”
29
_________
Leah
He never told oliver what happened the night we went to Bluesfest. That week with my brother was a mental rest, without pressure, without anyone nipping at my heels. Axel made it hard for me to breathe. It was as if all the feelings I struggled to keep under control overflowed when he was there, and I didn’t know what to do about it. Every time I took a step back, Axel pushed me forward.
“I was thinking…” my brother told me on Saturday, one day before he left again, while he was drying his hair with a towel. “You want to go out to eat? We could take a little stroll too.”
“Sure.”
“I didn’t expect that answer.”
“So why’d you ask?”
Oliver laughed and I felt a tickle in my chest. My brother was so… He was incredible. So loyal. So self-made. When the knot in my throat started to overpower me, I forced myself to control those feelings. I could. Because he wasn’t Axel. He didn’t keep pulling, taking me to the limit; he left me the space I needed to keep from drowning.
We walked awhile through Byron Bay without talking and wound up at Miss Margarita, a cute little Mexican restaurant we used to go to with our parents sometimes. When I hesitated, Oliver took my hand.
“Come on, Leah. Axel’s probably got you starving to death with his vegetarian bullshit. Don’t tell me a taco with real meat in it doesn’t make your mouth water.”
We sat at an outside table. From there, at the end of a street with a few stores on it, we could see the blue of the sea.
We ordered tacos and burritos to share.
“Goddamn, this is worth every dollar,” my brother said, licking his lips after a bite. “You can’t imagine how bad the Mexican place by my work is. The first time, I almost asked them to give me my money back, but you know, I was new and I didn’t want to make a scene in front of everyone else.” He licked his fingers. “This sauce drives me wild.”
“Everything’s good out there?” I hadn’t asked him much about his job. Not because it didn’t interest me, but because I felt so guilty, so bad…knowing my brother was wasting his life, doing things he never wanted to do to take care of me…
“Yeah, of course, great.”
“Oliver, I know you.”
“Look, there are good days and bad days. It’s not like Byron Bay; nothing is, you know that.” He exhaled and passed me half his burrito. “There’s a girl, too, who complicates things.”
“What girl?”
“My boss. You want to hear something funny? I’ll tell you if you smile like you used to.”
I smiled in response because I couldn’t help it when I saw his eyes shining and him looking so relaxed, leaning into his chair.
“That’s what I’m talking about. You’re gorgeous when you smile, you know?”
“Don’t change the subject,” I said, a little uncomfortable.
“Fine. But don’t tell anyone.”
“Of course I won’t.”
“Family honor.”
“Family honor,” I responded, though I knew he was just going on about this to stretch out the conversation and hold my attention.
“The second night I spent in Sydney, I was still in a hotel, bored, feeling kind of shitty, and I decided to take a walk by myself. I wound up in a cocktail bar drinking. I’d been there twenty minutes when she came in. She was stunning. I asked her if I could buy her a drink and she said yes. We talked awhile, and we ended up…you know, back in my room.”
“You don’t have to talk to me like I’m a little girl.”
“Fine. I fucked her.”
I tried not to laugh.
“So just take a guess who I found the next morning when they told me to go to the office and meet the boss?”
“Are you serious?”
“Fuck yes. There she was.”
“So…?”
Oliver smiled and took a deep breath, as if he had just revealed something he’d had bottled up a long time. I saw the satisfaction in his eyes and realized that for a long time now I hadn’t been thinking about anything, I’d just been there, in the present, listening to my brother––an ordinary, everyday situation.
“We should probably go.”
He nodded and got up to pay.
I stayed there awhile sitting on the patio, trying to figure out what I was feeling. It was like floating in the middle of nowhere, in limbo, in a place at once vague but very alive, full of contrasts, fears, longings, things impossible to understand.
Oliver respected my silence while we walked back. When we reached a street I knew well, I stopped. “You mind if I walk myself home?”
“Doesn’t Blair live here?”
“Yeah. I need to talk to her.”
“Sure. Gimme a kiss.”
He bent over to reach my cheek and then walked off at a rapid clip. I waited awhile in the same place until I got the courage to knock. Ms. Anderson opened up, surprised until compassion got the better of her and her dark eyes turned pitying. I looked down; I couldn’t bear to watch that grief welling in them.
“Dear, it’s so nice to see you here! It’s been so long since…” She didn’t finish the phrase before stepping aside. “Blair’s in her room. You want anything? A juice? A coffee?”
“Thanks but no.”
She pointed the way to her daughter’s room. I walked down the hall a bundle of nerves.
My pulse was pounding. So many happy moments I’d lived there…
I sucked in a breath and opened the door.