24 November 2013
Dear George
I understand your concern that I might be a psychopath. I’m not, but I also understand that all psychopaths probably say that. So, here’s my sister to prove it:
My brother is usually not a psychopath.
She doesn’t know why she’s writing that. She’s watching a documentary. She’d sign away her life if you asked her to while she’s watching Brian Cox.
I hope you keep writing to me,
Pytheas
It makes perfect sense, with hindsight – the Sea-Monkeys, the small arrow in Sea that I know now was Cal pointing out what he loved to George.
‘Pytheas was the first explorer to link the moon to the tides,’ I say.
‘It’s Cal, isn’t it?’ she asks.
I nod.
‘I love him,’ she says.
It makes me deliriously happy. It breaks my heart.
‘Do you think he loves me?’ she asks, and I nod again.
She smiles. It’s such a brilliant smile, so full of hope that I can’t look at it.
‘I gave Henry a letter to give to you. I need you to post it.’
I tell her I need a minute, and I walk to the bathroom. There’s someone in there. I stand outside thinking about how unfair the world is – that Cal could have had George. She loved him and he loved her and if he hadn’t gone for a swim that day, then they’d be together now.
It’s Frederick who’s in the bathroom. ‘I might be intruding,’ he says when he walks out and sees me. ‘But are you all right?’
‘No,’ I tell him.
And standing in the doorway of the bathroom, I tell him what has just happened. I let it all out – how I’ve lied to George and now I have to break her heart and tell her that Cal is dead.
My words are a jumble and I’m crying while I speak. But he nods, and listens, and then tells me more about Elena.
‘I loved this shop, when it was a florist. I loved being with Elena here. But after she died, everything in it reminded me of her. It was unbearable. I sold this place for nothing,’ he says. ‘I wanted to burn it. I tried one night, but Elena stopped me.’
‘You saw her?’ I ask. ‘You saw her ghost?’
He nods his eyes completely serious. ‘I’m certain that she kept blowing out the match.’
‘I don’t know how to tell George,’ I say.
‘Perhaps start by telling her again that she was loved.’
Love is important. The small things are important. Whether Henry is in love with me or not, he loves me. Whether Cal and George are together or not, he loved her and she loved him back.
This is where I start.
‘It was Cal,’ I tell her. We’re outside the store so we can have privacy. As gently as I can, I tell her that he died.
She stares up at a sky that actually looks starless tonight. A sky can’t be starless. But the lights of the city are doing their best to drown them out.
‘He died almost a year ago now.’
I expected her to be angry, but she’s completely still, except for the pressure she puts on my hand.
‘What happened?’ she asks, and I start anywhere. I don’t know where the beginning is really.
I describe him on the beach, in Mum’s floppy hat and huge sunglasses, writing in his journal. ‘I think he was writing his last letter to you.’ I’m going to find that letter for her. I’ll start with the box, and if it’s not there I’ll go home and search every inch of the house for it.
‘Mum and I were talking about the future. My future. We were planning what university I’d go to, talking about the best ones for marine biology.
‘He put down his pen, took off his hat and glasses, and ran towards the water, calling for me to follow him, but I stayed on the beach talking with Mum.’
I can see Cal running into the water under this thin and yellow light, while Mum and I sat on the beach and talked about tomorrow.
The thing that most people don’t realise about drowning is that it’s quiet. Cal was such a good swimmer, the possibility of him dying that way didn’t occur to us. He and I had been much further out on other days. We’d swum at night, in dangerous places, and we were fine. It makes no sense that he died that day, at that time, when the water looked so still.
He drowned while I asked Mum if I could have a bellybutton ring, and she said yes, and asked me how they did it. He drowned while I waved away a fly. While I looked at the buckled trees, while I imagined sex with Joel, while I excavated sand with my toes.
‘We tried to save him,’ I say. ‘We got him to the beach.’
I don’t tell her about Mum standing quickly and looking into the water. How I started laughing, and said, ‘What?’ because I thought Cal was doing something funny.
‘I can’t see him,’ she said, taking off her dress before she ran to the water. These are the lost seconds that bother Mum. ‘Why did I bother taking off my fucking dress?’ I’ve heard her say to Gran. ‘Why?’
‘Because you did,’ Gran said. ‘And it wouldn’t have mattered. He was gone.’
I tell George instead that Cal died in the place he loved the most. I tell her it was quick – which I know, outside of nightmares, it would have been. I tell her that the last thing he did was write her the letter.
I tell her how far he’d thought himself far into the future, to when he would dive off the Gulf of Mexico, in the Green Canyon. I tell her about that canyon; about the animals he imagined seeing, deep below the surface, where the sunlight can’t reach. I tell her about the light down there, light from billions of micro-organisms that glow in the dark. Spots of light – like drifting snow.
She and I walk to my car. I take out the box and we sit on the curb to look through it. There are journals and comics and a small world globe that I gave Cal once for Christmas. There are keys to his bike lock, some coins, his swimming goggles and a penknife. We find his library card, a CD. Maybe it seems strange to George that this is the box of things that Gran gave to me. But everything in here is important to me. It’s his life. I’ll never throw these small things away. There will never be a time when I don’t want them, all the tiny parts of Cal that made a life.
In the journal, just as I expected, there’s a letter for George. I hand it over without looking at it, and she reads it aloud. Cal loved George and she loved him back, and that’s no small thing. I look up at the light-drowned sky. I locate a star.
The letter is beautiful and brave and hearing it I know for certain that Henry was right. I’ve had the world the wrong way around. It’s life that’s important.
‘Can I get Martin for you?’ I ask George, after she’s finished reading.
‘Actually, I’d like that,’ she says. ‘He’s in the reading garden.’
I go inside, and bring him back to her.
Dear George
It’s the start of March; the end of summer, but it’s still warm. Not a lot of time left to swim.
I’m on the beach with my mum and my sister. My sister is Rachel Sweetie. I’m Cal Sweetie. Yep. The tall, skinny, goofy guy you’ve known pretty much all your life. Are you disappointed? I understand if you’re disappointed. I really hope you’re not disappointed.