The Boundless Sublime Read online

  Also by Lili Wilkinson

  Green Valentine

  The Zigzag Effect

  Loveshy

  A Pocketful of Eyes

  Pink

  Angel Fish

  The (Not Quite) Perfect Boyfriend

  Scatterheart

  Joan of Arc

  This project has been assisted by the Australian Government through the Australia Council, its arts funding and advisory body.

  First published by Allen & Unwin in 2016

  Copyright © Lili Wilkinson 2016

  The moral right of Lili Wilkinson to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by her in accordance with the United Kingdom’s Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording or by any information storage and retrieval system, without prior permission in writing from the publisher. The Australian Copyright Act 1968 (the Act) allows a maximum of one chapter or ten per cent of this book, whichever is the greater, to be photocopied by any educational institution for its educational purposes provided that the educational institution (or body that administers it) has given a remuneration notice to the Copyright Agency (Australia) under the Act.

  Allen & Unwin

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  Allen & Unwin – UK

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  A Cataloguing-in-Publication entry is available from the National Library of Australia – www.trove.nla.gov.au. A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

  Print ISBN (AUS) 978 1 76011 336 0

  Print ISBN (UK) 978 1 74336 926 5

  eBook ISBN 978 1 95253 446 1

  Teachers’ notes available from allenandunwin.com

  Cover design by Astred Hicks, Design Cherry

  For my grandfather Jim, who climbed the bridge.

  And for my father John, who chose his own path.

  CONTENT

  1

  2

  3

  4

  5

  6

  7

  8

  9

  10

  11

  12

  13

  14

  15

  16

  17

  18

  19

  20

  21

  22

  23

  24

  EPILOGUE

  ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  1

  My name is Ruby Jane Galbraith, and I’m no Messiah.

  For a long time, there was grief. It pulled me down into suffocating darkness, and kept me anchored there. I went through the motions. I turned up at school. I ate food and watched TV and took algebra tests. But I didn’t feel anything. It was easier that way.

  Mum wasn’t as good at hiding it as me. She stopped going to work and answering the phone, and pulled the curtains of her sorrow tightly around herself. She sat all day in the living room, staring at the TV and smoking cigarette after cigarette. Sometimes I’d come home from school and find her, vacant-eyed, with a perfect cylinder of ash protruding from pale lips. I’d speak to her, tell her about my day and the outside world, and it would take minutes for the cylinder to tremble and collapse, spilling ash down the front of her dressing-gown.

  We ate frozen meals straight out of the plastic containers. I ordered them online with Mum’s credit card, and we pretended not to be home when the delivery man came. Mum ate hers robotically, even when her teriyaki chicken was so hot from the microwave that it was burning her throat. Once I suggested we order pizza or Indian, for some variety, but Mum shrank visibly before me, folding in on herself. The idea of having to answer the door and interact with a stranger was too much. I didn’t suggest it again.

  My piano accumulated a thick layer of dust. I didn’t even open the lid. Just seeing it there, crouching close-mouthed in the corner of the living room, felt too loud. Music brought feelings, and our house was a feelings-free zone.

  I went out a lot, sneaking into nightclubs and losing myself in the thumping repetition of dance, staying long after my friends had left. I arrived home in the small hours of the morning, sweaty and exhausted, to find Mum still slumped on the couch with the home-shopping channel shouting at her. She wouldn’t look at me as I staggered to my bedroom and fell onto the bed, still fully clothed. It was the only way I could sleep, with my ears ringing from the club and my mind so numb that nothing could intrude. The blissful darkness would hold me for a few hours, and then I’d wake up and go to school, leaving Mum behind on the couch.

  We didn’t talk about it. Ever.

  I saw the school counsellor a few times. Helena wore voluminous floral caftans and tinkling earrings. She advised me to keep a dream journal and start a herb garden. I did neither. When she asked me how I was feeling, I lied and told her I was okay. She told me I was making amazing progress. She told me I was brave. She told me her door was always open.

  ‘How is your music going, dear?’ she asked, one grey, wintry afternoon.

  ‘My what?’

  ‘Your music. Mr Andrews tells me you are a very talented composer and pianist.’

  When I was little, the word pianist used to make me snigger. I watched the bright wooden parrots swinging from Helena’s earlobes.

  ‘Um,’ I said. ‘Okay.’

  ‘You know, music can be healing. A very therapeutic way to express and process grief.’

  I made obedient understanding noises. I didn’t want to express or process my grief. I wanted to be left alone in the deep darkness. Nothing could hurt me down there, because I couldn’t feel.

  ‘You should write a song,’ said Helena, ‘and dedicate it to Anton.’

  I felt ripples in the black tide, and let it draw me in deeper. There would be no songs. Not now. Not ever. Nothing to fill the void.

  ‘Promise me you’ll try?’ Helena leaned forward.

  ‘Sure,’ I lied. ‘I’ll try.’

  ‘I have something for you,’ she said, her eyes bright. She fished around in her handbag and pulled out a little silk bag. I took it, spilling its contents into my palm. A string of beads, like bubbled orange glass. I blinked. Helena had bought me jewellery?

  ‘They’re amber,’ she said. ‘They have healing properties.’

  Was she serious?

  ‘I know it sounds crazy,’ she said, with a self-deprecating eye-roll. ‘But it’s actually scientifically proven. The heat of your skin causes a chemical reaction that releases a certain kind of oil from the crystal.’

  ‘Resin,’ I said.

  ‘I’m sorry?’

  ‘Amber is a resin,’ I told her. ‘Not a crystal.’

  Helena shrugged this off. Scientifically proven indeed. ‘Anyway, the oil is absorbed by the skin. Mothers use these beads for teething babies. They can cure eczema and asthma, as well as providing an overall feeling of peace and wellbeing. I thought you could use some of that.’

  What a load of bullshit. Surely if amber did secrete some magic oil so powerful that merely holding it against your skin was enough to produce an analgesic effect and cure miscellaneous ailments, then people wouldn’t be putting it on tiny babies. Especially not patchouli-scented people like Helena, who probably didn’t believe in vaccination or pasteu
rised milk.

  That was what I should have said to her. It’s what the old Ruby would have done. I should have told her that there was no way a string of old sap was going to mend my broken heart, or pull me up out of the darkness.

  But I didn’t say it. I thanked her politely.

  I didn’t want to be healed.

  Minah was waiting for me outside Helena’s office. She didn’t ask me how I was. That was the good thing about my friends. They didn’t ever try to get me to talk about my feelings. They understood me. Minah’s hands were smeared with red, black and gold, her black jeans, torn and splattered with flecks of oil paint, hardened to a shiny crust.

  ‘Been in the studio?’ I asked.

  She nodded. ‘Still not sure what to do for my final composition,’ she said. ‘We’re supposed to be designing items of furniture, but that sounds so utilitarian. I want to make a monster. I’m really into monsters at the moment. The grotesque, you know?’

  ‘You could make a couch that eats people,’ I suggested.

  Minah’s dark lips curled in an ironic smile. ‘I’m totally obsessed with this Goya painting of Saturn eating one of his sons. Goya painted it onto the wall of his house, over some insipid inspirational thing he’d done earlier. He was depressed because he was sick and had gone deaf and there was political shit going on in Spain. Saturn is looming up out of the shadows with this wild hair and gaping mouth. He’s already eaten the baby’s head and one arm, and is taking a bite out of the other arm. Everything is dark and muted except Saturn’s bulging white eyes, and the bright red blood on the baby. It’s awesome.’

  I nodded, and tried not to picture it in my head. ‘Sounds great,’ I said, but couldn’t quite keep the wobble out of my voice.

  Minah looked away, suddenly uncomfortable. ‘I need a coffee.’

  When we were younger, we’d mostly hung out at my house. Minah’s parents were strict Malaysian Catholic and didn’t approve of any of her schemes or projects. When she’d pierced her nose (herself, with a safety pin), they’d gone ballistic. My parents were more laid-back. But Minah didn’t come to my house anymore. I hadn’t said anything. Hadn’t told her about things at home. But she knew most of it, and was a good enough friend to not bring it up. She also knew better than to ask me to visit the abandoned car park outside a boarded-up old pub, where we used to huddle on milk crates with Ali and Harrison and Flick, blowing out clouds of breath-steam and cigarette smoke in the chilled air. I only saw the others at school now, and had the occasional coffee with Minah.

  We walked side by side down the empty corridor. As we passed a rubbish bin, I held out my arm and let the amber beads slip through my fingers to mingle with half-eaten sandwiches and banana peels.

  Aunty Cath flew down from Queensland to visit us. Her bronzed skin and bright clothes looked out of place in our house, where everything was cold and pale and ashen. She took one look at Mum, slumped on the couch in her dressing-gown, and called Uncle Marco to tell him that she would be staying for quite a while, and could he send down some more clothes.

  She bustled Mum into the shower, chattering away as if nothing was wrong. She was relentlessly cheerful and bossy, making Mum wash her hair and put on actual clothes instead of the ash-dusted dressing-gown, which Aunty Cath insisted on throwing in the bin. Then she sat Mum back down on the couch and herded me into the kitchen.

  ‘Why didn’t you call?’ she said, her voice low so Mum wouldn’t hear. ‘If I’d known she was like this, I would have come earlier.’

  Because we’re doing fine. Because we don’t want you here. Because we like it this way.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ I said. ‘I didn’t want to worry you.’

  Aunty Cath’s lips pursed in concern, and she put her arms around me, a fluttering, faint hug, like being embraced by a butterfly. ‘You poor thing,’ she said. ‘I know it’s been difficult. Well, don’t worry. I’m here now. I’ll fix everything.’

  I wanted to believe her. I wanted to hug her back. To bury my face in her shoulder and cry. To let her take care of us.

  But I couldn’t.

  Aunty Cath set to work. She cleaned and scrubbed and disinfected. She went to the supermarket and filled our pantry with Tim Tams and smoked almonds. She made pumpkin soup, and brewed pots of tea. She opened the curtains, filling our house with weak winter sun, and bought flowers to freshen the stale air. She threw Mum’s cigarettes away.

  Mum did as Aunty Cath told her, obedient and passive. But even though she washed her hair and put on moisturiser and a bra, I could tell she was still the same inside. You could change the outside of a person with body lotion and flowers and hair conditioner, but there was nothing you could do to change the inside, especially when the inside of a person was blank, dark and hollow.

  Poor Aunty Cath. She was trying so hard. I could see the effort it took, to be that upbeat all the time. I knew she was hoping some of it would rub off on us. But we’d forgotten how to be cheerful. I knew how it would go. Eventually Aunty Cath would give up. She’d go back to Queensland and Mum would go back to her couch and her cigarettes. The flowers would die. The food in the fridge would rot. And Mum and I would crumble into ash again.

  ‘I’ve got a special treat tonight,’ Aunty Cath said after dinner one night, tapping one of her gold rings against her wine glass.

  She got up and went to the fridge, returning with something large and fluffy, laden with fruit.

  I felt the steak I’d just eaten turn hard and cold in the pit of my stomach.

  Aunty Cath placed the platter in the centre of the dining table, and disappeared back into the kitchen to get plates and cake forks.

  ‘I know it’s your favourite, Ruby,’ she said with a wink, as she sat down at the table and sank a knife into the pavlova, breaking its meringue crust.

  Mum stiffened next to me, as Aunty Cath served her a giant wobbling slice.

  It wasn’t my favourite.

  Mum’s face had turned the colour of bone. She stared down at her plate and fork. Aunty Cath looked from her face to mine, and then sagged in understanding.

  I didn’t need to try it. I could already taste the sweet creaminess and tart fruit mingling on my tongue. I wanted to throw up.

  ‘Well,’ said Aunty Cath brightly. ‘Maybe it’s a good thing. We should be celebrating Anton. Enjoying the things he enjoyed, in honour of him.’

  She scooped up a forkful and pushed it into her mouth, closing her eyes in pleasure.

  My jaw clenched. I ground my teeth so hard that I imagined them shattering into fragments. The shards would slice open my gums, filling my mouth with the taste of blood, instead of sugary cream and passionfruit. I’d spit them onto the plate, red flecked with sharp white.

  ‘What if we all told a story about Anton? A happy memory?’

  Mum started to rock gently back and forth, her face utterly blank.

  I left the table and escaped to my room. I texted Minah, but she didn’t respond. Probably busy working on her latest art project. I considered texting someone else, anyone, then decided it probably didn’t matter. It was better to be alone. I pulled on a jacket and black boots, and headed for the front door.

  Mum and Aunty Cath were still sitting at the table. Cath was talking to Mum in a low, soothing voice. Mum’s face showed no expression.

  ‘Ruby, it’s nearly eight,’ called Cath. ‘Where are you going?’

  ‘Out.’

  The club was exactly as I wanted it to be: loud and anonymous. It was sleazy enough that I could slip in without showing any ID, but not so sleazy that I couldn’t deter any groping hands with a swift elbow and a dark glare.

  I welcomed the dark, frenetic facelessness of the dance floor. Nobody stared at me with sympathetic frowns wrinkling their brows. Nobody offered understanding hugs. Nobody shifted their weight uncomfortably as they tried to work out what to say. On the dance floor, I wasn’t Ruby Jane Galbraith. I was just a body, jumping and writhing with all the other bodies. I wasn’t anybody at all.

>   A guy tapped me on the shoulder. ‘Hey,’ he said, yelling into my ear to be heard over the music. ‘Can I buy you a drink?’

  I glowered at him, and he backed off. I wasn’t here to make friends. I was here to forget.

  I stayed until my clothes were soaked with sweat and I could barely stand for exhaustion. Then I wearily found a taxi and headed home.

  ‘Does your mother know you stay out this late?’

  It was after three. Aunty Cath was sitting on the couch, a book open on her lap. Moving through Grief: Recognise the Divinity Within. Ugh. The music from the club was still pounding in my ears. All I wanted was to fall into bed and let the thumping rhythm of it batter me into unconsciousness.

  ‘Sit down for a moment,’ she said. ‘Do you want a herbal tea?’

  I shook my head and grudgingly perched on the arm of the couch.

  ‘I’m worried about you. You and your mum. It’s been six months. You can’t shut yourselves up in here forever.’

  Watch me.

  ‘You need to be strong for your mum, Ruby. She needs you now, more than ever.’

  What did she think I’d been doing for the past six months? Who did she think had done the laundry and ordered the food and gone to the dodgy bottle shop in town for cigarettes? Who did she think was making sure the bills got paid?

  ‘It’s natural to grieve when you lose someone, but your mum …’ Aunty Cath sighed.

  When you lose someone.

  Lose. People say that a lot, when someone dies. I’m sorry for your loss.

  It makes it sound careless, as if my brother were a door key or umbrella, left behind on the train.

  And the worst part is, they’re right. I was careless. It was me. My loss. I lost him.

  ‘Have you spoken to your father?’

  My muscles tensed. This was an ambush. Aunty Cath had carefully avoided mentioning Dad the whole time she’d been here. She knew that Mum wouldn’t cope, wouldn’t want to hear about him, so she’d waited for an opportunity to get me alone. I swallowed.

  Aunty Cath reached out and touched my hand. ‘I know it’s hard. But no matter what happened, he’s still your father. He’s grieving too. He needs you.’