Oliver had unkempt hair and baggy clothes and looked like a savage. Georgia, my mother, liked to tell that story over and over at family gatherings when she’d had one glass of wine too many. She’d say she nearly dragged him into our house to give him a bubble bath. Fortunately, the Joneses came out just when she was grabbing him by the sleeve. She let him go when she realized the root of the problem was right there in front of her. Mr. Jones, smiling in a poncho daubed with paint, stretched out his hand. And Mrs. Jones hugged her, leaving her frozen to the spot. My father, my brother, and I laughed when we saw the stupefied look on her face.
“I suppose you’re the new neighbors,” Oliver’s mother said.
“Yeah, we just got here,” my father replied.
Their talk stretched on a few minutes, but Oliver didn’t seem especially interested in welcoming us. His face was bored, and I watched him take a slingshot and a stone out of his pocket and aim at my brother, Justin. He hit him on the first try. I smiled because I knew we’d get along.
3
_________
Leah
The melody of “here comes the Sun” kept repeating in my mind, but there was no trace of sun in the black scratches across the paper. Just darkness and hard, straight lines. I noticed my heart pounding faster, stifling me, chaotic. Tachycardia. I balled up the paper, threw it aside, and lay on the bed, bringing a hand to my chest and trying to breathe…breathe…
4
_________
Axel
I got out of the car and climbed the stairs to my parents’ door. Punctuality wasn’t my thing, so I was the last to appear, same as every Sunday when our family met for lunch. My mother greeted me by running her hands through my hair and asking if I had that mole on my shoulder last week or if it was new. My father rolled his eyes when he heard her and hugged me before welcoming me into the living room. Once I was there, my nephews clung to my legs until Justin got them to leave me in peace with a promise of chocolate.
“Still bribing them?” I asked.
“It’s the only thing that works,” he responded, resigned.
The twins laughed softly and I had to struggle not to join them. They were devils. Two charming devils who spent the whole day shouting, “Uncle Axel, pick me up,” “Uncle Axel, put me down,” “Uncle Axel, buy me this,” “Uncle Axel, shoot,” and that kind of thing. They were the reason my older brother was going bald (though he would never admit to using hair-growth products) and Emily, the girl he started going out with in high school and ended up taking as his wife, had given up pants and skirts for leggings, and smiled whenever one of her little bundles of joy threw up on her or drew on her clothes with a marker.
I waved to Oliver and walked over to Leah, who was at the table, which was already set, staring at the pattern of vines around the edges of the dishes. She looked up at me when I sat down beside her. I gave her a friendly nudge with my elbow. She didn’t respond. Not the way she would have some time back, with a smile that took up her whole face and could light up a room. Before I could say anything, my father came over with a tray of stuffed chicken he left in the middle of the table. I looked around disconcerted until my mother handed me a bowl of sauteed vegetables. I smiled in gratitude.
We talked all through the meal: about the family’s café, the surf season, the most recent contagious illness my mother had heard about. The one thing we didn’t touch on remained hovering in the air, however much we tried not to pay attention. When it was time for dessert, my father cleared his throat, and I realized he was tired of pretending nothing was going on.
“Oliver, have you really thought about this?”
We all looked at him. All of us but his sister.
Leah didn’t take her eyes off her cheesecake.
“The decision’s made. It’ll pass quickly.”
My mother got up theatrically and brought her napkin to her mouth, but she couldn’t help sobbing, and she walked off to the kitchen. I shook my head when my father went to follow her and offered to calm the situation myself. I took a deep breath and leaned on the counter next to her.
“Mama, don’t do this. This isn’t what they need right now.”
“I can’t help it, son. This situation is unbearable. What else can happen? It’s been a terrible, terrible year…”
I could have bullshitted her, could have said, “It’s no big deal” or “Everything will be okay,” but I couldn’t manage it, because I knew it wasn’t true. Nothing would ever be the same. Our lives didn’t just change when the Joneses died in a car accident; they became different lives, with two absences that were always profoundly present, like a suppurating wound that never closes.
From the day we set foot in Byron Bay, we were family. All of us. Despite the differences: The Joneses may have gotten up every day thinking only in the now. My mother might have spent her every waking second worrying about the future. They might have been bohemians, artists used to living in nature, while we only knew life in Melbourne. Maybe when they said yes, we said no; maybe we contradicted each other in arguments that lasted till dawn on the nights when we had dinner together in the garden, but still.…
We had been inseparable.
And now it was all broken.
My mother wiped away her tears.
“How can he even think of leaving you in charge of Leah? We could have worked something out. We could have done a quick renovation in the living room, splitting it so she could have a bedroom, or we could have bought a sofa bed. I know it’s not the most comfortable thing and she needs her space, but no matter how good your heart is, you can’t even take care of a pet.”
I raised an indignant eyebrow.
“I’ll have you know I’ve got a pet.”
“Yeah, what’s it called?”
“It doesn’t have a name. Yet.”
Actually, it wasn’t my pet. I wasn’t really one for owning living creatures, but now and again, a scrawny tricolor cat with a hateful face would show up on my back porch for food and I would give it the leftovers. There were weeks when it came by two or three times, and others when it didn’t bother.
“This is going to be a disaster.”
“Mom, I’m almost thirty; I can take care of her. It’s the most reasonable thing. You all spend every day at the café, and when you don’t, you’ve got to take care of the twins. And she’s not going to spend a year sleeping in the living room.”
“What will you eat?” she asked.
“Food, damn it.”
“Watch your mouth.”
I turned around and left the kitchen. I went back to the car, grabbed the wrinkled pack of smokes from the glove box, and walked a few streets down. Sitting on the curb, I lit a cigarette and stared at the branches of the trees quivering in the wind. This wasn’t the neighborhood we had grown up in, the one where our families had grown together until becoming one. The two properties had been put up for sale; my parents had moved to a small one-bedroom house in the center of Byron Bay, close to the café they opened more than twenty years ago, when we settled here. They didn’t have any reason to go on living in the suburbs when Justin and I were gone; they had lost their neighbors, and Oliver and Leah had moved to the house he rented when he wanted his independence after the two of us finished college.