“I’m trying,” I answered.
He went on talking until he braked in front of a property surrounded by palm trees and wild brush growing untamed. I’d only been to Axel’s place a few times, and everything struck me as different. I was different. In the past year, he had been the one who dropped in at our apartment now and again to hang out. I closed my eyes when a thought lashed me, the thought that said to me, if this had happened before, the mere thought of sharing the same roof as him would give me butterflies in my stomach and a knot in my throat. Now, however, I felt nothing. That was how it was since the accident, that was the mark it had left in me, the immense, desolate emptiness that made it impossible to build anything because there was nothing to base it on. I just no longer felt anything. And I didn’t want to either. It was better to live like this, lethargic, than with the pain. Sometimes there were highs, some unexpected lightness, as if something were trying to open up inside me, but I managed to control it eventually. It was like being in front of a pile of pizza dough full of lumps and bubbles just before passing the roller over it and flattening it out.
“You ready?” My brother looked at me.
“I guess so.” I shrugged.
7
_________
Axel
I wanted to go back in time just to tell my past self that I was a dumbass for saying this wouldn’t be complicated. It was fucking complicated right from the get-go, when Leah set foot in my house and looked around without much interest. Not that there was much to see. The walls were bare, without a picture in sight, the floors were wood, just like the furniture with its different colors and styles, the living room was separated from the kitchen by a countertop, and, according to my mother, the décor resembled a tiki bar.
As soon as Oliver left, with just enough time to reach the airport, I started feeling uncomfortable. She didn’t seem to notice; she just remained silent, following me while I showed her the guest bedroom.
“Here it is. You can redecorate or…” I closed my mouth before adding, “Or whatever it is girls your age do.” She wasn’t one of those beaming youngsters that run all over Byron Bay with their surfboards on their backs in summer dresses. Leah had left all that behind, as if somehow it connected her to her past. “You need anything?”
She looked at me with immense blue eyes and shook her head before putting her suitcase on the bed and opening the zipper to take out and arrange her things.
“Whatever you need, I’ll be on the porch.”
I left her alone and took a deep breath.
No, it wasn’t going to be easy. Within my chaos, I had a set routine. I got up before dawn, had a cup of coffee, and went surfing, or swimming if there weren’t any waves; then I made myself lunch and sat down at my desk to organize my work. I usually made some progress, doing a little of this and a little of that, never in an especially organized way unless I was on a tight deadline. Later, I had my second and last cup of coffee for the day, normally while I looked at the landscape through the window. I wasn’t a bad cook, but I rarely turned on the stove, more because I was lazy than anything else. In the afternoon, same story: more work, more surfing, more hours of silence sitting by myself on the porch, more peace. After teatime came my nightly cigarette, a little reading or music, then bed.
So that first day Leah showed up at my home, I decided to stick to my routine. I spent the afternoon working on one of my latest commissions, concentrating on putting together a linear image, adding details until I thought it was perfect.
When I put down my pen and got up, I realized she still hadn’t emerged from her room. The door was half-closed, just as I’d left it. I went over, knocked, and opened slowly.
Leah was lying in bed listening to music with her hair spread over the pillow. She looked away from the ceiling and took off her headphones as she sat up.
“Sorry, I didn’t hear you.”
“What were you listening to?”
“The Beatles.”
There was a tense silence.
I would venture that everyone who knew the Joneses knew the Beatles was their favorite group. I remembered long nights at their house dancing to their songs and singing aloud. When I started accompanying Douglas Jones, Leah’s father, years later while he was painting in his studio off the backyard, I asked him why he always worked to music, and he replied that it was his inspiration, that nothing is born inside you, not even the basic idea––what you bring to it is the way you portray it. He explained that the notes marked the way for him, and the voices shouted every brushstroke. Back then, I used to imitate everything Douglas did, admiring his paintings and the easy way he smiled at all hours, and so I followed in his footsteps and tried to find my own inspiration, something that would get inside me, but I never did, and that’s probably why, halfway down the road, I wound up taking an unexpected detour and becoming an illustrator.
“You want to catch some waves?” I asked.
“Surf?” Leah was tense as she looked at me. “No.”
“Okay. I’ll be back soon.”
I was nervous as I crossed the few feet between my home and the ocean, looking at the orange bike leaned against the wooden railing of the porch. Oliver had left it there after taking it out of the car. It was just an object, but one that represented changes I still hadn’t absorbed.
I waited, waited, and waited until the perfect wave came. Then I arched my back, positioned my feet, and rose, coming down along the wall of the wave and, once I was really going, surfing away from the break and finally jumping down into the water.
When I got back, the door to the guest room was closed. I didn’t knock. I showered and went to the kitchen to make some dinner. I had gone––unusually––to the store the day before. I rarely bought much, but I had tried to bring some variety into the fridge. All I knew that Leah liked were strawberry lollipops; she always had one in her mouth when she was little, and she’d spend hours chewing on the plastic straw. That and the cheesecake my mother made, but that was no surprise, everyone knew it was the best in the world.
While I cut a selection of vegetables into strips, I realized I didn’t know Leah as well as I thought I did. Maybe I never really had. Not deep down. She was born when Oliver and I were ten, and no one expected another addition to the family. I still remember the first day I saw her: she had chubby pink cheeks, little fingers that grabbed on to anything in arm’s reach, and hair so blond it was almost transparent. Rose, Leah’s mom, spent a long time telling us how from now on we would have to take care of her and act right when we were around her. But Leah spent the day crying or sleeping, and we were more interested in hunting bugs on the beach or playing.
When we went off to college in Brisbane, she had just turned eight. When we returned after staying there awhile to work and go through our internships, Leah was almost fifteen, and even if we came back a lot, we had the feeling she had grown up all of a sudden, as if one night she had gone to sleep a girl and had woken up the next day a woman. She was tall and thin, with few curves, like a beanstalk. She had started to paint while I was away, following in her father’s footsteps, and one day, when I crossed the yard and stopped in front of the painting on the easel, I couldn’t help but wonder at the delicate lines, the dashes of almost quivering color. My hair stood on end. I knew it couldn’t be Douglas who had painted it, because there was something different about it, something…I couldn’t explain.