Theo and Dan were in the backyard of their parents’ house. Theo was rolling a joint; even though the night was cool, he was wearing a blue cotton singlet. It was almost scandalous how Dan couldn’t stop looking at his brother. The younger man’s body was slim, athletic, his skin was tanned and burnished from his days working in the sun. Theo had allowed his hair to grow long; his curls fell to his shoulders, and he had to keep brushing them away from his eyes. He held the joint out to his brother but Dan declined.
‘Still saying no to drugs, eh?’
‘It’s not a moral issue,’ Dan said. ‘They just don’t do me any good. They make me feel like I’m drowning.’
Theo sucked hard on the spliff, then expelled the smoke in one long thick plume. ‘Bro, it’s the only thing keeping me together at the moment.’
Their parents had finally gone to bed. His mother hadn’t been able to stop hugging and kissing Dan from the moment he’d stepped through the security doors at Melbourne Airport. His father’s reaction was more reserved, but he too grabbed hold of his son, brought him close and said how good it was to have him back.
No one asked about Clyde, and Dan was relieved. Instead they listened as he talked about Scotland, about Glasgow and Partick, about the southside and the westside, described the uncanny colours of the Argyle coast and forests and bens; blues and greens he’d never seen before, a softness to the light that he’d never known in Australia.
Then he’d asked them about Regan and his father said, ‘I just want her here, son, she should be home.’ His mother was crying, and Scotland and Europe and that world was stripped from him and soon forgotten. He was back home.
Now, for the first time in years it was just him and Theo alone together and talking.
‘What’s been happening?’
‘Same as you, mate. I broke up with Annalise. It’s been nearly two months and it still kills me, it still fucking does.’ Theo was peering through a tangle of golden curls. ‘Is it the same with you?’
Dan then noticed the heavy shadows under the younger man’s eyes, the sharp, gaunt lines of his jaw and his cheekbones. He wasn’t sleeping, Dan thought, and he wasn’t eating. Dan went and sat on the concrete step just below Theo. He wanted to put a hand on his brother’s knee, just to touch him — he knew that more than words, touch could speak. But he didn’t know if his brother wanted it; he feared that Theo would recoil from it.
He didn’t know Annalise, had never met her.
‘How about you?’ Theo’s question was an appeal. ‘Does it still hurt not being with Clyde?’ Theo needed to not feel alone with his hurt.
‘I wasn’t in love with Clyde,’ Dan said. ‘I realised I wasn’t because of how relieved I was when it ended.’ He didn’t touch Theo; he leaned down and ran his fingers through the unmown grass. ‘I think meeting Clyde brought me back into the world.’ Dan could feel his cheeks burning, his heart racing. ‘You know, after fucking up so badly, ending up in prison.’ The next words were the hardest, they laboured to come forth from deep in his belly, from within the very cells of his blood. ‘You know,’ he continued, his voice husky, ‘after failing at swimming, after failing at everything.’ He was shivering, but not from cold. He couldn’t look at his brother, couldn’t bear what he might see there. ‘I mean, failing all of you.’ He stopped, drank some beer to cool his mouth and tongue and throat. His whole body was burning.
On the other side of the fence a sensor light switched on, a yellow glow, and an old man was calling out, ‘Pssh psssh, Caruso, where are you?’ Both brothers laughed as a slim tabby cat jumped out from the bottom of the garden and scaled the fence.
‘So the Rizzos are still next door?’ Dan’s voice was back to normal.
Theo nodded, scraping the butt of the joint on the sole of his sneaker and flinging it into the garden. ‘Well, I fucking loved Annalise and I still do. And you didn’t fail me, you dumb fuck — not when you didn’t make it as a swimmer. You failed me when you left us, when you wanted nothing to do with us. That’s what fucking hurt.’
I want to run away, Dan thought. I can’t bear this, the crush of it, the shame of it. But he just sat there. He would not get up, he would not leave. He was alert to it now, how the shame began in the belly, how bile flooded his insides, seeped into his blood. He was aware that the anger, the poison inside him needed to escape, as if his shame could transform into wrath and he could spew it all out, turn on his brother, wring his brother’s bloody neck: It wasn’t about you, I couldn’t think about you, I was drowning and I was falling, I was plunging down to earth and I couldn’t think of you, or of Mum, or of Dad, or of Regan, or of anyone. He could spring up from the cold stone of the step, smash his brother’s face, wring his neck: It wasn’t about you, you little cunt, I was falling. I was drowning. The excuses and the defences came to his lips — he was ready, to strike, to run; his muscles tensed, his jaw clenched. Dan turned to his brother.
Theo was a young man now, an adult; his hands were callused and large, his skin was the darkest shade of honey from the sun. He was scratching the inside of his arm, something he had always done whenever he was nervous or afraid.
Dan could smell the eucalyptus, the old tree at the back of the garden, its bark shining silver in the light of the moon, its canopy gleaming golden from the light of the street lamps. He released his breath. ‘Mate, I’m really sorry for what I did. I’m really sorry for hurting you.’
The two brothers sat in silence on the steps. Finally, Theo put his hand on Dan’s shoulder, then flicked a finger hard at the back of his head, so hard it hurt. The younger man cackled and slapped his knee, enjoying Dan’s outrage. ‘Evens?’
Dan couldn’t help laughing at the infantile term, the word that brought back childish skirmishes and teasing. ‘Yeah, OK, we’re even.’
He got up from the step, stretched his arms out into the night sky, he breathed in the air. ‘It smells wonderful,’ he marvelled, ‘the eucalyptus and the pure night air.’ He was being reminded that it wasn’t just the horizon, not just the light, but even the sounds and smells in Australia that stretched to the infinite.
Theo snorted. ‘You’re an idiot. All I can smell are the fumes off the bloody highway. What the fuck is so wonderful about that?’
Dan then said, ‘Tell me about Annalise.’
‘What do you want to know?’ Theo’s tone was hesitant, sulky.
‘What does she look like?’
Theo went into the house and came out holding a laptop. He sat back down on the step and Dan came to sit beside him again as his brother turned on the computer. The screen was white, then blue, and then an image washed across it: Theo and a young woman. She had smooth pale skin, her mouth was serious and unsmiling, her eyes were solemn and gently hooded — they dominated her face. Theo was smiling, his hair much shorter. Dan could see the adoration in his brother’s eyes, the limpid submission in them as he pulled her into him. Her eyes gave nothing away, but he could tell exactly what his brother was feeling at the moment the photograph had been snapped. Annalise had not allowed the camera to glimpse anything of her.
‘She’s beautiful.’
‘Yeah, tell me about it.’ Theo’s voice broke, and then he slammed down the top of the computer. ‘So now you’ve seen her.’ His voice was distant.
‘Are you seeing each other at all?’
‘She’s visiting family in Townsville. She’ll be back next week.’
Dan could hear the choke in his brother’s voice.
‘But she doesn’t want to see me, she reckons it’s best that we don’t see each other for a while.’
Dan didn’t think there was anything to say. Words wouldn’t do Theo, couldn’t do Dan himself any good.