Golden Days, page 21
My skull prickles and I get that feeling again that Zoe has somehow shoplifted my thoughts. For that image of the river, of it reaching the daylight, is mine – it is Cave Creek, it is the night of the caves and it is Chris. I stare at Zoe and then around at the crowd. I’m confused, the thought crossing my mind that perhaps I’ve got it wrong. Maybe they were her thoughts all along.
‘I left New Zealand because I’d lost everything: my health, my study, my friends …’
Again, her eyes search like spotlights, but this time her gaze lands on me. Those hazel-green eyes I knew so well find mine and when they do it’s like an electric shock. Hello! my soul shouts, Hello, you! – before my mind has a chance to catch up. Funny how that happens, how you can forget, for a second, that you hate someone.
‘But most of all I lost my future,’ she says. ‘I lost the life I was going to live.’
I’m panicked; I know she is referring to me in some way. Her usual bullshit. She continues:
‘But as one of my favourite childhood authors Madeleine L’Engle says: In art, either as creators or participators, we are helped to remember some of the glorious things we have forgotten, and some of the terrible things we were asked to endure. That is what this exhibition has been for me, a cathartic remembering of the glorious and terrible past. But before I let you loose on my new pieces, I’d like to do something I should have done a long time ago. I’d like you to welcome to the stage, for a long overdue thank you, my old friend and artistic collaborator, Rebecca Chalke!’
I’m mortified. My body is on high alert, adrenalin surging. I know this feeling; this is what a therapist calls a need for flight rather than fight. My body detects a life-threatening situation, and all I want to do is push past that arrogant man in front of me, slip through the crowd, and get the fuck out of here.
‘Becky,’ says Meg. ‘I think she just wants to thank you for the old art. It’ll be fine; it’ll be weirder if you leave.’
I drag my eyes from Meg to the door. A roomful of gazes and smiles are directed at me, and I feel like that girl in the cow print stockings. My whole body is wired, and it’s hard to breathe, and I wish I hadn’t eaten that canapé, and I wish there was a bottle of chardonnay I could scull and …
‘You’ll be fine,’ says Meg. ‘Go on.’
She presses the small of my back so that I step forwards, the crowd parting, not towards the door, but towards the front where Zoe stands. I am the river wending through the cave, stepping out of the darkness into sunlight, to which my eyes are not accustomed, and which threatens to blind me. For some reason, my sense of smell is augmented, latching on to every scent as I walk: the milky softness of a cropped leather jacket, the chemical musk of hairspray, wine-breath ineffectively masked with mints. I’m almost there, she’s only a few steps away, and my mind is fizzing with scenes of what I will do when I reach her. I want to feel the hate that fuelled me for so long. I want to, but when I reach her, she takes my elbows and looks into my eyes, and it is not hate I feel. Or rage. It’s deeper than that, more blue/black than red/orange. I know that feeling. It is regret. Regret for a friend lost for so long.
‘Bec,’ she says, hugging me.
She smells of rainforests and daisies and the ocean, and up close, her skin clingwraps her cheekbones too tightly and smoothly for it to be by Mother Nature’s hand. Her arms, though, look thirty-seven years old. They’re tanned – from years beneath the Bali sun, I think – and crepey, like mine. Like her mother’s.
‘It’s good to see you,’ she says.
I breathe in. Out. ‘You too,’ I say. I mean it.
She releases me and begins to address the audience again. ‘So, this is the girl who, back in 1995, rescued me from my shitty life, and together we created some of the best work I’ve ever done. Not to mention had some of the most incredible nights out, ever.’
This last bit gets a laugh from the thirty-somethings in the audience.
‘She was the wordsmith and music maker, and I was the artist,’ she continues. ‘Together – equally – we created the pieces you’ve viewed tonight over on that side.’
The audience swivels briefly.
‘And, in part, the new works seen for the first time here tonight.’
A prick of confusion. What?
‘Please join me again in thanking my muse, Rebecca Chalke!’
The crowd applauds, and I’m embarrassed but relieved that there is one less thing I have to lug around with me: Zoe has righted one of her wrongs. I’m ashamed to realise that what I wanted that night at the uni exhibition in 1995, and still want here tonight, is what echoes off the iron walls of this draughty suburban barn. All I wanted was the sound of applause. As that thought settles, another one immediately follows, that unruly voice berating my vanity, my need to please and be acknowledged. What do I care? Why do I care? And what the hell did she mean about the new works?
It is at that moment that I turn towards the six new canvases and see they are indeed renditions of native bush, each one a subtle variation on the next. There are cut-out phrases dangling from the foliage in the scenes that – I can see now that I am closer – have been typed on a typewriter, like our old works. I squint, trying to make out the words on the painting nearest me. Dammit, I’m still too far away.
Zoe touches my arm. ‘All right,’ she says, turning back to the crowd. ‘Please go ahead and view my new pieces with an open heart – and an open wallet.’ That gets another laugh. ‘I’ll be over shortly to answer any questions.’
There’s more applause, and then the birds flock towards the pieces.
Zoe takes my hands. ‘It’s good to see you, Bec. Really.’
Before my brain catches up with my heart, I say, ‘You too.’
‘Look, there’s something I want to show you.’ She pauses. ‘Need to show you. Another piece you contributed to, in a way.’
‘Oh, okay,’ I say. ‘But I didn’t …’
‘Come,’ she says, linking arms. ‘It’s out back.’
I’m confused. My mind is playing tricks. It feels as though there are two realities: one where I did send Zoe’s stern lawyer Helen Brodie an envelope of poems, and the parallel reality, in which I didn’t. I’m sure the second is true, isn’t it?
As she leads me to the back of the room towards a black door, I pass the end painting. My heart fills and empties. I see the words now: No wonder your father left you. I do not know those words, but in the next moment, somehow, I do. My armpits are damp, and I feel breathless, unsteady.
We walk into the office. It’s tidy, with bubble-wrapped artworks leaning against the walls. There’s a TV screen and DVD player set up in one corner, with two office chairs in front.
‘Sit, please,’ she says, then joins me.
She picks up a remote and points it at the screen, her finger paused on the button. ‘Before we start,’ she says, ‘I want to tell you that I didn’t know how else to communicate this with you. It was all so long ago and we left it for so many years that it wasn’t as straightforward as just phoning you up. And so I did what I always do.’
‘Which is?’
‘Tell the story through my art,’ she says. ‘I guess I created this work to hold up a mirror. But being in the same room with you …’ She pauses, hangs her head. ‘I don’t feel angry. And I’m not even sure it’s the right thing to do.’
I feel that stuffed-up feeling again, where the words I want to say won’t come out: You’re angry? You?
‘Yes,’ is all I manage to say. But what I mean is this: yes, I feel it too, but I can’t say it because I’m supposed to hate you. And there it is again, two things both true at once.
‘Come on, Bec,’ says Zoe, her eyes flashing. ‘I’m putting my heart on the line here, giving us a chance for reconciliation and redemption, and all you can say is yes?’
‘I’m sorry,’ I say. ‘You’re right, we should have talked back then. I was stubborn.’ My mind catches up. ‘Redemption? I don’t need redemption.’
She pauses. Looks from the screen to me. ‘Fuck it,’ she says, and presses play.
There’s a flickering of black and white letters across the screen, followed by the numbered circles of an old-fashioned film leader, from eight down to one. The insistent beep that accompanies every number is unsettling, like a heart monitor’s countdown towards a flat line.
Letters begin to bubble up from the bottom of the screen. At first, they do not make sense; they rise in a grey nimbus until they begin to separate as if the cloud is dissolving into rain and the letters drizzle into words. And then I realise it is the same phrase from the picture in the gallery I just saw:
No wonder your father left you.
There is a sour surge in my throat and, as I stare, an attribution appears below the words:
– Rebecca Chalke
What the fuck? The words fade away, and another cloud of letters arises – not like clouds, no, this time like an underwater scream. I realise in this moment that Zoe is pulling one of her tricks, but it is too late. My eyes open, and I see the next awful words laid bare on the screen:
It should have been you who died.
I am frozen. As the seconds tick by, I’m playing dead, protecting myself from that which threatens to kill me, to strike me down.
‘They aren’t my words …’ I mumble.
‘I thought you’d say that. Here.’ She slips her hand into a pocket I’d not noticed in her silk dress and pulls out a page with a torn edge, as if from a 1B5 exercise book. She unfolds it and shows me: heavy blue pen written so fiercely there are pinpricks of light where the nib ripped through the paper, and with sections of the words highlighted in faded neon yellow. I reach out, feel the paper between my thumb and forefinger, tilt it towards the screen’s light so I can read the date – 5th March 1996 – and the parts she has highlighted. My breath blasts through my chest. It is my handwriting. I wrote this letter.
You’re a fucking murderer.
A voice-over begins onscreen:
‘Anais Nin says that it is the function of art to renew our perception. That what we are familiar with we cease to see.’
The words drain off the screen and it fades to black.
‘Perception. Perception. Perception.’ Zoe’s voice-over a drumbeat.
I stare at the screen, glad it’s over. Push to my feet so I can leave. Find Meg and get the hell out of here.
‘Please, sit back down,’ says Zoe, not unkindly. ‘It’s time you understood.’
I do not want to sit, but there is something in her eyes, sad and resigned, that makes me sink back into the chair.
‘I am sorry, though,’ she says, closing her eyes, ‘for what you are about to see.’
My mind is a scramble, and I remember that, yes, we sometimes used to write each other letters, even though we saw each other every day. Once, she’d even posted me an envelope of her fingernail clippings along with a voodoo love spell she asked me to cast for her and Rhys. (I did.) We’d write out song lyrics and poems, thoughts on life and the future. But I do not recall writing the letter she just showed me, or any other letters to her after Chris died. Not one. The back of my throat burns.
Then, from the still-black screen, a soft guitar melody fades in and begins to build. My ears prick. I know this song. I search my brain, and after two more bars the silky vocals start, and I know it is Bic Runga’s ‘You’, from her very first EP, Drive, which we played over and over that summer when we were feeling mellow. Present-day Zoe appears on screen now against what looks like a green screen. I see her blink. It’s a film, then, not stills. I am confused: she is wearing the Zambesi fur mini and tunic she used to wear, that she wore that night of the crash, but the top beneath is different, the pale shade more blush pink than white mesh. Squinting at the screen, as the camera zooms out, I can see she is in a car, in the driver’s seat. Her red-nailed hands are at ten and two on the steering wheel, tapping the beat. There is a man’s hand on her shoulder.
What the fucking fuck? ‘What is this?’ I hiss.
‘Renewing our perception,’ says Zoe, in a flat voice.
‘Turn it off.’ I reach for the remote, but she moves her hand away too quickly. I stand up to leave but then the shot on the screen widens. There is another woman in the passenger seat, and the woman is not me, but oh my god she is holding a stick with a print-out of my face on it – what the hell? It’s from a photo I had forgotten existed, from a summer’s day when Zoe shot pictures of us on a Nikon borrowed from Rhys, under the shade of a pōhutukawa tree. I/she holds a bottle of champagne with her other hand.
I cannot believe that whoever it is, whoever is pretending to be me with that sick-fuck mask, is wearing what looks exactly like the wine-coloured slip-dress I was wearing the night Chris died. The camera zooms out again, as if the videographer has climbed into the car boot. We can see the back of the head of the man to whom the hand belongs, and his hair is the same colour as Chris’s. I know Zoe’s intention is for me to see Chris, and I do, but it is not Chris because this head does not have the narrow hairless sliver of a scar behind the right ear that Chris got when he was eight and I was five, when he smashed into the kitchen ranch-slider door. But never more than at this moment do I know to be true what Dad says – that it is possible for two things to both be true at once – for I know this is not Chris, but I also know when that head turns to the camera, it will be Chris. And I am right, for this man turns, and he too is holding up a sick-fuck mask, this one of my brother’s face, and I stifle a scream with my fist.
‘Why would you do this?’ I say.
‘You have to watch,’ she whispers, a tear sliding down her cheek.
The trio is driving, and the shonky green screen shows me they’re travelling from the harbour near Point Chevalier, over the Whau bridge with the Waitākere Ranges lying low ahead, and then it switches to the lush greenness of bush. From that camera angle in the boot, we can see Zoe taking the bottle of champagne from between my knees and then a close-up of its dewy surface slipping from her hand. The car swerves into the other lane as she tries to reach down and grab it.
‘Shit!’ Zoe/she cries, yanking the steering wheel back to centre.
I/she screams, and then Chris, my brother, my dear brother, unbuckles, telling her to leave it, that it doesn’t matter, to keep her eyes on the road. He leans over to retrieve it from underneath the driver’s seat where it’s rolled.
‘There’s even some left!’ Chris/he says, holding up the bottle.
And how, how, how, is his voice so right, the bowed cello string depth of it?
Zoe lays a hand on his arm, just as I’d remembered. He leans in and says something to her, but I cannot hear what – this moment I do not remember.
Then, she turns to face the camera and takes her hands off the wheel, so it seems as though the car is driving itself, but it’s obvious it’s green screen because there is an amateur gap between the edge of the vehicle and the background, so it doesn’t look natural, but that doesn’t matter because I am there. I am there in the front seat next to Zoe. Her hands are still off the wheel, and the native bush flashes by on both sides and Zoe begins to address the camera, looking right down the barrel.
‘“What we are familiar with we cease to see”,’ she says, deadpan. ‘So, let the scales fall from your eyes.’ Her voice drops low and smooth like velvet. ‘Let the scales fall.’
Screen-Zoe turns back to the windscreen, her hands back on the wheel. The Bic Runga song lyrics are about being a friend and things being different then, and I realise, finally, that this was the track we were listening to when we crashed. This is the track I have been trying to remember! My senses are throbbing, my brain swarming with a thousand smoked-out bees, and I wonder where Meg is. Why she hasn’t come to find me.
Chris/he shakes his head and sinks back into his seat. He reaches for the belt and slides it over his chest. Clicks it back in. I stare at the screen, confused. What’s her point? I keep thinking. What’s her fucking point?
As the Piha road begins its descent, Zoe/she turns up the wipers. She takes a corner too fast, and I/she lurch sideways.
‘For fuck’s sake, slow down,’ the me on the screen yells.
‘Calm down,’ Zoe/she says.
‘Don’t tell me to fucking calm down! You are not the boss of me.’
Zoe/she looks at me, her mouth dropped open. ‘Sorry, I ah …’
Screen me cuts her off: ‘I’ve put up with your shit for too long, you know that? Everything we do, everything we say – Jesus, everything I wear – is decided by you.’
Oh my god. Oh my god.
I/she takes a breath. Keeps going: ‘Well I’m sick of it. Fucking sick of it. You think you’re some kind of spiritually enlightened being, but tell me this: would a’ – I do quote marks with my fingers – ‘“friend” spike a friend’s drink and abandon her in a cave in the middle of bloody nowhere to almost get raped?’
The chest of the me on the screen heaves.
‘Becky, I’m so sorry,’ Zoe/she says. ‘It was fucking awful of me. But don’t freak out. You know I’m sorry, I’ve told you a thousand times. I’ll do anything to make it up to you.’
I/she glowers at Zoe/her, eyebrows drawn together above the line of the mask. The window wipers sweep the windscreen. ‘How about this, then. How about you LEAVE MY FUCKING BROTHER ALONE!’
I can’t breathe.
Chris interjects. ‘Becky, come on. Stop. It’s okay.’
But it’s not okay. I’m watching all this unfold, and there is a speck of something beginning to unearth itself.
‘I will not stop,’ I/she screams. ‘You think I don’t know? You think I haven’t seen what’s going on? I’m not fucking stupid. She fucked Jono, who she knew I liked, just for fun, and now she’s trying to get to you because, once again, she wants what’s mine. I see the way you drool over him, Zoe. And, yeah, Chris, you make out like you aren’t turned on but I see it. I see she’s wearing you down, that you’re falling for her bullshit. I bet you’ve already fucked her!’
