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  Their wedding had been a simple affair, or, as Helen’s mother put it, ‘A non-event.’ But when they moved in to their rambling asbestos and tile two-storey home on the outer fringes of Fremantle with their first-born, there had still been so much promise, so much future in which to fulfil their aspirations — until the day, eight years later, when their first-born had died from an acute asthma attack.

  Too distressed to make sense of anything, Helen and Arnold had been taken home in a taxi organised by the hospital staff. It was a long drive, much longer than the journey in. The driver struggled with condolences but gave up once he realised that it was beyond him to comfort them.

  Helen and Arnold said nothing to one another, and the silence was agonisingly reminiscent of other trips going home without their son. But on previous trips back, they had left Leif knowing that he was still alive at the hospital. Now, they could only think of their young son’s cold body lying in the morgue.

  They remained still, hands in their laps, staring straight ahead as if fearful of looking behind, or sideways. But they knew that Leif’s death would follow them no matter which way they looked or turned or whatever they did.

  When the taxi pulled up to their driveway, Arnold argued with the driver over paying the fare. The driver didn’t want any money. Arnold insisted, and Helen watched him fishing around in his pockets. He pulled out, along with his hankie and some notes, Leif’s inhaler. He held onto the inhaler tightly, and then shoved the notes at the mortified driver.

  They stood separately for some moments in front of their home before going in to be greeted by their two younger sons. Astrid their neighbour, who had been looking after the boys, held back, tears in her eyes. Gabriel and Vivian were trembling, frightened by Astrid’s emotional state. They sensed something bad had happened, and on seeing their bewildered parents they began to cry.

  Helen had leaned heavily against the kitchen sink, trying to remember the normal pattern of a day. A routine to latch on to. Gabriel, who was six, pulled at his mother’s skirt. ‘Where’s Leif, Mum?’ Helen remained silent.

  Five year old Vivian went to his father who was sitting at the kitchen table. ‘What did you do with Leif?’ he sobbed.

  Helen steeled herself as she bent down towards her two young sons. ‘Leif has gone to heaven.’

  ‘When’s he coming back?’ Gabriel said hopefully.

  ‘You never come back from heaven,’ Helen replied. She returned to the sink, her back to them, before speaking loudly. ‘Leif has gone to heaven. He has become a star. And if you look up at night, out in the yard, you’ll see him. He will be the brightest star.’

  Apart from the funeral, nothing more was said of Leif’s death.

  But as youngsters Gabriel and Vivian spent many a night out in the yard looking up at the heavens, trying to pick out their brother in the crowded sky.

  *

  Helen read with a disturbing feverishness. How else to cope with Leif’s death? Most of the time she didn’t know what she was reading. She just needed to shut herself out from the world. However, she knew that the raw wound of sorrow was forming a scab when the books she was reading began to make sense.

  Astrid and her husband took care of Gabriel and Vivian until Helen began to surface. Still, she continued reading, but less as an antidote for her grief and more, over the years, for the nightmares that chased her through the night. She woke each morning at five, carefully wriggling her body up to switch on the reading lamp and pick up her book from the bedside table. Then she read, her hands caressing each page, until daylight and its fellow traveller, reality, crept across the room to steal her peace away.

  As she heard the fast-approaching feet of Gabriel and Vivian she would steel herself. And as the boys clambered onto the bed she would switch off the reading lamp, lay her book down, and swing into action, sustained for the day ahead.

  *

  Arnold’s grief, though, took a different course. He had found a way of submerging his sadness and it didn’t take long before the tide of junk was lapping around his family’s ankles.

  3

  Astrid was bustling around her kitchen, organising cocoa, toasted sandwiches, a heater and a blanket. As she sat at the kitchen table Helen reflected on the fight she’d had with Arnold the night before: ugly, inevitable and delivering yet another resounding blow to their marriage.

  She had been in the kitchen making bread when she heard Arnold’s familiar shuffle. Kneading the dough, she’d fixed her gaze on the floury mass in her hands. She didn’t want to have to look at her husband; she dreaded to think what alien object he might be bringing in this time.

  Arnold came in with a snuffle of contentment; he loved Helen’s homemade bread. But his snuffle only fuelled her anger. She pummelled the dough, refusing to raise her head as he stood before her.

  ‘Guess what I got ya.’

  ‘I’d rather not,’ said Helen. What was he thinking? She wasn’t stupid. Got her? Whatever he got her, he got for himself.

  ‘Have a look then.’

  Helen took the bait. She flipped her head up and nearly choked. ‘What the hell is that?’

  Arnold, unsettled, replied, ‘It’s a photograph album.’

  Helen stood, flour-covered arms folded in front of her like a bread knot. Her eyes popped disbelievingly at the large album with its faded cloth cover as she yelled, ‘I can see what it is. More damned junk!’

  ‘It’s not junk … it’s a photograph album.’

  Helen shook her head in disbelief. Of all things to bring home! Didn’t Arnold know how painfully few photographs they possessed of Gabriel and Vivian? There were only a couple of Leif.

  ‘Remember Mrs Slap?’ Arnold said.

  Indeed she remembered Mrs Slap; she had spoken, often, over the phone to the old lady about overdue lawn-mowing accounts. ‘Don’t tell me! She’s dead. And out of gratitude, her relatives gave you her old photograph album?’

  ‘Yeah,’ whispered Arnold.

  Helen couldn’t speak. She screamed. ‘It is not gratitude, Arnold. It’s offloading their crap on to a sap!’

  ‘Dead people don’t leave you brand new things. They give you things to remember them by.’

  ‘You already have a million photograph albums,’ Helen hissed through gritted teeth.

  ‘Well this one,’ said Arnold, tapping his finger onto the album. ‘This one is in particularly good condition.’

  ‘Humph!’ Helen landed a punch into the dough.

  Arnold was holding the album open for her. She leaned forward and noticed it was an expensive album with its black, matt pages littered with little white triangles for holding the photographs in place. Between the pages there was tissue paper.

  The book fell open at a page with two large black and white photographs. One was of a family sitting on what looked to be a front lawn; a mother and father surrounded by a huddle of young children. The house behind them was opulent, the surrounding gardens lush and well tended. It would have been a sunny day, for everyone was wearing summer clothing and squinting against the glare of the sun. And they were all smiling. They were happy, with their arms linked around one another.

  In the photograph opposite, taken in the lounge room perhaps, a small boy, a toddler, was sitting on a woman’s lap, her hands around his waist holding him securely. Her smile was serene, her composure almost regal. And somehow it seemed that the little boy knew he had a perfect mother, for he appeared to be absolutely content there, his small hands resting on hers.

  Helen compared the two photos. Yes, the mother and son were also in the happy family snap. Her shoulders slumped. The photographs hammered home what she didn’t have — a happy family. And what she’d lost — a son. How daft can a man be, she thought, bringing home a photograph album with photos of total strangers. Happy total strangers!

  She said, a tremor in her voice, ‘It’s the junk, Arnold, the junk or me. You’ve got three weeks to clear the lot out, or I go for good.’

  Arnold scratched his he
ad in bewilderment. Three weeks? What was she talking about? He had never seen her so distressed. She was crying as if she’d chopped onions all day.

  ‘I do not want that thing in my house. Get rid of it!’ Helen shouted, her index finger pointing the way out. Arnold stood immobile, holding the album to his chest.

  ‘Get it out!’ Helen screamed, and picking up the lump of dough she hurled it with all her might.

  The doughy missile flew straight past Arnold and landed smack in his collection of teapots on top of the kitchen cabinet. Teapots were sent flying.

  Helen waited for a response, but might as well have been waiting for hell to freeze over. Nothing would move this man. Not reason, not anger, not even death by a two-kilo wholegrain doughy missile.

  ‘Three weeks, Arnold. You have three weeks to clear out every single item you have brought into this house over the last twenty years. It’s me or the junk, Arnold.’ But even as she uttered the words, she knew which way the scales would tip. Knew who would be leaving. Threats were wasted on Arnold.

  Silence filled the kitchen like deadly gas. They stood motionless, both were in shock. Helen for having spoken what she had only thought for so long. Arnold for her threat of leaving and for seeing his teapots shattered. Putting the photograph album aside he began picking up the bits and pieces from the floor.

  Helen marched into the lounge room where she sat and cried, spreading small doughy pieces over her face as she wiped the tears away. She didn’t know where to put herself. She hit out at the piles of objects around her until, unexpectedly, her sense of outrage turned to a profound sadness. She knew Arnold would never move any of his stuff. Her threat had been more about her. She’d drawn a line in the sand. It was time to turn the sign to ‘closed’ on this marriage.

  She sat weeping under Arnold’s formidable collection of clocks. Some still worked, but their ticking brought little consolation to one of her bleakest hours.

  Arnold meanwhile had come upon the lump of dough. After carefully picking out the dust, the debris, and the broken china, he finished kneading it, then divided it into two, plopping each piece into a baking tin, and finishing them off with a brush of egg yolk. He slid them into the oven and decided to sit and wait until they were done.

  His mind was numb. He looked at the photograph album now sitting on the kitchen table. It looked harmless enough. Why had Helen reacted so strongly? He opened it to the page that held the two photographs. Was she upset by another family’s happiness? He closed the album. He felt as though his life was coming apart. He loved Helen but she had shut him out of her life a long time ago. Sitting by the warmth of the oven, his eyes filmed over with tears. He blinked them back.

  Soon the smell of baking bread permeated the house, making Helen feel even more vengeful. She went to bed. Later she heard Arnold shuffle to her bedroom door with a tray which he set down without a knock or a word. When she heard his steps drift away she got up and opened the door and took the tray back to her bed. There was a cup of tea and a plate with thick slices of freshly baked bread and honey. The bread had risen well and was baked to perfection.

  She felt angry that she couldn’t eat this beautiful bread soaked with butter and honey. Only anger was on her tastebuds.

  A stupid photograph album, with photos of a strange family in it! How perverse, where photos of Leif would barely fill one page; the empty pages a constant reminder of a life cut short, and parents too poor to afford even a camera. No happy family snaps for them.

  Helen picked up the bread from her plate and threw it across the room. It hit the wall, and she watched its sticky descent. She suspected Mrs Slap would visit her tonight, demanding her album back. Helen spoke out defensively in the dimness of her bedroom.

  ‘Well, have it back you old hag! Go on take it.’

  Her eye fell on the bread, it had reached the carpet. Dammit, she was hungry! She could not let good food go to waste. She slid out of her bed and collected the mess, shoving the slices into her mouth.

  4

  Holding mugs of warm cocoa they sat with their feet to the gas heater. Helen, wrapped in one of Astrid’s blankets, felt intoxicated, luxuriating in the way Astrid’s kitchen was so … minimalist. It contained only the essentials. Not a thing out of place. She gazed as Astrid, poker-faced, took a pack of cards from her tea-towel drawer. ‘Hendel never goes into my kitchen cupboards,’ she remarked as she dragged her chair to the table and began to shuffle the cards quickly before dealing.

  Helen picked up the cards, though with little enthusiasm. She had been enjoying herself just drinking cocoa and toasting her toes by the heater. Besides Astrid always won.

  It wasn’t much of a game with only the two of them, but Astrid loved to play. She reminded Helen of a blue wren, fluttering here and there, focused and intent on her business as she shuffled and dealt the cards with surprising dexterity.

  Helen looked around her. She knew every inch of the room by heart but she never tired of looking at it. Astrid had created her kitchen without having to accommodate anyone else. She had no children, while Hendel, considering the kitchen to be a woman’s domain, kept well away from it. Helen envied Astrid.

  Astrid interrupted her thoughts, ‘Well, you burnt your bed.’

  ‘Could hardly have burnt Arnold’s. He was in it,’ Helen responded drowsily.

  Both women broke into cackles of laughter that rose and fell like a gently shaken bedsheet. The laughter settled, leaving a familiar warmth between them.

  Astrid was persistent, ‘You burnt your bed?’ she repeated as though in awe of her friend’s achievement.

  ‘It was never mine,’ Helen stated, gazing at the bottom of her mug where the last of the cocoa had coalesced. ‘It was a dead person’s bed.’

  ‘What are you saying?’

  ‘Arnold got it from a deceased estate. Someone had died in it, in their sleep.’

  ‘A good thing you burnt it then.’ Astrid gathered the empty mugs and took them to the sink.

  Helen contemplated her act of rebellion. She had felt deep gratification on watching her bed being reduced to ashes. ‘It was the most tiring bed to sleep in. I always had nightmares in it.’

  Astrid nodded her head in sympathy. ‘I am so sorry for your terrible nightmares.’

  ‘Silly nightmares really.’

  ‘You mean there are sensible ones?’

  Helen smiled and then turned her gaze up at the ceiling, ‘They were awful, to be honest.’ She paused, and wondered if her mind was driving her insane. ‘It’s always the same dream, over and over. It’s like a Pieter Brueghel painting. Like hell.’

  Astrid was perplexed. Her knowledge of art was nil. She stalled. ‘Oh that’s terrible, terrible.’ Then asked, ‘Where will you sleep now?’

  Helen looked surprised. ‘I don’t know. I’ll find somewhere.’

  ‘Here! You can sleep here, in the guest room. Hendel and I rattle around like two coins in a big tin. We always have, but the rattle gets louder as you get older and deafer. Funny hey?’

  Helen couldn’t imagine rattling around in her house.

  ‘Live with us,’ pleaded Astrid. ‘We can move in your things today.’ Her face was aglow with the anticipation of company. Dressed in her sky blue flannelette nightie, thick dressing gown and slippers, her hair a spray of short grey curls, she looked like a doll, all sweetness and obedience. How could Helen refuse?

  Yet to accept meant her marriage really was over. ‘What about Hendel?’ she said. ‘How he would he feel with me living here? A woman who has left her husband.’

  Astrid was startled. Since when did she need to consult her husband about such matters? ‘He has no say in this. This is my house too. Anyway, he’s very fond of you.’

  Hendel was a retired Lutheran minister. A mere shadow in his wife’s life, he occupied his time in the shed out the back, fixing broken furniture for the elderly who lived in the area. He spent nights at the soup kitchen in the city, he visited old parishioners now residing in various nurs
ing homes, and he pottered around the Lutheran Church on the other side of their house as its unofficial caretaker.

  The church was a modest building constructed over a hundred years ago from jarrah by men with an unyielding religious faith, crude implements and a strong sense of the future. Nowadays, except for Sundays and special occasions, it was empty. Helen went there routinely to read, sitting with her book in the middle of a pew. Or she might read a chapter or two, and then sit thinking of Leif.

  Astrid was studying Helen. The time had come, she felt, to give her friend an account of a recent event, which until now she’d told no one. She sat forward on her chair. ‘You know, I have a confession to make. In fact I have two confessions.’

  Helen snapped out of her reverie. It wasn’t often Astrid made confessions.

  Astrid took a deep breath, ‘When I am fed up with everything, you know where I go?’

  ‘Nooo,’ said Helen, yawning.

  ‘Make a guess,’ Astrid gushed, sitting upright with her eyes still fixed on Helen.

  ‘Oh Astrid, I’m so tired. Please, just tell me.’

  ‘I go to the casino. It is my spiritual home. I feel happy there, it gives me peace. Otherwise, in this house with Hendel I would have gone mad years ago. I love the casino. Especially when I win on the blackjack. Although it hardly happens enough.’

  Helen nodded, encouraging Astrid to go on. In fact, she’d once gone with her to the casino, on Astrid’s insistence. It had been a depressing event: rows and rows of poker machines blistering with coloured lights that distorted her vision and a jangling kind of muzak that rattled her nerves. Worst of all had been the glum faces of people sitting before a technology over which they had little hope of triumph as they slipped in coins and pushed buttons with mechanical repetition. The futility of it all had conjured up the image of a factory where the workers volunteered to lose their pay instead of taking it home. How could it be that such a place had become Astrid’s sanctuary?

  ‘I no longer go just on a blue moon. I’ve been going for two days every week for the last five years now. Mondays and Fridays. My fed-up days. And I only spend a little money. Hendel thinks I’m visiting the sick in nursing homes. Funny — do you know how I got captivated by the casino in the first place?’