Double Exposure

Picasso

One

Everything in its place …

In the dream, it doesn’t feel like drowning.

In the dream, there is a surreal sense of … calm. A weightless floating. A slow drifting down towards the inevitable.

But no panic.

No fear.

The pale emerald of the surface shines, its ripples shattering the sunlight into random patterns, like chance images on a huge movie screen, and something in you knows that if you could just reach out your hand … just stretch your fingers up towards the light …

If you could just summon the desire …

But you can’t. The water encloses you. It cools your skin, it whispers water-logic in your ears and slowly fills your lungs. You are drowning and you don’t mind, though some small trace of conscience in you hints vaguely at regret.

You don’t mind, because in the dream you are beyond guilt. Beyond fear. Beyond anything but the fact of drowning.

And floating.

Because below you, the dark shadow is sinking fast. Falling away from you. Away from the green light. And you know that drowning is exactly the right thing to do.

In the dream …

*

Cain’s story

I lie awake, staring at the ceiling and timing my breaths.

Breathe in for three … Hold for twelve … Breathe out for six … Repeat …

It’s supposed to calm you.

Sometimes it even works. But not this time.

Across the street, Dusan backs his lowered, metallic-green SX slowly out of the driveway, sub thumping, exhaust bubbling, angled so the skirts don’t catch the lip of the concrete.

The blinds are closed, but I can imagine the machine’s clear-coat shining immaculate in the sun, because I know without looking that the sky is flawless. Blue and warm, with the sun burning white-hot halfway up above the eastern skyline. I don’t need to look. I just know. It’s something about the quality of the light as it seeps in through the angled slats.

Early showers, clearing to a mild and overcast afternoon. A top of twenty-one in the city, twenty-three out west …

It must be twenty-eight already and I haven’t even got out of bed yet.

Weathermen have absolutely the best job in the world. They can totally stuff it up – on national television – and they still get paid. And the next night, everyone still tunes in.

Figure that one …

What is it Chris says?

Your average television viewer has the artistic perceptions of a house-brick and the memory-span of a goldfish with Alzheimer’s …

Chris is the cynical twin.

I lie there holding my breath and waiting.

Three … Two … One …

A sudden surge of acceleration, the rubber protest of the tyres and the asthmatic hiss from the blow-off valve as the turbos cut in, then the slowly receding roar as the long street is restored to silence and Dusan is gone for the day.

A trickle of sweat rolls down the valley in the centre of my chest.

Weathermen …

I throw off the sheet. A sudden brief draught as the thin cotton balloons away from me, collapsing onto the floor like a limp parachute. I wait for the momentary coolness to fade from my skin, scratching an imaginary itch on my stomach and listening.

A cricket has found its way in through the open window and its electronic chirrup shreds the quiet of the room, until the sudden ringing of the cordless on the table beside the bed shocks it into silence.

‘Hello?’ The receiver smells of last night’s bolognaise. Too much garlic. Part of me is trying to remember who I talked to for long enough to contaminate the mouthpiece.

‘Cain, baby … I know it’s short notice, but …’

Amy. Of course. Who else would it be at nine-thirty on a Thursday morning?

‘Geez, Aim, are you going for the record? It’s the third time since Friday. I’m pulling the four ’til late already …’ The argument runs out. There’s no point whingeing, I’m going to say yes, just like I do every time. I know it and, more importantly, Amy knows it. Predicability is my strong suit.

My mother prefers ‘dependability’.

Chris is a little cruder. Something about having seen bigger balls in a packet of Tic Tacs.

Amy is waiting patiently, as usual. And it’s impolite to keep people waiting. I sigh theatrically, as a sign of token resistance. ‘So, who died this time?’

‘Fay. Actually, she only wishes she was dead. Her mum just phoned. She’s got the bug. You know? The bug? Look, I know it’s a big ask, babe, but I’m desperate. You couldn’t cover a double for me, could you? Please?’

I swing my feet around and stand, catching my pale reflection in the mirror door of the built-in.

And watch the capitulation.

‘I’ll be there in forty. And Amy, remember … you owe me big-time for this. If I didn’t need the cash –’

‘Cain, you’re a doll. Gotta go. I’m down two for the late shift and I want to catch Andy and Elise before they make plans for tonight. See ya.’

Abruptly, I’m left with the busy tone bleating in my ear, looking at myself in the huge glass. I suck in my gut and allow my chest to swell with the breath I’m holding.

No noticeable improvement.

Bending, I select a pair of boxers from the untidy pile on the floor beside the bed and slip them on.

The house is empty.

Pausing at the door of my parents’ bedroom, I look in.

The bed-cover is perfect, uncreased, the bottom frill hanging its regulation distance above the polished wood of the floor, pillows and cushions precisely placed.

Pleasantville revisited …

A single shaft of sunlight from the window falls at an angle across the bed, the one unbalancing element in a perfectly constructed image.

Then, as I turn to leave, a glimmer catches my eye and halts the movement. Deep red and shining in the sunlight, it draws me towards the dark-wood dressing table.

A single ruby stud earring. I pick it up and examine it.

‘Careful, old girl.’ Opening the jewellery box, I place the earring carefully inside. ‘Don’t want to piss off the General, do we? A place for everything and everything in its place …’

The opening of the lid has triggered the music box and its monotone rendition of ‘Somewhere My Love’.

I shut it carefully and the music cuts off mid-bar.

The shower is hot. It takes my breath away and I fumble with the cold tap, regulating the stream until I can put my head under and wet my hair.

Beyond the clear glass of the shower-screen, the door is closed. Locked. What kind of subconscious programming makes you lock the bathroom door when there’s no one else in the house?

The steam is condensing on the glass and on the mirror over the vanity. It’s like the shower scene from Psycho – except that there’s no shower curtain and the sound track is just water hissing onto my body and gurgling down the drain-hole.

I remember the first time I saw Psycho. It scared the living crap out of me and for a week I was afraid to take a shower. I was twelve at the time and even Chris laughed at me. But only in private.

In front of anyone else, he always backs me up. It’s been that way since the day we were born and instinctively I guess we’ve both known it.

Just the two of us. Identical and yet so different, but still the only ones we could ever really count on.

When your father’s an anally retentive control-freak, given to enforcing his opinions with a leather belt, and your mother would rather have her fingernails ripped out with hot pliers than make waves, you develop certain mutual-support mechanisms and a united front.

Anyway, the only people in danger of being murdered while taking a shower, Chris pointed out, were hot-looking bimbos in B-grade horror flicks or minor members of the Mafia. And as I was reasonably safe on both counts, why worry?

When he put it that way, I stopped worrying and found more interesting things to think about in the shower.

But I still locked the door.

Even when there was no one else in the house.

Two

Popcorn

The girl looks distraught.

The huge container of popcorn has slipped from her grasp, bouncing down from step to step on the marble-tiled staircase in a lightly salted white-yellow avalanche. The toddler hanging from her hand is crying and Adam who has paused in the act of tearing her ticket is struggling to suppress a smile.

For a moment the young mother stares down at the mess on the stairs and it is touch and go whether she will break and cry. Instead, she mumbles an incoherent apology and turns away, dragging the child towards the relative anonymity of the darkened theatre.

Mums and Bubs …

Great concept. A session for people saddled with ankle-biters and housework, to help them maintain a semblance of sanity. If they can survive the ordeal …

At the bottom of the stairs, Cain watches the girl go and stares up at the cascading mess. Then he turns and makes his way in behind the candy bar.

Filling up a large carton, he shakes the excess corn back into the hopper and grabs a mini Milky Way from the stand on the counter.

Inside the theatre the trailers are still running, and in the light from the screen he locates the young woman halfway up in a seat near the left-hand aisle. The kid is still crying and she is staring at the screen, her face frozen in an inscrutable expression.

Leaning down, he holds the carton out in front of her.

‘On the house.’

For a moment it seems as if she will refuse the offer, but then a look of gratitude replaces the wariness and the semblance of a smile creeps into the corners of her mouth.

There is a slight shudder in her intake of breath.

Dropping to a crouch, his eyes level with the little boy’s face, he opens his palm with a magician’s flourish, to reveal the small chocolate offering.

The boy regards him with suspicion, but the tears have stopped. He looks up at his mother for permission.

‘What’s his name?’ Cain asks the question without taking his eyes from the child.

‘Tyson.’ She pauses, as if embarrassed. ‘His father named him. About the only thing he ever gave him.’

‘Want a chocolate, Tyson?’ A slight pause, then the girl nods assent and smiles at the child, who imitates the nod and grabs the treat.

‘What do you say, Ty?’ she prompts.

‘Tanks,’ the child manages, while negotiating the wrapper of his prize. The girl reaches out and removes the paper, handing it back to him, then looks up. Cain has risen from his crouch and stands a little uncertainly in the aisle.

‘Thank you,’ she says.

‘All part of the service.’

As the cliché slips out, he grimaces internally, hoping his embarrassment hasn’t shown on his face, but her expression hasn’t changed. He turns away, then back. ‘Enjoy the movie.’

At the bottom of the steps, he raises the nerve to look back. There is a smile on her face, as she ruffles the boy’s hair and places an arm around his tiny shoulders, sliding down more comfortably in her seat.

As he leaves the theatre, the lights are dimming and the DreamWorks logo is fading up onto the screen behind its bank of blue-grey clouds.

‘I should take it out of your pay, you know.’ Amy appears behind him as he sweeps the last of the popcorn into the dustpan and looks up at the shining staircase. ‘You’re lucky Tim didn’t see you.’

He turns to face her, leaning back against the chrome handrail.

‘Did you see her face, Aim? I thought she was going to lose it right there on the stairs. And bloody Adam wasn’t helping.’

Amy places a hand on his arm.

‘I saw, babe. Good job. Just don’t make a habit of it, eh?’ She turns to go, then stops. ‘Could you relieve Shamerin at the ticket-booth for me? Just half an hour or so. I need her help in the office.’

‘The ticket-booth? Come on! Why can’t I help in the office?’

She looks at him, smiling.

‘Cain, baby … You know I don’t trust myself alone in a room with you. Take window two. The eftpos isn’t working on one and I haven’t checked the float on three yet. And no freebies – I don’t care if they look like they’re about to commit seppuku. Capisce?’

The Mums and Bubs exodus two hours later is a procession of strollers and chattering two-year-olds. Stocking the Snickers stand with miniature bars, Cain watches them file out through automatic doors. She is one of the last to leave, holding the little boy’s hand and looking in her bag for something.

‘Hey, Tyson!’

The little boy turns. Cain checks both ways, then tosses one of the bars towards him. Miraculously, the boy manages to hold on to the airborne gift.

Nice one, kid …

The remnant of a smile is fading from the girl’s face, as she moves on through the doorway and the mechanism slides the doors closed behind her.

Standing behind the ice-cream counter, assembling popcorn cartons, Nilgun shakes her head and smiles to herself.

Three

Living out loud

12 July 1991

‘There is no explanation, Mrs Eveson. At present, science really has no way of accounting for your son’s giftedness. Some children just … have it.’ Dr Coleman shrugs and picks up the sheet of drawing paper from the desk in front of him. ‘For a four-year-old, it’s a truly remarkable talent. Does he always draw horses?’

Ruth Eveson takes the sheet from the paediatrician’s hand and stares down at the pencil-sketch of a galloping stallion that she watched her son produce from memory a few minutes earlier.

‘No. Not always. He does like animals, but he’ll draw just about anything that catches his eye. A piece of furniture, a tree. His brother.’

‘Ah, yes. Cain. He shows no particular talent at drawing, you say?’

The two boys sit like identical bookends at the extremities of the bulky sofa that fills the far wall and seems out of place in the otherwise sterile confines of the room. For a moment the question hangs unanswered, as the symmetry and the absurdity of the image register at a level somewhere beneath the conscious.

Then she realises that he is waiting for a response.

‘No … None. He talks more than Chris, and he seems to make friends more easily, but no special talents. His horses look like garbage bins on sticks. What I don’t understand is, if they’re identical … I mean, if Chris can do … this …’

‘Why can’t Cain? The simple truth is that we just don’t know. As I said, we don’t understand a whole lot about where true giftedness comes from. Two boys with identical genes, in an identical environment … and with vastly different talents.

‘The important trick is to try not to compare them. And above all to treat them as individuals. In everything.

‘Let them find their own centre and their own identities and encourage them to be friends as well as brothers. Twins share a special bond, and as long as they don’t become obsessed with their sameness it can be a special blessing to know that there is someone in the world who is closer to you than any other human being can ever hope to be.’

He takes the drawing from her hand and studies it closely, shaking his head.

‘Amazing … What we need to do now is talk about how we can best nurture his talent – without destroying it in the process.’

As the two adults turn towards the desk, Chris slides across the cushions of the huge sofa and slips his arm around his brother’s shoulders …

*

One o’clock.

In the shadows on the far side of the street, the old man sleeps slumped against the brick wall, a halo of graffiti framing his bowed head, colours bleached to shadings of grey in the gloom. Through the viewfinder the composition is perfect. The weak shaft, struggling down from a dirty streetlight, highlights the crumpled coat and the texture of the filthy woollen hat, and the old man’s trolley casts a long, complex shadow onto the pavement at his feet.

All his worldly possessions. The detritus of a shattered life …

Chris straightens and steps away from the tripod for a moment. The street is silent. A slight breeze chills him and he closes the zipper on his jacket, then bends again.

Another look through the viewfinder, a slight adjustment of the focus.

The gentlest of pressure on the shutter-release …

For a second, as the shutter opens for its long exposure, the view through the lens is lost and he is staring at nothing. Then the mechanism clicks and the old man reappears, unmoving still.

He could be dead …

The thought surfaces, but he shakes it off.

Before he leaves, he slides money into the old man’s pocket.

One-forty.

Beside the fountain, the young man stops, and holding his hand the girl turns to face him. They are silhouetted against the water and the spray hangs on the air around them, in an illuminated mist.

By a trick of the light, the girl’s eyes shine in the highlighted darkness of her face and the expression in them is magic.

The shutter freezes them in the half-moment before the kiss and as he closes his eyes; something in the perfection of the image reminds him of a line from the old poem, mostly forgotten, read once in the lazy lethargy of a Friday afternoon English class. And a couple more times in the silent evening.

Bold Lover, never, never canst thou kiss,

Though winning near the goal …

Beside the fountain, oblivious to his presence, the kiss is given and received and they move on.