House of Sighs

PROLOGUE:

It Begins

There is only one Evil: Disunity.

—Pierre Teilhard de Chardin

ONE HUNDRED AND FOUR

Suzie Marten was ten years old when she died.

She lived to dance. Spinning herself sick in search of rhythm, pirouetting until her toes hurt in the ballet shoes her father bought. They were a perfect fit—and let’s not forget the pink ribbon laces. She scuffed and broke the soles of those shoes with a knife spirited from the kitchen drawer, just don’t tell Mum. Yes, Suzie adored them with the pure love only children can muster, or sustain, for inanimate things. And she was wearing them the day she came unsewn.

November 12th, 1995.

To Suzie, Sunday mornings were the final love-hate pit stop between freedom and being a ‘big girl’. Suzie despised school and feared her raven-faced teacher, a man who sometimes got so mad he threw things. She imagined he spent his Sundays alone, watching the clock, eager for Monday to roll around so he could overturn yet another desk. He did this to her best friend. Books and pencils crashed to the floor, an eraser bouncing up to clip one boy’s ear. Suzie sat beside her humiliated friend at recess and draped an arm over his shoulder—a brave move considering his sex, because as any ten-year-old girl knows, where there be boys, there be a whole lot of germs.

It’s okay, she whispered in his ear. I saw on the telly that teachers can’t hurt kids. We can sue if we want. He’s such a dirty shit.

They looked at each other, shocked. Dirty shit.

Suzie Marten, you can’t say that. If they hear you, they’ll send a letter home to your ma and she’ll wash your mouth out with soap. I saw that on the telly, too.

Na-uh she won’t. My ma’s too tired for that. Always in bed. Besides, she says words like that. She works the dogwatch at the hospital—whatever that means. She gets home from work when everyone else is getting up. I don’t know what the dog has to do with it. I once saw this boring black-and-white movie about a vampire who only ever came out at night. He could turn into a bat and flew ’round eating people, and during the day he slept in a box. Did’ja ever see that one?

Suzie once teased her mother’s mouth open with a spoon while she slept to see if she had fangs. Donna Marten bolted awake, grabbed her daughter by the wrist and pulled her under the sheets. They laughed and had Fruit Loops for dinner.

***

On the morning of the ninth, Donna fell into bed after a ten-hour shift. Knees ached, the stink of disinfectant and cigarettes sweating from her pores, too tired to shower. Suzie pulled the blankets up to her mother’s chin.

Mum, Suzie said, voice drawn out and meek.

What is it, honey? I’m dead on my feet.

Well.

Come on, out with it. I’m two ticks from dreaming.

Well, I was just wondering. How come on television mums don’t get old? How come Julia Roberts never gets wrinkles or anything, but you’re starting to look like an old lady? A bit of an old rag.

Mother stared into daughter’s innocent eyes.

Innocent, Donna reminded herself. Innocent. Forgive her, for she knows not what she says.

It wasan expression her own mother had been fond of using, and often. Donna never really understood its meaning—its weight—until that moment, there in her bedroom with her daughter by her side. For the last time.

Count yourself lucky I love you, Suzie, she said, wishing her little girl were old enough to start lying like everyone else. Despite this, they kissed each other bye-bye and all was forgiven, as it should be. Donna watched her daughter pull the door shut, taking with her the smell of Strawberry Shortcake, of pre-teen sweat.

***

Suzie passed a cabinet of her gymnastics trophies in the hallway, glass planes shaking as she bounced along. Her reflection twittered from one family photo to another. Leaping into the kitchen in her socks, she slid to the refrigerator; it was covered in drawings and magnets, school reports, and shopping receipts.

Alone at last.

Her father was away on another one of his business trips. Where he went she didn’t quite know, but she was always glad to see him go because he never came back empty-handed. Once he brought a packet of windup crayons home—and the good kind, unlike those her friends owned, crayons that had to be tossed if twisted too far.

Another time, the ballet shoes.

Watched Sailor Moon over cereal. Pulled her hair into a ponytail. Brushed her teeth, bristles frayed as the wheat stalks on her uncle’s farm after a storm. Suzie didn’t see much of her extended family anymore, not with her father always traveling and her mother sleeping day after day.

***

Donna Marten would find dried toothpaste splashes on the bathroom mirror a week later. She licked them off and fell to the floor, mouth tasting of mint and the briny tang of tears.

***

Suzie put on her headphones even though the padding itched her ears, and slipped into a pink leotard and tutu. Thumbed PLAY on the Walkman so music filled her ears. She went into the yard, front door clapping shut behind her.

Meanwhile, within the house, a mechanic hum escaped the freezer. The grandfather clock ticked away. Gentle draughts tickled the wind chimes near the window until they laughed. Through it all Donna Marten snored.

The little girl danced to MisterBoombastic ("say me fan-tas-tic!") on the front lawn. In her opinion, she lived on the most boring street in all of James Bridge, maybe even all of Australia: a rarely traveled stretch of road on the outskirts of town. They had no neighbors, but should a car come along she liked the idea of being seen. This was why she danced, and why she danced so well. She didn’t twirl and fall for herself, but for everything. There was simply nothing else to do.

Autumn was hot that year, her house surrounded by matchstick grass. The valley hissed when the wind blew through the dead trees, a desperate, lonely sound.

Suzie spun and curtsied, laughing. I could do this all day. And I just might, too.Go on, try to stop me.

Dirty shit. Dirty shit!

She loved watching her shadow on the lawn, the way it was a part of her, except for those times when she leapt into the air and they separated. These moments, which seemed so much longer than they were, left her floating and sad. The kind of sad not even MisterBoombastic ("say me fan-tas-tic!") could mend.

I wish I could fly forever, only I’d miss my shadow. I really would.

That would be a little like losing a friend.

***

Four hours after falling asleep, panic reached into the dark and ripped Donna from her bed. Her stomach knotted, brow flecked with sweat. It hadn’t been the screeching tires or muted gunshot that woke her—fatigue muted both. It was that her mind fled her body and the flesh had no choice but to follow.

She threw the door open and ran from room to room. Nothing.

Suzie! Voice feral and unrecognizable. Something burned within her chest, fueling dread. The house was empty.

Donna stumbled outside, squinting against sunlight. Pain thudded in her head and shot down her spine. Suzie wasn’t in the backyard. As she rounded the house and neared the front gate, heat waves coming off the brick wall to her right. She fumbled with the latch. Next to her were the trashcans, their stench reaching out to make her feel ill. The latch opened and the gate swung wide—a sharp cry of metal grinding metal.

Donna ran onto the front lawn and stopped.

Her daughter’s shattered Walkman near the gutter, ribbons of gray tape fluttering in the wind. Suzie Marten was strewn in pieces across the road.

Crows fluttered over intestines, disturbing the stillness. One hopped onto the little girl’s head, spread its bloodied wings and squawked. It lowered its beak and ate the tongue cooking against the tar.

A pink ballet shoe. The foot still inside.

Donna screamed. Breath ran short as her nostrils filled with the stink; a putrid mix of chemicals and sugarcane, shit and salt. She would never forget it.

Darkness flittered over Donna’s vision as she ran to her child, lashing at the birds. They twirled and cawed, sprinkling blood drops over her face. Get away from my baby! she screamed, arms thrashing. But the beaks returned to meat, to gorge.

Delicate, soft stabbing sounds.

Another crow settled on Donna’s shoulder and its feathers brushed her cheek. Her world emptied. She clambered over gravel. This isn’t happening. It can’t be. I’m dreaming—that’s it! I’m still sleeping, my baby isn’t torn to pieces. Donna giggled. Parents weren’t equipped to see these sights; to smell such insane, bitter scents.

She fought the birds again, kicked, punched. Donna didn’t comprehend what she was doing until she held one of the animals in her hand. Its scream mingled with her own, formed a single high-pitched mewl that echoed across the fields. She let it drop, wings broken.

Donna fell to her knees and attempted to scoop up as much of her daughter as she could. Arms swept wide in manic, possessive hugs, pulling the larger chunks closer. Tears slipped down her face. She gave in and settled on the largest intact fragment: Suzie’s head, neck, collarbone, and left arm, which held on by a thinly stretched tendon and little more. Only the birds were hungry and selfish and wouldn’t let their bounty escape without a fight. They swooped, black-on-black eyes both empty and cold.

The chunk of Suzie was only a quarter of her corpse, but it felt heavier than her daughter had ever been intact. She turned her back to the crows, deflecting swoops and scratches. The weight in her arms lessened and something slapped against her shins, something warm and wet.

Donna was a nurse and assisted doctors in surgery. What she saw now was unlike anything she had ever seen at work. It was small and childlike.

A child’s healthy heart with many years of beating left to do.

Donna collapsed amid a flurry of dark wings, dark shadows.

PART ONE:

Boarding

"Men’s courses will foreshadow certain ends, to which,

if persevered in, they must lead . . . "

—Charles Dickens

ONE HUNDRED AND THREE:

James Bridge

We have two cemeteries and no hospitals—so drive carefully, read the sign coming into James Bridge. The population at the time was marked at a firm 2022.

Outsiders built homes in its vacant lots, leaving neighbors scratching their heads, wondering what spell The Bridge cast over those not born there. Surrounded by vineyards and two hours northwest of Sydney, it was a highway town passed through on the way to somewhere better.

Bobby Deakins, the local mail carrier, laughed when he read books about people in small communities knowing everyone and their business. Not true of The Bridge, he often said to his son, a boy defined by naivety. Their town was its own schoolyard—with cliques and bullies, princesses and nerds. People didn’t mingle much. It seemed it was only he who knew what postcards were sent where, whose magazine subscriptions were to be slipped under the Welcome mat and not left face-up on the veranda.

On Sunday, the twelfth of November, he attended a morning service at St. Joseph’s with his wife. Watched the Australian Grand Prix on his old Panasonic television, despite reception so shitty it looked like the cars were racing their eighty-one laps in snow. He listened to a football game on a transistor radio forever tuned to 2HD—noneof that young’un shit, thank you! After all this, an afternoon nap with a damp cloth over his eyes. By Monday the town changed, word having spread.

The editor of the Bridge Bugle failed to get his cover story completed in time for the early printing, so it came out in Tuesday’s paper instead. When Bobby saddled his motorcycle that morning, he did so with a heavy heart. The Bugle’s front page listed the names of the dead, and he delivered those names door to door. The editor stood at the threshold to his office, cigarette in hand, face as white as the pages his namesake was printed upon.

Bobby Deakins looked at the sign on the way into town and hated it for its cheeriness.

Drive carefully!

Fuck me, he said.

That Tuesday morning, he also wanted to add, We have an unmanned police station and nobody really knows anyone and we’re grieving and why don’t you take your cameras and fuck off.

Bobby always assumed the worst killer on those streets were the streets themselves. In Memoriam wreaths were pinned to telephone poles all over town. When the roads were wet, they could be murder. He believed this before what happened, before Liz Frost.

Over the next three weeks, Bobby Deakins attended more funerals than he had ever been to in his life.

ONE HUNDRED AND TWO:

Liz

The girl’s nothing but skin and bone. Laughter, the electric crackle of the wicker chair under his weight. I’ve seen scarecrows with more stuffing. Liz shied away, dug her toes into the lawn and closed her eyes. In the dark—the smell of grass and cooked onions, the wind growling until her father’s voice faded away.

Safe.

At fourteen, her mother measured Liz at five feet against the kitchen doorframe. God’s stretching you like taffy, Reggie said, tucking the permanent marker into her blouse pocket. I’m going to have to put a brick on your head to slow you down. A shy smile on Liz’s face as her mother ruffled her bangs. Out you go. She gestured towards the back door, a hand on the seat of her daughter’s overalls to get her moving, and within seconds Liz was outside with two tennis rackets in hand. She gave one to her younger brother.

Here you go, weed.

That ain’t my name, he spat back. It’s Jed and you know it.

Yeah well, ‘ain’t’ isn’t a real word, so why should I call you anything when you can’t speak any proper English? Don’t they teach you anything at school? The two siblings glared at each other, their slight shadows long across the ground.

Yeah well, you’re skinny. So how’s about we just do this, okay?

They spent the afternoon playing tennis with mandarins plucked straight from the tree. Exhausted, they lay surrounded by a litter of exploded orange grenades, each wearing beards of citrus and dirt. Liz was happy.

Her father threw the back door open, picked a dripping racket up off the grass, and smashed it across her face. It made a hollow boing-ing sound, like something from a cartoon. God damn it, Liz, he said. Look what you did to that bloody tree!

Jed leapt to his feet and stumbled across the yard on shaking legs, unaware of his screams. He disappeared among the trees and continued to run, hating himself for not staying to defend his sister. Hidden in twilight and the branches of a dying eucalyptus, Jed collapsed, crying, and wondered why Liz had been punished and he had not.

***

Summer, 1979. Liz fumbled with the fly of her boyfriend’s denims in the front seat of his Mercury Cougar. The Knack’s My Sharona whispered through veils of static on the radio. She noticed his faint smile, green in the glow from the dash. Her body tingled, the hair on her arms dancing. In his smile, she saw a chance for happiness with someone who maybe loved her. Maybe was enough.

He leaned forward, imitation leather seats whining as he kissed her. When their lips drew apart, Liz could still taste his tongue. Juicy Fruit and sour lemonade.

The following day she found her father weeping into his hands, bent double in his favorite chair. Daddy?

Wes turned to study his daughter. You break me, Liz. The bones in his neck cracked. He sat upright, not looking at her, and said she would never see that boy again. She didn’t.

***

The notches on the kitchen doorframe scaled higher and higher.

Friends came and went. Liz was a good student, nothing extraordinary. She got top marks when it came to hiding bruises from teachers’ prying eyes.

***

The Frost residence was a two-storied house on an open property in the Hunter Valley. The nearest neighbors were a mile and a half away. Oven-hot in summer, freezing come the colder months, Liz knew every creak of the staircase, each loose floorboard its own alarm bell. She couldn’t step onto the veranda without her father, Wes, grabbing her by the wrist and yanking her back inside.

Why won’t you let me go, Dad? I’m nineteen. I’m not an idiot.

He stood over her, pushed in close. His breath smelled of dead mice. Somewhere in him she knew there was sadness, could hear it in his warnings. I want you to go, but you know you can’t. It’s not you I don’t trust.

She bought her first car at twenty-two and that grip on her wrist loosened. Wes aged overnight. Liz drove for the sake of driving. She had nowhere to go.

All roads led home.

Liz eyed the mirror on the rear of her bedroom door.

Yeah, I’m skinny. Too tall? Hell, maybe.

Then again, she could be all the things people said she was. If she gave in to it.

Sparse clearings behind the thicket of trees at the end of their yard. She walked through them some early mornings, watched frost melt from the branches and dropping onto her nose. Into her mouth. Cool on her tongue.

Here she lay with ghosts.

The ghost of a girl who refused to let herself grow into something she didn’t want to be; the ghost of the teenager who hoped for happiness holding hands with a woman who also never existed and was only aspired to. Liz was happy in the clearing. But each morning brought with it spiders waiting to spin fresh webs, ushered snakes out of hibernation. The scrub came with risks, and not even her ghosts could keep Liz safe. Here, among trees that resembled piled skeletons, watched by kangaroos foraging for berries, next to the remains of a dead fox with a tawny pelt writhing with maggots, Liz’s ghosts took her by the hand. Time to leave this place. She walked to the house with pangs of dread in her gut and twigs in her hair. Nothing lasted.

***

Liz Frost was born on the sixteenth of August, 1963, with her umbilical cord tight around her neck. She fought from the start. On November 12th, 1995, at seven forty in the morning, she sat on her bed, put a gun in her mouth and closed her eyes.

The day began.

ONE HUNDRED AND ONE:

Sarah

Sarah Carr ran down her hallway and stopped before a mirror to check her cropped, spiked hair. Pushing sixty-three but I don’t look a day over forty-five. Her laughter was a sad, husky sound in this house. Self-affirmations like these got her through the day.

Flat shoes thumped the floorboards as she searched for the keys. Sarah considered herself, and with a certain amount of pride, as a hip nanna in high-waisted jeans. The kind of nanna her grandchildren could approach with anything. Nobody would deny her open-mindedness, maybe even calling her a little different by Bridge standards—yet still she wore those shoes. Always. Those sensible flats, as reliable and well-worn as her wisdom.

Do unto others as you would have them do unto yourself, she told her grandkids, their round, innocent faces staring up at her. And those aren’t my words. It was one of her recycled lines, one that left her feeling a little flat, a little well-worn herself. Though she sometimes spoke His words, she didn’t give a flying fuck about God anymore.

Still, a large, garish crucifix hung around her neck.

Every nanna needs her bling, she once said to fellow parishioners after a Palm Sunday luncheon, face still streaked with ash. They glared at her, shocked. Oh, come now, Madame here isn’t fading into the background. How else are the young going to know who to turn to if us old biddies are invisible?

Hot air blew through the house. Unusual for autumn.

She doubled back to the mirror and snarled, checking for lipstick smears; were she to see them on someone else, all conversation must cease until the affected person rectified the matter. Don’t be bashful, Joan. If a bird shat on my shoulder and I hadn’t noticed, wouldn’t you hand me a Kleenex? Mitigate your humiliation, that was her policy. Relieved, lips drew shut, shielding smear-free teeth.

A heavy voice floated up the hall. Sarah!

What do you want?

"I’m dy-iiinnnggg."

Oh, jump in the lake. She picked up her over-the-shoulder purse and went to her husband. She found Bill Carr upright in bed with tissues stuffed in his nose.

I thought you’d left and left me for the crows.

No, sorry, sweetie. I’m not having any dirty birds flying around inside, thank you very much. When you’re a hairsbreadth away from meeting our maker, I’ll ever so gently throw you on the lawn. Got to keep clean house.

Your kindness knows no bounds. He chuckled, coughed, a wet rattle in his throat.

Love, I’d fix you another batch of warm lemon tea if I had the time.

No, it’s okay. I like sounding this way. I sound all gangster.

"Ah, posh Gangstah! She waved him off and returned to the hall. Have you seen the thingies?"

The what?

You know, the thingies?

What thingies, you silly old bat?

The doo-en-acky. Oh, shit.

English, woman, for Heaven’s sakes. And swear jar, please. I may be bedridden and dying but I’m not deaf. Dollar to the fat lady, thank you muchly.

Sarah went to the mantelpiece and found her husband’s wallet. She took a dollar coin and ran to the hallway table. Upon it was a wooden moneybox in the shape of a female Islander. The coin slipped through her breasts and disappeared with a clink.

Done. Then resumed her search. Now where is it? If I keep this up, I’ll miss the bus to town.

I’m a sick man. Enough with the badgering, you coot.

In the living room, she lifted a lounge cushion, revealing keys bound to a ring with a thumb-sized photograph of her grandkids in a silver frame dangling from it. Found them, Bill, you can stop searching.

Sarah glanced around the room. Small. Neat. Theirs. She opened both the front and back doors each Saturday to let the breeze flow through, sitting in the airflow with her eyes closed. Bill often found her there, silhouetted against the sun, cursing. The crucifix about her neck reminded them of who betrayed whom. Sarah never forgot those who had crossed her.

Congratulations, ma’am. You’ve won our annual sweepstakes. And your prize—yep, that’s right, your husband has cancer!

Sarah thought it a terrible injustice to witness her husband’s slow death, day after day, and feared living on once he was gone.

Did you find what you were looking for? Bill asked, the last word dropping as Sarah emerged in the doorway, straightening her collar. She showed him the keys.

"Ah, keys! Keys they are called. You’re losing it, old woman."

She buckled her cowboy belt. For years, she’d been trying to lose weight. Now she couldn’t keep it on. Stress took its toll. This old gray Dane, she ain’t what she used to be.

What do you need them for anyway? Bill coughed again. I’m not going anywhere so you don’t need to lock up.

Bill, you never know these days. Anyone could just waltz on in and rob us blind. God only knows you’re not going to get up off your throne and defend our telly, right? She ran to the foot of the bed. And don’t forget, our darling daughter is coming by with Madame Five to see her pa-pa after lunch, so don’t go and, like, die or anything before they get here, ’kay?

Begone, foul hob! He threw his arms at her. The power of Christ compels you!

Jump in the lake. Bye-bye, baby-luv.

See you later, Peggy-Sue, he said.

Sarah ran out the door and slammed it shut. Silence descended over the house, disturbed only by the occasional shuffle as the near-dead man wrangled with his bed sheets.

ONE HUNDRED:

Peter

As far as Peter Ditton was concerned, a little sun was always a little sun too much, so he settled for whatever shade the STOP HERE sign granted. His fair features were burning already. Australian sunshine knew no mercy, and although clouds would come, the sky above remained a clear bowl of hot blue for now.

Peter shielded his eyes from the red cloud of dust stirred by a passing truck, the first vehicle to swish past in over an hour. He’d mistaken the weekly route for the weekend’s and had expected the 243 bus to Maitland earlier than this. Oh, well.

A notebook in hand. The spine cracked and a sliver of twine marking his page.

The plan: skip church, visit a friend, together go to a creative writing and poetry class at the Rotary club in town, and pour out their souls to the laughter of slot machines chewing pensions in the adjoining room. The room stank of beer and old paper. Sometimes the organizers provided tea. Nice in a way.

Embarrassment almost always overcame Peter as he stood before the group. I’m a joke to them because I’m only eighteen. On his last visit, the head mentor urged him to write something real. This time, Peter felt he’d done just that. Up to now, his poems concerned girls, echoing the rhythmic timing of pop ballads. Peter wrote to calm himself, and he found he needed calming after his mother finished with him. She was furious that he was missing another Sunday sermon, and as such, refused to drive him. And so, the pen scratched hard and fast that morning, words spilling onto the page.

He felt better afterwards, a little less like punching someone.

On the bus stop sign, someone had written the words die aids breedin faggets. He turned away, bothered, and fiddled with his notebook, the end of the scarlet twine like a cut in his palm. He couldn’t imagine why someone would choose to be homosexual—didn’t they know what they were condemning themselves to? He’d read that one out of every ten men was or had the possibility of being gay. If that were true, then the graffiti might be directed at someone he went to school with.

He experienced nightmares about AIDS. In one, a man whose flesh had been eaten away came for him. When he spoke, corn-kernel teeth fell from his mouth, clattering on the floor. The man put his palsied hand on Peter’s shoulder, and then he understood—He’s got the disease!

Awaking, he still felt that clammy touch.

Peter held the notebook so hard his fingertips turned milky. He cocked his head at the sound of crunching gravel, the shadow of a man mingling with his own.

NINETY-NINE:

Steve

Steve Brown wanted to scream.

Instead, he focused on catching his breath. The skinny kid next to him at the bus stop—who looked like he’d been too busy doodling his notebook instead of some schoolgirl like other normal kids his age—hadn’t reacted. Good. His cool was in check.

Poor shit, Steve thought. He’s better off.

Or maybe he knows something about women that I don’t.

Although he doubted that.

Steve’s thoughts turned back to his wife. She had the wonderful ability of confusing him into anger, which hurt because he loved her like the world was ending. No wonder he wanted to bellow frustrations into the new day.

Bev appeared okay with him quitting his job as janitor at the James Bridge Public School. He gave his reasons, citing differences with the principal and harassment in the workplace. Bev nodded along, understanding.

Or so he thought.

In reality, he’d been fired—caught smoking pot under the year-six dormitory where the kids stored their bicycles. You can do whatever you damn well want in your own time, yelled the principal, "which, Charlie Brown, there is going to be plenty more of. I’ll be damned if I’m going to sit here and let you burn the place down. Jesus, there’s a fire ban at the moment."

Man, he hated people calling him Charlie.

Fuckers.

Bev stared at him, her look almost feline, and right then he understood why Babylonians sealed cats up in bricks. Okay, she said. Ice cold. I guess I’ll pick up a couple of extra shifts at the mill. Until things pan out. You’d do the same for me, right?

A test. You got it, babe.

Two days passed and over a dinner of mashed potatoes and homemade rissoles, Bev snapped. "Would you eat with your trap shut! Watchin’ all that meat there going in and out of you is making me wanna