Steeplechase (23 page)

‘I know you didn't. Mother did it, I saw her.'

She is confused. She narrows her eyes. ‘But you never came to see me.'

‘They kept me away.' It is true, but it is not an excuse. I could have tracked her down. I could have found her.

‘Well.' She shrugs then, a little gesture of resignation. ‘I started this one.'

She splashes water on her face and grins. ‘It was good though, wasn't it? The paintings? The fire? The rain? And no one died this time. Did you notice that? I did it so no one died.'

‘Yeah,' I tell her, ‘it was good. It was great, actually. I've never seen anything like it.'

‘Raphael wanted to do it for your birthday.'

I feel my chest sink like a balloon deflating.

‘They'll put you back in hospital.'

‘Yeah,' she says. ‘But don't you think it's time I went back now anyway?'

Kite

The plan is to get the thing in the air before he notices. The winds are erratic. I have never been to his apartment and now I know why he always preferred to come to mine. The place is an ugly brick monolith. Washing hangs from some of the balconies, a boogie board leans up against a wall. The outdoor furniture on each level is cheap plastic. Someone has thrown an egg from somewhere and the shattered fragments of shell sit, a crusted yellow stucco at my feet. There is a ragged Australian flag hung in a doorway. Someone else has blocked the light with a curtain branded with Bob Marley's face. There is the scent of tobacco and just a hint of pot wafting from the open windows.

An erratic breeze tugs at the kite and sends it diving into the ground where its nose cracks on the hot bitumen. I aim the crossbar into another gust, pull at the string. The kite almost finds the current, teeters, loops. A change in wind direction sends it clattering into someone's standing candelabra and I grab the string in my fist and haul but it is too late.

‘Hey.'

I am often surprised by him. He is always more attractive in the flesh than in memory. I think it must be something in his face, the gentle eyes, the softness around the mouth; anyway, I am startled by the power of my attraction to him.

‘That's blown it,' I tell him and his brow furrows, questioning. ‘The plan was to get that thing in the air then call you.' I hold out my mobile phone. His name hovers on the screen with a photograph of him beneath it.

‘Oh. That was a good idea. Would you like me to go back inside?'

‘Don't bother. It's too late now. It wouldn't be a surprise anymore.'

‘No. And also I don't think we have the appropriate weather conditions for the plan to succeed completely.'

‘Yeah.'

‘But I suppose that's my present from China?'

I hold out my hand. He takes the string and tries to reel it in. The kite stops flat against the railing and will not budge. He jumps, twitching the line upward, but it refuses to move.

‘It looks like a nice kite anyway.'

He jumps again and plays the line left and then right but it is stuck fast.

‘Damn,' he says. ‘That guy who lives there is pretty scary. He plays in a death metal band called Backslasher. Sometimes the rest of the band come round and turn their guitars up really loud and throw their empties at the cars on the street.'

‘Awesome.'

‘Totally.' He puts his hand out as if to touch my shoulder and thinks better of it, crossing his hands awkwardly over his chest instead.

‘How are you?'

‘Not as bad as you'd think. Which is odd actually.'

‘Yeah, sorry to hear about your sister.'

‘She'll be okay.'

‘But the way the news reported it made it sound like a fantastic exhibition. Everyone is jealous of you for being there to see it.'

His hand moves forward again just a little and I step into the familiar embrace. The smell of him, the sheer physicality. ‘It was. It was fantastic.' I close my eyes and pause there for a moment before stepping away. ‘Anyway we probably have to get the kite back from the drummer.'

‘Bass player. Yeah. I'll go up and ask him in a bit.'

‘Cause there's an envelope stuck onto it.'

‘Oh yeah? What's in it? A lottery ticket?'

I laugh.

‘Some Chinese money? That was great that Chinese money you sent me with Mao's face on it and everything.'

‘It's a ticket. To a thing at the Gallery of Modern Art.'

‘Oh cool. Everyone is all over your sister again now. I knew they would want to do something.'

‘Not exactly. It's my thing. They want to do something on me. A solo exhibition.'

He lunges at me and hugs me and lifts me up so that my feet are dangling above the ground. He jigs me like a doll, up and down in his arms and I am laughing with him. When he puts me back on the ground his cheeks are flushed with his excitement and something else.

Pride. John is proud, I realise suddenly, surprisingly. John is proud of me.

‘You better get painting then.'

‘Oh god no. I have plenty of paintings. I just had to get them out of storage.'

He grins at me and I like him, a lot. I like him an awful lot.

‘Oi!' he yells up towards the balcony, a deep rich sound echoing off the flat brick of the apartment block. ‘Backslasher dude. Come the fuck outside, I need to get my fucking kite!'

Signature Works

Lined up like this they take up the wall space along the entire room. The studio is the length and breadth of the house and even with the edges of the canvases pressed close against each other there are still seven paintings resting face up on the centre of the floor. They are somehow naked without a signature. I have managed to match the paint almost perfectly. You can barely see where my sister's name has been removed. Each painting has a person staring directly at me, their eyes a challenge. They watch me as I pace around the makeshift gallery.

Original Emily Reichs, and yet when I see them like this, without her faked signature, I know that they are not like Emily's paintings at all. They are similar in subject, people become animals, animals begin to burn. But they have my own touch on them, ambiguous smiles, an enigmatic emotional shift that you can't quite pin down.

John smiles up out of one of the canvases, his lips slightly parted as if he is just about to speak. It is impossible to know if what he is about to say is funny, sad or poignant, all I have captured on this canvas is the sweet, kind face of a man about to speak.

I choose a thin brush, but not the slimmest of them, full enough to give substance to the line I am about to make. It is odd to sign the image with my own name, but when it is done it feels like it was the right thing to do.

Bec Reich. This is a painting by me now. All of these, more than enough to fill a gallery space twice over. I move on from the painting of John to the next painting and the next, putting my name to images of my students, the staff at work, my psychiatrist, the nurses at Oma's hospital, the lady at the shop where I buy bread. These faces captured between thoughts, between moods, in a state of transition, all of them shifted now from paintings by my sister to images that I have claimed.

My wrist aches. There are so many repetitions of my signature to perform. My back hurts from bending and I stretch out and up, twist my wrist till it clicks. My name repeated back to me a hundred times. Bec Reich. I am Bec Reich and these paintings are made by me.

Thank-yous

I gratefully acknowledge the support of Varuna Writers' House for the completion of this book.

Thanks to my editor Mandy Brett and to all at Text. You are the best publishing house bar none.

To my first readers, Katherine Lyall-Watson, Chris Somerville, Trent Jamieson, Favel Parrett, Martin Cosier, Kristina Olsson, Anna Goldsworthy and my reader and love Anthony Mullins. Thank you to Fiona Stager for the constant emotional and career support. To Chris Currie for company during the writing of the first draft of this and for minding my computer when nature called. To Jen Clark, Martin Cosier, Sally Brand and Carl Flanagan for China. To Bouquinest Café for letting me use your table as an office.

Thanks to my family, Barry and Denise, Wendy, Lotty and Sheila and of course my sister, Karen. This book is not about you but I love you.

To my writing and reading family, Benjamin Law, Scott Spark, Belinda Jeffrey, Kari Gislason, Kristina Schulz, Ronnie Scott, James Butler, Kasia Janczewski, Jason Reed, Helen Bernhagen, Michaela Maguire, Anna Krien, Angela Meyer, Anita Heiss, Steven Amsterdam, Michelle Law, Simon Cleary, Stuart Glover, Susan Hornbeck, Jack Vening, Ashley Hay, John Hunter, Marieke Hardy, Matt Condon, Steve Watson, Nicholas Ib, the Cosier family and Jay Court—thanks for the comforting texts, coffees, alcohol, jokes and messages of support during the good and awful bits.

Lastly thanks to all those involved in the 2012 Queensland Literary Awards. I am so proud of what we did and I am sorry that this book distracted me from the last few weeks of our mammoth effort. Hope you think it was worth it.