Empty Read online

  Empty

  Jenny Schwartz

  The funeral is over. The heartache is still to come.

  Alice has to empty Roxie’s house of its clutter, and her own life of its complicated frustrations. But where junk can be thrown away, pulling out unhealthy emotions leads to a tangle of festering resentment and old fears.

  The old fibro house on the edge of the sea has withstood many storms, but for Alice, it was never a refuge. Her grandmother, Roxie, took in Alice and Malcolm when their mum died of an overdose. Alice has paid for that decision in so many ways and now, armed with bug spray, she’s going to break those spider web ties of need and deceit. Maybe.

  Because old houses hold surprises.

  Table of Contents

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Note From The Author

  Chapter One

  Malcolm liked mirrors. He’d scattered them around his small flat, building a lie that the walls weren’t closing in.

  With every movement a new angle of reflection caught Alice’s eye, so that she saw herself in old jeans and a t shirt. Only her hair looked like her everyday self. The expensive cut contoured to the curve of her skull.

  Every reflection showed her and Malcolm.

  He was just in from cycling, sweaty and agitated. His hair, the same nondescript brown as hers, stuck out oddly, fighting back after being flattened by his helmet. His ears were red, so was his nose. He looked as if he’d been crying.

  She should never have come here. Not this morning. Not knowing how he felt.

  “We have to clear the house.” She withdrew her attention from Malcolm and watched her lips in the mirror opposite. Even bare of lipstick, they moved precisely, saying so much and no more. Words were her trade, both weapon and defence. She bit out the words, comforted that her reflection had its customary coolness. Her body was the traitor, her blood pumping with emotions she’d rejected years ago. She needed to clear the house, to put all that adrenaline to some sort of use and reclaim her life. “I’ve taken a week’s leave.”

  His fist struck the wall beside a mirror.

  Their reflections jumped.

  “Malcolm, she’s dead. The house just invites trouble. Thieves, squatters, vandals.”

  “Three days in the grave.” The muscle by the left corner of his mouth pulsed and twisted. “You couldn’t wait.”

  “I’ve waited five months.” Interminable months. Hospice visits. Living two people’s lives.

  “That’s a horrible thing to say. You’re a bitch, Alice. A cold-hearted bitch.”

  “You weren’t there.” Her voice slashed along the cool glass of the mirrors, as sharply passionless.

  He slumped, spine curling in vulnerability, the lycra unkind to the middle-age he fought.

  Men aren’t like us, honey. They have other strengths. Roxie’s voice, excusing, accepting Malcolm’s absence, while male nurses dealt with her care, male doctors stopped in, advised, consoled, and handed her over to the male priest, Father Joe, for the last rites.

  No, Roxie had always expected Alice to be the strong one.

  “I’m driving up to the house this afternoon.” Roxie’s home, where they had both lived, grown up, and from which they’d moved on.

  Malcolm turned away—unable to stop her and unwilling to help. Situation normal.

  Her reflection nodded in the mirrors. Time to leave.

  The old fibro cottage had been impeccably maintained. Alice had paid for it, glad beyond belief when she’d started earning enough that someone else got to crawl through its roof space and under the floors, patching, replacing, eking out its life. The garden was tidy, filled with lavender and geraniums, a neatly clipped lawn and a white concrete birdbath. The gardener earned her money.

  Inside, the house smelled musty. Alice had expected it. Five months unoccupied, even with her duty visits, meant you smelled the slow decay of age. She walked through, opening windows and closing her mind to the memories. Through the lounge room, tiny kitchen, tinier bathroom, bedrooms and out the back door, down the two wooden steps to the naked washing line. Here, lemon blossom scented the air, mingling with the salt tang of the sea.

  Here, she could breathe.

  She gripped the washing line, swaying forward as she’d done a thousand times, and listening to it groan and creak but never fail. She rocked back on her heels and released the line. The imprint of the rope was red on her palms. Near her ankle, a bee buzzed out backward from a hardy gazania. She stooped without thinking to pick a bronze petal. This, too, had been one of her rituals. The satiny petal created a shrill whistle when she blew against it.

  In the distance, a dog barked.

  She dropped the petal and wiped her hands on her jeans.

  A developer would knock it all down. The house and garden were worthless: the land valuable. If she returned in two years’ time there’d be units here and new people, glossy people. There were units either side of Roxie’s yard with expensive cars parked awkwardly in narrow carports.

  Her own expensive car sat in the driveway. She could just see its nose with the fancy grille.

  Roxie’s old hatchback occupied the garage. It, too, would have to be disposed of. It hadn’t been driven in two years, but as with the house, Roxie had refused to part with it, refused to believe she wouldn’t one day be able to drive it, again.

  Alice spun on her heel. She would not think of the old vehicle and her grandmother’s stubbornness.

  She carried her bag in from the car, went back and fetched a box of cleaning supplies. Not that she had any intention of cleaning the house, but sorting out Roxie’s belongings would require bags, gloves and bug spray for the spiders that had always been part of living here. A final box held food, enough to get along with until she went to the shops, tomorrow.

  God, the house felt dead.

  Memories were plastered to the walls, waiting for darkness and loneliness, to swarm to life and nip at her like hungry mosquitoes. She brushed at her arms, throwing off the thought, and sought a distraction.

  The kitchen radio was cheap, the sound tinny. Roxie had used it to listen to the talkback shows. She’d spoken about the regular callers as if they were family. Alice had gotten her a new radio, one with headphones, to listen to in the hospice. Now, Alice fiddled with the old dial, shutting off a shock jock’s rant and finding an easy-listening station where the announcer’s voice was at least perkily alive.

  Manufactured enthusiasm was better than silence.

  She picked up her bag and carried it through to her bedroom. Since she’d left for university twenty years ago, Roxie had gradually turned Alice’s room into a store room. There was just space for a single bed and a wardrobe crammed with junk. On the other side of the wall, Malcolm’s room was empty, ready for its occupant, but Alice couldn’t imagine sleeping there.

  The threat of his room had her moving briskly. She took the cover off the bed and put it in the washing machine to freshen. The bare mattress looked back at her. She vacuumed it and the floor and ceiling around it then shot a spurt of bug spray down the vacuum cleaner hose.

  Damn spiders.

  She remade the bed with sheets and her pillows from home, went out and hung the wet bed cover over the washing line. It spun lazily as the wind caught the cover. The flapping sound was familiar from a thousand Wash Mondays.

  At home, she used a tumble dryer and accepted the loss of the sun-bleached freshness of line drying. Efficiency and independence trumped sensual pleasures. Nonetheless, she closed her eyes a moment, remembering the heaven this line ha
d once represented—cleanliness without threat of theft.

  For lunch, Alice ate the salad she’d brought with her, but the fresh Mexican flavours of lime and chili seemed intruders in a kitchen forty years out of date. The orange walls and brown cupboards with their matching linoleum demanded peanut butter sandwiches, a banana and milk.

  She took her mug of tea outside and sat on the back step. From there you could see the ocean, if you cared to. She took more comfort from the notebook beside her and the pen she’d use to scrawl her To Do list. Lists kept things organised.

  Skip bin—ordered, waiting delivery

  Gardener—cancel contract.

  The house would be going up for sale and whoever bought it wouldn’t care about the state of the garden.

  She sipped her tea and wondered if cancelling the gardener was a subtle revenge against the house and all it represented. She wanted it to know regret—to learn what life was like when she didn’t lavish care on it—before the bulldozers erased it forever. Something in her craved the satisfaction of seeing just how bad things would be without her intervention.

  All her life she’d tried to save people.

  She was the sort of lawyer you went to when you didn’t know what help you needed, just that you needed it. A natural-born problem solver, if you asked her partners.

  No. She smiled bitterly. She hadn’t been born a problem solver. She’d made herself one to survive. No one had warned her that survivors ran other risks…that they became rescuers, never free because of their own insecurity. She needed to be needed.

  I will be free. That’s what this week was for. She would shed the pathetic ugliness of Roxie’s life.

  “I thought I saw your car.”

  Alice closed her eyes in devout regret. If she’d been concentrating she’d have heard the shuffle-shuffle of slippered feet. Not that it would have saved her. Mrs Trelawney from two doors down across the road was one of the old neighbours, a hold-out like Roxie. If Alice had slipped inside, Mrs Trelawney would simply have stood on the front step, knocking and coo-ee’ing till Alice surrendered and opened the door.

  “I’m sorry to hear Roxie passed away. Poor dear, although with her cancer, it was probably a merciful release?” Just a hint of a question, her head tilting to one side as her hands gripped the frame of her walker. Blue veins and knuckles stood out like an artwork on age. The old voice had a querulous whine, an inbuilt note of accusation. “I would have come to the funeral, but you held it in the city.”

  The city. Like Roxie had, Mrs Trelawney lived in a time when this was a holiday suburb. She dismissed the new rail line and the influx of city workers, although Alice suspected she was fast enough to use the benefits that came with them: local health centres, community support, a range of shops.

  “Roxie was buried beside my grandfather.” Alice stood, picking up her empty mug. “Thank you for your sympathy card.”

  “Any number of us old neighbours would have gone to Roxie’s funeral if you’d held it here. You could have had us back to the house.”

  Only if I were insane. Alice remembered the wake for her mother. It had been held in this house. A terrible affair of neighbours sliding in with cake and sympathy, eyes slyly avid. Roxie had paraded her grandchildren, Alice and Malcolm. “They’ll comfort me.” She’d smelled of sherry and lavender water.

  “Will you be keeping the house? Did Roxie make a will? I expect she did, with you being a fancy lawyer and all.”

  “Roxie had a will. I’m the executor.”

  “And Malcolm?”

  Trust neighbours to know where the skeletons were buried.

  “Malcolm is busy in the city.” Her hand tightened on the mug. Busy sulking, busy plotting, perhaps busy being afraid.

  Roxie had been Alice’s parasite, but Malcolm had been Roxie’s. Who would he feed off now?

  “I expect you’ll sell the house and split the money between you?”

  “The house will certainly be sold.” And no waiting for probate. Alice had bought the house four years ago when Malcolm needed money and Roxie wanted to give it to him. Roxie had then stayed on, living rent free, sending the bills for maintenance and cable television to Alice.

  “More units,” Mrs Trelawney said, disgusted.

  “Probably.” Alice smiled wryly, looking to either side of the yard. The sharp new units with their glossy roofs and shining windows stared back. “Times change.” People change.

  “And not for the better.”

  “I don’t know.” Alice looked away from the units, out across the ocean. “Sometimes we all have to make a new beginning.” Or at least, close a few doors.

  Chapter Two

  The mirror hung above the electric heater in the lounge room. Age had pitted the bottom left hand corner of it. Dust lay on the surface, dulling it further.

  Mrs Trelawney hadn’t wanted to leave. She’d shuffled over for a cup of tea, a chocolate biscuit and a gossip.

  Roxie would have given her all three.

  Alice had stood on the back step, arms folded, empty mug dangling from one finger, making it clear that she’d be polite, but there would be no invitation.

  She glanced away from her face in the mirror, the downward turn of her mouth, the tug of guilt. Mrs Trelawney was lonely. Would it have hurt Alice to spend an hour of her time listening to gossip from years back?

  “Claire was always a wild one. Left two children. Different fathers, of course. Neither married her.” The whispers about her mother had been part of the neighbourhood story.

  The new neighbours wouldn’t know, wouldn’t care about her mother, not even about her death.

  Alice didn’t like the unsteadiness of the breath she exhaled. It hadn’t been impatience she’d felt with Mrs Trelawney. It had been fear. Too many memories were too close to the surface.

  Time to exorcise them. She marched herself into her bedroom, collecting gloves, bug spray and bags on the way.

  She started with the top shelf of the wardrobe and worked her way down. Roxie’s treasures would be in her own room. This cupboard held the overflow of things she hadn’t brought herself to throw away: clothes she’d shrunk too much to wear; old shoes; empty biscuit tins; full biscuit tins, the contents long out of date; cheap china ornaments; a radio; a water pistol.

  Alice paused. She remembered the water pistol. Roxie had carried it home in triumph from the supermarket. “I’ll teach George’s cat not to wee in my garden.” The cat had never learned, but Roxie had twisted her ankle racing outside with the water pistol in hand. George had moved to a nursing home ten years ago. Perhaps he’d died. The water pistol had a crack along one side and Alice chucked it into the rubbish bag.

  Most of the items could go to a charity shop. Those that couldn’t, Alice bagged up for the skip bin. It ought to arrive later today. She had no intention of carting around the rubbish that wouldn’t fit in Roxie’s household bin.

  Her hand knocked against a bottle of lavender perfume lurking at the back of the shelf, its cap rusted shut. Lavender air spray sat beside it. Both went into a plastic bag and she tied it tightly before setting it by the door.

  Binoculars, camera, a chessboard and pieces. The latter, according to family legend, had been Grandfather’s. He’d died before Alice was born. But she set the items aside. Malcolm would want some mementoes—and things to sell.

  When she straightened, her knees popped; ligaments announcing her tension. She walked some circulation back into her feet by fetching a damp cloth and a dry one to wipe the dusty shelves of the wardrobe. The muscles of her right arm stretched and twisted as she cleaned. Her shoulder rotated. She sneezed, bumped her head on a shelf, swore and dropped the dirty cloths into the bag of rubbish.

  There were firms that specialised in clearing out homes. She could have paid them to empty the house and dispose of the contents. But she couldn’t have paid them to deal with her emotions.

  Ashes to ashes, dust to dust. She would suck the blood and venom from those memories. They would b
e as inconsequent as the dry fly carcasses that were stuck to the dusty cobweb on the window.

  The sound of a large truck and the rattling thump of a heavy object announced the arrival of the skip bin.

  She wiped dirty hands down her jeans—she’d forgotten to put on the gloves—and went to the front door, raising a hand in thanks to the truck driver. The bin sat on the verge, just beyond the overhang of the peppermint tree. Its twisted trunk and rough bark had been a childhood challenge. One summer Malcolm had built a cubby in it: two planks of wood hammered across two branches. He hadn’t been one to over-exert himself, even then.

  “One down, many more to go.” She made an ironic ceremony of throwing the first bag of rubbish into the skip bin. The hollow thud gave no satisfaction.

  The linen cupboard was easier than her old room. Everything in it could go to the charity shop: sheets, blankets, towels, tablecloths. She hesitated over a length of white lace. It had been the tablecloth for special occasions. Hard words waited for the child who spilled her drink at Christmas dinner.

  The bag crackled as she shoved the tablecloth in. Sachets of crumbling lavender went in a new rubbish bag.

  Speaking of rubbish. She scooped up the ancient rag tag mix of cleaning products in the laundry and added them to the bag. It clanked as it landed in the skip bin. Sometimes it paid to start with the easy stuff. It built momentum.

  She’d cleared all the food out of the kitchen when Roxie went into the hospice. Now she opened the cupboard doors and stared at the pots, pans, dishes and plastic containers. Would anyone want this worn out junk? It had been cheap to start with. The one dinner set that had been any good—a wedding present, Roxie had said—had been gifted to Malcolm at his wedding seven years ago. He’d kept it in his divorce two years later. The good crystal glasses were gone—Malcolm, again. No wonder he hadn’t wanted to return here with her—he’d already scavenged.