Lines on Pages - Part One

I was never one to colour between the lines. I’ve always thought rules were made for breaking, or at the very least made for somebody else.

I thought of myself as free.

I guess all the irresponsible people think that.

#

Ian and I still go out to the island sometimes. It’s the same as when we were kids, when we went out with Mum and Dad, and again when we were teenagers, taking the boat out on our own. The times when we took some extras out, the back of the boat packed with bottles of whiskey, the island strumming with music and shouting, with kids sliding just a little too fast into adulthood. Kids without parachutes.

Ian’s going out there now to escape the fallout from his divorce. So am I, in a manner of speaking. Or maybe I’m just going out there to escape the carnage that I call my life these days.

“Again?” Mum said, three days ago.

“I’m sorry.”

“Good God, child, I don’t want you to be sorry. I want you to think about your life, and think about where’s it’s going. I want to you realise that you’re not a kid anymore, and you can’t just keep burning everything down when the going gets tough.”

“That’s not what I’m doing.”

“That’s always what you’re doing!”

Dad’s footsteps, coming in via the back door.

Not now. Really not the best time.

“She’s gone and got herself fired again, hasn’t she?” Mum called it out as he was coming under the dooframe.

“Oh, Vivi, not again.”

“It wasn’t like-”

“It’s always like.” Mum threw her hands up in disgust and didn’t want to hear another word. She marched on out of the kitchen, leaving the spaghetti boiling on the stovetop, letting her frustrated sobs and sighs be just loud enough to be heard through the door.

#

So that’s what I’m doing here.

And Ian: he needs to get away from the shadow of that looming divorce. He’s my brother and I love him, but I can see his shortcomings, I can see the soft, bluish-grey of him, a sweet and distance, vanilla, rhythmic, punctual, formal, systematic man. I’m more than willing to adore him as a brother, but it’s hard to picture a woman falling in love with him, a woman being all up and in lust with him.

Well, maybe it’s hard to see that sort of thing in your brother, even if he’s young and hot and built, not at all middle-aged and fading, pale-faced, with awkward and ill-suiting glasses…

“I was just so… blind-sided. I thought we were happy together.”

I’d never thought so. From the day I met Selina I’d looked at her, and looked at Ian, and I’d internally shaken my head: it’s not going to work.

And yet: two years later. In lavender. A fucking bridesmaid. You want to ask me how that happened? I don’t know. And I loved Selina. I still… I mean we’re still friends, and I would still take her calls, and I want the best for her. I’ve told her so.

“You could see it the whole time, couldn’t you?”

“Yeah. Sorry.”

“You never said anything.”

“Ian was happy. Besotted and all that. I thought… I guess… weirder things have happened.”

That’s part of the story.

Ian tosses me a lifejacket. “Yes. You are going to wear one.”

“I wasn’t not going to.”

“Okay. I just know you.”

“I was sixteen then.”

“I’m not sure you’re not sixteen now.”

God, the temptation to poke my tongue out at him. But I just stick the lifejacket over my head and settle down into the boat, set my eyes on the sky, let the spray wet my face, watch the birds circle while Ian steers the boat.

It’s just a little outboard motor, hardly more than a dinghy if you’re not the type to mince words. Just four plastic seats, a clear canopy, a bit of room under the nose to pack a few bags. But it’ll get us across the water in a little over twenty minutes. And then the trees will loom up all dark around us, the leaves with do something to the sunlight to make it look almost orange, to turn the leaves themselves nearly blue. The sand will be a soft grey, glinting with white, speckled with shells. And when we step up over the skinny curve of a beach we’ll walk under the trees and be enveloped in their quiet, and all that other stuff will be left behind for a while.

#

The hut has had some better days. But it’s still standing. And it’s still Dad’s. He won’t tell us which one of us – if either – he’s going to leave it to, someday. Maybe both. Maybe neither. “Maybe I’ll have a bit of a fling and cheat on your mother. Father a couple more children to inherit my worldly goods.”

Mum snorted, “yeah, you’d go to the effort of having an affair.”

“Don’t tempt me, woman, you might find some life in me after all.”

“Huh, yeah, I’d like to see that.”

Eyes averted, nothing to see here, nothing to say.

“If you’re waiting for them to get old and circumspect, keep waiting,” Ian told me. Older by only just over a year. Maybe that’s why we’ve always kinda done things together, why we’ve ended up having so many of the same friends. Why we shared those wild parties in our youth, in and around this same hut, spilling out of doors and windows, lucky not to break anything or set the forest alight.

The hut stands in front of us, wood rotting, a few roof tiles having fallen on to the doorstep. And the door’s pretty stubborn as Ian shoulders it open.

“Grandad would have repaired this place.”

Ian shrugs. “We should have brought some tools, I guess.”

Me, with tools. There’s a good joke. My only tools are a lipstick, my cellphone and a wine glass. But that’s how I usually end up in one mess or another.

Ian sits back with his hot chocolate, a scarf around his shoulders, waiting for the fire to flare up and take the edge off the season. A wind bustles about outside, rearranging the autumn leaves.

He says, “I don’t get it. I mean I know we were different and all that. But I know we had something real.”

“People change.”

“She didn’t though. She’s always been… flighty, you know, excitable. She was kind of a hippy when we met. Do you mean that I’ve changed?”

“No. You’ll never change.”

“Is that a compliment?”

“It’s a statement of fact. But people grow apart.”

“It wasn’t like that. There wasn’t any growing apart. We were close, we were connected. And then she’s talking about wanting to move on, wanting something else out of life. There’s another man. She won’t say it, but I know it.”

“Does it matter now?”

“Of course, it does, it’ll always matter. I don’t know why she’d choose him over me.”

“Novelty. Who knows? People do stupid things.” And since I’m the poster child for stupid things, what’s he going to do, disagree?

But I lie in bed overnight, staring up at a roof I can’t see, remembering the words: “Do this. If you don’t get it out of your system, it’s going to fester there for years. You can’t live this beige. You know you can’t.”

And I don’t even know what I meant by that.

She’s a rainbow like I am. But he’s my brother.

It keeps me awake half the night.

#

And in the morning, it rains. Heavy. It’s beating down on that roof we’re not fully sure can handle it. The fire’s burning steady in the hearth now, and Ian has his scarf hanging up; but his big, oatmeal-coloured, Dad-ish jersey is on over a dun-coloured pair of trousers. He looks like he’s looking for a background to blend into.

“See,” I know I should be keeping my mouth shut, but my mouth has no such capacity, it just has to open and let out whatever it’s got in it. And today it’s these words: “you look as if you don’t even exist.”

“What?”

“Like you don’t exist. Or like you’re nearly sixty.”

“Thanks.”

“I mean it in a sisterly way. But look in the mirror. I’ve never seen a thirty-year-old man is such desperate need of a makeover.”

“Are you saying she left me because I’m boring?”

“….no….” Yeah, too slow, too equivocal.

“Really?”

“I’m sorry, Ian. It’s just this vibe you give out. Maybe you are doing it more than ever, like you don’t want to stand out, you don’t want to be noticed.”

“Don’t exist.”

“I didn’t say…”

“Less than two minutes ago.”

“All right. Yes. Yes. Look, I’m not trying to fight.”

He stands up, puts his book down, “But you have a knack for it. I’d go for a walk, but:” and he gestures at the crazy outdoors. “I’m be down in the cellar.”

“Don’t drink it all.”

“Don’t tempt me.”

#

I give him time. How much time is time? How much wine is time? Bottles and bottles all lined up in the cellar, all facing outwards at the same angle, like missiles.

How many bottles do I give him?

And how comes a falling-down cabin-in-the-woods-on-an-island, come to have a wine cellar? It’s a good question. Because that cellar is bigger than the floorspace of the cabin itself. It’s deep and sturdy, the shelves all well-built. It’s like Great-Grandad Alec had a drinking problem or something.

I give it about a half hour.

Ian looks up when he hears my footsteps on the wooden stairs. I try to walk softly, but it doesn’t pan out.

“Oh. You.”

“Expecting someone else?”

“An axe-murderer would have livened things up a bit.”

“So, you’re still mad.”

“I came here to heal, not to be insulted and blamed, and just generally made to feel bad.”

“That wasn’t where I was going with that.”

“Oh?”

“I meant… I thought…” and this is coming out mega-lame: “I was just trying to help.”

“Don’t.”

“I’m sorry.”

“I know. I know, okay. But I need you to leave me alone right now.”

“Okay. Please don’t drink yourself to death in here.”

“That seems like more the sort of thing you’d do.”

Wow, digs like that probably cost you a wife. There’s the danger for a moment that I’m going to say that out loud, but that just proves his point. I do need to get out of here.

#

So, I retreat upstairs. The rain doesn’t let up, and my short attention span makes a mockery of my attempt to read. I have this urge to text my last ex-boyfriend, and even though I know how bad an idea that would be, my thumb gets itchy. When it was good, it was very, very good, after all.

But when it was bad, it was also pretty horrid.

So, I open a wardrobe and step inside. I have Narnia images dancing in my head. Even if I am twenty-nine. There’s coats in here, some of them furry – so you see, yes it could be the portal into Narnia, couldn’t it? – and some old dresses. A few old things of mine as well as some that might be Mum’s or Gran’s. And stacked boxes. It’s weirdly Tardis-big in here, like it has opened up a portal into a magical world of snow and talking animals…

Control yourself Vivi, you don’t believe in otherworldly portals.

Although these boxes could be the next best thing. I open them up, and there’s so much old stuff. When did Mum and Dad even bring this stuff here? Did I play with that doll while we were staying here one of these summers? Did I wear this felt hat with the little round flowers? I leaf through the colouring books. Mine are so different from Ian’s: his are all so precise, and they follow the intent of the drawing, he colours within the lines, and he picks the right colours, the grass is always green, and the sky is blue, there are greys and browns to the buildings, yellow for the sun. Then there’s mine, and the colours are all over the place, nothing is between the lines, nothing where it should be. In amongst this bright orange grass I have drawn an emerging elephant. I have drawn my own little line of swallows on the roof of this house. One has three feet.

And then this: this leatherbound, elastic-strapped diary.

God, it’s still here.

This, I remember. I was fifteen the last time I wrote anything on these pages. The first time we came out here without Mum and Dad, the first time we abused the privilege in shameless teenage fashion after promising we’d do no such thing. We’re supposed to regret these wild misadventures of youth. I can’t seem to. I’m not even really past them. Would I do all the same things now? At least half of them.

I should have taken a bottle out with me when I left the cellar.

I open up, and the page that strikes me has a name on it, one I haven’t thought about in some years.

Charlotte.

I’m not even sure exactly why we brought Charlotte Dunwell along with us. I know Justine thinks she’s friends with her right now, but she such a mouse I keep waiting for her to squeak, or run away with a piece of cheese or something. I just can’t picture her getting drunk and scoring with one Ian’s friends tonight. Is this big enough of an island for us to lose her on?

Okay, so I might have been kind of bitch back then. What else was I? Some of what happened that summer is a little bit lost in a fog of booze and time. But we had some fun. Tore ourselves a little bit, even Ian. Even a few of his straight-laced friends. I shove myself back against the bean-bag, toss my ponytail out of the way – we’re going to be here a few days after all – and I settle down to read.

We’re going to have more fun if we can get rid of Charlotte for the party tonight.

There’s a cold shudder that runs down my spine. That’s right. I’d forgotten about that. Or I’d done so on purpose. But with the scrawled words, out come the memories.

And this is what we did to her:

 

Picture Credit: author's own work