Are You Seeing Me? Read online

  “Reckon I might’ve been the one with the inappropriate behaviors, love,” says Ross.

  “Make that two of us,” adds Jane.

  I study their earnest faces. No need for further education here. Class is dismissed. “It’s fine,” I say. “All good.”

  They breathe a sigh of relief. Jane asks Ross to sit back so she can see me. “Thank you,” she says. “It’s Justine, isn’t it?”

  “That’s right.”

  “Justine, if you don’t mind me asking, did you say you were Perry’s sister and caregiver?”

  “Yes.”

  “Do you mean just for your trip?”

  “No, I’m his sister all the time.” A badum-tish follows. I announce that I’m here all week and ask that they don’t forget to tip the waitress. Jane blinks three times. “Sorry, my jokes aren’t as good as Perry’s. The answer to your question is no, I am the current full-time caregiver for my brother.”

  Jane places a hand on her breast and tilts her head. “Oh, that must be so difficult for you.”

  “Ow! That’s gotta hurt!” Perry mimics a crocodile’s lunge and snap with his hand. His focus remains on the small screen.

  “It has its moments,” I reply.

  “Wow. You must be an amazing person to do that, especially on your own. Do you have any help at all?”

  The question loiters in the aisle like abandoned luggage. Then it’s in my lap, heavy and pointed. I’m overtaken by a desire to share it all with these people, these complete and decent strangers. To tell them how our mother left and we were raised by our father. How he did the best he could, better than he was obliged to do. Then he up and died two weeks shy of our eighteenth birthdays. And even though he swore on his deathbed I was ready—that my future was more than just being my brother’s keeper—the two years following made his words seem like a coin tossed into a wishing well.

  Do I have any help? It’s coming. When this holiday is over and we touch down again in Brisbane Town, the balance my father wanted will be possible. “Home” will be elsewhere for Perry. “Dependence” will be measured by degrees. The wishing well will answer with the name Fair Go Community Village. Yes, help is coming, all right.

  But the truth is, I never asked for it.

  I want to tell these polite outsiders all of this and assure them of one last, important fact: I am not an amazing person. But the itch to unburden recedes when we’re interrupted by the pilot’s update. “Apologies, again, for the delay, folks. We are all set to go now. Shouldn’t be a problem making up for lost time.”

  I shift my attention from Jane to Perry. He senses the rolling movement of the plane and removes his earbuds.

  “We’re moving,” he announces. He digs around in the seat pocket and extracts the laminated safety card. He lifts it high so it is visible to the passengers behind him. “If we crash on takeoff, I can help save some of you! No lie, I have first-aid expertise!”

  “Shoosh!” I rein Perry in with a tug on his forearm. Amid the crowd murmurings—some good-natured, others not so forgiving—I turn back to Jane. “Why would I need any help?”

  2:12 AM, VANCOUVER TIME. The lights in the cabin have been dimmed and economy class is in various states of slumber. The burring jet engines are occasionally punctuated by a chunky snore or a muffled cough or a baby’s cry.

  I lean over to check on Perry. He’s out. Head tilting right and forward, his eyelids flutter. The small, orb-shaped seismometer is cradled in his lap like a snuggling pet. His seat is bolt upright. My desire to press the armrest button and ease him back into a more reclined position pales next to the prospect of waking him up. He’s done well so far—he’s earned some uninterrupted rest. Hell, so have I.

  “Worn out” doesn’t begin to describe my exhaustion. I rub my eyes until there are raw tears. Sleep won’t come for a while yet. The uncomfortable seat is partially guilty, but Perry’s the main culprit. Perry and the dark. For years as a child, I thought the nighttime knew secrets about my brother, that if I was close enough and awake enough, those secrets would be revealed in a sign or a vision or a whisper. Maybe I would learn the cause of his condition? A body toxin unidentified at birth. Some faulty genetic code spelled out in terms a science-shunning, literature-loving girl could understand. Maybe I’d be given the solution to his riddle? The power to bestow upon him all the unspoken language skills the rest of us take for granted? Or perhaps I’d be “made” like him for a few predawn hours; all the traits would be mine: the twitches, the ticks, the routines and the obsessions. I would think too fast and feel too much. I would try to be the same as everyone else in this world, and I would set the frustration and the anger and the despair free when it proved impossible. Then I would be Justine again, only new and improved, knowing my brother’s existence completely, working to bring about greater understanding in the “normal” world.

  With those nocturnal revelations so tantalizingly close, deferring sleep became a habit when Perry was in the same space. It took hold when we were little kids, and was reinforced when we went camping or on holidays.

  It came back in a big way after Dad died.

  I need Dad now. I reach down and reef the bag out from under the seat in front. Amongst the contents is the weathered hardback I can identify by touch and smell alone. Red and purple roses on the cover. Faded, felt-pen title in block letters. The Life and Times of a Tree Frog—the journal my father faithfully kept for seventeen years and fifty weeks. I open it to page one and listen for his voice: a gentle and unhurried baritone, nothing like the wispy croak he had in his final days.

  21 October 1990

  Hello, Justine. If you’re reading this, it’s 21 October 2008 and you’ve just turned eighteen. Happy Birthday! I wanted to do something special for the two of you, starting on the day you were born. Well, that’s today. Mum gave birth to you this morning—you first at 11:26, Perry three minutes later—and this is the special something. A journal. One for you and one for your brother. Eighteen years in the making. I hope you like it.

  Originally, I thought about doing some videos. Not like regular home movies of our holidays or Christmases. More personal ones, with stories and memories. Ones you could look back at and say, “That’s my dad, all right!” But I figured it would be difficult keeping it a secret when you guys were older. And all those tapes! How would I know if you had a Betamax recorder when you became an adult?

  No, I decided I should do something different. A challenge. Something that needed a real commitment. Something I would never do for myself and something that I would only ever do for my two minnows (twinnows!).

  I’m not much of a writer, but a journal seemed like a good idea…

  29 October 1990

  We’ve been home a few days and it’s bloody busy! Even though we’re flat out, my mind keeps going back to our first moment together. You were so beautiful when you came into the world. The doc lifted you out of your mother’s belly, the nurse wrapped you up…then you were in my arms. You were tiny, just under five pounds. Not bad for a preemie arriving six weeks early. You looked right at me with those big, dark eyes. It was as if you knew exactly who I was and what I was feeling inside.

  Your brother’s exit wasn’t as smooth. I don’t think he knew what had hit him when he was taken out. He didn’t breathe straight away, but he got it done when he had to. A part of me likes to think he did it on purpose so he could get a little extra care and attention from those good sorts of nurses. He went to Mum first. She had trouble holding him because she was drugged to the eyeballs, so they handed him over to me. He didn’t open his eyes the way you did. He stayed asleep, as if the rest of the world didn’t matter.

  4 May 1991

  You’ve started doing something that gives me a good laugh. When you’re eating the apple mush that you seem to like better than anything else on the mush menu, you gulp a mouthful down and then poke your tongue out. Every time! Mum says it’s gross. I think it’s bloody brilliant! Like a green tree frog catching flies!


  Your brother doesn’t perform this little gem, but he’s got his own comedy going on. The witchlike cackle. The backstroke attempts in the bath. The projectile pee—one of which ended up hosing the neighbor’s cat as it was having a stickybeak on the windowsill. I almost couldn’t breathe I laughed so hard!

  It’s nice to have a few howlers here and there. Now that I’m back at the factory, Mum’s on her own all day. She gets exhausted. Things would be much better if getting Perry to sleep—day or night—hadn’t been a real struggle the last month. Lots of tears and screams and not a lot of zees. Mum wants to let him cry it out, but I’m not keen. I don’t think it’s right. I mean, he’s crying for a reason, isn’t he? Probably the teeth coming through. I reckon once he’s over the worst of it, he’ll sleep like, well, a baby.

  In the meantime, I’ve got my little tree frog to keep me entertained.

  15 July 1991

  Holy bloody hell! You just walked! You pulled yourself up onto your feet with the help of the coffee table, took one hand away, took the other hand away, and toddled across the living room! Wow! So proud of you!

  Hopefully you can relive the moment when Mum gets back. I had a feeling she would miss a one-off like this. She’s been going out quite a bit lately, getting her “mental health time,” as she likes to call it.

  Perry saw you walk. He was over by the azaleas, mucking around with his Cookie Monster cushion. When you got up, he stopped and turned his attention to you. He watched you all the way, until you plopped back down on your bum near the bookshelf. Then he made a noise and held his arms up, like he was cheering for you! Okay, maybe he wasn’t cheering, but he certainly took notice of your great work. Hope he took a few notes—he’s still motoring around the house on his knees. The books say it’s not uncommon for boys to reach milestones later than girls. He is saying a few words though: “dog” and “Dad” and “fan,” so that’s good. He’ll be all right, especially with his big sister showing the way.

  20 November 1991

  I might have had too many hits on the hard hat, but it seems to me Perry’s gone backward a bit of late. He’s doing some funny things with his toys. He’ll put his Tonka trucks all in a row and stare at them from this angle and that. Then he’ll turn them upside down and spin their wheels, over and over and over again. Also, he’s not saying the words he was saying a couple of months ago. And he won’t look at you anymore when you say his name. I wondered for a while if he might be deaf, but he never seemed to have any problems hearing a packet of gingersnaps being opened. Anyway, we got his ears checked and there were no problems.

  Mum and I took him back to the clinic on Saturday (Grandma took care of you; she said, as per usual, you were an angel). Early on, the doc mentioned that it could be some sort of brain issue. She said it was too early to tell. Then she thought for a bit longer and shook her head. She said Perry having problems long-term was pretty unlikely and she wouldn’t want to put a label on him when, in all likelihood, he was just delayed in his development. After a time, some of these behaviors would go away and we’d see him start to catch up. Mum shook her hand like Robinson Crusoe meeting the captain of the rescue boat. In the car going home, she told me she’d known all along our boy was just a bit slow, and her job was tough enough without a husband getting worried for nothing. I’m not convinced.

  I’m sorry I’m going on about Perry so much—this stuff should go into his journal, I suppose. I’m not writing in his book these days. It was just dribs and drabs for a while, but now I’ve stopped altogether. It seems unfair to be recording his moments right now when he’s standing still and you’re zooming ahead. But that doesn’t mean this journal should be filled with your brother’s troubles and your father’s worries.

  This is your gift, your memories to look back on.

  RETURNING DAD’S JOURNAL TO THE BAG, I find my phone jammed into the pages of my current read: a dog-eared, secondhand paperback of Robinson Crusoe. I extract the phone and begin scrolling through Marc’s messages. I linger on the most recent one:

  Hope u made it through security ok. Have a gr8 trip. Can’t wait until u come back.

  xo

  “Can’t wait”—that phrase sums him up. Point blank and a perfect stranger, he asked me out for coffee in Woolies (frozen section, to be exact). I noted his basket contained a few favorites from my food pyramid: Tim Tams, Mount Franklin water, a ripe mango. His look had some favorites too. Blue eyes. Cropped beard. Soft, wistful face that hinted at James McAvoy in Becoming Jane. Long eyelashes.

  “I have a brother at home and it’s just the two of us,” I told him. “His name is Perry. He has a brain condition that can cause him to feel anxious or upset in different places and circumstances. He has trouble with people—mixing with them and communicating with them—and it sometimes results in inappropriate behaviors. Still want to have coffee?”

  “More than ever,” he replied.

  I agreed to meet up.

  We sipped espressos and split a Devonshire tea at Riverbend Books in Bulimba, and the discussion of which novels should never have been made into films went well enough to pencil in a second coffee date. He got down on one knee and proposed during that one. When I rejected him, laughing loud enough to disturb other tables, he told me he wasn’t serious. I suspect it was a half-truth.

  We got to know each other a bit better over the next month—three dinners, two Sunday brunches, one movie (Black Swan—it was a tad awkward) and one sleepover at his shared house in New Farm. In February, he admitted he could see us living together sometime very soon. The time had arrived to properly introduce Master Disaster. I got down on one knee and proposed Marc join us for a barbecue at Chez Richter.

  They went okay. Perry was quiet, not his usual talkative self. Marc tried hard, probably too hard. It was obvious a few of my brother’s chestnuts had him scrambling for rationales. When the hang-out was over, Marc reassured me I needn’t worry. He and Pez would be best mates before long. And future living arrangements? Those things would sort themselves out “in the fullness of time.” Six months on, Time is not merely full, it is fit to burst.

  Marc told me at the departure gate he’d be fine if the plan changed after the trip; if I were to come back second-guessing Perry’s move out of home, he wouldn’t be averse to living with us if that was the easiest way forward. In the moment, the revelation seemed a bit desperate—arrhythmic beats of a heart-on-the-sleeve already feeling the squeeze of separation. But looking back on it now, I think Marc meant what he said. Sweet gesture, for sure. And totally unnecessary.

  It’s not that Marc and Perry couldn’t handle the arrangement; Marc’s best-mates promise may not have been fulfilled, but a distance has been traveled. A small though solid foundation of shared experience now exists between them—bodysurfing at Rainbow Beach, pancake breakfasts, car washes, Mario Kart. Marc’s surprising knowledge and appreciation of Jackie Chan movies hasn’t hurt either. And a four-day camping trip to Girraween in June showed me the two of them were comfortable—with a small c—in close quarters.

  No, it’s simply this: there isn’t going to be any backtracking on a decision already made. Two weeks on the other side of the world doesn’t alter the reality at home: Perry wants to move out, period. My wish for him to stay is just selfishness on my part, and I would never deny him what he truly desires. Not when the rest of “normal” society denies him so much already. And maybe he needs to move out. He can handle life at a supported residence. He is capable. More people, other people, nice people—not just his loving but imperfect twin—they can only be good for him.

  Marc and his sweet gestures are still new to all this. A white knight riding in on his valiant steed is not what we need.

  My final rummage through the bag is for the manila folder labeled Perry’s New Adventure. It contains a host of documents—maps, pictures, lists of services, resident testimonials. I lift a page from the pile: Fair Go Community Village—Where Special Needs and Life Purpose Come Together. A crisp, gl
ossy flyer once upon a time, it’s now crumpled and stained. I know its content well. Regardless, I skim through the various sections, starting with “Our Mission for a Fair Go” and ending with “Contact Us Today—The Vision is Now!”

  For the thousandth time, I try to trace the timeline in my head, but it remains elusive. I put the starting date in the initial weeks—perhaps days—after Dad’s diagnosis. Finding a safety net for his son once it was clear he himself was in free fall? Makes sense. Dad was nothing if not a realist. Over the month following, there must have been phone calls, emails. I remember he went out for a drive one day even though he looked like death warmed over. He got back around seven in the evening and refused to tell us where he’d been, despite my best efforts to get it out of him. Given Fair Go’s location—about an hour’s drive northwest of the Brisbane central business district—it’s reasonable to assume he spent the day there. A week or two later, maybe six weeks in total after the initial inquiry, Perry was assigned to the residential waiting list. If Dad was provided with documentation confirming this fact, I’ve never seen it.

  Why did you never mention it to me, Dad? Or write it in Tree Frog? Taking this decision to the grave, relying on a reminder in the mail twelve months later—was that fair? Leaving the final follow-through in the hands of a kid—was that a good idea? And hear the truth, Dad: I am a kid. You always saw me as mature. You called me an “old soul” and “wise beyond my years.” I craved that praise. Making you proud—it allowed everything to be manageable, reasonable. But it couldn’t mask the truth: I was a kid. And then you went and bloody died, didn’t you? You took my sustenance away before I could grow up big and strong. No praise. No nourishing words. Just echoes in a journal and a document in the mail and a responsibility far too colossal for a make-believe adult.