Nothing to See Read online

  Also by Pip Adam

  Everything We Hoped For

  I’m Working on a Building

  The New Animals

  Victoria University of Wellington Press

  PO Box 600, Wellington

  New Zealand

  vup.wgtn.ac.nz

  Copyright © Pip Adam 2020

  First published 2020

  This book is copyright. Apart from any fair dealing for the purpose of private study, research, criticism or review, as permitted under the Copyright Act, no part may be reproduced by any process without the permission of the publishers.

  The moral rights of the author have been asserted.

  p. 7: Lyrics from ‘Quicksand’, Vulnicura, Björk (2015).

  Written by Björk Gudmundsdottir and John Flynn © Copyright

  Kobalt Songs Music Publishing and Warp Music Publishing US.

  Used by permission.

  ISBN 9781776563159 (print)

  ISBN 9781776563319 (EPUB)

  ISBN 9781776563326 (Kindle)

  A catalogue record is available at the National Library of New Zealand

  Published with the assistance of a grant from

  Ebook conversion 2020 by meBooks

  for Sheila, Brent and Bo

  When I’m broken, I am whole.

  And when I’m whole, I’m broken.

  —Björk, ‘Quicksand’

  Contents

  1994

  1

  2

  3

  4

  5

  6

  7

  8

  9

  10

  11

  12

  13

  14

  15

  16

  17

  2006

  18

  19

  20

  21

  22

  23

  24

  25

  26

  27

  28

  29

  30

  31

  32

  33

  34

  35

  36

  37

  2018

  38

  39

  40

  41

  42

  43

  44

  45

  46

  47

  48

  49

  Acknowledgements

  1994

  1

  ‘Huh?’ Greta was lying on Peggy’s stomach.

  ‘Everything seems so dark,’ said Peggy. They were both reading. They’d gone to their room with the intention of reading. ‘We’re just going to read,’ they’d said to their flatmate Dell. But for the last half hour or so they’d been staring out at their room over the top of their books. They were just learning how to spend time.

  ‘Like everything,’ Peggy said.

  Greta was sleepy. They’d been up too late. The cold and heavy of the Sunday evening was settling down.

  ‘When I think back to what we did this week or last week or the week before. It’s all so dark.’

  ‘We’ve been up a lot at night,’ Greta said. She put her book on her chest.

  ‘Yeah.’ Peggy turned round so she could see out the high window above their bed. Greta’s head moved with the change in Peggy’s position. ‘You’re right.’

  They sat like that for a moment. Peggy wound round to look up and out the window, watching the grey sky. Greta staring at the ceiling, book on her chest, and head, precarious now, on Peggy’s stomach.

  ‘We should get some food,’ Greta said.

  ‘Yeah,’ said Peggy. ‘Do we have any money?’

  Greta scratched her head. Her hands were swamped in a long jumper and she scratched her head through the sleeves. Her dark, short hair stood up. She wiped her nose with the sleeve of the jumper. ‘Not much.’

  ‘Enough for tom yum?’ Peggy’s voice lightened a little.

  ‘Yeah?’ Greta said. ‘How much is tom yum, again?’

  ‘Eight bucks,’ Peggy said. She was getting up now. Greta fell off her lap. ‘Eleven, if you have noodles. The noodles are three dollars. If we have the noodles we only need one bowl of soup.’

  ‘What’s the date?’ Greta said.

  Peggy shrugged. ‘Like, the sixth?’

  ‘We should be golden.’

  ‘Can we get spring rolls?’ Peggy asked. They’d both put on heaps of weight since they’d stopped drinking. A few weeks ago, Peggy worked out that if they took more Antabuse than they were supposed to it gave them diarrhoea. The counsellors at rehab were dark on dieting or vomiting but Peggy was pretty sure they’d get away with it now they were out. Except, Greta pointed out, if they both kept taking more than they were supposed to, they’d probably need more Antabuse sooner than they were supposed to.

  ‘What date does rent come out on?’

  ‘Like, the fourteenth?’ Peggy was pulling on their Converse All Stars. She pulled a floral dress over a long-sleeved top and leggings. The dress had been bigger. She was looking around for their fisherman’s rib jumper. Then she stopped. ‘But . . .’ She rubbed her eyes and the black eyeliner left over from the day before smeared more. ‘We can’t fly too close to the wind, ’cause it’s not like if we spend the rent it’ll magically come again from somewhere else.’

  ‘How much do we have in cash?’

  Peggy started going through the pockets of the jackets and trousers on the floor.

  They’d gone to a budget advisor. He hadn’t said much and had mainly looked at the pieces of paper their case manager had sent. He’d cut their credit card up in front of them – while they were still sitting there. They’d looked in the rubbish bin at the fragments of plastic while he moved on to other things. He rang the gym that had sent their debt to a debt collector, and worked out ‘terms’.

  They were on a sickness benefit, but every now and then they’d sleep with men for money. The counsellor at rehab said if they sat in the barber’s chair long enough they’d get a haircut, which as far as they could tell was true (the others from rehab were falling like flies), but sometimes the rent was due and it wasn’t like anyone would give either of them a job. A job that still left time to go to meetings and counselling and doctor’s appointments. ‘That’s what the sickness benefit is for,’ the counsellor said as he signed the forms for them before they left rehab. ‘So you can concentrate on staying sober.’

  They wanted to stay sober more than anything. They sat up late into the night talking about how much they wanted to stay clean. How much they wanted to start a new life. What they’d do to stay away from a drink. ‘If I was like . . . if I thought I was going to drink, I’d fucking . . . I’d go to the police station and say “Arrest me” and if they wouldn’t, I’d break a window.’ ‘Yeah,’ they’d both say. ‘Yeah.’ They went to a meeting every day – most days they went to two meetings. They were making friends. They got invited to go tenpin bowling. They got sick together and they’d get well together.

  ‘Three dollars,’ Peggy said. She was resting the combination of coins in her hand – they had small hands.

  ‘Well,’ said Greta, who was still lying on the bed. ‘That’s the noodles already. Like, in your hand.’

  ‘There’s so much fucking money,’ Peggy said. They’d pissed a lot of money against the wall. Things were tight now, but they had a roof and some clothes and they had enough for noodles without even checking their EFTPOS card.

  ‘Fucking love being sober,’ Greta said.

  ‘Fucking love being sober,’ Peggy said.

  ‘I’m going to check the wallet,’ said Greta, and she grabbed their canvas army surplus bag and pulled everything out until she found the wallet. There
was a five-dollar note. Greta looked up at Peggy with a smile so broad her face might come apart at the seams. ‘We’re fucking loaded! We’ve got like’ – she counted it – ‘eight bucks!’

  ‘We must have three in the bank?’ Peggy said.

  Greta looked at her.

  ‘For the noodles.’

  ‘For the noodles,’ Greta agreed.

  It stopped them for a minute. How lucky they were, and they just stood and looked at the wall and basked in the luck.

  ‘Shouldn’t we be happy with just the soup?’ Greta asked. ‘Like, finding that eight bucks – that’s pretty awesome.’

  Peggy thought about it. ‘I think god would want us to have noodles.’

  Greta wondered.

  ‘God didn’t save us from drowning for us not to have noodles on the shore,’ Peggy said. ‘God wants us to have a noodle life.’

  Greta laughed. Peggy did, too. It was okay to joke about god a bit. It wasn’t that kind of god. It was like a small ‘g’ god. Their counsellor at rehab had made them look at the hills surrounding the rehab buildings. ‘Are the hills bigger than you?’ ‘Yes.’ They were never surer of anything before in their life. They couldn’t stop drinking and the hills were big.

  Their flatmate Dell was in the lounge. She was reading too – staring at the wall, book in lap. They didn’t have a television and the days without drink were long.

  ‘Are you guys going to a meeting?’ she said. They’d all moved in together after rehab. It had seemed safe but it really wasn’t. Their other flatmate, Heidi, had started drinking again – or maybe she hadn’t. She was never home, or maybe she snuck in and out without them realising. None of them liked to be left alone.

  ‘We’re going for tom yum,’ Peggy said. ‘We went to a meeting this morning.’

  ‘And at lunchtime,’ Greta said.

  ‘Oh.’ Dell looked at her watch. ‘I think I don’t have time for dinner. Carol’s picking me up.’

  ‘For the one over that way?’ Peggy asked, pointing in the direction she thought the meeting was.

  Dell nodded. It was a pretty great meeting, but Peggy and Greta had already been to two meetings and they were hungry and they’d found the money. Just before they left rehab, they’d been told to go to meetings, they all had. Peggy and Greta wanted to be sober more than anything, so they did what they were told. The meetings were weird. Peggy and Greta had no idea what was going on. They had been about to give up going to meetings when a woman called Diane came over to where they were waiting for their bus home. Diane had been coming to meetings for a long time. Diane hadn’t had a drink for a long time. She gave them her phone number, written on a small piece of paper in blue ballpoint. ‘We don’t know what to do,’ Peggy said as Diane was walking away, and Diane stopped and came back. ‘What do we do?’ Diane said she didn’t know what Peggy and Greta needed to do, but she could tell them what she did. Diane said that to begin with she went to daytime meetings on Sundays. Sundays were hard and Peggy and Greta often wanted a drink. Diane said maybe they could go to daytime meetings, and on Sunday nights they could get ready for Monday. Routine was good.

  ‘Will you get something to eat?’ Greta asked now. ‘You have to eat dinner.’

  ‘Oh yeah,’ said Dell. ‘There are some baked beans and I can make some toast.’ Now Peggy and Greta felt like they should stay and have baked beans on toast too. Should they save the eight dollars for buses and savings? What were they supposed to do? If they went out for tom yum would they drink again? If they stayed for baked beans would they drink again? Diane had told them not to overthink things. Carol was Dell and Heidi’s Diane. She seemed a lot more loving than Diane. Diane never picked them up for meetings. She told them to pick up ashtrays at the end of the meetings, to talk to newcomers, forget themselves. Carol told Dell and Heidi to treat themselves like their best friend.

  Peggy and Greta wanted to stay sober. Wanted to stay sober more than they wanted their old life back. Their old life had been rape and beatings, and drinking had stopped helping, stopped working – completely. The people they knew from rehab who had started drinking again told them that some people could drink, and that was true, and Peggy and Greta and Dell tried not to have an opinion about whether Heidi was one of those people, but they all knew to their core, just right now, that none of them could drink safely again. Every now and then a thought would sneak in, but when they talked about it they could see what their mind was up to. So, they decided not to have a drink just for now. Just now they wouldn’t have a drink, and now, and now, and now, and then it was another day and today it was ten months and three weeks and two days.

  ‘Well, we’re going to have tom yum,’ Greta said. Peggy nodded.

  ‘Cool,’ Dell said. ‘Have a good time.’ Dell was way chiller than Peggy and Greta. It was like she knew more, or understood more, or was older. It was one of the things they stayed up late talking about. Maybe it was Carol. Maybe the whole ‘treat yourself like your own best friend’ thing made Dell feel like she had everything she needed. That there was no need to be sad, or angry, or anxious. Maybe it was easier to accept baked beans on toast for dinner when you were looking after yourself well.

  Greta and Peggy fought everything. Everyone said, ‘Let go.’ Anything Peggy and Greta let go of had teeth marks in it. They laughed about that as they walked down the street. The heavy dusk was falling in. It felt like they were walking underwater. It was all so heavy.

  ‘It’s so dark,’ Peggy said.

  Greta nodded. She was kicking a stone in an obsessed way like their life depended on it. The road they lived on was busy. Where were people going? It was five o’clock on a Sunday.

  ‘Dark,’ Peggy said.

  ‘Yeah,’ Greta said.

  When they were tiny, like, really small, there had been a very hot summer and all the mothers took all the babies to the paddling pool in the Botanical Gardens. The story went that everyone was sunburnt before they reached the end of their street. The pushchairs were all made of metal, they didn’t even have cushions in them. They weren’t adjustable except the back of the seat could be dropped to lying down. Being a baby wasn’t meant to be a cakewalk. Neither was being a mother. Peggy and Greta weren’t particularly wanted. When mothers like theirs were angry this is what they would tell daughters like Peggy and Greta. ‘I never wanted to have a baby. But I did my best.’ And they did, except when they didn’t. Mothers like Peggy and Greta’s were not happy about Peggy and Greta getting sober. Neither were fathers like Peggy and Greta’s, or brothers like theirs, or any of the girls at the parlour or the married men they’d been sleeping with before they got sober. Greta and Peggy felt very alone. ‘If it wasn’t for you,’ they’d say to each other as the sun came up. As they got on their knees and begged for one more day sober, as they picked up ashtrays at the meetings in the old stone building by the grassy square. ‘If it wasn’t for you,’ with their eyes, with their heart, to god – to say thanks. ‘You’ve taken almost everything,’ they’d say in their braver moments to something that was powerful and terrifying, that they couldn’t understand, something like the big hills, ‘but thank you for giving me her.’

  When they got to the wide avenue at the end of their street, Greta slowed. She looked down the tree-lined footpath. ‘We could go to the Krishnas?’ she said. ‘It’s heaps cheaper.’

  Peggy thought about it. ‘All that fucking chanting, though.’

  ‘It’s not that bad,’ Greta said. ‘It’s good for us. Probably.’

  ‘I really want tom yum. We’re sort of all prepped for tom yum.’

  ‘Yeah,’ Greta said. ‘But we should go to the Krishnas next week.’

  ‘If we’re alive.’ Peggy pushed the button on the traffic light so they could cross. ‘If you and I – or one of us – is still alive next Sunday we’ll go to the Krishnas and eat prasadam and chant like motherfuckers.’

  ‘But not get married,’ Greta said. A woman they knew had gone into the Hare Krishnas and been married to a ma
n, and then she’d left the Hare Krishnas. Every woman who married this man left. They left and the Hare Krishnas found him another wife. No one had seen her since she got married. Peggy and Greta had no idea if she’d left the Krishnas, they just heard from someone. There was a lot of that – gossip, intrigue. Things were boring without drinking.

  ‘Agreed,’ said Greta. ‘No marriage, just prasadam.’ She looked behind herself because she’d lost the stone she was kicking. They were both like that. Acutely obsessed and wildly distractible. Peggy looked around, took a step and picked up a small, round stone. She dropped it at Greta’s feet and Greta smiled. She patted Peggy on the arm to say thanks. If it wasn’t for you.

  They couldn’t walk straight through the grid system to tom yum. There were a couple of houses that still held a bit of a pull. It was best to avoid them, especially on a depressing Sunday night. One day it wouldn’t tempt them. One day they’d joke and say, ‘There’s not enough alcohol in the whole wide world to satisfy the deep hole in us, so why start?’ But there were men in the houses, and where there were men there was the illusion that Peggy and Greta could get what they needed. A habitual idea that the men could give them enough alcohol and drugs to satisfy the deep hole. They’d been raped in both the houses. Lots and lots of times. Once on a terrible night towards the end – smashed in the face and smashed apart by all the men in the house. To an amateur that would seem like enough to put them off. But when they first got back from rehab a week before Dell and Heidi they’d found themselves outside the house, thirsty, starving, telling each other how it wasn’t that bad. Not really. On balance. Compared to not having a drink or a taste ever again. The sun set while they stood there. The lights had come on in the house, they could see the men walking around in the windows. The guy who’d pissed on Peggy and Greta while they lay bleeding and naked in the lounge came out onto the deck because he thought he’d seen them from inside. ‘Peggy,’ he’d shouted. ‘Greta, is that you?’ and they’d stood and looked at him without answering. Looked at how much bigger he was than both of them. Realised, again, like they always did, that they didn’t stand a chance against how much bigger he was and how he had all the others on his side. Still, they thought, maybe. Maybe it’ll be different tonight. Maybe they could get in and get what they needed and then leave. Maybe just steal money – or ask for money. Ask for money for all the times they’d fucked him for free, for drugs. Like debt collectors. And then he walked to the front gate and shouted at them again. And they’d said, quietly, in something only slightly louder than a mumble, ‘No.’ No, it wasn’t them. It was someone else. And they’d walked away realising it wasn’t a lie. They were someone else.