Dead People's Music Page 2

  Megan, Samantha and I crowded into Samantha’s mother’s pink-marbled make-up-strewn ensuite. We were going to be vampires for the night, hair teased, eyes bruised, skin powdered white. Samantha had dyed her blonde hair black the day her parents left. Megan would make a good vixen-vampire, her boobs meeting in the middle like butt-cheeks, a corset-shaped waist, red hair chemically corkscrewed. My hair was naturally brown-black, but I hadn’t inherited my father’s olive complexion; I had my mother’s Celtic, emotional skin. I was too tall, bust barely filling an A-cup, but for once, I could use this to my advantage.

  I picked up a plastic container filled with powder-balls — I had seen the advertisement in a Vogue magazine. The multi-coloured balls were meant to explode on your cheeks, making you luminous. Megan snatched the container out of my hand and handed me the pasty cover-stick. ‘Use it on your chin,’ she said. ‘Actually, Samantha, does your mum have some of that green stuff? We need to cancel out the red.’ Megan was a pro, already wearing foundation and mascara to school. I only owned lip gloss, and my mother had a bottle of perfume in a suede drawstring bag that my dad had brought back from a business trip ten years ago. It was three-quarters full, and looked like a vial of poison.

  ‘Mum’s got everything. She’s obsessed,’ said Samantha, rummaging through a jam-packed drawer, pulling out the blemish concealer and then squashing the products back down again to push it shut.

  ‘You do it, Beck, I’m not going to touch your zits,’ said Megan, and I massaged green circles all over my face. Then foundation, then powder: I iced myself like a cake. I drew a wobbly line around my eye, nowhere near the rim.

  ‘Stop being a sissy,’ said Megan, grabbing the pencil off me, leaning forward to prise my lid open, outlining so close I was sure my cornea would be pierced. Hand clasping my forehead, she licked her finger and then rubbed around my eyelid so the black became all smudgy. ‘There you go,’ she said. Megan was the bossy one, the funny one, the one I was scared to be alone with. Because if there was no one else, she might turn her sharp tongue on me.

  Samantha didn’t need any help; her mother had been encouraging her to add some colour to her cheeks for years. Already she was evolving into her future Goth-self. We skidded lipstick around our mouths, dark and bloody, and glowered at ourselves in the backstage mirror, two light bulbs blown, the remaining ten making red spots in our vision. We inserted joke shop fangs, and the hard white plastic cut into my gums, giving me a hockey pout.

  The boys rang the glockenspiel doorbell, and Megan and I ran to the kitchen, leaving Samantha to answer it. I nervously gulped at my cocktail — it tasted disgusting, but Megan said it would take the edge off.

  And then they were in the kitchen too, not sure of where to stand: Darren, dark-haired and mono-browed, Paul, splattered with freckles as if by a bicycle through a mud puddle. Only Jeff qualified as spunky, a boxing ring jumpiness about him, precocious sideburns bracketing his face. They were wearing matching capes with red satin linings, but they hadn’t bothered with make-up or fangs, and underneath they wore their everyday jeans and T-shirts. I spat my teeth out; saliva was pooling in them and I thought I could taste blood.

  Megan poured them drinks. Paul stuffed a fistful of chips in his mouth and swallowed them like a boa constrictor. Darren whispered something in his ear and Paul snorted, spraying damp corrugated particles all over the bench. Then he started blowing through his nose, saying, ‘It’s stuck up my nasal passages, you wanker, it’ll probably make its way to my brain.’

  ‘We brought The Lost Boys and The Hunger,’ said Jeff. ‘I wanted to get Vampire’s Kiss, y’know, with Nicolas Cage, but it wasn’t out on video.’

  ‘Oh yeah, that’s amazing,’ said Megan, although we hadn’t seen it. It was R18 and none of us could pass.

  Samantha’s parents didn’t watch television in a sitting room, they had a sunken den, all dark mahogany cabinetry with a space for the television and video next to a crystal decanter alcove, a shelf for the complete set of Encyclopaedia Britannica. On top of the electric organ sat Samantha’s violin, and Paul picked it up, cocking it like a machine gun.

  ‘Pyew, pyew, check it out. Die, Don Corleone.’

  Darren clasped his chest and collapsed on the floor.

  ‘Hey, careful, that’s fragile,’ I said, and Paul turned it onto me, this time ratta-tatta-tatting. I walked towards him, and he put his hands up — ‘No, not the fishes, Signorina!’ —then returned it to the corner of the room in mock subjugation.

  ‘Shall we watch the movie?’ said Samantha. She seemed as unimpressed by Darren and Paul as I was.

  I wished we were alone for The Lost Boys, because Kiefer Sutherland was sexy-bad. I sat on my beanbag satellite, too far away for a hand to drift across, converting the erotic charge of the movie into a forcefield.

  I also regretted agreeing to the party theme. As exhilarating as they were, vampires freaked me out. Each night before I went to sleep, I imagined Count Dracula with his cloaked back to me. I lay facing out, my eyes open, a clove of garlic shooting up its green tendril between my clenched fingers. I was poised for him to turn, to reveal his canines, puncturing the thread of vein that tacked my throat.

  While we watched, Samantha passed the jug around, and the others filled their glasses up, but I had been unable to swallow what I already had, too busy worrying at my nails.

  And then it was over: I was elated. We went outside, I thought to look at the stars, but Darren and Paul unzipped their flies, pulled out their tortoisey penises and pissed over the deck. Darren struck a moon-bleached lemon, Paul rained on the lawn.

  ‘Gentlemen, manners,’ said Jeff, more suave, taking a cigarette out from behind his ear, inhaling and appraising us from behind his smokescreen. I examined my split ends. Samantha bit her lip. Megan giggled coquettishly, moving over to Jeff to ask for a drag. She placed the cigarette butt sensually between her lips, somehow communicating that it was practice for Jeff’s tongue. Samantha hitched up her fishnets and ripped a new hole in them. She, like me, thought Jeff was the only decent prospect, and Megan had nabbed him.

  The next movie was The Hunger. The opening scenes were urgent, Catherine Deneuve wearing silver sunglasses inside a New York nightclub, blue-black bodies dancing in the dry ice, a chiaroscuro man singing in a cage.

  ‘Oh my God, it’s Peter Murphy. This is amazing, I love this song,’ said Samantha. ‘You know Bela Lugosi, he played in all the vampire movies and he even died while filming one.’ She had just bought an album from Silvio’s and was contemplating a six-foot poster to go above her bed. Listening to Bauhaus while we waited for the boys to arrive, I had admired the singer’s freaky voice, but found his music oppressive.

  As was the movie. Why couldn’t this have been a Merchant Ivory night instead? I might have to excuse myself to the bathroom, never come back.

  But then, a shift. White tulle billowing, David Bowie played the cello. Not faking it; putting his fingers where they ought to be. He was accompanied by a violin-playing girl, and Catherine Deneuve on the piano. It sounded familiar: Schubert perhaps. The trio was so stately, a beautiful respite from the tension.

  ‘Hey, Beck, sit down, can’t see past you!’ Megan said.

  I had unconsciously raised myself up on my knees, leaning towards the television, wanting to dive into the pool of music.

  ‘Beck is a cellist,’ said Megan apologetically, as if she herself never touched her viola.

  Paul snorted. ‘Darren plays the clarinet. But he plays it with his arse — ah, fuck you, why’d you go and do that?’

  After the music dissipated, I laid my head on the beanbag. Despite monkeys thrashing in the cage, despite Catherine Deneuve seducing Susan Sarandon, I found myself falling asleep, the movie an opiate, my eyeballs retreating into the corridors of my head.

  When I next opened my eyes, Darren was playing my cello, which I’d thought was safe in corner of the dining room.

  ‘Look at me, I’m David Bowie,’ he said, perched on the sofa
arm, the instrument between his thick thighs, the wooden side of the bow clattering on the fingerboard.

  ‘What are you doing?’ I said, my voice crusty from sleep. ‘Put that down, that’s my grandmother’s.’

  ‘Give it to me. You don’t look like Bowie, you look like a dick,’ said Paul. He grabbed the cello by the neck and yanked.

  ‘Nah, mate, I haven’t finished yet,’ said Paul, squeezing his knees tighter, knuckles whitening around its throat.

  ‘Watch out, you’re going to break it and my dad will kill me.’

  I could see Darren wavering, and in that moment Paul overpowered him. The cello lurched out of Darren’s hands, swinging round towards the coffee table. A loud crunch, the strings groaned. Paul dropped the cello on the sofa and ran out through the ranchsliders onto the deck. Darren was frozen, unsure of whether to stay or go. Slowly he backed out after Paul, the curtains falling shut behind him.

  ‘Why didn’t you stop them?’ I yelled at Samantha, who was standing in the doorway with a bowl of popcorn.

  ‘Stop what?’

  ‘Look at my cello.’

  We both stared at the split wood, pale against the honey shellac. ‘This is my grandmother’s. She escaped the Holocaust.’

  ‘Shit.’ Samantha ate some popcorn, her eyes wide. ‘I’m sorry, Beck, I wasn’t paying attention. I was in the kitchen.’

  ‘My parents are going to kill me. She brought this with her from New York.’ Dry, panicky sobs rasped their way up my throat and I tried to stop them, but then I didn’t care if people heard me. ‘They have to leave, leave now,’ I said to Samantha.

  ‘You tell them.’

  ‘No, you.’

  ‘Megan should tell them — she found them. She was only looking out for herself. How desperate does she think we are?’

  ‘Where is she?’

  ‘I don’t know. She was here when I left the room. Did you know you were snoring?’

  ‘So?’ I felt too angry to care.

  ‘They put a tissue on your face, to see it hover. I made them take it off.’

  ‘I can’t stay here. I’ve got to go.’ Tears were making muddy puddles out of my mascara, eroding my foundation. I put my damaged cello back in its case, and hung the noose around its scroll. I joined the Velcro straps across its throat, then swung the pebbled black case shut, securing the silver clips. I picked it up by the handles and lugged it to the door.

  ‘Shouldn’t you get their numbers or something? So they can pay for the damage?’ said Samantha, slumping on the sofa, the popcorn scattering around her like confetti. She looked small and defeated.

  ‘You ask them. I can’t face them, I’m too mad.’

  ‘It’s dangerous out there, you might get …’

  ‘I’ll be fine.’ Opening the door handle, I was already making my way home in my head. I lived in the next suburb, over the viaduct, along the snaky ridge. If an attacker appeared, I could swing the cello, finding strength in fury, barge-poling them over the white safety barriers onto the gorsey banks below. Maybe I should push the boys off the deck first. Maybe I should gore them with my spike.

  A strange wet smacking sound — was that a rapist? Or even worse, a vampire who had stood at the window of our gathering, laughing at his timeliness! My muscles were petrified, and yet I was ready to ditch the instrument and sprint.

  Dark eyes flickered — Jeff. He looked at me and plunged his fingers into Megan’s spiralled hair, pulling her deeper into the hole-punched kawakawa leaves. She didn’t see me, but he smiled, perhaps apologetically. Next time, maybe you? Or was it condescending — You think too highly of yourself. My friends are as good as it gets for a girl like you?

  I stormed down the road, dank air from the south blowing around me. The darkness rose up, bile-coloured lights doing nothing to counter my unease. Every five minutes or so, my arm would feel too sore to carry the cello any further, and I would have to sit on it and rest. Then the vampires would lick my back with their icy tongues. Go get the boys, I whispered. Leave me alone.

  And then, miraculously, I was home. Unharmed. I pulled my key out of my bag and opened the door. Sneaking through the kitchen, along the hall to my room, the floorboards betrayed me. I pushed my cello into my wardrobe and pulled off my vampire clothes, climbing into bed in my underwear, my teeth furry and unscrubbed, my eyes still blackened.

  ‘Rebecca?’ My mother stood in my doorway, rubbing at her sockets. ‘Is that you?’

  ‘Yes,’ I said, trying to sound more asleep than I was.

  ‘But I thought you were staying the night at Samantha’s,’ she said. ‘How did you get home? I didn’t hear a car.’

  ‘Mmmm,’ I said, turning over as if in mid-dream. I lay there, eyes jerking behind lids, until I heard her sigh, turn, walk down the corridor to her room. The light switched off. But I didn’t sleep; I couldn’t.

  The cello hid in my wardrobe, sometimes scaring me when I opened it, mistaking it for a hunched crone. There was a storeroom full of instruments in the music department, and the school’s star cellist had just left for an exchange programme in Switzerland, returning her rented cello. I booked it immediately, telling Mrs Grooby the music teacher that I didn’t want my own valuable instrument to get damaged on the school bus. She praised my sensibleness, and my mother swallowed the same story when I brought it home in its floppy brown case. I didn’t practise: I felt tired, so went to bed instead, waking up needing to pee. I drank water, three glasses full in quick succession, and went back to my room to start on my homework. Only I couldn’t concentrate; I could only think of my grandmother seeping out of the cello. Would she have been like a lamp genie? Could I have made a wish on her, which would probably have been the wrong wish, further cementing my fate? Or perhaps she was like an oil slick, staining Samantha’s shagpile carpet. Maybe she was still resting in the Karori graveyard, her bones jumbled as the instrument cracked.

  I wet my bed the night of my sister Nadia’s twelfth birthday. We had gone to Valentines, piling our plates twice over, then sampling all the different cakes, the ice cream flavours, the chocolates. We had sabotaged the swan margarine sculpture, polka-dotting it with meringues. We had giggled, pleased to be united in naughtiness when normally we irritated each other. She was too wiry, too sporty, too unwilling to recognise songs on the radio; I was too caught up in my adolescence. Nadia had lain groaning underneath the table after her third slice of cake, and my parents had been embarrassed. Apparently I was setting the bad example.

  I felt a flush of shame when I realised the hot dampness around me was pee. I hadn’t wet my bed since I was five, and my mother had made me a sticker chart, rewarding me with a Cindy doll for two weeks of dryness. I pulled the sheets off the bed, eager to make it to the washing machine before my mother did. But she was already there, pouring soap granules across the school uniforms. ‘I only just washed your sheet last weekend. Why do I have to do it again? You don’t have your period, do you?’

  ‘No.’

  She grabbed the sheet off me, flinching when she registered the wetness. She dropped it — she wasn’t wearing her nurse’s uniform, which protected her from bodily discharges. Today she only worked in the afternoon, doing pregnancy tests at Family Planning. ‘You didn’t …’

  ‘I don’t know how it happened. I normally wake up when I need to pee.’ My shoulders rose, wanting to engulf my burning face.

  ‘Have you been waking up to pee much?’

  ‘Maybe three, four times a night?’ It didn’t feel like I was getting much sleep lately, even though I was napping all the time.

  My mother chewed one side of her lip so the other side rose up in a cone. ‘I think we need to make an appointment with Dr Wells.’

  ‘But Mum, I’m busy. I’ve got drama, we’re doing a performance in afternoon assembly.’ I was a tutu-wearing hound dog, doing the can-can in a pound. I could do the best high kicks out of all the girls.

  ‘I’m sure it won’t take long. We’ll see if we can get you in before lunch
.’

  I knew it was bad when the doctor asked me to step outside the office so he could talk to my mother alone. They were friends; they had been in Toastmasters together, before my mother decided that she was too busy and needed to give everything up except tennis and girls’ night. When he opened the door, my mother was looking blotchy and there was a suspicious pile of tissues shredded on her lap. I sat tentatively next to her, and she tried to take my hand but I pulled it back.

  The doctor leaned forward, putting his hands on his knees, and told me to listen carefully. I could see the hairs vining out of his nostrils, I could count the Orion-aligned moles on his left cheek. One of his pupils looked like it squared off in one corner; the other one was normal, the iris gold-flecked.

  ‘Rebecca, your symptoms and the tests indicate that you might have type one diabetes.’

  I looked at him, not recognising the diagnosis.

  ‘It’s a condition where the pancreas ceases to function, because it’s been attacked by your immune system. This is triggered by a virus, or maybe because of genetic factors. But your mother can’t think of anyone in your family. The pancreas is here—’ He prodded below his right ribs ‘—and it looks like this.’ Here, he rifled around on his desk, pushing aside drug company and prescription pads. He found a laminated flip chart and turned it to the pancreas page: it looked like a cloud, or maybe a very fat caterpillar. ‘We need to do a clinical intravenous blood test to make sure. In the meantime, I’m going to call the hospital — you might have to spend a few days there, stabilising your blood sugars, and sorting out your doses.’