Sea Lily

My parents arrive with a bouquet of lilies. They look immaculate: the flowers, my parents. They look immaculate, and I think that if it weren't for the flowers, you'd hardly guess there was any occasion for the visit.

Mum arranges them in a vase and sits the vase on the kitchen bench. It's a stunning bouquet, all pink and white, pink and white. Pink and ghost white.

She takes Dad's jacket, hangs it on a hook by the door.

Dad shivers, grunts. 'God, it's cold in here. Why isn't the heater on?'

I shrug.

'I thought I paid to get it fixed?' he says.

'It's not that cold,' I say.

'You just haven't acclimatised, honey,' Mum says to him. Then she turns to me. 'It's terribly hot in Singapore right now,' she explains, as if I never lived there, as if I was never dragged away from all my friends in Hong Kong, away from Charlotte. As if I've forgotten how hot and sticky my tears were.

Dad marches over to the heater and flicks it on full bore.

***

We go out for dinner in Manly, because neither of my parents cook and when I offer to, my dad asks, 'Why?' And then we go out for breakfast too, to a café on the beachfront, and since no one is talking about the funeral you'd almost be forgiven for thinking there isn't one.

When we get home, I go into my room and put on the outfit I wore with Will when we cleaned out Pa's room. I step into the living room in the suit, bright red socks and gold-embroidered boots. Mum looks me over, then says, 'I thought you could wear this.' From her suitcase she pulls a shiny bag, and from that she pulls pink tissue paper, and from that she pulls a floral-print dress. White lilies floating in a sea of teal silk.

'But I like what I'm wearing,' I say.

'I think it would be nicer if you wore a dress,' she says.

'I'm comfortable in this.'

'Olivia,' Mum says, holding the dress out, 'I bought it for you.'

'I already have an outfit.'

My dad walks out of Pa's room in a sharp black suit. He eyes my outfit. Scowls. 'Put the dress on, Olivia,' he says over the top of my mother's next sentence.

'But—' I begin.

'Your "outfit" is inappropriate,' he says. 'End of conversation.'

'Fine,' I say, defeated, and take the dress from my mum.

As always when I put on a dress my mother has bought me, it's a size too small. I have to suck in my stomach to do up the zip.

***

Only a few friends ever visited Pa while I'd been living with him, and my parents haven't invited any of them to the funeral. At the cemetery in Fairlight, just ten minutes from the apartment in Manly where Pa lived his entire life, it's just us, the neighbours Will and Annie, and two of my dad's business associates. I wonder if Pa cares, but then realise he's dead, so how could he? We gather around a hole in the ground and watch as a sleek black coffin is lowered into it. He's being buried beside Nan, and though I'm sure he can't feel anything, and that it doesn't really matter how close or how far his plot is from hers, I can't help but mourn the metre and a half of earth between them. Because even when his coffin breaks down around him, as it inevitably will, and the soil fills the holes in his sunken flesh, there'll forever be a metre and a half of dirt and worms and bugs and rocks between his bones and her bones. And there's something awfully painful about that thought. It makes me feel like I'm full of earth myself. Feeling it everywhere. In my ears, my nose, under my tongue. Grit between my teeth. Black sand under my fingernails.

The first shovel of soil lands on a wreath of white lilies and my mum bursts into tears. It's perfectly timed. And then another shovel of soil, and her cries thicken, become heavier, wetter somehow. Dad puts his arm around her shoulders. The colour of her wail is an uncomfortable red. Red like wet autumn leaves, muddy and rotting.

'Come on, now,' Dad says, patting her on the shoulder. 'Come on … enough now.'

***

Dad has booked dinner at a fancy restaurant in the city and invited his two business associates. It's one of those places with a degustation menu, one of those places where someone is paid to match every course with a different bottle of wine. One of those places where you don't ask to change an ingredient, because that would throw out the whole dish. That would offend the chef.

'I can't eat that,' I say, as a plate of beef cheeks is placed on the table in front of me. 'I'm a vegetarian.'

My dad very nearly spits his wine back into his glass. 'You're a what?'

'A vegetarian. I don't eat meat.'

'Since when?' he says, his eyes darting from his business associates, to me, to the beef cheeks, back to the associates. His eyes apologising to them. His eyes punishing me.

'A year ago,' I lie. I ate a chicken salad yesterday. In fact, I ate smoked salmon this morning. But there's something about the colour of the beef cheeks that makes me think of Pa's muddy flesh.

Outside, the clouds are backlit with fierce gold. The same gold that adorns my mum's neck. The same gold that makes her earlobes sag. The weight of it. Her watch. Her rings. Her bangles. Gold. Gold. Gold.

'We'll ask for something else,' Mum says.

'Absolutely not,' Dad says.

'Simon, I think—' she begins.

He cuts her off. 'Don't.' My father glares at me. 'Olivia, do you know how hard it was to get a table here?'

'No,' I mutter.

'What?'

'I said no!'

Hot red flushes down his neck. 'You are embarrassing yourself.' And I want to say, I'm not embarrassed.

But then I look at his hand, resting on the table; I look at how he's gripping the fork, his knuckles white. I know that hand. I know how it stings. How it burns across the cheek. And so I don't say, I'm not embarrassed. I don't say anything at all. I just pick up my knife and my fork, and I slice the cheek in half.

I chew the flesh, the muddy flesh, chew and swallow.

'Olivia has an internship at Lazard,' Mum says brightly, changing the subject. She's good at that, good at diffusing.

Dad relaxes his grip on the fork.

'That's great news,' says one of the associates, and the muscles around Dad's eyes begin to slacken.

Mum continues, 'She just finished her degree in economics.'

'You're finishing in May?' says the other associate, addressing the question to me.

'I took one subject part-time in first year,' I explain. 'That's why I'm finishing half way through the year.'

'She handed in her thesis early,' Mum adds.

The associate looks at my dad, smiles. 'Impressive.'

'Yes,' my mum says, 'we're very proud. Aren't we, Simon?' I sit back in my chair, look out the window at fading gold. 'Yes,' Dad says.

Gold turning into grey.

It's the same offhand yes he gave to the waiter asking, Do you want cracked pepper on your soup?

Then my dad turns to one of his associates and asks him about his work in coal. The associate's forehead is studded with sweat. He has a thick neck that wobbles beneath the chin when he speaks. He tells my dad the coal industry is thriving in spite of this greenie nonsense. Swathes of people across the globe are still living without access to electricity, he says, quoting statistics. The numbers surprise me. He says access to electricity should be a human right, and coal is cheap. For that reason, for now, it's our best option. All he's really doing is ensuring everyone can afford electricity.

And for a moment, it almost sounds heroic.

***

My parents leave Sydney before the lilies in the living room have even begun to wilt. Alone in the apartment again, I make myself a cup of tea and take it out onto the balcony, which overlooks the wharf and the old aquarium. A ferry is pulling in. Behind it, a fleet of yachts are racing towards the heads. I think of the Sea Rose.

'Shit,' I whisper, realising I never called Mac to tell him I couldn't come with him to fetch his boat and sail her home. I wonder if his friend was offended.

I go into my room and grab my phone. His name is saved in my contacts as Mac the kidnapper.

He picks up on the second ring. 'Mac, here,' he says, his voice deep blue.

'Hey, it's Olivia.'

'Oli!' he shouts. 'How are ya, kid?'

'I'm okay. How are you?'

'Great!'

I laugh; his enthusiasm is infectious. 'That's good. Sorry I didn't call last week …'

'No worries. Maggie reckoned I overdid it with the whole sailing to New Zealand thing.'

'The kidnapping.'

He cracks up. 'Yeah, yeah. Something like that.'

There's a moment's silence, then he says, 'Well, I'm just happy to hear from ya,' and I feel the knots loosen.

'How was your sail back to the CYC?'

'It turns out old Sea Rose took longer to clean than expected. We're not bringing her back till tomorrow.'

'Oh,' I say, 'does that mean I can still come then? Please?'

'We'll pick you up at eight.'