10a.

2018, real life

I know I haven’t told brother (or mum, etc.) about J., and the concert will cut family dinner short, but I still messaged him, ‘are you & Joyce coming tonight?’ Dinner is rarely so quiet as last week. Dad also away. Mum tired. And sister, calculating some professional decision she expects herself to make as the three of us sat in silence. Not that I had wanted it to be loud, but among the acknowledged absences there was some unacknowledged one: I had wanted to hear them. I know I could do something about this. I could talk.

I greet them at the door, brother offering some kind of ‘bro’-y/affectionate greeting phrase and launching into a large hug before I can process or reject it. Sister said she saw him sitting in the car outside our house a few days ago, and he wasn’t even talking, or looking at his phone, just sitting. Joyce waves lightly with her right hand and says hello.

Sister says we have to leave earlier because they changed the start time of the opening act, and she especially wants to see them. My parents share eye contact. They ask about my study. They know about the library. They don’t know ‘the library’ means sitting on the ground between the rows in the dusty sections, infrequently napping, occasionally studying, sometimes reading, always waiting for a staff member to tell me to move along. I yawn. Mum asks if I’m sure I’m OK to go tonight.

“We would not want to miss this for anything.” Sister.

They ask why, then, they haven’t been hearing more about this concert.

I think about the singer-songwriter and their deaf mother. I think too long. Sister says “Uhhh… he” pointing at brother “said he feels like we think our music tastes are better than his. They are, so…”

Brother protests. Joyce smiles. Sister checks her watch. Brother talks about how he got secret tickets to a band sister really liked after crying on the phone to the organiser. I’m not sure that sister likes them or ever did. Dad nods with his eyes closed, not good evidence for brother’s hypothesis. Sister’s face does not change for two, maybe three seconds. She laughs. She still did go to that concert with him and Joyce.

Mum asks if we know what story that reminds her of.

I roll my eyes. Sister says she hasn’t heard this one for some time. I say I need some fresh air.

Brother joins after a couple minutes. We kick sticks in the gutter. He asks if I’m doing OK, and says he feels like it’s been forever since we played video games.

The front door opens. “Hey, we need to leave.” The rest of the family shout a collection of phrases averaging out to we hope you enjoy the concert, as if enjoying the concert is a fifty-fifty proposition.

On the light rail sister keeps opening her mouth, but there is no hearing anything. Not between the transit officers, the people wearing the merchandise from the last concert like nothing had changed in their life since then, and the couple standing behind us yelling at each other about whether or not their friend ought to move in with their partner. I write on my pocket notepad, thanking sister for coming. She takes the notepad, there’s no need to thank someone for something they would always do, invariably, for someone they care about. I ask if she’s been reading about determinism again. She laughs as she fiddles with the pocket of her skirt.

Whilst we wait for sister’s coffee she asks if I think this concert will be cathartic. I talk about the song I simultaneously want and don’t want them to play, because there is a small, but non-zero chance I cry, because I don’t want to cry right now, but then maybe crying is a symbol of something real emotional happening, and maybe it’s a necessary signal, maybe that’s what catharsis is. She says something can hurt you really deeply without you crying about it, and you process emotions without having to cry. I say that I know that. I sigh. She says I know you care about people whether you cry or not. Furthermore, other people in our family cry for fun. I laugh.

The opening act is good. Occasionally moving. They say something that goes in my notepad, about their albums creating the boundaries through which they view the different stages of their life, as if the songs of an album were the walls of a house that contained one iteration of themselves. Sister and I discuss the music our older cousins played on the beach holiday when we were looking for her plush snow leopard, the first time she lost it. It was so small, but it had seemed like there was nothing more significant. Whenever those songs play on the radio, she will always think of that version of herself, looking for a toy, an innocent materialist, running, shouting. She says she no longer knows where the snow leopard is.

I lean against a cylindrical pillar. Those who made purchases at the merchandise stand look like ants, carrying their oversized hoodies, taking home some tangible proof they had a certain set of feelings at one point in their lives. Ants can’t carry feelings, only crumbs. But what are feelings? Sister would probably say I’ve gone too abstract. Maybe ants can communicate feelings? I grab my phone. A cursory search seems to indicate ants can communicate fear. A notification runs across the top of the screen.

‘Hi boy, we’re sorry that you & J. broke, up, wished we could have talked about it tonight. We’re here for you. Enjoy the concert. Love Mum’

I feel the phone buzz in my hand as brother messages. ‘Love you bro’

‘Your sister told me not tell you I knew, but you looked sad tonight. You OK kiddo?’ It seems farcical for dad to use this word for the first time ever in a context like this.

I take a deep breath. My gaze rises out from the borders of my phone. Amongst the shifting shapes of the crowd I can see her face, her coffee, her waving at me. She smiles.

Maybe she always had this in her?

If memory is like the bridge of a guitar, each possible note or combination of notes representing some part of your life, maybe my memories of our family have always been so faintly out of tune that I have never recognised the difference between the notes I was hearing and the truth. That feels unfair, and probably inaccurate. Sister - who actually knows how instruments “work” - could probably tell me how this is supposed to work.

I’m relieved to sit down again, relieved the lights dim, relieved they are starting on time, relieved they are noisy enough for the music to envelope us, and not too noisy that we need to stand.

Part-way through the set, the lead vocalist speaks about a cork board in the garage where they first started playing together. They gently strum on their guitar. There is a map of the world with string connecting the pins in each location the various members called home. They cease strumming and apologise. As they tune the guitar they say that playing music together on different instruments is like family.

They play the song I don’t want them to play. I angle my face downwards. I shift my eyes gently from right to left and back again, until I begin to cry. The piano, the guitars, go quiet. Still there, but quiet. I think we can survive this. I’m glad she’s here.

She whispers in my left ear, “are you OK?”

My thumbs are suspended over the phone keyboard. Half a song slips away. I fumble into the keyboard, ‘I’m sorry, I wish J. were here.’

In the light of her phone I see her eyes moving slightly from left to right. She looks at me, before she slightly frowns and nods. She gives me a side-hug.

As we arrive at the salient guitar riff immediately after the bridge, sister’s phone lights up. Two songs later, she apologises and says she really needs to go to the bathroom.

After the encore, I sit against the pillar as the light above me flickers, simultaneously looking and not really looking for her. The ants have left and taken their crumbs. The merchandise desk only has vinyls and CDs left.

She proposes maybe we walk to the train station because the crowds will have swarmed the light rail, and it will be quieter anyway. She occasionally chirps away about some of her favourite songs in the set, and how it’s interesting going to a concert where she only knew half the songs, and how she understands I may not feel like talking. She purchases another coffee.

I look at the empty seats as my ears ring. I pretend to close my eyes. She prods my shoulder twice and asks about my iPod. She talks, faster than before, declares a concert can be the catalyst for hearing the beauty in a song and seeing emotion in the world, says she’s sorry, fiddles with her pocket, pauses, says sorry she has not been as present the last couple weeks, asks me if I want to talk about anything. The songs do give flight to emotions I could never otherwise access, but I shake my head.


Brother and Joyce are still home, asking mum and dad to make decisions for them. Sister steps towards them and asks what they’ve been talking about. I wave, put the other headphone in, lie on the floor of my room, and listen to a soundtrack of a movie where two friends move across the country together. One of the friends, their greatest strength/weakness is ambition, and the opening track plays as the ‘ambitious’ friend is driving them to their new city where they’ve taken a new job. We as the audience don’t know any of that at this point, all we see is the friend’s face, as she looks at the skyscrapers, asking “what is this place where I don’t trust anyone?” in silence, feeling the consequence of risking so much and not having assurance that it will all be worth it, and if that is not devastating then nothing is. I close my eyes.

My iPod battery dies at the end of the song.

My phone battery too, after another couple songs.

I open my laptop, rest against the back of the door, and send an email.

‘Hi Sis,

I thought maybe I would ask why you told dad and the rest of them?

Thanks for coming to the concert. It meant a lot to me.’

I hear the tumbler for the latch in my door. I snap the laptop shut and jump to my feet. The music cuts out. I breathe deeply. I listen to the gentle spring of the latch returning to its resting position. I exhale.

I take my headphones out. I unsend the email.

10b.

sometime around the present

I type the word 'yes' into the presentation.

My phone buzzes. ‘Saturday. 7am. Coffee.’

10c.

2018 or possibly 2019 (it’s ambiguous), a scrap at the bottom of a paper basket

Hi

severely scribbled out words

a tear