‘He was piss-weak. Never went out on a limb. Never took a stand.’
She had humoured him. To be honest she wanted drunk sex, the uninhibited kind they hadn’t had for years. ‘Come to bed,’ she’d said, quietly.
But he’d wanted to talk. ‘You’ve got to do what’s right. That’s all you’ve got in the end, isn’t it? Huh?’ He’d touched her face and she’d thought they might get somewhere, but he’d opened another bottle of wine and she’d gone to bed, pissed off and sober and horny.
People don’t disappear accidentally. You do it yourself, or someone does it for you.
What did she sign? Why the fuck did she hand anything over? What other choice did she have?
She picks up her phone. ‘Please call Raquel at The Advocate,’ she enunciates slowly.
A beep to indicate a recorded message: ‘You have called The Advocate. Please be advised this line may not be secure. If you would like to leave a confidential lead please go to our website and follow the links to the encrypted messenger service. If you would like to speak to one of our staff, you will be redirected now.’
Then a voice, ‘Raquel.’
Mim stumbles, feels stupid. ‘Hi, it’s Miriam Elliot here, you wanted to speak to my husband… at Golden Arc.’
‘Yes?’
She almost hangs up, feels the humiliation swelling in her. ‘Sorry, I just, he’s still missing and I wondered if you might be able to –’
The journalist cuts her off. ‘I’m sorry, Miriam, but unless you’re able to provide an update on the situation –’
‘No, I –’
‘I’m sorry, I can’t help you.’
Mim notes she does not sound sorry.
‘Get in touch via the website if there’s any new information. Good luck.’
And the line cuts out.
‘What the fuck,’ she says under her breath, and then, ‘What the actual fuck?’
Her phone buzzes in her hand. A message from an unknown number.
It takes a moment to register what she is seeing, scribbles on paper.
She holds the screen closer to her face, using one hand to shadow the sun.
Don’t call again.
Get out of town.
They will come for you.
From across the playground, Sam calls her name and she tears her eyes from the screen to wave and smile at him.
What if, instead of looking for her husband, they come looking for her?
* * *
Her mother’s voice is so familiar it startles her.
‘Mum! Hi.’
‘Hello, darling. I was beginning to think I wouldn’t get a call this week.’
‘Sorry, it’s been busy.’
‘Of course it has. How are the children?’
‘Good, we’re good. Sorry, Mum, I’ll be quick.’ She needs to babble out the idea before she changes her mind.
She rushes on. ‘Remember how I told you about that job? With Heidi?’
‘At the university?’ Her mother stretches out all the syllables. She’s like that, old-fashioned, a bit of a snob. My daughter, working at the u-ni-versi-ty. Never mind that it’s an underfunded regional shithole. It bears the same name as its big city sister and that’s enough for her mother.
‘Yeah. I’m going to come up to meet with Heidi about it. We’ll be up tomorrow. That okay?’
‘Of course. Ben coming with you?’
His name, so normal, the sting of it.
‘Nup. Maybe later, he has to work.’ It is a version of the truth.
‘I’ll get the rooms ready.’
‘No fuss, Mum, okay?’
‘None at all.’
She ends the call as Essie runs towards her. ‘See that, Mum? See what I just did?’ She holds her screen up in front of her to capture a selfie with the soccer field behind her.
Mim smiles, dazed. ‘Yes,’ she says, ‘amazing.’
* * *
When the kids are in bed, she pours herself a glass of white. She wants Ben. Feels fear gripe in her guts. In the toilet, she shits liquid and feels relief for the light-headed emptiness in the wake of it.
They will come for you.
Fuck, Ben, what have you done?
She imagines opening the door of the bathroom and turning in the hall and into their room and seeing the bulk of him there in the bed. Pulling back the covers and sliding in next to him and feeling the weight of his arm go around her. Even in sleep, that sour warmth, the recognition of skin on skin – like sleep itself – as familiar as that. She can smell him. She feels as though she can conjure him up through the force of her need.
* * *
In her memory, that first autumn they were together is blown with light, wind and fingertips creeping in to touch skin under t-shirts. She is constantly distracted by the thought of him. She drops coffee cups. Overfills pots of beer. Thinks that she had better pull herself together or she will have a car accident. Sometimes Ben comes and sits at the corner of the bar where she works and when she knocks off they do not make it home; he pulls her against the dark wall around the corner, or in the shadows of the playground at the end of the street and they are all hands and mouths, frantic with desire. It is unsustainable, she knows, this fire. It will burn itself out. In some ways she is relieved by this. If it continues she will not be able to get her head straight. They do not speak about what it is, because it just feels as though it should be. They are cocooned in the blinkered way of lovers. No one has ever felt like this.
* * *
Sam calls out in his sleep. She wipes herself. Washes her hands. Pads down the hall to his room. The sheet on his bed is pulled back, and even when she squints against the darkness she can see there is no one there. Her breath catches. She switches the light on, says his name, steps into the room, then rushes out and opens Essie’s door with both hands.
There, in the bed, the two of them.
Sam’s blond tufts tangled in with Essie’s dark hair. Mim stands over the bed and is astonished to see how, in sleep, Ben’s face appears to be growing out of the children’s bone structure. The arch of Essie’s eyebrow, the length of space between nose and lip, the curve of it on Sam. She feels as though she might commune with her husband through the shadow of him in their faces.
And then? What would she say?
You stupid fuck.
I hate you. I need you. I love you.
Mim wants to lie down and curl herself around her children.
She remembers putting Essie down in her cot, the rituals of protection. Tucking her in under organic flannel sheets pulled tight to the edge, no toys, so there is no way she can get caught, tangled, smothered. A sensor pad will sound an alarm if it cannot pick up the regular movement of Essie’s breath. A camera in the bear on the bookshelf, a monitor to test the air. Mim dutifully records her daughter’s feeds on the FeedApp, which syncs with her FitApp and posts daily records of how much Essie has grown and the rate at which Mim has failed to shrink. There can be no surprises, and if there are, the data will be logged and seen and corrected and all will be well. In this way, they stumble through.
Safe.
But always, from the very beginning, that throb deep inside, what had been part of her is now outside of her. The terror of what is beyond her control, the first moment of clarity: I will feel like this forever.
3
It’s a ten-hour drive from their home in the suburban fringe of the city to the farm, barrelling up the highway, cutting clean across the wide brown northern reaches of the state and crossing the border to dip down into what was once the fertile plains of the food bowl of New South Wales. No one calls it that anymore, of course.
It takes an age to leave the fringe, extended as it has to meet the fringes of the regional centres coming towards them. At least they generate a shitload of energy. All those roofs with all those solar panels, nothing shading them. No trees at all but for the very last of the river red gums dotted sporadically, monuments now to the lives that were lost trying to pr
otect them in the years of eco-terrorism. Native grasses do well. Succulents. The genetically modified perennials designed to attract the genetically modified bees. There was no collapse in the end. Not the kind they expected, anyway.
She knows there is a BestLife estate out this way. Not the one Michael was in, that was in the west.
She remembers the visit. They must have had better water allocation on the estates. Blossoming eucalypts clustered at the edge of the front gates, almost camouflaging the glass gatehouse. The gates, imposing and yet aesthetic, rustic iron hinged onto enormous hunks of sculpted sandstone. It could have been a peninsula winery but for the uniformed guard, who cheerily directed Mim to place her hand on the screen. It looked exactly like a ticket dispenser to get into a parking lot, except this time she didn’t get anything back. As she drove through, she noticed the cameras, the black bulbs of them under each of the architecturally designed streetlights. Who the fuck did they think wanted to get in here that bad?
Michael had agreed to her visit. She supposed that’s why they let her in. But still, she hadn’t spoken to him beforehand. It just came through as an alert on her screen: Approved visit to BestLife, Bacchus Marsh. It took her an hour and a half to drive there. Her breasts were swollen and hard and her left was beginning to leak. She needed to feed Essie.
The estate looked no different to the sprawling new suburbs that had multiplied cancerously in the paddocks on the outskirts of the city when she first moved down. Cookie-cutter houses with imposing front doors and drought-tolerant front yards. There were blocks of townhouses, double storey only, so that the whole place had a country estate feel. A sign ahead told her she was passing a Learning Sanctuary: a safe place for your child to thrive. A canopy of lush trees peeked from behind the high fences. She lowered her window and could hear the kids squealing, a green ball popped high in the air above the fence. For all she wanted to mock it, to be suspicious of the immaculate spin of it all, she thought perhaps they really had done what they said they would: changed the trajectory of people’s lives, given them a second chance.
Michael’s townhouse looked just like the rest of them, heavy door flanked by the ubiquitous black bulbs of the cameras. She thought about poking her tongue out at them but didn’t. She could have used the capsule to bring Essie in but she wrapped her in the sling instead. For her brother’s approval. She thought he might change his mind if he saw that baby Essie was so clearly part of his sister. Tethered to her. That Mim was using old ways to be a mother. Doing it consciously.
He opened the door and he was, for a moment, himself. An eagerness, delight even in his eyes, his mouth. Later she thought he was high, he was just high.
‘Hello, Mim,’ he said and leaned forward to usher her in, peering curiously at the package strapped to her chest, the little fist that had escaped and was resting against Mim’s shirt. ‘This is her?’
It was so good to see him. He looked better than he had in years. They must have been making sure he ate, it must have been part of the deal. Fuck, she had missed him.
‘My boobs are gonna burst,’ she said, instead of hugging him fiercely, letting the last nine months go unspoken. ‘Let me inside so I can feed her, then you can have a hold.’
On the couch she unswaddled her child, unclipped the maternity bra, pulled across her shirt. He looked away at first as she held her daughter’s head firmly, squeezed the tender points of her jaw to help her clamp her hungry mouth against her darkened nipple. The sound of it, perhaps, was what made him look, the gulping slosh of the milk being sucked from Mim’s ducts and into the tiny body.
‘How does she do that?’ he said, face open in astonishment.
‘Ferociously,’ Mim said and snorted. ‘And cos I’m what is keeping her alive.’
‘That’s…’ he shook his head. ‘I didn’t…’
She looked at her brother’s face, saw that this might be the thing to sway him. But she was suddenly engorged with jealousy, that his tenderness was all for her daughter and not for her.
‘It’s been really fucking hard,’ she said, and he looked up, surprised perhaps at the bitterness in her voice.
She told him, some of it anyway, and he listened and Essie slept, milk drunk, against her, and for an hour or so it was something like it used to be. The room was small but new and bright and clean. She was glad for her brother, thinking of some of the dank places she’d gone to meet him when he was deep in the clutches of ice. He was mellow, too much so, she thought at one point, and she asked about the clinical trial. What it involved.
It was cutting edge, the pharmacological team were just ironing out the last glitches in the prescription doses. He said he was feeling optimistic, like this was his chance to really get somewhere.
‘I’m a new person,’ he said.
‘Maybe you could come and stay with us for a bit when it’s over?’ Mim said, thinking about keeping him safe, helping him to stay clean.
He looked surprised. ‘Oh, I can’t leave.’
‘Sorry?’
‘It’s in the contract.’
‘During the trial?’
He shook his head. ‘It’s how I get the house, the payments, all of it.’
She guffawed. ‘What, you signed a contract to say you’ll stay here forever?’
‘Yes.’
‘You’re fucking kidding me, right?’ Essie squirmed on her chest, grizzled.
‘It’s okay. It’s what I want. This project will change the way people treat addiction all over the world, change the way drugs are regulated, save hundreds and thousands of lives.’
‘You sound like a fucking mouthpiece.’
He shrugged, that gentle smile again. Now it was irritating.
‘I’m happy, Mim. You don’t have to worry. The Department know what they’re doing here. I trust them.’
‘Bullshit! You’ve never believed in anyone in charge!’
A knock on the door. Mim looked up in surprise, instinctually cradling Essie’s head in her hand.
‘That’ll be Elwin. My coach,’ he added as Mim questioned him with her eyes.
Elwin made it clear that it was time for Mim to go, and Michael didn’t disagree. She tried to get him on his own as she changed Essie and packed up the nappy bag. Said she could go for a walk and come back when they were done.
‘That’s okay,’ Michael said. ‘Maybe next time.’
‘You didn’t even have a hold,’ Mim said and let the hurt sound in her voice.
He said he would next time and cupped the baby’s head for a moment at the door. Mim took the opportunity, despite Elwin hovering in the hallway behind.
‘You can call me, right, any time, it didn’t take that long to get here, I can come whenever. I’m a lady of leisure now, right?’ She laughed, but it was too high, too brittle.
‘It was good to see you,’ he said, like a script, and his eyes were skittery tired. She gripped him hard on the shoulders and didn’t want to let go.
She felt hollow as she approached the gates of the estate. What had happened to her brother? She’d thought that nothing could be worse than the dark days of his addiction but maybe darkness insinuates itself in other ways. There was a black SUV ahead of her and Mim slowed to a stop. A female guard was standing by the window of the SUV. She appeared to be listening. Her face was pleasant, relaxed. Mim wished she could hear the conversation. Then the guard shook her head, still the pleasant smile, and after a moment, the SUV did a U-turn around the small grassed roundabout. Mim tried to see the driver’s face as the car passed, accelerating slightly. It was a woman, her face set, and there was a child in the back seat.
Mim’s chest was tense as she approached the guard, waiting in front of the closed gate, discreetly holding up her screen to check the numberplate. The guard held out the screen and Mim hesitated before remembering, holding out her hand to swipe her brand-new chip. In the back, Essie mewled.
‘Just a moment, please,’ the guard said and Mim had to brake because she had already begun
to move off at the sound of the woman’s voice.
‘Sorry?’
But the guard was stepping quickly towards the gatehouse, one hand behind her, palm splayed, telling Mim to stay put.
Mim could hear her blood swooshing in her ears. In the rear-vision mirror she could see Essie’s little leg kicking out from the capsule, her face in the mirror Mim had installed so she could always see her, eyes scrunched, mouth stretching.
The gate was very solid from this angle. She could see now that the artistically wound iron, as pleasing as it was to the eye, was impenetrable. She wondered what force the front of her car could withstand. The speed required to break a gate off its hinges. She closed her eyes and saw the other driver’s face. Was it blank? Or terrified?
Beyond the iron gate she could see the service lane to the highway, could imagine the coloured swish of other cars, driving back and away from here, on the outside. She thought she was going to hyperventilate. She pressed down on the handbrake, slid her foot to the accelerator. Wondered if what they say about airbags is accurate. Essie’s face, her kicking foot.
And then the gate was opening.
‘You’re good to go,’ said the guard as she tapped the door and stepped back.
Not until she was out on the highway had Mim truly begun to breathe. She lowered the front two windows, took great gulps of air, turned the music up loud and whooped in relief.
* * *
Mim shakes her head. She needs coffee, albeit the shitty stuff they’ll serve in one of the big highway stops. Dry paddocks, dumped rubbish on the shoulder of the highway, every now and then a hybrid that’s run out of juice of both varieties, waiting for a city owner who didn’t comprehend the distances out here, to come back for it before it’s nicked or torched. Sometimes, the sporadic gruesome splendour of a floral highway tribute to a loved one who’s become a tangled mess on this stretch of road.
The Mother Fault Page 3