The Mother Fault

by Kate Mildenhall

  * * *

  Essie quietens. Slowly. Until it’s just shuddery breaths, her face hidden by her hair.

  Mim won’t let go. She says her name, pulls back. ‘I’m sorry,’ she says.

  But this is not the end, she can see when Essie’s red face snaps up, the bite in her voice when she speaks through gritted teeth.

  ‘It doesn’t matter anyway!’

  ‘Hey,’ Mim says quietly.

  But Essie is up now, roaring.

  ‘I’ll never make the team,’ she yells. ‘This was my chance. And we’re here, on this stupid bloody boat in the middle of the ocean and I hate this, I hate this. I hate that we are here, and that Dad isn’t here, and that we’re not at home where I can just go with Jo’s mum and do the tryout and make the team and have something else which is all mine which I am really, really good at, which you and Dad will come together to watch, and we can all go and have pizza afterwards like Meg’s family do, because they are a normal family, and I just want to be as good as her, I want to be better. I want to be the best. But I’ve missed my chance. And I don’t care the ball is gone. It’s good it’s gone. I’m glad it is, anyway.’

  Mim tries to reach out for Essie, but she ducks away from her hands, goes down under.

  Mim looks at Nick, there is blood on his hand, and he is sitting a few feet away, watching them, the shock of it writ on his face. Like he suddenly knows who they are.

  ‘There’ll be other balls,’ says Sam.

  If Ben were here this is the moment where he would temper Mim, tell her to wait, I’ll go in a minute, and everything of Mim that was prickle and bluster and hurt and try would be relieved that Ben could approach sideways, no agenda, no Can we talk about this, just Dad. And she might go in an hour later and find them reading together, or lying back on the bed talking, staring at the ceiling, side to side, that careful considered approach, not head-on like her own.

  Mim pushes the heels of her hands into her eye sockets, hard, so that the darkness bursts red-veined, and she thinks she might make them pop, if she pushed hard enough. Because in this dark behind her eyes there is Ben. Ben. Even the fact of this absence, this unknown, is so extraordinary to her because she has never, not in all their years together, gone this long without talking to him.

  19

  Another day at sea. The early shift, then the midnight, the tell-tales flip-flipping against the sail. Counting knots, counting hours, the kids with their cards. Cups of tea, pots of coffee, the kids into the lollies, bored. And the sea, the sea, the endless swell. The way the light shifts, bounces sometimes off the planes of the waves, the deep roll of the current moving one way underneath, the quick flick of the wind pushing white caps the other way. Nick tells them they’ve now crossed the Timor Sea, and Sam traces the lines on the nav. States, a country, now an entire sea. They are so far from where they began. She wonders how much a kilometre weighs. She can feel them inside, the distance from what she has left behind. Heidi, Heidi. She cannot speak her name. The ever-shrinking distance between her and Ben.

  Time, distance – they are both held in suspense out here, liquefied.

  ‘Mum!’ Essie’s voice is frantic, pitched high over the engine and wind. Mim’s stomach cinches, body moves before her brain. Down the companionway, her hips jolting against all the surfaces as her panicked body forgets to move with the sway.

  ‘Essie! What! Is it Sam?’

  But he is lying on his bunk, book in hands, eyes peering over the top, concerned at the pitch in his sister’s voice.

  ‘She’s in there,’ he says softly and inclines his head towards the tiny bathroom.

  Mim puts both hands against the door, pushes gently, but it’s locked. ‘Ess? You okay? You sick?’

  Her daughter’s voice is quiet. ‘No.’

  ‘Let me in?’

  ‘You won’t fit.’

  She almost smiles. ‘Come out then?’

  ‘Is Nick there?’

  Mim feels the cinch in her throat this time. ‘He’s up on deck.’ The lock rattles and the door pulls back. Essie’s face all blotchy, her hand clenched around a bundle.

  ‘Ess?’

  ‘I think I’ve got my period.’

  ‘Oh, Essie.’ She wants to laugh and cry and hold her all at once. She wants to run from the change in her. Wants to grow her back down already, back through time, limbs growing shorter, flesh plumper and softer, words falling backwards to sound, take her back to the breast, back to her inside. Keep her there. Stop, she thinks, please stop. ‘Oh my darling,’ her voice cracks.

  She puts her arms out and Essie caves into her, sobs, crunches the bundle to her, which Mim realises now is covered with her daughter’s blood.

  ‘Have you got something?’ Mim says. ‘Do you need a pad? A tampon?’

  Essie speaks into Mim’s shoulder, ‘I used toilet paper.’

  ‘Here.’ Mim gentles her back, takes the scrunched ball of undies from her daughter’s hand. ‘Let’s get sorted.’

  Sam is sitting upright now. ‘What is it?’

  ‘Nothing!’ Essie explodes. Then softer, ‘Mum, make him go away?’

  Her rawness. It hurts. ‘Sammy, upstairs to help Nick for a bit, yeah?’

  ‘But he doesn’t need help.’

  ‘Sam!’

  He grumbles, but goes. He wants in on this secret whispering between mother and daughter. Mim wishes he could be part of it too, but Essie is crackling with emotion. The unfairness of it. What I have to bear that my brothers do not.

  Mim finds a pad in a side zip of her bag. There are five there, and tampons. Essie might have to learn from necessity. She is stupid for not packing more. Yes, she was ready for this, and no, she was not. Would never be.

  ‘Does it hurt?’ Mim asks, boiling the kettle. She’ll try and soak the rust brown stain of her daughter’s blood from the blue-spotted underpants. She is going to cry. ‘I can get you some Panadol?’

  Essie nods and Mim doesn’t know whether it is pain and shock or some other older, primal thing which has cowed her daughter’s shoulders a little. She wants to tell Ben. Needs to tell Ben. Needs to say all the things that she can’t to Essie. I’m scared, and sad. What if this means she is gone from me? She is not a child anymore. Where has my child gone? She feels her daughter cleaving from her, and is grateful then that they are tight up against each other here, that Essie has nowhere to run and hide from her.

  * * *

  Mim sits with Essie, legs dangling over the edge of the boat. Sun on their shoulders, fingers laced in the wire. They have both grown brave out here.

  ‘What’s that?’ Essie points out to the water, one hand shielding her eyes. ‘Something floating?’

  ‘Where?’ Mim stands to get a better view of where her daughter is pointing. The sun flashes on the water, mirrored spangling. She tries to make out a shape. ‘What colour? How far out?’

  Essie points, voice frustrated, ‘There! A round thing. Looks like a ball!’

  It’s a fair way out, but now Mim can see it. Sitting high on the water, big and white, bobbing with the waves but holding its position. She wonders, heart cracking for a moment, if Essie thought it was her ball. ‘It’s a buoy.’

  ‘All the way out here?’ Essie looks at her, incredulous. ‘Why?’

  Mim sits down again, lets the sun soak her, wants to extend the moment with Essie. ‘Could be sensors, they use them to detect tsunamis.’

  Essie calls out, ‘Sam! Tsunami buoy!’, pointing out to where it is receding in the waves behind them. ‘Sam will lose his mind,’ she says and sounds incredibly grown up. ‘Do they work?’

  Mim smiles and sighs. ‘They should. But they haven’t always. Sometimes fishing boats use them to moor on, or no one checks them. Funding is a problem. These places out here, they don’t have as much money as us.’

  ‘But if they are working, then…’ Essie looks at her.

  ‘Yeah.’ Mim nods. ‘In theory, they’re placed strategically to detect seismic activity, then to issue an earl
y warning so that people can evacuate to higher ground.’

  ‘So have they ever used them?’

  ‘When they’re working, sure. This whole area is tectonically complex.’

  ‘Explain.’

  Mim laughs at her daughter’s tone. ‘Well, right now, we’re sailing over the edge of the Australian plate. There’s a collision zone with the Pacific plate to the west of us, a collision with the Eurasian plate to the east and then, right here, it’s subducting beneath Indonesia along these trenches. Right here, underneath us. Australia moves seven centimetres further north each year. Eventually they’ll meet.’

  ‘What does that mean?’

  ‘It’s an earthquake belt. Volcano, earthquake, tsunami, it could happen at any time.’

  ‘Don’t say that!’ Essie pushes her with her shoulder. ‘Sam might be into it. But I don’t wanna hear if we’re about to get sucked under a huge wave. I’d prefer not to know.’

  Mim nods. Runs her fingers lightly down the knobbles of her daughter’s spine. ‘Yeah, I get that too.’

  ‘But you like it. It’s weird.’

  ‘What do you mean, weird?’

  Essie puts her head on one side, traces a finger along the horizon, squinting, as if she’s trying to measure it. The late afternoon sun turns the waves a deep gold. ‘That you think about that stuff.’

  ‘It’s kind of part of my job.’

  ‘Do you ever wish you had a job like Dad? Where you could go away?’

  She pushes her sunglasses against her face, surprised by the sudden hot burst behind them. You can’t lie to an eleven-year-old. Not really.

  ‘Sometimes.’

  Essie nods, puts her hand on her mother’s. ‘We’ll see him soon, Mum. We’ve just gotta hold on a bit longer.’

  No stopping the tears now. She turns and presses her lips hard against her daughter’s head. Lets her tears drip into her hair.

  ‘We should make dinner,’ Essie says, but Mim holds her there, just a little longer.

  * * *

  In the night, a tugging low at the bridge of her hipbones. She moves to the tiny bathroom in the dim light of the navigation desk. Pisses. Wipes herself and sees, of course, her body momentarily tuned to her daughter rather than herself. In the middle of the sea, she is bleeding too.

  When she opens the door, Nick is at the galley, filling the kettle.

  ‘I can do that for you,’ she says. ‘Sorry, is it my turn? Here, let me.’

  He looks at her with tired eyes, nods, thanks her, tells her to bring it up, brushes his body against her as he moves back up the steps.

  The tired, quiet need of him. It turns her off.

  She makes the coffee strong. Makes herself one too. Thinks she will sit with him. Try and convince him to go and have a sleep while she does a couple of hours. She is up now, awake enough, and she can see a small and reckless mean rising in him the longer he stays awake.

  ‘Thanks,’ he says, taking the hot cup from her, loosing his fingers across hers, pausing there.

  She pulls away.

  He shifts sideways. ‘Right,’ he says. ‘That how it is?’

  ‘It’s like nothing,’ she says. ‘I just – I’ll sit with you.’

  He tries again, turns to her. ‘I don’t want to just sit with you.’

  She inhales, wraps her fingers more tightly around the cup. ‘I can’t. I want to and I can’t. I have to stop.’

  He jerks his head back. Laughs low, cruel almost.

  ‘What changed?’

  ‘Nothing, it’s not…’ She turns so he can’t see her face. Don’t cry, do not cry. ‘I didn’t mean for this to happen.’

  ‘You sure about that?’

  She reels back. ‘What the fuck?’

  ‘You found me.’

  She stands up. ‘You wanted in – you said yes.’

  ‘This,’ he gestures his hands between the two of them, ‘this isn’t what I was after.’

  That familiar bruise of hurt. It blooms into something else.

  ‘Then what are you after, Nick? Getting your kicks from saving me, huh? You like fucking other men’s wives – is that it?’

  Quickly, he smashes his open hand onto the edge of the bench. She startles away from him. Astonished.

  ‘Fuck you,’ she says, more bravado than she feels.

  ‘Sorry,’ he says, sighs, shakes his head. ‘Sorry. I’m tired. I’m sorry.’

  She has nowhere to go. She wonders if the kids have heard anything. They drink their coffee in silence. She takes his cup and goes to bed.

  20

  Morning. Waking from deep rocking sleep to Nick banging around in the cabin. Has she missed her alarm? She pushes off the sheet, the sour bed smell of her, warm and clingy.

  ‘Fucking motor won’t start,’ he says.

  She rubs her eyes, wills herself to waking. ‘What?’

  ‘There was a noise about half an hour ago, turned it off to check. When I went to turn it back on, nothing. Fucking nothing. Fucking knew we shouldn’t have left without the spare starter.’

  ‘Can we fix it?’

  He looks at her, scoffs, goes to say something and then seems to swallow it back.

  It annoys her. ‘Well, tell me if you need a hand. You want coffee?’

  He runs his fingers over his hair. ‘I’ll have to disconnect the battery to work on it. We won’t have power for a bit. No water. No autopilot. I’ll come up and run you through the coordinates. You and the kids’ll have to stay up on deck, I have to pull this whole thing up.’

  Resentment curls its fingers in her guts.

  ‘Ess and Sam, you awake?’ She knows they are, their closed eyes and curled reposes nothing like the real vulnerability of sleep. ‘Come up on deck, we’re in charge this morning.’

  Essie groans. ‘Do we have to?’

  She wants to go easy on her, understands the cramping heavy in her daughter, the hormonal strangeness. But it makes her harder.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Fine.’ Essie throws back the sheet, grabs her book. Sam is already clambering up the steps.

  It is hot. She tells Sam to sit in the shadow of the mainsail, hanging limp and useless. The sea barely ripples. The salt-flecked heat begins to solidify around them.

  * * *

  They avoid speaking to Nick for an hour but the kids are getting fidgety. She didn’t realise it would take this long. They haven’t had breakfast even. They’re hungry and she needs coffee. She calls out down the hatch, but the stairs of the companionway are still up – that’s the only way he can access the engine and there’s no other way to get down.

  ‘You want a break? Some food?’

  There’s no reply, just some thuds and bashes.

  ‘Nick? You gonna take a break? Can I grab some food for the kids, for you? Can I help?’

  ‘What?’ His voice is muffled.

  ‘Can you take a break? Kids are starving.’

  There is the sound of huffing, clanging of metal on metal, the heavy staircase shifts, and folds down halfway, and Nick is there, face flushed and pissed off.

  ‘Can you make it quick?’

  ‘Yep.’ She wants to snap back at him, but she holds. ‘Kids, come on, let’s grab some snacks.’ She waits as Nick clicks the staircase back into place and then hurries down. He turns away to the desk.

  Essie hurries after her, slams the door of the head to lock herself away. Shit, she should’ve thought, tries to recollect her first period, the excruciating strangeness of it. The shame.

  Mim grabs a packet of biscuits. She wants coffee so bad. ‘Can I put the kettle on quickly?’

  Nick grunts.

  She has to reach past him to switch on the gas, and he leans away from her, intent on the screen. Arsehole, she thinks, she should have known that there would be some thread of aggression idling away under the surface. There always is.

  ‘Shit,’ he murmurs.

  ‘What is it?’ she asks forcefully, he can’t just shut her out of it.

  ‘Wea
ther coming. I’ve really got to get this sorted.’ He turns to her. ‘Things can turn to shit pretty quick.’

  ‘Yeah, I can see that.’ She leans back and flicks the switch off.

  She knocks hard on the door of the toilet. ‘Essie, come on. Nick needs to fix the engine.’

  ‘I am hurrying!’ Essie yells, a catch in her voice.

  Nick is trying to soften, realising he’s being a shit. ‘It shouldn’t be long, half hour max. Then I’ll make you coffee.’

  She hears the apology in his voice, but she’s ushering Essie and Sam up the staircase ahead of her and back onto the deck. The sound of Nick swearing and muttering is muffled beneath them, the staircase is heaved into the holding position and clicks.

  Essie scrunches the plastic wrapper from the box of biscuits in her hands and wedges it between two bottles of water on the table.

  ‘Careful it doesn’t blow away,’ Mim says.

  Sam says, ‘This is a funny breakfast.’

  A breeze, sly and quick, darts through the cockpit, releasing the purple wrapper, picking it up and swirling it in front of them for a second before it flies up.

  ‘Quick,’ Mim says as Sam leaps up, arms outstretched, leaning forward, racing to grab it before it twists up and out into the sea. One step, two, back towards the companionway.

  ‘Careful,’ calls Mim, as Sam jumps, the wrapper dancing above him, and he puts his foot on the upturned staircase to lift himself higher –

  ‘Sam, no!’ Mim yells. ‘It’s not –’

  He jumps back away, hands on the wrapper, triumphant. She sees the steps shift, hears a heavy whoomph.

  ‘No!’ she yells, and the steps fall.

  For a fraction of a second there is only the heavy thud, and then a yelp.