The Mother Fault

by Kate Mildenhall

  Fuck. Fuck.

  ‘Nick,’ she yells. ‘Nick! Are you okay?’

  She looks down the staircase, can’t see him.

  Then his voice, yelling frantically, muffled. ‘Don’t touch the steps!’ Swearing, a moan.

  ‘Stay there, Sam. Just stay there.’ She points at Essie. ‘Keep him there.’

  ‘Mum, I didn’t!’ Sam’s face, hand still clutching the plastic wrapper.

  Essie holds his shoulders. ‘I’ve got him, Mum. I’ve got him.’

  She has to get down to Nick. Sees the open hatch above his bed. Thinks of her hips, how to wiggle down. ‘Stay there,’ she repeats, then lowers herself down, scraping her leg. Pain in her armpits. For a second she thinks she is stuck. Breathe, breathe. Gets her boobs through, can feel the bed under her toes now. Lets it take her weight, and she’s in. Rubs her leg as she clambers through to the cabin, calling his name.

  She can’t see him, just the staircase down, not entirely wedged into place. She can hear him though, moaning.

  ‘Nick,’ she says, trying to be calm now, ‘I’m here.’

  ‘My foot,’ she hears his voice from under the stairs.

  Bending down, she gets her hands underneath the fibreglass lip of the staircase and begins to lift slowly.

  ‘Fuck, fuck, fuck!’ Nick yells.

  ‘Shit! What, do I stop?’

  ‘Get it off me!’

  Only when she gets it up to her shoulders can she see the blood.

  ‘You got it?’ He sounds like there is a vice round his chest, like the words are being squeezed out of him. God, where is the blood coming from?

  ‘Mum?’

  The kids peer down from the deck.

  ‘Just stay there,’ she barks. They shuffle back, faces white. ‘Essie,’ she calls out, suddenly realising there is no autopilot, no watch, ‘Essie, stay at the helm.’

  ‘Yep,’ she hears her daughter call out.

  ‘Just watch the –’

  ‘I know,’ she calls back.

  The staircase is so heavy, so bulky. ‘I’ve got it,’ she says, and she hears Nick move, shuffling, sees one bare foot, his leg, no blood, and then the other.

  His foot.

  ‘Don’t let it go,’ he says and she stares at the bloodied end of his foot. The place where his toes should be.

  He emerges, turning on to his arse and shuffling along the floor. His face is white.

  ‘Let it go, now,’ he says. Eyes closed.

  She bends, lets it fall at the last minute, snatching her fingers out of the way, feels for the latch on the side. Locks it in place. Tests it.

  Then she turns around. Nick is on the floor, leaning his back against the end of the couch. His beard seems darker, wiry against the paleness of his skin. Eyes closed, head tilted back, hands spread wide against the timber floor as though to keep him there. Bare legs sticking out of his shorts, unmarked, until the end of his right foot. The big toe looks normal, and the next, but the last three are a mangled mess of blood and flesh, the white of bone.

  She reaches to pull a tea towel from the sink, then changes her mind, pulls open a drawer and grabs a clean one. Kneeling in front of him, she hesitates again.

  ‘Just stop it bleeding,’ he says.

  She nods. Winds the cloth around the foot. Tight, the blood flowering on the faded check immediately.

  She can smell him now, something tart – fear, pain – mixed in with the diesel and rust.

  ‘Mum?’ Sam’s little voice behind her.

  ‘Ice, I need ice.’

  ‘But I can’t lift the lid.’

  ‘Sam, I told you to –’ but she thinks better of it. ‘Come here, it’s okay,’ she says, ‘hold this.’ She wraps his hands around the twist of towel. ‘Hold tight.’

  He nods, his face pinched.

  She goes to the fridge, lifts the heavy lid and buries her hand deep down to find the coldest thing. A can. Of course there’s no fucking ice. Why didn’t she check this stuff, how irresponsible has she been? ‘The first-aid kit, Nick.’

  ‘Under the sink,’ he says, eyes closed again. Pain pulsing in his jaw.

  She fumbles, finds it. Christ. It’s as small as the one she keeps in the car.

  Her nail catches on the zip, she pulls at it roughly and the kit springs open in her lap. Bandages, silver foil packets spill across her lap.

  ‘Go slow,’ Nick says through gritted teeth, but he opens his eyes to look at her now. ‘Can’t afford another mistake.’

  He must smell it on her, this rising fear, see the whites of her eyes brightening with it.

  She fumbles with the little bottle of Betadine.

  ‘Hold this.’

  He takes it from her as she unwraps the bloodied tea towel.

  ‘Sam, grab another towel,’ she says.

  ‘Where from?’

  ‘God! I don’t know!’ His face crumples at her quick anger. ‘Sorry,’ she says, ‘sorry, Sam. There, in the drawer, just a tea towel.’

  The bleeding has slowed, it’s an ooze now, enough to see the damage.

  They are crushed, the three of them. She fights the urge to gag. He’ll lose them all.

  Sam is beside her. ‘Woooahh,’ he breathes out.

  ‘Go check on Essie, see if she’s okay.’

  He doesn’t move for a second.

  ‘Sam,’ she uses the warning tone, and then he is quick up the stairs.

  She takes the plastic bottle from Nick. It’s only fifty mil, it won’t be enough.

  He sees her hesitate. ‘There’s bleach, somewhere.’

  ‘All right, we’ll do that next.’

  She squeezes the maroon liquid out, covers the entire crushed mess of the end of his foot.

  ‘Fuuuuuck,’ he whispers, and she knows he needs something for the pain. Antibiotics too. God, what if his toes get infected, what if she has to – stop. One thing at a time.

  She pulls the gauze bandage from the wrapper. Adds a second one. Her hands are covered in blood, Betadine, she wipes them on her shorts. She can’t remember her first-aid training. Does she wrap the whole foot, is it meant to be tight, not tight, open to the air? She begins at the bridge of his foot, holds the feathered end of the bandage with her thumb and gently begins to wrap it around. Already, the skin around the toes is turning purple-black, the blood dwelling under the damaged surface. She loosens off the next wrap of the bandage. Holds it in one hand, while she flicks out the other. At the end of the foot, she’s not sure. She decides to wrap firmly, there is still blood oozing but it is tacky, dark. She’ll check in an hour. She tucks the end of the bandage in.

  She leans her head in towards his.

  ‘It’s okay. It’s gonna be okay.’

  He touches his forehead to hers. It’s clammy, hot and cold at once. The sharpness of his sweat.

  She scrabbles through the spilled first-aid kit, finds a packet of painkillers, pops four out and gives them to him, gets him water.

  He swallows each one.

  ‘Got to get the motor going. The weather,’ he says.

  ‘I can fix it,’ she says.

  21

  ‘It’s the starter.’

  She waits for him to go on. The statement alone means nothing to her and he knows it.

  ‘One of the bolts was stuck, I nearly had it loose when –’ he stops and shakes his head. Winces with the pain.

  Mim thinks, If you say it, if you say that it was someone else’s fault, I will push you off your own fucking boat. He must sense her bristle, because he changes tack.

  ‘You’ll be able to get it off.’

  ‘Okay, so talk me through it.’

  ‘You got to get the starter motor out so you can check the terminal, that’s the problem.’

  Which means the stairs have to go back up. ‘Kids,’ she calls, ‘stay there.’

  She undoes the latch, lifts the stairs from the bottom as far as she can, then shuffles her body to wedge her shoulder under, shoving them the rest of the way before hooking them up.
A residual smell of hot diesel, metal.

  ‘You’re gonna have to climb right in to get to where it is.’

  ‘What am I looking for?’

  ‘Cylindrical piece of metal, bout as big as my hand, two bolts holding it in place. They’re pretty loose now. You got to get them undone, lift that cylinder away, and pull the starter motor out.’

  ‘The whole thing?’ She leans into the space, there’s a little light on the side of the compartment, but as she moves she throws shadow in front of her.

  ‘You see it?’

  She breathes out heavily. Her knee is stuck against something, and as she wriggles to move her hip and push further in, there is a sharp cramp in her groin.

  ‘Can you see it?’

  ‘No! Give me a second, okay.’

  She hears his huff behind her. She thinks of Ben and all those afternoons before Essie arrived, and then each time the kids outgrew an old bed, and they sat on the floor surrounded by unassembled flat pack furniture and almost wept with their frustration at each other and their respective ineptitude.

  There, the cylinder, the two bolts. She leans against the engine with her left arm, it has cooled now, hardly any warmth at all. With the fingers of her right hand she tests the bolts. One is loose enough to wiggle and she twists it out, feeling each satisfying turn before she loosens the whole thing and drags it back. There is nowhere she can put it down so she stuffs it into the pocket of her shorts.

  ‘Found it,’ she calls.

  ‘Take the bolts out.’

  The second bolt requires the spanner, which she wriggles her arm down to find, and she flexes her upper arm muscle into it, trying to get enough leverage in the small space. The moment when it gives she is elated – simple mechanical success. She twists and pulls and pockets the second bolt.

  From there it is more straightforward. Once she pulls the starter motor out of its place, she can bring it back out onto the floor. Under his eye, she can see what it is she has to do, because he dictates it, this, that part, put this here, wipe this terminal, pull this back.

  Later, she will know that, technically, it was her hands that fixed the starter motor, and brought it back to life so they could get the engine going again, but she could never feel the total pride that she had done it herself. She was Nick’s hands. That’s all. She doesn’t even know if she had listened hard enough to be able to do it again.

  With one hand, Nick can flick the switch, which he does, not even thinking about offering her the chance, a symbolic gesture to acknowledge what she’d done. Immediately it cranks and there is the thrum of it, steady.

  ‘Yes!’ she says, grinning.

  ‘Fixed?’ Essie calls down.

  ‘Yep!’

  Nick slumps back. Sweat beading on his forehead. He nods. ‘Let’s get that autopilot going again.’

  * * *

  Up on deck, Essie is standing tall at the helm. Face determined. The sun is still high and hot, but when Mim turns to see where they are headed, she can see a bank of dark cloud low on the horizon. The first clouds she’s seen that are not high and wispy. This is the weather that’s coming for them.

  ‘What’s it look like?’ Nick calls out.

  ‘Black in front of us, right on the horizon though.’ She turns back to Essie. ‘You’re doing a good job.’

  Essie nods. Not smiling, but proud, she can see. Doing something important.

  Nick’s voice behind her, ‘I need to be up there.’

  She turns quickly. ‘What are you doing? Get off your foot, you idiot.’

  ‘You can’t do this bit on your own.’ He uses his arms to push himself up the step, keep his weight off the foot.

  ‘You have to get off that foot.’

  ‘Move,’ he says.

  ‘You’ve got a crushed fucking foot – you could lose those toes. You need to sit down.’

  He moves into her, uses his shoulder to jostle her out of the way. ‘Then I’ll sit down up here. I’m the fucking captain. You said it. It’s my boat.’

  She would laugh if he weren’t so ridiculous.

  He moves past Mim, hopping on one foot, using the surface holds in the small space, dragging the bandaged foot behind. He swings around to sit on the bench behind Essie. He breathes heavily.

  ‘Want me to move?’ Essie asks.

  ‘You’re good,’ he says, and Mim bristles.

  Nick leans forward, looking at the nav. She sees him adjusting the autopilot buttons, feels the slight shift as the boat straightens into the wind, into what’s coming. The storm is gathering its potential on the horizon. Nick’s face, despite its pallor, is set firm. His eyes glisten a little, like he’s spoiling for a fight.

  He’s right. She doesn’t know what to do.

  ‘Grab those life jackets for the kids, will you?’ he says.

  Terror in the pit of her stomach as she gets them out. Knowing that now, for the first time, he reckons there might be a need for them.

  ‘It’s too big!’ Sam says, but doesn’t argue further as she pulls at the toggles, tightens the thing.

  ‘Just ten more minutes, then I want you under. Okay?’ Essie nods, invigorated, her eyes on the nav.

  * * *

  In the cabin, she tries to distract Sam, gets him to lay out the stale bread for sandwiches. They have to eat something. Empty stomachs will be a disaster if the wind really picks up. She slathers mayonnaise. Sam is quiet. Helpful.

  ‘Was it my fault, Mum?’

  ‘Sorry?’

  He lays out the rectangles of yellow cheese, right to the edges of the bread.

  ‘I was just trying to stop the rubbish going overboard.’

  ‘Sam.’ She turns, puts her hand on the side of his cheek so he has to look at her. ‘Sam, sweetheart, it wasn’t your fault at all.’

  ‘Is he gonna be okay?’

  ‘Yep.’ She turns back to press the bread, slice the knife through on the diagonal. ‘Yep,’ she says again, to convince herself. ‘If the wind stays, we might even get there tomorrow night. How good will that be?’

  ‘Mum?’ Essie calls out.

  ‘You okay?’

  ‘Can you come up here?’

  She is up the steps and sees Essie first, behind the wheel, and then Nick, laid out now on the bench seat of the cockpit, one hand covering his face, the white bandage on the end of his foot now vivid red.

  Mim hurries to him, crouches down. ‘You right?’

  ‘More painkillers.’

  ‘You have to stay lying down.’

  ‘I will.’

  She stops to peer at his foot before she goes back down. She’ll need to rewrap it soon. By the time she emerges with the rest of the pills, the storm is on them.

  It is eerie, how their whole world becomes this new dark, the wind. A moment ago there was sunshine glinting off the water and now there is only inky cloud reflected back in the roiling ocean.

  ‘Essie!’ She is frightened by the fear in her own voice. ‘Go down with Sam, quick now.’

  ‘But Mum, I can –’

  ‘No! Under. Please.’

  The urgency in her tone makes Nick attempt to sit up, his eyes open.

  ‘Shit,’ he murmurs.

  ‘What do I do?’ she says. ‘Tell me. What first?’

  ‘Got to change the sail.’

  Mim looks down at the ocean, the bubble of waves, when did they start moving so fast? Spray flickers her face. All around the boat, the sea has come alive. Dark waves peak and trough, frothing and fizzing. The water hisses along the side as they continue to build speed and the sail above her whucker-thumps in the shifting winds.

  ‘Essie, Sam, you okay down there?’

  ‘Yes!’ they chorus back.

  ‘It’s pretty rocky!’ Sam’s voice tilts with fear.

  ‘Just stay on your beds,’ she yells, and then to Nick. ‘What’s the safest place?’

  He doesn’t reply.

  ‘Nick!’ Urgent now. ‘Where should the kids be?’

  Shakes his head
like he might laugh if he could. ‘They’re fine.’

  ‘What happens if we tip over? How do you get out?’ All the questions she hasn’t asked, the panic, brimming up and over, a flick of sea spray in her face.

  ‘We won’t tip over.’

  Shouting now, wiping the salt from her face. ‘But what if we do?’

  ‘Not worth thinking about.’ Nick sits up fully and wedges himself against the back of the seat, leaving his bad foot stretched out beside him.

  ‘Got to get that sail down.’

  Not worth thinking about because it won’t happen? Or because if it does they’re fucked? She remembers her dream, swimming in the upturned hull, knowing the kids were somewhere in the water darkness beneath her. She lurches with the boat, dry retches. Nothing comes up, and she wipes her face again. ‘How?’

  ‘I can release it from here, but you gotta get up on deck to the mast and flake the sail down onto the boom.’

  ‘What?’

  He points.

  She looks ahead to the foredeck. She’s hardly been up there. The kids know it’s off limits. It’s an obstacle course of coiled ropes and rigs and wires that she does not understand. The whole front of the boat tilts against the horizon. The spray arcs up and splashes the deck as the boat shifts and bucks.

  ‘Keep a hold of something – the mast, a sheet, whatever – just have a hand on something,’ Nick says from behind her. ‘Don’t go over.’

  Mim turns to him.

  ‘We won’t find you if you go over now.’

  Adrenaline is crawling across her chest, spidering into her limbs, her breath. It’s loud, the noise of the sea and the wind, she’ll hardly be able to hear him out there.

  ‘What do I do?’ she asks, turning to him quickly.

  ‘You’ll see the sail go slack at the top when I release it,’ he says. His face is rumpled with pain. He’s aged ten years since this morning, and it shocks her. She glances at his foot, the bandage soggy with blood and muck already. It’ll have to wait.

  ‘You gotta bring it down and secure it.’

  She squints forward, trying to see what it is she must do. The bow is pitching up and down, skewing side to side in the buffeting waves and the boat seems smaller now, yet the front of it appears infinitely far away. Through the companionway, she can just see the kids’ feet, they are lying on the bed together. Sammy’s leg is tucked over Essie’s.