Beneath the Mother Tree

by D. M. Cameron

Where were all the photos? The letters?

  She remembered the tiny latch at the side of the box, twisted it then pulled out the false bottom to reveal his face, so like Riley’s it jumped out across the years and stole her breath. There they were, the three of them, happy and young, Riley still a baby. Such a beautiful baby. She felt the grip of his tiny hand in that cramped apartment with the rats in the walls, the broken toilet, the pot plants they painted themselves that sat on the windowsill. Far in the back of her mind it occurred to her that it was the only time she had been truly happy. Before the thought could solidify, she heard a flute.

  She rushed to hide the box and dropped it, spilling the contents over the floor so an image landed on her shoe. Cramming the letters and photos under the false bottom – no time to wipe tears – she raced to her bedroom, the carved wooden box a time bomb in her hands. He was almost at the house. She pushed the box under her bed and saw the tiny latch holding the false bottom had broken off. ‘Damn’. Frantic for a safer hiding place, she heard the screen door slam and footsteps mount the stairs. ‘Is that you, Riley?’

  ‘Uh huh.’

  She stuffed the box as far under the bed as she could reach, dried her face and walked into the kitchen, resolving not to berate him for the missing note.

  ‘Went for a walk on the beach. Sorry, remembered after I left about the note.’

  ‘Must have been a long walk.’

  ‘Played my flute for a bit, then sat and watched the waves.’

  ‘I spoke to one of the ferrymen. You might be able to get a job as a deckhand if a position becomes available.’

  He stood there nodding, too surprised to speak, then he was hugging her. ‘Thanks Mum.’

  She savoured his hugs, so rare these days. ‘If you did want to go to uni, maybe we could look at an online course. Lots of universities are online now.’

  He pulled away to see her face, then embraced her again, lifting her off her feet, twirling her in the air.

  For the first time in what felt like years, Marlise found she couldn’t stop laughing.

  6.

  Riley knelt amongst empty cardboard boxes on the floor, finding solace in the familiar nutmeg smell of David’s books. He was absorbed by two orange butterflies that had landed on the windowsill to mate. So bright in the shadow of the house, they shone without edges, fallen fragments of light stuck end to end in an ancient dance. The colourful sight made him hopeful. Maybe things would work out with his mother. Maybe he could lead a normal life, like the young people he had met at the markets, enjoying the freedom to do whatever they wanted. Maybe he would make friends here, people his own age. At this thought, his heart fluttered in time with the butterflies’ wings, remembering how shy he had been with the market crowd, and that girl from the incense stall who had tried to kiss him. How frightening that was. He could still see her slightly crooked front tooth and the black smudge of make-up around her eyes.

  The toilet flushed. His mother had slept in. The butterflies flew off, taking his optimism with them, leaving the hollow part that didn’t quite trust her.

  She poked her head through the doorway. ‘You darling boy.’

  As a surprise, he had organised the lounge room.

  ‘Nearly finished.’

  ‘I’m going into the mangroves to collect samples. If you need me, call out.’

  He couldn’t recall relating this well to his mother in a long time, and had never seen her so – he searched for the word – normal. Shards of memory of how she was before David’s death kept piercing his fragile bubble of hope, fragile as a plant being hacked by a grafting knife.

  After David died, he had withdrawn from her as she converged on him, but something had shifted since moving here. The smothering intensity between them was dissipating.

  He reached for the last box and spotted a photo lying face down on the floorboards: a picture of him at the age of two or three in the arms of a strange man. His mother as a young woman had her head on the man’s shoulder, gazing up at him. She looked so happy, Riley almost didn’t recognize her. But the man wasn’t looking at her, he was beaming at him, the young Riley. The man’s face so like his own, for a moment, Riley thought he was looking at a picture of his father.

  Impossible. His father was dead. He knew this from his earliest memory, the jolt and sound of a car crash through embryonic fluid. David has said it was impossible to retain pre-birth consciousness, but his mother had argued she had heard of several cases, and Riley remembered it so clearly. Or he imagined he did. As he stared at the man in the photo, it dawned on him: was this a lie his mother had planted in his young mind which had grown to be real over time, so real he never questioned it? Is it even possible to hear sounds from the womb? What David said the last time he saw him jumped into his head.

  ‘Your mother is frightened she’ll lose you if she tells you the truth.’

  ‘About what?’

  ‘Not my place to say. Your mother needs to tell you.’

  He had asked her what David meant, but she had been flippant. ‘Poor David. So feverish, he’s delusional. Didn’t even know who I was this morning.’

  ‘We should get him to hospital, Mum.’

  ‘Do you know how far away the hospital is from here? It’s the same flu I had last month. Once the fever breaks, he’ll be fine. I don’t want you catching it. How many times do I have to tell you? Stay away from him.’

  But David died that night while Riley slept peacefully in his tree house.

  The memory galvinised him. Assuming the photo had fallen from a book, Riley pulled apart every volume he had neatly stacked on the shelves, holding each one open from the spine and shaking the pages in the hope that more faded secrets would flutter out. When they didn’t, he threw the book and grabbed the next until he had searched them all.

  He collapsed onto his haunches and stared at the photo. The man looked so like him he continued to gaze into the image until doubt coiled like a snake in his gut. Her voice shattered his thoughts.

  ‘Riley?’

  He struggled to stand, legs all pins and needles. Leaning against the windowsill, he stomped to bring the circulation back and saw her below in the swamp. She waved. He imagined stomping hard on her beautiful face and watched her smile float into the air. A lone crow caught what remained of her smile and flew off with it, over the house towards the sun.

  His face stopped her. Looking up at him from this angle, he looked older. An angry stranger glaring down at her inadequacies. What the hell had happened? He disappeared from the window.

  ‘Riley?’

  She rushed inside and climbed her way upstairs, panicking. What had she done now? Pausing halfway up, light-headed from the adrenalin shock of seeing him so angry, Marlise realised she was starving. She had forgotten to eat again today.

  She couldn’t comprehend at first what had happened to the room. Her son, with that murderous face, was standing in a sea of books so thick she couldn’t see the floor. He was holding a photo in his outstretched hand. The faded image sucked the breath out of her. Had he found the box? She scanned the room. The walls started to sway. It must have fallen out when she dropped the box last night. The thought stabbed at the side of her temples as their eyes met. The hot flush felt like it began in her feet, by the time it reached her head, she had lost grip of the door handle. Before blacking out, she heard him say, ‘My father isn’t dead, is he.’

  It should have been a question.

  The look on his mother’s face before she collapsed told him the truth. He waded through the books to check she was breathing. ‘Mum?’ He carried her into her room and laid her on the bed. She was feather light and too hot.

  ‘Mum?’ – worried now – ‘Mum?’ He moved her onto her side, unable to feel a breath. ‘Mum.’ He shook her. She was breathing. Thank God. He should ring someone – that real estate agent. He scrambled through her handbag for the number.

  She came to and traced the shape of his face with her eyes while he counted their breaths
. He pulled the photo from his shirt pocket and watched her face light up. His heart felt so big and confused he had to sit back to make more room for it. ‘You lied.’

  ‘To protect you. He didn’t want anything to do with you. He hates us.’ She shut her eyes on the image.

  ‘He’s still alive?’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘Where is he?’

  ‘How would I know? He abandoned us. I’ve had no contact since. I’m sorry. Thought it would be less painful if you thought he was dead.’

  Riley sat with his heart so swollen he couldn’t breathe for the size of it. Surprised at the power of his sobs, between spasms he spat the words out. ‘It is not less painful.’

  ‘Oh, Riley.’ She sat up, but he sprang away and ran out of the house. He heard her call from the verandah. ‘Where are you going?’

  ‘Off this island. Away.’ He didn’t look back.

  Halfway up the road, he heard: ‘You won’t get far.’ The tone of her voice – she was mocking him. He had missed something obvious.

  Money. Of course. Money was essential.

  He stomped back into the house.

  ‘What are you doing?’ She followed him into his bedroom. He grabbed a flute and stuffed it into his pocket. ‘You can’t go anywhere. You don’t know anyone. You have no money.’

  She was wrong. He had plenty of money, taking the wad of it from under the inner lining of his flute case.

  ‘My God. Where did you get that? Answer me. Riley?’

  She tailed him down stairs, trying to grab hold of him. ‘Answer me. Please don’t leave. Please. Don’t leave me.’ He kept pushing her off. ‘You’re all…I’ve got. I’ll be alone, all alone without you. Riley?’

  He tore free and slammed the door. His sense of direction never failed him. The barge ramp was to the southwest, and the road went north. He looked toward the mangroves. There must be a way through.

  She was behind him again, trying a different tactic, her voice full of threat. ‘I’ll call the police like last time. You won’t get far.’

  When he headed into the swamp, her screeching doubled in volume. ‘Don’t go in there. What the hell are you doing? Riley. Get out of there. Come back. Riley.’

  The further he walked, the more she screamed until her voice, ringing through the mangroves, woke the mosquitoes from their midday slumber.

  In the end, it was only his name she repeated over and over, until she lost sight of him, until her voice grew hoarse from fighting the eventuality she had struggled against. So, it had happened. He would leave her now. A sharp stone lodged itself in the base of her heart.

  The police had been unhelpful last time, once they had discovered his age. She remembered the condescending tone of the senior officer: ‘He’s a grown man. If you had a fight and he’s taken off, there’s nothing we can do.’

  It was only when she explained he had no money and no access to money that they had been willing to co-operate. This time he had money and there was only one possible source for that money. More proof of David’s betrayal brought a bitter taste to her mouth.

  ‘People always end up disappointing me.’ Her voice sounded small against the limitless backdrop of the mangroves. The wind blew and her cheeks felt cold. This was the last time she would cry for him. David had stolen enough tears now.

  She wiped her face, deciding to give Riley twenty-four hours. Then she would ring the police. Her heart drifted out, weaving its way through the mangroves to her poor nervous son who was still learning how this cruel world operated.

  He’ll be back before bedtime. He knew how she felt about bedtime, about tucking him in, checking he was safe. It was her job to keep him safe. That’s what good mothers do, keep their children safe.

  Marlise only realised she had walked into the swamp when her shoes grew heavy with mud. The day was so stagnant, she heard the mosquitoes before she saw them starting to swarm. She let them suck from her.

  ‘Hello, girls. Have you seen my son?’

  They had seen him. They had even tried to feed on him. Her screeching had pushed him further and further into the mangroves until the mud was above his knees and he was lost, with mosquitoes attacking mercilessly. Driven to insanity by their biting, he rubbed his exposed skin with the rancid mud. Discovering they couldn’t suck through if caked on thickly enough, he feverishly applied it everywhere, including his face and in his hair, trying to protect his scalp.

  The knowledge that she had lied to him his whole life fed his rage, giving him strength to struggle against the sinking gunk and trip wire mangrove roots. He had known somehow. He had always known. He couldn’t believe his father hated him. That photo was full of love, not hate. He would find a way out of this quagmire, find his father and learn the truth.

  But the swamp had no end and his conviction seeped out of him until the resonant shriek of the barge ramp scraping on cement made him fall backwards into the slippery sludge. Harnessing his strength, he moved toward the noise. The mud so deep now, he used branches of the mangroves to pull himself forward. When he reached hard sand, and saw the barge through the trees, he charged in jubilation onto the beach, arms in the air, a primeval roar escaping him.

  ‘Swamp monster,’ came the cry from a group of children in scout uniforms walking onto the barge. Several screamed as one of the adults stepped forward, protectively. Riley retreated, continuing past the barge, further up the beach. He could still hear one of the smaller children wailing from fright and felt dreadful.

  Finding a flat rock where the sand was dry, he took the photo from his shirt pocket, placed it on the rock with his flute on top, and waded into the water. Unable to wash the mud out of his clothes, he surrendered to the sea and floated face down like a dead man.

  The water was calm on this side of the island and cooler than the ocean he had swum in up north during the weekend David had taken them to a resort. The water seemed saltier too, it was easy to stay buoyant. Striped fish darted above the sand and a stingray glided past, sneaking a shy look at him. Occasionally there were pale rocks with red tide-line markings running through them. When touched, pink clay dissolved into the water. He floated on his back and admired the flat-bottomed clouds, fluorescent white against the powdered blue sky. After the nightmare of the swamp, he had landed in paradise. Two birds circled, probably white-bellied sea eagles. He had read about them in David’s Birds of Australia book. The male was smaller than the female. He remembered David’s face the day he realised Riley’s ability to store facts, calling out. ‘Marlise, I think Riley has a photographic memory. I show him something once and he recalls it verbatim the next day.’

  His mother didn’t look up – ‘Of course, I was like that’ – as if it was perfectly natural.

  David had leaned in, ‘I think you’re remarkable. You’ll be able to do whatever you want in life. Don’t ever forget that.’

  Riley lay on the hot sand to dry out. The remaining mud in his clothes and hair hardened, releasing a foul smell. He stared at the man in the photo and pondered how he would find him in such a large world when he wasn’t even sure of his name. Riley knew now, he couldn’t trust anything his mother had said.

  The barge was long gone. He decided to walk in the opposite direction and explore around the bend.

  From a stand of ironbark trees, their black trunks splattered with grey lichen, the magnificent white horse appeared, minus its elderly rider. It galloped up the beach – a ghostly apparition gleaming against the indigo water. Riley half expected it to grow a horn.

  He kept walking, stopping to marvel at a piece of driftwood bleached by the sun to the colour of bone, in the shape of a human foot.

  In the distance, a jetty appeared. Near the jetty was a Hacienda he recalled from David’s Encyclopaedia of Houses Almanac. The books he had spent his childhood studying had prepared him well for this new world that tasted of salt and sunlight.

  Coming closer, he read the sign over the jetty, ‘Welcome to Moondarrawah Island,’ the faded o
utline of the stolen letters still visible. It now read, ‘come to Moondarrawah land.’ Moondarrawah sounded Indigenous. He wondered what it meant.

  The courtyard of the Hacienda was cool and inviting with an in-ground pool encompassed by potted palms, cacti, tables and chairs. There was a booth selling ice-cream. His mother didn’t let him eat ice-cream. Only then did he remember the money, damp and muddy in the pocket of his jeans. He attentively unfolded some notes.

  The pretty blonde behind the counter was studying her only customer.

  ‘Cor, I think you’ve stood in something.’ She held her nose.

  ‘No I...sorry. I….got lost in the mangroves.’

  ‘That explains it. The island’s septic systems are so old, I’m sure they’re all bleeding into that bloody wetland.’

  He took a step back to read the sign above the counter. ‘Can I have a triple scoop in a cone thanks?’

  ‘What flavours, mate?’

  He was so hungry, he picked the first three flavours on the left, deciding to work his way through the lot and discover which was his favourite.

  The ice-cream was soft and sweet on his tongue. For some reason, it brought to mind the naked girl in the fog. He looked around hoping she would walk past. Would he recognise her clothed?

  The sugary coldness was addictive. After the fourth time he ordered, the woman said, ‘You really like ice-cream, don’t you?’

  ‘My mother never let me eat it. Now I can do what I want.’

  ‘Some mothers need their heads checked. Eat up then, mate. Make up for all those years.’

  He went to hand her the money.

  ‘Nup, this one’s on the house.’

  He was pleased with himself over this exchange. It wasn’t hard communicating with people, only a matter of practice.

  He recalled David berating his mother. ‘He should be at school. Being brought up in such isolation will give him a fear of social interaction.’ How right David had been.

  Riley couldn’t finish the last ice-cream but knew nothing could surpass mango sorbet.