Gravity Well

by Melanie Joosten

  In the interview she shone. Her assured, almost bombastic tone came easily as she channelled Nate and the language of breezy confidence he had taught by way of demonstration. Briefly, she saw confidence for what it was: a performance. Whether it was genuine and deserved, or brandished to hide a deficit, the result was the same and the audience none the wiser. She could see it in their faces: their relief at being told she was the right candidate for the position, her conviction smoothing away any doubts. They gave her the job.

  Afterwards, she called Tom from a cafe on the main street. He was surprised to hear from her, and on his way to a meeting; could he call her tonight? Eve felt humiliated — of course that’s what she was to him: an evening distraction. He didn’t actually want her here, in his town, his life. And yet she had got the job; she would be here for six months. She could hardly avoid him all that time; the town wasn’t big enough for that.

  I’m here, she said, voice angry rather than plaintive. In Ballarat.

  His joy was unmistakable, her fears unwarranted. He was at the cafe twenty minutes later, meeting cancelled; his gently accommodating and sincere presence was just as she remembered, yet impossibly real. He was twenty-one years older than her, but it was more than this that made them hesitate.

  Tom was unlike Nate in every way that mattered: he listened to rather than talked at; his enthusiasms were for things other than himself. Mostly, there was an air of uncertainty about him that Eve found endearing: he seemed unconvinced of her interest in him, and continually apologised should he be taking up her time. She had suggested renting her own place while she was in town for the project, professing that they shouldn’t rush things, but she never got around to doing it. Within two weeks, she’d packed most of her belongings into the campervan, and arranged a short-term tenant for her flat in Sydney, convincing herself she’d be back for winter. By the end of the year, they were married. And then there was Mina.

  •

  Eve lies in the tent for hours, but sleep won’t come, even when she blocks the afternoon light with a shirt tied across her eyes. There’s a splat on the tent’s fly, and then another. She tenses herself for the encompassing patter of rain, but it doesn’t come; there is just the bellowing of the fabric whipping back and forth. Eventually, she leaves the tent and walks past the rows of built-in caravans and cabins towards the beach. A small boy wearing a wrestling helmet and a Collingwood football jumper draws chalk pictures on the concrete walkway outside the campsite reception. Len stands in the open doorway.

  Hiya! How’s the tent holding up? Will you be alright if this rain starts?

  They both look up at the looming clouds.

  It’s just rain, says Eve.

  Well, that’s true enough. Not like it’s going to kill you.

  I’ve got to go.

  She speeds up and strikes out across the car park and onto the road shoulder. A smooth convoy of cars whooshes past, gaining speed on the flat before pressing uphill. When there’s a break in the traffic, Eve surprises herself by darting across the road, her pace quick but stride reluctant — like a person who walks in front of a movie theatre screen, knowing that slouching won’t make their interruption any less apparent, but unable to resist the politeness of attempt.

  The girls on the beach are sisters. They must be. Same long legs and too-big knees, hair tied back in low ponytails. Their clothes are near copies, the younger girl’s reproduced at a slightly smaller size and in different colours. Where the older wears a faded pink jumper, the younger wears yellow. Both have leggings, baggy on their skinny legs and around their non-existent bums. Black, purple. Bought from the same shop at the same time. Been through the same number of washes.

  How many mornings had she been Mina’s handmaiden? The ceremony of dressing. Waiting patiently as Mina poked one foot into her tights and pulled the leg up to her knees before struggling to lift the second foot high enough to do the same. When she finally managed and pulled them up, the crotch would hang at her knees and Eve would lift her from the floor by the waistband, letting her slide into the tights before setting her down again. T-shirt, her head blindly searching for a way out; skirt on back to front, and Eve would twist it around in a hug, because Mina hated to be corrected. A call and response of dressing as they chattered about the things she was going to do that day. The people she would see at day care. The possible activities, of which painting was always the most preferable. She would like to paint a picture of a house. With a dog. And a cat. Which is what she wanted most in the whole wide world.

  On the beach, the younger girl cartwheels ahead until brought up short by the bark of her big sister, who commands attention before lifting her arms in a prim salute, stretching one leg before the other, the picture of concentration. Presenting to the judges: Eve had seen the school-age girls do it at Mina’s Jungle Gym. An athletic version of a curtsy, made before the gymnast commenced each apparatus. The older girl executes a perfect handstand, legs snapped together, toes pointed. The younger watches, then mimics, but her excitement escapes her body in wriggles and bursts; her legs splay and she tumbles to the sand, laughing. Is the younger sister always the clown? Knowing instinctively that she must be able to laugh at herself, that she’ll never, no matter how hard she tries, reach the heights of the older one: always two or so years ahead, always more experienced.

  Eve would have loved to be a younger sister. To have someone to follow, someone to teach her restraint and confidence. To hold her feet together when she was upside down, as the older girl does now, counting to ten, her arms shaking with exertion and giggles, until they both collapse in the sand. Lotte was the closest she had to a sister, and if things were different now, that’s whom she would call.

  The sun has dropped behind the low hills; the sky clings to the dunes as a fuzzy static. Tentative raindrops fall, but the weather is not quite ready to commit.

  •

  Eve had wished for Lotte’s arrival in the hospital ward soon after the birth, and in those long days that followed.

  It’s day three that’s the worst, no question, one of the nurses told her. You’ll want your mum around, and to have a good cry. But it gets better after. You’ll pull yourself up, they always do.

  Staring out the window at the brickwork of the hospital wing opposite. Thinking she should count those bricks. That if she knew how many there were in a wall, she’d at least know something. Breasts swollen and aching; nurses telling her everything was going just as it should.

  Couldn’t ask for a better bub, another nurse said, wheeling the little Perspex cradle and its pink flannelette bundle back to the nursery so Eve could shower in peace and get dressed to go home. In the shower she cleaned a body that still wasn’t hers, heavy skin draped about her belly. She had expected to feel empty, a deflated balloon, but she felt heavier than ever, her feet still turned out, her ankles full.

  Really though, even if her mum had been alive, Eve couldn’t imagine her being much help. She had been a perfunctory mother, and made no apology for it. She cooked — frying sausages, boiling potatoes and peas — and did the laundry, but not much else. She probably only did the latter because it gave her a chance to smoke in peace, stalking past the Hills Hoist to the agapanthus that fireworked against the back fence. Even when clean, the bedsheets smelled like stale smoke. When Eve came home from underage visits to the pub — her parents not even pretending to care where she’d been on a school night — she sank into her saggy single bed, its metal springs reaching for the floor, embraced in the smell of cigarettes: her own, the pub’s, her mother’s. She often dreamt that she had fallen asleep beside the bar, sticky carpet beneath her cheek. Her rebellion didn’t last long. It was an obligatory attempt to raise hell with parents who already resided there. Born a mistake, she remained an afterthought. But her parents loved her in their way. They had to, didn’t they? They rarely shouted at her, only at each other. And her father would often tap her lightly on the bum w
ith his foot as she passed between him and the television; she liked to think it was affection.

  For the first six weeks, Eve thought the nurse was right: day three was the worst, and everything was better after that. Mina slept often and cried little. Eve wrote long emails to Lotte, telling her of Mina’s small changes, careful to accentuate any difficulties in the way that new mothers must to their friends, for fear of appearing smug. She had never worried about second-guessing Lotte’s responses before — their friendship had been immune to concerns of hurt feelings or competition — but things were different now. Lotte didn’t reply.

  In those early weeks, alone in the house but for Mina snuggled in to her chest, Eve pined for Nate’s surety and spontaneity. Anything to break the heavy quiet of the house as autumn prowled outside. When Tom returned from work in the late afternoon, kind and solicitous, Eve’s longing was interrupted, but in the still mornings, when she would be unreasonably startled by the obnoxious clatter of cutlery tossed in the sink, or find herself scrolling unseeing and urgent through the Facebook feed on her phone, she would recall Nate’s eagerness for the small moments. The way each meal was an event, each day an opportunity for a new project or outing.

  A few months before Eve met Tom, Nate had turned up at her flat in Sydney. She hadn’t seen him for over six years, almost the entire time she had lived there. In a performance that was more despair-driven bravado than reassuring, he’d told Eve his marriage was over, that he and Katie just weren’t compatible. His list of complaints was inexhaustible: they barely had conversations any more; she never listened to what he had to say; the children were everything to her, and he was just some kind of bread-winning appendage. Katie didn’t pay any attention to him, he decried; they had no connection of the mind.

  It’s not like the two of us, he implored, head in hands on Eve’s couch. We could talk for hours, you and I. You actually cared about my thoughts, my opinions. If I ask Katie what she’s thinking, it’s always about the kids, usually some way I’ve failed them. It’s never about anything outside of her — it’s certainly never about me.

  He seemed to have grown younger rather than older: his hair longer and more haphazard, his clothes — faded black jeans, a hooded jumper — those of a teenager. His body still barely contained his energy: knees bouncing up and down, fingernails chewed to stubs. There was the same relentless tumbling of words cutting her off every time she made a comment; what she had once considered endearing enthusiasm now struck her as uncurbed self regard. For the first time she could recall, Eve just wanted him to stop talking. But when eventually he did, sinking back into the couch so that he seemed smaller than he’d ever been, the quiet was near overwhelming, and Eve found herself in his arms, face pressed up against his chest, all of her old feelings for him flooding back. For years she’d imagined him saying those exact words — I need you — and, in a rush of comprehension, she knew she could have him back.

  Lying in bed, his long limbs wrapped around hers, she knew that if he asked to come and live with her she would say yes. After all, what had she been waiting for? But the thought of him upending her life left her uneasy; the jumper he discarded on her bedroom floor was so out of place after he left as to be almost abhorrent. But he was there, wasn’t he? He had finally come to her.

  As the year wound to a close he returned every week, telling Katie he had business meetings in Sydney. Eve did not let herself feel anything much about the role in which she had been cast. At the time, she’d thought him sincere in his interest, if somewhat ungrateful for what he had with Katie and the children. But now, as she swung Mina from the crook of one arm to the other, her shoulder twinging with pain, she allowed herself more sympathy for his position and his bid to be free.

  For those couple of months, she had been light-headed with his dogged pursuit of her. When Lotte had called, saying she was in Sydney for some Christmas shopping, Eve almost invited her to join them, but she knew even Lotte’s friendship wouldn’t stretch that far; her friend was unable to forgive Nate for what he had done. And Eve knew, despite his promises and brash, desperate professions of need, that while she would always be able to forgive him, she could never be sure he would stay. She’d ended things with him before Christmas; she told him she would not see him any more, and jumped in her campervan and drove, knowing he would never follow. The following week, she met Tom.

  •

  When the rain begins to fall properly, dotting the sand in earnest, the girls depart from the beach, the older one leading the way. Eve follows them, turning her back to the endless sea. Headlights pierce the dusk, sweeping around the headland, and she sees the danger with sudden clarity, breaking out into a run, slipping over the still-dry sand, landing on her hands as her feet scuff and flounder. The wind has picked up, and the rain drives almost horizontal; she’s throwing herself forward but she’s getting nowhere, stumbling from path to car park.

  Watch out!

  The girls are standing back from the road, the older having taken the hand of the younger, and it takes them a moment to react, so intent are they on watching for cars. They look at her, and look away. They worry she is the danger. She watches their heads swivel back and forth before they break into a run across the road. Their mother stands in the grainy dark at the entrance to the campsite, waiting. As a mother should.

  •

  It had never occurred to Eve that after the arrival of Mina she might not, in time, get her body back. Different, of course; stretched to its limits and less willing than before, but hers all the same. But with Mina’s arrival, Eve found her body seemed to have departed her for good. It was now at her daughter’s beck and call: when Mina cried, Eve’s breasts ached and leaked, the baby’s distress, real or imagined, prodding at her body. Sleep both edged closer and became lesser: a plunge pool to be toppled into and to reluctantly return from, paddling upwards and willing the surface to be further away. Right up until she gave birth, Eve was walking around the lake every day, belly pulling her forward, dragging her toward the ground, to inertia; the only way to stay upright was to keep moving. For months, her body had been telling her it was no longer willing to do her bidding, and she had accommodated its requests with amused indifference. Eating more than she thought possible, hauling herself to the bathroom in the middle of the night, unsteady on her feet. Waking slowly, a hot air balloon lifting into the clouds. While pregnant, Eve found her body didn’t want to sit or stand the way it usually did: she was forever deep back in the chair or perched forward on the couch; on her side in bed, rather than face down. In the final few months, she couldn’t go running, and for a short time it became impossible to cycle when she couldn’t reach the handlebars of her road bike. She bought another bike, a women’s step-through frame, the handlebars reaching towards her, so that she sailed through the town like a paddle-steamer, sure and steady. But once Mina was born, Eve’s bicycles sat untouched in the garage, and when Ballarat’s winter rain set in, notoriously chill and interminable, she was confined indoors, days folding into one another.

  Snuffles, hiccups, snorts. Every sound flattened through the tinny speaker of the baby monitor. Drawn as ever to documentation, Eve set up her audio recorder by Mina’s crib, the microphone beneath the painted ladybird mobile. She didn’t listen back to any of the recordings, though, simply transferring them onto her computer and adding them, unheard, to her library of sounds.

  She had thought that with Mina she would escape judgement, at least for a while. Not from herself, ever her own fiercest critic, worrying that she was not doing things as she should: she didn’t expect this feeling to go away, but rather to intensify. She was ready, too, for the comparisons with other mothers when they gathered at the health centre, prams parked like a circle of prairie wagons. They feigned interest in others’ babies as a way to place the development of their own; criticisms were disguised as queries. But she had assumed that Mina would not judge. After all, she had nothing to compare Eve to and no faculty
to criticise and assess. She was bonded to Eve, reliant, dependent, and while she did not expect her daughter to be grateful, she did hope for love. From the very first day, however, it seemed Mina was appraising her: noting what she did right and what she did wrong, already knowing the worth of these concepts. Eve had created this person; she had done it well. In the hours after the birth, she was not concerned about how unfamiliar Mina was, and how far away she seemed even when she was latched on to Eve’s breast. They were getting to know one another, strangers taking tentative steps. But as the days wound on, Eve could sense she was not getting it right; she was failing again and again.

  When Mina was ten months old, she began to cry in a way she had not before. Long bouts of whimpering punctuated with angry squawks, refusing to be settled. She ate so little that Eve was sure she was starving: spears of broccoli sucked on and discarded, avocado smeared across the tray table. Strawberries, bananas — it was all spat out with derision. That purple plastic spoon with its deep bowl and bulbous handle; Eve came to dread the sight of it. Mina opening her mouth wide before sucking the food from the spoon, and then squeezing it out of her mouth, stalactites of carrot drooping from chin to bib. Later, she wouldn’t even open her mouth, keeping it clamped shut whenever Eve put her in the highchair.

  The ebullient promise of summer held the world together outside, but Eve kept the blinds closed against the glare. The internet offered discussion groups where mothers — some earnest, some joyfully resigned to the mysteries of parenting — listed their offspring in a string of letters and numbers after their username, littering their advice with cheerful emoticons and hopeful animated gifs. Eve trawled the posts, searching for a description of another baby that displayed Mina’s infuriating behaviour, but none of the scenarios were quite right. She went so far as to create login details for herself, but could not adequately describe Mina’s obstinacy, knowing that even if she could, these other mothers wouldn’t properly understand.