Gravity Well

by Melanie Joosten

  With shaky breaths, Lotte pulls herself to her feet, greedily reining in the adrenalin; she must not lie there and let her muscles seize again. As long as she keeps her leg bent, doesn’t straighten it enough to give the kneecap a chance to slip away, she knows she can weight-bear on it. She will be able to hobble back toward the residence; she will be able to go home. The light has lifted colour into the world as she slowly straightens herself up, her leg tentative beneath her, the ache of the stretched and torn ligaments wrapping itself around her knee like a pressure bandage. Blues and yellows tease a faint line of cloud; the sun hasn’t made its way over the horizon just yet, but it will, in time, as surely as it does every other morning.

  8

  EVE

  AUGUST 2015

  At this moment, it is unfathomable to Eve that the sun will ever haul itself over the horizon. She can see the grey lift of it, a band of dirty cloud fumbling at the edge of the sea, but she cannot believe that it will become day. Cannot bear it. How is it possible that time moves forward when everything of hers has halted? What is time but a measure, a creator of distance between what was and what is? An impassable border between states of existence, a border marked only by tense. They are a family; they were a family.

  She concentrates on the horizon, arms wrapped around herself, rocking back and forth, feet making flat pat-pat sounds on the damp sand. Two waves, maybe three? That’s all it will take before her dull impressions will be washed away. It is not getting any lighter. It cannot.

  She walks towards the sea, tries to suppress the tensing of her body as the first wave rolls across her feet. The sharp numb of cold is immediate, but within a few moments her feet will be warmer than her shins; as she goes deeper, her shins warmer than her knees. Her jeans hold the water — she feels the weight of them dragging at her hips. It won’t be a surprise to anyone; it will be a relief. Her knees clench, and the next wave throws itself at her waist, soaking her clothes. Mina came up to my waist, thinks Eve. She was half the size of me. And it is this unthinking use of the past tense that undoes her.

  She lets go of herself, her hands trailing in the water. The next wave that comes causes her to jump, throwing her hands up to protect herself from the splash, hopping on one foot as her body instinctively tries to keep itself dry. The water grabs at her wrists, soaking the sleeves of her hooded jumper, the cuffs becoming heavy bracelets encircling her arms. A seagull screeches, another yells back, and she wonders whether the water will fill her ears so completely that no sound will evermore be carried to her.

  •

  Eve remembers. She was the one who’d heard the doorbell, the one who walked down the hallway calling over her shoulder.

  I’ll get it!

  Not expecting anyone, and not even wondering who it could be. A postcard summer day in early January, still laughing at Tom’s lame joke about the cows that had Mina in stitches (Knock knock. Who’s there? Cows. Cows who? Cows go moo, not who!), and blissfully unaware that any interruption could herald all that this one would. Ding-dong. If they had not been home; if they had all been in the garden too far away to hear. If. If. If.

  She opened the door to a small moment of disbelief, and then climbing joy.

  Lotte!

  Eve.

  A bottle of duty-free gin in one hand, a soft toy in the other, luggage by her feet, and no explanation for her five-year absence. Eve flung open the screen door, hugging Lotte and drawing her close. Trying not to heed the warning in the stiffness of Lotte’s body.

  You’re back!

  Speaking the words into Lotte’s hair, her neck. So glad to see her. Five years in Chile, and there she was.

  Come in.

  Eve stepped aside, holding the door open to let Lotte pass. Lotte didn’t pause, just strode down the hallway toward the living room as if she owned the place.

  Eve struggled behind with Lotte’s suitcase. In the kitchen, Eve watched Lotte and Tom briefly hug. She saw that Lotte’s knee was strapped: a recent injury, flesh-coloured tape stretching down her calf. Mina circled, a wary lamb, butting in at Tom’s legs.

  And this must be Mina.

  All three adults looked down on the little girl, her dark hair curling at her neck, a necklace of purple and orange beads clutched in her hands.

  Say hello, Min, said Eve, encouraging, holding the pride in the back of her throat.

  Mina considered each of them in turn, aware of the way they were all so much taller than her, but that they would wait, enthralled, for her words. She said nothing.

  Go on. Say hello. This is Lotte. Your ... sister. Eve blushed, sure that the hesitation would be noticed, commented on. She had almost said ‘aunt’; it seemed more natural.

  You’re not my sister. Sisters are babies.

  Mina held the string of beads up as though she might bestow them on someone, then slipped them over her own head.

  Yes she is. This is Lotte. Remember we told you how a long time ago Dad had another little girl, just like you, and now she’s all grown up?

  Eve turned to Lotte. We have told her about you, she said. We talk about you all the time.

  She immediately regretted the insecurity in her voice.

  That’s okay, said Lotte. She held out the toy to Mina. A llama wearing a knitted poncho, its eyes closed beneath improbably long lashes.

  I got you this, Mina. It’s a llama.

  Mina stepped forward, flashing a look at Eve, just to be sure, before reaching out to accept the toy.

  Say thank you, said Tom. He crouched down to Mina to inspect the toy, and Eve saw how uncomfortable he was with all of this; it wasn’t just her.

  Thank you, said Mina, parroting the words, eyes only on the toy.

  Eve scooped up the laundry Tom had been sorting, and offered Lotte a seat. Every gesture felt loaded with meaning, so anxious was she that Lotte might think she was asserting herself. Her home, her family.

  When did you get back?

  Eve saw the hesitation, the way Lotte pretended to be absorbed in Mina’s inspection of the llama while gathering her thoughts.

  A few days ago. It’s been so busy at the IAO, it was difficult to get away; we had so much to finish up.

  So you’re going back? This is just a holiday?

  No, I’m not going back. The job’s finished.

  Lotte wasn’t giving the full story, but Eve knew she had given up every right to ask.

  I thought I’d just come by and see you all, before I head up to Sydney. There’ll be jobs there, something like before.

  And Vin? Eve wanted to ask, but didn’t, already knowing the answer. Every question would lead to a dead end; they had lost the shape of one another’s lives.

  What happened to your knee? Have you hurt it? asked Tom.

  It’s fine; it’s an old injury. It stiffened up on the plane.

  The conversation stop-started its way through the morning, only really gaining momentum when Lotte described her work at length, all of them relieved to have a topic that was so far from themselves, out of reach of consequence.

  We’ve discovered hundreds of planets since the program began, said Lotte. We’ve been using radial velocity tracking where the weak gravity of the planet pulls the star in a small circular orbit, making it wobble — and that’s the bit we can detect. But we’ve started using direct imaging now. They’re actually working on the site for a new telescope, just nearby, which will be able to image the planets in a much more sophisticated way than we can at the moment.

  Lotte had changed, decided Eve. She was thinner, her hair longer. None of her clothes were familiar: the blue cotton dress, the cream scarf with bright orange polka dots that had been wrapped loosely around her shoulders and was now balled in her lap. She watched Lotte’s fingers twirl the fronds of the scarf; saw that she wore no rings.

  Don’t you think? Lotte was staring at Eve, expecting a
response.

  Imaging, said Eve, scrabbling about for a word to hang on to. That sounds interesting.

  Woefully inadequate; the disappointment was clear on Lotte’s face. They had never been like this; it had always been so easy to fall into step with one another, picking up the conversation where it had been put aside the last time.

  It is, actually, said Lotte. At the moment we can find the planets because we can figure out they’re there. It’s like how Neptune was found by mathematical prediction rather than observation: Uranus’s orbit didn’t make sense, so they knew something was tugging it off course, and then they figured out the location and size of a planet that would be able to do so. Once they knew what they were looking for, it was easy to find.

  Trying to pay attention, Eve shuffled her body on the couch. She drew her knees together, jammed her hands in-between her thighs. Putting her body in lockdown, so she wouldn’t get up and start doing something else: the laundry that needed to be folded, the groceries that had not been put away. They can wait, she told herself. She thought through picking up the socks, pairing them and tucking one inside the other. Dividing the clothes into three piles — hers, Tom’s, and Mina’s — like a croupier dealing cards.

  How’s Vin? The words were out of Eve’s mouth before she could stop them. Have you seen him?

  He had gone to South America twice, Eve knew, sometime in the first year: once not long after Eve had moved to Ballarat, and the second time not long before Eve and Tom married. He’d met up with Lotte, and spent a week with her in Buenos Aires before they took a bus together up to Iguazu Falls. There was a mission town on the way, Vin had told her, built by Jesuit priests in the fifteenth century, and now in crumbled redbrick ruins, its grandeur destroyed by the Indigenous people who were glad to see the missionaries flee. Lotte and Vin had walked around the ruins for two hours, then sat at plastic tables on the town’s main street, eating ice-cream that had melted and been refrozen so many times it was only crystals, no cream. I couldn’t think of anything to say to her, Vin had told Eve later. In Buenos Aires, it was fine — we were surrounded with people, we had to decide where to eat, how to get back to the hotel, which bar to stop and have a drink at. But that town, its endless ruins. Everything was so still, and covered in red dust. It felt like Mars. Rutted roads, baked in the sun. The temple walls pushing into the sky. I said that to her — it could be Mars — just for something to say. And she just smiled at me and nodded. She was humouring me. Her mind was elsewhere, I could see that. She was thinking about the work that I had dragged her away from. She never said it outright, not until later, but I realised then that the trip wasn’t a reunion for the two of us, it was a goodbye tour. She wasn’t coming home, not to me.

  At the time, Eve had tried to reassure him, convince him that he was mistaken, but Vin had been adamant. And in the end he was right: she had left them both behind.

  He’s well, replied Lotte, voice cool.

  How long are you in Ballarat for? asked Tom.

  I’m not sure. I thought I would stay a couple of days here, if that’s okay? Get to know my little sister.

  They could hardly say no. But Lotte talked her way into the silence nonetheless. Handing them back their hesitations as if they had refused.

  It is my home, you know. It still feels that way to me, no matter how much you’ve changed it.

  And it always will be, Tom said. He smiled, reaching for Eve’s hand. She didn’t want to take his, but she watched her hand lift and accept, slotting into his.

  Even when things change, Eve said.

  They certainly do, replied Lotte. And she waited just a moment before laughing. Long enough for Eve to know she hadn’t been forgiven.

  •

  Eve feels incredibly strong, standing there as the waves come forward, beating into her chest and crashing behind her on the shore. The waves pull her up gently, and then heavily drop her to the sand, her toes instinctively curling in the effort of finding purchase. It’s the weight of her waterlogged clothes that gives her the strength to keep going: they won’t allow her to float away, no matter how much she wants to. A step forward, and then another, closing her eyes to face the breaking waves, diving under one of them, hair streaming back from her head, face free and exposed. She tries to rise to the surface, lifts away from the sandy floor, but her clothes, so reassuring when standing, are too heavy, too tangled, the hood of the sweatshirt wrapping around her neck.

  She cannot breathe: the air is water, it fills her throat, her lungs, and there is no sound, just a pounding in her ears. The morning sky is the same colour as the water; no way is up, everything points down. This is how Mina would have felt, in her last few minutes, and Eve feels this understanding still her, pressing down on her chest, closing her throat, her eyes, her mind.

  It is only a few seconds. She is not so deep, the waves not so powerful. Her feet kick with dedication, and her arms windmill as they should. Her instinct is still to survive, though she could find no such thoughts in her waking mind. Breaking through to the surface, hair plastered across her face, in her mouth and eyes. When she tries to tug the hair away, she sinks again — one beating arm, those kicking legs, unable to keep her afloat — managing only the smallest breath as she goes down, mouth full of seawater. Coughing instead of breathing, out not in. She comes up to the surface again, more annoyed than afraid, flicking back her head to tame her hair, egg-beating her legs and treading water as she turns back to the beach. The streetlights of the next town are still on, but the sky is blushing. She takes another lungful of water as she sinks under, and the panic pushes her forward into a breaststroke. She revels in the pull of her muscles, noting their annoyance at being called into service after such a long hibernation, their resistance at having to drag the weight of winter clothing as well as herself.

  Her teeth are chattering as she lets the swell of another wave drop her to the sand, and she’s walking slowly, pushing through the waist-high water, leaning forward, jeans chafing at her legs as the waves recede, when she recalls that this is exactly what it was like, immediately after. The realisation of what she had done causing a buffering delay between her mind and body. In the hospital, unable at first to stand up from the row of chairs in the waiting room, and then finding herself not only standing but also walking down the corridor.

  They say that it is normal to keep replaying moments from just before. That it’s healthy to search out what went wrong, to consider what might have been done differently, and realise the infinite nature of possibilities. To know that this accident just ‘happened’ in the same manner as any number of other accidents could. But it’s not the accident itself that her mind keeps returning to. She has no memory of that; there are no triggers to her understanding.

  The smack of the flyscreen door, that’s the last thing she remembers. She hauled up the roller door, the dust coming alive in the sunlight.

  Standing in the shallows, teeth clenched and jaw aching, clothes leaden and reaching for the ground, she can only remember what went before.

  •

  It was a period of colour: neon pink and blue trim on Lotte’s clothing, apple-green nail polish on Mina’s tiny nails, Lotte’s booming laugh, which always sounded warm and orange, the pale yellow of the pineapple that Tom bought in Lotte’s honour. Eve had been happy to see Lotte — there was no confusion about that — but the days that followed tumbled into one another, gathering speed as they careened towards the inevitable.

  I want to talk to you about what happened, said Eve.

  They were both sitting at the kitchen table. As soon as the words were spoken, Eve realised how little she had thought about how Lotte might respond. All of her daydreams were about the apologies she herself would make — the reassurances that she had never meant for any of it to happen, and the saving grace, she hoped, that what had resulted was the best part of her life, the crux everything else was built on. Surely Lotte could not be
grudge Eve the love of Tom and Mina. But Lotte’s attention was on her iPad, which she tapped at furiously, and when she looked up, her gaze was caught not by Eve, but by Mina and Tom in the backyard: Mina’s tentative jumps on the trampoline, ostentatious in its safety features, surrounded as it was by netting walls and padded cushions over the springs.

  I never had a trampoline, said Lotte. I wanted one, but Dad said it wasn’t the kind of toy an only child had. He thought I wouldn’t use it enough.

  Eve twisted in her chair to properly look out the window. Tom was on his hands and knees, pounding at the mat, and Mina was laughing hysterically, falling over every time she stood up. Eve smiled; Tom would be complaining tonight about how he was too old for that business, but then he’d be back out there again tomorrow. It had been his idea to buy Mina the trampoline for Christmas; Eve wouldn’t tell Lotte that.

  We haven’t talked about all of this, Lotte. Did you get my emails?

  Lotte kept staring into the garden, the iPad discarded.

  Yes.

  But you never answered.

  What was I going to say? She shrugged, smiling at Eve. What’s done is done. And I’m not angry about it.

  You’re not?

  Of course not. Lotte laughed. It’s your life. Not to mention it’s a relief to know you finally got over Nate. I thought that might never happen. He was never good enough for you.

  Eve chose her words carefully.

  He wasn’t as bad as you think.

  He married somebody else, someone you had no idea he was seeing.

  It was more complicated than that.

  How could she ever expect to explain it to Lotte, for whom everything was always black and white?