A coffee in hand, she took a seat on a park bench, watching people go about their day. A group of women began to gather by the pale obelisk in the square’s centre. Each pulled from her bag a white scarf and tied it over her hair and beneath her chin. Lotte had heard about these women: grandmothers and mothers of the disappeared. She had not realised they still marched, that there still must be reason to: their revolutionary children long ago disappeared by the government, their grandchildren adopted out to families of government officials to be brought up with no knowledge of their parents’ fates.
She had already made her decision, and knew it was the right one. How many times had she and Vin had a discussion about their future? Searching questions about what each of them wanted, but never directly asking. Only once had it been an argument, just before she left for Chile, both of them trying too hard to prove her relocation was purely to do with work, and that their relationship was not under threat. He showed her a house he thought they should put a bid on. Three bedrooms, a double garage, and already a cubby house in the backyard.
It’s perfect for kids, he said, tapping through the images.
We don’t have any, she had replied, and tried too late to make it sound like a joke.
But we will, he said. When you come back. Maybe we can get started when I come to visit? He smiled at her, almost a wink, but her face froze; it wouldn’t smile back.
Vin, I don’t want children.
Even as she said the words she was surprised by how unfamiliar they sounded, as if even the thought had not yet been properly articulated. But repeating them to herself she knew they were correct. From the look on his face she could see it wasn’t a sentiment he shared.
What do you mean?
She shrugged, apologetic. I don’t want children. I just don’t feel the need for them in my life.
Her voice drifted as she watched him shaking his head, his face crumpled. Our life, she could almost hear him thinking. You’re saying you don’t want children in our life. But of course he said nothing so blatantly emotive, proceeding with caution as though she might get spooked and flee from any sudden accusations.
But we’ve talked about this before, said Vin. A lot. You always said it’s something we would do. Later—
I think I meant never.
She urged an apology into her voice, but the words fell flat. He was right.
It’s not something I want to do. I have no desire for it, Vin, I don’t think I’d be good at it. I’m happy with what we have; I don’t want to give that up.
What makes you think you’d have to?
And they’d argued then, long into the night. Lotte trying to justify her decision and resenting having to. Searching for new ways of explaining, but falling back on the only thing that made sense. The truth: she didn’t want them. Would it have been so hard for either of them to believe if their roles were reversed? Why did she feel like she was failing him in so many ways? She stacked her reasons up one by one: her job; her lack of want. And the trump card: her genetics. If she had the gene mutation like her mother, she might pass it on to her daughters — not to mention guaranteeing them the same grief as she had gone through, that of losing a parent so early. Vin valiantly attacked each argument, labelling them strawmen and burning them down, and Lotte saw she had failed to make herself understood. Selective IVF, advanced technology, prevention, he said. He would take leave; she could go back to work. In the tired hours of the night — the lights in their lounge room too bright, but neither making a move to switch them off — Vin made Lotte feel that her decision was flawed in some way, that she was missing important evidence, and drawing illogical conclusions from what she had. She almost capitulated, hinted that with time she could reconsider. Yet deep inside she nursed a tiny feeling of relief, of something released under pressure and gently spreading. She didn’t want children, that was all. A small thing, but a little truth she could hold, something that belonged just to her. Her mother would have understood.
The position in Chile became an unspoken reprieve for them both. It was work not choice that took her away from him. She missed him fiercely, particularly in those first few weeks, which were tainted by his resentment at her bombshell. Time and distance returned their equilibrium. The same delicate balance that each moon had to find: the safety of a planet, or the freedom of going it alone? Asimov called it the ‘tug-of-war’ value — the measure of how much a moon is pulled between its planet and the sun. How much anyone is torn between two things they want in equal measure.
Following his observation to its logical conclusion, Asimov reasoned that Earth’s moon is actually a planet in its own right — after all, its tug of war is technically being won by the Sun. Asimov saw the moon and Earth as a double-planet system rather than a parent and its satellite: the two planets circling the sun in step together, Fred and Ginger. The moon is always ‘falling’ towards the Sun, he said, an unfaithful mistress, while all other satellites fall faithfully for their dedicated planets. If the Sun pulled a little harder, the moon might just break away.
Watching the grandmothers and mothers link arms and step out, Lotte felt definitively alone. She was relieved she would never know the particular loss they were forced to reckon with. Parenting was not for her, she was certain of that. In coming to her decision, she had freed herself from a future she had never been ready for. And now she had to do the same for Vin.
The week in Buenos Aires was like the honeymoon they never had. Long mornings in bed, late nights in restaurants, bars, busy plazas bundled up against the cold. Each time they went to bed Lotte said a silent goodbye, straining into his embrace, searching deep for the memories to hold onto. In Puerto Iguazu, they stayed in a hotel with a bath shaped like a water lily, green mats on the floor like lily pads, and towels rolled to look like swans parked on the bed. At Iguazu Falls, standing on a metal walkway as the water thundered into the Devil’s Throat below, sending up rainbows in the spray, Lotte resolved to tell him that evening. And then the next. But it wasn’t until they returned to the Buenos Aires airport, her flight to Chile called before his to Sydney, that she told him.
I think we should separate, she said. End this. Divorce.
She stumbled over the words, swapping one for another, struggling to make her meaning clear.
I’m not in love with you, Vin. Any more.
Tacking the last phrase on as though it would make any difference. To convince them both that things had changed, that they were no longer what they had been. But the words were clumsy, matching the decor of the Starbucks-inspired cafe in the departures lounge. She was sure he would recognise the lie, but what other reason could she give?
I think you should find someone else, she said. Someone who wants the things you want.
What she wanted was for him to refute her in that moment. To declare that he could only ever want her, whatever that entailed. But he didn’t answer for a time, his eyes searching out an alternative reality over her shoulder, somewhere back by the check-in desk.
Have you? Found someone else? At the IAO?
She tossed up the merits of taking this option. One lie begets another.
No, it’s not that, she said. I just don’t feel there’s anything left between us.
She wished she hadn’t used the word ‘just’. It made it seem as though she was being offhand or flippant. A decision she’d come to lightly. She wished she could explain properly, but she knew the more words she uttered, the more options she risked offering.
You’ve already decided, he said, not bothering to frame it as a question.
I’m sure.
Vin pushed back his chair and stood. His T-shirt was hitched at his belt, a triangle of exposed skin underneath. His hands held the back of the chair, his close-trimmed nails so familiar.
It’s not about love, is it?
She felt his eyes bore into her, willing her to look up.
> Does it matter? she asked. I want you to be happy, and you won’t be happy with me.
That’s for me to decide, he said.
I’ve already decided. Lotte spoke only to his hands on the chair. Yet she made herself look up; she owed him that. His face was white, jaw clenched. Eyebrows collapsing toward his nose, the whole facade about to crumble.
Goodbye, Vin.
You know I’d do anything for you, Lotte. Give up every single thing I ever wanted if it meant keeping you.
She nodded, her throat closing, heart pounding in her ears, swallowing as though it might keep the emotion in check.
I know, she said.
When he walked away, he didn’t look back. She will always admire him for that.
•
As Lotte tries to fill her days at Eve and Tom’s, she finds herself drawn to Mina, enraptured by the little girl’s certainty at her place in the world. She is surprised by how much she enjoys the childish art projects, the conversations running in circles. But one afternoon when Eve, Tom, and Mina planned to go to a friend’s barbecue, Lotte pleads a headache: she doesn’t want to tag along.
She finds her mother’s old address book in one of the kitchen drawers while looking for some sticky tape to fix Mina’s torn finger-painting. Its spine is cracked, some of the pages loose and feathered at their edges. The handwriting is familiar, the rounded ‘o’s and loopy ‘t’s happily balanced on the blue lines. Some of the addresses have been crossed out, a few of those amended with a new entry just below. Green ticks parade down the edge of each page, marking off some of the entries, all of them landline numbers. Lotte is taken back to a moment years ago, watching her father in profile, Adam’s apple dipping as he swallowed repeatedly, brow furrowed. Lotte would read out a name from the address book, and he nodded or shook his head. When he nodded, she dialled the number, passing the receiver to him where he sat slouched on one of the kitchen stools. Sometimes the phone rang out, or an answering machine picked up. He would shake his head, and Lotte would press the catch into the base of the phone, cutting the call.
When somebody answered, Tom waited for their greeting before giving his own, and Lotte would put a tick next to their name in the address book, concentrating on the mark on the page, not wanting to listen to the conversation.
Usually his gathering silence would be enough — they would understand before he even began to say. But sometimes he automatically answered their greetings: Good thanks, and you?, his reply inviting the telling of some small anecdote to which he would listen in near silence, offering only the most hesitant of encouragements as the person at the other end of the line talked on. It only took forty-five minutes to call every one of Helen’s friends and let them know. When they finished the calls, Lotte and Tom sat at the dining table and wrote the death notice for the newspaper. The language staid, reluctant to admit too much pain. How much was there by then? Only numbness. Relief. The pain wasn’t theirs, not yet.
Having found sticky tape and mended Mina’s artwork (a lion or butterfly — she was convinced it was both things), Lotte turns the pages of the address book back to the beginning. Not recognising the name next to the first green tick, she runs her finger down the page. Diane Allan. She’d taught with Helen, and she’d lived on a property out of town. Lotte recalled a brunette bob, the fringe blunt and unforgiving above brightly coloured glasses. Diane sometimes gave Helen a lift home from work when it was raining; on those nights, Lotte would arrive home, dripping, from the bus stop on the corner to find the two of them sitting in Diane’s car parked in the driveway, the rain sparkling in the beams of the headlights.
Hello?
Can I speak to Diane, please?
Just a minute.
The tap of the receiver on a hard surface, footsteps going and coming.
Diane speaking.
My name’s Lotte. Lotte Wren. I’m ringing about my mother, Helen.
A pause.
Lotte, yes, how lovely to hear from you. I think of your mother all the time, she was such a wonderful woman.
There was a longer pause and then Diane’s voice brightened. What was it you were calling about, Lotte?
From where she stands in the kitchen, Lotte can see a trio of linocut prints — cherry blossoms and temples — that her parents had brought back from their trip to Japan the year Lotte went to uni. She wonders if Tom and Eve and Mina go on holidays together. That’s what families do.
It’s just … I’ve been thinking lately, about how I never … I thought it would be nice to know what other people remember of my mum.
The words rush out of Lotte, thoughts coming together as she speaks them.
Well, says Diane after a moment. She was a beautiful woman, just beautiful. It’s awful what happened to her, we all thought that. But surely you knew her better than me?
Lotte can hear the raised eyebrows in Diane’s voice, as if gesturing to someone about the strange nature of the call but determined not to be ruffled.
I guess I’ve just been thinking about how other people saw her, and how they remember her. I don’t want to feel like she’s been forgotten.
Diane takes a moment to reply.
Your father remarried, didn’t he? It was fairly quick, wasn’t it?
It was four years.
She’s very young, I heard. Much younger than your father. What’s she like? Is she a bit, well, you know?
She’s fine. She’s nice, says Lotte, her defences rushing to Eve.
Must be different to your mother, though? I mean, Helen was the life of the party; she was always in the thick of things. She had a lot of friends, I don’t know how she did it, really — I’ve barely got the time to keep up with my own family. But Helen was a great one for social events, not like your father at all. Everyone loved Helen.
Diane warms to the subject as she speaks, interrupting herself when another memory strikes her, telling Lotte about her mother’s sense of humour, her determination to get even the most uninterested children involved in science by assigning them messy projects such as papier-mâché exploding volcanoes, or aircraft that could save an egg from smashing when dropped from the classroom’s second-storey window. They are stories Lotte has heard her mother tell, nothing new, but there is something reassuring about hearing them from Diane.
She talked about you often, Lotte. She was so proud of you going off to uni, studying physics, wasn’t it? Astronomy? Just like her?
Yes. I work for an observatory now.
She would have been happy about that. Look, Lotte, I have to go, I’ve got my grandchildren coming soon. I hope I’ve been helpful, it really was lovely to hear from you.
Lotte hangs up. Nothing Diane had told her is new, but even with a twenty-minute conversation, she feels closer to her mother than she has in a long time. Lotte turns the pages of the address book, looking for the next entry that is accompanied by a green tick, and picks up the phone.
Lit by a single spotlight that tickled at their manes, three retired Clydesdale horses munch hay in the bare paddock of the open-air museum. They don’t flinch at the orange and red lights that flash beyond the trees, or the rifle fire cracking across the horizon. The sound-and-light show plays out seven nights a week, fighting once again (and twice on Saturdays) the battle between gold miners and police for which Ballarat is known. The miners had brazenly pilfered the Crux constellation for their cause, emblazoning a blue flag with the bright white stars of the Southern Cross. Eve had worked on it, Lotte recalls, using the job as an excuse to move to town, to get closer to Tom. Such a calculated manoeuvre; Lotte can almost admire its audacity.
At the top of the hill, night has lifted itself into the clouds. The streetlights of the city criss-cross the landscape like tartan, fogging the sky with insolent spill. The observatory, built by a passionate amateur and gifted to the town back in a time when people still did such things, is too close ben
eath the umbrella of light pollution to be of much scientific use any more, but it is popular with tourists, families, and school groups. She hasn’t been back here since her mother stopped volunteering.
Lotte sits in the back of the small theatre wearing 3-D glasses and watching a cartoonish film that compels the planets to swoop and hurtle past one another like brazen roller-derby competitors on the chase. She’d spent the afternoon in a cinema, too, watching two new-release films — anything to avoid the awkwardness of being at the house. After the film, a man comes to the front of the stage: Simon. He had called her that afternoon, replying to a message she left on his phone; his was one of the numbers in Helen’s address book, but Lotte can barely remember him. He was eager to talk, insistent that she come and meet him at the observatory that night — he lived out of town, he didn’t want to have to drive in twice, didn’t want to talk on the phone. Lotte was wary — over the last two days, the conversations with her mother’s friends had been wearily similar. All of them remember a bright, vivacious woman who worked hard and died too young. A woman who is sounding less and less familiar with every phone call; time never moves backwards.
Simon’s beard juts forward, and when he uses his arms to gesture he does not look at his hands, staring past their waving and demonstrating to the audience, giving the impression that his hands are nothing to do with him. He throws in a few well-practiced jokes; the audience laughs. He is not as engaging as Helen was: he has none of that infectious joy that demands enthusiasm. When he asks the children in the audience if they can name the rover currently exploring Mars, a small child in the front row goes one better, explaining in her confident, piping voice the significance of Curiosity’s most recent findings. After a PowerPoint presentation, the families follow in a crocodile line to a telescope set up in one of the large domes, where they will be able to view Orion up close, and perhaps even Jupiter — though considering the size of the telescope, Lotte suspects it will appear little more than a russet-coloured Christmas bauble.
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