White Time

by Margo Lanagan

  Chenko had walked all the way here when he’d heard about the trees, but of course every carry-able piece down to kindling scraps had been taken by the time he got here. There was a woman with a chainsaw, and two big daughters and an old man with a stick to guard the petrol and the cut wood. The way they looked at Chenko, he said nothing; he turned around, and walked home.

  ‘That jar,’ said Chenko.

  Maylette smiled. ‘A swipe. Pantry in Northside Park.’ She was wearing a hibiscus-splashed shirt, huge, the sleeves rolled thickly at her elbows; eight-inch cuffs were folded up on her overall legs. Dressed up special, with her hair washed and combed. It gave Chenko a strange feeling, a hovering somewhere deep, between his navel and his groin.

  ‘You must be good.’

  Her smile went further, and he laughed. Then the call-bell sounded inside, and he felt all the expression go from his face. Down in a crater in the park a loose length of UXB tape was fluttering, faded to palest pink.

  For a quick shock of a moment, Maylette was right against him, her thin arms holding him, her clean cotton hibiscus-sleeve under his nose. Then she stepped back, frowning, and drew him around to face the parlour door. Inside, a huffy pedal-organ began to play.

  No one believes these songs, Marda had said. We wish we did, but we don’t – not a word. But we still use them. What else would we use?

  In the middle of the ragged final chorus came the whistle-crump, whistle-crump of distant shelling. The singing tailed off and people looked up and around as they always did, as if things in this room would clue them to any danger.

  Then the acting priest-man went over and closed Parda away behind the curtains. Next to Chenko, Marda pulled in a very deep and unsteady breath and straightened. On his other side Maylette snatched her hands off the prayer-rail and tucked them into her armpits.

  ‘Oh, my,’ said Marda on the porch. Smoke was going up, a wall of smoke from the dead TV tower as far as the bridge. You couldn’t see the church for smoke. ‘Oh my, oh my. Oh, Par.’ And she had to sit down.

  ‘I’ll go,’ said Chenko. ‘You stay here. Or go to … Mrs Abel, can she come to you?’

  ‘I’ve got her. Don’t worry. I even have tea.’

  Maylette ran with him. There was a lot of rubble between them and home, a lot of scrambling. They got into the smoke and the wailing, and it was hard to tell where they were with all the new caves and fallen walls. But Chenko kept a handle on things – the keystone of the church archway, the green GET HOME ALIVE posters on the school’s only wall, an actual street-sign, Bay Street and Hoe, intact even to its useless lamp.

  They found the place, at least. They found the smithereens. Some dead were already brought out and laid in a row. A province-woman was sobbing there over her half a daughter.

  ‘It’s a good thing it’s morning,’ said Maylette. ‘You’ll have time to find a cave.’

  They paced out the hall, worked out where the Zlatters’ rubble was, started tossing bricks aside, chunks of cankered concrete. It always amazed Chenko how much more there was of a house, knocked down.

  All they found was Dulcet’s old satchel, the kitchen pot, some bedding. Chenko hauled the wardrobe-cloth out too, scattering bricks. He felt all over its yellow and brown daisies. It wasn’t wet, or dirty with anything other than brick-filth.

  He couldn’t be surprised. Things disappeared under shells. Shells blew brick to powder, flesh to spray. And the Lily had been, if anything, soft.

  Still, he sat down. The province-woman’s noise was clambering around in his head. And it was sunny, and as safe as it ever would be.

  Maylette crossed the sliding rubble and sat down too. She waved the squashed stove in front of his wet eyes. ‘One thing you don’t have to hope for,’ she said, and tossed it away. Her other arm was on his back, right where the sweat was coldest.

  ‘It’s just, Dulcet and then Parda and then—’ He folded the wardrobe-cloth. ‘It was a good place!’ he burst out, and was properly crying. ‘Doors – you could lock – my parda could be sick there—’

  ‘Yep.’ She rubbed his back, hurting. It helped.

  And she left her arm on him. It was so luxurious, there in the sun, that he stole some unrelated crying – just a small burst, quickly curbed.

  ‘Nothing fair about it,’ said Maylette in a finishing way, as he slowed.

  He nodded, mopped up on his sleeve. Maylette wore a mask of dust; sweat stripes ran from her temples to her chin. She’d tied her shirt around her middle. ‘You dirtied up your nice clothes,’ he said.

  She looked at herself, grinned, shrugged. ‘We done here?’

  ‘I think so.’

  He picked up the bundle of bedding and followed her off the rubble. She stood right by him as he looked back, her gritty arm against his. He could still tell her about the Lily.

  But right now, Marda needed to know what was left. The smoke was clearing; the dead were covered with plastic sheeting; the province-woman was gone. As Maylette and Chenko worked their way out, cries from the market – Candles! Potatoes! A green bean for a gold tooth! – echoed as usual from street to street.

  THE BOY

  WHO DID N’T

  YEARN

  I should have realized straight off. Of all people, I, Tess Maxwell, should’ve seen him for what he was. I mean, I knew something was different, something big. My eyes kept going back to him. But I was caught up in people leaving the Art Cottage, and he was in the crowd going to the basketball courts, and we got swept away from each other, Keenoy Ribson and me.

  I tried to work it out at the bus stop, the way you try and get a whole dream back using the one little shred you remember. But it turned into a flutter among flutters in my mind, and the bus came, and I went home.

  I went home and I went to work – same place. I work in one square of home; ‘the parlour’, Mum calls it, a polite name for such a messy, personal kind of business premises.

  My first client was a woman who was after her husband. He was right there with her, of course; the thick, dark string of his tether went from his worn slipper-toe to her right shoulder. He hung over her, griping.

  ‘He’s saying “Don’t burn the snags, Merrill,”’ I told her.

  She laughed. ‘Oh yes, of course. Yes, that’s him. Same old whingeing bludger. God, I miss him!’ And she cried. They always cry when you tell them that kind of detail.

  And then there was a man. He had a very handsome boyfriend – well, the handsome version alternated with a blotched, dying one who slid down to lie between us on the Turkish rug. ‘He’s very grateful for everything you did for him,’ I said. ‘It made it easier, he says. You did everything right. Robert, his name is.’ And the guy nodded, and he dissolved in tears, too. ‘You’re doing good work,’ I went on. ‘You think it’s pointless without Robert, but every day of your life you make a big difference to a lot of people. He’s not saying that; it’s just … clear, around you. There’s all this value; you’re very solid. What is your work?’

  ‘I’m a nurse,’ he said, through the complimentary tissues.

  ‘Oh, there you go, then.’

  After him, I was tired, because it is tiring. But two clients means a hundred dollars. Five hundred dollars a week is a good amount – it means we can live, as well as keep Dad at Bernard House. If I were really determined I could do more, but … but I guess I’m not. We’re managing, aren’t we? We’re managing fine on two a night.

  Mum was in the kitchen with a fruit-shake and a cheese muffin for me, and Dad was there, too, on home-care. I sat and ate and thought about bed.

  ‘Take Dad for a walk?’ said Mum.

  I nodded. It was too early for bed; a walk would clear my head ready for homework.

  It was cold outside, grey and darkening. I wheeled Dad up to the park, because the paths there have got nice, rounded corners, and I needed to be somewhere quiet, among trees and rotundas and curly metal seats. I started to wake up there, I started to come back to myself. You can’t hurry that; all you c
an do is wait.

  I used to exhaust myself over Dad. It didn’t do any good. I can feel his brain almost as if it’s in my own skull, and half of it’s just drained, of juice, of life. And nothing on the living side’s very strong, either. Everything shimmers at the same level, with no memory bigger or better than the others, and there are no links between the memories, or feelings tied to them; everything’s just random poppings-up, a sort of play of life like a small, settled fire that won’t actually burn anything up.

  Once, right back at the beginning, Mum asked what I could see. ‘They say the life force can flow back in, bit by bit,’ she said. And she looked up from Dad, wanting hope – from me, probably the only person in her world who couldn’t give her any.

  I was so embarrassed for her I couldn’t speak. Life force –where’d she get that idea? And who were ‘they’ supposed to be?

  ‘But that’d be for mild strokes, I suppose,’ she finished, turning away.

  I recovered a bit. ‘He’s there, but he’s all mulched up. He doesn’t hang together.’

  ‘Is there any point,’ she asked, ‘in it being us, who look after him? Does it make any difference? Does he recognize us?’

  ‘Not very often. And not much happens when he does.’

  Which was why we eventually put him in Bernard House, to get some life back for ourselves, some time not tending that fire. We do still tend it, but only on a few week-nights. Mum wheels Dad home and parks him in the kitchen–family room he designed and built, and feeds him while I work – she says she doesn’t want me feeding him, doesn’t want me to have memories of that. And she talks to him. She’s hoping to get something back, an eye-flicker, a noise that sounds like an answer. Stubbornly she goes on, serenely talking, about the news, about people they both used to know (but now only she knows them), goes on and on breaking her heart over – him or maybe not breaking it so much as wearing it away, grinding it gradually down to nothing.

  I won’t do that to myself. I know it upsets Mum that I don’t talk to Dad, but what’s the point if he doesn’t exist enough to hear me? Mum still thinks he does – time and time again I see her making up that alternative life, seeing his eyes brighten, watching him throw off his rug and stand up: I’ll just get that doorknob fixed before dinner, he says, or What are we all sitting around here for, with long faces? But even when his voice is so clear, coming through her, I can’t believe; I know Dad’s kind of damage never mends. He won’t come back.

  Next morning I woke up breathing the deep calm of a Dad-free house. Whatsaname Ribson, I thought. Keenoy. The air around him is absolutely clear and silent. Yeah, that was it. No strings attached him to any yearnings or losses. He was clean; he was himself; he was completely self-contained. Like me. Excitement stirred tentatively under my ribs. Could there be someone like that? Or did he have some attachment I just wasn’t seeing yet?

  I dressed and took coffee in to Mum, stroked her head to wake her up and gave her one of those big morning hugs – better than coffee, she says – which are like being drunk out of, but like drinking too. And I smiled back at her, which I can do, some mornings.

  ‘Busy day ahead?’ she said. Beside her the bedclothes were flat and uncluttered, where for a long time after Dad’s stroke there’d been a mound, a Dad-shaped mound that Mum had put there.

  ‘Busy day every day. Want toast?’

  ‘There are some muffins left – I’ll have one of those. Please, I mean.’

  ‘Your wish is my command.’

  ‘Thanks, love.’

  Going up the hill to school, I saw a tall boy’s curly blond hair ahead. Ah, yes. Him.

  He was talking to Slade and those guys. He said something that made them laugh. They were easier to see for a moment–those guys are usually so stuck about with hang-ups it’s quite painful to look at them. But when the veils of fear and bad home life and wanting-a-red-car clustered back around them, Keenoy Ribson was still clear and unobscured. My eyes searched around him automatically, wondering where he hid all his stuff – some people can do that – searching and searching and finding nothing. Nothing at all. It was kind of stunning, like a fine day after a long rainy spell. I watched him closely – his relaxed walk, his personal version of the school uniform, the beaten-up school bag with his old school’s crest on it, with the motto KNOW THYSELF – and I waited for interference, but he stayed as crisp and clean-edged as a photograph.

  Several times that day I saw him, always with totally different groups of people. He didn’t seem to care who he was seen with, Slade’s roughnecks or Mandy’s knitting circle or that nerd Purtwee. He always looked perfectly comfortable; the group was always cheerful and busy with conversation.

  ‘Did you see that new guy?’ I heard Josh Bateman say. ‘What a suck – see him talking to Bannister? Getting in with the school captain …?’

  But at lunchtime there they were, Keenoy and Josh and all the soccer-heads together, out on the oval, kicking a ball around.

  Nobody had a problem with him, unless you call the girls’ instant wild crushes a problem. ‘Such a babe,’ Blossom O’Malley said to me – I happened to be standing near her when Keenoy walked past.

  ‘You think?’ I said.

  ‘What, are you crazy?’ She goggled at me.

  ‘You think he’s good-looking?’

  She gazed after him. ‘Well, it’s not so much the looks, though they’re OK. It’s more, he’s so happy.’

  I liked Blossom for a second, then, with that note of longing in her voice. Just for that brief time, she had dignity, before all her usual cutesy, kittenish attachments bobbed in around her again.

  My work makes it hard for me to like people. They seem so despicable sometimes, going around inside out, all their weaknesses showing in their walk, in their clothes, in their I’m-in-control-of-it-all faces, let alone the visible holes in them, the baggage-people they drag around with them. Mum says these things are only obvious to me, though. I must remember, not everyone can see what’s so shatteringly clear to me. I envy other people that, and I despise them. I can’t see how they can live, so cluttered up with other people’s lives and influences; I’d hate to live in someone else’s shadow. Worse, I’d hate to go around with my insides all blurted out like that, moaning my wants to the whole world, mourning what I’d lost.

  Keenoy Ribson went on being happy. (I should’ve realized then, at least.) He didn’t take on any of our hang-ups, didn’t join any of the cliques. He seemed to enjoy himself, to enjoy being at this school, with us. He volunteered for the daggy old musical; he played sports – not well, but with lots of energy; he worked hard enough but didn’t do brilliantly. And he talked. He greeted everyone, he chatted, he joked, he had deep-and-meaningfuls when deep-and-meaningfuls were required. He was always in there with people, close up, interacting.

  I kept waiting for some insufficiency, some little longing, to show itself near him, but it never did. I’d have to talk to him, maybe, get to know him better, or just get him away from the crowd and see him against a plain background, before I’d know for sure.

  I did follow him home one day – well, not all the way home. Somehow I lost him near the freeway overpass, just got distracted for the second it took him to disappear up some lane or into some house.

  I didn’t try again. I wasn’t exactly in a hurry to be disappointed. (Funny how, through the whole thing, I always expected disappointment, even though I went after hope. ‘Went after’ – hmph. I sat like a lump, doing nothing, letting hope grow all by itself, like ivy, latching onto me with its millions of little suckers.)

  ‘How does it come to you, the Knowledge?’ one of my clients once asked me, a client who’d pulled a whole bunch of mooing, chattering gurus into the parlour with her, all their tethers snarled together.

  It always annoys me, that soft, awed tone of voice. I sighed. ‘It’s very simple. You know how some people have been hurt so badly that they shuffle when they walk, or they hunch over and hug the inside edge of the pavement? You
know how angry people wear this angry face around all the time, with the pulled-down mouth and the eyes kind of flashing to warn you?’

  ‘Yes, you’re right!’ She sounded surprised, as if this was new to her. ‘It’s as if their experiences are imprinted in their bodies somehow.’

  ‘Well, exactly. And all you have to do is look a little bit closer, and all the details of that imprint will show you the shape of the thing that’s giving them pain, or anger, or sadness. Usually it’s another person, but it can be some thing they want badly, like a big house or a pile of gold – that can push you out of shape, too.’

  But I’d lost her – she’d gone all reverent again. She wanted me to be another guru, the guru of gurus, to give her the final answer that would pull all the others together into one simple rule for living. ‘It’s a wonderful gift.’ She thought she was agreeing, but she was actually preventing herself from seeing. People do this all the time.

  No, it’s not a gift. Anyone can do it – but nobody does. Nobody bothers to read, from the way a person’s spine bends or the way their voice turns all feathery when they’re stressed, the shape of the other person who stands behind, or over, or inside, or squashed underneath the client. Absent ones, Mum calls them, but in fact they’re very present. They’ve carved themselves into each client – sometimes gently and in a good way, sometimes with a single thump or shout spoiling a life, cramping every movement from that moment on. Just open your eyes and you’ll see them.

  It was a Wednesday evening, getting into autumn. I was pushing Dad home from the park. Everything looked coldly blue, except for the golden interior of Bar Piccolo, like a little lantern between the closed minimart and the vacant shop that had once been the Bibliophile bookshop. Kids from school sat laughing around a table in there, among them Keenoy Ribson.