Gravity Is the Thing

by Jaclyn Moriarty

  ‘What appointment?’ I asked.

  Mum ignored me. She threw open the screen door and ducked back inside. I could hear her shouting: ‘Robert! Come on! We’ve got to go right now!’

  I waited in the driveway beside the car, interested to see what would happen.

  The door flew open again and Mum was back. She ran down the steps to the car, opened the driver’s door, registered me, and smiled a bit maniacally while she hollered: ‘ROBERT!’ She was cradling something in her other arm, as if it were an infant. I can’t remember what it was. Not an actual infant, I’m sure.

  A couple of minutes later, my brother Robert wandered out onto the porch, squinted up at the sky then down at me and across at Mum. He’d stayed home from school that day, feeling dizzy. It seemed to me that you could just as well be dizzy at school as at home, but I kept that to myself. He was wearing his old tracksuit pants and a grey t-shirt, and his clothes seemed droopy and loose.

  ‘What appointment?’ Robert asked.

  ‘You know, the thing with that doctor; the doctor who has the—he has the—’

  ‘The elegant moustache?’ I suggested. ‘The habit of stroking the porcelain cat on his desk?’

  ‘The collection of elves locked in a box, pounding to get out with tiny bruised and bloodied fists?’ Robert tried.

  ‘The fish tank!’ shouted Mum, relieved. ‘He has a fish tank in his office! Come on! We have to go!’

  ‘Ah.’ Robert and I nodded wisely to each other. ‘Of course. The doctor with the fish tank.’

  Mum threw something at me—it was the object she had under her arm; I remember what it was now: a watering can. Droplets spilled out onto my wrist as I caught it. ‘Finish watering the house plants!’ she said.

  ‘Why?’ I enquired.

  She and Robert were getting in the car.

  I studied the watering can: so twee and little, neat and efficient, tip, move, tip, move, tip.

  When I looked up, they were driving down the road. Robert didn’t wave at me. He was facing straight ahead. I watched them turn left at the T, and the car seemed to me to be a bright, little, twee, little, efficient, little watering can itself. I don’t know why.

  Inside, I opened my schoolbag and took out a bunch of notes about excursions and new uniform rules, and carried them to the rusty frying pan. (It wasn’t just a place for stamped mail, you understand: it was the meeting point for all written communications.)

  As I was about to drop in the notes, I saw a thin brown envelope addressed to me, Abigail Sorensen.

  Right away, I knew it was a letter from a film producer saying they wanted to make one of my horror movie scripts into a movie.

  Zing! Right up from my chest and across my face, I was so excited.

  Even though I’d never actually written a horror movie script. Let alone sent one to producers. I just had a fierce intention of doing so, one of these days.

  I opened the envelope, revising my excitement as I did, so as to keep it realistic. More likely, it was a film producer who’d heard about my fierce plans to write a horror movie, and now wanted to tell me that s/he admired such fierceness, and could s/he please offer me a million dollars to write a script?

  But it was not from a film producer. It was the letter enclosing the first chapter of The Guidebook.

  I remember I read the letter and laughed. Of all the people in all the world. I was hilarious with laughter. I couldn’t wait for Robert to get home from the doctor with the fish tank so we could rip this thing apart.

  Not literally. You know what I mean.

  Then I read the enclosed chapter. It was printed on a single sheet of paper. I recall exactly what it said:

  Chapter 1

  Welcome.

  We begin with a question and a reprimand.

  The question:

  Did you find this book in the self-help section of the bookstore?

  The reprimand:

  Why?

  Sweet antelope, dear reader, what were you doing in the self-help section of your bookstore! Are you a fool or a baboon? Which? Do you think that the answer can be found in self-help? Do you think that the moon has a deficiency of iron and it is that which explains its wan colouring? If so, reader, get away! Do not scald this page with your plaintive, pleading eyes, do not blink your turtle tears upon this print!

  We do not want you reading our book!

  Get away!

  Ha!

  Just joking.

  You can read it.

  Now, tell us quick, did we alarm you? Were you scratching the back of your neck, embarrassed and confused? Well, sweet reader, let us offer you a warning: here, in your hands, is a book that will keep you on your toes. This book intends to shock and jolt, and you, in turn, will kick and bite, but we (in our turn) will never let you down. The covers of this book—midnight blue and flecked in gold—these covers are our arms and they embrace you.

  We do not mind where you found this book, though we prefer not to call it self-help. For what is the point in that? You can help yourself to the fish in the sea, you can help yourself to a coconut treat. You already know how to help yourself, yet you do not!

  So this is a we-help book.

  It is we who plan to help. Not you.

  That was it.

  The whole chapter. Done.

  I felt strange.

  I mean, the first few lines, I laughed aloud. Then I stopped. The laughter hung around in the kitchen, growing uncomfortable, mumbling questions about when the party was going to start again. But I’d gone quiet. I had this sense that the authors of the book knew I’d come here to mock them, but they’d stuck out a foot for me to stumble over and were ready to catch me as I fell.

  It is we who plan to help. Not you.

  Partly, the strangeness was the cognitive disjunction: this was a sheet of printed paper that had been mailed to me, a girl in my kitchen; but, according to the words, this was a book, its covers midnight blue and flecked in a gold, and I was a girl in the self-help section of a bookstore.

  I hid the letter and chapter in my bedroom, wrote YES on the back of a retro New York postcard and mailed it to the PO address.

  I think I might have done this because it was so easy. I had a lot of homework to do, most of which seemed elaborate and tiresome. Whereas writing the word YES; taking a stamp; walking down the street to post it—that was a piece of cake.

  Also, it struck me as supercool, super-slick to use the retro New York postcard, so that was also a motivating factor.

  Although I regretted this the moment I posted it. I’d had the postcard for years! It was from a street fair in Coolangatta, where I’d been on holiday, aged ten, with my best friend (and neighbour) Carly Grimshaw and her family. I’d been saving it for something special.

  After that, I received chapters of The Guidebook regularly. No covering letters, just chapters, and in no particular order. The second one, for example, was Chapter 47. Then we skipped back to Chapter 11. Most were extremely short. I liked that about them. Again, they compared favourably to the reading I had to do for school.

  I remember one:

  Chapter 25

  100 watts. But how many whys? How many ifs?

  And what about the whens?

  That was the entire chapter, and I found it extremely profound.

  Sometimes they sounded like a regular self-help book, but they always veered off-track in the end. Here’s an example:

  Chapter 9

  It’s simple, life. You just follow a rule or two. Always keep an eye out for a fireworks display. Don’t brush your hair when it’s wet. Teach yourself to understand the wind. Never put a plastic bag over your head. If you see a trampoline, jump on it, jump higher! Never stick a knife in the toaster. Do a thing you fear every other day. Raw chicken? Avoid! Don’t walk past a row of police cars, snapping off the antennae one by one, and gathering them into your arms like kindling for a campfire. Never do that.

  My parents noticed the envelopes eventually, and read a
few chapters themselves, but quickly lost interest, finding them mystifying and harmless, like my homework or my music. Sometimes the chapters gave me instructions, simple tasks to complete: sign up for a martial arts class, try this dance step, photograph the clouds, procure a dandelion, eat a slice of cinnamon toast. Some of these I did, many I ignored. Also, near the end of each year, a letter would arrive from Rufus and Isabelle, urging me to write, and then send in, a few pages of ‘reflections’ on the year just past.

  Alternatively, I was offered the option of cancelling my ‘free subscription’ at any time by sending them a note containing the single word, NO.

  I know exactly why I never did.

  8.

  Wilbur cleared his throat.

  ‘You can open your eyes now,’ he said.

  It had only been a few minutes, but people straightened, rubbed their faces and yawned, like preschoolers waking up from nap time.

  ‘Over the next two days,’ Wilbur declared, ‘I will lead you in a series of group activities. These will be fun!’ He hesitated, as if doubting that assertion, then carried on. ‘Tomorrow night, I will share with you the truth about The Guidebook.’

  Ha!

  The better, the answer, the promise. But we won’t get it tomorrow night, I thought. There’ll be something more. He will yank it from our grasp.

  ‘Listen—’ Wilbur continued, but a sudden chuckle cut him off. I craned my neck to see who it was. It was the guy with the red hair. I smiled at him. His eyes crinkled in reply. Everything went hazy, and I hallucinated ribbons and martini glasses. What I mean by that is, I wanted to sleep with him.

  I turned back to the front.

  ‘But listen,’ Wilbur repeated, his voice suddenly urgent, or pleading. ‘Only certain among you will be chosen to hear the truth. Please do not be sad if you’re not chosen.’

  Sparks flew up in the fireplace. Everyone was silent and thoughtful.

  ‘It is what it is,’ a woman suggested.

  ‘Right,’ Wilbur agreed, brightening. ‘So it is!’

  And the first day of activities began.

  9.

  My memory of that day has collapsed into the following glimpses.

  We are buttoning our coats, turning up our collars, tramping behind Wilbur into the bluster of the wind. Above us, skidding clouds.

  Now we are in a field. Wilbur is handing out sacks that smell of horses and hay. He is shouting instructions. We are climbing into the sacks, lining up side by side for a sack race. Unexpected! The strange awkward loping of a sack race. (I am winning the race for a moment! Then tipping sideways into rutted grass. Bruising my hip. Coming in last. Oh well.)

  We are tying our feet together for a three-legged race! My ankle is tied to the leg of the man with the sonorous voice and round spectacles! One minute, he’s not there, and then he is. Beside me, leaning down, his hand brushing mine as he loops the rope around and pulls it tight. He looks at me and shrugs. ‘Okay?’ His eyes, behind their spectacles, are smoky grey. We both laugh and I’m thinking, He chose me for this race! He chose me! Now we’re running together, the heat of it, the panting breath, an even rhythm, a jagged rhythm, the pull of his body, his leg against mine, our legs scissoring back and forth!

  We don’t win; we come in maybe fourth.

  Now our legs are free again, strange to be loose and free after a three-legged race! The smoky-grey-eyed man has drifted away, much like smoke itself.

  Wilbur is pointing out a long, low, brick wall. He is telling us to walk along the wall. Single file, we walk, arms out for balance. Somebody stumbles, jumps smartly down and climbs up again, all in a flash.

  We are racing down a grassy slope, arms outstretched again, eyes tearing up in the wind, leaping onto the sand dunes. Everybody laughs.

  ‘This is a fitness camp!’ somebody suggests.

  ‘No,’ says Wilbur. ‘No, it’s not.’ He seems disconcerted.

  We are on a long stretch of empty, cold beach. A lighthouse on a cliff. Someone shouts over Wilbur’s voice, ‘There’s a whale!’ Pointing fingers, squinting eyes, a distant haze rising out of the grey. The pale, pale pink cliffs.

  Wilbur wants us to play leapfrog. Firm hands press against my back.

  ‘It is a fitness camp!’ people shout.

  Wilbur frowns.

  There’s an urgent life and laughter to the day, I remember. It’s a day that has leaped out of its bed and is dancing around its room. A vibrancy, an intensity—which is strange, because this man, this stranger, is making us race up hills, across fields, along walls, for no apparent reason, and yet, rather than querying this, refusing, demanding explanations, we are laughing, joking and delighting in it—and I realise why.

  It’s a competition! Only certain among you will be chosen to hear the truth. Everybody wants to be chosen. Not only do we not complain, we embrace the day. Personalities are varnished. Voices rise, laughter arpeggios. It’s like a reality TV show, and I find myself peering around, looking for the hidden cameras.

  But how do we know the criteria for selection? I wonder, watching a woman flaring out her hair as she offers chewing gum around. She collects the gum wrappers back, and presses these into her pocket.

  Could the criteria be the furnishing of chewing gum combined with the thoughtful collection of litter?

  Probably not, I decide.

  Most people seem to have reasoned that vivacity is key. They are speaking in bursts to each other, their words flying out in the wind, their words not the point. Like extras in a film, chatting animatedly in the background.

  A woman turns a cartwheel! It’s the small woman who had frowned when I arrived this morning. She’s sparked up now! Turning cartwheels! She’s even smaller than I thought; she’s teeny tiny! Perhaps that’s why she was frowning? She was thinking to herself: Why, oh why, am I so small? How can I grow? Whereas now she has come to terms with her size and thus is turning her cartwheels.

  A man, seeing the cartwheel, climbs a tree. He clambers at high speed and then pauses, considering the next branch, fine, twiggy, thin. He decides on a lively leap back to the ground instead. Takes a bow. People applaud.

  We are back in the conference room, faces wind-pink, eyes bright, shivering to warmth by the fire. The fruit and pastries are gone; in their place are trays of sandwiches and sushi. My hands are cold.

  Wilbur splits us into groups of five or six. He seems to do this in a rapid, random way, grouping people who happen to be standing near each other.

  The man with red hair is in my group, as is flat-cap guy with hipster beard.

  Also in my group is a wiry little man with a disgruntled scowl, who seems to have an issue with his shoulder. He keeps stretching it, shrugging it, wincing. His shoulder has all his attention.

  I worry, on his behalf, that he will be eliminated from the truth for inadequate shoulder health.

  Wilbur is handing each group a long thin stick, like a cane. ‘This is a team-building exercise,’ he says. ‘Each group must place the stick along outstretched fingertips, and work as one to lower it to the floor.’

  ‘Why?’ calls Flat-cap, beside me. ‘Why are we doing team-building exercises when we are, in fact, not teams?’

  Others gaze across at him. His friendly smile makes his question perfectly reasonable. Yet it is also a risk. I see that in many faces. You don’t get chosen for the truth if you’re insubordinate!

  Wilbur smiles.

  Oh. The faces falter. Maybe you do? Maybe he wants us to ask questions?

  ‘How do you know,’ Wilbur responds, ‘that you are not a team?’

  Redhead looks directly at me and widens his eyes. You’re the kind of guy I like! I think directly at him. But then he widens his eyes at the others in our group too.

  We lower the stick to the floor. It keeps rising back up! (It’s something to do with the collective pressure of our fingers being stronger than the weight of the stick, Flat-cap explains.) Everybody laughs and laughs, and then everybody works together as teams to mak
e the stick hit the ground. The wiry guy with the shoulder issue does not appear to enjoy this game and, at one point, almost barks at us to stop lifting it up. No way he’ll get chosen.

  But it doesn’t take long for us to sort it out and we feel proud.

  Now we are back at the beach, kicking along in the sand, and people are pointing out seals in the whites of waves. Wilbur is handing out blank sheets of paper, which flap violently in the wind. We chase them. Wilbur’s face flashes with mild panic. He wants us to make these papers into aeroplanes, he yells.

  We’re sitting on rocks, folding paper. We’re tossing our planes and our shouts into the wind, where they’re turned, turmoiled, dashed against rocks, skimmed along sand, bedraggled by foam.

  Wilbur, I notice, stands perfectly still, eyes closed, wearing a strange sad smile, while the wind beats his face, wrenches at his hair, fluttering his lashes; a leaf rushes up against his cheek and away and he does not flinch. These are the Roaring Forties, I remember, the strong westerly winds that urge sailing ships around the world and that, further south, grow even angrier: the Furious Fifties, the Shrieking Sixties.

  ‘I forgot!’ Wilbur shouts abruptly, eyes flying open. ‘You were meant to write your names on the paper and then make them into aeroplanes.’ He slaps his own knees and bursts out laughing. This is the first time Wilbur has laughed. He seems ecstatic with his laughter. Also, for the first time, people regard him with uncertainty.

  ‘Let’s go inside,’ Wilbur bellows into the wind, ‘and introduce ourselves!’

  The sun fades and tumbles, clouds darken. We gather all the paper planes.

  It seems a little late in the day for introductions.

  10.

  Here my memory calms again, so I can return to past tense.

  We were back in the conference room and this time the food table was bare. I felt sad. I’d been imagining coffee and cake. It seemed rhythmically natural at this point of the day. Specifically, I’d visualised coconut-raspberry-chocolate squares. I had no grounds for visualising these, I just like them.