But Niall was here. Antony with the flat cap, whose mother had been cruel when he came out; the disgruntled guy with the shoulder, who muttered now under his breath; Nicole, who did not raise goats nor meet a man with golden hair; Frangipani.
Of course, I thought in relation to Frangipani.
She beamed at me in a way that suggested she was equally annoyed to see me here.
I looked around, counting quickly. Fifteen people.
Wilbur was the last to arrive. He rushed in, tousled with wind, cold and rain. He must have just come back from the airstrip. He was more outdoors than all of us now, and therefore somehow superior. He carried a stack of folders, and he began to hand them around.
‘Here it is,’ he said. ‘Inside this folder. The truth.’
That was unexpected. His voice was distracted, offhand. His eyes remained lowered.
Once we each had a folder, Wilbur stood back, rocking on his heels. Nobody moved. It was as if the group understood the importance of ritual better than Wilbur now. We disapproved of his failure to build drama.
‘Inside this folder,’ Wilbur repeated, frowning slightly, ‘is the truth. It’s the original prologue to The Guidebook. Go ahead and read it.’
He sat on a table, swung his legs like a boy, and turned towards a window to look out.
Here’s what was inside the folder.
Prologue
Tell us. Do you yearn for the uneasy balance?
Do you seek out the fine shred of moment when the seesaw hovers and stills? Does the principle of lift—based as it is on two pairs of sneakers hitting the dirt at the same time—does the principle of lift raise up your heart?
When you close your eyes, do you see scales? (We don’t mean fish scales, by the way. We mean the scales of justice! Or the scales you use to measure your fruit in a supermarket.)
If you have answered YES to any of our questions, then this book is for you!
You see, this book rests on the principle of lift. The principle of lift, based as it is on two pairs of sneakers hitting the dirt at the same time, the principle of lift, let us assure you, is the principle of life!
The Wright brothers, tiring of the effort of balance, cut out a section of the wing of their plane and they found it: the principle of lift. It had been there in the wing all the time.
Read all the chapters, complete all the tasks, and you will be ready to fly—primed for your lessons in flight.
We, your authors, already know how to fly.
Isabelle learned first. Later, she fell in love with me (Rufus), and taught me the secret.
For Isabelle, it started simply enough, as all great things do. One day, when she was four years old, her father found her playing in the garden.
‘Do you know, Isabelle,’ he said, ‘I think you could fly if you put your mind to it. You have such lovely little bones.’
He said, ‘We’ll start on the small hills in the snow.’
That was it.
I finished reading, and looked up.
Wilbur was still swinging his legs.
Around me papers rustled as others read, finished reading, and looked in the folders for more.
There was the sort of silence in which people sniff or cough. Drop something, pick it up. Clatter of a pen. Creak of chair.
‘Wait,’ I said suddenly. ‘That’s it?’
Others murmured similar doubts.
‘That’s the truth?’ The speaker’s voice twisted with contempt. ‘That we have to have balance and then we can fly?’
Wilbur was frowning. ‘Well,’ he said. ‘Not . . . It’s the principle of . . .’
‘I’m not sure they’ve quite got the principle of lift down,’ Niall contributed, reasonable. He read from the paper, a smile in his voice. ‘Based as it is on two pairs of sneakers hitting the dirt at the same time.’
Others were talking among themselves, in a tone of raised eyebrows and sighs. Oh, the dreary predictability of self-help.
‘They’re always on about balance.’
‘Wow, I’m glad I didn’t pay for this.’
‘See, there’s never anything new because there is nothing new.’
‘Good to be reminded, I suppose. I do need to get more balance in my life.’
Wilbur, meanwhile, had stopped swinging his legs and was looking around at us, his expression perplexed.
‘Oh!’ he said suddenly. ‘Oh, you’re thinking it’s a metaphor! No! No!’ His face had cleared. ‘It’s not metaphorical flight, it’s actual flight. The book has been teaching you to fly.’ He smiled warmly.
‘To fly a plane?’ someone asked.
‘No. To fly.’ Wilbur spoke the next words slowly and carefully, as if he’d just realised that we weren’t all that bright. ‘Assuming you’ve been reading The Guidebook, and you’ve carried out most of its tasks and exercises, you can fly now. All of you can fly.’
17.
‘Oh, brother,’ somebody said.
A tide of laughter moved around the room, snagging on one or two silent people with gaping mouths.
Wilbur’s eyes panicked. He saw the division falling swift, a rapid descent of boom gates, dividing him from us. He raised his voice. ‘Listen to Nietzsche,’ he almost shouted. ‘The higher we soar, the smaller we appear to those who cannot fly!’
‘Yes, well, that’s an issue of perspective,’ someone said mildly.
‘I’m not a fan of Nietzsche,’ another voice declared.
‘In the year 1002, or thereabouts,’ Wilbur tried next, ‘the Turkish scholar Ismail ibn Hammad al-Jawhari climbed to the top of a mosque with wooden wings, and said: The most important thing on earth is to fly to the skies.’
There was a brief, impressed silence.
‘What happened next?’ somebody enquired.
‘Well,’ said Wilbur, ‘he jumped to his death. But that’s not the point; the point—’
But he’d lost us again. Not everyone was laughing. Some scowled. Some shook their heads in disbelief. Some—well, Frangipani—were wretched, bright-eyed, bewildered.
‘I haven’t done any of the exercises,’ one woman said, pretending to be fretful. ‘So I certainly can’t fly.’
The laughter revved up again.
Niall grinned. ‘This is brilliant,’ he said.
Nicole was sitting with her head at an angle, studying Wilbur, her expression all compassion.
Oh, I thought. Of course. She’s got it right. Yes, poor Wilbur! Poor mad Wilbur.
I tried to imitate Nicole’s expression, but quickly grew bored, wanting to look around instead.
‘Think about it,’ Wilbur said, more urgently. ‘When people are asked what they would choose if they were granted just one wish—’
‘World peace,’ Frangipani declared. ‘I’d wish for world peace.’
‘Other than world peace . . .’
‘I’d wish for my family to be happy and safe,’ somebody said. ‘And for an extensive property portfolio.’
Wilbur frowned. ‘One superpower,’ he tried. ‘If you could have one superpower?’
At once, people began thinking aloud, weighing possibilities. ‘Invisibility?’ someone tried, and someone else said, ‘Super strength!’ while a third confided, ‘You know, I’ve always wanted to be able to turn myself really, really tiny, but with a—’ and Wilbur snapped: ‘Flight! Everybody wants to fly!’
‘Oh. Right.’ We all sat back, nodding.
‘And therefore we can fly?’ Niall now smiled broadly. ‘Because everybody really, really, really wants to fly?’
‘It’s a symptom, rather than a cause,’ Wilbur said distractedly. ‘I need to explain better. What I’m saying is—’
‘What you are saying . . .’ The disgruntled shoulder guy stood up, dropping his folder. Everybody turned to look at him. His face was watermelon but more ferocious than the fruit. ‘What you are saying is, if we all go up to the roof right now and jump, we’ll be able to fly.’
‘Well, no,’ Wilbur said. ‘Please. I wouldn�
�t advise that.’
The cranky guy was shoving his way through seats, using his knees. ‘You get fifteen-year-olds. You get children—children who are unhappy, vulnerable—you get them signed up, invested. You shape their lives! You ought to be ashamed of yourself,’ he half shouted at Wilbur. ‘You ought to be shot.’
He flung open the door, pulled it closed behind him, opened it again and slammed it so hard the room vibrated.
I worried about his shoulder, doing that.
Wilbur looked at the door. ‘We’ll start on the small hills in the snow,’ he whispered.
There was an embarrassed quiet. I began to think we all ought to follow cranky guy out, one at a time, with the same drama. Slam! Slam! Slam! It would lose its impact though, the slamming. There might be structural damage.
‘So we can’t fly?’ Frangipani asked, still trying to figure things out.
‘You can!’ Wilbur insisted, cheering up.
‘But you just said you don’t advise us to jump off the roof, ergo . . .’
(Ergo. That’s what she said. I am not kidding.)
Wilbur sat on the table again. ‘Everybody has a sense of flight,’ he began. ‘Now, you know how you have a sense of smell, of sight, taste, touch, and so on?’
‘Not me,’ Niall put in. ‘I have no sense of smell.’
Wilbur nodded at this, curious, then returned to his theme. ‘The human being also has an innate sense of flight.’
Flat-cap—Antony—raised his hand. ‘Are you talking jet propulsion? Artificial wings?’
‘No,’ Wilbur said. ‘Neither. Flight, like I said, is a sense, only lost to human memory. And yet we know it’s there. A part of us knows. Consider your dreams of flying. Consider the long history of the human quest for the secret to flight. Consider the yearning way we watch a bird soar. Or simply gaze at the sky: cloud-gazing, star-gazing. We are enamoured by the sky.’
‘That’s true,’ Frangipani said hopefully.
Niall chuckled.
‘Now think about babies and the way they develop,’ Wilbur continued, warming up. ‘At first, they are helpless and lie perfectly still. Then they learn to roll over. To sit up. To rock on their hands and knees, to crawl, to pull themselves to standing position and eventually to walk. The next step?’
‘An education? A job?’ somebody hazarded.
‘Flight! The child is supposed to learn to fly! But the young learn by example, by watching the adults of their species. Adults today are not flying, so what do children do?’
People were quiet, fascinated by this new turn in Wilbur’s insanity.
‘Children sense that there is more, something beyond mere walking. The child’s body needs to fly. Why do you think babies flap their arms and legs? Why do you think children never stop running, jumping, climbing? Why do they love a bouncy castle? A trampoline? They are always clambering onto furniture, rolling down hills!’
‘Playing,’ Antony put in softly.
‘Right! No. No, actually. They are expressing their frustration at their failure to employ their innate sense of flight.’
People were too dazzled to laugh: a long silence of amazement.
‘Are you saying children would be well-behaved if we taught them how to fly?’ Niall asked eventually.
‘Yes,’ Wilbur said. ‘Or better-behaved, anyway. We teach children to swim. We understand that our bodies need to move through water. Yet we forget that we should also move through air! We are doing children a disservice, not teaching them to fly.’
‘Ten Things You Must Do For Your Child If You Truly Love Them,’ Nicole reflected, grinning now, her compassion done. ‘Give them a hug. Turn off your phone. Teach them to fly.’
I thought about teaching Oscar to walk. ‘So one adult holds the baby in the air,’ I suggested, ‘and another stands a short distance away and reaches out their hands—Come on! You can do it! Come on! Fly to me!—then the first person kind of tosses the baby towards the second?’
‘Makes sense,’ Nicole nodded, while everybody else laughed. Nicole and I smiled at each other.
Wilbur pushed on. ‘The Guidebook has been developing your sense of flight. All these years, we’ve been awakening it through the exercises. Now we need to show you how to use it.’
‘Right now?’ someone asked, interested.
‘Well, no. In Sydney. We will hold a series of seminars during which we will consolidate your knowledge. By the end of that series, you will fly.’
The laughter took on a jeering tone.
‘Of course you’re holding a series of seminars,’ somebody said. ‘Need our bank account details, do you?’
‘No, no,’ Wilbur said, helpless. ‘The seminars are free. We want you to fly.’
Around me, others were standing, stretching, gathering their things. We’d been compliant, patient, ready to play, to take a break from life, but now? Now we were grown-ups looking at the clock, at the setting sun, at the real world of families and jobs, schedules and appointments. It was time to pack the game into its box, to wind elastic around the cards, gather up tokens and dice, press down the lid, set the box back on its shelf. We were somewhat mortified by having allowed the game to come so far.
‘You see, we all need to fly,’ Wilbur was urging. ‘We just don’t know that we need it.’
Flat-cap began explaining aerodynamics to him, his voice kind and apologetic. ‘Human arms are not strong enough to carry the human body. Even if you rigged up artificial wings, they’d need to be eighty feet long.’
As I left the room, I heard Wilbur launch into the benefits of flight: practical benefits, of course—you avoid traffic! And health benefits. The fresh air, the physical exercise . . . Why do you think we all have these issues with our joints? Knee reconstructions, hip replacements, lower back pain? It’s because we never spend time in the sky! Now, the benefits to the human spirit—
18.
On the stairs, my dismay was contained in a framework of resignation. My dismay was tired, cynical, amused, adult. A wry smile, an arched eyebrow.
I opened the door to my room, paused, ran my gaze across the rugs, the pictures, the bed, and here came my dismay, tumbling out from behind the wry smile, splintering its frame, lighting itself into wildfire, to fury.
This, I raged, this life! This waste! These promises! These chapters in the mail!
I wrote ‘reflections’ for these people every year!
Outside the window, the wind was blowing strong. Trees were ducking down fast as if something dangerous was hurtling overhead.
This pathetic fallacy, I sneered.
There went Lera, I remembered, rolling her suitcase behind her, and of course she had not been chosen for the truth! Lera, the paediatric surgeon, like Daniel, the glass-repair man, was sensible, separate, good and complete.
They chose the fools like me. The people left behind. The incomplete, the broken, the children still trapped inside their childish years.
Little boys with lolly pops inside their mouths, Lera had said. Those tiny sticks.
I am a half-person.
Also: You have to be so careful—you have to be so careful, because you can push it down, out of reach—and you can’t fix a burnt oesophagus.
I flung my suitcase open and began to throw clothes into it.
‘Is there happiness in truth, or only beauty?’ a chapter of The Guidebook had once mused. ‘When the glass becomes clear, the truth shines through and everything jumps gleeful at your face.’
Well, sure, truth is like a bright light at a window, but truth is also hands on your chest shoving you backwards, and truth is your oesophagus burned beyond repair.
Snow, Wilbur had promised, and it hadn’t snowed either.
Wilbur was a liar and a cheat.
19.
Yes, I know.
What did I expect?
I’d laughed at the invitation. I’d known it would be a scam.
But I had thought—a secret part of me had believed—that this retreat would take me b
ack to the year that I first received The Guidebook, which was also the year we lost my brother.
Somehow, I had thought, this would bring my brother back.
I didn’t think this consciously, of course, but if you want to get beneath the surface of my rage, there it is. If Nicole can turn back fate by buying goats, if she can unwrap her husband and her children and start over, then I can unwrap 1990, unwrap all the years between, take us back to Robert, Robert heading out to a doctor’s appointment, The Guidebook in a rusty frying pan.
I’ve said goodbye a hundred times, a thousand, yet I’m always on this carousel, turning and turning, and he’ll always be there, my brother Robert, always there, and always gone.
The Guidebook was absurdity: inexplicable, inscrutable; and so was my brother being gone. Hence, the two must be connected.
That is why I never cancelled my subscription: a part of me never stopped believing that, eventually, the one mystery would unravel the other.
But Wilbur wants to teach us how to fly.
part
2
REFLECTIONS ON 1990
By Abigail Sorensen
The first time I had sex I was, like, excuse me?
This was around a year ago now with my boyfriend of the time, Samuel McKew.
He was seventeen and I was fifteen, so I wondered if the problem was right there, in those two years.
Afterwards, we went into his backyard and grilled sausages on the barbecue. We didn’t say much. Just looked at the sausages, rolling around. I was thinking about getting a new boyfriend, one closer to my age. Samuel was wiping smoke out of his eyes.
‘Sorry about that,’ he whispered.
I got a humorous expression on my face, like, yeah, so you should be, but replaced it right away with: ah, it’s not your fault, never mind.
But was it his fault? His equipment was too big was the problem, as far as I could tell. (When he first called it his ‘equipment’, I laughed, thinking it was a joke, but he looked at me, like, what? what? so I stopped laughing and respected his equipment.)
Anyway, but can you blame them for the size of their equipment?
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