Oscar tipped his toys out of their box onto the floorboards, with a sound like shattering glass. I put the envelope on the side table and peered through the front door glass. Give me energy, I requested of the magnolia on the nature strip outside, please.
The tree didn’t answer, only waving its leaves around in the breeze.
It wasn’t just trees, I recalled. You could also get your energy from stars. I reached for a blue marker and wrote Remember stars on the back of my hand.
Next I ran back over the conversations I’d overheard in my café, looking for messages.
Insurance, photography, equipment, maps. They did seem connected! They meant I was supposed to go on a trip somewhere, buying travel insurance first, using maps to find my way, taking photographs!
I was pleased. I like a road trip. The logistics, however, would be complicated.
Taking a break from my thoughts, I picked up the envelope from the side table and opened it. Inside, there was a single typed sheet. I ran my eyes down to see who was talking.
Wilbur, of all people. Best wishes, Wilbur, it concluded.
Here is what the letter said:
Dear Abigail,
I have made a serious error of judgment.
I invited you and the other recipients of The Guidebook to a weekend retreat and told you that you knew how to fly.
Not surprisingly, each of you is now either angry or heartbroken—or, anyway, annoyed—and all of you consider me insane. Or, at the very least, inane. I don’t blame you.
I should have been open and honest from the start. I should have told you, for example, that Rufus and Isabelle, the authors of The Guidebook, were my parents.
Those same chapters they mailed to you were placed, by my parents, on my bed.
My parents died last year, within a few months of each other. They left instructions for me (their only child) to complete the venture they began when they first sent out the chapters. A portion of their estate was allocated for this purpose.
Out of a sense of loyalty to my parents—also befuddled by grief, I guess—I followed their instructions precisely. I sent out invitations; arranged the accommodation; carried out the weekend activities, and selected the ‘chosen ones’.
Instead, I should have told you this: until my parents died, I had no idea that they believed in human flight. I loved my parents. They were kind, funny and eminently reasonable. In fact, they were more sensible, more rational than many of the parents of my friends. I feel gutted by this absurdity I’ve uncovered: it’s completely inconsistent with my memories of them.
And yet, I cannot bring myself to abandon my parents’ plans.
Now I am going to say something you will find preposterous. You’ll laugh aloud. Here it is: would you consider coming along to the flying seminars?
I will hold them on Tuesday evenings from 6.30 pm at my apartment, 3/17 Engalwood Street, Newtown. We will begin next Tuesday. Please meet me in the lobby of the building.
Listen, I know that human flight is impossible. I’m not a fool. I have pages of detailed instructions on how to conduct these flying seminars, and I am profoundly aware that every word is nonsense. But the pages were written by my parents.
I mocked The Guidebook often, or ignored it, but all along I sensed it was leading somewhere. I’ve waited for some answer, some explanation or conclusion. Without one, I feel incomplete.
Perhaps you feel that way too? If we undertake these seminars together, carry out my parents’ plans (as a game, an exercise?), perhaps we might begin to see the point?
Thank you for listening.
I hope to see you next Tuesday at 6.30 pm.
Best wishes,
Wilbur
I put the letter down.
‘Tuesdays at six thirty pm,’ I scoffed, looking over at my child. You see there, Wilbur? I have a child! And who do you think will look after him while we carry out this whimsy, this tribute to your parents (good and kind, I’m sure, despite being unhinged)?
I did feel a profound yet paper-thin (mismatched adjectives, I realise, and yet . . .) sadness for Wilbur and his lost parents. Also, I liked that Wilbur seemed to write from his heart (even if a little fancily). But mainly I was busy with my rage and despair—mild rage, mild despair, but nevertheless there it is, whenever I’m invited to an evening event.
Tuesdays at 6.30 pm.
The preposterousness! The insurmountability!
I know what you’re thinking: Easy! Get a sitter!
See how you even shorten the word ‘babysitter’ like that? The casual, the abbreviated, the breezy: pop it in the freezer! jump in a cab! bang it in the microwave! shoot me an email! throw the kid in the car! Easy, breezy, bung-it-all-in-there, Jamie Oliver-style. As if the words themselves, the quick breeze of them, will do the job for you, will themselves tackle this relentless, this exhausting life.
Here is what a night out means to me:
Choose a babysitter; make the phone calls; send the texts; choose a different babysitter because that one just replied: ‘Sorry! I’m busy! ’; find money for the sitter—or ask for a favour from a friend, take on the debt, the guilt, the gratitude, the logistics, the complexities; sort out Oscar’s dinner; sort out sitter’s dinner; resent having to sort out sitter’s dinner; figure out how late the sitter or favour can stay . . . and that’s all before I have to tell Oscar: I’m going out tonight! and see his smile flip away, panic parachuting in, the pleading or defiance, his hands on my sleeves, little footsteps chasing me, determined, down the hall, dragging me away from the front door, his tears and snot and wails, the babysitter standing back, uncertain and judgmental—don’t fall for it, he’s manipulating you—the favour moving forward, wincing and judgmental—oh, how can you leave the little one, you already leave him so much to go to work, what could be more important than the little one, he’s going to grow up before you know it, stay at home!
My phone was ringing somewhere.
I moved towards my handbag but the sound drifted away. It was coming from upstairs. No, from the kitchen.
The phone was on the bench beside the bananas.
Missed call.
Dad.
My dad almost never calls me! He never calls anyone!
(He has a wife named Lynette. I suppose he calls her at times.)
I waited a moment and then ding!
Voicemail.
‘Mummy?’ Oscar called from the living room.
I looked at my stack of library books on the counter. The next one in the pile was called Tuesdays with Morrie.
Tuesdays at 6.30 pm.
‘MUMMY?’ Oscar shouted.
‘Yes, Oscar?’
‘Mummy? We need to get a cat.’
I picked up the phone, to listen to the message.
‘Hello, Abigail,’ said my father’s voice. He speaks carefully when he does call and avoids contractions. ‘It is your dad. I have a proposition. Well, Lynette has a proposition. She says there is a new play centre that has opened up next door—I beg your pardon, next door but one—to the printing place where she works in Erskineville. Now. Lynette thinks it might be fun if she and I took Oscar to dinner at the pizza joint and then let him have a play in the play centre. To give you a break. This coming Tuesday, Lynette thought, and then every Tuesday if you like, depending on how it works out. As a regular thing. Anyhow, think on it. It would be Tuesdays,’ he repeated. ‘Tuesdays at around six pm.’
‘MUMMY!’ Oscar shrieked. ‘We need a cat!’
7.
If you have a map, you know that Erskineville is just down the road from Newtown, where Wilbur intended to hold his seminars.
You may have pieced together all the Tuesdays flying at me—the book on the bench, the letter on the side table, the voicemail from my dad—and you will have realised that my babysitting issue, which you probably thought I was making too much of, was here beautifully resolved.
Finally, if you have read my rental agreement, you will know that I am not allowed a cat.
Setting aside the cat issue, the universe was clearly sending me a message: I should go to the Tuesday flying seminars.
8.
It turned out that one of Oscar’s day care teachers had told him he had to get a cat.
I found this unlikely.
‘Which teacher told you that you had to get a cat?’
‘The orange one.’
‘Leesa?’
‘Yes.’
When he says ‘the orange one’, Oscar is referring to the colour of Leesa’s hair. She is not otherwise orange.
‘Leesa told you we had to get a cat?’
‘Yeah. I forgetted but I just me-membered.’
I like how he says me-membered. On the other hand, I’m happy to correct forgetted. A speech therapist visited Blue Gum Cottage once, and addressed the parents. Rather than pointing out a child’s mistakes, she instructed us, you should repeat the word yourself, correctly.
‘Three times,’ the therapist said. ‘Say it correctly three times. So if your child refers to his friend Thomas, but pronounces Thomas’s name with a lisp, you should reply, “Yes, and wasn’t it nice to see Thomas? And hasn’t Thomas done a lovely painting? It would be good to visit Thomas, wouldn’t it?”’
By which time, I thought, the child will regret ever having mentioned Thomas. He will be backing away from you slowly.
‘You forgot to tell me that we have to get a cat?’
‘Yes. I forgotted.’
‘If Leesa told you to get a cat,’ I said, giving up on forget, ‘she was only joking.’
‘No.’ He was adamant. ‘It was not a joke. She didn’t laugh. She telled me we have to get a cat.’
‘Well, it’s not up to Leesa whether we get a cat or not!’
This led to a long, exhausting argument. I should have just shown him the rental agreement.
9.
In the bath that night, Oscar wanted to talk about Spiderman.
‘Let’s talk about Spiderman,’ he said.
This is a conversation we have often.
‘Okay,’ I said. ‘What do you like about Spiderman?’
‘I like that he shoots webs,’ Oscar declared.
‘I like that he helps people who are in trouble,’ I said promptly. Always trying to teach him something.
But he seemed unimpressed, and switched to a game in which the bath toys engaged in battle. The plastic boat could shoot fire and lava. The rubber duck, ice. The seahorse left a trail of poisonous spiders. The bottle of bubble bath was a crack shot with a rifle. And so on. He urged me to participate, offering the washer and soap for my team. They had no particular powers, he explained.
This is a world, Oscar’s world, of fire, ice, lava, shooting webs.
On the landing outside the bathroom, Oscar stopped. He looked up at me, his hair damp, eyes big, draped in his white towel.
‘You can have any wish you like,’ he whispered.
‘I can?’
‘Yes. Right now.’
Quickly, I flicked through options, sensing somehow that a four-year-old could do it; that if anyone could, he could. Mansions on the harbour with guesthouses and tennis courts; world peace; a chain of Happiness Cafés around the globe.
‘For you to be happy and healthy, Oscar,’ I said.
He nodded curtly. ‘That’s your wish?’
‘Yes.’
He leaned forward and slapped me fairly hard on the face three or four times with a small cupped hand, the firm slaps of the bishop at a confirmation. Then he stepped back and said nonchalantly, ‘You might get that wish—or you might not.’
He fell asleep while I sat on the edge of his bed, singing and rubbing his back, and all the other rituals and then, just when I thought he was breathing into dreams, he murmured, ‘Don’t forget we have to get a cat.’
10.
In bed, I thought of my wish and how, if I could have a supplementary wish, it would be for a beautiful man who would sing in my heart and listen with his eyes. The man would be lying beside me in this bed right now, and his hands would be reaching for my body. In the moonlit room, I could see him almost, the shadow of this man turning towards me.
I felt a rush of rage then, the rage of longing, its violent ache, but more than that, rage at a world that cheapens, dismisses my need for sex and love. That labels it women’s fiction, rom-com, chick-lit, the sneering at the happy ending, the pursed lips intoning: You don’t need a partner! You must be happy with yourself, content to be alone!
I don’t want a man to save me; I am happy with myself. Only, this longing for physical contact is real, a shape with dimension, and it’s all on a continuum with longing for closeness, for friendship, connection, for love. It’s a yearning that reaches back to lost best friends, lost brothers, lost birthdays, lost birthday wishes.
11.
A strange, grim calm changed the contours of my room, the tone of the moonlight.
I don’t deserve a wish. The chain of causation is clear.
part
4
1.
The driveway, the front door, the hallway, the house, all crouched beneath a heavy silence.
This was back in 1990, the night before my sixteenth birthday.
I was writing my Reflections on 1990, but every second sentence I stopped to listen out for Robert. Footsteps on the porch, creak of front door, key clatter in ceramic bowl on hallstand, footsteps down the hall, the puff of my door opening, Robert’s voice, I’m here—all those sounds were waiting, poised, on the edge of happening—but the silence just sprawled into the blackness of the night.
So I carried on typing.
Sometimes the silence was puzzled and friendly, a comical puppy with tilted head, but other times it would turn sly and slither onto my lap, coil itself deep into the pit of my stomach.
Fangs! A flare of terror! Where is Robert?
(I was pretty interested in horror movies back then.)
I didn’t mention my concerns in my Reflections on 1990. Once, I settled my fingers onto the keys, ready to type: Seriously, where is he? Has he had an accident or what?
But instead I typed: I have a new boyfriend now. His name is Peter.
I went to bed about 5 am. The silence coiled down under the covers with me.
But I woke at noon and it was my birthday! I lay still in the summer light and listened, and there was silence, but completely different. Now it was misty and calming, like yoga.
Because I thought it translated into Robert being fine. If something had happened to him, I reasoned, there’d be noise. Something would have woken me earlier: phone calls, police fists pounding on the front door. Shrieks and cries running up and down the hall.
But the house was quiet.
There were some sounds, Saturday sounds like birds and lawnmowers, but these were consistent with Robert being fine. I got up and pushed open the door of Robert’s room. It was empty, the bed made, so I wandered the house, looking for him.
I opened the sliding door and found my parents on the terrace smiling about something. They were sitting at the outside table with cups of tea and newspapers, an opened packet of Saos, butter, jams, knives, crumbs and orange peels.
‘Birthday girl!’ they said. ‘Welcome to the land of the living!’ That kind of thing. ‘Happy birthday!’
‘What time did Robert get in last night?’ Dad asked.
‘Is he up yet?’ Mum said. ‘We should have your birthday breakfast and do presents!’
They both looked at me, waiting.
‘He’s not home yet?’ I asked.
They continued to look at me, but now blinkingly.
‘Oh yeah, I forgot,’ I said, smooth, covering for him and his secret girlfriend-in-Glebe. ‘He’s staying at Bing’s an extra night because they needed more practice.’
‘What! So he missed your farewell ceremony last night? I can’t believe it! You always do that!’ They both seemed mildly outraged on my behalf, which made me realise: yes, they were right! It was outrageous!
I started to feel angry.
‘I’ll go phone him at Bing’s,’ I said, turning back towards the house, ‘and see what time he’s coming home.’
‘You have Bing’s number?’ Mum called, and I said, ‘Yeah.’
Actually I didn’t have Bing’s number, and, more to the point, I didn’t have Clarissa’s number either.
Once I got into the kitchen I decided I was going to track him down somehow. It’s just not good enough, I thought, in a teacherly voice. Just because you’re sick, it doesn’t mean everything should fall apart. Actually, that’s a reason not to let it fall apart. It makes our traditions even more important!
That’s the sort of lecture I was drafting as I searched for Clarissa’s number in Robert’s bedroom. I don’t really know if I was right—I mean, are traditions more important when you’re sick? Shouldn’t sickness actually make us all more flexible?—but I chose to believe it passionately as I looked.
I was trying to remember Clarissa’s last name so I could find her in the phonebook, but when it shot diagonal into my brain—Clarissa Armstrong!—well, she wasn’t in the book. Plenty of C. Armstrongs, but none in Glebe. She was sharing her place with other students; the number must have been in one of their names.
I went back to opening drawers in Robert’s bedroom, and flicking in a random way through papers on his desk. I found his homework diary and turned pages—and there it was. On 7 July, right next to details about an English essay on Romeo and Juliet, CLARISSA in Robert’s happy handwriting, a phone number beside it.
I took it into the kitchen and dialled the number. A boy’s voice answered.
‘Robert?’ I said.
‘Who?’ said the boy, and of course it wasn’t Robert. I asked if I could speak to Clarissa and the boy said she’d moved out of there three months ago to a place on Glebe Point Road. I recalled something about Robert taking a day off school to help her label boxes. He’d illustrated each label, he told me, and had taken an interest in the art of classifying possessions.
Gravity Is the Thing Page 10