Just Breathe

by Andrew Daddo

  My training gear was in a neat row on the floor. T-shirt, undies, compression shorts, socks, then shoes. It was all in order of how they’d go on because order was the answer, regardless of the question.

  ‘There’s a bomb on the bench for you, Drix. Get into it and I’ll see you in the gym.’

  Technically, the gym was a garage, but there hadn’t been a car in there for ages, since Mum, anyway. It was kitted out like a gym, though. Running machine, two bikes, a rowing Erg, boxing bag, free weights, weight machine and designated stretching and yoga area. Dad reckoned he’d got me in better touch with my physicality than most professional athletes, especially footballers. He always said they were apes, that their muscles were too big for their frames. They’d lurch about, rigid with power that was actually counterintuitive to good sporting results. Supple and subtle was much more effective. Of course, he knew footballers had to be built like that to cop the punishment they got on field, but running against them in a race, Dad reckoned I could burn them in my sleep.

  The chart on the gym wall was specific. Stretch first, warm-up next.

  Dad talked through the routine with me, which was different from day to day, but especially before and after racing. That morning was basically about ensuring there was no residual damage after the race, but given we’d barely got above a canter, there wasn’t much to worry about.

  After putting the mask on, I started walking on the treadmill. It wasn’t weird for me because I’d been doing hypoxic training for longer than I could remember. It wasn’t something we talked about, we just did it. Restricting your oxygen intake in training makes sense, it’s just that most people hadn’t done the research or the reading so they either didn’t understand it, or thought it was excessive.

  I always thought the hypoxic mask had been Dad’s idea, but it might have been Mum’s. Dad said she’d been into it, that originally she was the one who’d told him how it worked. There’s science, it’s proven, and if anyone doubted how good hypoxic training was, all they’d have to do was see where major sporting teams – especially distance and middle-distance runners – did their base work, and they’d find it was at altitude. It’s not a coincidence the US Olympic Training Centre was in Denver, America’s highest-altitude city. It’s where the air is thinnest, so the athletes are starved of oxygen and their bodies have to work that much harder to get the air they need. When they go back to sea level to compete, where there’s more oxygen, it’s like their muscles are jazzed up with power. All those red blood cells firing to the muscles, it’s amazing. Power’s up, stamina’s off the charts. I’d always thought altitude training and hypoxic masks would be on the banned substance list if they had a way to track it.

  But Dad didn’t stop at the mask or the chamber or the high-altitude tent. My training included carefully controlled food, sleep, recovery, supplements, vitamins. Everything was monitored and regulated by Dad, who was always hovering, making sure I followed the path he’d laid out.

  ‘Gold brick road.’ He said it all the time. ‘Gold pavers to wherever we want to go, which is all the way. We just have to do the work.’

  So that’s how it was, pay to play, and Dad reckoned there was plenty of time for play once the Olympics were done.

  ‘Think of this as future fun tickets, right? Or beer tickets. The very best beer is the beer that makes you wait. Which, officially for you, will be at least eighteen months away.’

  I’d said ‘sixteen and a half’ at the time, which made him snort.

  ‘You won’t be near a grog shop ’til I say so, Hendrix. Trust me, you’d kill yourself if you stuffed your future over something as stupid as a few beers. There’s time for that, and plenty of it.’

  Part of me wanted to drink. Some Mondays at school there was talk about massive nights. Goons full of piss and spewing or hooking up and blacking out and not remembering much of the night before. Pingers and weed got the odd mention, but it was mainly beer, goons and smoking darts.

  There’d be a gatho in a garage, park, behind the community centre, or even in the cemetery, but it wasn’t every weekend. Most of the time, the big talk sounded like bullshit. Some of it must have been real. It’d be fun to know how much.

  Dad increased the gradient on the treadmill and upped the speed just enough to hurt me. I wasn’t even halfway through the workout and I could feel the burn.

  ‘Okay?’ went Dad, standing in front of the machine. ‘Feel good?’

  I nodded, no point even trying to talk with the mask on. It’s not like I had the oxygen to spare. Some of Dad’s nineties hip-hop shit was bouncing around the garage.

  ‘Good.’ He turned to the mirror, did some old man dance move and picked up a pair of dumbbells. When he raised them, veins popped up all over the place, especially his biceps and his forehead. ‘Gooooood,’ he said again and again. ‘Tear and repair.’

  By 7.15, with the job done, we ate breakfast in silence, Dad online looking at deals on running shoes, me on Miniclip playing pool.

  He dropped me at school. ‘Afternoon off, Drix. Try and enjoy yourself, I might be late. Dinner’s labelled, in the fridge, you know what to do.’

  Of course I knew what to do. We’d been doing this for ages.

  Ethan still looked pretty amped when I saw him. After beating me in the school championships, he sounded like he’d found another gear in confidence.

  ‘Yo, Hendrix,’ he bawled when I came up to my locker. ‘How’s it hangin’?’ For a guy who I only kind of talked to, he sounded very matey.

  ‘It’s good, I think. Low? To the left? You?’

  ‘Hmmm,’ and he rubbed his crotch. ‘Not at all, actually. Think I need looser undies.’ He dumped his bag and put his back against the wall of lockers. ‘So, Hendrix. Districts. What do you reckon? There’s a huge chance I’m going to make a tool of myself.’

  The words made sense, but he didn’t look as if he believed what he was saying.

  ‘How do you mean?’

  ‘Well, like. You know. It’s Districts, it’s not like it’s the school champs. We’re going to get flogged, aren’t we? I don’t really do floggings, not that kind, anyway. So, I reckon I’m going skip it.’

  I must have looked at him in a weird way, because he instantly straightened up and started clucking. ‘I don’t flog that much. Yes, I do. Everyone does. Don’t they?’ I shook my head as if I disapproved. Wanking was a waste of energy but you had to draw the line on sacrifice somewhere. Ethan kept talking. ‘I just don’t know if there’s any point in going because we’re going to get slaughtered, you know? It’ll be embarrassing. I don’t mean it in a bad way. It’s just, I’m big enough to admit we’re not that good.’

  I knew what he meant. Ethan was fully aware he wasn’t much of a runner but had still managed to win the school championship. On numbers alone, that made me even less of a runner than him. If we turned up at Districts, it’d be a massacre because it’s for runners not pretenders. What he obviously didn’t know, what no one knew, was that I was foxing. I had every intention of winning at Districts, and whatever came after that. I was going to be this kid who came from nowhere. The kid with the kick at the end of the race, the one with the big heart from the little school who surprised the hell out of everyone. Bloody hell, I was Phar Lap, it’s just no one knew it yet.

  ‘We’ll be right,’ I said. ‘Who cares how we go. And you don’t know how fast the other kids are going to be. They might all fall over. We can be that guy in the Winter Olympics who won gold.’

  Ethan started laughing. ‘Oh, yeah. The guy who was coming dead last and ended up winning? That was epic, for sure they should have restarted that race.’

  ‘What?’ I said. ‘That’s racing. It might have looked unfair, but that’s the rules. That could be us, mate.’

  Ethan cocked an eyebrow. ‘Have you ever seen the entire field fall over in an 800 metre race?’

  ‘No,’ I went, raising my eyebrows. ‘Not yet.’

  Ethan was drifting. I could see it in the way h
e was looking around the hallway. His focus was off, it’s how you knew you could beat half the kids in a race before the gun went because they were thinking about other stuff, not the job at hand. It’s hard to run your guts out when you’re thinking about Sophie Pearson in a bikini. There’s a time and a place for everything, and even though I didn’t need Ethan to help me win, it’d be fun to have a friend along for company.

  ‘Think of it as a day off school where we get to perve at athletic girls in running gear,’ I said.

  His eyes came back to mine slowly from the throng, as if an idea was dawning in his brain. ‘You put it like that and it sounds pretty good, Hendrix. Rock on, right?’ He had a fist up, solidarity style.

  ‘And,’ I said, moving in a little closer to him. ‘Who knows what might happen. You’re a good runner, best in the school for our age. And I was right behind you, so …’

  ‘You don’t think we’ve got a chance, do you?’

  ‘No. Well, maybe. It’d be pretty cool to go to Regionals, and it’s not as if we have to win it. Top three go through.’

  He had Ethan beyond the dawn now – the sun was up and clear of the fog. Ethan was looking toward the ceiling, like a footy player watching himself on the big screen after taking a hanger. A smirk worked its way into the corners of his mouth and hoisted it sideways into a grin.

  ‘We’d better train,’ he said. ‘We get full colours from the school if we make Regionals in the Under 17s, too. That’d be epic. It’d just be us and the maths team.’

  ‘I hadn’t even thought of that,’ I lied. If you achieved to a certain level for the school, you were rewarded with badges or colours. So there were kids getting around with fully pimped blazer pockets, which were pretty cool. The only kids who thought they were lame were the ones who would never get them. ‘That would be good,’ I said, hoping not to sound too over-the-top.

  Ethan was in. ‘Sweet. Let’s train. Run the Tan? Maybe even talk to Mr Wood and get him to write a training program? He said after the school sports I’d be lucky to go further, but he’d try and help me if I wanted. You know what? Stuff him. He’s a dick. We could find a program online.’

  Got him!

  ‘When do you want to start?’ I asked, trying to sound relaxed but pretty amped I had a training partner for the first time ever.

  ‘I’ve got footy today. How ’bout tomorrow. How long to Districts, three weeks? I might let you win this time!’

  ‘That’d be a change,’ I laughed.

  Pretty much my whole life was boxed up in the boot and the back seat of the car. Maybe for the first time, reality had started to seep in. Like, I knew what was happening. That we were heading to the city, and things were going to be different and all of that, but I probably hadn’t considered what it actually meant.

  I was caught between totally excited and shitting myself.

  Mum put on her Best of Paul Kelly CD as we came into Melbourne. It seemed to settle us both.

  ‘I remembeeeeer …’ She sang it like she meant it, and I remembered with her.

  At the first set of traffic lights I turned in my seat to her and said, ‘New memories start now, Mum. This is where we make the good ones.’

  She burst into tears when I said that. Then she bawled again when we got to South Melbourne and she saw Aunty Astrid leaning on her front gate, the tips of the wrought iron fence poking into her generous forearms.

  ‘You made it,’ she barked, flinging the gate open and holding out her arms. I fell into the void and took a deep breath of whatever that smell is she’s always had. It was beautiful, a weird combination of hot-cross buns and ciggies and flowers. ‘Hello, love,’ she said. ‘God, I’m glad you’re here.’

  ‘Me, too.’

  She engulfed Mum in our hug, and the three of us huddled together out the front of her little worker’s cottage looking like we were up to something. I slowly untangled myself and set about emptying the car.

  ‘Leave that, love,’ said Astrid. ‘You save your strength. You’re going to need it.’

  ‘Don’t be stupid,’ I said. ‘I’m fine.’

  ‘And you’re my guest. Your mum’ll do it.’

  The two of them looked at each other and laughed. They’re sisters. Same height, same size, but very different lives.

  We took the bags inside to the tune of Astrid warbling on about how good the next little while was going to be. ‘Big adventures are coming,’ she sort of sang.

  Me and Mum in one room, Astrid in the other, just as it always was when we came to Melbourne.

  Her place was dolls house tiny, but worth a bomb. She said there was a time you wouldn’t live in places like South Melbourne. It had been a shithole forever, full of migrants from the docks living in little dumps like hers used to be. There was still a stack of the old houses, but most had been trendified and done up with lots of glass looking onto tiny little backyards barely big enough for a fat gut. Astrid bought her place when South Melbourne still had a stigma. It was cheap and cheerful and she’d clung onto it ever since, loving the way the prices kept going up and up and up.

  I had a shower at Astrid’s insistence and used the opportunity to poke around and refresh some memories. Her city house was more country than our place in Benalla. Lots of books, towels rolled into a wicker basket under the bathroom bench, expensive-smelling hand soap by the taps. Her couch was overflowing with cushions, and the blanket draped over the back must have been for decoration because it was way too warm to need it. There were lots of photos of Astrid in exotic places, and nick-nacks she must have collected along the way. It was neat, in a busy way.

  And there were paintings everywhere. Huge slabs of colour against white walls. One, my favourite, looked like a little kid had been told to paint bad pictures of birds with as much paint as possible. There were two black cockatoos flying over a tree. A storyteller came to our school in Benalla one time and told us how black cockatoos were like spirits coming into your life. If you see a black cocky, it’s a sign of contentment and happiness, but also of moving on, which is what we were doing now. I remember thinking it’d be a good bird to have as my totem.

  I’d ask Astrid if I could put that painting in the room I was sharing with Mum. It’d be a nice first and last thing to see each day. I’d need some nice for the next little while.

  Clean and dressed with my wet hair wound into a fresh towel, I found Mum and Astrid at the kitchen bench hunched over a pot of tea. They stopped talking when I walked in, and Astrid reached up to me with arms out so I dove in there and enjoyed the love.

  ‘So, you start tomorrow,’ she said.

  ‘Mmm hmm,’ I went.

  ‘You ready, sister?’

  ‘Reckon,’ I said.

  ‘You’d better be more than reckon,’ went Astrid. ‘You’d better be bloody sure you’re ready. You’ve got a big fight on your hands, girlie. A big one.’

  That’s when I thought I might lose it. I buried my face into the warmth of her neck and let her make wide, heavy circles on my back with her hands.

  ‘You’ll be right, Em,’ she cooed. ‘You’ll be right.’

  It was all ridiculously happy in the morning.

  I’d bet it was a ruse. We were shitting ourselves. I was, anyway. And Mum and Astrid had their mad isn’t-this-great giggles going which was annoying. They obviously did it for my benefit, but as hard as I tried to giggle along, my heart wasn’t in it.

  In the end they ran out of steam and the three of us sat in silence until it was time to go.

  When Astrid waved from the front gate, it felt like a last goodbye, as if this was the push beyond the velvet curtain into the never never. I know she was trying to look brave, but once that first tear fell it managed to buckle us all.

  It had been a long, slow process of elimination to work out things weren’t quite right with my health. The diagnosis had started somewhere between a hangover and hypochondria before steadily climbing the charts to the possibility of cancer. It sounded ridiculous when the doctor in A
lbury said as much, and even crazier that no one was able to tell us straightaway, but that’s how it worked out. He just didn’t know and he said regardless of what it was and how bad it might be, Melbourne was the only option for treatment.

  Mum and I barely talked on the way to the hospital. We tried singing but it was no good. Even Paul Kelly deserted us. Mum cursed again as we pulled into the carpark – she was too far from the ticket dispenser and had to half open her door to get the ticket.

  ‘It’s bullshit,’ she said. ‘This is bullshit. I shouldn’t have to pay eleven dollars per half hour to find out if you’re going to live or die. Sorry, babe. I didn’t mean that.’

  I tried to help. ‘There should be a free carpark lane for bad news, and a pay lane for good news.’

  ‘Genius.’ Mum tried to laugh it off. She took a couple of deep breaths and shook her head. ‘Hey, Em, I really shouldn’t have said that. You’ll be fine, I know it. I can feel it. You look amazing. If there was a problem you’d be sicker, and you haven’t had anything for ages. I’m nervous, that’s all.’

  There was something in her voice, it was higher than normal, almost manic. We were early, too, so the stupid parking’d cost even more.

  ‘Hang out here,’ Mum said before going to order herself a coffee and me a carrot juice at the hospital cafe. Since Albury, we’d googled everything to do with cancer in case that’s what I had. I think it was something like, ‘What’s the best stuff to eat if you think you’ve got cancer?’

  We didn’t read all twelve million entries, but carrot juice was pretty popular. It was a miracle I hadn’t turned orange after the binging I’d been doing.

  I waited for Mum at the door to the cafe and looked around. The place was huge, more like a cinema complex or a mall than a hospital. If it wasn’t for all the sick people it could’ve been pretty cool. There was even a McDonald’s.

  When she came back she said, ‘Just remember with the doctor you have to talk, okay? You have to tell him everything. Don’t grunt.’