The Restorer

by Michael Sala

  He squinted at the sky. ‘Not yet. They can blow in very quickly, though.’

  ‘I’d better go,’ Maryanne said, with one last glance towards the hospital.

  ‘I’ll see you soon,’ he told her. ‘Wherever they decide to put you.’

  29

  The window in Freya’s bedroom didn’t open or close properly anymore. At night, with any sort of breeze, it creaked and rattled against its frame. So much damage had been done in less than thirty seconds—walls had ruptured, floorboards warped, pipes burst. Half the ceiling in Mum and Dad’s bedroom had come down. A week had passed since the earthquake, and Dad had started on the repairs, but he hadn’t got far. When she walked through the house, Freya could feel currents of air moving again through new gaps that had appeared. They were warm this afternoon, the draughts, like steam escaping from some hidden machine.

  Mum was downstairs at the dining room table. Freya went to the phone without speaking to her and dialled Ally’s number.

  ‘What time do you want to meet?’ Ally said.

  ‘Six?’

  ‘Do you want me to come over to your house?’

  ‘No,’ she said. ‘Let’s meet in the park opposite the police station.’

  She was about to go back to her room when Mum called out to her. ‘Freya?’

  ‘What?’ She paused at the foot of the stairs.

  Mum’s hands were clasped around a cup of tea. She was peering into the cup like she was staring into a well.

  ‘Are you going out tonight?’

  ‘Yeah, with some friends. Just for a while.’

  ‘You haven’t even asked me.’

  ‘Can I then?’

  Mum’s eyes were red, and her face was blotchy, like she’d been crying. ‘How’s it going with that boy?’

  ‘What boy?’

  ‘Josh?’

  ‘I don’t see him much,’ Freya said.

  ‘What’s going on between you two?’

  Freya stared at her in silence.

  ‘Okay,’ Mum said with a weary half-smile. ‘Okay.’

  ‘Can I go then?’

  ‘I suppose.’ Mum took a sip from the cup. ‘Don’t drink, stay together, be safe. I’m not saying you would do anything stupid, but you never know what other people are capable of, right? And home by ten-thirty.’

  Freya frowned. ‘Since when do I have to be home by ten-thirty?’

  ‘There’s still a murderer out there.’

  ‘There’s probably still lots of murderers out there.’

  ‘I’m not sure if that’s supposed to make me feel better,’ Mum said dryly.

  ‘I’m fifteen, Mum. Isn’t that how old you were when you started going out with Dad?’

  ‘Okay,’ Mum said after a pause. ‘Let’s say eleven. I’ll be at work by then, so I guess I’ll just have to trust you. Can I trust you?’

  ‘Of course.’

  Mum shrugged. ‘Your father will be here anyway.’

  Freya hesitated. ‘Mum?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘When did you realise? About Dad?’

  ‘What are you talking about?’

  ‘You know, Mum. You know what I’m saying.’

  They looked at one another in silence. Mum didn’t blink. Then she smiled gently. ‘When did I realise what he was like?’ She shook her head. ‘I could try explaining it, but I don’t think you’d understand. I hope you never do. When someone becomes your world, you can’t see things clearly. You can’t even see them clearly. And before you know it…’ She sighed. ‘It’s too late.’ She put her hands on the table in front of her and studied them. ‘I’m waiting for my hands to start looking like my mother’s. Just waiting. If someone had told me fifteen years ago that I’d be feeling this way, I wouldn’t have believed them.’

  Freya went into the kitchen, poured a glass of water and drank it while she thought about what Mum had said. Mum was still sitting at the table, watching her.

  ‘I don’t regret it,’ Mum said finally.

  Freya looked at her but didn’t say anything.

  ‘See,’ Mum went on, ‘whatever else there’s been between your father and me, there’s also you. There’s also Daniel. I wouldn’t be without the two of you for the world.’

  Freya wanted to say then that she could never imagine it, choosing a man like Dad, not for anything, not even for the world.

  Instead she nodded and headed for the stairs.

  ‘Freya.’

  She looked back. ‘Yeah?’

  ‘How would you feel about it,’ Mum said, ‘if we actually left him? Like really. For good. If we never came back?’

  ‘I’d be happy.’

  ‘You wouldn’t have a father to come home to. Maybe that’s worse than you think.’

  ‘There’s worse things than not having a father to come home to.’

  There was a long silence between them.

  ‘I know,’ Mum said.

  Freya swallowed, about to speak, but the front door opened and closed. Dad’s breath, his footsteps, came towards them. He appeared in the doorway.

  ‘Hey,’ he said.

  ‘Hey,’ Freya answered, but he was looking at Mum. As he stepped into the dining room, she slipped past him out into the hall, climbed the stairs, away from them. In her room, she studied her face in the mirror, stretched the skin under her lip taut and looked at the fine pimples there, ran a brush through her hair, listening. She wondered if Josh’s mother had known on the morning of her death that she would do it, that it would happen. She wondered what the difference was between thinking it and doing it.

  Below, Mum and Dad had gone into their bedroom. They were talking. Someone turned on a tap. Water throbbed and moaned through the pipes, and then there was a resonant knocking that came through the house’s innards before the sound was throttled off. She glanced at her watch.

  Ally was supposed to meet her in an hour. They would buy alcohol and walk together to the party. It was at a small beach called Susan Gilmore—named after a shipwreck, Richard had told her once—separated and hidden from the rest of the coast beneath sheer cliffs. The party had been planned two weeks ago, before the quake. If anything, the conditions were better now, better than they would ever be again. The whole inner city was dead, barricades everywhere, half the streetlights still without power. There wouldn’t be many people around. The beach would belong to them.

  Since the earthquake, the whole town felt as if it were being dismantled rather than put back together—like their house, like everything—but what did it matter when you were outside, and getting drunk, and you didn’t really know what would happen in that dark, open-ended expanse of the evening, with no one to control you or hold you back?

  It was mainly Mum’s voice she could hear downstairs.

  A ship’s horn blasted the air like it was coming from the next room. Framed in the window, the rust-coloured hull of the ship slid past the rocks and the treetops, between the city and Stockton, where the girl had died. Freya saw the white block of the ship’s cabin, a latticework of small black windows, the tiny figure of a sailor on a balcony the size of a thumbnail. She squinted and imagined the earth moving again, the amazing out-of-control feeling of it.

  Perhaps they weren’t fighting downstairs after all.

  She sat on her desk by the window and painted her nails. It was difficult to keep her hand from shaking. She held it up, tried to force it to stay steady. It was difficult to keep anything steady. Did it even matter? It would be dark tonight—no one would see the flaws. But she would know. She thought of Josh and wondered what he was doing. She touched her mouth, felt her breath, warm and vital, over her fingers. Such a fleeting thing, a breath.

  An edge came into Mum’s voice down below, that brittle fineness pitted all of a sudden with anxiety, then rising and sharpening to a new pitch, Dad’s dogged tone hacking through it. Yes, they were fighting, no doubt about it, and this was how it would be between them until the end of time, no matter what anyone else said or did. An
d Mum would never, ever walk away. She would leave again, maybe, but then she would come back, and Freya had no idea why, or how she could stand it, and the thought of seeing that, of being part of it, was more than she could bear.

  Catching sight of herself in the full-length mirror, she decided that her cut-off shorts were all wrong. She needed to get out into the sun more. Her upper legs were pale and thin and particularly stick-like today—she could hardly look at them. She suddenly thought of Mr Hind, the vulnerable look of his face without glasses, and when she’d yelled at him, and it made her feel a white-hot stab of guilt, like she’d betrayed someone who mattered, but how long ago was all that now? It was last year. Everything would start again soon enough. And did anyone matter, really? In the end, everyone was just…what?

  Onlookers, strangers—no matter what they pretended.

  She wanted some pot, needed it all dull in her head, not this busyness, this constant back and forth of thought, but she didn’t have any, and she didn’t want to call Josh, not for that. She opened the wardrobe door, chose a dark blue dress and slipped into it. The door creaked behind her.

  ‘What are you doing?’

  She glanced at Daniel over her shoulder. ‘Getting ready. What are you doing?’

  Daniel was wearing boxer shorts that looked too big and a T-shirt that didn’t quite cover his belly. He walked into the room and sat on her bed, shifted around until he was comfortable.

  Freya sat down beside him. ‘What’s up?’ she said.

  He looked at the floor and shrugged. ‘I’m scared.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘There’s not going to be another earthquake.’

  ‘There was one the next day,’ he said.

  ‘That was an aftershock.’

  ‘A what?’

  ‘An aftershock,’ she said. ‘Like an echo. There’s always an aftershock, but there won’t be anything else. Not for years now. That’s what earthquakes are really about. Just releasing tension. It all builds up underground for years and years, and then, just like that, it’s okay again, and everything starts over.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘That’s just how it is.’

  ‘No, why did it happen?’

  ‘Maybe it’s all those holes under the ground. The tunnels.’

  Daniel stared at her, and she made herself smile at him. ‘Don’t worry.’

  ‘Maybe it won’t start over,’ he said. ‘Maybe it’ll get worse. The holes are still there. Or maybe it was the kangaroo.’

  ‘The what?’

  ‘You know.’

  ‘Oh, right, what Richard said about the headland? That’s just a story.’ She picked up her brush and began running it through her hair again. ‘Nothing’s going to happen now, okay?’

  He nodded doubtfully. ‘Okay.’

  ‘Well,’ she said, standing up, ‘how do I look?’

  ‘Pretty,’ Daniel told her without lifting his head. ‘Are you going out tonight?’

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘I don’t want you to go.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘You promised you’d read with me tonight, before I went to sleep.’

  Freya remembered and felt guilty. He looked so vulnerable and lonely, her brother, like he needed someone close. ‘Daniel,’ she said. ‘I’m sorry. I forgot.’

  ‘That’s okay.’

  Freya put down the brush, sat beside him again and put an arm around his bony shoulders, drawing him in towards her. He still barely came up to her shoulder, like he hadn’t really grown at all in the last year—or maybe it was just that they’d both grown.

  ‘Tomorrow, I’ll read. And tonight, when I come home, I’ll check in on you.’

  ‘I’ll be asleep,’ he said.

  She tickled him under his arms until he giggled. ‘Then I’ll wake you.’

  He wandered off again, after that, leaving her alone.

  Her parents had gone silent downstairs. There was a record playing. Freya faced herself in the mirror, frowned at what she saw. She was hungry, but she didn’t want to stop to eat at home. If Mum saw her in this dress, made some comment, she’d want to change it again. With her shoes in one hand she walked halfway down the stairs. The warm crackle of the record player scraped out a song—a French voice, it sounded like, and an accordion expanding and contracting in the background.

  Illuminated by the antique lights mounted on the wall, the polish of the hallway floor was so deep, the grain of the wood so fine and dark, that she could imagine walking down the stairs and stepping right into it, the wood pooling first around her feet, then her ankles, then her knees, then her waist—warm, maybe, like something living. But then she reached the bottom of the stairs and the ground was cool and hard and ungiving as it pushed against her toes and flattened the balls of her feet.

  Freya paused, her hand on the bannister, her breath rapid, as if her body knew something she didn’t. The music surrounded her. The woman was still singing, and the accordion beat and wavered through the subtle popping and hissing of vinyl that always reminded her of a fire burning low in a quiet room. It occurred to her all at once that maybe Daniel hadn’t been talking about the earthquake when he said he’d been scared. She crept up the hallway towards the front door and paused, peering cautiously into the living room, hanging back a little. She could only see part of the room from where she stood, the soft yellow light bouncing up off the floorboards and making the white walls hazy.

  Then her parents came into view, making a slow circle, Mum’s long hair undone, her head resting on Dad’s shoulder, her hand limp at his neck, the wedding ring glinting on her finger as they moved, his hand on the small of her back, their legs carrying them into the darkness. Then they were gone. Before they could reappear, Freya was slipping back down the hall and through the kitchen into the courtyard, out into the lengthening afternoon.

  30

  Maryanne heard the back door close, a furtive sound, and felt a sudden pang of loneliness. She stopped dancing, let her arms drop from Roy’s shoulders.

  ‘What?’ he said.

  Maryanne stared past him to the fading daylight that lingered on the wall out in the hallway. The song had ended. Another started up. ‘I think Freya’s left. She didn’t even say goodbye. I just wanted to say goodbye to her.’

  ‘That’s Freya for you.’

  ‘I should check on dinner.’

  She tried to pull away from his arm round her waist, his hand on her back, but he didn’t let go.

  ‘Don’t think we’ve settled anything.’ His eyes flickered across her face. ‘We still need to finish talking before you go to work.’

  ‘Roy,’ she said. ‘Not now. Let’s leave each other tonight on a good note.’

  ‘Leave on a good note?’ He frowned, made her face him. ‘Is that all we do now? No, there’s more I want to say. We have to work it out.’

  ‘What is it you want to work out, exactly?’

  His grip tightened. ‘See? That’s what I mean.’

  She pulled herself free with a violent motion. ‘What are you even talking about?’

  ‘You.’ His mouth twisted around the word. ‘That’s what you said. What are you even talking about. As if it’s me and not us. Like I’m the one who has things to work out, like it’s got nothing to do with you, like you’ve got one foot out the door already anyway, like you’re some fucking saint. You’re not, you know.’

  She sighed, then walked over to the lamp on the side table beside the record player and switched it on. She lifted the needle from the record, and it was quiet. ‘What is it you want, Roy? Sorry, what is it we want?’

  The shadow of a passer-by slid across the window, across the blind still aglow with the fading daylight. The walker’s crisp, light footsteps passed on, a reminder of the world stretching out beyond the house, a world in which people lived without a second thought for what happened here between Roy and her.

  ‘What is it you want?’ she repeated.

/>   There was no pause for thought. ‘Let’s start with Daniel.’

  ‘What about him?’

  ‘You should never have brought up the police. I want you to admit that.’

  ‘I meant what I said. You can’t do it again.’

  ‘Listen to yourself.’ He took a step towards her. ‘You’d call the police on me if I touched him? You’d do that—to me? He’s my son, for God’s sake. I’m allowed to discipline him if he steps out of line. I shouldn’t have to be looking over my shoulder.’

  ‘Isn’t it enough that I let you get away with what you do to me?’ She stopped herself, startled at her own voice, and waited for a moment before she went on. ‘You need to learn to control yourself, Roy. That’s not about me or Daniel or anyone else. It’s not about some total stranger who pisses you off in traffic.’

  ‘You’re my wife, aren’t you?’

  ‘If this is how you treat your wife, why should I want to be?’

  ‘We’re back to that, are we?’

  ‘I don’t know where we are, Roy.’

  ‘You don’t want to be my wife?’ He spread his arms, the gesture taking in the whole house. ‘After I did all this?’

  She looked back at him. ‘You didn’t do all of this just for me.’ ‘Who did I do it for then?’

  She shrugged. ‘I don’t think you know why you do half the things you do. I think it’s got something to do with your father, or not having a mother. You don’t know how to love.’

  Roy nodded jerkily. ‘Sure, I don’t know how to love, and you do. You’ve done a great job of that.’

  ‘I’ve tried, Roy. It’s all we can do.’

  ‘Tried?’ He spoke through clenched teeth. ‘You have to make more of a goddamn effort when you’re actually trying, Maryanne. Threatening to call the police on your husband is not making an effort. Talking to some faggot behind my back is not making an effort. Using my own son as a weapon against me is not making a fucking effort.’

  ‘No,’ she said. ‘None of that is the problem here.’

  He stepped closer to her, so that the space between them was gone. ‘What’s the problem then? Tell me.’

  ‘Mum?’ Daniel was standing in the doorway.