One Would Think the Deep

by Claire Zorn

Gretchen scrunched her eyes shut. ‘Don’t. Please. I was just having a breather, I’m not waiting for you or anything.’

  ‘But I am sorry.’

  She sucked air in between her clenched teeth and turned to face him. ‘Do you know how that feels? Like, how repulsive must I be that you would walk away while I’m there fully naked?’

  ‘You’re not repulsive. You’re beautiful.’

  ‘What then? Please, I’m listening. Any time when you want to explain why I’m not even worth …’ She didn’t finish the sentence. The two of them sat and looked out at the horizon. ‘It’s so dumb. It’s been months. I’m not supposed to care … You were the first person I thought of when I heard he was dead. I hate that. I hate that I think of you at all.’

  ‘Do you think of me?’ The cleaving feeling returned to his chest, like his breath was clawing out of his lungs. He’d imagined this moment. He’d imagined their reunion. But the look on her face was one of disgust.

  ‘Yes. Because it wasn’t just a fling or whatever. Relationships aren’t a recreational thing to me. Not cool, I know.’

  ‘It wasn’t like that.’

  She didn’t say anything. She didn’t get up and walk away either. Sam didn’t move. They sat next to each other watching the water.

  ‘I can’t believe he’s dead,’ Sam said. ‘And there won’t be any more music.’

  ‘I’m pretty sure he was the only guy in the world with a good heart.’

  Sam had no answer to that.

  ‘I mean, it was bad when Kurt Cobain died, but you didn’t feel that the world had lost the last great romantic.’

  ‘I don’t know. Singing about being horny is pretty romantic.’

  She glared at him, but she was half smiling. Then her face changed and she stood up. ‘No, no, no, no. You’re not doing this. Don’t look at me with your stupid, beautiful face.’

  ‘Gretchen.’

  She turned around.

  ‘You’re not repulsive … I wasn’t … it wasn’t you—’

  ‘Oh! Oh nice! HA. Good one. Classic line. Thank you.’ She started walking away.

  ‘No. I’m … It’s all screwed up. I’m not a good person to be with, Gretchen.’

  She stopped and watched him and he could see her deciding whether or not to hear him out. He still wasn’t sure what he was going to say if she did.

  ‘I’m … I do dumb things. And I don’t set out to hurt people, but … it always ends up that way.’

  ‘Tell me why you walked out and left me there.’

  He opened his mouth to make the words but he couldn’t shape them in his own head.

  ‘I’m listening.’ She wasn’t walking away.

  It was the same moment that he’d had with his mother on the last night. He wanted to tell her why he’d done what he had done because he wanted her to say that she loved him anyway.

  ‘Sam?’

  ‘My mum, when she died …’

  Gretchen’s eyes were suspicious.

  ‘She … I was … she was teaching me to dance. She didn’t have cancer. She wasn’t sick. It was sudden. Out of nowhere.’ Sam’s throat tightened and he blinked back the tears.

  Her expression softened.

  ‘She wanted me to … to be a gentleman.’ The tears welled and he laughed at how pathetic he must seem. ‘It was important to her. She … she turned and I held her arm up.’ He closed his eyes and he could see her. He could feel his mother’s hand in his own. ‘She fell, collapsed like. And I caught her. And her head was kind of back …’ He pulled in a ragged breath. He couldn’t open his eyes. ‘When you and me were … when I lifted you up …’ Sam rubbed his face up and down with his hands. ‘I saw it, the picture of what she looked like. Do you think in pictures?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘I have snapshots. Everything important that has ever happened, that I’ve done, I have a snapshot. And they’re always there. Whether I want them or not. But … I haven’t really thought about it. About the fact that she died. Or how. It’s just easier not to. But when you and I … I could see it. It’s screwed up, Gretchen. Me. I’m screwed up.’

  ‘Oh Sam.’ She stood with the wind whipping her hair, searching his face. ‘I don’t really know you,’ she said gently.

  Sam swallowed and nodded.

  ‘I need to think.’

  Please don’t.

  ‘I think it’s good you’re at school.’

  He nodded. ‘I don’t know which guy I am. Am I the one who goes into the water fully clothed? Or the guy driving the speedboat? I think I used to be one and now I’m the other.’

  ‘I don’t know what you mean.’

  ‘I mean that … Minty, Minty would go swimming in a river, wouldn’t give it a second thought. It’s like he tries to get everything he can out of life … I don’t want to be the one who does the damage.’

  She didn’t say anything.

  ‘He died. It’s horrible.’

  ‘Yes,’ she said. ‘Yes, it is.’

  33

  Nana made him hot dinners and packed his lunch for school like he was in year seven: two devon sandwiches on white bread, a packet of Smith’s chips and an apple. During class time he wondered if he had made the right decision – going back to school. He could just stay on with Nana and surf. But he was sleeping on a li-lo on the floor and his back was killing him. There was no space for him, no space to himself. It was now too cold to eat outside, so the two of them squeezed into the little breakfast nook for meals together. She made sweet and sour hotpot and boiled white rice, just like when he was a kid. It only served to remind him of the way life was back then: meals with Nana and Pop, skateboarding on the driveway, Easter egg hunts in Pop’s garden with Minty and Shane. A time when Sam unwittingly believed the illusion that he came from a happy family, a hardworking family of people who loved each other, a Nana who loved his Pop, cousins without bruises under their clothes. A time when ten-year-old Minty wet the bed because he drank too much soft drink at Nana’s. Not because he was petrified of going home.

  *

  After he had been back at school a while she served up dinner and the two of them sat listening to the radio while they ate. Nana listened to 2CH Easy Eleven Seventies: dance hall standards interspersed with Cliff Richard and John Denver. She kept her salt and pepper in the same black cat shakers he remembered from when he was a kid. Distorted shapes with elongated necks and big green eyes from a psychedelic dream. He picked one up and turned it in his hand, watching the light on its glossy surface, running his thumb over the cat’s familiar, chipped left ear.

  ‘How’d you get these?’ he asked.

  Nana took a sip of cordial. ‘How’d you mean, love? I’ve always had those.’

  ‘But they were at the house in Punchbowl.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘When you left Pop said nothing was taken.’

  She winked at him and chewed her food.

  ‘Did you take them?’

  ‘You boys loved them when you were little. You especially. Of course I took them. I told you, he knew I’d left him. I took a small bag with a few things: change of clothes, what have you.’

  ‘You knew about Minty’s dad. We needed you.’

  She stood and cleared the plates. ‘I knew they were going to be alright.’

  ‘How?’

  ‘I just knew.’

  ‘That’s bullshit.’

  ‘Please don’t swear at me, love. I’ve copped enough of that in my time.’

  ‘How can I even believe what you say? You’re a liar.’

  She put her hands on her hips and faced him. ‘We’re all liars, love. To some degree. We all put on a front. Leaving was the most honest thing I ever did.’

  ‘That’s convenient.’

  She leaned forward, looking into his face. ‘And what about you, young man? Bright young Sammy. Charmer, slay-you-with-a-smile Sam. What were you up to before? You think I didn’t have contact with Rachel? Just because you didn’t know about it. You think she didn�
��t talk to me when she thought you’d gone off the rails? You’d stopped talking to her. Your marks were dropping. You’d been in fights. Our lovely little Sam, like butter wouldn’t melt in his mouth.’

  Sam felt the blood rush from his head.

  ‘Next thing, she’s gone and you’re down here. You’re just the way I remembered you: quiet, gentle,’ she tapped a finger to her forehead, ‘more going on up here than you let on. And I think to myself, surely she must have been exaggerating. Look at him! Lovely kid: got himself a nice young lady, dealing with your mum’s death like I don’t know what – so well adjusted! And then you roll up here one night with a bloodied nose, all beat up and Lorraine’s kicked you out! And I think to myself, a mother always knows. Always. So are you going to tell me what was going on in Sydney before you left?’

  Sam couldn’t say anything. He stood up and moved past her, out through the sliding door of the annex into the dark caravan park. Nana didn’t let him go; she followed him.

  ‘Stop, Samuel. Look at me.’

  ‘What do you want me to say?! There was this kid, at school, he was a dickhead. He said stuff about mum, alright? And I lost it. I punched his head in. The cops were called. I got a fuckin’ caution and was suspended from school and I screwed my life up. Happy? At least I was there. At least I didn’t piss off and leave her on her own.’ Sam’s voice faltered over his words. ‘Why did you leave me?’

  ‘Leave you?’

  ‘Everyone was gone. One minute I had Mum and I had you and Pop and Minty and Lorraine, next thing it’s just me and Mum. I was the only one she had left … And now she’s gone too. And you know who my dad is and you won’t tell me. It’s like you want me to be all alone.’

  ‘No, darlin’. That’s not true.’

  ‘What happened then?! What happened between Mum and Lorraine and you? WHAT?’

  ‘Glen was a bad man.’

  ‘What’s that got to do with anything? He’s in fuckin’ prison.’

  ‘I know, love, I helped put him there. I made sure he was put away. I would have never taken off if he was still around. They needed evidence for a string of hold-ups and I knew where it was.’

  ‘What’s that got to do with me?’

  ‘It was a mess, love. It still is.’

  ‘What’s it got to do with me?’ he repeated. ‘He was a violent arsehole. I get it now. Wasn’t Lorraine happy he went away? And why the hell does that stop her and Mum talking?’

  Nana watched him without answering. She stood silhouetted in the doorway between the kitchenette and the annex of the van. She seemed to be holding on to the doorframe for support. ‘Answer me!’

  ‘Glen … He’s not the kind of father you need to know.’

  ‘No. NO. WHAT?’

  In those seconds Sam felt as if everything he knew about his life was a trick, a shoddy cardboard theatre set. One little nudge and it all came crashing down.

  ‘How? How could she?’

  ‘Same way Lorraine could, love. Glen was a handsome bugger. He could be as charming as all hell. You and Minty got all the good bits of him. She was young and made a stupid decision the same way we all do.’

  Sam staggered backwards, grabbing around for something to hold on to. ‘Holy shit.’ He laughed again, giddy, dizzy. There seemed to be nothing else to do. ‘That’s why they left? That’s why they moved away?’

  ‘I gave Glen up to the cops. He blamed Lorraine. He told her he’d slept with your mum all those years before. He wanted to hurt her and to destroy her family and it worked.’

  ‘Minty doesn’t know, does he?’

  ‘No. I’d like to keep it that way.’

  ‘Shane knows.’

  Nana nodded.

  34

  Out in the line-up, Sam picked his moment. He kept it together until Minty had a wave that took him into shore. It bought Sam ten minutes. He paddled over to Shane, who was sitting astride his board with his eyes on the horizon.

  ‘I know.’

  It was all he needed to say. Shane turned to face Sam and his eyes were cold, unreadable. Sam could tell that he’d heard him and he knew exactly what he was talking about.

  ‘How?’

  ‘Nana.’

  Shane swore under his breath, his jaw clenched.

  ‘Am I like him, Shane?’

  Shane looked him square in the eye. ‘Don’t start askin’ yourself that question. You’ll never be able to stop.’

  He slid onto his belly and paddled for the next wave.

  *

  At the caravan, Sam lay on his back with hands clasped behind his head and listened to Jeff sing about how he wasn’t afraid to die.

  It seemed so unlikely and pathetic that a grown man could be drowned by the wave of a speedboat. Maybe it was the Leviathan that took him.

  If he wanted to, Sam could recall every detail of the last night with his mother: the smell of spaghetti bolognaise filling the flat; her open textbooks pushed to the side of the dinner table; the tears in her eyes. He wasn’t allowed out. He wasn’t allowed anywhere. She wasn’t angry. She’d never been angry, not even when she’d had to go with him to the police station. Instead there was a horrible, hurt silence. She’d closed herself off from him and he was so ashamed he hadn’t been able to talk to her about what happened.

  He was never home on New Year’s Eve, yet here he was and suddenly, after a few wines, she was crying.

  ‘What did I do wrong?’ she’d asked him.

  ‘Nothing … it wasn’t …’

  ‘I must have done something wrong.’

  ‘You didn’t.’

  She shut her eyes and shook her head, running her thumb and forefinger up and down the stem of the wineglass.

  ‘It’s my job to make you ready for the world. You’re not ready for the world if you think it’s okay to punch someone in the head.’

  ‘He said something about you—’

  ‘He hasn’t even met me.’

  ‘I know, but he called you a—’

  ‘I don’t care what he said.’ Her voice was soft. ‘You’re supposed to be bigger than that.’

  They ate in silence, his mum wiping tears from her cheeks with the back of her hand. There had never been tension between them like there was that night. It was awful, the gulf that had opened up. She felt it too, she was always one step ahead of him.

  She wiped her tears and steeled herself. ‘I’m gonna teach you to dance,’ she said, as if the last ten minutes hadn’t happened, as if none of it had happened.

  ‘Mum—’

  ‘Come on. Up,’ she said.

  ‘Mum. No.’

  ‘Yeah, come on. It’s my job to teach you important stuff and this is important.’

  ‘No, it’s not.’

  The whole time it was like he’d been the one who had done something wrong. Something terrible. Something that had hurt her and hurt them. But it was nothing compared to the lie she’d told him his entire life. The first Christmas after the Booners had moved away and Nana had gone AWOL, Sam had pined for them. He’d felt the enveloping bleakness, the same fear and uncertainty in the very centre of himself that he felt now. The gaping hole had begun to open up all those years ago, long before the dinner and the dancing and his dead mother on the ground.

  It was all because of her.

  If his mum hadn’t been so thoughtless, so selfish and stupid to sleep with her sister’s husband the whole family wouldn’t have disintegrated.

  If his mum hadn’t been so thoughtless, so selfish and stupid, Sam wouldn’t exist.

  He didn’t know what to do with that.

  He just needed to talk to her.

  Lorraine was at the kitchen table, smoking a cigarette and reading New Idea. Sam tapped his knuckles on the screen door and she looked up. Her expression was grim. She never smiled at him and now he knew why.

  She opened the door and leaned her hip against it. She looked about five years older than the last time he’d seen her.

  ‘Shane talked to me,’ she s
aid. ‘You know about Glen.’

  Sam felt wobbly. He swallowed. He could feel the sweat on his forehead, despite the fact it was June. ‘I’ve still got a few things here. Clothes and that. I’d also like to take her blanket.’ He motioned to the patchwork of knitted squares on the couch. ‘I’ll say goodbye to Minty. He’s still in the water … First train tomorrow goes at six.’

  ‘Where you going?’

  Sam shrugged. ‘Dunno. Sydney. Still know people there.’

  ‘Where are you gonna sleep? On the bloody street?’

  ‘Dunno. Maybe. I’ll sort something out.’

  ‘I said you could come back here.’

  ‘You don’t want me here.’

  Lorraine watched him with his mother’s eyes and stood aside for him to come in. He went through to the spare room and collected the last of his things.

  ‘You know, I saw her when she was eight weeks pregnant with you.’

  Sam turned around. Lorraine was in the doorway. She pinched the bridge of her nose, eyes closed.

  ‘She hadn’t been around. I hadn’t seen her, which was odd for us, we were always in real close contact. I’d spoken to her on the phone and she just told me she was busy with work. Shane was three, I was six months pregnant with Michael. Bumped into her at the supermarket. She saw me and all the blood drained from her face. I said to her, “Rach, what’s wrong!” and she just burst into tears … She didn’t want to tell me she was pregnant, but I guessed. I could just tell.’

  Sam dropped his things on the floor and sank onto the camp bed.

  ‘She said she was gonna get a termination. All I could think of was how it was a cousin for my little ones, you know? I told her we’d help her, we all would. She was a bloody mess.’ Lorraine sniffed. ‘She was always, I dunno … on her own. No blokes stuck, I don’t think any of ’em were good enough. And she was so young: twenty. A kid by today’s standards. I told her she could keep it.’ She shook her head. ‘But it was tearing her apart, I could see it.’ Lorraine opened her eyes and looked at Sam. ‘I convinced her. And you came along and … you were the best thing that ever happened to her. Just the sweetest little thing. “Aunty Rain” you used to call me. It was always like I had three boys …’