An Astronaut's Life

by Sonja Dechian

‘At least three times, I check on you all the time, every night.’

  ‘Good.’

  It took another two stories before he drifted off and I could sneak out and along the hall. I continued on to the kitchen where I put away the day’s dishes and took the opportunity to open a window. When I heard no argument from outside, I snuck the blind up, too.

  I had almost finished tidying the kitchen when the cops switched on a series of floodlights. These were serious lights, they lit up sections of the yard like an artificial day, and it was only then I understood they would be here all night.

  No one came to the door to update me on their progress. Perhaps they’d already forgotten I was inside. I watched them digging their increasingly significant hole until I grew bored and my guilt crept back. I hadn’t done a scrap of work all day, so I went and sat in my office with good intentions, but even then I couldn’t summon the effort to begin.

  I texted Gina, I’m thinking of you, I hope work is all right. XX. Then I set to work searching out news that might explain what had taken place in our yard.

  I had no clue where to start, so I searched for news of a missing person in our neighbourhood. But was I looking for a man or a woman? Was it some sort of ‘cold case’ like cops said on TV, from twenty, thirty years ago? It couldn’t be more recent than that, could it? Unless someone had run through our yard depositing some sort of drugs or weapon in a desperate hiding spot—but none of these possibilities seemed likely.

  It was late when I gave up on this and defrosted a dinner of minestrone. The house had fallen dark around me, but I kept the lights off and used only the light of my phone to identify which frozen leftovers to eat, and to wash my dishes in the dark.

  Once I’d found my way to bed, I lay listening to the hum from outside.

  I had no idea what to make of what had taken place that day, or of what the following morning might hold. But I hardly felt troubled at all. Had the stress of the day, the horror of what might be, worn down my faculties until all I could feel were the most uncomplicated things; relief to be in bed and an unfamiliar safety? Or was it because my usual feeling of guilt, the doubt I went to bed with most nights, was now disguised by more urgent concerns?

  I thought of my dream again. Was the man in my dream the same as the one in Gina’s? It did sound like it: the man with the tennis ball was exactly the lumberjack type she’d described. If he was not the same person, he represented the same idea.

  So did she know?

  Was he a symbol, this figure laughing at her from over the fence, for not seeing the truth? Just as he bounced his tennis ball in my dream, waiting for the penny to drop?

  Probably not. It was just understandable unease over a strange and troubling day.

  Except he had come to me before this troubling day began, hadn’t he?

  Next morning the noise ramped up soon after dawn, but I held out in bed as long as I could. I’d slept well. Despite it all, there were no dreams, no lumberjack. I looked in on Lucas just after seven. He was asleep, which at that time of the morning was unheard of, so I continued on to the kitchen.

  There was no activity outside; I supposed the cops were on a break. I closed the window and inspected what they’d done overnight, then I changed my mind about making coffee. I’d start work right away.

  I felt focused and ready to make up for yesterday’s wasted time. It was okay that I hadn’t done any work yet, these were very extenuating circumstances—what kind of person would be able to resist a distraction like this?

  I opened the report and some supporting documents and began work on the first translated paper, Host Parasite Interactions in a Shallow Chinese Lake, it was called, or something like that.

  Gina came in before eight.

  ‘You’re early,’ I said, and we hugged.

  She leant in to give Lucas a kiss but he managed to deflect her.

  ‘You guys sleep okay?’ she said.

  ‘We did, great. Even this one, he slept right through.’

  ‘Is he off-colour?’ She pressed her palm across his forehead.

  ‘No, he’s fine, can he not just sleep well?’

  ‘I’m like a log, Mum,’ he said.

  I was often concerned that Gina did not trust my judgment when it came to Lucas. She sensed this and backtracked, congratulating him on the good sleep effort, being such a big boy, etc, and moments later the real reason for her annoyance became clear.

  ‘They’re going to drive us to a hotel,’ she said.

  ‘The police are?’

  ‘I spoke to that detective guy, the sleep apnoea one.’

  ‘Wait a second,’ I said. I did not like to discuss things in front of Lucas, so we put him to work selecting grapes for his lunchbox and stepped out into the hall.

  Gina was impatient. ‘He thought I was already there. Didn’t they tell you we had a room?’

  ‘In a hotel? I think they only mentioned it as a possibility.’

  ‘Well, I wish you’d told me. I’m exhausted.’

  ‘It wasn’t like they offered it. I would have told you.’ She took a long breath.

  ‘It was just a long night, after another long night, and I’m not looking forward to another day of this.’

  ‘This?’

  ‘Not you, I mean’—she flapped a hand at the yard—‘there’s cameras out there, you know.’

  ‘What, TV?’

  ‘Yes, it’s news now. We’re like a house of horrors. I mean, the neighbours?’

  ‘They’ll know it’s not us. The neighbours will see on the news that it’s not about us.’

  ‘We should grab some things,’ she said.

  A free hotel room with free food, a minibar maybe—who would not want that? Maybe a pool, too? But I didn’t want to go. I would not learn what was going on from the TV news. Were they trying to draw us out, distract us? I didn’t know how to express it to Gina, but the hotel felt like a trap. I had to be here as things unfolded, no matter how bad they might become.

  ‘I should let you sleep,’ I said. ‘I have to work today and it’ll disturb you if we’re in the one room. I’ll be fine here for now.’

  ‘All right.’ It had not taken much to convince her. ‘I’ll drop back before work?’ Gina said.

  ‘You don’t have to, you’re so tired.’

  ‘No, I want to. You and Lucas should sleep there tonight, at the hotel.’

  ‘Okay.’

  ‘I’m sorry I snapped. I’m just not very comfortable with all this, you know?’

  ‘I know, I can see that.’

  ‘Can I have a look out?’

  ‘Should you not?’

  But she was already halfway to the kitchen window and I knew when she leant in under the blind she would see that yesterday’s hole in the ground had now been joined by a second.

  ‘Oh God,’ she said.

  I helped her pack some things and then she took Lucas to school, and I was alone.

  My plan was to check if any news sites had the story, but when I arrived at my desk I saw Gina and Lucas were still outside on t
he lawn. I watched her chat with Victor. I couldn’t tell what they were saying, but she seemed relaxed. Lucas was scrambling around on the grass trying to show how he could talk with ants, or something.

  Victor loaded their things into a police car. I could tell he was laughing at the weight of the bags as journalists looked on, scribbling notes and pointing cameras at our house. I thought of going over to see what they were saying but I didn’t want to end up either being sent off to the hotel or with my face on the evening news, so I stayed put as Gina and Lucas climbed into the car and Victor drove them away.

  I pulled the curtains closed and returned to my work.

  POLICE TO SEARCH BACKYARD ON DEATHBED MURDER TIP-OFF

  Wednesday—A deathbed confession by a convicted murderer has led police on an intensive search of a western-suburbs backyard. Convicted murderer George Van Arthur is believed to have given details of a series of homicides during an interview earlier this week, before his death yesterday of pneumonia complicated by an enlarged heart.

  Police are thought to have unearthed significant evidence at the property named by Van Arthur, who admitted no involvement in the alleged murders, suggesting they may have been carried out by a former associate. Police will continue their search for evidence into the week.

  That was it. No street name, but of course it was our house, and it all but confirmed it was a body they were looking for. But a series of murders—more than one?

  What any of this had to do with our house—why us and why here—there was still no mention.

  Later that morning, I returned to my spot at the kitchen window and saw a tarp screening the area around each hole. To protect from the elements, perhaps? I watched for movement behind each screen, and at one point I thought I made out a pair of shifting feet that gave the impression of a man levering something out of the ground, but I couldn’t be sure.

  Gina didn’t call that afternoon. When she arrived home, she explained she’d left her charger, we’d forgotten to pack it that morning.

  She plugged her phone in by the bed and we lay together. Lucas was at her parents’ place, where she’d taken him straight from school.

  ‘You didn’t think to see what I thought?’ I said, keeping both annoyance and relief from my voice.

  ‘I thought, rather than the hotel. You know what he’s like, he’s used to their place, he has his room there.’

  She was right, but still.

  ‘And my phone was flat. But I’m sorry. I should have checked.’ She curled up against me and I wrapped an arm over her.

  ‘There’s a story about our house in the paper,’ I told her.

  ‘I know.’

  ‘You saw it?’

  ‘No, he told me, the detective.’

  ‘Victor?’

  ‘He’s actually all right.’

  ‘I know. Wasn’t I the one who already said he was all right?’ I felt her shrug. ‘So what did he say?’

  ‘He came to the hotel to have a talk with us.’

  ‘Okay.’

  ‘I’m not sure they realise you’re working in here.’

  ‘Well, that’s weird. I’m not exactly hiding.’

  ‘He said there would be media, they’ve found a body and they have to keep digging for more evidence.’

  ‘He said a body?’

  ‘He asked if we wanted to speak to a psychologist. I said no, not just yet.’

  ‘You’re sure?’

  ‘I don’t have time.’

  ‘Next week maybe?’

  ‘If we do it together.’ She found my hand and ran her fingers over my knuckles. ‘He said they don’t know who it is.’

  ‘God. But would he tell us anyway, if they did? They must have some idea, mustn’t they?’

  She didn’t reply.

  ‘Let’s think it’s someone bad anyway,’ I said. ‘A drug dealer maybe?’

  ‘You can’t say that. It doesn’t mean they would deserve it.’

  ‘I know. I was just trying.’

  ‘I’m sorry. I know. To make it better.’

  She rolled in towards me and cried a bit.

  ‘I know something else,’ she said. She looked up at me and I saw her crying was real, her eyes were wet. ‘He wouldn’t tell me, but I could see from his face.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘I bet it’s a child. I could tell.’

  ‘Shit.’

  ‘I knew it would be something like this.’

  I wanted to say I’d known too, but how could we? What kind of people ‘knew’ there was a body buried in their yard, but did nothing about it? There was never a bad feeling about this place, no premonitions or vague sense of unease we might have tried to put our finger on. The truth was, we’d had no idea that something terrible had happened here, none at all.

  ‘Christ,’ I said.

  Gina didn’t have to start work until 9pm so we made stir-fry and ate with the blinds down. We sat in silence for a while, each carrying out our own process of trying to think or not think about what had happened.

  ‘You know what we saw? There were people in the park with metal detectors,’ Gina said.

  ‘What’s that?’

  ‘The one near Lucas’s school. Three or four of them going around. He thought they were vacuuming.’

  ‘Metal detectors?’

  ‘Looking for jewellery or coins. Maybe for drug money—they looked pretty rough.’

  ‘Well it’s better than robbing houses.’

  ‘I know. Entrepreneurial, actually.’

  ‘What a neighbourhood,’ I said. I nearly said something more, a joke combining the idea of enterprising drug users and dead bodies in garden beds, but it wasn’t true. Ours was a standard middle-class neighbourhood and had been for a long time.

  ‘It’s funny, I keep thinking of our housewarming,’ Gina said. ‘Remember how we put up all the lanterns?’ She gestured to where we’d hung little solar-powered lights in the trees.

  ‘It looked great. Did I tell you my sister asked about those lights?’

  I’d opened a longneck for us and I topped up my glass. I raised my eyebrows to ask if she wanted more.

  ‘No, thanks,’ she said. ‘But all that’s ruined now, in retrospect. Knowing they were out there. We were celebrating on children’s graves.’

  She screwed up her eyes to hold in tears. I knew she was being melodramatic, testing the effect it might have if she let herself imagine the worst—and that was legitimate. I felt it too. She kept her eyes closed and went on chewing as if none of this was playing out.

  ‘It’s not like that,’ I tried. ‘Maybe something bad happened, sure, but there’s no reason that changes anything. We’re happy, we have made this a happier place by us being here.’

  ‘Does that matter?’

  ‘It does to us.’

  ‘No one’s going to buy it, anyway.’

  ‘But we’re not going to sell. We love this
house. Whatever happened here, it’s all going to be put to rest and we’ll start over. The place can get a new beginning with us, can’t it?’

  Gina looked at the blind in silence, as though she could see through. Then she reached over and poured more beer into her glass after all.

  She didn’t press the issue of the hotel and I was glad. I presumed she didn’t want to make it a thing—we had different ways of coping, and with Lucas at his grandparents’, that would be that.

  After she left I managed to work for a while, then I snacked on some peanut-butter toast before bed. That night I fell asleep without any deep thought towards what was happening outside. I’d become resigned to it, or it was still too much for me to make sense of. Whichever it was, I dreamt of him this time, the lumberjack.

  In the dream we were throwing a party. I’d cooked trays of food and Gina had cleaned and decorated the house. But there was a sense of time running out: soon everyone we knew would be at our door.

  At the last moment I noticed a spill on the tiles and I opened the cupboard and pulled out a handful of rags, annoyed Gina had not done this earlier. As I crouched to wipe it, I recognised the rag I was holding. It was unmistakable—a little girl’s red dress with half the skirt torn away. The missing piece was the fabric the cops had pulled from the ground on their first day in our yard.

  A phone began to ring.

  ‘Don’t,’ I said to Gina. ‘Don’t answer.’

  As I said this, I knew he was outside. I saw us from his perspective, looking in on our kitchen at the two of us standing there, surrounded by party decorations. Light streamed out through the cracks in the house, cracks I had never noticed, at the places the walls met, at the edges of windows and the base of the roof, as if the whole thing could be popped apart, like a child’s toy.

  That’s when I woke. My phone was ringing. It was only 12.30, the whole dream had probably taken seconds, maybe just the time between one ring and the next.

  The screen on my phone read Lim Landline.