An Astronaut's Life

by Sonja Dechian

  ‘And also of the entire classroom of children,’ I added. ‘Including my boy, Felix.’

  ‘Of course,’ she said, the sympathy returning to her voice as she no doubt remembered the angelic face of my son.

  ‘I have some home movies of Felix,’ I offered.

  ‘Great! Bring those in.’

  In my favourite home movie, Felix has just opened a Christmas present of Bob the Builder toys. He’s two and a half and he’s tossed aside his other gifts in favour of this tool belt and hammer. I’m looking down at him with the camera and he’s whacking me in the kneecaps.

  ‘Ouch! Ouch!’ I’m saying. And Felix, giggling out of control, keeps trying to whack me, but he’s falling over.

  ‘Fix it! Fix it!’ he shouts.

  Then I put the camera down and you can just hear Felix screaming with laughter as I tickle his weapon out of his hands and mock-hammer him into the carpet.

  I knew a video like that would win the hearts of the public. It’s just a shame that, the way it turned out, they never got to see it.

  That afternoon, I took some time out to prepare for the interview. I bought a newspaper and went down to the school, relieved to see Felix’s tributes piled up as high as ever. The school was still closed, the road at my back just beginning to buzz with traffic as I walked a circuit of the school’s fence, where photos now stretched all the way to the corner.

  I paused at the final face in this sad line-up. So this was Ramon? I took in his neat haircut and grown-up shirt. The boy’s photograph had been adorned by an actual wreath of flowers woven into the wire of the fence. The effect was touching, if a bit fancy.

  I returned to tidy up Felix’s pile and I looked in at his wreathed face and wondered if his colour had begun to fade in the sun.

  Back on my bench, I skimmed the front-page headlines. ‘Vaccine Months Away’, ‘Teachers Not to Blame.’ On page-two was a portrait of Ramon and beneath it the words gifted and charming. Then a larger picture. Ramon with his mother. A single parent, Karen Simons worked two jobs to provide for her boy, as well as studying online in the evenings in order to fulfill her dreams of becoming a forensic accountant, putting to use the natural numerical ability she had also passed on to her only child.

  I studied Ramon’s photo. Likeable and mysterious, with wisdom beyond his years. When I considered the wreath of actual flowers, and thought about that boy with his multilingual skills and advanced numeracy, even I wanted to make a tribute to his life so cruelly cut short.

  I turned back to my newspaper. At the bottom of the page were three inset photos: Felix, another boy, and then Max, the owl. I was relieved my son still rated a mention, until I caught sight of the quote from Ramon beneath. ‘None of the boys will play with me,’ it read. ‘Max is my only friend.’

  As a father, I found this heart-wrenching. As Felix’s father, I felt a different kind of tightness in my chest. Felix had never spoken about Ramon, but I knew he’d never liked the owl. In fact, we’d recently joked about how Felix had taken to poking Max with sticks. I recalled, with an unhappy sense of parental responsibility, how we’d high-fived Felix’s latest series of practical jokes involving the belongings of a number of less popular students and the bird’s droppings, or ‘faecal matter’, as I’d preferred him to say.

  When I called the 60 Minutes producer, I hadn’t decided what to tell her.

  ‘You’re still coming in for the interview?’ she wanted to know.

  I looked down at the article. A quote part way down the second column caught my eye: ‘Ramon was a stoic victim of systemised bullying who hid away in an imaginary world.’

  ‘I’ll be there,’ I said. ‘But there’s something I need to tell you. It’s a very serious matter.’

  In my mind I heard Felix shout: ‘A faecal matter!’

  I remained on my bench until well after dark, reflecting on my record as a father, and also as a man. I had thoroughly prepared for my upcoming interview by imagining a series of difficult questions about my own chequered past and rumours of my son’s disruptive school record.

  We hadn’t had it easy, I would say, but we were learning as we went, and that’s something we’d been committed to doing together. We were self-made men, but now all that we made together is gone. Then the lights would go down and they’d play a montage and that Cyndi Lauper song—the sad one.

  Satisfied with my preparations, I folded my paper and was set to head home when I caught sight of a figure cutting across the school oval. Given recent experience of the questionable behaviours of some grieving individuals, I steadied myself for the possibility of a confrontation, but then a sound reached through the shadows and settled my nerves—the clip of high-heels along the path.

  The woman who took shape was dressed for work, with a light shirt against a dark suit, a get-up too serious to be any of the school’s teachers. She stopped at the fence and I watched her lean in to adjust the flowers woven into the fence around Ramon’s face. She did this for some time, flattening and stretching them before she stood back, giving the whole fancy wreath a long and mournful look. Then she reached in again, this time to caress her fingers against the photograph of the boy’s smiling face.

  I knew from harsh experience just how this would feel: like shiny paper.

  I must have rustled my newspaper or cleared my throat, because the woman sensed me looking on.

  ‘Who’s that?’ she called.

  ‘Just me, over here on the bench,’ I waved to her. ‘Sorry, I just like to sit here.’

  She found the shape of me and unfolded one hand in a wave.

  ‘You’re a parent too?’ she said.

  ‘I am.’ I pointed to the image of Felix fixed to the fence and she came over to the picture of my son.

  ‘That’s him. Felix,’ I said. ‘You’ve probably seen him?’

  She made a slow nod at the face of my boy. Right then I had no way of knowing just how much Ramon’s mother knew about us.

  ‘That wreath really brings out the colour of his eyes,’ she said.

  ‘Thank you for saying. I think it does too.’

  I stood and offered my hand. Close up I could see the resemblance to her son, the round face they shared, and chestnut hair.

  ‘I’m sorry for your loss,’ I said.

  ‘And I am for yours, too.’

  ‘Would you like to sit? Or I can leave you, if you want time alone with your son and his tributes?’

  ‘No, that’s fine. We can share it,’ she said.

  So the two of us stayed on my bench for a while, looking over at that line of faces, but instead of making it easier, the company only doubled our feeling of loss.

  ‘How are we supposed to make any sense of it?’ she said.

  I shrugged.

  ‘How a tiny genetic mutation turns a cold into, what, a super bug?’ she went on. ‘How it sneaks into a class of children and takes them down, one by one?’

  ‘I know,’ I said. What else could I say?

  I reached out and placed my hand on her shoulder to offer comfort. Maybe I was only a sad grieving guy looking for hope, but as we sat together like this, in our own
thoughts, I was sure a different mood started to swell between us. Ramon’s mum reached up and touched the back of my hand. I looked at her to see what this meant, and the next thing we were kissing, a desperate, hard kiss of lips and tongue, and teeth.

  When she began to unbutton her shirt, I held out a hand to say, Ramon’s mum, let’s take it easy, but she showed no sign of doing that. Instead her breasts came out of her bra and I looked around for a more private location, somewhere the two us could lose both our heavy hearts and our clothing.

  Afterwards, Ramon’s mum rubbed her big toes with her hands. ‘Bunions,’ she said. ‘It’s these shoes.’ She put them on anyway and pulled her skirt over her hips and into place, turning back into a business woman, only now one with her shirt untucked and the branch of a small bush poking from her hair.

  We dressed in silence after that, exchanging only sad smiles at the thought of returning to our quiet homes with their children’s toys and pantries lined with lunchbox snacks.

  When I arrived at the studio the next afternoon, I was rushed into makeup where they combed my hair and poured cups of tea. Once they were done, the producer took the cape from my neck and led me into the hallway. She kept her voice quiet.

  ‘We’ve corroborated your story. There’s another parent who knew about this disturbing, ah, revelation.’

  ‘There is?’

  ‘Yeah, he’s in the green room. There are probably others, we’re ringing around. Our experts are saying this behaviour could have contributed, a lot, to the death toll.’ She sighed. ‘All those little children.’

  ‘Have you said anything to the boy’s mother?’

  ‘Not yet. She’ll be here soon.’

  She led me into the green room. There were biscuits on the table and an electric urn in the corner.

  ‘You won’t be here long. You two know one another?’

  Krystal’s dad was sitting in one of the plastic chairs brewing a cup of tea on the table.

  We nodded and the producer went on.

  ‘Look,’ she said, ‘I know this is difficult. You’re very brave to come out with this. Ramon had a difficult life, but no one would have imagined he was capable of it. To snap and do something like this.’

  ‘In their lunchboxes!’ Krystal’s dad whispered. ‘Owl crap.’

  ‘Faecal matter,’ I corrected.

  The producer left, closing us in. Krystal’s dad nursed his tea in his lap. The urn boiled some more water and we waited. I was picturing the two of us, me with my hair combed flat and Krystal’s dad with his almost-crossed eyes, side by side in the studio, hot lights shining down on us. I pictured Felix’s intelligent face projected behind. I pictured us saying the words, It was Ramon who was unnaturally close to the bird. He caused all of this.

  Outside I heard the clip of high-heels along the hallway.

  I closed my eyes and took a long, slow breath.

  The producer appeared in the doorway. ‘Ready?’

  On our way down the corridor we were careful not to make eye contact, but I gave Krystal’s dad a firm pat on the shoulder. He nodded, as if to say he was sure we’d made the right decision. We were even now. Just two bereaved parents, regardless of tributes or past indiscretions. There were hot lights on us, but now we were in it together.

  AN ASTRONAUT’S LIFE

  The shopping centre is crowded with families desperate for Thursday-night groceries and updated wardrobes, so it follows that parking is a nightmare. Eddie predicted this, but Alexis figured, like everyone, that the shopping plaza, with its dependable movie theatres and department stores, might be the only place they could escape the rain.

  They park right at the back and unwrap umbrellas for the trek to the entrance.

  ‘Look out, don’t step in puddles,’ Eddie says to their three daughters.

  Twelve-year-old Meghan strides ahead without concern for water or wet sandals.

  ‘See, a builder did this carpark, but look at it,’ Eddie says to Alexis. ‘It’s the ground around here. Always moving.’

  ‘The ground is moving?’ the youngest, Maddy, says.

  ‘No, it’s not darling,’ says Alexis.

  ‘Dad said it was.’

  ‘That’s what bad builders say when they make a bad driveway.’

  Maddy looks to Catherine, but even she offers only a hand and hurries her dutifully towards the entrance, umbrellas trailing.

  The shopping plaza is not the haven they imagined. Hundreds of muddy feet have trailed prints across the tiles and the polished surfaces of the department store have been marked by dripping umbrellas. The sports-shoe shop has sprung a leak and the buckets and towels lined up along the back wall are a constant reminder that things are not business as usual.

  But the mood inside the plaza is high anyway, and there’s a spirit of survival, as if everyone is on a camping trip, everyone in the whole town. When neighbours pass one another, someone will wink and say, ‘Hanging in there?’ And the answer is yes, because no one has seen this kind of rain before, but they’ve seen a lot of other things, and this is only rain.

  Alexis takes Meghan to buy the bikini she’s been nagging them for, while Eddie leads the younger girls up to Electronics so they can play video games as they wait. He’s had it in mind to buy Catherine a camera, something to take her mind off her worries. Alexis has already said it’s not something they can afford, because a camera for one daughter will mean its equivalent for the other two, but he hasn’t put it out of his mind. His cursory research suggests the falling price of digital cameras has been more than outpaced by the rising cost of teen bikinis.

  Up on the fourth floor, Catherine and Maddy line up for a turn on a video game while Eddie browses the latest technology. There’s an entire shelf of night-vision goggles. He isn’t sure what he’d use them for but they’re appealing anyway. He watches Maddy step up to take the controller, but her turn is over as soon as it begins—she’s walked into a snake. Eddie can tell from the way her shoulders tense that she’s about to cry.

  It’s one of those games where you have to collect coins and jump over holes in the ground. It’s a game for kids, and because Catherine’s been watching she seems to have a handle on how to play. By the time Eddie reaches them, Maddy’s in tears, so he kneels down beside her and wipes her cheeks with his fingertips.

  ‘It’s okay,’ he says. ‘You can have another shot. Don’t be a bad sport.’

  ‘But it’s just.’ She pauses for breath. ‘I’m not big enough.’ Her words break apart as she says them.

  ‘You will be,’ he tells her. ‘You’ll get bigger. Catherine and Meghan were small too. Even I was.’

  He holds her as she catches her breath. It’s true she’s small for her age.

  Catherine falls into a hole full of crocodiles, but she’s made it most of the way through the first level. She looks over to see if Eddie is watching. He gives a thumbs up.

  ‘Hey,’ he whispers into Maddy’s ear. ‘You’ll grow up, too.’

  She’s stopped crying.

  ‘But Catherine says I don’t have time.’

  When they ride the escalator down to the women’s section, Eddie has a large box under his arm a
nd Maddy is jumping beside him.

  ‘Hold on,’ he tells her. She reaches for the handrail.

  ‘Who’s it for?’ she says.

  ‘It’s for all of us.’

  ‘Can I use it?’

  ‘We can all use it. It’s a family telescope.’

  ‘Dad? Can we see shooting stars with it?’ Catherine says.

  He explains it—that a shooting star is really a meteoroid entering Earth’s atmosphere. ‘It’s dust and rock,’ he says. ‘And it burns up too quick to follow with the telescope.’

  ‘Oh.’ His helpful science only seems to disappoint her.

  By the time they reach the bottom of the escalator, he’s spotted Alexis and Meghan. They’re standing in the women’s underwear department, Meghan with a bag in her hand and Alexis with her eyebrows raised in a way that suggests disapproval. Of the telescope? But then he understands—they are calf-deep in water. It’s lapping at the ankles of mannequins dressed only in bras and underpants.

  ‘Dad?’ Catherine says. She tries to back up on the escalator but there are people behind.

  ‘Hey,’ someone says. ‘It’s just water, kid.’

  Eddie wraps an arm around her waist.

  ‘It’s okay. The fish are all safe in the sea.’

  He lifts her to his chest and balances Catherine and the telescope as he strides past the make-up counter. Catherine closes her eyes and buries her face in her father’s neck—it’s already too much like the dream she has where the kitchen tiles are covered in dying fish, flapping their tails and gasping for air.

  The water is coming.

  Late that night, Eddie leaves Alexis asleep in bed and heads downstairs to the girls’ rooms. Catherine is awake. She always is. Eddie thinks there must be something wrong with a kid who can stay awake reading an encyclopaedia all night—an encyclopaedia of all the fish in the Indian Ocean, which she holds to her chest like a dirty magazine when he pokes his head in the door.