He’d gotten the call five nights earlier as the rest of his small town slept. Wide awake with a focused urgency pushing his grief aside, John booked a flight immediately. It was high-priced and lengthy, but his sister was dead.
By morning he and his daughter were more or less packed and ready to go – ‘We’ll buy whatever we forgot’ – and they were off. Problem was there’d been so much snow. In this flat land of all-horizon, John Harley couldn’t have separated the white earth from the white sky if he tried. Ventilated heating worked to warm him inside the cubicle of his car and morning radio worked to cheer him, but that feeling in his gut of being caught between two places and not having a single step of solid ground on which to stand was bearing down on him; nothing had felt right. With his sister gone, with his marriage ending, John wondered if anything would ever feel right again.
Coraleen had curled herself into an unshapely S on the passenger seat, exhaling the softness of a fifteen-year-old’s breath. John wasn’t in any way glad he was travelling across the world to collect a handful of his sister’s ashes, but he couldn’t help think the opportunity perfect for him and his daughter. Soon he’d be moving out of the house. He’d have to get used to weekend visitations, shared holidays and school breaks. He’d have to watch Coraleen flower into womanhood on prescribed days. Jean’s dying in a foreign country at least gave John and Coral this: the chance to share a specific time and place with one another; the chance to embrace family; the chance to grieve over its loss.
And at the airport, no, nothing was right. The ground flight attendant had told him that snowstorms generally didn’t last for more than a couple of days, but he knew this to be false. He’d lived in the Wheat Belt for eighteen years and he knew how snow could build. How it could fall horizontally from such a strong wind that you didn’t dare push against it. How schools and workplaces and highways and airports closed down. ‘I have to get to my sister’s funeral.’ Could he have made it sound any more dire? He’d already missed saying goodbye to her while she’d been alive and that made him feel a complete failure as a brother. He had to go now.
The storm lasted three days. They spent two nights sleeping among strangers on chairs and on the floor against the walls of Chicago’s O’Hare Airport. The quality of food in cardboard boxes and wrinkly bags ridiculous, the bar and grill airport lounges’ and restaurants’ food dull and lonely. And they’d had to buy new books. They took long walks to stretch their legs and shrug off boredom, went into shops that hadn’t interested them.
‘You think Mom’s OK at home?’ Coraleen squished a U-shaped pillow three times then moved onto another. It was Christmastime. Not the best time to be left alone with your own sad thoughts. ‘I bet she’s lonely. It’s a huge house. I wouldn’t want to stay there alone.’
They’d been avoiding it, the separation, and John knew this was his daughter’s way of bringing it up. He tried to sound a little cheery and nonchalant. ‘She’d be missing you, that’s for sure.’ And he’d known it to be true. John had felt his need for his daughter growing stronger as his marriage had begun its steep slope downwards. It had been on a gentle decline for years but at some point – and neither his wife nor he could determine when, exactly – the grade had changed dramatically. He saw it happening between his wife and his daughter as well: this need. He saw how they lay upon each other watching TV and how sometimes Lynn would take Coraleen’s hand when Coraleen was asking her a simple question, as if Coral was a small child again and everything she said was a wonder. John expressed his love for his daughter differently. It was more distanced and hesitant, but it was no less deep.
‘She’d be missing you too. It’s not like she’s ever lived without you.’ And here the conversation stopped, Coraleen’s eyes challenging him with adolescent insight. John had wondered when she’d gotten so old.
Things were changing rapidly, too fast for John to feel safe, and now, after Jean’s funeral, after digesting the fact that a portion of her body would soon fit into a small urn he’d bring back home, after the eulogy he gave on behalf of the family back in America, after the wake and all of those condolences from absolute strangers, he was exhausted, wanting a shower and a bed.
‘You can have this front room. It’s sort of a study and a guest room.’
John set the suitcase near the tall table where two African figurines were mated for life. He picked up the male. ‘Did you get these on your trip to Sudan?’
‘We did.’ Stan looked as if he wanted to say something, and John was waiting for him to continue, but he didn’t. John had been in love once too and, though he’d fallen out of it with Lynn, he understood that there was too much to say about the people and the streets where Stan and Jean had travelled together. She’d told him about the trip – about all of their trips – in letters, on the phone, during visits home, and John knew there was no way Stan could sum up that Jean had fallen in love with the mothers who carried babies on their backs, that their journey to Sudan was the first time the two of them had ever talked about having children, that she and Stan both agreed they had never felt so foreign before as in Khartoum, though in years to come they would always consider the city ‘theirs’. How could Stan have said any of that?
‘You guys love your travel.’ John set the figurine back on the table, inwardly wincing for not using the past tense when referring to Stan’s life with Jean and knowing that, really, it was still too soon after her death to worry about using the present tense unapologetically.
‘I guess this is our travel room too,’ said Stan.
John looked around the room at all the other objects that told a million stories. It was a purple room with refurbished second-hand furniture and, yes, relics from all over the world. Instruments, posters and prints, forget-me-nots of carved wood. A black-and-white photo of three sets of footprints in the sand hung above the couch.
‘That folds out to a bed,’ Stan said. ‘I’ll get you some bedding.’
Stan’s footprint was three times larger than Orion’s, who must have been a toddler when the photo was taken; not surprisingly, Jean’s was the most deeply indented.
‘Great room.’ Coraleen leaned against the doorway. ‘Did Aunt Jean paint all these rooms herself?’
‘Most of them. But not Orion’s.’ Coraleen would be sleeping in Orion’s room.
‘That’s a wild room. I love the stripes going all the way around.’
‘Our friend Viv did that. Did you meet her? Viv?’
There had been so many people at the funeral and the wake, and they were so tired from the long days at the airport and the equally long flight, that neither Coraleen nor her father answered.
‘You probably can’t remember anyone’s name,’ Stan said, looking rather hopeless. ‘Viv was her best friend. Along with Neddy. Neddy’s the woman who held the wake.’ He moved his eyes around the room, back and forth and up and down, then seemed to return to this particular moment in time. ‘Anyway. John …’ He pointed at his brother-in-law. ‘Beer?’
‘That’d be great. I’ll just jump in the shower first?’
‘Go for it, mate. I’ll keep the beer cold. Coraleen? You want some water or juice or anything?’
‘No thanks.’ Coraleen looked at her dad when her uncle left the room. ‘Isn’t this weird?’ she asked. ‘Being here?’
John continued looking around the room. ‘She’s everywhere,’ he said. ‘She’s in all these pictures and knick-knacks. She’s in each book on the shelf.’
Coral walked over to the bookshelf and picked up something bright green: a novel she’d probably never heard of by an author she most likely didn’t know. ‘I wish I could ask her what her favourite book was. Then I could read it.’
John scanned the large bookcase, wondered which book his sister had read last. When the thought began to take on a shape he wasn’t prepared to follow through, he changed gears. ‘You want to shower first?’
; ‘Sure,’ she said, turning back towards her dad. ‘I’m tired.’
‘Me too.’
When Coraleen walked down the hall, the sound of her shoes seemed to rebound off the hardwood floors and echo from the high ceiling. It was a lonely sound, and John immediately missed her. He had a longing to ask her to sleep in the purple room with him, to share the bed with him as she would have done if she were a small child, but there was something wrong about that now since she was fifteen, and what it was, he wasn’t sure. He felt like yelling down the hallway, ‘Hey, Coral! What’s your favourite book?’ but he had closed the door to the purple room before the feeling stood too tall, and across the hall from the bathroom, in Stan and Jean’s king-sized bed, was a five-year-old boy he didn’t want to wake.
When her dad had asked Stan if he was sure he wanted them to stay at their house, Coral hadn’t wanted to know of any other alternative. She wanted to stay with her cousin.
‘It’ll be good for Orion. He remembers Coral. He’s really excited.’ Perfect.
Soon they’d fly to Uluru, that big rock she’d grown up with in their coffee table book at home, and get there for New Year’s. Then to Queensland to see the Great Barrier Reef, another thing in the book. Then down to Sydney for more ‘touristing’ (as her Aunt Jean used to call it). They’d worked out a plan on the long flight over and John made himself busy in the day booking flights and accommodation. Coral guessed it was as good a reason as any for her dad to stay out of Stan’s way.
She couldn’t believe they’d be leaving in two days, couldn’t believe that in less than two weeks’ time they’d be back in the arms of a cold and heartless American mid-west winter. She was torn between being ready to leave Adelaide and wanting to stay. She felt tongue-tied around Stan, wanting to tell him how sad she was for Orion, how awful it must’ve been for him to have a birthday cake in the hospital room where his mum died, how she wished they all lived closer so she could look after him, just a little. She wanted to tell Stan that it would be good for both her and Orion, talking about their absent parents, only her dad would just be living somewhere else, not dead. She really, really wanted to tell Stan that she was sorry for him too, but words seemed unoriginal and meaningless.
Death lay thick in the air of Stan and Orion’s house, like fumigation, but it lifted for Coraleen when she was with Orion. She liked doing little-kid things with him, and he had the best room in the house. Just now she was helping him to cut and glue paper to make a card for his Aunty Lynn.
‘She loves you so much, you know. And she loved your mom.’
‘Then why didn’t she come with you?’
The rays of a sun were particularly finicky to cut out with a pair of children’s scissors. Coraleen concentrated on her art while answering the boy. ‘My mom and dad are splitting up. They make each other sad.’
‘What do you mean splitting up?’
‘We’re not going to all live in the same house anymore. My dad’s moving out. Can I use that glue?’
Orion handed her the glue. ‘You mean you’re not going to have a dad anymore?’
Coraleen knew he’d understand.
After the craft session they played dress-ups and dance school, Coral’s way of winking at her Aunt Jean in heaven. She had previously thought there wasn’t a heaven, like there wasn’t an Easter Bunny, but now she wasn’t so sure. Fifteen is a fine age to contemplate such things.
‘Nice moves,’ Stan said from the doorway, smiling with every deep crease in his face.
Coral stopped dancing and started laughing, like she’d been sprung for enjoying her childhood while heavily into her adolescence. Then she wondered if some moments made her Uncle Stan feel lucky for his life, and if this was one of those moments.
Her dad had popped his head in the room too. ‘What’s going on in here?’
‘We’re dancing!’ Orion yelled, running on the spot with his arms straight out in front of him.
‘Well, come on then, dance into the bathroom. It’s time to brush your teeth.’
Orion kept his arms straight in front of him and ran into the bathroom yelling, ‘Goodnight, Coco!’ His pet name for Coraleen.
‘He’s going to miss you when we go,’ her dad said, sounding somewhat lost between cheerful, bemused and concerned.
‘I’m going to miss him too,’ she said, feeling just about the same.
But Orion wasn’t the only person she was going to miss. He was a big reason for wanting to stay on in Adelaide, but not the biggest. Kyle was the biggest. Kyle, the strange boy with the food fetish who’d taken Coraleen to the city the day after the funeral. Down Rundle Mall they’d gone, stopping in front of every busker. Coraleen had been drawn to them, thinking them exotic and utterly ‘Australian’ because there weren’t any entertainers like that in Galena, Illinois. Through Rundle Street, where they’d looked in windows at the brightly coloured dresses draped on mannequins. Where Kyle had asked her why she wore so much black. It had been a black-singlet-with-a-pair-of-black-men’s-cut-off-pants-bunched-at-her-waist-with-a-thick-black-belt-and-black-army-boots-to-match kind of day for Coraleen. ‘Don’t I look tough?’ she’d asked, nudging him.
‘Not really,’ he’d said.
‘You must see right through me, Kyle.’
They’d gotten yiros and eaten them at a park, absentmindedly swinging on two swings.
‘You seem kind of uptight sometimes,’ she’d told him, licking garlic sauce from the corner of her mouth.
‘I am,’ he’d said. ‘But I don’t feel uptight now.’
They’d walked along the Torrens River, paid for a paddleboat and made their way to the fountain springing from the middle. Water had rained over their bodies, relieving their adolescent pores, and they’d laughed and felt very young and simultaneously quite old. At least ten. At least twenty.
While they sat among the seagulls and swans that claimed the river and all of its food scraps, Coral wanted Kyle to kiss her. His lips were large and soft as he licked the Jaffa ice-cream cone, and she stared at him staring at her, as if she’d known what he was thinking, as if it was what she’d been thinking too.
‘Your ice-cream’s dripping,’ she’d said, and she thought he was sweet when he licked his cone and his fingers. ‘What do you think it’s going to be like for him when he’s our age? Orion.’
‘I don’t know. I can’t picture him as a teenager.’
‘I can see him being sad.’ Coraleen had imagined the boy heartbreakingly cute, crying quietly on his bed.
‘Maybe he’ll just get used to it. Maybe he won’t think of her much because he was so young when she died.’
‘Maybe.’ Coraleen took a bite from the bottom of her cone, sucking the melted ice-cream out of it. ‘I wonder if I’d be better off if my parents split when I was five. Then I’d be used to it now and I wouldn’t be sad.’
‘Maybe every teenager is sad about something. Maybe it’s what teenagers are supposed to be. Just sad.’
‘Are you sad?’
Kyle had nodded his head then, kneaded his knuckles into the grass, dropped his head to his chest, and Coraleen had leaned into him and hovered over his shoulder until he turned to look at her. She’d kissed him with her lips, then with her tongue. It was sweeter than the waffle cone and as big as overseas travel. ‘Are you sad now?’ she’d asked when they had finished.
‘No.’
Now, waiting for her dad to close the door to Orion’s room and leave her to dreamy thoughts and the single bed, the memory of that kiss made Coral want to stay in Adelaide. Made her want to drop out of school and move to Adelaide so she could kiss Kyle anytime she wanted to. She imagined them falling in love, getting married, having babies who would play with Orion. Was there anything as good as that waiting for her back home?
But she was leaving for the Red Centre the day after tomorrow and soon she’d be back in America, 13,000
miles away, where her house would look different with all of her dad’s stuff gone.
‘Well, don’t stay up too late, OK?’ John hesitated, and Coraleen wondered if that was really all he wanted to say to her.
‘OK, Dad.’ She thought maybe she should say, ‘I love you,’ but she thought about it for too long and then there was no time.
John cooked meals for the four of them that they ate at the kitchen table. Orion poured his own cereal and Coral’s too, and together they ate at the kitchen table. Stan poured coffee, tea, milk, water, juice and wine, and they drank them at the kitchen table. Jean was there with them too. In every story, thought and breath.
‘Eighteen years, huh?’
‘Yep. Makes it difficult to separate “mine” from “yours”, that’s for sure.’ John didn’t envy Lynn the task of boxing up his things during the time he and Coral were in Australia, but it was the plan. He knew when they returned to the house on South High Street, dead-eyed from the flight and craving only sleep, he wouldn’t go up the stairs to his bedroom where he could undress and climb into the bed with the feather doona bought especially for their winters; he’d say, ‘OK, see you soon,’ and turn into the freezing night, leaving his daughter behind.
‘Jean hated that you and Lynn were going through this. She’d cry whenever she hung up the phone with you.’
John and Lynn had gone through the Anger stage, first a simmer then a constant boil, occasionally completely out of control, and Anger butted heads with Numb, which was the stage that had lasted the longest. John counted two years, though Lynn once told him four. When they first began talking about separating, they moved into the Amicable for the Sake of the Child stage. It was the most unnatural of them all and John, therefore, knew it’d tipped Coraleen off. Now, with Jean’s sudden death and the hotel he’d booked for a week in his own hometown and the real estate agent waiting to call him to give him news on properties, John and Lynn were at the stage of Downright Sad.
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