by Tracy Farr
‘I’ll do it. Let me.’
Iris moves around the table, reaches her arms out. Kristin lifts the baby out of the sling, hands her to Iris, then hands her the nappy bag that’s slung over the back of the chair in the corner of the kitchen. The baby is heavy in her arms, and Iris can feel the damp through the layers of both of their clothes. She holds the baby against her shoulder, talking quietly as they move from the kitchen, down the hall. The baby holds herself out from Iris’s shoulder to get a good look at her. As they move through the door from the hall to Iris’s bedroom, the baby reaches out her hand and places it, flat, fingers spread like a star on Iris’s cheek.
Iris bends down and puts the baby on her bed. She kneels on the floor, unwraps the tiny clothes, unpins the cloth at the baby’s belly. She grabs both feet around the ankles with her left hand, lifts her up, pulls the damp cloth out from under her with her right hand. The cloth is thick, folded and wadded, soaked with the sweet hot wee of a breastfed baby, so sweet you could almost drink it. When she puts it down beside her on the floor, the nappy stays shaped in the curve of reaching to cup the baby from front to back, tummy to tail.
When she’s changed the baby, and taken her back to Kristin, Iris offers to mind her.
‘Everything’s done for tonight. I was just going to sort through some boxes, so I can watch her while I do that. You could get some rest. Read a book. Do some Pilates. Whatever.’
‘Oh, I’ve done some already today, before she woke up. It’s okay. But maybe while I have a shower? That’ d be great.’
‘Good. Go. We’re good. We might go and sit outside for a bit, watch the rain.’
‘Perfect. One moment.’ Kristin leaves the room, returns a minute later with a fine merino wrap, and a green woollen beanie topped with a long knitted curl, that she fits to the baby’s head while Iris holds her.
‘There. Just like Mr Curly.’ She leans in, kisses the baby’s head. Kristin’s hair smells of tea-tree and sweat. ‘Ah, and this, too.’ She takes the book from the table, slots it in between Iris and the baby, wedging it there. ‘Maybe you will read her some poems of Hope.’
The baby’s hand reaches towards the book. Iris snugs the wool wrap around them both, book and all, and they head out through the kitchen door to the verandah.
Iris sits under cover of the back verandah, the baby hugged to her front. She feels monumental, holding the baby, feels herself solid and stable, immobile, carved from stone, all out of proportion, a Henry Moore statue, woman with tiny child. The movement – the only movement – is in her and the baby, their breath and blood, their fluids. Even the air around them is still. There’s no wind, and the rain has eased, falls gently, straight down.
She holds her free hand in front of her, flexes the fingers, turns the hand palm up, then palm down, spreads the fingers, holds her hand still, hovering just above her knee. There are tiny movements of the fingers, the fingertips twitch as if trying to keep their balance. She cannot see her pulse – nothing as overt as that – just its little tremblings. She thinks of Rosa’s hands, how they shake now, how they claw and grab, and fail to connect. Her own hands – when she thinks, like now, to look at them – show her age. She flexes her hand up at the wrist, straightens it. The skin slowly sinks back to shape.
She turns her hand over, so it is facing palm upwards again. Now she can see the movement of her blood, can see – just – the pulse pulse pulse under the skin in the soft underbelly of her wrist, near where veins branch and cross. She rotates her hand in the light – yes, at the base of the thumb, too, she can see the pulse moving under the surface. Like a swan, paddling madly underwater, gliding serenely above.
Iris wonders, not for the first time, how to describe the relationship the baby has to her. My son’s half-sister. My ex-husband’s child. Step-niece. Almost. The baby has nothing of her – of Iris – in her, even though she is her son’s sister. The half-sibling of my offspring. It’s a common enough relationship, but there’s no word to describe it, to define or delimit it. Nor is there a word for what Iris will be, to the baby. The baby, when she grows, might describe Iris as my brother’s mother, or my father’s first wife. Perhaps just an old friend of the family. Or not even that.
A noise like paper fluttering comes from the baby. Iris has to pull her chin in to her neck, rear back to focus on the baby’s face. She is asleep. Iris kisses her head, and the Mr Curly curl – upright, like a feather on the baby’s hat – tickles her nose.
‘Hope,’ she whispers to the sleeping baby, ‘you’re the thing with feathers.’
She picks up the book of poems with her free hand, opens it, and starts to read, quietly, sounding the poems out; not quite reading them out loud, but whispered on her breath, so she can only just hear their rhythm and feel their weight.
Compass point
Seam. Fold. Slip. She has searched for him on the internet, on her phone – this Zigi, this poet – and found the geologist, Zigmund Silbermann. She has found his books, his scientific papers and geological bulletins, texts thick with words of rocks and measurements and certainty. She has searched images, and she has found his maps.
They are old-fashioned colours – Commonwealth Pink, teal, yellow, blue – the colours of long-ago classroom maps. The lettering on the maps is close and neat. She pinches her fingers apart to zoom in to see detail large on the screen. She imagines a hand holding a pen, dipped in ink. Or perhaps a pencil, sharpened – as her mother had always done it – with a knife, whittled to a perfect point, kept sharp, precise, controllable. She thinks of her mother, and the work she did, colouring photographs, long ago; the precision it must have taken. Lick the tip, dip to colour, bend yourself in close to the page and gently, lightly, touch the tip to it.
There are marks and hatchings, unreadable areas of colour filling outlined areas, patterns hatched left, hatched right, crosshatched, dotted, herringbone. A streak of solid sky blue reaches almost right across the map, overlaid with words like spells (or, yes, poems): Vitric lithic and crystal tuffs sandstone / coarse basal conglomerate / marine fossils rare few beds of / fragmental plant remains. She pans around the space of the map, the face of it. It is unreadable to her. It makes no sense. She can read the individual marks and words and colours and numbers well enough. She can read the colours as colours – as pattern, as shape and form; she can read them aesthetically. But lines that read to her as darts or seams marked on a dress pattern have different meaning on the map. Their sense is not her sense – she can’t decipher their code.
Loops and folds of pink and orange course through the map, loop out of its frame, loop back into it. Phrases interrupt the shapes and lines: steep & broken. Steep & broken. Attitude clear but evidence uncertain. Attitude clear. Lines are inscribed in little marks, like blanket stitch, or inches marked off on a ruler.
North is not straight up, to the top of the map’s page, but lies instead at a lazy angle, as if the earth has tilted to fit map to page. The compass point is simple and beautiful, and reminds her of a Christmas star. The word True is written above it.
Stitch a fragment of a poem
Take the book of poems as a guide and stitch hope, stitch fault. Stitch a fragment of a poem, show the poem maps the land. Stitch the fault as an arc, concave to the north. Make a border, shade it blanket stitch; make an edge, mark a cliff. Give the flatness third dimension, give it height; stitch the ground uneven. Stitch seams. Stitch folds. Stitch darts. Stitch a pointer to true north, but not straight upwards; stitch it lying lazy. Stitch True above the compass point.
Rumpelstiltskin, Rumpelstiltskin, Rumpelstiltskin
Luce says, ‘There’s got to be a ceremony. Like, a party. You can’t just start calling her a name, after all this time.’
‘Yeah, yeah, that’s the plan, Lu. A party. On Monday. Here.’
‘A christening, but without the Christ.’
‘With fairy godparents?’
‘Of course.’
‘What about Jacko and Alba?’
&nbs
p; ‘What about them?’
‘They’ll be pissed off.’
‘Nah, they’ll be relieved. They’ve been hassling us about the name ever since she was born.’
‘Since before. Ever since we told them I was pregnant.’
‘But they’ll be pissed off not to be here. Not to be invited. Her only grandparents.’
‘If you don’t invite them, they might show up anyway. Like magic. Cast a spell. A curse. Like a pricking finger.’
‘But you never have evil grandparents in a fairy story. Stepmothers, yes. Not grandparents. I think we’re safe.’
Luce looks at Kristin when Iris says stepmothers, but Kristin doesn’t seem to mind.
‘If you keep saying their names, they’ll turn up. Like Rumpelstiltskin, Rumpelstiltskin, Rumpelstiltskin and boom, there, in a puff of smoke.’
‘I think that’s wrong –’
‘Jacko-and-Alba, Jacko-and-Alba, Jacko-and –’
‘No! Don’t say it!’
‘– I think the princess had to guess Rumpelstiltskin’s name, and he disappeared in a puff of smoke –’
‘They’ll be fine. Don’t worry about Jacko-and-Alba, Jacko-and-Alba –’
‘Paul! Don’t!’
‘We need to bring gifts. Fairy godmothers always bring gifts.’
‘She doesn’t need presents, Lu. She’s got everything she needs.’
‘Not presents. Gifts. Gifts are different from presents. Gifts are sort of – small and magical.’
‘Like a magic ring.’
‘Beauty. Intelligence. Compassion.’
‘A magic story.’
‘A magic mirror.’
‘Sometimes the name itself is considered a gift.’
‘Yeah, but you’ll give her the name. I’ll give her –’
‘It’s fine, Lu, honestly –’
‘But I want to. I’ll make – I’ll make a song.’
‘Oh, Luce –’
‘Oh. Is that not okay?’
‘Love, of course it is. It’s lovely. That’ d be a lovely gift. The best.’
Paul grabs her, hugs her, kisses her golden hair, and she lets him.
‘Lucinda-sky. You’re the best. You’re the crown jewels.’
‘With diamonds?’
‘With diamonds.’
‘Hey, Mum can make a cake –’
‘Of course, a Marti Sponge!’
‘It wouldn’t be a party without a Marti Party Sponge –’
‘– and that can be her gift to the baby.’
Iris’s eyes prickle with love. How Luce has lit up with this task! How impossible she is to predict.
Round like a record
Paul was planning to plug his phone through the speakers, but Kurt’s vetoed that.
‘With all this vinyl? Nah, let’s do it old-school, old man.’
Paul surrenders his hands in the air. ‘Suits me. Who’s DJ? You or me?’
‘Aren’t you supposed to be on kitchen duty?’
‘You think?’ Paul holds out his fist.
Kurt matches it. They bounce fists three times; Paul bounces a fourth as Kurt throws a flat hand. Paper wraps rock.
Paul surrenders again. ‘The hands have spoken. I’m off to the kitchen. I’ll expect music to slice and dice to.’
Kurt pulls one of the milk crates out from the shelf under the stereo, starts flipping through the records. There’s nothing more recent than ten years ago, most of it older than that. A mixture of good stuff, and dross.
There are more milk crates, and boxes of CDs, still to sort. He lifts a record sleeve from the milk crate, slides the record from the sleeve to balance between his middle finger (nesting in the hole) and thumb (on the edge). He puts the record sleeve on the shelf, lifts the lid of the turntable and settles the record, places the needle on the lead-in to track one and cranks the volume up loud.
Luce is in her room, fired with purpose, tapping time on the windowsill, thinking about what to put in her song, when she hears the music start, in the other room. She sits back on her bed, leans against the wall, and smiles, starts her head nodding, starts to sing the words.
Iris is in her room, doing one last session of stitching before the party (snipping threads, making marks on fabric), when she hears the music start. She opens the door, and follows the voices. She stands in the doorway, leans, watches. Luce is up on the sofa, her arms windmilling backstroke; then thumbs out, hitchhiking. Her legs are triangling, knees bent, for stability, hips rotating, thrusting to the music. She’s singing at the top of her voice. Kurt’s on the floor next to the sofa, one arm out in front, the other by his eye – as if to sight an arrow – then he swaps them, pivots at the waist. Luce bounces, stumbles, regains her feet and jumps from the sofa to the floor and Kurt catches her, and they break apart and keep on dancing, watusi-ing and singing all around the room.
‘Have you seen the kids? In the big room? God, they’re gorgeous!’
Iris finds Paul and Kristin in the kitchen, piling food on plates, glasses on trays. Paul’s singing, bouncing to the music as he moves around the room.
Paul’s phone, on the table, vibrates. He picks it up, peers at the screen, flicks it, swipes to answer.
‘Hey Sis, it’s party time! Where are you?’
‘Tell her I hope she’s on her way. It’s getting dark already.’
‘You hear that? Iris says she hopes you’ve left. It’s dark already. No, we don’t need anything, just you. Alright Mart, gotta go, this wine isn’t going to drink itself. Drive carefully. See you round like a record, baby.’
Car lights arc across the house and in through the front window, light up the room, light up Kurt and Luce, still dancing. Doors open, slam. Gravel crunches, voices move towards the front door. The first guests have arrived. The party has started.
Saturday night
In the middle of the house
If not for the rain, they’d be spilling out onto the back verandah, and out the big side doors and into the garden, but the people are all inside the house, now, the windows fugged with their breath. This is how it used to be: the house filled with people, with music. It’s the right way to send the house off out of their lives. It’s not wallowing in the past, or trying to recreate it; it’s nodding to it, celebrating it, doffing a hat to it. Raising the roof.
It doesn’t take many people to make the house seem full. Most of them are Paul and Kristin’s friends, but many of them Iris knows, or at least recognises. Some are neighbours she’s never met. She looks around the room at the old people – all of them – and thinks: they’re like me; we used to be young. Now, the only young ones in the room are second wives, or grown-up kids.
Across the room from Iris, glasses clink together. From the next room, she hears laughter, and hands clapping, someone strumming a guitar, then tuning it, then strumming again. People turn towards the sound. They move towards it, into the big low-ceilinged room that runs along the side of the house, built out from the original deep verandah, years ago, when they were down here every weekend and all summer; when they’ d thought they’ d move here one day, and live here forever. A room for kids, they’ d thought – for Kurt and his friends, for Luce; or maybe, maybe one day, who knew, Iris was still young enough, Kurt’ d love a brother or sister – a play room, a music room, where they could make a mess, make a noise, tramp sand in from outside and it wouldn’t matter. There’s a piano at one end of the room, a guitar stand next to it, and next to that a cane basket full of soundmakers: drumsticks, a tambourine, wooden spoons, chopsticks; maracas made from tin cans filled with rice, decorated with stickers and paint and glued-on glitter; harmonicas and whistles. Someone Iris doesn’t know – a man, maybe in his forties, maybe older – has picked up the old guitar and is singing, something bad and bluesy. Is it Creedence? Iris can’t tell; they all sound the same to her. She stands up, weaves her way across the room, touching people on the arm, smiling as she moves past them.
Next to the piano, Kurt and Paul stand together, w
atching the man play, listening to him. Paul leans in to Kurt, says something into his ear, nods his head in the direction of the guitar man as he says it. Kurt’s face breaks into a smile – fills with it, lightens with it – before he closes up again, sets it back to neutral. When he smiles, like that, there’s a flash of Paul when he was that age, and Iris thinks of the first time she saw him: when she sat on the Oak Lawn at lunchtime, between lectures, eating sandwiches from a brown paper bag. Paul was playing guitar in a band playing so-so Velvets covers. Marti did a Nico, standing smoking at the side, coming in on droning vocals and tambourine on ‘All Tomorrow’s Parties’. When Iris first heard Paul sing – when he stepped to the microphone, hidden behind those wrap-around Lou-style sunglasses, and sang the first words of ‘Sunday Morning’ – she fell in love, there and then. Thirty years ago, just about. How young they were, then.
Here and now, Kristin sits on the piano stool next to Paul, the baby held close to her in the sling. Kristin rocks, sways back and forth on the stool, moving slowly, almost imperceptibly, not quite in time to the music.
Look at Kristin with the baby. Iris remembers what that’s like, the turned-in-on-yourself feeling of closeness and oneness, of two-ness, of nothing-else-matters. She remembers the focus, the sense – on a good day – of strength (my strong body made this out of food and air and love; I can feed this). Not sleeping, doesn’t matter. Have to sleep. Can’t sleep. Must sleep. Look at Kristin; how well she looks. She is rested, resilient, remarkable. She is made of Pilates and raw food. She has the vigour of youth, and love.
Paul is next to Kristin, and he leans in to her as he talks, his hand on the baby’s head. His big hand protects her, as he once protected Kurt. Kurt was never tiny in the way that this baby is tiny, though. Kurt was a big bonny baby, the most beautiful, beautiful, all head and limbs; and eyes, her eyes, his eyes looking at her eyes, all recognising.