by Aaron Dries
“You?”
“I know, right? Where’d that girl go?”
“You got to get back on the road.”
“I know. Add travel to the growing list. But I’m thirty now.” Claire debated going on and realized she was too far gone to stop now. “And I feel like I’ve got nothing to show for it. I know that’s a horrible thing to say.”
“Listen: Get some Claire-time. Trust me. You work in front of a computer screen for hours on end, you’re bound to stew on things. Christ knows I haven’t got the energy to entertain your mind all day long. Hell, I struggle to even stay awake myself. See this? This is my fourth coffee today. The fourth. When I started here, I didn’t even drink the shit. Look at me now. No wonder I can’t sleep.”
Claire laughed and loaded her scanner with a ream of documents. “You’re right. I just miss home is all. I’d kill for a white Christmas. My parents and I used to zip out of Vancouver for the holidays and go up to this place called Harrington Hot Springs. Bigfoot country, bang smack in the middle of all these gorgeous mountains. And we’d do the whole deal. Mistletoe and snowmen. I can’t help missing that. That’s the least of it, though. I’d like to take Noah and let him see the country; Canada’s just as much a part of him as Australia is. Plus, I don’t think Noah’s happy here either. I’d like to shock him out of submission, you know? Culture shock. I think it’d be good for him.”
“Trust me, I know. Even though my parents don’t speak to me anymore on account of the whole…well, you know…I still respect them for making sure I experienced the cultures I came from. I hope to go back to Malaysia, or China one day with them, although I don’t see that on the cards any time soon. My dad’s a doctor, you know? He treats his patients with utter contempt. Calls them white idiots. I think he hates how whitewashed he thinks I am more than me being a fag. But then I think of the way he chased me out of the house and maybe I know better.”
An awkward smile stitched across Claire’s face. She couldn’t understand how a mother could disown her child. It would be like someone reaching inside her chest and ripping away her vital organs, leaving her to live in a sad, incomplete form.
“Thanks, Benny. I mean it.”
“I don’t think we got anywhere though, did we?”
“No, we did,” Claire said, fiddling with the collar of her shirt. “At least I hope so.” The papers started to scan; the smell of warm machines filled the air. The pages fell into the catch tray.
“Well, today’s been productive, hasn’t it?” she said. “It’s knock-off time and I only got about two thousand pages done.”
“You’re heading off early?” Benny asked.
“Yeah. I’m picking Noah up from school and I’m taking him to Macquarie Shops. He needs new shoes. And maybe I do too.”
“I fucking hate Macquarie Shops. It’s a nightmare. There’s no stairs anywhere, just this big spiral going up and up, all these shops branching off. And you never know what floor you’re on and you’re always getting lost. I was there a couple of weekends ago, hungover as almighty fuck, mind you, and I searched for the food court for like, half an hour. I swear to God, I was this close to going postal. When there’s no more room in hell, the dead will still shop.”
“Well, after that endorsement, I feel super inclined to torture myself all the more.” The batch of documents finished scanning and Claire logged out of her account. She switched off the monitor, the image shrinking down to a dot.
“You have yourself a wonderful time,” Benny said, turning back to his desk. “Think of me when you’re looking for shoes, knowin’ full well that I’m here, slaving away.”
“Yeah, working hard no doubt! Your keystroke record begs to differ.”
“Oh, look at you, Miss Productive! Fine, leave. See if I care. It’ll be a clean break, nothing messy. Pre-nup, bitch. You get Noah and the car. I get Marshall. Sound good to you?”
“Benny, if anyone else on this planet called me ‘bitch’, I think I’d slap them down. But when I hear it from you, it just makes me feel happy. You think I’m joking, but sadly I’m not. I don’t know what that says about me.”
“It says you’re fantastic. And that you really deserve that new pair of shoes as much as your boy.”
Claire smiled and walked out of the room, her handbag swinging from her shoulder like a pendulum. She passed the big bay windows overlooking the busy Central Business District, crammed with traffic, and beyond to the Harbour Bridge. The water looked silver and uninviting, a faded postcard image that no longer cast its spell over her. She waved to the few remaining workers and passed Raquel’s empty desk. A few stray papers had been left behind. A stuffed panda bear holding a heart.
Claire, like Raquel, never saw her office desk again.
Chapter Four
The world slid over the window of Claire’s car—houses and buildings, a burst of sunshine. Behind the glass, in the warm Ford, two eyes stared out. Noah’s nose was pushed against the glass, fogging it up. In the steam he drew a smiley face. It faded away. His fingertip was cold—he slipped it into his mouth, sucking hard until blood welled up under his skin. Soon the blood redistributed itself throughout his hand, leaving behind a pinprick bruise.
He didn’t want any new shoes. He didn’t want anything. Noah would’ve been content to just ride in the car forever, curled up and rocked to sleep as it turned around corners, revealing even more corners.
Bugs exploded against the windscreen as the van rumbled along the road. In the glove compartment spare change, pens and batteries rattled. But their sounds were overcome by the throb of the engine, the pounding of the music.
The plastic cases of film soundtracks vibrated against each other in the coffee holder on the door. Halloween 3: Season of the Witch, Magnolia, Blue Velvet, Fargo. The Freddy Kruger bobbing-head doll continued nodding at Marshall as he tapped on the steering wheel in tune to the music. The doll’s eyes never left him; the headlights of passing cars threw the toy into silhouette.
Taillights ahead flared across Marshall’s face.
Traffic was bad—he wouldn’t be home for some time yet. He craned his neck to see farther ahead. The corner swallowed the taillight fireflies. He squinted, leaned in close to the dash and felt his stomach tighten. The string of eucalyptus flanking the road were lit up like Christmas trees in the light from the police cars.
“Oh shit.”
Claire watched her son in the rear-vision mirror. He was so pale it frightened her. His skin was delicate, his eyelashes too fair. It made him look strained, as though in constant waiting—but for what she didn’t know. Or was it disappointment? She couldn’t help but feel it was directed at her.
Claire knew school was hard for him, that his classmates could be cruel, but wasn’t that cruelty part of the package? The challenge was to fight through it and to emerge tougher on the other side. She didn’t want to tell him what all parents knew but never wanted to voice: You’ve just got to get through this, ’cause it only gets harder the older you get. Claire understood that adolescence was nearsighted, so she explained to him how the rough patches would fade and all that he aspired to be would come true given time.
But Noah wouldn’t listen.
“How was school, babe?”
The rain answered for him as it began to fall again. The headlights of a passing car projected melancholy water shadows over his face.
Are you testing me? It would be so easy to get angry with him. If nothing else, he was being rude, and hadn’t she raised him better than that?
“Have you got much homework to finish tonight?” she asked, ensuring that her voice gave no evidence of her concern, her anger. “I can help you with it if you like.”
Nothing.
Someone had wrapped their car around a tree. Two police cars and an ambulance stood by, shining wet and alive in the glow of a hundred headlights.
Marshall’s heart raced. He turned the music down so he could concentrate on his thoughts, but the beat lingered—the soundtrack to th
e scene, orchestrating the slow movements of the officers and their torches, the sway of the trees in the wind.
His mind made a movie of it all, it was safer that way. He wasn’t rubbernecking like the other people on the road, he was just fictionalizing what he saw so his brain could accept it. Marshall had been lucky enough to live his life untouched by tragedy—he still had both of his parents and he’d been with Claire for so long that he’d never really had the opportunity to be burned by a genuine ex-girlfriend. So he had little to compare this scene to. Except for one event, which happened when he was still a child living in James Bridge, and to this day, he still felt its sting like some lingering, pre-pubescent thorn in his side. The damage done embarrassed him. Marshall would be the first to admit that he wasn’t the wisest guy on the planet, but he’d lived long enough to learn that some scars, even the small ones, ran deep—a child’s flesh is tender, and does not heal with ease.
I don’t think I’ve even told Claire about it.
Indy, his dog, had been clipped by a passing car, driven by a man who didn’t care enough to stop to look at the damage he had done. The collie was flung into a roadside ditch down the street from their house. The poor little guy’s spine had been snapped in two, the bones spearing up through his matted fur. And there had been no other choice. Marshall’s father put the animal out of its misery. A simple bullet through the brain. Burying the mongrel had been the hardest thing Marshall had ever done.
A child standing above a square of dirt in the far corner of the backyard. A cross made from two termite-infested fence pickets stabbed into the earth. The handwritten epitaph read: Indy, a good boy. The father put one of his giant hands on the child’s shoulder and squeezed. Hard. “You did well, Mars,” he whispered.
“Dad, will Indy ever come back?”
The father looked down at his son, a cigarette dangling from the corner of his mouth and shook his head. “He’s gone where all good dogs go. He’s not coming back. I’m sorry.”
Marshall drove past the accident. He constructed a new ending to the scene; it needed a final punch. A fleeting glimpse of the crash wouldn’t satisfy his audience, they always hungered more.
The body bulged under the sheet; an exposed, blackened hand. It rolled by in slow motion, the music building. Cross-dissolve back to the road. The camera pans up to the overcast sky.
Marshall blinked, his breathing shallow. Only once the strobe of red and blue lights were gone from the side mirrors did the movie end and his defenses drop. Left in its wake was a raw patch of emotion, flooding with truths.
This isn’t a movie. That was somebody’s husband. Somebody’s wife.
He felt sick, spent. Marshall’s hands shook when he gripped the steering wheel.
Chapter Five
Noah’s feet slapped against concrete and the echo reverberated throughout the car park, mingling with the screeching tires, the sound of runaway shopping trolleys. He inhaled the bitter stench of exhaust, of the damp. It reminded him of their laundry, a place he sometimes went to listen to the washing machine as it bashed at their clothes. He liked things that hummed, that turned in endless cycles. It was calming. It made him feel better.
Noah’s reflection passed over parked cars. His white, drawn face. He knew he’d lost weight but he couldn’t bring himself to eat; the thought of food passing through his intestines and coming out as shit made him feel disgusting. He didn’t like the taste of anything anymore, either.
He felt dizzy but kept on walking.
The doors leading to the indoor mall loomed before him, separated to let him and his mother inside. The sliding glass sounded like a sharp intake of air. A gasp of panic.
The mall was a giant coil skewered with escalators, winding up around an open atrium. There was an elaborate dinosaur exhibition on the bottom level. A robotic Tyrannosaurus rex stood atop an elevated platform, its jaw opening to emit a deep roar. Children swarmed around it, reading from plaques and playing with the interactive set ups. From where Noah stood, hands on the balustrade and peering over the third story balcony, the children were the size of his index finger.
The call of the dinosaur bellowed through the mall, drowning out the drone of busy shoppers. Mall Security buzzed elderly women from store to store on their golf carts whilst teenagers cackled and screamed, some hugging, some fighting. Tinny Muzak played from concealed speakers. Noah heard it all. He closed his eyes and allowed the numbing sounds to wash over him.
A hand landed on his shoulder—he spun around, eyes wide.
“There you are,” said his mother. “You shouldn’t run off like that, you know.”
“I know,” he croaked, looking down.
“It’s okay. Look, so I’m thinking of picking something out for myself, too. So instead of dragging you around, do you want to run off and explore on your own? You always said how much you hate going shopping with me.”
Claire waited for his approval, one eyebrow raised. She didn’t want to leave him but thought he might appreciate the vote of confidence.
Let him go. Let him grow.
“You want to meet me here in an hour?”
Noah looked up at his mother. She was so pretty. The mall’s neon light pronounced the blemishes in her skin, revealed thin strands of white hair amid the red, and still she looked beautiful. He kind of wanted to tell her this, just like as he sometimes wanted to ask for help—but didn’t. “’Kay,” he said, shuffling his feet. He ran his hands over his school shirt. His palms were sweaty.
“All righty. You’ve got your phone in your backpack, right?”
Noah knew it was there. It sat beside his lunch box, like a brick he spoke into on occasion—and almost of equal size. He didn’t use it at school unless he had to, all of the guys in his class had slimmer, newer phones and his own embarrassed him. His parents had given it to him for “just in case” situations. He did spend a lot of time alone, either at the library or on long walks around the neighborhood. The phone was more for their benefit than his, but it did make him feel better having it there, tucked away next to his lunch box. You heard things from time to time—and they drummed it into you at school—about students going missing, about old guys in vans holding out Playstation consoles, the kids stepping closer to check it out and then BAM, they were never heard from again. It was kind of scary… Besides, the brick made his backpack heavier and Noah liked the weight on his shoulder. He didn’t know why. Most of the time he forgot he had the phone at all.
“Yeah, I’ve got it.”
“Cool, but take it out and pop it in your pocket so you’ll hear it if I ring, okay? We don’t want a repeat of last time, right?” She raised her eyebrow again, her glare contrasting with the gentle way she was touching his shoulder. His mother appeared both stern and scared all at once. It confused him.
And yes, he did remember last time.
It had been at the Annual Epping Carnival. His parents had wanted to visit the farmer’s market and he’d wanted to ride the pirate ship. The idea of swinging into the air and being suspended upside down—not knowing up from down, or sky from soil—excited and fascinated him. He knew he had to experience it, despite how terrified he would be. It was okay to be scared. Sometimes.
So the family had separated, his parents weaving through the crowd, swallowed up by faces. Noah hit the dirt, sprinting towards the ride.
He could remember how the pirate ship had swooped through the air, the way the ground had rushed up at them. It looked as though the nose of the ship would crash into hundreds of spectators, splattering children and grandparents alike. But no, that didn’t happen. That kind of stuff only happened in movies. This was real life—nobody died. The ship arced and he saw the big top and Ferris wheel upturned, a purple sky where the ground should’ve been and the city skyline rushing down at him like a row of sharp teeth.
Noah’s stomach knotted as though he were still on the ride.
Once his feet were back on solid ground, Noah had wandered through the fairgrounds a
nd gotten himself lost. The robot clown heads and their open mouths called out his name; he dropped Ping-Pong balls down their throats to silence them. And all along his phone rang within his backpack. It was only by chance that his parents found him. Their voices faded away as they yelled, Noah focusing on the sounds around him instead. The insane jingles of the merry-go-round, the clapping of spectators as they watched a pig race. He’d looked away from their faces, craning his neck. The flutter of carnival flags on long, intersecting cords, separating him from the sky—
“Noah,” his mother said, more stern this time.
He looked back up at her. “Okay, I’ll get the phone.”
“Get it now, okay? I want to see it in your pocket before I go.”
Noah did as he was told. It bulged through his trousers.
“Good,” Claire said, smiling. “Now, we’ll meet at the food court in an hour. You know, right near the Chinese food place?”
“Where?”
“The Chinese food stall. It’s right there when you walk in the food court. You don’t know where I’m talking about?”
He said nothing.
“Okay,” she said. “Well, meet me at the Boost Juice right near the entry to the food court. You know where that is, right?”
Noah nodded, slow. Eyes downcast.
“If you lose me or I lose you, then call, okay? But try not to spend your credit unless you have to.” She reached into her purse and pulled out a ten-dollar note. “Here, take this. Just don’t tell your dad. You know he doesn’t like me giving you extra money outside of your allowance. But take it. Go get whatever you like.” She held the money out towards him. “You don’t want it?” she asked, her face pained.