Breathe

by Penni Russon

  Later, side by side in the kitchen, Lou assembled a vegetarian lasagne while Undine made a walnut and cheese salad. Undine’s mind fizzed as she thought about that captivating word—Corfu—but she tried to keep her fizzing to herself.

  “Is Dominic coming?” Lou asked.

  “I forgot to invite him.”

  Undine suspected she wasn’t a very good girlfriend to Dominic. Dominic seemed to think so; he complained often of neglect and of the faraway look in Undine’s eyes. “No secrets,” he had whispered into her neck once, imagining that any secrets they might have would be as harmless as tame mice. Undine had not responded. She had nothing but secrets; she lived with them every day. Big ones and small ones, they wrapped themselves around her heart like lies, and squeezed.

  Hearing the sound of Mim’s heavy boots clomping up the outside steps, Undine flung open the door before she had a chance to knock. Undine was always glad to see her aunt Mim. She was really a step-aunt, Undine supposed, though she was Jasper’s real aunt, but she felt as much Undine’s true family as Stephen had.

  Mim had Stephen’s kind gray eyes, soft and rounded at the edges, and when she smiled at Undine it was as if a part of Stephen had not been lost.

  Mim knew a bit about Undine’s magic, more than most. She knew that Prospero was Undine’s biological father, that he had called to her at night through her dreams, and that his Bay of Angels had magic of its own. She knew that Undine had been able to draw magic from the bay and Prospero had tried to control her, to use her magic for himself. She knew that Trout had tried to save her, and had almost died, but that Prospero had helped her in the end and Lou had come, too, to call her back, away from the magic. But Undine had never told Mim, nor had she let Lou tell her, how close Undine had come to squeezing the life out of the world with her terrifying power.

  (Though Undine herself had never been quite clear on that one—when she believed the world to be darkened and contracted into one small grain of light, the rest of the earth’s population had apparently been unaware and had gone on eating, sleeping, getting stuck in peak-hour traffic, having sex, disappointing each other, buying houses and toasters and raisins, murdering each other, rescuing each other, writing down each other’s phone numbers on the backs of their hands with a ballpoint pen. Even Mim—Undine had checked—at that precise moment had been gathering white sheets off the line; Undine could see them in her mind’s eye: billowing around Mim like sails.)

  “Go and get your brother, will you?” Lou asked. “And see if you can persuade him to put something more…suitable on.”

  “Suitable?” Mim said. Lou rolled her eyes in her son’s direction. Mim saw the rainbow boots and giggled. Lou stared.

  “Well,” said Mim defensively, “it’s pretty cute.”

  “It was pretty cute. It is wearing thin.”

  Undine went over to the corner. Jasper was arranging his blocks carefully on the ground.

  “It’s writing,” he told her, “but you can only read it if you’re on the ceiling.” Undine peered up at the white ceiling, relieved to see it was empty. She half expected to see someone spread-eagled on it, reading Jasper’s message.

  She had often wondered, since she learned that her magic came from Lou, what this meant for Jasper, whether he had some kind of magic of his own. Sometimes she almost wished he did have it, to share the load. But when she looked at his bright three-year-old face, and Stephen’s and Mim’s questioning gray eyes that peered out from it, she hoped ardently that he would be free of the magic and all its burdens.

  “Is Prospero my daddy, too?” Jasper had once asked out of the blue.

  Lou met Undine’s eyes. “No, sweetie. He’s just Undine’s daddy. Your daddy was Stephen, remember?” Lou brought out the photo albums and they looked at photos of Stephen with Undine, with Mim, with Stephen’s parents, with familiar family friends, with Lou. In the later photos, Lou’s pregnant bump was apparent.

  “Where am I?” asked Jasper.

  “You weren’t born yet, honey. You were in here!” Lou pointed to a photo of her swollen tummy and made her mouth into a widely surprised o.

  “What’s born?” asked Jasper, and so he learned his first lesson about the birds and the bees: the resilience and frailty of life. He knew death as he had seen it—flies on the windowsill, echidnas and wallabies by the side of the road. But now there was birth, too, and it was astonishing and improbable and Jasper had asked about it many more times, until Lou had finally bought him a book to explain the parts she could not.

  Undine reached her hand out. “Come on, little man,” she said. “Let’s get you dressed for dinner.”

  Something more suitable turned out to be starry underpants and the top part of his Spider-Man pajamas. Jasper sat up to the table and carefully picked the zucchini and eggplant out of his lasagne.

  “Jasper, sweetie,” Lou said. “You like eggplant.”

  He stopped and stared at Lou. “Do I?” He looked at Undine. “Do I?” he asked her curiously.

  Undine nodded.

  “Oh,” he said, and continued to pick it out anyway.

  “Oh, Jasper,” Lou said, exasperated.

  “You is cranky,” he told Mim. “You doesn’t want Undine to go away.”

  Mim looked confused. Lou explained. “Jasper has picked up Undine’s habit of calling me Lou. Except because of his delightful, selective speech impediment, he says You. It never fails to confuse people. Including me. And he seems to have no trouble pronouncing the word lolly.”

  “Lol-ly,” Jasper said with exaggerated enunciation, by way of demonstration.

  Mim waved her hand. “I actually got all that, scarily enough. I spend way too much time with you people. But why would Undine be going away?”

  “I had a letter from Undine’s father. He wants her to discover her roots.”

  “But she’s not going?”

  Lou said nothing, her mouth a stubborn straight line.

  “It’s just for a few weeks,” Undine told Mim plaintively, looking sideways at Lou.

  Despite the weight of her disappointment, Undine couldn’t blame Lou. It was to Lou’s credit that she let Undine have any kind of relationship with Prospero at all. He had shown no interest in Undine throughout her childhood, only appearing when Undine’s powerful talent began to manifest itself. No one, not even Lou, could understand the nuances of Undine’s feelings for Prospero. It was complicated and not without twinges of betrayal and mistrust—more than twinges if truth be told—but loving Prospero was apparently an involuntary reflex, something that couldn’t be helped.

  Undine answered Mim’s question. “Lou doesn’t really trust Prospero.”

  Mim looked from Undine to Lou.

  “Fair enough.”

  They ate in silence for a few minutes.

  “You know,” remarked Mim casually to Lou, looking at her meal. “You could go with them.”

  Lou’s fork froze halfway to her mouth. “I…I couldn’t.”

  “You could,” said Mim. “If you wanted to.”

  “Well! What about Jasper?”

  “Take him with you.”

  “And my work?”

  “Schedule a break. Come on, Lou. They keep hassling you to have a holiday.”

  “But Undine’s school—”

  Undine broke in, flushed with excitement. “Lou, I’m doing so well this year, better than I ever have. If I promise to work really hard…”

  Lou looked assaulted. “I couldn’t spend four weeks with that man.”

  Mim shrugged. “Well, if you couldn’t…” She went back to eating her dinner, but unseen by Lou, Mim gave Undine a big wink.

  Lou looked around the table. Undine stared back, brimming with excitement, trying to hold it in. Was Lou caving?

  “I…” Lou began, pointing her fork in Undine’s direction, but did not finish her thought. “We’ll see,” she said finally.

  Undine bounced up and down a little.

  “Is that we’ll see, yes, or we’ll se
e, no?”

  “It’s we’ll see, maybe,” replied Lou. “And absolutely not if you keep leaping about like that.”

  Undine stopped bouncing, but nothing would wipe the smile from her face.

  Lou dropped her knife and fork and put her head in her hands. “I must be crazy.”

  Undine jumped up and hugged Lou, then Mim. “Thank you,” she whispered in Mim’s ear.

  Lou looked at Mim. “This is all your fault, you know.”

  CHAPTER THREE

  Undine skipped down the steps and knocked lightly on Trout’s door. Mrs. Montmorency let her in and directed Undine coolly up the stairs to Trout’s bedroom. Dan stood at the bottom of the stairs, watching her ascend, his eyes dark and fierce. Undine shivered, glad to get away from both mother and middle son.

  She tapped on Trout’s bedroom door and, without waiting for a response, flung it open. Trout said, “No!” at the same time. Undine caught her breath, and stood, struck dumb by the sight before her.

  It had been months since she’d been in Trout’s room. It had always been relatively neat, drab, and functional: bed, desk, chair, bookshelves, and a few childhood leftovers like model boats and a scungy old toy rabbit called Blinks.

  The transformation was startling.

  Every inch of wall space was covered. On the right, under the heading Chaos, there were intricate, symmetrical geometric patterns. On the left, far more disturbing, was the heading True Chaos. Here the pictures were distorted, with no discernible pattern or methodology. Sticky notes, scrawled with comments, were plastered everywhere. The floor was a mess, covered in clothes, and books were piled up on the chair and desk and even the foot of the bed. The bedclothes were twisted tightly. Surely no one could be sleeping here; this couldn’t be a place of rest.

  “Trout, I…”

  Trout was frantically gathering things up. “I didn’t want you to…I said no, didn’t you hear me? Did Mum say you could…?” He was practically sobbing.

  “Trout, what is going on? What’s happening to you?”

  “I didn’t want you to see….”

  “Trout, it’s okay. Stop. Stop tidying. Look at me.”

  But he wouldn’t. Undine gazed at the images on the walls. “What is this stuff?”

  “It’s just…” Trout stopped. “It’s work. I’m working on something.”

  Undine looked at the notes. “Nothing is true,” she read. “Everything is permitted.” On another: “Mystery. Wildness. Immanence.” And another: “Space Time Mass Energy Ether.”

  “It’s the magic!” Undine realized. “Isn’t it?”

  Trout nodded.

  “You’re studying it?”

  “Just in my spare time.”

  Undine’s laugh was hollow and bitter. “Then you’ve got way too much spare time, Trout.”

  Trout sat on the bed. “I can’t stop thinking about it.”

  “The magic?”

  Trout hesitated. “Yes,” he said. But there was something else, something he wasn’t saying.

  “What is it?”

  “I…” his voice caught in his throat. “I can’t. Please don’t ask me.”

  “Is it…?”

  “I can’t. Please.”

  Undine felt a hot surge of guilt burn through her. “Trout, I wish…I want…”

  Trout closed his eyes, as if Undine was causing him physical pain.

  “What are you doing here anyway?” Trout asked numbly.

  Undine’s news about Greece now seemed frivolous, empty. It wasn’t even news; it was just a maybe. Once she had shared everything with Trout; now she couldn’t say even the most ordinary things.

  She opened her mouth and closed it again. “I just…I came to tell you something, that’s all. It’s not important.”

  “Is it about the magic?” Trout asked hungrily.

  His intensity made her recoil. If she could have, she would have created a slit in space and crammed that word magic in it. It was amazing all the many covert ways it slithered into the jumble of normal words that made up the everyday, mundane conversations around her. Actually, she probably could have created that slit in space, but with the way the magic affected her, the whole world would have ended up crammed in it, turned inside out, like a beanbag stuffed through its own small zipper, the contents spilling away.

  “No,” Undine said. “It’s nothing.” She could feel the gap between them widening. It yawned cavernously—a space that she could physically have closed by just extending her arms, but a space that was so overwhelming she almost couldn’t see her Trout at all, just this shallow copy of Trout, an echo.

  Trout stared at the floor. Undine glanced around his room again. It was like being in the bedroom of a stranger. She looked at Trout. He sat, his face white and drawn. A memory of Trout’s face revisited her: on the beach in her arms, his heart stopped, his body limp, his head lolling to one side so all she could see was one open, lifeless eye.

  Undine couldn’t be in that room for another moment.

  In the hallway she forced herself to turn back and look at him.

  “Trout?” she said.

  “Yes.”

  “Do me a favor, okay?” She looked into his eyes and waited till his gaze met hers. “Please?”

  Trout’s eyes dropped away as if he knew what she was going to say. Already defeated, he nodded.

  Undine glanced at the walls again and shivered. “Take it down, Trout. Take it all down.”

  Undine let herself out. The Montmorencys’ door slammed shut. Outside she gulped a lungful of thin, cold air. The sky smelled faintly of woodsmoke and snow; it cleared her head. She ran up the steps, two at a time. Though she felt disloyal, with every step her heart felt lighter, and by the time she reached her own house she had entirely shed the burdensome presence of Trout.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  Trout woke as he always did, sitting up, gasping for breath, squeezing it out again. Breathing out was the difficulty, as if his body were trying to hoard air for some mysterious future purpose. It felt like drowning, only instead of water flooding his body, it was oxygen. Gradually the dream would subside; he would go from being his dream self, choked with darkness, to being his real, ordinary, living self again.

  The dream was always the same.

  Will darkness or light be born? Undine whispered, before putting her mouth to his, as he had so often longed for her to do. And then came the treachery: she inhaled, stealing the air from his lungs.

  His mother had thought that his asthma had returned and insisted he see his childhood doctor, Dr. Adams. The doctor’s consulting rooms smelled of sickness and disinfectant. Trout was terrified of what his old, pale-faced doctor might see in him, looking that closely: studying his ear canals, shining light in his eyes, and listening to his breath.

  “Say ah,” the doctor said, probing in Trout’s mouth with a tongue depressor.

  “Aargh!” Trout wanted to scream.

  When Dr. Adams put his stethoscope up against Trout’s chest, Trout thought the doctor might hear nothing, just the swirl of silence. But the doctor had declared him healthy, and blamed stress for the attacks; his mother was easily convinced. Although it was only the beginning of winter, the teachers were already talking about final exams, assessment criteria, and university entrance scores.

  Trout closed his eyes and focused on the imperative of breath. He made each exhalation slow and deliberate. He felt himself slipping back into the void of sleep and struggled awake. As soon as his eyes closed he could see Undine, hear her voice. Baby, she whispered. Baby, here comes the dark. He fought to keep his eyes open.

  The illuminated clock by his bed said 12:14.

  Hanging on a hook by the front door was an old winter coat that was used by all the males in the Montmorency family; Trout wore it on his nighttime excursions. One morning someone had commented on the coat’s dampness. Trout worried it would lead them to him but, though curious, no Montmorency had considered the matter worthy of investigation. Anyway, from Trout�
��s point of view, it was better to use the communal coat than draw his mother’s astute attention to the extra wear and laundering of his own fleecy jacket.

  Despite the weight of the woollen coat, outside the cold air shocked him, and he walked briskly as if to outpace it.

  He always walked with purpose, though he rarely had a destination in mind. Every night he took a different route, making his decision to turn left or right spontaneously. The decision was random. Sometimes if he felt himself inclined to go left, he would deliberately turn right, as if to ward off any subconscious pattern that might be forming.

  Sometimes the direction he took was influenced by other factors, such as the presence of an individual or a couple. These he avoided: the intimacy of the street at night was too much for him. Groups he didn’t mind so much. He felt threatened by them, yes, there was danger in the restlessness of youths when they collected en masse. But he liked the danger, it fed him somehow, lent him an energy he needed; gave him life, he supposed, where life was lacking.

  Once he had walked halfway up the mountain. That night he had almost been hit by a car; it sped around a blind corner and skidded onto the wrong side of the road. It stopped just short of Trout, and the engine failed. Noise filled his ears in the moment the car approached, but its stillness was more crushing, more deafening. There were no houses nearby, just gum trees staggered down the steep embankment to his left. With the dazzling headlights in his eyes, Trout had not been able to make out the driver, or if there were any passengers. In that instant, though, they were all caught in the same story, watching the alternative outcome unfolding before them. Then the motor started and the car reversed away from Trout. The headlights swung away, and Trout was left with the shape of them burned temporarily on his retinas before he began the long journey homeward.

  Tonight he found himself drawn to a group of three girls. They were older than him, but not much. At first he thought they were drunk; they screeched and whooped with laughter, talking over the top of one another, words crowding the sky around them like fluttering night birds. But they were walking too decisively; they had a mission, they had a destination.