(boat, sky, horse, bird) just by pointing
them out to him. Dad bored friends
and relatives, not quick enough
to intervene, with the story of how
he caught me first, newborn.
Mum always pursed her lips at this
in a thin red thread, as if the incident
foretold the later betrayals I’d inflict.
13
I reach Jack’s house with Bear,
both of us panting, out of breath;
my feet blood-smeared and cut
from running over scrub and rocks.
—Dad’s dead, I say before the crying
sets in. I gasp at air but can’t stop it.
—What? North, really? God, I’m so sorry.
Shit, look at your feet. What happened
to them?
He moves milk, coffee and cereal,
clears the crate that’s his coffee table.
He sits me down beside the heater,
fetches Bear a bowl of water.
I’m aware of how worn out I feel,
like the threadbare couch into which
I sink. Details throng about my head;
errant messengers I try to rank by way
of importance, but they slip away:
Dad’s socks, Jo’s bossiness, Mum’s
soft-boned chest, the cups of tea.
But tears and a brackish moan
disperse all speech.
14
Jack peels away my sea-wet
clothes, drags out heat sheets
and makes warm milk. I can’t
stop my teeth from chattering.
My hands shake as I try to drink.
Jack runs a shower, puts me in it,
dries me, tends to my injured feet.
He gives me one of his shirts
to wear; a big man-shirt, striped
white and green. It smells of Jack.
I breathe him in.
15
And lean against Jack’s solidity.
—What gets you through? I say to him.
How does anyone get through this stuff?
It all comes out in a guttural croak;
viscous, ugly, mucous in my throat.
—Shit, sorry Jack. I rub at tears.
He puts his fingers on my wrist,
the one that aches where Finn held it.
He closes his eyes, bows his head,
makes no sound but moves his lips.
Jack’s like a deep clear lake, I think,
whose skin if broken does not resist
but calmly lets the waves recede.
You can see the sliding shine
of things on him. I feel a quiet
hand reach inside and draw me up
towards air and light. Something
enters in.
16
—What did you do?
—Nothing much, he says. Just
said a prayer or two, I guess.
God heals, not me.
—God? I said. You believe in him?
—Increasingly. Do you?
—Well, once I did. I recall seahorses
and phosphorus. God is a scientist,
Dad always said. But Dad is dead.
For a moment, I’d almost forgotten that.
—Now I want proof, I say.
—But why? Jack goes to the far side
of the shed, returns with something
in his hands: a Little Green Star Fish
whose fluid he extracts. I didn’t know
he had one of those.
— Here’s proof, he says. Here, and here.
The cuts on my damaged feet vanish.
17
I’m crying again. The tears well up.
—Oh North, says Jack. He reaches out
to stroke my hair and I somehow end up
kissing him: his neck, his eyes, his lips.
I catch his tongue between my teeth
and lap as if at the rim of him.
My groin throbs with a familiar heat
but the voice in my head says: Stop.
My desire pulls back to a faltering trot.
I turn away from Jack and push him off.
18
Jack lifts the dark veil of my hair
I’ve drawn shut tight against him.
—North? he says. Are you okay?
His voice is faint. I’m burrowed deep.
The earth’s leaf-dank, clay-moist;
desire loose-tangled in a murmuring heap.
—Hey now, says Jack, soil-muzzled, far away.
North, talk to me.
And despite the earth’s funereal load
that’s crushing me, its impossible weight,
I expel four words.
—Get away from me.
Too late to take them back.
I keep my eyes turned from his face
and change the subject. Make light of it.
19
—What’s this? I say, and fix my gaze
on the cross he wears around his neck.
—I found it on the beach.
—Pretty.
—An instrument of torture, actually.
But I like the grace that goes with it.
—Grace is for nuns and Jesus Freaks.
—Ah well, says Jack. It’s a free country.
He kisses me on the cheek, but gingerly,
as if I might bolt at the slightest sound
and his eyes are sad when he stands
to leave.
20
From the shed I hear his dull retreat;
footsteps on concrete, grass, nothing.
I fall back onto Jack’s old couch, hollow
and angry enough to summon up desire again.
—Come, baby, says the man inside my head
that I hire for ten minutes occasionally.
—Come on, baby, come with me.
I climb the thick rope of his voice
and almost, sort of, kind of come
in little fibrous knots, swiftly replaced
by tears. I cry myself to sleep.
21
And dream: a tumbling, fractured dream
about Dad’s old serge coat infused
with soil and nail clippings.
—When I’m gone, I’m gone, he says,
washing his hands in a bowl that holds
eternity. I wake up shuffling time
in a dog-eared deck. Think, where am I?
Details assemble in my head: the beach,
Jack’s place. His couch. That kiss.
It’s just past twelve a.m. My fone lists
nine missed calls: Mum and Waverley.
The cat is curled up on my feet.
I can hear Jack breathing close by me.
—Bear! I whisper. Gather my things
and quietly leave. Jack doesn’t wake.
A dome of stars shines overhead.
22
—Waverley, I say across the night.
Can I come over?
I hear her wade through REM.
—I guess, she says. Hang on a sec.
Shit, that you North? It’s one a.m!
But she lets me in, yawning
through a riot of hair and offers
me the comfy chair. I smoke
her cigarettes, drink her beer
and tell her almost everything.
P
art 16: Waves
Queensland, 2039
When loneliness comes stalking, go into the fields,
consider the orderliness of the world. Notice
something you have never noticed before.
Mary Oliver
1
October was a flurry of exams.
I passed with honours. Trudy failed.
The fruit salad trees burst almost
overnight into riots of perfect
fruit: lemons and apples, oranges,
peaches, pears and apricots.
Leo went home to Elizabeth Bay,
where his folks sold didges made
in Asia as souvenirs of Australia.
—Go figure, said Leo, unphased.
Trudy was off to the Gold Coast
with a stack of friends.
—See ya, she said. Behave, okay?
She gave me a cute, tight-fisted wave.
I raised my hand to do the same
but already she had walked away
and left me in ticking silence.
2
Not everyone left for the summer
break. A handful of students
and lecturers stayed. I was in
no hurry to go back home
to the despondent pitch and toss
of the waves or my parents’ house
in Angler’s Bay. Instead, I took
long walks past the Disney resorts
and ate at the almost empty caf
at a table with peeling laminate.
There were only a dozen or so of us:
a few age-spotted profs, offshore
students and the girl with plaits
who sat with me on the Sky Rail
from Brisbane that first day.
She was reading now as she was then,
lasagne congealed upon her plate
as she chewed upon one scarlet braid.
Her hands were slim and elegant
with bitten, ice-blue fingernails.
3
Her braids were long as horses’ tails,
the wiry hair not quite contained.
They made me want to weep again
like they did when I saw them
on the train. An equine sadness
reared up in me, intent on making
a quick escape.
—I’m Waverley. She looked up
and smiled. Are you okay?
—I’m fine, I said.
And I was really, for melancholy
was a familiar beast who often slunk
in unannounced. Waverley sensed
all of this somehow with a delicate
furrowing of her brow, giving birth
to the friendship we have now.
4
Autumn came in amber drifts.
Leaves scattered the lawns
and the heart-shaped pond with
a casual, coloured symmetry.
When Trudy failed to reappear,
the stuff I shifted from her bed
left a slight indent, as if a creature
once nestled there. Leo said Trudy
had joined a cult, some doomsday mob from Byron into cyber drugs.
—Not good, he said. He’d got fat
over summer, and I saw him then
as he’d look when middle-aged.
Already he sported a faunish beard
and a paunch above his jeans.
Any desire I’d felt was dimmed.
The kiss intended for my lips fell
on my deftly turned away cheek.
His milk teeth made me nauseous.
5
Waverley became my new room mate.
She filled the room with her zany taste.
This was an antidote to Trudy’s zines
and makeup scattered about the place.
Waverley had gingham geraniums
and an iposter of a deep-sea squid.
But the best was Janine the mini-pig,
a tiny pink and hairy thing that slept
in a shoe beneath her bed.
6
I settled into a study routine
with a major in marine biology.
Waverley was a better friend for me
than Trudy or Leo had ever been,
despite her slightly eccentric ways
I somehow managed to integrate.
One night I found her snug in bed
with a female tutor from Transgenics.
Those thick, red plaits and bookish genes
belied a large addictive streak
mainly for caffeine tabs and patches.
But compared to Trudy’s Heaven trips,
these were milder blips, redeemed
by her wit and intellect.
7
Then in October of my second year,
L-Kida flexed its muscles again
by filling a dome with arapax
at Brisbane’s gala Logies event.
All four of Missy Higgins’ quads,
film vets like Kidman and Blanchett.
L-Kida’s minions got the lot.
A podmail to the government
declared a university would be next.
All of the best brains dead, it said.
My fone trilled not long after this:
my mother, high with anxiety.
—North, she said. Come home, love.
Please.
8
That night I dreamt of falling through
deep space towards the earth but
couldn’t seem to land on it. I woke up
homesick for Angler’s Bay, Shale Road,
my folks, Pixie’s Café. It took six weeks
to book a flight and get the okay
from security. The bay was prettier
than I remembered it; opal blue
and sparkling. I applied an anaesthetic
patch, felt the ache inside recede.
My homecoming was an experiment.
Outcome unknown, and perilous.
9
—North! said Mum as I walked in
with my baggage and a new haircut;
smart and short, a blue helmet.
Clutching a tea towel to her chest,
she hugged me hard. Then Dad
came in from out the back, tracking
soil on the beige carpet but for onceMum didn’t tell him off.
—North! he said. Well, well.
His mouth did a little upwards twist
and his lips trembled. Don’t cry
Dad, I thought. If you cry, I’m sunk.
But he wrapped me in an iron grip
and released me with a half-gasped
breath. Grief still hovered about
his eyes, in the creases of his smile.
The jar on Mum’s red kitchen bench
held the same biscuits as before I’d left.
But her hair was grey and she’d lost weight.
10
Dinner was tense. I had changed,
I think, and was out of sync with family
habits and rituals. But I loved the pale
slope of my mother’s neck and sought
it out now for some kind of comfort.
The gap between us felt fathomless,
a watery expanse we could not breach.
—I’m glad you’re home, said Mum.
I just couldn’t sleep.
—Which meant nobod
y slept, said Dad
with a wink. He was wearing a cardigan
he’d had for years. I wished I could
curl up on his knee, the way I did
when I was three. No one spoke
of my degree or if I would go back
to university. I got up from the table,
pushed away my chair, went out back,
sought solace elsewhere.
—Where’s she going? Mum said. North,
come back, please. There’s no dessert till
you eat your greens!
11
Dad found me sitting in an old
cane chair, staring at a trellis laden
with pears.
—Espaliered, I said. You’re good
with them. My plants always wilt.
Why do you think that is?
—North, said Dad, go easy on
your mother. She’s had a lot to deal
with. My health, for instance. And
with you not here…
I picked a leaf from the pear vine
and dissected it. Mum never went
easy on me, I thought. But I stayed
in their house for another two years
until I completed my science degree.
Part 17: Home
Angler’s Bay, 2051
We shall not cease from exploration
And the end of all our exploring
Will be to arrive where we started
And know the place for the first time.
T S Eliot
1
—Keep an eye on your mother, Jo Green
says. But Mum’s okay. She’s finally
got her bad hip done, the house is up
for sale at last, and her first exhibition
in years will be hung in December
at Snow Crash Inc. Mum seems
to walk more lightly now. Dad’s death
has sluiced her clean somehow of earlier
griefs, the way water poured over shells
dislodges sand and grit. I call in on her
The Sunlit Zone Page 13