by Emily Brewin
She begins to run, heavy boots hitting the concrete path awkwardly, visions of Petey spinning in her head. The closer she gets to the boathouse the stronger the sense of him, dirty and dusty under the boat. She can feel him, the gangly mess of his arms and legs, the sweep of his lashes against her cheek. Her legs propel her faster, driven by the promise of more.
The air gushes from her as she reaches the boathouse. She bends, hands on knees, to slow it down. Her head spins and for a moment she’s terrified she’ll pass out and miss him. She focuses on the boats, the long curved planks of their sides. It’s all she needs to stand and move forward again.
Doubt scratches. Someone would have seen him if he was here. Then possibility overpowers it again and she rushes between the boats, losing track of the ones she’s looked under and the ones she hasn’t. Each patch of empty earth makes her more frantic, until she overturns the boats completely, one by one.
He’s everywhere and nowhere. A boy in the corner of her eye, just out of reach. She was so sure, but with the empty boats all around her she sees how fucking stupid she was. He fades away, and it’s like losing him all over again.
Isobel
MARCUS IS SITTING ON THEIR BED in the dark when she walks in with an armload of her mother’s dresses. They are still on their wire hangers and stick out at awkward angles so she’s glad to put them down. Her father insisted she go through the wardrobe first, unable to bear the thought of everything ending up at the charity store.
A year ago she might have scoffed at the sight of the bright synthetic tucks and pleats and the clutter of cheap shoes, but now they help her see her mother again. Not the sick version of recent months but the strong, fearless woman she recalls as a child. The one who loved her with an intensity that was sometimes misdirected but always true. She’ll make space for the dresses in her wardrobe to remind her of it.
She starts at the sight of Marcus. ‘You frightened me.’
‘Sorry.’
His hands are tucked between his knees and he shuffles over a little when she lays the pile on the bed behind him. He looks tired.
‘Thought you were working back tonight, or …’ She trails off. She hasn’t got the energy to pretend. The unsaid words drop to the carpet between them. Anyway, she wishes he were at work or wherever he goes. It’s too much to contemplate right now, what’s gone wrong with their marriage.
She flicks on the bedside lamp as a distraction. Marcus puts his face in his hands as if it bothers his eyes. Something like a thin pane of glass exists between them. Behind it, Marcus sighs heavily and runs a hand through his dense brown hair. She recalls it tangled in her fingers once upon a time, soft and clean.
He sighs again but doesn’t lift his head. She contemplates him, the broad breadth of his shoulders that she’s measured in kisses and the solid arch of his neck. It occurs to her that she still loves him in a worn kind of way, but it isn’t enough. They’ve drifted and although it hurts to admit it, it’s more like a bruise than a cut.
He feels the same. She’s known it all along. The late nights and hasty showers before bedtime, the way his skin seemed infused with someone else’s scent. It was all so obvious. He wanted her to see and she chose to ignore it. It was simpler that way.
She sits beside him, resting her hands on her thighs. ‘I know what’s going on.’
His shoulders drop as he turns towards her. ‘I’m so sorry. It wasn’t meant to be this way.’
Part of her wants to say it was a choice he made. But it doesn’t matter now. She touches the cuff of her blouse, rolls the button between her fingers.
‘I wanted a family,’ he continues in an edgy way, ‘but I couldn’t be the bloke who pulled the plug on your career.’
She’s heard it before, in muted tones, but managed to ignore the hurt in his voice until now. He feels betrayed too.
‘We can keep doing IVF,’ she says without conviction.
Suddenly it all seems so unfair, this slip of timing.
He shakes his head.
‘Why did you agree in the first place?’ she asks, now that there’s nothing to lose.
He flinches, then is quiet for a while. His eyes are darkest grey, and for a moment they take her breath away again, the way they used to.
‘How could I say no?’ He shakes his head finally. ‘Your mum was dying.’
The words wash away the last wisps of anger while her mother’s dresses slump lightly against her back.
His voice softens. ‘Then Audra came along.’ He rubs his eyes. ‘I’m sorry you lost the baby.’
He makes it sound as if the baby belonged to her alone, and in a way she supposes it did. She wanted it to plug the hole in her heart, to love it the same way her mother loved her, to prove she could do better. But by then, Marcus had moved on.
She begins to cry. Hot sticky tears that stream down her face and smudge when Marcus kisses them away.
‘I’m so sorry,’ he says again and again.
It hurts like hell to hear him say it, but at least this time she knows it’s true.
Rosie
HER REFLECTION IN THE LAKE is a slow, wavering portrait that’s hard to grasp. Her eyes are holes and she imagines the water filling them up, the soft slush of it in her ears, the tension in her lungs. She imagines her head getting foggy and forgetting, the peace it would bring. But it would mean forgetting Petey too and she can’t do that.
The upended boats are pushed out of their neat rows behind her, as if set afloat on some imaginary ocean. The dampness of their wood lingers in her hands while hope evaporates. It’s impossible to hang onto. Finally, she lets it go.
In the background, the kid kicking the footy with his dad laughs and for the first time in days she doesn’t turn to see if it’s Petey. She lets the sound flow over her instead to disappear into the lake.
It will kill her later, once the shock wears off. Petey ran off to get away from her. She knows what it’s like to want to get away from the person who’s supposed to love you most, to be shocked at their cruelty.
One night, after coming home from the pub, Vera pulled Rosie from bed and steered her to the car with promises of a holiday.
‘Inverloch,’ she muttered. ‘The beach.’
Rosie’s ten-year-old heart fluttered at the thought of it. A beach holiday was something other kids took with their mums and dads at Christmas time. She wondered if Vera had packed her bathers.
‘Put ya seatbelt on,’ Vera said when she asked where their bags were.
The car was a spaceship hurtling through the night, and even though she was tired and it was dark outside she refused to close her eyes. She didn’t want to miss a thing. Excitement made her chest swell.
‘Are we camping?’ she asked the outline of Vera’s face. In the dimness it seemed softer than usual and she couldn’t wait to tell her classmates how her mum had taken her away.
‘Mum?’
‘Yeah. No. It’s a surprise.’
Rosie sat back again and yanked her nightie down her thighs. It was cold and Vera hadn’t brought her dressing-gown.
Soon the streetlights disappeared and all she could hear was the whirr of the car engine. Vera chatted on and off, fast and furious to start with then slow until finally she stopped and Rosie thought she might be falling asleep.
But the car whirred on and her heart pounded with anticipation all the way to Inverloch. In her head she saw mountains of sand and lapping waves she could jump into. She saw buckets and spades and hot chips on the beach, like Lindy in grade five said she got at Phillip Island. She saw Vera on a towel in the sun and not at the pub. No boyfriends or beer or screaming through her bedroom wall. Just sun, sand and a real mum for a change, like the ones who waited outside school with happy smiles and outstretched arms.
The sky turned streaky grey and tall trees pushed into the road on both sides. Somewhere beyond them, she was sure, was the ocean. Bright blue and waiting for them. Her stomach grumbled and she pulled her arms and legs inside her nightie
to keep warm but didn’t complain. Vera blinked hard and wiped her face, leaving a smear of pink lipstick on the back of her hand. Her hair was flat and the strap of her slinky top fell off one shoulder.
A big green sign said Inverloch as they turned off the highway. She could hardly contain herself. They passed a row of shops with ‘closed’ signs in the doors and a two-pump petrol station, then pulled up at a park next to a toilet block. She wondered where the water was. The car idled but wasn’t switched off. Maybe the campsite was further away.
‘You need to go?’ Vera’s voice was as flat as her hair.
Rosie shook her head.
They sat in silence.
‘Where’s the sea?’ she asked finally after Vera closed her eyes.
Vera shrugged her shoulders and started snoring, and Rosie knew then the holiday was like the puppy she’d been promised once and the birthday party Vera was always going to throw. A nice idea when she had a beer in her hand.
She sat on the swing in the park for a while, the morning sun warming her bare skin, then followed a path she thought might lead to the ocean. It was scrubby and sticks dug into the soles of her feet, but she didn’t care. It was taking her away from the stale stink of Vera and the empty boot of the car.
Sand appeared, grainy then soft and full of promise. Then suddenly there was the ocean, stretched out in front of her like a wide blue sky, as far as she could see. It filled her up and washed Vera away. She ran down to it, let it lap at her legs, cool and clean, then found a white patch of sand back up near the scrub with an ocean view and fell asleep.
A man in overalls woke her when the sun was high in the sky and said Vera was looking for her.
‘There, there,’ he said, patting her shoulder when she started to cry. ‘I’ll get you back to your mum.’
She went with him because she couldn’t explain that leaving the ocean and driving back to the city with Vera was what was turning her stomach. She couldn’t explain that, deep down, she always knew that Vera’s promises were too good to be true.
The surface of the lake ripples as she recalls the fear on Petey’s face as she hit him, his desire to get far, far away.
Her phone rings in her back pocket and she snatches it out.
‘Rosie?’
It takes her a moment to realise it’s Isobel and another to find her voice. ‘Yeah.’
‘How are you?’ Isobel asks, a world away.
The breeze whips the words into a frenzy and suddenly Rosie’s terribly alone.
‘He’s gone,’ she splutters, holding tight to the phone because she can’t cry.
There’s a long pause on the end of the line then, ‘Don’t give up hope, Rosie. You’ve been so lucky.’
‘Lucky?’ Rosie narrows her eyes at the lake. ‘You have to be joking.’
But she’s not. Rosie can tell by the silence that follows. Isobel thinks Petey’s more than she ever deserved.
Isobel
JOKING? NO, SHE isn’t. How could she even begin to explain to Rosie how much she’s lost this past week? Her mother, her marriage, her chance at having what Rosie had. And that’s not all, she realises now—there are other things she’ll never get back. All those decades spent evading her parents so that her father still finds it hard to look her in the eye.
‘Well, what are you doing to find him?’ she asks instead.
Her voice is prim again, and suddenly it’s hard to separate Rosie from the hundreds of cases she’s worked on. Her clients’ victims who, deep down, she couldn’t help thinking should have done more to help themselves. Why did they stay with violent partners or get so drunk they went home with the wrong person?
On better days, she knows she’s done the same in the past. Had one too many vodkas and ended up against a wall with some stranger’s mouth on her own. But after ten years on the job her sympathy was hard to find.
Rosie says something about the police and it scratches up the injustice lying just beneath the surface.
‘You shouldn’t have hit him.’ It feels good for a second, the lightening and lifting that go to her bones when she speaks. Then the phone goes dead.
The sudden silence immobilises Isobel and she realises too late that she’s lost Rosie too.
Rosie
SHE KEEPS HER EYES ON THE FLATS as she jogs towards them and her thoughts on Churchill so she doesn’t crack. Isobel. Just thinking the name makes her jaw clench. Isobel. She turned out to be just like everyone else.
The fighter inside her bucks then quietens as the doubt sets in. Maybe Isobel’s right. She should be doing more. She’s spent so many hours waiting by the phone for the police to tell her they’ve found him. She should have been doing more than that.
A driver plants his hand on the horn as she runs onto the road.
Petey’s hers. No one’s ever going to put the effort into finding him that she could. Shit. She gives the driver the finger then picks up the pace.
Isobel’s made her angry again, determined, her natural state. She can shove her luck. Rosie would prove her wrong. Petey was hers and she’d go down fighting for him. Her muscles tighten. She’ll deliver Churchill to Mr Granthall too.
‘In one bloody piece,’ she says loudly, so a man walking past frowns at her, making it easier to ignore a nagging thought in her head. Churchill’s had no food or water for seven days. He’s fat but she doubts that’s enough. She slows as she passes Dulcy’s store and walks through the gates at the base of the flats.
By the time she gets to the concrete steps that lead up to the landing, the thought of unlocking Mr Granthall’s door is making her sick. But she owes him this. For all the love he’s given them over the years, like a grandfather. It forces her to lift one foot after the other until she reaches the first floor.
Nirvana screams through a screen door ahead, fraying her nerves. What’ll she do if the dog’s dead? Mr Granthall lives for him, like Petey does. What if it’s all too much for his heart? She leans back against the wall, suddenly breathless. How will she cope if something happens to him too? It’s crushing. She won’t call him tonight. She’ll let him have one night of peace, it’s the least she can do. A guitar solo moves her forward.
By the time she reaches their floor she’s a nervous wreck. She stands in front of Mr Granthall’s door and stares at the scruffy doormat beneath her feet that says Home is where the heart is.
‘Rosie, isn’t it?’
She looks up to see the idiot’s wife coming towards her in jeans and a lime-green windcheater that’s on the small side. It’s the first time she’s seen her in anything other than a dressing-gown.
‘How is he?’ she asks nervously. ‘I wanted to help, but you know …’ She gestures at the door. ‘Things got tough.’
Rosie doesn’t know if she’s talking about Mr Granthall or Churchill but says, ‘Fine.’
‘I’m sorry.’The woman nods again towards her flat.
Rosie bites her lip.
‘I’m gunna leave him, you know. When the time’s right.’
Rosie’s glad for it but wishes the woman would go away. ‘Good.’
The woman runs a hand through her thin hair. ‘I’m praying for your boy too.’
‘Thanks.’ Rosie nods.
The woman turns and walks away but stops as she reaches her front door. ‘I haven’t heard the dog in a while,’ she says before turning the handle. ‘I hope he’s okay.’
Rosie checks the landing before fishing a door key out from behind a small piece of loose cement on the wall inside the doorframe. Mr Granthall hid it there despite her telling him it wasn’t a good idea. It scratches her finger as she extracts it.
She has to use two hands to get it into the keyhole, they’re shaking so bad. Churchill’s dead, she feels it in her bones. He must have been desperate for food in the end. Or maybe he died of a broken heart before he starved, wondering why Mr Granthall deserted him. She imagines Violet watching him suffer from her spot on the wall, sad-faced and helpless.
She turn
s the key, music floating up from the floor below.
What if it’s worse than that? What if he’s almost dead, but not quite, foaming at the mouth or panting in agony? What would Petey expect her to do? Because in the end, she loves Churchill because Petey does.
A stink like wheelie bins left out in the sun hits her as she pushes the door open, making her reel. She has to duck her head out again for a breath to prepare. Daylight barely touches the walls in the hall but she can already see a pile of dog shit a little way in, and another further along. The floorboard creaks as she inches forward slowly, her eyes adjusting to the half-light. She holds a fist to her nose and steels herself to turn the corner into the lounge room.
She conjures up Petey to make her brave. Petey tearing madly around the playground, arms stretched to the sky, laughing in the face of fear, spinning faster than she’s ever dared to do. Petey curling his long legs around her in bed, the grip of his thin fingers on her neck, the soft puff of his breath on her face.
She’ll deal with whatever lies ahead because that’s what he’d expect from her. She’s his mum, after all. And it’s her job to make things right. She turns the corner and there he is, curled up on the messy floor beside Mr Granthall’s couch, breathing ever so quietly.
Isobel
SHE SPENDS THE WEEK helping her father pack away her mother’s belongings. It surprises her how quickly he wants to do it. He says his brain keeps telling him she’s just down the other end of the house with all her things lying about. He picks out a few objects to keep and puts them in a cardboard box on the dresser in their bedroom.
Isobel peers into it when she gets the chance, pushing past a jade necklace and a pair of white gloves to a photograph at the bottom. It’s one she hasn’t seen before of the four of them in their swimmers on Altona Beach.
The colour is still vivid enough that the green and orange stripes of their beach umbrella bleed into the bright blue sky. It was taken the year before she started high school. Lachie is in a pair of apricot shorts crouched beside her father who is fit and firm, flashing a blinding smile at the camera. Isobel’s beside them, hands shielding her eyes from the sun, hair matted with the salty sea. And there is Grace, lean and brown, uniting them all with that smile and arms that rest loosely around Isobel’s neck, claiming her, telling the world she is mine.