Our Magic Hour

by Jennifer Down

  Nick tossed the phone onto the bed.

  ‘It’s your brother,’ he said. ‘He’s off his tits.’

  ‘Where is he?’

  ‘Out the front.’

  Nick pulled on some shorts. Audrey followed him to the door. Bernie stood on the step dressed in a girl’s school pinafore. In his hand he held a fluorescent-blue tube and a shaggy wig.

  ‘The fuck.’ Nick started to laugh. They stepped aside and Bernie staggered to the kitchen.

  ‘Sorry,’ he kept saying, even as he collapsed at the table, ‘sorry, mate. I’m really sorry, Audie.’

  ‘Where’ve you been?’

  ‘I started off at this party in Carlton, one of Tom’s friends. And we went for a walk, to get more drinks, but I sort of got lost from everyone else.’

  ‘What’s with the lightsaber?’ Nick asked.

  ‘Dress-up party. Guess who I am.’ He held up the mass of synthetic hair, and slapped it on his head. The red fringe fell over his eyes. ‘Chrissy Amphlett. You know, like, Boys in Town-era. This is my microphone.’

  ‘So you got lost.’ Audrey handed him a mug of tea. ‘Then what?’

  ‘Then I was smoking a doobie in a park somewhere, and this guy comes up to me and says he’s going to a party, so I got on the tram with him and it went a long way. It went to fucken Thornbury. I didn’t even know where that was. But when we got there, to the house, I realised it was a sex party, and I got scared.’ Nick rocked back and clapped his hands together. Audrey looked at her brother, with his smudged makeup and his lopsided wig, and she was laughing, too, an early-morning delirium. Bernie drew the teabag up and down in the mug. ‘So then I slept in a bush for a while,’ he continued, ‘and by the time I wake up the trams have stopped running and my wallet’s gone and I can’t get a cab.’

  ‘How’d you get here?’

  ‘Walked.’

  ‘What, from Thornbury?’

  ‘Yeah, it’s taken a while, but it was okay. I didn’t want to wake you up so I just kept walking. Figured if I got here, I could crash on your couch. I just can’t make it back to St Kilda.’

  Close to five o’clock he passed out on the living room f loor. Audrey put a quilt over his body. She stood and watched him a moment.

  In the bedroom she lay down beside Nick and opened L’Assommoir. Gervaise was losing her mind on a sidewalk, her entire existence confined to the triangle between the hospital, the abattoir and the railway. Audrey remembered the tragedy from years ago, when she’d f irst read it. Her father had been pleased. She remembered a conversation she’d had with Katy. Must have been when her father was dying, around the time of Sylvie’s psychotic break. There were phone calls at all hours, there were long drives to and from the peninsula, there were false preludes to death. Sylvie’s behaviour became ritualised in its weirdness. It was mostly too difficult to explain to people. Once Katy had asked Do you ever get scared you’ll end up like them? Audrey said No, and Katy said Sorry, sorry, over and over again. I should never have said that. You’re tough, Spence; you’ve built up immunity. You’re the synagogue, you’re Gilgamesh.

  Still. Audrey had gone home to Nick. She said What do you know about epigenetics, and he might have laughed, but she was shaking. He sat up with her all night, reading about heredity as if they were studying for an exam.

  Gervaise was in front of the slaughterhouses. They were being torn down, but they still stank of blood. Audrey closed the book and covered her eyes.

  On Saturday night Audrey and Nick drove over to Malvern where Emy’s parents lived, near the private hospital. The houses were monstrously large. Their lights were just coming on. Their iceberg roses trembled in the wind.

  ‘Who lives like this?’ Nick said as they stood in front of the cavernous driveway. Ben opened the door to them. His shoulders nearly filled the frame.

  ‘Come in, I’ll introduce you to Em’s parents, everyone’s out the back—’

  The garden swarmed with people. They huddled under the big gas heaters. Audrey could see Emy, flushed and happy. She looked so alive that Audrey wanted to rush over and kiss her, but Emy was busy talking. Audrey watched the scene. The music hummed in her teeth. Her friend beamed. She thought of Emy saying What’s been happening with you. She turned back to Nick and Ben.

  ‘I might go and see if Emy’s mum wants a hand,’ she said.

  It was quiet in the kitchen. Mrs Takemura gave her a colander full of snow peas and a knife. They worked side by side. Their conversation was gentle and meaningless. Audrey could see the party, the darkening sky, through the glass over the sink.

  When the food was ready she sat between Adam and Nick at the long table.

  ‘Feels like the last supper,’ said Nick.

  ‘Something’s happened,’ Audrey said to him in a low voice. ‘Ben’s moving back to Japan with her, or something.’

  ‘You reckon?’

  ‘I just have this feeling.’

  Veiny leaves floated on the surface of the swimming pool. The air smelled of smoke and damp soil. Audrey looked at the faces around the table. Beside her, Adam was telling a story about an argument. His voice hurried to fill the air.

  Audrey went to get her jumper from the car, and returned as Emy was standing up next to Ben’s chair, tinkling fork to wineglass.

  ‘The reason we’re having this party is because I wanted to see you all before I go back to work next week,’ she said, and gave a cough, ‘but also because Ben and I got married yesterday.’ She grabbed his hand and held it up as proof: one thick finger was bound in gold.

  ‘Well, fuck me,’ Adam said. He clapped a hand over his mouth.

  ‘I’m still contracted in Chiba for another eight months, but Ben’s staying here, so it’ll be a bit tough, but we’ll survive.’ She glanced at Ben. ‘Anyway, that’s all, I didn’t want to make a speech…’ She sat down anticlimactically, and there was hooting and noise and applause.

  ‘I thought they split up!’ Adam said.

  ‘Guess they got back together again.’

  ‘They must’ve moved fast. Emy’s only been back for ten days.’ His gleeful eyes wandered to the head of the table. ‘I’m going over to get the goss,’ he said.

  Nick shook his head. He looked sideways at Audrey. ‘Wanna dance?’ he asked.

  She couldn’t remember the last time they’d danced, but he took her hand and they crossed the shadowy lawn to the far corner where coloured bulbs were strung between trees. They swayed from side to side in the cold. Audrey watched the holiday lights quivering across Nick’s face. He bent his head.

  ‘Give me something,’ he said. His breath made a warm puff of air in her ear. She looked up, smiled. She squeezed his fingers lightly.

  ‘I’m sorry.’

  ‘Just give a little,’ he said. She put her head on his chest. They rocked back and forth.

  In the morning they walked to work together down Gertrude Street. Audrey came with Nick as far as the ambulance bay. She said she’d buy his father a birthday card on her lunch break.

  ‘What’s on for you today?’ he asked.

  ‘I have to go
out to Port Phillip again,’ Audrey said.

  ‘What, the jail?’

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘Same client?’

  ‘No, different. It’s weird, I’d never done a prison visit before this year and now I’ve done it twice. It’s like that thing where you learn a new word one day, and then read it in a book or whatever the next day.’

  ‘Baader-Meinhof,’ Nick said.

  ‘What?’

  ‘The Baader-Meinhof phenomenon. The thing with the new words. That’s what it’s called.’

  He was smiling shyly, the way he did when he knew he’d surprised her.

  Audrey stared at him. ‘Nick Lukovic, font of knowledge.’

  He grabbed her wrists, pulled her close. He tasted of coffee.

  It was an access visit, a five-year-old strapped into the back seat of the work car, Audrey making quiet talk with him.

  ‘He looks tired,’ Penny had said. ‘He might drop off on the way there.’ But every time Audrey glanced in the rear-view mirror he was staring out the window, absently stroking his hair.

  He held her hand while they stood in the line for security, while she relinquished her handbag and mobile phone and the rice crackers she’d brought for him, while they shuffled into the open walkway with the other strangers, all there to see different people. There were no concessions for children. They were herded through the series of barren chambers in the same frightening, humiliating way as the adults. The air whistled through the cyclone-wire walls. The other visitors peeled off into rooms.

  In the family visiting room everything was bolted to the floor. There was a plastic slide for toddlers. There was a low circular table set on a supporting pole. The chairs were fixed to the ground. They could not be moved closer. Audrey saw that small bodies could never sit at a comfortable distance from their drawing, or whatever modest distraction was laid before them.

  She felt exposed without her phone or handbag. The room was cold. She bent to zip the child’s parka to his chin.

  At last the father appeared, flanked by an officer. ‘Joey. Mate,’ he croaked. He reached for the boy. He was shaking. The child threw his arms around his father’s neck. It was only the two of them in the whole world.

  Audrey glanced up at the correctional officer, watching by the door. His face was blank, but she thought she detected a masculine sympathy, a current in the air.

  In the afternoon there was a team meeting. Audrey took the minutes. She was still wearing her coat. The cold from the visiting room was in her sleeves. When everyone filed out, Vanessa said, ‘How was this morning?’

  ‘All right.’

  ‘Those access visits are shitty.’

  ‘It’s the most hopeless place. It could not be any more terrifying for a child. That poor kid today. I hope he forgets it,’ Audrey said. ‘I hope his memory destroys itself.’

  Vanessa was sitting the wrong way on the chair, with her knees either side of the seat. ‘Why don’t you call it a day,’ she said.

  ‘I’m okay.’

  ‘I didn’t ask how you were.’

  Vanessa looked down the table at her. Calm face. Audrey picked up the exercise book with the meeting minutes. She gathered her things at her desk. She sensed she’d made a critical error somewhere.

  After dinner at Nick’s parents’ house Audrey went to help with the dishes, stopped short of the kitchen doorway. She heard Nick in there with his mother.

  ‘There’s just been a lot going on,’ Nick said. ‘Two infant deaths, one after the other. One of them was Audrey’s. Her mum shoplifted four hundred dollars’ worth of clothes last week. She’s manic at the moment. Last night she phoned six times.’ He drew breath. ‘Bernie’s pretty nuts. It’s all been sort of unrelenting since Katy.’

  ‘Isn’t there anything else they can prescribe her mum?’

  ‘She’s on the same meds, she just doesn’t take them. I don’t know what to do.’

  ‘Oh, darling.’

  Audrey retreated down the corridor. She went back to the wall with its reassuring family photos. There was some destructive energy humming in her body. She thought of what Nick had said about expecting to be attacked by the man stepping out of a shadowy house. I was ready.

  He wandered out from the kitchen.

  ‘You all right?’ he asked.

  ‘Yeah, are you?’

  They looked at the pictures together. Audrey pointed at the frame that held the two of them, three years ago, dressed as the Tenenbaums. Their posture now mimicked the picture.

  ‘I don’t think I should ever go blond,’ she said, ‘do you?’

  He squeezed her hand. He didn’t answer.

  ‘Did you tell your mum I’m losing it?’

  ‘I don’t think you’re losing it,’ Nick said. ‘I’m also not going to have a fight about it here in the hallway.’

  ‘Okay. Let’s find a corner.’ They faced each other. ‘I’m sorry,’ Audrey said. ‘I don’t want to fight. I’m sorry.’

  Driving home the roads were quiet. Nick wound down the window and pressed his face to the streaming lights as they crossed the Maribyrnong.

  ‘It’s seventy here,’ he said finally, ‘you can do seventy.’

  ‘Oh—oh, shit.’

  ‘It doesn’t matter,’ he said, ‘I just didn’t know if you realised.’

  And then, five minutes later, as they turned on to Wurundjeri Way:

  ‘Jesus, Audrey, why haven’t you got the lights on?’

  She pulled into the driveway of a factory, unlit for the night. She cut the engine and got out. They stood on opposite sides of the car.

  ‘Could you drive?’ she asked.

  ‘What?’

  ‘I’m sorry, I know we’re halfway home, but I’m really fucked.’

  ‘You didn’t have anything to drink,’ he said.

  ‘I know that.’ They stood looking at each other. She saw he understood.

  ‘The temazepam?’

  ‘I have to stop taking it. I hate the way it makes me feel.’

  ‘I wonder if you could have a lower dose,’ Nick said. They switched sides. Audrey pressed the keys into his hand.

  ‘It’s only ever meant to be a short-term thing, you know,’ he said as they pulled into Charles Street. ‘The Normison. It’s a short-term drug.’

  Nick went to the bathroom. Audrey listened to the messages Sylvie had left on her phone, four of them.

  ‘My mum asked if you were okay,’ Nick called down the hall. Audrey could hear the splash of his piss against the bowl. She heard him flush the toilet and wash his hands. She imagined him standing in front of the mirror. He was so tall that he had to bend down to see the very top of his head. ‘I didn’t know what to say. That’s all.’

  He appeared in the doorway, his lovely patient face. She sat on the end of the bed and watched him undress. Something about his chest, his stomach, made her want to cry. She knew how to make him shudder, but it had been a long time. Last night she’d told him I feel completely unfuckable. He had acc
epted that.

  ‘I s’pose you don’t want to come to Pat’s tomorrow night?’ he asked.

  ‘I’m sorry. I can’t.’

  ‘I was just asking.’ He went on folding his jumper. ‘Don’t feel bad about it.’

  ‘I’m so scared,’ she said. ‘I just have this dreadful feeling something’s going to happen.’

  ‘Like what?’

  ‘I don’t know. Something catastrophic.’

  ‘It’s already happened.’

  ‘Something worse.’

  ‘There’s nothing worse,’ Nick said. ‘You’re not going to sleepwalk off a cliff. What’s the worst thing that could happen?’

  ‘The other day I was driving back to work along Heidelberg Road after a visit, and there was a petrol tanker going in the opposite direction. And for a second after we’d passed each other I was sure it had drifted across into my lane and we’d collided head on, and I was dead. I was really certain. I know that’s not how you’re supposed to think,’ Audrey said, ‘but I can’t stop it.’

  ‘Get into bed.’ She didn’t move. Nick stepped towards her. He pulled her jumper over her head. Skin a bunny. ‘You lie straight and I’ll tuck you in.’

  Nick made the bed with hospital corners. Audrey imagined that was how his mother had taught him. He tucked the sheets so tightly that Audrey was pinned. He sat on the edge of the bed to pull off his boots, and he lay beside her.

  ‘If I’m getting like my mother, I don’t want you to be stuck with me,’ she said.

  ‘Don’t do that. Don’t use that as an excuse.’

  ‘It’s not an excuse. If I’m losing it, it’s not up to you. I don’t want you to feel like you’re stuck.’