Our Magic Hour

by Jennifer Down

  ‘What do you want me to say? I’m on your side, Audrey.’

  It doesn’t matter, she thought; there are no sides, there’s only up and down.

  Audrey cut the camellia blooms from the garden and put them in empty jars around the house. She phoned her mother and listened for almost two hours, sitting cross-legged at the kitchen table. She felt her face grow slack and mild. Nick met her eyes from across the room, and he knew she’d tuned out. She left him funny notes. She went with him to trivia at the Dan O’Connell, made bright talk with his friends. Walking down Canning Street afterwards, he said Thank you for coming and Was that okay? and You did good. She wanted to weep at their emotional economy, but she kissed him instead. Dinner in their backyard, all their friends around the fire pit, faces aglow. Day-drunk in the Edinburgh Gardens, someone’s birthday. Audrey stayed when she wanted to go. There was MD going around. It made things more bearable. She looked sideways at Nick as she rubbed the last grains on her gums, and he grinned as if some secret had passed between them. Her hair was tickling her face. Maybe this is what Maman needs, she said. It’s making me feel better. Nick’s eyes crinkled. Pop a goog in her mouth next time you have dinner. Here, Sylv—lithium’s not a party drug. At home Audrey drew lipstick circles around her eyes. PBS was playing jumpy swing. She danced a Charleston for him and he smiled and said something about Marcel Marceau, but then he rubbed at the lipstick with his thumb and said Can you take it off? and his voice was sad.

  He talked about when they were first together. Remember that year at Golden Plains, remember when we went to Cradle Mountain. He’d taught her how to drive in the new estates in the western suburbs, way out past his parents’ place. The houses were still being planned and built. The lots were empty. The streets were new. They had names like Belvedere Crescent and Lexington Drive. At night they drove with the high beams on. They peeled the learner plates on and off the windscreen and drank cans of Sprite. The city shone from the highway: a milky cloud of light hung above it. Remember those made-up suburbs? They’d be real addresses now.

  Audrey knew he was trying, just like she was, to reconstitute it all. Warm weather, knocking off work at three to see a film, grass stains on knees, the glow-in-the-dark galaxies on the ceiling of his childhood room. But none of it fit any more. When Audrey’s phone vibrated on the kitchen table, and her mother’s name was on the screen, Nick would wiggle his eyebrows and hum the Wicked Witch tune, and Audrey would laugh, but it was all different. He’d made the joke before. They were bloodless.

  She came home from work and found Nick in the lounge room. At first she thought he’d decided to paint the walls. The furniture had been pushed into odd shapes, everything draped in bedsheets. When she got closer, and saw him kneeling with the quilt in his hands, she realised it was a fort.

  ‘What are you doing?’ she asked.

  ‘Remember a while ago when you were telling me about you and Irène, how you had that tent?’

  ‘The tepee.’

  ‘Was it anything like this?’ he asked. He held aside a corner of the quilt. Audrey crawled in, and Nick followed on his knees. He’d laid out some blankets on the floor. The coloured lights from the back fence were strung up inside.

  ‘Oh,’ Audrey let out.

  Nick crouched beside her, trying a smile. She wanted to be graceful about it.

  ‘Hang on, I forgot something.’ He shuff led out again, and returned with two beers. They touched the necks of the bottles together. The glass tinked feebly. Nick sat back as though evaluating a great architectural marvel. The quilt ceiling sagged in the centre.

  ‘How did I do?’ Nick asked. ‘Is it like the one you and your sister had?’

  ‘This is bigger,’ Audrey said. ‘We never had beer.’ She propped the bottle between her knees and began to kiss him very slowly, holding his face as though it might fall away from her. She stroked its shapes. She knew the planes of his cheeks, the hardness of bones under her fingers. They were in each other’s arms, hanging from each other. They hadn’t fucked in weeks. Her body was reluctant, but she wanted to do it for him. It was good to be the author of someone else’s pleasure.

  It seemed a long time before he came. Her face found the hollow between his neck and shoulder. She felt his breath in her hair; heard his lungs catch. They turned away from each other.

  Dead Nature

  Audrey was sitting on the porch when Ben came sweeping around the corner on his old Raleigh. She startled.

  ‘Did I give you a fright?’ Ben asked, leaning his bike against the fence. Audrey remembered him saying once that he was conscious of his size, of looking like a thug.

  ‘No, no.’

  Their cheeks touched: his warm with exertion, hers stinging with cold.

  ‘What are you doing out here? It’s freezing.’

  ‘Nick made spaghetti before he went to work. The whole house smells like garlic. I’m trying to air it out,’ she said. Ben laughed. It echoed in the dark street. ‘Do you want a drink?’

  ‘I’d love one.’

  She left him sitting on the porch. The radio was still on inside. She’d been half-listening to it: Radio National, they were talking about resuscitation, about the visions people reported between death and revival. There was an American specialist talking to the presenter—Actually beyond the threshold of death, he said. Audrey switched it off.

  Ben had a plastic bag between his feet. She handed him a glass.

  ‘Chin-chin.’

  ‘Cheers.’

  Audrey tilted her head towards the shopping bag.

  ‘What’ve you got in there?’

  ‘A heap of books Emy said to return to you. She said she didn’t manage to get through Ragtime before she had to go back again, but she liked it so much she bought her own copy so she could finish it.’

  ‘She could have taken this one,’ Audrey said, thumbing through the pages. ‘How’s it going without her?’

  ‘It’s all right, I guess. I don’t know. We’re sort of used to it. I’m going over there in November for two months. That’s not too far away.’

  ‘It’ll come quickly.’

  Ben fingered the stem of his wineglass.

  ‘Do you know what my dad said after we’d all been to the registry? He said, I hope you two have done the right thing. And I’m pretty sure he was joking, but shit…’ He threw back the remainder of his wine. ‘I’d better get going. Em said she’d call at nine,’ he said.

  ‘Thanks for bringing the books over.’

  ‘No worries.’ They stood, embraced. The security light blinked on with the motion.

  Ben wheeled his bike out of the gate, swung a leg over and looked back at the house. His face was like a skull in the weird light. ‘Hey,’ he said. ‘Don’t be out here too long, eh? It’s bloody cold.’

  She nodded and smiled. ‘Love to Emy for me.’

  She watched him pedal away, then went back inside. The leftover spaghetti was cold on the stove. She sat down to call her brother.

  ‘Hello, Aud-rey,’ he drawled.

  ‘How did the SACs go?’

  ‘Psychology was all right. No, actually, it was good. I answered all the qu
estions. Hazel and Winnie came over on Tuesday and we had a study night. I was prepared.’

  ‘Good on you!’

  ‘Accounting wasn’t so good,’ he said. ‘I walked out halfway through. I don’t even know why I chose accounting. I’m never going to get how to do that checks and balances shit. I mean, I live on a hand-to-mouth basis. I’ve got about twenty bucks in the bank.’

  ‘If you stopped blowing it all on pills—’

  ‘Fuck off, Audrey, you’re worse than Maman.’

  ‘I’m not trying to moralise.’

  ‘No, I’m sorry,’ Bernie sighed. ‘I didn’t mean it. Anyway, I’ve stopped all that. Hazel’s pretty into school, because she wants to do physio or speech therapy or something next year, so it’s no more disco biscuits for me, either. I just hate exams. They’re so intense. Hey, did you cop Maman’s story about her fight with the mechanic? I’ll do it for you.’

  He made her laugh, turning on Sylvie’s shrill voice; the way she pronounced exploit as ex-plwat. She was bereft when he hung up. She lay on the couch and watched the late news. She dozed, woke to hear the woman on the television say Total ground frost. She half-expected Adam to call, but he didn’t.

  Nick arrived home before dawn and found her asleep on the couch.

  ‘How was work?’

  ‘Pretty slow,’ said Nick. ‘How are you?’

  ‘I had a dream I drove our car off the pier down near Maman’s house. I didn’t die.’

  Nick looked upset. You weren’t in the car, Audrey did not say.

  She followed him into the kitchen, and leaned in the doorway while he wolfed down a piece of bread and peeled a banana. Still in his uniform, still wired from his shift, he looked very presentable.

  ‘Was Adam round?’ he asked, gesturing at the two glasses listing in the dishrack.

  ‘No, Ben came over for a bit.’

  ‘Ben?’ He turned from the sink.

  ‘Yeah, he was dropping off some books that I’d lent Emy.’

  Nick’s brow tightened. ‘Do you reckon those two getting married was something to do with Katy?’ he said.

  ‘What?’

  He took a bite of the banana. ‘I mean—do you think they felt like they needed to do things faster, or something?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ Audrey said. ‘I don’t know why they did it.’

  Nick dropped the banana skin into the plastic container they used for compost. The light was leaving him.

  The morning of the union strike, Audrey had a cup of tea with Nick and Tim in the St Vincent’s Hospital cafeteria.

  ‘We might need to re-do the windows,’ Tim said.

  ‘Get Spence to do it. She’s got nice writing.’

  The three of them stood by the ambulance on Gertrude Street. Audrey passed Nick her paper cup.

  ‘What am I putting? I’m too short to reach.’ They laughed.

  ‘We apologise for the delays you are experiencing under a Liberal government,’ said Tim. Audrey reached up to scrawl across the window.

  ‘And then here’—they moved to the back of the van—‘What’s the difference between a large pizza and a paramedic’s wage? A large pizza can feed a family of four.’ Audrey’s breath hung in a cloud. She rubbed at a wonky letter. The chalk marker left a blue stain. ‘You coming today?’ Tim asked her.

  ‘Depends on work. But I’m in the Lonsdale Street office today, so maybe.’ She looked back at Nick. He was staring at the blue letters on the window. She couldn’t tell if he wasn’t listening or just pretending not to hear. His face was like a vacant house.

  She moved to the front of the ambulance.

  ‘What about the windscreen?’ she asked.

  ‘Nah. Not allowed.’ Tim stood back to review her work. ‘I reckon your job’s about done, mate.’

  She walked up to Trades Hall at lunchtime and stood across the road by the pub. There was a woman with a megaphone, a sea of red T-shirts and vests and flags. She glimpsed Nick’s face between Tim and an older woman. They were standing on the steps in front of a television crew. Audrey watched the crew arranging their cameras and microphones. Nick and Tim were dicking around, pulling faces, tugging at their collars, but on the cameraman’s signal she saw Nick’s mouth begin to move. He spoke deliberately. She was thirty metres away, she couldn’t hear what he was saying, but his face was full of purpose and intelligence. The cameraman shook his hand, they grinned at each other, Nick’s lips said Thanks, mate. Audrey scanned the painted banners. IN SA I’D GET AN EXTRA 32K. IN VIC I’D NEED TO GET INTO PARLIAMENT. She looked back at the steps where Nick had been, but he was gone. She could have called him. He’d say I’ll come over to meet you, and he’d be flushed with cold and resolve, kiss her, make a joke about being on television. Audrey remembered him tucking her in, saying I’m on your side. She thought about him on the Trades Hall steps. She realised they were in different climates. He could be a new person out here, away from the sad air in their kitchen. She turned from the building.

  Adam phoned at the end of the day, before she’d left work.

  ‘The gallery’s open late tonight. Do you want to come?’

  She got there first, and phoned Nick while she waited outside.

  ‘I heard you’re famous,’ she said.

  ‘I’m basically the Paul Keating of the union,’ he said.

  She laughed. ‘Are you at the pub?’

  ‘I came down for a few beers, but I reckon I’ll head off soon. You home?’

  ‘I’m actually at the NGV. I said I’d meet Adam here. We might get tea after. Do you want to come down?’

  ‘Oh-h-h-h—no, it’s okay. You two should just hang out.’ Something had shifted in his voice. ‘I’m actually knackered.’

  ‘I’m not surprised. You only had about two hours’ sleep last night.’

  They had nothing else to say. Audrey sat down by the fountain. The air smelled of chlorine and car fumes.

  Adam was almost in front of her before she noticed him. He hugged her very tightly, as though he were relieved to see her. His mouth was close to her ear, in her hair. She thought he was going to tell her something, but at last he pulled away. He winced. They linked arms walking towards the entrance.

  Inside they drifted apart. Audrey was glad, standing in front of a wall of Louise Bourgeois drawings. She didn’t want Adam beside her while she flinched at the red bellies and hands.

  At the end she came to a great dark room. There was a ladder suspended from the ceiling, made of fibre-optic cables that changed colour. As she got closer, it seemed to stretch impossibly into the sky, and down into the ground. It was dizzying.

  Adam was lying on the floor on his stomach like a child. Audrey lay down next to him. The dark, his warm body, the lit ladder reaching into the ceiling, its illusion of bright endlessness. Audrey thought she might cry.

  ‘It’s a mirror,’ Adam whispered. ‘See? There’s one at either end.’

  Audrey stared at the ladder, watched the colours change until the room around it melted away.

  At last Adam stood, and she did too, obediently
. It was like swimming up from underwater.

  Out by the gift shop it was light again, and they both blinked.

  ‘Do you want to get a coffee?’ Adam asked.

  ‘I think I want wine. Sit down, I’ll get it.’

  They sat for an hour in the gallery café, watching the people coming and going.

  ‘So then Sean says You need to think about the best interests of the child. He’ll be less displaced if he stays with Dad.’ She affected a neanderthal voice, tucked in her chin, scratched her groin. ‘And I said I think it’s in the child’s best interests that he not remain in a houseful of smackies, and Dad’s got two DV charges, you fuckhead.’

  ‘No you didn’t,’ Adam said.

  ‘I didn’t call him a fuckhead. But he is.’ She watched Adam scoop the last of the froth from his cup. ‘He’s all non-interventionist when it’s some bloke with a string of assault charges, but he’s pretty trigger-happy when it’s an ID mum or a Koori family.’

  ‘Fark.’ He glanced around. ‘Hey, do you reckon we’re the youngest people in here by about twenty years?’

  ‘I’d say forty.’

  Adam scooted his chair around so that he sat beside Audrey. He reached for her, and she settled into his arms. ‘Do you know,’ she said, ‘we say still life but the French say nature morte?’

  ‘Dead nature.’

  When Audrey raised her head, Adam’s face was crumpled.

  ‘I feel like everything I say upsets you,’ she said, ‘and I’m sorry.’

  ‘I’m not upset.’ He touched her cheek, checked his watch. ‘Come on. They shut soon.’

  On the way out he bought her a postcard of a Louise Bourgeois painting. It was the red watercolour hands, reaching.

  Walking home from the tram stop she passed the pub. They were packing up the outdoor furniture. There was music streaming from inside. The guy stacking the chairs said Hey to Audrey as she passed, and she said ’Night.