Sixty Seconds

by Jesse Blackadder

  Tilt the head back and open the mouth. Couldn’t say Toby’s mouth.

  Cover the victim’s nose and mouth with your mouth and give five slow, gentle breaths, one breath every three seconds.

  He turned. Bridget’s mouth was over Toby’s. She raised her head and bellowed at him.

  FOR GOD’S SAKE HELP ME, FINN!

  BRIDGET

  Chen wants to wait outside with you, but you refuse and send him into the courtroom. It’s wrong to take his comfort on this day.

  The crowd has filed into the court and the waiting area is almost empty. Just a couple of other witnesses, standing alone, fingering phones or trying to read. You don’t know who they are. Don’t care. Retreat into yourself to wait.

  You wish Jarrah hadn’t waited until last night to talk.

  You’d been sitting outside after dinner, the stink of the mosquito coil curling in your nostrils, watching the last of the light fade from the sky. It surprised you when Jarrah joined you instead of watching TV or something. You’d put it down to the case, the imminent prospect of Finn going to jail. You were glad of the company.

  ‘Tell me again how Toby got in there,’ he’d said. ‘I’ll hear it tomorrow anyway.’

  ‘No you won’t. You’re not coming,’ you’d replied, on automatic.

  Jarrah had worked himself to his feet and crutched over to the verandah railing. He leaned on it and looked out.

  ‘Do you still not get it?’ He turned back to you, so adult you hardly recognised him. ‘I have the right to come. You can’t stop me.’

  Your eyes locked together for a long moment and you exhaled and surrendered.

  ‘Your father went through the pool gate and didn’t notice it malfunctioned and stayed open behind him,’ you explained. ‘I left Toby alone for a few minutes while I went to the bathroom. He got into the pool area and fell in.’

  ‘But Toby could swim. We swam with him the day before. How long before you found him?’

  You got up, crossed to the railing, and put your hand on Jarrah’s arm. ‘He was out of my sight for, I don’t know, maybe four or five minutes. Part of that time I was searching the house for him because I looked out and saw the gate was shut. Meredith told me a toddler can drown in sixty seconds, even one you think can swim.’

  You were both quiet, imagining that.

  Then Jarrah said: ‘I don’t understand how the gate was shut when you looked.’

  You let go of him. ‘The police spent hours examining the pool and the fence and I’ve gone over it and over it trying to work it out. Toby must have gone through the open gate and bumped it, so it started working again and shut behind him. I can’t think of anything else that makes sense.’

  ‘How long after I left?’

  You knew you’d have to relive the day in court the next day anyway, so you forced your mind back. You’d kissed Jarrah goodbye, sent him back for deodorant. Finished Toby’s breakfast, lifted him out of the chair. You’d gone to the bathroom.

  ‘It wasn’t long, Jarrah. Maybe fifteen minutes.’

  He hesitated. ‘Do you remember if I said goodbye to Toby?’

  That simple question, enough to break your heart again. It was in your power to give him that at least.

  ‘Don’t lie to me,’ he warned.

  You turned. It was nearly dark, but you could still see his eyes, fixed on yours. He frightened you sometimes, the way he was suddenly adult. What he seemed to know about you.

  ‘I can’t remember,’ you said. ‘I’m sorry.’

  The silence went on so long you thought the conversation must be over. You were loath to go to bed, not expecting any sleep, but it seemed like time. You began to stir.

  ‘I don’t think Dad went through the gate.’

  You swivelled. ‘What?’

  ‘You know when I left? He was putting the bins out on the street. He came back in through the gate when I went out and he went around to the back door of the studio.’

  ‘I don’t understand. Did he tell you this?’

  ‘No, I saw it. I saw him go round the back.’

  ‘But – that can’t be right. He told me he went through the pool gate. He told everyone. On the day it happened.’

  ‘I know,’ Jarrah said.

  ‘Did you ask him?’

  ‘He told me I remembered it wrong. But I don’t think I did.’

  The two of you stood in silence until he leaned over to kiss you on the forehead and wished you good night.

  You sank onto the cane lounge and sat in the dark a long time, unmoving. When at last you heard a soft teenage snore from inside the lounge room you got up. Walked on the balls of your feet down the length of the verandah. Raised the noiseless, squeakless, reliable new latch and opened the gate. Closed it behind you and heard the click as the latch dropped unerringly in the cup.

  The explosion of primitive life in the pond had scared you at first, but over the past few days it finally settled, and you’d switched the automatic light back on. The plants and fish cast rippling shadows on the sides, but you could see right through to the bottom again.

  You’d thought about swimming, for the first time, but when the moment came to put your feet in you baulked. Something stopped you from even running your fingers through the water. You sat, instead, on a deckchair by the pool and leaned forwards, watching the fish darting in and out of the plants. Silver perch, firetail gudgeons, Pacific blue-eyes: small Australian fish suitable for seeding an ecosystem without causing environmental havoc. The green light glinted off their scales and eyes.

  It had become beautiful. It had turned into what you imagined. A living, breathing system. Life-supporting. Benign.

  You had swum, the morning Toby drowned. You’d gone out while Finn was making coffee and breaststroked a couple of laps. Towelled yourself dry, leaned over the gate and pulled down the lever that operated Owl Sentry. You’d passed through the gate, preoccupied and focused on getting back indoors. You’d trusted the mechanism to shut the gate.

  No, even that was untrue. You hadn’t given it a thought. You had no memory of hearing it close or of not hearing it. Your thoughts had thrust forward to the things that needed to be done, and it hadn’t occurred to you to glance backwards.

  Perhaps Jarrah was right. Perhaps Finn didn’t walk through the gate at all. Perhaps you were the only one to open it that morning.

  You shook your head, pressed your hands to your temples. Did it matter? The issue was the gate not being safe. The issue was that terrible, fallible device you smashed.

  ‘They’ll ask,’ Malcolm had said, ‘about the nature of the modification. How many times it played up, if you or Finn were aware of it, or if he ignored it. They need to establish an extreme level of negligence.’

  You had, you slowly realised, only Finn’s word to say that the thing had malfunctioned at all. Finn’s word and the elimination of other probabilities. The absence of any other theory.

  Why would he say that? The question Jarrah hadn’t answered. The question you couldn’t answer. Or had you known the answer all along and been unable to face it?

  ‘Mrs Brennan?’ Finn’s solicitor has to say your name twice to get your attention.

  You start and push yourself to your feet.

  ‘They’re ready for you.’

  You push your hair back, tug your jacket. Glance at him until he nods, then follow him to the door.

  ‘Bow your head to the judge when you enter,’ he says and sweeps in, trailing his robes, nodding gracefully. You follow, repeat the move awkwardly, look up.

  To your right, Finn sitting alone in the dock. Above the judge’s head, a massive and elaborate coat of arms: crown, lion, unicorn, rose, harp, flourishes, Latin words decorating an elaborate ribbon. You’d never noticed – or considered – such things before, or the obscure but powerful weight of tradition and authority they confer.

  This is real.

  FINN

  She was sworn in and took her seat on the stand. Close to the judge’s right
hand, far from Finn, the accused. Another design feature cementing might and right.

  His barrister, Jack Ferguson, stood. ‘Mrs Brennan, tell me what happened the day your son died.’

  Bridget shuddered and began. ‘He was on the kitchen floor reading his favourite book and I left him to go to the bathroom.’

  Finn squeezed his eyes shut. Just a short retelling, that’s all. A confirmation of what he’d said. He willed her to keep it simple.

  ‘I was away from Toby for perhaps five minutes,’ Bridget was saying. ‘In that time he left the kitchen and somehow entered the pool area.’

  ‘What happened when you realised he was missing?’

  ‘I went outside to look and saw the pool gate was shut, so I didn’t think he could be in the pool area. I couldn’t see him in the garden. I was calling him. I ran upstairs and looked in his bedroom. Then I ran along the hall and looked in our bedroom. You can see the pool from our window. That’s when I saw he’d fallen in. He was face-down in the water. Not moving.’

  ‘What did you do?’

  The room was silent. Finn had to open his eyes. Bridget was crying. She looked across at him and swallowed.

  ‘I knew I had to get him out, and had to get Finn. I ran downstairs and outside into the pool area. I started screaming for Finn. He was working in his studio. I knew it would be hard for him to hear me. I ran into the water to get Toby, and I kept yelling for Finn and eventually he heard me and came out. We got Toby out of the water and put him on the ground, and I told Finn to read out the instructions for resuscitation.’

  ‘Had you ever done rescue breathing before?’

  Bridget nodded. ‘I trained in first aid when I had my first child. Fifteen years ago. I’d done it in the training. Never on a person.’

  Finn sank back into the day. Peering at the sign, his hands on either side of the dancing words, the dreadful pictures he’d never noticed before, trying to read ahead. Bridget’s screams for help echoed around him, sounds stretching and distorting like he was hearing underwater. Parrots squawking in a tree above his head, their racket piercing. This was beyond them, beyond any printed instruction. He was running to phone the ambulance in curious slow motion, nightmare steps, his legs refusing to work properly. Stabbing at the zeros with his thick fingers, somehow making himself understood. The voice on the line telling him to go back outside giving further instructions for him to relay to Bridget.

  Kneeling. Bridget gasping and breathing into Toby, breathing for both of them, for all of them. Toby’s small hand, limp, outflung.

  The tinny voice in his ear: You need to stop rescue breathing and begin chest compressions. Put the heel of your hand on his breastbone. You’re going to do thirty quick compressions, counting aloud.

  Dropping the phone. Taking Bridget’s shoulder and pulling her back. Toby’s blue lips. Placing his hand on Toby’s chest. Its chill.

  ‘What else happened before the ambulance arrived?’

  Finn remembered it then, the impression that agony must have driven from his mind. His palm flat on Toby’s chest, he felt Toby hurtle out of his small body in a rush. The full force of him punched into Finn, and he felt, for an instant, that he could hold his son, stop him from leaving.

  Before the thought was finished Toby was gone, leaving a turmoil of emotion. Confusion. Fear. And, weirdly, joy. A rush of excitement, as their boy leaped into the universe – unconstrained, free.

  And then the first paramedic trying to wrench the gate open, and the look on his young face and the way he tried to hide it and the little groan of despair that escaped him and how Finn leaped for Owl Sentry’s lever and the paramedic ran to Toby and the second paramedic followed and Finn pulled Bridget out of the way and held her as she keened and wailed and he knew it was too late and too late and too late.

  ‘How do you think Toby got into the pool area?’

  Bridget took so long to answer that Finn opened his eyes again, just as Ferguson prompted: ‘Mrs Brennan?’

  ‘I don’t think we’ll ever know. The gate was closed when I got to the pool. Perhaps the device malfunctioned earlier when I had a swim and didn’t shut properly. Perhaps Toby found some way to set off the device himself. He was a child you couldn’t hold back. When he wanted to go somewhere or do something, he found a way to do it. My husband blames himself. But we don’t know what happened, or even if the gate was open. All I know for certain is that I walked out of the room and left Toby unsupervised.’

  Finn blinked. Looked at Jarrah, who dropped his head. Looked at Bridget. For the first time she was really looking back at him.

  JARRAH

  It was like a great big held-in breath was let out when the judge finally spoke. A suspended sentence of fifteen months, she said, and then read out a whole lot of legal stuff that went on forever. I didn’t follow it all, but I got the idea. Dad wasn’t going to jail. She finally finished, stacked her papers, stood up, nodded her head. Everyone got to their feet as she walked out, and people started turning to each other and talking. Some were smiling. The legal people shook hands. Conor hugged me and Edmund patted me on the back.

  Tom was sitting up the back with his mother. They must have come in after me; hadn’t known they were there. I kept my head down, stayed in my seat and avoided looking their way. Dad caught my eye and smiled as he stepped out of the dock, and I smiled back, but with the crutches I was stuck in my row and I nodded for him to go outside. By the time I got out there, Mum and Dad were hugging. I didn’t want to interrupt that, but Dad looked up and called me to come over. I stumped across to them and he opened his arms and pulled me in so all three of us were hugging. Dad’s face was wet and I was crying too. He felt so big and real and warm and I realised how much I’d missed him, and I wanted to bawl like a kid, and had to control myself.

  People were melting away. Chen must have gone; I’d seen him leave the court in front of me and he wasn’t anywhere outside. I couldn’t see Meredith either, and Conor and Edmund kept their distance. Then Dad looked up from our hug as we were sniffling and starting to loosen our grip on each other, and he caught sight of Tom and his mother and waved them over. I saw Tom hesitate.

  ‘We just wanted to see that you were all right,’ his mother said to us. ‘We’re so pleased.’

  ‘Thank you,’ Dad said. ‘We appreciate the support. Don’t be a stranger, Tom. Come by for a beer, eh?’

  ‘Sure,’ Tom said, not meeting my eyes.

  They walked off. I was pretty sure he wouldn’t come for a beer. Didn’t know if I was sad or relieved. Still squirmed whenever I thought about that moment. But seeing Tom was kind of like seeing Dad again. Hadn’t realised how much I missed him.

  The hug was over, though Dad still had his arm around Mum’s shoulders.

  ‘Let’s go home,’ she said.

  I saw Dad baulk. He’d been away from where Toby died and he didn’t want to go back, I realised.

  ‘It’ll be OK,’ Mum said. ‘We can make some decisions now.’

  The TV cameras and the journalists were out the front, interviewing Meredith, but I couldn’t hear what she was saying. She finished and walked off without coming over to us. Then Dad’s barrister spoke to the cameras while we stood in the background. Edmund drove us home, with Conor in the front and the three of us squashed into the back seat and my crutches across our laps. Mum and Dad held hands like teenagers.

  When we pulled up out the front, I realised there was nothing to show what had happened. Everything looked normal. It looked just like the other houses on the street.

  ‘Off you go,’ Edmund said. ‘Conor and I are going to check out the coast.’

  ‘You don’t want to come in?’ Dad asked.

  Edmund looked back at the three of us and smiled. ‘Not today. We’ll see you tomorrow.’

  Mum reached over and the sound of the car door handle was loud as she pulled it and the door cracked open. I opened my door, swivelled to the side, arranged my crutches so I could lever myself out of the car.
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  Edmund drove off while we were still standing there, the three of us close together. I didn’t feel so happy suddenly. Dad didn’t know what Mum had done to the pool. What would he think?

  Dad’s feet seemed rooted to the ground, like he couldn’t move to walk to the gate and go inside.

  ‘I feel like I’ve already left here,’ he said.

  Mum took his hand. I knew she was thinking that what she’d done to the pool would make things better, and even I knew what a dumb idea that was, but I couldn’t say anything.

  ‘You still sleeping in the lounge room?’ Dad asked me, stalling for time.

  I nodded. I probably could have got upstairs on my crutches by now, but I’d got used to being down. I could flick on the telly if I woke up during the night and it wasn’t as hot as upstairs. I kind of liked it. Upstairs felt like my old life. Too many things up there reminded me of Toby.

  ‘Guess we’d better not stand out here all afternoon,’ Dad said.

  I let them go first. You could tell a lot by how people held hands. I thought they were maybe going to be OK.

  It was thirty-six days after Toby.

  BRIDGET

  You can’t settle on any feeling, not yet. Not while a fragile connection has tendrilled unexpectedly between you. And you won’t speak of it, not of the gate and who went in or out, or didn’t. Not yet, not today.

  Now that Finn is about to see what you’ve done to the pool, you’re afraid. As chlorine evaporated and algae colonised the water, thank God it eventually turned clear. Now you can see down through leaves and fronds to where the fish dart and flash, and fallen leaves swirl their way to the bottom and sunlight makes patterns of it all.

  You feel his unease at returning to the house and you know not to take him there, not straight away. Lead him instead to what has become your outdoor seating area, the gathering of old chairs on the verandah outside the lounge room. From that spot you can see the pool fence, but only obliquely, and you’ve become used to facing away from it.