Too Close to Home

by Georgia Blain

  ‘You’ll have to be quick,’ she warns him. The train is on the last stretch of open tracks before reaching the underground tunnels at the edge of the city.

  It’s Lisa. They’ve spoken. He just wasn’t sure if she’d also told Freya.

  ‘Told me what?’

  Lucas has run away, he explains. Lisa doesn’t know if he has headed to Sydney. He may turn up.

  As the train plunges into the darkness of the tunnel, the phone breaks up.

  At the entrance to Mikhala’s gallery Freya tries to call him back, but he has switched his phone to voicemail. Ring me, she says, knowing he probably won’t. He has meetings for most of the afternoon. Work is busy at the moment. He does even longer hours, leaving just after seven and getting home late.

  ‘Come and have a look.’ Mikhala waves from the first room on the left and Freya follows her.

  She has hung half her paintings along the length of the space. Four huge canvasses depicting dark scenes, gothic nightmares: a dog on a chain barking as it leaps high against a cyclone fence, steep circular stairs leading down into black, a swamp choked by reeds, and at the end an abandoned shoe, small and red, in a wide empty field.

  Against the whiteness of the wall, their effect is startling and Freya is surprised to find herself crying, momentarily overwhelmed by the work.

  ‘Oh God,’ Mikhala says, drawing Freya in close. ‘You really like them?’

  Freya can only nod. ‘They are amazing,’ she eventually says. ‘You are so unbelievably clever.’

  Outside in the chill of the day, Mikhala lights a cigarette, the paper burning rapidly in the freshness of the air. A flock of birds overhead catch the light, their wings like flecks of foil against the smooth sweep of sky.

  They sit on benches on the pavement, the warmth of the sun cutting through the cool, the ash from the tip of Mikhala’s cigarette flying away each time she exhales. The waitress looks irritated while they try to make up their mind.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ Mikhala tells her as she changes her order once again, and then she looks across at Freya. ‘I’m just so agitated,’ she explains.

  Her opening is in a couple of days, and although she knows she is guaranteed a sell-out, she is still nervous.

  ‘Max is the only other person who has seen them,’ she says, and then she leans forward, speaking rapidly with excitement. ‘I told him I want to have a baby.’

  Freya is surprised. She had always thought Mikhala saw having children as being incompatible with working as an artist. She also hasn’t been with Max for more than a few months, a question mark still hanging over his relationship with his wife for most of that time.

  ‘It’s not like I have long,’ Mikhala says, taking her coffee from the waitress. She pours in two sugars, stirring them as she does so. ‘And I love him so much, you know? I mean, why not? It’s all going well.’ She raises her hands in the air. ‘Life, work, the lot. So why not fuck it all up with a child?’ Her grin is infectious. ‘I reckon I’d be a terrible mother and I’d have to give up smoking, but it gets you, doesn’t it? This desire to have a baby?’

  Freya agrees. She remembers how much she wanted Ella. There were times when it left little room for anything else. Each time that Matt had suggested they wait she had felt herself collapse with the urgency of the need.

  ‘Is Max into the idea?’

  Mikhala downs the last of her coffee, nodding as she does so. ‘I mean he’s had kids so he’s not so enthusiastic, but he hasn’t said no.’

  Across the street, a young boy of about seventeen sits slumped against a crumbling stone wall, head in his hands. A dog walks past, sniffs at him briefly and then continues on his way. The boy doesn’t move. Freya watches, pulling her sandwich apart as she does so.

  ‘You don’t like tomato?’ Mikhala asks, taking the piece that Freya has extracted.

  ‘I do actually,’ Freya tells her. ‘I was saving it for last.’ She grins as she hands the other slice over, and then looks across to the boy again.

  ‘Do you reckon he’s all right?’

  Mikhala shakes her head. ‘Probably not.’

  They watch him momentarily, both aware that they could get up and go over to him, both knowing they won’t. It’s Lucas that Freya is thinking about, this strange boy who may turn up or may not. She doesn’t know how she feels, and so she turns back to talk of Louise and her pregnancy and then, briefly, of her own play.

  It is not until some hours later, when she sits with Frank outside the theatre, that she is able to mention Lucas’ name and the possibility of his arrival into her life. She speaks without thinking, surprised at herself as she tells Frank all about Matt having another child and her inability to react in the way she knows she should.

  ‘I kept looking at this boy across the road and thinking that this was what Lucas could be like, that I could suddenly find myself having to deal with that.’ She smiles slightly and shakes her head at her own foolishness.

  Frank doesn’t respond immediately. He stares out across the courtyard. There’s a coolness in his eyes, and a distance in him that’s new. He’s thinner too, the sharp lines of his bones evident, his body lankier than it was. Sadness, she presumes, because he has left Marianne and his child to work here. He has run away, he confesses, unable to cope with what their relationship has become. He can deal with leaving Marianne, but – and he does not look at her – the guilt of having walked away from his child hurts.

  ‘You’re going to have to let it happen,’ he eventually says. ‘Matt has to work out what his relationship is going to be and you’re going to have to let him do that.’

  ‘I know,’ she replies, and there’s a defensive edge to her voice. ‘I wouldn’t think of doing anything else.’

  The afternoon sun has slipped behind a tall building and it’s cold in the courtyard now. The bare branches of a wisteria vine twist around the verandah and on the wall opposite, the trace of what was once ivy, but has now been removed, forms a skeleton along the bricks. She is about to tell Frank she should be getting home, when he takes her hand and holds it in his own. As she sits perfectly still, he runs the tip of his thumb inside the softness of her palm, tracing a gentle arc across her skin and then, bringing her close, he kisses her briefly on the lips, moving away as quickly as he had drawn near, leaving her looking at him, uncertain as to what has just passed between them.

  THE LITTLE MENTION MATT has made of Lucas’ name over the last three months doesn’t mean that he hasn’t been on his mind. Since his return, Matt has thought of him often, the brief intensity of those few days in Queensland bleeding into the edges of his daily life with Freya and Ella.

  Flying home, he had composed a letter to Lisa. He wanted to tell her he was there if she decided she needed him. But each time he attempted to write the words, he faltered. The relationship they were trying to navigate was too intimate for the scant knowledge they had of each other.

  ‘I find it hardest now,’ she’d told him on their last morning together.

  They’d been sitting at the Laminex table in her kitchen drinking a peppermint tea she’d made for him, her eyes fixed on the caravan in the yard, the metal door shut to the world, Lucas presumably inside, lost in the deep, sweaty sleep of a teenage boy.

  ‘I know kids of this age don’t talk to their mothers, but he’s so uncommunicative.’ She’d looked down at the table, scratching at a stain on its surface. ‘He smokes a lot of dope. And some nights I hear him out there.’ She shook her head.

  Matt had waited for her to continue.

  ‘He laughs,’ she said. ‘Or talks. And I think someone is there with him, but there isn’t. He’s all alone. And I worry, and I wish there was someone else who could calm me.’ She looked up at the ceiling, biting on her lip as she did so. ‘But there’s only me.’

  He opened his mouth to speak, aware that he couldn’t make promises.

  ‘You need to get him to a doctor. Get a psychiatric assessment, for your own peace of mind. Or if you don’t feel com
fortable with that, maybe even see a counsellor – for you.’

  She smiled, shaking her head. ‘I told you how hard it is when you live here. I’m on three waiting lists with doctors in Brisbane. Ones that I know are good. But even when I get to the top of a list, I’ve got to get him there. He doesn’t think he needs any help. He won’t want to come. I could try to get the GP here to convince him, but he’s hopeless. He didn’t even want to give me the referral. He just thinks Lucas needs a father and discipline.’

  Later, when Matt had carried his bag to the car, Lisa told him it had been good to see him.

  ‘I know you want answers,’ she’d said. ‘But I just need to take this slowly. To think about how to play it.’

  She was squinting in the harshness of the Queensland sunshine, the flies buzzing around her face, and she’d seemed, in that instant, so alone, there in that house, at the end of the road, on the edge of the town. As he’d driven away, he’d glanced in the rear-vision mirror, watching her, the pale hair, the lilac cotton top, her slight frame – until she’d disappeared from view.

  It was that image of her that had remained, grainy, the colours saturated, in his mind each time he thought of her. In the end, the letter he wrote was brief. He understood that she needed time to work out what to do next. She could contact him whenever she wanted. He, too, was glad to have seen her again; they could take it step by step. He wrote down his work and mobile number and then sealed the letter in an envelope. The next morning he posted it on his way to the office.

  The first time she rang him, he was out on a site inspection. Standing on the edge of a cliff that looked across the deep blue of the surging ocean, he could barely hear her above the roar of the wind and the waves. He stepped back towards the curve of the road, and then into his car as he recognised her voice with a slight lurch of his stomach. Perhaps something was wrong? But no, she seemed simply to want to talk. She told him she was at the community house, and he phoned her back, aware of how expensive a call to his mobile would be.

  That first conversation barely touched on Lucas. He was okay, she said. Still wanting to leave school, and she didn’t know what choice she had but to let him. It was hot up there, she said, the summer never-ending, and they talked for what seemed a long time about the intensity of the heat and the effects of global warming. And then she asked him how he was since he’d got back. Everything okay?

  He wanted to tell her that he felt thrown, flip-flapping like a fish in a bucket, but he just said he’d been working hard.

  ‘Designing fancy houses?’ she asked.

  ‘Doing that.’ He grimaced.

  They promised each other they’d stay in touch and, as he hung up, she told him again that it had been good to see him.

  ‘You too,’ he said.

  He thought about ringing her in the following weeks, but he didn’t want her to feel as though he was putting pressure on her, forcing something that may not be there.

  He was at home looking after Ella when she rang the second time, the sound of his mobile harsh in the still of the early evening.

  ‘You know you can just call me here,’ he told her, and he gave her his home number.

  ‘I’ll ring you back,’ she said.

  He was drawing with Ella, a strange underwater kingdom, peopled by plant-like creatures that swayed in fluorescent Texta swirls. Ella kept colouring while he and Lisa talked. Lucas had given up all pretence of going to school, Lisa said. He had no friends and she was worried about the amount of time he was spending on his own. She had told him he needed to get a job.

  ‘And has he?’ Matt asked, knowing what the answer would be.

  There was no work up there. It was a shithole, Lisa said, a death trap for young kids. He was spending most days asleep in the van, heading out when the sun went down.

  ‘I’ve got no idea where he goes or what he does,’ she said.

  Matt wanted to offer to help, but again, he felt useless. He’d already made it clear he was there for her; it was up to her to decide when and how to call on him if she felt it was needed. At the moment, all he could do was listen.

  ‘Bedtime,’ he told Ella after he hung up.

  Looking across at him, her wide green eyes directly focused on his, Ella put the lid back on her Texta. ‘Who was that?’ she asked.

  It was an old friend of his, Matt explained. A woman called Lisa.

  ‘Why did she call?’

  ‘She wanted to talk.’

  ‘What about?’

  ‘Not much. Her kid, her life.’

  ‘How old is her kid?’

  ‘He’s a teenager.’

  ‘Why did she want to talk about him?’

  She was worried, Matt explained.

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Because he’s left school and doesn’t have a job.’

  Ella considered the information for a moment. ‘Is he in trouble?’ she eventually asked.

  ‘I don’t think so,’ Matt told her.

  ‘So why did his mum want to tell you about it?’

  ‘It helps,’ Matt said, ‘to talk about things.’

  As he kissed her goodnight, her small arms around his neck, she giggled. He looked at her quizzically.

  ‘Dad and Lisa sitting in a tree. K-I-S-S. L-O-V-E.’

  ‘Goodnight,’ and he turned the light off in her room and shut the door softly.

  It wasn’t until a couple of weeks after his return that Matt felt more capable of speaking about Lisa and Lucas, but it was Shane to whom he talked, not Freya.

  Out in Shane’s garden, in the middle of the overgrown stretch of lawn, they sat on old vinyl couches that had cracked in the heat. Shane had built a fire in a rusted drum, and its warmth was welcome now that the nights were becoming cooler. Sparks shot across the blackness of the sky as Shane poked the embers with a stick and talked.

  The young bloke he worked with was continuing to cause trouble.

  Shane shifted closer to the fire. ‘I’ve had enough. I’ve told ’em all I’ll stay till July and then I’m heading home.’

  ‘Really?’ Matt helped himself to the pouch of tobacco lying on the ground between them, the caramel of the leaves sweet as he rolled out the strands into the paper.

  Shane nodded. ‘Got a few ideas for some work up north. With me cousin.’

  Archie came out from inside the house, his eyes sleepy, his pyjama bottoms on inside out; he crawled into Shane’s arms and lay there, still, while Shane continued to talk.

  ‘Reckon your missus will be glad to see the back of me.’ He glanced across, shame-faced, at Matt, who didn’t understand.

  ‘Think she got the shits with me,’ and he explained briefly about the riots.

  ‘Nah,’ Matt said. ‘She was just worried.’

  Darlene came out of the house next. She wore a pink satin nightie under an old windcheater and in one hand she clutched a magazine. She, too, curled up next to Shane, taking up the little space that was left on the couch. Archie was already asleep, arms flung out, fingers trailing in the grass, his head back on Shane’s lap; he didn’t stir as Shane shifted to make more room.

  It was Matt who had to bring up the subject of Lisa and Lucas. Shane wouldn’t. And he told him about her and the boy with the hesitancy of someone who hadn’t yet moved beyond initial impressions. She seemed pretty together, he said. But the boy worried him.

  ‘I haven’t had much to do with teenage boys, but he looked like he was heading for trouble.’ Matt rubbed his chin, staring up at the sky as he continued speaking. ‘It’s not so much wanting to leave school, although of course that’s not great. It was more that he was completely shut down. You know, I talked to him but I felt like the whole time I might as well have been talking to a wall. He gave nothing. No indication of any awareness of my presence at all.’

  Shane didn’t speak. He just hunched forward, smoking. But he was listening.

  ‘He doesn’t know who I am,’ Matt continued. ‘So it’s not like he was angry with me for being his fathe
r and never being there. I feel like I should help her, but I don’t know how.’

  Flicking the end of his rollie into the fire, Shane stretched his legs. Neither Archie nor Darlene stirred from the depths of their sleep. He didn’t look across at Matt, and when he finally spoke, it was not about Lisa or her child.

  ‘Don’t think you ever met their mum,’ and he nodded at his kids.

  Matt shook his head.

  ‘She’s a good woman but she’s got her problems.’

  From over the fence, a cat howled, a wild feral screech that broke the stillness of the evening. The next-door neighbour’s dog barked in response, continuing in its frustration at being unable to get to the cat until Shane eventually banged on the tin fence with his fist – and all was silent again. Matt looked at the kids sprawled next to their father, amazed that they were still asleep.

  ‘She took ’em a couple of times. Came in the middle of the night and just took ’em.’ He shook his head. ‘I had to call the cops to get ’em back. Had to go to court.’ Running his hand through Darlene’s hair, Shane looked across at Matt and then back at the fire again.

  ‘But you’re sorted now?’

  Shane nodded. ‘They go up there for the holidays.’

  ‘Do they miss her?’

  ‘Yeah. Reckon they do sometimes.’ Carefully extracting Darlene’s limbs from across his lap, Shane leant forward and reached for another beer. There was a sharp hiss as he opened the can, flicking the ring pull into the brightness of the fire. He poked at the coals once again with the stick. ‘I’ve told her she can have ’em.’ He sat back, letting the stick fall in the dirt at his feet. ‘She’s just got to get it together. Soon as she does that, they’re hers.’

  A little unsure as to why Shane was telling him this now, Matt only nodded.

  ‘All you can do is just take it day by day,’ and Shane scratched his forearm. ‘Day by day.’

  Picking up the stick that Shane had dropped, Matt also stirred the embers of the fire, watching the glow of the coals, brilliant orange from grey ash, as he poked at the few burnt ends that lay scattered on the edge, pushing them back towards the centre.