Too Close to Home

by Georgia Blain

  There is so much Freya would like to say, but she knows that embarking upon any sentence would only take her down an impossibly curved and tangled route. She looks at her feet, a crushed cigarette pack and a broken bottle swept into the gutter.

  ‘I thought you were going to stay,’ he eventually says, although there is no real disappointment in his eyes.

  It’s all the same to him, she realises.

  ‘I’m sorry.’ She wants the courage to continue with the one truth that she knows she should hold fast, a raft in this sickening sway of deep water: I shouldn’t be doing this. I need to work out things at home, but these are not the words she speaks.

  She smiles. ‘I guess I just thought it would be better if I left, that a whole night is something else. But maybe I should stay. To go home now – this late, having to explain myself –’

  He looks at her.

  She is hovering, pinned still, and it cannot be maintained. She could squeeze his hand, each bone rigid in her grasp for that moment, and then let him go, holding an arm out to hail the first passing cab, turning her back on the foolishness of this, and returning home, although she knows it isn’t the home she wants it to be. Or she could walk through the streets with him, careful not to touch, to the strange empty world of his apartment high above the city, hiding out there until the night dissolves into day, and she has moved even further from the place where she should be.

  She wants him to make the decision for her. But he won’t. There’s no hold or weight or responsibility between them, no reason why he should step in and lift the choice from her, carrying it, as she shakes herself free.

  MATT IS WALKING BACK from the park with Ella when Freya comes home. She sees them both on the street in front of her, hand in hand, Ella pausing to strip paperbark from the trunk of one of the few tall trees. Last summer a magpie made its nest in the branches, swooping each time they walked within a few metres of its base. Ella had been terrified, until Shane had told her to get a stick and hold it upright. ‘See,’ he’d said, demonstrating to her, Archie and Darlene. ‘The bird goes for this and not my ugly head.’ She’d liked it then, the whole ritual of finding the right stick to use as armour enjoyable enough to make her almost sad when the bird eventually left.

  Leaning against a collapsed fence bordering what had once been a garden but is now a tangle of weeds surrounding a dilapidated cottage, Freya watches, unobserved. They are both in old jeans, canvas sneakers and long-sleeved T-shirts – Matt’s navy, Ella’s red. She puts her finger to her lips when Matt raises his hand in greeting. He is about to bend down and tell Ella to look, there’s Freya, but he stops when he sees her gesture.

  Ella is talking, telling Matt her plan. She needs enough bark to build a house. ‘It’ll have a downstairs and an upstairs, with a verandah and four bedrooms and a library full of books.’

  ‘You’re going to need the whole tree for that.’

  She looks up to the sharpness of the clear sky, and then down to where the roots have cracked the pavement.

  ‘I can’t leave it nude,’ she eventually tells Matt, who nods his head in agreement.

  She isn’t sure how to tackle the problem, and waits for his guidance.

  ‘We could just take a bit from this tree,’ he tells her. ‘And then some from another, and then another. Until there’s enough.’

  Only a few feet away, and standing perfectly still, Freya overhears every word.

  Ella nods in agreement. ‘So how much from here?’

  Matt tells her that just a couple more pieces should do the trick.

  ‘And we’ll save them?’ Ella asks. ‘Till we find more?’

  They will.

  Freya is almost right next to her daughter, taking care to tread lightly on the scattering of twigs in her path. And then Ella turns, jumping and squealing as Freya pulls her in, kissing the smoothness of her cheek, and tickling her under her arms.

  She wants to know where she’s been, when she got here, how long has she been listening? Freya starts to tell her she’d spent the night at the theatre, but Ella cuts across the answers she’d been demanding.

  ‘I went horseriding this morning.’

  Freya had forgotten that Shane had arranged to take them early.

  ‘This time I had a horse called Blaze. It was brown, like gold really, with a white stripe on its forehead, which is why it’s called Blaze. And you should see Darlene and Archie ride. I want to do lessons. Can I? There’s a place you can go.’ She tugs at Freya’s hand, wanting all of her attention. ‘We had to get up at like five or something; it was still dark. And I galloped.’

  Freya smiles as Matt shakes his head, mouthing the words: I’m sure she didn’t.

  They sit on the step that leads into their house, Ella now telling her that Darlene says they are all moving back to Queensland.

  ‘She reckons they miss their animals too much and Shane is going to take them home.’

  ‘You’ll be sad to see them go,’ Freya says, and Ella nods.

  ‘But maybe I could go up there and stay with them. In the holidays or something.’

  Margaret, their neighbour, is calling in her cats, her voice shrill.

  ‘She can’t find Boots,’ Ella whispers. ‘I hope he hasn’t been run over.’

  Blackie slinks out from underneath a car, a slither of running silk as he slides in under Margaret’s gate and up the stairs. Ginger follows. Margaret calls Boots’ name again, her voice high and thin.

  ‘No Boots,’ Matt says, looking out across the street, and they all wait, hoping to see the youngest of the three cats run across the road, paws a flash of white on the bitumen.

  He tells Freya she must be tired. ‘Rehearsals went late?’

  Freya only nods in reply. With her legs stretched out in front of her, she shades her eyes from the clear winter sunshine.

  ‘Are they in there?’ she eventually asks Matt and he knows she’s referring to Lisa and Lucas.

  It’s Ella who replies: ‘He is.’

  The weight of it returns as she imagines him, lying on the couch or Ella’s bed, his black jeans and T-shirt unwashed, his lank hair flecked with dandruff. It’s wrong, she knows. She has made so little effort to talk to him or know him, never pushing past the barriers he has erected.

  ‘Lisa’s mortgage came through,’ Matt offers. ‘She’s going to put the money in our account first thing next week.’

  ‘What money?’ Ella asks, looking at each of them.

  Matt tells her it’s nothing, just some money he lent.

  She lays her paperbark out in a row on the bottom three steps. ‘How much?’

  ‘Not much.’

  Freya stares at him. ‘And have they found a house?’ She hardly dares ask the question.

  ‘She’s out looking as we speak. Shane offered to drive her when they got back from riding.’

  He puts his arm around her, pulling her in close. ‘I’m sorry,’ he tells her. ‘And I’m sorry to you too.’ He kisses Ella on the top of her head. ‘You’ll get your room back soon, I promise.’

  Inside, Lucas is, as Freya had imagined, in Ella’s room. The blinds are drawn and in the thick darkness she can just see the shape of a suitcase open on the floor, Lisa’s camp bed neatly made, and next to it the outline of his body, sprawled across Ella’s sheets.

  ‘I brought some cake home. Would you like some?’ she asks in what is a useless attempt to once again try to communicate with the boy.

  He doesn’t reply.

  She switches on the light, the glare blinding, and he sits up, rubbing at his eyes. On the rug is a drawing, black ink scratched onto white paper. It shows a row of young men sitting, each with their knees drawn to their chest, their backs against a stone wall intricately patterned with what appears to be a snakes and ladders game.

  ‘Did you do this?’ she asks.

  He nods, and she’s surprised he can hear her with the headphones still in.

  Sitting on the edge of Lisa’s bed, she picks it up. ‘It’s goo
d,’ she says. There are others she can see, pages of them, their edges peaking out from under the suitcase, but she knows better than to pull them out.

  She wonders for a moment whether he’s been crying. There’s a pinkish tinge around his eyes. Or perhaps he’s simply stoned. He sniffs loudly, looking at her as he takes the headphones out, scratching at his hair before asking her where his mum is.

  ‘She’s looking at flats,’ Freya says. It’s after three and she can only assume that most of the open inspections would have finished by now, and Lisa will be back soon. And then she asks him whether he’s been in here all day.

  He just nods.

  ‘You don’t have to stay in this room, you know.’

  He doesn’t reply.

  ‘You could go for a walk down by the river, or there are shops up the road, or you could just come out to the kitchen and talk.’ She knows that all she suggests is unlikely to offer any form of enticement, but surely it would have to be better than lying in a darkened room.

  ‘Mum said not to go anywhere.’

  Freya wonders whether he’s scared by his predicament. She searches his face for some clue as to who he is. He doesn’t look like Lisa. He is considerably taller, his skin paler and his eyes darker. She can’t see Matt in him either. There is a frailty to him that is nothing like Matt.

  He twists the leather strap tied around his wrist, the stain of the suede a pale grey, and then he lets it go. His fingernails are black. She wishes he’d have a shower.

  She opens the blind and window, the freshness of the afternoon cool on her face, the lemony sun flooding the room. When she turns around he is standing up. Like a bat, she thinks, blinking in the brightness, his black clothes a worn leathered skin hanging loose on his skinny frame.

  ‘Why’d he help us?’ He asks the question without flinching.

  Her throat dry, Freya says nothing.

  He doesn’t move.

  ‘He knew Lisa a long time ago,’ she eventually replies.

  ‘Yeah. But it’s not like he’s stayed close. I’d never even heard of him. Or you.’

  ‘I guess he could help. And he wanted to.’

  ‘But you didn’t want him to.’

  She shakes her head, ready to utter words of denial and then finds she can’t. ‘It’s not like it’s a lot,’ she tells him, although she is really uttering the words to herself. ‘To lend the money to your mum and have you stay for a while.’

  He’s still looking at her, but then he drops his gaze to the ground and she, too, looks down at his feet, his big toe poking through the hole in his sock.

  It’s the slight tremor in his shoulders that gives his fear away. The shake is almost imperceptible as he sniffs again, before wiping at his nose with his wrist, the fall of his hair covering his face from her view.

  She doesn’t move. Then, wishing she were anywhere but here, she reaches for his arm. It stays hanging limp by his side.

  ‘I don’t want to go to jail.’ He brushes his fringe out of his eyes.

  ‘If you didn’t do it, then you’ll be okay. You’ll go to court and tell them the truth and it will be all right.’

  ‘What if they don’t believe me?’

  She doesn’t want to get drawn into this because if he was responsible, if he did bash that old woman … She shakes her head, knowing she wouldn’t be able to continue with him under their roof. She has to believe he is innocent.

  In the soft glow of the afternoon sun, she can see how young he is. The frame of the man he will become is there but it is not yet filled, there are just bones, waiting for the flesh and the life and all that hardens and ossifies and crumbles. If he were my flesh and I couldn’t protect him? She again tries to drag herself to that place, because he is terrified and she doesn’t know how to offer any form of comfort.

  ‘You just have to take it one day at a time,’ she says. ‘You can’t worry about the court case and what follows now.’

  ‘The cops – in the police station –’

  Freya cuts him off. ‘It really doesn’t help to be in here by yourself all day.’

  ‘One said they’d give me at least ten years. I’d be old by then. I can’t do that. I can’t.’

  ‘Stop.’ She steps closer, her hands on his arms now, squaring him so that their eyes meet, level, and she holds him perfectly still. ‘There’s no point. You won’t get through if you do. You need to come out of this room and be with other people.’

  But he isn’t listening.

  ‘I shouldna run away. I should’ve stayed with Mum, gone to school. I should’ve done what you’re meant to do. But I couldn’t. And it’s all bad.’

  And then he sobs, a heart-wrenching child’s cry.

  She is forced to hold him, there in her daughter’s room, as the late-afternoon sun washes in, golden, and they stand, two people who don’t know each other, closer than either of them want to be.

  LOUISE’S BABY SHOWER FALLS on the afternoon of the election date announcement.

  ‘Everyone is far more interested in discussing who’s going to win than my impending arrival,’ she jokes each time she welcomes a new guest. ‘But here’s hoping this –’ and she pats her stomach – ‘will enter the world as we welcome in the first female Prime Minister of Australia.’

  She’s holding the party in Scot and Alistair’s house. Originally an old shop near Clovelly Beach, it has a large front room that opens onto the street. Brisk sea breezes lift paper napkins and swing white lampshades stiffly from side to side. Presents have been left at one end of the room, and Freya cannot bear to think of the amount of useless crap hidden beneath reams of wrapping paper, baby contraptions far cheaper than they should have been, and all ready to break. She knows this ongoing obsession of hers will feature in her next play, she’s just not sure as to how she will use it, but there’s a character on a crusade she thinks, one that’s lost all perspective in her battle against Stuff. And there, she has it, an excellent title. She smiles to herself.

  At the other end of the room, there’s a long table set out with food – cupcakes, chicken sandwiches, rolls of smoked salmon filled with cream cheese and capers, devils on horseback, and bowls of chips. At the end are jugs of homemade lemonade, and in a bucket filled with ice, champagne and crisp white wines.

  Ella tries to fit as much on her plate as she can, the carefully arranged pile threatening to topple as she carries it back to a chair in the corner of the room. She is, once again, the only child. It won’t be that way for long, Freya knows, but still the next lot will be much younger, and boring to Ella. Freya realises she’ll soon see less of these people, probably settling more into life near where she lives, with the parents of the people that Ella gets to know, and it is strange to realise the panic that she would have once felt about this is no longer there.

  Mikhala is by the table talking to a woman Freya has never met.

  ‘Rachel,’ she introduces herself. ‘I was set designer on Louise’s last film.’

  She looks like a designer, Freya thinks, noting the size of the ring on her finger, a twist of silver and opal fashioned in the seventies, and the turn of the heels on her deep green suede boots.

  ‘So, what do you think? Labor will scrape back in again?’ Mikhala asks the question of both of them.

  ‘I bloody well hope so.’ Rachel raises her glass.

  Freya doesn’t know. ‘They’re both despicable,’ she says, shaking her head. ‘I can’t believe how they’re acting. It’s hard to separate the two parties. They’re each saying they’ll get tough on refugees, and neither of them have the guts to do anything real about climate change. They’re just trying to appeal to this small margin that swings, and it’s poll after poll and decisions made in response to the polls. What was that famous Russian quote? “There go the people. I am their leader, I must follow” – or something like that.’ She winks at Ella sitting on the other side of the room. ‘But I think Abbott has the edge. Both parties are so similar but he’s less careful in how he speaks. He�
�s more real.’

  Mikhala grins. ‘Horrifyingly so.’

  Rachel downs her glass. ‘We used to all say we’d move to New Zealand if we had another term of John Howard. Now we can’t even go there.’

  Across the room, Freya can see Matt with Frank and Marianne. She glances in their direction and then away. It has been years since she has seen Marianne. She is tall and slender, her pale blonde hair and golden skin mark her as a beauty, even though her face is drawn, and there is a heavy-lidded sadness to her eyes. She leans forward to hand Lola to Frank and then heads to the food table, only a few feet from where Freya stands.

  They look at each other momentarily and then Marianne smiles.

  ‘Is that Ella over there?’

  Freya nods.

  ‘She looks just like you. And she’s grown so much.’

  ‘She’s at school now,’ Freya says. ‘I have my life back again – it’s all consuming when they’re little.’ And then, hating her own hypocrisy, she adds: ‘It must have been hard on your own over the last few months.’

  Marianne shrugs. ‘It’s not like he did all that much when he was around.’

  ‘Still, I’m sure you’ll be glad to have him back.’

  Marianne’s lips are pursed. ‘Perhaps.’ She steps away from the table with a plate of food in her hand. ‘I hear the play’s going well.’

  ‘Apparently.’ Freya smiles. ‘You know what directors are like. Never want the writer in the room.’

  Marianne just looks at her. ‘Well, you’d be the first woman he hasn’t wanted in the room, or on the stairs, or in the garden – anywhere for that matter.’

  Freya wonders why she’s telling her this. They barely know each other. The bitterness slakes over her, and she would like to say: Leave. If he makes you that unhappy, leave. But she’s in no position to advise, and so she tries to switch tack, asking Marianne if she’s gone back to work or whether it’s been too hard with Lola so young.

  Marianne hasn’t. But she has been volunteering with an organisation that teaches English to new immigrants – ‘the ones that actually make it out of the detention centres and are allowed to stay’. She loves it, and for the first time there’s a light in her eyes, a joy.