Troy’s Possibilities

by Rodney Strong

  That’s when I noticed the note, carefully placed on the edge of the kitchen bench. Her handwriting cast in blue ink simply said, ‘We’ll talk later.’ That’s all it said. Not, ‘I’ll be home later’ or ‘I love you.’ There was no comfort in those three words.

  Going back into our bedroom, I looked for anything missing – clothes, shoes, a bag – but it all seemed there. That was a small measure of comfort. I went into the bedroom at the end of the hall. The rocking chair seemed less substantial without Cat.

  I lowered myself onto it, felt the hard wood beneath me, caught her faint scent. I thought of all the nights she’d sat here. Sometimes I would sit on the floor, leaning against the drawers, watching them. We would talk excitedly of the future, but none of the plans had ended like this. I’d lost children before, in Possibilities, but this was different. This was with Cat; this wasn’t supposed to happen in a happy ever after.

  I glanced up at the mobile, the moon and sun slowly shifting against each other. An idea began to form.

  Emily insisted on coming, and since Cat had taken the car I needed transport. It seemed like every two minutes she asked me if I was sure about this, and my reply was always the same. Sure? No. Hopeful? Yes.

  After what seemed like forever, we arrived at the car park. Suddenly this seemed like a stupid idea, but I clung to it desperately because it was better than the alternative. I paused at the bottom of the path, glancing back at Emily in the car, suddenly not sure, then walked down to the beach.

  It was a cold, dull day and the water churned and rolled, sending white froth onto sand washed clean from the day before. Overhead a seagull sat on the wind and cried mournfully, constantly searching for food. The only visible sign of life apart from the bird was scrabbling around on the sand, moving it from spot to spot. As I drew closer I realised Cat’s movements weren’t random; she was making something. She didn’t acknowledge me when I dropped onto the sand next to her.

  ‘What are you doing?’ I eventually asked.

  She paused with hands full of sand, and looked at me. Her face was calm, but there was a glint in her eye – a hint of life that had been absent for the last few days. ‘Do you remember what you were doing the day Emily and I got attacked? It didn’t work because you were trying to prove to the moon it was wrong. That was a mistake – it’s not going to change its mind. What you should have been doing was showing the sun how right it is. How bright it is, how important it is to us.’

  ‘It won’t bring her back,’ I replied.

  ‘I know.’ Her voice was full of regret and despair. ‘But she was my sun.’ She stared up into the sky, searching for the real thing, but it remained stubbornly hidden behind layers of grey. ‘Will you help me?’ There was desperation in her question.

  In answer I picked up handfuls of sand and slapped them down, shaping them as directed by Cat. We worked in silence for a long time. At one point I saw Emily watching us from the top of the beach, but when I glanced over again she was gone.

  ‘You know Emily is pregnant,’ Cat said.

  I stopped, hands dripping sand, and looked at her. ‘What? When did she tell you that?’

  Cat shook her head. ‘I could tell, the way she holds her stomach, the excitement she’s trying to hide from her face.’

  ‘It could be a stomach bug,’ I objected.

  Cat gave me a scornful look, and for a second the real her emerged. Then she disappeared back into the shadows.

  ‘Why didn’t she tell me?’ I asked.

  Cat didn’t deign that stupidity with a response.

  I thought of Emily. I wanted to be happy for her, but happy was a lone grain of light in the emotional darkness.

  ‘This must be agony for her,’ Cat said, using her hands to scrape at the sand.

  She was right. It should have been the happiest time for Emily; instead she had to keep the news from her friends, and watch us go through the sort of hell parents dread. Part of me wanted to go and find her, to give her a hug and say it was all right, that her baby would be fine, but I didn’t want to lie to her. And a tiny part of me, a part I instantly loathed, was angry and jealous that she was going to have something that had been so cruelly snatched away from us.

  My mouth filled with bile, and a nauseous frenzied wave of emotions threatened to crash onto the sand. I worked with increased vigour, smashing the sand down, burying my pain with each dull thud. Cat glanced over but I ignored her. Despite the cold I warmed up quickly, sweat forming and cooling on my forehead.

  Even with the two of us it took another hour to finish. The finished product was huge, about two metres wide and half a metre high, as close to a circle as we could do, with long lines coming out of it, representing the sun’s rays. It was a child’s version of the sun, a crayon drawing on a crumbling canvas. We sat next to it, exhausted. Her hand crept into mine and I clung onto it as if afraid the tide would sweep her away.

  In a quirk of timing the sun broke through the clouds and bathed our sculpture in light. I held my breath, waiting to see if the sun would accept our offering. For a moment hope smouldered in the ruins of our fairy tale, then cruelly the clouds reasserted their control of the sky and the light slipped away, Cat’s hand going with it.

  ‘Where do we go from here?’ she whispered.

  ‘On,’ I replied. ‘We go on.’

  ‘How?’ she said in tears. ‘Tell me a story where this ends well.’

  I took a deep breath, not knowing how to answer. Then it came to me. ‘I never told you everything about that day. What happened after I finished the sculpture.’

  When I looked over at her she gave no sign she was listening but I kept going anyway. ‘I tried to stop the tide taking it. I fought against the water until exhaustion and nature beat me. So I lay down and waited for the tide to take me instead. I figured if the tide was the work of the moon and I felt like the moon, then I should embrace the tide and go with it. Then I heard Emily.’

  She was looking at me now. ‘Why did you never tell me?’

  I shrugged. ‘It’s not the sort of thing you bring up, is it? By the way, I almost committed suicide on the night I saved you from being raped.’

  She thought about that for a while. ‘If you’d finished five minutes earlier, or we’d been attacked five minutes later, then…’

  ‘We wouldn’t be here now,’ I finished.

  ‘Would that be a bad thing?’ she said.

  I know she was talking about the reason why we were there rather than being here with me, but it still shredded my insides. ‘We can get through this, Cat.’

  ‘I don’t want to get through this. That means I have to accept it, and I don’t.’

  ‘She was my daughter too. You’re acting like you’re the only one hurting.’

  ‘How am I supposed to act? Tell me? I’ve never lost a child before, Troy, so please tell me how this is supposed to go.’ She scrambled to her feet and I followed her.

  ‘I don’t know, but I don’t want to lose you too.’

  ‘I don’t want to lose you either,’ she snapped.

  ‘Then why does it feel like you’re already gone?’

  She reeled back as if I’d slapped her. ‘I can’t…’ She turned and ran off down the beach.

  I stood unmoving and blinked…

  And was on the beach watching Cat retreating along the sand. I blinked again…

  And stood on the beach. ‘Fuck!’ I screamed. The clouds picked that moment to pull back their grey curtain and let the sun shine onto our pathetic offering. I blinked…

  And stood on the beach. No, this can’t be real life – this has to be a Possibility. This can’t be what happens with Cat. I blinked again…

  And again…

  And again, each time staying exactly when and where I was.

  The sun disappeared behind clouds again and anger narrowed my vision to pinpricks. All I saw was the pile of sand in front of me. The one we’d spent so long lovingly crafting into a beautiful offering to the universe. Only t
o have it rejected, like mine had been all those years ago. I kicked out, sending sand flying, and again, and again – destroying, ripping, shattering, until it was a sodden pile of nothing. Chest heaving, I dropped to my knees amongst the devastation and stared out into the ocean in despair. I’d thought I was all cried out, but they came anyway.

  I blinked them away…

  And was on the beach. This was real life. It was horrible and shitty, and I hated this moment more than any other moment I’d ever experienced. And I hated that I’d thought there could be a happy ending. There was no happy ending for the moon; it was fated to keep tearing at the beach for eternity. I should have known better.

  I looked down the beach to where Cat had disappeared. I should go after her, fight for her, but I was done. It had all been an illusion, thinking Cat and I were meant to be together, and I couldn’t do this any more. It was too hard.

  In the carpark our car had gone, but Emily’s was still there. It was empty, though as I approached it she appeared from the café across the road, holding a takeaway cup of coffee. She read something in my face that caused her pain.

  ‘Brush the sand off before you get in,’ she said. I did, then slid into the passenger seat. We didn’t say anything for the first five minutes.

  ‘Are you supposed to be drinking coffee in your condition?’ I asked.

  Her hands trembled and the car swerved a little before she corrected the steering. ‘How did you know?’

  ‘Cat.’

  ‘I didn’t want to tell you, not yet.’

  ‘I know. That’s why I love you.’

  ‘Do you want to talk about it?’

  I shook my head. ‘No, Ems, I really don’t.’

  So we didn’t, instead sitting in silence the whole way home. When we pulled up outside my house there was no goodbye, she just reached over and squeezed my hand. I squeezed back, then climbed out of the car.

  The house looked different, colder – not a home any more. The key echoed in the front door, and the air inside the house was still and lifeless. The empty driveway had told me what to expect; even the new note on the kitchen bench failed to spark anything inside me. The promise that she still loved me did nothing to stop the shaking.

  I picked up the teddy bear from the top of the drawers in our room, took it down the hall, and lowered myself into the rocking chair. For a moment life hung suspended in a single second, then I began to rock. A soft voice broke the silence. I stopped rocking and the sound ceased. For a brief craze-filled moment I thought it was Cat – or better yet, our daughter. I don’t believe in ghosts, but that doesn’t mean they didn’t believe in me.

  I started rocking again, waiting without breathing for the voice to start again. Nothing happened. My breath stuttered out with disappointment.

  Then the voice came again, only this time I recognised the voice as my own. ‘You with the sad eyes…’

  The teddy bear sat on my lap, staring with unseeing eyes at the room that should have been its home. I blinked…

  And was lying in my bed, alone. As I picked up my phone to check the date, the bedroom door opened and Cat slipped through. She wore my T-shirt, and by the looks of it that was all.

  ‘Sorry,’ she whispered. ‘I didn’t mean to wake you.’

  ‘That’s okay. I don’t think I was sleeping.’

  She grabbed my dressing gown off the back of the door and shrugged it on. ‘Emily’s home, so I’m going to have a quick chat.’ She came over and kissed me. ‘Don’t worry, I won’t talk about your performance.’ She laughed and disappeared out the door.

  I closed my eyes, waiting for my heart to slow, waiting for the fresh memories to subside, and for the feeling of utter devastation to disappear. I opened my eyes again. It wasn’t working. I looked over at the closed door and a flash of the bedroom door from the Possibility crossed my eyes. I wanted to blink it away but was afraid the act of blinking would sweep me away again. I checked the date, it was the same night Cat and I had first had sex.

  I got out of bed and paced to the door, then stopped, suddenly conscious I was naked. My pants were somewhere on the floor; turning on the light made it marginally easier to find them discarded in the corner of the room. Once they were on I looked for my T-shirt and it took me a while to remember Cat was wearing it. I pulled a new one from the drawer and gently cracked open the door.

  Low voices came from the kitchen. I stepped into the hallway, aware of how much the floorboards creaked in this old house. The voices continued unabated, so I slid my feet along the floor and into the bathroom, easing the door closed behind me. I used the toilet, then washed my hands, afraid to raise my eyes to the mirror, then as if compelled by an outside force, raising them anyway. The face looking back at me was dull and shadowed, cracked and full of flaws. It was the same face that used to stare back at me before I met Cat. The ground seemed to shift beneath my feet and I looked down, expecting to see a gaping hole of despair, but it was the same crappy lino.

  When I slipped out of the bathroom the voices still murmured from the kitchen. I stopped halfway along the hall, where their words were clear. Eavesdropping wasn’t something I normally did, but after the Possibility I made an exception.

  ‘…thought you guys were never going to get together,’ came Emily’s voice.

  ‘Me too,’ Cat replied. ‘Luckily he was willing to be patient.’

  ‘Willing is probably too strong a word.’ Emily laughed.

  Cat laughed too. ‘Okay, so he was getting a little impatient, but you’ve obviously had a good influence on him, Ems. He showed a huge amount of restraint. Poor guy slept next to this for weeks and kept his hands to himself.’

  ‘He’s a saint,’ Emily quipped.

  ‘Not too much of one, I hope – I have plans.’

  ‘So things are good?’

  ‘I think he loves me,’ Cat said.

  ‘Of course he does.’

  ‘You don’t sound surprised.’

  ‘I live with the guy – it’s been obvious to me for a long time,’ Emily told her.

  ‘You couldn’t have said anything?’

  ‘Hell, no. Not my place.’

  The voices trailed off and for a second I thought one of them was about to walk into the hallway, but then the conversation continued.

  ‘So do you love him?’ Emily asked.

  I held my breath. She took so long to answer I almost ran through the door and shouted Answer the damn question. I pushed myself back against the wall to prevent independent movement of my feet.

  ‘The first time I met him he answered the door wearing a towel that only just covered things.’

  ‘Oh, my God – really? You never told me that.’

  ‘It never came up. Anyway, it was only for a second because then he slammed the door in my face, and I thought, What adick.’

  ‘Oh?’

  ‘Not that kind of dick.’ They both laughed and my face flamed bright red. ‘Although now that you mention it… No, I thought What kind of idiot opens the door naked and then rudely slams it shut? So I was kind of glad not to win the bet. Then I saw him on the side of the road, and he scared off a ride that my friend and I were going to get. And I thought what a wanker.’

  ‘So, not love at first sight then,’ Emily observed.

  ‘Not even close. But then something funny happened. I kept running into him and suddenly I was looking at him differently. His smile doesn’t always reach his eyes – have you noticed that?’

  ‘Yeah. He’s had a rough time.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Something happened at high school, with a girl that he was in love with.’

  ‘Heather?’

  ‘Has he told you?’ Emily sounded surprised.

  ‘No. Lucky guess. What happened?’

  ‘He fell in love – that deep love only teenagers can feel. And she said she loved him as well, and then she took her life. He doesn’t talk about it, but it screwed him up.’

  There was another silence. Tears form
ed in my eyes, the extent of what I’d put Emily through suddenly becoming crystal clear.

  ‘But I’ll tell you this. The last few weeks – that’s the happiest I’ve seen him in ten years. So this is important.’ Emily emphasised the last four words and there was a pause before Cat replied.

  ‘When I first met him I was carefree. It didn’t bother me what tomorrow was going to bring because I lived in the day, and I loved that, I loved my life. Then the attack happened and it changed me. I stopped living in the day and started worrying about what happened yesterday, or what was going to happen tomorrow, or if I was even going to make it to tomorrow. But when I’m with him I don’t worry about tomorrow, because if he’s in it then I know it’s going to be good. So I can enjoy the day. I lost myself, and he found me again. So do I love him? Hell, yes.’

  ‘That’s good.’ Emily sounded unsure. ‘But do you love him, or do you just love the things he’s done for you?

  I pressed harder against the wall, fighting the urge to cover my ears with my hands.

  ‘This is who I am – the real Elissa, strong and getting stronger, independent, often called quirky, or a pain in the arse if you ask Steven. I don’t need a knight in shining armour. I’m with him because I want to be, not because I need to be.’

  ‘For what it’s worth, I think you two are a cute couple.’

  ‘No, we are a magnificent couple,’ Cat shot back, and they both laughed.

  Emily said in a warning voice, ‘But you know how Troy taught me how to defend myself? If you hurt him I’ll kick your ass.’

  ‘Fair enough,’ Cat replied. ‘So what about you? What’s this I hear about a guy?’

  ‘Austin. He’s from work. He’s sweet.’

  ‘You like him,’ Cat stated.

  ‘Yeah, I do.’

  ‘Have you slept with him yet?’

  ‘Elissa!’

  ‘Would it help if I told you about sex with Troy?’

  ‘Eww! God, no – he’s my friend. And no, I haven’t slept with Austin yet. We’ve only been on a couple of dates.’

  ‘But he makes you feel good?’

  ‘He makes me relax,’ Emily said.

  ‘It’s a good feeling, right?’