Aida filled a glass of water from the tap then sat at the small table watching Elham. Sometimes it was like watching two different people – one at ease in this little cold house but the other a shadow beyond its walls. Not long after they had moved in Aida had accompanied Elham to a doctor’s appointment. She hadn’t wanted to, but Elham had seemed so nervous that she hadn’t had the heart to say no. They’d sat in the waiting room watching the muted television as it flashed images of Syrians scattered across the Greek coastline, while Niki tore apart the toy box and shrieked at the other children. The doctor, an elderly man whose kind eyes reminded Aida of her father, had invited Elham to talk. Elham had leant towards Aida.
‘That accent, all nose and phlegm!’ she exclaimed. ‘What is he saying? I can’t understand him.’
Aida translated, watching the change in Elham’s posture. Eyes downcast and fingers trembling, Elham explained in whispered Persian how her body felt always on the edge of collapse. Like her breathing was gone, like her mind would explode from the racing. How sometimes at night her body shook so much it woke Niki. How the darkness bled into her mind and hauled up images of the boat, the rocks, and the wall of water engulfing them all. Then she had waited expectantly, hands clasped in her lap, and Aida realised she had to translate this too. She did so, her jaw tight and her mind rigid against itself. When she finished, the doctor tilted his head to one side.
‘Can you ask her to tell me more about this?’ he’d said, pen poised over notepad. ‘More about what she’s been through?’
At this Aida froze. Elham looked at her expectantly and Aida considered lying. She was saved by a bang from the corner as the medical waste bin fell on its side, Niki standing victorious and purposeful above it.
‘Niki!’ Elham snapped, and Niki’s face had twisted into an outraged scowl as she burst into tears, leaving the overwhelmed doctor to rifle through his drawers for a lollipop as he warily eyed the used syringes, wipes and rust-hewed dressings.
Now, several weeks after this visit, Elham diligently took the antidepressants she’d been prescribed, waiting each day for their effects.
After she’d finished eating she set aside some scraps for the cats then went to settle Niki in bed. Aida sat on the couch, absorbed in the headlines of the nightly news. There was a piece from back home, something about a visit from the Australian Foreign Minister and the ensuing inevitable talks of involuntary returns. Her mother would message about this, she was sure, her longing to see her only daughter muted by the fear of what might happen in the event of her forced homecoming. There would be safeguards, the Minister assured people, but no one believed this. The report cut to footage of a protest in Melbourne’s city centre, thousands of people waving signs for humanity. Bring them here! Not in our name!
Aida looked up as Elham entered the room. It was a rare occasion that the two women found themselves alone together. Aida drew in her legs, making room on the couch, and Elham sat down beside her. Aida reached for the remote. She knew that Elham refused to watch the news, that the sadness of others was too much to process alongside her own, so she flicked through the channels until she found a US sitcom with loud canned laughter. These shows demanded nothing of either woman and the American accents didn’t strain on their ears as the Australian ones did.
‘This?’ Aida asked, and Elham shrugged agreeably.
On screen a young woman was dancing about with an uncooked turkey on her head.
‘Turn key,’ Elham said in English.
‘Turkey,’ Aida corrected her.
‘Turkey,’ Elham repeated.
‘Use it in a sentence,’ Aida suggested.
‘We cannot eat the turkey because oven is break and the landlord will not fix,’ Elham announced in awkward English.
‘Close enough,’ Aida said.
They watched in silence, curled up side by side on the couch with the cats nestled between them. Aida glanced at Elham, her young face intent on the television screen. She was so tiny it seemed impossible Niki had come from her, yet once that small body had carried this screaming, demanding child across the sea and into this world. She reminded Aida of another woman from the island, a Feyli, effectively stateless and lost, who had filled her belly with cleaning products to avoid an empty future. But she didn’t want to remember that woman from the island. She didn’t want to remember any of them. What she really wanted was to ask Elham if the pills were working, if the nightmares and the shaking and the panic had stopped. If it made some things easier and made others forgotten. Instead, she cleared her throat and adjusted her legs.
‘Niki is asleep?’ she asked, and Elham gave a half-nod.
‘Enshallah,’ she replied, mimicking a pious mother with a comic tilt of her head.
Aida laughed and turned to say more, but Niki’s cry interrupted them.
‘Of course.’ Elham smiled with feigned exasperation as she pulled herself from the couch.
She’d tried to show her photos. A few days before, scrolling through her phone to parade her family before Aida. Aida had humoured her, but had none of her own to share. She’d deleted the ones her mother had sent via the phone app, the ones of her father, gaunt and pale. What use were photos if you couldn’t bring yourself to look at them?
‘Where are your people, Aida?’ Elham had asked softly. ‘Everyone I know is up in Brisbane but what about you?’
She’d ignored this and Elham hadn’t asked again.
Aida turned back to the television, flicking through the channels until she found the twenty-four-hour news station. There again was the Australian Foreign Minister shaking hands with her Iranian counterpart. They stood together, caught in the flash of the world’s press as a sea of journalists fanned their microphones before them. Aida scanned the faces, moving forward to crouch close to the television screen. This had been where she’d seen herself, back when she’d first decided to study journalism. Pushing her way to the front, elbows lethal and determined, questions ready to hurl above the others as she landed her headlining story. Instead, here she was the angle, another nameless story to be reported and forgotten. Her cheek rested against the screen for a moment, the down of her skin prickling with static, before she switched it off. There was a faint click, a flash of hazy colour remaining as if clinging to the memory for the briefest of milliseconds, then the room fell into darkness.
2
DB
Dear Jonesy . . .
Ben ‘DB’ Arnolds swam his laps one by one. Though, to be honest, it was less one by one and more one-by-one-by-stop-to-adjust-goggles-by-one-by-squint-at-the-lane-timer-for-a-moment-by-one-by-quick-sip-of-water-by-no-no-you-go-first-I-insist-by-one-by-gosh-these-goggles-are-being-a-bother-today-by-one-by-is-that-the-time-maybe-just-a-few-more-with-the-kickboard-by-one.
He used to be good at this – good in the sense that the physical exertion hadn’t always made him feel like vomiting – and he still had some of the better-coloured ribbons from his high school swimming carnival days. He’d even done a triathlon once, the swimming bit anyway, because it was one of those work team-building ones where everyone did a different part, and they’d not done too shabbily either. But now it was a constant morning battle to haul himself up and down the lane for long enough to tick off the exercise portion of his daily routine. He’d slow to a crawl sometimes, his mind elsewhere, until he’d catch a glimpse through the water of the elderly folk huffing their way up the walking lane in their reef shoes and realise they were beating him. Then he’d picture the lane traffic piling up behind him and speed up in panic, racing to the end where his goggles would no doubt need adjusting. This, more accurately, was how DB swam his laps. But regardless of how he swam them, he swam them just the same.
As he swam, DB made lists. Things that needed doing that day, things that needed paying that day, things to tell Jonesy when he replied to his email later in the day. Jonesy was in Doha at the moment for a conf
erence and had attached a picture of himself at the Corniche with the futuristic skyline in the background. DB had been to the Corniche once and found it glitzy and overblown, so he’d tell Jonesy this, and also embed a picture of the place he’d found that did their toasties with two types of gruyere, a subtle throwback to their uni days when a cheaper variation of this had been their standard post-night out fare. Something in his shoulder was twinging with each stroke but DB ignored it, just as he ignored the murky amoeba-like clouds that floated about the water of the local swimming pool. There were better pools, but it was on his way to work so it would have to do.
Jonesy had certainly lifted his game of late. It had been easier when he’d been stuck in his Trafalgar office for hours on end. But since he’d got the promotion and commenced what seemed to be a never-ending world tour of business dealings and experience-havings, his emails had stepped it up a notch or two. DB enjoyed it, their chummy back-and-forth. And he knew Jonesy would be blown out of the proverbial water when DB got his promotion. Not that it was set in stone. Or even chalked lightly on stone. Or verbalised in the vicinity of the stone. But he could just tell from the particular look Old Man Williams gave him when they bumped into each other in the elevator – a certain knowing glint in the eye – that the future had a corner office in it and was indeed promising. Not that it wasn’t well deserved. And it would certainly help with the mortgage. He’d worked it out the other day in a moment of distraction and at this point, with them both working fulltime and providing they didn’t have any more children, he and Sylvie would have it all paid off by the time they were one hundred and thirty, or dead, whichever came first. But this was, unfortunately, the kind of sacrifice one had to make if one wanted to live in Northcote these days. And technically, if you checked the local planning maps – which DB had – they were actually on the very cusp of Westgarth, if you were a bit creative with fence lines – which DB was – and this made their piece of the world very impressive real estate when it all came down to it. And this meant they’d be able to get somewhere nice on the peninsula when they retired at one hundred and thirty, and if they didn’t make it that far Rudy would find himself with a very nice inheritance to blow as he pleased.
DB paused at the end of the lane, pretending to drain some water from his goggles, grappling for breath. A woman in a neon cap completed her lap and he nodded for her to go before him. He waited a few more gasps, then threw himself into another lap.
Rudy. He was an earnest little thing, four years old and curious, though not curious enough to have mastered the potty or approached the toilet, which he observed with wild-eyed suspicion as if it were a compact trapdoor to hell and seating himself atop it would eventuate in immediate brimstone-y freefall. This was becoming a bit of a big deal as apparently the staff at his kindergarten did not get paid enough to change nappies and Rudy was becoming a sore – and smelly – point. Sylvie fretted over this, their weekends largely spent enticing and cajoling him while he shrieked like a nanny goat whenever the toilet was in sight. But DB saw the valour in it. He was a cautious and perceptive child, much like his old man, and he knew the end of a good run when he saw it. It was admirable, really, though Sylvie didn’t seem to think so. Instead, she saw their child’s occasional shortcomings as a direct reflection of their abilities as parents, which was something DB would never have imagined of a woman who in her pre-mothering days had more than once turned up to work in yesterday’s clothing, having pulled an all-nighter at one of the various clubs and pubs they used to frequent back when they were fun.
Rudy was currently going through A Stage. It had started with the dead bird. It must have flown down the chimney at some point while they were away on the Noosa holiday, and from what they could gather had made itself at home, shat all about the place, then died rather ceremoniously in the middle of Rudy’s little bed. They had buried it in the garden accompanied by its duvet shroud, and since then Rudy had been fascinated with what happened to other living creatures when they died. His insistent questioning meant DB now knew that elephants grieved their dead, that shark and whale carcasses were scavenged by bottom dwellers, and that sometimes the Antarctic winter preserved frozen penguin corpses for decades. While not exactly things to tell Jonesy – That merger sounds like a winner! Did you know cats like to crawl into small spaces to die? – it demonstrated to DB the kind of sagacity one needed to get ahead in life. His son would be great on trivia teams. He would impress the ladies. Or the gents. Didn’t matter. DB was progressive like that. The Discovery Channel fuelled this obsession, and Rudy spent a great deal of his time sitting before it like a dear sweet addict, eyes wide and body deceptively limp as he could within seconds hurl himself shrieking across the polished floorboards if someone were to interrupt his viewing. While Sylvie insisted they would be just as happy with non-subscription television, DB felt their monthly payments were entirely reasonable if it meant maintaining Rudy’s habit. He had intellect, his son. And intellect required cultivating.
Sylvie was of the opinion that if they spent less money they would require less money. This was, DB suspected – quietly, and never in her presence – because she had grown up poor, so what was the worst that could happen to her? He, on the other hand, hadn’t, and it certainly wasn’t something he was keen to have a go at. This difference had become starker post-Rudy’s birth, as the decisions they made seemed to suddenly matter so much more. Besides, he loved his job and loved what it allowed them to do. He loved the ways his ears popped in the elevator on the way up to his desk and how his suits fit perfectly because the tailor knew his body by rote. Sylvie poked fun at his sartorial choices, particularly his love of a well-cut business shirt, but what was he to do? He was a tall man with wide-set shoulders. Tailored shirts were a necessity. Most of Sylvie’s childhood clothing had been sewn by her mother, so she’d practically cried with laughter at the matching Ralph Lauren polos he’d recently brought home for himself and Rudy, pretending to vomit onto the year nine History essays she was marking at the kitchen table.
‘He can’t wear that to kindy. Do you want him to get beaten up by all the kids in tracksuits?’
Then she had turned back to scrawling red ink across a poorly formed dissection of the causes of World War I, emitting the occasional chuckle and snort as she recalled the matching polos.
The kindy. This was a delicate subject in their household. Despite living in an area with ample quality kindergartens, the fact they both worked fulltime meant they depended greatly on Sylvie’s parents to help out with Rudy. While DB had investigated options like Montessori and Steiner learning models, Sylvie was a champion of council-run centres, preferably in areas with respectable vaccination rates. After much heated discussion, they had fudged their address and enrolled him in a kinder north of Bell Street, closer to Sylvie’s parents’ outer suburbs home. This in itself had in fact been a compromise as Sylvie had wanted them to go the whole hog and sell up and relocate closer to her parents. So the geographic victory of their place of residence was somewhat dampened for DB, as it had, to him, come at the cost of his child’s early years education, but battles were battles, and wars were wars, and the true war was still to come because Rudy was a decade away from high school and DB was damned if he would be a child of the public school system. DB’s parents, both lawyers and utterly progressive in a closed-minded kind of way, were openly disapproving of their choice of kindergarten when there were perfectly good ones this side of the divide. It wasn’t the location, they had told DB and Sylvie, but Rudy’s future they were worried about. Why couldn’t he just go to the lovely Montessori kinder DB had gone to? Because, Sylvie had informed them coolly, he would be going to the perfectly fine council-run one she had attended. And then everyone had been very quiet for the rest of the meal and Sylvie had refused to go to any more Sunday night dinners. She tolerated his parents, which wasn’t fair as he quite liked hers.
Sylvie spoke to her family daily, whether it was in person when
dropping off or collecting Rudy, or over the phone a half-dozen times throughout the course of the day. They were always in each other’s lives, always so aware of where they all were and what they were all doing at any given moment. They would ring each other to ask about a third party’s whereabouts, often prior to calling the person in question. Sylvie, it’s your mother. Will your brother be home at nine-thirty if I ring him this morning? DB had originally found this unsettling, until eventually he realised he had been pulled into this Carmen Sandiego vortex a year or so into their relationship, and found himself an integral part of this intense Zambetti communications tree. Most likely Tony would be at the gym at nine-thirty because he’d missed his session on Sunday due to his hangover. Yes, it was strange he wasn’t answering, but he might be stuck in traffic because there was always traffic these days. No, no one needed to call the police yet. Yes, Tony was such a good boy to his mama. Tony was, DB had discovered long ago, actually a bit of a dropkick, but no one could ever argue this with Guiseppa Zambetti, who had formed her opinion the moment she’d first heard his newborn wail and never wavered since. Besides, he had been named for her long-dead brother who had passed away in his late teens in a motorcycle accident, and it still made Guiseppa weep just to think of him. Sylvie, who had been named after her paternal grandmother who nobody particularly liked, had long ago given up attempting to equal Tony’s familial status, though understandably, and for reasons DB suspected had something to do with money, her standing had risen significantly once DB came into the picture.
Sylvie’s grandparents had grown up in villages where people died often and dramatically. Smallpox, whooping cough and, once, though DB sometimes questioned this, a wolf had apparently snatched a toddler straight out of its pram while its mother was engrossed in buying tomatoes at the mercato. Subsequently, and despite the distinct lack of wolves in Australia, they had raised their children with a constant awareness of the potential for imminent death. This was a parenting technique Sylvie’s mother had carried over to her own children. Her fundamental understanding of the telephone was that it allowed one to check for certain that loved ones were presently still alive, and provided concrete evidence that if left unanswered they were at the very least severely maimed or kidnapped. She had started insisting during her evening phone calls that Rudy be put on the line, in something DB was increasingly certain was some kind of telephonic proof of life. As if she didn’t trust their assurances that he was alive and well and staring golem-like at the television as a pack of lions tore apart a gazelle. When DB mentioned this to Sylvie, she gently teased that he was jealous because his parents could go a whole week between Sunday dinners without clarification that he was still living, forcing him onto the defensive. ‘We speak regularly. Daily, even.’ His family engaged in a long-running and suitably competitive race to solve the nine-letter word in the newspaper’s puzzle section, conducted via a group messaging app. DECIDUOUS. ORATORIAL. CHIHUAHUA, you inept fool. This was how they kept in contact. Besides, they valued quality over quantity, which in DB’s mind tended to be preferable. You paid for quality, as his father often liked to say, to avoid the burden of quantity.
The Book of Ordinary People Page 3