Shallow Breath

by Sara Foster

  She had kept her plan secret, because she knew her father had other ideas for her. When they had visited Lovelock Bay that first time, he had taken her down to the beach and pointed to a short rock that jutted from the water, at least five hundred metres away. ‘You can practise swimming there and back,’ he said, ‘and when you’re quick enough we’ll get you in a pool.’ Desi had been swimming in the ocean for almost five years. She was already strong and fast, but there was no sign that Charlie was planning to start driving her on the eighty-kilometre round trip to the nearest club pool. She had long grown immune to his talk. She suspected that the swimming was just a ruse to keep her out of the way. On the day they had driven out to Lovelock Bay, it had felt like the end of her life.

  As she traverses the same track all these years later, Desi is surprised at how vividly she can still conjure those old memories. What would she say if she could talk to that teenage girl with her fierce, secret dreams, and her desperation that morning as she watched them dashed? Would she let her into the secrets of the future: that she would briefly be one of the showgirls? Or would she try to turn her young mind away from her ambitions, because they had set in motion the chain of events that had led her here, driving reluctantly up this uneven road, estranged from her father and her daughter, bewildered by the path her life had taken.

  Chug has been determinedly bouncing along the track with Desi lost in her memories, and to her surprise she is at the gate. She returns to the present as she sees her father kneeling in the garden. She is shocked at how old he appears. His shoulders and cheeks have concaved, while his pot belly has grown ever larger underneath his grubby white singlet. He is working slowly, his fingers as swollen and twisted as tree roots, but she has no doubt he will stubbornly ignore the pain until the day he dies. Her mother has been gone for a decade, and Charlie had always relied on Hester’s practical care. Desi can see the neglect in his creased, unwashed clothes, his unkempt, untrimmed tufts of hair, his grey stubble and sagging jowls. She has tried hard to love him as a father, but they have never been friends, and she doubts they ever will be now.

  She sees him glance up at the noise of the van, then recognise it and look down at his plants again, as though he can pretend he hasn’t seen her. It would probably be much easier for him if she simply disappeared from his life.

  She climbs slowly out of the van and walks towards him. Determined to be civil, she stops. ‘Hello, Dad. How are you?’

  He stands up, wipes his forehead with the back of his arm and takes a long look at her. Apparently he doesn’t like what he sees, as he gestures with his trowel. ‘She’s in the van over there.’ And then he bends down and carries on. As though he knows and cares nothing of what she might have been through over the last few years.

  Desi has long let go of any desire to shout and scream at him. To do so would further convince him that he knows the truth of her. She turns and glances towards the caravan a short distance away, praying that she gets a better welcome from her daughter.

  6

  Maya

  All morning Maya has been peering out of her small caravan window, waiting for Desi to arrive. It is past eleven o’clock when Chug appears in the driveway, and Maya’s heart does a dive in her chest. She watches as her mother gets out, and almost gasps. She is so thin, and her long hair, her beautiful long hair, has been cropped close to her head. She used to at least dye it, but now it’s a mousey brown. Her shoulders have slackened, and her whole body seems to have shrunk.

  For the very first time a thought occurs to Maya: perhaps the mother she knew is never coming home.

  As she watches, she sees her grandfather struggling to his feet. Desi can’t get past without him noticing – he is out in front of the house, pulling weeds from his vegetable beds. Desi begins to speak, and Maya tries to imagine what she could be saying to make Charlie fold his arms so tightly. He gestures in the direction of the caravan, and bends down to his gardening again, as though he has been talking to a stranger. Maya watches as Desi trudges over with her head down, one hand fretfully rubbing the other.

  As Desi nears the caravan, Maya’s mobile rings. She sees Luke’s name and snatches it up.

  ‘It’s on again, Maya – tonight. I’ll come and get you.’

  A shiver runs through her. ‘Okay, but I can’t talk now. My mother is here. Do you remember I told you she was coming home?’

  ‘I’ll come about nine.’ There is a pause. ‘Remember the knife,’ he adds, and, as her mother raps on the thin metal door, he is gone.

  Maya pulls the door open, caught off guard and wondering why, in all the time she’d had this morning, she hasn’t yet changed out of her sleepwear. She steps outside.

  ‘Hello, Maya.’

  Only now does Maya realise how much she’s missed hearing her mother’s voice, the gentle way she has of saying her name. That, and so much more. But, rather than softening her demeanour, she stiffens. Why did it have to be like this? she wants to shout. Why did you have to cause us all so much pain? But her mother butts in before she can articulate any of her questions.

  ‘I didn’t wake you, did I?’ Desi has noticed her pyjamas.

  Maya thinks about how long she has spent waiting this morning. ‘No.’

  Desi hesitates as Maya looks down on her from the caravan. ‘Can I come in?’

  Maya is about to stand aside when she remembers the book on her bed. And the knife. ‘I’d rather you didn’t, sorry.’ She comes out and shuts the door quickly behind her.

  Desi flinches, and steps away. They stand in awkward silence as a couple wander past, chatting, before glancing across and lowering their voices. Somewhere close by a kookaburra strikes up, its cackles bursting through the air for a few seconds before it falls abruptly silent.

  ‘Look,’ Desi says, ‘let’s not talk out here, like this. Would you like to come to the shack tonight – for dinner?’

  Maya pauses, thinking of Luke.

  ‘Pete will be there,’ Desi adds. And, softer, ‘Please come.’

  It seems to Maya that if she capitulates now, she sets the trend. Desi will switch to being her mother again, expecting Maya to be there whenever she asks. Maya wants to be obstinate and say that things have changed, forever, but Desi’s pleading stare kills all her objections.

  ‘Okay … But I can’t stay too long.’

  ‘Fine. Oh, Maya,’ Desi says, her eyes tearing up. ‘I haven’t seen you for so long. Can I at least give you a hug?’

  Maya would much rather go inside and slam the door, but Desi doesn’t wait for her reply. She pulls them together awkwardly, kissing Maya’s forehead, cupping her cheeks and scrutinising her face. ‘I’m so happy to see you.’

  They are so close that Maya can smell her mother’s peppermint breath. ‘I’m happy to see you too, Mum,’ she replies, hoping it sounds like she means it. Her body relaxes into the embrace, and she reprimands herself. You saw what she did. She pulls away.

  ‘Has Pete told you about Kate?’

  Desi seems confused. ‘Who’s Kate?’

  ‘Dad’s niece. She wants to meet you, apparently.’

  Desi frowns, her hands planted on her hips. ‘Connor’s niece?’

  ‘Yes,’ Maya says. ‘She’s been around for a few weeks. And she’s made a big impression on Jackson.’

  ‘I see.’ Desi nods slowly, trying to take it in, her expression bewildered.

  After her mother has left, the day begins to drift. Maya now has two big events planned for the evening, and too many empty hours to kill beforehand. She wishes Jackson were here this morning. He feels more like a brother than an uncle, and always knows how to distract her and calm her nerves. Typical that the one time she needs him he is half a world away. There is no one else close by that she can talk to.

  She wanders down to the beach, walking slowly along the tideline, eyes on the horizon. The sky is a still blue void poised over the shimmering sea, diamonds of light flashing along the water’s restless currents.

  The o
cean has been a constant in Maya’s childhood. For as long as she can remember, most days before breakfast Desi would swim. On weekends and holidays, Maya would walk to the beach with her, and play or float in the shallows until Desi had finished. Whenever Desi missed her morning exercise, she was noticeably irritable for the rest of the day. Maya can hardly imagine what fifteen months without sight of the ocean might have done to her.

  As a girl, Maya had marvelled at the clinical, graceful strokes as her mother flew through the water, and for a while she had joined her, trailing behind, thrashing out each lap with grim determination. But she had rejected the ritual by the time she was fourteen. Sometimes she would go with her mother, but only if there was nothing better to do. However, on her first night at Lovelock Bay, she had lain there picturing Desi in a tiny, dirty concrete cubicle, fifty kilometres inland. And even though she was so incredibly angry with her, even though at that point she didn’t ever want to speak to her again, she found herself getting up the next day and wandering down to the enticing blue waters of the bay. She hasn’t missed a day of swimming since.

  Until now. Since seeing her mother, for reasons she cannot explain, she has become determined not to enter the water today.

  She sits on the beach instead, her eyes straying to a small boat weaving its way in the distance. She picks up handfuls of soft sand and watches the granules disappear between her fingers.

  It had been horribly awkward with Desi this morning, and she can’t imagine it will be much better tonight. She is glad Pete will be there. He has been her link to her mother for the last fifteen months – and she has come to like the fact that she could keep Desi one step removed. It is strange and stressful having to form a direct relationship again.

  What will her mother make of Kate, she wonders. She had seemed as surprised as Maya had been to learn of Kate’s existence.

  ‘You two need to meet,’ Jackson had said one morning, as Maya walked past his caravan, and Kate hovered in the background. ‘This is your cousin,’ he’d told Maya, with a big grin. ‘Your dad’s niece.’

  Maya wasn’t sure what she’d expected, but it was certainly more than she’d got. Kate had waved a shy hello, but that was it. No excitement on meeting. No embrace. Maya had hurried away, confused, unsure what to do with this information.

  She had been surprised and hurt when Kate made no effort to seek her out, but the unexpected opportunity to learn more about her father was too good to miss. So she had watched out of the caravan window until she’d spied Kate alone, and then staged a meeting. ‘So, you knew my dad?’

  ‘Yeah.’ Kate had stopped guardedly, her hands on her hips.

  ‘I never met him,’ Maya had explained, blushing as though she were admitting some terrible folly. ‘What was he like?’

  Kate had paused. ‘He was away a lot when I was a kid. Over here. But he was nice. Really nice.’

  Then, to Maya’s surprise, Kate had moved to step past her.

  ‘And what about my grandparents?’ she asked hurriedly. ‘What are they like?’

  Kate shrugged. ‘Nice enough.’ Another step.

  ‘What do they do – you know, for work?’

  ‘They’re retired now, but Nana was a swimming teacher. And Poppa was a schoolteacher. They’re not very interesting, I’m afraid.’

  These were Kate’s grandparents too, Maya realised, annoyed by the way Kate had dismissed them. She felt like yelling at her: perhaps if you hadn’t had them all your life you might appreciate them a bit more. So much for long-lost family. In fact, it unsettled her idea of what her father might have been like. Maya had learnt as a little girl that pushing for information about her dad would result in her mother retreating to her room and coming out later with red-rimmed eyes. It had been better to turn detective, and glean what she could indirectly. As a result, for a long time Connor had seemed terribly enigmatic and exciting. And you always assumed you would get on with your parents. But look at her mother and Charlie. Connor might not even have liked her.

  She hadn’t had a chance to miss him properly, since she had never known him. In the beginning, he seemed like a character in a fairytale, but now she wants to flesh him out, to understand him as the person who had made half of her. When Desi had gone away to prison, Maya had searched the shack, but the only thing she could find was an old logbook from the time her parents had spent on the boat. She had taken it anyway, and slept with it underneath her pillow.

  She wanted to talk to Pete about all this, but it felt rude, somehow. Pete is the closest Maya has ever had to a father, and he had been a good friend of Connor’s. She has uncovered more about her father from Pete lately than anyone else has ever told her directly. While Desi was away, Pete had visited Maya every week. He would come to Lovelock Bay, and they would walk along the beach, telling each other their news. He would reassure her that Desi was holding up well, and she would say she was glad. Then one of them would change the subject.

  Almost a year ago, on her eighteenth birthday, he had arrived with a bottle of champagne and two long-stemmed glasses. By the time the bottle was empty, both their tongues were loosened. Most of his Connor stories were disappointingly familiar to Maya, so she was delighted when he began to talk about her parents in a way she had never heard before.

  ‘They were both so passionate,’ he had said, as the waves broke gently in the distance and the sky darkened. ‘I think your mother still is. It’s her greatest strength, and her greatest weakness.’

  ‘That doesn’t make sense,’ Maya laughed.

  ‘It makes absolute sense,’ he told her solemnly. ‘The thing that makes you is the thing that breaks you.’

  Maya thought about that for a moment. ‘What is your thing, then?’

  ‘Empathy,’ he said straight away, disconsolately, she thought. ‘And what about you, Maya? What do you think yours is?’

  ‘I don’t know.’ They were quiet for a while as she considered it. ‘Sometimes I wish I didn’t care so much,’ she said eventually.

  He studied her as she sat there thinking of Luke, and she thought maybe he was going to ask her to explain, but he didn’t. Instead, he said, ‘Help your mother, Maya, when she comes home. She made a big mistake, but she doesn’t deserve any more punishment from the people who love her.’

  Maya had seized on this rare chance to talk. ‘But why did she do it? Rebecca was her closest friend. Why would she want to hurt the Carlisles?’ Then she had let out a great sigh – it was such a relief to ask these questions. The subject wasn’t forbidden, as such, but there seemed an unspoken agreement between everyone around her that it wasn’t to be mentioned. And sometimes all Maya wanted was to talk about it.

  But, disappointingly, Pete had shaken his head. ‘You’ll have to ask her, Maya. I’m sorry. She won’t discuss it with me. But there will be a reason. The Desi I know wouldn’t want to hurt anyone.’

  Maya comes back to the present, gets to her feet and dusts off her clothes. She has begrudged her mother all her secrets, but now she has a secret of her own. Will she tell Desi what she gets up to with Luke? Probably not. Will she tell Pete? No. Even though they, more than most, might understand.

  She wanders back to her caravan, pondering what might make her mother reluctant to share. Once inside, she changes her clothes.

  She remembers the necklace. Had her mother noticed she wasn’t wearing it? She tries a few drawers, scrabbling about in them to see if she can find it. She locates it at the far corner of a small cupboard and takes it out. It is a small white pearl, a perfect globe set within the curve of a silver dolphin, as though the dolphin is jumping over the moon. She hesitates for a moment before slipping it on.

  She stares at the contents of her bed. She’d better return the book tonight. She hadn’t meant to be a thief. Putting it to one side, she picks up the large carving knife that she took from her grandfather’s kitchen. She collects the blankets and wraps both items inside them. After that, she sits on her bed and tries to decide how she is going to pass
the next few interminable hours.

  7

  Pete

  The zoo is the last place Pete had planned on going today, and yet here he is, parking in the visitors’ car park and walking towards the gate. Since his conversation with Desi, he hasn’t stopped thinking about Indah. He could get in touch with any number of friends to ask about her, but today he needs to see how she is for himself.

  He is thankful the person in the ticket booth doesn’t recognise him as he hands over his money. It’s early yet, and a weekday, so the place is fairly quiet – only a few holidaymakers and weary mothers with preschool children. It is an odd feeling, walking the familiar routes without uniform or purpose. As he hurries past the ornamental lake, he sees a flash of grey on the small island in the middle. It is followed by a series of whooping calls: the Javan gibbons are singing, each note a long, looping crescendo across the water. They are answered by a hush of people, as those nearby stop, entranced, eyes searching the trees for a glimpse of them. For a moment, as he listens, Pete is back in Sumatra. How he wishes he could cool his mind off and renew his senses in the damp, fresh morning of the rainforest. But nowadays such recollections are dogged by searing guilt.

  He heads on through the African savannah exhibit. A new litter of painted dog pups are chasing each other under and over a fallen tree trunk, tails wagging like white-dipped brushes. Hidden from sight, a lion calls to the morning, a deep-bellied grunt, half threat, half sigh. A meerkat stands sentinel as he walks by, and the Galapagos tortoises are already moving sluggishly towards their wallow. It is going to be a hot day.

  He is nearly there. In his hurry to cross the road, he steps out in front of a small zebra-striped car, driven by a docent, one of an army of volunteers who help to keep the zoo running. He holds up his hand in apology and the docent smiles at him, obviously recognising him. Before she can say anything, he hurries on, towards the series of enclosures that make up the orang-utan exhibit. He strolls towards the perimeter, to one of the quieter, out-of-the-way sections often missed by visitors, hoping that Indah hasn’t been moved. There is no sign of her on the tangle of ropes or the gleaming silver platforms, so he searches the long grass. He spots her on the far side, a hunched figure sitting facing the corrugated metal wall. The burnished orange of her thick, oily hair shines like fire in the sunlight. She isn’t moving, but occasionally a small figure bounds into view, a little Charlie Chaplin with a punk hairstyle. The baby leaps away on a series of ungainly adventures, regularly returning to her mum’s side. Occasionally the little one grabs a fistful of her mother’s hair, and Indah’s long fingers gently loosen her daughter’s grip.