Alaska

by Sue Saliba

  ‘i’m sorry,’ he said.

  she was surprised.

  ‘i’m sorry. i kind of disappeared when you were telling me about your mum, about how she’s sick and everything, in hospital. i’m really sorry … to hear that…’

  ‘yeah,’ mia said. ‘thanks.’

  it was something she could never have imagined peter saying – sorry and you’re special and i care. ethan had said all of these things to her, and he’d shown it, too, letting her stay at his house, bringing her out to dinner like this and taking her to the hilltop where you could see the sky. it was special to him, she knew that, and he had taken her there.

  that was something terrence would never have done for em – taken her somewhere special, really special that meant something to both of them, that they both understood.

  yes, mia was fortunate to have met ethan, she was the lucky one, he had none of peter’s liabilities – in fact, he had a stable family and even financial stability – and unlike terrence, he also had something magical about him, something deeply soulful.

  mia sat straighter in her chair now. she saw the meal coming from across the room, it was cheese soufflé that she’d ordered without appetite, but she felt like she could eat two servings of it now. she was happy, she was with ethan.

  he cleared his hands from the table so that the food could be put down and the two of them ate, and talked. and later when the empty plates had been taken away and ethan had paid the bill, the waiter opened the door and they walked out together into the icy night, it should have been absolute darkness, but the tiny streetlight mia had seen on their way into the restaurant still burned and lit them a perfect path back to the car.

  how well mia slept. she woke only once in the night and, when she did, she thought of the woman with the dark, dark hair and mia felt like she might suddenly gasp for breath. but then she pulled ethan’s arm around her and slid into the shape of him, and she rested, drifting off again.

  outside there was the sound of wind in the darkness, but mia slept. when she woke, she heard the whisperings of ethan as he dressed and went to work, and then she turned alone in the bed and smothered herself in the warmth his body had left.

  darkness was followed by first light, sunrise. it was 11 o’clock before mia got up. her body still felt full from the meal of the night before. she dressed quickly, rather than linger in her night clothes, something was urging her to move forward, to move on.

  could it be thoughts of the woman with the dark hair, or of ethan up on the hill watching the sky? perhaps something had happened to em, or to christian. perhaps her mother was coming home from hospital; perhaps she was cured. there was a restlessness all through mia’s body. she went downstairs to make herself a cup of tea, but found herself looking around for the letters that had arrived for ethan yesterday, as if finding them would give her peace, but they had disappeared.

  mia boiled the water, but forgot it as she moved back upstairs and noticed a box beneath a table. she leant down and saw that it was labelled in ethan’s writing: university books and notes – for storage, what was inside? mia stopped herself from opening it, but nothing could ease her restlessness.

  she looked around the room, near the window on a chair was ethan’s laptop. it was open and seemed to be turned on. she couldn’t help approaching it. what would she find? as she bent over and touched the first key, a question came onto the screen: did she want to read the latest opened file? did she? mia felt conscious that she was intruding into ethan’s world, and that was wrong, what was more – she might find something she would not want to know.

  she pressed yes. yes, she would open the latest file.

  it sprung up before her. if you care about our forest. action planned. mia knew the words well enough.

  so ethan knew about the forest and the protest, and he’d said nothing. why? was that why he was so restless? perhaps he’d made up the story about difficulties at work just as an excuse, an alibi, yes, now mia understood why he hadn’t talked to her about his involvement in the protest group – it was because he wanted to protect her, that was it. he didn’t want her getting involved, being endangered in some way, especially as a visitor to the country, she might have her american visa cancelled, she might be deported and never allowed back. he would not allow that to happen to her. no, he wanted to keep her safe, he wanted to keep her near him.

  for a moment, mia closed her eyes and let herself imagine that he would be broken-hearted if she were to leave.

  she opened her eyes again, there, in front of her at the bottom of the page was a web address, a link, she hadn’t seen that on the bottom of her own flyer. she clicked on it.

  too precious to lose, it said. and below the heading were photographs of a wolf, a lynx, a snowshoe hare, and then a caribou, a boreal owl and last was a deer – a fawn still wearing its child spots. mia stopped, each individual animal was precious and unrepeatable in the universe, each one stared out at her: beautiful and vulnerable.

  stand up for those who can’t stand up for themselves, it said under the photos. save our forest.

  she stretched out her hand to the image of the deer and although her fingers only touched glass, mia felt as sad as if she had touched the creature’s fur.

  she felt as she had in the library at the meeting. it was the feeling she had tried to describe to ethan the night before – being in a place where, although there was so much to fear, there was nothing to fear.

  he had laughed, perhaps to distract them both, but mia was back in that feeling now. disarmed, alone. wide awake.

  what could it be but a kind of truth?

  she felt like crying. she thought of em, who she had not seen for two nights and nearly two days, but who had not left her consciousness, not for a moment.

  what was it about family – about her family – that kept her returning?

  mia went back downstairs and picked up the telephone near the window, she turned her back to the glass, dialled, and then she waited.

  one second, two …

  if em didn’t answer the phone within ten seconds she would hang up.

  seven, eight …

  there was a sudden silence.

  ‘hello.’

  it was terrence.

  ‘hello,’ he said.

  mia wavered, she hung up.

  she felt stranded, cut off from em in a whole new way. it was different from the gap christian had made between them, different from geographical distance and even different from those distant emotional places they each retreated to away from their mother. something separated them and, for an awful moment, mia feared the space could not be bridged.

  she turned to the window and touched her palm against its glass. snow, there it was, falling soft and faint, but unmistakable – the first snow.

  this was the beginning of winter, or so mia had heard.

  not officially, of course, not on a calendar or in the files of the meteorology society, but in the hearts of the local people, and of the animals too. the first snowfall.

  she watched the soft powder drift from the sky and would have stayed lost in its slow descent if she had not been startled by the loud sound behind her. she jumped. it was the telephone, stark and harsh, ringing out.

  who could it be? it was probably ethan, checking to see that mia was okay, ringing to see if there was anything she needed on his way home from work later. yes, that was it.

  mia relaxed. she picked up the phone. ‘hello.’

  ‘mia?’

  it was a woman’s voice, it was em.

  ‘em.’

  the line was quiet.

  em and mia stayed like that, silent at each end, and then mia spoke. ‘em, i was thinking about you. i wanted to talk to you and … now you’ve called me first.’

  ‘i pressed return on the phone,’ em said. ‘you called a few minutes ago.’

  ‘yes, yes i did,’ mia said, as if she’d just remembered. ‘i did call you first.’

  ‘and i’m glad you did,�
� em said. ‘i’m glad, mia. thanks.’

  mia felt the distance between them vanish, she felt close again to em, forgiven.

  ‘it seems ages,’ mia said. ‘the last few days …’

  ‘yes. when are you coming back, mia? when are you coming home?’

  ‘i don’t know,’ mia said. ‘i’m not sure.’

  there was silence again until mia asked, ‘how’s christian? has he seen the snow?’

  ‘he’s fine, he hasn’t seen the snow yet, he’s still sleeping.’

  mia felt herself deflate then as though she’d wished for something impossible.

  but why was it impossible? she wondered. why was she always curbing her enthusiasms around em, feeling that the most wonderful things you could wish for had to be watered down, circumscribed?

  ‘em,’ she said. ‘you know why i called earlier? what made me call?’ she didn’t wait for em to answer.

  ‘it was the deer, em, and the owl, the tiny sparrow.’

  ‘what?’

  ‘the forest, em. it’s …’

  ‘mia … we talked about that.’

  ‘no, we didn’t. not really.’

  ‘i’ve told you, mia. i really don’t think you should get involved in this.’

  ‘em, we are involved, all of us – you, me, christian.’

  ‘christian?’

  ‘yes. he’s as much a part of the forest as the lynx and the deer, and every bit of snow that falls, and they’re as much a part of him.’

  ‘mia …’

  ‘what?’

  ‘we can’t stop it. alaxoil will build their pipeline. that’s the way it is.’

  ‘but you think it’s wrong and in your heart you know it’s wrong, we have to try to stop them …’

  ‘mia, it doesn’t matter.’

  ‘what doesn’t matter?’

  ‘it doesn’t matter what my heart says.’

  mia had no answer and there was silence, it was em who broke the silence.

  ‘there is another reason i called,’ em said. ‘last night our mother rang. she asked for you. she’s going home from hospital.’

  her mother. hospital. home. mia heard the words as separate moments that she would take time to fit together. what did any of it mean? it was as though she were standing right there in the forest; she saw everything differently from how she had before. she felt it differently: her mother, her mother’s illness, her mother’s life.

  for the first time ever, mia felt the sadness of her mother’s problems without running from them.

  ‘i’ll ring her,’ mia said to em. ‘i’ll call her from here.’

  em answered, but she seemed a long way off.

  ‘okay,’ she said. ‘i’ll leave it with you.’

  and that was how their conversation ended. mia put the phone down and she turned to the window, snow fell softly, just as it had before, falling softly and yet without pattern or control – simply drifting in a beautiful descent.

  mia would call her mother, she would. later she would find the number and she would ring the hospital and she would speak to her mother. no, she would not speak, not exactly. she would listen, that’s what she’d do. she would sit without going anywhere, and she would listen.

  what was it she might hear?

  it’s not much of a life, anyway, is it? that’s something her mother had said when the doctor had warned her that her drinking could lead to her death. mia had been sitting just outside the door of the doctor’s room and she had heard that.

  they’d be better off without me, was something else her mother had said. this time there was no doctor, only twelve-year-old mia hiding behind the lounge-room curtain where she’d scurried when she heard her mother coming into the room, it was afternoon and her mother smelt of wine. mia heard her crying.

  they were words and you could say they spoke of guilt and anger and sadness and frustration. but what else might mia hear if she really listened? what might she hear beneath the words? what might she hear if she listened as if she were quiet and alone, as if she were inside the forest?

  she looked at the window again, but this time she didn’t see through it. she saw her own eyes reflected in the glass and it struck her – they were not just her eyes or christian’s. they were the eyes of her mother.

  she stared back at herself.

  and she knew that later she would call her mother.

  and she knew something else: she would speak to ethan about her mother, about herself, about everything, and he would understand. she was sure.

  she folded herself now, like a little bird, and lay on her side by the window on the wooden floor of ethan’s home. it was warm there, heated, and she thought she would just close her eyes and rest. she did not expect to sleep, not in the way she did. hours passed and she stayed still and snug. winter moved outside.

  the snow passed and darkness came. ethan must have arrived home quietly. when mia woke, he was kneeling beside her saying her name.

  ‘mia,’ he said. ‘mia, you’ve been asleep so long.’

  she blinked as if seeing him for the first time. ‘yes, yes, i have. i didn’t realise …’

  she looked around at the house, at ethan, at the place where she now lay half-raised on one elbow. but she didn’t say what it was she didn’t realise, she didn’t say anything more.

  it really was as if she were awakening from somewhere deep inside her and then drifting down again, holding onto her desired and dreamed reality.

  ethan put his hand out to lift her up from the floor, and she let him take her hand. she twisted herself up.

  ‘i thought i’d lost you,’ he said. ‘i came home and i didn’t know where you were – and then i saw you there, so peaceful, and i let you sleep. i watched you.’

  she was surprised by what he said, by the tone of it more than the actual words. he was soft and gentle in a way she hadn’t felt him to be since she’d come to stay in his house. he had been distracted until now, that was it – something had been calling him away from her like a little whisper.

  ‘i’ve been thinking about my mother,’ she said. she knew now was the time to talk about things that mattered.

  he nodded, then led her to the table. they sat down.

  ‘she’s been sick a long time,’ mia said.

  he waited.

  ‘a long time, sometimes she’s been in hospital and sometimes she hasn’t, but it’s always been with her.’

  ‘what has?’ ethan said. ‘the illness?’

  ‘is it an illness? i don’t know.’

  ‘what do you mean?’

  ‘it’s more like an unwillingness to live with things the way they are. a need to get away from an awful place of discomfort.’

  he looked at her.

  ‘she’s going home from hospital,’ mia said. ‘em called me today.’

  ‘i guess that means you’re thinking of returning home to australia,’ he said, but didn’t wait for an answer.

  ‘i made a decision today, mia.’

  it must have been the time for decisions as mia felt herself close to making one as well.

  ‘mia,’ he said. ‘i’m sorry if i’ve been a bit distant the last few days.’

  she felt frightened and almost wished he wouldn’t continue, but another part of her was curious – too curious – to know what he was trying to say.

  ‘i mean i’ve been … well, it’s because i’ve been trying to make a choice, to choose between two things that each matter to me. i mean, each one has its own …’ he hesitated, ‘attractions.’

  ‘attractions?’

  ‘yes. ah, maybe that’s not the right way to put it. how do you say when you want both things?’

  ‘what things are you talking about?’

  she crossed her arms, feeling a need to protect herself.

  ‘i’ve been really stressed,’ he said, as if he hadn’t heard her. ‘one way is special, but it feels like it belongs to a part of me that’s no longer … realistic and i have to let go, and the other, wel
l, the other has its own obvious reward and i know it’s what my family want.’

  ‘what are you talking about?’ mia said. she was now impatient.

  ‘i’ve been thinking of leaving.’

  ‘leaving?’ she felt herself drop. it was as if she had fallen from a great, great height.

  ‘yes. it’s just … not working anymore.’

  she was silent, numbed.

  ‘i mean, maybe i’m just over it. i need to move on.’

  ‘over it?’

  ‘yeah, i told you there was some stuff going on there, and i just feel pulled in two directions.’

  ‘stuff going on where?’

  ‘at work.’

  ‘at work? you’re talking about work?’

  ‘yeah. i’m talking about work.’

  ‘ah.’ she let out a breath, a deep, deep breath, ‘so … work …’ she said. ‘what’s been happening with work?’

  she asked the question, but she didn’t really listen to the answer. she felt relieved, and something beyond relief, a kind of hope, a kind of gladness. happiness, his work, her family – they were the kind of serious and everyday things that couples discussed. maybe they really were a couple.

  ‘mia, would you think about staying in alaska?’

  she came back to the room then. she returned from her thoughts.

  ‘would you consider it?’

  he was asking her if she would stay. ethan was asking her if she would stay here with him, in alaska.

  what would she answer? isn’t this what she’d always wanted? ever since she’d seen him in the forest, the first time they’d met, she’d thought how special he was, how he could be fitted perfectly into the narrative of her life, it was a version of her mother’s story – the escape from loneliness via a lover – and of em’s, but it was better, far better. ethan was like a dream. he was connected to her by something deep inside the two of them. she knew it. don’t forget the deer, he had said. she thought of that now. yes, what she and ethan had was special. even if there was the shadow of someone else – she had not forgotten the woman with the dark hair. but she could push that thought away. she could find a way around it. what mattered was that there was a special bond between them and that he had asked her to stay.