Riptides

by Kirsten Alexander

  ‘You bastard.’ I spit the word at him.

  He jerks his head back in surprise.

  While he’s been wherever he’s been, I’ve been trapped with my rage in this house, going through each domestic task as if I were a robot, thinking about Mark and Lou, growing angrier, more hurt, more brittle. I’ve crafted a speech about betrayal and hypocrisy and the wounds he’s inflicted. I’d forgotten that he would be thinking about the car crash. That conversation feels a lifetime ago.

  ‘Uh.’ He takes a step backwards. ‘Don’t know what that’s for but I can see you’re in no state to have a rational discussion so I’m going to bed.’

  ‘You think you’re going to sleep here? Lie in our bed like nothing happened?’ I stand up and grab his arm, as much for balance as to stop him leaving the room. ‘How could you?’

  ‘How could I? You’re the one who killed a woman then lied to me.’

  We face one another in the dark. I let go of his arm. I am barefoot and small, and feel like a child in the presence of a powerful adult. ‘Lou,’ I say quietly. Even in this dim light I see the change in his expression as he becomes aware of what I’m saying.

  ‘Abby,’ he whispers.

  ‘You had an affair.’ I feel myself sway.

  ‘It wasn’t like that.’

  ‘You’re married, she’s married. That’s an affair.’

  He considers for a moment, then regains his confidence. ‘Well, what did you expect? You turn into a plank of wood whenever I touch you. Don’t seem interested in me at all.’ He waits. ‘Is that because of the car crash, the stress?’ he says. ‘Or – I don’t know. How much rejection did you think I could take, Abby?’

  I stand still, separate from the world and all that’s in it. I want to ask when and where and for exactly how long. And does he love her. And was she the first.

  ‘Okay, well, I’ll go then.’ His face makes it clear he believes himself to be the victim in this scenario, cast out of his home, misunderstood by his mad harpy of a wife.

  There is no law of motion that allows for things to stay the same, silent and motionless, at peace. I would like that, for a while at least. To wake to stasis, a permanent sunrise, have the raindrops hugged in white clouds – for life to stay utterly immobile until I can make sense of it.

  As if on cue, the still night is shattered by what I first think is a volley of gunshots and backfiring cars. I look over Mark’s shoulder and see the black sky spot with puffs of sparkling light, then quick rockets shooting up, zigzagging, bursting open, white at first and then pink, green. The explosions grow in number and speed until the sky is hysterical with them and it suddenly seems so funny that someone is flinging all this nonsense up into the air, faster and faster, until it just stops. And when the noise abates and the sky is decorated only with pale grey squiggles of smoke, I realise I’m laughing. And that Mark has left.

  The next morning, I hear a knock at the front door.

  Woof runs down the stairs, barking excitedly. I open the door even though I recognise the knock.

  Lou and I are wearing the same dress. I hate her afresh for the fact I’ll now think of her whenever I pull this dress off its hanger. I will never again pull this dress off the hanger. Woof leaps forward in enthusiastic greeting.

  ‘We match.’ She smiles awkwardly, bends down to stroke Woof’s head. I stand on the threshold with my hand on the door. ‘Except one of us is a dumb bitch.’

  The sun shines onto one side of her face. Worry wrinkles cut into her forehead. I reach forward and grab Woof by the flea collar, pull him back to me.

  ‘Me. I’m the bitch. Abby, I’m sorry. I swear, I’ll make this up to you. I’ll –’

  ‘Is that it? I have things to do.’

  I drag Woof closer, point him towards the stairs and pat him on the rear. He ignores me, stands by my side. I step back so I can close the door.

  ‘Wait, I have something for you. A first peace offering.’ She picks up a thick wooden mask she’s placed against the doorframe. It’s the length of her torso, stained a dark brown, and topped with a shock of coarse black hair. The gawping oval mouth is circled with red, and the cowrie-shell eyes are ringed by thick stripes of yellow and blue. It’s the face of a morning-after drag queen as drawn by a child, or Munch’s scream made solid.

  ‘That’s hideous. Why would you bring me that?’

  She’s surprised. ‘I thought you loved the masks. You always say such nice things about them.’

  ‘I don’t want a mask.’

  ‘Andrew says this is a good one.’

  ‘So he doesn’t know you’ve been sleeping with my husband?’

  ‘He does. We’re not speaking. He’s letting his knuckles do the talking.’ She has a large bruise on her upper arm.

  ‘Don’t ask me to feel sorry for you.’

  She holds the mask out to me. ‘Please take it. You might like nailing my head to your wall.’

  I put the mask on the floor behind me. I’d drop it but it would crack the tiles. ‘I’ll enjoy setting it on fire at some point.’

  Woof circles the mask, sniffing and growling.

  Lou cries in large, loud sobs. ‘I’m sorry, so sorry. I was wrong, such a bad friend.’

  ‘Is that what you’re going to call it? Bad friendship?’

  She turns her palms up, lifts her shoulders, wordlessly pleading. Her nose runs, leaking clear thick fluid that touches her lip. I have a tissue in my pocket.

  ‘How long were you a bad friend for? Were you a bad friend in my house? I mean, aside from the day of the flood when I risked my life to carry your garbage here to safety, fed and clothed your children? Were you being a bad friend and fucking my husband while I cooked your children’s dinner? Or after we spent a day together at the pool? Were you one of his million trips to the hardware store or work?’

  She uses her forefinger to wipe her lip. ‘Abby, can you forgive me? I’ll do whatever it takes.’

  ‘Go away.’ I close the door on her. Barely contained behind my rage are the feelings I don’t want to make public – hurt and humiliation and crushing fear. There was no one in the world watching my back except for Mark and Lou, and now . . . Now, neither. And in my heart, I think I knew. I both knew and didn’t know.

  Woof is pawing the mouth of the mask, sniffing at it, pulling back to bark at it. He looks up at me to see if this is what’s required. I kick the mask over to the wall, scratching the floor tiles. ‘All yours.’

  PART TWO

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

  Friday 21 February 1975

  Abby

  I spread my towel on the wooden floor of the church hall. The yoga instructor, wearing a long-sleeved leotard, pale orange, offers me a smile of acknowledgement as she pads barefoot around the room. A fifty-something woman with a grey ponytail moves to the right to make more space for me. Sun beams in a bright slant through the stained-glass windows but the open front doors invite in a breeze so the morning’s heat is lifted to the rafters, to rest with a pair of swallows sitting in silence above us. The room is painted white except for the bare floorboards. It smells of incense, with notes of shampoo, warm skin and dust.

  I’ve dropped the kids off: two at kindy, one at school. I lie on my back as I see the dozen others are doing and feel my shoulders relax towards the floor. Sarah, Petey and Joanne are safe and cared for, and I am free. My own schooling starts Monday and I’ll use this moment of unowned time to consider how to make this year better than the last, to force positive change. I will exercise, clean and organise.

  I tell myself that for this one hour I won’t weep when I picture my husband and best friend naked together. I’ll block that image. I will not obsess about whether I can forgive my husband, or whether my husband and father will ever forgive me. I won’t try to think of fresh ways to further explain myself or how I can make amends. Or who exactly is owed amends. I won’t think about Skye’s little boy. I’ll push down my anger that Charlie still doesn’t seem as guilty as he should be, as contr
ite, or committed to healing his rift with Dad. None of this. I will banish this writhing, poisonous viper pit from my mind.

  Of course, my brain fights relaxation, accustomed to encouraging anxiety to flare up as soon as I’m horizontal. I tell myself I’ll allow five minutes of my punishing self-talk and then I will relax into the class. So: I need to talk to Mark, and soon, to have one conversation that doesn’t immediately disintegrate into yelling and insults, our ping-pong of blame, so I can beg him to drop his investigations into the commune. Sergeant Doyle thinks this conversation has already happened, even praised my good sense, and I didn’t correct him. The truth is that the universe offered me a reprieve when Mark flew to Alice Springs one day after he moved out of our house. He’ll be there for another week, investigating something about the American military base at Pine Gap. The previous Four Corners reporter who was covering the story is under arrest for trying to get inside the facility. Mark is enraged there’s a part of Australia no Australian is allowed into: ‘Satellites, radars. Do you know that more than six hundred people work at that base and our government has no idea – none – about what’s going on out there.’ He said that much when he told me he’d be gone a while, so consumed with the story it wouldn’t have mattered who was on the other end of the phone. This assignment should fill me with dread but I’m confident in Mark’s ability to keep himself safe, and glad he’s immersed in a meaty story. Also, bastard. I’m snapped away from my thoughts by the yoga teacher, who welcomes us to her class.

  We stand at the back of our towels with our hands in prayer position then swoop our arms up. The woman on the phone said this was a beginners’ yoga class and perfect for my tightly wound body, but the other students seem to know what to do and are able to move from one pose to the next with ease. I am, admittedly, making it harder on myself by second-guessing the instructor. ‘Salute’ sounds aggressive to my ear. And shouldn’t we be doing this outside where we can see the sun? My body resists the chest-expansion exercises, finding comfort in curling my shoulders in. Bending down to touch my toes feels claustrophobic and brings on a rush of panic. I roll up faster than anyone else. I count the seconds when we hold a position, antsy to move.

  The instructor must see the tension radiating off me and strokes my back as I try a downward dog pose. Dog, cat, frog, camel, cow. Foreign words spoken as though I should understand them. More pain than I’d anticipated. I’m not unfit but evidently I’m inflexible, in every way. The instructor’s hand is warm through my t-shirt. I try to relax, not for myself but because I know this is what she wants me to do.

  By the end of the class I’ve worked myself into a tangle of annoyance and self-loathing, and want nothing more than to be home. I shouldn’t have come. But when I think we’re about to be released, the instructor walks around the room passing out thick cushions to make us comfortable for our seated meditation.

  Once we’ve arranged ourselves onto the cushions, the room becomes silent. The instructor, cross-legged in front of her altar – a low square table covered in Indian cloth, topped with a Buddha statue, incense, a small vase of frangipanis, a scattering of shells, a lit candle – asks us to gaze with soft eyes on the flame and become aware of our breath. ‘Don’t try to control it, simply observe. Feel the rise and fall of your stomach, the release that comes with each exhale.’ My ankles push into my towel. I hear my heartbeat over my breath. I watch the flame and think of the altar we make to my mother each year, and realise I don’t want to do that anymore. I’ve turned what started as a moment of reflection into a furtive chore to rush through before getting on with Christmas. I’ll tell Charlie I want to try a new way to remember our mother, as she was before she got sick. And I’d like to include the children. The decision to drop our shrine-building makes me feel more relaxed than I have since I walked into this hall. My shoulders ease down.

  Out of nowhere, I remember Charlie saying ‘karma’ when I was trying to explain the laws of motion. Perhaps action and reaction and cause and effect are not that different.

  ‘Breathe in, breathe out.’ The instructor advises us to find peace in the truth of this moment. I don’t know what that means. But the promise of peace, that word used on her poster, is what drew me to this class so I should at least try to experience it. ‘Try not to think about the past or the future, or the stories you tell yourself about your life, but instead think about what is happening in this moment. Be here, now. Be willing to truly feel, in all its glorious expansiveness, everything that exists in this breath, and in the next breath.’ The idea of not allowing my mind to think about the past or future is intriguing but bewildering. I’m committed to keeping the bad thoughts at bay, and dropping my mind into a lower gear, but to corral my mind into one moment seems incredibly limiting, the opposite of expansive.

  ‘Let go,’ the instructor whispers, as if reading my thoughts.

  We sit in silence until she says: ‘A poem.’ Which we all take as an invitation to resettle our bodies.

  ‘Let us consider the words of Zen poet Ryōkan as we begin our brief look into the three paths to peace.’

  How strange that the Western scientist and Eastern seer divide their truths into threes: did they artificially construct three laws and three paths, or is that a division preferred by nature that they merely put into words? Surely life is scrappier, messier than their three-part theories would have it.

  ‘To find truth, drift east and west, come and go, entrusting yourself to the waves.’ The instructor looks directly at me and suggests we close our eyes. ‘To find happiness and peace in our lives, to feel genuine contentment, first we must know the truth of ourselves and the moment, and pay close attention to what is inside us; second, we must encourage kind and loving relationships with those around us; and third, we must relax with true awareness in the waves.’ She pauses. ‘This last one can meet resistance from those of us more comfortable trying to control than to observe. But a wise mind entrusts itself to the waves, and is able to remain calm even in chaos, knowing that life is never still, and that we are a part of that perpetual movement and change. Even as you sit here your heart pumps, your blood flows, your lungs empty and fill. And outside, flowers bloom, a bird breaks out of its shell, another may lie down to die. The earth moves around the sun. We don’t control any of this. We need only to be aware of it, fully awake to everything around us, both outside and inside our bodies. Live and love, entrusting ourselves to the waves.

  ‘Take a moment now to visualise yourself floating in an endless sea. Be at ease in the calm water, then observe the waves as they rise to swell and crash around you, feel the push and pull of the water and know that life is not meant to be still, that you are part of a vast and ever-changing ocean. Entrust yourselves to the waves.’ She pauses again. ‘For our last few moments, come into your body and simply breathe.’

  And though I am sitting still and my eyes are closed, inside I am like a cartoon character who has thrust a finger into a live power point and become electrified. I’ve never thought about life in this way. My father taught me the value of pragmatism, practicality, the rigid inevitability of forward motion, the pointlessness of introspection or resisting what is established. Move on, move forward, fix and maintain. Control.

  But what I hear now is that life’s movement is something more organic than that, messier, more beautiful. The world and everything in it rises and falls and changes and grows, even as I sit and breathe. And I can’t control that. And I am only responsible for some of what I can control. And it is possible to feel at peace knowing that.

  This, at least, is how I understand her words: I can control what I eat for breakfast, how many hours I study, how I vote, what I say. I can exercise. I can show up again for this class. But I cannot make my brother grow up, my father answer the phone or my husband come home and love me. I can keep my hands on the wheel today, but I cannot undo Skye’s death. I cannot rewrite the past or be certain about the future. But I can choose to fully be in this moment of this life. A though
t that fills me with fear and delight.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

  Monday 24 February 1975

  Abby

  With only one year of uni under my belt – six years ago – I feel like a foreigner setting foot on campus. The students I pass on the footpath that leads to the Great Court are younger than me, and cooler. For all my attention to books and stationery, the logistics of leaving and returning to my home, I hadn’t thought enough about how I should dress. In my defence, I suspect neither the girl with the perfect flicks, zigzag-striped skirt, Levi’s t-shirt and clogs nor the boy with the blond surf hair, maroon flares and thongs had to wrangle three kids out of the house before coming here, or is thinking about whether their husband is about to file for a divorce. And I’m certain they aren’t starting their year with an undeclared crime in their past. As I think this, I catch a waft of dope, watch the guy walking in front of me slip one hand into the back jeans pocket of the man he’s with. So, maybe other people aren’t living by the letter of the law, but I’d bet none of them wakes in the night remembering the time they left a dead woman in the dirt.

  Skye’s death hangs over me like a black cloud. I try to take solace in this moment, my new beginning. Neither Dad nor Mark will tell the police what they know. And we’ve had no more calls from Roberts or Doyle. I’ll talk to Mark the first day he’s back in Brisbane, to make sure he leaves the commune story alone. While he’s still in Alice, and I have no immediate fires to put out, I can focus on being a single-mother student. I can study law.

  I hitch my denim book bag high on my shoulder and cross a road lined with parked Minis, Beetles, Holdens. Holden Premiers. An AC/DC song blares out an open car window. I walk through an archway into the court, still a work in progress it seems from the construction equipment and scaffolding, where imposing sandstone buildings – pink and cream and biscuit coloured – circle a large swathe of grass spotted with saplings.