Deep Water

by Sarah Epstein

  He walks away from me. He gets all the way to the exit doors before doubling back. As he strides towards the card rack, I find myself shrinking away from him. Mason notices and his lips part as though he’s offended.

  ‘You know what?’ he says, his voice unsteady. ‘I don’t even know who I am. So how the hell do you?’

  His words ring out across the post office and everybody turns to stare.

  ‘Excuse me, young man,’ says the postal worker behind the counter. ‘You can’t be raising your voice like that. I’m going to have to ask you to leave.’

  Mason ignores her, his eyes locked on my face. He scowls at whatever he sees there, then takes off again towards the exit. As the glass doors open for him, he shoots me one last look over his shoulder.

  ‘Do me a favour,’ he says. ‘Tell your old man to back off and stop talking to my mother.’

  Seven weeks before the storm

  21 NOVEMBER 2018, 16:05

  Missy: Hey! How’s it going? Any luck finding your dad?

  Henry: Not yet. Don’t think he’s on Facebook after all. I’ve tried to google him.

  Missy: What’s his job?

  Henry: Dunno. Can’t exactly ask my mum either.

  Missy: What about your brother?

  Henry: He never wants to talk about my dad. He says the only way to get out of here is to do it on your own.

  Missy: You think he’s planning to leave?

  Henry: Mason?

  Missy: Would he tell you?

  Henry: Probably not. He isn’t happy though.

  Missy: What do you mean?

  Henry: Our mum is hard to live with.

  Missy: It could be other things too. Stuff he doesn’t talk about.

  Has he been acting differently?

  Henry: He’s always in a bad mood.

  Missy: You think he’s hiding something?

  Henry: Why so many questions about my brother?

  Missy: Sorry, we got sidetracked. If you find your dad will you leave?

  Henry: I wanna visit him in Sydney first. See what he’s like.

  Missy: Would your mother let you go?

  Henry: No way.

  Missy: Then how will you do it?

  Henry: I’ll have to sneak out. She can’t stop me if I’m already gone.

  Now

  I’ve never been inside a police station before. It reminds me of a medical centre’s waiting room, only without the magazines and daytime TV. Grey-tiled floor, white walls, a row of fixed vinyl chairs along one side and a large counter running the full width of the reception area. It’s currently deserted; just me, a lone table of pamphlets and the humming ceiling vent.

  Perhaps if I hadn’t seen Mason in the post office, I might have put this off for a little while longer. I might have tried to find some kind of workaround that didn’t involve having to speak to my mother’s ex-lover. But Mason’s passport application has unsettled me and I now feel a sense of urgency I can’t quite put my finger on. One Weaver brother is missing, another is about to leave town. It feels like any answers will disappear along with him.

  There are two empty chairs behind the counter, and a much larger room with desks and computers behind a plate glass window. A young female officer is tapping at a computer keyboard, her red hair pulled into a sensible ponytail. She notices me and takes a sip from her coffee mug as she rolls her swivel chair out to stand, smoothing her pants as she makes her way over to the door leading out to the reception counter.

  Just as she’s about to come through, Sergeant Doherty approaches her with some papers in his hand. They have a short conversation I’m unable to hear, and the female officer gestures in my general direction. Doherty blinks as though he’s surprised, then says a few words to the other officer, who returns to her desk. Doherty disappears through a doorway.

  What am I supposed to do now? Take a number? Is it normal protocol to leave people waiting when they come into a police station? I lean awkwardly against the counter, wondering what Doherty said to the other officer to make her ignore me.

  A security door opens on my right.

  ‘Chloe?’ says Doherty, stepping into the waiting room. The heavy door automatically clunks shut behind him. ‘Can I help you with something?’

  ‘Oh, I—’ I glance at the female officer through the glass, then at the automatic doors that lead out to the street. I guess this is as private as it’s going to get. ‘Um, I have something I need to show you.’ I reach into my bag and pull out the postcard.

  Doherty’s eyes skim over it briefly and he frowns. With his angular nose and sharp cheekbones, I’ve always thought he looks young and boyish. Up close, though, I see the creases in his skin and the way his upper eyelids sag. His broad shoulders and fitted uniform give the impression he’s capable and athletic, but dark circles under his eyes suggest exhaustion. It occurs to me I’ve only ever seen him smile a handful of times, and that was during the period he was secretly seeing my mother.

  ‘When did you receive this?’ he says.

  ‘I just found it in our PO Box.’

  There’s something stern in his regard. ‘Has Henry been in touch with you prior to this?’

  ‘What? No. Don’t you think I would have told you?’

  He doesn’t answer, instead flipping the postcard over to read it again. ‘So you haven’t received any phone calls or text messages from him?’

  ‘Not at all. This is the first I’ve heard from him. Except …’ I sigh, gesturing limply at the postcard. ‘I’m not sure that’s really from him at all. It doesn’t look like Henry’s handwriting.’

  I hold my breath and wonder if he’ll ask for proof. Henry’s note feels like it’s burning a hole in my bag.

  ‘Hmm,’ is all Doherty says. He doesn’t seem shocked or surprised.

  ‘You don’t think Henry sent it either,’ I say.

  ‘I don’t know who sent it, and it’s not exactly easy for us to find out.’

  ‘Can’t you trace it somehow?’

  Doherty tilts his head. ‘I can’t interview every shop owner selling postcards of Manly Beach on the off-chance they’ll remember the person who bought it,’ he says. His voice isn’t unkind but it still feels like he’s talking down to me. ‘And there will be dozens of post boxes in that area that thousands of people use every day, most of which won’t be covered by the CCTV system. Even if there was CCTV, how do we know who was mailing a postcard when we trawl through hours and hours of video footage? If it’s not Henry’s handwriting, who are we even searching for?’

  He’s right of course, as much as I hate to admit it. ‘I just thought it could be a lead.’

  ‘Let me take a photocopy of each side and we’ll add it to Henry’s file,’ he says. He leaves me standing at the reception desk while he punches a code into the panel beside the security door. It disarms and he steps through it. The female officer glances up from her computer in the back room, and for some reason I feel like a little kid being humoured. If the postcard was an important clue, Doherty would ask to hang onto it.

  He returns after a few minutes. ‘Don’t get too hung up on this,’ he says. ‘We’ll look into it as much as we can, but it’s most likely a troll who’s been following the Facebook page, waiting to see if you’ll post something about the postcard on there.’

  ‘A troll who knows my name?’ I say. ‘And the motel’s address?’

  ‘Maybe they saw you were admin of the page and clicked through to your personal profile. Do you have anything about the motel on your private page?’

  ‘Maybe.’ I narrow my eyes. ‘How do you know I’m admin of Henry’s page?’

  ‘It’s my job to know things.’ He hands back the postcard, holding onto it for a second to keep my attention. ‘I know how much you want to find your friend. I think it’s admirable how you’ve been putting up posters all over Sydney.’

  I stare at him for a beat or two, suspicion lacing my thoughts.

  Is Doherty still in touch with my mother?

 
‘Maybe revisit your privacy settings,’ he says, heading back towards the security door. ‘And if you receive another postcard, let me know.’

  * * *

  I spend the rest of the afternoon cleaning our unit, which gives me the opportunity to work off some pent-up frustration. The more I think about my conversation with Doherty, the more annoyed I become. It took a lot for me to front up at the police station, only to be fobbed off. The worst part is, I feel like a traitor to my dad for being civil with Doherty at all.

  Once I’ve aggressively scrubbed the shower, I move on to the vacuuming. I check Luisa’s not on the phone before dragging the vacuum cleaner down the hallway and through the door that separates our residence from the motel office. With drooping pot plants and a faded couch, it’s pretty drab for a reception area, made significantly more cheery by Luisa’s hibiscus-patterned shirt and matching scrunchie. She also brought a large bunch of orange chrysanthemums with her this morning, gifted to her by the florist on the ground floor of her building.

  As I plug the vacuum cleaner into the power point, Luisa glances up from the computer. She throws her hands in the air, gold bangles jangling together at her wrists.

  ‘It’s not working again,’ she says. ‘Now I’ll be on the phone with tech support for an hour.’

  I straighten up. ‘Anything I can help with?’

  ‘Não, querida. It’s okay. Just this new booking software.’ She mutters something under her breath in Portuguese.

  ‘It’s giving you some trouble?’

  She spins around in her swivel chair to face me, as though grateful for the break. ‘The first two weeks? It works fine. Now the admin screen ices up and we get nowhere.’

  I stare at her in confusion for a moment. ‘Oh, it freezes?’

  ‘Freezes! Yes! David and I were here till one o’clock in the morning last week trying to fix it.’ She stands and stretches, reaching for a ceramic mug covered in bright yellow stars. ‘I’m going to need more coffee if I have to talk to the tech man. You can cover the phones?’

  She trots off towards our residence and it occurs to me how personal it is, the way we leave the door unlocked so Luisa can come and go as she pleases. She must use our kitchen and bathroom several times a day, as though she lives here too. However, she did just reveal why she was here so late on Thursday night, and I feel kind of silly for assuming she stayed over. I mean, we’re talking about my father here – he hasn’t asked anyone on a date since before he was married. If he had any moves back then, I seriously doubt he can remember them.

  I drag the vacuum around every inch of the reception area, switching it off every now and then to listen out for the phone. Getting right under the old couch with the cleaning head, I hear all sorts of dirt and grit shoot up the metal rod, possibly some tiny shards of glass that were missed when cleaning up the broken window. The rod clangs into a solid object and the cleaning head catches behind something heavy. Crouching on all fours, I flip up the fabric sofa cover and inspect the space beneath. A softball-sized rock is tucked under there, like a wombat in a burrow.

  It must be what Mason lobbed through the window. I suspect there’s a matching indent in the soil of the garden bed outside. I’m reminded of a documentary we watched last year for a forensics course at school that showed footage of a murderer’s interrogation. The guilty man, who had lied constantly throughout the interview, was confronted with the rock he’d used to bludgeon his victim. The guilt he felt was so strong he couldn’t bear to look at it, as if it made him feel physically ill, and this is what finally elicited a confession. In the detective’s piece to camera he referred to every guilty person having their ‘rock’, something from the crime scene they struggle to have in their presence.

  How would Mason feel if I presented him with this? Would he show remorse? Would he be able to look at it? Instead of returning the rock to the garden bed, I carry it over to Room Three where Dad is painting. I want him to explain exactly what happened last Thursday night, and why Mason asked me to tell Dad to back off. As with everything at the moment, I feel like I only have half the story.

  ‘Hey Dad,’ I say, stepping into the room among the drop-sheeted furniture. The air is thick with paint fumes and the smell of recently laid carpet. ‘Look what I found.’

  I place the rock on the small breakfast table by the window. Dad glances up from where he’s cutting in around the bathroom door.

  ‘Ah,’ he says, returning to his painting. ‘So that’s what did the job.’

  ‘Why did Mason throw it through the window?’ I ask. ‘You and Luisa were working late, so he must have seen you both inside the office.’

  ‘He did,’ Dad agrees, gliding his brush in a neat vertical line beside the doorframe. ‘Wish Luisa hadn’t been there, though. Scared her half to death.’

  ‘And?’

  ‘He was drunk and unhappy, chook. Not sure what you want me to say.’

  ‘Why was he unhappy?’

  ‘Well,’ he says, ‘only Mason can answer that.’

  I shove a corner of the plastic drop sheet aside so I can sit on the bed. ‘Why are you protecting him? You didn’t tell Sergeant Doherty.’

  Dad moves to the other side of the bathroom door and lowers himself to his knees with a grunt. He pauses for a moment, as though weighing something up.

  ‘I’ve told you a bit about my old man,’ he says, bending over to start painting along the skirting board. ‘Your granddad, Bill.’

  ‘Mm-hmm.’ He passed away when I was four or five and I don’t really remember him. I know Dad and his brother Paul had a difficult time growing up because their father had a bad temper. Dad never goes into much detail about it.

  ‘He was a hard bloke.’ Dad dips his brush into the tin, gently wiping off the excess. ‘He used to give us a walloping over the smallest things. Kids got smacked all the time back then, but this was more than discipline. It was like he was taking his frustrations out on us.’

  ‘God, that’s awful.’

  ‘You never really knew which side of him you were going to get,’ Dad says. ‘Worst part is, everybody thought he was a top bloke. Because he was. To them.’

  I shift on the mattress. ‘What did your mum do?’

  ‘Not much. I don’t know why. Maybe she thought he’d go even harder on us if she made a fuss.’ He shrugs like that’s a reasonable excuse, though it’s far from it.

  ‘Did anybody help you and Uncle Paul?’

  ‘We never asked,’ Dad says. ‘Didn’t think we could. Our own mother knew and she didn’t stop it, so why would anyone else?’ He shifts his position, eyes still on the job at hand. ‘It was our lot in life, we thought.’

  ‘Oh, Dad,’ I say sadly.

  He glances over. ‘Point is, I look at Mason and see myself. He has the same empty expression I had as a teenager. Like he’s worn down.’

  Through the open door I have a clear view across the forecourt to Room Fifteen. ‘Is that why you offered him the room?’

  ‘Should’ve done it sooner,’ Dad admits. ‘I’d heard a few things from Stu Macleod before Christmas about how Mason was hanging around the workshop till all hours to avoid going home. When I saw him on New Year’s Eve, I could tell the kid needed some space for whatever he was dealing with. He seemed miserable.’

  I stare into my lap, knowing I’m partly to blame. New Year’s Eve started out as such a fun night and ended so badly, leaving our circle of friends fractured. Henry’s disappearance ten days later brought us back together, but things weren’t the same as before.

  ‘What you said about not knowing which side of your father you were going to get,’ I say. ‘Henry used to say something similar about Ivy. Some days she’s okay, other days she’s in a bad mood from the moment she wakes up. Sometimes she sleeps the whole day away, and other times she smashes things in a rage. It’s why Henry used to hide out in his bedroom most of the time when she was home.’

  Dad nods slowly. ‘There’s talk around town Ivy’s been hitting the drink
again pretty hard. She’s had issues with it in the past.’

  ‘Has anyone ever spoken to her about it?’

  Dad shifts again, resting his brush on the lip of the paint tin. ‘Sally and Liv had a word to her after New Year’s Eve, but Ivy denied having a problem. It’s tricky because you’re never sure what’s going on behind closed doors.’

  ‘Mason gave me a message for you to back off and stop talking to his mother,’ I say. ‘When did you do that?’

  Dad side-eyes me, looking sheepish. ‘The day before you got here. Had a beer with Stu at the pub last week and we saw Mason getting mouthy with the staff ’cause they wouldn’t keep serving him. He was drinking alone and seemed in a bad way. We thought his mother ought to know.’

  ‘What did you say to her?’

  Dad picks up his paintbrush again and dips it in the tin. ‘I told her I think Mason’s having a rough time of it. He might need some help.’

  ‘And what did Ivy say?’

  ‘She said I should mind my own business, that she’s sick and tired of everybody giving their two cents about her family. She got pretty riled up. I’m guessing I made things worse.’

  ‘You think that’s why Mason smashed the window?’

  Dad shrugs. ‘Didn’t ask. Not going to. Just going to keep that room free—’ he nods towards the forecourt, ‘—for whenever he needs it.’

  ‘Don’t be too hard on yourself, Dad. Mason could have left that house any time he wanted.’

  ‘Could he?’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘Same reason I didn’t do a runner growing up,’ he says. ‘Couldn’t leave Paul alone with our old man.’

  ‘Well, Henry’s not here anymore,’ I point out. ‘And Mason’s eighteen. He can walk away right now.’

  ‘Not always that easy, chook.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘She’s still his mother.’

  I’m about to protest until I think about how we didn’t leave Sydney until after Granddad Bill died. Dad told me that ever since he left school his dream was to live in the country, but it wasn’t until twenty years later, after his father passed away in a south Sydney nursing home, that we actually sold the house and hit the road. It was like Dad couldn’t leave his father, compelled to stay out of some sense of duty. It seems both incredibly generous and heartbreakingly sad what a child will do for their parent despite everything that parent may have put them through.