by Tabitha Bird
My mother and father never remembered the changes all those years ago. They had memories of the Queenslander being on the block of land when they bought it. I think maybe, when the ocean changes something, like this house, it is only the Willas and children who remember the change.
At first, Sam is a bit foggy about the details of why he thinks we have always lived in this house. ‘We said it would only be for a while when we first married, just until my business got on its feet?’ Sam says this like a question. I sense his shame. ‘It’s not a good idea. I knew it wasn’t. Sorry, Willa. We can sell, knock the bloody thing down, I don’t know.’
If Sam remembered the house having transformed, he’d want to gather us up and move, take us from this strangeness. So the magic makes sure he doesn’t remember. Is the ocean protecting its own magic, by making sure I stay where it has moved me?
I rub my forehead. ‘You’re still an architect?’
He nods, shoulders slumped forwards. ‘Not a very good one, I guess. Things are still slow and we are still in this house.’
I reach for his hand and he takes mine like it’s a lifeline of hope. We have always held each other like this. Even if I could convince Sam that the house had changed and that we used to live in the city, what would he think of me? That I was unstable, an unfit mother?
Sam interrupts my thoughts. ‘I know enough about what went on in this house and I knew you didn’t want to move into it when we married, even when you promised it would be okay. We can leave. Work it out. There’s got to be somewhere we can afford.’
‘Am I still thirty-three? I won’t turn thirty-four until November first of this year?’
He looks up from the tiles. Nods.
‘And this is still the winter of 1990?’
Nods again.
‘Eli and Sebastian are still aged six and two?’
I see his worry, a sodden coat around his shoulders. The weight of it. He looks at me for any sign that I might be okay. Holds my hand tighter, droplets of bathwater running down his forearm. ‘We’ll figure everything out.’
I see the eagerness of his wish.
‘The house, though … You are sure you don’t remember us living in the city?’
‘I’m not sure what you’re trying to tell me. You want to leave? I get that this is all about your past and Lottie and her phone call …’
‘What about the boys? What do they remember about the house?’
His face is unsure whether to crease into lines of worry or join in some game we’re playing. ‘Well, they love pretending. Eli imagines we lived in the city, you know that, but he says he likes it better out here in the country. Those boys, what games they play!’
We talk about the house until I’m raw inside because I’m trying to understand this new history Sam remembers. He says the house has always belonged to me. My mother gave it to me when she divorced my father in my late teens. By that stage I was living on friends’ couches here and there. Sam tells me that when we married the family house was still mine and was vacant and free, the two things we could afford on our wish list. My mother also left us my father’s truck. Well, she left the house and the truck was in the yard. No one wanted it and she didn’t want to deal with it. That’s the new memory Sam has. But I do remember living in the city with Sam and my family and the whole house changing and returning me to Boonah. I comfort myself that at least Eli shares my version of events.
I let my shoulders slump forwards. Bathwater cooling around me, Sam gently washing my back.
‘Do you think this might all be from the stress of Lottie’s call?’ he asks.
‘You think I’m having a breakdown?’
Sam rinses the soapy water off me, but doesn’t answer.
I exhale, regroup. ‘This is silly. I’m sorry. Of course we’ve always lived in this house. You’re right. This is all stress about Lottie’s call and … I should rest.’ I cup these lies in my hands and offer them to Sam because he needs them. And what else is he supposed to think when his wife suddenly believes the whole house changed?
Sam, though. Beautiful Sam. He doesn’t leave me. When my skin is wrinkled from bathwater, he bundles me into a towel hug. Only a hug, but I flinch from the fear that he might be another man, even though I know he isn’t. Sam and touch, two opposite ends of my universe. For us to know what it’s like to enjoy touch without my shrinking away from him.
Sam’s hand is cautious beneath the bath towel, asking questions of my body. I can feel his love for me in the moment, his gentle fingers in my hair, how it is to smell him, the honey of his aftershave, and the milk of soap on my skin. I give a yes because this is Sam. But I can’t give my yes without imitating a moan or play-acting a married woman. I cheat us both, I know, but it is also a decent deception; it comes from a good place within me. A need and a repulsion. Both things live inside the sex between us.
‘Sam.’ His name is the story I tell myself over and over as I close my eyes there in the bathroom.
After, as I lie on our bed in my childhood home, I wonder about each moment I am living. About what I might be changing. I wasn’t going to collect that box from the post office and then it was delivered anyway. That in itself must surely be a change in my timeline. I wonder what else will change. My choices from this moment forwards will actively create a new future.
It’s not until later that night, looking for a bandaid for Seb in the bathroom, that I realise that in all this upheaval I haven’t taken the pill in two days. And that Sam has just made love to me.
Chapter Fifteen
2050
Willa Waters, aged 93
Inching out of the garden, past the rocky edge, I knock the glittery play glasses from my face. They land on the seat of my walker. It’s too late to put them on again; the girls are gone. I put the glasses in my pocket. The mango tree shrivels, voices fade, and I’m alone.
Around me on the ramp, I see sand everywhere. I can hear the faint sound of waves on a beach. Why am I outside? I search about for clues. Wait. It will come to me. There is sand all over my gumboots, too. The day seems young, but it’s hard to tell when June won’t warm your bones. All about me are weeds and a withered mango tree. My breathing quickens. My legs ache, and I know I must find a chair. But where is inside?
Katie.
Katie was inside. I remember her. She needed more … boxes? Nursing homes will drown under my collections. I take out my notebook.
Number two says: Stay out of the nursing home.
Shaking my head, I try to think. What did you see outside, Willa? A tree. Mangos. Girls telling stories. The little one threw my flat-packed boxes into the ocean, didn’t she? Eli was at the top of the stairs. Why am I thinking about my son? There is someone else I keep thinking of, too. A woman saying goodbye to her sons and driving off in the rain. It’s all muddled now.
I want to search for the girls, but I don’t have the energy.
Back inside, I sink into my chair. Catch my breath. The house returns to me. It’s mine, I’m sure of that.
Some things you expect when getting old. Your feet never warming past the age of seventy. Coughing and farting at the same time. But you don’t expect to get lost in your own backyard. I think about how important this house is to me. The memory of that morning when I was eight and woke to this house, my old Queenslander, is a happy-making thing. How much I wanted that house beside the ocean.
But then a new memory plays. I’m a middle-aged woman, and Eli and Sebastian are still young. It’s the day a jam jar was delivered in a box and my brick home transformed into this old Queenslander. Middle Willa? Oh, goodness. Whatever must she think? I try to remember if I was frightened. I must have been. Then there’s that ache inside me again, like I forgot to do something.
Through a crack in the curtains, I notice the light is much higher in the sky, and kookaburras are laughing.
What do I need to do? Find something?
A wander here, a muddle there. Mind the newspaper piles and the walking cane
s there. Don’t upset the boxes of keys; I want those. Sam’s letters are all over the floor. My life is all around me, tipped over and belly out. I’ve been meaning to sort through and give away the unwanted, but it’s all very much wanted. Not only for being things, but because these things are with me. They don’t leave. That’s increasingly important. Maybe it’s age, but my mind is slippery. Holding on to things in my head is becoming difficult and I want to hold on to who I am even more than before.
Ballet costumes, a cycling trophy, a hand-stitched doll. Her eyes rattle. She sits on my lap awhile. A knitted scarf, the whale print on a patchwork quilt. Am I looking for the quilt? I hold it up, breathe it in. A lump forms in my throat.
I catch myself noticing how light rays linger on each pile that huddles around me. I am all these things. The Willa Collection. Were they all lost?
I write in my notebook: 12. Find something.
Goodness, that’s not very helpful, is it. When I look back through my list, I can’t be sure if I mean find Super Gumboots Willa or find something else. I think it’s something else.
I know Katie’s behind me before she speaks, but when I turn, it’s not Katie. Suddenly, I have a clear memory of an argument I had with this new woman when she was a child. She was maybe four or five, and she told me not to call her a Cat-Dragon.
‘I didn’t call you a Cat-Dragon,’ I said.
‘Yes, you said if I don’t get changed out of my dirty clothes I will be a Cat-Dragon.’ She cried.
I wiped her eyes. ‘That’s not what I said.’
‘Well, what did you say?’ she sniffled.
I said, ‘Get changed out of your dirty clothes so you don’t look like something the cat dragged in!’
‘Oh!’
This girl is all grown up now, with grey hair. Unlike Katie, she wears no uniform.
I catch bits of what she’s saying. Something about pulling the place apart. As if places were so fragile they wouldn’t mind being apart a little. Surely you could put them back together.
‘Where’s Katie? Did I lose her?’
‘Evidently you lost something. Who’s Katie?’ She surveys the room. Keys jingle as she puts them on the table.
‘My carer. Actually, I think it’s pronounced Cat-ee. She gets very cross about that. Who are you?’
She spits out a laugh. ‘Oh, yes. Cat-ee. I mispronounced it the first time, too. She was helping me out while I was away on holidays. You remember I told you I was going to have a little break before we started packing? I’m Eden.’ When I don’t respond she adds, ‘Your daughter.’
A new memory surfaces.
The Brisbane house has transformed and I am living back in the old Queenslander. Poor me; I’m terrified. Sam ran me a bath and sat alongside me talking, maybe about the house? As I got out of the bath, the warmth of his hands slipped under my towel. Then we kissed and made our way to the bedroom …
I flush red, then say, ‘Oh, Eden! Are you a change in my story? You weren’t there before that night we made you, and then you were?’
‘Ha! Mum, yes, I suppose that’s how it happened. What are you grinning like a Cheshire cat for?’
‘Never you mind, dear.’ I have sons, but a daughter will be nice, too. Then I’m worried perhaps I don’t have sons anymore.
‘Are the boys coming today?’
Eden sighs. ‘Eli’s not coming.’
‘What about Sebastian?’
Eden grips the strap over her shoulder, but doesn’t answer. Her bag has fringes. It reminds me of something. In my notebook I write:
13. Find something.
14. Find something.
15. Find something.
16. Find something.
17. Find something.
She reads over my shoulder. ‘You’ve written Find something five or six times already.’
‘Fifty-six times? It must be important, then. Where would you go if you were a lost thing?’ I put the notebook back in my pocket.
She blinks. ‘Is this how you felt when I was little and told you I was going to be a Viking when I grew up?’
I blink back. Because I don’t know the answer, and I’m not sure if she’s asking a question. Being a Viking seems grand, though.
‘What’s your occupation now, dear?’
‘A mostly retired vet.’ Eden pauses. ‘Okay, fine. What do you think you’ve lost?’ She opens curtains, replaces drawers and closes cupboards.
‘The twinkles in the sky,’ I say.
‘The stars?’
‘Yes. Those.’
There’s a laugh somewhere on Eden’s face, but my hands are folded. She takes one hand and tucks it up together with hers. ‘Stars are easy to lose when morning comes. How about I make some lunch?’
‘But I was climbing trees near the ocean.’
She stares at me, then clucks her tongue.
‘Where exactly have you been?’ She takes my gumboots off and sweeps up the sand.
All I can think is that I was outside and it didn’t make sense, and then I couldn’t remember where inside was. But I don’t want to say any of that.
Instead, I say, ‘Oh, around.’
With my new Eden here I have lots of questions. ‘Did I have a Katie for years and years? How long have I lived here? Who else has been helping? I’m no spring chicken, you know.’
Eden chuckles. ‘For the past eight years, I’ve been visiting more and more regularly, with Catee on and off in between. You’ve been living out here for the past twenty-odd years. You didn’t like the idea of a full-time carer or robotic aids or shiny chrome gizmos, but there’ve been regular carers visit over that time.’
‘Quite right – can’t trust a toaster with brains to turn on when you shout at it. Where’s Eli?’
‘He doesn’t live in Boonah. He’s been living abroad in the USA and only recently returned to Brisbane.’ Eden folds her arms.
Question after question, until Eden flops in the opposite chair and says she needs a nap.
Apparently, Eli hates the country and didn’t want to live out here. I can’t think how that could be true. Eden said she would stay close by, out here in Boonah, and would come every day until the nursing home had room. She can’t keep driving out from the city, and the house requires updating and an army of carers.
Eden has all sorts of other stories, too. She says that she makes great crushed tomatoes on toast, and of course we can walk about town with gumboots on. Whatever has changed in Middle Willa’s world to make all this possible in mine, I mostly like it.
Eden won’t talk about Sebastian, though. This part I don’t like.
‘Oh, by the way, I put fuel in your funky old car so we can take it into town any time. I know how you love that antique thing. It’s a wonder it still runs. A wonder they still give permits to drive them. Collectors’ items, I suppose that’s why there’s big money in companies like Retro Fuel ChangeOvers –’
‘No! What would you do that for? Willa will take the car and she might not come back.’
Eden rubs my shoulder a little. ‘It’s okay. You’re not going to take the car by yourself.’
‘No, not me.’ I get out my notebook and point to number nine on my list. ‘See, I am Willa.’
‘I know that, Mum.’
‘You don’t understand. I think I took the car out and left Sam.’
She grimaces. ‘Let’s not talk about that night.’
‘It happened at night?’ I add that information to the note. Now it says: 9. I am Middle Willa, too. I left Sam. It happened at night.
The night that I got in the car and left sits so fresh with me, a scab I can’t leave alone. In my memory I said goodbye to Sam, Eli and Sebastian. Where was Eden?
‘How old are you?’ I ask.
‘Mum!’
‘A number, Eden!’
She taps something into a wrist thingy. ‘You silly – Fine. As of today, I am exactly fifty-nine years, two months and eighteen days old. I’ll be sixty on the fifteenth of March next year.�
�
‘What year?’
‘What year is this year, or what year was I born?’ She waves a hand. ‘I’ll answer both. I was born in 1991 and this year is 2050.’
My goodness. She wasn’t born until the year after I left Sam? So, that memory of making love to Sam happened not long after the house changed into an old Queenslander. When I left Sam I must have been pregnant. Did I know that the night I left?
‘Did I know, Eden?’
She titters. ‘I assume you knew I was born, yes, Mum.’
‘But – why did I leave Sam, then?’
She purses her lips. A shadow across her face.
Once we were shiny new together. How I’m sure of this, I don’t know. But this memory is so real it curls up in my lap.
Eden was swaddled in my arms, the total tiny sum of her. Our eyes opened. Her eyes said, ‘I am,’ in a way that only infants could. Not, ‘I will be,’ or ‘I am thinking about.’ Simply, ‘I am.’ Her delicate soul was like a dragonfly’s wings, waiting to be let loose in all the skies she would ever see. That moment expressed a kind of newness that scares many mothers. And scared me most of all. Instantly, I gave her to Sam because I knew I didn’t deserve her.
Eli stood in the hospital room and screamed, ‘I want Sebastian. I want him. I don’t want this baby sister!’
‘You were a baby when I gave you to Sam?’ I say, looking at Eden.
‘Well, yes. But I saw you at birthdays and Christmases. It was … a difficult time for all of us when Eli and I were young.’
‘And Seb? What about him? Did something … happen to Sebastian? That night I left. In the car?’ My voice is all jerks and jolts.
Instead of answering my question, Eden says, ‘You and I have made our peace over the years. And we have each other now, that’s what matters. It was all a very long time ago.’
I take my glitter glasses out of my pocket and hold them like a comfort blanket. Eden points to them. ‘What are those?’
I finger them gingerly.
‘Are they what you’ve been looking for?’ she says.
‘Yes. No. I think I was wearing them before.’
‘So, now they’re found?’
