Gravity Well

by Melanie Joosten

  Sorry, I lost my balance, I …

  Nate fumbled, tried to lift himself from her. Eve managed to get her arm out from underneath herself, haul herself back to her knees. When she kissed him, she was surprised by how thin his lips were; his face went from skin to teeth; there seemed to be nothing in between. She could hear her pulse swirling in her ears, amplified by the hood of her rain jacket. He kissed her back, his tongue pushing her teeth apart as he let her pull him down on top of her. Small rocks poked at her back; she could feel the rain seeping through her trousers to her underwear. She found it difficult to breathe with the weight of him, the way his nose squished hers against her face, first one way and then the other.

  They had sex with their trousers around their knees, their hiking boots still laced up. Their raincoats as bed sheets, the smell of wet hair, wet dirt, wetness in the air. It was just as Eve imagined it would be — uncomfortable and a relief all at once — and when he was inside of her she knew she had never felt as far away from someone as she did just then. She clutched at his shoulder and his hair. She could see his dandruff; she would like to wash his hair in the bathtub, massaging the shampoo into his scalp while she recorded all of the sloshing sounds. He pushed inside as though there were further to go, and she squirmed, trying to tell him that there was not. He pulled out, and when he came he let out a little yelp in her ear, the hot air sending a shiver down her neck. It was only then that she realised all of this would be on the recording. She wondered whether he knew this, whether that was what he’d wanted.

  He moved off her, pulling his trousers up as she struggled with her own. He gave her a wry smile and then his hand as he pulled her to her feet.

  Alright then? he asked, and she nodded.

  He held her face in both his hands for a moment, bringing his thumbs to her eyebrows and smoothing them out. Then he nodded and let her go, turning to begin packing the sound equipment away. Eve thought he was humming, but she couldn’t be sure because the wind whipped the notes away as fast as it brought them to her. She did up the fly on her trousers, straightened out her jumper. Her legs were covered in mud; she could feel it drying and tightening on the skin of her lower back.

  Ready?

  Nate hoisted his backpack onto his shoulders, and she did the same with her own. He hesitated, as though he was about to ask her something, and it was that hesitation that made her stride out. Eve took the lead; it was Nate following her, and she knew that he would be looking at her the whole way back. Looking at the mud smudged down the back of her legs, and thinking whatever it was he thought. As she walked, she listened to the forest in the way that he had taught her, and, above it all, she listened to her breathing. She felt as though her lungs were larger, they were reaching a little further into the world, drawing more in.

  •

  The walk to the swimming hole from the campsite had seemed much longer the last time she was here, in the hot stillness of the summer: Eve had also been carrying the weight of Mina — it was only three weeks before her daughter would be born. The tail-end of the school holidays, and the swimming hole had been crowded: children with their floaties and legionnaire caps; mothers watching from picnic rugs laid out in the small patches of sun, everyone enjoying the cool of the narrow gorge while the beach was burning hot. Fathers and older children swam a little further upstream, where rock ledges formed gentle waterfalls. Back then, water ran thin across the rocks, and in the shallower recesses it was only a muddy trickle. Now, mid-winter, the river is replete with rain, gushing and tumbling over itself. Blue gums march by the stone walls, their fallen leaves and twigs caught in a multitude of tiny dams that gather scummy bubbles; an undersong of roar and splash is amplified.

  It must have been the pregnancy: Eve recalled, at the time, being so aware of every child she came across, in awe of their independence and tenacity. A little girl standing in the shallows, absorbed in the appearance of her own feet, wobbly through the water. She’d worn a Dora the Explorer rash vest, her stomach unabashedly round. A running boy who’d pulled up short of the swimming hole’s edge, jogging his feet to carry him into the air, and, gathering his knees to his chest, falling smack to the water. Years have passed; those children would have grown. The girl in school, the boy a teenager by now.

  In winter, without the families, the swimming hole is calm. Climbing over the rocks, and avoiding the damp moss, Eve sits down by the water’s edge and unlaces her shoes. Cold, so fucking cold. The clench races from her toes right up through her back, and her body wants her to withdraw, to pull her foot out of the icy water. Each of her toes is screaming at her and she tries not to move them, knowing it’s impossible to keep any feeling in them at this temperature. Within minutes they have tingled into a warm numbness. Relief.

  3

  LOTTE

  DECEMBER 2009

  Leaving the hotel, Lotte turned corners and pushed uphill, away from the shopping precinct, walking fast lest she fall backwards into the aggressive mess of the city.

  She had only once been to the Sydney Observatory, for an award ceremony years ago; some of the names on the badges pinned to rumpled cocktail attire were recognisable enough that Vin and Lotte had kept a running tally of those she’d cited in her thesis. It had been summer then, too, and Lotte had to pick her way through the crowd, her heels sinking into the lawn, to collect her award from the professors standing like a line of patient groomsmen beneath a swarm of fairy lights. Three of four awarded researchers that night had been women, and the head of school had nervously licked his lips and thrust out his hand to Lotte as he congratulated her, before stuttering out a speech that tried to positively highlight the increasing number of women involved in astronomy, but only managed to make it sound like the death rattle of an obsolete profession.

  Coming upon the observatory now, Lotte saw purple banners strung across its walls: Give the ultimate gift this Christmas … give a star. It wasn’t ever enough to just look — everything must be owned. Perched on the top of the hill, the old observatory building looked too small to be of use, its sandstone walls marking it as a relic from the past. From here, only the time ball — balanced on a four-storey tower and dropped every day at one o’clock in the afternoon — gave away the building’s function. Lotte pictured an ancient astronomer, hidden away in the tower, reading the time from the position of the sun and the stars, and heaving the ball to the top of its pole in readiness. The reality was much more likely to be an automated process: a little motor to lift and drop the ball, its accuracy checked every now and again by googling current time Sydney. She walked a slow lap around the perimeter wall, welcoming the sight of the observatory’s two copper domes, tarnished to green. It was her mother who’d told her that the first was built to house the equatorial telescope, and the second had to be built soon after, when it was discovered that the time-ball tower obstructed the telescope’s view of much of the eastern sky.

  Turning her back on the observatory, Lotte crossed the lawn, her gaze drawn to the harbour: the squat yet elegant bridge of steel girders, the chomping mouth of Luna Park. Taking a seat beneath the low branches of a Moreton Bay fig, she reached down and unbuckled her new shoes, putting them neatly to one side, her feet grateful for the cool of the grass. She still had hours before her appointment.

  In June, Lotte had felt a small lump in her breast. Two lumps, in fact, snuggled up against each other like a peanut. Considering Helen’s illnesses, a tiny bit of her was relieved that this had finally occurred. But it couldn’t have come at a worse time: her first paper on potential exoplanet locations was about to be published, and she was head-down wading through the most recent data. Without giving it much thought (nor wanting to), Lotte had made an appointment with her doctor, had been referred to a specialist and then to a surgeon — all within a week. Just one of those things, she said, repeating the specialist’s words when she asked Vin if he would be available to pick her up after the surgery the following day.
She ignored his anger at being told so late in the piece, just as she ignored the hastiness of the process, the guarded expression of the doctor when she’d detailed her mother’s illness. A fluctuation of hormones, perhaps, the specialist had said when the growth had been pronounced benign. He suggested she take a lower-dose pill or go off it all together, just for the time being. Having children sooner rather than later was something she should be thinking about, he said, considering her mother’s medical history. Lotte hadn’t told Vin that. Just as she hadn’t told him about her referral to have genetic testing.

  At the initial genetic testing appointment, the counsellor had spoken carefully, laying out each possible outcome as softly as a mother covering a sleeping baby.

  Some people prefer the certainty of knowing, the counsellor had said. But it’s important to recognise that when the answer is positive, that when you do have the gene mutation, this certainty might not feel as comforting as you hoped.

  Lotte had barely listened, concentrating instead on the fabric panel that hung above the counsellor’s desk. It was natural linen, stretched on a frame and screen-printed with the trunks of white birch trees. It was a repeating pattern, Lotte was sure of it, yet she couldn’t quite see where the break was: the point where the same trees appeared again. It was the bird, she finally realised. A small wren appeared by two of the trunks, but not in the same position. Had it been printed with a different screen? The counsellor talked on, and Lotte nodded. Of course she wanted to know; of course she expected the result to be positive. She would not be shocked. She had let the nurse take her blood, reciting her name and date of birth again and again to avoid a case of mistaken identity, irritated by the solemnity of all the staff.

  The roots of the Moreton Bay fig pleated out on either side of the bench, forming a gentle buttress. She was her mother’s daughter — it was improbable that she would not have the gene. All she had to do this afternoon was go to the appointment so the counsellor could divulge the news, and then Lotte could do what needed to be done. One step after the other. The ferries trailed ribbons of white, frothy wake across the harbour, stout matrons caught with lengths of toilet paper attached to their sensible heels. The sun set without fanfare; the lights of the city came on well before dark, lest anyone take fright at the night closing around them. The street lamps mapped out their own constellations; the spectacular lights of the bridge and Opera House denoted far-off galaxies; the dark matter of the harbour was cut through by water taxis barrelling across like comets, booze-cruise pleasure crafts proceeding at a more stately pace. Venus appeared low and bright near the horizon, then Jupiter — a little higher, warmer and bigger. Finally, the moon showed itself, a tipped crescent reclining on its bottom. Only then did Lotte pick up her shoes and walk barefoot back toward the city.

  •

  Despite her mother’s protestations, when Helen was moved home from the hospital, Lotte took indefinite leave from her job, determined to be the daughter she no longer had a lifetime to be. She busied herself with tedious and repetitive tasks: bundling up soiled bedsheets and clothes; scheduling nurses; searching out recipes on the internet, following their instructions to the letter, and scraping them into the bin without complaint when her mother refused to eat. Sometimes she had to scour at the carpet in the places her mother vomited so suddenly, the baking soda creating lighter patches on the ash-grey wool, like dappled sunlight thrown across the floor.

  Every time she was crouched over some task, she would promise herself that as soon as it was done she would join her mother in the front room where they’d installed the hospital bed, and ask her one of the hundreds of things she must surely need to know soon. She saw the years stretch ahead, a blank, motherless expanse. But when one job was finished there was always something else to do, and the conversations went unspoken.

  Do you think she reads it? Or does she just like to have it there?

  A bottle of wine sat between Lotte and her father. It was an awkward routine they’d fallen into after Helen had gone to sleep: usually, one of them would pour the other a glass and they’d escape to different parts of the house or switch on the television, taking relief in the mindless distraction. But that night, Lotte had asked her father about something that had been bugging her — the Bible she’d noticed on her mother’s bedside.

  I don’t know, he replied. But I know that she prays. Didn’t you take her to church a couple of times?

  I did, but I guess I thought it was nostalgia. That she was remembering her childhood. I didn’t think it was more than that.

  God works in mysterious ways, said her father, raising his eyebrows as Lotte groaned.

  Bloody hell, Dad. But it is weird, don’t you think? Mum could never deal with any kind of authority figure, let alone an all-seeing one. Do you remember the time the council tried to charge her for having one of her star parties by the lake? It must have been to raise money for the planet drive.

  An unauthorised commercial gathering on public land — that’s what they told her. She was livid. She berated that poor man for twenty minutes, asking him if he had also taken out a controlling lease on each of the stars, and if so, would he be so kind as to let her know which ones she was permitted to point her telescope at.

  She wrote a letter to the Courier as well, said Lotte. I remember that.

  I don’t think she ever paid a parking fine, said her father. She managed to argue her way out of every single one.

  They traded stories then, of Helen’s demanding moods that could just as quickly jolt into mirthful glee. Lotte remembered looking up bolshie in the dictionary one night after a comment from a school friend’s mother, and asking her father if her mum was a communist. Just contrary, her father had said, laughing. And obstinate. She’d had to go and look that up, too.

  Lotte traced the base of her glass with her finger.

  Will you stay here, Dad? In the house? In Ballarat?

  He didn’t answer straight away. Then: Where would I go?

  Anywhere. You could move to Melbourne or Sydney. Come to Canberra.

  They both knew it was a flippant invitation, but he smiled as if considering.

  I wouldn’t know what to do with myself somewhere else. I’m too old to start again.

  You’re only fifty.

  Only.

  He stood up from the table, gulping down the rest of his wine.

  And at the moment, I feel every day of it. You know, I really didn’t think it would come so quickly, but at the same time I didn’t think it would last so long.

  He ruffled her hair as he passed by, and she almost reached for his hand.

  Some days, Lotte caught herself thinking that the illness was all part of an elaborate performance: despite the determined ebbing of her mother’s body, despite the nurses who came twice a day.

  There were times she wanted to ask her dad if he felt the same: helpless and unfit for the task of caring for a woman whose personality had always outshone them all. Lotte forced herself to look at her mother’s body, to be reminded that this was real, it was happening. She had always thought that the longer you looked, the more you could understand. But the more she looked at Helen, the less she was certain about.

  When the Hubble telescope was first sent into orbit, it sent back flawed images: the precision mirror was 2.2 thousandths of a millimetre out of shape, less than a hair’s breadth. Astronauts were sent into space to fix it, a painstakingly delicate task, but four years later its riveting images illustrated the beauty that scientists had been able to calculate but not see. The Hubble peers so deeply into space — or back in time — that one day it may confront the edge of existence. The result of Hubble’s persistent staring — the Deep Field — was spectacular. A spill of lollies across a black tablecloth; a slice of fairy bread; the pattern printed on a child’s pyjamas; a field of wildflowers in full bloom. It was indescribable. Thousands of galaxies gambolled across the image, whirl
ing dervishes of colour and heat. Every single one harbouring stars, every star lassoing planets.

  Lotte was reluctant to admit her mother’s ultimate transience, but each day, there was less of her than the day before. Ridges jutted beneath the surface of her body — shifts in the continental plates. Shoulders and collarbones. Elbows and knees. Cliffs and crevices. Bedsores that had erupted on her legs, and bloomed ever larger.

  Each day, Lotte watched the visiting nurses move about, sure of themselves as they tugged and adjusted, not afraid to reach for Helen’s hand, or wipe the saliva from her cracked lips as she slept. But Lotte was afraid. She was repulsed by her mother’s body: the slack skin loose over bones, the brittle hair that wasn’t a colour at all familiar. It was her mother’s body that had caused all of this, and Lotte could barely bring herself to touch it.

  How is she? Eve’s voice was muffled — she must have the phone jammed up between her shoulder and cheek while she rummaged in the fridge.

  Some days she’s good, some days she just lies there. She doesn’t even try to get up, just stays in her pyjamas and lies there with her eyes closed.

  Is she in pain?

  No. Lotte sighed, struggling to keep the exasperation out of her voice. She says she isn’t, they give her morphine. She says she’s just tired, but she also says she can’t sleep. But it seems like she’s asleep all the time!