White Time

by Margo Lanagan

  I guess I kind of loomed up to the window out of the dark, and Dad’s wheelchair’s a bit of an eye-catcher, and … anyway, Keenoy looked up, and lifted a hand as if we were old friends.

  I put a smile on my face that died as soon as I was past the window. Then I heard footsteps, and there was Keenoy beside me. ‘Tess! I need a word with you.’

  ‘Oh?’ I tried to casually hide the wheelchair behind me.

  ‘Sorry. You in a hurry?’ He indicated Dad with his eyes.

  ‘Not really. Um, this is my dad.’

  ‘Hallo, Mr Maxwell.’

  Dad’s head wandered around to look at him.

  ‘He’s had a stroke,’ I said. ‘He can’t speak.’ In fact, he isn’t really here at all. Please act as if he isn’t here.

  ‘Ah.’ Keenoy nodded to him anyway. ‘I was just going to ask you, Tess. We’re short one Beggar Maid in the musical. D’you think you could fill in the gap?’

  Surprise made me laugh. ‘Hey, I’m not really performing material.’

  ‘All you have to do is sit in a bunch of Maids and sing a chorus, sway a bit. Nothing too hard.’

  ‘Sounds very not me.’

  He made a pleading face that I had to laugh at. ‘Come to rehearsal tomorrow,’ he begged. ‘Take a look.’

  ‘OK, I’ll take a look.’

  ‘Good on you!’

  ‘I’m not promising anything.’

  ‘Look, you don’t have to.’ He backed towards the café. ‘See you then.’

  He was gone. And I walked home smiling. Idiot.

  I’ve made them sound really powerful, those ‘absent’ ones. But in the end it’s the clients who decide how helped, how timid, how lost they’ll be. That’s why I was so sour on making this thing of mine into a business. Before Dad died – sorry, had his stroke – I never would have dreamed of doing it. All I was doing, I felt, was taking money for telling people what they’d already spent years telling themselves – that Grandma was the only one who ever properly loved them, that she must be watching them from above, continuing to wish them well. Or that their dead child still lived somewhere – which it did, inside them – beaming innocence out into the world.

  You want certain voices to speak to you – lovingly or bullyingly or whatever. You want it so badly that you throw them out from yourself, and when I hear them and repeat back to you what they say, it seems like proof. You forget it’s your own ventriloquism, your own loss, your own hankering written into the space around you for just about anyone to read. I feel like a thief, charging you my fee, but if you need to hear, but won’t listen for yourself, and if we need the money so badly, I’ll do it. I won’t like doing it, but I’ll do it.

  I went home smiling and told myself not to get silly. I should have been tired, but I wasn’t. Mum had lit a fire in the parlour fireplace, and I sat there with her for a while. In the firelight Dad looked like somebody’s dreamy old grandpa, mesmerized by the flames, and Mum and I had a sleepy, bitsy conversation. I almost told her about the musical, but then I thought, No, she’d be too delighted. She’d pin more on it than I want pinned … for now. Instead, I let myself feel the occasional roll of excitement inside me, let Keenoy’s face rise in my memory and shine across to me some of its happy light and warmth.

  I went to the rehearsal next day. I volunteered straight up, and got parked among the Beggar Maids.

  ‘Oh hi, Tess,’ said Zenardia. ‘I didn’t know you were musical.’

  ‘Oh, I’m not. I’m only doing this as a favour to Keenoy.’ It was the first and last time I ever said his name, and it made a funny feeling in my mouth, a kind of embarrassing tang, as if I’d used a special, intimate name I had for him, loosed it in public.

  But then the rehearsal started. It probably seems like nothing to a normal person, but I enjoyed myself. It was a silly, romantic story, interrupted by the soppiest songs, but I got caught up in it anyway. Everyone else was taking it so seriously! When Lexie Nelson, the main girl, was singing her duet with Keenoy, they were both so excellent, even standing there in their school uniforms, that I saw Lexie clearly for the first time. Her mother climbed down off her back and her pushy brothers faded away to nothing, and for several minutes she didn’t care that Nick Stefanopoulos didn’t love her the way she loved him. I sat there with all the other Maids – who’d stopped chatting to listen, just as impressed as I was – and I let myself think, Maybe life could be like this.

  Right back when I first discovered that other people didn’t see what I saw, all I wanted to do was get out, climb down from this kind of princess’s tower my knowledge puts me in, mingle, be with other people, act like them – unaware, laughing at my own mistakes. I can see that people’s ignorance is blissful – I’d like to turn around and say to some clients, Hey look, you’d be happier not knowing, really, don’t make me tell you.

  Because knowing is hard. For my clients, knowing just their own stuff is hard to cope with; for me, knowing everyone’s … Well, I used not to cope; a school assembly used to make me pass out. Nowadays I can block out quite a bit of the noise and bother around people, but it still takes some strength to deal with, say, a half-full train carriage, where there’s room for each person’s burdens and yearnings to swell out and speak up and compete for attention. Whenever a new passenger climbs in, everyone’s yearnings check out the new ones and then go back to their own blabbing and yowling. It gets exhausting. I only really have any peace when I’m on my own, shut away from everyone. The rest is … well, it’ll always be hard work, won’t it. I just have to face that.

  After the rehearsal, Keenoy walked me home. He was exactly the right height, just a bit taller than me. It makes me miserable now to think how perfect he was.

  I told him everything. Well, he’d seen Dad, so he knew about all that, and he wanted to know more, and he asked about the stroke, and listened, and was sympathetic but not ghoulish about it. ‘That’s hard on you and your mum.’ His tone of voice, of course, was righter than most people’s, with no awkwardness in it. He must have some kind of similar experience behind him, I thought, but where? If it hasn’t left a mark on him, what’s he done to get over it? What power does he have? What makes him so strong?

  I looked up at him occasionally as we walked and talked. His skin was totally spot-free, unmarked by freckles or acne or any other kind of imperfection. Blossom was right; it was a happy face. Happiness was built into it, the mouth always ready to smile if not actually smiling, the eyes kind of smallish but active, taking in everything and having a quick thought to match each taken-in thing. I liked him. For the first time in my life I could see how it was possible to like a boy, even for someone like me.

  I didn’t feel awkward at all, saying, ‘Would you like a hot drink or something?’ when we reached my gate.

  ‘Sure,’ he said.

  I held open the gate after me. ‘Where do you live, anyway?’

  ‘Just a little way along from here, really. Over Oaky Park way.’

  ‘Really? Why don’t you go to Oaky Park High, then, instead of trawling all the way across here?’

  ‘Oh, well, you know …’

  I opened the door. Something went crash! in the kitchen. ‘So clumsy!’ came Mum’s voice, her really-upset voice. ‘You’ve turned into a baby – no, worse than a baby! You’ll never grow up! You’ll never be more than this clumsy wreck—’

  I froze on the doorstep. Another crash. Sobbing.

  Keenoy took my shoulders, moved me to one side and went in towards the kitchen. I started after him; I didn’t want him to see, didn’t want Mum to know he’d heard her losing it.

  Dad was there, with food spilled down his shirtfront. Mum was down next to him, trying to scoop the mush on the floor back up into the bowl with a shaking spoon. She looked up and saw Keenoy – and recognized him. (Well, she would, wouldn’t she?)

  ‘I just wanted him to try,’ she said desperately. ‘Maybe he could feed himself! Maybe something’s knitted back together in his head by now. Maybe he
’s healing in there and none of us can see it yet!’ She said it all in a garbled, tear-hiccupped rush, while Keenoy took the bowl and spoon from her, put them in the sink, then turned back to put his arms around her – whoa! She was sobbing against him; she looked very small wrapped up in there, and he felt suddenly very big in the room. It seemed a big thing for a person to do, to comfort someone just because she needed it.

  I stood by the door feeling sick. If it had been me, I would have concentrated on the mess: wiped up the mush, told Mum to sit down, made her a cup of tea, cleaned up Dad’s shirt, moved around and around her and not touched her once, biting back my irritation. ‘I could have told you Dad would drop it! Don’t you listen when I tell you? He’s not there!’ I never would have hugged her. I would have been too angry.

  I went away, full of shame. I put my bag in my room, went into the parlour. Twenty minutes and my first client would be here. I’d have to calm down by then.

  After a little while Keenoy Ribson came in. He stood in the doorway with a mug of hot chocolate in each hand, smiling.

  ‘She OK?’ I said gracelessly.

  ‘She’s fine. A “momentary lapse”, she said. We all have ’em.’ He handed me a drink and sat down in the client chair.

  ‘She’ll never stop missing him. It’s almost all she ever does.’

  ‘But not you?’

  I tried to take a sip of my drink, but it gave my lip a warning scald. I blew on it instead. ‘Sure, I miss my dad. But that out there in the wheelchair, that’s not him, and it never will be him. There’s too much damage. I’m not going to fool myself.’

  ‘No, you’re too clear-eyed for that.’ There was no sarcasm in his voice. He looked so singular and baggage-free in that chair, the chair I usually saw through such a fog of ghosts and inhibitions. For once, someone was looking at me to give me something, not to suck a reading out of me, not to be saved. He was looking, he was caring, he was interested. Nobody looks at me like that – and I’m not talking about romance here; this is so much more important than romance. I’m so lonely in my life! I remember thinking. I’ve got no one! What a sad novelty it was to confide in someone, to tell about just me. Usually people’s sympathy locks straight onto Mum, and we all help and console her; I’m so competent and practical, it must seem like I don’t need consoling.

  ‘I’ve been meaning to ask you,’ I said – and it was a wonderful feeling, to be able to say anything I liked and know I wouldn’t be laughed at, or revered – ‘Have you got a talent like mine?’

  ‘Which talent’s that? Like, of all your talents?’ He raised his mug to me and took a sip. ‘I mean, I can sing, you heard me—’

  ‘The talent of seeing … extra things about people.’

  ‘Extra things? What, like their potential as Beggar Maids?’

  ‘Like their hang-ups.’

  ‘Their hang-ups?’ And then he drank down his hot chocolate. In two gulps – I heard them both. He put the mug on the table next to the tissue box. His smile was a little strange, a little fixed.

  ‘It’s almost a psychic thing,’ I said, frowning from the empty mug to him. And despite that look in his eyes, which said clearly, Don’t go down this road, I told him all about it, about my work, the things I see, and how he didn’t fit into the system. Boy, did I blather on. ‘You don’t even seem to have any parental pressure, which is crazy for a sixteen- or seventeen-year-old. Every other boy I know carries his father around on his back like a sack of cement – sometimes his mum’s there too, trying to heave off a bit of the dad’s weight, trying to make life a bit easier. You don’t seem to have anyone. Nothing gets to you; nothing pushes you out of your own shape. I don’t see how that’s possible. Are you some kind of strange non-grieving orphan? Have you got some kind of religious belief that clears all your gremlins away?’ Blah, blah, blah.

  When I finally shut up, he laughed gently. ‘You don’t want to know, Tess.’

  ‘But I do! I’m busting to know! Because whatever you’ve got, I want it too!’ And I blahed on about that, too – clarity and self-assurance and kindness and—

  He was still laughing. He was at his best-looking, laughing – maybe he was hoping that’d distract me.

  But it didn’t, and he laughed on, too long, too watchfully.

  And then he slipped. His gaze flicked to the floor just for a second, and when he looked back to me his laughter had definitely turned nervous.

  I looked down. I was trying to hide it from myself and see it at the same time, so the tether was very fine, disguising itself by following the pattern in the Turkish rug. But I knew that pattern; I could see where the line had to cross from one motif to another, wriggling through the pile like a snake through stubble. A thread of darkness ran from one side of the rug to the other, joining Keenoy’s foot to mine.

  ‘You idiot,’ I heard myself say.

  Keenoy’s smile was feebly apologetic now. His eyes wobbled, and then began to widen down his collapsing face, dragging the smile down with them.

  ‘I thought you were too good to be true,’ I said, trying to save face.

  Keenoy’s head was a melted heap on his chest. His torso deflated with a wet pop!, his arms shrinking into his shoulders.

  ‘You twit.’ I hit my head with my fist, over and over. ‘You sappy, cloth-brained, stupid—’

  He was shrivelled to a tiny black blob on the end of the line, whipping back across the rug into the toe of my shoe. I hadn’t noticed him leave, but now I felt him come back into me, like water-balloons bursting in my chest and throat. Then I was brim-full of my own self again, unhappy but unstretched, not yearning, not fooling myself.

  I sat there for a bit, recovering. I could hear Mum humming along to the radio in the kitchen. Keenoy’s empty mug sent up a last lazy curl of steam. I felt like a complete fool. But at least it was over now; I didn’t have to wonder any more.

  And then the front gate clicked open, letting my first client in. Taking a deep breath, I got up and went to the door.

  MIDSUMMER

  MISSION

  It was one o’clock in the morning. Streetlight gleamed into the empty classroom through venetian blinds. Above one of the desks, a pinpoint of elf-light was poised. It brightened, thrumming softly, and four tiny figures tumbled forth onto the desktop. The thrumming stopped, and the light winked out.

  ‘Gods dammit,’ said Hat. ‘Where in the flying fuck have they popped us?’

  Snap whapped him with her cap. It had a hard-bell on it, and must have hurt. Hat pretended it didn’t.

  ‘In a Designated Place,’ said Motto, keeping himself po-faced.

  ‘Well, it’s hot as hell. Slick as buggery, too – how’s a snag supposed to get a purchase on this?’ Hat stamped.

  He was right, the ground was very hard and slippery. But I was heartened; I’ve heard of missionaries being popped through into water, into ovens, into unbounded snow.

  ‘It has a pattern like our timber,’ said Snap, her bum in the air as she examined the ground. ‘Only huge.’

  ‘Plateaus of polished jove-timber all around,’ I stated.

  Hat snarled. ‘Oh, don’t suck, Trinket.’

  I was stung, but I tried not to show it. ‘We’ll all have to report when we get back, Hat.’

  ‘Report my hairy arse.’

  Motto turned away with beautifully practised Neutrality. Lovely to see. If only we could all do that.

  ‘Airy plateaus,’ I continued, beginning to feel Virtuous, ‘ranked in rows as far as the eye can see. Cornered four-wise, many of them–’

  ‘Oh, let’s get moving, fuck it!’

  ‘And where do you suggest?’ snapped Snap.

  I jumped in before Hat could answer. ‘The High Ones said it would be close. We should each go to one of the four edges of this plateau and assess the terrain below.’

  ‘Very good thinking, Trinket. Very ordered,’ said Motto.

  Hat’s grumbling and the tinkling of our cap-bells dispersed across the bare, smooth landscape. A
t the edge I lay down and looked over. The plateau stood on poles that went down and down to a dark, blank plain.

  ‘Here!’ cried Motto. ‘I believe I have it!’

  We tapped across the timber to him, Snap doing little skids and whoops. ‘Careful,’ I said. ‘You’ll go over.’ She stuck her tongue out at me.

  We lay down either side of Motto. A blob of crumpled white paper lay on the plain below.

  ‘Yep,’ said Snap. ‘Looks like a Map to me.’

  ‘Do you think?’ said Motto enchantedly.

  ‘Indeed, indeed,’ I said. I flung myself over the edge and unsnicked my thing-dang. The cord whipped up; the dang opened and began its slow whirl. I heard three snicks above me as the others followed.

  Motto landed proudly right on the Map, and kept balance though the balled paper wobbled. His dang fed neatly down into his belt. ‘Give us your Hands here, Trinket,’ he said, beginning to crackle open the Map. ‘Ooh, I do have an excellent feeling about this!’

  ‘’Tis very tightly crushed,’ I grunted, hauling on a wedge of it.

  ‘’Tis very secret,’ he panted, ‘very important.’

  ‘You truly think?’

  ‘Oh, yes. Here, look – there is Script on it! Keep opening. We must get it out flat. We are so lucky, to have no wind.’

  ‘Yes, indeed!’ We had all heard those stories, of mission-maps snatched away into blowing snow, or caught in fire-draught – or worse, fires, and consumed.

  ‘We will need light, however,’ said Motto. ‘Snap? Where is Hat? We must make light.’

  Snap started, and peered through the dimness. ‘Hat? Come and do your duty!’

  ‘Hush,’ I said. ‘There may be Rats.’

  Hat’s voice came faintly. ‘I’m busy. Busy dying of hunger, I am.’ He was just visible, ambling towards us, his feet catching in the ground’s whiskery weave.

  ‘He’s stalling,’ I said. ‘Tsk, tsk.’

  Snap snarled. ‘The snot-head. I’ll jump him.’