As Stars Fall

by Christie Nieman

  So why, after a disturbance, do some ecosystems cross a threshold when others don’t? Well, that depends a bit on the type of disturbance, and a bit on the ecosystem itself.

  I like to think of ecosystems as different kinds of people, and disturbance as different kinds of life events. Imagine you suffer a little emotional knock – like a rejection or a failed exam or something. How would you respond to that? If everything else in your life is going well, you might feel bad for a little while, but then, I don’t know, maybe a good friend gives you a bunch of flowers or you get a good mark on an essay, and it cheers you up and you’re much the same as you were before. This is like a resilient ecosystem, like a large forest where the trees and plants have enough seed to regenerate if a small part of it gets damaged. The ecosystem may transition to a slightly different state for a little while, like when you feel bad after failing your exam, and then with time and rain and sunshine it goes back to the way it was.

  But what if something really bad happens to you, like someone you love dies? This is a much bigger thing to deal with, a much bigger disturbance in your life. You’ll probably be very sad for quite a long time. You might actually feel quite different to how you were before. You might feel changed by the experience. But let’s say again that everything else in your life is good – then you will probably, over time, be able to go out into the world again and do many of the things you did before. And maybe you’ll do something new, too, something different. But your friends will still be able to see that, although you are a little bit different, you are still you. You are like an ecosystem that has suffered a larger disturbance, like a single big fire, and now has a bit less of one thing it had before, perhaps fewer trees, and a bit more of something else, like shrubs or wildflowers. You have transitioned into a different state. You have been forced, by disturbance, to behave differently.

  But what if you’re someone who has already had a lot of disturbance in your life? What if your family is difficult, what if you are in debt, what if you are mentally ill, what if you’ve been rejected and you’ve failed your exam? And what if then someone you love dies? How might you respond? Well then, you might, just might, cross a threshold. You might find yourself in a loop you can’t get out of. You might be so sad that you can’t sleep at night. And not sleeping at night might mean you can’t get up in the morning. And not getting up in the morning might make you lose your job. And losing your job might mean you can’t pay your rent. And getting evicted might make you feel so bad you drink alcohol to feel better. And then your friends might not want to be your friends anymore because you’re always drunk. In fact, your friends might no longer recognise you. You might no longer recognise you.

  You are like an ecosystem that has already suffered, has already taken a couple of hits from a number of fires, or annual land-clearing. And then one big disturbance is the last straw: it knocks you over a threshold from which you can never return. The ecosystem is irrevocably changed.

  And that’s the complicated thing about disturbance. It’s a natural part of an ecosystem. It compels life, it changes life, it makes life dynamic. It makes an ecosystem what it is, and it makes us who we are too. But it can be dangerous: give an ecosystem, or a person, too much disturbance, and it can drive them past their point of no return.

  Saturday

  Robin

  ‘Penny! Come on! Good dog!’

  I slapped my thighs. Pen-dog, who had been sitting at Amber’s feet getting excited by all the people in a scattered, unfocused way, suddenly pricked up her ears and pointed them in my direction.

  ‘Pen-dog! Come on!’

  She was off like a shot, streaking towards me down the platform with a huge grin, tongue lolling sideways. She barked as she ran, half excited to see me, half yelling at me for going away. She jumped on me and then turned circles in front of me, still yelling her doggy yells. I dropped my bag to hug her, and she licked my face, and then smelled my bag all over, every centimetre, as if saying, ‘Tell me everything.’

  Amber and Andy sauntered over to me. No-one can saunter like Amber. She slung one arm over my shoulder, around my neck, and said, ‘Yo.’

  ‘So cool,’ I said.

  ‘Carry the little lady’s bag, will you, big bro?’

  ‘Watch it,’ said Andy, and then nodded his head at me. ‘Hey, squirt,’ he said, and he picked up my bag anyway. Our friends at my old school thought Andy was hot – not that they’d say that around Amber, or if they did she’d tell them to shut it. Andy was older, he left school last year, he drove a ute, and was about to be an apprentice builder; and our friends were all a bit gaga about tradies. They also liked to call the Dooleys ‘the Golden Family’ because of their sandy blond hair and sun-honeyed skin. Even Steph, the youngest, had that amazing skin, like the golden crust on soft white bread. Amber, Steph and I used to hold our arms together with my spotty one in the middle and call it a sprinkle sandwich. Our friends all thought I should try and go out with Andy. But Andy’s like my big brother. He looks out for me like he looks out for Amber. It’s really cool, especially as I don’t have any brothers or sisters. So I could never picture him as my boyfriend. I guess when you’ve known someone from way back when they used to pick their nose and put rotten plums in your bed, and who has memories of you at four years old running around with no pants on under the sprinkler, some of that magic is lost. And besides, he’s a great big brother.

  We walked off the platform and Andy slung my pack into the back of the ute, and Penny jumped in after it. We sat, the three of us along the bench seat, Amber squeezed in the middle between Andy driving and me gazing out the window waiting for the town to disappear so I could see the countryside. Penny in the back alternated between sniffing my bag and tripping over it as she leapt from one side of the tray to the other.

  ‘She seems happy to see you,’ said Amber. ‘She’ll start telling you we don’t treat her right, won’t you, Mutt-features?’

  Penny grinned and huffed on the glass before tripping over my pack again.

  ‘Andy, can’t you change gears more smoothly than that?’

  ‘Watch it.’

  ‘God, I’m hungry – did you have a hot chicken roll on the train? I love those things.’

  ‘You’re so loud, Amber.’

  ‘Shut up, Andy.’

  Andy reached over and ruffled Amber’s hair and she crankily flicked on the radio – a country station – and after a while her stubborn silence became a relaxed one.

  Within minutes of our arrival there was a cup of cocoa in front of my face, and Mrs Dooley smiling, and Steph kicking the back of the couch I was sitting on, and Amber saying, ‘Stop it, Steph, or I’ll pound you.’

  Steph didn’t stop. I took the cup of cocoa, trying not to spill it in the earthquake from behind. Mrs Dooley stuck her head around the back of the couch and said, ‘Stop it, or Bobbie’ll pound you too.’

  ‘No she won’t!’ Steph was very confident.

  ‘Yes I will. And then I’ll knock your block off.’

  ‘I don’t have a block.’

  ‘Well, I’ll just have to tickle you till your head falls off then.’

  Threats of creative violence were the way to show affection in the Dooley household. And the rough affection and the warm cocoa and the stale-smelling couch were the best things I had experienced in nearly two months.

  ‘Penny’s still here,’ said Mrs Dooley.

  ‘Must be ’cos Bobbie’s here,’ said Amber. ‘She’s been taking off a bit the last week. We reckon she goes to old Ada’s place, near your house, because when she does come back it’s from that direction.’

  ‘She’s probably buddying up with Ada now we’re not at her home anymore.’ The thought made my tummy go tight. She was my dog. ‘Hey, where’s Mo?’

  Mrs Dooley and Amber exchanged a glance.

  ‘Well, he . . .’ Amber made a false start.

  Mrs Dooley picked it up. ‘We don’t really know, darl. It’s hard to move a magpie. We had him here,
but he got hassled by a couple of the local magpies, and Pickles was playing a bit rough with him and, well, we haven’t seen him for a week or so now.’

  ‘I saw a magpie over near your house that could have been him,’ Amber said quickly; she could see I was blinking hard. I must have looked too hopeful, though, because she said, ‘But it might not have been. Sorry.’

  I nodded and sniffed. Mo. My Mo. My beautiful, funny Mo. How did everything get so completely awful?

  ‘Hey,’ said Amber, ‘let’s go spy on that camper squatting in your paddock.’

  ‘Simmer down,’ said Mrs Dooley. ‘She’s only just got here. Let the girl finish her cocoa at least.’

  *

  It was one of those summer days where the air has the slightest cool edge but the sun is bright and burns everything but blue out of the sky, and the grass is yellow and dry and noisy, and everything looks like a picture in a book you would read to a kid. We left after cocoa, with Steph screaming the house down because Amber wouldn’t let her come with us. We could still hear the screams a hundred metres up the road. Amber was full of disdain.

  ‘She’s bloody hyper.’

  We were walking along the dirt road, heading towards my house. Penny was up ahead, sniffing out a path. Pickles, a hit-and-run survivor, had obviously decided we were going too far for his three legs. I was trying not to think about Mo, which was made easier by Amber firing questions at me.

  ‘Who are your friends? What’s your school like? Any cute boys?’

  ‘I go to a girls’ school, idiot.’

  ‘Jesus! I keep forgetting that. That’s so weird. Is it weird?’

  ‘Kind of. It’s actually quite good in some ways. You get a lot done in class. I feel like I maybe could end up doing better in maths and English, even though the work is much harder.’

  ‘Ugh, girls are bitches, can’t stand them – present company excluded, of course.’

  ‘Likewise.’

  ‘Maybe if there weren’t so many cute boys in my class I’d get A’s in maths.’

  ‘You reckon?’

  ‘Yeah, probably not, eh. Maybe if I got a brain transplant and there weren’t so many cute boys . . .’

  We reached the crossroads and crossed. We walked down the hill on the run-down track towards the creek. No cars could use this road anymore – it was more like a rainwater gully to the creek than a road. I looked at the distant corner of trees that marked the creek off from our paddock. I thought I could see the canvas of a red tent among the trunks.

  ‘So what was going on at your house when I rang?’ Amber kicked a red-clay clod down the hill over the bright blond grass.

  ‘Oh God, don’t ask.’

  ‘I’m askin’, baby.’

  ‘Mum was getting ready to go out on a date.’

  ‘You’re kidding? That’s awesome!’

  ‘What?!’

  ‘Good on her. After all that shit with your dad and that hussy, she deserves a bit of fun.’

  ‘It’s not awesome, it’s awful.’

  ‘Don’t be such a drama queen. Who’s the guy?’

  ‘Oh, just my form teacher.’

  ‘Jesus! The Creature!’

  ‘Now you get it.’

  ‘Is he good-looking?’

  ‘No!’

  ‘Well that is awful, then. Tell her to go for a looker.’

  ‘I don’t want her to go for anybody.’

  ‘What else is she going to do – sit at home and knit? She’s still young. Young and cool. He’s not really that ugly, is he?’

  ‘No, I guess not.’

  ‘What’s his real name? Spell it.’

  I spelled Mr Krietcher’s name out for her.

  ‘Sounds German or something. Good old Roberta, what a sly fox – bagged herself a German looker. Half her luck.’

  ‘You don’t get it. Your mum doesn’t go on dates.’

  ‘Lord, I wish she would. She’s been on her own for ten years. She should go out and have fun, and not pay so much attention to what I’m doing. Hey, we should shut up now, I can see the tent.’

  We reached the creek, took off our shoes and put our feet in the water. The water was almost as warm as the air. Penny leaped across some rocks and took off straight up the opposite bank and through the trees, tail wagging like crazy.

  ‘Penny!’ I called in a whisper-shout. She didn’t even look around and disappeared through the undergrowth. Amber watched her tail disappear.

  ‘Now what do you suppose she has in mind?’

  We snuck along the creek to the sandy spot where you can come out and follow a cow track back around along the fence line. The grass was long against the fence and we went doubled over, Amber first, until we were level with the tent, and then we crouched looking over the grass.

  I could see Penny next to the tent, looking so at home there, her chin on her front paws, her tail wagging lazily in the grass, and I could see a hand just as lazily patting her head and playing with her ears. There was a magpie a few metres away, head cocked, hunting in the grass, ignoring Penny. I couldn’t see the owner of the hand, the tent was in the way, but Amber, whose view was a bit further round than mine, could. She gasped.

  ‘Shit!’ she said. ‘Bobs, it’s your dad.’

  Seth

  Seth is following Delia down the street, trying to keep out of sight. He feels light-headed. Hot-headed. Deep in his pocket his burnt hand throbs. Through the wall this morning he heard her alarm go off. It’s a Saturday. She has no reason to be going anywhere. What is she doing? He’s worried. He hasn’t been good enough for . . . something. He has to remember to be good enough. So when he heard her wash up her tea things and open the front door, he leaped out of bed, pulled on his jeans and t-shirt, stuffed his bare feet into his sneakers and ran out the door after her.

  She has a big woollen cardigan on, despite the warmth of the morning. It’s an old one of their mother’s. She is going down to the station. There is no-one else around. He waits up on the street, looking down onto the platforms. She enters the walkway and he loses sight of her. He has his eyes on the outbound platform. She doesn’t appear. He curses. She must have gone through. She might be walking to wherever she’s going. He runs to find her, but then sees her waiting patiently, knees together on the in-bound platform. He hadn’t noticed it before, but she’s carrying something; a big yellow envelope. She has it resting on her knees with her hands crossed on top of it.

  There is a train coming. She stands. Seth has come out with no money. Not that he is ordinarily bothered by not having a ticket, but ordinarily he knows where he is going, and how to get around the ticket officers there. The train is stopped at the platform, and he makes a split-second decision and pounds down the ramp and into the end carriage, about three carriages away from his sister, just as the doors beep and slam shut. Some of the other passengers frown at him as he stands and pants. They frown at his socklessness, at his out-of-breathness, and at the crumpled soft-pack of cigarettes poking out the top of his jeans pocket.

  He says, ‘What?!’ to one particular lady who keeps tsking in his direction, but she doesn’t stop, and in fact tsks even more when at every station he opens the doors and sticks his head out to see if he can see Delia.

  They are travelling south towards the city. When they are one stop before the city, he sticks his head out and sees her walking towards him on the platform. He leaps out and ducks behind a vending machine. He turns away from her and bends his head to light a cigarette, half cupping the light from the wind, and half hiding his face behind his hands. He moves slowly backwards around the vending machine so that she is always the other side of it.

  She passes right by him. He can hear her humming her internal hum, the one she does so quietly that people standing near her don’t even know she’s doing it. Their mum used to joke that Delia had swallowed a bird, and the bird was singing away somewhere deep inside there. Seth follows her at a distance down the ramp. She doesn’t turn round. She goes out through the ticket gate an
d Seth breathes out when he sees the gate is unmanned for the moment and, looking around him, sneaks through after her.

  She goes out the back entrance of the station, and he follows as she takes a tiny side street through some factories. This is not a safe place for her to be walking around by herself. What is she up to? She comes out onto a street which is all houses on one side – some renovated, modern-chic style, and some just tiny, slightly battered-looking houses – and on the other side of the street, a row of big factories, likewise either renovated into modern apartments or left to rot.

  Delia is walking up the street on the side with the houses. Seth stays behind the corner of the side street. He watches her pause just back from a house – watching the windows, he thinks. What’s in the house? he wonders. And after a moment she walks deliberately past it and quickly, without altering her step, drops the package into the letterbox and keeps walking. She turns into another side street parallel to the one he is hiding in. He almost runs to follow her, but realises that the other street would just head back to the station too. At the station end of his street he waits behind the corner, and sure enough he sees her pop out of the other street and head across and back into the station.

  He watches her go in through the ticket gate, which is now manned, and show her ticket to the inspector. Her errand is done, and Seth can’t follow her now that the gate is manned. He lets her go and heads back up the side street and turns into the street where the houses and factories are having their face-off across the narrow bitumen. He walks up and stands in front of the house where Delia has posted the envelope. He looks up at the tiny attic window in the front of the house. Hang on a minute. He looks at the pointed roof. Now just hang on. He turns, and the factory wall is not ten metres from his face.