Watermark

by Joanna Atherfold Finn

  ‘I don’t think so. He was reassuringly self-consumed, like his granny.’

  ‘What do we tell him? He’ll ask about Austin. It’ll come up. What do we say to him?’

  ‘Maybe he won’t. I don’t know. We’ll say he’s gone away for a while. One day he’ll forget to ask.’

  Anna lets go of his hand and turns over so she has her back to him. ‘That’s what Austin’s mum said on the answering machine. Her voice was like the whispery voice Oscar uses when he’s in trouble. I had to play the message a few times before I called her back.’ Anna stares at the photo on her bedside table. Lachy dipping her, with the ocean in the background, on their wedding day. ‘All she said was, “It’s Austin’s mum.” She left her number and she said, “Austin’s gone.” And I thought she meant just that. That he’d gone away for a bit. I even pictured him overseas, travelling in a tuk tuk, wearing that hideous cracked-leather hat he wears to stop his head from frying. And you were working.’

  ‘I’m sorry.’

  ‘You were under the water, like you always are. Oblivious. Counting urchins. Counting shells. I couldn’t even reach you. There are times when people need to reach you.’ Anna didn’t tell him that when she called back, Austin’s mum had said that Austin was always going on about them. ‘Anna and Lachy this, Anna and Lachy that,’ she’d said.

  Lachy works his fingers into Anna’s skull. He is exhausted, but he stops himself from dozing. Suspended between wakefulness and sleep, his mind goes back over the same things. He can see the events unfolding, as vivid as a film. They hadn’t bothered to clean up that night with Austin. The table was littered with half-eaten meals; empty bottles were scattered under the table like fallen soldiers. Austin declared the meal an ambitious but nevertheless successful attempt. A new meal to add to his repertoire. Anna did the wind-up spiel, asking if anyone wanted tea or coffee. It was then that Austin reached over and held Anna’s hand. She seemed unsure but she didn’t pull away. They stayed like that for an uncomfortable amount of time, and then Austin got out of his chair and kneeled in front of Anna. He put his hands and head in her lap, like a child does when it’s tired. Anna laughed nervously and gave Austin a friendly shove. He fell sideways onto the floor and then he got onto all fours and started to growl. ‘The big grizzly has been woken. Who wants a grizzly ride?’ Anna said it sounded novel, but she’d give it a miss. ‘Right, well you were my preferred choice, Anna, but the grizzly is going to tuck Oscar into bed. Come aboard, little boy, I’ll get down on my hunches.’ They all laughed, the uneasy moment broken.

  ‘We’re all a bit down on your hunches,’ Anna said.

  ‘Haunches,’ Austin laughed again. ‘I’ll hunker down on my haunches.’

  Anna shook her head but Lachy thought it was okay; his son didn’t have far to fall. They only had to get to the bedroom, and the hallway was carpeted.

  ‘I’ll limber up. I’ll lumber on. I’m out of hibernation. On you get.’ Lachy recalled that Austin had called his boy son. ‘On you get, little cubby bear; on you get, son.’

  Anna shrugged – good-natured Anna – and told Oscar to get on.

  ‘That’s my little cub. Throw your leg over. Sure you don’t want a go, Anna? I’m a rare smooth-bodied grizzly. You’d probably enjoy it.’

  Despite their fatigue, they laughed at their son bobbing down the hallway on Austin’s back. The grizzly bear plodded with the arthritic gait of an old dog. Oscar, reenergised, smacked Austin on the buttocks and told him to giddy-up. It was quiet when Anna put her legs up on her chair and crossed them. She said that Austin meant well. She said maybe he deserved another go. They waited for him to come back out but he didn’t. Anna disentangled her legs and started to stack the dishes in a teetering pile on the table, scraping the sauce and chicken bones into a bowl. She faced Lachy with a simple smile and then she said, ‘Maybe the grizzly bear is devouring our son.’

  Lachy had felt a sudden quickening in his chest. His skin prickled. He ran the short distance to his son’s bedroom. Austin and Oscar were under the bed’s blue-striped covers, a mobile of dolphins and seahorses suspended above them. They were nestled in, with the stuffed creatures from Where the Wild Things Are, both asleep, their limbs formed around each other, facing towards the door. Lachy stood there, staring, trembling, until Anna came in behind him. She pushed past him and went over to the bed. He watched on, unable to move as she bent down and kissed both their foreheads. Nodding towards Austin she said, ‘This one’s going to give us trouble when he grows up.’ She tucked the creature with the horrible, gnashing teeth under Austin’s chin and said, ‘They fit together. They fit together like tessellating shapes.’

  Lachy had gone overboard that night. He knew that now. Over-reacted when he shook his startled son and dragged Austin from the bed. But he’d felt for months that Austin was gradually moving in on his family. He was like a piece of urchin spine that works its way into your fingertip. Sooner or later it gets embedded in there and it slowly infects the surrounding skin. You can dig around and try to lance it out with a needle, but there’s always a fragment that’s in too deep. A bit that’s just out of reach.

  ‘Cuddle me?’ Lachy says to his wife. She keeps her back to him. He goes with the possibility that she’s not ignoring him, but sound asleep. He recalls the mutton birds again. They’ve been on the beach for weeks now, washing up onto the sand with the tide. Lachy presses his body against his wife’s so their torsos are curved together and their legs are linked.

  In just a week, this has become the time of day that he dreads the most. To prolong staying awake, he counts shells for as long as he can. He imagines that the ceiling is the ocean floor. He sees himself suspended, moving across the surface, prising turban shells and urchins from barnacled crevices, wading through the shallows on the current. Inevitably, though, he starts to drift off. Each night so far it has been the same. He feels the ocean draining away, like the tide is inhaling. The seabed dries out and turns into the blunt edge of the headland. And then he sees Austin.

  His mate’s expression changes each time as Lachy calls out to him. The first night, the night after Anna had run down their driveway and pushed her face against his chest, he’d dreamt that Austin had turned to face him and his cracked ribs were like a broken carcass protruding from his skin. Lachy had tried to force the ribs back together but the bones were too fragile and they wouldn’t fuse. Austin had laughed that crazy laugh of his and tucked them back into his skin. He’d said he was just checking the swell before they headed out to Broughton. Two nights ago, Austin was brave and defiant, as sleek as a seal in Lachy’s wetsuit. With his wide smirk and wild eyes, he’d looked almost euphoric. But last night he’d seemed relieved to have been caught. He’d had wings, but the feathers were drenched and matted and he couldn’t fly, let alone walk. He’d said he was exhausted.

  Lachy doesn’t know what Austin will look like tonight, but he does know that he’ll reach out to him. He knows that just before he touches Austin, the movement of his outstretched arm will jolt him. It will jolt him awake and stop him from falling.

  His eyes are heavy. He pushes himself as hard as he can against Anna, but he just can’t get close enough.

  No Words for It

  Travis was fossicking around in a bag of bullets. ‘He’s off his ever-lovin’,’ he said. ‘I mean, you’re the expert, but the word that springs to my mind is psychotic.’ Travis was wearing chinos and a tight black T-shirt. He had his legs wide under the wheel and liquorice stuck between his teeth. He was trying to gouge the remaining bits out with his tongue, moving it over his gums and sucking. The noise was like the sound of one of those dental suction devices that stop you drowning in your own saliva. It was annoying the hell out of Josephine.

  They were sitting in their champagne-coloured sedan. In the light, the paintwork on the bonnet looked more like cut-rate chardonnay. They’d stopped at the corner shop just near her dad’s house to buy him a few essentials. Josephine had loaded ten-grain bread, Pink Lady app
le juice, organic carrots and free-range eggs into a basket. Life-prolonging purchases. On her walk to the checkout, she’d thrown in some recycled toilet paper. Travis had made a song and dance about the 200 per cent convenience-store mark-up.

  Now, with the sun streaming in through the car window, Josephine felt capable of curling up and having a nap. Instead, Travis’s comment about her dad briefly energised her. She pulled her legs up under her beaded orange skirt. It was her latest purchase from the Mystic Aura store that also sold incense, brass elephants and self-help books. Travis refused to go in there. He claimed the heady sandalwood scent gave him an instant headache, the throb of a dozen beating monks. He once commented that he hadn’t noticed any of the owner’s enlightenment rubbing off on Josephine, though the dye from her cheap cotton clothing frequently ran into his white shirts giving them a sickly pallor.

  ‘Let’s talk about your family,’ she said. She pressed the automatic window button to let in the breeze. ‘If you want to start.’

  ‘I’d rather not,’ Travis said, flinching. ‘Not on the weekend.’

  ‘Your mum. She agrees with everything you say without hearing a word.’

  ‘You think?’

  ‘She gives you this look and she nods. Yes, yes,’ Josephine said, her voice high-pitched. She moved her head up and down for effect. ‘And she picks at her nails. Incessantly. It’s odd.’

  Travis tossed the final bullet in his mouth and passed the bag to Josephine. She felt around in it, pressing her fingers into the corners.

  ‘You do things too,’ she said, annoyed he’d eaten the last one. More than anything, annoyed that she was still taking out her restless grief on him. It had been almost a year since her mum had died, and her visits home had been sporadic. If she stayed away she could pretend that nothing had changed. She could imagine her mum crouched in the front garden ripping out sunset-coloured umbels and her dad in his office writing vitriolic letters to the editor. She had tried grief counselling and meditation, even affirmations for a while, but nothing could fill the void in her life. Instead she made mordant observations about the futility of life, and punished anyone who got too close with tireless tests of their affection. She had also, much to Travis’s dismay, enrolled in an applied psychotherapy course that was advertised on the Mystic Aura noticeboard along with Open-minded Tenant and Organic Market leaflets. Now she psychoanalysed almost everyone. Travis’s best friend, who was a bit shy and liked building replica cars, clearly had Asperger’s. His mother, who arranged her herbs in rows, had Obsessive Compulsive Disorder. Funnily enough, the one person Travis felt she should be concentrating on was immune from her diagnoses. Her dad was clearly off his rocker.

  ‘You do things too,’ she repeated. ‘You’re just not aware of them.’

  He wiped some dust off the visor mirror and made one final, prolonged sucking noise, tilting his head towards the sagging mustard-coloured headlining of the car’s interior to inspect the grooves between his teeth. ‘And here we go,’ Travis said.

  ‘That thing you do when you drive,’ she said. ‘You’ve done it twice this trip.’

  ‘What thing?’

  ‘You know,’ Josephine said, bringing her fist up to her nose, inhaling deeply. ‘You sniff your knuckles.’

  ‘Oh sweet Jesus.’

  ‘You do. I don’t mind. I don’t think it’s serious. I’m just saying. I feel as though I know you well enough to be able to say these things. You sniff the knuckles of your left hand. Periodically.’ She ruffled her streaked hair with both hands. ‘I think it’s a nervy thing.’

  Travis looked across at her, recalling, with astounding clarity, the day nine months ago that they’d met. She’d been attaching an Ashtanga Yoga poster to a telegraph pole with a staple gun. This was one of the many pursuits Josephine had picked up and dropped to stop her mind from wandering. It was a windy day. Her glasses kept slipping off her nose and she kept pushing them up with the edge of the gun while the poster flailed around her like a startled bird. She was dressed in a patchwork skirt, purple cotton T-shirt and Doc Martens. Her hair was in child-like plaits. A bohemian with attitude, he’d thought at the time. The perfect antidote to his prolonged break-up, four months earlier, with a needy bank clerk. She looked so endearingly incompetent with the task at hand that he couldn’t take his eyes off her. He’d been on his way to work, crouched over at the bus-stop, prising a bit of chewing gum off his boot with a coin. Moments later, he’d watched the bus leave as he punched a series of staples into the flyer while she pressed down the edges. That afternoon, when he should have been doing monthly reports, he sat in a cafe eating lentil soup, feigning an interest in sun salutation and elongated limbs. They’d also broached religion and politics and various other off-limit subjects. She’d been feisty and opinionated. Amid the blank-faced couples scanning menus, sipping lattes, he’d found that appealing.

  ‘Dad’s just quirky,’ Josephine said, clicking on her seatbelt, jolting him from his thoughts. ‘Nothing wrong with quirky. Some days I’d kill for a bit of quirky.’

  He felt the resolve leaking out of him.

  • • •

  The four of them sat around a timber coffee table. Travis, Josephine, Gordon and Kevin. Kevin was a bitzer. He rested his muzzle on the latest issue of Australasian Science. His bulbous black gums spanned an obesity-crisis review. Just last year, the dog would have been in the adjoining kitchen, squatted next to Josephine’s mum, waiting for leftovers, and her mum would have been complaining, yelling, ‘Goddy, get this damn dog out from under me.’

  Josephine observed her dad. He was still in his dressing gown and his face looked washed out. Against the apricot chair fabric, his skin had the texture of a wilted petal. This is what her mum should have looked like the day before she died. Maybe then someone would have had an inkling that her body was shutting down. She’d mentioned a trembling sensation in her chest, but dismissed it as indigestion. She’d walked her usual two kilometres to the local beach and swum her methodical laps. On the walk home she’d collapsed on the council strip between the patisserie and the youth hostel. By the time Josephine’s dad arrived, a small crowd had gathered around his wife. She was wearing her still-damp swimmers and the contents of her bag were spilled across the pavement. An Italian tourist was bent over, wringing his hands, saying, ‘Ho provato; mi dispiace.’ I tried; I’m sorry. Gordon had tried to resuscitate her too, and then the ambulance arrived and the officer gently pulled him from her.

  Just like she always did when she returned home, Josephine thought about her mum’s funeral in tiny, raw flashes. The intended priest was sick on the day and his replacement was named Jack Russell. Her dad had perfectly ironed creases in the pale blue shirt taken straight from his cupboard. There was the call of a bird that she’d never heard before or since, three indistinct notes detached from their melody. And, finally, the ceaseless commotion deep within her. A sound deep enough to drown in.

  In the months that followed, her dad refused to move into an apartment. Even when the developers offered twice what the place was worth so they could subdivide. Gordon and Kevin put up a stink. When Josephine broached the topic, knowing he couldn’t possibly look after the place on his own, her dad was vehement. ‘Kevin and I said to those vultures, “Over our dead bodies.” We told them they’d have to cart us out in a box. The same goes for you.’ It was this sort of behaviour that Josephine called quirky and Travis called psychotic. Since Susan’s death, Gordon had involved Kevin in his daily decision-making. With each new visit, the behaviour became more pronounced. He now spoke both to and through the dog.

  Gordon picked up a carrot stick from the plate Josephine had prepared. ‘You shouldn’t have, love,’ he said, crunching on it. ‘Really.’ Her mum would have baked the carrots into a cake. A cake with thick vanilla frosting. ‘She got you on this bunny food too, Trevor?’

  ‘Travis,’ Josephine corrected, conjuring her raven-haired mum, meeting her eye, swapping a conspiratorial grin with her. ‘Just like
on each of the five occasions you’ve met before, his name is Travis. Not Trevor. Not Trey.’

  Gordon sighed, arching his back then slumping again. ‘Sorry, Josephine. And Travis. I really am sorry about that, Travis, but when you get to my age, things start wearing out. I’m going from the top down, apparently.’

  ‘We’re both doing the organic thing at the moment,’ Travis said, good-naturedly. He thought about Josephine’s raw goji-berry pie that had churned up his gut for a week. He sat with his hands on his knees, at the ready. He was wary of Josephine’s dad. His own parents were uncomplicated and that’s how he liked it. They spent six months each year doing volunteer work and six months in a caravan, tethered to a powered slab at the Cairns Coconut Holiday Resort.

  Gordon glanced at Travis and then Kevin and half-smiled. There was a bit of carrot stuck to his chin. ‘Well, good for you. And just on the QT, Travis, I don’t think I’m entirely to blame for the mix-up. We’ve never been able to keep up with Josephine and her boyfriends, have we, Kevin?’

  The dog looked up, panting. ‘No, Farver,’ Gordon ventriloquised in a solemn voice. ‘We were just getting used to the South African.’

  Josephine raised her eyes at Travis and then spoke precisely. ‘Dad, please. Not today. And the South African you insist on bringing up went home after his visa expired. Went home years ago. It’s time to move on, Dad.’

  ‘Shaka Zulu,’ Gordon said, raising an imaginary spear above his head. ‘He was a keeper. Big strong warrior. Your mother was particularly fond of him, if my memory serves me correctly. I think she wanted to take him on a bivouac. Love, I know you think I’ve got some sort of control over Kevin, but I can’t stop him,’ Gordon said. He took another carrot stick from the table and offered it to the dog. Kevin gulped and spluttered. Tiny slivers of carrot sprayed across the table.

  ‘I coughed-ed, didn’t I, Farver,’ Gordon said, and then he moved his hand along the dog’s back and directed three firm thumps between its shoulder-blades.