by Penni Russon
‘What are they?’ Jasper asked.
‘Devilsticks,’ Phoenix said. Undine snorted suspiciously. Disconcertingly, Phoenix winked at her. He clapped Jasper’s shoulder. ‘I’ll show you how to use them later. I’m dying for a cup of tea.’ He raised an eyebrow at Undine. She glared back at him.
‘Undine?’ Lou said. ‘Do you want to put the kettle on?’
It was two against one. Undine skulked off to the kitchen to boil the kettle and make the tea. At the table, Undine found herself glowering into her cup. Phoenix seemed to have endless supplies of charm for Lou and Jasper. Jasper giggled at his jokes. So did Lou. Lou never giggled, she laughed, a deep hearty laugh, not this silly girlish giggle that seemed to come from the shallows of her throat.
‘Another cup of tea?’ Undine asked, pushing her chair back noisily.
‘I’m fine, thanks,’ said Phoenix. To Undine it seemed as if Phoenix was teasing her with every word he said, as if he knew a great joke about her. It really was very provoking.
‘I need to think about lunch,’ said Lou. ‘It might come out of a tin.’
Phoenix waved his hands. ‘Don’t go to any trouble.’
Lou laughed. ‘I wouldn’t call opening a tin trouble.’
‘I’ll help,’ said Undine, quickly. Lou raised an eyebrow. ‘I like to cook,’ Undine added.
‘News to me.’
‘Why don’t we go outside, Jasper?’ Phoenix said, pushing back his chair. ‘I’ll show you how to use the devilsticks.’
Outside, Phoenix held one of the two smaller sticks in each hand, and balanced the longer one across their ends. He tossed the big stick, with its coloured tassles, between the smaller ones.
‘It’s like juggling,’ Jasper said.
‘Yeah, a bit,’ said Phoenix. ‘But you use the little sticks to move the big stick around.’ And he twirled the big stick around his head. He threw it up – Jasper watched the spinning colours flying upwards – then caught it lightly, flicking it again from side to side.
‘Wow,’ said Jasper.
‘You’ll be an expert in no time,’ said Phoenix. He threw the big stick up, passed the little stick in his right hand to his left, then reached up and plucked the big stick out of the air with his empty right hand. He passed the sticks over to Jasper. ‘Your turn. Just hold the little sticks first, feel the weight of them in your hands.’
Jasper gripped them.
‘Good. Now here, loosen your hands, relax your wrists. That’s the way. Cup them in your hands like this … Good. Hold them out in front of you.’ And Phoenix laid the coloured one on top. The weight of it caused Jasper to let the small sticks droop and it rolled away onto the lawn.
‘It’s okay.’ Phoenix picked up the stick. ‘Try again.’
Jasper frowned, concentrating. He stared hard at the ends of the stick and this time the coloured stick stayed still. But keeping it balanced was tricky. It wobbled to one side and slid away.
When Phoenix first began travelling through space and time it was always face to face with some version of himself, same-ish age, like being drawn to your own reflection in the mirror. Sometimes it was long enough to play a game, hide-and-seek or follow-the-leader, something quick and spontaneous with whatever was to hand since it never lasted long. As a kid, he was always his own favourite playmate. That was how he taught himself to juggle, he practised over and over, using household objects or sticks or stones – whatever lay nearby. It was like being visited by a friendly ghost – sometimes he was visited, sometimes he was the ghost.
Lou’s and Undine’s voices drifted out across the lawn. Their words were inaudible, but the sense of them was clear.
Phoenix picked up the tasselled stick. ‘So, your sister’s back?’
Jasper’s lips pressed together as he concentrated on balancing the stick. ‘Yep.’
‘Is that good?’
Jasper didn’t answer.
‘I have a sister,’ Phoenix said.
‘Really?’ Jasper asked, briefly interested. ‘I didn’t know that.’ The stick rolled away again.
‘I haven’t seen her for a long time. She went away. Like your sister.’
‘Did she come back?’
Phoenix nodded. ‘But she always goes away again.’
‘Do you miss her?’
Phoenix picked up the stick. He seemed to think about Jasper’s question, blinking up at the bright blue sky. ‘Yeah, sometimes. Did you miss Undine when she was gone?’
‘Yeah,’ said Jasper. He balanced the stick again. ‘Sometimes.’ The stick rolled away once more. ‘In the night-time Lou cried.’
Phoenix frowned. ‘Did she?’ He didn’t remember Lou ever crying. ‘When she went away?’
Jasper bit his lip, concentrating again. ‘No. When Undine came home.’
Undine poked about in the cupboard. She came up with two tins of cannellini beans, half a stock cube and in the fridge some slightly bendy carrots and a rather sad leek.
‘I can make soup,’ she said, doubtfully.
‘Okay,’ said Lou, equally doubtful. Cooking a meal had been one of Undine’s weekly chores for a few years, but Undine had never offered to do it and had never really stretched much beyond boiled pasta and sauce out of a bottle. ‘What would you like me to do?’ Undine handed her a carrot, Lou scrabbled in the utensils drawer for the vegetable peeler.
It didn’t take long to cut the carrot and leek or drain the tins of beans and once the soup was cooking it actually smelt delicious. It was Stephen who had taught Undine to cook like this, winging it with the things she found in the cupboard or the fridge, using her intuition to combine ingredients.
‘What shall we have with it?’ Lou asked.
‘If only we had a bread machine,’ Undine said, ‘we could make fresh bread every day.’
‘Who are you and what have you done with my daughter?’ Under the circumstances it wasn’t a very comfortable joke, and there was a moment’s awkward silence.
‘It was just a thought,’ Undine said.
‘We might have bread in the freezer,’ Lou said. ‘Does anyone really do that? Make their own bread every day?’
Undine opened the freezer and peered into it, her eyes dangerously misty as she remembered Stephen setting the timer on the bread machine every night before bed. She managed to excavate a brown loaf from the freezer’s deep recesses. By the time she had worked it out, past frozen leftovers and bags of peas, she had contained her emotions.
‘Well,’ said Lou, ‘looks like you’ve got it all under control. I might go and see how Jasper and Phoenix are doing.’
Undine rolled her eyes.
‘What’s that look?’
‘It’s just a look.’
‘Why don’t you like him?’ Lou asked.
‘Why do you?’ Undine demanded. ‘He’s young enough to be your … and what’s with the magic? I thought we didn’t like magic in this house.’
‘It’s not real magic. It’s just a harmless illusion. Just pretend.’
‘Like him. Like he’s pretend.’
‘I don’t know what you’re talking about,’ Lou said.
‘I don’t trust him! I can’t believe you do. You don’t know anything about him, and he’s out there now with Jasper—’
‘For god’s sake, I’m right here,’ Lou cut in.
Undine pressed on. She wasn’t sure why she couldn’t just let it go. ‘He’s hoodwinked you. He’s made you feel admired, interesting. He’s using you, isn’t it obvious?’
‘He couldn’t just actually be interested in me? Is that what you’re saying?’ Lou stopped and held up her hands. ‘No. No. You don’t get to do this. You left. Where were you?’ Lou’s voice was climbing, thin and plaintive. ‘When Jasper couldn’t sleep, where were you? When Jasper asked over and over when you were coming home, where you had gone, if you were dead? When he was a ghost, disappearing …? When Prospero was dying, in that awful hospital, ringing me to bring him food, books, any pretence to cover up his loneliness …?
Where were you? Where were you?’
Undine was aghast at the sudden vivid image of Prospero’s loneliness. But she was more shocked that Lou would use it to hurt her. ‘He looks like Stephen,’ Undine hissed, realising it herself only as she said it. ‘Didn’t you notice? He’s got Stephen’s eyes. He’s tricking you. It’s a trick.’
‘Does he?’ Lou asked bleakly. ‘If he does, it isn’t a very good trick. I don’t even remember what Stephen’s eyes looked like anymore.’
‘Oh, Lou …’ Undine was immediately apologetic, regretful. She shouldn’t have said it, brought up this hurt.
But it was too late. Lou wheeled on her. ‘You think you’re the only one. You’ve always thought that. It was your loss, you were the one who wanted comfort. Well let me tell you: you lost a father – a stepfather – and that was awful, I know that, but I lost a husband. I lost my lover and my best friend. I lost him all at once and then I lost him again, by degrees. Every day, I keep losing him. I don’t remember. His eyes. His voice. The sound of his breathing. What his hand felt like on the back of my neck. I don’t remember.’
‘Lou …’ Undine pleaded.
But Lou was tired of it. ‘Phoenix is not Stephen and for your information, he’s not trying to be. I’m not in love with him, or hot for him, or however you would phrase it. He was merely kind to Jasper when there was no one else left to be. And to me too. And I’m allowed to want that. I’m allowed to want things for me.’ Lou stabbed at the frozen bread, prying apart the slices. ‘He hasn’t asked me for anything. Not one thing.’
The electric hob hissed as soup bubbled over. Undine turned down the heat.
‘It’s ready,’ she said.
Lou nodded. Then the register of her voice changed as if suddenly she wanted Undine to understand. ‘I feel it,’ Lou said, putting frozen bread slices in the toaster. ‘I feel it inside me. I can trust him. I know I can.’
Undine looked up. Phoenix and Jasper were standing just inside the door. Had Phoenix heard them?
‘What’s for lunch?’ Jasper asked Lou. ‘I’m starving.’
At the table, Undine kept glancing furtively at Phoenix. Did he really look like Stephen? She faltered. Now that she had the chance to study him she wasn’t so sure. Already she found it hard to perfectly picture the details of Stephen’s face, and looking at Phoenix now she had a sudden fear that Stephen’s face might be replaced by Phoenix’s, that she wouldn’t be able to tell what was the same and what was different.
Phoenix returned her stare with a disarming one of his own and Undine peered back into her almost empty bowl of soup, blushing furiously, hating herself for not being able to hold his eyes, as if she was the sneaky one!
When he had eaten two full bowls of soup, Jasper ran straight back outside. Phoenix cleared the table, carrying the dishes to the kitchen as if he owned the place. ‘The cook never washes up,’ he said when Undine tried to take over.
It seemed friendly enough, but Undine felt she was being pushed out of the kitchen, away from Lou. Lou seemed to welcome Phoenix’s company, the two chatting in the kitchen as Phoenix filled the sink with sudsy water.
Undine wandered outside to watch Jasper. He held a short stick in each hand and balanced the longer one across them. He rolled the longer stick up his arms and balanced it on his chest, then rolled it back down again.
‘I do it!’ he said excitedly to Undine. He seemed to have forgotten, in the excitement of his success, to be shy with her.
‘Yay!’ She clapped.
She remembered the day Lou brought Jasper home from the hospital. Lou had been so sure of Jasper right from the start. Undine had been tentative, reluctant at first to carry him in case she dropped him, shy of pushing his tender, bendy arms into his clothes, uncertain how tight to fasten his nappies, so they often slid off when she picked him up. His fontanelle had worried her, this soft vulnerable spot on his head where his skull seemed likely to cave in. She watched him now, his face puckered with concentration as he tossed the stick into the air over and over, trying to catch it and failing.
For Undine, Stephen’s death coloured everything, made everything seem temporary, fragile, perishable, especially newborn Jasper. Lou seemed more resilient. Less haunted by it. But Undine could see now that she’d been wrong about Lou. What choice did Lou have? A bereft teenage daughter, a new baby … Lou didn’t have the luxury of falling apart, because there was no one to put Lou back together again afterwards.
Trout would have said, you were there. Trout had always thought Lou was too hard on Undine, leaned too heavily on her. But, Undine argued with him now in her head, you don’t understand the shape of my family. His was so solid, with such a clear hierarchy. Undine’s wobbled. Mrs Montmorency never wobbled, and Undine supposed if she did she could wobble all over Mr Montmorency.
Jasper threw the big stick high in the air and caught it on the ends of the two short ones. It balanced, and though the air around it seemed to tremble, the stick stayed perfectly still. He stared for a moment before breaking into a big, excited grin.
‘Oh, Jasper,’ Undine said, excited for him. She leapt up. ‘You did it!’
But Jasper let the sticks clatter to the ground and ran inside calling for Phoenix and Lou, to tell them what he had done.
Phoenix and Lou stood side by side in the kitchen. Phoenix washed the dishes, swishing them around in the hot water, and Lou dried. Neither of them hurried. It was a comfortable, companionable act, to Phoenix it felt reassuringly domestic. It reminded him of being a kid, standing up on the big kitchen chair next to Lou, washing tea cups in lukewarm water while she stood by drying, surreptitiously dunking things back in that needed extra washing when she thought he wasn’t looking. This was a stolen pleasure, he knew, this moment – he was stepping straight into a childhood memory.
‘So, how are you doing?’ he asked Lou.
‘Fine,’ she said automatically. Then she put down the cup she was drying and sighed. ‘Actually, not so fine. I thought … I thought I would be so happy to have her home. I wanted it so much. But I can’t help … I’ve got this tight, angry feeling, and I can’t make it go away.’ She picked the cup up again.
‘You’re angry with her,’ Phoenix said. ‘For coming back?’
‘No. No, not for coming back. I’m angry with her for leaving. Furious. When she was gone, I wasn’t angry. I was devastated. I missed her so much, this big aching … I felt as if she’d been taken from me, pulled out of my arms by some unseen, mysterious force. I felt responsible, I should have been holding on to her tighter. But all of a sudden she’s back and she’s just my delinquent, runaway daughter …’
‘Where’s she been?’ Phoenix asked, swirling the washing-up brush in their soup bowls.
Lou shook her head. ‘I haven’t asked. She hasn’t told me. I’m not even sure I want to know. What if … what if it’s awful? What if I can’t handle it?’ She looked at Phoenix, wide-eyed. ‘I’m so ashamed,’ she confessed. ‘I feel like such a bad mother. I’m protecting myself from her, when she’s the one I should have been protecting.’
Phoenix handed Lou the saucepan and plunged his hands back into the hot water to rummage around for cutlery. ‘You’re not a bad mother,’ he said. ‘You’re a fantastic mother. Besides, she looks fine. She doesn’t look like she’s been suffering.’
‘I’m angry with her for that too,’ Lou admitted. ‘Not that I want her to suffer, but she seems so … unaffected. As if it’s all supposed to be so normal … that she could just walk in and we’d be the same, me and Jasper, her place still set at the table, her room how she left it …’
The dishes were done. Lou dried the last cup and put it away in the cupboard. Phoenix leaned over and kissed her cheek. ‘I should go,’ he said. ‘Leave you to deal with your delinquent daughter.’
‘You can’t stay?’
Phoenix suddenly felt he was intruding, he shouldn’t have been there. ‘I’ve got plans. But I’ll come back soon.’
‘I’d like you to.
Jasper too.’
Phoenix nodded. ‘Say goodbye to him for me.’
‘You’re not going to do it yourself?’
‘I don’t want to interrupt. They should spend time together.’
Lou nodded. ‘You’re right. I don’t want Jasper to pick up on my feelings about her. They used to be so close.’
Phoenix closed the door behind him. Just as he did he heard Jasper run in, calling, ‘I did it! I did it!’
Phoenix smiled at his pupil’s success but standing there, with the door between them, he felt suddenly, sharply, excluded from the family the little house contained.
When Phoenix got to the road at the top of the steps, he found himself turning left instead of right. He walked up Camelot Drive, towards the end of the road. Camelot Drive started down near the city and finished in the bush, not far from where Undine lived, maybe a few hundred metres. Houses were built on the steep hills on either side, and more blocks had been sectioned off. Phoenix could see wooden stakes indicating the boundaries of what would one day become houses and gardens and fences, swimming pools and water features and pergolas, but were currently trees and ferns and rocks and gravelly earth. After the house blocks Camelot Drive petered out into undulating bushland covering one of the mountain’s foothills. There was an old firetrail that would take you all the way up to the top of the mountain. Many local bushwalkers still used it.
He walked a little way up the trail, following instinct rather than any sort of predetermined path, responding to faint childhood memories of playing in the bush, building cubbies under trees. The air smelled hot and peppery, catching in his nose drily.
Under the trees and just off the trail, he found it: a little kid had hauled fallen branches together and hoarded piles of sticks and twigs. There was a circle of stones, marking off a room. The fallen branches made another room, with space for several people to sit. Phoenix wandered into it, feeling, more acutely than ever, he was an intruder. There was a tree with a large hollow in it, big enough for a grown man to sit in. It seemed to be inviting Phoenix to do just that, so he did, surveying the area around him. The boy who had made this place had brought things with him – a tea cup with a broken handle, a bent fork, a small, burnt-out, aluminium saucepan, a torn sheet, hanging untidily from a branch by one corner. Things no one would miss, but they made this nowhere space in the bush a home of sorts, however temporary.
