Of Things Gone Astray

by Janina Matthewson

  He looked around, looking for something else he didn’t know about. He picked up an old teddy bear with a missing eye and the thin fur. He’d found it abandoned in the aisle of a supermarket. He lay on his bed, the bear clasped in one hand, and closed his eyes like before. For an age he was still, or it may have been a moment.

  The same thing happened. The bear had been the favourite toy of a child who was now grown. The grown child had given it to her own daughter who had thrown it out of her pushchair without her mother noticing.

  Jake picked up a pristine white satin shoe that had been dangling from the branch of a tree. A girl had had a fight with someone and tried to throw it at him. She’d missed and it had gone through the window.

  Jake didn’t know how long he had been in his room when he decided to go downstairs. He needed water. It took him several tries to get off his bed, and he almost fell down the stairs on his way to the kitchen.

  ‘You look exhausted, Jake, are you OK?’ his dad asked, looking up from the vegetables he was chopping.

  Jake jumped. He hadn’t realised his dad was there. He hadn’t noticed him.

  ‘I’m fine,’ said Jake.

  His dad continued making him dinner and asked him no more questions.

  Marcus.

  HE WAS SITTING IN THE lounge listening to her tell him about her studies. She had made them tea, a new tea she said was good, but he didn’t know. He’d drunk half of his cup, but he couldn’t tell whether he liked it. Her boy, that Jasper, was in the kitchen cooking dinner. Jasper wanted him to try his chilli. Did he like spicy food? Jasper had asked. He hadn’t known what to say.

  ‘He’ll love it,’ she’d said and Jasper had vanished but for the clashing of pans that gently echoed through from the kitchen.

  She’d been talking for a while, but he was having trouble keeping track of what she was saying. He wanted to listen. He thought he was listening, but he was never sure of what she’d just said.

  She’d asked him about the piano, about the new keys and he’d replied, he was sure he’d replied, but he had no idea what he’d said. He couldn’t remember the last time he had said something. He wondered if he should say something.

  She was looking like her mother again. He hated it when she looked like her mother. Not her mother. Her … there was no word. The woman.

  The woman who’d auditioned a few times for Albert’s theatre. The woman who’d wanted to experience pregnancy and birth, as she believed all actresses should know what it’s like to give life. The woman who had not wanted the trouble or expense of raising a child. The woman who’d seemed perfect for what they wanted. The woman who’d said they could arrange everything themselves, unofficially, and she would leave them be after her part was all over.

  ‘I’ll take a year,’ she’d said, sitting arrow straight, cross-legged on a chaise lounge, staring nobly into the distance. ‘A year without working, without thinking about working. I’ll devote myself completely to the experience of procreation.’

  The woman Albert had been so thankful for.

  Delia.

  DELIA STOOD IMMOVABLE IN A crowd of strangers. One hand was poised in front of her lips as she gazed, wide-eyed, into the distance. Her other arm was slightly raised, as if she’d been about to point at something, but been arrested by whatever sight it was that had caught her eye.

  Also, she was naked.

  She was naked, and trying very hard not to think about how sore her left shoulder was. Why had her arm become so heavy? She carried it all the time, why, when she was still, did it cause such trouble?

  She tried to think of something else. The eye line she’d chosen, for instance, and how she could adjust it so as not to be almost making eye contact with the balding man wearing all denim. He was working in watercolours, balding man. In murky greens and blues. Delia could see a discarded attempt out of the corner of her eye. It looked like a water nymph in an illustrated Greek myth.

  She blinked.

  There was a cramp in the arch of her left foot. She tried to stretch her muscles without visibly moving, but her whole leg started to shake.

  ‘Fifteen minutes left on this pose,’ said Mattie.

  Delia swallowed. She swallowed her groan.

  There was a tall man in the corner gesticulating wildly at his easel with a wide paintbrush. He’d finished one painting already, and taped it to the wall beside him. It was a wash of colour, with a white figure in the middle.

  Beside him, a gangly girl was bent low over her paper, sketching in charcoal.

  Delia’s hand was going numb and she had a tickle in her throat.

  By the time Mattie told her she could relax Delia almost felt like she’d never be able to move again. She got dressed behind the screen, which was thoughtfully arranged in the corner of the room, to protect her modesty she imagined. Or restore it.

  Donald was waiting for her in the kitchen with a macaron that he insisted Delia eat before the ride home.

  ‘New adventure,’ he said, as she bit into it. ‘Been working up to giving these a try all month. Is it all right?’

  Delia assured him it was perfect, as ever, and they headed to the car.

  ‘Not, my dear, that I don’t enjoy driving you,’ Donald said as he drove, ‘but it can’t be more than a twenty-minute walk from our house to yours. Do you have any particular aversion to journeying by foot?’

  Delia was silent for a moment.

  ‘I like walking,’ she said eventually. ‘I just – lately I’m not all that talented at finding my way.’

  ‘I see.’

  ‘No, I mean, something’s actually gone horribly wrong. I never used to be like this. And now I can’t get anywhere, not even the shop on the corner of my street, not even with a map. It’s like I somehow forget which way to go in the second between checking it and moving.’

  ‘Oh. How strange.’

  ‘And I hate being such an imposition, and I’m sorry, but I’m so grateful to you as well, because I love coming to the classes.’

  ‘Oh, it’s no trouble.’

  ‘It’s a disaster,’ Delia said. ‘And what am I going to do? I mean, for the rest of my life, what am I going to do? I’m going to end up stuck in my house, too afraid to leave it, getting everything delivered. I’ll become all pasty, which is not a good look with my hair, but it won’t matter because no one will ever see me because I won’t be able to leave the house. It’ll just be me and my mother, inside, doing needlework and snapping at each other. We’ll become two little women, identical except for the fact that one’s in a wheelchair and thirty years older.’

  ‘It’s going to be all right.’

  ‘I just don’t think that it is. I really don’t think there’s any way of this being all right. You can’t get your internal compass replaced, you know. There’s not some inventive medical procedure to fix this. I’m basically screwed.’

  Donald pulled into the space in front of Delia’s house.

  ‘My dear,’ he said, ‘no matter how old we get, we somehow can never convince ourselves that whatever trial we’re in the middle of is only temporary. No matter how many trials we’ve had in the past, and no matter how well we remember that they eventually were there no longer, we’re sure that this one, this one right now, is a permanent state of affairs. But it’s not. By nature humans are temporary beings.’

  ‘You’re saying I just have to ride it out until it goes away.’

  ‘Not at all, my dear. I’m saying you have to strive for a solution and trust that eventually there will be one.’

  Delia was quiet for a moment.

  ‘Thanks for the ride,’ she said. ‘See you next time.’

  Robert.

  THERE’S NOTHING LIKE FORGIVENESS FOR making a person feel guilty. There’s nothing like understanding for making a person feel undeserving. Because if someone is willing to forgive a weakness, they deserve better than to have to put up with it.

  Robert couldn’t help but feel that he was failing Mara, and her insisten
ce that he’d done nothing wrong, that she was only concerned that he be happy, only made it worse. And the worse he felt the more he felt compelled to find a solution.

  Out of guilt and worry Robert had started having a quick look for his office once a week, every Wednesday. He’d get up, go for a run, which he’d become almost good at, make his girls eggs and fruit salad, and take Bonny out for the day. Wednesdays were not for sitting in the house with books and pencils, he said, they were for getting out into the city. They were for galleries and museums and zoos and buildings. And they were for lunch or tea or a rest at any one of the many indifferent cafes that happened to be within a block or two of the street where Robert had last seen his job.

  Before long, he was going more often, some weeks he would search every day. He caught up with a lot of old friends by using them as a pretext for being near where he’d last seen his job. He’d suggest places to meet nearby, pretending to himself that there was something about that particular place that he liked, and he’d wander casually down the street, trying to distract himself from his quickening heartbeat and cold hands. When he reached the nothing that had once been his building, he would feel empty and ill and exhausted.

  He had stopped feeling relieved when he failed to find it; he had stopped feeling much about it at all. He would wake up anxious and try to hide it. He would go running, have breakfast, do some school work with Bonny, make lunch, and all the while he would search for an excuse to get out of the house.

  He didn’t try to explain to himself why his search had grown so frequent and so fearful and so fervent.

  He needed to be doing better. He needed to fix it.

  Mrs Featherby.

  MRS FEATHERBY HAD BEEN SURPRISED by how well suited the sheet of plastic was to keeping out the rain, but it was no match for a real storm. The wind pulled at it, sending waves of agonised sound through the house and eventually the corner of the sheet pulled away from the house. Rain came streaming into her bedroom, soaking the carpet two feet into the house and splattering across the bed where she lay furious and afraid.

  Knowing this was not a problem she could solve on her own, Mrs Featherby got up, swathed herself in her dressing gown and slippers and retreated to the kitchen to wait out the storm.

  Bruno would tell her she was being foolish, she knew. He’d tell her to go next door and ask for help. He’d tell her that one of her neighbours would have a bed for the night. But there was no reason to take lifestyle advice from one’s builder. He was performing a service for her, his chatter was incidental.

  Jake.

  JAKE WAS SITTING IN THE school office when he heard about the lost and found room. He was waiting to see the guidance counsellor. They were always making him see the guidance counsellor.

  A girl he didn’t know was talking to the office lady about a jacket she’d lost.

  ‘It got hot the other day at lunchtime,’ she was saying. ‘I didn’t think it was going to be hot so I put my jacket on to go to lunch. But then it did get hot, and I was sweating, so I took it off. And I forgot about it, I left it, I forgot I’d been wearing it. I forgot I’d taken it off.’

  ‘It’s OK, love,’ the office lady said. ‘We’ll have a look for it. You come along with me to the lost and found room and we’ll see if we can’t find it.’

  Jake watched them walk down the corridor and through a plain blue door. He chewed his lip. He didn’t have to wait long for them to come back, the jacket had clearly been plainly in view. The girl clutched it to her as she left the office. Jake stared at the blue door.

  ‘Jake?’ said a voice behind him. He turned to see the counsellor standing in the doorway of her office. He got to his feet and she stepped back to let him in. She was wearing a brown jersey that was too big for her. She was always wearing clothes that were too big for her. Jake wondered if they were her husband’s or her father’s and she just always wore them because she never remembered to buy her own clothes. Or maybe she used to be really fat and hadn’t bought new clothes since she’d got thin.

  ‘Well, Jake,’ said the counsellor, when they were sitting in her office. ‘How are you?’

  ‘I’m fine, thank you,’ said Jake. ‘How are you?’

  ‘I’m well. How have you been finding school this week?’

  ‘I haven’t really had to find it. It’s just always been in the same place.’

  The counsellor chuckled. ‘Are you getting along with your classmates? Have you made many friends?’

  ‘Yes. They’re fine.’

  ‘Well, that’s good. That’s really good, Jake; friends are important.’

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘And how have you been feeling?’

  ‘Fine.’

  ‘It’s OK, Jake, if you’re not feeling fine. An earthquake is a big trauma to go through, even on its own, even if you hadn’t lost—’

  ‘Lots.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘There were lots of earthquakes. They happened for ages. They kept happening.’

  ‘Of course. Of course. Anyway, it’s hard to go through, and we can talk about it as much as you want.’

  ‘It’s fine. It was ages ago.’

  ‘OK, well, is there anything else you want to talk about? How’s your dad?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Your dad. How’s he doing?’

  ‘He’s fine.’

  Jake sat quietly waiting for the counsellor to stop asking him questions. He sat and thought about his growing collection of lost things. He waited patiently until the counsellor told him to go.

  Delia.

  DELIA SAT ON THE FRONT step of her house watching the two girls who were probably not twelve have an argument. It seemed that the one with long hair had brought home a boy the one with tiny feet had wanted. Delia wondered why they weren’t waiting until they were inside for their recriminations. When did the world become so public? The one with all the flowing locks, who was holding a set of keys in front of her, appeared to think of a new point every time she went to unlock the door, so Delia got to hear every ‘you knew how I felt’ and every ‘you’re just trying to make Gerald jealous’. At least it sounded like Gerald, but Delia didn’t really think there were still actual people called Gerald, so it may have been something else.

  Finally, Anthony walked up the street towards her.

  ‘Hello,’ said Delia, jumping up. ‘What shall we do?’

  Anthony looked at her for a moment before speaking. ‘So, here’s a thing,’ he said. ‘My son has lost his accent. I think it happened ages ago, slowly enough that I didn’t realise it. And then this morning he said, “If I have a bowl of cereal will there be enough milk? We’ve run out of bread.” And I realised that his accent is completely gone. He might have lived here all his life.’

  ‘Oh,’ said Delia. ‘Is that bad?’

  ‘Probably not. I don’t know. It was inevitable, I suppose, that he’d end up sounding British. I’m surprised I haven’t started to, too. It’s just that he doesn’t sound like his mother anymore, you see. He doesn’t have her tricks of speech anymore. Bound to happen. No way to stop it.’

  Delia looked away and back again. ‘Well, thanks. That was a great start to the night. Set the mood brilliantly.’ She blinked, suddenly ashamed. ‘Sorry. I shouldn’t be sarcastic about your motherless child.’

  ‘It’s OK. I should have led with a pithy anecdote.’

  ‘Well. We’ll both know for next time, I suppose.’

  ‘Live and let learn. No, wait, that’s not it.’

  ‘Moving on, I think the answer to my earlier question is “take some wine to the park and drink too much of it”. OK?’

  ‘Yeah, go on.’

  Delia narrowed her eyes and smiled.

  Being drunk in a park isn’t quite like being drunk anywhere else. It doesn’t have the tawdry dimness of a pub or the deafening beats of a club. You can be expansive without being an arse, you can marvel at the few stars still visible through the light pollution, you can gambol and frolic
. Delia had lost track of how long she’d been talking for. She always forgot she was a loquacious drunk until it was too late.

  She was sitting precariously in a tree and telling Anthony earnestly about how she was finding sitting for art classes; she couldn’t tell whether he was listening, which really didn’t matter to her at this stage. Not being listened to is no reason not to talk, if you feel like talking. He was humming what sounded like a Disney song.

  ‘I’ve been very proud of myself actually, for caring so little about the cellulite on my thighs and the scar on my belly.’

  Anthony stopped humming.

  ‘What?’

  ‘Well, you know. I always think I shouldn’t mind about things like that, but I always actually do mind. But I haven’t. I’m all, “Here is my body. Look at it. Look at it, and draw. Draw like the wind.” It’s incredibly mature of me.’

  ‘Sorry,’ said Anthony, swallowing. ‘You weren’t, um, naked, were you?’

  ‘Yeah. Of course. That’s what life modelling is, right? You draw, don’t you? You know.’

  ‘I draw buildings. That don’t exist yet.’

  ‘Well, fine. Well, this is art, you know. Life drawing. And it’s kind of surprised even me, to be honest; I never would have done this kind of thing when I was young and crazy.’ Delia stopped talking for a moment. Anthony hadn’t started humming again. ‘Are you OK?,’ she asked.

  ‘Fine. I’m fine. I just didn’t realise that’s what you’d be doing.’

  ‘Right. Are you upset about it?’

  ‘No. Of course not.’

  ‘Right.’

  Delia looked down carefully, placed one hand on the trunk of the tree, and one on the branch she was sitting on, and attempted to ease herself off. She stumbled a little and grazed her arm on the tree.

  ‘Ow,’ she said. ‘Let’s go back. You lead.’ She stared at Anthony, waiting for him to turn towards the street so she knew which way she was going. ‘I’m quite good at it, you know. I have very strong legs. Apparently lots of them can’t do standing poses for longer than ten minutes, but I can make it for at least twenty. Probably more if I had to. I’m that good. Although, although, last time, there was this one pose, the last one, and it was, ooh, maybe forty-five minutes, right, and I was lying down, but I had one arm under my head. Actually, it wasn’t really under my head, it was just flung up beside it, and kind of falling backwards. Anyway, for the last ten minutes it was completely numb. Not in a painless “it’s best you don’t know what’s happening to your arm right now” kind of way, more like a “what are you doing, this isn’t natural, I don’t know how to handle it, so I’m saving all this pain for later, but I am going to hit you with it hard in a bit” kind of way. But anyway, the teacher likes me, so she’s asked me back a couple of times, and her husband drives me there and back home so I don’t get lost.’