Tuvalu

by Andrew O'Connor

  ‘Berwick’s hardly the country,’ Anna said tersely. ‘And anyway, I was born in the city.’

  ‘Of course you were. I was just talking about the air.’

  ‘Do shut up, Steven,’ said Mrs Livingston. There was now malice in her tone. I had the impression the pair behaved like this at every dinner party, that it was a sort of dance. It was obvious in the way they moved and spoke to one another. Certainly Anna hated them both with an equal vehemence. She sat waiting to leave, hardly touching her food.

  The heat of the Australian dusk, the trace of a nipple through Anna’s top, her midriff, the shape of her tanned calves and her slender jaw all made me want to have sex. Entirely too late it occurred to me I was getting an erection. I squirmed in my seat, trying to accommodate the development. I knew I should stop looking at Anna, but I kept stealing glimpses all the same, kept trying to lock the image of her away inside my head. Anna must have been aware of my discomfort. Lust surrounded me, I felt, like a fart, evoking a strong sense of perversion—even guilt. But she offered no acknowledgement of my hankering. Instead she maintained her disinterest.

  My father spoke. ‘Noah, get Mr Livingston a beer from the kitchen, will you? It seems he wants another.’

  ‘What ah … What type?’ I asked, arm over my lap, not daring to stand.

  ‘I only brought one type,’ said Mr Livingston.

  ‘I’ll get it then.’ But I did not stand. Everyone stared.

  ‘Well?’ asked my father.

  ‘Sorry, but I was wondering … elk. I was wondering about Finnish elk.’

  My pants strained.

  ‘Elk?’ asked Mr Livingston.

  ‘Finnish elk,’ I repeated.

  Saying the word ‘elk’ out loud, I tried to shut Anna from my mind, tried to picture elk fighting or doing their business behind thin, Finn pines. But Anna was firmly set in my head. She was all I could see, naked and nuzzling into my neck.

  ‘What about elk specifically?’ asked Mr Livingston.

  ‘I think,’ said my father, ‘we’ve moved on from that topic, Noah.’

  Mr Livingston leant in to refill his wineglass. Like a snake striking at a marsupial, his wife tried to pull the bottle back upright. But his hand evaded her with practised dexterity.

  ‘I don’t mind,’ he said. ‘If I can answer, I will.’

  ‘The beer,’ said my father, a little grimly.

  But Mrs Livingston shook her head and pointed to her husband’s freshly filled wineglass. ‘Beer’s not necessary. He’s perfectly well catered for.’

  Mr Livingston ignored her. He scratched his toupee. ‘I don’t even know if an elk is different to a deer.The business about deer in Finland I heard from the man who sold us our ducks. Or was it an SBS documentary? I’m getting mixed up in my old age.’

  ‘In your drink more like it,’ said his wife bitterly.

  At this Anna shook her head. She reminded her parents they had to be home for a phone call. The entire family then made excuses, stood and quickly left, as if the words ‘phone call’ held some special significance for them.

  My father, pouring his untouched wine down the kitchen sink, watched the Livingstons reverse their sedan from the front driveway. ‘That wasn’t a very civilised meal,’ he said, face illuminated by the headlights, then falling into a soft gloom.

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘Fancy a girl like Anna aspiring to become a model. She seemed quite bright. And Mr Livingston, all proud. It’s not an industry I’d ever like to see a daughter go into. The eating disorders, the superficiality, not to mention the amoral pornography that’s par for the course. She looked like a nice young lady.’

  ‘I guess,’ I said, recognising my father’s tendency to express his worries vicariously and feeling certain my mother would not be raised. But he surprised me.

  ‘Mr Livingston’s changed since I knew him. Not that I ever knew him well. The Livingstons were more your mother’s friends.’ My father paused at this mention of my mother. I thought he might continue to talk about her but having spoken badly of Mr Livingston he retreated instead into explaining himself. ‘I mean, it would be a shame for people to view Anna as an object, would it not? Or am I just an old out-of-touch ex-priest?’

  I wanted to ask what Anna had offered the table all evening. As far as I could tell my erection was the only evidence she had visited. Most of all, though, I wanted to be back in Japan beneath my clock, listening to its steady tick. ‘She was beautiful,’ I said with a calculated shrug.

  ‘Yes, she was.’ My father matched my shrug and again paused, this time with the shadow of a smile. ‘She reminded me of your mother, actually. It was her age mostly.’

  I did not want to listen. My eyes pulled away, moving over the room as if in search of permission to ignore him: the kitchen corners I had been backed into as child, flinching at his impromptu sermons; the table where we said grace and ate in silence; the peeling ceiling, the church newsletters, the bills, the radio he scoffed at. I had told myself (after my father first mentioned Celeste) that I was returning to talk with both parents, to broker a reunion. But taking my father’s reading glasses from on top of the fridge and turning them over in my hands, I realised I was home to visit my mother.

  I wondered if I had understood all along what was happening. I had felt next to no shock at the news my mother was missing, only fear. Perhaps some of my confusion was a show—a show put on by me for my own benefit, so I would not have to face the announcement beneath the mystery. I knew I had to see my mother as soon as possible. I wanted to know she was happy with her choice. As for my father, I could forget to pity him simply by handling his glasses.

  I had never once put these glasses on. He had often sent me in search of them, but I had never squinted through the blur or affected an academic look in front of a mirror for fear of being caught. Now I noticed his eyes following my fingers, following the lenses. He wanted to tell me off, to tell me to put them back, but could not, not without abandoning the topic of my mother.

  ‘She was about Anna’s age when I first met her,’ he said, turning away and running the hot water. ‘She joined the church fundraising committee. That’s how we met. I’d seen her before, here and there, but …’ He paused, shut off the tap, aimed a squirt of washing liquid into the sink, then dunked and scrubbed a saucer. I put the glasses back on the fridge, uncertain what to do. When he handed me the saucer, wet and soapy, it slipped straight from my fingers and smashed on the lino. Shards shot out. Midway up my left shin, pale and withered from lack of exercise, a small bubble of blood swelled and quietly burst.

  ‘I’ll get the first-aid box,’ my father said, irritated.

  ‘Thank you.’

  Love and Lust

  Once, when I was about nine, I was taken to Celeste’s front gate. It had not been my mother’s plan to take me but my grandparents, who normally babysat, were attending a funeral.

  This was how I knew her name.

  We had boarded a tram and played ‘I Spy’ until I asked where we were going.

  ‘Celeste’s,’ my mother had said. ‘She’s a friend of mine, but your father wouldn’t like her. If he asks, tell him we went shopping.’

  ‘We didn’t go shopping.’

  ‘We will after I see Celeste. So you won’t be lying. You’re just not telling everything.’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘Why not? They’re different, Celeste and your father. They’d fight about very, very silly things and I’d have to say goodbye to Celeste, which I don’t want to do.’

  Eleven years later, I remembered this conversation perfectly, but I was in no way certain I could retrace the journey. It was not that it was an overly difficult or long trip. It was not. The problem was identifying Celeste’s gate. All I knew was, it was odd. Beyond that, nothing. Not how it was odd, or its shape or colour.

  Having set an alarm after the Livingstons left I woke at six the following morning, dressed without showering and quietly let myself out the fro
nt door. The deadlock clicked resolutely, like a firing pin, but my father’s bedroom window remained dark. Outside, the moon was obscured by solid cloud, the air comfortable on my skin. The houses I passed were all quiet.

  I walked with my head down from Hawthorn to somewhere near Kew. Brick walls formed a solid boundary between the footpath and the houses they guarded. I began checking the gates but found nothing odd. A little after six-thirty an old-style tram clanked past, metal wheels grinding in dry tracks. The driver clanged his bell at a turning motorist and behind him a student woke from a tentative sleep. This student was probably a rower, facing morning training. He pulled his head groggily from the window pane. I knew his sports uniform well, knew the exact school to which it belonged because I had worn it myself. I thought of the stained-glass windows he would be staring up at in just a few hours, the gloom their brilliance costs a room. I thought of wet wool and heard lofty voices crackle, asking everyone to stand.

  All this was inside my head but roused no nostalgia. I had never felt I belonged to the school or suburb in question. And I did not miss either. On the contrary, I shied from both. It was common knowledge that the Tuttles were poor, that my scholarship was awarded not on the basis of merit but honourable poverty. While I did not feel at home in Japan, I was no more at home here.

  I gave up looking for Celeste’s house, sat down beneath an elm tree, pulled off my right shoe and peeled the top layer of skin from a blister. Two middle-aged women in sports attire approached, headphones blaring. They looked ahead unswervingly. The taller had a wind-out lead in one hand extending to a labrador, a fat rumbling old dog which ran a few steps only to stomp its feet down and let them slide over the concrete footpath. Every time it did this, it took a yank on the cord to get the obdurate animal moving again. The women passed on by, tossing me last-minute frowns. I had the impression my bare foot was like faeces to them: something which spoilt their stuffy suburban vista and should never have been outed in public.

  I stood, replaced my shoe and again tried to picture Celeste’s gate. I had been left standing outside the gate while my mother went in to see Celeste and must have stared at it for fifteen minutes. What did it look like?

  My search was just beginning to take on a slightly farcical feel when I finally saw it—a perfectly odd gate. While most gates in the area were made of metal or wood, this one was constructed from cutlery. Knives, forks and spoons, now a lustreless silver, had been welded together so that each flowed into the next naturally, as if these utensils had been produced with a gate in mind.

  ‘Cutlery,’ I said, letting out a laugh. ‘How in the hell did I forget that?’ The gate was set deep in a tall, white brick wall. Farther along I located and pressed a red button on an intercom.

  ‘Who?’ asked a sharply accented voice.

  ‘Noah Tuttle. I think my mother’s here.’

  ‘Aha! Yes. This is Celeste.’

  The gate clicked open automatically, popping an inch out of its frame. I stepped into a small yard covered in brilliant green grapevines. The leaves of these vines, each the size of a saucer, accorded the yard an almost magical feel. I half expected elves to appear with platters of food on their shoulders. The fact it was a small yard added to this appeal. It felt wonderfully private, as though only a select few ever crossed into it from the outside world.

  ‘Hello?’ I called. I was standing on a path bordered with empty Coke bottles and overflowing with metal bottle caps. They sounded like seashells beneath my sneakers.

  ‘Hello?’ I called again. ‘Anyone here?’

  The bottle-top path led to a narrow three-storey house. The upper levels had balconies while the lowest appeared to be constructed entirely from glass. This level was empty and I could see directly through it to the brick wall at the back of the block. There was not one foundation, column or other item of framework supporting the two floors above. Nor was there furniture or a single fitting inside. I hesitated. Part of me, reluctant to be deceived, wanted to press on, investigate. I felt like a child presented with a sleight of hand—there was an urge to puzzle it out. But I remained still, staring at this house, narrow within the garden walls like a portion of cake in a box. Birds chattered aimlessly on a circular cast-iron table to my right, and when I turned my attention to them several flapped up into a nearby persimmon tree, where they sat squawking. This tree was the only plant—aside from the vines—on the block.

  ‘Anyone here?’

  I started towards the house. I was halfway up the path when, looking behind me, I noticed a green aluminium shed shrouded in vines. This shed was tucked in a front corner of the yard, opposite the gate. Somehow, probably because of the vines, I had failed to notice it. But now a door flung open and without warning a plump, pyjama-clad Asian woman stepped out, looking me up and down without embarrassment. The door behind her was heavily padded and, with it now open, loud classical music sent the birds in the persimmon tree flapping for the sky.

  The woman, clearly in her fifties, twirled a metal can-opener by its handle, one hand resting on a voluptuous hip. Then, grinning like a child, she stood straight.

  ‘Quick quick,’ she called out.

  ‘I’m here to see my mother.’

  ‘Quick quick!’

  I had assumed this woman would accompany me into the house. But, with an upside-down hand, she gestured for me to step inside the shed. When I did, my eyes hardly able to see in the gloom, she pulled the door shut, bolted it and dropped the opener onto a pile of identical openers. This pile came to my knees, spilling across the floor.

  ‘What is this place? Why have we come in here?’ I shouted over the music. But I could hardly hear my voice; I had to imagine the words. The woman, silhouetted in the light of a battered desk lamp, put on a welding mask. She shrugged, turned her attention to a workbench with a small vice, dropped the mask’s visor and tapped the welding rod to get a light. For a moment I felt as though I was staring into the sun. Then came blackness.

  ‘What are you doing?’ I shouted.

  ‘Wait wait.’

  White splotches danced inside my eyes, maliciously centring themselves in front of anything I attempted to look at. I tried to blink them away. She again welded together two perfectly good openers, ruining both. How she did this without burning holes in either her flannel pyjamas or abdomen I could not say. New splotches joined the dance.

  ‘Are you Celeste?’ I yelled. ‘Can you show me where my mother is?’ But the woman waved me off, beginning to sway in time to the music, a big smile on her podgy face. Her lips, as if instruments themselves, moved in time with the melody.

  ‘Like?’ I think she shouted.

  ‘What?’

  She cupped a hand behind her left ear, already lodged at a right angle to her temple, and demanded, ‘What you say? Say again!’

  ‘I said, “What?” ’

  She frowned, finding a remote control amidst the openers. The music cut dead and, just as there had been an absence of light following the welding, there was now an absence of sound. In the furious silence I had the sensation we had detonated something. I could not hear a thing—birds, traffic or any of the noises which had filled the enchanted yard on the other side of the padded door.

  ‘What you say?’ she asked again, voice expanding like a pressurised gas to fill the room.

  ‘Is Mum here?’

  ‘Dips, ne,’ she said nodding.

  ‘What?’

  ‘Okay, I am Celeste. Dips is here now.’

  I had no idea what she was talking about. ‘You’re Japanese?’

  ‘Sort of, sort of no,’ she said. ‘C’mon. All done. We go see Dips now, shall we?’

  Celeste exited the shed, crossed the front yard with me in tow and slid back an almost invisible glass door. She gestured for me to enter.

  ‘Dips?’ she called, following me in. ‘Dips? Where are you?’

  The floor had tatami matting. Four walls, all made of glass and meeting each other squarely, formed a long rectangular vo
id. We did not linger to appreciate it though. Celeste led the way, her face turned towards me as she talked of welders, up glass stairs to the second floor. At a glance this level looked like any normal apartment. It had solid walls, carpet, doors, power points and a digital television. We passed through a beautifully appointed kitchen and down a long hallway filled with ghoulish paintings, finally stopping in front of a closed door.

  ‘Dips?’ Celeste called out, rapping this door with one knuckle.

  ‘Yes?’

  My mother’s voice.

  A moment later the door opened wide, revealing a bathroom. Steam billowed out, running along the low ceiling. My mother, her hair longer than I remembered, wrapped a towel around her head and smiled. She wore loose-fitting jeans and a singlet.

  ‘Well,’ she said, ‘it’s fantastic to be able to see you!’ Without the slightest hesitation she stepped forward, scooped me up in her arms and gave me a hug, tightening her grip in degrees until I finally protested. I felt a smile burst forward, become a laugh, then censor itself. I hardly knew my mother in these surrounds. I could not recall ever having seen her so animated.

  ‘It’s been a while since I’ve done that,’ she said. ‘I’m thrilled you’ve come, but I have to ask, did you tell your father about this place? The address?’

  ‘No. He was asleep when I left.’

  My mother rubbed the back of my neck with an outstretched hand, examining me as a tourist might a statue.

  ‘Dips?’ I asked.

  ‘A school name,’ she said dismissively. ‘I can’t believe you found your own way here. I was going to have Celeste call. Thankfully, though, that won’t be necessary.’

  At the mention of her name, I turned to ask Celeste about the front gate. But she had vanished.

  ‘Interesting house,’ I said to the empty hallway.

  ‘It is.’

  ‘Is it Celeste’s? I don’t see much evidence of a husband.’

  ‘Yes, all hers.’