The Paper House

by Anna Spargo-Ryan

  ‘Does she? But you look nothing like her.’

  ‘I guess that’s not the reason.’

  ‘Give it a few weeks then.’ She disappeared out the front door. I heard her call out to the woman across the road, friendly, easy.

  The day held a storm in its skirts, grey and tumbling, just the hint of rain, but dry earth. The garden called me with its high-pitched poetry, and I went to it aboard my downward wave. I would be careful. Hold my insides in. The grass was slippery; I skated into the shade of the pittosporums, reed-thin but with the rough faces of old men. I would take them out. Or get someone else to.

  Behind the wall of trunks I found a crook in a surprising Port Jackson fig, with immense surfboard roots. It had been someone’s treehouse once: a few planks remained jammed between the branches and I had stepped on a broken teacup in the grass. It was easy to see why they’d chosen that spot; from the northern aspect (where I imagined the treehouse’s lounge room might have been – prime real estate) a stretch of vineyards broke apart in the morning sunlight, dewy leaves giving the appearance of thousands of icicles. A man in a straw hat bent over the vines, and he shouted things I couldn’t make out to a woman further along, whose throaty laugh carried across the valley like a bell.

  Beyond my new seat, the grass curved and disappeared under a veil of willow and I could hear it, the creek, bubbling and chattering like a friend.

  In the city, our garden had been three planter boxes on the balcony – petunias, mostly, or maybe they were pansies, and a limp tomato plant that gave us exactly one edible fruit each season. City flowers all looked the same. Forlorn, sorrowful faces; an aching stretch towards the sunlight, which came in glimpses but always moved on too quickly. Most people we knew didn’t grow anything on their balconies. Balconies were for drinking ciders on a summer afternoon, or sneaking a cigarette in the moonlight, or hanging undies on a cheap clothes horse. Flowers were no match for people stumbling out of bars, or garbage trucks in narrow streets, or blocks of flats so close together that you had to wonder why they bothered with separate buildings at all. I thought that our flowers persevered quite well, all things considered, until I came home from work early and found Dave replacing them with fresh ones from the punnet. Oh, he said, you’re early. But I let him think I hadn’t seen him, and the deception carried on like our own private Easter Bunny.

  Which was to say, our city garden was nothing like the garden at Cabbaga. The new garden buzzed with the faintest suggestion of magic.

  It was hard to say how long I sat, with the sun casting only dappled light with dancing shoes. The air, hot and damp, drew up from the creek and smelled of moss, that organic rotting odour like an old room.

  And then, a mouse.

  ‘Come on then, mouse,’ I said. At the edge of my vision, a flicker of light. The mouse froze. Where the pittosporums gathered in their hilltop regimen, the grass moved. We pushed through a curtain of vines, me and the upright mouse with its satellite dishes. The air became wet and heavy like a Bangkok street. I had to work to draw it in. Unsteady, I felt my way through, leaning into stiff trunks, listening to the chatter of water for direction. ‘Shh,’ I said to the mouse. It tripped and skipped soundlessly at my feet.

  Deeper and deeper into the garden, drowning in the wet air, in the twilight corners. In places it had the density of a forest; in others, it was a fairytale woodland. Pink and green and orange. Autumn leaves. Spring leaves. The heady bleating of babies learning to fly, to hunt, to hide.

  ‘Here we are, then,’ I said, but the mouse had gone.

  I listened with my hands cupped around my ears. The creek hiccupped and hissed, and under my feet the ground had become mud. Between tree trunks – willows on the east bank, soaring gum trees on the west – a flash or a hum or a buzz, as though a spaceship might emerge.

  I took off my shoes and tested the water with sweaty toes, gasped; the water was cold, maybe flowing from somewhere higher. It drew me into myself, filling the gaps where mind and body had separated. Startlingly present. Careful treading, deliberate and even. Over the sharp rocks, around the mossy outcrops. Steps away from the if, away from the maybe, further and further away from the if only I had just and deep into the belly of the garden, where the light was almost completely shut out. A great canopy of tightly knitted leaves created a tarpaulin where the creek diverged. One arm continued, snaking away to the next block, and the next, and eventually the sea. But the other rested sullen and still, at the end of its life in the darkness.

  A branch snapped.

  ‘Hello?’ More of a croak. ‘Is someone there?’

  I carried my shoes, slipped clumsily across the moss, under the weeping trees. Their canopy opened into something of a cave – blackness and the slap of wet leaves. Somewhere ahead, cracks and tiptoes.

  ‘Hello?’

  The building was just a glimpse at first: a corner rounded by the passing of time, an eave protruding from the overgrowth. I didn’t know if I had really seen it – it might just as easily have passed for a shadow in my eye. But I could hear it. I heard the scratch of branches on corrugated iron and the creaking scrape against glass. The creek tripped and laughed. And the building moved. Not a lot. Like it skipped a frame.

  ‘Who’s there?’

  The door opened a crack.

  ‘Hello?’

  He was not the man you might expect to come out of such a place. Not an ogre, not part human and part tree, but just a straight-up-and-down man wearing a brown cardigan and rubbing a short beard. He was lit, from underneath, by a kind of phosphorescent whiteness that clipped the cresting water as it passed over the rocks. He didn’t seem alarmed to have found me there, or anything like it: not interrupted, or disturbed, or unsettled. Nor did he appear to be sizing me up – he just looked directly at me and put out his hand.

  ‘I’m Noel,’ he said, and his lips hardly moved.

  My breath stopped, staring at his outstretched hand. He was a ghost, a wizard, a gremlin. But he was none of those. He had the manicured nails of a teacher or a scholar, and the round-rimmed glasses of a voracious reader, and the soft voice of a father. He slipped in and out of view, pallid, thin and as translucent as wax paper. ‘And you are?’ Heather. Dumbstruck. Mute. He put his hand back in his pocket and turned to go inside. The blue light dimmed. The tree cave was dark.

  And all around me, electricity in the air, popping and crackling. I ran back to the house, tripped and stumbled.

  ‘Fleur. Fleur. There’s a man living in our garden,’ I said. My face was numb. I pushed my fingers into my cheeks.

  Fleur shouted from the front garden: ‘What?’

  ‘A man!’

  ‘A what? Hang on, I can’t hear you properly!’ The door banged open. The woman from across the street was with her, plucking dead heads from our roses. She came closer, watched Fleur dust her hands on her jeans, then looked at me.

  ‘Okay, start again,’ Fleur said. ‘I thought you said there was a man living in your garden.’ Laughter.

  ‘He had grey pants,’ I said. Sylvia slipped through the door, pressed herself against the wall as if to be invisible.

  ‘Heather?’ Fleur frowned. ‘You had something to eat?’

  ‘I’m not hungry.’

  ‘Get on the couch. I’ve got these apples I bought at one of those boxes on the side of the road. So crisp. Not too sweet.’ She turned to Sylvia. ‘Come in, Sylvia. Were you born in a barn?’

  ‘I put kettle on,’ she said.

  Fleur pushed me to the couch. We moved slowly but her hands were firm on my arms and I was moving in spite of myself, stepping lightly across the floor. She grabbed a pillow and a blanket.

  ‘You are good carer,’ Sylvia said from behind her tea cup.

  Fleur ignored her. ‘Don’t move,’ she said.

  ‘He had a cardigan,’ I said. ‘With owl buttons.’

  ‘It must be hotter out there than I thought.’ She tucked the blanket around me, dropped an apple in my lap. ‘Cosy? Need a biscuit?
’

  ‘Don’t have any.’

  ‘If you’re really good, maybe Sylvia will bring some.’ She sat next to the old woman and the two of them watched me, blinked me into nothing. I could hear the scuttle of their whispering, but not the words. A while later, Sylvia got up and left, but her spirit lingered, furrowed.

  I didn’t tell Dave about the man. He told me about lunchtime detention, about the boys who’d been selling Tiny Teddies on the school’s black market. When I didn’t laugh, he held me against him and kept me there until he was snoring. The garden and its occupant folded into blackness. Sleep evaded me. I didn’t know the sounds of the house. In the city, nighttime was punctuated with the rattle of the last tram (and the drunks that alighted and pissed on the kerb), the urgent scream of sirens, people shouting and banging and fighting. They were familiar, easy sounds that placed me. Even when I was alone in the apartment, there was the company of life going on around me.

  But now, a thick silence; so earnestly silent that it seemed exacerbated by the sounds that did come. A heaving, breathy sigh. Fingernails on the ceiling. Throaty barking. Dave barely stirred. A sullen whisper. Scratching on the window. My body burned, ached, throbbed. The room rolled and groaned. I closed my eyes and willed myself back home – a twenty-four-hour convenience store I could hole up in until the madness passed, or a friend I could call on. Just my same old bed in this new and terrifying room. Breathe. Breathe. Stop. Breathe. Christ. Flight. Throw off the sheets, they will strangle you. Get out of the room, it will suffocate you. Get out, get out.

  I threw myself from the bed and into the air. Nightlife moved in silhouette and shadow: the broad wings of a fruit bat against the sky, the low call of the boobook owl that always spoke in couplets – mopoke, mopoke. In the garden, the pittosporums stood to attention and the moon pooled at their feet.

  Shhh, said my body, folding around me.

  GRAN IS SITTING in a window seat. She’s wearing her green coat and her hair is cut like one of those models in the magazines, all blonde except for the dark bits on top. She has a fancy coffee with froth but she hasn’t drunk any of it. Her lips are painted bright red and so are her fingernails.

  My heart is running in my chest like wild horses, I’m that excited.

  Mum puts her hand on my back and pushes me forward.

  Go on then, Heather.

  Gran turns to look at me and her eyes are smiling and she puts her hand out so I grab it. She smells like lavender and vanilla and the inside of a bakery and I let her wrap me in her green coat and I think I might just stay there for a while. I put my ear against her chest and listen to her breathing, in and out, slow and calm.

  Heather, Mum says, and Gran frees me from her hold.

  Shelley, Gran says. You look terrible.

  I look at Mum. She looks okay to me, just the same as always. Maybe her hair is looking a bit thin, or her skin is a bit shiny.

  Thanks, Mum, she says.

  Then Gran looks at me. Do you want a milkshake, Heather? Of course I want a milkshake! I tell her I’ll have a chocolate milkshake and maybe one of those chocolate crackles just to make sure I have enough chocolate. She is smiling. Mum isn’t smiling. She gets down on her knee and puts her hands on my shoulders and says, I just have to go see someone for a bit. And I say, That’s okay, me and Gran can have two milkshakes.

  I sit in the window, and Gran turns to Mum and puts her hand on top of Mum’s hand. And they kind of just stand there like that for a while, and I wonder why Mum even bothered to bring me here if she was just going to stay anyway.

  Bye, Mum, I say, and blow her a kiss.

  I’ll bring her home later, Shelley, Gran says, and we sit in the window and wait for our milkshakes together.

  Gran has a red car with bench seats, which is my favourite thing about driving with her. We can be right next to each other, and sometimes she lets me take the wheel for a second. She says her car is nearly as old as she is, and then she winks at me.

  Are we going home? I say, and she says she’s taking me the long way past the bakery.

  I’m going to get you guys a pie for dinner, she says. It’s a chicken pie with thick gravy and vegetables and crispy pastry, which is the best kind. Even better, she buys some vanilla slice for afternoon tea. I know you like it, she says. When we get home Dad and Fleur are playing Sonic in the lounge room. They don’t even look at us, but I’m kind of glad because there’s only enough vanilla slice for me.

  Is she here? Gran shouts to Dad, and he says, She’s out the back! and she is, but she’s sleeping, so Gran cuts us all a slice of chicken pie and I eat mine so fast I get a stomach-ache and Gran puts me to bed. Then I hear those words again: leave, help, sick. But I’m full of pie and slice and my happy day, so I sleep.

  I RECOGNISED PARTS of my body. It wasn’t the same body as before, not the sharp corners and the bony undercarriage, but rounded off at the edges. If I poked my skin, my fingertips disappeared. Dave watched it, wherever I went, his eyes up and down. Who knew why they lingered, whether in delight or disgust? I wrapped myself in a dressing-gown.

  ‘Good morning,’ he said. He put on his glasses. ‘What are you going to do today?’ He looked at me and yawned in that rested way, easing his way into the day, slowly rising. Full of clean air. I felt my body moving from one centimetre to the next.

  ‘Just read, I reckon.’

  ‘I don’t want you to feel trapped here,’ he said, pulling on his pants.

  ‘What, in the house?’ Knotting his tie. ‘Well I am, a bit.’

  ‘Maybe you could try another walk.’ Threading his belt. ‘Take Fleur with you. There’s a place down the road that does a half- decent coffee.’ Lacing his shoes. I followed him into the kitchen.

  ‘I went there yesterday,’ I said.

  ‘Did you? Did Fleur go too?’

  ‘Sort of.’

  ‘Sort of?’

  ‘She came down later.’

  ‘You went by yourself?’ He was frowning; I got the distinct feeling I was in trouble. A child, grounded, sent to my room.

  ‘The lady over the road told me about it.’

  ‘Sylvia?’

  ‘Yeah. Sylvia. How do you know her name?’

  ‘She keeps trying to feed me biscuits,’ he said.

  ‘You don’t even like biscuits.’

  ‘I know.’

  He tapped the seat next to him. ‘Hey, come here. Just for a sec.’ I sat at our table-for-two that had now become three, and he seemed older, somehow, suddenly. The corners of his eyes ran in crossroads. His voice came out in multiple directions. ‘How are you travelling?’

  ‘Fine.’ There’s a man living in our garden. ‘I’m fine.’

  ‘Uh-huh,’ he said. ‘It’s just, you’re not fine. Standing out in the rain in the middle of the night isn’t fine.’

  It came down in hurricanes, the rain. Fat drops and dark clouds. It swept through and back around and in the mornings the valley was full of fog until the rain breathed it away. Sometimes it didn’t happen until Dave had left for work, and I curled my feet under my body and talked to the currawong, and he smiled at me in the broken way he had.

  ‘Don’t be ridiculous,’ I said.

  ‘I went down there when I got home.’

  ‘Good for you.’

  ‘It’s steep. And it’s slippery as hell. Just about killed myself getting to those trees you hate.’

  ‘What do you want me to do about it?’

  He had eyes like steel and a fist like steel and he trapped them both on me and we stared.

  ‘I just want you to be careful.’

  ‘Fine. I am being careful.’

  ‘Maybe don’t go down there for a bit.’

  ‘No.’

  He put his mouth close to my face, his griefless, creased mouth. ‘I know you’re sad. I’m sad.’

  ‘You’re not as sad.’

  He sighed. ‘It’s not a competition, Heather.’

  How could he understand? How could he know the way
my wound would fill and empty and fill and empty like a tide?

  He pulled a bit of folded paper from his pocket. ‘I’ve made an appointment for you. For tomorrow afternoon.’

  I felt the tightness in my shoulders first. ‘What kind of appointment?’

  ‘Jenny Greer is her name. The hospital said she’s very good.’

  It ran through me like an earthed wire, the physicality of it, the mournfulness of it.

  ‘Come on, Dave.’

  ‘Just go once, yeah? For me?’ He had his face put on all earnest.

  ‘Fine. Once. Because you want me to.’

  ‘I’ll take it.’ He kissed me – firm, regimental. ‘I love you. Call me if you need anything. I’m just down –’

  ‘I know. You’re just down the road.’ I put my hand on his hand. He didn’t smile the way I had hoped he might. The door clunked into its hinges as he left. ‘I’m sorry,’ I said to the space he had filled.

  I pulled on my slippers and stepped into a late spring shower. The southerly wind had taken the edge off the impending summer. The garden was alight with the wet dose of soul food – flowers that clutched at each other, leaves that swayed as if to music, ducks and frogs and mushrooms with hats. I tiptoed past a cluster of peony roses (their faces! baby pink and white and wearing green skirts) and ducked under a willow that had wept so keenly it had drooped all along the creek bank. I hugged my bare arms and walked upstream, where the creek broke through into a shallow pool, its surface almost invisible under a layer of insects.

  Wood cracking. How far away? I had no point of reference. Behind me? In front of me? I held my breath. A slip of light appeared. The ground was mud. My eyes saw only the light; the rest of the garden had somehow become even darker than before. I turned to face the source. A silhouetted man looked back at me, or away from me, or neither – it was impossible to tell.

  ‘Noel,’ the shadow said.

  Noel.

  ‘Heather,’ I said, and the shapes behind him breathed in a grey halo.

  ‘This is the best spot,’ he said. ‘You’ve chosen well.’ A talking slip of black air. I was immediately at ease.