Deeper than the Sea

by Nelika McDonald

  Until now. There was no camouflage in the hallway of a police station.

  Standing there with those other women in handcuffs, shuffling and humming to choke back everything they wanted to shout out and weep over and rail against, Theo asked herself, would I have changed what I did, if I had known it would end this way?

  She knew the answer though, before she finished the thought.

  Give up these years with Beth? She would not.

  Even if it saved her from being sent to prison?

  Still no.

  Not ever.

  chapter ten

  Mary was Theo’s best friend. Sort of her only friend, really. She had four children of her own, four sticky, squirmy little elves with blonde hair frizzed out around their heads like Mary’s, little dandelion haloes, and big blue eyes like her, too. They were not yet as determined as Mary, but they would be, Beth was certain. Mary was a teacher, and that’s how she’d met Theo. Dragging new generations into the library, every year.

  ‘I only do it so I can get a break,’ she always joked. She sometimes pretended she didn’t like kids, but anyone who knew her knew that wasn’t true. Beth had felt soothed as soon as she’d seen her this morning. But she didn’t feel soothed any longer.

  They were walking, trying to find Mary’s car. She had come in such a rush when the police officer had rung her, and she’d parked nearby but not looked at the name of the street. Now she couldn’t find it again. Beth followed behind her, her eyes blank.

  ‘Beth, you need to remember, Theo loves you very much,’ Mary said. ‘I’m sure there is more to this story. Theo will explain. When we can talk to her, she will explain what happened.’

  They walked and walked. Beth thought the streets seemed to keep unfolding as they went down them, the ends receding further and further away. The light seemed far too bright, and the air too warm, and Beth felt the strangest sensation of moving in and out of her own mind, like waves lapping at the shore and then falling back.

  She tried to concentrate, to untangle some of the mess, but all the thoughts were pushing and shoving at each other to get to the front.

  Theo always said she didn’t know a thing about Beth’s birth mother. Beth had believed her, why wouldn’t she? But she was lying. She had told Mary her name, and a name was a lot more than nothing.

  But what if this Alice was just some madwoman? What if she was the one who was lying? Then again, Mary knew her name. There was a lie, right at the beginning of the story. Chaos theory told the rest. Mary pulled her, as though she was towing her along on wheels, and Beth let her. She didn’t know where to go, how her body was supposed to move.

  She looked down at her feet. She had a mosquito bite at the top of her sock, and the edge of it rubbed against the bite, irritating it. She wore an anklet, braided pieces of string. One of the pieces of string in the anklet was from a tassel on a scarf that someone had given Theo as a gift. She’d used it to tie a curtain back in the kitchen. The tassel had dropped off and Beth had rescued it, as there were strands of silver in the dark blue cotton weave and she thought it was too pretty to go to waste.

  ‘Beth, I’m going to take you home, I’m going to take you back to my house, okay?’ Mary said, and Beth nodded. Mary’s face was red and her hair was a mess, she looked tired and harried.

  ‘Okay.’

  What choice did she have?

  Where else was there? Was her home even hers any more? Beth thought about leaving home to go to work, Theo offering her a sandwich. Beth hadn’t known then that Theo had stolen her. She tried to remember what she had felt like, not having this knowledge sitting heavy inside her, like she’d swallowed cement and it was slowly setting. She hadn’t known how light she was then.

  In the street leading down to the used car yard, Beth stopped suddenly and bent over. She couldn’t breathe. Her chest felt like it was in a vice, and she didn’t have enough air, and then she couldn’t stand. It took her a few moments to realise what it was.

  Asthma. It had been a long time. Beth wasn’t sure if she had her inhaler. She knew she shouldn’t panic, that it would make it worse. But what if she had been panicking before the asthma started? What then?

  ‘Beth, Beth, are you all right, honey? Tell me what’s happening, what are you doing, are you sick?’ Mary knelt down next to her, her bag spilt open and pens and tampons and coins rolled out. Beth watched one coin as it rolled right under a car parked nearby and felt her airway open again. She knew the bitumen was hot but she just had to rest for a moment. She tipped forward to lay her cheek on it and breathed, in and out, in and out. Mary left her bag and her stuff and slid her leg under Beth’s head and stroked her hair.

  ‘That’s it, that’s right, breathe, honey, breathe, that’s it, you’re doing so well.’

  It felt nice, both the words and the hand stroking her hair. A cloud moved over the sun so they were in shade and Beth thought she would like to stay here and have a nap, turn her face in to Mary’s soft stomach, let that cool hand keep stroking and stroking her hair, until she slept and wasn’t thinking any more, until she was just floating.

  ‘I wish you were my mother,’ Beth said, and closed her eyes. That was good, to not see anything, but bad, because the ground felt like it was shifting beneath her, spinning, slowly, but spinning nonetheless. She had a feeling if she opened her eyes the spinning would not stop. She needed to find something to hold on to. She wanted Theo.

  But she couldn’t have Theo.

  Beth imagined that this hadn’t happened, she rewound to last night, working her shift, when the idea of Theo not being her mother was preposterous, unfathomable. She would have been expecting Theo to be there when she got home. She would either still be up and make Beth a cup of tea and a hot water bottle to take to bed, or she would call out from her bed as Beth passed her room on the way to her own. No matter how quiet she tried to be, padding along the wooden floors in her socks, Theo always heard her.

  ‘Come here and give me a cuddle,’ she’d say, ‘now that you’ve bloody well woken me up.’ And sometimes Beth would go in, and Theo would wriggle over so Beth could lie in the warm part of the bed where Theo had been lying while she ‘broke in’ the cold side, and more than once she had fallen asleep there, although Theo woke up at the crack of dawn to go for a swim every day and Beth loved sleeping in.

  She wondered whether Theo had gotten any sleep at all last night. She wondered how she possibly could.

  Beth had always loved Mary’s house. It was exactly what she thought a home should be: noisy, full, with Mary and Tom’s babbling, the chubby baby and the other kids, squirmy toddlers and pre-schoolers, all slobbery kisses and artless, silly funniness. There were always pots of sauce bubbling on the stove and couches heaped with cushions, unopened stacks of letters and toys and umbrellas and batteries all piled together on the hallstand, everyone’s shoes in a jumble by the door. Old, soft, faded sheets, the smell of the jasmine on the back fence and the radio or television always on.

  When they got back, the kids clamoured for Beth’s attention, climbing in her lap, playing at her feet, passing her shoes to tie, drink bottles to open, cardigans to button up, and she let them, she let herself be diverted by them. Mary checked on her frequently, sometimes mouthing ‘Okay?’ at her, or just raising her eyebrows, and for a while, Beth nodded back. This was okay.

  But then it wasn’t.

  If Theo was not her adoptive mother, then Theo was someone else. And if she was someone different, then Beth had an actual mother, who claimed Beth had been abducted. So, what about her father? Did she have brothers and sisters? What, of all the things that Beth thought she knew in this world, was still true?

  On that first afternoon she had only snatches of time when the kids stilled to let her mind go down those paths. And then the baby fell asleep on her, and she couldn’t bear it, couldn’t stop thinking of herself as a baby, like this, grown heavy in someone’s arms, and then what? Just taken from them? Was she snatched? Was she lifted from he
r cot in the dead of the night? Each question gave rise to another and another, and then Beth felt her throat closing over. Mary took the baby from her, and she couldn’t breathe still, and she felt her forehead dampening, and she was crying but it was not ordinary crying, more like choking. Mary held her tight until it passed, and she was spent, then put her to bed like one of her children, in the guestroom.

  chapter eleven

  ‘While we aren’t charging you at the moment, it is possible that charges will be laid following our investigation. At the moment, we have no reason to believe the allegations against you are false. Nothing you have said has illuminated things to the contrary. So, I’m sure that doesn’t surprise you,’ Detective Verten said to Theo.

  How would you know what would surprise me? Theo wanted to say, but didn’t. Guilty until proven innocent. The injustice of it floored her.

  ‘What about Beth?’

  ‘That is not your concern.’

  ‘She’s my daughter, she will always be my concern.’

  ‘Well, that is not strictly true now, is it?’

  Theo dug her fingernails into her palm.

  ‘You will need to surrender your passport.’ Detective Verten handed her a sheaf of papers.

  ‘I don’t even know where it is.’

  ‘Then you will need to find it. You will also need to be mindful of the stipulations of the protection order. Given the size of Cardmoor, you may violate them unintentionally. I suggest you remain at your own property unless it is absolutely necessary to leave.’

  Swimming, Theo thought. I won’t be able to go swimming?

  ‘Your cooperation throughout the investigation will be taken into consideration.’

  ‘By whom?’

  ‘By a judge, at sentencing.’

  Was he trying to scare her? It was working. A judge, in a courtroom, that scared her, of course it did. Someone who could change her life in a bang of their gavel, as quickly and utterly as pushing her in front of a train. She would have to get a lawyer, and she would have to contact Oliver. Somehow.

  ‘I’ll have someone drive you home.’

  I’ll have someone make sure you go directly home, Theo heard. It didn’t seem like she was being asked if she wanted that. Well. What did it matter, anyway? Where else would she have gone? The beach? On any other day she would have already been swimming by now. But it was not an ordinary day.

  Theo had learnt to swim as a child but not really taken it up (and been taken by it) until her early teens. With puberty came the most violent resurgence of her hip pain. One kindly doctor suggested swimming as a therapeutic measure, but her mother vetoed it. Public swimming baths were dens of filth, she said.

  Theo dug her heels in. The pain made her bold. ‘I don’t care. I have to do something.’

  ‘Theo, no.’

  ‘Mother. Yes.’

  So uncharacteristic was this insistence from Theo that her mother seemed flummoxed into agreement. So, with the other rehabilitation patients, Theo trundled along to the aquatic centre every afternoon at four, to be baptised in the tepid chlorinated waters each day anew.

  The first few times Theo was conscious of her thighs and her stomach in her costume, and she wondered about buying a swimming cap so the chlorine didn’t damage her hair. But was it better to have wet hair than look ridiculous with your scalp swathed in vibrant pink plastic? The bus driver and nurses sat in the bleachers and read the newspapers and Theo floated about self-consciously. On about the third or fourth visit she looked around and realised that absolutely nobody was looking at her. Nobody her age, nobody of any other age. It was a solitary pursuit, and for the most part people ignored each other. It was perfect.

  On her fifth visit, Theo pulled her goggles down over her eyes and swum an experimental lap. She sliced her arms through the water one after the other, copying an elderly woman next to her, and kicked her feet only enough to propel herself forwards. When she hit the wall she stopped and looked around. The woman in the lane next to her arrived at the wall just behind her, turned underwater and pushed off, gliding like a fish, quicksilver, her fingers flexed together in a V, a bullet. Theo decided to try that. She swam down the pool, this time trying to match the woman’s strokes and imitate her breathing pattern.

  Stroke, stroke, stroke, breathe. Stroke, stroke, stroke, breathe.

  At the wall she tried the turn and managed a clumsy half somersault. At the end of that lap she rested. One of the nurses smiled at her on the way to the canteen, and nobody else looked her way. Theo took off again. At the end of that lap she decided to try to kick a little more neatly, efficiently. It was then that she noticed that her hips were not hurting.

  The pain in her joints had been so constant that when it stopped, all Theo noticed was that she was discomfited, unsettled about something. Something was awry. Had she forgotten to do something? Was she wearing costume? Where was her bag? Only then did she realise that the strange feeling was the absence of pain.

  If she missed a few days in the pool, her joints would flare up, her hips feeling as though the sockets were lined with gravel. She became used to the smell of the chlorine on her body. It became her particular perfume, that and the talc she used when she dressed. The puckered, peeling skin on her toes, the way her shape changed, shoulders broadening and squaring, her calf muscles separating and becoming defined. In her early twenties the pain in her joints almost stopped. It definitely faded. She walked normally by then. But she didn’t stop swimming.

  In the car on the way home, Theo wound down the window and let the air buffet and slap at her face. The police officer drove through the backstreets, for reasons that Theo didn’t query. When he walked Theo up the driveway to her own front door, she had the bizarre thought that it was like the end of a date, a young fellow getting his gal home before curfew. If this was a movie, then Theo would be a bombshell who seduced this young man so she had an ally at the police station. But Theo felt more shell than bomb, a hollowed-out casing.

  ‘Goodbye,’ she said to the police officer at her door.

  The officer frowned. ‘Detective Verten said I’m supposed to collect your passport, Ms Abrams.’ He reminded her of a child coming up to her in the library, breathless with self-importance. The teacher said we had to read all our homework books before we choose new ones, miss!

  ‘Tell him it’s lost.’

  Theo closed the door in his face and ignored his knocking. She walked through the house, looking only at the floor in front of her. She went directly into the shower and stood under the jet for a good half an hour, letting it wash and wash and wash that police station off her. She scrubbed every inch of herself, the curls of her ears and under her nails and the folds between her legs, then she rinsed and did it again. She kept the water as hot as she could bear.

  When she got out she put on her bathrobe and walked down the hallway to Beth’s room. The tins of paint and drop cloths were stacked in the corner. The green colour had dried like powder on the walls, as though it would be soft to touch. Theo wanted Beth to see how good it looked. She wanted to see Beth smile, pleased with her.

  In the lounge room Theo pulled all the curtains across the windows, so the only light came through the French doors that led onto the verandah. Nobody could see into the house from out there. Theo could see the ocean, beyond the tops of trees and roofs. That was all she needed to see. She roamed the house for a while, picking up things and putting them down again. The phone rang, so she yanked the jack out of the wall. What on earth would she say to anyone who rang? She would scream at them, swear at them, slam the phone receiver against the wall so hard that the whack of the plastic on the plaster would sound like a firecracker going off in their ear. Better still, Theo could throw the whole telephone and handset right into the wall, ripping a hole in it, then put her hands into that hole and claw it open further so the whole wall came down, the whole house. She could do that right now; she knew she could. Pull down a house with her hands and teeth.

  The bott
le of wine still sat on the table from last night. Theo looked at it, considering. That would be a slippery slope. She went into the guestroom and sat down on the bed. Suddenly, she felt bone-achingly tired. A few of the beaded bracelets that Beth sometimes wore were on the bedside table. Theo put them on her wrists, and drank from the water bottle that Beth had left on the floor. She slid her hand under the pillow and pulled out the old T-shirt Beth wore to bed. She held it up to her nose, breathing in her smell. She put a corner of it in her mouth and pressed the fabric between her lips. She put the T-shirt on and lay back on the bed.

  Staring at the ceiling, Theo noticed grey dust furred along the edges of the fan blades. In the corners, cobwebs spanned from wall to wall. Above the fan the ceiling was discoloured, faint yellowish patches spreading across the white paint like a rash. Diseased, Theo thought. This ceiling has pox. Beth would have lain here and stared at this dusty fan, fallen asleep under this stain, this spreading infection on the paintwork the last thing she saw at night. Filth. What kind of mother made her daughter sleep in a place like this?

  She got up and went into the laundry, where she filled a bucket with hot water, soap and vinegar. She threw some bi-carb in too, for good measure. She spread a tarp across the bed and lined the floor with towels. The tiredness would not leave, now that it had come, but Theo ignored it. There was no time to be tired, now. She started with the fan. When that was clean, she got a broom and knocked down the cobwebs, then began on the ceiling.

  Three hours later, she was done. She pushed the tarp aside and climbed into the bed. As she was falling asleep, Theo thought about her own bedroom and Beth’s new freshly painted walls. The walls looked good now. But when had she last cleaned their ceilings? Had she ever cleaned their ceilings? Or the windows? Disgusting. Tomorrow, Theo vowed.