Deeper than the Sea

by Nelika McDonald

  chapter twelve

  Beth woke, startled, in the middle of the night, her stomach cramping and hollow. Someone had pulled a quilt up over her. She got up, went to the kitchen and ate a handful of the baby’s rice crackers, hard discs meant for teething gums, faintly tomato-flavoured. It could have been sawdust for all she cared. She fell back asleep, then woke again in the pre-dawn hours.

  At first she thought there was something caught in her throat, a piece of cracker or a dusty tuft of cotton wool from her pillow, stopping the air from getting through. She opened her mouth as wide as she could to let as much air in as possible. She tried to cough, but that made it worse. She thought of drinking some water, but couldn’t bring herself to put anything down her throat – it seemed so cramped in there already. Her chest felt like a drawstring purse that someone was pulling closed, tighter and tighter with every moment. Pins and needles zipped down one side of her body. Beth grasped her pillow with both hands and everything disappeared into black then came back again, like a dimmer dial being turned back and forth. You mustn’t panic, she told herself. It’s worse if you panic. Her whole body was covered in a film of sweat.

  Inhaler, she thought, eventually, in a dislocated sort of way. Need to get my inhaler.

  She panted in short gasps, trying to draw air in through whatever tiny passage was still open, and her vision went black again. Inhaler, she thought again, inhaler, inhaler, inhaler. She dragged herself across the mattress until she was almost at the edge. Beth could hear a strange, faint whistling sound. It took her a few moments to realise she was the source. That was the last ribbon of air scraping along her windpipe. She summoned all her reserves to nudge herself off the bed and landed on the floor with a thud. She gulped at the air, but it wouldn’t come close enough, lurking just out of reach.

  I’m running out of breath, she thought. I’m going to pass out, very soon. The room melted away again, and returned, murkier. Fuck, Beth thought. Am I dying?

  Her heart bounced in her chest like it was trying to get out. She swept her arms around over the ground, looking for something, anything that might help. The door flew open and Mary barrelled in, Tom at her heels.

  ‘Beth? Beth? What is it, what is hurting, where are you hurting?’ Tom knelt beside her, putting a hand under her head to stop it rolling against the wooden floor. Mary pushed in beside him. Beth pointed at her neck and shook her head, frantic.

  ‘Asthma,’ Mary said to Tom, and Beth closed her eyes. ‘We need to find her inhaler. Quick! Start looking, anywhere.’ Tom started rifling through Beth’s clothes, on a pile on the armchair in the corner of the room. Mary upended Beth’s handbag, tipping all the contents on the floor, throwing things aside.

  ‘It’s not here, it’s not here,’ Tom said, his voice high.

  He looked at Beth. ‘Beth, do you know where your inhaler is? Can you point? Please can you point for me?’

  Beth shook her head, tears rolling down her face.

  ‘She doesn’t fucking know, just keep looking,’ Mary shouted. She had moved onto the bedside drawers now, yanking each one out and sifting through the contents. ‘Her jacket, Tom, go find her jacket, on the hallstand, hurry.’ She didn’t turn around and Tom got up and skidded out the door. A few moments later he yelled out to them and the baby started wailing from another room.

  ‘Mary, it’s not here, I can’t find it, fucking hell –’

  ‘The first aid kit! In the bathroom, quick, bring it here!’

  Tom came flying back in with a big plastic box with a red cross on it.

  ‘Open it, open it.’ Mary and Tom knelt over the box and unlatched it, then upended it, shaking the contents onto the floor. They all saw it at the same time, like a nugget of gold gleaming in a bed of rocks. Mary plucked the inhaler up and shoved it in between Beth’s teeth in one swift movement. She grabbed her hand and squeezed it. ‘Breathe it in, Beth, breathe it in right now, do you hear me?’

  Tom stroked her hair back off her forehead. ‘Breathe, breathe, breathe,’ he muttered, his own face pale.

  From down the hallway the baby wailed on like a siren, but Mary and Tom kept their eyes on her face as Beth sucked and sucked and sucked on the inhaler. Finally, she felt the magical opening of her airways, like throwing open a door. Beth closed her eyes again and slid a hand over her chest. She watched it move up and down as she breathed, slower and slower until it was almost normal. She put her fingers to her lips and felt the air pass between them, cool and soft.

  The three of them all stared at each other like they’d witnessed a horrific car crash. Mary burst into tears. Tom got up and went to her, putting his arms around her shoulders and wiping her face with his fingers. ‘Shh now, she’s okay, Beth’s okay now,’ he murmured. Mary cried on, her nose buried in his chest.

  Beth rolled on her side so she faced away from them, turned back towards the bed. She drew her knees up. Her whole body ached and her eyes wouldn’t stay open. She felt spent, like she’d been running in her sleep, her shirt was damp with sweat.

  ‘The baby,’ Mary said, and Tom left to tend her. Mary sighed and wiped her face with the hem of her nightgown. ‘Let’s get you back into bed,’ she said. With her hands under Beth’s armpits, Mary levered her up onto the mattress and pulled the sheet over her. She rubbed her back in a circular motion.

  ‘Are you okay?’

  Beth nodded, once.

  ‘Do I need to get a doctor out?’

  Beth shook her head. Mary didn’t say anything for a bit. Beth held the inhaler to her cheek, the plastic funnel wedged against her jaw. She breathed, in and out, felt her lungs fill and empty, then again. She edged the covers up to her chin. Mary gave her a last pat and kissed her forehead, then left.

  Beth slept again, waking only to eat the tomato soup and toast that Mary put on her bedside table. She didn’t eat all the toast, just one piece. She chewed each bite twenty times. She needed the extra strength from it, she told herself. When she finally woke properly, it was almost dark again. She had lost a whole day. From the hallway Beth could hear a voice that sounded familiar.

  The door opened and Erin stood there, Mary hovering behind her.

  ‘I bumped into Erin at the supermarket,’ Mary said. Erin cut her eyes away, staring out the window. ‘I told her you weren’t feeling well, so she decided to drop in.’

  Beth and Erin looked at each other.

  ‘I’ll leave you girls to it,’ Mary said, and disappeared.

  Erin took a couple of steps into the room and sat down on the edge of the window seat, wrapping her arms around herself. She glanced at Beth, her hair falling forward, then away again.

  ‘Cool garden,’ she said. Her fingers toyed with the drawstring on her jumper.

  Beth nodded.

  ‘So,’ Erin said. ‘Why are you in bed anyway?’

  ‘Asthma.’

  ‘Really? You haven’t had that in forever, right?’

  Beth nodded again. She felt a tug, that feeling of being with someone who knew all the little things about you. If Beth got called on in class and Erin could tell she didn’t know the answer to something, she used to call it out herself like she just couldn’t contain it. ‘Seventy-four! Oops, sorry, sir!’ Beth wrote Erin detailed sick notes to get out of sport. Erin brought her mum’s caramel slice to school for Beth because Theo never had that sort of thing in the house. Beth knew Erin was gay. Beth was the only person Erin told when she saw her mother with her dad’s best friend in his car, hands everywhere, early one morning when she was out on her observation deck.

  ‘Mary said the police reckon Theo kidnapped you or something,’ Erin blurted, then blushed a deep pink.

  ‘That’s what they said.’

  ‘What do you think?’

  Beth shrugged, not looking at Erin.

  ‘Wow. That’s pretty intense.’

  ‘Ha. Yeah.’ Intense. They would usually have said that after a heated conversation with someone, or a maths class that went on for hours, or an interrogation from a
parent.

  ‘So, will she go to jail?’ Erin was leaning forward, wide-eyed.

  ‘I don’t know, do I? Nobody tells me anything.’

  ‘Okay, okay. Sorry. I just thought you might want to talk about it.’

  ‘If I wanted to talk to you about it I would have called you,’ Beth snapped.

  Erin shook her head. She took a deep breath, then stood up. ‘Yeah well, I told Mary this was a stupid idea. You’ve been too self-absorbed to talk to me about anything for months now.’

  ‘Maybe I only want to talk to people who have interesting things to say.’

  ‘Fuck you.’

  ‘You can dream.’

  Erin looked like she’d been slapped. She stared at Beth for one beat, then another, then turned on her heel and walked out, slamming the door behind her.

  Beth burst into tears.

  God. What was happening to her, was she some sort of monster? How low could she get? Erin didn’t deserve that. Nobody deserved that. But things happened all the time that weren’t about what people deserved or didn’t deserve, didn’t they? Beth couldn’t protect Erin, she had to harden up. Sometimes shit just happened, bad things to good people, good things to bad people. Theo always said there was no such thing as a bad person, only people who did bad things. Beth knew why she said that now. Because that was how Theo managed to sleep at night, that was how she thought of herself: not a bad person, just someone who did a bad thing. And now, that bad thing had come back to bite her, and not just bite her but swallow her whole.

  Before Beth had gone on school camp in grade seven, Theo had made her a Just-In Case. It was a little fabric pencil case with donkeys printed on it, and it had a wooden toggle closure. Inside were tampons and Panadol, band aids, a mini sewing kit, five dollars in coins, a handkerchief and a Milky Way. When she had given it to Beth, Theo had said she couldn’t think of any circumstance that wouldn’t be at least helped a little by having those items at her disposal. During that camp, Erin and Beth had won the Tidy Tent Award and Gabby Ahern and Rachel Cormac, feeling much aggrieved at their defeat, had stolen their training bras and hung them from the rafters of the outdoor shelter where they ate all their meals. Beth had sat hunched over her bowl of cornflakes and long-life milk at breakfast, watching her tiny bra sway in the breeze above her table, her face so red that she feared it would never go back to normal but stay that way forever, so deep was her embarrassment.

  While she tried to ignore the cutest boys sniggering into their cordial, Beth had mentally riffled through her Just-In Case. Nothing in its contents would help in the slightest, but she hadn’t told Theo that when she got home. She had told her it had been wonderful and very handy and Theo had glowed with pleasure. That was probably around the time Beth had stopped telling her mother everything. She had carried the Just-In Case with her all through school anyway. Theo had joked that she would just put a gun and some gold bullion in it if Beth ever travelled overseas.

  Lying in bed at Mary’s house, Beth thought about the Just-In Case. It seemed silly to think that anything like that could ever have helped at all.

  chapter thirteen

  Theo woke early with a start. The phone, she thought.

  She had unplugged the phone last night. But, Beth might ring, or someone might ring about Beth, and Theo had unplugged the fucking phone. She ran down the hallway and over to the phone, jamming the plug back into the jack. She picked up the handset and listened to the dial tone. She put it back down again and stared at it. It didn’t ring.

  On the doorstep Theo picked up her newspaper. At the top of page eight, she found what she was looking for.

  Woman dies at Gipps Point lookout

  A Verity Beach resident has died after an apparent suicide at Gipps Point on Friday evening. Ambulances attended the scene of the incident and transported the fifty-five-year-old woman to Cardmoor General Hospital. She remained on life support for some time but eventually succumbed to her injuries. Locals say the deceased was a pleasant community member and they were unaware of any distress she may have been in. She has no surviving family. The incident, the third suicide at the spot this year, has prompted a renewal of calls for sturdier safety barriers at the site.

  No surviving family.

  Was that it? Theo flipped through the paper again, in case this was a snapshot of a larger article, but there was nothing. And there probably would be nothing further. Just like that, a whole life erased.

  Theo went to the kitchen to make herself a cup of tea. Beth’s mug stood by the kettle and the muesli she liked was still out on the bench. There were peaches in the fruit bowl that Theo had bought her a few days earlier, Beth had always loved peaches. A fuzz of fruit flies hovered around them. One peach had split and leaked juice into the bowl, turning the others rotten. Where was Beth this morning? Did they have the things she liked to eat there?

  Theo went to the window in the lounge; she could see the street below from here. She didn’t open the curtain but stood in a channel of light that beamed from around the corner of the fabric. The house was so quiet. Theo rummaged until she found some painkillers. She swallowed them with a sip of tea. Her hips were already beginning to react to not swimming, a hot needling if she bent down or twisted her midsection.

  She rang Mary.

  ‘Theo, I was calling and calling you last night. Where have you been?’ Mary sounded upset.

  ‘I’ve been here, I just . . . I didn’t feel like talking.’

  ‘You didn’t feel like talking? I thought you’d at least want to know how Beth was.’

  Theo almost dropped her cup of tea. ‘Have you seen her? When did you see her?’

  ‘Theo, she’s staying with me. That’s what I was calling for. They released her into my care. Isn’t it handy having a registered foster carer as your friend?’

  Theo burst into tears. ‘Oh, Mary, I’m so glad she’s with you! Nobody told me, I had no idea where she was. I was picturing some horrible group home for teenage runaways or something.’ She sank down to the floor.

  Mary sighed. ‘I like to think I can offer her something a little more salubrious.’

  ‘Of course. I would rather you than anyone else in the world look after her, if I can’t.’

  ‘Theo, that’s very nice, but I’m more concerned about what Beth wants at the moment, if I’m honest.’

  Theo bit down on her lip. ‘Is she okay?’

  ‘Oh, Theo. Of course she’s not okay.’

  ‘Mary.’ Theo kneaded her stomach with a fist. ‘Please, Mary, please can you just let me tell her what happened. Just let me talk to her, so I can explain.’

  ‘Theo, you know I can’t do that, please don’t ask me to, that isn’t fair. I can’t even see you, not while I have Beth. It’s a conflict of interest.’ Mary sounded upset now, and Theo shut her eyes. The protection order. Mary couldn’t give her a conduit to Beth, that would be in breach of the order too. Theo stopped kneading.

  ‘I’m sorry, I’m not thinking clearly.’

  ‘I know. It’s such a mess. Beth’s hurting so badly, Theo. She had an asthma attack, too.’

  ‘An asthma attack? She hasn’t had one in so long. Is she okay, now? Did she have her inhaler?’ Theo gripped the phone.

  ‘We had one in the first-aid kit. I think we must have had it for one of the placement kids.’

  ‘Thank goodness. I’m so sorry I couldn’t be there. I hate that I can’t be there for her. I wish it didn’t have to be like this.’

  Mary paused. ‘Do you?’

  ‘Mary!’ Theo gasped. ‘Do you think I haven’t gone over and over this? Do you think I haven’t questioned myself constantly?’

  ‘I don’t know. Have you? I don’t really know what happened. You’ve told me a little, Theo, but –’

  ‘But what?’

  ‘But not enough to make me get it. Not enough to make me think it’s worth it, not when I see what Beth is going through. You have told me that you did the right thing, and I’ve always taken your word fo
r it. But I still don’t understand, not entirely. Couldn’t you just have told her about her mother yourself, when she was old enough?’

  ‘I’ll explain, Mary. I just need you to promise me something first.’

  Mary was silent on the end of the phone. Theo spoke clearly, she couldn’t afford to be misheard. She licked her dry lips. ‘If I go to jail, if I never see Beth again, or if she says she never wants to see me again, even if we’re allowed, I need you to tell her that I did it because I loved her. Will you tell her that? Not now, but then.’

  Mary murmured something. Theo gripped the phone harder.

  ‘What? What did you say?’

  ‘I said “of course I will”, Theo. I’ve already told her you love her. I told her straightaway.’

  Theo leant back against the wall.

  ‘What did she say, Mary? What did she say when you told her how much I love her?’

  Mary paused. ‘She didn’t say anything much, Theo.’

  Theo closed her eyes.

  ‘Theo, I’ve got to go. The kids are planning a mutiny.’

  ‘You shouldn’t have had so many.’

  ‘I know. My ovaries wouldn’t listen.’

  ‘Thank you, Mary.’ Theo’s voice cracked.

  ‘Oh, Theo. Talk soon.’

  When she got off the phone, Theo went back into Beth’s room, lay down on the floor and looked again at those grey-green walls. Couldn’t she just have told Beth the truth about her mother, when she was old enough?

  It was a fair question.

  Theo could have told Beth what had happened, maybe when she was nine or twelve or fourteen. She could have told her every painful fact of it, every twist of the knife, all the countless ways that things went wrong. Indeed, Theo had always planned to do just that. When Beth turned eighteen. That was the age of a legal adult, and a legal adult deserved to know who they were. At first she had thought sixteen, but then sixteen had come and gone and Beth just hadn’t seemed old enough. The time just never arrived when Theo believed she could tell Beth how they came to be here without breaking her heart.