Alaska

by Sue Saliba

it was the voice that came after – or sometimes before – all of mia’s dreaming and wishing. it said, give up, let go, there’s nothing at all there.

  she’d heard that voice before, using other words but arriving at the same destination, she would deny it if she were asked – she would even deny it to herself – but it was the voice of her mother.

  what’s the point? her mother would say. she might look to the floor, or sigh, shaking her head, but whatever she did, there would be a pause and then she’d answer herself predictably, routinely, in the same way.

  why won’t the darkness just come? mia thought, looking through the closed window at the endless day. there was suddenly something intolerable about the near-constant light, she closed her eyes and she thought of the forest, but all she could see was the young deer and the vision troubled her although she didn’t know why.

  upstairs there was commotion as christian screamed and anxious parental steps charged across the floor towards him. perhaps he’d thrown one of his toys or misplaced his plastic tank that circled the lounge room with its guns raised until its wind-up key completely turned back to zero. mia put her hands to her ears. she wished herself far, far away and didn’t stop to let herself acknowledge that this was the ‘away’ she had always wanted. here with em.

  there were the sleeping pills she’d stolen from her mother’s drawer before she’d left melbourne. she hadn’t used any yet. there was nearly a full packet in the little box she kept at the bottom of her suitcase. the box was scratched metal with a faded cowboy on the front and had come to her many years ago from her father. she couldn’t remember if he’d sent it to her once he’d left the family, or if she’d found it in the shed in a place where he’d left it for her to find. em had insisted the box had belonged to their grandfather and he’d left it behind by accident on one of his saturday-afternoon visits. he’d used it as an ashtray for his hand-rolled cigarettes. no, mia silently insisted, but she didn’t tell em what she believed.

  em was the holder of the family’s logic, of their history as it made sense.

  i’ll just sleep for a little while, mia thought, to pass the time, and as she pulled the suitcase across the floor towards her, she imagined herself slipping further and further into darkness.

  ‘mia.’ there was knocking at the bedroom door. it was em. ‘mia, someone phoned while you were out.’ a note appeared under the door.

  ethan called to say hi.

  there, suddenly the flight in mia stopped. she was present, grounded in the little room at the bottom of the stairs. she didn’t know whether to answer em – to open the door and give some kind of explanation of the night before – or pick up the note and turn her attention to ethan.

  the note against the wooden floor was perfectly written in em’s square script, neat and precise. em was silent now on the other side of the door.

  mia bent down and picked up the note, she turned herself and pressed her back against the door. silently, patiently, she waited for em to leave.

  it hadn’t been like this before. in the past there had been no gap, no space between the sisters. that’s what mia told herself. in the past, mia would have rushed home to tell em of what had happened, of how she felt. she would have curled up on the bed or the couch and talked and listened and simply rested with em. ethan would have been a subject shared, part of their joint world.

  she held both notes now, both links to ethan. and she lay on the bed and closed her eyes.

  she remembered how she had met ethan for the second time, quite by mistake. after all those attempts to find him after their first meeting in the forest, she had run into him on a shopping trip to the supermarket with em. she had seen him loading groceries into his car and she had walked over while em was still busy at the checkout. yes, he was the young man she’d seen in the forest, mysteriously carrying that bucket with the fish inside, she hadn’t known what to say, but he’d recognised her and talked freely, and suggested they might meet again, and they had, secretly, one lunchtime when mia convinced em to drive her to town and pick her up later. he’d asked her if she’d like to visit his house. ‘yes,’ she’d said, fearful and excited. and so she’d sneaked away to the edge of the forest where she had first met him more than a month before.

  mia held both notes and she did not take the sleeping pills, she didn’t need to. she drifted deliberately, peacefully away. she left the day behind and knew that when she woke it would be different.

  and it was: night-time at last. now she could look out into blackness, identify a star, see a corner of the sky that she was sure no one else was seeing right at that time. immensity. mia felt a sense of possibility overtake her.

  she pushed her face to the window of the little room, still closed, locked, and she couldn’t believe what she saw.

  a simple ribbon of colour, the northern lights.

  she’d heard about it in one of terrence’s pseudoscientific lectures but experiencing it by herself, unexpected, alone, was something different,

  she put her hand to the glass, hopefully, foolishly, as if she might catch a part of the rainbow night sky and hold it inside her forever, it was gone, and then back again, green and yellow and red shivering against the black.

  if only she could find where it came from, somehow get closer to it. she turned and left the window behind, climbed the stairs away from her basement room and hurriedly, even recklessly, ran to the house’s back door. in the kitchen the evening’s dishes were drying. em must have wondered why mia hadn’t come up for dinner, perhaps she’d knocked at her door again, but most likely she hadn’t. there was a communication between mia and em that was unspoken. things were shifting or coming to the surface at last.

  mia opened the door to night-time, it was cold, very cold, she shivered, she knew she wouldn’t be able to stand the chill so she pulled em’s thick parka from the coat rack. she sunk her hands into the warm pockets and closed the door behind her. she felt the car keys in her palm. she couldn’t, no. an evil thought flashed through her mind. she’d never driven the car. she didn’t even have her licence, what if she lost control and skidded across the deadly black ice?

  up above her was the sky. the colours hadn’t stopped changing and shifting. how beautiful. she quietly unlocked the car and she climbed inside, it was cold, very cold, like the interior of a metal tomb.

  she turned the key and the car shuddered. the sound echoed so loudly in the chilly air that she was sure em must have heard. she rubbed frosted holes in the windows so that she might see outside and as the engine warmed, she saw exhaust smoke hanging ghost-like in the air around the car.

  at last she moved forward, slowly up the driveway, it had only been that morning that ethan had driven her along this path, towards the house, and yet it seemed so much longer, not in hours or minutes or the daily chores that might mark the usual passage of time, but in experience, it was as if via his presence she had touched upon some other dimension of herself and she had seen or thought things that otherwise might have taken her many years to know.

  she turned the car awkwardly, dangerously onto the road. the forest on either side was a dark shape and a million creatures rested inside, she was alive, she found the switch on the side of the steering wheel that lit up the road in front of her. a little tunnel of light. she would drive all the way to town, she would drive past the abandoned mine where fairbanks had begun one hundred years earlier, down the main street with its two bars and their neon lights, and past the lunchtime cafe, now vacant, with the corpse of a bear in its window, she would drive until she reached the end of town, that much she knew. and she would drive further.

  out she went along a single-lane tarred road until it became a dirt track, straggly and narrow, it would have been lost to the trees and the forest if it hadn’t opened onto a clearing, a bald patch that existed on the rise of a hill, it felt like she had been here before although that wasn’t possible. she stopped the car and as the engine clicked like a watch she felt seeped by a sense of familiar
ity, above her, the northern lights were brighter than when she’d first seen them through her window, around her was the forest.

  somewhere out there, not far away, she was sure, ethan rested. his house was in this direction from town, she knew that much. she knew, too, that he would be awake.

  you remind me of a part of myself, that’s what he’d said to her as they’d talked last night.

  she climbed out of the car, out into the night and she felt a strange companionship, how odd, to feel that here, beneath a foreign sky. she pulled her arms around herself and she felt strangely close to everything, and strangely far, far away, she looked above her at the sudden rush of blue whose shade she could not describe and she wondered if ethan, too, might be watching this night with its proof of a world beyond earth.

  she couldn’t be sure if he was watching, but she was determined she must hold this place tight within her. she knew that she must leave before the sunlight arrived and faded everything, quickly she started the car and began to drive hurriedly down the hill, slipping in places near the edge of the track but always recovering just in time.

  back through the town she went. still, the sky was dark enough to believe it was night, and mia believed she could make it all the way back to em’s house before em and christian were awake.

  and so she might have if she had not spotted a familiar car, just towards the edge of town, a kind of truck actually, it was too difficult to make it out exactly in the half-lit dawn. it was just a shape travelling quickly towards her, and then speeding away.

  a feeling inside her – yes, more a feeling than a thought – made her stop, pull over to the side of the road and wait. there she waited, and the trees grew slowly in definition and the night disappeared.

  it was morning, there was no escaping it. as mia drove the last few miles back to em’s house, she could see the frost against the trees she passed. she grew aware of the coldness of the car and felt herself grow smaller. she was shrinking, she was approaching the house.

  perhaps i can just slip downstairs and into bed, she told herself as she turned the car into the driveway, no one will ever guess i was gone, and with this thought, she felt not only a calmness, but also a kind of satisfaction in the notion that she might keep this experience a secret from em.

  but em had already woken.

  she was waiting when mia pulled the car to a halt on the icy ground at the back door of the house.

  ‘what do you think you’re doing?’

  em was furious, she was dressed, not in her pyjamas, but in jeans and a jacket.

  ‘i … needed the car,’ mia said.

  it was unconvincing.

  ‘you don’t even have a licence, what if you had an accident? what about the insurance?’

  mia bit her lip. she was standing with the car door open, she was a million miles from the night-time sky. em would not move.

  ‘where did you go, mia?’

  ‘it doesn’t matter.’ she closed the car door quietly.

  ‘what if i needed the car for christian? what if he were suddenly sick?’

  yes, christian, mia thought. that completed em’s sphere of what mattered, of what was allowed to matter.

  ‘did you go to see that man?’ em asked.

  ‘not exactly,’ mia replied. ‘anyway,’ she said, ‘if christian did get sick, you could drive him to the hospital in terrence’s car.’

  mia was unprepared for what followed.

  ‘terrence isn’t here, as you can see.’

  mia hadn’t seen. she was so preoccupied with her own entrance that she hadn’t noticed the utility had gone. the two sisters stared at each other in the morning.

  ‘he’s gone out the back of town to forest hill. it’s his last chance to go hunting before the snow falls.’

  you might have expected mia to think of ethan then. you might have expected her to think of the night-time sky again, but she didn’t. she thought of her mother. it was the first time mia hadn’t run into escape, into somewhere else. for once, she was pinned at the heart of things.

  ‘i need to make a phone call,’ she said to em, ‘i could give you the money.’

  em stepped aside. she didn’t take her eyes off mia.

  ‘don’t worry about the money,’ she said.

  mia walked into the house, took off her thick-soled shoes and handed em the car keys.

  ‘i’ll take the phone downstairs,’ mia said.

  in her tiny room, she called her mother. how terrified she was.

  ‘sunshine hospital, drug and alcohol unit,’ a voice answered, ‘rehabilitation.’

  mia thought the person on the other end was going to hang up. ‘i want to speak to mary lanson,’ she said.

  ‘who’s calling, please?’

  ‘it’s her daughter,’ mia said. ‘her youngest daughter.’

  ‘just a moment.’

  mia waited. outside it was light now. she wasn’t sure what time it might be in melbourne. it was spring – that occurred to her. her mother might be outside in the garden that the patients were encouraged to tend. she might be there in a sunhat, trimming flowers or watering herbs. she might be smelling the new leaves and watching the tiny sparrows that had only just been born.

  a voice came back onto the line.

  ‘mary lanson’s daughter? ‘

  ‘yes,’ mia said.

  ‘sorry, your mum’s in bed now.’

  ‘is she okay?’

  ‘it’s two in the morning.’

  ‘oh … sorry, i’m calling from alaska.’

  ‘yes, i know. i’m the nurse who’s looking after your mum.’

  ‘is she … okay?’

  ‘she talks about you a lot. i thought you might be coming back soon.’

  ‘so she’s getting better …’

  ‘well, it would probably help her if she had some family around.’

  mia was silent. this wasn’t what she’d expected. but, then, what had she expected?

  ‘maybe i should try to call her again when she’s awake,’ mia said.

  ‘the afternoons are best for her,’ the nurse said. ‘if you can manage it.’

  ‘the afternoons,’ mia repeated.

  ‘yes, the morning medication’s worn off and we haven’t given her the evening dose yet. she’s a bit more responsive.’

  mia remembered her mother’s milky, distant eyes from previous hospital visits, her mother with her cardigan on backwards.

  ‘i’ll tell your mother you called,’ the nurse said.

  ‘no, no … don’t do that,’ mia stumbled. she felt instantly guilty; guilty all over again. ‘no, please don’t do that,’ she said, and then she hung up.

  what had she wanted? any minute em would knock at the door, and mia would scream at her, mia would yell out. that’s what she imagined, she would shout, look what you’ve done. she would blame em with her perfection and her solutions and her way of knitting everything up so, so tight.

  what’s wrong with being vulnerable? mia wanted to say. what’s wrong with being defeated? why have we run away?

  mia could hardly breathe. she’d open the window. no, she’d go upstairs and she’d confront em about it, that’s what she’d do. why have we abandoned her? that’s what she’d ask. why can’t we accept things just as they are?

  of course, em would be washing dishes or ironing her clothes for work or preparing christian’s meal, she would be busy. but mia would break through. she’d say whatever she had to say to shatter everything.

  mia climbed the stairs.

  she saw em’s back at the kitchen sink, no doubt em was still angry with her, and she would be distant, contained.

  mia prepared herself.

  ‘em,’ she said.

  but em did not turn, only her back seemed to stiffen. ‘em, i called our mother.’

  and then em turned around and her face was flushed. she was crying.

  and mia felt a huge gap open up and feared she would fall into it. what then? who would come and save her? o
r, more to the point, who would stay by her side? she’d be as lonely and hopeless as her mother, shaken free by her brother and father and by an entire cast of cousins and extended family.

  it’s too hard. that’s what her mother’s family had said. you’ll just get dragged down with her.

  mia felt the panic that came at these moments of possible intimacy, the voice that said, keep your head above water, be safe.

  she looked at em. ‘we can’t do anything about it,’ she said.

  ‘i wish i could care for her,’ em said, ‘and i wish i could care for you. i wish we could just be free.’

  mia had not heard em speak like this since she’d arrived in alaska.

  ‘terrence doesn’t understand,’ em said.

  ‘em …’ mia was scared she’d opened something up now, and she would drown. ‘em,’ she said, ‘it’s okay.’

  she reached across to her sister and put her arms around her and was not surprised when em moved closer into her, like a child, and stayed that way, unhurried, quiet, as though she might never move again.

  and yet she did, of course. they both moved, they jumped back. the utility was coming down the driveway. the ground had dried, turned harder since mia had driven on it. you could almost hear the crunch of gravel beneath the tyres.

  terrence was shielded by the dark glass of the windscreen. mia and em both looked through the kitchen window at the car moving towards them down the path as if it were a ghost vehicle.

  almost nothing had been spoken of terrence, but something had been communicated, mia knew that. em was bound to terrence, that was it.

  something drew them both outside. terrence had been in the shed for ten minutes. he’d parked the utility in front of it. christian had not woken after eating an early breakfast. it was unusual, everything about the morning had felt unusual, as if things were familiar, but strangely skewed.

  what’s he doing in there? mia wanted to ask em. but as she was about to speak they both heard a crunching of leaves in the forest behind the garage, and a sound like the scraping of metal, of blades, and water.

  em went to terrence. she was in a hurry. mia saw her sister walk out of view and she knew she was going to the edge of the forest where terrence must have gone from the back door of the shed.