Alaska

by Sue Saliba

‘i’d need to get some more clothes from em’s,’ she said, and she realised that she had not answered his question.

  could it be that despite all that ethan offered – all that alaska offered – mia could hear herself being called somewhere else? where might that somewhere else be? mia wondered this as she sat beside ethan in the car the following day. they drove along the snow-wet road to em’s house. the trees were frosted with white powder now. soon they would be heavy with snow. winter would deepen. the daylight would diminish.

  further along the road they travelled, had it really only been a few days since she had seen em? she thought of the last time they had been together, after the protest meeting, and she thought of em’s refusal to be swayed, of her caution and then her sadness. and then she remembered their telephone conversation and she realised that it had followed the same pattern it always followed: a distance, then sadness, and beneath it all, something else. love.

  she looked up, wanting to say something to ethan to break the feeling all through her, but she had nothing to say. she looked at ethan with his hands on the steering wheel, his face staring straight ahead, and her mind was blank.

  the road went on forever and ever.

  or so it seemed. at last, at very last, after they had turned and climbed the hill and turned again, they arrived at em’s.

  here, where mia expected everything to be different – and she couldn’t explain why – all was very much the same. the house, the driveway, the shed she had entered on that morning as she hid from terrence – everything was identical to its former self. only a thin dusting of snow was scattered across it all to suggest any time had passed.

  she closed the car door and half-expected ethan to stay in the car, to wait for her there, but he followed her and came to the house. she knocked on the door and felt as if all the blood in her had instantly retreated. there was no answer and she was about to knock again when em opened the door.

  ‘hi,’ mia said.

  em looked surprised, she seemed to back away a little inside the hallway.

  ‘hi. i came to … i need to … get a few more of my things,’ mia said.

  em’s face was blank, neutral. then she nodded and said, ‘okay,’ as if they had already spoken about it and mia’s arrival was expected. ‘come inside,’ she said.

  ethan followed mia inside. ‘hi,’ he said to em.

  em put out her hand and shook his.

  that was when mia looked away and saw christian watching her from along the hall. his little face spied at her from around the corner of the lounge room, she smiled at him and he looked back, then he emerged from his hiding place and came towards her. how tiny he was. she remembered him that day in the forest, when she and em had gone there and he had, too.

  he had been so small and perfect and almost lost inside the shadows.

  he came to her now and nestled against her leg, pushing himself into it and holding her with his little arm.

  ‘you could help me get some things,’ she said to him.

  ‘you could be my helper.’

  without asking em, or looking at ethan, mia took christian’s hand and led him downstairs to the little room where she had slept.

  together they pulled out her clothes, there were not many that were hers as she had mostly borrowed em’s. she made two piles. in one, she placed her sister’s clothes, in the other, she placed her own. christian stopped and rubbed the skin of his palm against the softness of mia’s teal velvet skirt. she wanted to tell him that it was the colour of the alaskan night late in summer, and that when she had seen the sky out there alone it had made her believe in special things beyond those that fear bound us to. mia leant across to tell him, not in words, but in a language more reliable, she went to take one of his hands, but as she reached across, she felt the presence of em in the room.

  ‘so you’re moving in with him?’ em said.

  ‘maybe … i suppose so.’

  em was silent.

  ‘we get along well,’ mia said. ‘i mean, he… understands me. we have similar ideas.’

  ‘i guess he’s involved in the protest against the pipeline, fighting for the forest,’ em said.

  mia thought of the flyer she’d discovered on his computer. ‘yes,’ she said. and then she thought of ethan’s heart. she knew his heart, she was certain. ‘yes,’ she said more surely. ‘yes, he cares about the forest very much.’

  em stiffened for a moment, but then her voice lowered and mia felt what was behind her sister’s words and silent gestures whenever she spoke of the forest – when she’d warned mia to stay away from it, when she’d asked mia for help and then spoken only of christian’s schooling, when she’d driven mia to the meeting but refused to participate. something in all of this spoke of em’s connection to the forest and its power, or the power in em that the forest awoke. but em resisted.

  ‘does this mean you might stay in alaska?’ em asked.

  mia felt like she had when she and em had been separated at each end of the earth – like she might burst apart with sadness.

  she wanted to answer yes.

  but she couldn’t, not out loud, instead she turned back to her small pile of clothes and put them, one item at a time, into the new bag she’d brought with her from australia. it had been stored, unused, beneath the bed here in the little room at the base of the stairs and yet mia noticed now how it seemed strangely worn.

  ‘ethan is waiting upstairs,’ mia said when she’d finished packing her things. ‘i really should be going.’

  but although she spoke the words, mia did not leave. instead she stayed close to em. i wanted it to be different, that’s what she wished to say. i wanted it to be like it used to be, when there was just the two of us, you and me, em, and nothing could take us apart …

  ‘goodbye mia,’ em said and she reached across and hugged mia to her.

  ‘goodbye em.’

  ‘your sister was quiet,’ ethan said as they turned back out of the driveway, and mia answered with her own silence, the kitchen curtain moved and she glimpsed em’s hands behind it.

  after a time, mia said, ‘perhaps we have our different ways of answering what we hear in the world.’ and she thought about the forest, about the deer and what a great loneliness it would be without all the beautiful creatures of the world.

  she stared at the road ahead and she wanted to tell ethan how glad she was that she had met him, how important it was, how … she stopped trying to think of words and simply shifted towards him and rested her head against his arm.

  there she stayed. he continued to look straight ahead as he drove, she knew he had a lot on his mind with work, with all that entailed. i won’t speak out loud of what matters, not now, she decided. and she thought of em and she thought of the forest and she thought of her mother.

  yes, there, moving beneath a different sky, she couldn’t help thinking of her mother.

  on they travelled until at last they were back at ethan’s house and he guided mia to his bedroom and showed her an empty drawer and then part of the wardrobe where she could put her clothes, he left her there to unpack and she removed her jumpers and her skirts, her thick, thick stockings and her one coat from melbourne that would never be warm enough to keep the cold from her here in alaska.

  slowly she folded and hung her things and slowly she began to feel a sense of safety – was that the feeling? – that she had longed for. here she was, with ethan, living with him in his home.

  how far she had come.

  ethan came up the stairs and stood behind her. ‘can i use your telephone?’ mia said. ‘i need to make a phone call.’

  she rang the number slowly, deliberately. it was unfamiliar, after all, and she felt a mixture of excitement and apprehension, and determination, she was doing the right thing, as she pressed the numbers, then waited for the rings and the person at the other end to pick up, she felt closer to a kind of truth. it was as if she were on the cusp of herself, her edges, and she might soon fall in.

&n
bsp; ‘hello,’ the voice at the other end said.

  ‘hi,’ mia said. and she held the flyer in her hand. ‘hi, is this jessie?’ she said.

  it was jessie. the woman who’d organised the protest meeting at the library, the woman who wanted to save the forest.

  ‘hi jessie. my name’s mia. i came to your meeting about the forest. i want to help, i want to come to the protest outside alaxoil’s office on friday the fifteenth and i need a lift. i saw your number on the bottom of the flyer.’

  ‘mia,’ jessie said, and for an awful moment mia expected she would say that she was too busy or that she’d changed her mind, that they couldn’t win anyway or that the forest wasn’t so important after all.

  ‘mia,’ jessie said. ‘that’s so wonderful that you’re coming along, where can i pick you up?’

  and so, on a friday morning, mia waited by the window for jessie to appear. ethan had gone to work – one of his last days with his old job. she felt a little guilty about not telling him that she was going to the protest, but she thought he had enough to think about with finishing his job. when the time was better, when it was right, she would tell him and they could go to the protests together and do whatever it took to stop the killing of the forest.

  for now, mia would go alone, well, not quite alone because although she didn’t really know anyone else involved with the protest, she felt a strange sense of companionship with the people participating. for the first time in her life, she felt like she belonged to something larger than herself. was that it? she looked at the sky beyond the window, the snow was falling and fir trees rose from the white ground. she remembered being in the forest and the feeling she’d had. she couldn’t find the words for it at the time, but now she realised that it was a feeling of belonging, of being at home. and when she surrendered herself to this feeling, she would feel entirely alive.

  she was disturbed by a knock at the door. mia hadn’t noticed that a car had arrived and someone had walked to the verandah, she heard another knock. quickly, she gathered her bag and her coat and ran to the door. it was jessie.

  how excited mia felt, how purposeful. she and jessie drove all the way into town, two strangers somehow united in a way that made mia feel happy, safe.

  ‘sarah jin’s office is just around the next block,’ jessie said. ‘you’ll see a big new sign for alaxoil on the door with a glossy painting of the forest, as if the two go together.’

  mia felt the sudden lie of it, the awful pretence this oil company was making to try to convince people not only that all would be okay, but that what they wanted to do was natural and good.

  ‘we’ll let them know that we understand what the truth is,’ mia said.

  and jessie looked at her and smiled.

  when they arrived, mia helped jessie unpack the boot of her old car. she had placards, a table to be spread with information, t-shirts someone had printed for people to wear, even a loud speaker. one by one, a small crowd began to gather on the pavement, some were there to help as part of the protest, others were simply curious – unsure but wanting to know more.

  ‘join us to tell sarah jin and alaxoil that they are not welcome here in fairbanks,’ jessie shouted through the speaker. ‘our forest matters! the trees matter! the animals matter! the forest is their home. the earth belongs to all of us.’

  mia looked around. the sharp glint of unnatural light from the windows of alaxoil’s office caused her to squint, in the crowd she saw the girl she remembered from the protest meeting. she was tiny, wrapped in a coat that almost reached her ankles. she wasn’t holding a sign, but she was sketching, just as mia had seen her that night – drawing something with all of her concentration. mia edged closer, she heard chanting behind her.

  people were repeating, ‘the earth belongs to all of us.’ mia moved closer and closer to the girl. she stretched to see what she was drawing.

  and there, on a crinkled wet piece of paper, she saw the deer.

  it was true, the earth did belong to everyone, to the people and the trees, the animals, and the deer. it belonged to all of earth’s inhabitants and it had to remain alive, you couldn’t kill one bit of it without killing every other bit. you couldn’t take away one part of the world and expect all the rest to go on living as if nothing had changed – as if it were fully alive as it should be.

  mia thought of her mother. how she, mia, had tried to get away from her, bit by bit because it was all so uncomfortable, so difficult. and how through every attempt to get away, every story and fantasy and delusion, every time she moved away from the truth of things – as haunting and frightening and beautiful as that truth might be – mia became a little bit dead.

  ‘the deer is so beautiful,’ mia whispered to the girl.

  ‘i don’t understand why anyone would want to kill it.’

  would she stay in alaska? there was em, there was ethan. there was, after all, a beauty and – she looked around at the crowd that had grown now – there were people who cared about the forest and all that it meant. but the voice of mia’s mother was calling her. beneath all the anger and sadness, beneath the fear, there was something uncompromised mia felt for her mother: an indisputable love.

  ‘she’s not even here to respond to us,’ someone yelled from the door of the office.

  one of the protesters had tried to get sarah jin to come out and address the crowd, to explain why the company was going to kill the forest, but sarah jin was nowhere to be found. she must have known of the protest and planned to be somewhere else.

  ‘they don’t even have the courage to explain themselves,’ jessie called out. ‘save our forest!’ she cried.

  ‘save our forest,’ mia repeated, joining in the chant, holding up her placard.

  ‘it was a great success,’ jessie said, as she drove mia home.

  ‘yes, it was,’ mia said. she felt there was so much swirling around in her head but mostly, right now, she couldn’t wait to tell ethan of the event, of how they had all stood up for the forest.

  ‘we’ll keep going,’ jessie said. ‘we won’t stop.’

  mia felt that she would tell ethan this too. she felt that next time he would join them, she was sure of it.

  ‘thanks jessie,’ she said as they stopped in ethan’s driveway. ‘i may have someone with me next time.’

  ‘really?’ jessie said.

  ‘yeah. ethan.’

  that was when mia noticed that ethan’s car was parked around the side of the house, protected from the snowfall.

  ‘i’m going to tell him all about it now,’ she said, and leant across to hug jessie goodbye.

  how strange that ethan was home. mia thought it odd, but she was so excited. she couldn’t wait to tell him all that had happened. she rushed towards the house and up the steps, along the verandah, and paused only momentarily at the door, how silly, she almost laughed at herself, why should she knock? this was her home now. she lived here.

  in she went. she nearly forgot to take off her shoes, she was in such a hurry. she looked down when she heard the ice crunching on the tiles, and then began to pull her shoes off, one at a time.

  there she stood, with one shoe still on when she heard ethan’s voice in the kitchen. she was about to call out to him, to answer him, when she realised that he wasn’t talking to her.

  ‘i thought i heard someone,’ she heard him say. and his voice was low, so she knew it wasn’t directed at her.

  ‘maybe not,’ he said. ‘anyway …’ she heard him open the door of the fridge. who could he be talking to?

  mia walked along the passage carefully. she heard only her own footsteps and thought for a moment that perhaps she had imagined ethan’s voice, perhaps he hadn’t spoken, or perhaps he had and he was simply talking to himself. yes, why not? people did those things and they were the kind of things you got to learn about after you were in a relationship with someone, weren’t they?

  she felt herself relax, and she thought again of the forest and all that had gone on at the pro
test.

  ‘ethan,’ she called out. there was silence. ‘ethan. i’ve got so much to tell you,’ mia said. she was at the door of the kitchen now. ‘ethan, i’ve been at the …’

  she stopped. he was looking up at her from the open fridge. she looked across the kitchen at him.

  ‘ethan,’ mia said.

  he looked towards the kitchen table and mia followed his eyes. there, sitting on a chair, beside the long window with the snow falling outside and the sky and the trees, was a woman.

  ‘mia,’ ethan said. ‘i want you to meet someone.’

  mia stared across the room.

  she saw the woman looking back at her, smiling, it was the woman with the dark, dark hair.

  ‘mia,’ ethan said. ‘i want you to meet my new boss, sarah jin.’

  that night as she lay beside ethan,

  mia’s heart made a sound

  that no one else heard.

  she was here in alaska, with ethan, with em. safe from certain parts of the world and certain parts of herself.

  here – if she chose – was a certain story.

  or she could listen to another way.

  outside it was night and dark and the sky was upside down. the forest called to her. why had she come? what was it that a world so remote had to tell her?

  it wasn’t hard to know, not now.

  she moved the heavy blankets from herself and went to the wardrobe. she put on a jumper, a jacket and a pair of jeans. she pulled the fur-lined boots em had given her onto her feet.

  outside something was calling her.

  there, in the night, she went out into the snow, it fell all around her, but made no noise. the silence of snow – that was a phrase that came to her now. it was something ethan had said, something about snow making no sound as it fell. it was a little prayer, as if to say – stay calm, stay still, for everything is peaceful and soundless.

  but she knew it wasn’t true. something had woken her, woken her from her dreams. something was calling her, shifting out there, moving.

  look into the darkness, it seemed to say. come closer,

  what could it be?

  she heard a shifting in the snow as if something was dragging itself, trying to be free.