by Luke Horton
His mother shook. Historically, mostly in the hands, but now it was everywhere. Her trembling was the product of her illness and the medication she took for her illness, the cocktail of drugs she was on — steroids, antibiotics, anti-nausea medication, SSRIs, various other medications he didn’t even know about. And yet it was her anxiety that led her to self-medicate with nicotine and alcohol in the first place, so in this sense, anxiety had made her shake. What he did remember of it, before the illness, was how jumpy she could be, how fretful. And paranoid. And she had panic attacks; he had seen that. In many ways, they were alike. But was he making himself in her image?
The shaking was particularly cruel to Marianne initially because she was a potter, and while it had already become difficult for her to do the physical work of pottery — she had long since stopped wedging clay or using her kick-wheel — she no longer felt confident in her hands. The control was gone. For a while she continued, and joked about it, said she was going through her wonky mug phase — a style of pottery she had always despised. But now she could not do it at all. The emphysema had depleted her to such an extent that she struggled to do things that most people took for granted: bend down to pick up objects, walk through a room. At times, Tom’s condition debilitated him in similar ways. Hindered the same basic functions. Like drinking from a cup. And neither of them could breathe deeply. The main, of course not insignificant difference was that, for her, none of this ever passed.
For Marianne, leaving the house was a major undertaking that involved planning, coordination. His own confinement was voluntary, up to a point. When he was not well, many of their calculations ran along similar lines. Would there be stairs? Hills? How much walking would be involved? Any kind of overheating for him had become a trigger. What kind of place were they going to? Where would they sit? How easily could they leave if they needed to? Who would be there? His mother was able to discuss all this, map it all out, make plans for escape. And it was his father who had to do a lot of the work: gather the details, get her into the wheelchair, out of the car. Tom’s calculations were private. No one really knew how much of a shut-in he had become, he didn’t think. He did a good job disguising things, dissembling. He was working from home because he preferred it that way; he was driven, not someone using work as an excuse to never leave the house. Had he admitted that even to himself, in such a blunt way? Maybe it was being away from it that allowed him to see it more clearly for what it was.
He wasn’t sure how much Clara knew. They’d had conversations about performance anxiety in front of classes — about concealing sweat marks, about dealing with stressful situations — and all of these conversations had subtext. But everything they discussed fell within the normal range of nervousness that most people experienced, he thought.
Fundamentally, the anxiety that he shared with his mother kept them both from experiencing the world, the built environment, with the ease that people like them — white, middle-class — usually enjoyed. The world as it was designed did not easily accommodate them. There was no architecture for anxiety, no planning for it. Of course, mental health was always a stated concern of planners, of architects in their pitches, and it informed so much theory, especially now — neuro-architecture, environmental health. But how much could really be done for people like Tom and his mother was hard to say. For them, it was the fact that other people shared the world that they had to contend with. Indoor plants and adjusting the height of ceilings in public spaces just wasn’t going to cut it.
10
The next morning, Tom took his time getting out of the room. When he finally emerged, he took a packet of lime-flavoured chips out to the cabanas and sank into the cushions of a bamboo couch. There was no one around. He was feeling beaten by the heat, and sluggish, like he always did after not sleeping well and then sleeping late to compensate. He did not bother taking the towel off his shoulder, or picking up his book, or peeling his feet from the bamboo floor. His whole face ached. The pain radiated from the corners of his eyes across his cheeks.
The beach was empty. The massage ladies were in their spot, but even they were quiet, and for once the place seemed lugubrious. Perhaps it was just that it was overcast.
Tom was just ordering eggs when Clara appeared, shading her face from the sun and sucking on a coconut with a straw sticking out of it. Sleeping well, as she did every night, and rising early, she had gone for another walk, further north up the boardwalk, all the way to the big hotel that loomed over the beach. She was going to the room, would meet him back out there, she said.
Tom looked out at the water. There was one couple out there, in the shallows — although it was all shallows to the reef a few hundred metres out, and always calm, no more than a ripple ever making it to shore. The couple were bobbing around together, the girl’s arms around the guy’s neck. They were kissing every now and then and leaning into each other and leaning away again, and something about this movement caught Tom’s attention. As he watched, and it became clear what he was looking at, they became more brazen and began — stealthily at first, then quite openly — pressing against each other and moving up and down in the water. Tom looked around. There was no one else on the beach to witness it except two older women who had just arrived at the cabana at the far end and were busying themselves with the menus. He turned back, felt himself becoming hard in his shorts, and pulled his towel onto his lap. After a few minutes, in which time it was clear the woman was bringing the man to completion, holding him close to her and tightly around the neck, the couple disconnected and floated around the water for a while before getting out. Then they sauntered up the beach, surreptitiously inspecting their wet bodies as they walked.
Tom ate his breakfast, and then went to the pool to cool off. No one else was around. He dived deep into the crystalline water, skimmed the blue-and-white mosaic that pixelated the pool floor, and came up at the other end. Then he dived again.
There was something about some water, the blueness of it, which always seemed special to him, vaguely numinous. Even this pool water, which was chlorinated, had enough clarity and spangle in its blueness to make it count, while the dull, metal-coloured soup in the bay clearly did not. Perhaps it was the setting, the beauty of the place. And the stillness, save the two golden frogs presiding over it, burbling away. There was something beyond it being merely invigorating or refreshing in the heat — something that made him feel he might come back up, after a long time underneath the surface, somehow cured, made new. Cleansed of all his shit.
What was it that kept this fantasy alive for him? Why did he have it so strongly, every time? Diving into the water at the inlet near his parents’ place, his favourite place to swim, where there were mysterious, clearly delineated drifts of colour — turquoise, sea-green, cobalt — he always felt that if only he stayed under a little longer, in the deepest hollow in the sand, or dived back down one more time, truly soaked himself in it, he would come up changed. And, for a moment or two, sometimes a whole afternoon, if he swam long enough, he would feel that he was. His body felt different, his awareness of his limbs altered, his mind soaked, slowed. And then he would think: If I stayed here and did this every afternoon, then I would be changed, if only for a few hours every day — at least initially, and perhaps I could work myself up from there.
Now, he merely hoped the water would soak through the pores in his face and leach the ache of tiredness from it. That was all he asked. And perhaps to be able to sleep — if that was within the water’s powers.
He lay on a banana lounge for a while, nodded and smiled at several staff members as they drifted past. One woman, one of Madeleine’s friends, spoke to him briefly. She asked him if there was anything he required, and he — relaxed and comfortable in the exchange, feeling perhaps the effects of the water — thanked her and told her there wasn’t, and was alone again.
He wondered where everyone was. Perhaps Ollie was having a nap, or they had taken him for an adve
nture somewhere. But he wanted none of them to come back too soon, so he might remain changed for a little while yet.
Eventually, he got up and wandered back over to the cabanas, wanting a couch. He lay down in the shade and closed his eyes.
The first thing he knew about it was the sound. It came to him as if from a dream — or something from outside of a dream, something real puncturing it. It was like a mower starting up or a scooter, but when he turned around, he saw two men coming along the path, one in an official-looking uniform, and one wearing a gas mask with a machine strapped to his waist. The machine was something like a leaf blower, but heavier, all chrome, and it billowed out smoke in a continuous thick spray, disappearing plants and trees and paths and outdoor tables and chairs. The uniformed man seemed to be in charge of clearing the area, but he got waylaid by a group coming off the boardwalk into the hotel, the man with the machine was moving fast, and the smoke began drifting rapidly across the boardwalk towards Tom and the cabanas.
He stood up.
Several other employees materialised, including a security guard. As they watched, three young women rushed out from the hotel onto the beach, clutching belongings.
Tom moved over to the security guard, who was keeping his distance, presumably the safe distance, but not moving further away as the smoke rolled towards them. Tom asked him what was going on. What they were spraying.
Smoke, he said.
Smoke?
Yes, yes, smoke. For bugs, flies. He pantomimed swatting flies from his face.
What is it, though?
Smoke, he repeated.
Tom stared at it: the thick white fog was now obscuring pretty much all view of the hotel grounds, reaching high into the treetops, and covering the boardwalk like mist rolling in from the sea, but going the wrong way. Or like dry ice over a dance floor.
He watched it, for a minute or two, and was half-sitting back down when Clara emerged from the smoke, rushing towards him.
She looked stricken.
It’s just smoke, they say, he said, standing back up.
It’s pesticides … chemicals, she said, moving beyond him onto the beach. Nobody told me! I saw it coming under the door, so I went outside, and the whole place was so full of smoke I could barely see. I thought the hotel was on fire. But it didn’t smell like fire, it smelled like fucking horrible chemicals.
She held his gaze for a moment, and then backed further down the beach, towards the water. The fog had reached the cabanas now, was engulfing their bamboo blinds and floating out into the air, although it was thinning elsewhere, the hotel coming back into view through the haze.
Tom followed her.
She began talking rapidly: I tried to shut myself in the room, and I went into the bathroom, but it was coming in under the door, in through the louvres, so I had to leave. And then outside I saw someone who told me they were ‘fogging’, whatever the fuck that means, and it would be over in a minute or two, and she said to stay in my room or go out to the beach, but I was surrounded by it, I didn’t want to walk through clouds of fucking pesticides to get out here, so I thought I could get above it, and I went up the stairs of one of the bigger bungalows, but it was up there, too, so I went back down. And then I got down and lay on the path.
Her voice was shaking.
I thought it would rise up, float up, and maybe being on the ground was the best place to be … but then I thought ‘this is ridiculous’ and got up and ran out here … I could barely see where I was going … it was like a nightmare … Why didn’t they tell us?
She was close to tears. Tom couldn’t decide if she was being absurd by being so melodramatic or if he was being absurd for taking at face value the clearly inadequate reassurances of the security guard.
I wonder what it is, he said, stupidly.
Tom saw then that the two women he had seen earlier in the cabanas were standing nearby. They looked his way.
You seen this before? he asked.
Oh yeah, the closest one said. They do it all the time, for the mozzies.
Nobody told me, Clara said. They didn’t come to my room!
The women looked at her.
It’s okay, love, said the second woman. Everyone gets caught in it sooner or later. And she laughed.
There it was, then. He was relieved.
Things came back into focus a little after that. Out on the cool, grey sand, the beach was transformed. By the overcast day, by the whole weird thing with the fog. Everything looked plain and uninviting and kind of grimy: the sand with its dark patches, its litter and leaves; the water a dull brownish colour. But everything was alright now, they were fine, and life continued around the place. People were swimming at the next beach along. Hawkers were making their way along the sand, carrying baskets on their heads and eskies full of soft drink. He could hear music from the other hotels and restaurants all around them, and birds singing, as if they had stopped while the fog rose through the trees, but had started up again. A couple of staff were moving around the beach, tidying up tables after people’s lunches, straightening banana lounges.
And, he realised, he had remained cool. If he had felt any anxiety at all, he had not registered it consciously. He looked down at his hands. Beaded sweat lay in his palms, but that was it. It was as if anxiety had fizzed on his skin for a moment and evaporated into the air along with the fog. He felt strange, a little disembodied still. Sleepy, but good. Like this had been a test, and he had passed. Everything he had been worried about since the flight — was he simply going to disintegrate now, in front of fear of any kind? Was this his life now? He couldn’t trust himself? Again? — he could now counter. It felt less urgent, less real. Maybe he was fine after all. Maybe it was a one-off.
Clara was a few feet away, standing still, with her feet in the water. She would stand like that for a few moments, frozen, hovering over the water, staring back at the hotel and the last wisps of smoke hanging in the air, her eyes wide and her mouth open, and then snap out of it and begin pacing again, up and down the beach. Her face was pale, and she kept wrapping her hands around her neck, as if the pesticides she had inhaled had burnt her throat — which couldn’t possibly be the case, he didn’t think.
He didn’t know what to do. He tried, half-heartedly, to catch her eye, and when that failed, he sat back down in the cabana and tried giving her space. He grew impatient quickly. His stomach rumbled. He wanted lunch. He couldn’t look at her. Her cartoonishly horrified face. It was too ridiculous. He felt angry, he wasn’t sure why. He tried paying attention to his phone. Picked up a menu and leafed through it. But he couldn’t concentrate, and he knew he had to do something, he couldn’t let her just keep pacing the sand like that, looking so stricken. So he got up with a sigh, and trudged over to her.
As he got close, she looked up suddenly, past him, over his shoulder. He turned and saw that someone was coming out of the haze and tearing down the beach away from them with a child in their arms. It was Madeleine. Tom could see that she was crying and talking softly to Ollie while she struggled to carry him — he was too big, really, he was sliding down her front, while grasping on to her with both arms around her neck. She didn’t see them and wasn’t slowing down.
Clara went after her.
Later, when Clara returned, she went to reception to complain, and the woman was sympathetic, apologised, said they must have missed her bungalow when they were clearing the hotel. But she seemed slightly bemused, Clara said, as if she didn’t quite get it. Clara shut herself in the room for the afternoon, doing research, and when Tom came in, she told him what she’d learnt.
He was keen to let the topic drop. He couldn’t understand why she was so upset. Yes, it was pesticide, but surely a single exposure couldn’t be that bad, and it had cleared from the grounds within minutes. Clara had had her mysterious illnesses in the past, it was true — possible IBS, those rashes, headaches, fati
gue — but she’d cut out various foods and the symptoms had mostly disappeared, as far as he knew. And it was true that this might have made her more susceptible, or more wary of coming into contact with toxins, maybe. But still. Besides, she seemed as upset on Madeleine’s behalf as anything. Kept going on about the effects of fogging on children, babies. He couldn’t understand that either. Surely Madeleine was being way-over-the-top protective of Ollie and his ‘bad chest’, whatever that meant.
Under normal circumstances, he was sure that Clara would have joined him in mocking this kind of over-protectiveness. Would mock this response to the fogging, even, and would see the hypocrisy in it — that it was okay for them to spray toxic shit all over the island so they could enjoy their tropical holiday pest-free, just as long as they didn’t have to get caught in it themselves. But he didn’t really care about any of that, he just wanted them to forget about it. For everything to go back to how it was before.
But Clara didn’t want to let it drop. Didn’t seem able to.
They have no idea if it’s harmful, she was saying. There’s no studies on it. And I was lying down in it, Tom. For several minutes.
He was half-inclined to ask her again why she had lain down on the ground in a cloud of pesticides, but caught himself just in time.
I’m sorry you had to go through that, he said, unconvincingly.
