Gravity Is the Thing Read online

  Here I felt a sweet surge of gratitude towards this Pete Aldridge, pest control, because he was here to take care of me and prevent me jumping off a cliff, and was prepared to back that up with violent threats against a man considerably taller than he, a man on a larger scale than himself—a man whom he might have considerable difficulty snapping over his knee. We all looked at each other, contemplating this—but gratitude was immediately followed by irritation because the guy seemed to think the rest of us were idiots.

  ‘Deal,’ Wilbur agreed, cheerful. ‘Now, shall we sit?’

  At this, a buzzer rang in a sharp, important way.

  Wilbur reached for a phone on the wall, said, ‘Third floor, apartment 3,’ pressed a button, then hung up.

  He remained standing as the rest of us took seats. ‘Drinks?’ he said. ‘Sasha? Red or white? Mineral water?’

  He poured wine for each of us in turn, so eventually I had Flat-cap’s name again: Antony. I decided to think of Cleopatra as a way of recalling his name, Cleopatra and snakes, but then I recalled that I’d decided that before.

  Somebody knocked. We swivelled, glasses in our hands.

  Wilbur crossed the room, and opened the door.

  It was Nicole!

  She wore an orange, polka-dotted scarf around her hair, and a full skirt with bobbled edges, and her cheeks were pink: she really did look as if she’d come direct from leaping over rocks with goats. Her beam seemed to propel her towards us, exclaiming, as she came, at the floating balloons and pictures and paper cranes, then at each of us in turn. She said all of our names, and when she got to Pete Aldridge, she said: ‘Pete! How’s the shoulder?’ to which he replied, ‘What shoulder?’ frowning fiercely. Then she bobbed up and down on her heels, chatting an apology that had to do with one of her children having brought home the wrong homework. She admired the sky through the windows then stopped abruptly, her smile faltering. She touched her scarf, uncertain. I remembered that about her: the energy always chased by self-consciousness.

  Wilbur offered Nicole a seat, and sat himself. A long pause.

  ‘Shall we get on with this?’ Pete Aldridge demanded.

  Wilbur laughed. ‘I’m nervous,’ he admitted. ‘I apologise. I’ve memorised a script that my parents wrote for this first lesson. But now I have stage fright.’

  The buzzer rang again.

  Pete Aldridge shook his head, his expression suggesting that there were many things he could say right now, but would restrain himself.

  This time, it was Niall.

  Red hair, broad shoulders.

  He stood in the doorway and looked across at us, face serious, smile in his eyes. He wiped his feet on the mat.

  ‘Am I too late?’ he said.

  Nobody else arrived that night. That was the group.

  We sat in the circle. We drank wine and ate sushi. (Frangipani, I noticed, had four or five pieces, each time reaching out in a reluctant way, as if engaging in a small battle with herself and then surrendering.) Wilbur repeated his wish that this not be ironic. Nicole and Niall both agreed. More chatting.

  ‘Are we ready?’ Wilbur asked. He was holding a manila folder.

  We all became still.

  ‘Then let’s play.’

  3.

  He handed out forms.

  I hereby promise that I will not attempt to FLY unless and until WILBUR informs me that I am ready to FLY. I hereby agree that we will start on the small hills in the snow.

  ‘There is no snow,’ Frangipani pointed out. ‘It doesn’t snow in Sydney.’

  ‘We’ll go on a field trip,’ Antony told her comfortably. ‘I love a good field trip.’

  Wilbur shook his head. There would be no field trips, he said. He explained that small hills in the snow was a metaphor. It meant that we would only fly in safe conditions. ‘At least, I think that’s what it means.’

  He blinked. For a moment I thought he might break character, but he shook himself and carried on.

  ‘Before I say a word about flight,’ he said, ‘you need to sign these forms. Look at me.’

  Obediently, we looked.

  ‘Our arms and chests have insufficient muscle power to fly,’ he said. ‘We will never fly by flapping our arms. Do you understand? If you jump off a skyscraper, you will die. If you make yourself wings out of cardboard, you will die. If your wings are made of wax, they will melt in the sun and you will crash into the ocean and die.’

  We stared at him.

  ‘None of you will fly until I tell you,’ he declared. ‘And then only in the safest of conditions. Yes?’

  Nobody answered. We carried on staring.

  He handed around pens and we signed the forms. I was thinking that this was kind of fun. Pete Aldridge raised his eyebrows as he signed. He seemed impressed, but in a provisional way.

  Wilbur collected the forms and placed them inside his folder.

  ‘Every single one of us,’ he said, looking up, ‘is born with a sense of flight.’

  A pause. I was impressed by his sense of the dramatic.

  ‘Can I quickly ask a question?’ Nicole stage-whispered.

  Wilbur considered, then nodded regally.

  ‘It’s only, I’m wondering if your parents put everything in their lesson plan, including your tone of voice? Because this is really good. I’m kind of believing it!’

  ‘Nicole,’ Wilbur said, annoyed rather than regal, ‘remember what we said about how we’re going to play this straight? That’s the ground rule.’

  ‘I know,’ she said. ‘That’s why I was whispering. I’m off-stage. Sorry. It’s just, you’re doing a good job.’

  ‘Thank you,’ he said, and frowned. ‘Where was I?’

  ‘We are all born with a sense of flight,’ Niall prompted.

  ‘Right. We are. Only we lose it. Thousands of years ago, people stopped using their sense of flight. They considered it sacrilegious: only angels should fly, they reasoned. Or perhaps there were too many accidents? Anyhow, they stopped. Over time, human flight disappeared. It was forgotten. It fell into the realm of impossible. Now we continue to be born with the sense, but it quickly fades. If children approach an edge, they are scooped up, warned, reprimanded. They learn to fear flight. The sense falls dormant.’

  Antony spoke up. ‘I see a number of holes in your thesis. Now, historically, angels—’

  ‘Hush,’ Nicole said. ‘We’re playing this straight.’

  ‘I am,’ Antony argued. ‘Playing it straight doesn’t mean we have to go along with it. It means we don’t make fun of Wilbur’s parents. I’m being exactly who I would be if they were saying these things. I’d question everything.’

  ‘Save your questions until the end,’ Frangipani suggested. She ran a finger around the rim of her wineglass.

  Wilbur’s eyes had been darting back and forth between the speakers during this conversation. He appeared to decide not to respond at all.

  ‘We no longer believe we can get into the sky,’ he said, ‘without such trappings as aeroplanes, helicopters, hang-gliders and cliffs.’

  ‘Cliffs!’ barked Pete Aldridge.

  ‘In the sense that you need a cliff to use a hang-glider,’ Wilbur apologised.

  Pete Aldridge accepted this. ‘Go on.’

  ‘Now, my parents reasoned that it would be too late to revive an adult’s sense of flight: they needed to start earlier, with young people. Children, preferably—but what parents would allow it? They require sufficient youth combined with independence. They settled on teenagers. On you.’

  He began to refill glasses. It was a very nice Peppertree shiraz, I remember.

  ‘And on me,’ he added, as he poured. ‘The Guidebook, of course, is full of flight.’

  ‘No, no!’ Frangipani was irritated. ‘The Guidebook said nothing about flight!’

  Wilbur raised an eyebrow. ‘The Guidebook is full of flight,’ he repeated. ‘Kites, remote-control helicopters, cloud formations, gravity. Just to name a few.’

  We all frowned.
Had I been sent the wrong extracts? I had no memory of kites, helicopters, clouds—then I laughed, realising. ‘No,’ I said. ‘Those were self-help metaphors.’

  ‘Lessons in flight,’ Wilbur declared, ‘disguised as metaphors.’

  We all took a break in the form of a sip of our wine to consider this.

  ‘By reading The Guidebook extracts,’ Wilbur went on, replacing his glass on the table, ‘and doing the exercises, you have tuned yourselves to flight in all its grandeur.’

  ‘And if you haven’t been reading it?’ Niall wondered aloud. ‘I mean, if you only read it occasionally, and did maybe two of the exercises, you’re completely out of tune?’ He chose a piece of salmon-and-avocado sushi. ‘Speaking hypothetically, of course.’

  Everybody laughed.

  ‘No,’ said Wilbur, which surprised us. ‘My parents knew they couldn’t expect teenagers to read it all or do all the exercises. But by reading some, we have been changed. Its stories layered themselves into our beings. We are now composed, in part, of its words.’

  Wilbur stood abruptly. ‘If everyone’s done with the sushi,’ he said, ‘I’ve got dessert.’

  He took away the platter and returned with a tall chocolate cake and a jug of cream.

  Frangipani surrendered to her own nature and helped him to slice it, passing the bowls around, adding cream if people wished.

  ‘In this course,’ Wilbur resumed, ‘we take the next step. The Guidebook has triggered your sense of flight, but it only flickers. Our lessons will fan the sense into its fullest vitality. There are five units. First, Meditation. Open your mind to flight. Second, Flight Immersion. Imbue your consciousness with the idea of flight. Third, Sensory Development. Flight is a sense, as I’ve mentioned. It lies just beyond your other senses. Fourth, Practical Flight. The physical aspects of flying. Once we have completed those four units we move to the fifth and final unit: Emotional Flight. By that point, your sense of flight should positively blaze.’

  ‘But what is a sense of flight?’ Frangipani complained through a mouthful of cake. A crumb spilled onto her chin and she wiped it away.

  ‘I’m glad you asked,’ Wilbur said smoothly. ‘Who here knows what aerodynamics is?’

  ‘Aerodynamics is the study of the motion of air, and the movement of objects through air,’ Antony said. ‘This cake is very good, by the way. Where’d you get it?’

  Most of us murmured agreement. I said that this was exactly the sort of cake I was looking for in my café, and everyone said, ‘What café?’ So I told them about my Happiness Café. They were very interested and Frangipani said that she regularly had her hair done in Hair to the Throne right next door to that café!

  ‘I’ve even thought about going into that cafe!’ she told me, as if it should both amaze and delight me that she had considered my café.

  ‘Actually,’ Wilbur said eventually, ‘I made the cake myself.’ He pointed to his windows. These were dark now, sprinkled with stars. ‘There are waves in the ocean,’ he said, and for a moment I thought this was cake-related. Had he folded salty waves into his cake? Or was it some kind of commentary on life and its possibilities: much as I baked this cake, so too are there waves in the oceans. But then I realised he was getting back on track.

  ‘The waves in the ocean can carry you, yes?’ he said. ‘Well, you can ride on a surfboard, of course, but you can also simply ride.’

  ‘This is true,’ Pete Aldridge accepted. ‘Body surfing.’

  Wilbur seemed encouraged by the unexpected approval. ‘There are also waves in the air,’ he continued. ‘These waves carry light, sound, colour, messages. They carry images, both moving and still. Light waves, radio waves, infrared and so on. There are also waves in the air that can carry you.’

  The room had grown quiet. Except for the clinking of teaspoons in bowls and the sound of Nicole saying, ‘Can you pass the cream?’ and Frangipani pointing out, ‘You told me you didn’t want cream,’ and Nicole apologising, ‘I thought I shouldn’t, but it looks so bright and white against the chocolate, and—’

  ‘Shush!’ Wilbur ordered. ‘Give her the cream, Sasha! This is the dramatic finale!’

  ‘I think that was self-referential.’ Antony smiled. ‘And breaks the ground rules.’

  ‘No, it doesn’t.’ Wilbur stood, raised both hands and spread them high and wide. His fingertips almost touched the ceiling. ‘There are waves out there that can carry you through the sky,’ he said, and lowered his voice to an almost-whisper. ‘If you could only see them, feel them, know them, you could ride them, my friends. They are everywhere.’

  ‘In this room,’ I asked, ‘or just outside?’

  Wilbur looked confounded for a moment. He cupped a hand around his mouth and lowered his voice: ‘I’ll have to check my notes. But I think just outside?’

  ‘Those other waves you were talking about,’ Antony shout-whispered, ‘they’re electromagnetic rays from the sun. Are these flying waves part of the same spectrum?’

  ‘Good question,’ Wilbur whispered. ‘I wondered that myself.’

  ‘Maybe just get back to the script?’ Nicole suggested.

  ‘Flight waves!’ Wilbur cried, giving Nicole a quick thumbs-up. ‘You simply leap aboard the lowest one that you can see. You ride it! Fling yourself from wave to wave.’ He was gesticulating madly, to demonstrate. ‘To an extent, you can even steer the waves. Ever so gently, and just a little. You can fly, my friends. There are flight waves in the sky!’

  ‘And that’s what our sense of flight is for?’ Frangipani breathed. ‘So we can see these flight waves?’

  ‘Exactly,’ Wilbur said. ‘Aerodynamics. From the Greek. Aero meaning air, and dynamics meaning powerful. The air is powerful, my friends. The air will carry you.’

  He stopped. His hands dropped to his sides.

  There was a faint rustle around the circle. Nicole raised her hands as if to applaud but then quickly replaced them on her lap.

  At this point, Pete Aldridge spoke up. ‘You know you’ve got an ant problem, right?’ he said to Wilbur. ‘See them tracking right along there?’ He pointed. ‘Up from the skirting board, across that frame, and right along the ceiling.’ We all followed Pete’s pointing finger up behind the standing lamp, across the picture frame, and right along the ceiling. A thin trail of moving blackness.

  This was the first time I’d seen Pete Aldridge smile.

  At the end of the night, Wilbur asked if we’d like to come the following Tuesday, and everybody said, ‘Sure,’ or ‘Why not?’ while Pete Aldridge growled, ‘Of course.’

  Wilbur took our phone numbers so he could let us know if he ever had to cancel a class. There was a brief uneasiness at this, but then I suppose we all recalled that Wilbur already had our home addresses and—if his parents had kept the files—access to any annual ‘reflections’ we had sent in to The Guidebook.

  4.

  I read Tuesdays with Morrie, and it was about a nice old guy. He’s quite a character, and he’s dying. A former student, who has not stayed in touch despite having promised to do so, comes by to leech the remnants of the old man’s wisdom.

  Ha ha. No, he comes by to chat with the old man and keep him company while recording his final, wise words. The old man appears to appreciate this, and to enjoy the idea of himself as wise. And he does say many thoughtful things! However, I cannot now recall what they were. I have a sense that the two men passed abstract nouns between them—regret, death, family, ageing, love, marriage, culture and forgiveness—but there was probably more than that.

  The next book in my stack was I’m OK—You’re OK.

  I had heard of this book, and looked forward to reading it: there is something very soothing about you, me, everyone being okay. (Previously, I had not been okay, because The Guidebook prevented me from reading this book, but now I would be.)

  However, it was more complicated than that. The book explained that everybody is a Parent, a Child and an Adult. The Parent is bossy and thinks in absolutes; the Child
cries and falls apart; and the Adult reasons things out and is very dull and sensible. So, when the bus runs late, the Parent says, ‘Isn’t this always the way!’ and the Child has a tantrum and punches the bus shelter, but the Adult says: ‘No. In my experience, buses are not always late,’ and sits on the seat to wait.

  Buzz-killing Adult. Takes everything literally.

  The author mentions group sessions he runs in which, when anybody grows angry or upset, he reminds them to ‘keep being their Adult’. People must want to strangle him.

  And he tells a little story about what you should do if your husband writes I love you, in the dust on the coffee table. The husband is doing this to point out that you are failing as a housekeeper. You could be a Child and shout at him. But better to be an Adult and meet him at the door with a clean house and a tall, clean drink. Like the people in his group, I want to strangle him.

  5.

  When I started the Happiness Café, I placed a ceramic pot just inside the entrance. A stack of notecards sat next to it, along with a pen and a sign:

  How to leave your sadness at the door:

  Write down the things that make you sad or angry today,

  Fold them up, place them in this pot

  And, at the end of each day, we will burn them for you.

  At first, this seemed ingenious and people loved the idea, filling in many cards. But pretty quickly I started to find names on the folded papers. I felt like a witch doctor, practising voodoo. I wasn’t at all keen on burning names, burning people.

  Also, all this anger, this bitterness, in a pot by the door. Was it toxic?

  And there were days when I didn’t feel like lighting a match over the sink, and days when the smoke alarm went off, and more generally there were the fire risks associated with, well, fire.

  So I replaced the pot with a mat. Welcome! it says. Wipe your feet here and you will wipe away your tears.

  Simpler, more civilised, and less sweeping up.

  Today, everyone seemed to be wiping their feet assiduously. We were in the flat space between morning coffees and lunch. Two tables taken.