Gravity Is the Thing Read online

  My mother used to snap when I hurt myself as a child, which I found mystifying. As I grew older, I understood that her exasperation was an expression of her love and concern for me. Now, however, I see that it was pure irritation: the time-consuming distraction of stubbed toes and bumped knees.

  In the end, I chose the pencil skirt and the sort of meshy-see-through top.

  ‘Do I look pretty?’ I asked Oscar.

  Oscar sat up from his latest somersault. Crossed his legs and leaned forward. A smile formed. Slowly, the smile grew.

  Wow, I thought, I must look fantastic!

  But Oscar was drawing his hand from his pyjama pocket, and opening his fingers. ‘Look!’ A domino lay on his palm. This beautiful, surprising world!

  ‘Time for bed,’ I told him.

  At midnight, I went to bed myself.

  I was just fading into sleep when a small voice spoke: ‘It’s dark in here.’ I shrieked, which caused Oscar, standing by my bed, to shriek himself and burst into tears. ‘You scareded me, you scareded me.’ I picked him up and hugged him, explaining that, well, he had scareded me. He sniffed and shuddered, climbed into my bed and curled up on my pillow. ‘Go back to your own bed,’ I suggested, but without conviction. Oscar gave another theatrical sniff, put his thumb in his mouth, and closed his eyes.

  I rolled him to the other side of the bed. Eventually, I sank into sleep, at which moment Oscar began crying.

  ‘What’s wrong? What is it?’

  He didn’t reply, he simply wept.

  ‘Is something hurting?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Is your tummy hurting?’

  ‘No!’

  I felt his forehead. It felt fine.

  ‘Did you have a bad dream?’

  In the midst of his sobbing came a yelp. ‘It’s all right,’ I soothed, ‘Mummy’s here, no more bad dreams,’ and similar things, stroking him, until he hiccuped back to sleep.

  I closed my eyes. My heart pattered. I turned over. Pulled up the covers. Drifted towards sleep . . . and he was sobbing again.

  This continued through the night. Again and again, I would sink towards darkness and the crying would pierce through. What’s wrong? What’s wrong? I got him water. He curled up, fell asleep, then cried in long, low sentences. ‘Shhh,’ I said, patting his back. The crying faded, my eyes closed, and it started up again.

  I was gentle and loving, but over time, as he twisted and kicked, shouted, No, my tummy doesn’t hurt! Stop asking if it hurts!, as the red digits switched from two to three to four, as my temples darted with aches, as I imagined myself the followed evening, bloodshot, shadowed, my witty date-girl self dissolving, I became brisker.

  ‘What is it?’ I demanded. ‘Just tell me what it is!’

  At one point, I heard a muffled whine: ‘My pyjama top is hurting me!’

  ‘Okay. Sit up. We’ll take it off! See? We’ll get you a new top!’ Bright-efficient-mother fine veneer over fury.

  In his bedroom, the dawn light touched his blind. I found another pyjama top.

  He slept again. I drifted. He kicked me hard in the stomach.

  ‘Stop!’ I said. ‘Go to sleep!’

  Oscar sat up and smacked the back of my head. ‘I want to get up,’ he said. ‘It’s day time.’

  Five forty-two am.

  ‘No,’ I said firmly. ‘No. It’s too early. Go back to sleep.’

  ‘It’s time to get up,’ he insisted.

  My eyes burned, angles pressed the inside of my forehead. ‘Go to sleep!’ I rose up, took his little shoulders, forced him to the pillow.

  ‘You hurted me! You hurted me!’ He sobbed, wailed and then, through the tears: ‘I have to get up. I need yoghurt for my throat.’

  2.

  I gave him Children’s Panadol for his throat.

  I cancelled the date.

  ‘No problem,’ Niall said.

  ‘I am so sorry,’ I told him.

  ‘Seriously, no problem,’ he said. ‘I hope your boy gets better.’

  ‘Another time.’

  ‘You bet,’ he agreed.

  I cancelled the hair appointment and the sitter. I called work to let them know I wouldn’t be in.

  Oscar curled up on the couch beneath his quilt. His cheeks flared pink, eyes flashed wild. I sat beside him watching ABC for Kids.

  ‘Why didn’t you tell me your throat was hurting?’ I asked. ‘I thought you were just having bad dreams!’

  ‘I was having bad dreams.’

  He outlined his dreams. In one, nobody at preschool liked him. In another, there was a puppy and the puppy took his most special toy. This, it turned out, was the pen-light a doctor had given him months before. I had no idea where the pen-light was.

  ‘Any more dreams?’ I urged, because I could see his thoughts progressing step by step towards: where is my pen-light?

  ‘There was a swing,’ he said. ‘And it went like this.’ He thrust his hand through the air, much like the motion of a swing. ‘It was bad,’ he whispered.

  ‘Huh. I can see that.’

  ‘Oh, this was a funny one. I was inside an orange.’

  ‘You were inside an orange!’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘How did you get there?’

  He was silent.

  ‘It must have been funny being in the orange!’ I prattled. ‘Sticky and sweet! But plenty to eat!’

  Still silent. I looked at him.

  ‘Were you scared?’ I wondered, eventually.

  ‘Yes. It was dark inside the orange,’ he said, ‘and I didn’t know where you were.’

  3.

  That night, he was coughing, breathless, a hollow cough. I ran a hot bath and blasted the hot shower, the bathroom door closed, while he sat in the bath and asked repeatedly, ‘Why is it blurry in here?’ and then, ‘Why does the steam make my cough better?’ followed by, ‘Why is it blurry in here?’

  ‘Is that rain?’ I asked, and he said, ‘No, it’s just the shower,’ but when I turned off the shower, the rain was blasting, pounding on the skylight, furious on the skylight.

  And then thunder!

  ‘What does that sound like?’ I asked, and he said it sounded like fire, like a crackling fire, which, surprisingly, it did.

  ‘Will the thunder hurt us?’

  ‘No, it can’t get inside.’

  ‘Why not? Why can it not get inside?’

  I put him to bed, Vicks on his chest, and lay looking at him, finding him so sweet and adorable, conscious of the loss unfolding between us, because he will grow up, this little boy will disappear. There’s no such thing as this baby, this toddler, this little person, because it’s quicksilver, there’s no such thing as anybody. We shouldn’t have children, it’s impossible, but if you want children, and you can’t have them, then that’s its own impossible. It’s impossible to lose them, but it happens, it happened to my mother, it’s happening all the time.

  His eyes closed, he breathed his crackling breaths. ‘Oh,’ he said, opening his eyes. ‘Oh, I thought that a monster had taken you. I was looking in this direction so I couldn’t see you, so . . .’

  ‘So you naturally assumed that a monster had taken me.’

  ‘But a monster didn’t take you,’ he said, pleased. ‘You’re still here.’

  4.

  He was sick for a week.

  This is how it works with Oscar. First, he gets a cold. This usually takes place on a Thursday and I think: I will keep him home tomorrow and by Monday he’ll be fine. Easy!

  On Friday, he is sweet, soft and warm, snuggling into my arms, large eyes, pale face, reaching out and saying, ‘I love you, Mummy.’

  The next day, Saturday, he is brittle, bright and mad. He demands a cinnamon doughnut. There is no cinnamon doughnut. He throws couch cushions and toys. He pinches my arm. He slaps the side of my head. He picks up a picture book and tears a page in two.

  He is awake for most of Saturday night screaming with an ear infection.

  I took him up to th
e Big Bear Medical Centre on a Sunday turned ocean-grey with flicks of ice-cold rain. We waited for an hour and a half, and Dr Seoh, whom I hadn’t met before, shone a light into his ears.

  I told her about Oscar’s ENT specialist, Dr Koby, and how he had said that Oscar was cured.

  ‘He’s not cured,’ I said now. Doctor Seoh’s manner was stern, but with unexpected dimples.

  ‘Seems not,’ she agreed.

  ‘Maybe we should try a new specialist?’

  I thought of Lera on the island in Bass Strait, Lera’s careful steps. Hundreds of tonsils, thousands of adenoids.

  ‘There’s one named Lera,’ I said.

  ‘Lera?’

  ‘That’s her first name. I don’t know her last. She’s a surgeon. She has great posture.’

  The doctor dimpled. She was typing at her computer. She prescribed antibiotics. Plenty of fluids, she said. She spun her chair around, folding the papers, instructing me to keep him at home.

  5.

  Each day it rained and the wind complained.

  On Tuesday afternoon, I texted Niall.

  Hey, how’re things? I’m not going to flight school tonight. Kid’s still sick. Take notes for me? A.

  He replied: Will do.

  That left me nowhere to go. In a house with a fractious child and nowhere to go.

  I texted anyway. Thanks!

  Of course, I regretted it. I knew I would, as I typed it. Thanks!

  But, listen, if you’ve ever been trapped in a house for five days with a fractious child, your mind a trapped, wild animal—You can’t walk out of the door.

  You can walk out of the door if you dress your child warmly, strap your child in the car seat, drive to the Big Bear Medical Centre, pick up antibiotics from the pharmacy, take your child home.

  You can walk out for that. Otherwise, you rattle the windows and doors. Your mind rattles your skull. Outside, the rain falls. You watch children’s television, read children’s books, play-act children’s games, place soft toys in a circle, play pass-the-parcel, soft toys as imaginary friends. Help him paint a cardboard aeroplane, grate an apple.

  You go to throw out an old teabag lying on the kitchen sink. You realise it’s not a teabag but a toy, a plastic stingray. Ha! A little stingray! You pour Children’s Panadol into the medicine cup, measure antibiotics in a plastic syringe, beg your child to take the medicine, coax and bribe and chase your child, hide the medicine in strawberry milk, watch your child sip the strawberry milk once and say, ‘No more.’ Beg your child to drink his strawberry milk. Run out of Children’s Panadol at ten o’clock at night, slam your head against the wall because you were right there at the pharmacy, picking up the antibiotics, but you didn’t get more Children’s Panadol. Measure antibiotics with syringe, beg and coax your child. Your child slaps the medicine out of your hand, spits the medicine onto his pyjamas. You reach for the used teabag on the kitchen sink, realise it’s not a teabag. Ha. Not a teabag. It’s a stingray.

  So I texted: Thanks! and waited.

  But Niall did not reply. What could he have said, anyway? You’re welcome?

  6.

  The final book in my stack was about cybernetics.

  It reminded me of The Secret because, once again, you don’t have to do anything except issue instructions. Here, however, you issue them to the machine that is you, rather than the universe. Your machine is your central nervous system. It can do anything you want.

  Around page 38, my concentration faded and I began to think about multiple sclerosis. In case you do not know, here is a simplistic outline of how that disease works.

  Two systems are involved: the central nervous system and the immune system.

  The central nervous system is your brain and spinal cord. It sends messages and secrets from your brain to your body. It’s in charge.

  The immune system is the tough guy. If a disease tries to get in, it takes the disease down.

  When you have MS, the immune system tries to take down your central nervous system. It runs around making little rips in the central nervous system, tearing it like paper. It’s spiteful and childish. It leaves scars everywhere, multiple scars, and now the central nervous system can no longer send messages.

  Robert wants to walk along the shore: the message is scrambled, and he falls.

  When he was diagnosed, I tried to speak to his immune system telepathically each night. I set things out logically. ‘The central nervous system is not a disease,’ I told it, speaking as distinctly as I could. ‘Think about it. It’s been here all along.’

  It also occurred to me that we should try to distract his immune system. Give it other diseases to cure, for example. Or train up the CNS so it could fight back, like Mr Miyagi with Daniel-san.

  Or get the two of them sitting down and talking, find out what the trouble is; most likely it was all a misunderstanding.

  What about when the machine malfunctions? I asked the book on cybernetics. What then?

  I found the book absurd, and stopped reading.

  Then I set to work outlining goals for the machine that is me: please arrange success of the kind Xuang predicted for my café; please arrange for world peace; warm, dry homes for everyone with hot and cold running water; cures for all cruel and insidious diseases; also, please arrange for the past to be unravelled and restrung so that Robert never disappeared and here he is, swinging by to visit, swinging Oscar by the hands in a circle in a park; and arrange also for the past to be unravelled and restrung so that Finnegan is here, both of us glowing with our good and golden hearts. You may have to call for back-up from the universe.

  part

  9

  REFLECTIONS ON 2005

  By Abigail Sorensen

  In January this year, Finnegan and I moved to Montreal.

  It started as a dare. We were at dinner, celebrating our third wedding anniversary. I was in my hostile phase.

  *

  After we discovered that my brother had stolen the neighbour’s passport and used it to travel to London as ‘Andrew Grimshaw’, there was, in my family, an extraordinary surge of adrenaline and hope, one that even briefly affected my father.

  My mother and I flew to London ourselves, and met with agencies, missing persons associations, media outlets. We transferred our campaign of notices, ads and enquiries to Europe for three months, and then hired a private detective to take charge.

  Over the next two years, the detective sent us regular, detailed reports of his activities—he was very thorough. ‘London is a gateway to the Continent,’ he often pointed out, and he would ask if Robert had any interest in a particular European country. Italy, we told him, remembering how Robert used to rhapsodise over pizza and pasta. I also recalled his brief fascination with Montepulciano and its barrel-racing. The detective pointed out that Robert could have changed planes the moment he arrived at Heathrow, and he tracked down the passenger lists of every connecting aeroplane for the next forty-eight hours after Robert’s arrival. But neither Robert Sorensen nor Andrew Grimshaw had taken any of these.

  ‘There was a flight to Helsinki that day,’ the detective told us. ‘But that airline has since gone under, so I can’t confirm if he was on it. Might he have had an interest in Finland?’

  ‘He’s not in Finland,’ my mother said.

  ‘Why would he go to Finland?’ I concurred.

  Still, we agreed that our detective’s assistant could take a trip to Helsinki, tape Robert’s updated photograph on telegraph poles and hand out leaflets. His expenses were out of control. Eventually, we cancelled his contract.

  *

  The internet contains the whole world, all information, all truth, if you can just crack its code, if you can click the right link.

  As a lawyer, I never quit: I follow the thread of legislation, case law, precedents; open enough books and eventually the answer will be there. I’m a good lawyer except that clients aren’t always keen on the hours I clock up never-quitting. It should work on Google, too, and soc
ial media. Eventually, the answer should be there. So I clicked and clicked, googled, where is my brother? Or hello Robert, where are you? Sent emails, set up pages, blogs, made comments, followed threads. This one will work, the flash of hope, excitement, the spinning wheel. Nights I fell asleep with my head on the keyboard.

  I read The Old Man and the Sea, because Hemingway is one of Finnegan’s favourites, and there it was, my hunt—the fish on the hook, the giant fish, grappling with it—you think that catching a fish is easy, but Hemingway gets inside the enormity, the terrible, desperate anguish of catching a fish, the brutality of it, alone, alone, alone, in this ocean, this immensity.

  *

  Hope is like a giant soap bubble, and you roll around inside it, smiling while it deflates, slowly, cruelly, until you’re walking around with this sticky consistency, wrapped across your flesh.

  Robert’s gone and I will never find him, never know.

  Deflated hope becomes self-loathing. I hated myself for every flash of excitement, request for help, notification, every click, every phone call, every conversation I had ever held about Robert.

  *

  I phoned my mother in Maroochydore. ‘He’s nowhere,’ I said. ‘I think something happened to him after he got to London. He’s not—alive.’

  The sound of her breathing, rasping almost.

  ‘I don’t feel him alive in the world,’ I confessed. A half-gasp. I felt as if I’d taken the hat from my mother’s head and punched through its crown.

  Then she spoke, her voice strange and distant, a voice stripped back, her old-woman self exposed: ‘I don’t think I’ve felt him alive in the world for a long time, Abi.’

  Now she’d punched me back.

  But she was still speaking: ‘Your relationship with him was too special. He’d never choose not to speak to you again.’