Gravity Is the Thing Page 22

  ‘Don’t make this my fault,’ I snapped, illogically.

  ‘But I need to know that he didn’t hurt,’ Mum whispered—a strand now, a filament of voice. ‘I need to know the truth. And as long as there’s even the faintest . . . I can’t give up on him.’

  ‘We don’t always get what we need,’ I informed her. ‘I think we have to let go.’

  *

  My self-loathing clawed its way out into the world in search of other people: family, friends, missing persons organisations. Why are you looking for missing people? I sneered. There is no such thing as a missing person. It’s all an illusion, false hope.

  Anybody who hoped for anything deserved contempt.

  Anybody with ambition, anybody who expected a response: people who sent me emails or asked if I wanted coffee; the junior lawyers, the rotators, the idea of rotation, statements of claim, defences, particulars, all of it was a nasty, livid joke.

  I read more Hemingway, hoping to recognise myself again, and loathed Hemingway: always verging, often crossing, into this goddamn grandiosity—and sometimes he’d get silly and drunken, and he overused the words love and beautiful, and he loved pieces of wood, and his sentences were unwieldy and winding, but there was a self-importance to this, the self-importance of the tango dancer, the giant fish, the boats, the alcohol, the women, pages and pages without women, and then a woman shows up to be beautiful, sassy, to love, to want, to be wanted—the guns, the sugarless daiquiris. I loathed it all.

  I began to loathe Balmain, the inner-west suburb where Finn and I lived, particularly the tall glasses in which they served lattes at our favourite café, and the onion bhaji at our regular Indian place, which, previously, I had loved.

  I loathed my state for being a state: who had even heard of New South Wales? It was duplication, duplicity, it was not South Wales, it was no part of Wales, it was a lie!

  Most of all, I hated Australia, because it was parochial, suffered from cultural inferiority, was racist, sexist, bombastic, it wept over sports but threw desperate people onto island prisons, voted not to become a republic, not to have its own bill of rights, and because it hadn’t been able to keep hold of Robert.

  *

  So, it was pretty comprehensive, my hostile phase.

  *

  Even though I hated everyone, I still loved Finnegan.

  I loved his thin frame, the shape of his legs, the hair on his legs and his arms and wrists, his thick eyebrows, his dark blue eyes, the shape of his eyebrows, the pattern of largish freckles on his back.

  I loved the way he shaded his drawings with a pencil on its side, the way he left me illustrated notes around the flat, the way he poured a glass of wine, the way he scrubbed a frying pan, the way he said ‘swasher’ instead of dishwasher, the way he spoke to the elderly woman who lived in the apartment next door, listened to her stories and, in response, told corny, dry jokes that made her laugh and flick her handbag at his arm.

  *

  Anyhow, at this anniversary dinner, I said, ‘Finn, I hate everyone except you.’

  He considered this. ‘Is that an issue, do you think?’

  Then he dared me to take a year’s leave without pay and move across the world with him.

  ‘It’s a dare,’ I said, amazed. ‘So I have to do it.’

  ‘You do.’

  It turned out that the tenants had moved out of his mother’s apartment in Montreal. The apartment needed repairs, refurbishment, redecorating and repainting, Finn explained, and his mother had asked whether we might like to live there rent-free in exchange for supervising, or undertaking, all that re-ing.

  ‘Now I’m thinking we should do it,’ he finished. ‘We could visit with my cousins; they’re someplace remote in Quebec. You could try something completely new—like screenwriting. Didn’t you always want to try that? This is what you need.’

  *

  I didn’t tell Finn this, but I had grown to hate his mother also, for her stubborn, ridiculous refusal to return to Canada—the thing you are missing is there, right there!—and for her hatred of Australia, and how that affected Finnegan. ‘It’s cruel,’ I told friends. ‘And it’s a lie to hate a place completely.’ The friends argued that there was plenty to hate about this country, that hatred is subjective, it could not be a lie.

  I got myself so tangled. Was I only disgruntled because of patriotism, because I was the only one entitled to hate my country? But it’s not a truth, it’s a half-truth; I know Australia is imperfect, but it’s not to be written off—

  *

  ‘If we go to Montreal,’ Finnegan added, ‘maybe my mother will come and visit us. And when she’s there, she might even realise Australia’s not that bad.’

  The flash of a wince behind his smile, covered with a sideways shrug.

  ‘Your selflessness,’ I said, ‘is kind of breathtaking. You’d move across the world for me and for your mother?’

  ‘I’ll take my laptop,’ he shrugged. ‘I can work remotely. It’ll be an adventure.’

  *

  His depressed mother, his hostile wife. Finn and his thin shoulders—always trying to build those shoulders up in the swimming pool—his thin waist, his occasional stutter, his passion for the abstract in art. Always trying to carry us, his mother, his wife.

  A man on the side of the road trying to steer a fridge into the back of his truck; other people walk by, glancing over with interest. Finn will pull over his car and offer to help. He will joke with the man. The muscles in his back will strain against his shirt as he hefts the fridge into the truck.

  *

  My dad and Lynette came to the airport to see us off.

  Finnegan loves my dad, and my dad is fond of Finn, despite finding him a little too artistic and thin-shouldered.

  After my parents broke up, I scarcely spoke to my dad for years, but I heard about him from friends and, apparently, he fell apart for a while. Stopped taking the garbage out or shaving. Walked out of his job. In the end, a woman in his apartment block rescued him. She cleaned out his cupboards and bought him a fancy electric shaver. This rescue continued for a year but then another woman stepped in and took over—which was unfair, the first woman having scrubbed the algae from his bathtub, and treated his fungal nail infection—and then another and another, until he married one named Lynette. She seems okay.

  This is a scenario you often see with sad men, I think: the rescue women. Whereas a sad woman who sits alone unshaven in her garbage, fungus in her toenails, will almost certainly remain un-rescued. A sweet young ingenue with giant teary eyes might be the exception, but even then it will depend on the extent and nature of garbage, and just how hirsute she has become.

  *

  Finn’s mother’s apartment is in the historical part of town. Old Montreal, they call it. It’s on the third floor of a stone building with blue-painted wooden shutters. Through the double-glazed windows, we heard horses and carriages clattering on cobblestones, tourists shouting, locals swearing, trucks reversing, a piano being played at a Polish restaurant on the corner.

  In my first week, I signed up for two courses, one was Screenwriting for Beginners, the other The Art of the Story.

  Finn set up the laptop on the dining room table, and carried on designing ads and pamphlets.

  It turned out that an old school friend of Finn’s named David Chin was living in Montreal with his wife. We met up with David often, although his wife always seemed to be busy.

  The apartment itself had stone walls, an open fireplace and polished floorboards. It also had turquoise-and-rose-striped wallpaper, and a plastic grapevine nailed along the mantelpiece.

  ‘It doesn’t need renovation,’ Finnegan told his mother on the phone. ‘Just revamping. New furniture and appliances. A few cosmetic changes.’

  We started by shopping for a stainless-steel dishwasher, gourmet oven and double-door fridge at La Baie. May as well make our lives pleasant.

  *

  As usual, I filled in the change-of-address fo
rm that comes with every chapter of The Guidebook.

  The first time I saw the familiar envelope, curled into the locked box in the foyer of our building, I felt both weary and relieved. I’d been pretty sure the authors would not pay international postage. This was it, I’d thought: by moving to Canada, I’d killed off The Guidebook.

  Yet here it was. Intrepid. And I felt fond of it, and proud.

  Yet, as I mentioned, also weary.

  The first to arrive was Chapter 268. It touched on the subject of knowledge.

  For many years I have carried around a vast absence of knowledge. My brother’s disappearance is an epistemological wasteland. I carry this wasteland in my arms, piled before me, or I drag it behind me.

  *

  Chapter 268

  Hume was into knowledge! David Hume, Scottish philosopher, was a sceptic. I imagine he walked around his life saying, ‘Hmm,’ doubt scribbled over his face. Infuriating at dinner parties. ‘But how can you be sure?’ he must have said. Or, ‘Wait. Let me stop you there. Do you know this for a fact?’

  ‘We can only know the things that we experience,’ he said. ‘If you haven’t felt it, touched it, tasted it, well, how can you be sure it is?’

  As a tribute to Hume, we would like you to head out now and feel something, touch something, taste something, smell something, hear something, see something! Keep a diary of your observations.

  *

  I didn’t keep a journal of my sensory experiences, but I do recall noticing the things I saw, smelled, touched and tasted for the few days after I received that chapter. But we were new to this city, so our senses were heightened anyway.

  Snow everywhere when we arrived.

  We had trouble finding wood for our fireplace. It’s too late, people told us, too late in the season. We ordered a cord of wood, and it arrived damp through. The apartment reeked of wet wood.

  Finn’s friend David Chin came by and laughed. ‘Chuck it out,’ he advised. ‘That’ll never burn.’ The wood hissed damply in the fireplace. David organised a fresh delivery for us, solid, dry wood. Also, he gave us his coffee machine. ‘Cindy and I just got a new one,’ he explained.

  We competed, Finn and I, to see who could make the best and creamiest latte.

  Outside, the snow looked creamy to me. It looked like frosting, too, of course: thick, generous frosting on a wedding cake. Although, in some places, it was rumpled and dry, like crumbled mashed potato.

  *

  Chapter 269

  There is no such thing as cause and effect, Hume said. We can never know that one thing caused another. All we know is that this happened and then that: one thing followed another.

  You cannot experience the act of causation and thus you cannot know that it took place.

  (He killed off metaphysics.)

  *

  The death of metaphysics did not bother me in the slightest. Causation, however—when I read that part, there was an almost-pleasant corkscrew turn in my stomach. I thought I was an expert on causation, having studied the law, and having set up and analysed the following sequences of cause and effect:

  (a) He was diagnosed with MS. (b) He ran away.

  (a) I refused to let him be sad. (b) He ran away.

  (a) Our parents were super-relaxed. (b) He ran away.

  (a) His secret girlfriend next door—my so-called best friend—broke up with him. (b) He ran away.

  (a) I told him he was not funny. (b) He ran away.

  (a) He was born. (b) He ran away.

  Which is the relevant cause and effect?

  It depends on your degree of self-loathing, your tendency to blame. It depends on your timeframe, too.

  But if Hume were reading over my shoulder, he would point to the spaces between (a) and (b) and say: All we know, for certain, is that one thing follows another. Dive into the space between. Take a mask and snorkel.

  *

  Spring in Montreal, it remained cold.

  Snow was melting, and the streets were grey rather than white. Smears and patches of snow everywhere so that the city seemed like an abandoned construction site; someone had made a perfunctory attempt to tidy before they left. Dirty-white fill left behind, piled into little hills; smears of plaster and spilled paint.

  We walked the streets, trying to find clear paths, or pebbly, gravelly, salted paths, trying to walk between slick patches of ice. Trying to find the sun.

  *

  Peeling away the wallpaper—soaking it with water, then finding its edges and peeling it away—was soothing to me. Finnegan found it exasperating because it was inconceivable to him that anyone could have chosen this pattern.

  *

  In German, nouns begin with capital letters, but not in French.

  I tried to learn French by reading the cereal boxes and milk cartons in the mornings. Also, I learned French every time I opened a door. TIREZ. PULL.

  I tried reading a movie magazine in French. Meg Ryan was giving her opinion on plastic surgery. I thought maybe she was opposed but, quite honestly, I couldn’t understand enough. Meg’s French was full of apostrophes and of ques.

  *

  I kept an eye out for Robert, of course, but he wasn’t there. I had known that, and yet I hadn’t known.

  One day, out walking, I saw police tape across a street. DANGER DO NOT ENTER, it said. Police cars were parked in crisscross patterns both inside and outside the tape. On the street corner, a cluster of people, all with their chins tilted up.

  I followed their gaze. A high-rise apartment block. A crane. A man stood at the very end of this crane like somebody walking the plank. Another man—I guess he was a police officer—also stood on the crane, but closer to the building, safer.

  We all watched, the silent people and I, tilting our chins. The two men stood perfectly still, also apparently silent. High in the blue of the sky, they were tiny puppets.

  After a few minutes I thought: What am I doing? What if he jumps? This, I did not want to see.

  So I put my chin back down and headed home.

  *

  Often, we played pool with Finn’s friend David Chin in a place on St-Denis. His wife, Cindy, always sent her apologies, and swore that she’d come ‘next time’. Then, next time, we would watch for David to arrive, see him appear alone in the doorway of the pub, and he’d shake his head and hold out his palms. ‘She’s not feeling up to it,’ or, ‘too much on,’ or, ‘a bit under the weather—next time, she swears’.

  ‘Her oaths are cheap,’ Finn pointed out.

  David spat his beer, laughing. ‘I hope not. She vowed to love and honour me for life.’

  It was always noisy in the pub, and crowded. When we weren’t playing pool, we’d chat near the tables, ready for our turn. Often, without meaning to, we’d block the players. They’d push their cues behind them, and hit us in the face or in the shoulder blade. They’d turn to see, and their faces would go perfectly blank. In their minds, I believe, they were both apologetic for stabbing us with a pool cue, and annoyed with us for being in position to be stabbed. The two things cancelled each other out; hence, the perfect blankness.

  David was large and he seemed unafraid to use his big, loud, Australian laugh and voice.

  His wife, meanwhile, was a shadowy figure, an imaginary friend, a vibrant silhouette.

  *

  Chapter 274

  Yet still we hanker to know! Not just one thing but all of it, to pack it all inside a bag and carry it on our back. An explanation. A theory of the universe. A template for life.

  All templates have leaks. Life is too buoyant to pin down.

  *

  The screenwriting course was full of diagrams and arcs, rules, bullet points and three-part structures. According to the Rule of Three, things that come in threes are inherently funnier, more satisfying, more effective.

  All this makes me want to break the rules, crack the structure, collect things into seven parts, or two, or twenty-eight.

  I preferred The Art of the Story. That
was taught by a prize-winning Canadian author. Ideas floated around us in that course. I can no longer remember what they were; however, at the time, they struck my soul.

  The first lesson, the teacher counted the students in the room, and looked at the list on his table. Suddenly, I recalled a one-day writing course I took with Robert. The teacher had been a disappointment to me: not a writer, but a regular, anxious, middle-aged woman, knobbly fingers twisting. She’d spent fifteen minutes staring at the door, waiting for three missing students.

  This teacher, by contrast, was short with a long face, a handsome basset hound with his drooping, upside-down smile. He glanced at his student list, gave a languid shrug and began to read aloud from a book. He liked to begin each class by reading passages of fine literature, piping these into the silence of our awe.

  I made friends with a girl in my class named Becky, who was from Saskatchewan originally, and who told me she had once kissed our teacher.

  ‘At a party,’ she said. She told me that all women fall in love with the teacher for exactly twenty-four hours. She was very precise about this.

  I watched the teacher, waiting for my twenty-four hours to begin.

  I read one of his books and felt a slippage between lines. One character would speak and the other would reply, but the words slipped out of the characters’ mouths and landed on the next line down. It was something to do with punctuation, and its absence. Quote marks were missing and apostrophes.

  I recommended that Finn read the book. He loved it!

  ‘But what about the punctuation?’ I said.

  ‘What punctuation?’

  ‘Exactly! What did you think?’

  But Finn was not being clever. He hadn’t even noticed.

  ‘He does what?’ he asked, surprised.

  ‘He skips punctuation!’ I opened the book and showed him.

  Finn ran a finger down the page to an image he had liked. He read this out to me.

  ‘Shall I have an affair with the teacher?’ I asked.

  ‘Do you want to?’

  ‘Not yet,’ I replied. ‘But apparently everybody falls in love with him. And he’s open to kissing his students at parties.’