Gravity Is the Thing Read online

  This is a man who takes action! I thought.

  This is how you heal, I thought next, reaching for the man as he reached for me. We met in the middle of the reaching. The strange shape of his shoulders, a dryness to his lips, the dent of his stomach, the music. He was kissing me so skilfully! Expertly moving us onto the bed!

  I said: ‘Do you have any protection?’

  He chuckled. ‘Not on me.’

  ‘Oh,’ I said. ‘Well then, we can’t, because—’

  He laughed again, a bigger laugh, his arms wrapped around me. ‘Don’t worry,’ he murmured. There was something loose and strange about his arms. Finn’s arms and shoulders have so much definition, from his swimming. I’d forgotten it was possible for arms to be soft, to have to press to feel the bone and muscle.

  The hair on this man’s body was fine and fair, and his skin was tanned. I’d forgotten that this was possible too; Finn’s skin is almost translucent white so that the black hair on his chest, arms, calves, is startling.

  The music played, and we were naked, and then he was inside me. ‘Oh,’ I said. ‘But . . .’ And he chuckled again and repeated, ‘Don’t worry.’ He moved differently from Finn, his knees were fiercer, his movements were fiercer; more traditional, I thought. I loved the selfish way this man moved: this was about him, not me, and that was how it should be, I decided. Primal! His eyes went sideways, looking sideways, not at me.

  He moved faster, and faster.

  ‘I’m going to come inside you,’ he said, urgently.

  My mind seared into blankness. What?! I thought. You’re what? You can do that?!

  The thoughts collapsed into a single point, and he did.

  Afterwards I lay beside him, my heart thudding with calculations about what he just did, the thing that just happened, whether what he did, just now, was acceptable.

  He seemed to think it was. The air in the room was breathless, sweaty, but nobody seemed to be shouting at him: Wait, what did you just do?

  He did apologise, the way you might for knocking something over with your elbow.

  *

  He fell asleep beside me, which I found unexpected. I thought that one-night stands were supposed to blow you a kiss and vanish?

  Early the next morning, he pressed two fingers to my lips and said, ‘See you soon.’

  The front door closed behind him.

  I lay in bed.

  After a while, there were shouts from outside. I got out of bed, wrapped the quilt around me, and watched through the window. In the snowy alley below, a carriage driver and two people in a car were having some kind of altercation. I was convinced it was connected to my one-night stand, but I couldn’t see him anywhere out there. Raised, angry voices and then, abruptly, calm. The people got back into their car, the car reversed, and drove away.

  ‘Back up, back up,’ called the driver, speaking English to the horse. Such a good horse, I thought. Such a good, calm, beautiful, bilingual horse, walking slowly backwards while the passengers stayed quiet. Then the driver spoke to the passengers in French and they all cried, ‘No! No!’ and laughed.

  I stood at the window and watched this. The altercation, the calm, and then only the snow.

  *

  Later, I built a fire. I turned the wood over when the fire had buried itself, and blew on the embers.

  I folded the laundry and put it away. Finn’s khaki trousers, Finn’s t-shirts, Finn’s socks, Finn’s swimming towel.

  I tried reading Kierkegaard. Finn had left behind a copy of a book called Either/Or: A Fragment of Life. He’d drawn on Kierkegaard to impress me the first night I met him. Cheap trick, I thought now, although when I started reading I decided it was a reasonably expensive trick.

  Music is the end of language, he had told me at the party—meanwhile, Tia down the hall somewhere—and also the beginning. Music as parentheses of language. Now Kierkegaard himself, I decided, could be the parentheses around my relationship with Finn.

  I grew bored of Kierkegaard. I flicked through pages. I found these lines:

  My soul is so heavy that no longer can any thought sustain it, no wingbeat lift it up into the ether. If it moves, it only sweeps along the ground like the low flight of birds when a thunderstorm is brewing.

  I opened the mail and there was a fine for putting the garbage out on the wrong day. I slammed the laundry door, opened it and slammed it again. I did this repeatedly, until a long thin thread of wood peeled away and slithered to the floor of Finnegan’s mother’s apartment.

  *

  I felt quite dreamy about the fact that I was pregnant. I never stayed pregnant, so it wasn’t real. I had considered taking the morning-after pill but I was certain, I knew, that I wouldn’t get pregnant from a one-night stand. Life was more important and serious; life was not quite so hilarious. Besides, like I said, I never stayed pregnant.

  Sometimes I thought I should call Finnegan and tell him I was expecting, let him think it was his, and then I’d smirk at Tia: Ha, I win, reeling him in with the promise of a child. This made me feel like someone ugly, snarling, poisonous, and the air took on a brutality, while, meantime, a small truth washed forlornly by: What if he stays with her anyway?

  A bigger truth, of course, was the fact that Finnegan was capable of arithmetic.

  I watched TV. Canadian Idol. American Idol. The Apprentice. The cruelty of that man’s gruff jaw, his curling lip, his ridiculous hair.

  Reruns of Sex and the City or NYPD Blue, the volume turned low, the lights dimmed. There was a quiet pointlessness to the programs—why all this fretting about that character? We know that, in the future, he’s been shot by an underground crime figure, buried in a field with his badge, and replaced by an exuberant detective with an excellent work ethic—and in the dim, closed light, I felt as if I were on an aeroplane. The faint buzz of earphones, canned laughter, the poignancy of altitude. Such a vulnerable state to be in, watching television with your belt loosely fastened across your lap.

  I chatted to Mum on the phone. She was reading a magazine article about Bec and Lleyton Hewitt’s baby girl, she said. Also, there were race riots on Cronulla Beach.

  I told her I was coming home for Christmas.

  I said nothing about Finnegan, or Finnegan and Tia, or the fact that I was pregnant with a stranger’s child.

  I saw a reader survey on ninemsn.com.au. Do you think the worst of the race riots is over? Strange question for a survey, I thought, staring at this a while.

  *

  It’s also strange the way I write these reflections in exactly the same format each year. Moments separated by dots. Impressionistic glances, that long-ago creative writing teacher called them. Like fish darting by in an aquarium.

  I’ll tell you who I want to be.

  I want to be a shadow, a silhouette, the girl who stays at home, the girl who waits patiently, an anchor, not the girl out in the pub with the pool cues in her face, making jokes. I should have stayed at home and let Finn have his time out with his friend, I should have stayed at home, a princess, a mystery, a silence, making the baby, drawing him back home, my worn boots at the door.

  Instead, I chatted, sat up high on bar stools, walked outside through the cigarette smoke, slipped on ice, and I talked and talked to Finn so he was drained dry, white with it, pale with it, desperate to go and replenish.

  *

  Anyway, the other day I came home to Sydney on an aeroplane, the way that you do.

  The accents on the plane were strange. Flat Australian, like voices from old TV shows. I thought: Where do they get these flight attendants? Have they flown back to the seventies to fetch them?

  I dreamed of a small, white desk lamp. Its head was bowed, ashamed. I lifted it up, tilted it up, as if by its chin, and it looked at me, startled.

  At that moment, in the dream, and with sudden clarity, I was walking hand in hand with Finnegan. Faster and faster we walked through the Montreal snow. ‘By the time we get to that lamppost up ahead?’ Finn said. ‘We will b
e warm.’

  I woke with a powerful feeling, as of dread.

  part

  10

  1.

  They seemed happy to see me, the students of flight class.

  ‘Abigail! We missed you last week!’ Antony opened his arms, and the others, even Wilbur, agreed that things had not been the same.

  I was surprised. I didn’t think I was especially present in these classes; in fact, part of their appeal was the opportunity to be absent, passive, an observer. As a single parent, you make every decision. You get plenty of advice, of course, but it’s up to me alone to determine how I deal with this tantrum, which day care I choose, whether I continue allowing favourite sticks to be brought home from the park, a giant stack of kindling forming in the corner of the living room.

  Better than having to squabble with an adult whose child-rearing philosophies clash with mine, of course—but it can astonish me. Again? I think. Nobody responsible here but me?

  Still, maybe I’d been passive in flight class because I was too shy around Niall to be anything at all.

  Niall himself smiled quietly at the enthusiasm of the others.

  They wanted to know how Oscar was, and Nicole told me that her third child was sick all the time. Anything going around, he’ll pick it up, she said. Whereas her first two kids? Healthy as cows.

  ‘I don’t associate the cow with health, especially,’ Antony told her.

  Pete Aldridge nodded gravely. ‘Mad cow disease.’

  ‘All right,’ Nicole complained. ‘What do people say? Healthy as an ox, which is like a cousin of the cow, so leave me alone. My point is, I’d never have known what it was like to have sick kids if I’d stopped at two. I’d have been secretly judging Abi, trying to figure out what she was doing wrong. Are you getting him enough fresh air? Are you feeding him orange vegetables? But see, I’m not saying a word.’

  ‘You’re saying plenty of words,’ Frangipani declared, and Nicole laughed. Everyone did.

  They told me that I’d missed a class on Sensory Development.

  ‘We did the sense of taste,’ Frangipani said. ‘Not to be confused with the sense of flavour.’

  ‘But we did that too,’ Antony put in.

  Now they became excited again. They knew so much about ‘taste’! Flies and butterflies have taste organs on their feet, Nicole told me. Every time they land on an object they taste it.

  ‘Catfish have more than a hundred thousand tastebuds,’ Antony offered. ‘All over their bodies. They taste everything they touch.’

  Wilbur was pleased. ‘You guys listen to me!’

  He had prepared treats, ‘flavour sensations’, and they’d played guessing games with blindfolds, as well as practised ‘mindful eating’, chewing each mouthful eighty times.

  ‘Very hard work,’ Pete Aldridge informed me, strolling across the room to study the line of ants still trailing along Wilbur’s wall.

  ‘Don’t worry,’ Frangipani reassured me. ‘You can probably catch up on the missed class at home. The five basic tastes are sweet, bitter, sour, salty and—what was the other one, Wilbur?’

  But Wilbur was studying his phone. ‘Umami,’ he said. ‘Fish, mushrooms, green tea. Anyway. Meditation tonight.’

  ‘What about the bit where we stand at the windows?’ Nicole asked, and Wilbur blinked. ‘Of course. Please.’

  We lined up at the windows, and stared out at the darkening blue.

  I can honestly say that I did not see a flight wave that night. But it was relaxing, rocking on the soles of my feet, staring at the sky. It’s not something you have the time or inclination to do when you’re taking care of a four-year-old with an ear infection.

  Everyone else seemed similarly happy at the windows.

  ‘I was thinking something,’ Nicole said, pressing her forehead to the glass. ‘Wilbur, when you say flight waves, are you just thinking of thermals?’

  ‘There’s a sale on thermals at Aldi this weekend,’ Frangipani said, and I noticed Niall’s eyes disappearing into his smile.

  ‘Not thermal underwear,’ Nicole explained. ‘I mean those air currents that rise up, and birds glide on them. Is that the idea, Wilbur? That we ride on the wind the way birds and gliders do? My husband, Marcin, is a birdwatcher, and he was telling me about them. Obstruction currents happen when air hits the side of a cliff, and you can do slope soaring. Dynamic soaring is where the wind is moving at different speeds and you keep crossing back and forth.’

  ‘Dynamic soaring,’ I breathed. ‘I like that idea.’

  Niall turned to me. ‘I think you would excel at dynamic soaring, Abigail,’ he offered.

  Wilbur sighed. ‘No, Nicole,’ he said. ‘No. Flight waves are something more than updrafts.’

  Then he began pulling out the purple yoga mats. The embroidered cushions were tossed about, the mystical music was switched on, and Wilbur instructed us to lie down. He seemed a little brusque.

  ‘Consider this,’ he began, the moment we were on the floor. He himself sat cross-legged, leaning against the wall.

  ‘Wait,’ Antony said. ‘I don’t feel in the zone at all.’

  ‘Consider this,’ Wilbur repeated, more loudly. ‘I’m about to put you in the zone, Antony. If you’ll just consider this.’

  ‘Go ahead,’ Pete Aldridge said. ‘We’re right now.’ I heard him wriggling around.

  Niall was beside me. His profile in the dim light. The pleasing shape of his nose. Our hands tapped the floor, side by side.

  ‘Consider the splendour of height,’ Wilbur said.

  ‘Oh yes,’ Frangipani said. ‘I like a tall man. I put that on my RSVP profile. Preference for men at or above five-eleven.’

  Everybody giggled.

  Wilbur hesitated. ‘I’m not referring to people,’ he said. ‘But to the sky.’

  ‘Are you doing online dating?’ Nicole whispered to Frangipani. ‘Seriously?’

  ‘Yes,’ she whispered back. ‘But not seriously. In a light-hearted way.’

  More giggles. Wilbur cleared his throat. We quietened.

  ‘I forgot to tell you to breathe tonight, didn’t I?’ Wilbur asked, abruptly disappointed in himself.

  ‘That’s all right,’ I said. ‘We do that automatically.’

  ‘The splendour of height,’ Wilbur continued, returning to his meditation tone. ‘Thank you, Abi, you are kind. Picture yourselves down on the ground, the low ground, amid the clutter and clamour. You are jostled, battered, buttressed, your senses assaulted. There’s no space! Yes, that’s good, Pete, good job being discomforted by the crowds.’

  ‘It’s my shoulder,’ Pete Aldridge growled.

  Wilbur apologised. ‘Now picture yourself stepping off the path,’ he instructed. ‘Stepping away from the crowds, the cars, the streets. You are in a park. The grass is soft and green. There are trees. Consider these trees. Choose a tree. Perhaps it is a palm tree.’

  ‘Mine’s a jacaranda,’ Pete Aldridge declared.

  ‘All right. Look up. You are looking up at the tree. It’s so tall!’

  ‘No. Not that tall.’

  ‘Maybe try a different tree then, Pete,’ Wilbur suggested evenly. ‘A tall one. Focus on the tall tree. Consider the splendour of its height!’

  ‘I just thought of something.’ Nicole’s voice was loud and chatty in the musical quiet. ‘Is anybody here afraid of heights?’

  There was a sharp intake of breath from Wilbur. ‘Should have asked that sooner,’ he muttered. ‘A fear of heights.’ He chuckled, and the chuckle grew, turned into laughter, and now Wilbur was slapping his knees.

  We all joined in the laughter, although Wilbur’s carried loudest and longest.

  ‘Anyway,’ he said at last. ‘Is anyone? Afraid of heights?’

  ‘We surely would have mentioned it by now,’ Antony pointed out.

  ‘Unless,’ Nicole mused, ‘somebody here hopes to cure a fear of heights by learning how to fly?’

  *

  But none of us was here for that reason.
We sat back up on our mats to discuss this. It’s easier to talk in dim light.

  Nicole said she’d never been bothered by heights before she had kids, but now she had a sort of fear of heights by proxy.

  I said I had the exact same thing! When Oscar was two, I took him on a chairlift in the Blue Mountains. Suddenly, I realised how simple it would be for him to wriggle and slip from the chair, plummeting to the rocky chasm below. I spent the rest of the ride holding Oscar so tight that he had my fingernail marks on his arms.

  ‘And yet if he’d learned to fly as a baby,’ Frangipani pointed out, ‘he’d have been fine!’

  There was a moment’s pause before we realised she was making a joke, and we laughed to reward her.

  A friend of Niall’s had attended a course on ‘fear of flying’ at the airport. They’d been instructed to board an aeroplane sitting on the tarmac, but the man climbing the plane steps ahead of Niall’s friend had stopped, swung around, and thrown up everywhere. She’d had to go back to the terminal to clean herself up.

  For much of that story, I’d assumed Niall’s friend was a man, and when we got to the end, I was disconcerted. Who was she? I wanted to snap. I imagined she was rather darling, what with her fear of flight.

  Antony said that his partner, Rick, was afraid of heights. On their first date, not knowing about this fear, Antony had taken Rick to 360 Bar and Dining, a revolving restaurant at the top of the Sydney Tower. Rick had not wanted to spoil the date by telling Antony about his fear, but he’d ended up slithering out of his seat, crouching by the table and crawling back to the lift. It took him ages to crawl back, Antony said, because the restaurant kept spinning him away. Antony had wanted to scoop Rick into his arms and carry him, but that had seemed too forward for a first date.

  Antony had never mentioned a partner before, and I felt a jolt because I’d assumed him to be single, whereas in fact he was a winer-and-diner, capable of scooping partners into his arms, or wanting to do so anyway.

  ‘Acrophobia,’ he added. ‘That’s what you call a fear of heights. Ancraophobia is a fear of winds or drafts, which would be a problem if Nicole’s theory is right—flight waves turning out to be updrafts.’