Gravity Is the Thing Read online

  We all agreed we’d only come here for the free holiday. Or out of curiosity. Somebody said she was tweeting the whole thing. Somebody else said he was considering writing a piece about it for BuzzFeed.

  Then everyone had a theory about what ‘the truth’ was going to be.

  ‘It’ll be nothing,’ someone said. ‘It’ll be your usual self-help hogwash.’

  Hogwash. We talked about hogwash then, the origin of the word, and somebody got out a smartphone to look it up, but the guy I liked with the beard and the flat cap—his name was Antony; I decided I would remember this by thinking of Cleopatra and snakes—anyway, Antony shouted at her to put it away. ‘Instant access to answers is killing conversation,’ Antony explained, so the person with the smartphone put it away, ashamed, and everyone fell silent, considering this.

  ‘You see?’ Antony grinned. ‘Conversation killed.’

  Then his grin broadened and he told us about how, when he came out to his family, at his nineteenth birthday dinner, his mother had said, ‘Now there’s a conversation killer.’

  So Antony was gay. It was lucky I hadn’t told him my plans to sleep with him.

  When I tuned back in, everyone was talking about parents, coming out, smartphones, technology, answers, truth, hogs, cars, laundry. I don’t know.

  ‘Let me tell you, I will be pissed if I don’t get chosen for the truth,’ somebody announced. ‘Talking about access to the answers.’

  ‘It’ll be a pyramid scheme,’ Petite Tobi declared. ‘Watch this space.’

  We made fun of her about watch this space, which she took in her stride.

  Niall said he thought it would be something about extra-sensory perception.

  ‘What? Why?’ we all asked, and he reminded us that Wilbur had played us the song ‘Read My Mind’. ‘Why else would he have played that?’

  ‘Huh,’ I said. ‘I thought he was just setting the mood.’

  At this, Niall turned his chair slightly so he could face me, consider me.

  ‘I agree with birthday girl,’ Antony put in, and Niall inclined his head ever so slightly, but kept his gaze on me.

  ‘I bet you a thousand dollars,’ said a voice, ‘that we all get invited to find out the truth.’

  It was Daniel. Oh, Daniel, I thought, why do I always forget you? On the outskirts of the group there, leaning forward with his stained-glass-repairing fingers interwoven. They must be so careful, those fingers.

  ‘Wilbur looked sad though,’ Nicole pointed out, ‘when somebody asked how many would be chosen. Who was it who asked that?’

  It had been Daniel himself who asked. So others forgot him too.

  ‘He didn’t answer,’ I remembered.

  ‘Exactly,’ Daniel said. ‘Because he knew it would be all of us.’

  ‘I bet you a thousand dollars the truth will be something we find out in a series of upcoming seminars,’ Antony declared, ‘and I bet you a thousand dollars the seminars will cost a mint.’

  ‘I haven’t got a mint,’ Niall announced, ‘but I do have some chewing gum.’

  ‘I’m losing track of the thousands,’ Petite Tobi complained. ‘Are these separate bets?’

  ‘All bets are off,’ someone said, but they were just drunk.

  ‘Watch this space!’ a voice threw in, to make us all laugh again, and Tobi continued to take the laughter in good grace, although she looked a little bored by it now.

  I can’t remember what happened after that. Someone stoked the fire and called himself a fire doctor. Fire whisperer. We moved our chairs closer and spoke intently. Someone was in love with a woman named Zelda. I told the group that I’d once been married to a man named Finnegan. It seemed connected, somehow.

  We talked about sociological jurisprudence and string theory. We took grand statements and illustrated them with amusing anecdotes, so that we never had to explain or even understand the grand statement. Chitchat was thereby elevated, given a theoretical framework.

  ‘I was suspended from high school,’ I announced, late in the night, sleepy with wine, ‘for almost blinding a teacher.’

  But when the others leaned closer, enthralled, I asked if anybody played a musical instrument. I think there was a seamless transition then, to the dialogue inherent in music.

  14.

  So now it was the day after the birthday cake, pizza and red wine, and we were following Wilbur’s schedule.

  First, we undertook further team-building exercises on the beach. These involved balloons, and the balloons either blew away or burst, so it was mostly hilarity rather than team building.

  Next, Wilbur announced a yoga class in a field.

  Someone asked why we couldn’t do the yoga right here on the beach?

  But Wilbur explained vaguely that the field he had in mind was ‘a very good field’. A little harried, he swung around and led us off the beach and along a dirt track.

  I found myself walking beside a woman named Lera who had beautiful posture and a way of reaching out each foot as she walked as if to test the ground ahead of her. Like someone fearing cracks in the ice. She did this rapidly so it didn’t slow us down. Her hair was also interesting to me, cut as it was in a short, sharp style.

  Lera spoke about her daughters—I remembered her mentioning them when she introduced herself, but I was scrambling to recall what else she’d said. She was from Nigeria originally, I remembered that. And her girls were ten, eight and six.

  ‘Your girls are ten, eight and six,’ I said. Just to show off my memory.

  ‘Right,’ she said kindly. ‘Exactly.’

  I asked if they got along.

  Mostly, she said, but sometimes they fought like nobody’s business.

  She asked if I had kids myself and I told her about Oscar and she said, ‘Oh, four, that’s a cute age.’

  So far, people have told me that all of Oscar’s ages are cute. ‘He’s eight months old.’ ‘Oh, such a cute age!’ ‘He’s two and a half.’ ‘Oh, the cutest!’ Each time, it troubles me, because I think: So he stops being cute after this? But so far he’s kept up his cute.

  I said, ‘Yeah, pretty cute, except when he’s sick,’ and Lera, looking worried, asked, ‘Is he sick a lot?’

  ‘Just the usual,’ I reassured her, but she still seemed concerned, so I began to list his ailments. ‘Just, you know, colds, conjunctivitis, that kind of thing. Ear infections. He gets those all the time.’

  ‘All the time?’

  ‘He’s had seven ear infections in the last year.’ I may have sounded proud.

  ‘Really?’ She seemed so intrigued now. ‘Because that’s what I do. I’m a paediatric ENT surgeon.’

  Of course!

  I felt a rush of embarrassment, as if I’d been caught out in a lie. Seven ear infections? Impossible! But it was true. Oscar had had seven ear infections in the previous year. I could prove it if required: it was all in his medical records. I calmed down in time for a second wave of embarrassment: she’d think I was mentioning the infections because she was an ENT doctor! And I could only escape this charge by admitting I’d forgotten who she was. Your regular catch-22.

  ‘Who’s looking after him?’ Lera asked.

  ‘My mum.’

  Lera nodded slowly, walking along in her careful way. ‘It’s good he can stay with your mum.’

  I told her that my mother was only in Sydney for a few days, house-sitting a friend’s place in Crows Nest.

  ‘Crows Nest?’ Lera said. ‘That’s where I live!’

  But I wasn’t finished. I told Lera that my mother actually lives up north, in Maroochydore, having moved there to be close to my grandfather after he had a stroke. While there, she’d fallen in love with an old school friend named Xuang and married him. So usually, I said, she could not look after Oscar. Usually, she was nowhere near Crows Nest.

  I didn’t know why I was telling Lera all this, except that I wanted to set the record straight. I wanted there to be no confusion about the availability of my mother to babysit my child.<
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  ‘Which is a shame,’ I said, ‘because she’s great with him. And so is Xuang.’

  Next, I told Lera about the nutritious meals my mother and Xuang provided for Oscar and how, by contrast, I feed him so badly! But then I recalled she was a doctor, and regretted saying this. It wasn’t even really true: fish and chips sometimes, sure, but I give him five serves of vegetables a day. More or less. And small serves. But still! I’d only talked about feeding him badly as one of those things mothers say to each other: oh, my place is a mess; oh, I let him watch way too much TV! The other mother is supposed to engage in reassuring competitiveness: You think your place is a mess! Or else, My children live on fairy floss! At which, you both feel better.

  But Lera was only nodding.

  I tried to backpedal. I mentioned that Oscar loves bananas—and avocado on toast? Can’t get enough. And he really likes salmon!

  Lera was growing very bored here, I believe, as she didn’t say much, just murmured a sort of congratulatory, ‘Oh!’ about the salmon. There was a moment’s quiet and then Lera asked, ‘And his ears? Who’s looking after his ears?’

  Oh wow, I thought. She thinks we have to split a child into separate body parts and distribute them among carers. We’re going to have to go through his nose, toes, fingernails, and I’ll have to reply, ‘My mum. My mum. Yep, my mum has that too. You know what? My mum has all of him.’ I worried about her career as a surgeon, given this misapprehension.

  ‘His ears?’ I repeated, stalling.

  ‘I mean, just the GP or does he have a specialist?’

  So then I saw a couple of things: first, that I’m an idiot, and second, that this was what she’d meant by her original question about who was looking after him. Only, she was one of those kind-hearted people who instead of saying, ‘No, I mean . . .’, just follows the trajectory of a miscommunication, waiting for a chance to gently reel you back.

  ‘Doctor Koby,’ I told her.

  ‘Oh, Tom,’ she said. ‘Yes. He’s good.’

  ‘Last time I saw him, he told me that Oscar is cured,’ I offered. ‘That the ear infections will stop now because his skull has caught up with his tonsils.’

  Usually I mock Dr Koby at this point in my narration, the hundreds of dollars I’d paid to sit in his office, have him peer at Oscar’s tonsils and eventually declare him ‘cured’. But Lera had just called Dr Koby Tom.

  ‘Do you watch Grey’s Anatomy?’ I asked, to change the subject.

  She seemed surprised but told me she’d watched an episode or two.

  ‘And is it like that for you?’ I said. ‘The way they love surgery? They really want to cut.’

  Now she smiled. ‘No.’ With tonsils and adenoids, she said, you just do them. There are so many. Hundreds, she’s done. Thousands. ‘But with the other ones,’ she said. ‘The life-threatening ones . . .’ She stopped and crouched—maintaining her beautiful posture—to tie her bootlace.

  I waited, thinking about tonsils and adenoids, hundreds of them, thousands.

  At this point, Niall caught up to us. Redheaded, broad-shouldered, as per usual. He’d been walking a few steps behind and, as he reached us, I felt grateful for bootlaces. He looked down at Lera, still double knotting, and he smiled at me. I could see pale freckles, the same colour as his hair, on white skin. I could see the shape of his nose, a big, rounded nose. Neither of us spoke.

  A strange thought crept across my chest. You’re not just the kind of guy I like, you are the guy I like. I know you! But I didn’t know him at all. Confusing.

  ‘Those ones,’ Lera said, carrying on our conversation, ‘the life-threatening surgeries—I come out of those bathed in sweat.’

  The three of us walked on, and Lera continued to talk about her work.

  ‘It’s those little round batteries,’ she said at one point. ‘The button batteries. Kids swallow them. They stick them up their noses. They’ll burn a kid’s oesophagus irreparably. Right away, they start burning through, those lithium batteries. If we don’t get to them in time, the kid will die. Or never talk again. Never breathe on their own again.’

  And the drownings, she added. The water in their throat. ‘I don’t ever want to get a swimming pool,’ she said. ‘And when I see little boys running with lolly pops in their mouths . . .’

  Niall and I listened and asked questions.

  We walked and, in the distance, there they were again: the two men sitting opposite one another, pointing at the sky. This time, as I watched, one lowered his hand and scratched the back of his head.

  A moment later, we passed a girl flying a kite in the centre of a field. A man rode by on a bicycle, brrringing his bell so that we all stepped aside to let him pass. We passed a house with a garden in which a woman pushed a child on a swing.

  Each of us noticed, in silence, the pointing men, the kite, the bike, the child on the swing.

  ‘And grapes,’ said Lera. ‘I’d cut them in half until a child is eighteen.’

  15.

  Between 3 and 4 pm, I was in my room, as instructed.

  The fire had been lit, and there was a slice of cake on a plate again. I wondered if this was in everybody’s room, or only those of the winners.

  Or losers: a consolation prize.

  Everyone would be chosen, I remembered. This was not a game; it was a hoax, a scam, a con.

  In order to demonstrate that I wasn’t waiting around for a note under my door, that I had not fallen for this elaborate recruitment exercise, I called my mother. Look at me getting on with my life. However, she didn’t answer. That was a relief. I could not have paid sufficient attention to another recitation of Where is Hairy Maclary? while I tilted the phone away from my ear, straining to hear footsteps in the corridor.

  I leafed through the guesthouse information folder. I boiled the kettle, poured water into a cup, opened a teabag, made tea, and forgot all about it. I ate some of the cake: coconut and lemon.

  It was raining outside, and there were other sounds: a clattering, a door slamming, a motor running. I stood at the window, wiped the mist with my sleeve, and looked down.

  A golf buggy stood in the driveway, motor running, door open. Wilbur leaned against it, holding a black umbrella. He called something in the direction of the guesthouse door. Somebody laughed in reply.

  A man stepped towards the buggy now, pulling a suitcase behind him, head bowed against the rain.

  He turned slightly as he climbed into the buggy, and I saw his face.

  It was Daniel.

  My face went cold. Not chosen, I thought.

  Even though he fixes glass and the environment.

  Even though I had planned (when I remembered his existence) to sleep with him.

  He wasn’t chosen so he’s leaving.

  Yet he seemed composed, and cheerful.

  Now a second man strode towards the buggy and hoisted his suitcase into the back.

  Oh no, I thought. Oh no, not Niall! He’s my other option!

  But the man at the buggy turned his head and it was nobody important—an unshaven, unkempt look, the sort of look I sometimes find attractive, other times exasperating. He was the one who’d climbed a tree, I remembered.

  So! Tree-climbing was not, after all, a criterion.

  I turned towards the door of my room and studied the carpet. So far, I myself had not been chosen. Neither was there any guarantee that Niall would choose me. Let me keep my fantasy, I argued violently.

  After tree-climber came the petite cartwheeling woman, Tobi, her head bowed. It was beginning to seem that physical prowess might, in fact, preclude you. Interesting. Lucky I hadn’t won the sack race, after all.

  I looked towards the door again. I felt fluttery. I hadn’t packed my suitcase. I’d been thinking I’d stay on even if I wasn’t chosen, to show that I didn’t care. Also for another night of sleep, reading and cake. (And I’d persuade the actual chosen ones to just tell me the truth, over wine and pizza, later tonight.) But all those people downstairs were busy climb
ing into the buggy, so maybe we were expected to leave? Maybe it was one of those unspoken assumptions and people would look at me aghast if I stayed, or would wince, embarrassed on my behalf. What if the chosen people shunned me? Apologetically, of course. Explaining that they’d signed a confidentiality agreement, or they’d made a promise not to tell: they’d sworn.

  I’d be so irritated if they did that. I hate people who get ethical on you.

  My eyes wandered back to the door. A piece of folded paper lay on the carpet.

  How did that get there?

  My heart thudded wildly. Ice ran down my spine; a blast of heat hit my face. Honestly, suspense is just the weather.

  I turned back to the window. Outside, three more people were trundling their suitcases towards a second buggy. I didn’t recognise the first two particularly, but the third stepped in a careful, considered way—back straight, legs reaching out—and oh, I thought. Lera!

  I felt crestfallen. My crest just fell, I thought.

  Lera seemed okay, though: she was climbing into the buggy, speaking to the person beside her. They all seemed fine. Cheerful even.

  But I liked Lera. There was something good about her, something good and complete, and she’d done hundreds of tonsils, thousands. She deserved to hear the truth.

  I looked back at the paper on the floor by the door. Now I felt hostile towards it. It was a folded piece of white that could keep me from the truth.

  Two quick strides across the room, and I pounced.

  Congratulations, it said, you’ve been chosen for the truth.

  I’m deeply ashamed to say that I burst into tears.

  16.

  Everything felt different in the conference room.

  There were empty chairs and a complicated hush: curiosity, pride, and a determination not to be curious or proud. Also, we felt sad and strange about the missing people. All this added up to a desperate, low-level embarrassment.

  I looked around at the ‘chosen ones’, and felt suddenly annoyed by that phrase. Chosen ones. As if the missing people didn’t deserve to be chosen! As if we were really up for Jedi training!