Relativity, page 10
Ethan grimaced. “With real spit?”
Alison spat on her hand and gave him a solemn nod. “An oath bound in saliva,” she said theatrically, as she held out her wet palm. “Sealed with spit.”
He tried to collect saliva inside his mouth. Spit pooled under his tongue made him want to gag. He spat. The bubbly mucus cooled quickly in the middle of his palm.
Alison grabbed Ethan’s hand, the surfaces of their skin clapping together. She gripped her fingers around his and looked straight into his eyes. Their saliva blended—squelching, fusing, moist palm against palm—as they steadily shook hands. “Spit, shake, swear,” she said with a serious tone.
“Spit, shake, swear,” Ethan repeated, returning her steely look. He had to stop himself from laughing as Alison maintained her earnest, unsmiling face. She took everything so seriously. Ethan pulled his wet hand back, wiped spit on her nightgown and grinned.
Alison screamed. “Yuck!” she said, running away from him. “Stop it! Ethan! That’s disgusting.”
“And spit-swearing isn’t?”
They chased each other around the room with their sticky hands, laughing and shrieking, pretending for a sacred moment that they weren’t in a hospital. Alison wiped her hand on Ethan’s back, whooping with victory. Their blended spit dried into the lines of his hands, his palm coated in white flakes of drool. It should’ve been gross, but it wasn’t.
The morning nurse peeked her head into the room. “Alison! Ethan! Back in your beds right away. You both should know better than to overstimulate each other. Especially you, Alison.”
The children did as they were told, giggling and sharing mischievous glances when the nurse wasn’t looking, as they climbed into their beds and under the covers again.
Alison gave Ethan a weak smile. “I don’t feel so good. Maybe you could read to me?” She picked up the book that was on her bedside table. “Will you read me Alice in Wonderland?”
Ethan got up and took the book from Alison’s hands. He sat at the end of her bed. From under her blanket, she kicked his thigh and snickered. But even her smile couldn’t conceal the cloud forming in her eyes. Ethan opened her book to a random page and read aloud. Alison was asleep before he reached the end of the chapter.
Ω
MARK HAD THE HANDS of a pianist, long fingers bowed like the neck of a swan. He tapped them on his knee, each movement striking notes of a nervous sonata of the fingertips. But this was a deceptive elegance. His body was all angles, sharp corners, and hard lines. Sweat beads collected in the tide of his brow. There was no softness there.
The train came to a stop and with a myopic squint he read the station name. Circular Quay. Not yet. He removed his jacket and wiped the sweat off his face with the back of his hand. He was dressed in shades of neutral—slate, charcoal, asphalt, stone—and, if put against the Sydney cityscape, he might disappear. Mark worked in ore lodes, inside a lab inside a pit; he wasn’t used to dressing up. His leather shoes lacked creases, his laces without the frays of regular wear. The passenger sitting opposite looked at him and their eyes met. They both smiled, but Mark had the sort of downward smile that was actually a frown.
From the pocket of his jacket, he pulled out a present, green paper tied with a pink bow. With a swan finger, he touched the edges taped into precise corners. The train stopped again. St. James. This was it. He followed the tiled tunnels, up the stairs to the vintage neon sign. “Chateau Tanunda, The Brandy of Distinction.” The blue and orange sign had been there for as long as he could remember. His mother used to take him to the city, past St. James station, to have soup and sandwiches at the café on the highest floor of David Jones department store.
Claire was waiting for him at the station exit, leaning against a wall. The afternoon sun lit her hair, but she had such high cheekbones that even on the brightest day, a shadow always fell on her face. She wore an old white sundress—Mark remembered it—that had somehow managed to stay impossibly clean.
“You’re late,” Claire said.
“Yeah, I know, sorry, the train.”
She looked at her watch. “I don’t have much time.”
This wasn’t the greeting Mark had expected. “Let’s just grab a quick coffee then.”
“There’s a coffee shop around the corner,” Claire said, leading the way. As they walked, she kept a wide gap between their bodies. When Mark stepped closer, Claire moved back. They were like two kids learning to waltz as they renegotiated the space between them.
The coffee shop was crowded when they arrived, the line almost out the door.
“Long black with a splash of full-cream milk, no sugar?” Mark asked.
She nodded.
He smiled. “You haven’t changed.”
Claire smiled back, but immediately looked away. “I’ll wait out here.”
Mark went inside. The line wasn’t moving and he kept glancing backward to see if she was still there. He rubbed the back of his neck. It was loud—roar of the coffee grinder, whistle of frothing milk, staff yelling—so Mark couldn’t organize his thoughts. The barista was listless, working leisurely: grind, dose, level, tamp. Mark ordered and tapped his foot, wanting to run behind the counter and make the coffees himself. Finally, they called his name.
“Thanks,” Claire said as he handed her the paper cup. “Let’s sit in the park.”
Mark hadn’t been back to Hyde Park for years. He used to study on the steps of the Anzac War Memorial, occasionally looking up from his books to stare into the gray water of the Pool of Reflection. Nothing much had changed. Elderly men still played chess with the giant pieces in the Japanese Garden. Office workers still sat on the grass during their lunch breaks, sprawled on the lawn, turning their faces toward the sun. Down the fig-lined avenue, Mark could see the spraying jets of the Archibald Fountain.
Ω
ONE DRUNKEN NIGHT in the height of Sydney summer, many Januarys ago when the balmy late night felt as hot as noon and the humidity soared, Claire had persuaded Mark to jump into the fountain. He liked how impulsive she could be, how uninhibited, except when she tried to make him act recklessly too. But as Claire climbed the marble plinth and bronze statues—wet dress clinging to her body, hair slicked back, her magnetic face glistening in the fountain’s mist—Mark reflexively followed her into the water.
“Diana, goddess of the hunt, of purity and the moon,” he said, pointing at the statue. He’d studied classics at school, knew all about ancient Greek and Roman mythology. “The Greeks called her Artemis.”
“Show-off.” Claire splashed him and gestured to the bronze man in the middle of the fountain. “Who’s he?” she asked, drops of water dripping off her chin, the fountain’s floodlight igniting her face.
“That’s Apollo. Diana’s twin brother. God of the sun, of beauty, music and light. He was the god of healing too. The ancient Greeks thought the twins shooting arrows at people caused illness and death. So they prayed to Apollo to cure disease.” At the statue’s feet was a horse head; water spilled from its flaring nostrils. “I guess he was a multitasking god.”
Claire laughed and waded through the water to the other side of the basin, lifting the hem of her dress. Tortoises shot water from their mouths at her feet. She had the most beautiful legs. Mark saw the ballet training in her walk—her turned-out hips, her pointing feet—that elegant gait engraved into her body by years of bending at the barre.
She lifted herself onto another statue and smacked its bronzed behind. The metal had oxidized, turned slightly green. “And this guy?” she asked. “What’s his story?”
“Theseus,” Mark said. “Slaying the Minotaur.”
“Theseus was a bit of a hunk,” Claire said as she mounted the basin at the center of the fountain and stood below Apollo. “Look at his ass.”
In the shadow of St. Mary’s Cathedral, under the fan of spraying water, Claire looked more striking than any neoclassical sculpture. Mark wanted to touch her. Carved into clay, forged and wrought, cast with molten metal: she belonged in a museum. But she was greater than any statue—animated, fearless, determined, painfully stubborn—and she’d pulled Mark out from his hard shell, taught him how to feel truly alive.
“And look at this ancient mythical creature here,” she said, mimicking his voice as she placed her hand on a water-sprouting bronze fish. “His name was Trouteus, and he was the god of swimming in forbidden fountains at two in the morning.” She pouted, curling her lips to resemble the fish. “And he represents vomiting when you’ve had too much to drink.”
Mark came after her, scaling the granite slabs, sliding on the slippery polished stones. “Claire, I love you,” he blurted out. He’d never said it to her before and suddenly felt self-conscious, hyperaware of his sticky wet clothes.
Claire stood there for a moment, wobbling in the pool of water, her mouth agape. “I love you too,” she’d said, a little breathless.
Crescents of water shot over their heads as they kissed in the moonlit fountain, before they lost their balance and slipped in the basin. Mark had loved the languor of those warm evenings of their careless youth. Laughing hysterically, their bodies submerged, they kissed again in the hexagonal pool. Above them, the bronze mythological figures looked into the distance.
Ω
SEASON FOLLOWING SEASON, year after inevitable year, Diana, Apollo, and Theseus hadn’t moved. The lifeless statues still held their poses; the jets still sprayed their streams. Mark wondered if Claire remembered jumping into the water as they overlooked the fountain now. Had she forgotten that night? She carefully brushed leaves off the bench before sitting down.
He studied Claire’s face. A little more worn than the last time he’d seen her, her eyes a little older but unsettlingly familiar.
“You look beautiful,” he said.
Claire crossed her arms. “Don’t you remember? You used to tell me I wasn’t beautiful, I was symmetrical.”
“Oh,” he said, staggered by her comment. It was never meant as an insult; symmetry wasn’t subjective, it was absolute. Her beauty could be quantified by mathematics, by divine measurements and ratios. “I’ve got something for you.” Mark reached into his pocket and handed Claire the wrapped present.
She barely glanced at it before putting it straight into her handbag.
“About our conversation on the phone. What do you think?” he asked.
Claire looked at her lap; she couldn’t seem to look him in the eye. She was different now, even her hair had changed; she’d cut it shorter. Back when they’d met, her long wavy hair almost came down to her waist. But at this new length, Mark saw it still had a natural tendency toward the wild.
“I don’t think it’s a good idea,” she said.
“Not a good idea for him? Or for you?”
“For him.”
Mark had anticipated this but felt his neck muscles tense. If he was honest with himself, he hadn’t come all the way back to Sydney for nothing. It wasn’t just for his father, and he wasn’t interested in climbing the Harbor Bridge, touring the Opera House. There was something here more monumental than all of those things. “But Ethan—”
“Ethan doesn’t know what’s best for him,” Claire interrupted. “He’s a twelve-year-old boy.”
“Maybe you don’t know what’s best for him either.”
“I don’t need this,” she said, still looking down. “Do you honestly think you can tell me I don’t know what’s best for Ethan? You don’t know him. What’s the name of the toy he’s slept with every night since he was a baby? What was his first word? When did he take his first steps? You have no idea.”
“I want to know those things. I wanted to be there.”
“Well, you weren’t.” Her tone was hard and matter-of-fact now. “You have no idea what we’ve been through.”
Mark stared blankly at the fountain. “You have no idea what I’ve been through either.”
Claire looked up from her lap and directly into Mark’s eyes. “You deserved that.”
“Dad’s dying,” he said. “It would mean so much to him to see his grandson.”
“I’m sorry about your father,” Claire said. “I’ve always liked John. But I have to put Ethan’s needs first. It’d be traumatic for him to meet his grandfather for the first time when John is on his deathbed.”
“He can hardly speak but says Ethan’s name over and over. I don’t know what to do. I feel like I owe it to him to . . .” His voice trailed off. Mark fixed his eyes on the cathedral’s stained-glass windows. “I don’t have to be there. If that makes it easier for you. For you both.”
“Don’t you think you owe Ethan too? I don’t think you understand how upsetting that would be for him.”
“Claire, I think about him all the time.”
“No, I mean his feelings? His best interests?” Claire tucked some loose strands of hair behind her ear. “I have to put my foot down. It’s not a good idea.”
Both of them looked away, staring at people passing by: runners wearing shorts and sunglasses, jogging through the shafts of light; old women walking from Mass at the cathedral across from the department stores; school students on an excursion marshaled into a line by their militant teacher.
Mark broke the silence. “Can I ask a question? He’s normal, right? No permanent, you know, damage? Everything is okay?”
“I can’t believe you asked me that,” Claire said. She looked distracted for a moment. “Yes, he’s fine. But do you seriously think that just because he’s relatively fine now, that he’s okay? He doesn’t have a dad. And you didn’t live through not knowing whether or not he’d ever stand up, walk, or talk. I spent the first years of Ethan’s life holding my breath.”
Mark sighed. “But he does have a dad.” He wanted to show her every moment he’d experienced since they’d last seen each other, how he’d had no choice but to become somebody else, but how could he make her understand?
“It’s not enough. It’s too late.” Her voice fractured. “It’s been so hard.”
“Claire, it’s been hard for me too.”
That icy stare. “You deserved that,” she said again.
A tour group walked past, a flock of tourists led by a guide holding an umbrella high and shouting in German. The crowd shifted their gaze from the fountain to another attraction developing on the bench.
“I’ll always love you,” Mark said softly. The words slipped out of his mouth before he’d thought about it, before he’d run it through the filter he knew he should have.
“Mark, you broke my heart.” Claire was almost in tears. She covered her face for a second; he knew she didn’t want him to see her cry. Her posture changed as she tried to regain some semblance of composure. “I shouldn’t have come. I have to go.”
“But, Claire—”
“Mark, don’t.”
“But what about my father? What about—”
Claire stood up and gathered her things.
Mark watched her walk away, the sharp rectangular outline of the wrapped present visible through the leather of her handbag. Will she even open it, he wondered. Would she ever give him the present he wanted most?
Ω
CLAIRE WALKED ALONG Hyde Park’s central avenue, hurrying down the garden’s spine. Under the cool shade of the leafy canopy—towering arch upon arch of figs—she struggled to take several deep breaths. Do not cry. Do not look back. Just cross the road. She regretted that coffee; she felt its acidic burn in her empty stomach, milky phlegm in the back of her mouth.
In the late spring light, the park’s colors were painfully vivid: bright mazes of manicured flower beds, walls of orange and pink azaleas. Jasmine drenched the air. Jacaranda season’s explosion of purple was almost over for the year—the last of the November mauve flowers still clung to the branches. Claire stepped carefully over the dead flowers at her feet.
She pushed on toward Museum station, almost breaking into a run. Surely he wouldn’t follow, chase after her. But Claire knew Mark was too indolent for that, he’d always suffered from immobilizing pride. Agreeing to meet him had been a mistake. In a moment of weakness, she’d taken pity on him. Yes, his father was dying, but she couldn’t expose Ethan to that. She needed to get back home to him. Pedestrians kept standing in front of her, blocking her path. They walked slowly, stopped suddenly, clogged the breadth of the footpath. Why wouldn’t they get out of the way?
The arterial paths of south Hyde Park led to the Anzac War Memorial at its heart—a concrete tower, clad in pink stone. The memorial reminded Claire of a miniature New York Art Deco skyscraper, as though the top of the Empire State Building had been sliced off and dropped in the middle of Sydney. She walked along the edge of the Pool of Reflection.
Ω
CLAIRE HAD NEVER BEEN inside the war memorial until the middle of Mark’s criminal trial. During the ambulance officer’s testimony, she’d stepped out of the court to get some fresh air but ended up finding hundreds of thousands of gold stars.
They were called the stars of memory: a dome of 120,000 golden stars that covered the memorial ceiling, a single star to honor each person from New South Wales who’d fought in the First World War. Claire had entered the war memorial by accident. What was unfolding in the courtroom was too much to process; she’d needed to disappear. In the cavernous white marble room bathed in amber light, she finally found somewhere to vanish. The crust of stars soared a hundred feet above her head—countless gilded heroes and nameless deaths. Stepping inside the memorial and standing under the stars of memory became Claire’s daily retreat. It helped her put things into perspective. Her problems weren’t the end of the world. She was just one star in an entire galaxy.
Diagonally opposite the war memorial was the Downing Center. Ornate, with a turreted roof and white, yellow, and green exterior. The “Mark Foy’s Department Store” original signage was still above the awning—laces, gloves, silks, and millinery—funny words to read along the façade of Sydney’s district court. Inside was a grand piazza with marble floors and a spiral staircase. That criminal trial had seemed so long: twelve days, twelve-person jury. Claire spent two days in cross-examination, summoned as a witness for the Crown.
