The Best Australian Stories 2010 (33 page)

*

The storm came through at ten, after the boy had gone back to sleep again. He had been well enough to sit up for a couple of hours and watch some television. He had even managed to eat an egg mashed up with some buttered bread. Samuel wasn't home yet. He was doing a course two nights a week, something to do with wealth management and investments. He had asked Steph to do it with him but she had told him it wasn't her thing.

‘What's that supposed to mean,' he said. ‘Not your thing?'

‘Sorry,' she said. ‘I'll stay home and babysit.'

Which is what she did. For two nights a week she and the boy had the house to themselves. It was like they were on a holiday from Samuel. They ate together after he'd gone, and she never forced the boy to finish what was on his plate because that only seemed to confuse pleasure with suffering.

‘You don't discipline him enough,' Samuel told her. ‘You let him run wild.'

‘How is he going to grow up if we're constantly on his case?' said Steph. ‘He'll be too scared to risk anything.'

Samuel didn't agree. She could tell from the way he looked at the boy sometimes as if he wanted to tie him up and whip him, break him like a horse with too much pride.

*

At three in the morning Steph woke out of a dream about a man with Clive Owen looks whom she'd tailed down into the scrubland as far as his hide-out, at which point he'd spotted her and demanded a kiss. In exchange he offered her a coin-sized emerald-green stone. She knew it wasn't a thing of any value but she was willing anyway and let him unbutton her blouse and put his hands all over her, while the trees all around them whispered and the animals made their little scuffling noises in the dark.

She opened her eyes and struggled to climb out of the dream, checking that it was Samuel beside her in the bed and not Clive Owen. The sound from the dream was still there. Not a snake because snakes were soundless. Not a cat, because cats were stealthy. This was a lumbering, more awkward thing. It was in the garden outside their bedroom window. Steph was certain she knew it from the time before. She slid out of bed and padded out of the bedroom, making sure not to wake Samuel since he had never understood her excitement about anything at all unexpected.

After the violent beating the storm had given it the garden seemed abnormally still, like something that has stopped breathing. Once her eyes had adjusted to the dark Steph could see the way quite clearly in the starlight. She came round the corner of the bedroom and there was the echidna, probably the same one she and the boy had found the other time, when he'd been camping out the back in a tent.

‘Hello there,' she whispered. The animal had already sensed her coming. Its spines were up and its head wedged between two boulders so that all it presented to her was its prickly back. As a defence system it was impenetrable. There was no part of the creature that was unprotected. Steph thought of what the boy had told her after he'd done his investigations. Echidnas, he said, roamed huge territories and navigated by some system that was barely understood but was probably tuned to magnetic lines in the earth.

It occurred to Steph to wake Samuel to ask him whether they should try to rescue the animal and take it to the RSPCA before it was run over by a bulldozer or buried alive under a ton of fill, but she was afraid of what he might do. The first time the echidna had come into the garden she had sent the boy into the bedroom to wake up his father but Samuel had refused to come.

‘He said to let him sleep,' said the boy.

‘He doesn't have a soul,' said Steph.

When she thought of that now, of what she had said, and of how she and the boy had sat together on the grass in the dark, the boy so wide awake and still so young, she wanted to howl out loud like a wolf or a bear protecting its cub from all the harm that would ever come to it.

One Book Many Brisbanes

The Tower

Meg Mundell

She found us a week ago, in the arts section of the newspaper. Or to be honest – and really, at this stage, what's the point in lying? – we found her.

‘Listen to this!' Marianne's voice pricked a sharp hole through my sleepy Sunday afternoon. She read aloud from the paper: ‘
However you phrase it – disabled sculptor, artist with a disability –
they're pointless labels. I am a sculptor. My physicality is irrelevant. Why
automatically insert it before the art itself is appraised?

' The journalist had used the word ‘defiant,' Marianne reported, but I thought the artist, whoever they were, had a point. Eyes half-shut, I stroked the cat and felt almost content, waited for Marianne to finish her dramatic pause. I am interested in art, but the feeling is not mutual. Marianne is impasto, thick reds and dark greens and tobacco golds; I am the water in which the brush is rinsed.

She read on: ‘
But Alice Rowe's upbeat, assured personality may well
have a darker side, if her art in any way reflects her life.
' I opened my eyes. Marianne stared at me over the newspaper and a sneaking unease crept between us. I tried to keep my voice neutral.

‘I'd heard she had become successful. How much space did she get?' I asked.

‘Half a page. That should piss her off. Extra space because she's a sculptor with a disability
and
an attitude.' Marianne doesn't really mean it when she talks like this. She only does it when she's frightened.

‘Maybe she's good.' Distracted, I stroked the cat too vigorously and did not snatch my hand back in time – there's still a red scratch on my wrist. She's a pretty thing, but unpredictable.

As I sucked at the scratch Marianne got up to make coffee, but after announcing this plan and banging cupboard doors busily she just stood at the sink in a kind of dream. She left the tap running for a long time. I had to remind her that we're in the middle of a drought.

*

It happened down by the river. Summer would turn us into mosquitoes, quick and irritating, whining in our parents' ears until they shooed us out the back door and we all flew down to the water.

With each passing year memory blurs, another hazy layer of plastic wrap is laid over the senses, but at the age of eleven things are still as clear as the water, solid as the river stones. The world existed around us in a bright, clear bubble and nothing beyond the immediate horizon counted.

The water tower loomed over a bend in the river near the train tracks, a squat cement cylinder stained with lichen and faded graffiti. It cast its shadow over our swimming hole, darkening a rectangle of water that shifted slowly with the path of the sun.

Daniel was the first to conquer the tower. One still afternoon, after weeks of brutal heat, he climbed the worn metal ladder and stood on the tower's crumbling edge, peering down at our upturned faces. Before anyone could yell out ‘Chicken!' he'd done the unthinkable. Those skinny bird legs pedalled the air like Roadrunner suspended over a cliff, his eyes and mouth three black circles in his pale face; the drop of his scrawny body seemed endless.

Water exploded everywhere like glass. The swimming hole rocked and slapped against its banks. We waited.

Finally Daniel surfaced, eyes huge above the choppy water, the shock in his face already turning to pride. He strutted ashore, chest pushed out like a pigeon, face split by a grin, to shake his wet hair all over us.

But the hero shrank in status as, one by one, we followed. Marianne was first; my turn came later. But by the weekend, all but two of us had jumped off the tower. John, who was only seven and deemed too small, looked relieved when we forbade him.

But Alice didn't get off so lightly.

*

Children are not, by nature, kind. They know that a group is made stronger by the presence of an outsider, that someone has to be the runt of the litter. Perhaps they know this instinctively; or perhaps they learn it from their elders.

That summer Alice had already been made to pay for many crimes: chickening out of our stick-fight tournaments, running home crying when a rubber tarantula landed in her hair, telling her mum about Marianne's strip show, with us selling tickets at twenty cents a head. Alice who went to church every Sunday, who once wet her pants in assembly, who stared at the ground when teased. Alice the bag carrier, the moneylender, the punchline; the one whose clothes got hidden after swimming. Alice the lonely, and I later realised (hindsight being an inferior source of knowledge), the harmless and helpless.

The water tower waited for her like a judge.

Cajoled, enticed, bullied – I am still not sure how she got up there. From below I could see her crouching near the edge, the panicky flutter of breath in her ribs; it brought to mind a tiny mouse I once found cornered by our cat. It was easy enough to save the mouse.

*

The rest is blurred in my memory – a deliberate haze, I suspect. But Marianne and I have always agreed that it was Sarah and Dean's fault.

Nasty little Sarah with her beautiful hair shimmering, her sharp stick prodding. Mean Dean with his goblin teeth, laughing too high and too loud. They scampered up the ladder after her. I don't remember what the rest of us were doing – just watching silently, I hope. It was a long time ago.

Hot mixed-up air, the sounds ugly and jumbled: Alice's jagged sobs, Dean's wild laughter, the swish of Sarah's stick cutting through the air. Five children staring up at three children.

And then there were two.

I am certain she was meant to land in the water. If she had fallen into the river, rather than landing on the bank, one of us could have pulled her out before panic swallowed her – Alice couldn't really swim.

But after the sickening sound of flesh on solid earth there was only silence. The sun smiled down on seven tanned children standing very still. Only the river moved.

*

I refused to go with Mum to visit Alice in the hospital. This didn't rouse suspicions: I'd always been petrified of anything even vaguely medicinal.

Anyway, it was an accident. We were all fooling around on top of the water tower and Alice slipped and fell – didn't she, Helena? Right, Daniel? That's what happened – remember, John?
That's
what happened.
We all knew the drill.

And, incredibly, Alice's story was no different. To my knowledge it never has been.

I cried that first day she came to school in a wheelchair. I contracted a mysterious illness, thoughtfully passing it on to the others, and we all spent the week in bed.

Eventually we had to go back to school. At first, Sarah and Marianne would bring Alice Redskins, sherbet bombs, Wizz Fizz. But Alice never said thank you. Alice didn't say much at all. And after a few weeks we came to an unspoken agreement: it had never happened. Alice got no more lollies. We used the stairs instead of the corridors. When the bell rang we'd head for the back of the field, far out of reach of the smooth asphalt, on the rough grass where wheels could not travel.

At first, parental concern forced token visits. But after a few months the dreaded questions (‘Helena, why don't you go and visit Alice and lend her your new book?') became less frequent, then ceased altogether. I guess Alice made new friends. We went to the movies, hung out at the mall or played quietly in our bedrooms. We stayed away from the river. Our parents said the current was too strong.

*

Marianne flicked a chocolate into the air, catching it in her mouth. I've never seen her miss yet. Like she says, maybe if her hand-eye co-ordination wasn't so good, her jeans would still fit.

‘So, Hells. Want to go and have a look?'

‘No,' I answered.

*

Friday lunch hour. The gallery doors flick shut behind me. The woman behind the counter hands me a catalogue without glancing up.

The room is all-white, long and narrow, the sculptures set along its length. The first one I come to is a black cauldron filled with cement feet; further along I find an ornate life-sized window frame, carved entirely from a block of soap, hung with a black lace curtain; then a three-course meal for one, hewn from white marble and set on bone china. The titles, written in the language of art, make no sense to me.

And then I see it.

It is more of a scale model than a sculpture: a cement temple, an icon of the rural landscape. A monument cut down to size. Below it, on the rocks, lies a tiny broken doll. The title card reads ‘
Birth.
'

*

The next weekend is my mother's birthday and I must make the rare trip out to the country. The train-ride is hushed, each stranger wrapped in their own silence, and the landscape is parched and singed. Cheek laid against the synthetic fabric of the seat, I retreat into my own quiet bubble.

With me I take Alice's black-and-white smile from the gallery catalogue. It's not a posed smile, and there is nothing modest about it. She is smiling just like Daniel was when he walked out of the water.

An hour into the journey, by the time the train clatters out of the burnt trees and past the gorge, I have fallen into a gentle half-sleep. I don't see that grey concrete mass standing sentry over the river. I tell myself that on the train-ride back, if I keep my eyes shut tight, I can pretend that it was never there at all.