The Vanishing Moment Page 3

  That night, it’s Steve’s turn to make dinner. As well as being a good carpenter – the kitchen table he crafted out of old cedar poles is the most glorious thing they have – he loves cooking and enjoys being useful around the house.

  Marika and Steve are careful around each other. Neither can forget those first few months when he and her mother started going out together. Marika had been used to having her mother to herself; now there was this interloper who wore shorts all the time like a little boy and who liked drinking beer and watching the footy.

  Marika had behaved like a brat: she stomped out of the room when he came in, she switched on the TV when he tried to make conversation, she sighed contemptuously when he attempted a joke.

  ‘What do you see in him?’ she asked her mother. ‘You’re a scientist. He doesn’t even open a book.’

  ‘He thinks I’m wonderful. He’s also kind and loyal and clever in his own way. I love him, Marika, and we’re getting married, so you’d better get used to it.’

  And she had. She even started liking him, a bit, though she misses her father, who now lives in New York with his smart new wife and their twin daughters.

  Her father never did a thing around the house: hinges fell off doors, tiles cracked, knobs loosened, pipes leaked – all this he studiously ignored, stuck like a brainy limpet to his computer screen.

  Marika often hears her mother joking to friends, ‘Both my marriage and the house were falling apart.’

  The women are envious, marvelling at her luck in finding Steve (seven years younger, great legs, patient father, kind stepfather).

  ‘They’d be even more envious if I told them how beautifully he sleeps,’ she confided to Marika one night after too much wine. ‘He doesn’t snore, toss, thrash about, or hog the doona. He lies quietly, peacefully, his body temperature perfect – warm in winter, cool in summer.’

  ‘Too much information,’ Marika murmured, but her mother was on a roll.

  ‘Those poor women would love to banish their snoring, snorting, kicking, farting husbands to sofas or spare rooms. If they found out about Steve, they’d kidnap him and then where would I be?’

  Marika blocked her ears. Sleeping together means sex, of course – how else did they produce Jasper? – but she’s not comfortable thinking about it. And she wishes they would keep their hands off each other when she’s around.

  Like right now. Do they really have to twine their fingers together at the table?

  Jasper scowls and shoves away his plate. ‘Baked beans,’ he demands.

  Marika’s mother sighs. ‘Spaghetti bolognaise is your favourite. Come on now, be a good boy.’

  Jasper throws his spoon across the room. ‘Baked beans!’ he yells, his face red and contorted.

  Marika purses her lips. Steve and her mother are both too soft on him. Any moment now they’ll open a can of beans, then reward his bad behaviour further with chocolate ice-cream and a little packet of the sultanas he gobbles endlessly.

  One minute later, Jasper beams at everyone, his teeth gummed with orange sauce. Marika can’t help smiling back. He’s naughty, but irresistible.

  Later, when Steve is bathing Jasper, Marika snuggles up next to her mother on the sofa. She’s too old to be doing this, she feels, but she so rarely gets her mother to herself anymore. Before Steve, and then Jasper, it was just the two of them, eating out together, watching TV, going to the movies, planning holidays.

  Her mother strokes her cheek. ‘You’re happy, aren’t you?’ she asks.

  Marika nods. She tells her mother about Echo, about how excited she is at the way the sculpture’s taking shape.

  ‘Have you told your father?’ her mother asks. ‘I’m sure he’d like to know what you’re doing.’

  ‘He hasn’t replied to my last three emails.’

  ‘Ah. I’m sorry.’

  They both know that her father is only interested in her when she achieves something big – like winning the art scholarship, or having an exhibition. It’s hurtful, but she tries not to let it get to her anymore.

  ‘So,’ she says, ‘how was your day?’

  Her mother laughs. ‘Researching the declining frog population is much easier than dealing with a three-year-old, I can tell you.’

  ‘He’s uncontrollable, Mum. You’re going to have to do something about it.’

  ‘I know. I should be at home with him more, but we need the money.’ She doesn’t elaborate. She doesn’t need to. Not only did her husband run off with his young, sexy colleague, but he organised his finances so cunningly that money is tight, even with Steve’s wage.

  My dad’s a deadshit, Marika thinks. He might not care about Mum anymore, but why doesn’t he care about me?

  In her fantasies, her father never falls in love with the seductive Naomi, but appreciates his wife’s warmth and intelligence, and loves his daughter unconditionally.

  Sometimes she wishes that was the way life had gone.

  Marika and Jasper are on an outing again, a rainy autumn-day outing to the aquarium.

  Jasper is biddable on the train, apart from greeting every adult who is rash enough to pay him any attention with the charming phrase, ‘Hello, monkey bum!’

  At the aquarium, the attendant stamps the back of their hands with the entry pass (a blue octopus symbol). Marika hopes that as it’s a weekday, the place won’t be too crowded, but it’s overrun with school groups – the girls fragrant, tossing long shiny hair; the boys smelling of locker rooms, sweat, dirty socks.

  The students jostle, scuffle, punch, flirt, fart, giggle. Jasper finds them fascinating. He keeps being trodden on, but he doesn’t complain, just puts his head down and tackles another knee, clinging to it like Velcro. He’s ecstatic when one boy, thickset as a rugby forward, crumples to the floor, clutching his leg, groaning, ‘You got me, tough guy!’

  The girls coo over Jasper, admiring his green eyes and the cowlick which makes his hair stick up at the back of his head. They fiddle with it, try to damp it down. Jasper wriggles with pleasure at all the attention.

  The morning is a great success. Marika loves the starfish tiptoeing along the sand; the swaying seahorses with their carved ancient heads; the moon jellyfish parachuting; the manta rays, their wings billowing like washing in the wind.

  Jasper loves the big kids, the seals, the giant crabs, the sea snakes, and the sharks with their mean little eyes and ragged mouths.

  It’s time to find somewhere quiet and dry to have lunch. Besides, her back aches from lifting Jasper up to view the fish. He bounces playfully now in her arms, knocking her chin. Teeth slam into her tongue. Ow! She feels her mouth fill with the salty taste of blood.

  ‘Jasper!’ She sets him down on the floor, and turns for a moment to scrabble in her bag for a tissue.

  That’s all it is. A moment. Just a moment. But in that moment as she rummages among keys, mobile, wallet… he vanishes.

  She turns around. No Jasper. Flash of bewilderment. Flash of exasperation.

  He’s run off, the little pest. Hiding. Can’t be far away.

  She grabs the stroller. Trundles along, handbag banging against her hip. Runs.

  Any second she’ll see his blue shorts and yellow Pooh Bear T-shirt.

  ‘Jasper! Jasper!’

  Eyes wide now, heart knotted, breaths short, sharp.

  Abandons the stroller. Bumps into people, knocks over a small child.

  ‘Sorry, sorry! Have you seen a little boy – blue shorts, yellow shirt? Help me, help me, help me!’

  She’s screaming, sprinting over a thick, glassed floor.

  Beneath her feet, cold-eyed sharks, tuna, cod, dolphins, sturgeon, turtles, swordfish swim silently, ceaselessly, obliviously.

  7. BOB

  This he remembers:

  He once got a prize at school for getting the highest marks.

  His award was a book about astronomy, with paintings and photographs of stars, moons, planets and comets. It was beautiful. He’d never had such a beautiful book.
And inside was an ornate bookplate with his name written in flowing calligraphy.

  ‘Let me see,’ said Dean.

  He handed it over reluctantly. Be careful, he wanted to say.

  ‘Oops, ripped a page. Such rubbish paper. Oops, ripped another. And another.’

  He watched in agony.

  Afterwards, he collected all the bits of paper and sticky-taped the universe back together.

  Ellie’s mouth wobbled.

  ‘It’s all right,’ he told her. ‘Don’t cry. Don’t cry.’

  8. ARROW

  The weeks snail by. Prodded by Mr Watts, Arrow is borrowing books for herself from the library. She has been binge-reading some of the biggest, fattest books she can find: War and Peace, Les Miserables, Wolf Hall, Crime and Punishment.

  The beauty of reading is that it is respectable, virtuous. People assume that you read to expand your thinking and enhance your life. True, but it can also be camouflage for doing absolutely nothing: if you’ve got your nose in a book, people tend to leave you alone. You don’t have to engage with the outside world. It’s the perfect escape.

  Arrow fools her mum and dad, but Mr Watts next-door is sharper. He reads incessantly, too. ‘Not to escape from my life,’ he tells Arrow, ‘but to escape to another life. There’s a difference, my dear.’

  ‘I know.’ At the moment she’s caught up in the mental anguish of Raskolnikov, a young student haunted by the murder he committed.

  Although she doesn’t like to admit it, she’s glad of Mr Watts’ company, and she believes he’s glad of hers. Ever since his wife died, he’s lived alone, except for Lucy.

  ‘She’s my life,’ he once told Arrow, stroking the little dog’s rich tan coat. ‘If she dies, I will want to die, too.’

  ‘Can’t have that happening,’ Arrow said, trying to keep her voice light. ‘We’ll have to make sure she’s in The Guinness Book of Records for longest-living Silky Terrier ever.’

  Though she’s usually slack about buying birthday presents (for anyone), she’s decided to give Mr Watts a first edition of Poor Fellow My Country by Xavier Herbert, as the book is top of his wish list. She’s tracked it down to a second-hand bookshop in Newtown, with the odd name of Cat Whiskers.

  To get there, she catches a train to Central Railway, then another train to the inner-west. Sitting next to her is a man in a stained green anorak. He stinks of nicotine. Arrow tries to hold her breath.

  The man takes a red cigarette lighter out of his pocket. He holds it up in front of his face and speaks loudly into it as if it were a mobile phone.

  Out of the corner of her eye, Arrow can see people glancing at him. But no one laughs.

  Conversation finished, dignity intact, the man puts the lighter back in his pocket. He gives a pleased grunt, as if he’s just concluded a satisfactory business deal.

  Arrow stares out of the window. She wonders at the man’s self-possession, at his total belief. It’s as if he’s living in a parallel world where cigarette lighters might well be mobile phones.

  When she gets off the train, she takes a short cut through a scruffy park. A man is asleep on a bench, a newspaper over his face; a woman is pushing a child on a swing.

  Out of the trees slink two girls and a man. In an instant they surround Arrow.

  ‘Bag. Money. Mobile.’

  Arrow hangs on to her bag. ‘No,’ she hears herself saying. ‘No!’

  One of the girls cackles in disbelief. ‘Give it here,’ she commands. She smacks Arrow across the head. The man punches her in the stomach.

  Arrow doubles up. She writhes, gasping for breath.

  When she staggers to her feet, she sees that they are strolling away along the path. The man has her bag slung around his shoulder, his arms around the two girls. She hears them laughing. How dare they!

  Surging with rage, she hurtles after them. Her sneakers are soft-soled, silent.

  Arms outstretched, she slams the palms of her hands into the man’s back. He topples forward, smashing to the ground.

  She keeps going. Turns around once. The girls have helped him to his feet. Blood is pouring down his face. She thinks she hears him howling, but it might be the wail of the traffic. She’d meant to give him a fright, not actually hurt him. Well, only a bit.

  She runs on. Fear makes her fast. And now she’s in Church Street, panting, shaking, but safe among the crowd of shoppers, dawdlers, coffee-drinkers, dog-owners, mums and dads, babies in prams – some of them as big as Hummers.

  Walking quickly, she checks over her shoulder every few seconds. She feels weak with relief, but she won’t tell her family what happened. Her mother would have a heart attack.

  And now she’s feeling foolish. Her wallet and house keys are safe in her back pocket where she always puts them. There was nothing valuable in her bag: just her mobile – a cheap, pre-paid Nokia – a bottle of water, and Crime and Punishment. She hasn’t yet finished reading it. She hopes one of the thieves drops it on their toes.

  Arrow loiters outside Cat Whiskers Bookshop, trying to recover her breath and composure. She can feel her heart still jumping about like a trapped animal. She folds her arms tightly across her chest, and presses hard. Calm down, calm down.

  In the window, among piles of books, is a big white cat, dozing. Now the name of the shop makes sense.

  She taps on the window. ‘Puss, puss.’ It opens its eyes, yawns mightily. Its mouth is as clean and pink as a seashell.

  Arrow pushes open the door. Wooden shelves crammed with books line the walls from floor to ceiling.

  The shop smells of old paper, old glue. Mr Watts would get high on it. She’ll have to bring him here sometime.

  But Poor Fellow My Country is nowhere to be found. The sales assistant, whose halo of fuzzy hair is as white as the cat’s, searches the fiction and classics shelves, then checks on the computer again.

  ‘We’ve definitely got a copy,’ she says. She frowns, then smiles. ‘Aha!’

  She goes over to the window and picks up the cat. It miaows in protest.

  ‘Here we are.’ Triumphantly, she retrieves a book the cat has been sleeping on.

  ‘Oscar has an uncanny knack of hiding a book that’s about to be sold. It’s as if he doesn’t want it to go.’

  Arrow laughs. The cat hisses. He jumps back into the window and crouches like a sphinx. She wonders what book he’s guarding this time.

  She asks the assistant to find out.

  It’s Jorge Luis Borges’ Ficciones.

  ‘Ah,’ says the woman, ‘there’s a fascinating short story in here, “The Garden of Forking Paths” about multiple universes.’

  ‘I’ll take it,’ Arrow says, grinning at the very grumpy cat.

  When Arrow gets home, her mother says, ‘The phone hasn’t stopped ringing for you!’ She looks hopeful.

  No, Mummy dear, Arrow thinks, I haven’t suddenly become popular.

  She’s right. Friends, even ones she hasn’t heard from in years, phone one after the other. They are angry, abusive. They say they will never speak to her again.

  Arrow doubles over, fighting back tears. She feels as if she’s been punched in the stomach again.

  ‘What’s the matter, Arrow?’ her mother asks. ‘Why are you looking so upset?’

  ‘Nothing. Really. I’m going to unplug the phone for a while. Okay?’

  ‘Why? What’s happening?’

  ‘I don’t want to talk about it,’ Arrow croaks, but she has to when Nikki barges into the house, demanding an explanation for the text messages on her phone.

  ‘So I’m a fat, stupid slut, am I? I have the IQ of a pumpkin and I smell like rotten fish!’

  ‘I never sent them,’ Arrow protests. ‘It’s all a mistake.’

  Nikki thrusts her phone at Arrow. ‘Read them. Then start explaining. Fast.’

  The messages are horrible. Violent. Obscene. Arrow swallows, feeling sick. She clenches her hands to stop them from shaking.

  ‘My mobile was stolen. Two girls and a guy mu
gged me in the park. Hit me. They’ve obviously sent these.’

  Nikki raises her eyebrows. ‘Why would they?’

  ‘Revenge.’

  She tells Nikki what happened. ‘When I pushed the man over, I think he may have broken his nose.’

  ‘Bloody hell! But you’re usually so…so…’

  ‘Apathetic?’

  ‘Relaxed.’

  ‘Sluggish?’

  ‘Quiet.’

  ‘Benumbed?’

  ‘Becalmed.’

  When they’ve stopped laughing, Nikki asks, ‘Friends?’

  ‘Friends,’ says Arrow.

  ‘Right. We’ll cancel the SIM card. Then I’ll send a group message to everyone explaining the situation.’

  ‘Thanks, Nik,’ Arrow says. She feels humbled and ashamed. She hasn’t bothered to see Nikki for so long, yet she is as generous as ever.

  ‘Anyway, at least the thieves don’t know where you live,’ Nikki says.

  ‘Yeah, no name or address on the bag.’ Arrow’s eyes widen. ‘I was using the library print-out as a bookmark. It has my name on it!’

  ‘I’m guessing there aren’t too many Axelquists in the phone book?’

  They stare at each other.

  ‘Time for a holiday?’ Nikki asks.

  ‘Good idea,’ Arrow says.

  Arrow’s father is delighted she’s decided to buy a car. He believes it will make her want to study, get a job, visit friends, do something at last.

  So off they go to the wilderness of car yards along Parramatta Road. It’s the pits. Buildings as squat as toads. Shouting signs. Silly fluttering flags. Red, green, yellow, blue. Smarmy salesmen in sharp suits and even sharper shoes. And, of course, cars. Hundreds, thousands of gleaming vehicles, their bonnets wide open like the gaping beaks of baby birds, all waiting for a sucker to choose them and take them home.

  Her dad looks in engines, asks questions, kicks the tyres, makes her go for test drives, blah blah blah. She quite likes a red zippy little sports car, but he bulldozes her into buying an elderly yet reliable Toyota Corolla. She doesn’t really care. She doesn’t have any sort of image to maintain.