I find my way out of the concentric circles of light and stand near the door, waiting to go. There’s something so brash and jarring about the installation that it makes me feel even more disconnected to the world. I can’t relax around repeated invitations to be introspective.
‘I need to get some air, I think.’
‘Yeah, I don’t quite get this one, if I’m honest,’ Jack says, before following me out.
I leave Jack slumped in an oversized beanbag looking at the river as I retreat to the closest bathroom, where I stand next to the sink taking slow breaths. What is it about parents that makes you long for them when they aren’t there, and then as soon as they are in front of you, all you want to do is push them out of the way and sprint past anything that might link the two of you? When I am with Jack, I long desperately for Vincent; I need his humour and energy. And when I am around him as he switches madly through all his moods, all I want is Jack, who leaves a cup of tea by my door then shuffles away before I’ve even noticed he was there. What I want more than anyone is my mother, but she’ll be buried tomorrow and I can’t even squeeze a tear out. I cup my hands under the faucet and wipe warm water over my eyes and down my cheeks until it feels like tears. Like a ticking clock under a blanket to imitate a heart, it’s the closest I can get, but it’s still not good enough. Vincent once told me that the purpose of tears is to let others know you’re not feeling well. It triggers an empathetic response in humans. I think of him crying now, and how confused he would be that I’m not there, and how unfair it is to leave someone who already feels left behind. I ring him.
‘I’m with Jack,’ I say.
‘You’re in Tasmania?’ I can hear him walking quickly upstairs, thump, thump, thumping. ‘But the funeral is tomorrow—you need to come back.’
‘I’m not going.’
‘You don’t have to do her make-up; Judy’s organised for someone else to come in. But it’s very important that you’re here. You need to say goodbye.’
‘I will. I’ll just do it in my own way.’
‘No, Amelia. Come home now. You’ll regret it if you don’t.’
I hear a scuffle with the phone before Simon comes on the line. ‘What dumbfuckery is this? Of course you’re coming to the funeral.’
I use my shoulder to hold the phone to my ear while I run my hands under the automated taps, again cupping and releasing the warm water that comes out of the copper spout.
‘No,’ I say.
Simon hangs up. Although we share parents, our posture and a similar laugh, we are actually just circling each other like two planets, alike but unable to touch.
I shut myself in a cubicle and lean against the door, and the first image that comes to mind is my mother’s face. Heart-shaped and with high cheekbones, her eyelashes brown all the way to the tip. I try to remember her fully, but anytime I catch a small glimpse, it distorts. I can’t seem to assemble her and hold her all together. Already, only the smallest fragments remain. The thickness of her upper arm. A small mole on her chest. A thumbnail. There is another small pocket of comfort in the repetition of these facts.
My feet are pulsing from the plane ride, and when I look down the veins running over my ankle look pumped up and swollen. How can I be full of moving blood, yet feel completely inert? I lean down and push one of the veins in and then let it go, watching as it springs back up again. I crouch over, pressing the vein in my ankle in and out, as if it’s a button I can use to reset myself.
CHAPTER EIGHT
It’s dusk as Jack drives home to his property via the highway, and the car is like a motorised lighthouse moving along the road, illuminating everything whether it wants to be seen or not. Moths flap to the windscreen and other small things swarm. They cling to the duco on the hood of the car, close to their beloved light. We sit together in complete silence, which is fine, because there is the silence of someone who doesn’t want to speak to you, which isn’t this. The silence of a person confused or thinking. The silence when your ears are underwater. The silence of a thud in the night followed by listening. And then there’s the silence of two people in a car unable to talk about all the emotions spilling out of each of them.
The sky has turned dark blue except for when it meets the tops of the trees, where it fuzzes into a gentle pink. Jack’s property begins with a wide wooden gate followed by a dirt track edged with wildflowers, which are now luminous in the car headlights. Hanging above the letterbox from two bronze chains is a stately sign reading Wyndhere. Jack drives slowly around a tight corner and the driveway narrows to accommodate the ragged edges of the forest.
He pulls up outside the garage and we both sit in the dark for a moment looking at the five-bedroom house he inherited. It faces the river, and at night you can hear the churning and splashing of the water. The house seems to loom out of the landscape surrounding it. The hedge that grows either side of the front door has been flattened by the winds, and
