Shallow Breath (4 page)
A
ll morning Maya has been peering out of her small caravan window, waiting for Desi to arrive. It is past eleven o’clock when Chug appears in the driveway, and Maya’s heart does a dive in her chest. She watches as her mother gets out, and almost gasps. She is so thin, and her long hair, her beautiful long hair, has been cropped close to her head. She used to at least dye it, but now it’s a mousey brown. Her shoulders have slackened, and her whole body seems to have shrunk.
For the very first time a thought occurs to Maya: perhaps the mother she knew is never coming home.
As she watches, she sees her grandfather struggling to his feet. Desi can’t get past without him noticing – he is out in front of the house, pulling weeds from his vegetable beds. Desi begins to speak, and Maya tries to imagine what she could be saying to make Charlie fold his arms so tightly. He gestures in the direction of the caravan, and bends down to his gardening again, as though he has been talking to a stranger. Maya
watches as Desi trudges over with her head down, one hand fretfully rubbing the other.
As Desi nears the caravan, Maya’s mobile rings. She sees Luke’s name and snatches it up.
‘It’s on again, Maya – tonight. I’ll come and get you.’
A shiver runs through her. ‘Okay, but I can’t talk now. My mother is here. Do you remember I told you she was coming home?’
‘I’ll come about nine.’ There is a pause. ‘Remember the knife,’ he adds, and, as her mother raps on the thin metal door, he is gone.
Maya pulls the door open, caught off guard and wondering why, in all the time she’d had this morning, she hasn’t yet changed out of her sleepwear. She steps outside.
‘Hello, Maya.’
Only now does Maya realise how much she’s missed hearing her mother’s voice, the gentle way she has of saying her name. That, and so much more. But, rather than softening her demeanour, she stiffens.
Why did it have to be like this?
she wants to shout.
Why did you have to cause us all so much pain?
But her mother butts in before she can articulate any of her questions.
‘I didn’t wake you, did I?’ Desi has noticed her pyjamas.
Maya thinks about how long she has spent waiting this morning. ‘No.’
Desi hesitates as Maya looks down on her from the caravan. ‘Can I come in?’
Maya is about to stand aside when she remembers the book on her bed. And the knife. ‘I’d rather you didn’t, sorry.’ She comes out and shuts the door quickly behind her.
Desi flinches, and steps away. They stand in awkward silence as a couple wander past, chatting, before glancing across and lowering their voices. Somewhere close by a kookaburra strikes
up, its cackles bursting through the air for a few seconds before it falls abruptly silent.
‘Look,’ Desi says, ‘let’s not talk out here, like this. Would you like to come to the shack tonight – for dinner?’
Maya pauses, thinking of Luke.
‘Pete will be there,’ Desi adds. And, softer, ‘Please come.’
It seems to Maya that if she capitulates now, she sets the trend. Desi will switch to being her mother again, expecting Maya to be there whenever she asks. Maya wants to be obstinate and say that things have changed, forever, but Desi’s pleading stare kills all her objections.
‘Okay … But I can’t stay too long.’
‘Fine. Oh, Maya,’ Desi says, her eyes tearing up. ‘I haven’t seen you for so long. Can I at least give you a hug?’
Maya would much rather go inside and slam the door, but Desi doesn’t wait for her reply. She pulls them together awkwardly, kissing Maya’s forehead, cupping her cheeks and scrutinising her face. ‘I’m so happy to see you.’
They are so close that Maya can smell her mother’s peppermint breath. ‘I’m happy to see you too, Mum,’ she replies, hoping it sounds like she means it. Her body relaxes into the embrace, and she reprimands herself.
You saw what she did
. She pulls away.
‘Has Pete told you about Kate?’
Desi seems confused. ‘Who’s Kate?’
‘Dad’s niece. She wants to meet you, apparently.’
Desi frowns, her hands planted on her hips. ‘Connor’s niece?’
‘Yes,’ Maya says. ‘She’s been around for a few weeks. And she’s made a big impression on Jackson.’
‘I see.’ Desi nods slowly, trying to take it in, her expression bewildered.
After her mother has left, the day begins to drift. Maya now has two big events planned for the evening, and too many empty hours to kill beforehand. She wishes Jackson were here this morning. He feels more like a brother than an uncle, and always knows how to distract her and calm her nerves. Typical that the one time she needs him he is half a world away. There is no one else close by that she can talk to.
She wanders down to the beach, walking slowly along the tideline, eyes on the horizon. The sky is a still blue void poised over the shimmering sea, diamonds of light flashing along the water’s restless currents.
The ocean has been a constant in Maya’s childhood. For as long as she can remember, most days before breakfast Desi would swim. On weekends and holidays, Maya would walk to the beach with her, and play or float in the shallows until Desi had finished. Whenever Desi missed her morning exercise, she was noticeably irritable for the rest of the day. Maya can hardly imagine what fifteen months without sight of the ocean might have done to her.
As a girl, Maya had marvelled at the clinical, graceful strokes as her mother flew through the water, and for a while she had joined her, trailing behind, thrashing out each lap with grim determination. But she had rejected the ritual by the time she was fourteen. Sometimes she would go with her mother, but only if there was nothing better to do. However, on her first night at Lovelock Bay, she had lain there picturing Desi in a tiny, dirty concrete cubicle, fifty kilometres inland. And even though she was so incredibly angry with her, even though at that point she didn’t ever want to speak to her again, she found herself getting up the next day and wandering down to the enticing blue waters of the bay. She hasn’t missed a day of swimming since.
Until now. Since seeing her mother, for reasons she cannot
explain, she has become determined not to enter the water today.
She sits on the beach instead, her eyes straying to a small boat weaving its way in the distance. She picks up handfuls of soft sand and watches the granules disappear between her fingers.
It had been horribly awkward with Desi this morning, and she can’t imagine it will be much better tonight. She is glad Pete will be there. He has been her link to her mother for the last fifteen months – and she has come to like the fact that she could keep Desi one step removed. It is strange and stressful having to form a direct relationship again.
What will her mother make of Kate, she wonders. She had seemed as surprised as Maya had been to learn of Kate’s existence.
‘You two need to meet,’ Jackson had said one morning, as Maya walked past his caravan, and Kate hovered in the background. ‘This is your cousin,’ he’d told Maya, with a big grin. ‘Your dad’s niece.’
Maya wasn’t sure what she’d expected, but it was certainly more than she’d got. Kate had waved a shy hello, but that was it. No excitement on meeting. No embrace. Maya had hurried away, confused, unsure what to do with this information.
She had been surprised and hurt when Kate made no effort to seek her out, but the unexpected opportunity to learn more about her father was too good to miss. So she had watched out of the caravan window until she’d spied Kate alone, and then staged a meeting. ‘So, you knew my dad?’
‘Yeah.’ Kate had stopped guardedly, her hands on her hips.
‘I never met him,’ Maya had explained, blushing as though she were admitting some terrible folly. ‘What was he like?’
Kate had paused. ‘He was away a lot when I was a kid. Over here. But he was nice. Really nice.’
Then, to Maya’s surprise, Kate had moved to step past her.
‘And what about my grandparents?’ she asked hurriedly. ‘What are they like?’
Kate shrugged. ‘Nice enough.’ Another step.
‘What do they do – you know, for work?’
‘They’re retired now, but Nana was a swimming teacher. And Poppa was a schoolteacher. They’re not very interesting, I’m afraid.’
These were Kate’s grandparents too, Maya realised, annoyed by the way Kate had dismissed them. She felt like yelling at her: perhaps if you hadn’t had them all your life you might appreciate them a bit more. So much for long-lost family. In fact, it unsettled her idea of what her father might have been like. Maya had learnt as a little girl that pushing for information about her dad would result in her mother retreating to her room and coming out later with red-rimmed eyes. It had been better to turn detective, and glean what she could indirectly. As a result, for a long time Connor had seemed terribly enigmatic and exciting. And you always assumed you would get on with your parents. But look at her mother and Charlie. Connor might not even have liked her.
She hadn’t had a chance to miss him properly, since she had never known him. In the beginning, he seemed like a character in a fairytale, but now she wants to flesh him out, to understand him as the person who had made half of her. When Desi had gone away to prison, Maya had searched the shack, but the only thing she could find was an old logbook from the time her parents had spent on the boat. She had taken it anyway, and slept with it underneath her pillow.
She wanted to talk to Pete about all this, but it felt rude, somehow. Pete is the closest Maya has ever had to a father, and he had been a good friend of Connor’s. She has uncovered
more about her father from Pete lately than anyone else has ever told her directly. While Desi was away, Pete had visited Maya every week. He would come to Lovelock Bay, and they would walk along the beach, telling each other their news. He would reassure her that Desi was holding up well, and she would say she was glad. Then one of them would change the subject.
Almost a year ago, on her eighteenth birthday, he had arrived with a bottle of champagne and two long-stemmed glasses. By the time the bottle was empty, both their tongues were loosened. Most of his Connor stories were disappointingly familiar to Maya, so she was delighted when he began to talk about her parents in a way she had never heard before.
‘They were both so passionate,’ he had said, as the waves broke gently in the distance and the sky darkened. ‘I think your mother still is. It’s her greatest strength, and her greatest weakness.’
‘That doesn’t make sense,’ Maya laughed.
‘It makes absolute sense,’ he told her solemnly. ‘The thing that makes you is the thing that breaks you.’
Maya thought about that for a moment. ‘What is your thing, then?’
‘Empathy,’ he said straight away, disconsolately, she thought. ‘And what about you, Maya? What do you think yours is?’
‘I don’t know.’ They were quiet for a while as she considered it. ‘Sometimes I wish I didn’t care so much,’ she said eventually.
He studied her as she sat there thinking of Luke, and she thought maybe he was going to ask her to explain, but he didn’t. Instead, he said, ‘Help your mother, Maya, when she comes home. She made a big mistake, but she doesn’t deserve any more punishment from the people who love her.’
Maya had seized on this rare chance to talk. ‘But why did she do it? Rebecca was her closest friend. Why would she
want to hurt the Carlisles?’ Then she had let out a great sigh – it was such a relief to ask these questions. The subject wasn’t forbidden, as such, but there seemed an unspoken agreement between everyone around her that it wasn’t to be mentioned. And sometimes all Maya wanted was to talk about it.
But, disappointingly, Pete had shaken his head. ‘You’ll have to ask her, Maya. I’m sorry. She won’t discuss it with me. But there will be a reason. The Desi I know wouldn’t want to hurt anyone.’
Maya comes back to the present, gets to her feet and dusts off her clothes. She has begrudged her mother all her secrets, but now she has a secret of her own. Will she tell Desi what she gets up to with Luke? Probably not. Will she tell Pete? No. Even though they, more than most, might understand.
She wanders back to her caravan, pondering what might make her mother reluctant to share. Once inside, she changes her clothes.
She remembers the necklace. Had her mother noticed she wasn’t wearing it? She tries a few drawers, scrabbling about in them to see if she can find it. She locates it at the far corner of a small cupboard and takes it out. It is a small white pearl, a perfect globe set within the curve of a silver dolphin, as though the dolphin is jumping over the moon. She hesitates for a moment before slipping it on.
She stares at the contents of her bed. She’d better return the book tonight. She hadn’t meant to be a thief. Putting it to one side, she picks up the large carving knife that she took from her grandfather’s kitchen. She collects the blankets and wraps both items inside them. After that, she sits on her bed and tries to decide how she is going to pass the next few interminable hours.
T
he zoo is the last place Pete had planned on going today, and yet here he is, parking in the visitors’ car park and walking towards the gate. Since his conversation with Desi, he hasn’t stopped thinking about Indah. He could get in touch with any number of friends to ask about her, but today he needs to see how she is for himself.
He is thankful the person in the ticket booth doesn’t recognise him as he hands over his money. It’s early yet, and a weekday, so the place is fairly quiet – only a few holidaymakers and weary mothers with preschool children. It is an odd feeling, walking the familiar routes without uniform or purpose. As he hurries past the ornamental lake, he sees a flash of grey on the small island in the middle. It is followed by a series of whooping calls: the Javan gibbons are singing, each note a long, looping crescendo across the water. They are answered by a hush of people, as those nearby stop, entranced, eyes searching the trees for a glimpse of them. For a moment, as he listens, Pete is back
in Sumatra. How he wishes he could cool his mind off and renew his senses in the damp, fresh morning of the rainforest. But nowadays such recollections are dogged by searing guilt.
He heads on through the African savannah exhibit. A new litter of painted dog pups are chasing each other under and over a fallen tree trunk, tails wagging like white-dipped brushes. Hidden from sight, a lion calls to the morning, a deep-bellied grunt, half threat, half sigh. A meerkat stands sentinel as he walks by, and the Galapagos tortoises are already moving sluggishly towards their wallow. It is going to be a hot day.
He is nearly there. In his hurry to cross the road, he steps out in front of a small zebra-striped car, driven by a docent, one of an army of volunteers who help to keep the zoo running. He holds up his hand in apology and the docent smiles at him, obviously recognising him. Before she can say anything, he hurries on, towards the series of enclosures that make up the orang-utan exhibit. He strolls towards the perimeter, to one of the quieter, out-of-the-way sections often missed by visitors, hoping that Indah hasn’t been moved. There is no sign of her on the tangle of ropes or the gleaming silver platforms, so he searches the long grass. He spots her on the far side, a hunched figure sitting facing the corrugated metal wall. The burnished orange of her thick, oily hair shines like fire in the sunlight. She isn’t moving, but occasionally a small figure bounds into view, a little Charlie Chaplin with a punk hairstyle. The baby leaps away on a series of ungainly adventures, regularly returning to her mum’s side. Occasionally the little one grabs a fistful of her mother’s hair, and Indah’s long fingers gently loosen her daughter’s grip.
Pete sees they have put a new plaque on the wall. The baby’s name is Langka.
Of course.
In the wild, a mother orang-utan would never come to the rainforest floor. They are safer in the treetops, swinging between branches on their travels for food, or building nests. A mother can teach her child everything it needs to know while they shelter ten metres above the ground. Pete often thinks of it when he sees Indah like this, because he has spent too long in Indonesia, where a glimpse of that vivid red fur on the rainforest floor usually indicates a problem, or something more devastating. But Indah was born at the zoo, and has never known anything else. He hasn’t missed the irony that these walls around her keep her far safer than her wild Sumatran cousins.
Almost as though she has heard his thoughts, Indah swivels to stare towards the glass.
‘Hello, Indah,’ he says softly.
He hopes she will come over, but, after an extended moment, she turns towards the wall again. He studies the immobile set of her back as she picks a long stem of grass and begins to chew it.
The orang-utans at the zoo are an eclectic mix of personalities, and Indah has always been one of Pete’s favourites. When he worked here, one of his most enjoyable tasks was devising enrichment activities for her – she was so adept at puzzles that it was a challenge to keep her interested. A few of the other orang-utans love to cuddle, but Indah has always been shy. However, when Pete was around she would sometimes come to rest against him and close her eyes.
He sees Langka’s face appear for a moment again, peeping out from behind Indah. She is a lucky baby, since Indah’s gentle, attentive nature makes her an ideal mother. How Pete wishes he could have been there for Langka’s birth. When Indah’s last infant, Berani, had been hours old, she had come over to Pete and gently placed her newborn’s tiny hand over Pete’s finger. She had never repeated the gesture, but Pete had been profoundly
touched. What else could it be except an acknowledgement of trust and understanding, of Indah forging a connection between them?
It is yet another reason he feels so heartsick now.
He sits on the low wall observing them for a while longer, then checks his watch. He has promised his sister he will get the car to her by lunchtime, so he should leave now. He is hurrying away from the exhibits when he hears footsteps jogging behind him, and a voice shouts out, ‘Pete!’
He had known it would be risky coming here, that he might bump into someone who would ask questions he’d rather not answer. Pete turns reluctantly and breathes a sigh of relief to see it is Declan, a reptile keeper and one of the numerous friends he has neglected of late.
Declan stops beside him and leans over for a moment, hands on his knees, out of breath. ‘I heard a rumour you were here – thought I’d better come and find out for myself.’
Pete tries to smile. ‘Just thought I’d see how Indah’s going. Langka looks well.’
Declan nods. ‘I’ve only heard good things. So, what have you been doing with yourself?’
‘Ah, you know …’ Pete stalls at that. ‘Have you heard anything about Berani?’
Declan thinks for a moment, shakes his head. ‘Not lately, but no news is good news, isn’t it?’
Pete tries to smile. ‘Yes.’
By the time Berani had been chosen for the Sumatran release program, Indah had separated from him, encouraging his independence, as happened to all male orang-utans sometime after the age of six. Pete had been with Berani from the initial stages of his release training. He had flown with him to Sumatra, keeping close watch on him as he sat quietly in the confines of his
container, talking to him and soothing him. When they reached the jungle, Pete had been ready for a three-month stint. But then came the phone call, and he was back within two weeks.
His choice had been impossible. But he still felt he’d abandoned Berani at the time he was needed most.
Declan is watching him steadily. ‘I’ll ask around if you like, mate. Let you know, hey? You still on the same number?’
It saddens Pete that Declan has to ask this. It shows how much distance there is between him and his former workplace now. This had been his first and only proper job; the zoo is as much home to him as it is to the animals. If anyone had told him a few years ago that he would resign to do nothing, he would have laughed and never believed it. Yet he’d seen enough of the natural rhythms of life in the zoo to know that they were subject to abrupt, devastating change. It was just that, somewhere along the line, he had forgotten that capricious fate could find him too.
After Pete leaves the zoo, he drives quickly west towards the coast. Now that Desi is home he is going to need transport if he wants to make the hour’s journey north to the shack regularly – he hasn’t told her that for the past year he has been borrowing his sister’s car to make the weekly trek to the prison. What would Desi say if she knew the truth about Pete, about how often their lives had run parallel lately? Would she think it was her fault? In a way, it was. Her actions had made Pete’s efforts feel meaningless too. Years of painstaking work, and then one mistake and it all crumbles away as though it doesn’t mean anything. What was the point?
Desi has had so much to contend with recently that all he
wishes for her is some quiet time to put herself back together again. He had felt he was partly to blame when Desi went to prison. If he hadn’t been thousands of kilometres away, perhaps he would have seen her tipping towards the edge, and could have stopped it. He was the only person she might have turned to, and he hadn’t been there. ‘There’s going to be times when I’m not around,’ Connor had said once, uncharacteristically, on a beautiful day years ago, one of the last when they were all on the boat together. ‘Please take care of her.’ At the time, Pete thought he had been referring to his trip to America, to shore up his research money. But now he remembered it like a warning.
Something is going to happen to me. And she’s going to fall down. Be there
.
And he had failed.
What would you think of us now, mate?
Pete thinks, trying to conjure up Connor in his mind – the 24-year-old who was timeless in death, not the 44-year-old he would be today. Pete struggles to imagine what Connor would look like in middle age, but suspects he’d be one of those handsome bastards with flattering streaks of grey in his hair.
Pete had tried his utmost to take care of Desi in the beginning. That’s when the lies had started. First he had given Desi a lump sum of his own money and told her that it was from Connor’s family. It had seemed the right thing to do at the time, when Desi was overwrought with grief, unable to see her way forward. The money had allowed her to buy the shack. It had got her on her feet again. And then, when he discovered Connor’s secrets, he had protected her from the truth.
How could he have anticipated that Kate would turn up so many years later? And what would she know? He hadn’t met her yet, only received reports from Maya, and what he heard troubled him. First, Kate wanted to talk to Desi. And now, Kate
and Jackson were in love. Kate had gone to explore the coastline while Jackson was away, but she would return soon.
What did this girl want from Desi? Perhaps it was completely innocuous, but his gut didn’t think so. Maybe that was the problem with holding onto other people’s secrets for too long – you became suspicious of everyone.
In his daydreaming, he has passed the turning for his own small, neglected apartment and reached his sister’s house. He pulls up in the driveway, and Maggie is greeting him seconds later. ‘How is she?’
Maggie is the kindest person he knows, and has followed Desi’s progress as much as Pete has allowed her to.
He shrugs. ‘A worry.’
‘Just give her time.’
He doesn’t want to talk about it. ‘Look,’ he says, handing her the car keys, hoping he doesn’t sound rude, ‘I can’t stop. Thanks for the loan. Can I take it again tonight?’
‘Of course, any time. Sure you won’t stay for a coffee or something?’
He shakes his head and makes for the door.
‘What are you doing with yourself nowadays?’ Maggie asks, following him.
Maggie has slotted so well into the gap their mother left, Pete thinks.
Answering one question will only lead to another. He turns and kisses her on the cheek. ‘I’m fine, Mags. I’ll see you soon.’ Then he walks briskly around the side of the house, collects his bicycle and rides away.
