An Astronaut's Life (11 page)

A free hotel room with free food, a minibar maybe—who would not want that? Maybe
a pool, too? But I didn't want to go. I would not learn what was going on from the
TV news. Were they trying to draw us out, distract us? I didn't know how to express
it to Gina, but the hotel felt like a trap. I had to be here as things unfolded,
no matter how bad they might become.

‘I should let you sleep,' I said. ‘I have to work today and it'll disturb you if
we're in the one room. I'll be fine here for now.'

‘All right.' It had not taken much to convince her. ‘I'll drop back before work?'
Gina said.

‘You don't have to, you're so tired.'

‘No, I want to. You and Lucas should sleep there
tonight, at the hotel.'

‘Okay.'

‘I'm sorry I snapped. I'm just not very comfortable with all this, you know?'

‘I know, I can see that.'

‘Can I have a look out?'

‘Should you not?'

But she was already halfway to the kitchen window and I knew when she leant in under
the blind she would see that yesterday's hole in the ground had now been joined by
a second.

‘Oh God,' she said.

I helped her pack some things and then she took Lucas to school, and I was alone.

My plan was to check if any news sites had the story, but when I arrived at my desk
I saw Gina and Lucas were still outside on the lawn. I watched her chat with Victor.
I couldn't tell what they were saying, but she seemed relaxed. Lucas was scrambling
around on the grass trying to show how he could talk with ants, or something.

Victor loaded their things into a police car. I could tell he was laughing at the
weight of the bags as journalists
looked on, scribbling notes and pointing cameras
at our house. I thought of going over to see what they were saying but I didn't want
to end up either being sent off to the hotel or with my face on the evening news,
so I stayed put as Gina and Lucas climbed into the car and Victor drove them away.

I pulled the curtains closed and returned to my work.

POLICE TO SEARCH BACKYARD ON DEATHBED MURDER TIP-OFF

Wednesday—A deathbed confession by a convicted murderer has led police on an intensive
search of a western-suburbs backyard. Convicted murderer George Van Arthur is believed
to have given details of a series of homicides during an interview earlier this week,
before his death yesterday of pneumonia complicated by an enlarged heart.

Police are thought to have unearthed significant evidence at the property named by
Van Arthur, who admitted no involvement in the alleged murders, suggesting they may
have been carried out by a former associate. Police will continue their search for
evidence into the week.

That was it. No street name, but of course it was our house, and it all but confirmed
it was a body they were looking for. But a series of murders—more than one?

What any of this had to do with our house—why us and why here—there was still no
mention.

Later that morning, I returned to my spot at the kitchen window and saw a tarp screening
the area around each hole. To protect from the elements, perhaps? I watched for movement
behind each screen, and at one point I thought I made out a pair of shifting feet
that gave the impression of a man levering something out of the ground, but I couldn't
be sure.

Gina didn't call that afternoon. When she arrived home, she explained she'd left
her charger, we'd forgotten to pack it that morning.

She plugged her phone in by the bed and we lay together. Lucas was at her parents'
place, where she'd taken him straight from school.

‘You didn't think to see what I thought?' I said, keeping both annoyance and relief
from my voice.

‘I thought, rather than the hotel. You know what he's like, he's used to their place,
he has his room there.'

She was right, but still.

‘And my phone was flat. But I'm sorry. I should have checked.' She curled up against
me and I wrapped an arm over her.

‘There's a story about our house in the paper,' I told her.

‘I know.'

‘You saw it?'

‘No, he told me, the detective.'

‘Victor?'

‘He's actually all right.'

‘I know. Wasn't I the one who already said he was all right?' I felt her shrug. ‘So
what did he say?'

‘He came to the hotel to have a talk with us.'

‘Okay.'

‘I'm not sure they realise you're working in here.'

‘Well, that's weird. I'm not exactly hiding.'

‘He said there would be media, they've found a body and they have to keep digging
for more evidence.'

‘He said a body?'

‘He asked if we wanted to speak to a psychologist. I said no, not just yet.'

‘You're sure?'

‘I don't have time.'

‘Next week maybe?'

‘If we do it together.' She found my hand and ran her fingers over my knuckles. ‘He
said they don't know who it is.'

‘God. But would he tell us anyway, if they did? They must have some idea, mustn't
they?'

She didn't reply.

‘Let's think it's someone bad anyway,' I said. ‘A drug dealer maybe?'

‘You can't say that. It doesn't mean they would deserve it.'

‘I know. I was just trying.'

‘I'm sorry. I know. To make it better.'

She rolled in towards me and cried a bit.

‘I know something else,' she said. She looked up at me and I saw her crying was real,
her eyes were wet. ‘He wouldn't tell me, but I could see from his face.'

‘What?'

‘I bet it's a child. I could tell.'

‘Shit.'

‘I knew it would be something like this.'

I wanted to say I'd known too, but how could we? What kind of people ‘knew' there
was a body buried in their yard, but did nothing about it? There was never a bad
feeling about this place, no premonitions or vague
sense of unease we might have
tried to put our finger on. The truth was, we'd had no idea that something terrible
had happened here, none at all.

‘Christ,' I said.

Gina didn't have to start work until 9pm so we made stir-fry and ate with the blinds
down. We sat in silence for a while, each carrying out our own process of trying
to think or not think about what had happened.

‘You know what we saw? There were people in the park with metal detectors,' Gina
said.

‘What's that?'

‘The one near Lucas's school. Three or four of them going around. He thought they
were vacuuming.'

‘Metal detectors?'

‘Looking for jewellery or coins. Maybe for drug money—they looked pretty rough.'

‘Well it's better than robbing houses.'

‘I know. Entrepreneurial, actually.'

‘What a neighbourhood,' I said. I nearly said something more, a joke combining the
idea of enterprising drug users and dead bodies in garden beds, but it wasn't true.
Ours was a standard middle-class neighbourhood and had been for a long time.

‘It's funny, I keep thinking of our housewarming,' Gina said. ‘Remember how we put
up all the lanterns?' She gestured to where we'd hung little solar-powered lights
in the trees.

‘It looked great. Did I tell you my sister asked about those lights?'

I'd opened a longneck for us and I topped up my glass. I raised my eyebrows to ask
if she wanted more.

‘No, thanks,' she said. ‘But all that's ruined now, in retrospect. Knowing they were
out there. We were celebrating on children's graves.'

She screwed up her eyes to hold in tears. I knew she was being melodramatic, testing
the effect it might have if she let herself imagine the worst—and that was legitimate.
I felt it too. She kept her eyes closed and went on chewing as if none of this was
playing out.

‘It's not like that,' I tried. ‘Maybe something bad happened, sure, but there's no
reason that changes anything. We're happy, we have made this a happier place by us
being here.'

‘Does that matter?'

‘It does to us.'

‘No one's going to buy it, anyway.'

‘But we're not going to sell. We love this house.
Whatever happened here, it's all
going to be put to rest and we'll start over. The place can get a new beginning with
us, can't it?'

Gina looked at the blind in silence, as though she could see through. Then she reached
over and poured more beer into her glass after all.

She didn't press the issue of the hotel and I was glad. I presumed she didn't want
to make it a thing—we had different ways of coping, and with Lucas at his grandparents',
that would be that.

After she left I managed to work for a while, then I snacked on some peanut-butter
toast before bed. That night I fell asleep without any deep thought towards what
was happening outside. I'd become resigned to it, or it was still too much for me
to make sense of. Whichever it was, I dreamt of him this time, the lumberjack.

In the dream we were throwing a party. I'd cooked trays of food and Gina had cleaned
and decorated the house. But there was a sense of time running out: soon everyone
we knew would be at our door.

At the last moment I noticed a spill on the tiles and I opened the cupboard and pulled
out a handful of rags, annoyed Gina had not done this earlier. As I crouched
to wipe
it, I recognised the rag I was holding. It was unmistakable—a little girl's red dress
with half the skirt torn away. The missing piece was the fabric the cops had pulled
from the ground on their first day in our yard.

A phone began to ring.

‘Don't,' I said to Gina. ‘Don't answer.'

As I said this, I knew he was outside. I saw us from his perspective, looking in
on our kitchen at the two of us standing there, surrounded by party decorations.
Light streamed out through the cracks in the house, cracks I had never noticed, at
the places the walls met, at the edges of windows and the base of the roof, as if
the whole thing could be popped apart, like a child's toy.

That's when I woke. My phone was ringing. It was only 12.30, the whole dream had
probably taken seconds, maybe just the time between one ring and the next.

The screen on my phone read
Lim Landline.

‘Hello?'

‘It's Lucas.'

But it was not the kid's voice.

‘What's wrong?'

‘He's having a nightmare all the time now. Why do
you let him watch all those things
on the iPad?'

It was Gina's mother, of course.

‘What things?' I said.

‘He wants to come home to you. He's asking for you.'

‘Me?'

‘
Ma, Ma, Ma.
He calls out. Can you come get him?'

‘Now? No, but wait, Gina's got the car.'

‘Oh my God. I'll bring him to you.'

She hung up. I closed my eyes and must have slept a few seconds, then I picked up
my phone to check the call had in fact taken place.

I got up and put on some pants. I called Gina at work to tell her what was happening
and we had a disjointed conversation as I waited for the headlights of her parents'
car to light the front window.

‘Your mum's here,' I said finally. ‘I should go.'

By the time I'd unlocked the front door, Mrs Lim had parked against the kerb. I went
over and lifted Lucas from his car seat. He appeared to be asleep but he opened an
eye as I nudged the door shut with my thigh.

‘I sleep in with you?' he said in a baby voice.

Gina's mother rolled down the passenger-side window and shook her head.

‘Sorry,' I said

‘It can't be helped. You doing some work to the yard now?' She gestured at the marquee
the cops had set up.

‘Yes, a bit,' I said. Gina hadn't told her?

She handed his schoolbag through the window. ‘Bye bye, my bunny,' she called, and
pulled away without seeming to notice the police van or the glowing lights at the
back of our house.

I carried Lucas inside and slid him into our bed.

‘Everything's all right, Ma,' he said sleepily.

I pressed a palm across his forehead. He felt warm but okay.

‘That's right, you're home now.'

He did not seem upset and it crossed my mind he might have pulled a turn just to
come home.

‘But did you get the Captain?' he said.

This seemed urgent, but he was asleep again before I could make sense of what he
meant. I pulled the sheet to cover his shoulders and took his school bag off to the
kitchen.

When I reached in to clear his lunchbox, I was met with a mess of cardboard. It was
some sort of art, I could see now—an owl with a bulbous head, and red eyes. This
was the Captain? I managed to manoeuvre its wings back into position but the head
was crushed, so
I lay it on the bench and left the heavy chopping board on top to
flatten it.

The backyard was empty. Had they finished for the night? Screens still blocked my
view of their work and cast shadows on the grass, but a scattered pattern of upturned
dirt suggested the cops had started and thought better of another twenty or so excavations.

Our yard looked worse than a crime scene: it looked as if it was three quarters of
the way into one of those renovation TV shows, right at the point where the team
is forced to wonder if they will ever have the place ready in time for the family
about to return home.

Back in the bedroom Lucas had folded himself into the sheets on my side of the bed,
so I went around to Gina's side to get in, where I would not disturb him. As I lay
down he shifted and pressed against me.