In the Shadow of Satellites (7 page)

I see them together, lying on the grass. James is on his back, holding Kieran in his arms, lifting him up and dropping him, like teaching a baby Superman to fly. Kieran is giggling, and James grins. There’s nothing like that feeling, seeing your child happy.

Opening my eyes, my heart feels lighter, as if a burden has been lifted. They’re close. I know they are.

Gently pushing the boat out into the lake, it barely makes a ripple.

***

“We should take this back to Luke,” Ana says, handing me the plastic bowl, red and well-used, to dry.

It’s the last thing I want to do, but it strikes me that if we take it back to him together, I won’t have to do it later, alone. Definitely preferable. As nice as he seems, I’m not in the right frame of mind to make new friends. Relationships like that take energy, and I’m using all mine maintaining the ones I have.

Once Ana and Chris go home in a couple of hours, I’ll be on my own again. As usual, it’s bittersweet. I like being alone, but I always feel that when Ana goes home on Sundays, she leaves a vacuum that takes a while to fill. That’s part of the reason I have a routine in the first place. I need to fill time as well as mark it. With Chris leaving too, I’m sure it’ll be twice as obvious. I’ve loved seeing him, but trying to act like I’m not falling apart inside is exhausting. It’s important to keep up the charade, though. I don’t want him to worry about me. His guilt, and how to ease it, is top of my priority list right now. I think it’s what James would want.

“Okay,” I say, as I finish drying Luke’s bowl.

“After we’re done here, then?” she asks, scrubbing Nanna’s best crystal and turning it upside down on the draining board.

“What’s this?” Chris asks, appearing out of nowhere in the kitchen doorway.

“We’re going to take Luke’s bowl back to him once we’re done here,” she says, draining the water out of the sink. “Want to come with?”

“Yeah, okay. Be a good chance to say goodbye.”

“Aw,” Ana grins. “Will you miss him? You guys seem to have a little bromance going on, with your matching beards and your boy-talk.”

He just raises his eyebrows, but there is the familiar, impish glint in his eye.

“Bromance? Boy-talk? If anything, it’s man-talk.”

“Ha! Yeah, sorry – man-talk.”

“What exactly is man-talk anyway?” I ask.

“It’s all that construction talk – timbers and joists and structural supports and shit. They were all over that last night, remember? Felt like I was in a foreign country.”

“And just think,” he quips. “You wanted to be part of it all.”

“Yeah. Lucky escape is right. He’s really hot, but he has this mountain-man streak about him that I’m sure would’ve pissed me off sooner rather than later. I like my creature comforts.”

“We know – believe me.”

She grabs a tea towel and flicks it at him. Missing him by a mile, he disappears, chuckling.

It’s been a strange couple of days. I’ve taken care to dodge some of the questions Chris has asked, even if he’s been pretty delicate about it. I haven’t overheard them discussing me again, yet I get the feeling they have been, or they will be. I’ve seen the glances they exchange when they think I’m not looking.

We haven’t seen Luke since Friday night. I wasn’t sure he’d understand that I have boundaries, but he appears to have boundaries of his own, which is a relief. We’ve heard him, hammering over the trees, and it’s comforting to know that things are returning to normal.

When the dishes are done and the kitchen is back in order, Ana and I sit down and make a grocery list – actually, two of them. We separate it into two lists as we write. One is for me, for things I can get myself from the store across the lake. The other is for her, for the things she can only get at the supermarket in town. I refuse to go into town. I refuse to go to the supermarket. All those people, all that noise, the traffic… it gives me a panic attack just thinking about it. Chris looks on from across the room but he doesn’t comment, and Ana doesn’t make a big deal of it.

After she and Chris have packed up their belongings, we take Luke’s bowl back to him. It’s Chris’s idea to give him the leftover six-pack of beer that we didn’t end up drinking this weekend. A parting gift, he says.

Geezer welcomes us with his customary barking, but this time his tail is wagging and he seems much less perplexed by our sudden appearance.

“Must be the steak you were sneaking him under the table at dinner the other night,” Ana says, as Chris leans down to ruffle his soft fur. “Don’t think it went unnoticed.”

“Bribery,” he says. “Never underestimate its power.”

He turns to wink at me, a playful smile on his face. This is the Chris that reminds me of life before everything fell apart. This is the Chris that I’ll miss the most.

“Hey,” Luke says, coming around from the front of the cottage.

“Hi,” Ana smiles, handing him the bowl. “We came to say goodbye, and return your bowl from the other night.”

“Thanks. I was getting a little concerned. It’s my best china.”

He smiles at us and I smile back automatically.

“And to bring you this,” Chris says, handing him the six-pack. “I reckon you’ll need it.”

Luke’s grin widens as he takes the beer. He looks genuinely pleased.

“Well, thanks. I appreciate that. I promise I won’t let it go to waste. So, you’re heading off today? Auckland, right?”

“Yep. Back to the land of the JAFAs.”

Luke shakes his head, clearly amused.

“You’re speaking the same language, but still I can’t understand half of what you say.”

Chris grins back at him, but it’s Ana who clarifies things.

“JAFA – it’s what we call Aucklanders. Just Another Fucking Aucklander. JAFA. Get it?”

“Ah. Right.”

“Even though, technically, you’re a JAFA yourself,” she says to Chris.

“Hush your mouth, woman. We don’t talk about that.”

Luke offers his hand to Chris.

“Well, take care out there in the big wide world. I guess we’ll catch up again next time you’re down this way.”

“Count on it,” Chris says. “I’m planning on coming back through in a couple of weeks on my way back down to Wellington, so I’ll probably see you again then.”

Luke holds out his hand to Ana.

“It was really nice meeting you,” he smiles.

Ana, though, doesn’t stand on ceremony. She ignores his hand and goes in for a kiss instead.

“And you,” she says, kissing his cheek.

For some reason, it makes me nervous. I hope he doesn’t expect that from me. I’m not going anywhere, for one thing. And I’m not kissing a stranger, for another – on the cheek or anywhere else.

He doesn’t seem fazed, though, and Ana is practically smug.

“I’ll be back next weekend, so I’ll probably see you then,” she says. “We better get going. I’m dropping Chris off at the bus station in town. He has a four-hour bus trip from hell in front of him.”

I’m constantly torn between the desire to be alone and the desire to have those I love stay close to me, just in case something happens to them. Deep down, I know that keeping them close is no guarantee of keeping them safe, but it doesn’t stop the longing. I think that’s part of the vacuum they leave behind. I fill it with fear, even though I don’t want to. It always takes a while to fade.

That’s the way it seems for me lately. I’m a contradiction, an exercise in both hope and futility. I’m a study in opposites, continually warring against myself. No wonder I feel like my head is going to explode sometimes. I wonder if it’s got nothing to do with my residual brain injury and more to do with the fact that I’m trying so hard to both hold on and let go, simultaneously. Something has to give.

I try to steel myself for the approaching sadness, already making plans to fill my time to make it seem like the next five days are shorter, not longer. Letting go is a complicated process.

“Sian?”

I snap back to the present. Everyone’s looking at me. I get the familiar sucking sensation in my chest.

“Sorry, what?”

Geezer is licking my fingers, and I pull them away, tucking them into the pockets of my linen dress. I feel like a naughty child once again, caught daydreaming in class.

“I was just saying that if you need anything in the meantime, you only have to holler,” Luke says, his razor-sharp eyes missing nothing.

It feels like he’s digging again, and it makes me squirm like an ant under a magnifying glass. I can’t wait to get away.

***

The boat ride over is slow and silent. There is so much I want to say to Chris, but I can’t bring myself to say any of it. I’ve caught him looking at me, and I know he’s feeling the same combination of pain and joy as I am.

As Ana pulls the boat in beside the jetty, cutting the engine, the silence deepens. It feels heavy, almost suffocating. Chris climbs out first, and Ana hands her weekend bag to him, along with his backpack, the weight of which almost topples her over. I pass up her handbag, and he helps us both out of the boat.

Walking together along the jetty, the faint hum of traffic mixes with the sounds of the café we’re heading to, and my stomach clenches. I can’t do this in front of an audience.

“I think I’ll say goodbye here, if that’s okay,” I say, reaching for Chris’s arm.

He stops, lowering his backpack and turning to me.

“Course it is.”

We stand there for a moment, facing each other, the ghosts rushing between us. Then he pulls me into his arms. I return the hug, holding onto him as tightly as I dare. I’m afraid to let him go in case I never see him again. Anything could happen between now and two weeks from now. Between this moment and that, a million dangers lurk. I hold my breath, determined not to cry.

“You’re gonna be okay,” he says huskily. “I know it. Might take some time, but you’re going to be okay.”

I nod into his shoulder, my heart breaking. He has no idea.

“If you need anything –
anything
– call me. I left my cell phone number on your fridge.”

I nod again and pull away. They have to go, and I have to get back before I lose it altogether. I smile, weakly, but it’s all I can manage right now.

“Have fun with your parents,” I say.

He rolls his eyes, smiling.

“Yeah. Fuck. I might be back sooner than you think.”

Ana drapes her arms around me, pulling me close for just a moment.

“I’ll call you in a day or so, okay?”

“Okay. Thanks.”

She lets me go, and they back away slowly, as if they’re afraid I might disappear. I’m afraid I might, too. Chris waves one last time, as they get near the café, and I wave back. Then I turn and make my way back along the jetty to the boat.

I want to cry, but I hold it all the way back over the lake until I get to the cottage. I even hold it as I walk over the lawn and up the stairs. It’s not until I’m inside, standing in the silence of my living room, that the tears finally come.

I immerse myself back into my routine immediately, even as loneliness tugs at my fragile heart. It’s not as if I’ve been abandoned, yet that’s exactly how it feels. They went back to their lives, out there in a world that scares me to death now. Part of me wonders if I’ll ever be brave enough to exist anywhere else but here.

I make myself tidy up the cottage, even though Ana did a decent job of that before she left. Chris has left his toothbrush behind. I stand in the bathroom staring at it for a long time, memories washing over me. Every time Chris stayed over at our place, he always left something behind. It became a bit of a joke. I wonder briefly if I should post it back to him, for old time’s sake. I can almost hear James chuckling from somewhere in the distance.

I don’t, though. I put it in the drawer in the bathroom cabinet instead. It’s a reminder that he’ll be back.

It’s weird, the things you leave behind when you die. Voicemail messages, handwriting on a grocery list, photos in a frame or on a phone or in an album, toothbrushes. Echoes of a life, whispers in the dark. Evidence, proof, tangible signs that you once existed.

By the time I woke up in the hospital, I’d lost five months and the two most important people in my life. James’s family had cleared out our house, and all traces of he and Kieran were either packed away in boxes for when I woke up, given away to charity or taken as mementos. The things they chose to keep for me weren’t the things I wanted. They were someone else’s memories. The things I would’ve kept were much simpler.

I would’ve kept James’s toothbrush. I would’ve kept the second-hand quilt hanging over the back of the chair in Kieran’s room.

I would’ve kept everything – every last thing.

I think that’s part of the reason why the wardrobe is my sanctuary within a sanctuary. I can still smell James in there, among the holiday clothes he had stashed away. He’s tangible in there, in a way that he isn’t anywhere else. I can hear him, and sometimes I can see him, but in there, in the wardrobe, he’s everywhere. I can smell him,
feel
him. He’s so close, I can almost reach out and touch him.

Ana is the only one who knows that I still see them, still hear them. It came out one dark day, not long after I moved back here. There were a lot of dark days then. One afternoon, lying on my bed, it just slipped out. She didn’t freak out or ship me back to the nearest hospital. She didn’t even raise her voice. She just nodded.

“It’s the lake,” she said. “This place, it’s alive with spirits. My koro always said there was something special about this lake.”

She was deadly serious.

“They’re watching over you, babe. Their love for you, that’s what you can feel, hear, see.”

I wanted to cry with relief. Maybe I wasn’t as crazy as I thought.

***

Last night, I dreamt I was playing with Kieran on the lawn. When I opened my eyes, I could still hear his laughter echoing through the cottage. I sat up in bed and watched the moon hanging over the lake until the sound faded.

At sunrise, I walk down to the lake with my candle, my matches and my paper boat. I wade out into the lake, only knee-deep this time. The match lights on the first try, and I gently push the glowing boat out into the lake and watch as the sun’s rays illuminate it.