Names for Nothingness (18 page)

But I am her mother, Sharn wanted to say. It is a fact that we all seem to forget, but it is a fact. No matter how I may behave, I am her mother. She looked at him, biting down on her lip so that the flesh turned white, and when she finally spoke it was Freya she talked about, not Caitlin, and not herself, and she knew she wanted to feed that desire for action, make it grow, now.

She told him the details of their discussion, knowing that she was shaping it in its retelling, not omitting words as such, but moments, particulars: the harshness of Freya's laugh, the bitterness in the tight stretch of her mouth, her momentary doubts about Freya's remembrance of the past; this was what she left out as she fashioned a picture of the life that Caitlin had chosen.

He did not express any anger at her failure to tell him earlier. He held her hand and listened.

‘She's just one person,' he said when she finally finished.

‘Meaning?'

‘She's telling you how she saw it. Caitlin was happy when I saw her. I know she was.'

Sharn sighed. Now that the surprise of the phone call had worn off, she could see him slipping back into the comfort of inaction, the ease of just letting others be, a stance he had
always preferred and clearly one that he had been jolted out of only momentarily.

The first dawn light was coming through the back window, the change almost imperceptible as Sharn looked at the softening of the black night sky. A single bird chirped and she stood up.

‘I'm going back to bed.'

He yawned as he pushed his own chair back, stretching slightly as he stood.

She moved over as he lay next to her, her body shifting into the curve of his, and he curled his arm around her waist, burrowing his head into the softness of her hair.

‘It will be all right,' he whispered.

She didn't answer. Not straight away. She just rolled over and faced him, lifting his head in her hands so that he was forced to look directly at her when she finally spoke.

‘You know I'm going, don't you?' and she did not shift her gaze from his.

‘When?' he asked.

‘Tomorrow.'

He didn't say anything.

She would ring Freya as soon as it was morning. She would find out how to get there and then she would just go. She had already waited too long. She knew that now. And she lay still, cradled in the warmth of his arms, watching the daylight creep into the room as she waited for the last of the night to end.

L
ATER, WHEN
S
HARN RETURNED
from her journey, she told Liam that she drove nearly the whole way there in one hit. She was mad. But she just didn't feel that she could stop. Once she had finally made up her mind to go, she wanted to be there. She covered about 900 kilometres that first day, and she would have kept going if she hadn't seen the sign.

It was the turn-off that led to Sassafrass, the road that went round the back of the hills and along the edge of the river. Liam used to drive it with Caitlin when he went into town. She would watch him buckle her in next to him, Caitlin's back pressed against the vinyl bench seat so that she could see everything they passed. Caitlin loved those trips. It was there in her face. The excitement in her eyes, the tightness of her smile and the bright colour in her cheeks gave it away. Because she never liked to express her enthusiasm. Not directly.

The sign just had the name of some distant town, much further up the valley, but Sharn recognised it when she saw it. And the cluster of boulders that leant against each other near the turn-off. She remembered them too. They used to say that they were male spirits. Those moronic hippy chicks who would blame their relationships falling apart on the bad female energy and not the fact that the men were into screwing around.

She pulled over because she was curious. She wanted to see it again. But she suddenly realised she was too tired to make the rest of the journey without resting, so she decided to stay in the pub and drive out there in the morning. It was only a slight detour, and then she could keep taking that road further north to where Caitlin was.

The air was heavy, leaden and still. She had forgotten how oppressive it could be. She lay awake most of the night listening to the whine of the mosquitoes and trying to find a breath of cool air. Downstairs in the pub, it was quiet. No one there, just the low hum of the television coming up through the floor. She would have preferred noise, a band, drunks, anything to distract her from the heat and the humidity, anything other than that silence.

When she woke, her hands shook, her head ached, and she felt nauseous. The lack of sleep made her so ill that she almost didn't take the detour. She didn't want to add any complications to what was already a difficult journey, but as she drove onto the main road she saw that sign again, and she found herself turning in that direction without hesitation. She couldn't be that close and then not go there. She wanted to see it again.

It took about an hour. The road was a potholed dirt track that flooded when the rains came. There had been heavy falls and it was slippery beneath the tyres. Twice she thought she
would be bogged, and the yellow mud that coated the windscreen made it difficult to see. Everything looked overgrown. The same but different. Uncared for, wild, buzzing with life, yet decaying.

When she came to the gates, she almost drove straight past. She wasn't even really looking for them, she had forgotten they were there. She thought she would just know where to turn off, that it would all be so strong in her memory she couldn't possibly pass it. But that's not how it was. She didn't really know where she was, and her mind kept playing tricks on her, teasing her with what she thought were real fragments of the past.

The gates had collapsed. They had fallen into the mud. That was what made her look at them, not because she remembered them. She was driving so slowly that she saw the sign, still hanging onto the wood by one nail only. The rainbows (god, how she hated those rainbows) and those words: ‘Sassafrass: A Peaceful Community'.

She didn't know what she expected when she drove up. Maybe Simeon would still be there, just as he always had been, dressed in his Indian clothes, surrounded by adoring followers. She had no idea how he would greet her, she hadn't let her mind travel that far.

But the place was deserted. There was no sound except the buzz of the insects and, in the distance, the rush of the river, swollen from all the rains. The central house was still standing and so were the mud huts, but the plants had almost taken over, pulling at the walls, covering the doors and windows, choking the rooves – and the grass was almost waist high, impossible to penetrate. But she managed to find the vegetable garden, or what was left of it. Pumpkin vines, huge, thick, trailing across the dirt, marrows that Simeon would have been proud of left to rot on the ground.

The path down to her shack had all but disappeared. She took a stick to beat back the grass and to scare off snakes, and she fought her way through the growth, past the hayshed and down to the river.

The roar was overwhelming. The banks had burst and the water had risen right to the edge of what used to be her door. The windows were smashed and she could see inside. The one room that she used to share with Caitlin. The floor had rotted and collapsed. Sticky weeds grew up the walls. The shelves Liam had put up were still there, even the table and chairs, and the mattress, the stuffing bursting out of the seams, tangled into the lantana.

Around the back, the old tin bucket that she used to wash Caitlin in was lying up-ended in the grass. She picked it up to scoop out some water from the river. She was hot and thirsty, and she thought she would cool herself down and then get going again. The bottom had rusted through and it fell out as she held it in her hands, slicing through her palm and hitting the ground with a thud. There had been a snake lying underneath and she hadn't even seen it. It darted out, flicking through the grass and disappearing from view.

She had lived there for almost four years. Looking at that place, what it was and what it had become, she was surprised at how insignificant it seemed. Because that time at Sassafrass was the hardest time in her life. The hardest and also the best. It was the place where she fell apart and the place where she fell in love. It was the place where those two extremes had met.

I
T HAS BEEN FOUR MONTHS
since Sharn went north, and Liam is now on the same road she was once on. He and Essie, following in her footsteps.

After three hours of driving, Liam knows he has to stop.

He pulls over at a motel, uncertain as to whether he will actually have enough money to cover a room for the night, but aware that he cannot keep going; he is tired and Essie needs to be fed.

The only other car is a rusty panel van in a corner of the car park. There are two men and a woman in the front seat, sharing a joint, the music loud. He can hear their laughter in between the brief revs to the engine. The laughter stops as the woman (who could not be more than nineteen) suddenly gets out, slamming the door shut behind her.

‘Fuck off,' she shouts, and Liam watches as she raises a finger in the direction of the car.

‘Slag' one of the men shouts back at her, and he guns the accelerator one more time as she walks away.

Liam smiles to himself. He has, for a moment, a flash of what Sharn would have been like before he met her, before she became pregnant with Caitlin and found her way to Sassafrass. He remembers her stories. He likes to imagine her striding through trouble, one finger raised in defiance as she turns her back on the jeers.

‘I was shocking,' she would tell him, and she would grin at the memory. ‘Sometimes I reckon it's a pity I smartened myself up,' and although she would still be smiling, he could never be certain whether she meant it or not.

He misses her already, even though he is aware that he is missing something that vanished a long time ago. He takes the key out of the ignition, knowing that he cannot dwell upon the potential consequences of his decision to leave like this with Essie. It is a rupture that may not be reparable.

The motel is on the outskirts of a coastal town, amongst a sprawl of brick-veneer houses and empty takeaway food shops with broken neon signs. It is early in the evening and everything appears to be deserted. This is the autumn season, when there are few tourists and businesses struggle to stay open until the summer. He knows he will have no trouble getting a room, although the sign seems to be stuck on ‘No Vacancy', and he turns around to tell Essie that this is where they are going to sleep, just for the night.

The car doesn't lock, so he has to bring everything in with him.

‘Can you walk?' he asks Essie, and he holds his hand out to her.

She has only just started attempting to stand on her own and is not capable of taking too many steps without falling over. They make it halfway to the door before it becomes
patently obvious that she is not going to cover the entire distance. She wants to crawl, and he tries to scoop her up with one arm, dropping the bags in the process.

‘Okay,' he says, and he holds her carefully as he bends down to retrieve their luggage. She giggles, thinking this is some new game he has invented especially to delight her, a kind of strange dipping dance, and she claps her hands as they both come back up to a fully vertical position.

He smiles. He has been allowing himself to get closer to her, even in the last few hours alone, and he knows how hard he has been trying to avoid any attachment.

(‘Don't say anything,' Sharn had said when he had opened the door to her and this unknown child. ‘Please, just don't say anything,' and the air in his lungs had tightened into a sharp point as he waited for an explanation.)

The reception area is empty and he puts Essie down on the carpet. She holds on to his leg, her apprehension at the strangeness of this environment evident in the way she tries to hide behind his jeans. He rings the bell twice, and then one more time, before a middle-aged woman comes out, baby tucked under her arm, and tells him that there is, as he had expected, a room.

‘And food? Is there anywhere I can get some food?'

She looks doubtfully at Essie, who immediately ducks her head back behind Liam's leg, and then suggests the pizza place next door.

As he counts out the little money he has left in his wallet, he realises he will have to ring Margot and ask her for more. But after he rings Sharn. That, he knows, must come first.

She answers almost immediately, saying his name as she picks up the phone, and as he sits down on the sagging bed, trying to extract the lamp cord from Essie's fingers, he tells her where they are.

‘Why didn't you speak to me first?' Her voice is flat, tired, and so unlike her that he does not know what to say.

‘I've tried to,' and he lifts Essie into his arms, wanting to feel her warmth, but she struggles out of his hold and back down to the floor, clutching the chenille bedspread between her fingers.

Sharn says nothing.

‘Essie's fine,' he tells her.

Still she does not reply.

‘She needs to be with Caitlin.'

‘Does she?' And the sharpness in Sharn's voice is almost metallic in its coldness.

Outside, a truck pulls in to the car park, the low rumble of the engine reverberating throughout the room, the headlights slicing through the nylon net curtains. Essie looks up and points. He does not smile at her, nor does he nod in response. She crawls across the room towards the desk, and he watches as she pulls herself up, dragging down the padded vinyl folder that contains a list of local businesses. She sits on the floor again and pulls out the cards, one by one, spreading them across the worn brown carpet.

‘You can't decide for her,' he tells Sharn. ‘You don't even want a child in your life,' and as he says these last words, he hears the low sounds of Sharn's breathing, so close she could be in the room with him. They are words he should not have spoken, but he has said them now, and he waits for her response.