Relativity (25 page)

Alison screamed and collected bedclothes in her arms. “Ethan, I'm not going to get struck by lightning. We have to go inside.”

The children ran back into the house, shielding themselves from the rain with pillows on their heads and sheets over their shoulders.

Ethan looked up at the electric lightning firing across the purple sky. From Alison's place, they could see the outline of Sydney's skyscrapers dotted on the horizon. Electrostatic charge was building up inside the clouds—positive charge to the top, negative charge to the bottom. A brilliant blue flash of electricity surged suddenly from cloud to earth. Thunder rumbled in the distance. Ethan traced the lightning's jagged path with his finger on the fogged-up kitchen window.

“It's the air,” he said, pushing wet hair off his face. “That's the sound of the thunder. Lightning heats the air really quickly, and that makes a sonic shock wave. It gets so hot the air expands and then nearby air gets compressed. That bolt of lightning was five times as hot as the surface of the sun. Did you see those sonic waves that came from the lightning? They were bubbles of sound. They looked a little like cartwheels.”

Alison's eyes were bright, lit by the electric storm. “Nope,” she said, grinning. “I didn't see any sonic waves. But you did.”

Ω

CLAIRE'S EYES
struggled to focus on the road. The sky had suddenly darkened. Her head felt light. She knew this spinning feeling, this loss of balance—the vertigo of ambivalence. Years ago, she'd felt the same whirling confusion before.

In the hours, days, weeks, and months after Ethan was hurt, Claire had still loved Mark. She couldn't make that go away overnight. Rational parts of her mind knew that was the end: Ethan came first. So Claire needed to make an impossible choice. She'd wanted to support her husband but how could she, when the victim was her son?

Cricket commentators on the radio yelled—another wicket had fallen. She switched the car stereo off. Back then, Claire was angrier with herself than with Mark. What kind of person still loved the man accused of shaking her baby? Must be something wrong with her; she was faulty, deranged. Secretly, she held on to a small piece of hope that Mark hadn't done it, that everybody else had made a colossal mistake.

An unspeakable amount of time passed before Claire let that hope go. Time wore it down: medical diagnosis, Family Court, revoking Mark's rights, stripping him of parental responsibility. An apprehended violence order and a criminal investigation. Officers apparently knocked on his new door, arrested him, and then took him to the police station. Fingerprints, charges laid, trial date set. Mark had a new identity: the accused.

Heavy rain started to fall and Claire turned on her windshield wipers; the rubber of the blades squeaked against the glass. But it was still innocent until proven guilty. Mark pled not guilty; Claire wished his plea were true. Finally, the jury's verdict: guilty beyond reasonable doubt. She'd always thought her doubts were reasonable but apparently they weren't. Without the safety net of doubt, Claire had no reason to keep clutching on to her hope that he was innocent. She had to open her palm, loosen her grip, and let those last particles of empty hope evaporate into the air.

Oxford Street was covered in rainwater; traffic lights lit the shining road green. As she drove past Centennial Park, her tires hissed in the rain. She was almost there, surprised by how automatically she'd remembered the route. Claire thought of what Dr. Saunders had said, about how he could never be completely certain of his diagnosis. If what Mark said was true about shaken baby syndrome—if it didn't exist—that would mean Ethan was never a shaken baby.

She was outside Mark's house now. Claire parked the car and loosened her grip on the steering wheel.

Inside her palm, the hope was back.

Ω

MARK HAD FORGOTTEN
about the electrical storms that rolled over Sydney after a hot summer day. Dark clouds that clustered over the horizon, the sinking front of mammatus formations—patterns of pouches, hanging low in the sky like black balloons about to burst. Kookaburras sang, sensing the rain. That sudden cool change, that shifting wind. Day became night before lightning cracked through the thick canopy of clouds.

As a child, storms terrified Mark. He used to hide in his mother's arms and block his ears. Now he enjoyed the charged drama of a thunderstorm—flash, clap, rumble—as static discharge turned into light, sound, and heat. He lay in his bed listening to the weather change, a crisp breeze coming in through the open window. Water spilled down the roof and passing cars splashed puddles onto the sidewalk.

It was a shock when the doorbell rang. Mark looked through the peephole and there—distorted by the rounded glass—was her face, her blond hair. He opened the door.

“Claire? What are you doing here?”

Her clothes were transparent from the rain; her pale skin looked translucent. In the golden beam of sodium streetlight, Mark could almost see right through her. Claire's hair fell flatly around her face and her fingers trembled.

“Hi,” she said.

Mark opened the door a little wider. “Would you like to come in? You're all wet.”

“I'm sorry, I don't know why I'm here.”

“Please come inside.”

The rain continued to pelt down.

“Just for a minute.” Claire wiped her feet on the doormat and removed her shoes. Mark remembered how she'd always looked so funny barefoot, walking on tiptoe with her high dancer arches.

Inside the house, the television was the only source of light. Mark liked its company when he was alone. After prison, absolute silence unnerved him. White noise helped. Mark led Claire to the living room and switched on a lamp. She stood there in her soaking clothes. Her vulnerability made Mark feel custodial; he wanted to dry her wet skin and wrap her cold body in blankets.

“Would you like a drink?” he asked.

Claire shook her head. “I shouldn't stay.”

Mark poured a glass of red wine. She reluctantly accepted and nursed the glass in both hands. It looked like a bowl between her fingers; he'd forgotten how delicate she was. A flash of lightning illuminated the sky, followed by a clap of thunder.

“Can I get you a towel?”

“No, thanks. I'm all right.” Claire sat down and took a small sip of the wine.

“How about some dry clothes?” Mark didn't know what to offer her—none of his clothes would fit, his mother's clothes were gone—but he went to look in his suitcase. He still hadn't unpacked properly although he'd been in Sydney for almost a month. Finally, he found an old T-shirt. It was huge but it was clean, albeit slightly crumpled. He handed it to her.

Claire held the T-shirt up. “The Big Banana?”

“Best I could do.”

She finished the wine in a single gulp and stood up. “I'll go change.”

Mark tapped his fingers on his knees as he waited, and looked around the room. It wasn't exactly untidy but there were a few dirty mugs lying around. He turned on another lamp, then turned it off again. Then he returned to his seat and continued to tap his knees. Hopefully there wasn't anything embarrassing in the bathroom.

Claire came back, wearing only the shirt, and sat beside him on the sofa. Mark couldn't help but notice the lines of her legs underneath the shirt. A little heavier now, some visible veins, but he was hardly a young man himself. Her skin was pale but flawless; she'd never liked sitting in the sun. He found her fragility beautiful.

“Are you okay?” Mark asked.

“Yes,” she said, holding out her empty wineglass.

He filled it again. “After our conversation the other day, I'm confused why you're here.”

Claire didn't respond, but slowly sipped the wine. She kept pulling the bottom of the T-shirt down, trying to cover her legs. Mark looked away, embarrassed that she might have caught him looking at her thighs, that she might get the wrong idea. She bent her legs up to her chest and stretched the fabric of the shirt so that it formed a small tent over her knees.

“I wanted to talk to you about that night,” Claire said finally.

“I wanted to tell you something too.”

“You really upset me, saying all those things. It's like you think this is a game, toying with my feelings like that.” She paused as she took another swig of wine. “I really hate you, Mark.”

Her words stung but he made sure it didn't show on his face. “If you've come here just to tell me that, to yell at me or get angry, then you should go home.” He finished his glass of wine. He'd half-expected her to say something bitter like that, to be deliberately hurtful, and perhaps it was inevitable that she hate him. She'd never believed him, after all. But he wasn't trying to play a game and toy with her feelings; he hoped she knew that. The last thing he wanted to do was seduce her or rekindle their relationship.

Claire's head was in her hands. “I'm sorry. I don't know why I said that.”

“Because you hate me?” Mark offered.

“No, I don't think I do. Hate is too strong a word. I wish I were indifferent to you. The opposite of love is indifference, so they say.” Her voice wavered; she didn't sound convinced. Claire stared into her glass. “I don't have anyone else to talk to about this. About Ethan. Nobody else understands how I feel.”

Welcome to my world, Mark thought. No old friends related to him anymore, no one connected to his past. He'd made some new mates in Kalgoorlie but they were superficial friendships—drinking companions, workmates who might share a joke—and they didn't really know him. Whenever anyone asked about his life in Sydney, Mark always changed the subject. His mates probably thought he was trying to be mysterious so they let it slide, but Mark knew they'd think differently of him if they heard his real life story. Not many people gave you the benefit of the doubt; everyone always assumed the worst.

In prison, Mark had paid an unmentionable price for letting his guard down—he was beaten, bullied, worse. When he was released on that freezing August day six years ago, crammed into old clothes that no longer fit, he needed to put all that behind him. Erase those incarcerated years. After his parole period, Mark left the state. Ran away and started afresh. But nobody truly knew him; nobody scratched the surface. He suppressed himself, internalized all his thoughts. It was a dangerous way to live.

Clean slates had invisible consequences. Mark worried that his unconscious feelings were slowly poisoning him. Like radiation—ionizing him into decay—his secrecy had a subatomic instability. Just like the law of conservation of energy: energy couldn't be created or destroyed, but it could change form. Mark worried that he'd combusted like an exploding bomb—chemical energy converting to kinetic energy—and the detonation of prison life had altered his molecules.

“Claire, I get it,” Mark said quietly. “I don't have anyone to talk to about what happened either. You're the only person who'll ever understand how I feel. And maybe I'm the only one who really understands you.”

She ran a hand through her hair. “I don't know about that. I wasn't the one who—”

Mark cut her off. “We already had that conversation.”

“Fine. You said you had something to tell me too.”

Mark didn't know where to begin. Half this house they were sitting in right now belonged to Ethan, but those words wouldn't come out of his mouth. In the back of his mind, he didn't want her to know. Mark wanted to punish her like she'd punished him. And he was jealous. Claire got to play the victim to his villain, the good to his bad. She had the relationship with their son; he had nothing. In his darkest fantasies, Mark would imagine how close they were, inseparable, bound by an unbreakable cord. She knew their child intimately, at his best and worse. She gave Ethan her unconditional love.

Mark didn't know what that felt like. Conditions were placed on his love; he wasn't allowed to love his own son. Only in abstraction, at a distance—the way people love a football team or celebrities, worship from afar. Completely unlike the messy love that should exist between members of a family. Whatever he felt for his child was intangible, lacked complexity. Mark had spent more than a decade trying to pretend Ethan and Claire didn't exist. A good policy most days, and a lot of the time he hadn't given them a passing thought. Days, weeks, even months went by when the two of them didn't enter his mind. But there were always reminders—their wedding anniversary, Ethan's birthday, Christmas—inflaming the memories and making them rush back.

“I wanted to tell you . . .” He paused. “My father wrote me out of his will.”

“Mark, that's awful. I'm sorry to hear that.” She gave him a genuinely sympathetic look. He'd forgotten the precise color of her eyes.

“No big deal,” he said. “Wasn't a surprise.” Something about Claire's expression made Mark want to touch her but he knew it was a bad idea. She was so angry with him and he didn't want to confuse himself. He'd moved on too, made progress. Forgotten all about her. The last thing he should do for his own sake was touch his ex-wife.

The rain was heavier now. She shuffled closer to him and rested her head on his shoulder. “How did we end up like this? What did we do wrong?”

Mark didn't know what to say but began to stroke her hair on instinct. It was still damp in places but alarmingly soft where it was dry. He smelled the top of her head. How peculiar that after all these years she still smelled the same, how strangely reassuring. It disarmed him—the familiar musk of her scalp—but it was wonderful. He wrapped his other arm around her; it felt awkward at first, then effortless. Claire craned her head up and before Mark could register what was happening, she kissed him.

She tasted the same too. They kissed; the curves of each other's faces slowly remembering how they once fit together; the warmth of both bodies transferring heat. Lightning struck outside again.