Too Close to Home (14 page)

SUMMER HAS ENDED BY the time Freya first speaks to Lisa.

As the days become shorter and cooler, she buys a heater for Ella to change in front of, complaining bitterly about the fact that it is under thirty dollars.

‘How can they make them so cheap?' she says, and Matt ignores her, used to this current obsession.

Outside, the garden has died back, and their small stretch of lawn is now half dirt, the grass roots brown and twisted. The broken lawnmower is put away, neither fixed nor returned to the shop.

Only the citrus trees are showing any signs of vibrant health, the lemon and orange heavy with thick-skinned fruit, waxy to the touch, the smell tart and sour. Freya picks each one up as it falls to the ground, keeping a bright red bowl on the kitchen table filled with the sharpness of their colour, brilliant in the softer days.

Winter has also brought a change in the political climate. The Labor Government is slumping in the opinion polls, and Freya reads the newspaper with a growing anxiety that this dip may be more than temporary.

‘It's not as though I like them,' she complains to Matt. ‘The way they backed down on an ETS was unforgivable – but I really don't want to end up with the alternative.'

He refuses to believe it's anything more than a temporary slide, but she is less optimistic. And as the polls fail to turn, her pessimism grows.

The cold weather has also heralded the beginning of the soccer season, and Ella has started playing, her practice sessions in the park at the bottom of the street. The breeze from the river brings with it a fog that swirls around the lights illuminating the ground, and the giant elms that line the banks are bare now, their branches white against the darkness of the sky.

Ella plays with enthusiasm, sliding in the mud whenever she can, coming home exhausted and filthy. In fact, Freya is hanging out Ella's soccer clothes when the telephone rings. She swears loudly as each of the new pegs she has bought snaps in her fingers, and she gathers the plastic pieces, throwing them in the laundry basket before rushing in, breathless, saying her name as she lifts the receiver.

‘Is Matt there?' the voice asks.

Freya says that he's at work. Can she take a message?

‘Could you tell him Lisa called?'

Her intake of breath is small but audible as she introduces herself. She is Freya, she says. Matt has talked about her, Lisa; it's good to finally speak.

Lisa's response is awkward, her words slightly mumbled as she says hello, before apologising for bothering her at home like this.

Has she tried his mobile? Freya asks.

Lisa says she has. ‘Can you ask him to call? It's important. He's got my number.'

‘Shall I take it again just in case?'

As she writes it down, Freya realises that Matt must have been speaking to Lisa since his return. Lisa's confidence in his knowledge of her number would seem to indicate this, and there is a numb ache in her heart, heavy and dull.

Freya looks at the message she has written: Lisa called. The two words are scrawled in pen and she circles them, placing asterisks around the edge.

It was never going to go away.

 

On the morning that Matt came back, Freya had met him at the airport, driving out there after leaving Ella at school. She was anxious; the acid in her throat and high flutter in her stomach made her feel as though she were bracing herself for terrible news. In the terminal, she tried to keep herself still, eyes on the gate as the line of passengers emerged. For one minute she thought he might have changed his mind, not coming back after all but deciding to stay up there in his new life with his new family, and she had to force her mind back from the lurch that it threatened to take.

And then, there he was.

He stepped into the arrivals lounge, bag slung over his shoulder, and opened his arms to her, and the sight of him, just him, unchanged, calmed her.

‘I missed you,' he said, face buried in her hair, his breath warm against her neck, the softness of his skin familiar and good.

All the tension in her limbs dissipated.

In the car, he talked a little. As they headed past the international airport, container freight in square blocks of colour on their right, the filth of the river winding next to the road, he told her it had been difficult.

‘It was okay with Lisa,' he said. ‘We managed to talk. But the boy, you know,' and he looked out the window, turning away from her as he found himself unable to complete his sentence.

‘How did he react to you?' Freya asked.

Matt just shrugged. ‘I think he said two words to me.' His smile was slight. ‘But what do you expect? He doesn't know me. She hadn't told him anything about me.'

‘Not even before you arrived?'

‘She doesn't even know whether I'm his father. And she's always told him that his dad is dead. I hardly feel like I'm in a position to demand anything, to just walk in and tell him the truth, or ask for a paternity test. Not that I even know how to go about doing something like that.'

A truck pulled past them, its weight making the car shudder, and Freya shut her window against the onslaught of smell and noise. Reaching across, she rested her hand on the top of his thigh. He'd turned back to look at the road, oblivious to her touch.

At home he told her he was tired. He didn't think he would go into work. He might take the car and have a swim. She offered to go with him, but he said he wanted to be alone. He would pick up Ella on the way back. They could all have dinner together, maybe even go out. He kissed her gently on the cheek.

‘I love you,' he said.

She looked at him.

‘I'm sorry about all this.' He wiped at a tear in the corner of his eye. ‘I don't know what the right thing to do is.'

She had tried to work during the day, waiting for his return. The words she put down were useless, and in the end she gave up. Out in the garden, she pulled up onion weeds, digging down into the dry soil in search of the white roots, small bulbs that had never seen daylight. There was no end to the task, and in the midday heat, she felt the sweat drip down the back of her T-shirt, an icy trickle on her skin.

When he came back, some hours later, he told her he couldn't talk about it anymore, apologising for his lack of communication.

‘I just haven't sorted it in my head,' he tried to explain. ‘So I don't really know what to say.'

She'd squeezed his hand in her own and told him it was okay.

It wasn't until a week later that he said he'd been thinking that maybe it was best to let it go.

‘I've let her know I'm here if she decides she needs me.'

Freya just nodded.

Matt undressed in the darkness of their room, and she watched him, his shape an outline only. She opened her arms to him as he got into bed and they lay close, silent but close.

He had, she presumes, done as he had decided. Tried to let it go. In fact, over the last three months, they haven't talked a great deal further about his trip north. If he has called Lisa, as she can only guess he has, he's never told her.

Now, standing next to the phone, she wonders whether she should try to reach him at the office and let him know that Lisa phoned. She hadn't had the presence of mind to ask whether anything was wrong. She picks up the receiver, hesitates and then puts it down again.

Later that morning, as she heads into the city to meet Mikhala for a quick preview of her new work, before a meeting with Frank about her play, Matt rings her. She's on the train, and she searches for her phone in her bag. When she sees his number, she is surprised. He never rings her during the day.

‘You'll have to be quick,' she warns him. The train is on the last stretch of open tracks before reaching the underground tunnels at the edge of the city.

It's Lisa. They've spoken. He just wasn't sure if she'd also told Freya.

‘Told me what?'

Lucas has run away, he explains. Lisa doesn't know if he has headed to Sydney. He may turn up.

As the train plunges into the darkness of the tunnel, the phone breaks up.

At the entrance to Mikhala's gallery Freya tries to call him back, but he has switched his phone to voicemail. Ring me, she says, knowing he probably won't. He has meetings for most of the afternoon. Work is busy at the moment. He does even longer hours, leaving just after seven and getting home late.

‘Come and have a look.' Mikhala waves from the first room on the left and Freya follows her.

She has hung half her paintings along the length of the space. Four huge canvasses depicting dark scenes, gothic nightmares: a dog on a chain barking as it leaps
high against a cyclone fence, steep circular stairs leading down into black, a swamp choked by reeds, and at the end an abandoned shoe, small and red, in a wide empty field.

Against the whiteness of the wall, their effect is startling and Freya is surprised to find herself crying, momentarily overwhelmed by the work.

‘Oh God,' Mikhala says, drawing Freya in close. ‘You really like them?'

Freya can only nod. ‘They are amazing,' she eventually says. ‘You are so unbelievably clever.'

Outside in the chill of the day, Mikhala lights a cigarette, the paper burning rapidly in the freshness of the air. A flock of birds overhead catch the light, their wings like flecks of foil against the smooth sweep of sky.

They sit on benches on the pavement, the warmth of the sun cutting through the cool, the ash from the tip of Mikhala's cigarette flying away each time she exhales. The waitress looks irritated while they try to make up their mind.

‘I'm sorry,' Mikhala tells her as she changes her order once again, and then she looks across at Freya. ‘I'm just so agitated,' she explains.

Her opening is in a couple of days, and although she knows she is guaranteed a sell-out, she is still nervous.

‘Max is the only other person who has seen them,' she says, and then she leans forward, speaking rapidly with excitement. ‘I told him I want to have a baby.'

Freya is surprised. She had always thought Mikhala saw having children as being incompatible with working as an artist. She also hasn't been with Max for more
than a few months, a question mark still hanging over his relationship with his wife for most of that time.

‘It's not like I have long,' Mikhala says, taking her coffee from the waitress. She pours in two sugars, stirring them as she does so. ‘And I love him so much, you know? I mean, why not? It's all going well.' She raises her hands in the air. ‘Life, work, the lot. So why not fuck it all up with a child?' Her grin is infectious. ‘I reckon I'd be a terrible mother and I'd have to give up smoking, but it gets you, doesn't it? This desire to have a baby?'

Freya agrees. She remembers how much she wanted Ella. There were times when it left little room for anything else. Each time that Matt had suggested they wait she had felt herself collapse with the urgency of the need.

‘Is Max into the idea?'

Mikhala downs the last of her coffee, nodding as she does so. ‘I mean he's had kids so he's not so enthusiastic, but he hasn't said no.'

Across the street, a young boy of about seventeen sits slumped against a crumbling stone wall, head in his hands. A dog walks past, sniffs at him briefly and then continues on his way. The boy doesn't move. Freya watches, pulling her sandwich apart as she does so.

‘You don't like tomato?' Mikhala asks, taking the piece that Freya has extracted.

‘I do actually,' Freya tells her. ‘I was saving it for last.' She grins as she hands the other slice over, and then looks across to the boy again.

‘Do you reckon he's all right?'

Mikhala shakes her head. ‘Probably not.'

They watch him momentarily, both aware that they could get up and go over to him, both knowing
they won't. It's Lucas that Freya is thinking about, this strange boy who may turn up or may not. She doesn't know how she feels, and so she turns back to talk of Louise and her pregnancy and then, briefly, of her own play.

It is not until some hours later, when she sits with Frank outside the theatre, that she is able to mention Lucas' name and the possibility of his arrival into her life. She speaks without thinking, surprised at herself as she tells Frank all about Matt having another child and her inability to react in the way she knows she should.

‘I kept looking at this boy across the road and thinking that this was what Lucas could be like, that I could suddenly find myself having to deal with that.' She smiles slightly and shakes her head at her own foolishness.

Frank doesn't respond immediately. He stares out across the courtyard. There's a coolness in his eyes, and a distance in him that's new. He's thinner too, the sharp lines of his bones evident, his body lankier than it was. Sadness, she presumes, because he has left Marianne and his child to work here. He has run away, he confesses, unable to cope with what their relationship has become. He can deal with leaving Marianne, but – and he does not look at her – the guilt of having walked away from his child hurts.

‘You're going to have to let it happen,' he eventually says. ‘Matt has to work out what his relationship is going to be and you're going to have to let him do that.'

‘I know,' she replies, and there's a defensive edge to her voice. ‘I wouldn't think of doing anything else.'

The afternoon sun has slipped behind a tall building and it's cold in the courtyard now. The bare branches of a wisteria vine twist around the verandah and on the
wall opposite, the trace of what was once ivy, but has now been removed, forms a skeleton along the bricks. She is about to tell Frank she should be getting home, when he takes her hand and holds it in his own. As she sits perfectly still, he runs the tip of his thumb inside the softness of her palm, tracing a gentle arc across her skin and then, bringing her close, he kisses her briefly on the lips, moving away as quickly as he had drawn near, leaving her looking at him, uncertain as to what has just passed between them.