Walking to the Moon (23 page)

‘You mean, you,' says Anna. ‘You are close to panic.'

I keep thinking of Kit, my brother, who must now be nearing twenty, who may even have his own family, his own children, but who I see, nevertheless, as I saw him then, with his fidgety knees and his sudden sweet smile and my mother's arms wrapped around him. I think too about the older boy, Hamish, the cellist. But it is Kit I worry about.

I realise that I am very hot and that my chest is tight, and that I am hungry. The throbbing from my sole has spread up across the top of my foot and towards my calf. Just pressure, I tell myself, not an infection. Yet I understand that a visceral calculation is at work within me, despite me, weighing available resources (nutrients, water, oxygen, fitness) and current energy demands (I must keep walking) against the system's ability to metabolise energy, disperse heat, maintain blood sugar levels, keep me standing. My chest is tight. I am not well enough prepared. I need to stop. I need to sit down.

I take off my pack, a little dizzy now, nauseous, and notice that my legs are shaking as I bend down. I sit on the ground beneath a tree. I lean forwards, put my head between my knees and see dark light behind my eyes.

‘You should be more careful,' says Michael.

His voice is very clear, as if he were next to me, quite gentle; an observation. I understand too, at last, that it is not his voice, not Michael's voice; it is my own. I should be more careful. I should take better care.

After a minute or two I stand and bend, intending to pick up my backpack and haul it on. Instead, I take it by the shoulder straps and throw it as hard as I can along the road ahead of me. It lands with a scraping sound and I run after it and brace myself before throwing it again, harder this time, back the way I have come. When I reach it again, heart thumping and skin scratchy now and hot, I begin to kick. I kick the backpack rhythmically and methodically up one side, and down the other. I kick the frame and the bulging pockets and the tent where it sticks out the top, then I turn it over and start again, half kicking, half stamping. A couple more kicks, losing force, and then I drop to all fours in the yellow dirt and retch.

I want suddenly and powerfully for Hil to be here with me.

As she always has.

When I am done, I pull myself slowly to standing. With the tip of my boot I dig out a little sandy soil from the track and kick it over the sick. Then I open the remaining part-bottle of water and take two swigs. The first I swill and spit, the second I swallow.

Then I pull on my pack and keep walking.

‘I wonder,' said Anna, ‘if we might do an exercise.

‘Would you like to do an exercise?'

I shrugged. Anna shrugged back at me.

I looked away again. Anna said nothing.

Eventually I looked back at her. She was watching me, head tilted slightly to one side, quizzical.

I smiled a little, and Anna smiled.

‘Yes?' she said.

‘Okay.'

‘Yes then.'

Anna gestured to the mat on the floor and I lay as she told me to on my back. Start slowly, she said, just kicking the legs slowly, one by one, keep the legs straight, feeling the contact with the heels.

Then add the arms, not too fast, up in the air then down by your side, right arm with left leg, left arm with right leg, thumpity thump.

Thump. I stopped.

‘Keep going,' said Anna. ‘Just do it at your own pace.'

‘I don't like it.'

‘It's just unusual,' she said. ‘Try making a rhythm.'

I didn't move.

‘Why don't you try it again?' said Anna, looking down at me where I lay.

‘Because it's stupid. Because it feels stupid.'

‘Just your legs, then. Try kicking your legs again slowly, and say “stupid”. Say “stupid” while you kick.'

‘Stupid.' Thump. ‘Stupid.' Thump. ‘Stupid. There, are you happy now?' Thump.

‘Don't stop. Keep going. Why do you ask?'

‘Well, I'm doing what you want, aren't I?' Thump.

‘I wouldn't say you were putting your heart into it, no.'

‘Then stop looking at me. I can't do it while you're looking at me.' Thump. Thump. Slowly. Thump. ‘It's bad enough having everyone here looking at me all the time. Now I have to put up with you staring at me too.'

‘What do you have to put up with?'

‘You. Looking at me. Judging me.'

‘What makes you think I'm judging you? Why don't you lie down again, Jess. Keep going. Don't stop. In what way do you think I'm judging you?'

‘The same way as everyone else. I'm not doing this any more.'

I sat up.

‘It's up to you.' Anna stepped away from the mat as I pulled myself to standing. She walked to her chair and sat down. ‘I am very sure though, Jess, that I am not judging you.' Her voice was light and cool. ‘Perhaps,' she shrugged slightly, ‘it is you who's doing the judging.'

A sudden spurt of heat filled my throat and I wheeled abruptly towards her, unchecked. ‘Well of course I bloody am,' I had raised my voice. ‘Sigmund fucking Freud! Tell me something I don't know already!' Almost shouting. ‘I'm sorry,' I said quickly, ‘I didn't mean—' Anna sat very still. An expression crossed her face that might have been hurt, or just surprise.

‘I do exist, you know, Jess,' she said at last in what seemed to me a small tight voice. ‘I'm not a figment of your imagination. I am actually here.'

There was a knock on the door. Anna rose and walked without looking at me to open it. From behind me I heard Viv's voice, then Anna's.

‘Excuse me Jess,' said Anna. I swivelled in my chair and she turned to me with the door still ajar. ‘I must move my car, I'm sorry.'

She seemed to be away a long time. The room was thick around me. When at last she returned she apologised again and sat down, regarded me, head tilted slightly. ‘Well then,' she said.

‘I thought you'd gone,' I said. And then I was crying.

I felt as if I was breaking in two. I felt that my sobs, which rose quickly into a series of gasping wails, would blast me apart, a burning river bisecting my lungs. I was curled now in my chair opposite her, face streaming with tears and snot. I could barely breathe. I must slow. I can't breathe. I looked at Anna. She was looking at me.

She said, ‘Jess—'

I cut her off. I could feel the panic rising with my voice, high and windy. I said, ‘Will you hold me? Can you hold me? I need to be held.'

‘Jess,' she said. ‘I want you to do something.' She was talking very calmly and she had not moved. ‘I want you to keep looking at me. Look back here, Jess. That's right. I want you to keep looking at me, and I want you to breathe. Just for a minute. Feel your arms and legs. Jess? Come back to my eyes, Jess.'

She does not want me.

I felt myself start streaming out through the back of my head, as if a cord that had been there all the time had at last inevitably been pulled, and I was falling backwards, toppling over and over from the force of the rebuff.

‘Jess, look at me.' Anna's voice in the distance was steady. ‘I want you to look at me.'

Instead I grappled my way out of the chair, making clumsy flailing movements with my arms and backing away from her.

It was only then that she stood. For a moment she looked old; not beautiful; helpless. She held her hands in front of her, palms open and upturned as if to show that she meant no harm.

‘Jess,' she said again, and took a small step closer, stretched her arms slightly towards me. I only saw this later, this movement, when I thought back over what had happened. At the time all I felt was the great surging fright, a kind of vertigo, and some other knowledge that I could not yet name.

‘Stay away from me,' I said, ‘don't come near. I have to, you have to, I—' The room is too small. There is no room. ‘I have to run.'

She didn't say anything then. She stood as she was, quite close, arms now loosely by her sides and she looked at me, neither harsh nor soft. She looked at me, and I at her, and after a long moment, still without taking her eyes from mine, she lowered her head, the shadow of a nod, and I wheeled away from her then, didn't look back, yanked open the door and ran from her down the corridor, through the glass-panelled doors, into the car park and down the gravel driveway. I ran because I had nowhere to go and because once I had started I had to keep running.

I was half way up my hill before I stopped. I sank on to a grassy hummock; the soil around me was pale and dry; my heart was thudding. After a while, when it settled, I got up and began to make my way back down the path, slow at first, then gathering pace until I arrived at the front gates at a lope. I stopped on the driveway to regain my breath, and walked the last fifty metres to the back door more slowly, then along the corridor to her room.

She was sitting in her chair, waiting. She looked up when she heard me, and I crossed the room and sat on the floor beside her, arms around my knees, pressing the side of my body into her leg, her flank. She rested the back of her hand, her loosely curled fingers, briefly against my cheek. After a moment I let my head drop on to her lap, and she stroked my hair slowly from my face and kept stroking, and neither of us spoke.

*

The phone starts ringing again. I reach into the pack and check the number before answering.

‘Hello Laura.'

‘Jessica, I'm sorry, I've been foolish—'

‘No you—'

‘Yes, I have. I want to apologise. I've been pushy and intrusive and unforgivably insensitive.'

‘I don't—'

‘No, hear me out, Jessica, really. Viv at the nursing home told me you were taking some time alone to think, and I just blundered in anyway because it suited me. My husband ripped into me this afternoon and he was right. He was! And thank god I've got him. I'm afraid I haven't coped well with what's been happening with Hugh—and I know, how can I be expected to, it's been a stressful time, etcetera etcetera, I know all that—but really, sometimes I just go on and on and make things worse, and now—'

‘Laura, can you just shut up a minute?'

She halts abruptly, then starts up again. ‘See, I'm doing it again. I—'

‘Laura, I'm not offended. I don't feel intruded upon. You made a kind offer. Yes, you're talking very fast. No, I don't think you're unforgivably insensitive. No, I don't think I'm doing any better with my own life. In fact, compared with you I'm a disaster. You're just trying to look after your children, you're doing your best.'

She is quiet for a while and when she speaks again her voice is slower.

‘The truth is Jessica that neither of my children want me anywhere near them.'

‘Well I'm sure—'

‘My daughter's heading back to London this week, and Hugh wouldn't even come with us. He's had them move him to a rehab place in Sydney, and as soon as he's fit he says he's going back to Melbourne. He told me to come home. Dad's going down to see him tomorrow, but Hugh doesn't even want me to come. That's how good a mother I've been.'

‘Well,' I say at last. ‘You seem like a nice mother to me.'

‘Yes.' Dismissive. ‘Jessica,' she says after a pause. ‘Your daughter—I'm sorry, they said you had a little girl—you can tell me to stop.'

‘Lily.'

‘You know, I wasn't being rash about staying here, about the flat. I'm a quick judge of character and I'm usually right. It really is beautiful here, we're on the river. You could bring her. You could stay for as long as you liked. I wouldn't, you know, be a bother.'

I have a sudden vision of a room among trees on a river bend, a wall of glass and stippled light.

‘Laura, I—thank-you. Right now though I really need to—' ‘You don't have to answer. I just want you to know it's there.'

‘I have to talk to my husband.'

‘Yes of course. And your daughter, you must get back to your daughter.' She pauses. ‘Jessica,' she says, ‘you will get back to your daughter, won't you?'

In the silence after her question I watch a small brown bird on the side of the road beat its wings against the dry ground, producing a halo of yellow dust in which it continues to dip and flap as if hoping for water. Suddenly I want to tell her what a failure I've been. How I have let down my daughter, my precious child, whose very existence portends loss. How I have married a man I can neither like nor leave. I want to tell her everything. To wrap myself in her pure imperfect love and seek absolution.

‘Perhaps we could visit,' I say at last. ‘Perhaps—'

But the phone has died. I push it back deep into the bag and continue
.

Dear mummy,
writes Lily
, Nancy starfish should make friends with the
Nuthing.

A
car is coming. Through the thudding of blood in my ears the new sound accumulates, takes shape.