Too Close to Home (20 page)

OUTSIDE THE COURTROOM, MATT, Lisa and Lucas stand in the warmth of the winter sun. It's not yet peak hour but there's already traffic banking up, cars inching forward only to be stopped by the red lights at each corner, their horns a constant noise in the background. There's also construction opposite, the drill of jackhammers and the thud of metal on metal loud enough to make it necessary to shout.

Lisa looks exhausted. Whatever energy she'd summoned for the meeting with the lawyer and then the hearing has gone. She has collapsed, small and thin in Freya's jacket, her hands only just visible at the bottom of the sleeves. Her hair has come loose and it hangs lank to her shoulders. Her make-up has long since worn off, leaving her skin dry and old.

Matt suggests they go somewhere quieter, wanting a drink more than anything else, but knowing it isn't possible. He's putting off returning home. He looks at Lucas standing opposite him, scratching at a sore on his arm, eyes downcast, and he doesn't know what he was thinking in suggesting that he could come and stay.

‘You must be hungry,' he says to the boy.

Lucas shakes his head. ‘They fed me,' he eventually mumbles, but Matt doesn't really catch the words, he just guesses them.

‘There's a place around the corner.' He turns to Lisa for confirmation and she nods, probably also failing to hear what's being said and too numb to do anything other than comply.

It's a cafe near his work, one he goes to occasionally when he wants to get out of the office. The owner raises a hand in greeting as he enters, telling them food service is finished, but they can have whatever sandwiches are left.

Lucas fidgets, jiggling his leg up and down and keeping his eyes fixed on the table as he asks the waiter for a Coke. There is none. He looks confused, and Matt realises it's the first time he's seen any expression on the boy's face.
Of course they wouldn't have Coke. Not in a place like this.
Lucas hasn't said a word but Matt knows this is what he's thinking as he runs his finger down the menu and then orders a smoothie, only to be told that the blender has been packed up and put away. He can have a juice, the waiter suggests. Or a mineral water?

‘An orange juice,' Lucas mumbles, and Matt can only pray the waiter won't ask him if he wants the lightly carbonated blood orange that they serve.

But she doesn't. ‘Anything to eat?'

He shakes his head, muttering something under his breath as he taps at the edge of the table. The waiter looks irritated and Matt just suggests she bring over a couple of sandwiches – whatever is left.

Lisa reaches across the table for Lucas' forearm. Her
knuckles are raw and her fingernails bitten down to the quick.

‘Listen to me,' she urges her son, and there is some thing in the timbre of her voice, the complete emptiness in her being that stops him from doing what he was about to do – pull away and tell her to ‘lay off of me'.

Instead he stays still, head hanging low, lank hair covering his pale, pimply face.

‘You understood what the lawyer said?'

He doesn't move. Lisa takes her other hand and places it under his chin, lifting his gaze so that he's forced to look at her. There is both pain and shame there, his eyes blinking rapidly as he tries to glance away and she continues to keep him stilled.

He sniffs loudly, and then he nods. ‘I don't want to go back there,' he tells her, his voice a whisper in the quiet of the deserted cafe. The sob, when it eventually comes, is loud.

Matt looks away, an interloper.

He remembers sitting with Lisa in her house only a few months ago, turning the pages of that photo album, the images of Lucas as a small child – gap-toothed grin, freckles, bikes and toys – so at odds with the young man he has become. In the dim overhead light, he had seen the love on Lisa's face as she had shown him the pictures, and he had recognised that joy. The warmth he feels at any thought of Ella is there, strong, sustaining and primal. Yet, there is always the curl of potential pain beyond imagining inherent in any love for your child. Your light and your vulnerability, the sweetness and its shadow.

He hadn't wanted to look at Lisa in court as the prosecution lawyer opposed bail, describing the attack on the old woman, the brutality of the blows in detail. Matt had winced involuntarily, keeping his gaze on the judge, and not on Lucas, who sat, eyes fixed on the ground, nor on Lisa, who flinched at the lawyer's words, and then tried so hard to lift her head in an attempt to demonstrate that she believed in her son.

Seeing Lisa now is almost too much to bear.

She wipes Lucas' tears with a paper serviette and tells him that he has to stay with her until the hearing. ‘You cannot run off.' She is still holding his chin in her palm. ‘You must understand this. I'll be getting a mortgage on the house and we will lose it if you disappear.'

Lucas remains silent. And then he looks at Matt, his eyes cloudy, bloodshot. He clears his throat and when he speaks, his words are clearer, louder than any of them had expected. ‘He was the one who coughed up the bail.'

Matt is about to reply but Lisa interrupts him. ‘I'm paying him back.'

‘Why'd you do that?' Lucas hasn't shifted his gaze from Matt, who twitches, uncomfortable. ‘Are you her boyfriend?' He scratches at his cheek, still staring at him as he does so.

Matt shakes his head. ‘I knew your mum years ago. I wanted to help.'

The waiter puts a plate of sandwiches down and Lucas picks one up without looking at it, shovelling most of it into his mouth in one bite. He chews slowly, his mouth open, his eyes remaining fixed on Matt.

‘You turn up a few months ago, and then here you are again.' He is shaking his head now, turning his gaze back to Lisa, who ignores him.

‘Listen.' Her voice is firm, despite the strain of exhaustion. ‘You have to do as they say until the case is heard. We'll be staying with Matt and his –' Lisa searches for the word, eventually settling on ‘wife'. She keeps her hand on his. ‘And then we'll have to find a place to rent. You must stay under my care. You must report to the police each week. It's important.' Her voice cracks now, and Matt can see she is crying. It is tears of frustration and exhaustion, and she wipes at them, not wanting anything to distract from the urgency of her words.

Lucas sniffs again, rubbing his nose with the back of his hand, and then shielding his eyes from her gaze. His fingernails are dirty, and there is a homemade tattoo on his wrist, a star, inked in blue, the edges blurred.

It takes a moment before Matt realises that Lucas is also crying. There's only a slight shudder that gives him away, his thin shoulders shaking beneath his T-shirt. He must be cold, and Matt reaches for his own jacket, draping it over his frame so that it falls lightly, aware that any heaviness of touch could tip the balance again, with Lucas as liable to sneer with anger in the next instant as to continue sobbing.

Lisa hands him another paper napkin and he blows his nose loudly.

‘I don't want to go back there,' he repeats, still sniffing. ‘I can't.'

She just moves her chair and holds him, pulling him in as close as she can so that his head rests on her shoulder and she can rock him gently, back and forth, back
and forth, while the waiters continue packing up the cafe behind them.

 

Freya is not there when they get home. She has left a note saying Ella is at Shane's and she is out. As he reads it, he realises he forgot to call her as he had promised he would.

The kitchen is clean. All the dishes put away, the piles of paper on the table ordered, the floor swept. Everything is quiet. He looks around him, seeing his domestic life as an outsider, and he is overwhelmed by the sense of having walked into a place that is not his, a home that belongs to someone he doesn't know. Ella's drawings are stuck to the fridge, along with invitations and a calendar. There are dates marked, events he went to but can barely remember.

He can smell something sweet, delicate and floral and he suddenly notices the tall green vase of jonquils and daffodils on the mantelpiece above the fireplace. A chaos of brilliant yellow and creamy white, ruffled petals curling in and out of each other. He doesn't remember Freya buying them or putting them there, but he can only assume it was some time ago because a few of the flowers have begun to die, their edges turning up, crinkled and brown.

He looks at her coat slung over the back of a chair and touches the red wool, lifting the fabric to his face and breathing in the scent of her skin. He misses her. She has the ability to cut to the heart of the matter, he thinks, and this is what he loves and needs.

As he sits at the table to phone her, he sees Ella's writing scrawled across a piece of paper. The words are in
purple Texta, the letters badly formed, and the spelling terrible. He smiles to himself. ‘My Life,' she has written, followed by a list:

17: finish skool

18, 19: traval round the world

20, 21, 22, 23, 24, 25: university (He can only presume Freya helped her spell that one.)

25: bekom a vet in the country (Again, there must have been help.)

27: Marrie. 2 kids – Jasper and Ash

28: Rite a book

The rest.

His eyes smart and he wipes at them before folding up the paper and putting it in his pocket.

There's no answer on Freya's phone so he leaves a message, apologising for having failed to let her know what's going on. But Lucas was given bail, he says, which is good for him, and they are all home now. ‘Thank you,' he says, and he means it. ‘I know it can't be easy. But it won't be forever.'

And then, as he hangs up, he wonders at the stupidity of his words.

Lucas is his son. Lisa has told him this, although he has not yet told Freya, and nor has Lisa told the truth to Lucas.

‘I want to get through this first,' she'd said on the way to court.

He hadn't been surprised when she'd confessed. Sitting next to her on the train, both of them pressed close on the vinyl bench, she'd apologised for not being forthcoming immediately.

‘I needed to think,' she explained. ‘He believes his father is dead and I didn't know who you were or what you wanted.' She looked at him then, her gaze clear and direct, and again he was struck by the disconcerting blend of the apologetic and the steel within her. ‘But you're still you.' She smiled slightly, shaking her head as she did so. ‘And he's lucky to have you in whatever way this all works out.'

Staring out the window, Matt didn't even see the rush of trees and sky and backyard fences before they plunged into the blackness of the tunnel.

Of course he was the boy's father. She wouldn't have come and asked for help if he wasn't. And he had looked at the darkness until they emerged into the flickering light of the station, not knowing how he was going to incorporate this into his being, to adjust and shift his idea of who he was. He only knew he had to do it before he could face telling Freya.

FROM FRANK'S BEDROOM WINDOW, you can see out across the tangle of railway lines and beyond that, the jagged city skyline. The lights are on in the office blocks, a glowing grid of gold and soft orange sequinned against the dusty darkness, with flashes of coloured neon, loud and chaotic swirls that sparkle and dance, the cancan dancers of the night.

Freya had once organised drinks for Matt's birthday at the top of the Summit, a restaurant and bar that revolved, slow like a giant sleepwalker, with windows looking over the great stretch of city, the curve of the harbour and then out to the expensive waterfront suburbs with houses that cantilevered down to small secret bays where yachts bobbed in the inky water. Freya had felt ill when she'd looked down, the slow turn wrong in something as solid as a skyscraper. She had told Matt it felt like watching a movie where the camera tracked in and zoomed out at the same time, and he'd put his arm around her waist, the warmth of him steadying her against the strangeness of the still motion.

She feels the same slight nausea now as she stares at the lights, Frank lying behind her.

‘I once thought about writing a play …' she says, and he moves a little closer on the bed. ‘Not really a play, more a performance piece. Every building in the city would have its lights out. And then just one window would be illuminated with action, silhouettes. Maybe the performers would be arguing, kissing, saying farewell. The audience would watch their moment until it dimmed. Then another window would light up, and we would see a new thread of the story – and then another. Characters could interact, moving from one tableau to the next – and if you want words, you could have an LED sign – something like a silent movie. Just brief exclamations of dialogue.'

He kisses her shoulder and tells her it sounds good. ‘You should do it. Try to sell the idea to a festival with me as director.'

His flat is a small studio. The front door opens onto a single room with a kitchenette in one corner and the bed under the window. There is also a couch, covered in what is meant to be leather but could well be vinyl, and a large flatscreen TV, the kind that Ella would love. A few shirts, trousers and one good jacket hang in the built-ins with the rest of his clothes folded in drawers underneath. He has also stacked the two pictures that once decorated the room – ‘the art collection' he called it – in the wardrobe, because the images (a field of sunflowers and a country cottage) depressed him. ‘I can see why,' Freya had agreed, when he had held them up for her viewing. ‘The hook on the wall is infinitely superior.'

The only other room is a bathroom, even smaller than the kitchenette. It fits just a shower and a toilet, lit
by a buzzing fluorescent light that bleeds a harsh yellow glow.

The first night she had stayed she hadn't wanted to meet her own eyes, round and scared, watching her watch herself. Opening the mirrored cabinet, she had seen the little he had with him there on display: toothpaste, razor, shaving cream, and moisturiser.

‘The selling point is the view,' he had told her. ‘And location, location, location.'

She had smiled. ‘Come on. I bet you love living like this. You have nothing. No one to worry about. Just you. Sounds like heaven to me.' And in that moment it did.

It was a life she hadn't known since shortly after Ella had turned one, when she had gone away on a writer's retreat for a week. Returning to a time when there was no one to look after but herself had seemed extraordinary, and on the first morning she had relished in the fact that she could just get up, shower, make her own breakfast and start writing. It was so very simple.

But by evening she had missed them both, calling Matt and saying she thought she would come home.

‘Don't,' he had encouraged her. ‘Enjoy it. We're not going anywhere.'

She wonders now how much Frank misses Marianne and his daughter.

Turning to face him, the room lit by the soft glow of the city lights, she asks him what he is going to do when the play is up and running.

‘Will you go back? To Melbourne?'

He sits up, the sheet only just covering his waist, the fine hairs on his thighs soft against her legs. He rubs his calf against her shin, his hand tracing the smooth line of
her hip as he tells her he doesn't know. His smile is sad. ‘I mean, how do you walk out on your child?'

How do you?

Freya's eyes sting and she closes them.

On the evening Matt brought Lucas and Lisa home, Freya was here at Frank's place. She had called him, saying she wanted to come over.

Opening the door to her, he had taken her face in his hands, his lips on her mouth, breathing each other in, hesitant and then rushed, her hands lifting his shirt, feeling the flat line of his stomach, the ridge of his pelvis – and then he had pulled back.

He asked her what she expected from him and she was surprised by the directness of his question.

‘I don't know,' she had answered honestly. ‘Probably just what you offered – an escape.'

‘Because I can't be the one that you are walking away to. I can't be the answer.'

Wanting only the grind of his body next to hers, his mouth covering her, she had told him she wasn't looking for an answer. ‘I'm running away for a while,' she said. ‘That's all.'

But she wanted to be able to go back. That was the truth of it, and whether that was possible was something she simply didn't know, and also not as much to do with Frank as she had feared. Or maybe it was? In any event, it was too late. She'd crossed the line and then kept right on walking.

She'd caught a taxi home at two am, her skin rubbed raw and fine, taut across her bones, too tender to touch. She'd showered again, scrubbing herself with an astringent soap, and washing her hair, so that it hung wet and
cool down her back, the dampness waking Matt when she had slipped into bed next to him.

Where had she been?

Telling a lie was easy. He wasn't the jealous type.

This time she has told him rehearsals will go late. There's a small room out the back of the theatre and she may just stay there. It's not a good lie. No one ever wants writers at a rehearsal, and no theatre can afford a room out the back to sleep in. But again, he didn't question her.

In the last few days, they haven't seen much of each other at all. He gets up early for work and is home late, leaving her alone with Lucas and Lisa.

‘I have to write,' she told them both on the first morning, hoping they would understand she didn't want to be disturbed once Ella had gone to school. ‘Help yourself to food, and whatever you need.'

When she came into the house from her workroom for lunch, Lisa was in the kitchen calling real estate agents, Lucas lying on the lounge, headphones in, the faint buzz of heavy metal audible, and an empty Domino's Pizza box on the floor next to him.

‘Any luck?' she asked.

Lisa shook her head, pressing the receiver closer to her ear as her call was answered, a pen in her hand to write down open inspection times.

After school, Ella asked when she would get her room back. ‘I don't like him,' she complained. ‘He stinks worse than Shane's car, and he never talks.'

‘He'll be gone soon,' Freya promised.

She took Ella out for the afternoon, wanting to avoid home. They wandered around a shopping centre, buying food under the harsh glare of the low lighting, finishing
the expedition up with a plastic carton of cold sushi, the fish curled and dry at the edges.

Over dinner, Lucas sat opposite her, headphones still in, eyes fixed on the bowl as he scooped up forkfuls of risotto.

‘Turn the iPod off.' Lisa's voice was tired.

It was all right, Freya told her, and it was, because she didn't want to have to converse with him and at least the headphones removed any need to try. But he did as Lisa asked, glowering at her as he unplugged each ear.

‘Happy?'

A few nights later she rang Frank again.

‘You have no idea how good this emptiness is,' she told him when he apologised once more for the sparse apartment. She grinned as he handed her a glass of wine, ready to down it in one long thirsty gulp.

But now, as she lies here next to him in bed, the relief of having run has faded again, and she feels only that strange sense of still motion.

‘Let's go for a walk,' she suggests. She waves her hand to the window. ‘Find a bar, have a drink, not go to sleep.'

He looks at her and grins. ‘It's cold out there.'

She is already up, legs swung out of the bed covers, and she stands awkward in her nakedness, to face him. ‘Just for a little while?'

He relents, groaning as he tries to find his clothes among the tangle of bedding, and then leans over to kiss her on her neck. ‘Only if you promise to come back.'

She has already told him she can stay all night, and she nods, but the truth is, the longer she stays here, the more she wants to go home.

Outside, there is a sharpness in the air, the harsh chill of midwinter, and they walk close, not daring to put their arms around each other for risk of being seen, but still wanting that warmth and a sense of the connection they had because now, out in the world, it has only stretched further, fine, and ready to snap.

An old drunk sits in the doorway of one of the deserted warehouses, his body slumped forward, and a few metres further up, a cluster of younger men huddle together, heads bent close, furious dealing under way. She doesn't want to walk in that direction. There is a sense of menace in the air and it hovers, ready to smear itself across her skin.

Matt always tells her she is too cautious, quick to assume the worst motives in strangers. And he is right – whenever she sees anyone in an unlit doorway or at the end of a laneway, her immediate response is to avoid.

‘It's different for men,' she says. ‘You have no idea what it's like to walk the streets as a woman.'

She thinks about Lucas, living in the tunnel that led from Central to the university, sleeping on a worn blanket in clothes that smelt of sweat and beer and cigarettes.

She'd asked Matt if Lucas was using. Was that the problem? Was that why he tried to rob the old woman, beating her up when he found she had nothing?

Matt didn't know.

Was there a mental illness? She'd heard Lucas talking to himself, his eyes cloudy, and she would be unsure whether it was something he was listening to – his
earphones were always in – or an imagined conversation, springing from some delusion.

‘I don't want him here,' she'd hissed in the middle of the night, knowing how ugly her words were but unable to stop them. ‘I'm sorry for Lisa, it's terrible. But I don't want him here.'

Matt had confessed that he didn't feel great about it either. ‘But what do you do? I offered to help and I can't withdraw it now. I'm sure they'll find somewhere soon.'

She leads Frank to the bar where she met Mikhala all those months ago. It's a Friday night, so it's crowded, the air thick with talk and laughter, alcohol, and hovering above it all, sex. Women lean in close to men, their lips scarlet, their eyes alive. Men sniff them out, pressing closer, breathing them in. Freya stands at the door, taking it all in. Too much, she thinks, but she doesn't want to return to the empty stillness of Frank's room. Not yet.

She finds a table at the back of the bar while Frank gets a drink. When he returns, pressing through the crowd, she's dismayed to see that he is not alone.

‘Look who I discovered,' he tells her, his face impassive.

Anna leans forward, crushing Freya in her hold. ‘It's so good to see you. I feel like it's been too long and I don't know why.'

She wears a simple black wool dress and tight fitting black boots, the heels making her almost as tall as Freya. Her dark hair is ruffled and her huge green eyes glint in the light.

She had to go to an opening of a film around the corner – ‘it was bloody awful' – and then a few of them
came back here for a drink. ‘What are you two doing out together so late?' She asks the question with no hint of knowledge, no suspicion of having stumbled upon anything illicit.

Freya tells her she wanted to get out of the house. She explains briefly about Lisa and Lucas, trying to make light of the impossibility of the situation. ‘So I dragged Frank out of his warm bed and told him to come and meet me. We only just got here.'

Anna sympathises. ‘You can come and stay with us,' she suggests. ‘You and Ella, if it goes on. I mean let Matt deal with it.' Then she leans a little closer. ‘Did I tell you my good news?'

Freya knows it's the pregnancy, but she feigns ignorance.

‘I've only just started telling people as it's very early, and I feel incredibly nervous and strange.'

They have to move in close to hear.

‘So promise you'll keep quiet. I haven't been making it public.' She puts quotation marks around the last word, looking pained as she does so.