Girl falling, p.13
Girl Falling, page 13
‘You’re a biologist,’ I said, blinking. And then, ‘What are you going to do?’
‘I’m twenty-seven. I’m not getting any younger. I don’t want to be like my parents. I’d rather raise my child on my own while I have the energy for it. I don’t want to be as old as my mother was when she had Brianna.’
‘What about your PhD?’
Daphne looked down before speaking. ‘I’m failing my PhD.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘I don’t want to talk about that. It isn’t important.’
‘But –’
‘It doesn’t matter, Finn.’
‘What will you do?’
‘It’ll be fine.’ She squeezed my hand. ‘I want someone to love me with everything they’ve got. It will be a fresh start. And I’m going to need your help. Lots of it.’
I was a part of her plan. I’d be expected to step up, to be the involved friend.
‘So, you’d want to stay here? Not go back to Sydney?’
‘I kind of burned my bridges there.’
‘How?’
The skin under her eyes was blue, and for the first time I noticed how tired she looked. She took a deep breath. ‘Some stuff went missing from the house, and my housemates blamed me. They also happen to be my only friends in Sydney.’ She shrugged. ‘Fuck ’em.’
‘What? When did that happen?’ Daphne had been in Indra for over three months, and she’d never said anything about fighting with her Sydney friends.
‘It’s the real reason I came back.’
A beat of silence passed between us; I was unsure what to say next.
Daphne shrugged again. ‘I may have borrowed a few things and forgotten to return them.’
I hadn’t been paying enough attention. I’d been busy falling in love with Magdu. I’d assumed Daphne was crushing her PhD the way she had all her other studies. And she had so many friends from her undergraduate days, I’d imagined a busload of them, sophisticated and worldly types, crowding into her share house, cheering her on. But then, other people didn’t always see Daphne like I did. She could fall out with people pretty spectacularly, I knew. For some, she was a bit intense, interested in things they didn’t understand, that made them feel stupid. And people could be funny about their stuff.
We lay on the bed I’d had since I was little; a pattering rain started up outside. Daphne snuggled into the crook of my arm. I took a deep breath. She looked fragile, like she might blow away.
I wanted to float away from this room and my problems and be wherever Magdu was. I didn’t believe in heaven, but maybe somewhere Magdu was lying on her couch, in the last bit of golden sunlight, reading a book she enjoyed, Celtic symbols on the cover.
‘What are you thinking?’ Daphne asked, voice low.
‘I’m sorry I’ve had my phone off,’ I said.
‘You’ve always been terrible with your phone.’
Daphne was going to have a baby. She was going to make a new person.
‘I’m really sorry that I haven’t been there for you,’ I said.
A moment of hesitation. A car drove by outside, the room lit up by its headlights. ‘Oh, Finn.’ She put her hand in mine and squeezed. ‘I’ll forgive you for anything. You know that.’
It was true. It had been true our whole friendship.
Daphne tucked her hands up into her jumper sleeves. ‘So what have you been doing, other than avoiding me?’
‘I went to the dentist.’ I didn’t want to tell her that Mum had made an appointment with Jo for me, that I would be seeing her in less than ten hours.
Daphne laughed. ‘You are so fucking weird.’
I couldn’t bring myself to tell her about seeing Magdu’s body. The thought of it made me start crying. Daphne held me to her chest, let me cry it out.
We fell quiet. I heard something that might’ve been Mum moving around or might’ve been the rain.
‘Can I stay here?’ Daphne asked softly.
My tongue felt fat inside my mouth. I knew I didn’t want her to stay but didn’t know how to say it in a way that wouldn’t hurt her feelings.
Daphne stood up from the bed, and I knew my silence had been an answer in itself.
‘Forget it.’ Daphne tossed her hair behind her shoulder. ‘You’ll be snoring and I’ll be wide awake. I’m going to go for a drive instead.’
I reached for her hand from where I sat on the bed. ‘Congratulations, Daphne. I mean it. You’re going to be an amazing mother.’
The room seemed to pitch and tilt. And then she was gone. The front door creaked as she saw herself out.
I pulled on socks and shoes and a rain jacket and crept out into the hall. Spencer was sleeping in his bed in the kitchen. I was who I was because of Daphne. I owed her, and I always would. She would never leave me.
‘Hey, buddy, good boy,’ I said, reaching for the lead we kept on a hook by the fridge.
Spencer staggered to his feet, so eager to be standing that my heart lurched a little. I thought of Magdu. Of her body lying on a cold steel table at the hospital.
‘I’ll bet Mum hasn’t walked you all day, huh?’ I whispered.
He ducked his head. It had been a strange few days, he seemed to say, and my mother was doing her best.
How’d you end up here, buddy? I would ask him sometimes, when we were alone. Golden retrievers were a rich person’s dog. I was almost sorry for him that he’d got stuck with us.
I slipped the key I’d left on the hallstand into my pocket, clipped on Spencer’s lead and we stepped out the door.
Outside, it was cold and drizzly.
The cold was good. Clean. You couldn’t smell anything when you breathed in. The town oozed out below us as we lurched up the hill, some lights twinkling, smoke rising from the chimneys. Everything dripped with moisture. I felt dampness seeping into my jacket, near my neck. For a moment, I pulsed with shame to think of Daphne, of how she must be feeling.
I’d been self-absorbed, had missed so much that was going on with her. I had only remembered at the last minute to congratulate her on the baby.
Spencer sniffed at a boundary fence.
Mum had brought him home after Suze died. It was Suze who’d wanted a dog, who’d actively campaigned for one. Mum had relented, had organised to pick up a puppy from a friend who had just found out they had to move overseas for her husband’s new job – but she hadn’t told Suze yet. Maybe Suze’s diary entries would have been different if she’d known. Mum brought the puppy home and it was as if my sister had been replaced.
Damp seeped through my jacket. I couldn’t stop thinking about what Daphne knew, what she could tell the police if she wanted to. The thought poured mortar into my bones.
‘Maybe we should go home, boy?’
Spencer looked at me, panting, agreeable.
We didn’t see a single soul on the way back. I let Spencer off the lead in the hall and went to my bedroom. I took off my rain jacket and pants and crawled into bed in my jumper and underwear.
I thought about my upcoming appointment with Jo. I remembered long conversations, punctuated by her nodding silences. The thought of it should have kept me awake, but the familiar, sticky heaviness came over me and I fell asleep. I dreamed of Magdu falling over and over, a feeling in my body like the rumble setting in the PlayStation handset Suze had got for her tenth birthday. And I dreamed of the moth plant, of a blunt blade slicing through a stem, severing it from the ground.
‘Hello, Finn,’ Jo said when she buzzed me in.
There was a cafe in the arcade that hadn’t been there when I was a teenager. Laughing conversations rang down the tiled space, people enjoying their late Saturday morning coffee.
Jo looked the same as I remembered, just a few more lines around her eyes. ‘Come on in.’
I was hit by the familiar smell of essential oil and rising damp. Like no time had passed.
I followed Jo into her room.
‘Have a seat,’ she said, gesturing to an armchair that could have been the same one I sat in when I was a teenager, though it looked too new and clean.
‘So, it’s been a little while,’ she said. ‘How are you?’
This was it. We were starting. ‘My girlfriend died – Magdu.’ A choked sob. ‘On Wednesday.’
‘Can you tell me about it?’
‘We were rock-climbing. There was an accident.’
I assumed she’d heard at least some of the details from Mum. We’d kept the TV and radio off and we never got the paper, but it had probably been on the news as well.
What had happened on the cliff, how I’d been trapped on a ledge when Magdu fell, all of it tumbled out in a sick rush. Jo asked occasional questions, probing into what I’d thought, how I’d felt.
‘Sounds like you’re still in shock, Finn,’ she said softly.
Being here made me think of Suze, and I struggled to hold on to the story Daphne had given me.
When I told Jo that the police suspected suicide but I knew Magdu would never do that, she kept her face still. I told her about Magdu’s mother coming to the house. Her cool, impassive face. A shaking hand held to her throat.
Jo leaned in. ‘That would have been extremely confronting.’
I was sobbing again. ‘The stupid thing is I wanted her to like me.’ I took in a ragged breath. ‘I wanted her to love me.’
‘That makes sense.’ When I didn’t reply she kept talking. ‘Can I ask how long you and Magdu had been dating?’
‘I was in love with her. I wanted to marry her,’ I blurted out. But that wasn’t the question she’d asked. ‘About six months,’ I said.
‘Why do you think you were so certain about wanting to marry her?’
It had been one of the few things in my life I’d been sure of, but I didn’t know how to explain it to Jo.
‘Magdu didn’t need me.’ I looked at Jo. ‘She wanted me.’ I looked down at the carpet. ‘She made it possible for me to be a better person.’
‘And now the police say they think it could be suicide?’ Jo said, her voice steady. ‘That must be very difficult for you.’
‘At first they were saying we were negligent.’ I squeezed my right hand with my left, tight. ‘But this is worse.’ I looked at her. ‘Magdu wouldn’t hurt herself; I know it.’
Jo waited for more.
I crossed my arms. Let her wait.
Rain beat on the roof, and there was a trickling sound. Water rushing down a pipe.
‘I read that Daphne was there with you,’ Jo said eventually, her deep voice catching a little as she said the words.
‘Yes. She came over last night – well, this morning, really. Very early. She told me she’s pregnant.’ A thought solidified as I said the words. ‘Which means she was pregnant when we went out on the climb.’
Some girls we went to high school with had kids, but I’d assumed we were too young. Even if it wasn’t planned, Daphne would never have an abortion, I knew. She believed in fate. Sometimes I thought that she had so much choice, she enjoyed letting the universe make choices for her. Letting the universe make choices for both of us.
Daphne would expect me to be something to her child. Parenthood was hard work and Daphne wouldn’t like that. She would grow frustrated. I could picture her saying, Here, before shoving the baby into my arms and walking out the door. There’d been a point in the first site survey she’d done for her honours year where I’d had to come and finish for her, bending over thousands of tiny shoots, placing tags and measuring until my back ached. When things come easily to you, I suppose you never get used to doing the hard and boring work. Maybe that had been the problem with her PhD, too.
‘So, you still see a lot of her?’ Jo asked.
‘She’s my best friend. Not that I deserve her.’
‘I’ve often had the sense that you feel you owe Daphne a debt. Is that fair to say?’
I took a breath. How did she know that?
She looked at me. ‘You may remember that we talked about Daphne quite a lot in the sessions after your sister died.’
I laughed, despite myself. We had talked about Daphne a lot.
Jo plucked a notebook from between the chair cushion and the armrest. She found a page that she’d bookmarked and read aloud: ‘I feel like I’m a black hole. I suck people in and then they disappear.’ She looked up at me. ‘What do you think now, hearing that?’
After a long pause, I said, ‘I guess I’m supposed to feel sorry for that kid.’ In that moment, I wanted to tell her that Suze’s death was my fault. But how could I? It was flickering in my mind in a way it hadn’t done for years. The stress of what had happened with Magdu was applying pressure to the ship I had made, that small and perfectly formed object, and its timbers were straining.
When I didn’t say anything more, Jo kept talking. ‘You didn’t deserve to have this happen to you. Nobody would. It hurts, and it will continue hurting, and I don’t want you to think too far into the future. I want you to focus on right now, if possible. Focus on each breath. When it gets to be too much, which it will, I want you to think about what you can smell and hear and taste and touch. Let that be enough for the moment.’
I set my shoulders.
Jo checked her watch. ‘I’m afraid that’s time, Finn. I’m sorry to have to end our session today. I want to acknowledge that this must be difficult. I know you probably don’t want to hear that you’ll get through it, but you will.’
My body flushed with anger. And then fear rippled through me. I was afraid of my own response. And what I couldn’t tell Jo was that maybe I would be arrested. Maybe Daphne had called the police after she left my place, after I hadn’t let her stay, hadn’t been able to give her what she wanted.
I shook my head, rejecting the thought. Daphne wouldn’t do that.
‘You’re right,’ I said.
‘Shall we make another appointment?’
I nodded.
‘I’ll need to take payment now.’
‘Oh. Mum said she would pay.’ I’d never had to pay when I was a teenager; it had all been taken care of before I got there.
‘Unfortunately, I need a card today,’ Jo said. ‘Could your mum pay you back?’
A wave of shame. I was an adult. I should be paying for myself anyway.
Jo’s expression was neutral. I suppose this was part of the job. Getting people to open up and then taking money from them. There should be more distance between the person who might be able to help you and the person who took your card details.
Jo ran my card through her card machine and told me that if I went to my GP, I could get a mental health plan, and then the government would subsidise part of the cost of my visits to her. Great, I thought. Because what people in distress need is to try to get an appointment at the fucking medical centre. I held my breath until the payment cleared.
I returned to my car and drove home, rain hurling itself at the windscreen.
I pictured Magdu’s body under its white sheet. The thought slid neatly between my ribs, blossoming in my gut, expanding to take up all the available space until I couldn’t breathe.
16
Before
I was surprised when Magdu invited me home for Christmas. We were at her place, in her kitchen. It was the last day of August. It was warm for that time of year, and I’d just said as much to Magdu.
‘Finn, I’m going back to Dubai in December, and I want you to come with me,’ she said, not ignoring what I’d said, but like she couldn’t wait to ask.
My heart leaped. Given Magdu’s reaction to seeing her uncle on the street that day – and the way I couldn’t move about her flat if her mother happened to ring, but had to sit silent and still, playing Tetris on my phone until the call was over – I’d thought maybe I would never meet the rest of her family.
‘I know it’s a few months away, but Mom likes to plan early. You might not think that a Muslim country would be a good place to celebrate Christmas, but my mom goes all out. The flat will look like a department store window. And the food is amazing. She makes curries and trifles and bebinca – a huge feast.’
My mother had never really been that interested in Christmas, especially not after Suze died.
‘I mean, we can’t tell them about us,’ Magdu added quickly. ‘Obviously. But you can stay in my room. My mom won’t think twice.’
I managed a smile. I would have to let her down gently. How many thousands of dollars would it end up costing? There was no way I could afford it. But it wasn’t only that. I would have to take time off work, and who knew if my job would still be there when I got back? Magdu was a student; a few months’ holiday a year was part of the deal for her, but it wasn’t for me.
Like she could read my mind, Magdu said, ‘I’ll pay for it, Finn – flights, your passport, everything. It’s not going to be the trip of a lifetime, trust me. The trade-off will be that I won’t feel so guilty for forcing you to sit through all my family stuff.’
This wasn’t paying for takeaway. This was something else.
‘I can’t let you do that, Magdu,’ I said. ‘It’s too much.’
She took me by the arm. ‘Please? I want you to let me do this. It will make me happy.’ She squeezed my elbow. ‘You don’t have to answer now, but think about it. Mom doesn’t know yet that you’re moving in with me, but it’ll be the perfect opportunity to tell her, when we’re there.’
How was she going to explain that? Was I supposed to be sleeping on the fold-out couch in Magdu’s little flat? But Magdu’s mother had never come to Australia, had never seen the little flat, so maybe it wouldn’t come up.
And I wanted to see the place that had made the woman I loved. I wanted to meet her family. They were there, in the imagined wedding photo in my mind. Magdu needed her family by her side for the picture to be complete.
