When the phone rings the next evening, Annie is staring at her collection of shoes, wondering how she has so many. These moments come all the time now. When she is almost bedazzled by things. Made exhausted by them. She can sit and stare at things for long tracts of time, without being bored. Without requiring anything other than their shape and colour. Her thoughts.
Her mobile rings on the bed behind her and she drags it forward and yawns. ‘Hello?’
‘Annie! How are ya?’ Her uncle’s voice. Warm and rough and like he’s standing right by her.
She shuts her wardrobe and sits with her back against it. ‘Tired. Pip managed to upend an entire bowl of jelly on herself and then run it through the house. How’re you?’
‘Good, good.’
‘And Rose?’ Annie’s best friend. Rose, who is two years older than her. Rose and Len got together when Rose was in her early twenties and it was the only time Annie can remember things with Len being strained. That unsettling knowledge of him being with someone her age when he seemed so ancient, so steady. But he and Rose had been together ten years now. And the age gap didn’t startle Annie the way it used to.
‘Rose’s good, good. She’s running the art gallery down in Cruwick, I told you that, right?’
‘Yeah, yeah. You did. But it’s still amazing. She’s always been clever.’
‘She has.’ His voice is so warm. Annie wonders if Tom’s voice is that warm when he talks about her. Not any more, she thinks. Maybe once, but not now. He’s too angry with her now. About riding through the fires and then heading back to the mountain when he wanted her home with Pip. With him.
Down the hallway, Annie can hear Tom trying to get Pip out of the bath. Pip begging for five more minutes. Begging Tom to blow some more bubbles. Begging him to pretend to be a shark. Her voice carrying down the hallway.
‘Can we get a bigger bath?’
‘No, Phillip. This one will do for now.’
‘How’re the lyrebirds?’ Annie’s voice is quiet. Her Uncle Len has been trudging the blackened tracks of the rainforest for months, trying to track down the lyrebirds he’s been observing for years.
‘They’ll be around,’ he says. ‘It’s a big forest. Just haven’t found them yet. That’s all.’
‘Right.’ Annie thinks about the heat of the fire. The blackness of it. How frail those birds are, with their silvery feathers and fanning tails. She taps her nail against the wooden floor.
‘They’re still on the mountain, Annie,’ Len says. ‘I can feel it.’
‘I think so, too.’ She clears her throat. ‘How’s the practice?’ That feeling of missing a step. Len’s vet practice, burnt to pieces last summer. She still imagines it, when she asks him about work. And then, quickly, she reimagines his new practice, operating out of the bottom floor of his house on the main street.
‘Still in bits. Insurance and all that. Bloody nightmare. But doing what needs to be done. Your ma’s been helping out.’
‘Oh! That’s good.’
Len is quiet.
Annie’s fingers tighten on the phone. ‘That’s good, right?’
‘Well, she’s doing a good job, yeah. But Annie …’
Small, wet feet on wooden flooring and the sound of shallow breathing. Pip explodes, naked and dripping, into the bedroom. ‘Who is it?’ she asks.
‘Uncle Len. Don’t run when you’re wet – you’ll slip and hurt yourself.’
‘I love you, Uncle Len!’ She screams as loudly as she can before bolting back down the hallway. Annie hears the trudging sound of Tom following her.
Annie leans back into the phone. ‘Half the neighbours would’ve heard that.’
‘You were the same as a little tacker.’
‘Yeah, but I was on the mountain. No neighbours. Not in a bloody terrace. We get complaints, did you know? These passive-aggressive letters in the mailbox about managing Pip. Like she’s an animal or something. She’s just a kid.’
‘I know, Annie.’
‘Doing what kids do.’ She stares at the grey fence through the bedroom window and sighs. ‘Anyway. About Mum. You were saying?’
‘She’s not good, Annie.’
‘But you just said the animals …’
‘Were you thinking of coming home at all? Over Christmas?’
‘Tom can’t get time off. It’s the busiest time for him at work. Why? Is she that bad?’
Len sighs. ‘Look, she’s okay. She’s just in her own little world. That’s all. And I think it’s past time she got the hell out of it.’
* * *
When she was younger, Annie followed Len along the tracks of the forest. Heavy boots, no matter the weather or the season. They made her legs ache, but she didn’t complain. Didn’t ask to go back home or walk more slowly. She matched his long stride as best she could. She ploughed on, even when her vision became speckled and her legs wavered like disappearing woodcarvings.
In summer the tracks still had a dampness to them, so different to the chalky silver of the paddocks around her home, where the only dampness was the rippling of the wheat, the dull sheen of the dam, low in its bed. Even in the heat of high summer, the tracks of the forest would have a trace of mud underfoot, would still have a thickness to the air, which the paddocks and the grassy hills had lost weeks ago.
Annie and Len would strain their ears. Hoping to catch a dozen bird calls trilling from the same place in the forest. A cockatoo, a galah, a magpie, a rainbow lorikeet. The telltale sound of a lyrebird, cycling through its calls, hidden in the sounds of others. When Annie explained her lyrebird watching to Tom, he frowned. ‘You know, I don’t think I’ve ever heard a lyrebird. What sort of sound is it?’
Annie, lying next to him: ‘They’re mimics!’
‘Mimics?’
‘They mimic the calls of other birds.’ She found him recordings, videos. Snippets of their trilling magnificence on the internet. But Tom just smiled, like he did when Pip showed him a drawing of a dog that looked like a picture of vomit crossed with a caterpillar.
* * *
Annie takes a photo of her wall drawing and emails it to her mother. Then she unearths the home phone from beneath a stack of crayons and scrunched-up paper and dials her mother’s number. She realises she’s holding her breath, worried by what Len said.
‘Susan speaking.’ Her mother’s voice is soft, distracted. Annie can hear the screech of guineafowl in the background.
‘Hey, Mum. How are you?’
‘Annie! Good. I’m good. How’s my gorgeous baby girl?’
‘Pip’s okay. She’s a menace, but she seems a bit better than she was. Maybe. Anyway, Len called. Said you’re helping out with the animals.’
‘Your uncle! I’ve had it with your bloody uncle.’
‘Okay. Why?’ Annie scratches her nose, feeling like she is five. Six, maybe. Gladys rolling her eyes and her mother’s voice ringing out throughout the house. I’ve had it with your bloody uncle!
‘I made him cakes and he didn’t take them home with him! And Jenny was here and it was humiliating. He obviously wants everyone to know that I mean nothing to him.’
‘Mum, he probably just didn’t feel like cakes.’
‘No! No. It was more than that. He was communicating something.’ Susan sniffs.
‘Oh, he was not.’
‘He was! Ring him and ask him if you don’t believe me. I’ve had it with him. He doesn’t appreciate anything I do. He never has.’
‘Hey? Mum? I just emailed you a photo. Can you check it?’
Susan huffs. ‘I haven’t finished yet.’
‘Finished what?’
‘Talking about your bloody uncle.’
‘Sorry. Continue. But can you look at the picture? Please?’
Susan sighs heavily into the phone and Annie hears her mother’s slow typing at the computer.
‘Got it?’ Annie asks.
‘It’s downloading. We have country internet, remember.’
‘Should I call back next week?’
‘Oh, ha ha. You’re so funny.’ Susan huffs again.
Annie picks the scrunched-up paper to pieces. ‘So. About Uncle Len. He would never communicate something with cakes. He’d just tell you straight. He’s Uncle Len.’
‘You’ve got such rose-coloured glasses.’
‘I do not! The man is not going to communicate some deep truth about your relationship by rejecting your cupcakes!’
Susan begins to cry quietly.
Annie sighs. ‘Mum, are you okay?’
‘Fine. I’m fine!’
‘You don’t sound fine.’
‘Hayfever.’
‘Do you want to come down and stay with us? For Christmas? We’d love that.’
‘No, dear. But thank you. Too much to do out here. Too much to do.’
‘I’m sure Rose and Len can handle the animals.’
‘No, Annie … I’m not … the mountain … I can’t. I can’t leave.’ Susan’s voice is stilted.
‘What do you mean, you can’t leave?’
‘I’m just not up for it at the moment. That’s all.’
‘Mum …’
‘Hang on. Hang on! The email’s loaded. Oh. Did Pip draw this?’
‘What do you think it is?’
‘Is it some sort of mandala? I’ve been colouring them in, you know. Ebony dropped some in for me. They’re meant to be soothing.’
‘I dunno.’
Susan blows her nose. ‘Did Pip do this?’
‘No, I drew it in my sleep.’
‘Oh, Annie. You haven’t done that in years.’
‘I’ve always done it. When I’m stressed.’
‘Are you stressed? Is Len putting pressure on you to come up here? That bloody uncle of yours.’
‘No! No, Len’s great. Len hasn’t done anything.’ Annie’s breath catches at the thought of the mountain. Fear makes her lungs tight, her limbs tingly. But she has to. For Susan, she has to. ‘But we are coming up, actually. In the next few days, if that works. And not because of Len.’
There is a pause. ‘Well, that’s lovely!’ says Susan, blowing her nose again. ‘But I am fine, you know. Whatever he’s been saying to you. I’m bloody well fine.’
* * *
Later that night Pip pulls Tom’s hair up into palm trees with bright purple bands. He’s sitting on the floor, trying to read the paper he didn’t have a chance to finish this morning, but she keeps stepping on it with her foot and crinkling it. Tom just stares at the newspaper and Annie knows from the look on his face that he’s entered that place of tiredness where you don’t have the energy to reprimand, to parent. Where all you’re doing is praying they don’t do something like put the cat in the blender, because you’re not sure you could come up with a consequence in amongst all the thoughts of bed and blankets and quiet and sleep.
‘We need quality time, Dad,’ Pip says. It’s been her catchcry since the family therapy session weeks ago.
‘C’mere,’ Annie says, sitting down at the table. She’s tired, but she hasn’t yet reached the glassy-eyed state that Tom’s in. ‘Come have some quality time with me.’
Pip shakes her head. ‘Want Dad.’
‘Right. Hey, Phillip? How would you like to visit Uncle Len and Grandma over Christmas?’
‘Yeah!’ she yells, bouncing up and down. Tom winces and reaches up for his tugged hair.
‘Sorry, Dad.’ Pip kisses his scalp and then keeps yanking the hair up into hair ties.
‘I have to work, Annie,’ says Tom. He’s not looking at her. He’s staring down at the newspaper, crumpled under his daughter’s feet. ‘I’m going to have to work overtime as it is.’
Annie looks away. ‘I know. But Pip and I can still go. We need to.’
Tom’s mouth tightens.
‘Uncle Len! Uncle Len! He has ducklings! Uncle Len!’ Pip finishes and dances around Tom, who stays on the floor, resting on his knees.
Pip grins and runs down the hallway. ‘I’m going to the mountain! To visit Uncle Len!’
Tom gets up and fills the kettle. Then he stands at the counter, bracing with his arms. ‘Why’d you do that?’ he says.
‘Do what?’
‘You told her before you’d discussed it with me.’
Annie starts to fill the kitchen sink with sudsy water. ‘I don’t see what the big deal is. Mum’s not well, Tom. And she won’t come down off the mountain. I need to be up there. I need to make sure she’s okay, you know?’
‘The big deal is you can’t just make a decision like that without talking it through with me. What would you do if I’d done the same?’
‘I wouldn’t care – you’d be looking out for your mum! It’s a good thing.’
‘You’d hate it, Annie. You’d be furious.’
Annie stares at the back of Tom’s head, still all mismatched with palm trees and bright-coloured bands. ‘Because you’re my keeper?’
‘Christ, Annie. No.’
‘But I have to check with you? Before I go visit my own family? She’s my mother.’
He throws his hands up. ‘No. That’s not what I’m saying! I’m saying that you should’ve mentioned it to me before you told Pip.’
‘But why? Why is this such a big deal?’
‘Because she’s my kid too.’ Tom turns around to face Annie. ‘And I know this won’t have entered your head, but if you guys are in Quilly for Christmas, that means I’m here alone. It’s not about me stopping you. It’s just about me being thought of.’
Annie breathes out. She wants to press up against him, breathe sorry into his ear until he softens and hugs her back. But she doesn’t. It’s like she has to punish him, over and over, for something he hasn’t done. And each time the regret of it hits her like something solid. ‘Sorry,’ she murmurs, not touching him. Not letting herself. ‘I’m sorry, Tom.’
She stares at the drawing on the wall. The blue. The arcs of texta.
Tom sighs. ‘I’m here too, Annie. That’s all. I’m here too.’
* * *
On the mountain, everyone knows everyone. Knew everyone. Annie grew up to the beat of other people’s lives. Their family and friends and the things they did on weekends. It was less intimate, though. So much space. You didn’t know what time your neighbours went to bed or what they yelled out during sex. But you knew the names of their grandparents. You knew which of their properties had bore pumps and who had to truck water in. You knew who had the best orchards. Their favourite foods and their pets.
People left rhubarb by Gladys’s shed, for Susan to make crumble with. People pressed chocolate eggs into the veggie garden for Annie to find at Easter, even after she became too old. The glint of brightly coloured foil as the last of the tomatoes of the season grew small and stayed tinged with green and threads of yellow.
Annie’s father was not an object of fascination to the other residents because he was absent; he was fascinating because he was unknown. Annie did not have a photo of him to flash around. All she had were Susan’s sketchbooks, and when she secreted them into school one day to show the other kids, they laughed. ‘That’s not even a proper drawing!’
Rose, standing in front of her, hands on her hips. ‘Better than anything you could draw, Brandon! It’s a great drawing. Better than a photo.’
Gladys and Len, the two of them, were more than enough. They more than filled the gap other people seemed to see in Annie’s life, left by a man she’d never met. But Annie knew that nobody would understand this. Not properly. Nobody other than Rose and Trent and Alex, who spent long afternoons prodding and poking the dam with her and shoving each other in to see if the leeches would come.
What nobody else understood was that Annie did not miss her father, the idea of him. Between the people in her life, there was no gap for him to fill, no place where he would comfortably fit.
When she was pregnant, Tom spent two months trying to convince her to find her father. Talk to Susan; talk to Gladys. Talk to anyone. Surely there was more to him than the old notebooks filled with Susan’s sketches?
‘But I don’t want to!’ Grumpy, slouched on the couch with Gladys’s Agatha Christie books. She’d given them to Annie when she couldn’t make out the small print any more, even wearing the pair of glasses that made her eyes seem huge.
‘What about the baby? Shouldn’t the baby have the opportunity to meet her grandfather?’
Annie slammed the book shut. ‘Why is this so important to you?’
‘This is about the baby. She deserves to know her family.’
‘He’s not family, though.’
‘Whether you like it or not, he’s your father. That’s family.’
‘No. That’s not family.’
‘He’s your father.’
‘No, he’s not!’
They argued into the night, Annie becoming louder and louder. Tom brought him up again and again. Always gently. Always for Pip.
But Tom hasn’t mentioned him since the fires. Not once. And Annie has noticed. She wonders what it means.
* * *
Even with their block-out blinds pulled close, the streetlights still fan across the walls. Milky and shifting.
‘Sometimes I get so tired of this,’ Tom says and Annie goes rigid and pulls away.
He pulls her back. ‘It’s like you spend half your time being vacant and cold and not wanting me near you and then you’re needy and intense and I can’t keep up. I’m just … tired.’
‘I’m tired too.’
‘We’re just two tired people,’ Tom says and they laugh, smothering themselves against the pillows because Pip wakes up so easily these days.
Then they almost kiss, but don’t. Annie lies still, and then reaches out for his hand. They won’t kiss, but they will have sex. It’s how it’s always been between them. Kissing is what fluctuates. And it fluctuates now, with their plans for Christmas hanging between them, over them, like the light cast in from outside.
‘Slower,’ she whispers and she feels his lips on her. But there is no rush of blood, no prickling. There is nothing answering him and she wonders if he is frustrated at her body’s silence more than he is frustrated with her.
‘Okay, a bit faster,’ she says.
Tom heaves a big sigh and Annie wonders if this will be them in fifty years. Slower. Sigh. Faster. Sigh.
She pulls him up and against her and he is sweating and panting.
‘It’s okay,’ she whispers. ‘It’s not you.’
‘It never is.’ He lies on his back and Annie rolls against him and kisses his neck.
‘I’m sorry,’ she says.
‘Don’t be sorry!’
‘Shh! You’ll wake Pip.’
He swallows and rolls away and Annie presses into him. Listening to his breaths, the eddy of them as he drifts off to sleep.
Later that night Annie touches herself until her hand cramps up and her arm stings with the strain. She wonders how many other people who went through the fires can no longer orgasm. Wonders whether other people did not find relief with others in the months after. Wonders if they find relief in anger and running and moving. Maybe the whole mountain is now full of frustrated people with aching wrists and a pounding pulse.
Annie sighs and gives up, watching car lights wash across the wall.
Still, she shouldn’t complain. Maybe it’s her penance for surviving.
* * *
After the fires Annie pressed up against Tom after he’d gone to sleep. She was too jangled, too splintered for anything close to desire. But she still rolled against him and reached between his legs and rubbed at him so hard that he startled back into uncertain, dozing wakefulness, cupping her hands in his. Trying to stop her but made too slow by sleep.
‘Annie, watcha doing?’ His voice muffled by the pillow, still half stuck in dreams. ‘It’s three in the morning.’
She would slither away from his cupped hands, back to her rubbing. Until he woke more fully, became quick enough to stop her, or else came sleepily into her hands. ‘What’re you doing?’ he’d ask, his voice muffled. Over and over.
She confused herself, in those months. Because she didn’t want sex. She didn’t want his desire. Even being touched seemed to splinter her apart. Her jangling, shimmering nerves. It’s taken her until now to realise that she just didn’t want to be alone.