NENIA DEA | Goddess of Funeral Music and Rebirth into the Afterlife
After cremation, rebirth could only occur if all Nenia Dea’s proper practices were followed. Like other deities connected to death, she was locked out of the city.
I couldn’t rest until Caleb was released on bail. His first appearance at the Magistrates Court would determine this. Over the phone, the night before, I begged him for reassurance that things were okay.
‘This is prison, Mum,’ Caleb said. ‘You won’t get a report card.’
I held the line open just to hear him breathe. Wondering if he knew that.
We’d received a brief of official evidence against Caleb. Brief was a strange name for the boxes containing thousands of pages. The Crown case had incremented like a history research project, like sketches gradually telling a story in Caleb’s book, each new detail capable of inflicting a new wound. Douglas noticed my shock. ‘There’s information here about over two hundred charges.’
Fourteen charges were for arson causing death. Nearly two hundred others related to criminal damage. Some witnesses who had agreed to testify, like Laura Price, were our neighbours. The day after reading her name, I passed Laura in the supermarket. Her trolley squeaked. She had the grace to look awkward. My mind flickered through everything I knew about her, like a newsreel. Until this moment my impression of her had been that she thought that, as a trained historian, I should do more to help her historical society. Now she thought I’d raised a monster.
Since Caleb’s arrest, I had stopped turning my own new evidence over to the police. It seemed they ignored evidence that might disprove their case. There was no mention of John Zynda and earlier fire-starting claims, for instance. Jack tried to defend them, saying they’d investigate my evidence. I’d hear about it in due course, if it was important. ‘So why haven’t I heard anything? It’s important,’ I insisted.
‘You wouldn’t necessarily know what the investigators have been up to.’
A strange type of dread mixed with excitement kept me awake until morning. Douglas drove me to the Caledonia Magistrates Court, promising he’d be my guide through the street protesters outside. The courthouse was a miraculous survivor of fire, and a fire for justice lit the crowd massing beneath gothic arches reminiscent of a cathedral.
Constructed during Gold Rush prosperity, the building’s grandeur emphasised the importance of what happened here and insisted court judgements were as infallible as God. Its supporting columns were like trees sprouting from stone, fertilised by fearful symmetry and malevolent proportions. Justice herself was the statue of a woman with a blindfold, as enigmatic as the Virgin. Classical Greeks had the animistic idea that statues were alive, attributing human characteristics to the elements. Perhaps Caleb wasn’t an arsonist, but a fire, and I was responsible for lighting him. In my dreams he walked to me, arms outstretched, incandescent.
Inside, the courtroom was even more reminiscent of a sacred place. Ominous dark furniture lurked beneath elevated ceilings. The windows were too high for any view except grey clouds. From the corner of my eye, timber panelling seemed to move, crawling halfway up the walls. The edges of everything – walls, windows, desks – were aggressively straight lines, a device Caleb used in his graphic art to indicate danger.
Other cases were being heard today too, but the audience was here to abuse Caleb. I sat isolated among my enemies, hands clenched in my lap. When Magistrate John Heaney appeared, high on his bench, he reminded me of Satan ascending on a cloud of smoke and fire in Paradise Lost.
He dismissed minor matters with bewildering speed, granting bail more often than not. I released my hands, crossing my fingers. Excitement grew when Caleb’s name was called. I looked around, expecting him to be brought in. Instead, a large television set flickered to life. A clerk explained they had a video-link from the Yarra Remand Centre.
At least I’d see him. I leaned forwards, fighting the urge to move closer to the screen. Caleb appeared pale, apart from bruises around his eyes. The snakebite rings were gone and the piercings now looked like oddly symmetrical, healing pimples.
‘How does your client answer this charge?’ the magistrate asked Douglas.
I sucked in my breath, willing words into Caleb’s mouth. Tell the truth, say you weren’t there. ‘He doesn’t wish to enter a plea at this stage,’ Douglas said.
The magistrate took note, as did the court reporter.
Douglas stood. ‘The defence has serious concerns about security. There’s high interest in this case. There have been reports of threats from fellow prisoners.’
My heart clenched. What sorts of threats? Why hadn’t anyone told me?
The magistrate nodded. ‘Can we be sure your client will be safe anywhere else?’
Let him come home with me. Let him come home with me and give me a gun. I pictured a hunting rifle. I pictured myself in a safari suit, hunting Caleb’s enemies like big game.
Prosecutor Charles Scott frowned. ‘Wharton faces multiple counts of arson causing death. The Crown believes community safety is best served by not granting bail.’
Court was dismissed while Magistrate Heaney went somewhere to reach his decision. Perhaps he rolled dice. An hour later, Douglas sent an associate to fetch me from the women’s toilet. I did my best to splash away the taste of vomit. Then I walked back into court.
‘The charges you face are of the most serious kind,’ Magistrate Heaney said to a camera above the video screen. ‘But I’ll allow bail on the condition you remain under the supervision of your father or mother. There’ll be no suppression order on your name, this would be pointless, because you’ve already appeared voluntarily on television. Vigilantism is a threat but police will have to play their role in keeping the peace.’
Caleb was coming back with me. I was legally responsible for him, as I had been before he turned eighteen. I imagined legal ribbon tying us back together as a family. I didn’t let myself think about vigilantism.
Caleb was subdued as we drove home. I imagined him as an antipodean Phaeton, the stupid adolescent god who caused previous climate change, who burned the Sahara Desert into existence by driving his father Apollo’s sun chariot too low. No. I wanted my old Caleb back, with his black hair and make-up and chunky jewellery, his temper tantrums and his insistence upon his right to be himself. When he’d been a baby, the mere suggestion of his distress caused my milk to let down and leak, sometimes painfully. Years had passed: my milk was long gone but my physical reaction to his emotions remained.
‘It must be so hard for you,’ I said.
‘What?’ Though he’d been locked up only briefly, he stared outside as if seeing the world for the first time. I followed his eye. Rapidly reconstructed, Brunton seemed as artificial as a stage set. You might wipe the air with your finger and see the ashes and destruction that still existed just below the surface. The town’s new reality was as fragile as skin on hot milk.
We arrived home. Rosie appeared at her window and watched. I nodded at her as Caleb strolled to our door. She vanished and a second later her own door opened.
‘So he got bail. Your legal connections. I suppose you’ll get these charges dropped too.’
I followed Caleb without responding to her, and closed the door between us and the world. ‘Don’t listen to her,’ I told Caleb. ‘Accidents aren’t anyone’s fault. It’s what the word means. Accident.’
He fell into a kitchen chair. ‘What word we use makes no difference to Sean.’
I made tea. Caleb sat, resting his hands on the table. His old black manicure had been replaced by natural nails, chewed to the quick. ‘You going to jail won’t make a difference to him either. You can fight this!’ I told him.
He shrugged.
Months passed between the bail hearing and the committal. Ivy’s baby was born. In Facebook photos, he was identical to Caleb and to Stephen. Another Wharton. That night, I couldn’t sleep. Of course I couldn’t sleep. No point trying.
I turned on my light. I slid out of bed to grab the manila folder of printed out files and handwritten notes from my oak dresser. Flicking through the loose pages, I imagined Jack’s day, rereading his description of the moment he and Craig Silva returned to Jack’s own house, turning the final corner. Jack so appalled he nearly ran off the road. This was he first time he realised his house, designed as a fortress against climate catastrophe and flame, had been completely destroyed. Despite his meticulous planning, all that remained were a couple of brick walls, stained with oily-looking soot. Fire still lingered around collapsing walls, flames playing an obscene game of hide and seek. Craig, unencumbered by emotional connection, made a quick assessment of the site. He strode through the rubble in his thick protective boots.
‘No one would have stayed here, Jack. No one who survived.’
For a terrible moment, Jack thought he must have killed us. Then he peered at his old dam. Movement. He made out a small line of people, blackened with soot, approaching. ‘Phoebe!’
I remember the hoarseness in his voice. I remembered having no energy to speak. Wet as a dirty mermaid, I trudged on as though on broken glass. We were wet, exhausted, alive.
I reached Jack, finally. ‘Is Caleb with you?’
He shook his head. ‘We’ll find him, Phoebe. I’ll take you to the refuge at St Monica’s.’
Refuge. What a loaded word. All those Brunton groups meeting in St Monica’s hall – the Progress Association, the Lions, the Rotary. There’d been no refuge for Caleb or me. Once that day began, everything that happened – every freak act of nature, every act of God, every choice we made – pushed us further into the flames of trouble, one crisis leading inevitably to the next.
I’ve never slept well but also, I’ve never slept as badly as I did after Caleb’s arrest. I didn’t believe Caleb slept well either. Jack explained post-traumatic stress disorder to me once, talking about his own experiences in the army. He helped me with Caleb almost from the first moment we met. His attitude to Caleb was always positive, sometimes felt like the only positive idea I had to hang onto.
The day before his committal hearing was due to start, I woke Caleb early, knocking on his door while magpies were still warbling.
‘If you want to talk about my sketchbook, go away.’
‘Okay. But we need to go shopping. You need a new suit for court.’
‘I’ve got a suit.’
‘It’s…’
‘It doesn’t fit. You can say it, Mum. I’m fat.’
I opened the door, a tiny bit, waiting for his protest. ‘Caleb, would you let me do this one thing for you?’ I tried one last tactic, knowing Jack was still his hero. ‘Jack always wears a suit to court.’
Caleb sat up, shrugging. I checked he didn’t smell too bad and told him to meet me in my car. We drove to Myer, and found the suit department in a miasma of old air-conditioner and starch. There isn’t much to grey suits. In fact, you’d think the whole task would be simple, one any mother could undertake with her son.
‘I don’t need to try anything on,’ Caleb said.
I took it from him and led the two of them, boy and suit, to the fitting room. Caleb was swallowed by white swinging doors while I sought a new tie for him, too, settling on staid, sensible blue stripes.
Caleb swung back through the doors. A grown man, in a suit. Allowing the tie, his Adam’s apple bobbed against my fingertips. I’ll never know what words he swallowed and suppressed. Don’t patronise me. Perhaps. He stepped away. His tie wasn’t quite right. ‘This is all fine,’ he said. ‘I’ll take it off now.’
I waited on a courtesy seat beside the cash register, reduced to the status of a credit card, checking my phone. Slow rock music from my own teenage years thumped softly overhead, comforting as a heartbeat.
‘You fucking bastard!’ Caleb’s voice!
I leaped to my feet.
A loud thump. A yell of pain. Other customers turned, alarmed. A couple of sales assistants strode over. The yelp was followed by a low-pitched clatter, then the smash and tinkle of glass breaking.
‘Leave me alone, you freak!’ I didn’t recognise the voice. ‘Call the police!’
I stepped into the fitting room. ‘Madam!’ a sales assistant called. ‘This is for men!’
‘This is my son!’
Caleb stood in a clutter of collapsed swinging doors, a shower of broken mirrors. An empty grey suit resembling a man collapsed over him. Nearby, a teenage boy pulled himself upright, hand clamped to his head.
‘Caleb, what happened?’ I demanded.
A man in a grey uniform pushed me aside with his shoulder. ‘Madam. I’m store security. I’ll deal with this.’
The other boy checked his hand through his good eye, and brushed bloodied glass fragments from his shirt. He formed a fist and shook it at the sales assistant. ‘You better’ve called the fucking cops. You shouldn’t let crazy people in here. Fucking arsonist. Murderer. You know how many people this guy already killed? I just wanted jeans and now I’m bleeding. I’m gunna fucking sue you.’
Later, we were at the police station. Caleb knew he could be returned to remand for breaching bail. I asked what had happened, why was he stupid enough to get into a fight?
‘He was on his phone in the next cubicle.’
Through him, I heard the other boy’s words. You’ll never guess who’s at Myer. Caleb Wharton. The arson dude. The one who set fire to Brunton.
Caleb had kicked open his door and punched the boy in the mouth. He had a temper. Was that what had burst out and lit the fire? What could have made him so angry that day? Caleb was released back into the care of his parents. I brought him back home.
I lay in bed while minutes crawled past, and wondered about words. At what precise moment did I stop being the art historian who was also a teacher, and become instead just a mother and advocate? If I didn’t sleep, when did tomorrow become today? Was Tuesday, the first day of Caleb’s committal hearing, still tomorrow?
In a few hours, we’d face court and fight to tell the best story. Caleb’s future rested on a frail net of words. I preferred a tangible connection to people. The reason behind my collection. It was photos and mementoes, connections to their past, that people mourned after the fire. Nero invited divine wrath by stealing his fellow Romans’ household god statues, and melting them to make decorations for his own huge golden Domus Aurea. How different would my life be, had I stayed with Marco? I imagined that, magically, Marco could have been Caleb’s father. We’d once explored Rome like time travellers – in drama I’d studied, based on religious ritual, and in digs with Marco, I’d witnessed all history’s different Romes, from Romulus and Remus’s bare hills to the bustling city of the Republic, to the Empire, the great fire. In the Middle Ages, the Colosseum had been a weird apartment complex. Some of Marco’s colleagues had uncovered prehistoric tools. Others had evacuated the headquarters for an army unit and an impressively tiled commander’s domus. That happened in archaeology. Sometimes you did the basic work at a dig, but it was the next team who made the big discovery.
Above me, spider-webby cracks recorded my own house’s moving history in their slow spread across the ceiling. I rolled onto my side and stared at the night-greyed curtains, picturing myself as a once-empty vessel now filled with anger. All the problems of insomnia hovered a few calendar pages away. Not sleeping was dangerous. When we’re awake, neurons bombard our brains with electrical impulses. The barrage leaves us needing time to recuperate, regenerate. Sleep is when our minds put down memories, when we make sense of the world. I once read of an Italian family with a genetic illness causing them to stay awake until they died. One by one, each fell victim to chronic sleeplessness. They died within months of diagnosis.
Being sleepless for twenty-four hours was like a blood alcohol reading of 0.1. I’d been awake for forty-eight hours. The committal hearing was yet to begin and I was drunk on insomnia. My world made no sense. Douglas Anderson had warned this hearing would last at least a week. The trial itself could last much longer. Months.
But this must stop here. We couldn’t go to trial, I couldn’t stay awake for months. I’d become like a member of that Italian family, awake until it killed me.
Thumping footsteps in the hall pulled me from my trance. I flung my bedroom door open. In the sitting room Caleb was tossing a change of clothes and his new suit into a variety of plastic supermarket bags.
‘What are you doing?’ I demanded.
‘I can’t stand it anymore. Listening to your pacing. Hearing you at my door.’
I hadn’t realised he was aware of my sleeplessness. ‘I’m sorry—’ I began.
‘You can’t do anything about it. I can’t stay here.’
‘Caleb.’ I rested my hand on his arm. ‘You have to stay here. Remember the court order.’
‘It says I have to stay with one of my parents.’ He shook my hand off and continued shoving things into plastic bags. A pair of shoes, slightly muddy, on top of his new jacket. ‘I’ve already called Dad.’
Stephen arrived a few minutes later. Caleb must have called him a while ago. I had no choice but to let him leave. The next time I’d see him would be in court.
I remembered Caleb on the evening of the bushfires, features covered in soot. A smear followed the line of his nose. His bandana was black, I hadn’t yet spotted the blood. I remembered my own desperate relief at seeing him. I didn’t see the weirdo goth others saw. I didn’t see the murderer from Facebook and news site comments. My Caleb was still a golden-haired boy riding on my shoulders while I piggybacked him to the creek where he would one day go, walking into this disaster.