MAIA | Goddess of Growth
Originally a demure cave-dwelling nymph, Maia became known as the good mother when she chose to raise a child conceived when Jupiter raped her, even after jealous Juno transformed the baby into a bear.
MONDAY NIGHT
CALEB
He sat in the passenger seat of Dad’s newish Audi TT coupe, heading for Hawthorn. It was an escape, at least from Mum. Today, she was even worse than usual. He had to get away even if it was to a house with Ivy in it. Earlier, he’d tried escaping to his old sanctuary down at Damper Creek. Mum had spied on him from the kitchen window. Deluded. (She had appalling judgement – e.g. loving him.) Caleb regularly hid in the scrub, far from watchers at their rear windows. There was nothing to fear in the creek anymore. He wasn’t even scared of snakes. How could they harm him now?
‘You’ll be right, Caleb,’ Dad said, insincerely, as the lights of Brunton faded in the rear-vision mirror. Dad grew up in Brunton. When Caleb was small, home had been with his friends in Hawthorn, where he was going now. Then, going to Gran’s place had been like visiting another world. He remembered discovering that sheet of corrugated iron resting against rocks near the creek. Mum said, ‘Watch out for rust and tetanus!’ and, more intriguingly, ‘It’s the roof of a shack belonging to a Gold Rush miner.’
Young Caleb hadn’t been allowed there and went, all the time. So what about tetanus? Until a year ago, he’d been immortal. He’d stuffed broken pencils into his pockets and discovered things to draw, mostly things the miner left behind. He’d identified colours in nature and the connections between them. An old pan was ambergris, the colour of eucalypt, camouflaged and evading detection. In those days, Caleb’s voice had been higher, unbroken in more ways than one. He’d never hurt anyone or imagined he could. Words had poured from his mouth in clear sentences, unburned as water.
‘The creek is a home for bunyips,’ Mum had said, before, describing the mysterious water beast. ‘He has long, sharp claws and long, strong arms and a looong pointed beak.’
Caleb had loved that house as a holiday destination where Gran grew vegetables in neat plots and fruit on trees. Gran had made scones, and tidied Caleb’s room for him when Mum wasn’t watching. Caleb’s room hadn’t been disgusting, then, like it was now. Mum should think he was disgusting too. He’d respect her more, at least her intelligence. Her emotions always showed on her face. Mum should have tried white make-up, a goth look herself, if she really wanted to hide her feelings.
Back then, the hedge between Gran’s house and Mrs Henderson’s had grown way over his head. It and the creek had marked the edges of Caleb’s holiday world. He’d avoided the hedge this last year. Its leaves whispered into the wind – their message was that he was cursed. So many changes had occurred, all at once. Dad had made a lot of late-night Skype calls to Ivy. Such an old, boring story, a man having an affair with his secretary – Caleb wouldn’t bother drawing it. Gran had died and left the house to him. Mum and Dad had argued. ‘We should sell up and invest the money for him,’ Dad said. They didn’t consider asking him. Unable to agree, they had done nothing. Soon, Dad had decided he wanted to live with Ivy instead of Caleb. Then Caleb had gotten into that stupid trouble at school. But that wasn’t really what had sent them out into the country. None of the other boys had to move. Anyway, Gran’s place had become home. Mum never had time to garden. There were no more neat rows of vegetables, the fruit trees grew spindly or died of drought and neglect. The yard Gran once carefully tended got overgrown with weeds that evolved into kindling.
And Caleb had been here that day, a year before the fire, when… No.
It was just one of the things he didn’t want to think about. Ivy was another. He’d have to think about her in Hawthorn, but at least she wouldn’t pace outside his room like Mum. And Ivy was the mother of his new brother. A brother, like Sean had seemed to be. Ivy probably wouldn’t trust Caleb to look after the baby. Which wasn’t fair. Caleb knew how he destroyed things, but Ivy destroyed things too. When Mum moved out of the Hawthorn house – Dad thought wives were replaceable – Ivy had moved in. Mum found a job at Brunton Primary School. Mum said Caleb should be happy here, where people pretended to know them, because they’d known Dad. And Gran. One street in town, parallel to the disused railway line, was Wharton Street, named for one of Dad’s ancestors. Dad was a local success story. City lawyer. Occasionally interviewed on television. People said Caleb looked like Dad – Dad said they were peas in a pod. That Caleb was a chip off the old block.
But even though Dad thought they were alike, he’d stopped caring for Caleb long ago. Caleb wasn’t as clever as he should have been. Dad called his own move to the city an escape, but when he got sick of Caleb, he sent him back to Brunton. Unescaped him. Caleb knew that wasn’t really a word, you couldn’t make up words, making things up was for art. Caleb dreamed of art school and had wondered if he’d ever get away. Now, he’d go away. Jail. Twenty-five years. Some arsonist’s sentences were even longer than that.
‘It’ll be good for you to arrive at the court with me,’ Dad said, when they arrived in Hawthorn. He used his remote control to open the security gate. ‘Mum’s made a lot of fuss. You’ll be less obvious this way.’
Less obvious! Caleb was the defendant! And his size made him conspicuous too. Dad could hardly look at him. Dad was still athletic. He virtually jumped out of the car. But there was a lot more Caleb than there used to be. Lumbering after Dad, Caleb impulsively sucked in his stomach. But it made little difference and he soon reconsidered – he didn’t care how he looked or what Dad thought. He breathed out.
‘Anyway, I’m glad to have you home,’ Dad added, opening the front door. ‘You’ll have to be quiet. The baby’s asleep.’
Home! After the disastrous lie detector test, when Caleb had desperately needed Dad (Mum wouldn’t understand – she got him into this trouble in the first place, paying to have that urine test lost and making sure police would forever-after be suspicious of him) Caleb hadn’t even been allowed in. Home wasn’t a place with Ivy in it.
Now, Dad’s hand clapped his shoulder. ‘You’ll be wanting to sleep soon, mate.’
Caleb shrugged. Dad’s hand fell away. ‘Happy to be here?’ Dad asked.
The entrance hall was full of photos of Dad and Ivy. Hawthorn, as much as Brunton, was full of reminders of how great Stephen Wharton was and Caleb Wharton would never be. They used to practise footy together, regular father/son stuff. (Go Hawks!) Caleb had been quite good, although not as good as Dad thought.
‘If only you’d practise more!’ Dad had said, with no idea how much time Caleb spent learning to be quite good for him, which really meant not good enough. ‘Do you want to talk?’
Dad used to ask Caleb about AFL like it mattered. Caleb had realised what a waste of time sport was. Why hadn’t Dad? Dad was a lawyer who must have seen terrible things. He should know life wasn’t about hand passes and drop-kicks and goals.
In his old room Caleb pulled out the sketchbooks he’d packed. The style of his graphic stories had changed. With large tubes of black and red ochre watercolour he prepared pages with a bloody wash, planning a painted landscape the colour of scabs. No matter what he drew, the bloodstain would always be there, guilt always leaking through.
His art was brought to life with water! Weird. Water could once have saved everything. Angrily, Caleb scarred his paper with details – the wind’s spiral, a bruise of tight and tighter circles, vertiginously climbing through an unholy black rapture of ashes while he recreated another replacement for his art that the police had stolen. He’d seen a snake sleeping like a flickering flame in the long, dry grass. Long and lean as Caleb’s own limbs before he stopped riding his bike everywhere and ate so much pizza. Moving gently, like a warning. Fear prickled down his spine. That was what had inspired him to get the snakebite piercing – fear. When the guilt monster stopped devouring him, it was only because fear had taken over.
Even in Hawthorn, Caleb felt the pressure of Mum’s thoughts, like she had psychic powers that Marvel comics hadn’t yet converted into a character. Life was bleak, like he was viewing it through tears of blood. Survival was not always the best result. Caleb hadn’t tried to tell Mum he felt this. Mum had been there, she had seen his accident. In fact, he could have avoided it, if only…
But, no. He wouldn’t think that.
‘What are you drawing?’ Dad stood in his doorway. Spying, like Mum.
It’s my art, Caleb didn’t say. He’d tried that before. He stared at his sketches like he stared at burn scars on his hands. Like they masked secrets. Dad took Caleb’s pencil (gently) from his hand. ‘Mate, you need to stop this and get some sleep.’
And far worse than struggling to explain his drawings to Dad, was Mum… she hated it when Caleb said he was doing nothing, even when he wasn’t doing anything. She didn’t believe nothing was something anyone could do. Her awareness of him, doing nothing or not, was an entity with a life of its own. Like his fear. Fear of his own flawed nature – the impulsiveness that had made it so hard to sit in his school seat. Fear he might one day forget the power of his own guilt. Guilt itself was Caleb’s own superpower. Though power, of course, was the wrong word. Born in Caleb’s accident, his guilt had been nourished by everything that happened afterwards. It grew stronger around Sadie, around Rosie, and it was strongest around Mum, because even more than the woman who wanted Caleb to be a news story, and the woman who hated him, Mum just wouldn’t leave him alone.