Luke had booked a fabulous warehouse conversion in west Hobart. It had exposed red-brick walls, dark timber beams stretching across the ceiling like whale bones, stainless-steel steps up to the second level, and an industrial hook hanging from the ceiling above the dining table, celebrating the warehouse’s ancestry as a fish factory. There was also a rooftop deck where we all had dinner, marvelling at the view of Hobart below.
Luke was in fine spirits, having temporarily cast off the shackles of his small business. On the first night he made us fettuccine carbonara and the three of us ate dinner on the rooftop, Luke and Max chatting and laughing as freely as the wind. I had this moment where I never wanted it to end. I wanted to pull down the shutters on this family unit of ours, protect it, heritage-list it, make sure that no one could ever make any alterations to it. This was us, our moment, our life: I wanted to keep it exactly as it was.
But then I realised that there I was again, being a spectator rather than a participant in my life, always distracted, always analysing. Why wasn’t I simply in that conversation, laughing along with the two of them? Why was I always observing and dissecting? This was what made me feel as though I would never be normal again until I was with Jarvis.
I was almost demented with all these thoughts and feelings. It was as though Jarvis had me on some fishhook and he’d dragged me out to sea and I could no longer see land. I decided that I wanted to find my way back to land, for Max’s sake, to make sure that we had a good holiday. I texted Jarvis and said that I’d be out of contact for a couple of days, that I wanted to clear my head a little and try to have some proper family time.
Although it initially felt scary to cut off contact with Jarvis, even briefly, it was therapeutic to not be checking my phone all the time for new messages. I was able to swim back into that family circle of ours, a place that I had loved so much, once upon a time, a place that had been the only place for me.
We took the hire car down the coast to White Beach. I deliberately left my phone at the warehouse and felt completely free from any kind of distractions. Luke always loved a car journey and he was in a fine mood, talking about plans for future holidays and a redesign of the back garden, including building an outdoor fireplace. Rather than being irritated by discussions of the future, I felt somewhat soothed by it, and joined in with him. Max was excitable, compliant and happy to be away for a week. There was none of that attitude we were getting back at home.
It was a weekday, so we practically had the whole beach to ourselves. The sun was shining, but the water was icy. The three of us swam out. I remembered the days when Max was a toddler and I’d always felt like a lifeguard at the beach, always on standby, watching him, waiting for some sort of catastrophe by the water. But that day at White Beach I realised I was no longer his lifeguard. He was as strong a swimmer as I was — all those swimming lessons had paid off. I felt so proud of his confidence in the water and proud of the person he’d become. I knew that Luke and I had done a good job of raising him, despite our own shortcomings. Even if we had somehow fallen onto different pages, Max was the binding that had kept us together.
Panting, tired from our swim, we lay down on our towels, the three of us lined up together, and we let the sun sink its rays into us. I felt a beautiful sense of calm. My head was washed free of torment. It was just me and my two boys.
***
MONA was every bit as fabulous as everyone said it would be. We steered Max around the exhibitions carefully, trying to avoid anything too confronting. He was in awe. This place was nothing like the stuffy galleries he’d visited in Melbourne. ‘Mum, they’ve said “shit” and “fuck” in this,’ he said, pointing to the electronic label device. It made him feel trusted and grown-up to be able to join in with us in this adult wonderland experience.
I’d been able to clear my head of Jarvis at the beach the day before, but at MONA I lapsed back into narrating everything I saw to him in my head. The voice inside my head was clear like a news reporter’s. I would phrase something, then rephrase it and try to highlight it in my mind. I must not forget to tell him this. ‘There are sculptures on the ferry. The approach to MONA is awesome — it’s built into a cliff. Outside there’s a tennis court by the entry and a rusty life-size truck sculpture overlooking the water. There’s a wine bar in the basement with sandstone walls and antique chairs. I discovered this artist named Henry Darger, he wrote a 15,000-page manuscript and hundreds of watercolours that were only found after he died. Outsider Art. Have you heard of the band The Vivian Girls? His magnum opus inspired them. David Walsh has a car park with a sign saying “God” and right next to it is his wife’s spot, marked “God’s Mistress”. What a guy. Even the toilets are a work of art.’ On and on and on it went in my head, these short soundbites that I tried to memorise for him. When I became conscious that I wasn’t living the day, but relaying the day, I shouted silently at myself to stop, stop. This was my day to share with Max and Luke: get the hell out of my head, Jarvis.
It was like Jarvis had pitched a tent in my mind, hammered in pegs and fastened ropes to my brain. Always, he was sitting in that tent, invisible, with a glass of whiskey, waiting for these private chats of ours. He was an unhealthy obsession, a delusion; the image of him was stronger than the life I was living. He had a magnetic pull that I couldn’t resist and a power over me that I had never felt before. My thoughts were no longer my own; they belonged to him.
A few weeks before, my therapist had asked whether I was obsessed with him. I’d asked, despairingly, ‘How would I know?’ And she said obsession would be indicated if I couldn’t stop thinking about him. The word ‘obsession’ had alarmed me. Now I realised it was true, this was some kind of obsessive love, and there was something not quite normal about it.
I’d always been quite sensible. I’d never had to chase a man before; love had come to me naturally and easily. Luke, especially, was a very straightforward love affair. This thing with Jarvis was far more complicated than I was ready to admit. I wondered if my therapist could hypnotise him out of my brain. I wanted to sweep away those scattered, distracting thoughts of mine that had become as annoying as dirty leaves that blew into the house on a windy day.
***
In contrast to me becoming increasingly wired and uneasy, Luke unwound on the trip. I didn’t even hear him making any calls to Mike to check up on the Patch. At night, after Max was in bed, we turned off the TV and sat on the rooftop, watching the lights switch on around Hobart. We drank a glass of red and talked, like we used to do before life got so hard and busy. We even managed to drag ourselves out of the slump of husband-and-wife conversation and behave like friends, making an effort to engage each other with our wit and observation. After some time, I realised that I hadn’t thought about Jarvis for at least an hour or so. That incessant voice in my mind had gone quiet and I was pulled back towards Luke.
I wanted to grab him by the shoulders and hold him, and say, ‘This is my Luke. Where have you been? Where have I been? This is why we are together.’ I remembered it all, why I fell for him in the first place. How he could make me laugh and keep me entertained. How we felt so comfortable together, like best friends. Without all the everyday drudgery to get through, the queries over the recycling bin or the status of the gutters, we actually got along really well.
Max’s bedroom was downstairs and our bedroom was on the top level of the warehouse. We took our time rediscovering each other’s bodies. He continued taking off all his clothes. One night, he didn’t even redress himself afterwards, and when we woke up naked together the next morning he was still holding onto me. I felt as though I had my man back.
***
On our final day, we went to Port Arthur. I’d been umming and ahhing about whether I wanted to go or not, but in the end we decided that we would, because we never knew when we’d get back to Tasmania. I wanted to focus on Port Arthur having been a penal colony, I didn’t feel as though Max needed to know about the Martin Bryant massacre just yet. But somehow he already knew. When we arrived and looked out at the lawn area, he said, ‘Is this the place where that guy shot all those people?’
‘How do you know that?’
‘I don’t know, I just do,’ he said.
We crept in and out of the historic buildings, the churches, hospital and penitentiary; we made our way up and down dark staircases, into basements chilled by the spirits of convicts. Max viewed most of the site through the lens of my smartphone, using the Hipstamatic app to create some retro blue-washed shots of the site. I’ve looked back at the record of that day many times. Max took lots of photos of Luke and me walking in and out of the ruins. The blue filter he used creates a sense of calm. There’s this one shot of Luke and I emerging from behind a crumbly pillar, and we are smiling about something. There’s happiness in that candid moment. Years later, even though I can’t remember what we were smiling about, it reminds me that all was not bad between us, there were good times as well, as precious as a native orchid found growing between the cracks in a rock.
Afterwards, in the hire car, on the way back to the warehouse, we had to stop and get some petrol. Luke walked into the servo to pay for the fuel and I noticed that he’d left his phone in the front console. I don’t know what made me do it, but I picked it up and looked at his sent messages. I didn’t recognise the number of the last message, but it said At Port Arthur. This place is eerie. Thinking of you as always.
And I knew exactly who he’d sent that to.
I shoved his phone back into the console, my heart pounding. Max was sitting quietly in the back of the car, looking out the window, tired after a long day, oblivious to the drama that was playing out in his mother’s head. I didn’t know what to feel. A week ago, I’d been looking for evidence that my plan had succeeded and been sad when I hadn’t found any. But now that I’d seen that it had, I felt my world crumbling.
Luke came back to the car, carrying three Golden Gaytime ice-creams. Max accepted his happily, tearing open the paper wrapper quickly.
‘I don’t want it,’ I said.
‘But I bought one for you,’ Luke said.
‘I don’t feel like it.’
‘What am I going to do with it?’
‘I don’t know.’ I slumped back in the seat, looking out the window.
‘What’s up? You like these.’
‘I don’t want it.’ My voice was slowly slipping into the deranged range.
‘I’ll eat both of them,’ Luke finally decided, placing my Gaytime next to his phone in the console. He drove down the highway, one hand on the steering wheel, the other holding the stick of his ice-cream. His mouth cracked on the chocolate, bits of cookie crumb fell onto his shorts and blobs of ice-cream dribbled into his beard and I seethed with hatred for him. I thought how far away I was just then from having a ‘gay time’, how this was so absurd, that I was so angry right now I could have leaned over and struck him with one of those lead pipes from Cluedo — if only we didn’t have such a precious passenger in the back seat of the car.
It was our final night in Hobart and we were supposed to have dinner in Salamanca Place, but I was in the foulest mood. I almost told Luke to take me back to the warehouse. But for Max’s sake, I came along, quietly, moodily, a black pit in my stomach. We ate fresh seafood, and during the meal, I remember it so clearly, Max said, ‘Mum, Dad, I love you so much’, unprompted, like he used to say to us when he was three. It almost broke my heart, the three of us there, a family in body, but our spirit ruined. I grabbed Max, my fingers slimy from the prawns, tears in my eyes, and planted a big kiss on his cheek, wanting to freeze that moment in amber.
I didn’t say anything to Luke. I was solemn that night, but I needed time to think about what I was going to do and when I was going to confront him. I turned my back to him in bed. The holiday was over, in more ways than one.