THE AUSTRALIAN PUSHES THE electronic doorbell. On the plane, he had read his father’s letters, in which he pressed Margaret to allow him to visit her and the Australian in Melbourne. Lock had written that he had no money to send, and that his parents—who, in accordance with Margaret’s bidding, had no knowledge of the Australian—weren’t willing to give him any on account of his previous escapades. Margaret must have deflected him from her life again and again. Lock’s acquiescence to her refusals demanded explanation. He could have found the Australian in the schoolyard after the last bell rang, swept him up in a hug and swung him in a circle. He could have shown up at the apartment, and if Margaret had tried to shut him out, he could have lodged his arm between the door and the frame, demanding to see him son. Or years later, when the Australian was in New York, Lock could have come to him, explaining man to man what—for all the years that mattered most—had kept him away.

The Australian rings the doorbell again. When a woman answers—sun-leathered, unsmiling, straddling the border between elderly and ancient—he realizes that, against all reason, he had hoped his father would be standing on the other side of that door.

“Yes?” says the woman. She is dressed tidily, in mint-green pants and a white button-down shirt with the sleeves rolled up. Her coarse gray hair is cropped short and immobilized by hairspray. She speaks with a broad Aussie accent, thicker than the Australian’s. “Can I help you?”

He explains his predicament clumsily: that his father may have once lived in the house, and that he is in search of anyone who knew him.

The woman does not release her grip on the doorknob. “You must have the wrong address,” she says. “This house has belonged to the same family since it was built. The Joneses—they own the Yamba Golf and Racquet Club. I’ve worked for them for thirty years.”

Inside the front door of the ranch-style home, a sitting room with white shag carpeting and angular modern furniture expands beyond his view on the right, while a cream-colored grand piano is partially visible on the left.

“Sorry,” says the woman, beginning to close the door.

The Australian puts a hand on the doorframe. “My father’s name was Lock Jones.”

The door halts, slightly ajar. A bird noisily shakes free from its perch in a bush beside the Australian and takes flight.

“Wait here,” says the woman, flatly. She shuts the door completely, leaving him standing under the hot sun.

Rows of red, orange, and yellow flowers line a slate footpath that cuts through the green yard, ending at the sidewalk. The Australian takes a few steps back and a double carport containing a gleaming maroon Audi comes into view. From there, a driveway extends to the road. A mailbox is located at that junction—it is clean and white, with a miniature golf club affixed to its side, raised to indicate outgoing mail. The door opens again, and the woman is back, smiling now.

“Please,” she says, waving toward the house’s interior. “Come in.”

The Australian follows her into the living room. He steps gently on the carpet, as though afraid of making a sound.

“Make yourself at home,” she says, indicating a beige sectional couch shaped like a kidney bean. She turns away and vanishes around a corner.

The Australian sits on the edge of the firm couch cushion. Several minutes pass. It seems impossible that his father, the very same Lock Jones from Margaret’s stories, had grown up here. There is the flush of a distant toilet, then footsteps. A man is walking through the hallways toward the living room. He is a head shorter than the Australian, wearing a short-sleeved white polo shirt and loose-fitting khaki shorts. The skinniness of his arms and legs is contradicted by his torso, which suggests, gently, the shape of a Bartlett pear. He has the sort of face—clean-shaven, bright blue eyes, few wrinkles—that, particularly when combined with total baldness, as is the case with him, makes age impossible to guess. As the man slips off his loafers at the room’s edge and walks across the shag carpet, the Australian stands, wondering whether he ought to take off his own shoes. Before he can ask, the man is shaking his hand.

“Cameron,” he says. “But everyone calls me Cam.”

The Australian feels a queasy kind of letdown, once again, at the fact that this man cannot be his father. Cam sits down in the olive-green, pod-like chair under a bay window that looks out onto the lawn. As he leans back, he is enveloped by the chair, like a baby bird who, having deemed the world inhospitable, is attempting to reenter its egg. The Australian reclaims his place on the couch.

“I’m your father’s younger brother,” says Cam. “The resemblance is wild.”

“I look like my father?” asks the Australian.

“Yeah,” Cam replies.

Cam’s hazy, adolescent demeanor takes the Australian aback. His lightly crow-footed eyes are bloodshot. The Australian explains the circumstances of his visit—his bewilderment over his interaction with the lawyer after Lock’s death, the mystery of how she had located him, his mother’s death, and his subsequent discovery of Lock’s letters.

“The letters,” says Cam, shifting in his seat and adjusting his shorts cuffs with a tug.

The Australian hears the rush of blood swooshing inside his head. “I was surprised because my mother had always said Lock was illiterate.”

A branch of a flowering cassia tree scrapes lightly against the window, its yellow blossoms shaking in the ocean breeze. Cam narrows his eyes. It dawns on the Australian that his uncle is very stoned.

“Lock was brilliant,” says Cam. “Beyond clever, but totally illiterate. See, he had severe dyslexia. Our father wanted to send him to a special school in Brisbane, but he ran away.”

This statement is followed by silence during which Cam’s thoughts manifest themselves on his face, but he makes no effort to communicate them verbally.

“Why did he run away?” asks the Australian.

“He didn’t want to deal,” says Cam. “Boarding school, all that.” He explains that the family didn’t hear from Lock for years, not until he joined the Royal Air Force. “He got discharged for going MIA during a training mission over Tasmania. He landed in a field and was discovered naked and wading in a bay, eating oysters and what have you. After that, we lost contact with him again.”

“My mother told me a few details of my father’s past,” says the Australian. “Skydiving, mountain climbing, BASE jumping. Was he doing all those things during that time period—after he was discharged from the Air Force?”

Cam’s focus drifts to some faraway place. “Some of them,” he says. “Yes.”

“When did you finally see him again?”

“Three years after he was kicked out of the Air Force. He showed up at the front door, here. He’d contracted malaria while knocking about South Africa in an anti-rhinoceros-poaching militia. There were loads of complications from the malaria, and he rested at home for two years. At that time I myself was out of commission. I weighed thirty-seven stone, mate. I was bedridden. Kaye—you just met her at the door—she took care of me.”

“How did you lose the weight?”

“Right after our mum died, when I was twenty-three, I had my surgery—stomach staples. The weight fell right off.”

“Good on you,” says the Australian. “I’m sorry about your mum, though.”

“Yeah,” says Cam, with the stereotypical sincerity that is particular to the intoxicated. “Pancreatic cancer. After we lost Mum, Dad was never the same. He finally joined her a few years ago. A series of strokes over the course of a few months.”

“My condolences,” says the Australian.

He hopes the conversation will now veer back to Lock Jones and the letters, but Cam continues to spout off. After he lost weight, he was reborn—a new man with fresh ambition. He attended the University of Sydney, where he earned a degree in mathematics. His marks were high, and he even contributed to an important breakthrough in applied statistics, but upon graduation he chose to honor his father’s wish that he return home to manage the affairs of the family business: the Yamba Golf and Racquet Club. He did this out of gratitude to his family, who had supported him during his convalescence, and so that his father could retire.

The Australian nods periodically, seething at his uncle’s meandering. It seems a miracle when the conversation finally returns to Lock.

“About your father,” says Cam, sending a jolt through the Australian.

“Yes?”

Cam leans forward in his chair and rests his forearms on his sinewy thighs. “While he was recovering, he swore me to absolute secrecy. Then he told me about your mother, and you. He asked me to write those letters. He spoke the words and I transcribed them.”

“Did he every talk about me? Beyond the letters?”

“He was too private for that,” says Cam. “Not just about you. He wasn’t a verbose fellow.”

The Australian inquires about the inheritance bestowed upon him by Lock.

“My best guess is that it was the money our mum left to him,” says Cam. “I never knew what he’d done with it. Quite honestly, I assumed he’d frittered it away.”

The Australian tells him the amount, and the year in which he received it.

“Yes, that’s exactly right. He must have saved it all that time, for you.”

This notion softens the Australian, but those feelings are quickly eclipsed by anger at the fact that there were gifts much more valuable than money that Lock had withheld. “Why do you think my mum told Lock about me, when she had no intention of allowing us ever to meet? Do you know?”

“I’ve always wondered the same thing, mate,” says Cam. “I know she was dead set on raising you alone.”

“But why?”

“Let me think,” says Cam. He closes his eyes, pinching the bridge of his nose between his thumb and index finger. Time flows around and through the Australian. Just as he begins to wonder whether Cam has fallen asleep, his eyes snap open.

“In one of her letters, she mentioned something about the Divine Feminine,” he says. “Also she had this idea that, biologically, the next evolutionary step for humankind will be women’s ability to procreate without any outside genetic input.”

Some distant moment in the Australian’s own childhood in which Margaret said something similar sparks, and then fades into ash. “Oh,” he says, quietly. “She didn’t say anything else?”

“I’m sorry,” says Cam, shrugging. “I don’t remember all that much.”

He narrows his eyes and scrunches his forehead. “All I can add,” he says, “is that your mother was cool. Too cool, if you know what I mean. Maybe part of her did want you to know Lock, but it was like she’d made some kind of vow. Like, extreme self-sufficiency. Something about her parents. She wanted to do it all on her own—to succeed at that.”

This explanation, however dissatisfying, resonates. The Australian wants to fight against it, to will into being a history less damning of his mother. Yet her particular brand of pride seems a truth carved deeply into stone, traced and retraced by each year he knew her.

“My brother respected her,” Cam says. “He wouldn’t just pop up at her doorstep. He wanted to win her over with the letters. I told him to make a move, she has no right to keep you from your son, but he wouldn’t.”

“Why not? Didn’t he want to know me?” The Australian is surprised both at the rawness of his wound and the fact that he has revealed it so plainly.

“You’ve got to believe me,” says Cam. “Lock cared. Letter after letter, Margaret put up barricades. It turned him inside out. He grieved for not knowing you, but he wouldn’t cross her. Their time together was brief, but I’m sure that he was deeply in love with her.”

Cam looks at his watch and announces he is expected at Yamba Golf and Racquet. “Want to come along? Check out the club?”

“Sure,” says the Australian, unsure what another option might be.

Behind the wheel of his car, Cam slips into a cheerful persona, one more befitting the owner of a beach town country club. Cruising slowly down his tree-lined street, he explains that despite its name the club no longer houses any racquetball facilities.

“A few years back, I had the courts ripped out and turned that building into a social hall. Sometimes we host events—wedding parties, retirement bashes, and the like. Otherwise, it’s used for live entertainment on Sunday nights. We’ve been able to snag some good ones.”

“Oh?” says the Australian.

The ocean appears out the window. As the car glides along parallel to the coastline, he imagines himself out there, at twenty years old—half boy, half Poseidon—paddling out on his surfboard into the open sea. He pictures his hands cupped into powerful shovels, hurling great curls of water behind him, churning waves upon the waves.

They roll past the club’s sign onto a narrow drive, which winds alongside the club’s eighteen-hole golf course.

“Have you ever heard of Lily Blundell?” asks Cam. “I’ve got a meeting with her and our event staff now. She’s a musician, one with a very famous sister.”

“Can’t say I have,” says the Australian.

“Well, certainly you’ve heard of Celeste.”

“Yes, of course.” The Australian is still thinking about the sea, longing to be alone on that empty beach. If he were there, perhaps he could cry, which is all he wants to do.

“Lily Blundell is Celeste’s younger sister,” says Cam.

“Is she really?” The meaning of Cam’s words snaps into focus. When the Australian was in university, Celeste had been named Australia’s sexiest woman by the Australian magazine Stargaze. Just that morning, on a television at the airport, he watched her speak out against a common practice in the fashion industry in which designers give models clothing from runway shows in lieu of cash payment. A retired supermodel, she is now spokeswoman for several human rights organizations whose fundraising campaign ads are internationally televised. Most of all, the Australian is familiar with her because of her ongoing feud with the pop star.

The feud began nearly fifteen years ago at a British awards ceremony, when the pop star presented Celeste with a special achievement award for her Nourish the Youth campaign, for which Celeste had spent eight months in the Sudan filming a documentary called Only Hope. According to Fiona, Celeste—having just been handed her golden trophy—thanked the pop star by the wrong name. She quickly and gracefully corrected the error, but she then proceeded to repeat the mistake in conversation with a celebrity gossip columnist at the award show’s afterparty, and then again when confronted by the pop star on the red carpet of another event a few weeks later. Celeste sent the pop star an apologetic note and lavish bouquet of flowers. This did little in the pop star’s opinion, to set things right.

Over the years, whenever the two women have bumped into each other at benefits or other industry functions, the pop star has snubbed Celeste. What’s more, ever since her own career has been in decline, the pop star has underhandedly trashed Celeste to the press. “Poor thing,” she once said, shaking her head with theatrical dismay during an interview on an internationally syndicated talk show. “We all have our struggles. But trichotillomania—the compulsion to pull out one’s own eyelashes—how painful and grotesque. I just pray she gets the help she so desperately needs.” Celeste, whose lack of eyelashes since birth is well documented and much celebrated by her admirers, has consistently risen above these smear tactics, declining to respond when asked for comment.

Cam parks the car in front of the clubhouse and pulls his key from the ignition. “There’s a rumor going around,” he says, turning to the Australian. “I can’t promise anything, but there’s a chance Celeste will come to the show tomorrow.”

Before his meeting, Cam leads the Australian on a tour of the country club. Given the flashy modernity of Cam’s house, the club is surprisingly quaint and outdated. It is late afternoon, and the grounds are deserted aside from a few leisurely golfers dotting the course’s distant sprawl. Inside the clubhouse there is a small pub and a low-ceilinged dining hall in which the waitstaff, wearing a uniform of forest green polo shirts and khaki pants, are busy laying down tablecloths in preparation for dinner. Cam proudly points out a menu posted on the wall by the hostesses’ station, and the Australian surveys its offerings: two buttery preparations of local prawns, fried and bread-crumbed King Island Brie, chili chicken wings, pepper-crusted Nolan grain-fed eye fillet served with a parmesan béchamel sauce, breaded veal scallopine, and several other dishes, all of them overwrought. Fare this heavy, this overburdened by sheer number of ingredients and quantity of grease, hasn’t been in fashion in New York, or the major Australian cities for that matter, since the 1980s. As soon as the Australian thinks this, he feels the urge to smack himself for being such a snoot.

He thinks of Fiona, who has always adhered mostly to a vegetarian diet yet inflicts no judgment on others. While she would never prepare meat for the Australian—in part because she preferred not to handle it, but also because he did most of the cooking—there was a time when she delighted in his enjoyment of a good steak, particularly one prepared in the Argentinian style. That was his favorite meal at Ignacio’s, one of the few restaurants for which Fiona could ever find time, given the demands of her work schedule. Located just two blocks from their apartment, the restaurant was convenient and also happened to be very good.

Following Cam through the clubhouse, past golf trophy display cases and sweaters with the club’s crest sewn onto their breasts, arms outstretched and nailed to the wall for display, the Australian tries to recall the last time he and Fiona ate at Ignacio’s and cannot. Instead, he remembers one of the first times, an August evening during a heat wave, just weeks before Maximus’s birth. They sat in a corner by the window, beneath the cool blast of a central air-conditioning vent, holding hands at the center of the table. After they had finished their meals, Fiona drank the remainder of her mint-lavender iced tea while the Australian used the crayons provided in a scotch glass on the table to sketch nude depictions of himself and his wife, eight months pregnant, on the white paper tablecloth.

As he did so, he took inspiration from Albrecht Dürer’s famous engraving, Adam and Eve, which he had recently seen on a solitary trip to the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Struggling to mimic the soft yet precise shapeliness of Eve’s form, he found himself adding folds and rolls of flesh to Fiona until her torso resembled the body of an elongated Shar-Pei. Then, as he fashioned his own musculature, his attempt to echo Dürer’s athletic Adam begat a jagged and robotic monstrosity—abdomen, thighs, and biceps forming in accordance with the geometry of nightmares. By the time he finished the double portrait, both he and Fiona were laughing to the point of tears.

The Australian follows Cam outside, across a narrow courtyard, and into the building that once housed racquetball courts, which is now called Sinclair Hall in honor of Cam and Lock’s late father. Inside that cavernous space, stage lights glow dimly from the high ceiling, just barely illuminating the dark wood paneling on the lower third of the walls. The center of the room is filled with small round tables, each set with white tablecloths and two chairs. Jutting from the back wall is a wooden stage. On the left is a bar occupied by a small cluster of employees, along with a woman in her mid-forties with a feathered haircut, wearing high-wasted denim shorts and a tight, white T-shirt. Cam waves at the group and together they wave back, except for the woman, who is examining her cuticles.

“Lily! Friends! Sorry for the wait,” Cam shouts. “Must run off now,” he tells the Australian, slapping his shoulder. “Go back to the clubhouse, mate. Kick back. Have a drink, or three.”

The Australian returns to the pub. He feels none of the pride, disappointment, visceral familiarity that he assumed would come to him by connecting with his father’s roots—only the same longing for something other than the cold distance he always felt whenever he looked the photograph of his father. He sits on a stool at the middle of the empty bar. The two weeks he has spent in Australia feel like ages: decades away from Fiona and Maximus, centuries witnessing his mother’s death, and millennia seeking out elusive truths about his father. Today is his birthday. Having decided to drink himself into apathy or blindness, whichever comes first, he asks the bartender for the club’s signature drink, whatever it might be.

A Lemon Ruski—lemonade and vodka—is set down on a napkin before him. He remembers drinking grapefruit shandies with Fiona on the evening they first met. “Shut up,” he mumbles. The bartender glances at him. The Australian lifts his drink to his lips. Two sips in, he is seized by the hot, tight embrace of nausea. Hoping the chill of the beverage will be soothing, he takes a big gulp. The back of his tongue burns with stomach acid.

Abandoning his cocktail, he steps quickly out into the courtyard. It is 6 p.m. and dry heat radiates from the yellow disc of the sun, still high in the cloudless sky. He leans over behind a bush, hands on his thighs, and takes a series of deep breathes. Minutes pass—two, three, four. Confident now that he won’t vomit, he drags a wooden deck chair to the edge of the courtyard, where the shade of a golden ash tree blooms against the cement, and collapses into it. Soft breeze stirs around him and he closes his eyes. A weight sets into his bones.

The Australian thinks of Maximus in the fragmented way that occurs during half-sleep, a colorful montage of associations. Moments with his son, on which he has been afraid to dwell for fear of heartbreak, resurface. One by one, they rush to the barricade he erected upon leaving New York, flowing through every crack and gap.

There is Maximus, emerging from the bathroom after peeing all by himself and in the general direction of his training potty, beaming with satisfaction. There is his laughter, like a cluster of tiny bubbles escaping from a slim fissure in the ocean floor—rising, rising, free. There is his plump little hand, warm and perpetually sticky, gripping the Australian’s index finger with impossible, beautiful force. There he is fast asleep, dreams fluttering behind his milky eyelids—and between his parted lips, a teensy orb of saliva expanding and contracting with each long breath, glittering in the glint of his dragonfly nightlight. There he is at the neighborhood playground, giving away his toys to any child who shows interest in them, until, empty-handed and alone, he watches, quiet and content, as a girl collects pebbles in his bucket, a boy digs with his shovel, and another girl runs sand through his blue plastic sieve into the large, loose pockets of her dress. The memories keep coming, each sharp-edged fragment of love penetrating deeper, slicing through the Australian until he buckles into an agitated slumber.

When he is woken by Cam, with a startling shake of the shoulder, the sun is sinking toward the crown of a hill on the golf course, the sky a cobalt blue. Club members have begun to arrive for dinner, shuffling awkwardly past the Australian before entering the clubhouse. Cam invites him to spend the night at his home. Having reached the end of his own ideas about anything, the Australian lamely accepts.

On the drive, he struggles to keep his eyes open. “I just need a nap,” he says, pressing his forehead against the cool glass of the car window.

Cam glances at him, his expression vaguely worried. “No problem,” he says, and turns on the radio.

For the rest of the ride, Cam taps his fingers on the steering wheel to the beat of a song by the pop star, one the Australian once secretly liked and which he hasn’t heard in years.

At the house, Cam asks Kaye to show the Australian to the guest bedroom. She smiles, revealing tea-stained teeth, the same yellow-brown as a cockle’s shell.

“This way,” she says, walking brusquely down a hallway.

The Australian follows. Earlier that day, when he first arrived, he dropped his duffel bag in the house’s entryway. Having long since forgotten about it, he is grateful to find it resting beside a dresser in the small bedroom.

“Can I bring you anything?” asks Kaye. “A glass of water? An extra fan?”

“No, thank you,” he says.

He sits on the edge of the bed, unties his shoelaces, removes his trainers, and begins to knead his sore feet. It seems impossible that Lock Jones spent his childhood in this house. Cam, with his confidence in running his father’s country club and comfort living in the family home, must be a typical Jones. Could the same ever have been said of Lock? Or had he always been different? The Australian chooses to believe the latter. Lock had been bold, challenged his parents, shot like a bullet from Yamba. The Australian looks up and is surprised to see Kaye still in the doorway, leaning against its frame. She is scrutinizing him so intently that she seems not to realize he has noticed her watching him. Then she appears to catch herself and erupts with a smoker’s laugh.

“Ay,” she says. “I don’t mean to stare. It’s just the resemblance. I’m sure Cam’s told you already.”

The Australian is silent.

“Right,” she says, backing out into the hallway. “I’ll rack off now. G’night.”

The next morning, the Australian emerges after eleven hours of sleep to an overcast sky and a silent house. Wearing boxer shorts and a T-shirt, he wanders the hallways, peering into rooms until he is sure he is alone. A note from Cam is taped to the bathroom mirror, stating that he will return at 5 p.m. to take the Australian to Lily Blundell’s show at the club. In the kitchen, the Australian locates a cordless phone resting in its cradle on the wall beside the refrigerator. Outside the kitchen’s panoramic window, rain begins to fall.

The Australian’s calling card is in the guest room, but certainly Cam owes him an international phone call at the very least. He dials the United States country code, followed by Finn’s cell phone number. The phone rings once, and then again.

“Hello?” Finn’s voice comes through the line over the whirr of street sounds.

“It’s me,” the Australian says.

“Brother!” says Finn. “How the hell are you?”

“I’m in a nightmare. It’s been a rough time, mate. I can’t get into it now. Please, I want to know how you are. What’s new?”

“Are you sure you’re OK?” asks Finn. It is clear that news of the Australian’s separation from Fiona has not yet reached him.

“I’m surviving,” he says. “I’ll give you the rundown later. I just need you to tell me about yourself. Please.”

“Well, a lot’s happened since you left,” says Finn. “Work is basically over for me.” He explains that the pop star called into a morning radio show, hosted by a notorious shock-jock, to announce her retirement and declare herself a recluse. “She doesn’t need me anymore. The timing is perfect, though. I’m going to open my own salon. Figuring out how to back it, the money, that’s where I’m at.”

“Brilliant,” says the Australian, doing his best to sound enthusiastic. “It’s about time.”

“We’ll see,” says Finn. “I hope so. But that’s not the big news around here.”

“Tell me the big news.”

“OK, here goes,” he says, taking a deep breath. “Something incredible happened to Vivian and I. This is going to sound insane, but we were sledding in Central Park and we met this couple, Michelle and Laurent. She’s a graphic novelist and he’s a high school guidance counselor.”

“OK,” says the Australian.

“They’re polyamorous,” Finn continues. “Just like Vivian. They love who they love—each other and whoever else. And actually, it’s awesome.”

“All right.” The Australian is wary of where Finn’s story is heading, yet wishes he were hearing it across a table at a café.

“I could never wrap my head around Vivian’s whole poly thing,” says Finn. “You know that. But everything changed when we met Michelle and Laurent. Vivian and I—we both really hit it off with them.” He clears his throat. “What I’m trying to say is, we fell in love.”

“What do you mean?” asks the Australian.

“We all fell in love with each other,” says Finn. “I just opened up, you know? It’s not just that I’m into Michelle, who by the way is gorgeous and wonderful. You’ll adore her. It’s Laurent and I, too. And Michelle and Vivian. There’s this electricity—this perfect connection between all of us. It’s beyond anything I could have imagined.”

“Wow.” The Australian clears his throat.

“I know this must seem ridiculous—it all happened so quickly— but we’re getting married. Not legally, obviously. It’ll be a commitment ceremony.”

“All of you, together?”

Outside the kitchen windows, the rain begins to fall in sheets.

“Yes,” says Finn. “In May.”

Finn’s situation strikes the Australian as familiar in its absurdity, which calms something inside him. However, that effect quickly dissipates. As his friend carries on about his burgeoning four-way romance, the Australian’s conception of their New York life skews. From this new angle, his and Finn’s lives appear chaotic in the most banal sense of the word, little more than the result of a series of random impulses, flurries of spasm and twitch. His own life is a meaningless anarchy. The idea that anything worthwhile is waiting for him—a life of his own, aside from Fiona and Maximus, or even the seed of one—is a delusion.

Finn segues to Vivian’s film career. Visions of You has won Best Screenplay and Best Director at a small but well-regarded film festival, garnering her the attention of important people within the industry.

“Fantastic,” says the Australian. “Please give Vivian my congratulations.”

After hanging up with Finn, the Australian calls Fiona. Outside, the rain has powered up into a rolling, booming storm. Leaning against the kitchen island, phone pressed to his ear, each ring is met by a desperate refrain emitted from deep inside him: I need her, I need her, I need her.

Fiona’s voice comes through a web of static: “Jesus. Why are you calling me from an Australian number? I thought you were back in the city.”

“If I were back,” he says, “I would be there.”

“Well, clearly.” Her voice has a hard edge, even through the wall of fuzzy reception.

“I mean I’d be there, with you,” he says, immediately regretting it. Before Fiona has the chance to take pity—to soften her voice and remind him that their marriage is over—he asks to speak with Maximus.

“That’s fine,” she says. “Hold on.”

The implication of her words—that’s fine—spreads and multiplies like a virus, infecting the Australian’s every cell. The suggestion seems to be that it is somehow generous of her to allow him to communicate with his own son. Perhaps she has undergone a drastic change during his absence—she may have turned against him completely. This new Fiona might regard him much as his mother regarded Lock Jones.

The Australian’s mother never had any grasp on the practical, had offered no guidance in matters that—during his youth, and to this day—seem fundamental. He had learned so much of the necessary repertoire of boyhood through trial and error: how to roller skate, how to shave, how to swing a cricket bat, how to pick out cologne that girls would like. There were skills he never learned, which perhaps a good father could have imparted: how to hold down a job, how to laugh at himself, how to render a proper apology, how to be quiet and still without a profound sense of dread. An image comes to the Australian of his son, alone and shivering in a field whose tall, yellowed grasses are etched with sparkling frost. His skin tightens with panic and rage.

“Daddy?” Maximus’s gentle voice is barely audible through the crackle of the bad connection.

“Darling,” says the Australian. “How’s my little lad?”

“Daddy?”

“Yes, love—it’s me. I miss you like crazy.”

“Daddy?” says Maximus. “Daddy?”

“Can you hear me?” asks the Australian. “Are you there?” Thunder booms nearby. “Hello? Maximus?”

There is a long pause, and then Fiona’s voice comes through, barely intelligible. “We can’t hear you. The connection is horrible. Sorry.”

“Fiona.” The Australian is shouting into the receiver. “Can you hear me now? Fiona?”

The line crackles loudly and then goes dead.

The Australian thinks of Roper Thomas, a classmate of his from secondary school. The two of them had been friendly, but not quite friends. Three weeks before graduation, Roper killed himself by injecting air into a vein using his diabetic grandmother’s insulin syringe. As the storm gradually decelerates to a drizzle, an image of him visits the Australian. He had never thought much about the suicide before—he never accepted that ending one’s own life was a thing that could be done—but now the event returns to him, and he wonders why it happened.

Roper was a good-natured prankster, a bassist in an unremarkable garage band, and a benchwarmer on the football squad. His marks were average, his parents happily married, his family middle class. The only thing that set him apart was that, although he wasn’t particularly attractive, he was extraordinarily popular with girls. He was attentive and compassionate in a way that none of the other boys were. He took genuine interest in comments girls made in class and remarked upon them later. He seemed to be able to morph into different versions of himself depending on girls’ desires—yearnings that perhaps the girls themselves were unaware of until he managed, in a thoughtful word or two, to fulfill them completely. Yet he seemed undistracted by thoughts of romantic conquest.

While some of the other boys suspected Roper was gay, he maintained his popularity with them. Between sports and barbies and house parties, he affirmed and empathized with them, too, in ways so subtle as to never fracture the boys’ pride. In the Australian’s own moment of weakness following the breakup with his girlfriend, Shanna, Roper—although they had spoken very little during the preceding three years of their acquaintance—provided him with advice that the Australian recollects as being paternal and providing him with particular solace. While he can’t recall Roper’s exact words, he can remember that in the bathroom where Roper had discovered him, weeping and pissing at the same time, the Australian had felt carried. Not like a child in his caretaker’s arms, but like a wounded soldier slung over a sturdy shoulder. Afterward, the painful emotions remained, but he trusted that help was on the way, that relief was imminent. Aside from party banter and shouts across a football field, it was the only conversation they’d ever had.

The rain has stopped. The Australian collapses into a chair at the breakfast table, rests his forehead on the glass tabletop. Roper’s motive for suicide comes into focus: he had no respite from the burden of his own empathy. His seeming ordinariness must have been an attempt at self-protection, a sort of camouflage. A way to avoid being targeted by other boys for being soft, attacks he could not have weathered, and also to hide from those looking to unburden themselves. Still, there was no preventing the people around him their suffering. Sensing his compassion, they sought him out. Cutting those people off would have required either callousness or indifference, neither of which Roper possessed.

He was unable to turn away. He inhaled every sorrow, cloaked himself in every joy, and shed none of it. Yes, he had essentially been killed by the generosity of his spirit. The day he died must have been the day he reached maximum capacity.

All of it seems so clear to the Australian. It is also seems obvious to him why Roper chose the method he did—silent and literally sterile. A hypodermic needle would leave no visible mark, no open wound through which his loved ones might enter him and thereby come into contact with the great storehouses of anguish within. Why had Roper chosen air over poison? Unlike cyanide or bleach or morphine, air is nothing at all.

The Australian takes a cold shower. Back in the guest bedroom, the idea of unzipping his duffel bag and assembling a new outfit is daunting. He slips on yesterday’s pants and shirt. Only once he is wearing them does he notice their rankness. Back in the kitchen, he is tempted to lie down, spiraled like an embryo on the little turquoise rug in front of the oven. Why he does or doesn’t do anything, everything for which he feels an inclination—the alien logic behind his restraint—is the greatest mystery of his life. It seems entirely possible that had he heeded every instinct from the day he was born, he would have been better off. If only he had relied solely on his natural impulses, they might have become exquisitely refined; or, alternatively, they might have expanded into tools of great power, both destructive and creative, swollen into monstrous density like the muscles of a mythical beast. Animal intuition, sharper hearing, quickened heartbeat, a taste for raw and gristly meat, and total ignorance of cultural and moral conventions—maybe these are the things he is missing, the losses incurred by the atrophy of his primitive brain centers. Living in the civilized world has been his undoing. The Australian wonders whether he is losing it or finding it, and he wonders what is meant by it, this thing that seems to be absolutely essential to everyone’s existence, which no one dares to name.

He has not eaten since his arrival in Yamba. In the refrigerator there is a large plate of corned beef and smashed potatoes covered with plastic wrap. A small note from Kaye rests on top of it, explaining that she prepared the food for dinner the previous night, and that while Sunday is her day off, she thought he might like a nice hot lunch. He could put the food in the microwave, but a warm meal will only depress him more. He scarfs down the cold food without enjoyment. Then he returns to the guest room, lies on the bed, and reaches for the leather sleeve containing his passport and the photograph of his father. The sleeve had been a gift from Fiona years ago, when they still planned to travel together. Between his fingers, the leather feels stiff and waxy. He returns the sleeve to the table and spends the next several hours flipping through a stack of twenty-year-old Australian Geographic Outdoor magazines from a wicker basket by his bedside.

Cam picks up the Australian and takes him to Yamba Golf and Racquet. During the drive, the Australian again stares out the window at the white-capped sea. Cam has been talking for the entire ride, but the Australian doesn’t tune into the conversation until they are already halfway to the club.

“She’s been boozing all bloody afternoon,” he is saying. His face is red and his knuckles bloodless on the steering wheel. “She’s never done this before. She’s always been very professional. I’ve known her six months and I’m telling you, this isn’t the real Lily.”

“Oh,” says the Australian.

“I told her to please go easy,” says Cam. “There’s the show tonight, of course. But more importantly, I feel responsible for her.”

“Why?”

“She wasn’t doing well when I first hired her,” he says. “She’d been living in the middle of nowhere with some chap. A boy, really. Just barely eighteen. I’m pretty sure he was stealing from her, whatever money Celeste was sending. One of my employees knew Lily—his brother was once in a band with her. He urged me to invite her to audition, said she needed a fresh start. She’s very good. I hired her on the spot. Anyway, before I came to fetch you, I asked her if she’s upset because her older sister is coming to town. Lily denied it, swore it had nothing to do with Celeste. I’m certain, though, that’s got to be it.”

“It must be very difficult to have a sister like Celeste,” says the Australian.

“Exactly,” says Cam, punctuating his speech with a slap to the steering wheel. “Now, don’t get me wrong. Lily is a fine musician. She’s the best we’ve had. But let’s face it—it’s a gig at a country club. Her sister is Celeste, man. Celeste”

“Right,” says the Australian, only now truly appreciating the reality of Celeste’s imminent appearance.

“When I found her, Lily lived in a yurt with a bloke who calls himself The Real Deal.” Cam shoots the Australian a meaningful glance.

“Jesus.” The Australian is awash in a noxious sort of sympathy. Lily’s disaster is a reminder of his own—Cam’s pity mirroring what he believes his friends, if he let them in on the truth, would feel for him. He dreads meeting her and wonders if there is a way to avoid it.

“It’s a bad situation,” says Cam. “As we speak, she’s probably still at the bar knocking back Singapore slings.”

“Can’t you call it off?” asks the Australian.

“No way. According to Lily, Celeste is en route to Yamba. She just wants to come support her sister, but Lily can’t see that. Tonight will be rough—it’s going to be one hell of a bodgy show—but we’ll get her though it. You and me, pal.”

“We will,” says the Australian, intending to inflect it like a question but somehow neglecting to do so.

“That’s the ticket.” Cam grips the Australian’s shoulder with his faintly liver-spotted hand. “We’ll make this work.”

In Sinclair Hall, the forty-odd club members, hunched around circular tables with tea candles at their centers, are speaking very little to one another, and those who are speaking are whispering. The space hums as though in the aftermath of an event of high significance, one capable of disorienting and enervating people. The Australian assumes it has to do with Lily. Perhaps she has made an outrageous scene or a dramatic exit.

The barman—stout and in his twenties, a bush of red hair flaming around his paper-white face—is staring with eagle-like intensity toward the back of the room. There, in the shadows, is the silhouette of a tall, broad-shouldered figure.

“Where is Lily?” Cam asks.

“In the ladies’,” replies the barman. “She’s been there since just after you left.”

He nods toward the dark table in the back, where the figure is seated, and Cam’s eyes follow.

“Fuck all,” says Cam. “Is that her?”

“Yes.”

“Why is there no drink on her table? Is she being taken care of?”

“Of course,” says the barman. “She didn’t want anything.” He shrugs.

The Australian understands that the figure is, indeed, Celeste. His eyes gradually adjust to the dim lighting. She is reading a book spread open on her table.

“Come on.” Cam tugs on the Australian’s shirtsleeve.

Approaching Celeste’s table, the Australian sees the title printed on the book’s spine—a biography of the famed primatologist Jane Goodall. When Cam and the Australian are standing directly before her, she removes from her lap a tasseled bookmark, places it in between pages, and looks up. Breathlessly, Cam introduces himself to Celeste and welcomes her to the club. “Thank you,” she says, standing to shake his hand. She smiles and nods at the Australian, whom Cam seems to have forgotten completely.

Many models the Australian has encountered in his New York life have, up close, looked—with their spindly limbs, oversized heads, and wide-set eyes—like beings from outer space. This is not true of Celeste. Having retired from fashion modeling well over a decade ago, she has become zaftig. At six foot three, she is a powerful presence in such a way that is inspiring, regal. Her chestnut-brown hair is shorn close to her scalp, revealing the perfect curvature of her skull and allowing the gold flecks dancing in her deep brown eyes to dominate the impression she leaves.

“Is there anything I can get for you?” Cam asks, gesturing toward the bar. “A drink? Something to eat?”

“I’m quite fine,” she says. “If you could please just let my sister know that I’m here, that would be fabulous.”

“Of course. We will tell her straightaway.” Cam bows, a quick tip at the waist, and the Australian follows him—like a dog, he thinks—to the ladies’ room.

After calling out into the lavatory to make sure it isn’t otherwise unoccupied, Cam enters and the Australian follows. Beneath the last stall door, two red cowboy boots are visible.

“Lily, dear,” says Cam, his voice thin with caution. “Are you all right?”

“Is she here?” Lily asks, slurring.

“Yes,” says Cam. “She is very excited to see you.”

“Do you know what happened last time we were together?”

“No, I can’t say I do.”

“It was two years ago,” she says. “We had a blowout.”

“I’m sorry to hear that,” says Cam.

“Don’t be sorry,” Lily snaps. “I’m not sorry. I’m not sorry about a bloody thing. She tried to trick me into ditching the love of my life.”

“The Real Deal?” asks the Australian. The words launch from him by some automatic mechanism, similar to the one that induces a sneeze.

“Yeah,” says Lily, apparently unconcerned by a stranger’s presence in the ladies’ room, in possession of the details of her private life. “I told my sister to go to hell. I told her I loved him. I loved him so much. Oh God,” she wails. “I love him still.”

“You did the right thing, doll,” says Cam. “You can do much better than that. You will do much better.”

Although the Australian is invisible to Lily, he nods in earnest agreement.

“She made me doubt myself,” Lily says, sobbing now. “I should have said no to you, Cam. I don’t belong in Yamba. I shouldn’t have left him to come here. Oh, God.” She blows her nose loudly. “She put it in my head that my life was all wrong. I heard her. I listened. I believed her.”

This isn’t the Australian’s mess. He has trouble enough for a hundred people waiting for him in New York. Indeed, it is ridiculous that he has become ensnared in this fiasco—and for what? Cam has been no help at all. The Australian will now thank him for his hospitality, hitchhike back to the house, retrieve his rental car, and drive it straight to the airport. But in the instant that he opens his mouth to say so, the stall door swings open, so quickly that the two men must jump aside in order to avoid being hit.

“Fellows!” says Lily, beaming.

Though her features are coarser than her sister’s, the Australian can see her resemblance to Celeste in her Roman nose and brown eyes flecked with gold. She twirls away, tosses her snotty tissue into the toilet, and turns back to them. Once again Cam has failed to introduce him.

“I’m ready,” she says, holding her arms out theatrically. Her eyes are rimmed only slightly with a faint pinkness.

“Are you sure?” asks Cam. “You’re feeling well enough?”

“You know what?” says Lily, still a bit slurry but far more chipper. “I’ve never felt better in my life. I feel clean—cleansed, really. I needed that. Oh boy, did I need that.”

Moments later, Lily takes the stage, gripping her acoustic guitar by its neck. Cam leads the Australian to the end of the bar. Club members reposition their chairs in order to ensure a good view of the entertainment. Lily stumbles but manages to mask it by falling into the wooden chair at stage center, as if that had been her intention precisely. She clears her throat and scans the crowd. Her roving eyes land on her sister.

“I’m going to play a song for you,” she says into the microphone. “Thanks for coming out tonight,” she says, slowly strumming her guitar. “I’ll start with something old.”

In the first few bars, the Australian recognizes a folk song that he knows from ages ago, perhaps a favorite of some long-forgotten, musically inclined boyfriend of his mother’s.

“Oh come along,” sings Lily, so close to the microphone that her lips brush against it, which causes her husky voice to be overly amplified, “all you sailor boys and listen to my plea. And when I am finished you’ll agree—I was the goddamned fool in the port of Liverpool.” She narrows her eyes into an accusatory stare.

“Bugger,” Cam says under his breath.

The Australian is allied with Lily—she is as much of a mess as he feels. Watching is like witnessing the unfolding of his own disaster.

“Oh,” she continues, “I started drinking gin and was neatly taken in by a little girl they all called Maggie May.” Her voice becomes gruff and very loud. She whips her head from side to side like an angry lion. “Oh Maggie, Maggie May,” she belts, appearing on the verge of tears once again. “They have taken you away to slave upon that cold Van Diemen shore! Oh, you robbed so many sailors and dosed so many whalers, you’ll never cruise down Lime Street anymore.”

Celeste is sitting tall in the back of the room, but her expression is obscured by darkness. Lily is nearing the end of the song and has worked herself up into the sort of condition for which an exorcist might be summoned. “Oh, Maggie—Maggie May,” she roars. The club members sit motionless, neglecting their cocktails. The Australian can feel the heat of their stares, the burn of their judgment and the sting of their pity. Lily strums the final chord, hard and slow. She lets it reverberate into the ghastly purity of the silence that follows. The Australian is shrinking, mortified.

Then comes the applause. It is startling and thunderous, much louder than the number of people in the room could possibly generate. There are hoots and hollers, and here and there people rise from their chairs, clapping their hands in the air above their heads. “Brilliant,” someone says. “She is hilarious,” says another. “What a card.” The club members have interpreted the performance as some kind of gag. When the applause dies down, they begin to sip their drinks and chat amongst themselves. On stage, Lily looks out across the banquet hall, wearing an expression of naked astonishment. Beside the Australian, Cam sits on a barstool, his nostrils flaring and collapsing with each strenuous breath. In the back of the room, Celeste’s chair is empty.

The Australian holds out for as long as he can, while Lily edges closer to total loss of control. The club members grow rowdy, possessed by the self-surprised raucousness of people who are usually reserved. Between the third and fourth songs, the Australian leaves the bar, slinks along the wall toward the exit, and bursts out the door into the twilit courtyard.

“Pardon,” says a woman’s voice. The Australian turns and finds himself face to face with Celeste. “You wouldn’t happen to have a piece of nicotine gum, would you?”

The Australian pats his pockets despite the fact that he has never chewed a piece in his life. “Sorry.”

“Oh, don’t be sorry,” she says. “I haven’t chewed it in years. I shouldn’t have even asked.” She laughs, kicking the grass with the toe of her knee-high boot. “Quite a show in there, don’t you think?”

The Australian casts his eyes down.

“I hate coming home—to Australia, I mean,” she says. “No offense.”

“None taken,” he says. “Believe me.”

“Say what you want about the States, but in New York they leave you alone. Less people know who I am there, of course, but it’s a cultural difference as well. It’s too much for me here. I try my best to avoid it.”

The Australian responds with a single nod.

“From the minute I get on that plane, it’s a nightmare,” she continues. “I’m not complaining about being—well, anything, really. Don’t think I am. My point is that I have no motive to be here anymore, other than my sister. I only ever come for her, and it just seems like she’s doing everything she can to push me away.”

“You’re talking about Lily?” asks the Australian, because it seems like the polite thing to do. “She’s quite talented.”

“That’s hardly relevant anymore,” says Celeste. “She’s a mess. I’ve tried every conceivable way to help her.”

“She’s lucky to have a sister who cares.”

Celeste makes eye contact with him for the first time. “Do you have family?”

Perhaps because of Celeste’s fame, or due to her frankness despite their strangeness to one another, the Australian immediately assumed her to be a narcissist of the type that will emote unabashedly, effusively, but will—in the very next moment—have no memory of the person to whom they have been confiding. He is familiar with this sort of person, via his connection to the pop star. But he has misjudged her. Beyond her distress at her reunion with Lily, there is kindness in her face. Beneath her sadness lies a firm bed of confidence—not self-importance or arrogance, but the sureness of a woman who trusts herself.

“Do I have family?” the Australian says, as though repeating her question aloud will make it any easier to answer. He could easily return to the fabrications he presented to his dying mother, but Celeste’s honest and total way of listening releases something in him, and he unloads the whole truth. “Well, my wife has just left me. We have a son, Maximus—three and a half. I need to win them back, but I don’t know how. They’re in New York, where I still live, I guess, although I no longer have an apartment there. I’m almost broke and I’ve got no job prospects. Years ago I worked in finance, but I can’t reenter that world—it’s been too long. And aside from Fiona and Maximus, I suppose I don’t have any family. I never knew my father, and he died years ago, anyway. Last week, my mother died, which was the reason I came back to Australia. After them, who’s left? I’m an only child. I have an uncle, my father’s brother, and I just met him for the first time, hoping he would help me learn about my father, but I’m nothing to him, and frankly he is nothing to me. So that’s my situation.”

The Australian marvels at his own boldness, which he is certain Celeste has inspired. Her presence will give him the strength to face any truth. He feels a strong desire for her to ask further questions, so that, in answering, he might finally know his own mind.

“I’m so sorry for your losses,” she says. “And I apologize, by the way, for not asking your name earlier. Silly me—I assumed you worked for the club.”

The Australian thanks her and introduces himself.

“Listen,” she says. “I’m not much of a drinker, but I think we could both use one. Wouldn’t you agree?”

The Australian and Celeste return to Sinclair Hall, ignoring the spectacle that continues on stage. They bring the drinks back to the courtyard and sit in side-by-side deck chairs still damp from the morning’s rain. They discuss Celeste’s struggles with her sister, and then, when prompted by the Australian, she describes her own family. Her husband, William, is a classical cellist—“a true cellist’s cellist,” she says. They have two sons: Atlas, fourteen, and Emmanuel, seventeen. She speaks of their life in New York, tucked away from the public eye in a SoHo loft—a tight-knit bunch, she explains, despite tension caused by her sons’ eccentric teenage phases, the details of which she promises would bore the Australian to bits. “Tell me about Fiona,” she says, and then takes a short pull of scotch through a red cocktail straw.

The Australian sips his pint. “She’s the love of my life,” he says. “Well, I know that’s what everyone says. I met her at a bar in the East Village a few years after I moved to New York. I had a few bucks in my pocket but no idea what to do with myself. I probably would’ve had to leave the States. No Green Card, no job, no ideas.”

“What is it that you love about her?” asks Celeste. “What is she like?”

“Well, for one thing,” he says, “she’s the mother of my child. And she is a wonderful person. She works for a very troubled woman, and she’s incredibly patient with her. She’s basically a saint. And with me—she has tolerated so much. All this time, I’ve been trying to figure out my life. Sure, she’s leaving me now, but for years she put up with my confusion. I owe her everything.”

An uncomfortable pause wedges itself into their conversation. The Australian downs the second half of his beer in one long chug. Celeste breaks the silence by inquiring about his Green Card status.

“Oh, I got it years ago,” the Australian replies.

“That’s remarkable,” she says. “That business can be difficult enough, but without a job it’s often impossible. Did that come through before or after you married Fiona?”

“After,” he says. “It was incredibly lucky that it all came together like it did.”

“Sounds like it,” she says. “Very fortunate. How did you get by for so long without job, especially after your son came along?”

The Australian inspects his empty glass and then sets it on the armrest of his chair. “Like I said, I owe it all to Fiona. She’s an angel. Above all, I love her for that—the goodness of her heart. I should have done more to show my gratitude. Without her, I don’t know what would’ve become of me. I should have thanked her more, for everything.”

Celeste, lit golden by the streetlamp beside them, appears lost in thought. The last rays of sunlight slide behind the dark slopes of the golf course. Night birds call out in the purple dusk.

“Here’s the thing,” she says. “And I hope you don’t mind my saying this. But it seems to me that what you really owe her is an apology.”

“Absolutely,” the Australian says quickly. “You couldn’t be more right.” He shudders despite the warmth of the evening. “I need to apologize for not doing my part in the marriage. I’ve got to do something big to make things right.”

“Not exactly,” says Celeste. “This is only my perspective, and I don’t even know you. But it sounds to me like what you really need to apologize for is convincing yourself you loved her, marrying her for a Green Card, and then letting her operate under the assumption that your feelings were genuine for so long.”

“You don’t know me—I love Fiona,” he says, straightening his posture. “I love everything about her. I need her.”

“Well, that’s where I think you’re right,” says Celeste, gently. “You need her. Or at least, you believe you need her. Your union did result in a Green Card, correct? And she does support you financially, yes?”

Retorts swarm the Australian’s mind, only to scatter and vanish like roaches in the sudden flash of a kitchen light.

“Well?” asks Celeste.

“Yes,” he says, “but—”

“It’s just—do you want to hear this?”

He thinks for a moment before nodding his affirmative.

“It seems that you can’t tell me one thing about her aside from what she’s done for you—nothing specific to her, nothing that only you know and love,” says Celeste. “If you asked why I love William, I would tell you that he drinks four cups of Darjeeling tea per day, and sometimes I find him scrubbing a spoon while he’s doing the dishes, furiously trying to clean off a tea stain. If he doesn’t know I’m watching he will carry on and on, trying to polish a single spoon—and I will feel joy, because his attention to that spoon is so meticulous and deliberate, and those are some of the traits that made me fall in love with him almost twenty years ago. What I’m getting at here is that, from where I sit, your feelings seem to have very little to do with the reality of who Fiona is. It sounds like you wish to remain with her because, as you said, she saved you from yourself. Under the guise of romance, you essentially made of her a Green Card, an ATM machine, and a companion in a tough city.” She uncrosses her arms and leans toward him. “Who is she? What is she like? You haven’t told me yet.”

“She is the mother of my child,” says the Australian. He flips back through the years, searching. “She tells the most wonderful lies,” he adds, although he can no longer remember a single one.

Celeste reaches across the gap between them and places her hand on his shoulder. His last defenses fall away, whipping and twirling into the distance like cornhusks on the wind.

“How do you know all this?” he asks.

“Don’t take this the wrong way,” she says, “but you’re not as complicated as you think. No one is. Not really.” She leans toward him, the golden flecks in her eyes accented by the yellow light of the streetlamp, her irises blooming like marigolds. Close enough to his ear that he can smell her cool, mineral fragrance—not a perfume, but her own natural scent—she says, in a whisper, “Not even me.”

Celeste decides to leave Yamba Golf and Racquet and head straight to the airport. She bids the Australian farewell, handing him her phone number penned on a bar napkin, which he shoves in his pocket. “Let’s grab a coffee sometime,” she says.

The Australian’s ability—his exceptional aptitude, really—for self-delusion sickens him. Why was he such a willing target for her forthrightness? And did her honesty unfurl to the point of abuse? No, her words had come from genuine concern—but if thrust with enough force, the blunt knife of a letter opener can be no less fatal than a switchblade. Why did she persist in exposing his selfishness, which now disturbs him to the point of derangement? Perhaps she harbored a mistaken notion for the potential of a more enlightened person hiding somewhere deep inside him. She must have conceived of her insights as tools with which he might chisel away at his defects. She mistook him for a better man, and he cannot hold it against her. Nonetheless, he can never face her again.

In his bank account, the Australian has just over three hundred dollars. With the purchase of a last-minute standby plane ticket to New York, a transaction made over the phone at the club, his credit card limit is exceeded. He can no longer justify an attempt to reunite with Fiona. To do so would only inflict further cruelty. And certainly he cannot take her money. Where he will go after his arrival at John F. Kennedy International Airport and how he will survive in the city are puzzles he will attempt to solve midair.

At ten thirty, the Australian and Cam return to the house. Cam sits on the living room couch smoking a bong while the Australian readies himself to leave. While packing his clothes in the guestroom, he grabs several Australian Geographic Outdoor magazines at random from the bin beside the bed and tosses them into his duffel.

As he finishes zipping shut his bag, Kaye appears in the doorway.

“Hitting the road?” she asks. “I don’t blame you,” she adds, before he can respond. She crosses her arms and leans against the doorframe. “I practically raised those boys. Sometimes I fault myself for how they ended up.”

“No worries,” says the Australian, slinging his knapsack over his shoulder.

“Wait a minute, would you?” she says. “I want to talk to you about your dad. That’s why you came, and I can’t let you leave with nothing. It’s not right.”

The Australian sits stiffly down on the edge of the bed. Kaye straightens her back, as if poised to make a public address.

“I’d worked for a few other families before I met the Joneses,” she says. “I’d been around loads of children by then, knew all about the things that scared them. Monsters, thunderstorms, fever dreams—every little one has their fears. I always knew what to do about them, what to say. That went for Cam, too. He was an easy one. But your father was different. See, Lock was the most fearful child I’ve ever known. He was scared of just about everything. The feeling of wool against his skin made him scream bloody murder. The tiniest bit of rind left on an orange threw him into a fit. If it touched his teeth, he would be a blubbering mess. Even at the age of nine, if he looked out the window and saw a cat walking nearby, he would hide under his blanket for hours.”

“My father?” asks the Australian.

“Oh, yes,” says Kaye. “And he had night terrors. He was an incurable bedwetter. He was a fragile boy, which is why we were all so shocked when he ran away. We thought he’d been kidnapped. Nothing else made sense. It seemed impossible that a lad with his temperament would set out alone.”

“Seems like everyone was wrong,” says the Australian, angered both by Kaye and his own impulse to defend his father.

“Oh, I know the stories,” she says. “Skydiving, fooling with wild animals, flying around in tiny planes, all of that nonsense. I know that’s the version of the story you’ve heard, and I know what you must be thinking: If my father was so brave, why couldn’t he face me? Why did he wait until he died to contact me? I couldn’t help but overhear your talk with Cam. Believe me, I’m familiar with his version of things. But I’ve got to give you the Lord’s honest truth. I don’t know whether Lock loved your mother. But I do know what kept him away, whether he loved her or not.”

“What is it that you believe?” says the Australian, making no effort to hide his bitterness.

“He was a boy so scared of life that he died trying to prove otherwise. But he didn’t quite get it right. Life stuff never stopped spooking him, the real stuff—relations with his parents, his brother, himself. You were the most terrifying thing ever to happen to him. Like I’ve said, I knew him well, maybe better than anyone. He could wrestle a crocodile, but he could scarcely have a conversation with another human being. How he ever confided in me the times that he did, I don’t know.”

She pauses, staring for a moment at the ceiling, and then returns her attention to the Australian. “He created an idea of this man,” she says. “Exciting, wild, brave. That was his gift to you, that legacy. I’m certain that’s how he thought of it, that the idea of himself was better than any reality he could have offered.”

“But what about the letters?” the Australian asks. “What you’re saying isn’t true. He tried, he wanted to be with me and my mum in Melbourne.”

“Whatever he told Cam to write is one thing,” says Kaye.

“What is your point?” asks the Australian.

“My point, honey,” she says, “is that those letters don’t tell the truth of Lock’s heart. He may have loved your mother, and he may have wished he could be in your life. But the fact is, he chose to stay right here. I believe that if your mum would’ve had him, he still would have stayed here—sitting right there on that bed, the one you’re sitting on now, crying to me, like he did so many times, that he just couldn’t do it.” She straightens from the doorframe and brushes some imaginary dust from her shirtfront. “I hope knowing that helps you,” she says, her voice unsteady. “I really do.”

In a daze, the Australian leaves Kaye and Cam to their strange little lives. Driving to the airport, he blasts the radio at the highest volume he can tolerate. He wants to cry, wishes he could. At the airport he collects his standby ticket. He expects to wait a long time, maybe even days, for a seat on a New York—bound flight, but he is able to board the very first one. Learning of this bit of good fortune ignites a sense of foreboding. This luck may represent the final installment of his ration, a precise amount that was allotted to him on the day of his birth and which has now all been parceled out.

Once in the air, he tries to sleep but cannot. He drinks gin and tonic while staring at the sunset over the silver arc of the oceanic horizon. On a monitor affixed to the seatback in front of him, he attempts to watch a subtitled German television show about people who raise orphaned baby animals on a farm in Bavaria, but he cannot concentrate. Leaning his head against the smudgy airplane window, he shuts his eyes.

Three thousand feet above the Earth, a portrait of Lock Jones assembles itself. By the time the plane is over Samoa, the Australian is confronted with a revised portrait of his father: a man whose childhood peculiarities grew malignant, who abandoned his son to a world that he himself was too cowardly to inhabit, instead barricading himself inside the safehouses of whimsy and paralysis and dreams, leaving his own future—and his son’s—to fate. The Australian envisions Lock Jones as a lonely wayfarer wandering a white desert landscape in search of color, magic, and light, scouring great cities and ragged wilderness for any means of redemption, and finally looking upward, searching for a trap door in the sky. In that portrait, the Australian sees himself.

When the plane touches down in Hawaii for a two-hour layover, Kaye’s sun-damaged visage comes back to him. He remembers her turning to leave the bedroom, and then looking back. “Being your dad was the greatest adventure Lock’s life served up,” she said. “And it was the only one he ever turned down.”