He’s finally down. She leaves the fan on low, turns up the monitor and backs out of the room. Lowering herself onto her side and curling her legs up on the cool vinyl couch, she thinks don’t wake up, and there are tears way back in her throat. She tries to close her eyes, but they prickle dry and won’t stay shut. With every blink, there are flashes of colour. Jerking. Jumping erratically. Olive green shaking by her shoulder and a dark yellow weighing down above her forehead. Harsh and nauseating. Still she blinks again and again. The air in the house is heavy and falls flat on her skin no matter which way she lies.
There’s a blowie trapped between the sliding door and the flywire. It bashes up against the glass, frantic and determined. With her head on the cushion, she tracks its movements with her eyes and feels the pity start to grow. Shhh, she thinks, wishing it’d just stop panicking and rest. But it keeps bashing, buzzing and bashing, till it drops down to the bottom, soundless and finally dead.
The pile of washed laundry on the armchair topples as she pulls out a pink-and-white-striped beach towel. She heaves the glass sliding door open and pushes her feet into a pair of purple thongs lying just outside. The concrete slab behind the house thumps white.
She crosses it quickly, one hand pressed into her forehead above her squinting eyes, and wrestles the umbrella from the hole in the middle of the green plastic table. As she turns towards the garden, it hits the wind chime hanging limp from the pergola rafters and sends it into a frenzy. She heads down the slope as the jangling dies away, the umbrella pole dragging through the grass and raising a thin trail of yellow dust. The muscles around her knees twitching and flicking her feet out—left, right, left, right—without any real thought of movement.
* * *
The big cement fishpond was the first thing they’d put in when they moved out here. With not enough money for landscaping, the bare dirt the builders left behind had hardened and baked and even the weeds hadn’t really taken hold. But the fishpond had felt cool and soothing in the haze of that first summer. They’d installed a small water feature by the edge with rivulets and bubbles cascading over flat stones.
When the pump broke down that winter, they’d been too busy with the little one to fix it. And then the algae set in and the fish started dying off. Not enough oxygen, she’d read. That wasn’t so bad. She wasn’t keen on them anyway. The way they lurked with needy eyes just beneath the surface and gulped at the air. Now it’s not so much the trickling water she misses as the droning of the pump, like a mother’s absent-minded lullaby, calm and reassuring. Like a soft conversation through a thin bedroom wall.
By the edge of the fishpond, the air feels a little lighter, damp when she breathes in deep. But the odour hangs in her nostrils like rot. The water has shrunk away from the sides and the last fish is long dead. The surface, though, is such a gentle shade of emerald, and so still and intense, like a Monet painting. She drops the towel on the grass and opens the umbrella against the sun. She lies down in its rainbow shadows and curls up on her side. From somewhere nearby, a soft ringing starts up and stops, starts again and stops. I’m not here, she thinks and closes her eyes.
* * *
He holds his mobile to his ear and pictures the sound of the phone ringing in the kitchen, skidding across the sticky laminate benchtop, rattling the unwashed glasses and chipped coffee mugs tumbled like a rockslide in the sink.
He counts the rings—twelve, thirteen, fourteen—and then hangs up to dial her mobile. It goes straight through to message bank. That’s not unusual. It’s never charged. Always dead.
Half an hour later he calls again in case she was in the shower. He counts to fifteen this time. Enough time to get off the toilet and answer. Enough time to get out of bed. But she might be changing a nappy. It’s not enough time to finish changing a nappy.
The third time he calls he counts to ten and hangs up. He tells his boss his little one’s sick and his wife needs his help. It’ll take him an hour to get home on the freeway at this time of the afternoon.
* * *
She’s been slipping towards sleep and away again. Her mind like a windscreen on a rainy night … blurry … clear … blurry … clear. And her scalp is burning hot. And then, when she opens her eyes, it’s not so much a noise that’s woken her. More a tiny slit in the silence. She raises her head from the sun-dry grass, her cheek etched deep with crumpled blades. The umbrella has rolled away and is on its back, swaying wearily in the heat. The sun on the surface of the fishpond is angled now and glistening on the green, smooth and cool as satin sheets. But she notices a tear in the skin—one small dark patch just near the edge. She leans forward to peer into the hole and sees a small child’s face, its skin like polished jade, silent and unblinking, disappearing down.
Before she can even think, she’s walking into the water, thongs and all, her arms sliding down through the green film. She grasps the child’s head in her two hands and pulls and out it comes. Its whole body greeny blue, with long soft strands in its hair and in the corners of its mouth as well. The bottom of her dress, her legs and arms are green with the silky slime. She lays him on the grass and looks at him. He doesn’t move; just stares back up at her, his eyes hard and pale like cherry pits. She can’t tell if he’s breathing. She wishes he would cry like a newborn just to let her know he’s alright. She picks up the towel and wraps it around him. He’s heavy in her arms like a woollen jumper that hasn’t been wrung out and his skinny heels jolt against her thighs. She looks around, but there’s no one there to claim him. She staggers up towards the house, her thongs slipping sideways and sucking at the soles of her feet, screaming, ‘Whose child is this? Whose child is this?’
As she pushes through the gate, she sees a tall man in dark grey pants and a pale blue shirt. He looks a little like her husband, but his face is more twisted, less gentle. He’s looking at her and at the child. She looks down at herself. Her fingernails are painted green with slime and water seeps between her legs. She knows she must look mad, but he’ll understand once he sees the child. She’ll wash it off once they’ve taken care of the child.
The man screams, ‘Kelly?’ and waits for her to answer, but she just stops and closes her eyes against the blinding sun behind him. She wonders how he knows her name. She softly shakes her head and presses her eyelids tight, but the flashes of colour have returned, swirling now and making her sway. She lets the child slip down onto her feet and bends over him to stop her head from spinning. The man’s footsteps come closer on the grass, thudding through her soles, heavy and serious, closing in fast. He stumbles towards her, his arms like question marks above his head, and screams her name again. And this time, even without opening her eyes, she knows who he is.