Queensland, 2039
When loneliness comes stalking, go into the fields,
consider the orderliness of the world. Notice
something you have never noticed before.
Mary Oliver
October was a flurry of exams.
I passed with honours. Trudy failed.
The fruit salad trees burst almost
overnight into riots of perfect
fruit: lemons and apples, oranges,
peaches, pears and apricots.
Leo went home to Elizabeth Bay,
where his folks sold didges made
in Asia as souvenirs of Australia.
—Go figure, said Leo, unphased.
Trudy was off to the Gold Coast
with a stack of friends.
—See ya, she said. Behave, okay?
She gave me a cute, tight-fisted wave.
I raised my hand to do the same
but already she had walked away
and left me in ticking silence.
Not everyone left for the summer
break. A handful of students
and lecturers stayed. I was in
no hurry to go back home
to the despondent pitch and toss
of the waves or my parents’ house
in Angler’s Bay. Instead, I took
long walks past the Disney resorts
and ate at the almost empty caf
at a table with peeling laminate.
There were only a dozen or so of us:
a few age-spotted profs, offshore
students and the girl with plaits
who sat with me on the Sky Rail
from Brisbane that first day.
She was reading now as she was then,
lasagne congealed upon her plate
as she chewed upon one scarlet braid.
Her hands were slim and elegant
with bitten, ice-blue fingernails.
Her braids were long as horses’ tails,
the wiry hair not quite contained.
They made me want to weep again
like they did when I saw them
on the train. An equine sadness
reared up in me, intent on making
a quick escape.
—I’m Waverley. She looked up
and smiled. Are you okay?
—I’m fine, I said.
And I was really, for melancholy
was a familiar beast who often slunk
in unannounced. Waverley sensed
all of this somehow with a delicate
furrowing of her brow, giving birth
to the friendship we have now.
Autumn came in amber drifts.
Leaves scattered the lawns
and the heart-shaped pond with
a casual, coloured symmetry.
When Trudy failed to reappear,
the stuff I shifted from her bed
left a slight indent, as if a creature
once nestled there. Leo said Trudy
had joined a cult, some doomsday mob from Byron into cyber drugs.
—Not good, he said. He’d got fat
over summer, and I saw him then
as he’d look when middle-aged.
Already he sported a faunish beard
and a paunch above his jeans.
Any desire I’d felt was dimmed.
The kiss intended for my lips fell
on my deftly turned away cheek.
His milk teeth made me nauseous.
Waverley became my new room mate.
She filled the room with her zany taste.
This was an antidote to Trudy’s zines
and makeup scattered about the place.
Waverley had gingham geraniums
and an iposter of a deep-sea squid.
But the best was Janine the mini-pig,
a tiny pink and hairy thing that slept
in a shoe beneath her bed.
I settled into a study routine
with a major in marine biology.
Waverley was a better friend for me
than Trudy or Leo had ever been,
despite her slightly eccentric ways
I somehow managed to integrate.
One night I found her snug in bed
with a female tutor from Transgenics.
Those thick, red plaits and bookish genes
belied a large addictive streak
mainly for caffeine tabs and patches.
But compared to Trudy’s Heaven trips,
these were milder blips, redeemed
by her wit and intellect.
Then in October of my second year,
L-Kida flexed its muscles again
by filling a dome with arapax
at Brisbane’s gala Logies event.
All four of Missy Higgins’ quads,
film vets like Kidman and Blanchett.
L-Kida’s minions got the lot.
A podmail to the government
declared a university would be next.
All of the best brains dead, it said.
My fone trilled not long after this:
my mother, high with anxiety.
—North, she said. Come home, love.
Please.
That night I dreamt of falling through
deep space towards the earth but
couldn’t seem to land on it. I woke up
homesick for Angler’s Bay, Shale Road,
my folks, Pixie’s Café. It took six weeks
to book a flight and get the okay
from security. The bay was prettier
than I remembered it; opal blue
and sparkling. I applied an anaesthetic
patch, felt the ache inside recede.
My homecoming was an experiment.
Outcome unknown, and perilous.
—North! said Mum as I walked in
with my baggage and a new haircut;
smart and short, a blue helmet.
Clutching a tea towel to her chest,
she hugged me hard. Then Dad
came in from out the back, tracking
soil on the beige carpet but for onceMum didn’t tell him off.
—North! he said. Well, well.
His mouth did a little upwards twist
and his lips trembled. Don’t cry
Dad, I thought. If you cry, I’m sunk.
But he wrapped me in an iron grip
and released me with a half-gasped
breath. Grief still hovered about
his eyes, in the creases of his smile.
The jar on Mum’s red kitchen bench
held the same biscuits as before I’d left.
But her hair was grey and she’d lost weight.
Dinner was tense. I had changed,
I think, and was out of sync with family
habits and rituals. But I loved the pale
slope of my mother’s neck and sought
it out now for some kind of comfort.
The gap between us felt fathomless,
a watery expanse we could not breach.
—I’m glad you’re home, said Mum.
I just couldn’t sleep.
—Which meant nobody slept, said Dad
with a wink. He was wearing a cardigan
he’d had for years. I wished I could
curl up on his knee, the way I did
when I was three. No one spoke
of my degree or if I would go back
to university. I got up from the table,
pushed away my chair, went out back,
sought solace elsewhere.
—Where’s she going? Mum said. North,
come back, please. There’s no dessert till
you eat your greens!
Dad found me sitting in an old
cane chair, staring at a trellis laden
with pears.
—Espaliered, I said. You’re good
with them. My plants always wilt.
Why do you think that is?
—North, said Dad, go easy on
your mother. She’s had a lot to deal
with. My health, for instance. And
with you not here…
I picked a leaf from the pear vine
and dissected it. Mum never went
easy on me, I thought. But I stayed
in their house for another two years
until I completed my science degree.