‘Please,’ she whispers, too quietly for anyone to hear. ‘Please,’ she whispers again. ‘Please help.’
But there is no one. Where is everyone? There should be cars filled with people. That’s what she’s here for – cars filled with people. Help should be racing up the road, screeching to a stop. Help should be here but it’s not. Help is as far away as it’s ever been.
The road remains empty. A long stretch of darkness leading nowhere. She touches her damp cheek – sweat? Tears?
The heat is heavy, sticky, refusing to let go despite the day ending hours ago, despite it being another day already. She wants to turn around, she wants to run back, back to where it’s safe, but it would mean running back through the years. You can’t run back to your past.
A truck appears, huge, with more wheels than she can count. Her heart lifts, but the vehicle thunders by, sending bits of gravel flying into the air, leaving behind it the smell of burnt rubber. The driver is only looking forward, staring at the empty road ahead of him. It would be better if it was a woman anyway. A woman, a woman who can think for herself, would help, but a man might hurt.
She is so tired. Tired, scared, heartbroken. She wishes she knew how to not feel anything at all.
Her knees are aching now. She feels old. She is too young to feel this old, to know this much, to be doing what she’s doing.
She would like to turn around, to run back home. Home, she thinks – such a nice word. For most people it means family and love and comfort, but not for her.
‘Not for me,’ she whispers. She has no home. She has a house where other people live. Other people who hurt her or ignore her, other people who don’t deserve children. That’s why she’s doing this. That’s why it has to happen.
Where are all the people in their cars?
A sleek sports car appears, going so fast it takes her breath away. By the time she realises it’s there, it’s passed by. It might have been blue or black. It’s difficult to tell with only the streetlights on.
‘Please help,’ she prays, knowing it won’t do any good. She swats at a mosquito and wipes her face again.
She feels like she’s been here forever.
But finally, finally another car appears. Going slowly enough to see, to register what’s there. It stops.
A woman climbs out, young and wobbly on high spiked heels that clip-clop against the tarmac. Bright pink hair shines in the streetlight. She totters over, swaying as she walks.
Is she drunk? the little girl wonders. Drunk isn’t good. Drunk means you stop thinking about anyone else, stop feeling for anyone else. She cannot deal with drunk. Not again. She begins to stand up but then the woman speaks.
‘Are you, like, lost?’ she asks, her voice soft and sweet. ‘Are you lost?’
And then she turns and looks back at the car she has just gotten out of. ‘We need to call the police,’ she yells at the unseen driver. ‘Come on,’ she says, holding out her hand.
The little girl slips her hand into the stranger’s.
She lets out the breath she’s been holding. She’s done it. She’s actually done it.
Alice
I inch my car forward in the primary school pickup line, glancing at the clock on the dashboard for what feels like the tenth time in five minutes. It’s already twenty past three and Isaac will be outside the high school by three thirty. The primary school and the high school are only a few minutes apart but I can’t help feeling anxious. I hate being late for him, hate the idea of him peering worriedly up and down the road. I’ve never actually been late, not once, but I’m always afraid I might be. He’ll know I’m coming since I’ve never let him down, but I don’t want him to have to think about it, to have to wonder. It’s a terrible thing to be unsure if you will be fetched from school or not. Yet there are worse things. It’s a terrible thing to wonder if you will be fed or not, to wonder if you are loved or not. I know that, but still, I cannot help but panic at the idea of being late for my eldest son.
‘They will survive… will be fine if you’re a few minutes behind, Alice, especially Isaac – he’s not really a child anymore,’ my husband Jack has said, trying to reassure me. He understands but at the same time he doesn’t understand.
I adjust my sunglasses, warding off the glare from the afternoon sun in a cloudless, cold, blue sky.
Finally, I reach the front. I lean forward and straighten the sign lying on the dashboard, making sure my surname is clear to the teachers.
The large group of children waiting to be picked up spills out of the black wrought-iron gates of the school and onto the pavement with two teachers in front of them to prevent anyone from dashing into the road. Despite it being the end of the day, I can see they are still buzzing with energy, shouting and talking, shoving each other and jumping up and down. Uniforms are stained and crumpled and faces are smudged with dirt but there are smiles and laughter, loud conversations and singing all going on at the same time. Pure happiness, pure joy and everything children should be.
As each car pulls into place, there are always two or three kids who recognise the mother or father or grandparent or nanny in the car and alert their classmates to their arrival. As I reach the front of the line, news of my arrival spreads quickly.
‘Gus and Gabe, Gus and Gabe,’ shouts a little girl whose glasses are secured to her face with a wide strap, ‘your mum’s here, your mum’s here.’ The level of excitement that ripples through the group makes me smile. You would think these children were worried about not being picked up despite the guaranteed arrival of a parent or caregiver every single day. This is a privileged primary school in an affluent neighbourhood. These are the children of parents who devote their lives to their kids. School notices contain regular updates about food that’s been banned because of sugar content and exhortations to ‘buy organic’. These children are shuttled from ballet and football to tennis and violin. They are given everything their hearts desire and can be certain they are loved. Only half the children waiting to be picked up are wearing jumpers despite the cold weather of this first week of winter. I know, without having to think about it, that Gus will not be wearing his jumper, but Gabe will be. Gus’s jumper will be in his bag, or in the classroom or somewhere in the playground, forgotten.
I watch as the news of the arrival of Gus and Gabe’s mother spreads quickly through the crowd before the teacher in charge of pickup glances at the sign on the front of my dash and lifts her megaphone to her mouth. ‘Stetson twins,’ her voice booms across the crowd, but Gus and Gabe are already at the car, pushing each other out of the way, trying to be first to get in.
‘Augustus and Gabriel Stetson,’ she calls, ‘you will calm down.’ Gus and Gabe immediately stop their pushing and shoving and stand quietly by the car. A hush falls over the group of children, awed by the teacher’s loud voice and the reprimand in front of everyone. I want to laugh, I really do, but instead I purse my lips and try to look disappointed in the two of them. I would hate to undermine a teacher. The boys climb, chastened, into the car, bringing with them their little-boy smell of fruit and sweaty hair. Outside, the wind is blowing and there is a chill in the air but, as predicted, Gus is not wearing his jumper.
I nod my head at Marie Winslow, their teacher. She’s nearing retirement and I can’t help but feel that she’s very tired of young children, especially my boisterous twins. My rambunctious little terrors, my beautiful boys.
‘Quick sticks,’ I say as they shove their bags onto the floor and buckle up their seat belts. I pull away before saying anything else, allowing the next car to slide into place.
‘So how was your day, boys?’ I ask.
‘Me first, me first,’ yells Gus. Gus always has to be first; first out of the womb by five minutes means he gets to celebrate his birthday a whole day earlier than his brother. He was first to crawl and walk and talk, and still, at the age of nine, insists on being first at everything. He is running at life at full tilt and I worry that when he’s older he will be the kind of child who believes he’s invincible, who thinks fast cars are fun and a new drug is worth a try.
‘You… you worry too much,’ Jack has told me. Of course I do.
‘You went first yesterday, Gus,’ I say. ‘Today Gabe is going first. Gabe, how was your day?’
‘Um,’ says Gabe and then he is quiet. I can actually feel Gus’s frustration. He has so many stories to tell me, he’s not even sure where to begin, but I know he won’t interrupt his brother. Interrupting means half an hour less on the computer later so Gus keeps quiet, but I can feel his fizzing desperation to speak from the back seat.
‘Today in art,’ Gabe says finally, ‘I drew a picture of our house. It took me a long time because I had to make sure that I got it right, especially the big trees in the front garden where the king parrots like to sit, but Mr Mahmood let me stay and finish at lunch. I was allowed to be in the classroom alone because he says I’m very responsible, and when he came in after, he told me that I’m a real artist. He said my king parrots look friendly. He liked their red bodies and their green wings.’
‘Oh, Gabe, how wonderful,’ I say, a rush of love for my quiet, serious child filling me. ‘I’m so proud of you for taking the time to really work on your drawing.’
‘Yes,’ agrees Gabe, ‘I took my time.’
I risk a quick glance in the rear-view mirror at Gabe’s face. He has Jack’s deep blue eyes and jet-black hair but my generous mouth, unlike his brother with his striking red hair and emerald-green eyes. ‘My Irish great-grandmother making sure we don’t forget her,’ Jack always says. The boys do not look like twins. They barely look like brothers, and while the idea of identical twins seemed enticing to me when I was pregnant, I’m pleased that they look so different. They are very distinctive children, and their separation in both looks and personality has allowed them to forge their own way forward at school and, I hope, in the future too.
‘Okay, Gus, your turn,’ I say.
‘Yay, I went across the monkey bars three times at lunch and I didn’t fall once and I didn’t eat my sandwich because I told you I hate cheese and honey or maybe I did hate it at lunch but I ate it now because I was hungry and I don’t have homework but Ali says he’ll be on the computer at five and I want to be on the computer at five so we can play Minecraft together and I was the fastest to finish my maths test today but I got three wrong so Charlie is the best in the class and she said she was the best so I stuck my tongue out at her and then she said she was going to tell so I said sorry and now she’s not going to tell but it was only a tongue and what’s the big deal and I’m starving, what’s for dinner?’
‘Goodness,’ is all I can manage as his words wash over me. ‘What a busy day that was. You can be on the computer at five but only if I can see your diary and make sure you have no homework. And I thought we’d have lasagne for dinner.’
‘I like lasagne,’ says Gabe.
‘Me too!’ shouts Gus and the boys laugh as though someone has told a joke. I can’t help laughing with them. No one mentions how funny you will find your own children. I don’t think there’s a day when one or all three of them don’t make me laugh.
I pull up into the car park at the front of the high school just as Isaac ambles out, his head down, his thumbs moving furiously as he checks Instagram or texts a friend or does whatever it is he’s doing on the phone he is glued to. He looks up and grins when he sees my car. ‘Hey, Mum,’ he says as he slides into the front seat. ‘Hey, you ratbags,’ he throws over his shoulder at his brothers.
‘How was your day, Isaac?’ asks Gabe, and I know I don’t have to tell Gus to keep quiet because Isaac is speaking, and as far as the twins are concerned, their fourteen-year-old brother is the closest thing to a real-life superhero they’ll ever get to meet.
Isaac is the only one of my children who looks like me. ‘Are you sure I was involved with this one?’ Jack likes to joke. My eldest has the same shade of dusty-brown hair I do, the same chestnut-coloured eyes and an identical heart-shaped face. He is tall and slim and towers over me already, and I’m sure it won’t be long until he’s bigger than Jack as well.
‘My day was good, Gabe,’ says Isaac. ‘I’ve got tons of homework, Mum, and a project for history and another one for science. I don’t know how I’m going to get it all done because I have two matches this weekend.’
I throw him a quick smile – Isaac, my gorgeous perfectionist.
‘You’re going to score the most goals again, Isaac,’ says Gus, starry-eyed. ‘One day I’m going to be the captain of my football team as well.’
‘I bet you are, mate,’ agrees Isaac, ‘and Gabe will be the best artist in the school.’
‘I will,’ says Gabe.
‘You’ll manage to get the work done, love, you always do,’ I say to Isaac, remembering him at two years old. He was an absolute terror, refusing to sleep, climbing onto counters, throwing himself at every dangerous thing he could find. But he has matured into a lovely, patient young man who rarely gets angry enough to shout and seems to be managing his teenage years with good-natured humour. He stares down at his phone again, angling it slightly away from me. He is, of course, very protective of his phone.
‘Yeah, I guess. What’s for dinner? I’m starving.’
‘Everyone in this car is always starving,’ I laugh.
But as quickly as the laugh bubbles up it disappears. Don’t think about it, I tell myself as Gus and Gabe chat about moves they will make on Minecraft later and Isaac’s thumb sweeps across his screen.
I see the kitchen table, round and topped with peeling, grubby laminate, the chipboard showing where whole pieces have broken off. ‘Cereal for dinner again,’ I can hear myself saying, as though it were yesterday instead of thirty-two years ago. ‘No, no!’ I remember her shouting. I couldn’t blame her really. The sweet, crunchy rings were nauseating without milk, especially when we’d already had them for breakfast and lunch. But it was cereal or nothing. The fridge was empty, the pantry containing only rice and when I looked inside the packet, the grains wriggled furiously, alive and disgusting. ‘Please eat,’ I remember begging. ‘Look, it’s delicious.’ I filled my mouth, crunching the rings, and then opened wide to show her the multicoloured mess, making her laugh and eventually convincing her to shove a handful into her own mouth.
But that is not my life, not the life my children are living.
I’m not sure I ever meant to be a mother. It wasn’t that I didn’t want a baby, I did. I wanted one with every fibre of my being but I was terrified to bring a child into the world, terrified of what I would do and who I would become.
In the end Isaac announced himself after a bout of tonsillitis and a course of antibiotics reduced the effectiveness of the pill. I remember being horrified when I looked down at the test. I had taken it just to get the idea out of the way, simply to make sure, not really expecting anything other than one single line letting me know my period was just late. But as I peered down at the little square, in the toilet at work, the second blue line bloomed brightly – so deeply blue that I couldn’t deny what I was seeing. I knew the instant nausea I felt had nothing to do with being pregnant. I knew it was fear.
It was impossible for me to imagine the happy future that Jack kept predicting. All I could see ahead were bleak years where all the work I’d done on myself was undone in a haze of sleepless nights that would lead to terrible depression. It was my genetic inheritance and I believed there was nothing I could do to stop it.
‘I promise you, you’ll make a great mother… a brilliant mother,’ Jack told me. But Jack grew up in a different world to me. He grew up with his parents Ida and Lawrence in a house filled with the perpetual smell of baking. He grew up with a family dog and holidays to the coast. He grew up with the expectation that he would achieve something with his life, and the education to do that. He has no idea – no real idea despite having listened to me talk about my childhood – what it’s like to grow up deprived of all those things.
It feels far away now, my childhood. It felt far away then, when I found out I was pregnant with Isaac, but it is always there, just there.
There is a feeling I have, when I think about my life, that I exist as two separate people. I compare it to a news bulletin on television where the stories you see on the screen are mostly about local happenings – things like car crashes and fires; but if you read the thread running below, you can see all the monstrous happenings around the world. That thread that moves quickly across the screen is where you read about terrorist attacks and tsunamis and earthquakes in the rest of the world, far removed from where you are. I feel like my life is exactly like that. On the screen you can see me raising my children and eating dinner with my husband, but if you read the words running underneath, you’ll see: Alice is broken. Alice is grieving. Alice was hurt. Alice was abused. Alice is afraid. The truth of who I am.
‘You don’t have to go through with it if you’re… you’re not ready,’ Jack said when I told him I was pregnant. I opened my mouth to tell him that I wanted a termination, but when I looked into his hopeful blue eyes, I knew that I couldn’t break his heart like that.
The baby hadn’t felt real until he’d kicked. I had remained emotionally distant at the first scans, barely looking at the rapid, flickering little heartbeat, and I battled through the nausea without complaint, as though I had a bug that I would soon get over. I got up every morning and dragged myself to work at the suburban newspaper where I had earned my way to editor.
But you can’t hide a pregnancy forever, and my colleagues noticed the sickness, saw me resting my head on my desk in the afternoons, watched me as I sometimes ate a hamburger as though I hadn’t eaten for weeks. They were delighted for me and naturally everyone wanted to give advice or ask questions. Eventually I took to remaining in my office as much as possible so I could avoid the eager conversations about the gender of the baby and how I was feeling. I believed that if I started discussing it, I would inadvertently let everyone know the truth about how I was feeling. It was easy to picture their horrified faces if I told them about my ambivalence about the idea of a baby, my baby. It was better to keep it to myself instead.
And then, at eighteen weeks, I felt the first kick. I ignored the small flutter the first time, assumed it must be something I’d eaten, but that night I was sitting next to my husband on the couch as we watched television. Jack had his hand resting on my stomach and the flutter came again.
‘Did you feel that? Did you feel it?’ asked Jack excitedly.
‘Yes, and I felt it earlier as well. I think it’s just gas.’
‘No, Alice, that’s a kick. I promise you that’s a kick.’
‘A kick?’ I don’t think I believed him, but later that night in bed, I laid my hand across my stomach and felt the small movement inside me. I closed my eyes and took a deep breath. ‘Hello,’ I whispered, and tiny bubbles of movement answered me back. Just like that, I was completely, totally smitten.
‘Pregnancy is not an exam you have to pass, you know,’ Jack laughed when he helped me offload the books I had rushed out and bought on my lunch hour the next day.
‘I can’t get this wrong,’ I replied. ‘I have to do it right. I can’t do what…’
‘Oh, sweetheart,’ he said, ‘I understand, but you’re going to be… just wonderful.’
I had no one to look to for an example on mothering, no one to turn to and say, ‘I don’t know what I’m doing, can you help?’ I was so afraid of making a mistake. I was terrified of repeating history.
When my beautiful boy was born, they placed him on my chest and he squealed and wriggled, and I thought, So this is what people mean when they talk about falling in love at first sight.
‘You’re too hard on yourself,’ Jack says even now when I question how I’m doing. ‘You’re doing an amazing job with them. I’m worried for the women they will date and marry in the future because… I can’t help but think that no one will stand the comparison to their mother.’
He means to make me laugh when he says such things. I know he does.
He’s suggested I return to therapy a few times over the last couple of years but the truth is I don’t need to talk about it anymore. Some scars will always be there and some healing can never take place. I’m fine with that.
‘Right, here we are,’ I announce, pushing aside the morbid thoughts that are always bubbling just under the surface. I admonish myself to pay more attention. I have driven home without thinking about where I’m going. The boys clamber out of the car and race up the steps from the garage into the house. As I push the button to close the garage door, I catch the sweet, spicy smell of a wood-burning fire coming from the neighbour’s house. I love the idea of it but I have always been worried about children near an open fireplace. I shiver a little. It’s going to be a cold night.
I follow my children into the house, picking up Gus’s dropped school hat and two pens that have slipped from Isaac’s perpetually open school bag.
I take a deep breath as I enter the living room, embracing the calm created by warm leather and timber furniture. The chocolate-brown sofa glows in the soft light of the living room, and I cannot help but contrast it with another sofa, plastic in feel and touch and peeling from the day it was brought into our house, salvaged from the side of the road. I wrap my arms around myself. It’s time to turn on the large gas heater. I’m always surprised by how swiftly winter arrives in Australia. We seem to go from an endless summer to the chill of winter overnight with no pause for autumn in between.
In the kitchen the boys are in the pantry, having shoved their cut-up pieces of apple and orange in their mouths already. Gus has a wedge of orange in his mouth, juice dribbling down his chin.
‘Gus,’ I say and he shrugs his shoulders at me and spits the wedge into the bin, mostly eaten, I’m pleased to see. I grab a cloth and wipe up a few drops of juice on the floor. I can’t stand mess. ‘You make things hard for yourself,’ Jack says. ‘We have three boys.’ But he doesn’t quite understand the heart-racing panic I feel when things are dirty.
‘One snack, boys,’ I say as I do every day. The rule doesn’t apply to Isaac, who will eat up until dinner and then polish off his food like the hungry teenager he is. I enjoy the comfort repetition brings. I like that I know Gabe will only take one snack but Gus will try and sneak by me with an extra chocolate bar concealed in his pocket.
I grab his shoulder as he walks past me and hold out my hand. ‘You always know,’ he sighs, and I nod solemnly. ‘I always know,’ I agree and I bite down to stop myself from giggling as I hear Isaac laughing in the walk-in pantry.
The afternoon flies by in a whirl of homework and mediation. Gus and Gabe inevitably squabble over something, and I like to keep a check on what Isaac is working on. Today it’s an English essay, and I go up to his room twice, suggesting ideas, before he actually starts doing anything.
‘I’m not telling you two again!’ I shout up the stairs for the third time as my phone rings.
‘You’re going to be late again,’ I answer after I see it’s Jack calling.
‘I am… yes, I’m going to be late again,’ he affirms. I hear him tapping on his computer.
‘Why do you let the secretary schedule late patients?’ Jack has a soft heart for his older patients, who sometimes schedule a visit to the doctor out of loneliness. Lawrence, his father, wanted him to be a surgeon, but Jack was always more suited to the role of a GP and the patience required of that job.
‘What can I do, love? I don’t want anyone to feel they can’t call me when they need me… and they do need me. It’s fine, I’ll be home by eight. Wait for me to eat, will you?’
‘Of course. When don’t I wait for you?’
‘Never, my love. See you soon.’
‘Is Dad going to be late again?’ asks Isaac, coming into the kitchen for yet another snack.
‘Looks like it.’
‘Do you think he’ll be able to help me with my science project? I want to do something about genetics.’
‘I’m sure, just give him some time to have dinner and then he’ll be all ears. Have you finished the essay?’
‘It’s so unbelievably boring. I hate English.’
‘Hate it all you like, Isaac, but you have to do English for the rest of your high school career, so you might as well do the best you can.’
He groans exaggeratedly.
‘Muuum!’ shouts Gus from upstairs. ‘Gabe hit me.’
‘No, I didn’t!’ yells Gabe.
‘Oh, hell.’ I grab a cloth to wipe my hands after I sprinkle the last of the cheese onto the top of the lasagne.
‘Relax, Mum, I’ll go. Hey, you ratbags, I’m coming to sort you out.’
I open my mouth to say something but bite down on my lip instead. He’s not really threatening the boys, and I know he would never raise a hand to them. Right now, the two of them are probably hiding behind their bedroom door so they c. . .
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