Anchor Point (16 page)

Joseph once had an uncanny knack for timing his visits home to coincide with hers, but only when she arrived without Luc. She never asked – she didn't really want to know – but she suspected Bruce and Donald had a hand in that.

She didn't know what to make of the Joseph returned from the city, his pressed shirts and shiny shoes. Her uncertainty hadn't really dissipated over the years since his graduation. At first when they met for beers at the Kyree pub, he told her about his work as a junior lawyer in a big firm, bowed by research and paperwork and reports, and of the other work he did, dispensing advice through the Aboriginal Legal Service. He was trying to get as much experience as he could, he said, so that he could start his real work. He had plans, he told her, big plans. A land council for the mob around Kyree, for one. Though she was hazy on the specifics of such a thing, Laura's skin had prickled when he'd said that.

‘And how's your dad going?' she cut in quickly, gulping her beer. ‘My old man mentioned the accident. Bale fell?' She whistled through her teeth. ‘Bloody lucky not to be crushed. Break a leg or neck easy as!' She knew she was babbling. ‘Glad he's okay. Nine lives, your dad. Like a cat.'

Laura's hands were trembling around her empty pot glass. Joseph measured her with his gaze, brow furrowed slightly above expensive shades, the sole evidence of feeling on his face. But he allowed her to steer the conversation, letting the issue drop.

It was only later, lying in bed, that she was able to think through her reaction to what he had said. That the merest suggestion of such a venture, conflict over land, made a fissure inside her. Her loyalties to the people she'd grown up among, new understandings gleaned from Luc, and love for Joseph pulled in opposite directions, making cracks.

As years passed and their jobs kept them apart, bringing an end to their brief catch-ups in Kyree, Laura wasn't surprised when Joseph did the things he had planned to do. He was on the verge of doing his real work, the things he had trained himself for. When she thought of Joseph, she thought of the gangly young man he had been. She thought of the child. She didn't know the prematurely salt-and-pepper grown-up he'd become. This man, a lawyer, image printed in national newspapers under the opinion pieces he penned: a stranger.

When Vik's baby arrived prematurely, on Valentine's Day, Michael phoned in the night. His voice was fast and tense, summoning Laura. She could hear tears building behind the dam of his throat, threatening to spill over. ‘She went into labour at work!' he said, uncharacteristically shrill. ‘She hadn't been feeling well. Had spotting. I told her not to go! I
told
her. But you know what she's like about these fucking projects.' Laura had never heard Michael swear. His anguish was frightening. ‘She said this job was important. The fucking Vic Market. Some kind of works!' Laura winced, listening. Her precise brother-in-law, fumbling so. ‘But she was finally running things, you know.'

Laura wanted to know about her sister, the impossibly tiny baby, but she could hear how panicked Michael was. She let him talk on, sensing he needed it, making soothing noises.

‘And you know what happened?' Michael continued. ‘How they found bones?'

Laura's throat felt dry. She sat up in bed. Luc rolled over, rubbing his eyes. She put a hand on his chest to quiet him. ‘Slow down, Mike,' she said. ‘What bones?'

‘A whole cemetery under there, apparently – even bigger than they thought. Bones where they didn't expect them. Can you believe it? The project has been a nightmare. Vik's been so stressed.'

In the airport at dawn Luc rushed away from her and returned minutes later, thrusting an absurdly large bear into her arms. Laura took it, dismayed, but said nothing: her flight was already being called; there was no time to return it for something smaller. Her heart felt far too full. Luc was still beautiful, perhaps more so. She was aware of him gazing down at her, dimple already fading in the face of her silence, the sense that something wasn't right.

‘Vik will love it,' she said quickly, restoring his smile. ‘Thank you, sweetheart.'

The preposterously large teddy seemed to magnify all the things she loved about Luc, making her feel unbearably sad, and guilty, that he had tried to do something nice and got it so wrong; that she had ever been unappreciative. Cradling the bear under the fluorescent lights, surrounded by strangers, she felt a terrible yearning. If only they could start fresh. She tried to picture the baby they might have had together – could still have. The imagined weight of it in her arms, like a lamb. Then her flight was boarding, lines forming at the gate.

‘Give my love to Vik and Mike,' Luc said, kissing her quickly, but Laura clung to him longer than either had expected. ‘Come home safe.'

She boarded the plane with her heart pumping in her mouth and sat, nursing the stuffed animal on her lap. Burying her face in white, faintly chemical fur, she couldn't stop thinking of Kath's letters, postmarked Melbourne. She had searched for Kath online, an act she found deeply shameful, furtively scrolling. She hadn't been able to bring herself to use her own computer, skulking instead to the local library and logging in. It was crazy to fear that her mother was still out there, with no reason to believe she was even alive. Was it possible to exist without an online presence? Laura didn't know. Part of her didn't want to know.

Either way, she had developed an almost superstitious aversion to Vik's chosen city. She'd always blamed her work for not allowing her to visit Melbourne, choosing to fly Vik up to Sydney instead, or waiting to meet her at home in Kyree.

Laura surprised herself by sobbing into the bear's soft neck until the flight attendant came and took it away for stowing. ‘I'm sorry,' she muttered, thinking of the letters, of the bear, of all Luc's wasted energy, the problems he couldn't fix. In Melbourne her niece, impossibly small, was hooked up to machines. The very fact of the child was something Laura still hadn't fully got her head around: a whole new person, pushed into the world.

‘It's alright, love,' the old lady in the next seat said, patting Laura's hand. ‘We're all afraid of flying.'

Laura went to see the baby first, setting the bear and her bags on the floor and staring through glass into the humidicrib marked with Vik's name. The child was small, naked but for a nappy and some tiny cotton mittens, wired with tubes taped down on bare skin. Laura had expected to feel something for her, a bolt of recognition, but none came. She stared and stared at the little body, lying still, eyes closed. How helpless the baby looked, impossibly fragile.

‘Shh,' Laura found herself whispering. ‘It's alright.' She stared harder, trying to look past the medical tape, seeing perfectly formed fingernails, pearly flakes of shell, counting the long, dark eyelashes. It seemed incredible that all the parts were there, if in miniature. The baby's face was wrinkled, looking far older and wiser than Laura had ever felt. When she opened her eyes they seemed to fix on Laura's face, taking her measure. Laura was flooded with an absurd desire to be deemed worthy, but after a moment the baby sighed and closed her eyes again, as though already wearied by the weight of her family history.

I'm sorry
, Laura thought, gazing into the face of her niece, longing to assuage herself of something she couldn't name. She thought of merino sheep, bred for quality wool, whose beauty came at the price of other skills. They made hopeless mothers. Bruce had told her this, scoffing, when he decided that breeding sheep for meat was a far better investment. Skittish as racehorses, merinos up and left their lambs in the face of danger. They ran away. The farmer had to care for the lambs, bottle-feed them, else they died.

She had looked out for Vik, raised her up. Here was another little girl. Unlike the two of them, this child had a mother. But Laura knew the way traits moved through time, passed in genes through generations. She had done her best with Vik. Hoped it was enough.

Laura stepped into Vik's private room, deeply affected by her sister's red eyes, her dishevelled hair. She felt herself tear up. Even the fact that Vik was wearing a disposable hospital gown, not the expensive satin pyjamas she'd emailed Laura about, indicated the shock and seriousness of the experience she had just endured.

‘Oh, Lor,' Vik said weakly, ‘I'm so glad you're here.'

The huge teddy took up the only chair, so Laura perched on the edge of the bed, cradling her sister, rustling the thin paper gown. She could hear the air conditioner whirring, working overtime to cool the room. Michael was gone, having raced home to pack toothbrushes; Laura was glad for the moment of privacy, to be able to rub Vik's back the way she had learned to rub it after Kath left, had rubbed it time and again for years through colds and tests and nightmares.

Vik told Laura about the birth, explaining that although the baby was small and would need to stay in for a couple of weeks, she was strong. ‘They think she'll be okay,' Vik said, wringing the sheet. ‘She has to be. Right, Lor?'

Laura briefly closed her eyes, recalling the baby's knowing expression. ‘Yes. Of course,' she said with all the certainty she could muster. It seemed like the more people you loved, the more dangerous and painful the world became. ‘'Course she will.'

Vik flopped back against the pillows. Her skin looked yellow beside the bleached linen. ‘I haven't called Dad yet,' she said.

Laura sat up straighter, frowning. ‘What? Why?' Would she ever understand her sister? Surely that old scab of tension between Vik and Bruce had healed by now. They were very different people. He'd been hard on her. But in a family like theirs, just the three of them, you couldn't afford not to get on. Vik was loyal to their father, visiting as often as she could. And Bruce was quietly proud of Vik's achievements – that was more than most children could say of their parents, wasn't it? Laura had clocked the creased photograph, Vik in a mortarboard, tucked inside his wallet.

‘Oh, you could call him for me, couldn't you?' Vik said, rolling her shoulders impatiently. ‘I just can't face the whole thing right now. I'm so tired.' Laura couldn't suppress her sigh in time, and Vik's eyebrows rose. ‘If it's too much trouble, forget it.'

Laura suspected her sister made an excuse of Bruce's gruffness to get out of what she didn't want to do. But Vik was a senior surveyor. Six pairs of Louboutin heels. Egyptian cotton sheets. Laura didn't know if it should annoy her, Vik requiring help, or make her happy she was still needed. The work of mediating might have exhausted her, had she come at it fresh. But it was decades old. So much a part of her character she barely felt its weight.

‘No, it's fine,' Laura said wearily. ‘He'll be wanting to hear from you, that's all.'

‘Well, listen,' Vik said, brightening. ‘We've got a name – tell him that.' Laura was busy rummaging for her mobile, emptying the contents of her bag on her bed. But she froze when Vik said, ‘It's Cait. The spelling is for Granny and Grandpa Malloy, but I'm naming her for Mutti.'

‘Oh,' was all Laura could choke out, wanting to press her palm to the sudden, awful ache in her chest.

‘He'll like it, don't you think?' Vik said. ‘Dad? It'll make him happy at least, don't you reckon?'

Laura wanted to push Vik out of the bed and get in herself, pull the covers up to her chin.

‘The middle name's Johanna, after Mike's grandma. So she's got something from both sides.'

Laura worked to breathe, forcing a smile across her mouth. She felt for the baby, hefting history like a snail. But it was foolish to think that any of them were free of it.

‘It's lovely,' she managed. ‘Cait.'

Vik gasped, then laughed – a single, loud bark. ‘God, sorry,' she said, gesturing at Luc's bear. ‘Thought there was someone else here, for a second!'

Laura spent the next week energetically attending to Vik and Cait in the hospital, cooking for Michael, stocking their fridge with homemade meals. Though she couldn't acknowledge the thought, shying away from it, covering it over with task after task, with the rush from apartment to hospital to the supermarket and back, Laura knew she was avoiding being out on the street. When Michael suggested she take an afternoon off to sightsee or do some shopping for herself, Laura flatly refused. She preferred it inside the air-conditioned apartment, she told him. It was too hot, she said. She was too busy. In her heart, she knew she was being silly. Shame at her behaviour was a shard of wood under skin, inflaming.

In some ways, Vik's apartment was the perfect refuge. Separate from the lives of those down below, protected from the elements, it was temperature-controlled, soundproofed, untouchable. There were security guards on the ground floor and double glazing on the windows. From the thirty-third storey, Laura could bear witness to the minutiae of the world outside, the whole tartan fabric of the city laid bare, without having to be a part of it at all.