Our Magic Hour (15 page)

Vanessa was sitting the wrong way on the chair, with her knees either side of the
seat. ‘Why don't you call it a day,' she said.

‘I'm okay.'

‘I didn't ask how you were.'

Vanessa looked down the table at her. Calm face. Audrey picked up the exercise book
with the meeting minutes. She gathered her things at her desk. She sensed she'd made
a critical error somewhere.

After dinner at Nick's parents' house Audrey went to help with the dishes, stopped
short of the kitchen doorway. She heard Nick in there with his mother.

‘There's just been a lot going on,' Nick said. ‘Two infant deaths, one after the
other. One of them was Audrey's. Her mum shoplifted four hundred dollars' worth of
clothes last week. She's manic at the moment. Last night she phoned six times.' He
drew breath. ‘Bernie's pretty nuts. It's all been sort of unrelenting since Katy.'

‘Isn't there anything else they can prescribe her mum?'

‘She's on the same meds, she just doesn't take them. I don't know what to do.'

‘Oh, darling.'

Audrey retreated down the corridor. She went back to the wall with its reassuring
family photos. There was some destructive energy
humming in her body. She thought
of what Nick had said about expecting to be attacked by the man stepping out of a
shadowy house.
I was ready
.

He wandered out from the kitchen.

‘You all right?' he asked.

‘Yeah, are you?'

They looked at the pictures together. Audrey pointed at the frame that held the two
of them, three years ago, dressed as the Tenenbaums. Their posture now mimicked the
picture.

‘I don't think I should ever go blond,' she said, ‘do you?'

He squeezed her hand. He didn't answer.

‘Did you tell your mum I'm losing it?'

‘I don't think you're losing it,' Nick said. ‘I'm also not going to have a fight
about it here in the hallway.'

‘Okay. Let's find a corner.' They faced each other. ‘I'm sorry,' Audrey said. ‘I
don't want to fight. I'm sorry.'

Driving home the roads were quiet. Nick wound down the window and pressed his face
to the streaming lights as they crossed the Maribyrnong.

‘It's seventy here,' he said finally, ‘you can do seventy.'

‘Oh—oh, shit.'

‘It doesn't matter,' he said, ‘I just didn't know if you realised.'

And then, five minutes later, as they turned on to Wurundjeri Way:

‘Jesus, Audrey, why haven't you got the lights on?'

She pulled into the driveway of a factory, unlit for the night. She cut the engine
and got out. They stood on opposite sides of the car.

‘Could you drive?' she asked.

‘What?'

‘I'm sorry, I know we're halfway home, but I'm really fucked.'

‘You didn't have anything to drink,' he said.

‘I know that.' They stood looking at each other. She saw he understood.

‘The temazepam?'

‘I have to stop taking it. I hate the way it makes me feel.'

‘I wonder if you could have a lower dose,' Nick said. They switched sides. Audrey
pressed the keys into his hand.

‘It's only ever meant to be a short-term thing, you know,' he said as they pulled
into Charles Street. ‘The Normison. It's a short-term drug.'

Nick went to the bathroom. Audrey listened to the messages Sylvie had left on her
phone, four of them.

‘My mum asked if you were okay,' Nick called down the hall. Audrey could hear the
splash of his piss against the bowl. She heard him flush the toilet and wash his
hands. She imagined him standing in front of the mirror. He was so tall that he had
to bend down to see the very top of his head. ‘I didn't know what to say. That's
all.'

He appeared in the doorway, his lovely patient face. She sat on the end of the bed
and watched him undress. Something about his chest, his stomach, made her want to
cry. She knew how to make him shudder, but it had been a long time. Last night she'd
told him
I feel completely unfuckable.
He had accepted that.

‘I s'pose you don't want to come to Pat's tomorrow night?' he asked.

‘I'm sorry. I can't.'

‘I was just asking.' He went on folding his jumper. ‘Don't feel bad about it.'

‘I'm so scared,' she said. ‘I just have this dreadful feeling something's going
to happen.'

‘Like what?'

‘I don't know. Something catastrophic.'

‘It's already happened.'

‘Something worse.'

‘There's nothing worse,' Nick said. ‘You're not going to sleepwalk off a cliff. What's
the worst thing that could happen?'

‘The other day I was driving back to work along Heidelberg Road after a visit, and
there was a petrol tanker going in the opposite direction. And for a second after
we'd passed each other I was sure it had drifted across into my lane and we'd collided
head on, and I was dead. I was really certain. I know that's not how you're supposed
to think,' Audrey said, ‘but I can't stop it.'

‘Get into bed.' She didn't move. Nick stepped towards her. He pulled her jumper over
her head.
Skin a bunny
. ‘You lie straight and I'll tuck you in.'

Nick made the bed with hospital corners. Audrey imagined that was how his mother
had taught him. He tucked the sheets so tightly that Audrey was pinned. He sat on
the edge of the bed to pull off his boots, and he lay beside her.

‘If I'm getting like my mother, I don't want you to be stuck with me,' she said.

‘Don't do that. Don't use that as an excuse.'

‘It's not an excuse. If I'm losing it, it's not up to you. I don't want you to feel
like you're stuck.'

‘What do you want me to say? I'm on your side, Audrey.'

It doesn't matter
, she thought; there are no sides, there's only up and down.

Audrey cut the camellia blooms from the garden and put them in empty jars around
the house. She phoned her mother and listened for almost two hours, sitting cross-legged
at the kitchen table. She felt her face grow slack and mild. Nick met her eyes from
across the room, and he knew she'd tuned out. She left him funny notes. She went
with him to trivia at the Dan O'Connell, made bright talk
with his friends. Walking
down Canning Street afterwards, he said
Thank you for coming
and
Was that okay?
and
You did good.
She wanted to weep at their emotional economy, but she kissed him instead.
Dinner in their backyard, all their friends around the fire pit, faces aglow. Day-drunk
in the Edinburgh Gardens, someone's birthday. Audrey stayed when she wanted to go.
There was MD going around. It made things more bearable. She looked sideways at Nick
as she rubbed the last grains on her gums, and he grinned as if some secret had passed
between them. Her hair was tickling her face.
Maybe this is what Maman needs
, she
said.
It's making me feel better.
Nick's eyes crinkled.
Pop a goog in her mouth next
time you have dinner. Here, Sylv—
lithium's
not a party drug.
At home Audrey drew
lipstick circles around her eyes. PBS was playing jumpy swing. She danced a Charleston
for him and he smiled and said something about Marcel Marceau, but then he rubbed
at the lipstick with his thumb and said
Can you take it off?
and his voice was sad.

He talked about when they were first together.
Remember that year at Golden Plains,
remember when we went to Cradle Mountain
. He'd taught her how to drive in the new
estates in the western suburbs, way out past his parents' place. The houses were
still being planned and built. The lots were empty. The streets were new. They had
names like Belvedere Crescent and Lexington Drive. At night they drove with the high
beams on. They peeled the learner plates on and off the windscreen and drank cans
of Sprite. The city shone from the highway: a milky cloud of light hung above it.
Remember those made-up suburbs? They'd be real addresses now.

Audrey knew he was trying, just like she was, to reconstitute it all. Warm weather,
knocking off work at three to see a film, grass stains on knees, the glow-in-the-dark
galaxies on the ceiling of his childhood room. But none of it fit any more. When
Audrey's phone vibrated on the kitchen table, and her mother's name was on the screen,
Nick would wiggle his eyebrows and hum the Wicked Witch
tune, and Audrey would laugh,
but it was all different. He'd made the joke before. They were bloodless.

She came home from work and found Nick in the lounge room. At first she thought he'd
decided to paint the walls. The furniture had been pushed into odd shapes, everything
draped in bedsheets. When she got closer, and saw him kneeling with the quilt in
his hands, she realised it was a fort.

‘What are you doing?' she asked.

‘Remember a while ago when you were telling me about you and Irène, how you had that
tent?'

‘The tepee.'

‘Was it anything like this?' he asked. He held aside a corner of the quilt. Audrey
crawled in, and Nick followed on his knees. He'd laid out some blankets on the floor.
The coloured lights from the back fence were strung up inside.

‘Oh,' Audrey let out.

Nick crouched beside her, trying a smile. She wanted to be graceful about it.

‘Hang on, I forgot something.' He shuff led out again, and returned with two beers.
They touched the necks of the bottles together. The glass tinked feebly. Nick sat
back as though evaluating a great architectural marvel. The quilt ceiling sagged
in the centre.

‘How did I do?' Nick asked. ‘Is it like the one you and your sister had?'

‘This is bigger,' Audrey said. ‘We never had beer.' She propped the bottle between
her knees and began to kiss him very slowly, holding his face as though it might
fall away from her. She stroked its shapes. She knew the planes of his cheeks, the
hardness of bones under her fingers. They were in each other's arms, hanging from
each other. They hadn't fucked in weeks. Her body was reluctant, but she wanted to
do it for him. It was good to be the author of
someone else's pleasure.

It seemed a long time before he came. Her face found the hollow between his neck
and shoulder. She felt his breath in her hair; heard his lungs catch. They turned
away from each other.

Dead Nature

Audrey was sitting on the porch when Ben came sweeping around the corner on his old
Raleigh. She startled.

‘Did I give you a fright?' Ben asked, leaning his bike against the fence. Audrey
remembered him saying once that he was conscious of his size, of looking like a thug.

‘No, no.'

Their cheeks touched: his warm with exertion, hers stinging with cold.

‘What are you doing out here? It's freezing.'

‘Nick made spaghetti before he went to work. The whole house smells like garlic.
I'm trying to air it out,' she said. Ben laughed. It echoed in the dark street. ‘Do
you want a drink?'

‘I'd love one.'

She left him sitting on the porch. The radio was still on inside. She'd been half-listening
to it: Radio National, they were talking about resuscitation, about the visions people
reported between death and revival. There was an American specialist talking to the
presenter—
Actually beyond the threshold of death
, he said. Audrey switched it off.

Ben had a plastic bag between his feet. She handed him a glass.

‘Chin-chin.'

‘Cheers.'

Audrey tilted her head towards the shopping bag.

‘What've you got in there?'

‘A heap of books Emy said to return to you. She said she didn't manage to get through
Ragtime
before she had to go back again, but she liked it so much she bought her
own copy so she could finish it.'

‘She could have taken this one,' Audrey said, thumbing
through the pages. ‘How's it going without her?'

‘It's all right, I guess. I don't know. We're sort of used to it. I'm going over
there in November for two months. That's not too far away.'

‘It'll come quickly.'

Ben fingered the stem of his wineglass.

‘Do you know what my dad said after we'd all been to the registry? He said,
I hope
you two have done the right thing
. And I'm pretty sure he was joking, but shit…'
He threw back the remainder of his wine. ‘I'd better get going. Em said she'd call
at nine,' he said.

‘Thanks for bringing the books over.'

‘No worries.' They stood, embraced. The security light blinked on with the motion.

Ben wheeled his bike out of the gate, swung a leg over and looked back at the house.
His face was like a skull in the weird light. ‘Hey,' he said. ‘Don't be out here
too long, eh? It's bloody cold.'

She nodded and smiled. ‘Love to Emy for me.'

She watched him pedal away, then went back inside. The leftover spaghetti was cold
on the stove. She sat down to call her brother.

‘Hello, Aud-rey,' he drawled.

‘How did the SACs go?'

‘Psychology was all right. No, actually, it was good. I answered all the questions.
Hazel and Winnie came over on Tuesday and we
had a study night. I was prepared.'

‘Good on you!'

‘Accounting wasn't so good,' he said. ‘I walked out halfway through. I don't even
know why I chose accounting. I'm never going to get how to do that checks and balances
shit. I mean, I live on a hand-to-mouth basis. I've got about twenty bucks in the
bank.'

‘If you stopped blowing it all on pills—'