Where the Light Falls (6 page)

It wasn't his father's ghost that had done the haunting, but his own memories of him. When he was younger he'd wished that, since his father was gone, his memories of his father would leave him too. At that age it seemed unfair, even cruel, that his father could be dead, but the memories remained as though his father still lived. He wanted to push the memories aside, to expel them, to sink them into the same unreachable place where his father now lay. And on a day-to-day level, he felt this was possible, that he could manage to forget him, that the man who had been his father became an outline—until the whole man returned to him suddenly, in an irresistible flood of feeling.

The vegetable patch took up almost half the yard and the plants had grown larger than he remembered: a knotted mass, tangles of tomatoes and a pumpkin vine that crept across the yard towards the garden shed in search of new territory. He pushed his way between the rows, the wet leaves brushing his legs as he passed. Hidden between the leaves of one plant was the curved shape of an eggplant, its skin secretive and dark. Along the back fence the old passionfruit clung to the palings, green fruit tugged at the vine and the flowers were delicate tendrils of white and purple, concentric circles, like pretty eyes that shifted in the breeze.

‘Andrew?'

He heard his mother's voice behind him. He turned suddenly with the same sick feeling he'd had as a boy,
when he thought he had upset her in some way. Just by being out there, he felt, he was reminding her of his father's absence.

‘I'm making breakfast for us,' she said from the back veranda, standing in her dressing-gown. Dressed that way she looked small and frail, depleted by age. He walked up to the back steps, went inside and stood on the other side of the kitchen bench as his mother finished preparing their breakfast. The kitchen cupboards were painted a shiny lime green and the drawers were wooden and prone to jam halfway, having to be eased in and out with a wriggle.

‘Oh, I forgot—this came for you,' his mother said, pushing an envelope addressed to him across the bench. Normally, she sent anything that came in the post for him over to Berlin, which meant he usually received his mail late. He picked it up—the envelope was clean and white and bore all the markings of a bill. But when he opened it, it was a letter from the Museum of Contemporary Art in Sydney advising that two of his photographs would be included in an exhibition of contemporary photographs that was opening the following month. An invitation to the opening was enclosed, on which his name was printed in embossed gold letters.

The museum had acquired two of his photographs several years before, but there had been no interest in his work from them since. By next month, he would be back in Berlin with Dom. He wondered if he should
suggest to his mother that she go in his place, but he knew she wouldn't.

The electric stove in the kitchen was old; the hot element glowed in a coil of red. Steam from the saucepan had misted the kitchen windows. His mother turned the stove off and lifted the pan into the kitchen sink. She'd made hard-boiled eggs and toast, the meal she'd often made for breakfast when he was a boy; it was a nurse's meal, quick, easy and nourishing.

They ate together at the bench, then she readied herself for work. He still remembered the morning of his mother's first day back at work after his father's death. He said goodbye to her through the gauze of the flyscreen door, her fingers still attached to the door handle. It was the only time he'd seen her cry. She was frozen there behind the fine crisscross of wire, her face pixelated by the gauze. Her image was uncertain and blurry, though her sadness was palpable and real. She didn't say a word, but withdrew her fingers from the door and turned to leave. Her small, diminished body disappeared down the front steps and across the front lawn to the gate. In the sky a black cockatoo wailed over her head.

When he removed his hands from the gauze they tasted of salt. It hurt him to see his mother engulfed in sadness and to know there was nothing he could do to help her. It caused a physical pain in his chest. From then on he made an effort never to show his sadness in her
presence, never to even think about his father when she was there. He swore he would never cry in front of her and he never did.

He knew photography was somehow connected to this. In photographs there were no feelings, only tangible objects. He accumulated images and eliminated emotions and every photo he'd taken, every success he had with it, was moving him away from this terrible time in his life.

•

That night, he dialled Dom's number and took the phone out to the back veranda so that he wouldn't disturb his mother as she slept.

‘Hi. It's me.' He thought of her strong jaw and her dark coiled hair. How it had smelt of lavender on the first night they'd spent together and every night since.

‘Hi,' she said. ‘How are you?' He could hear her breathing over the phone; she might have been standing at his shoulder, though he knew she was very far away.

‘I'm fine. I still feel a bit jet-lagged though. And I don't really know where to start to find more information about Kirsten.'

‘You only found out about her death a few days ago and now you are on the other side of the world. It must be disorientating.' Dom had always possessed a clarity he lacked, an ability to understand how another person felt.

‘I know. It's also because they didn't find the body. I'm not sure it will really sink in until I find out what happened to her. I haven't really been able to speak to her family about it yet. They didn't say anything about what happened at the funeral.'

There was a pause, then she said, ‘I was thinking, would you like me to come over?
To Australia, I mean. I'm sure I'll find someone who can cover the rest of my classes here. I've actually never been to Sydney—it might be a good time to finally make the trip.' Her tone was tentative, the words halting. ‘And it would be nice to meet your mother.'

He knew immediately he didn't want Dom to come. He wanted her to stay where she was until he could return to her.

‘I don't know,' he said.

‘You don't know?' she repeated, articulating each word carefully. After almost three years together, this was all he had to offer her. This ambivalence.

He wanted to find out what had happened to Kirsten, that was all. He didn't want the additional complication of having Dom there with him. He wanted to preserve their life as it was in Berlin, so that he could return to it.

Maybe, in truth, he didn't want her to know this part of him, the part that belonged in Sydney. The version of him that had struggled for years without success, who'd treated Kirsten badly. He wanted to quarantine that part of his life from Dom, to protect her from it. In Berlin
he could live with everything he'd made with his life; in Sydney he was aware of all the ways in which he'd fallen short.

When he didn't respond, she said, ‘Tell me this, do you love me?' The word was soft in her mouth, the ‘v' pronounced as an ‘f'.
Lofe
, she always said; what she felt for him was
lofe
.

‘Come on, Dom, of course I love you. And I'll be home soon—there's no need for you to come all this way. I just want to get this done as quickly as possible then fly home and focus on the London exhibition. We can come out again together another time, when it's less rushed. Maybe later this year?'

As he said the word ‘home', he realised that something about the way he viewed the world had shifted. He understood that the place where he stood was no longer where he belonged; his home was the place that he and Dom had created for themselves. And now he had said something that threatened it.

Dom exhaled slowly, audibly, a low heave that sounded as though she was dislodging something from her chest. ‘I don't know. You don't want me there. What am I supposed to think? I've never met your mother. Sometimes I feel like I don't really know you at all. Sometimes I think that's the way you prefer it.'

8

On Monday afternoon, he walked around Leichhardt. The streets were so familiar to him that he didn't even have to concentrate on where he was going. He tried not to think about the conversation he'd had with Dom. He hadn't spoken to her the day before at all. Instead, he focused on the fact that they'd both be back in Berlin soon and he could smooth things over between them when they were together. Once he understood what had happened to Kirsten, once he knew how to make sense of things, he could explain it all to Dom.

He lost track of where he was, listening to the internal sounds of his body: his breath; his heartbeat, steady and rhythmic. As he walked, his thoughts scattered away from him like tossed coins. He found himself in front of
a school. The buildings were tall, their thick walls made of red bricks. Pictures were taped to the windows, facing outwards, images drawn in crayon by small and imprecise hands. He read the sign leichhardt public school and had the sensation of moving back into himself. This was his old primary school, but it looked somehow more exposed than his memory of it, too close to the street and the chaos of the city. When he had been there, it had felt secluded.

Mostly, his memories of it were the view from inside, looking out the window during classes and realising, as other students put their heads down to work, that he hadn't been listening to what was said and was unsure what he was supposed to be doing.

The playground was empty now. He glanced at his watch; it was quarter past three. He assumed that school must be over for the day. But even as he had the thought a bell rang and suddenly the school was swarming with green bodies. He stayed there gripping the fence, watching the bodies, small and busy, forming groups and separating, moving like ants.

His eye was caught by a young girl walking slowly through the bodies with her bag slung over one shoulder. Her hat dangled from one finger, bobbing on its elasticised band. The straw hat had buckled on one side.

Her hair was blonde, the colour of barley. When she came closer he thought at first that she was pulling a face because the left side of her mouth was slack. When she
smiled at one of her friends, though, he noticed that she smiled with only the right side of her mouth. From where he stood, that part of her face looked melted. She moved around to his side of the fence, eyes on her feet, glancing up from time to time in the direction of Norton Street, as if waiting for someone to arrive. She was only a few metres away from him, and if she hadn't been standing so close, he might have said nothing. He might have walked away and let the idea that had suddenly possessed him pass.

He took a step towards her. ‘Hi,' he said.

Growing up, he had no younger siblings or nieces and nephews, and as an adult he'd played no role in the lives of his friends' children. He'd had no experience in talking to children, apart from the models he'd used for photographs, and the young girl seemed to sense his nerves.

‘Is your mum or dad coming to pick you up this afternoon?'

Still looking at her feet, she said her mother was coming from work. She spoke so softly he could hardly hear her.

‘Okay,' he said. They stood beside each other without speaking and he kept wondering what he should do with his hands.

After a few minutes a woman walked towards them. Her long, dark hair had a silvery sheen in the sun, where it had started to grey. She wore jeans and a tunic
that reached her knees. On her feet were flat, practical sandals. She took the girl's head in her hands and kissed her hair. It was a firm gesture that seemed to almost be an expression of relief at having found the young girl still there waiting for her. He wondered where the girl's blonde hair had come from. She held her hat up to her mother, who frowned, and he saw the word
broken
pass over the young girl's lips.

He moved towards them, a sideways movement like a crab's. ‘I'm sorry to interrupt you,' he said. He hated scouting for subjects. It was like asking someone he didn't know very well for a favour, even though he paid his models—whether they were professional or not—and most people were glad to be involved. ‘I'm a photographer,' he continued. ‘I noticed your daughter as I was walking past. I wondered if you would let me take her photograph?'

The woman frowned. ‘What sort of a photograph?' she said, moving her arm around her daughter's waist and pulling her closer. The inside of her arm was pale, the two bones in her wrist visible like the underside of a wing. Behind him, the chatter of children peppered his thoughts.

‘I'm a photographic artist. You can look me up online. It would be a portrait. I'll pay her. Your daughter has the right look.'

Look
. The word repulsed him. It was a word that photographers used, but he didn't like the way it implied that a person's appearance could be slotted into a category.
He hadn't really been thinking about photographs at all until he'd seen her there and an image of her flashed before him against a soft, white background, her hair falling evenly around her face.

Behind the woman he was talking to, he noticed a figure moving towards them. It was a teacher whom he actually recognised, wearing a red shirt and shorts. His socks were pulled up to his knees.

‘Can I help you?' the teacher said. A vein in his neck bulged and his face was slightly flushed, the colour of sunburn that hadn't completely faded. Andrew wondered whether it was actually possible that a teacher who'd been there when he was a student was still teaching at the same school. Perhaps he was mistaken. Over the years he had seen so many faces that maybe this man just appeared similar to someone else he knew. But no; Andrew looked at him again and the way he stood, the way he gestured with his hands as he spoke, as though he was demonstrating the dimensions of a box; they were the movements of a person he knew.

‘I'm just talking to this girl's mother,' he said. An exhaustion took hold of him. He had too much else to think about and wished he'd said nothing, that he could walk away now and pretend it hadn't happened. ‘My name is Andrew Spruce. I'm a photographer. I actually went to school here.' He smiled, trying to muster his charm from somewhere inside him, a place that felt welded shut. He tried to remember the teacher's name.