Names for Nothingness (13 page)

Deva Sadhana is there and Santosh, who once was Fraser back in the country where Caitlin used to live, the place where she wandered like a stranger who never belonged. But Caitlin, too, no longer exists. She is Nirav now, and the person she has become has no connection with who she once was.

Together, the three of them slice into the mangoes, a crisscross
of cuts, cubes that press out as they bend the skin back. When they are done, they lay them out on the white cloth, alongside the papayas and limes, and the breads they have baked; for this is the day that they break their fast, that they celebrate and sing the joy of existence.

‘It is feasting all day, and well into the night,' Satya Deva has told them.

She is hungry, because it has been so long since she has eaten, but each time she looks at the food before her, she feels nauseous, wanting only to be ill. She knows she must experience this, allowing herself to swallow the giddy lightness that rises and then plummets with a rapid heaviness into the pit of her stomach, but in doing so, she feels that same tight grip of fear that rips the present out of her hands and sends her hurtling into a future filled with terror.

She runs her hands under the tap, washing off the sticky mango juice and splashing the cool water across her forehead, and in the moment of looking up from the sink, she sees her reflection in the window. The glass is cracked, and the dust dances in the sunlight, but it does not alter the vision she had, the brief moment of seeing and finding herself slipping out of her attempt to find peace. She steps back, almost colliding with the table, and steadies herself with one hand gripping the edge. The others know she is not feeling well, and they put down the food and turn to her, anxious that she is about to faint.

She is not.

Deva Sadhana's hand is warm on her stomach. It is her way of asking if she is all right. Santosh turns back to the fruit, unwilling to look at her, and she wants only to be back where she was: Nirav, calm and content, preparing food for the day of celebration, doing that and that alone. So, she brushes Deva Sadhana's hand away and turns her back on the window
as she tells herself – once more – that this is a new country and all that she was, all that she held as truth, has no place here.

O
NCE WHEN THEY WERE WORKING BACK
, Lou had asked Sharn what had made her fall in love with Liam. Sharn had been complaining, saying that she was unsure whether they should continue, when Lou stopped her with the question.

‘I don't know,' Sharn answered.

‘Yes, you do,' and Lou smiled. ‘Apart from the fact that he's a looker.' Which he was.

She tried to remember. She didn't have to try, really. Lou was right, she did know. It had just become so buried under all the crap. There were three things, but she didn't say them all out loud.

‘He was kind,' she said. ‘And I'd had it so hard.'

‘He is kind,' Lou corrected her.

But it wasn't just that he was kind to her. He was good to Caitlin too. She didn't have to do it on her own anymore and she could not even begin to describe how huge that relief was.

She remembered standing out on the highway on the night they left Sassafrass. The rain had only just stopped falling and the steam was rising from the road. There was not a car in sight, and she had begun to regret the haste with which she had made them leave, her anger with Simeon making it impossible for her to stay a moment longer in the shack that she realised she had always hated.

Liam had taken Caitlin from her, and tucked a strand of hair behind her ears.

She had looked at him and she had been so grateful.

She remembered; the three of them waiting in the deep indigo of the early evening until their first lift had finally appeared, a battered old ute that would take them as far as Brisbane, so long as they didn't mind sitting in the back.

She and Caitlin had sat on either side of him, the hiss of the tyres on the wet road drowned out by the tarpaulin flapping in the wind, and she had thought that this was all she wanted. Nothing else had mattered. He was, in that moment, perfection to her.

Even though so much had changed, Sharn still respected Liam's love for Caitlin. But on the night that Caitlin told her that she was leaving school and that she no longer wanted to live with them, she had dismissed his years of parenting.
You are not even her father.
She remembered her words, and the shame of them pulsed, steady and dark, beneath her fury.

She had walked around the block for over an hour, seemingly unable to leave this grid of four streets, her thoughts tracing and retracing themselves as she rounded each corner for the third, fourth, fifth and sixth time.

He was in bed when she eventually came home, lying there with the light on. His eyes were closed and a book was by his side, spine bent back on the page he had been reading. He was, she presumed, asleep, and although she had returned
with every intention of apologising, her anger resurfaced. How could he just get into bed, seemingly unperturbed by both Caitlin's departure and her words?

‘Liam.' She said his name, harshly and loudly, and he woke, startled by the sound.

They looked at each other and she could not think what to say.

‘Come to bed,' and he lay back down again, pulling the sheet up over his body.

‘It really doesn't bother you?' There was disbelief in her tone.

His voice was muffled by the bedding. ‘For christsakes, just calm down,' he told her. ‘She says she's happy and we have to trust her.'

Looking at him, Sharn knew that she was an idiot to have expected any other response, but nevertheless she could feel the anger building. ‘You don't even seem to care that she's gone and that neither of us knows where. Or maybe you do know and you don't see fit to share that with me.' There was no stopping her now that she had started, and she wished that she could turn herself off, but she seemed unable to find the right switch. ‘I don't understand you. You are so fucking passive about everything. There could be bombs exploding all around us and you would just lie there, asleep. For godsakes, Liam –'

He didn't look at her as he picked up his pillow and left the room to sleep in Caitlin's bed.

Suddenly alone, she stared at the blanket kicked right back, the book now on the floor. She picked it up and read the title:
Emptiness and peace towards a spiritual prosperity: a new world order.
She glanced at the words written on the inside cover, the name ‘Fraser', a number underneath, and then threw it to the other side of the room.

When morning came, Sharn did not get up. She stayed in bed and cried, intermittently wondering if she had temporarily lost her grip on sanity. She was so ashamed of what she had said to Liam that she could not apologise. She wanted him to come to her and say that he was sorry, so that she did not feel so bad about herself. She was also ashamed about Caitlin, and wished she had acted with more presence of mind. But she hadn't, and after an hour of crying, she got up and looked at herself, drained and exhausted, in the mirror.

In Caitlin's room, Liam still slept, not waking until she came and stood right next to the bed. He lifted up the blanket and moved over to make space for her. She sat, right on the edge, and looked at the wall.

‘Come on, Sharn' and he pulled her in close. ‘It really isn't such a big deal. It could be far worse'

For a moment she wanted to believe him. She wanted to just sink into his warmth and give in, to let herself believe that nothing really mattered; to no longer fight.

‘I'm sorry' she eventually said.

She felt his arm stiffen slightly, but other than that he did not respond.

‘I shouldn't have said what I did.'

They both lay there, silent, until eventually she turned to look at him.

‘If she wants to do this, we can't stop her.' He reached across and stroked her hair gently.

Wanting to trust the decision he had clearly made, Sharn said nothing, but as she looked around Caitlin's room, she could feel the agitation resurfacing. It was not so simple. They knew nothing about where she had gone and the life she had chosen. Sharn moved out of Liam's hold and sat up.

‘I have to get to work.'

He went back to their bed while she had a shower. As she
dressed herself, she had to repress the irritation she felt at seeing him still lying there. She did not want another fight. Standing by his side, she noticed the book on the floor where she had thrown it, and she picked it up absent-mindedly.

‘Do you know who Fraser is?' she asked, and he stirred.

He was about to shake his head in response, and then, rubbing at his eyes, he remembered. ‘Think he was a friend of Caitlin's, the one who introduced her.' He watched Sharn put the book into her bag. ‘But I don't know for sure.'

The first time Sharn rang the number written inside, there was no answer. There was not even a machine on which she could leave a message.

The second time, a female answered, and she asked if she could speak to Fraser.

‘He's not here at the moment.'

‘I'm actually trying to reach my daughter, Caitlin.'

‘She's not here either.'

Sharn hung up, realising as she did so that she hadn't even asked if Caitlin was staying there. She rang back again. The person who answered was male.

‘I'm sorry,' Sharn said. ‘I called just a moment ago, wanting to speak to Caitlin.'

‘Who?'

‘Caitlin.'

There was no response.

‘Is she there?' Sharn asked.

She heard him rest the receiver on something hard, and then call out a name that wasn't clear.

‘Sorry, no one here who can help. Call back.'

‘Who should I ask for?'

He had already hung up.

She listened to the beeping for a moment and then put the phone down.

Later that evening, she tried again. Not once, but eight times. Liam was not home, and she sat in the flat, the book on the table in front of her, dialling the number over and over again. The first few times it rang out, and after that it was engaged.

She went to the back steps. As she looked over the garden, she wondered at her own agitation. She had always trusted Caitlin, she had to remind herself of that. Caitlin had always been a sensible child. She lit a cigarette. It had been raining and the mosquitoes were out, whining about her head. She slapped at them, missing each time, eventually knocking over her glass of wine and sending it flying down the stairs, shards of glass shattering as they hit the cement, until the last piece finally splintered into fragments at the bottom.

She should have picked it up. She knew that. But it was dark by then, and she would only have cut herself. For a moment, she had a vision of Caitlin as a child, navigating these stairs, the glass slicing into her bare feet as she made her way down to the garden, one small hand clutching the rail so that she did not tumble, head first, down to the paving at the bottom, and Sharn felt her stomach lurch at the image.

Inside, it was dark. She had left all the lights off. She picked up the phone almost as though it were an automatic response, pressing the sequence of digits without thinking.

It was engaged again, and as she swore loudly, Liam opened the door.

‘Who were you calling?' he asked, and she told him she had been calling the number inside the book, the one Fraser had written down.

‘All day,' she said, ‘I've been calling it all fucking day.'

He reached for her. ‘You have to calm down,' he said. ‘There's no point in getting this worked up.'

She just looked at him, her eyes wide and tense, her entire
being fearful and ready to fight. Her hand hung stiffly by her side and he slipped his fingers into the palm, holding her tightly in a gesture of comfort.

‘What is it that is getting to you so much?' He put his hands on her waist.

‘I don't know.' She wanted to give him an answer. She wished she had one to give him, but she didn't. She hung her head now. ‘I am just so scared that if I let her go, I am doing the wrong thing, the irresponsible thing.' She looked at the ground. ‘I keep failing her.'

She bit her lip and wished she didn't feel so alone.

W
HEN
S
HARN FIRST STARTED LOOKING FOR WORK
, she usually impressed employers enough for them to hire her. She had not completed school, she had no previous experience in the position, but she was young, undeniably attractive, and she had a direct, sharp intelligence that appealed to everyone who interviewed her.

Because they had no money, they had stayed with Margot after leaving Sassafrass, and because Sharn was in love with Liam, she found everything to do with his life wonderful, even – in those early days – his mother. She would sit at the breakfast table with the papers spread out in front of her, and Margot would sit opposite wrapped in a slightly soiled silk kimono, encouraging her as she circled job ad after job ad.

‘You'd be wonderful, my darling,' Margot would say, dipping her toast into her tea, ‘absolutely wonderful.'

And Sharn thought she was one of the most amazingly eccentric people she had ever met.

Out in the garden, Liam would play with Caitlin, showing her the first bulbs coming through the grass, talking to her ceaselessly while she followed him around, silently. This was his home, this huge, falling-down house with its overgrown lawns, this was the place where he had grown up, and it felt like another country compared to anything she had ever known.

After about three weeks, Sharn began to feel that they would never leave.

‘What do you want to do?' she asked Liam one night, anxiously.

The two of them were in bed, Caitlin asleep between them. This was the only time that they had to themselves. During the day it seemed that Margot was always there, talking, and Sharn had begun to feel a slight panic whenever she saw her, a sense that she was going to be invaded, to be sucked dry by Margot's endless chatter.