Relativity (14 page)

She barely glanced at it before putting it straight into her handbag.

“About our conversation on the phone. What do you think?” he asked.

Claire looked at her lap; she couldn't seem to look him in the eye. She was different now, even her hair had changed; she'd cut it shorter. Back when they'd met, her long wavy hair almost came down to her waist. But at this new length, Mark saw it still had a natural tendency toward the wild.

“I don't think it's a good idea,” she said.

“Not a good idea for him? Or for you?”

“For him.”

Mark had anticipated this but felt his neck muscles tense. If he was honest with himself, he hadn't come all the way back to Sydney for nothing. It wasn't just for his father, and he wasn't interested in climbing the Harbor Bridge, touring the Opera House. There was something here more monumental than all of those things. “But Ethan—”

“Ethan doesn't know what's best for him,” Claire interrupted. “He's a twelve-year-old boy.”

“Maybe you don't know what's best for him either.”

“I don't need this,” she said, still looking down. “Do you honestly think you can tell me I don't know what's best for Ethan? You don't know him. What's the name of the toy he's slept with every night since he was a baby? What was his first word? When did he take his first steps? You have no idea.”

“I want to know those things. I wanted to be there.”

“Well, you weren't.” Her tone was hard and matter-of-fact now. “You have no idea what we've been through.”

Mark stared blankly at the fountain. “You have no idea what I've been through either.”

Claire looked up from her lap and directly into Mark's eyes. “You deserved that.”

“Dad's dying,” he said. “It would mean so much to him to see his grandson.”

“I'm sorry about your father,” Claire said. “I've always liked John. But I have to put Ethan's needs first. It'd be traumatic for him to meet his grandfather for the first time when John is on his deathbed.”

“He can hardly speak but says Ethan's name over and over. I don't know what to do. I feel like I owe it to him to . . .” His voice trailed off. Mark fixed his eyes on the cathedral's stained-glass windows. “I don't have to be there. If that makes it easier for you. For you both.”

“Don't you think you owe Ethan too? I don't think you understand how upsetting that would be for him.”

“Claire, I think about him all the time.”

“No, I mean his feelings? His best interests?” Claire tucked some loose strands of hair behind her ear. “I have to put my foot down. It's not a good idea.”

Both of them looked away, staring at people passing by: runners wearing shorts and sunglasses, jogging through the shafts of light; old women walking from Mass at the cathedral across from the department stores; school students on an excursion marshaled into a line by their militant teacher.

Mark broke the silence. “Can I ask a question? He's normal, right? No permanent, you know, damage? Everything is okay?”

“I can't believe you asked me that,” Claire said. She looked distracted for a moment. “Yes, he's fine. But do you seriously think that just because he's relatively fine now, that he's okay? He doesn't have a dad. And you didn't live through not knowing whether or not he'd ever stand up, walk, or talk. I spent the first years of Ethan's life holding my breath.”

Mark sighed. “But he does have a dad.” He wanted to show her every moment he'd experienced since they'd last seen each other, how he'd had no choice but to become somebody else, but how could he make her understand?

“It's not enough. It's too late.” Her voice fractured. “It's been so hard.”

“Claire, it's been hard for me too.”

That icy stare. “You deserved that,” she said again.

A tour group walked past, a flock of tourists led by a guide holding an umbrella high and shouting in German. The crowd shifted their gaze from the fountain to another attraction developing on the bench.

“I'll always love you,” Mark said softly. The words slipped out of his mouth before he'd thought about it, before he'd run it through the filter he knew he should have.

“Mark, you broke my heart.” Claire was almost in tears. She covered her face for a second; he knew she didn't want him to see her cry. Her posture changed as she tried to regain some semblance of composure. “I shouldn't have come. I have to go.”

“But, Claire—”

“Mark, don't.”

“But what about my father? What about—”

Claire stood up and gathered her things.

Mark watched her walk away, the sharp rectangular outline of the wrapped present visible through the leather of her handbag. Will she even open it, he wondered. Would she ever give him the present he wanted most?

Ω

CLAIRE WALKED ALONG
Hyde Park's central avenue, hurrying down the garden's spine. Under the cool shade of the leafy canopy—towering arch upon arch of figs—she struggled to take several deep breaths. Do not cry. Do not look back. Just cross the road. She regretted that coffee; she felt its acidic burn in her empty stomach, milky phlegm in the back of her mouth.

In the late spring light, the park's colors were painfully vivid: bright mazes of manicured flower beds, walls of orange and pink azaleas. Jasmine drenched the air. Jacaranda season's explosion of purple was almost over for the year—the last of the November mauve flowers still clung to the branches. Claire stepped carefully over the dead flowers at her feet.

She pushed on toward Museum station, almost breaking into a run. Surely he wouldn't follow, chase after her. But Claire knew Mark was too indolent for that, he'd always suffered from immobilizing pride. Agreeing to meet him had been a mistake. In a moment of weakness, she'd taken pity on him. Yes, his father was dying, but she couldn't expose Ethan to that. She needed to get back home to him. Pedestrians kept standing in front of her, blocking her path. They walked slowly, stopped suddenly, clogged the breadth of the footpath. Why wouldn't they get out of the way?

The arterial paths of south Hyde Park led to the Anzac War Memorial at its heart—a concrete tower, clad in pink stone. The memorial reminded Claire of a miniature New York Art Deco skyscraper, as though the top of the Empire State Building had been sliced off and dropped in the middle of Sydney. She walked along the edge of the Pool of Reflection.

Ω

CLAIRE HAD NEVER BEEN
inside the war memorial until the middle of Mark's criminal trial. During the ambulance officer's testimony, she'd stepped out of the court to get some fresh air but ended up finding hundreds of thousands of gold stars.

They were called the stars of memory: a dome of 120,000 golden stars that covered the memorial ceiling, a single star to honor each person from New South Wales who'd fought in the First World War. Claire had entered the war memorial by accident. What was unfolding in the courtroom was too much to process; she'd needed to disappear. In the cavernous white marble room bathed in amber light, she finally found somewhere to vanish. The crust of stars soared a hundred feet above her head—countless gilded heroes and nameless deaths. Stepping inside the memorial and standing under the stars of memory became Claire's daily retreat. It helped her put things into perspective. Her problems weren't the end of the world. She was just one star in an entire galaxy.

Diagonally opposite the war memorial was the Downing Center. Ornate, with a turreted roof and white, yellow, and green exterior. The “Mark Foy's Department Store” original signage was still above the awning—laces, gloves, silks, and millinery—funny words to read along the façade of Sydney's district court. Inside was a grand piazza with marble floors and a spiral staircase. That criminal trial had seemed so long: twelve days, twelve-person jury. Claire spent two days in cross-examination, summoned as a witness for the Crown.

White wigs and black gowns, prosecution and defense rolling their suitcases of files, solid wooden panels of the stands, metal scanners at the entrance. Everything was unreal, surreal, like living in a television court drama. The days fused; she didn't remember every detail now. But she remembered admiring the slate and terracotta tiling of the former department store's beautiful floors.

Grievous bodily harm. Child abuse. Those were the charges. Articles ran in the newspaper about the trial, but thankfully nobody was named. Disclosing their identities was prohibited: the victim was a child. Her child. Throughout those inert days, those long hours of hearing clinical evidence from expert witnesses—specialist doctors, surgeons, police, ambulance officers—Claire sat comatose in her seat. It felt like living inside a recurring nightmare, listening again to the atrocity of that day.

She didn't cry during the trial, though. Claire didn't have any tears left. It was Mark who broke down. She was taken aback by it; she'd only ever seen him cry a handful of times, but not like this. Guilty, said the juror. Beyond reasonable doubt. His body crumpled behind that stand and he let out a guttural moan. The sound wasn't human. It shocked Claire to her core.

But she didn't see what happened next; she was ushered out of the room and into the hall. The Crown prosecutor was thrilled, threw her wig off triumphantly, but Claire didn't feel like celebrating. She'd focused for so long on this verdict and now that it was delivered, she didn't know what to think. A definitive answer—guilty—should have made her feel better. Instead, she just felt numb. Could Mark really have done that? Uncertainty still swirled inside her head. She tried to quiet it with the verdict—guilty, guilty, guilty—repeating it like an incantation until its persistent rhythm eventually eroded her doubts.

Five years after the trial ended, Claire was on Liverpool Street for a meeting. She had an appointment with a prospective donor who worked for the director of public prosecutions, a distinguished lawyer known for his love of the arts. The meeting went well—he pledged to make an annual contribution to the ballet company—so Claire was in a good mood. She walked away from his office with a spring in her step.

But as she waited at the intersection, Claire looked down at her shoes. She was standing on the Downing Center tiles of glazed diamonds and Greek frets that wound around the building's edge. Suddenly, the ground fell away. She lost her balance, her vision skewed. A fearful sound came out of her mouth—that same primal cry she'd heard Mark make during his trial. Claire collapsed by the court stairs.

A young solicitor ran over to her and asked if she was hurt. Claire assured him she was fine but tears were streaming down her face. Some strange wall had broken; her numbness finally gave way. Patterns on the tiled floor brought it all back, made her feel everything. It took her awhile to compose herself before Claire stood up and left.

Ω

SHE WAS AT MUSEUM STATION
now, making her way down to the platform. A blast of cool air surged through the station, metal squeaks, skid of breaks. Claire boarded the train, sat down, and opened her handbag. Automatic doors closed. Then the train sped out of the station. Colorful advertisements for chicken burgers and insurance policies stuck to the platform's wall blended into the blur of the underground tunnels.

Mark looked like Ethan. Claire knew it should be the other way around, that sons resembled their fathers. Ethan was made from Mark's chromosomes, was a copy of his unzipping molecules, their dividing cells. But it was the little boy who was far more present in her life; she'd passed many more hours studying her son's face. Claire and Mark were only together for five years, but now she'd spent twelve with Ethan.

It almost knocked her sideways when she'd seen Mark walk up the station stairs: a sudden smack of similarity. She hadn't expected it—the two of them existed in separate parts of her mind and memory, compartmentalized into different chambers of her heart. His face disoriented Claire. She could have been looking at her son in the future, not at her past in the now.

Hints in the chin, echoes in the nose; something about their bearing was identical. Claire couldn't put her finger on it. The way they held their head maybe. Same rigid posture, same inward-pointing feet. Seeing traces of Ethan in Mark made Claire want to be nice to him. She'd forced herself to be hard when her instinct was to be soft.

Under the train car's fluorescent lights, she caught a glimpse of her reflection in the train's wide window. She looked tired. But still symmetrical. Mark was as insensitive as he'd always been. Back then, she'd fixated on his remark. Gardens were symmetrical; poems had symmetry. Not people. It was such a backhanded compliment. All he saw was proportion and geometry, not Claire. She was reminded of how Mark valued impossible ideas like symmetry more than what was real.

Now the train was emerging from underground, surfacing into the daylight. She looked at her watch. It would take another half an hour to get home. Claire untied the ribbon of the present and placed it on the seat. The tape was difficult to unstick as she began to unwrap one side. She made shallow breaths; her hands shook. But her fingertips resisted. Some invisible force stopped her from peeling the paper away from whatever was inside. She taped the corner back. As the train slowed, Claire set the present down on the seat and stood up. She didn't look back as she stepped onto the platform. The doors closed.