Relativity (22 page)

“Anything else about its orbit?”

“Mercury's orbit is elliptical but it moves slightly, it's kinda weird. As it orbits the sun, the ellipse rotates. That's because gravity bends space-time, and there's more of it near the sun, so obviously that makes the perihelion shift.”

Dr. Thorp and Professor Skinner gave each other a strange look. They showed him more slides, of other planets and distant dwarfs, comets and asteroid belts. As they asked questions, Ethan rattled off everything he knew about the solar system, planet by planet: how seasons on Uranus last only twenty days, how Jupiter is like a cosmic vacuum cleaner and sucks things up, how asteroids can have their own moons, how Saturn would float.

After an hour, Dr. Thorp turned the lights in the lecture theater back on.

Ethan let his eyes adjust. “So, how did I do?”

Dr. Saunders came down from the wooden benches. “It wasn't a test, Ethan. But I must admit, I'm sure everyone is pretty impressed with your very comprehensive knowledge of space. How come you know all this?”

“I read some textbooks in the library. But it all just makes sense to me. I don't know.”

Professor Skinner smiled. “You know much more about how the solar system works off the top of your head than most of my students, even the postgrads.”

“Fascinating,” Dr. Saunders said. “Your brain is certainly very special. They do say there are as many neurons in the brain as there are stars in the Milky Way.”

“More than one hundred billion?” Ethan asked.

“I must admit I've never counted personally. Did you see anything interesting today? Like what happened with the ping-pong ball? Anything like that.”

Ethan shook his head. “Excuse me but I'm busting. I really need to use the toilet.”

“Hold on, I'll go with you.” Mum came out to the hallway with him. “There's a bathroom just around this corner.”

He gave her a funny look. “How do you know? Have you been here before?”

“No, never,” she said quickly.

But Ethan knew that even though those words had just come out of her mouth, the rest of her face was really saying yes.

Ω

CLAIRE RAISED HER FACE
to the sun. After a stressful day at work stuck in meetings, the late afternoon light boosted her mood. Office workers spilled from buildings and into the city streets. Rush hour crowded the footpaths; pedestrians elbowed one another along the sidewalk as they hurried home. She walked from her office to her bus stop, through the narrow alleys of the Rocks. This old part of Sydney always reminded Claire of Ruth Park's
Playing Beatie Bow
, how any moment she might wander down a cobblestone path and walk into the past. Follow the little furry girl along Argyle Street and travel back in time. The Harbor Bridge would vanish; the Opera House would melt away.

Claire walked down to Dawe's Point Battery. Across Lavender Bay, the rosy-cheeked face of Luna Park smiled. She stood beside the chalky gray pylon and looked up at the arching iron of the bridge. Sea breeze hit her face. Traffic bellowed overhead, powering along the towering alloy. Her phone rang. She glanced at it vacantly, expecting it to be the office—she'd left a little early—or maybe Ethan's school. But it wasn't. It was Mark.

Claire held the phone to her ear and waited for him to speak. He didn't say anything. She heard him breathe and hesitate; she could almost hear him think.

“Hi,” Mark said finally.

“Hi,” she replied.

“I just wanted to let you know my dad passed away. Early last week.”

“Mark, I'm so sorry.” She took a deep breath. “How are you doing?”

“I don't know. I'm okay, I guess. Sorry, I probably should've told you sooner. Meant to invite you to the funeral. It was on Friday. I'd planned to get in touch. There was so much to deal with and I just blanked out about it.”

“Don't worry, it's fine. It doesn't matter. Remember when my father died? I was a wreck.”

“You almost wore your pajamas to his funeral. You were literally about to walk out the door in your slippers.”

Claire smiled. “I'd forgotten about that.”

“What are you doing right now? Do you want to get a drink?”

“Oh, I can't. I should go home.” She paused, thinking back to when her own dad had passed away. Of how supportive Mark was then, how caring and attentive—literally slipping her dress over her head, putting shoes on her feet—while she was immobilized by grief. But that was the past; she knew better than to be mindlessly sentimental. “Mark, I'm not sure it's a good idea.”

“Yeah, you're right. I've just felt really lost this last week. Thought it might be nice to see a familiar face, but like you said, it's not a good idea.”

His voice was strained; he sounded upset. His father had died days ago. Of course Mark felt lost. Claire chastised herself for being insensitive. Perhaps he didn't have anyone else to talk to about it; Mark was only trying to express his feelings. She felt a small twinge of pity. After all, he'd helped her through her grief years ago. One drink wouldn't hurt. “Mark, I'm sorry. Let's have a drink.”

He relaxed. “Where are you?”

“The Rocks.”

“Does the Lord Nelson still exist?”

“I think so,” she said.

“See you there soon.”

Claire hung up the phone. She wasn't far from the pub and walked up the hill toward Argyle Place. The Lord Nelson's façade had been renovated and stripped back, revealing chisel marks made by convicts on harbor-quarried stone. The pub had its own brewery and the heavy smell of malt and yeast filled the air. She examined the gray wall for a moment, thinking about the convicts who'd carved those grooves in the rock.

Inside the pub, Claire went to the bathroom and tried to fix her hair. In the mirror, under the tungsten lights, she looked so much older than she remembered—exhausted, with dark circles under her eyes. Mark hadn't arrived yet so she ordered a glass of wine and sat at an available table.

“Sorry to keep you waiting.” Mark tapped her on the shoulder and she quickly stood up. He leaned in to give her a kiss but Claire twisted away. Their cheeks touched awkwardly. “Let me just grab a beer,” he said.

She found herself staring at him while he stood at the bar, admiring the shape of his back. He'd aged well, she thought idly. Men were lucky like that. As he returned to the table with his drink, Claire pretended to look for something in her bag.

Mark sat down and pulled his chair in. “Thanks for coming to see me.” He smiled.

Claire looked across the table at his hands—rough skin, bare fingers—and wondered what he'd done with his wedding ring. Her own rings were hidden somewhere in the farthest corner of a closed drawer. When she'd stopped wearing them, smooth white lines lingered on her ring finger for a long time—two ghosts who haunted her hands.

“You work near here?” he asked.

“Just down the road. At the Sydney Ballet Company.”

He sipped his beer. “You're still dancing?”

Claire shook her head. “Haven't danced since . . . well, since Ethan I suppose. I'm philanthropy manager. A professional beggar, essentially.”

“Oh, I'm sad you quit. You were an extraordinary dancer; you worked so hard.”

“It's fine,” she said, quickly grabbing her wineglass. “What about you, what are you doing over in Kalgoorlie?”

“Bit north of there. I work at a mine. Not actually in the mine, in a lab. Metallurgical research.”

“Mining? You're kidding.”

“Money is okay, I guess.” Mark looked at her, amused. “That's right, I forgot about your angry environmentalist phase. How you went to those Jabiluka action-group meetings. Whenever we walked past any fast-food chain or bank you'd stop at the door and scream, ‘Capitalists!' ”

“Come on, I wasn't that angry,” Claire said, feeling a flush creep across her cheeks. “And it wasn't a phase, I still care about the environment.”

“Bet you're a stickler for composting and recycling.”

“Maybe.” She suppressed a smile. “So you really didn't go back to physics. What about your PhD?”

“Got derailed, like everything else.”

“Yeah, I know what you mean. Well, cheers to us!” She raised her glass. “To approaching forty with unrealized dreams.”

Their glasses clinked. Claire felt a rush of fondness for him again; perhaps she'd demonized him too much inside her head. They'd had an overpowering connection once, been so in love. As she swallowed her wine, she forced herself to remember that this connection was only a memory.

Mark cleared his throat. “Claire, I wanted to ask you something. Since Dad died, I've been thinking about Ethan a lot. About family. How Dad never got to see him again before he passed away. I understand why you didn't want Ethan to meet his grandfather under those circumstances but what about me? Since I'm back in town, it would be nice to see Ethan. I don't want my relationship with my son to be like the one I had with my father.”

She frowned. “Your father didn't give you brain damage.”

“Ethan has brain damage? You said he was fine. Normal.”

“He is fine. Actually, that's not entirely true. He's been in the hospital recently. A few weeks ago, Ethan had a seizure. Apparently triggered by scar tissue in his brain.”

“Why didn't you tell me?”

Claire avoided eye contact; she wasn't sure what to say.

“Has this happened before?”

“Not since he was a baby. But those seizures were caused by his old injuries. Because of shaken baby syndrome.”

“Right.” Mark laughed, with an edge in his voice. “You still believe that. Shaken baby syndrome is a hoax, you know. It's been proven now that it's based on hypothesis and faulty science. The laws of physics don't work like that, never did. Did you know biomechanical studies have shown the syndrome doesn't exist?”

“I don't know about that,” Claire began.

“There's lots of new research from the past few years. You wouldn't believe how often it's incorrectly diagnosed. SBS mimics Menkes disease, brittle bones, vitamin K deficiency—hundreds of other conditions. Was Ethan ever tested for those?”

“He had the constellation of symptoms.”

Mark took a pen from his pocket and started to draw dots on a cardboard coaster. He pointed. “What's this?”

“The Southern Cross.”

“Yeah,” he said. “But this is only a two-dimensional view. It's how it looks from Earth. What about the distances between all these stars? You can't tell when you look at the sky, but all constellations have three dimensions. If you looked at the Southern Cross from anywhere else in the universe, it'd appear completely different. Not in this shape at all. So much for constellations.”

She shook her head. “Don't go off on some astrophysics tangent.”

“My point is, if you only looked at Ethan's symptoms from one narrow view, you'd only draw one conclusion. But if you reorient yourself, they mean nothing. If Ethan is still having seizures now, maybe he's always had some neurological disorder. Maybe he had a febrile seizure when he was a baby?”

Claire pushed her wineglass away. “Then how do you explain what happened to him?”

“I don't know, but I don't think the doctors did a differential diagnosis. Bleeding in the brain is common in babies. Besides, you can't medically diagnose abuse. It was all assumption and mythology. These days, the diagnostic criteria for SBS are completely different. Doctors don't even call it shaken baby syndrome anymore. That diagnosis broke our family, destroyed us. I loved that child and he was taken from me. Claire, I couldn't even come near you. The police put out an AVO.”

She turned her body away from him; she couldn't listen to more of his lies.

“Doesn't matter,” Mark muttered. “You've already made up your mind.”

“What else was I supposed to do?”

He shifted on his chair. “You were supposed to believe me.”

“I really wanted to,” Claire said. “I wanted to believe that you weren't capable of such a thing. But seven doctors testified that you shook my baby. A jury found you guilty. You went to prison!”

“So you trusted the legal system more than me? In the last few years, tons of people found guilty by a jury of shaken baby syndrome have been exonerated. They've had their names cleared because the evidence was wrong. A guilty verdict didn't mean that I was guilty. Once people think you've hurt a baby, you're as good as guilty anyway. After I was accused, I never stood a chance. Stigma always stays there.” He stared into his empty beer glass.

“There was a huge pile of evidence, enough to put you in jail. So I had to reconcile the Mark I loved with this other version, this criminal. Accept things I didn't want to accept. But it's been twelve years, I've accepted you hurt Ethan. Just tell me you did it, I've already dealt with it. You can tell me the truth now.”

“You want the truth?”

“I really need to hear you say it.”

He looked into her eyes. “Claire, I don't know how many times I have to tell you. I didn't hurt him.”

Claire studied him carefully; she couldn't read his face. She wished she could see a flash of something on it—guilt, sadness, remorse—but Mark's expression was stony. All he had to do was admit it. Confess. It wouldn't change anything now except finally quiet her doubts. She felt agitated by his empty protests of innocence, after all these years.

“I can't be here,” she said.

“What do you want? You'll never be happy, no matter what I say. I did it, I didn't, I'm guilty, I'm innocent. What does it matter? You've already accepted your own version of the truth.”

“Don't you dare do this to me again.”

“Claire . . .” he began.

“No, stop.” She cut him off and raised her voice. “I've wrestled with uncertainty for too long. It's all over. It's in the past. Just tell me the truth.”