Zac and Mia (11 page)

I’m sneaking the back way to Bec’s house when I get sprung by Mum. Since when does she weed the pumpkins at 8 a.m.?

‘You’re up early, Zac.’

‘Just making the most of the morning.’ I stretch like an eighty-year-old.

‘How’s
Pride and Prejudice?’

Worse than a lumbar puncture. ‘Not so bad.’

‘Thought you’d be finished. Didn’t see much of you yesterday.’

Now I’m on Mum’s radar, I’ll have to postpone my visit to Mia.

‘Chapter eight and still nothing’s happened.’

Mum laughs. ‘We should rent the movie.’

‘We?’

‘Well, the men will be picking and Bec wants to get
painting. It’ll be fun. I’ll make popcorn.’

Shit. The only thing worse than a suspicious mother is a bored one.

Even the movie is lost on me. Who cares about Keira Knightley and the guy from
Spooks
? How can I feign interest in gossiping socialites when Mia’s only fifty metres away? That’s if she hasn’t done a runner and taken off. When I go for a leak, I phone Bec’s number, but it rings out. Mia’s mobile diverts to voicemail.

She could be anywhere by now.

Bec’s front door won’t open for me. I didn’t even know it had a lock.

I follow the verandah around to the front of the house. Through the lounge room window I see Bec on the couch with her feet up, her laptop balanced on the dome of her belly.

When I tap the glass, she looks up lazily. It takes her a few seconds to spot me, and when she does her reaction is audible.

‘Fuck me!’ She slides the laptop off and pushes up the window. ‘You shouldn’t scare a woman in her third trimester.’

‘Why’s the front door locked?’

‘To keep out the drop bears.’

‘Do I look like a freaking drop bear?’ I hear the whine in my voice.

‘Haven’t you got a novel to read?’

I see Anton, her partner, wave jerkily at me via Skype. I lean in through the window and wave back.

‘Go home,’ Bec says.

‘What’s going on?’

‘You’re interrupting …’

‘You know what I mean. Where’s Mia?’

‘She’s busy. So am I.’

‘Bec!’

She angles the laptop screen away from us. ‘You told me to keep her a secret,’ she whispers.

‘I didn’t mean from
me
! Is she here?’

‘I haven’t eaten her; she’s too skinny.’

‘Have you checked her room?’

‘Not today.’

‘You have to. Mia’s got, like, two switches: Hiding Mia and Houdini Mia. When she wants to go, it’s just …
poof.’

‘The girl can barely walk, there is no
poof.’

‘She’s faster than you think. Go check.’

‘Give her some space. Now rack off, you’re wasting data.’ She pulls the window down then blows me a kiss.

I leave, shocked. I’d confided in Bec because I thought she could help. I hadn’t meant for her to take over.

Give her some space
, she’d said. Does that mean Mia’s still there?

Neither of them answers their phone. The front door stays locked all day, and I get the same response each time I knock:
Go read your book. Give her some space
.

It’s only at night that I get any answers. Through the curtains of Bec’s spare room, a low light glows. So she’s there, after all. She’s okay.

J. R. keeps me company in the pumpkin bed, gently smacking me with his tail. We sit there until the light goes out, and then a while after that.

Bec hands me pink gloves and a bucket.

‘Morning, sunshine.’

‘So?’

‘So …’

I shove teats into kids’ mouths. ‘Have you checked on Mia this morning?’

She shrugs, feigning innocence.

‘Well, have you told Mum?’

Bec grins over the sucking of the kids. ‘Our mother doesn’t need to know everything.’

And neither do I, apparently, as she ignores the rest of my questions through the day. An impenetrable forcefield has descended over her house, and when I tap at the kitchen window in the afternoon, Bec shoos me away, saying that Mia is sleeping.

‘At four?’

‘She sleeps a lot,’ Bec whispers, as if talking about a baby. ‘She must need it.’

I creep around to the spare room. I don’t knock at the window. Instead, I slip a note between the glass and the frame.

It’s been two days. Why won’t she answer?

The silence is seriously fucking with me.

I spend the next two days in the shed, trying to occupy myself with the cot pieces. I saw and sand. My sanity’s slipping away. What’s with all the secrecy?

On the fifth day, I lose the plot. I chuck the tools and storm across to Bec’s house, ready to force entry if I have to.

But Bec’s on the front verandah, soaking her hand in Dettol.

‘The bitch bit me.’

‘Bit you?’

‘Don’t go near her; she’s crazy.’

‘What happened?’

‘I was just checking her for ticks.’

‘Mia?’

‘Daisy
bit me. Your stupid alpaca.’

I’m so confused.

Bec tuts. ‘And I thought you were Mia’s friend …’

It’s the final straw. ‘So did I! Bec, you’re taking the piss. It’s been five fucking days.’

‘Calm down, Zac.’

‘Calm down? I’m worried sick. She’s probably fucked off to the other side of the country.’

‘She hasn’t. She’s here—’

‘How would you know? You don’t even know that. Mia!’ I shout.

‘Shh. She’s in the bath. Zac, don’t—’ Bec grabs my arm but I yank it free and rush around the outside of the house. I knock on the bathroom louvres, but the sound is dull, so I call her name.

‘Mia.’

I tilt the louvres a bit more.

‘Mia?’

‘I’m here,’ a small voice answers. There’s a slosh of water. It’s her.

I close my eyes and rest my palms against the louvres. The glass is lumpy and cool.

‘Just tell me you’re okay.’

‘ I’m okay.’

I feel like an idiot, but now I know. She might be hiding, but at least she’s not fighting or running.

And it’s more than I could’ve hoped for.

I’ve never been in a real bathtub. This one stands alone, wide and deep and stained. The enamel is cool and smooth. The warm water comes almost to the top.

In this bathtub, water is sud-slippery. It fills each space without judgment. Nothing hurts.

Hours pass. There’s nothing to tell how slowly. I’ve let my phone go dead, paranoid someone would track me.

Sounds skim under the door. There’s the close cheeping of chickens. Further out, grunts and bleats merge into a soundtrack that’s already become ordinary.

I used to hate spending time alone; now it’s all I crave. In the hospital, too many people came prying. What would
they
know? I hated every one of them.

But not as much as I hated my mother. How is it that, at seventeen, I’m old enough to drive, have sex and
get married, but not old enough to decide what happens to my body? Given the choice, I’d rather have died than let them do what they did.

But I didn’t get that choice. My mother signed the form while I was on the operating table, the tumour holding tight to the artery it had wrapped itself around. ‘We had to act immediately,’ surgeons told me later. ‘An excision and bone graft were no longer practicable.’ Consent was needed. They didn’t wake me up; they handed my mother a pen. She signed her name and ruined my life.

Did they use a powersaw?

I slide down and go under, letting the back of my head bump against the bottom. Water slips and slops above. Down here, I hear my heart resound through water. Its two-part rhythm is low and wilful in my ears. It surprises me how insistent it sounds, even after all of this.

‘Mia.’

It reaches me like a memory. I lift myself and check the door is locked. It is. My crutches lean against it. The voice comes floating through the window.

‘I’m okay,’ I tell Zac, though I’m not. I’m not okay. I’m tired. I’m hurting.

I don’t have energy for Zac. I don’t have energy for anything. All I can manage is to make the daily journey from my bedroom to the bathroom in Bec’s long robe. I’m more tired than ever. How can Zac get up and feed the animals, cracking jokes like the world is exactly how it should be? Perhaps for him it is. He might have
someone else’s marrow, but at least he’s got two legs.

Fuck
. I reel again. After all this time, it still catches me off-guard. I sink underwater once more. How long does it take for the brain to catch up? Each morning I open my eyes to the same sickening shock.

I have to remember not to look down. I have to clip the thing on and get dressed quickly, hiding the temporary prosthetic that rubs my wound till it bleeds. It burns like hell but I have to keep it on, keep it hidden, unclipping it only for the bath or bed. In water, at least, the scars don’t hurt so much.

Such a pretty word:
scar
.

The ugliest is
stump
. I woke to a stump. The surgeons congratulated each other for saving the knee and a part of the shin. They boasted, over and over, that I was lucky.

Lucky?

While my friends were dancing at Summadayze, I was kept in observation with intravenous morphine. I pitched in and out of the world, visited by psychs who attempted to talk about change and perspective and body image and luck. Then they hooked me to more chemo. I couldn’t eat, wouldn’t talk, didn’t watch when the wound was unbandaged or the staples taken out. I tried to trick myself beyond my fucked-up body, slipping between vivid dreams until the morphine was taken away and I was left to live like this.

Against my will, I resurface. My head falls against the side of the tub. At this angle, I see every beam of the ceiling. Sixteen of them. At this angle, I don’t have to
see myself. My body can be perfect. It can be anything I imagine it to be.

So I stay in the bath for hours, hearing the animals and the floorboards that creak beneath Bec’s weight. In this house, wood flexes and yields. Even the walls, somehow, seem to bend for the people within. I’ve never known a house to be soft. Bec, too, is unexpectedly kind. Yesterday, she asked for my opinion on paint swatches. ‘A new coat of paint for a new soul,’ she said, levering open a tub of olive green.

Bec hums as she paints. Through the day, she brings me sandwiches and sliced pears and expects nothing in return but the safekeeping of her brother.

She can relax: I didn’t come here to hurt Zac. I don’t want their money, either, anymore. I’ve got enough to get to Adelaide, at least. Enough to get out of here.

I have to start again or not at all.

Thump, pat, pause. Thump, pat, pause
.

The sequence comes from inside Bec’s house. It reminds me of Mia on her crutches. But isn’t she still in the bath?

I go around the back of the house, passing the baby’s room with its windows opened to release the stink of paint. Outside the spare room, I stop and listen.

Thump, pat, pause. Thump, pat, pause
.

There’s a gap between window and frame, so I draw the curtain to one side. I recognise the end of a brown tail. It thumps the floor, then slides from view.

‘Get out of there,’ I whisper, opening the window some more. I lean in, trying to coax the joey to me. ‘Come here.’

She doesn’t come so I pull myself through the window. Inside, I crouch and click my fingers at the
joey, now sniffing the spilled contents of Mia’s backpack: a jumble of clothes, a tube of gel, a phone.

‘Come—’

It’s not the mess of Mia’s life that stops me. It’s not the empty packets of pills.

It’s the half-leg in the corner of the room. It starts with a flesh-coloured socket, like an over-sized champagne glass. It tapers down to a pole with screws and a harness. Beneath is a stripy sock that ends in a blue shoe, its laces tied in a perfect, white bow.

It knocks me with unexpected force.
Mia
. The hollow socket. The chunky clasp. The neat white bow that shouldn’t be.

A hand at my back shocks me. Bec slides her other arm around her belly, like she’s shielding her baby from all the harm that could ever happen.

I gasp for breath and Bec tightens her grip around all three of us, drawing us together.

‘I know,’ she says. ‘I know.’

We shut the door to the bedroom and release the joey outside. It springs indifferently away. Goats bleat and the sky is too bright, too blue for this.

‘I think, perhaps,’ begins Bec. ‘I think she needs her mum.’

I sit in the cool shed, grateful for solitude. Laid out around me are the wooden slats and plans for the cot. There’s no urgency to finish this: the baby’s
another six weeks away at least.

With a chisel, I dig into the flesh of a post-head. Thin spirals peel away. My incisions become vines that curl around, twisting and tangling the length of it. I carve tiny leaves. In each leaf, I etch veins. I zoom in on every detail, though I’m wasting my time. Nothing I do could ever make her better. Nothing I say would make it right. This chisel, this hammer, these nails—they’re useless. Mia’s not tough enough for this. For
that
. The ugly leg. All this time I’d suspected, but never known for sure.
Tore a ligament at netball
, she’d say. It’s so easy to believe her.

‘I haven’t seen much of Bec lately.’

It’s Mum by the entrance. When did it get so dark outside?

‘Have you?’ she asks.

‘She reckons her legs have puffed up.
Cankles
, or something.’

‘Should I help you clear the poo then?’

‘What?’

‘It’s Friday, Zac.’

I release the chisel and it rolls along the bench. ‘No. I’ll ask Bec.’

Her front door’s locked, as expected, but I don’t knock. I don’t want to break the spell of this house anymore. I wait a few seconds, then turn away to leave.

Then, ‘No!’ shouts a voice from inside.

I stop.
No?
Was it Bec? Was she calling me?

‘Don’t!’

It
is
Bec. I’ve never known my sister to be afraid of anything.

I push an ear to the door, hearing the ‘Farrrck!’ that manages to rattle the entire house. ‘Faaarrrking hell!’

Fuck! Bec? Mia! I should have known—something had to give eventually.

I sprint around the house and yank open bathroom louvres, but they’re too small to crawl through. Inside, Bec’s voice is rising in anger. ‘Don’t you
dare
!’

I target Bec’s bedroom and force up her window. Panic escalates as I roll in, pick myself up and dash to the kitchen, the epicentre of noise—‘Fuck! Shit! Fuck! Shit!’—where screams amplify at the sight of me sliding in with golf clubs. I grab hold of the sink to slow my skidding. Then I hold on longer so I can take it all in.

I’d expected to see women engaged in combat, not this: Bec lying belly-up on the kitchen table like a beached whale beneath a bath towel. Mia bent over, her face buried in her hands.

‘Zac!’ Bec pants, clearly hysterical. ‘Oh my god,
Zac
!’

What the hell? ‘Is the baby coming?’

‘God, I wish.’

‘What’s happening?’

‘Just do it. Quick!’

‘What?’ I yell.

Mia whips her hands from her face, reaches for Bec’s knee, then rips a strip violently free. Bec bucks as if she’s taken 3000 volts from an electric fence and howls every swear word she’s ever taught me and more.

The two golf clubs clatter to the floor.

‘What the …’

Bec’s a writhing, flailing buffalo with a four-letter-word vocabulary. Tears stream down her face, which is twisted with pain. And … laughter?

‘She said it wouldn’t hurt!’

‘It?’

She groans in a primaeval way, then lets her head flop sideways to face me. ‘I’m trying to impress Anton. We haven’t even
started
on the bikini line.’

Beside her, Mia inhales into cupped hands—gulping, laughing—and it’s the most awesome thing I’ve ever seen.

‘Who does this? Please tell me labour is less painful.’

‘Toughen up,’ I say, though I’ve never been more grateful to my sister.

‘Oh, she’s cruel. There’s a whole tub of wax just sitting there.’ Bec shakes her head at me. ‘Oh, Zac. Oh shit, this is bad.’

‘Have you inhaled too many paint fumes?’

‘Oh, Zac, you have no idea. We’re really in the shit now.’

I laugh. ‘We? I’m not the one covered in hot wax.’

‘So what’s the joke?’ Mum demands from the doorway. ‘Besides me?’

‘You can’t keep her—’

‘I know.’

‘She’s not an animal—’

‘Mum, you sound like Bec.’

‘Well? Why didn’t someone tell me?’

Bec and I exchange a look.

‘What about her check-ups and blood tests? Is she up-to-date?’

‘She’s not an animal,’ reminds Bec. ‘She did my eyes. Lashes and brows. Good, huh? I’d bypass the leg wax though.’

Mum sighs. ‘Don’t be flippant. Someone’s got to tell her mother.’