An Astronaut's Life (15 page)

Instead it's me scurrying out of the bushes like a native marsupial. Guys, are you
serious? That was meant to be a surprise, now you've ruined everything. Mick already
has the bottle to his mouth and I think to grab it before he can get a taste, but
as I'm thinking that I'm also thinking, What the fuck is still in my hand? Is it
my toilet paper? Because that is so disgusting.

I put it behind my back but too late; they have seen
and will show no mercy. So what?
I say. Do you expect me to litter at random?

Mick is laughing so hard he can't speak, but Tilly stands back with a sorry face
like she's feeling so sad on my behalf. Can they be related, let alone twins? Maxi
Pad pipes up, You know paper? It's biodegradable? Just bury it, eco-warrior. But
I produce a snap-lock bag from my backpack and, as if it was my intention to do this,
put the paper inside and give them a glance like, whatever? A lizard could choke
on it, I say, which sends Mick over the edge into cardiac arrest.

This is when you see the resemblance: the breathless kookaburra Markson laugh that
contorts all three faces into open-mouthed clowns. It cracks me up. Especially Tilly,
whose brain connections are mis-wired to make her look like she's crying, but then
when she's actually crying make her lips draw back in a smile.

By the time they get it together I have already restored the booze to its rightful
place in my bag and stormed off ahead. I'm glad it's started, though—this camping
trip that almost never was. Without Maxi Pad there is no way, parentally speaking,
I'm allowed to be here, and given the eye-rolling disinterest shown to her siblings
and myself these past few weeks, we feared our
plans were futile—how would we tear
her away from her favourite new thing of hanging out with lesbians who only wear
black? But, could it be? Here was Maxi of old, talking my parents around and pinching
half-a-dozen savoury muffins from Coles in preparation for our annual trip.

Of course there was no convincing necessary for Sad Ted and Dawn Markson who could
not have honestly given a shit on a weekend where they had not only the Home Expo
at which tens of dollars would be spent on their Green Eco-Organic Sustainable &
Natural cleaning product franchise, but where also Sad Ted's men's group would be
hugging it out in their very lounge room right in front of that weird ceramic owl.

There is nothing in my memory from before we moved next door. If I search, the earliest
things I remember from way back are: 1) Maxi losing her poncho into a cactus and
2) the twins huddling either side of their mum as pigeons rained on their heads.

That's where I was when it started: at my front window waiting for the twins to return
from the park, one of many destinations I was not allowed to visit without supervision.
When I saw them at the top of
the street they were skipping and squealing and I was
longing for them to come closer. As in, if only I had a twin brother, and Dawn was
my mum, or at least my parents didn't constantly disappoint to this extent, etc.
But then a dark blob whacked Mick in the head and I saw his face screw up in horror.
Tilly lost it crying, which meant the laughing face, which meant Mick laughing at
her and poor Dawn not knowing what to do with thirty-five birds falling dead out
of the sky and twin four-year-olds in hysterics—she called the police who were like,
yeah we know, it's happening all over.

I didn't see much beyond that since I was whipped from my post by parental hands
and kept clear of windows and televisions for the next two weeks. The Marksons saw
it all, though, and they told me everything, so when I think back the images I think
I see must be theirs: Sad Ted in his socks building a pile of magpies on the driveway
and Broken Dawn in bed for weeks, glued to videos of flamingos toppling over on their
faces.

By the time I was let back out in the world the streets were clear, the feathers
had been swept from the schoolyard and that was it. Just no more birds. It was silence
from the skies, and they were gone.

I arrive at the beach and lay my eyes on the
ocean, but this is no time for relief, I am driven mad by this itching bite and the
possibility the perpetrator is still in my pants. I have no choice but to whip them
down, but the next thing I see Maxi is coming over the dunes. Keep your pants on,
dude, she yells, and I try to explain, I had a bug! But too late; I am harshly judged.
The twins are next. They appeal for a drink, but I insist we do the tent because
Tilly, though a master of tent engineering, is sadly lightweight in the face of vodka.

After that's done we swim. What a relief from the biting insects, and it feels like
we're here now, the trip's really begun. The four of us ride the waves for a while
and then float together on the ocean, our energy sapped and our eyes closed in relaxation
until someone dives under to inflict fear and coughing with an unexpected yank on
the ankle.

Michael, you cock, Maxi Pad screams, but Mick is as calm as anything. What? I'm nowhere
near you, he says.

Tilly gives me a look so I know it was her, but I don't say. This situation is about
to deteriorate so I offer my peace pipe, so to speak. You guys, want to smoke some
weed? There's a whoop of elation then a splash of
arms and legs, and it's swimming,
Markson-style. Did they never have lessons? No, they did, but some genetic defect
makes them splash around like three separate seizures.

Back on the sand I receive the high-fives offered my way. Aren't you full of surprises,
Maxi Pad says, and I raise my eyebrows like, who even knows what other secrets, etc.
We open our first packet of chips and then the vodka, then we layer up with insect
spray and head off to the rocks.

The rocks is the place we think about going to when things get us down, where we
feel alive and unjudged. So we find a spot with a view, up on top of the big round
rock, and it's like life on the moon here, if the moon had an ocean around it instead
of space.

We lie back. Curled against rock and facing the sky, we feel so high above the world
and important. But looking up at the stars we feel small, too.

We pass the joint around and get into reminiscing about fun times gone by, and it's
funny how much I've forgotten. If I live five or six times as long as this, how much
more will I forget? It feels urgent that this moment,
this right now
, makes it into
the memories I will keep.

What is it we are remembering? The seagull, Tilly is saying. That fucking seagull.

It comes back to us all at once. Mick's robotic seagull, ordered in from France or
whatever place for his tenth birthday.

Do you still have it, Maxi says. And he's like, Do you not know? And me and Tilly
are rolling over in laughter because we know, we were there. It's off a cliff, I
say. Which is so funny we can't stop laughing, and Maxi Pad's hand is over her mouth,
she can't believe he did it.

That cost them a fortune, she says. He rolls his eyes like he does not care and we
know why, because Mick did not ever ask for a robotic seagull for his birthday; he
asked for a bike or a Transformer or whatever normal thing, and they all went on
about how lifelike it was. Look at its eyes, look at its eyes, they all went. And
we were like, That is so creepy, thank God they're all dead.

It's who knows what time when we traipse back down to camp, and we're lying on our
sleeping bags when Maxi Pad drops a bomb.

So Sargie and Parsons are coming up tomorrow, she says. They'll bring their own booze
though, don't worry.

And we are like, I'm sorry, what?

And Maxi Pad acts like it's nothing at all. But really, she's saying, I already told
you this like way before?

Tilly is the most angry. You're telling us this, now? she says, and takes a deep
breath holding back tears, the poor thing. You are so fucking demented, she says.
Then she storms off down the beach, and when I go after her and call out, Are you
okay? she screams back, Can't I even take a piss!

It's quiet after that. We climb into bed and I tune my ears into the insect noise
swelling around our tent. I wait until Tilly's back, rustling into her sleeping bag,
and only then do I close my eyes. I can't believe Maxi's done this to us. So this
is why she's here, not even for us, but for them. But as much as I fume away in the
dark there's also something else creeping up on me.
Sargie and Parsons
. I have never
heard these names. Are they the new friends I have only recently glimpsed? It may
be interesting and now I am flooded by curious thoughts. What insights into the secret
life of Maxine Pad might tomorrow bring?

We wake early and it's dead quiet. It's already hot and it stinks in here, to be
honest, so I slip from my sleeping
bag and make my way out of the tent. There is
one dead lump in the corner, that's Mick; the others must be outside.

I unzip the flap and there's Maxi giving me a look already, and I'm like, What?

Nothing, she says. Just Tilly, who is being a pain. I shrug because, seriously, it
is too early and until I eat breakfast I will be maintaining a dignified silence
on this matter.

I go about preparing my bowl of rice crisps, applying milk and sitting down to eat
like I have not a care in the world. But, as if my silence is irrelevant, Maxi continues
to talk on about Tilly—how ridiculous and selfish she is, etc. Then Tilly appears
in a towel and all falls quiet around me.

Morning, she says. God, I'm so starving, anyone else need chocolate? Which she proceeds
to share with us all, even Mick, who has been awake this whole time and only now
sticks his head out of the tent. So it is fair to say that Tilly, sweet thing, has
decided not to ruin the trip for herself or us by holding a grudge.

How was your swim? Maxi says, testing the waters.

Oh great, Tilly says, it's so calm today. Maybe we should head to the wetland before
lunch?

So we spray ourselves to death with sunscreen and insect spray, then we start on
our walk over. It's about an hour to the wetlands and so we stop and smoke a bit
of a joint, then we keep on and Mick's got this whistle started, this low breathy
thing that Tilly can't stand, like it's on some twin frequency that sends shivers
up her spine. But after a while even that wears off and we're just walking in a rhythm
of silence under the cover of trees where it's green and cool and like another world.

We're single file with Mick up the front, but then he stops.

What the fuck, he says.

We all look ahead to see what he means.

What the fuck, Mick says again, and then we see it.

Tilly's like, Shh get down, so we crouch and watch, and although we're stoned, we're
not that stoned, so we can't explain what we are seeing.

Is that, like, an animal? Tilly says.

A round white body perched on stick legs, a long neck up to a black leather face?
None of us want to say what, but as the oldest Maxi is the one who must remember
them most clearly.

A beak, Maxi says. Like a bird?

The thing makes a deep sound from its throat and
wades forwards. What we do not expect
is the knees bending back as it walks.

How disgusting is it, Tilly says.

We wait a minute, just hearing our own hearts and thinking, What should be our plan,
we should call someone, right? A wildlife service, or police, and people will come
with nets and cameras and syringes and they will take this one bird and turn it into
millions more so the world will be so much better than it is now—it will be the way
our parents remember, full of birdsong and feathers and whatever else; the impossible
magic of flight.

It's Tilly who does it: hurls a rock at the bird. She misses, but before it can go
anywhere we have three more in the air. Do we mean it, what we're doing? I see Tilly
chuck another. It strikes deep in the bird's body and it's weird how that sounds,
firm and full.

Nice shot, Maxi says, so we all go again.

The bird stumbles on its stick legs and red seeps onto its feathers. We reach for
more rocks, but it goes to unfold its wings and it's almost like, shit, we forgot,
it can fly.

Quick, Mick says. We don't have time.

So with one last effort we throw everything we have. We throw as hard as we can.

THE FOREMAN

Fresh from the shower, with his hair slicked down, Mr Wei checks his appearance in
the small mirror on the wall behind his desk before he turns on the park's PA. The
speakers ring with feedback so he steps onto the balcony, where for some reason the
sound is not so bad.

‘Good morning, workers.'

Three storeys below, and for kilometres around, his workers wake with wet faces and
stinging eyes. Some are in tents, some in makeshift beds in storage areas; hundreds
more have slept on the ground. They crawl from sleeping bags and pull on boots as
Mr Wei's voice comes to them, distorted, through the haze.

‘Of course I don't need to remind you why this is
such an important day.'

The mist will hold back the sun for an hour or two as the workers board buses destined
for their allocated section of the park. They will ride them through the soupy morning
and take up where they left off yesterday: painting the walls of the teacups, bonding
fibreglass leaves to fibreglass palm trees, shuttling animals into their enclosures.
But for once they will do all this with cautious optimism.

‘Today we will show the investors how this park lives up to every dream they have
had,' Mr Wei says. ‘And if we do well, then before you know it our work will be done,
and you will all be home with your families.'

By now the park's initial plans could have been fulfilled ten times over, but instead
there is always another assignment: a new exhibit to build, a gravity-defying ride,
another enclosure for a previously extinct species, extending the park further and
further beyond its former boundaries.