Where the Light Falls (3 page)

He queued for a taxi. When he got into the car, talk-back radio blared from the front, the honeyed tones of a voice that seemed to be coaxing the world into outrage.

‘Leichhardt, please,' he said as the car bumped over the speed hump and turned a corner to drive out of the airport.

Along the expressway, the nature strips divided the lanes of traffic in two. Gymea lilies, their flowers already black, sat like ravaged nests on stilts and the kangaroo paws had turned a dirty orange from exhaust fumes. Houses backed directly onto the road and through breaks in fences he caught glimpses of yards and swimming pools, small and private views of other people's lives.

As they drove towards the city in the late summer light, everything around him looked unreal. The light was brighter than it was in Europe, sharper and somehow crueller. He hadn't prepared himself for it.

•

Along his mother's fence purple hydrangeas bloomed, their round heads like old women's swimming caps. The first sound he heard after he knocked on the door was the squelch of her rubber-soled shoes on the wooden floor. As long as he could remember, his mother had worn flat shoes, like most nurses.

‘Andy,' she said as she opened the door, and she walked straight into him, wrapping her arms around him. She was the only person who continued to call him by that name. He wasn't sure, exactly, when people had stopped calling him that and started, instead, to call him Andrew. It had happened gradually, the further away he travelled from childhood, as though the innocence that went with the nickname had thinned and faded and was
now finally lost. He rested a cheek on her head. She still used the same shampoo.

After a moment she let go, took a step back and held his shoulders. He saw that a patch of hair near her temple had turned completely white, although the rest of her hair had remained dark, like his.

‘What happened?' she asked. ‘Why are you home all of a sudden?'

His mother went through her life assuming the worst. And he knew why. She worried that he would die young, as his father had; her greatest fear was outliving him.

He'd only had time to send her a quick email before he left Berlin.
Don't worry about collecting me from the airport
, he'd written, though he knew she wouldn't. She hardly drove anywhere, anymore. She hadn't been into the city in years, though it was barely six kilometres away. Sometimes he wondered why she stayed in Leichhardt. If she wanted to live quietly, why she didn't move to some small coastal town, or to the mountains where her sister lived? But part of him knew exactly why she stayed. Living in the same house for so many years had always been about holding on to the memories of his father.

•

Andrew was eleven when his father died. That day, he came home from school to a silent and empty house for the first time he could remember. All he could
hear as he opened the door and walked carefully down the hall were echoes of his own movements. Even before he learnt of his father's death, he knew from the silence that something had been irreversibly lost.

His mother had never told him how his father died; the knowledge remained inside her sunk deep like a stone in a well. As a child he kept thinking that one day, when she stopped feeling sad, she would sit him down and explain everything. But a year had passed and then another year. And he hadn't been told a thing about it. Nor had he dared to ask. From overheard telephone conversations, he had gleaned two facts: ‘collapsed' and ‘the garden'. Those words were all he ever knew about his father's death.

His mind, though, had filled in the blanks. The absences in his knowledge were transformed into pictures, a sequence of images that ran together in his head. He replayed those scenes so often they had become as real to him as if he'd actually witnessed them. His father stood in their backyard, surveying his vegetable garden. Then, abruptly, he toppled, like Marlon Brando in
The Godfather
.

•

His mother made him a pot of tea in the same striped teapot she'd always used, though the pattern grew more
faded each time he sat down to drink from it. He'd once brought her back a new teapot from Delft, hand-painted blue and white, the porcelain so fine it felt soft in his hands. His mother used the things she owned until they had served their purpose. This was what losing someone you loved did to a person: it made it difficult to let go of other things. She would be serving tea from that teapot until the day it broke apart in her hands.

‘How's Dom?' she said, sliding onto the stool beside his. His mother's movements had become smaller and more horizontal as she'd aged.

‘She's fine, Mum,' he said, not quite meeting her gaze. ‘I had to see to a few things back here before my exhibition next month. It has nothing to do with Dom and me.'

‘So everything's okay then?' Her tone was tentative, as if she was aware she was asking for too much. His mother had never met Dom and he tried to keep their relationship to himself. He wanted to hold on to this new privacy he'd acquired from living abroad. His mother had lost her husband at a young age and seemed determined, since then, to know everything she could about Andrew, as though knowing the details might prevent another loss. He couldn't bring himself to speak to her about Kirsten straight away. He'd always felt he could not mention death to his mother without reminding her of the death they both lived by.

‘When's your opening?'

‘Mid-March. I have to send the galleries all the images by the end of the month.'

‘That soon?'

He nodded and they both looked at the calendar on the wall. It was the third of February; he'd lost a day in transit.

She sighed heavily. ‘How long are you staying?'

‘I'm flying back next Saturday. Is that okay with you?'

‘That soon? Of course,' she said.

They spoke easily about other things: his mother's sister, the walk-in wardrobes she'd recently had installed. He told her that the tenants in his apartment in Darlinghurst were moving out in two weeks and the agent would be advertising for new ones. Though he couldn't always be open with his mother, he felt at least that around her, he never had to pretend; he didn't have to project the air of confidence that the rest of the world expected of him. He felt the same way around Dom.

4

He arranged to meet Stewart the following afternoon at the Nag's Head in Glebe, the pub they used to drink at when they were students. If he had someone he could call a best friend, a friend who had travelled with him for life, Stewart was it, though they saw each other rarely now. When they were still at school, Stewart had lived on the other side of Parramatta Road in Petersham and for many years they had spent the afternoons together, until Andrew discovered photography and it changed the way he related to the people around him. He always made a point of seeing Stewart when he was back in Sydney, even when he had very little time. Their lives had run at parallels and seeing Stewart each time he returned had become a way of measuring himself.

He walked in through the front bar, hearing the familiar sound of glasses shuddering together as the barman lifted a tray of schooners onto a stack, and took a seat at a small table near the beer garden. On the wall above the table was a picture of an English hunting scene, men in red coats riding horses with beagles trailing at their heels. Ahead of them, foxes ran with their heads turned back towards their pursuers, gaunt flashes of red, the whites of their eyes holding an awareness of their fate.

Stewart arrived wearing a business shirt with the top button undone; a tie dangled from the left pocket of his pants. Since he'd graduated from university, Stewart looked to be permanently straining; the muscles around his neck were thick, giving him a top-heavy appearance, and he walked with his head down, as though peering over a ledge. Over the years his hair had turned slowly and prematurely grey. Stewart lifted his satchel over his shoulder and they hugged awkwardly, patting each other forcefully on the back.

‘I wasn't expecting you to come home so soon,' Stewart said, when he came back to their table with two beers.

‘How was the wedding?' he asked without meeting Stewart's gaze. Stewart had been married six months ago and Andrew had not flown back for the wedding. Instead he'd sent an email apologising.
Break a leg
, he'd written, as though the whole thing were a performance for Stewart's family and friends.

‘Oh, great, man. It was just a big party. You know, an
expensive
party,' Stewart said, and laughed. ‘It would have been great if you could have made it.'

Andrew had explained at the time that he was too busy preparing for his upcoming exhibition, but the truth was he didn't want to risk bumping into Kirsten, not after he'd left Sydney without any explanation. He couldn't bear facing the accusation in her eyes.

‘And how's . . . your wife?' He couldn't believe it; as the sentence left his mouth, he couldn't recall her name, although he'd known her since they were in their twenties.

There was a part of him, some pocket deep inside, that envied people like Stewart—people who had fallen in love young and who'd given up other things in their lives in order to remain that way.

‘Louise is great. You know, we've been together forever, so nothing really changed for us, but we did buy a house in Stanmore.'

This was what happened to people like Stewart and Louise: their lives followed a certain pattern and it never deviated from the path other people expected them to take. There was a feeling that often took hold of him when Stewart and he were together now, that their lives had veered too far apart and what they were doing with these dinners and drinks was trying to restore something they'd already lost.

‘Good for you. Property is expensive here. It's much
cheaper in Berlin. I'm thinking of selling my apartment in Darlinghurst so we can buy something there.'

‘Really?' Stewart's eyes were alight at the mention of Berlin. ‘I loved Berlin, when we visited. You don't find the language a barrier?'

‘Oh no, not really. I know enough to get by.' He knew the names of things, but he had never learnt how to fit those words together into sentences and the truth was that being around Dom made him lazy about learning. When he was alone, he moved through the city, pointing to what he wanted in shops and speaking in nouns and he didn't mind not understanding the things being said around him. It afforded him a quietness in which he could be alone with his thoughts.

‘Do you think you'd ever come back here to live?' Stewart asked, his voice scooting higher suddenly, wanting some sort of reassurance from him.

‘I don't know. There are a lot more opportunities for me to exhibit over there. Europe is a much bigger market. Also my work sells better there.' He watched the disappointment trickle through Stewart's expression.

‘Well, I guess it would be difficult with Dom, wouldn't it?'

He nodded an agreement and stroked the sweating glass with his finger.

Stewart looked down and then back up again and there was a looseness to his expression, the face of a person who has information they are not quite sure how to share.

‘Have you heard any more about Kirsten since you came back?' Stewart said softly, looking into his beer. There was a single line of bubbles floating to the surface.

‘No, I haven't heard anything,' he said. Weary now, in the fug of his jet lag, he was no longer sure that he actually wanted to hear more. He felt himself recoiling in anticipation of the details.

Stewart leant forward, bent over his beer, as though the words he spoke were very heavy and had dragged him there. ‘They've stopped the search. For the body. I heard after I sent the email to you.' He looked to be on the verge of tears. ‘Louise found out from Kirsten's mother that there'll be a service for her. Tomorrow, actually.'

‘The body?'

Stewart nodded. ‘Your mum didn't hear anything about it? It was reported on the news a few weeks back, as a suspected drowning in Lake George.'

‘Drowning?' he said distantly. ‘My mum doesn't watch much television anymore.' And he hadn't told her, reverting to the familiar instinct he'd always had to protect his mother from the things that might upset her. ‘Kirsten drowned?' He could hardly fit his mouth around the word.

Stewart nodded sadly. ‘They think so. Louise is going to the service. And I will if I can. It's just there's something on at work. I'm not sure if I can get out of it.' He gestured vaguely, as if trying to offer Andrew more of an explanation with the movement of his hands.

‘Had you seen her recently? Did Louise and Kirsten keep in touch?' He'd always wondered if Stewart knew what went on between Andrew and Kirsten for all those years after they'd officially broken up. He'd never spoken about it—mostly he felt embarrassed by it.

Stewart licked his lips. ‘Louise tried, I think. She always made the effort. We invited her to our wedding. She RSVP'd but never showed up. I think Louise had plans for dinner with her a few months ago, but Kirsten pulled out on the day. Louise feels bad that she didn't try harder, but I don't know; you can't force someone to see you.'

Andrew stood to go to the toilet and a space seemed to have opened at his feet, like a rupture in the earth's crust. Around him, this old place was the same as it had always been, but his world had now changed. A part of it that had once meant something to him, a slice of his own personal history, was missing.

•

When he thought about Kirsten, what he thought of most were her silences. She was a woman who was always on the verge of speaking, of looking away then back towards him with the sense that there was something important she had to say. Her silences were intoxicating; they held the promise that one day he might know what they were hiding. But she had always kept her secrets to herself.