Chapter 32
32
Evie
The flights to Melbourne and Adelaide pass in a blur. Drew tries his best to make conversation, but all I can focus on is landing and going straight to my parents’ place. I need this agony to be over. Surely my memory will return once I’m back in my comfort zone with them?
It’s after 9 p.m. when we hit the tarmac, and a wall of unexpected heat slams into me outside the terminal. Fading orange and pink clouds merge into deeper purple and blue, punctuated with the first of the evening’s twinkling stars.
“The ‘blue hour,’” Drew says, while we’re waiting in the queue for transport. It’s not clear if he’s talking to himself or to me, until he adds, “This perfect, tranquil soft light …”
Is he serious?
“Do you remember ?” he asks, dragging his eyes from the sky and settling them on my face.
“Remember what?”
“About the blue hour?”
“Are you trying to give me a photography lesson in the midst of my crisis?”
Or is he just lost in it? I think of his photography website and how in the world he is. And I have a pang of regret about my own approach, so “head down” to his “looking up.” I’m always focused on the next thing, endlessly worried about where I might be tripping up or falling short. I’ve never made time for finding the poetry in the world, the way Drew does.
“You seemed to recall some things about photography,” he says. “Negative space and all that. I thought you might remember this. Maybe photography could be the way back for you. A positive trigger.”
“A glimmer?” I tell him. The psychiatrist mentioned those. The opposite of triggers. Moments of joy or calm that ground you. I’m hungry to feel some. I wish the blue hour meant something to me, but it only hands me another piece of information I should know and don’t.
According to the address Rose gave us, my parents live thirty minutes from the airport in a suburb called Mawson Lakes. I try to distract myself during the drive there. The psychiatrist at the hospital told me to stay “in the moment” by noticing details about my surroundings and telling myself what I’m seeing. The sandstone architecture. The churches. Quirky shop fronts. Street art. The pale green sundress I’m wearing, purchased in a dash to Kmart with Drew. My own nerves. Drew’s hand resting between us on the back seat. The bones in his knuckles. The way he clenches and stretches his fingers every so often. Maybe he gets repetitive strain injury from holding the camera so much? My gaze travels up his forearm, over the definition of his muscles. The sleeves of his T-shirt. Up his neck and the square of his jaw, the dark hairs on his chin, Adam’s apple bobbing in his throat as he swallows when my exploration of him reaches his brown eyes, which are observing me closely.
“It’s anxiety,” I explain, quickly. “Sorry. I’m meant to pay attention to things. Little details, you know? You’re just … an available stimulus.”
He doesn’t seem convinced.
“You never could keep your eyes off me, Hudson,” he jokes. At least I assume it’s a joke. Either way, I’m mortified.
The closer we get to my parents, though, the fewer of the city’s charms I take in, and the more nervous I become. Drew remains a solid presence beside me in the back seat, but even he wipes his hands on his jeans and takes a breath when we pull up outside the house.
It’s so different from our home in Newcastle, but I can see Mum and Dad’s influence all over it, even from the street. Mum’s favorite Pierre de Ronsard roses climbing along the side fence in the garden. Dad’s old armchair on the veranda—even though Mum thinks it’s an eyesore. Such normal, middle-aged “parent” things that a vastly less grateful version of me used to find cringey.
Drew opens the door and gets out of the car like a man on a mission. He is a “rip off the Band-Aid” type of person, leaving me to clamber across the seat after him as he grabs our things. As the car drives away, he gestures for me to go first up the garden path, but my feet seem planted to the driveway, so he takes my hand and pulls me these last few steps to the front door. I have déjà vu from doing the same thing together in Newcastle. How could it be only yesterday?
I knock tentatively. Then stronger.
I should just walk in. I should have a key.
There’s scrabbling on the other side, and Dad’s voice saying he’ll get it, then Mum saying not to get up, him telling her he’s already up. They always do this performance. Forever trying to make each other’s lives easier. Finally, the door swings open and Mum is standing there, tea towel in hand, staring at me, speechless.
“Who is it?” Dad calls. “Christine?” He rounds a corner, carrying two cups of tea, and stops dead in the hallway. He looks almost comical with his beard, in an apron and shorts and a gray polo, and I’m hit by the scent of something delicious from the slow cooker—all wrong for this time of year, but all right for my parents.
There’s a protracted silence before I drop my bag, fall across the threshold, and throw my arms around Mum, her shape exactly as I remember, and sob. Just her fragrance is enough to fling me back to every age I’ve ever been. Four, and twelve, and fifteen, and … no, that’s where the memories start fading. It’s so frustrating .
She takes moments to catch on, then holds me by the shoulders and pushes me back so she can look at me. “You’re here?” she says. Her voice is strained.
Mum looks years older than I remember. Middle-aged, when she was always so youthful. She’s in white capri pants and a vibrant top scattered with sequins. Of course she is. What would have once had me rolling my eyes now looks utterly perfect to me, in the wake of Gwendolyn’s classy polish. I can handle the lines across Mum’s face, and the graying hair. What I can’t handle is the arm’s distance.
She isn’t hugging me back. Dad isn’t rushing to my side, either. There’s a scary silence that should be exploding with the reunion of our dreams.
They look at Drew, and back at me.
“Why?” Mum says.
Why?
It’s the last question I expected. Far from being delighted, she looks hurt.
Dad puts the tea cups down, walks over, and stands behind her, placing his hand on her shoulder. It’s a gesture I’ve never noticed him do before. Protective. Calming. But protecting against what? Me? His lip is trembling and the tears in his eyes are contagious as my heart plunges.
“I’m sorry, Evie,” he says after an unbearable few seconds of silence. His voice is cracking. “Your mother just can’t do this anymore.”