Penelope, by comparison, often felt like she should stop, but she suddenly had so much to say. When she mentioned the cockroaches, and the terror they’d inflicted, Michael laughed, but sympathetically; there was the faintest stretch of wonder on his lips for houses made of paper.
When she got up to leave, it was well past midnight, and she apologized for all her talking, and Michael Dunbar said, “No.”
They stood at the sink, he washed the cups and plates.
Penelope dried, she stayed.
There was something risen up in her, and so, it seemed, in him. Years of gentle barrenness. Whole towns not had, or lived. Just as each of them knew they were never so game or forward, there was another truth at hand—that this would have to be it: No waiting, no politeness.
The wilderness out, from in them.
* * *
—
Soon it became too much for him.
The quiet suffering was intolerable for another second, and he stepped, reached over, and gambled—his hands still covered in suds.
He grabbed her wrist, both calm and firmly.
He didn’t know how or why but he put the other hand on her hip bone, and without thinking, he held her and kissed her. Her forearm was wet, her clothes were wet, just in that patch of shirt—and he took the cloth hard, and made a fist.
“Jesus, I’m sorry, I—”
And Penelope Lesciuszko, she gave him the fright of his life: She took his wet hand, put it beneath that shirt—the exact same place, but on skin—and delivered him a phrase from the East.
“Jeszcze raz.”
Very quiet, very serious, almost unsmiling, like kitchens were built for this.
“It means,” she said, “again.”
It was Saturday—the halfway point to the Murderer’s return—and Clay walked the road from the property, in the dark of just turned night.
His body was part elastic, part hard.
His hands were blistered raw.
Inside he was ready to burst.
He’d been digging alone since Monday.
The depth to the bedrock had been nowhere near as deep as he’d feared—but at times, even inches were hard labor. Sometimes he thought he might never hit it at all—but then, the ache of stone.
* * *
—
By the time he was finished, he couldn’t recall anymore which nights he’d slept a few hours inside, and the ones he’d worked till morning; often he’d woken in the riverbed.
It took a while now to work out it was Saturday.
And evening, not dawn.
And in that state of delirium, and those bleeding, burning hands, he’d decided to see the city again, and he packed only very lightly: the box, and the favorite of his bridge books.
Then he’d showered and burned, dressed and burned, and staggered, like that, into town. Only once, he wavered, to turn, to look back at his work, and that was all it took:
In the middle of the road, he sat down, and the country surged around him.
“I made it.”
Just three words, and each one had tasted like dirt.
He lay for a while—the pulsing ground, the starry sky. Then forced himself to walk.
That first night, at 37 Pepper Street, when she left, it was agreed.
He walked her home and said he’d come down to her apartment, on Saturday at four o’clock.
The road was dark and empty.
Nothing much more was said.
On the return visit, he’d shaved, and brought daisies.
It took a while before she played the piano, and when she did he stood beside her. When she finished, he placed a finger at the far right end.
She nodded for him to let it fall, to press it down.
But a piano’s highest note is fickle.
If you don’t hit it hard enough, or right enough, it makes no noise at all.
“Again,” she said, and she grinned—nervously, they both did—and this time he got it to work.
Like a smack to the hand of Mozart.
Or the wrist of Chopin or Bach.
And this time it was her:
There was hesitancy, and awkwardness, but then she kissed the back of his neck, very light, very soft.
And then they ate the Iced VoVos.
Right to the very last.
* * *
—
When I think about it now, I go back through all we were told, and especially all Clay was told, and I wonder what’s most important.
Here I think it’s this:
For six or seven weeks beyond that, they saw each other, they swapped venues, up and down Pepper Street. Always, for Michael Dunbar, there was a kind of welling up, through the newness and blond of Penelope. When he kissed her he tasted Europe, but also the taste of not-Abbey. When her hands held his fingers as he stood to leave, he felt the feel of a refugee, and it was her but also him.
* * *
—
Eventually, he told her, on the steps of number 37.
It was Sunday morning, grey and mild, and the steps were cool—and he’d been married before, and divorced; her name was Abbey Dunbar. He’d lain on the garage floor.
A car drove by, and a girl on a bike.
He told her he’d been devastated, living, hanging on, on his own. He’d wanted to see her much earlier than the night she came to his front door. He’d wanted to, but wasn’t capable. He couldn’t risk a fall like that again, not anymore.
It’s funny, I guess, how confessions come out: We admit to almost everything, and the almost is all that counts.
For Michael Dunbar, it was two things he left out.
Firstly, he simply wouldn’t admit that he, too, could produce something approximating beautiful—the paintings.
And next (and this was an extension of the first), he didn’t confess that somewhere in his murkiest depths, he wasn’t so much afraid of being left again as condemning someone else to second best. Such was how he’d felt for Abbey, and the life he’d once had, and lost.
* * *
—
But then again, what choice did he really have?
This was a world where logic was defied by argumentative piano men. It was a world where fate could stand out front, both tanned and pale, simultaneously. God, even Stalin was involved, so how could he possibly say no?
Maybe it’s true that we don’t get to make these decisions.
We think we do, but we don’t.
We do laps of all our neighborhoods.
We pass that certain front door.
When we hit a piano key and it makes no sound, we hit it again, because we have to. We need to hear something, and we hope it isn’t a mistake— As it was, Penelope was never meant to be here.
Our father should never have been divorced.
But here they were, walking perfectly, and quite fittingly, toward a certain kind of line. They’d been counted down, like skiers on a mountainside, and were hitting it for the now.
At Silver Station, he saw the oncoming glow of the night train.
From far away it looked like a magic, slow-moving torch.
Inside, though, it was heaven.
The air was cool; the seat was warm.
His heart like a broken body part.
His lungs a kind of waxworks.
He lay back lightly, and slept.
* * *
—
The train pulled into the city just after five o’clock, Sunday morning, and a man was shaking him awake.
“Hey, kid, kid, we’re here.”
Clay startled, and managed to stand up, and despite everything—the enormous headache, the searing pain when he picked up his sports bag—the draw was unmistakable.
He felt the glimmer of home.
In his mind he was already there; he was watching the world of Archer Street; he was up on the roof, he saw Carey’s place. Or behind, to see The Surrounds. He could even hear the movie in our lounge room—but no. He actually had to remind himself he couldn’t go, and especially not like this.
For Archer Street, he’d have to wait.
* * *
—
Instead, he walked.
He found that the more he moved the less he hurt, and so he trawled the city, to Hickson Road, down to under the bridge; he relented at the slanted wall. The trains came rattling above. The harbor so blue, he almost couldn’t look. The rivets in rows, on his shoulders. The great grey arch reached over.
It’s a she, he thought, of course she is.
He leaned and struggled to leave.
* * *
—
In the afternoon, he finally managed it, though, and walked the curves of Circular Quay; the clowns, a guitarist. The traditional didgeridoos.
The Manly ferry beckoned him.