Shallow Breath

6

Maya




All morning Maya has been peering out of her small caravan window, waiting for Desi to arrive. It is past eleven o’clock when Chug appears in the driveway, and Maya’s heart does a dive in her chest. She watches as her mother gets out, and almost gasps. She is so thin, and her long hair, her beautiful long hair, has been cropped close to her head. She used to at least dye it, but now it’s a mousey brown. Her shoulders have slackened, and her whole body seems to have shrunk.

For the very first time a thought occurs to Maya: perhaps the mother she knew is never coming home.

As she watches, she sees her grandfather struggling to his feet. Desi can’t get past without him noticing – he is out in front of the house, pulling weeds from his vegetable beds. Desi begins to speak, and Maya tries to imagine what she could be saying to make Charlie fold his arms so tightly. He gestures in the direction of the caravan, and bends down to his gardening again, as though he has been talking to a stranger. Maya watches as Desi trudges over with her head down, one hand fretfully rubbing the other.

As Desi nears the caravan, Maya’s mobile rings. She sees Luke’s name and snatches it up.

‘It’s on again, Maya – tonight. I’ll come and get you.’

A shiver runs through her. ‘Okay, but I can’t talk now. My mother is here. Do you remember I told you she was coming home?’

‘I’ll come about nine.’ There is a pause. ‘Remember the knife,’ he adds, and, as her mother raps on the thin metal door, he is gone.

Maya pulls the door open, caught off guard and wondering why, in all the time she’d had this morning, she hasn’t yet changed out of her sleepwear. She steps outside.

‘Hello, Maya.’

Only now does Maya realise how much she’s missed hearing her mother’s voice, the gentle way she has of saying her name. That, and so much more. But, rather than softening her demeanour, she stiffens. Why did it have to be like this? she wants to shout. Why did you have to cause us all so much pain? But her mother butts in before she can articulate any of her questions.

‘I didn’t wake you, did I?’ Desi has noticed her pyjamas.

Maya thinks about how long she has spent waiting this morning. ‘No.’

Desi hesitates as Maya looks down on her from the caravan. ‘Can I come in?’

Maya is about to stand aside when she remembers the book on her bed. And the knife. ‘I’d rather you didn’t, sorry.’ She comes out and shuts the door quickly behind her.

Desi flinches, and steps away. They stand in awkward silence as a couple wander past, chatting, before glancing across and lowering their voices. Somewhere close by a kookaburra strikes up, its cackles bursting through the air for a few seconds before it falls abruptly silent.

‘Look,’ Desi says, ‘let’s not talk out here, like this. Would you like to come to the shack tonight – for dinner?’

Maya pauses, thinking of Luke.

‘Pete will be there,’ Desi adds. And, softer, ‘Please come.’

It seems to Maya that if she capitulates now, she sets the trend. Desi will switch to being her mother again, expecting Maya to be there whenever she asks. Maya wants to be obstinate and say that things have changed, forever, but Desi’s pleading stare kills all her objections.

‘Okay … But I can’t stay too long.’

‘Fine. Oh, Maya,’ Desi says, her eyes tearing up. ‘I haven’t seen you for so long. Can I at least give you a hug?’

Maya would much rather go inside and slam the door, but Desi doesn’t wait for her reply. She pulls them together awkwardly, kissing Maya’s forehead, cupping her cheeks and scrutinising her face. ‘I’m so happy to see you.’

They are so close that Maya can smell her mother’s peppermint breath. ‘I’m happy to see you too, Mum,’ she replies, hoping it sounds like she means it. Her body relaxes into the embrace, and she reprimands herself. You saw what she did. She pulls away.

‘Has Pete told you about Kate?’

Desi seems confused. ‘Who’s Kate?’

‘Dad’s niece. She wants to meet you, apparently.’

Desi frowns, her hands planted on her hips. ‘Connor’s niece?’

‘Yes,’ Maya says. ‘She’s been around for a few weeks. And she’s made a big impression on Jackson.’

‘I see.’ Desi nods slowly, trying to take it in, her expression bewildered.





After her mother has left, the day begins to drift. Maya now has two big events planned for the evening, and too many empty hours to kill beforehand. She wishes Jackson were here this morning. He feels more like a brother than an uncle, and always knows how to distract her and calm her nerves. Typical that the one time she needs him he is half a world away. There is no one else close by that she can talk to.

She wanders down to the beach, walking slowly along the tideline, eyes on the horizon. The sky is a still blue void poised over the shimmering sea, diamonds of light flashing along the water’s restless currents.

The ocean has been a constant in Maya’s childhood. For as long as she can remember, most days before breakfast Desi would swim. On weekends and holidays, Maya would walk to the beach with her, and play or float in the shallows until Desi had finished. Whenever Desi missed her morning exercise, she was noticeably irritable for the rest of the day. Maya can hardly imagine what fifteen months without sight of the ocean might have done to her.

As a girl, Maya had marvelled at the clinical, graceful strokes as her mother flew through the water, and for a while she had joined her, trailing behind, thrashing out each lap with grim determination. But she had rejected the ritual by the time she was fourteen. Sometimes she would go with her mother, but only if there was nothing better to do. However, on her first night at Lovelock Bay, she had lain there picturing Desi in a tiny, dirty concrete cubicle, fifty kilometres inland. And even though she was so incredibly angry with her, even though at that point she didn’t ever want to speak to her again, she found herself getting up the next day and wandering down to the enticing blue waters of the bay. She hasn’t missed a day of swimming since.

Until now. Since seeing her mother, for reasons she cannot explain, she has become determined not to enter the water today.

She sits on the beach instead, her eyes straying to a small boat weaving its way in the distance. She picks up handfuls of soft sand and watches the granules disappear between her fingers.

It had been horribly awkward with Desi this morning, and she can’t imagine it will be much better tonight. She is glad Pete will be there. He has been her link to her mother for the last fifteen months – and she has come to like the fact that she could keep Desi one step removed. It is strange and stressful having to form a direct relationship again.

What will her mother make of Kate, she wonders. She had seemed as surprised as Maya had been to learn of Kate’s existence.

‘You two need to meet,’ Jackson had said one morning, as Maya walked past his caravan, and Kate hovered in the background. ‘This is your cousin,’ he’d told Maya, with a big grin. ‘Your dad’s niece.’

Maya wasn’t sure what she’d expected, but it was certainly more than she’d got. Kate had waved a shy hello, but that was it. No excitement on meeting. No embrace. Maya had hurried away, confused, unsure what to do with this information.

She had been surprised and hurt when Kate made no effort to seek her out, but the unexpected opportunity to learn more about her father was too good to miss. So she had watched out of the caravan window until she’d spied Kate alone, and then staged a meeting. ‘So, you knew my dad?’

‘Yeah.’ Kate had stopped guardedly, her hands on her hips.

‘I never met him,’ Maya had explained, blushing as though she were admitting some terrible folly. ‘What was he like?’

Kate had paused. ‘He was away a lot when I was a kid. Over here. But he was nice. Really nice.’



Then, to Maya’s surprise, Kate had moved to step past her.

‘And what about my grandparents?’ she asked hurriedly. ‘What are they like?’

Kate shrugged. ‘Nice enough.’ Another step.

‘What do they do – you know, for work?’

‘They’re retired now, but Nana was a swimming teacher. And Poppa was a schoolteacher. They’re not very interesting, I’m afraid.’

These were Kate’s grandparents too, Maya realised, annoyed by the way Kate had dismissed them. She felt like yelling at her: perhaps if you hadn’t had them all your life you might appreciate them a bit more. So much for long-lost family. In fact, it unsettled her idea of what her father might have been like. Maya had learnt as a little girl that pushing for information about her dad would result in her mother retreating to her room and coming out later with red-rimmed eyes. It had been better to turn detective, and glean what she could indirectly. As a result, for a long time Connor had seemed terribly enigmatic and exciting. And you always assumed you would get on with your parents. But look at her mother and Charlie. Connor might not even have liked her.

She hadn’t had a chance to miss him properly, since she had never known him. In the beginning, he seemed like a character in a fairytale, but now she wants to flesh him out, to understand him as the person who had made half of her. When Desi had gone away to prison, Maya had searched the shack, but the only thing she could find was an old logbook from the time her parents had spent on the boat. She had taken it anyway, and slept with it underneath her pillow.

She wanted to talk to Pete about all this, but it felt rude, somehow. Pete is the closest Maya has ever had to a father, and he had been a good friend of Connor’s. She has uncovered more about her father from Pete lately than anyone else has ever told her directly. While Desi was away, Pete had visited Maya every week. He would come to Lovelock Bay, and they would walk along the beach, telling each other their news. He would reassure her that Desi was holding up well, and she would say she was glad. Then one of them would change the subject.

Almost a year ago, on her eighteenth birthday, he had arrived with a bottle of champagne and two long-stemmed glasses. By the time the bottle was empty, both their tongues were loosened. Most of his Connor stories were disappointingly familiar to Maya, so she was delighted when he began to talk about her parents in a way she had never heard before.

‘They were both so passionate,’ he had said, as the waves broke gently in the distance and the sky darkened. ‘I think your mother still is. It’s her greatest strength, and her greatest weakness.’

‘That doesn’t make sense,’ Maya laughed.

‘It makes absolute sense,’ he told her solemnly. ‘The thing that makes you is the thing that breaks you.’

Maya thought about that for a moment. ‘What is your thing, then?’

‘Empathy,’ he said straight away, disconsolately, she thought. ‘And what about you, Maya? What do you think yours is?’

‘I don’t know.’ They were quiet for a while as she considered it. ‘Sometimes I wish I didn’t care so much,’ she said eventually.

He studied her as she sat there thinking of Luke, and she thought maybe he was going to ask her to explain, but he didn’t. Instead, he said, ‘Help your mother, Maya, when she comes home. She made a big mistake, but she doesn’t deserve any more punishment from the people who love her.’

Maya had seized on this rare chance to talk. ‘But why did she do it? Rebecca was her closest friend. Why would she want to hurt the Carlisles?’ Then she had let out a great sigh – it was such a relief to ask these questions. The subject wasn’t forbidden, as such, but there seemed an unspoken agreement between everyone around her that it wasn’t to be mentioned. And sometimes all Maya wanted was to talk about it.

But, disappointingly, Pete had shaken his head. ‘You’ll have to ask her, Maya. I’m sorry. She won’t discuss it with me. But there will be a reason. The Desi I know wouldn’t want to hurt anyone.’

Maya comes back to the present, gets to her feet and dusts off her clothes. She has begrudged her mother all her secrets, but now she has a secret of her own. Will she tell Desi what she gets up to with Luke? Probably not. Will she tell Pete? No. Even though they, more than most, might understand.

She wanders back to her caravan, pondering what might make her mother reluctant to share. Once inside, she changes her clothes.

She remembers the necklace. Had her mother noticed she wasn’t wearing it? She tries a few drawers, scrabbling about in them to see if she can find it. She locates it at the far corner of a small cupboard and takes it out. It is a small white pearl, a perfect globe set within the curve of a silver dolphin, as though the dolphin is jumping over the moon. She hesitates for a moment before slipping it on.

She stares at the contents of her bed. She’d better return the book tonight. She hadn’t meant to be a thief. Putting it to one side, she picks up the large carving knife that she took from her grandfather’s kitchen. She collects the blankets and wraps both items inside them. After that, she sits on her bed and tries to decide how she is going to pass the next few interminable hours.