Our Magic Hour (16 page)

‘Fuck off, Audrey, you're worse than Maman.'

‘I'm not trying to moralise.'

‘No, I'm sorry,' Bernie sighed. ‘I didn't mean it. Anyway, I've stopped all that.
Hazel's pretty into school, because she wants to do physio or speech therapy or something
next year, so it's no more disco biscuits for me, either. I just hate exams. They're
so intense. Hey, did you cop Maman's story about her fight with the mechanic? I'll
do it for you.'

He made her laugh, turning on Sylvie's shrill voice; the way she pronounced
exploit
as
ex-plwat
. She was bereft when he hung up. She lay on the couch and watched the
late news. She dozed, woke to hear the woman on the television say
Total ground frost.
She half-expected Adam to call, but he didn't.

Nick arrived home before dawn and found her asleep on the couch.

‘How was work?'

‘Pretty slow,' said Nick. ‘How are you?'

‘I had a dream I drove our car off the pier down near Maman's house. I didn't die.'

Nick looked upset.
You weren't in the car
, Audrey did not say.

She followed him into the kitchen, and leaned in the doorway while he wolfed down
a piece of bread and peeled a banana. Still in his uniform, still wired from his
shift, he looked very presentable.

‘Was Adam round?' he asked, gesturing at the two glasses listing in the dishrack.

‘No, Ben came over for a bit.'

‘Ben?' He turned from the sink.

‘Yeah, he was dropping off some books that I'd lent Emy.'

Nick's brow tightened. ‘Do you reckon those two getting married was something to
do with Katy?' he said.

‘What?'

He took a bite of the banana. ‘I mean—do you think they felt like they needed to
do things faster, or something?'

‘I don't know,' Audrey said. ‘I don't know why they did it.'

Nick dropped the banana skin into the plastic container they used for compost. The
light was leaving him.

The morning of the union strike, Audrey had a cup of tea with Nick and Tim in the
St Vincent's Hospital cafeteria.

‘We might need to re-do the windows,' Tim said.

‘Get Spence to do it. She's got nice writing.'

The three of them stood by the ambulance on Gertrude Street. Audrey passed Nick her
paper cup.

‘What am I putting? I'm too short to reach.' They laughed.

‘We apologise for the delays you are experiencing under a Liberal government,'
said
Tim. Audrey reached up to scrawl across the window.

‘And then here'—they moved to the back of the van
—‘What's the difference between
a large pizza and a paramedic's wage? A large pizza can feed a family of four.'
Audrey's
breath hung in a cloud. She rubbed at a wonky letter. The chalk marker left a blue
stain. ‘You coming today?' Tim asked her.

‘Depends on work. But I'm in the Lonsdale Street office today, so maybe.' She looked
back at Nick. He was staring at the blue letters on the window. She couldn't tell
if he wasn't listening or just pretending not to hear. His face was like a vacant
house.

She moved to the front of the ambulance.

‘What about the windscreen?' she asked.

‘Nah. Not allowed.' Tim stood back to review her work. ‘I reckon your job's about
done, mate.'

She walked up to Trades Hall at lunchtime and stood across the road by the pub. There
was a woman with a megaphone, a sea of red T-shirts and vests and flags. She glimpsed
Nick's face between Tim and an older woman. They were standing on the steps in front
of a television crew. Audrey watched the crew arranging their cameras and microphones.
Nick and Tim were dicking around, pulling faces, tugging at their collars, but on
the cameraman's signal she saw Nick's mouth begin to move. He spoke deliberately.
She was thirty metres away, she couldn't hear what he was saying, but his face was
full of purpose and intelligence. The cameraman shook his hand, they grinned at each
other, Nick's lips said
Thanks, mate
. Audrey scanned the painted banners. IN SA I'D
GET AN EXTRA 32K. IN VIC I'D NEED TO GET INTO PARLIAMENT. She looked back at the
steps where Nick had been, but he was gone. She could have called him. He'd say
I'll
come over to meet you
, and he'd be flushed with cold and resolve, kiss her, make
a joke about being on television. Audrey remembered him tucking her in, saying
I'm
on your side
. She thought about him on the Trades Hall steps. She realised they were
in different climates. He could be a new person out here, away from the sad air in
their kitchen. She turned from the building.

Adam phoned at the end of the day, before she'd left work.

‘The gallery's open late tonight. Do you want to come?'

She got there first, and phoned Nick while she waited outside.

‘I heard you're famous,' she said.

‘I'm basically the Paul Keating of the union,' he said.

She laughed. ‘Are you at the pub?'

‘I came down for a few beers, but I reckon I'll head off soon. You home?'

‘I'm actually at the NGV. I said I'd meet Adam here. We might get tea after. Do you
want to come down?'

‘Oh-h-h-h—no, it's okay. You two should just hang out.' Something had shifted in
his voice. ‘I'm actually knackered.'

‘I'm not surprised. You only had about two hours' sleep last night.'

They had nothing else to say. Audrey sat down by the fountain. The air smelled of
chlorine and car fumes.

Adam was almost in front of her before she noticed him. He hugged her very tightly,
as though he were relieved to see her. His mouth was close to her ear, in her hair.
She thought he was going to tell her something, but at last he pulled away. He winced.
They linked arms walking towards the entrance.

Inside they drifted apart. Audrey was glad, standing in front of a wall of Louise
Bourgeois drawings. She didn't want Adam beside her while she flinched at the red
bellies and hands.

At the end she came to a great dark room. There was a ladder suspended from the ceiling,
made of fibre-optic cables that changed colour. As she got closer, it seemed to stretch
impossibly into the sky, and down into the ground. It was dizzying.

Adam was lying on the floor on his stomach like a child. Audrey lay down next to
him. The dark, his warm body, the lit ladder reaching into the ceiling, its illusion
of bright endlessness. Audrey thought she might cry.

‘It's a mirror,' Adam whispered. ‘See? There's one at either end.'

Audrey stared at the ladder, watched the colours change until the room around it
melted away.

At last Adam stood, and she did too, obediently. It was like swimming up from underwater.

Out by the gift shop it was light again, and they both blinked.

‘Do you want to get a coffee?' Adam asked.

‘I think I want wine. Sit down, I'll get it.'

They sat for an hour in the gallery café, watching the people coming and going.

‘So then Sean says
You need to think about the best interests of the child. He'll
be less displaced if he stays with Dad.
' She affected a neanderthal voice, tucked
in her chin, scratched her groin. ‘And I said
I think it's in the child's best interests
that he
not
remain in a houseful of smackies, and Dad's got two DV charges, you fuckhead.
'

‘No you didn't,' Adam said.

‘I didn't call him a fuckhead. But he is.' She watched Adam scoop the last of the
froth from his cup. ‘He's all non-interventionist when it's some bloke with a string
of assault charges, but he's pretty trigger-happy when it's an ID mum or a Koori
family.'

‘Fark.' He glanced around. ‘Hey, do you reckon we're the youngest people in here
by about twenty years?'

‘I'd say forty.'

Adam scooted his chair around so that he sat beside Audrey. He reached for her, and
she settled into his arms. ‘Do you know,' she said, ‘we say
still life
but the French
say
nature morte
?'

‘Dead nature.'

When Audrey raised her head, Adam's face was crumpled.

‘I feel like everything I say upsets you,' she said, ‘and I'm sorry.'

‘I'm not upset.' He touched her cheek, checked his watch. ‘Come on. They shut soon.'

On the way out he bought her a postcard of a Louise Bourgeois painting. It was the
red watercolour hands, reaching.

Walking home from the tram stop she passed the pub. They were packing up the outdoor
furniture. There was music streaming from inside. The guy stacking the chairs said
Hey
to Audrey as she passed, and she said
'Night
.

At home she took the postcard from its white paper bag and tacked it to the fridge.
She knew Nick would ask about it the next day. She switched off the lights.

Afternoon in court. Audrey arrived early and went to get a coffee. She walked to
the Flagstaff Gardens. It was cold and hazy. She saw Katy standing by a park bench.
She was smoking a cigarette, politely tapping the ash into a rubbish bin, wearing
her navy work cardigan. There was sunlight in her hair.

Audrey stopped herself from calling out just in time. She had thought all that was
finished, or at least faded.

She walked home afterwards in the thin sun. On the nature strip outside their house
there was a dead possum, its blue guts blown open across the grass. Nick was sitting
at the kitchen table eating a sandwich, flicking idly through one of her novels.
She smiled when she saw him, and he held out the sandwich.

‘Tomato,' he said, ‘worthless white bread. Salt and pepper.' She shook her head and
sat down beside him. ‘You're home early.'

‘I was at the Children's Court. Wasn't worth going back out to the office. How was
your day?'

‘I went for a big bike ride. Right round Merri Creek, down the CityLink trail and
Footscray Road.'

‘Must have taken you ages.'

‘Five hours,' he said, and she raised her eyebrows.

‘Impressive.' She took off her lanyard and set it on the table.

‘How was court?'

‘I don't know if I can do this job.' She looked down at her ID tag: her own face
smiled back at her. ‘It's really bad right now. There are too many people who weren't
supposed to have children.'

‘I don't think that's how it works.'

‘What do you mean? Of course it is.'

‘People don't think about whether or not you're
meant
to have kids.' Nick went to
the sink and rinsed his plate. He spoke to her over his shoulder. ‘They just do it.
And your job is full of people
who need help to do it better. Not everyone's like
that. Nobody's “not supposed” to have kids.'

‘There's this dream I have,' Audrey said. ‘I'm walking down a street and I can see
a baby, a toddler, coming towards me. No mother, but I figure she's coming, and I'm
smiling at this baby. And then a few seconds later, the mother runs towards me and
says
Have you seen my baby?
and she's panicking. I turn to point her the right way
and this truck zooms past, and it's got a stroller hanging from its grille. And I
just—I know what's happened, but I don't want to look down the street to see.'

‘Spence. It doesn't mean anything.'

‘Of course it does.'

Audrey went to the bedroom. She felt miserable and mean.

Nick leaned in the doorway. His hands were hidden in his pockets.

‘I don't understand why you're doing this,' he said.

‘Doing what?'

‘It's as though you're saying
We're ending, something bad's going to happen, we're
unhappy
, and we're not—but you go on saying it, so it becomes true. Fuck, Audrey.'
He kicked the mattress in frustration.

‘Fuck what?'

She sat down hard on the bed. Nick crumpled next to her. He watched the floorboards.
‘I remember when we first started going out,' he said. ‘When we started sleeping
together I could see you processing. I felt so proud that I'd worked it out for myself.
I always felt like I was doing the right thing by dropping back all the time, leaving
you alone a bit.'

‘You were,' Audrey said. Her eyes were leaking. ‘You were the first person to get
it.'

‘But I think maybe it made me complacent, or something.'

‘We have not been happy for a long time,' she said.

‘Do you want me to argue with you?' he asked. ‘All right, then.
All right. It's okay,
Audrey.'

The screen door slammed behind him. She heard the car pull away. There was a sound
coming from her that she didn't recognise, a groaning she hadn't known she could
make.

She thought to call Adam. He'd come to pick her up. She crawled to her side of the
bed, where she'd dropped her handbag. But when she found her phone, her fingers dialled
her mother's number. Sylvie said
Here's what you're going to do
.
I'm going to tell
you
. Her voice was calm and low.
And you're going to leave a note for Nick. He'll
be worried if he gets back and you're gone.
Audrey was weeping.

Spring was coming, and everything was strange. Between Adam's flat and the office,
Audrey worked to find her forward motion. She felt turned around, coming from the
other side of the river. She could hardly remember what things had been like in the
summertime. All open windows and love, enough of it to go around. Audrey thought
she remembered blinding happiness, ciders in the Darling Gardens, gentle fucking
in the hot night, but maybe she'd built a myth of it. She couldn't be sure.