Relativity (2 page)

Above them, three hundred sextillion stars rearranged themselves. Expanding, tightening, collapsing—new stars were born and old stars died. Quasars and pulsars, novae and nebulas, clusters of galaxies woven together like a spiderweb. Ethan watched the marbled universe dance over his head, ever-shifting and spinning toward its ultimate fate.

A tiny flicker of light shot across the sky.

Swoosh!

The meteoroid vaporized. Flashing and fading in the same instant, like a phosphorescent memory.

Ethan blinked. It was already gone. “I think I saw one.”

“A shooting star?”

“Meteoroid,” he said, correcting her. “It was really fast.”

“Did you make a wish?”

“Yeah. But if I tell you, it won't come true.”

Mum ruffled his hair. “Come on, pumpkin. Let's go home.”

Ω

CLAIRE WATCHED ETHAN
gaze at the stars. Wriggling with excitement, mouth slightly open, head tilted back as he scanned the sky. His spellbound expression made it impossible not to smile. She loved her son in unexpected ways, with the same sort of visceral obsession that one might have for the idiosyncrasies of a lover. Claire loved his physicality—the way Ethan laughed so hard he farted, how he picked at the dry scabs on his knees, the weight of his musty head resting on her shoulder as they sat together on buses or trains. She enjoyed that silent intimacy most of all.

Ethan shuffled closer and pressed his face against her arm. He wasn't self-conscious about adoring his mother yet, still needed her affection. Claire knew these easy days were numbered. Adolescence was sneaking into her son—faint whiffs of body odor, scatterings of hair growing on the back of his neck and down his legs, a tiny line of blackheads forming on his nose.

“Mum,” he said, “look!”

But on nights like this, when the dark sky was crisp and cloudless, Claire hated looking at the stars. After sunset, she'd taught herself to keep her eyes fixed on the ground. Star visibility wasn't great in Sydney but sometimes they came out to shine, reminding the city they were still there. That night they were sharp, flaring, and Claire looked up. She still knew where to find her star—it was always there. It never seemed to wander the night sky.

Ω

THEIR WEDDING
was fourteen years ago now, just family and a few close friends at the registry. Claire wore a vintage lace dress that had belonged to her mother. Instead of a reception, they invited friends to dinner at their favorite Indian restaurant and everyone drank champagne and chatted over butter chicken and rogan josh. Toasts were made to the happy couple and Claire and Mark held hands under the table, looking over at each other occasionally to exchange a smile. She got a bit drunk, spilled curry on her dress. It stained the lace and she remembered running her finger over the orange mark when—years later—she threw the dress in the trash.

After dinner, Mark took Claire to Centennial Park. They lay together on the grass, looking up at the sky. It was a warm Sydney evening, the middle of January, and the balmy breeze cloaked Claire's skin. She closed her eyes and sniffed the summer air, so thick with humidity that she could reach out and touch the night. The grass was freshly mowed and a chorus of cicadas chirped behind the trees.

“Are you happy?” Mark's fingers moved down her arm, his breath on her face.

Claire kept her eyes closed but smiled. It was unusual for Mark to ask for reassurance and it made her feel drunk with confidence. “Why wouldn't I be?”

“This probably wasn't the wedding you wanted. You deserved a big ceremony, hundreds of guests, a church, a gift registry. You must be disappointed.”

She sat up and looked at him. Blades of grass were stuck in his black hair, and she picked them out with her fingers, noticing how thick and full his eyelashes were. It was peculiar to feel as though she owned him now, that she could say he was hers, that they were married. But he should've known that she didn't care about the wedding. They were young and in love. The thing that mattered most of all was Mark.

“I'm not disappointed,” Claire said. “Today was perfect.”

Mark nodded but seemed unconvinced. Bats flapped overhead, flying into the park to feed on the nectar of the paperbark and gum trees. She knew him well enough to suspect that maybe it was Mark who was disappointed, who wanted things to be grander.

“I have something for you,” he said.

She hadn't bought him anything. Sometimes Mark made her feel naïve, like she'd lived her life in a bubble, oblivious to the rest of the world. “You didn't have to,” Claire insisted. “I have enough things.”

Mark stood up and offered his hand. She pulled herself upright and brushed the grass off her dress.

He kissed the back of her neck and pointed at the sky. “There. It's for you.”

Claire looked up. “I don't understand.”

Mark linked his fingers around hers. “Can you see that star, right here?”

She stared out to beyond where her fingertip grazed the sky. “Maybe,” she said, closing one eye so the stars came into focus.

“It's yours. I bought it for you.”

“You bought me a star?” She gave him a skeptical look.

“Because you're my light,” he said. “My constant.”

Even though it was a hot night, Mark's lips against her earlobe made her shiver.

Much later, Claire removed every trace of Mark: letters, clothes, books, the wedding dress. She erased him completely. But Claire couldn't throw away a star. She prayed that somehow up in space, her star would extinguish and disappear. This star didn't though. It remained steadfast in the sky, and the further away Mark felt, the brighter the star seemed to shine.

Ω

AFTER THE METEOR SHOWER,
Claire peeked through Ethan's bedroom door. When he was a baby, she'd stand over his cot and listen to him breathe, soothed by the perfect function of his lungs and steady heartbeat. Now Ethan was twelve years old and Claire still watched him sleep, still sending herself into a panic if she couldn't see his ribs move. She'd survey the landscape of his face—the smiles and frowns of his dreams, the shadow his long eyelashes cast on his cheeks, the crease that ran through the middle of his nose. His long limbs were often a shock, caught in his rumpled bedding. Her son was always taller and older than she thought he was in her head. Claire could never picture him properly.

But Ethan gave the vagueness of her life definition. And although Claire complained about his clothes and Legos scattered about the house, she needed them there to punctuate her existence. He made their house a home. They were similar in many ways, soft-spoken and prone to dreaming, half-listening to conversations and lost inside their heads. Echoes of her bone structure bloomed in the lines and angles of her son's face. But something about Ethan was from another planet.

Even when he was a baby, Claire knew he was unique. Her son saw the world with different eyes. Sensitive to light, he'd become entranced by prisms and patterns. Ethan lost hours watching shadows bend and flex, shrink and elongate against the carpets and walls. Amazing—that didn't seem like normal behavior for a baby—but alarming too.

Everyone was worried. Ethan didn't meet his developmental milestones; it was frightening how late he was to walk and talk. He didn't coo and babble, or respond to his name. Claire took him to specialists, tested his hearing, read him stories, sang him songs. She did everything in her power to draw her son out from his interior world and into hers. But Ethan was stuck, caught in the net of delay.

Doctors warned her that he might never speak, but Claire refused to believe them. It took almost a year of speech therapy but Ethan's first word was “Mama.” Behind those quiet eyes, she saw flashes of something brilliant hiding there. His second word was “moon.”

This uneven brilliance was coupled with a dark intensity. Quickly agitated, Ethan often threw toys across the room; his wild temper was easily broken. Claire saw her son get frustrated with his homework, angry with himself, to a point where he'd detonate and explode. When Ethan was like this, she couldn't be near him. It was too familiar. During those crackling moments when her son lost his cool, Claire locked herself in the bathroom and burst into tears.

That wasn't who she wanted to be. She often felt like an amateur at motherhood, even though it was a job she'd had for twelve years. Unconditional love and quiet affection both came easily to her. Leadership and being stern did not. She wanted to be Ethan's ally, preferred to make him happy than focus on the prosaic drills of discipline. At times, Claire did let things slip. The duties of parenting—jumping from tutor to coach, manager, cook, seamstress—needed an ensemble cast and she was just a one-woman show.

Ethan spotted her standing in the doorway. “Mum, can you stay here until I fall asleep?”

“Sure.” Claire lay down beside him. She shouldn't have let him go out past midnight; he'd be tired for school tomorrow. She succumbed to his strange requests too often.

Outside, the moon finally rose: a slim crescent like cupped hands waiting to catch a star. As her son settled into sleep, he automatically shifted his solid body closer to hers—that undeniable umbilical pull. He offered his cheek for a kiss. Claire pressed her lips to the back of his head, taking in his doughy smell.

“Good night,” Ethan whispered.

“Sleep tight.”

“Don't let the bed bugs bite.” He paused for a moment. “Mum, did you know that bed bugs have the geometry of an ovoid? Their bodies are dorsoventrally flattened. That means their vertical plane is flat like a leaf, so it's easier for them to hide in carpets and beds.”

Claire laughed. “Ethan, go to sleep.”

Ω

TIME HAD STOPPED.

It was an ordinary pocket watch: pale gold with a white face, a halo of black Roman numerals around its edge. But the enamel of the dial had browned, the golden casing was coated in orange rust. Gears and shifts had frozen; there was no tick to follow the tock. No hand heaving forward, shaving another second off the future. Ethan pushed his nose against the glass. Time had stopped at seventeen minutes past eight.

Underneath the pocket watch was a white plaque. Its lettering was black and small. The watch belonged to a Japanese man named Kengo Nikawa, who was riding his bicycle along Kan'on Bridge in Hiroshima on his way to work on August 6, 1945. He was only sixteen hundred meters from the point of impact. The blast left him with serious burns all over his body and sixteen days later he died. He was fifty-nine years old.

Ethan stepped back from the display and the tip of his nose left a smudge on the glass. The Hiroshima exhibition upset him—a chill skimmed down his spine. He'd seen a corroding metal lunch box with an uneaten meal and burned rice from 1945. A small tricycle that belonged to a child, who would have been playing in his yard when that bright August morning turned dark. The ribbons attached to the handles were black. Ethan glanced back at the pocket watch.

He heard the rest of his class moving to the next part of the exhibition, his teacher Mr. Thompson telling them to hurry up. But Ethan stayed behind. He couldn't stop thinking about that Japanese man and his pocket watch. In a single moment, Kengo Nikawa's whole world changed. After that atomic bomb had fallen, and his watch stopped.

“Ethan!” Will's voice echoed through the museum hall. “Where are you?”

Will had been Ethan's best friend since they'd started school. On their first day of kindergarten, five-year-old Will made a paper plane and threw it across the classroom. It landed on Ethan's desk. Will's plane was flawed, clumsily folded, badly designed. Ethan uncreased the paper. It needed bigger wings to give it more lift, a more aerodynamic structure. He refolded the paper and threw it back. It floated above the small tables, hovered instead of flew, and Will stood up to catch it. He had a look on his face as though nothing impressed him more than that paper plane. After that, they were always together, talking about rockets over lunch, how to build a time machine, how the universe began.

But now that primary school was ending and Year 6 was almost over, Ethan noticed something was different. They never spoke about rockets, time machines, or the universe anymore. Recently, Will had started spending all his time with another group of boys; all they talked about was football and farts. Once, Will rolled his eyes after Ethan spoke in class. His best friend stopped coming over on the weekends and after school. He didn't understand why Will was suddenly embarrassed to be seen with him. Nothing had changed. Ethan hadn't changed.

Will's new mates called Ethan “Stephen Hawking,” repeating things he said in a slow, electronic-sounding voice. Maybe it was meant to be mean, but to Ethan this was the greatest compliment. Stephen Hawking was extraordinary. Ethan would smile as they imitated the famous cosmologist.

The rest of their class gathered under the shadow of the dinosaur in the foyer of the Australian Museum. The bones of the Tyrannosaurus Rex swayed in the yellow light. Ethan imagined what the creature had looked like millions of years ago, wishing he could travel back into the past along the curvature of space-time. Ethan often thought about space-time intervals and the space-time continuum. How it was made up of lots and lots of intervals like beads on a huge cosmic necklace. Like fireworks that branched off into an explosion of four different directions, we continuously filled up the universe with our pyrotechnic lives. Ethan looked up at the skeleton again but Will was dragging him back to the group.

Daniel Anderson was one of those boys who puberty found early, already a foot taller than most of the kids in the class, tufts of impatient facial hair bursting from his skin. At eleven, he was almost the size of a fourteen-year-old but still had the voice of a small boy. He tried to make it sound deeper by grunting at the end of sentences.