An Astronaut's Life (3 page)

‘What does it feel like?' you ask.

‘The contractions?'

‘Yeah.'

‘It was like, I thought it was indigestion. Since I got here they're worse, like
cramps.'

‘Tell me when it's coming.'

‘Oh, you'll know.'

You run your hands over the back of her hips, in circles. You're not sure where it
hurts.

‘Melinda?'

‘That's good.'

‘I need you to tell me about the baby.'

‘We haven't even talked about the baby,' she says.

‘We'll talk about it now,' you say, but then she lets out a whimper and curls forwards.
You tell her to breathe, because it seems like the thing to say. She's calm soon,
but drained.

‘You've never asked,' she says. ‘I thought, “Why the hell isn't he asking? He can
add up.” What did you think?'

‘I didn't know. I didn't want to ask.'

‘Did you think it's someone else's?'

‘No. I didn't know. My mother said—'

‘God. What did she tell you?'

‘She didn't exactly. You tell me. I don't want to have to ask.'

Melinda sighs and you think it's another contraction, but it isn't—not yet. You think
of Francis in hospital. Lying there with machines beeping and monitoring. The oxygen
buzzing cold across his nostrils, disturbing his eyebrows. That was you for seven
months. And all they could think of was to read to you, which is nothing, but also
everything, really.

‘Okay,' Melinda begins. ‘You have to remember: we thought you were dying. We looked
at you lying there and we were pretty sure. Day after day, just nothing. Not one
movement. We begged you—just a sign. Move one muscle. Nothing. Like you were dead.'

She punctuates this with a grunt and drops her head forward again. You hold her shoulders.

‘Just breathe through it.'

When it's over she lies back on her pillow.

‘So I just decided I only had a short time. You could die any day, they'd take you
away and that would be it. I'd have nothing.'

She looks at you meaningfully, a look that accuses you of being hardly more than
the ‘nothing' she feared, despite all she's done.

‘I'm here though,' you say.

‘But it's not about that. It's what I thought. All I had
was your mother for advice
and she told me every day you looked more like a corpse. I made up the reading to
keep her quiet, then it was all we had. And then, I don't know, I guess I fixed on
the idea that if I had a baby, had your baby, it wouldn't be so unfair.'

‘I don't think we'd even agreed we wanted children.'

‘I know. But it changed me. Sitting there day after day.'

‘So what did you do?'

‘I just, by hand.'

‘You wanked me? What, into a cup?'

‘Don't say it like that.'

‘While I was unconscious?'

‘Don't. It wasn't dirty like that.'

‘While my mother watched the door?'

‘Shut up. It wasn't like that.'

‘Jesus.'

‘It's the conception of our child you're talking about. It was the saddest thing.
But I did it for you, too. I did it to keep you.'

‘Oh God.'

‘I'm sorry I didn't say this before.'

‘How is it even possible, in a coma?'

‘I didn't know. You were on the catheter, so.'

You'd rather not think about it. She grits her teeth.

‘Is it another contraction?'

It's only been two minutes; you check on your watch. Melinda grunts and it seems
to take longer this time, or maybe this one hurts more.

When it's over she says she'd like to see a nurse.

‘You've got a button around here, right?' You start looking for it.

‘But I feel bad ordering them around.'

‘It's what the button's for.'

‘I know, but could you find someone?'

You stand up. ‘I'll go down to the nurses' station. I'll be back in two minutes,
I promise.'

‘Thanks,' she says. ‘Don't go far.'

‘I won't.'

‘I hated it when you were gone. I hated that coma. I hate it now.'

‘I'm sorry.'

‘It's not your fault. It's a coma. I just get a feeling sometimes, like, wherever
you were, you liked it more than coming back.'

You head to the door.

‘I've only got a minute until the next contraction,' you say. Then you sprint along
the hall towards the
nurses' station, your feet thump against the linoleum. Your
body, still lacking the power you took for granted in the days before all of this,
feels your efforts sharply. It's good though—all those muscles.

In a moment you'll reach the desk.

‘My dear chap,' Francis once said, ‘there's no point tackling trivial problems while
the fundamental questions of life are there for the taking.'

The claustrum, Francis's examinations have taught you, is a thin sheet of brain matter
that receives input from multiple areas of the brain. It may be involved in integrating
information and therefore plays a role in generating self-awareness, or consciousness.

‘Will you come see my wife?' you say to the young nurse at the desk. ‘Her contractions.'
You're out of breath already. ‘She's frightened and maybe it's time for something
for the pain?'

‘Of course,' the nurse says.

The lights are stark. Your legs shaky. The nurse trails behind, you can hear his
soft shoes. Melinda is panting, her face red. Her eyes meet yours and you smile.

‘I'm here now,' you whisper. ‘Right here.'

It all happens at once. Melinda grits her teeth as the pain comes again. The privacy
of conscious sensation:
there's nothing you can do. She grips you hard and it hurts.

‘I'm back,' you say.

The nurse explains about medication. You're sweating. Melinda's crying.

‘I'm back now,' you tell her. You say it again, close to her ear, but you're still
not sure she can hear you.

THE RACE

There are people in the water tonight.

We heard it on the radio and now Jean won't stop talking about it.

Mum says we should get on with making dinner—chop carrots and fry butter a little
faster, be glad we're us and not them—but Jean says the opposite is true. She looks
up reports online; one hundred and twelve people, mostly men, some children.

Jean likes to blanket herself in details as an insurance against worst-case scenarios.
Less than half of the people would have life jackets, she says.

Mum opens a can of tomatoes. How silly would you be, to get on a boat like that without
a life jacket, she says.

But Jean says, It's not really like that.

Rolf's coming around later. Mum calls him my
big Estonian boyfriend
or she just
calls him
Ralph
.

Rolf says the way we all talk about people coming here by boat says a lot about the
national psyche. He's just finished a degree in history, so he likes to take a broader
perspective. Mum can't stand it; she usually says something like, Can't we just eat
without you indoctrinating my daughters? And she shakes her head.
Jesus, Ralph.

He won't be here before nine, at the earliest, and Mum will be in bed. She's in bed
early these days, then she's up again at six to drop Jean at swimming, then straight
to work because she has to start on the phones first thing.

It's 9.45pm when he comes up the drive. I see the light on the front of his bike
through our curtains, then I hear him get off, and I wait on the sofa until I hear
his knock on the door.

Tap-tap
,
tap-tap
.

He's got ice-cream and Twisties and his hair's all pushed up from his helmet so he
looks crazy.

Have you had dinner? I say.

He has, but I heat up leftover casserole and put some bread in the toaster. While
the microwave hums we have two minutes to kiss and when it dings we pull back and
I scratch my fingers across his stubble.

This can't be aerodynamic.

Good point, he says. So maybe it wasn't my thoughts weighing me down all day.

What thoughts? I say, but I'm thinking, Maybe it's me. Maybe I am weighing him down.

You heard it, on the news, he says.

The people in the water.

Yeah. A hundred and something, I say.

I won't remember the numbers, one hundred and fifty, or ninety, or three hundred
and fifty-three, because they're coming every day now, asylum seekers in boats. Day
after day, in sinking boats, and the navy is always fishing them out.

Rolf spreads more butter on his toast than probably anyone ever has.

I just keep thinking about them, he says.

He's like Jean. If she were out of high school he'd be dating my sister instead of
me.

We all do, I say, and it's true. But I also agree with
Mum: we're so sick of hearing
about people in boats, and their insatiable hopes on our horizon.

I don't tell Rolf. We take the casserole and Twisties to the living room and settle
into the sofa with my blanket over us.

You warm enough, I say.

He is, but I don't know how. I touch the shiny lycra of his bike shorts, the mound
of thigh underneath. We kiss again. Rolf didn't always dress like this. He used to
come around in normal clothes, jeans, but since the Tour de France began he's been
riding every afternoon and that somehow led to padded lycra shorts. It's for comfort,
he says. I think he looks ridiculous, but I don't have the heart to make fun of him.
Mum hasn't seen the shorts and I don't want her to. She'll tease him, which will
make him self-conscious and then he might stop riding. And the riding is good, despite
the shorts.

They can't get SBS in Rolf's sharehouse so he comes around at night now and we watch
the Tour together until I fall asleep. Cycling is not something I've ever been interested
in, but it's growing on me this year—this alternate reality of grown men riding bikes
up mountains on the other side of the world. I'm not so concerned about who wins;
I'm still figuring out how
the winning works. It's the forward motion of it all I
like. The reliability. I'm usually asleep before anything interesting happens, but
when we turn it on next night they're still there, the men on bikes, on a long slog
up some new mountain, or the same one—I can't tell.

Rolf stays up until the end, that's the other reliable thing—when I stir and he's
there. He covers the blanket over my shoulders, kisses my forehead and I fall back
to sleep.

Rolf starts work at half-past six now, so once he's gone I climb into bed and doze
a couple more hours until Mum and Jean leave too. Sometimes I lie in and think of
Rolf on his afternoon ride, powering through hills, the rhythm of his breath filling
his ears and thoughts.

He's tired tonight. The casserole probably doesn't help, and after a feed and half
a packet of Twisties he's quiet. I pat his hair and say, Are you okay?

Yeah, just worn out. I rode 40ks.

Really? That's so far. Was work all right?

I guess. About the same.

It's not for much longer, you know.

Yes, it is. It's six months. Or more. Or forever.

But that's up to you, if you want to stay.

Only to a point, he says.

No one's forcing Rolf to work for his father, it was his idea. I guess the thought
of it—early mornings, a real pay cheque—seemed romantic, in a way. Now if I stay
at his place, I wake to him dreading the day ahead, pulling on his work boots as
if they weigh a tonne, and I get the feeling that everything ahead of us is going
to be this way, this weight. Sometimes I leave while he's still in the shower and
don't say goodbye. I feel guilty but relieved so then I walk to the library where
I plan to work on an electromagnetics assignment or something, before anyone else
is in, except the study rooms are already busy. These days they're always full with
students who have been up since who knows how long before me.

On TV, a French guy is showing how to cook rabbit stew. Rolf flicks over to check
the news, but the search is shut down overnight. They're saying the ocean is twenty-nine
degrees so it's possible to survive thirty-six hours, if you have a life jacket or
something to hold on to. I picture the dark water, a stranger's legs dangling above
like the silhouette from
Jaws
.

Is the race on yet, I say.

I see a stranger suspended in darkness.

It's still the cooking bit, Rolf says.

I want to keep talking so I say, Have you thought any more about going into Honours
this semester? even though I know this is not a good thing to bring up.

I've thought about it, but I can't see it happening, he says.

But you could, if you wanted.

Yeah, but that's not the problem, you know that.

I know, I'm just saying. You've got the option. And whatever you choose, it's not
like you can get it wrong.

Well it feels like both options are wrong.

Does it? Do you really feel that?

Rolf looks over and kisses my forehead in a long, slow way. On TV a helicopter is
gliding over a castle while the cyclists slide over distant mountains in their colours,
people in T-shirts lining the road.

I don't know, he says. It's not the end of the world, anyway.

I know the exact feeling Rolf has when he's riding. I used to swim, back in high
school, and I remember how the effort would focus my whole self into a rhythm. Rolf
used to feel like that about work too. Not that it was ever completely absorbing,
but it gave him a physical satisfaction. It was real.

Rolf's dad is so proud that his son has a university degree. It's the first in the
family, but there's a certain work ethic they both have, a connection to the outdoors
and the masculinity of physical labour. It's as though the idea of working in a university
or being some sort of historian is exactly half-satisfying to Rolf, so there's always
a looming disquiet—he's not sure he'll ever balance his need to be intellectually
engaged with a bodily connection, the feeling of having done his day's work the way
his father always did.