Relativity (5 page)

A
T THE HOSPITAL ENTRANCE,
there was a stained-glass window—small panels of emerald and ruby glass, fused into a story told with color and light. It was a memorial for the Australian hospital ship
Centaur
. Off North Stradbroke Island, a Japanese torpedo hit
Centaur
before the sun rose on Friday, May 14, 1943, sinking the ship and almost three hundred passengers aboard. The window was dedicated “to the memory of those who perished.”

The old hospital chaplain stood beside Mark and they sipped their takeaway coffees together. He told Mark about how sinking a hospital ship was a war crime under the Hague Convention but they didn't discover the identity of the guilty Japanese submarine until the 1970s.

“Those bloody Japs should've been tried at a war-crimes tribunal,” the chaplain said. “Avenged those poor drowned nurses.”

It had been a hospital for the Australian Army, built in 1942. There was something totalitarian, Soviet even, about the hospital's architecture. Not that Mark had traveled to Russia or East Berlin—he hadn't even been to Europe—but he imagined the bleak eastern bloc to have the same monolithic severity. Gray upon gray, concrete tower after tower—it reminded him of a prison.

Inside, there was a large foyer with a miserable-looking florist. Mark wondered for a moment if he should buy his father a bunch of flowers but quickly decided against it. John hated flowers. Mark hated hospitals. The corrosive smell of the corridors, the bite of the air-conditioning, the abrasive squeak his shoes made against the polished floor that caused the hair on the back of his neck to stand up. He could taste the cloying vapor of disinfectant in the air on his tongue. He couldn't breathe. Coming back was a terrible idea.

Mark stood at the reception desk. “I'm looking for a patient. John Hall?”

The nurse glanced at the whiteboard. “John Hall. Room 8, Bed 24.” Her eyes scanned over his features. “Are you family? You look exactly like his son.”

“I am his son.” Mark paused. “You must mean my brother.”

“I didn't realize Mr. Hall had another son. Just down the corridor on the left. Third door.” She smiled at him with the sudden warmth of familiarity.

Mark walked down the corridor to his father's room. The door was shut. When he was a boy, his father's door was always closed so Mark would stand there quietly, examining the fissures running through the wood until he'd forgotten why he needed to speak to his dad. Even now, he still had to gather his nerves, hesitating for a long time before opening the heavy hospital door.

The room was dark, the blinds drawn. A sliver of sun fell across one wall, particles of dust hanging like fog in the single shaft of light. On the bed, the old man was as small as a child, curled beneath a green hospital blanket. His hair was completely white. Mark did a double take. The last time they were together was more than six years ago. He'd never seen his father robbed of pigment before.

John lay on his side. “You,” he said quietly. His faint speech was a pale imitation of the booming voice that once struck Mark with fear.

“Dad, it's me. Mark.”

“Thirsty,” John croaked, his eyes searching for a face. His head jerked forward, exposing his wrinkled neck. He reached out and touched his son. The shock of physical contact made Mark flinch; the rawness of skin on skin felt like electricity. Mark held his father's hand. Crooked fingers, blue veins bloated beneath gray skin. “Thirsty,” John said again.

Mark sat in the chair beside the bed. He offered John a cup of water and placed a bent drinking straw near his mouth. There were no teeth left inside his jaw—just a gummy cavity of fleshy holes and sticky saliva. The old man's lips hunted clumsily for the straw. Pipes and drains came out of his father's body. Amber urine collected in a bag hanging off the bed frame. Mark listened to John's labored breathing, unsure what to think—should he feel sad? He'd resented his father for longer than he could remember.

When they were kids, John was strict with the boys; they needed to be the best, top of the class in every subject. Occasionally, there were beatings—the leather belt came out whenever they misbehaved or failed to achieve. Tom thrived under the rules, but although Mark did well at school, he wasn't tough enough for his dad. His knee-jerk sensitivity made him an easy target; he couldn't control his feelings. Their mother did her best to protect her children from her husband's violent outbursts. Although he never saw his father hit his mother, Mark knew he did. It was clear from the muffled sounds that reverberated through the house, the occasional darkness in Eleanor's eyes.

“Mark,” the old man said finally. His sour breath quickened, his sweaty, chalk-colored hair stuck to his temples. The whites of his father's eyes were a dirty yellow. Tom said John only had a week left, if they were lucky. Luck had little to do with it—it was cancer. The room stank of shit and piss masked by bleach.

Mark squeezed his father's hand. “I'm here, Dad.”

John sucked at the plastic straw with his thin lips, drinking with such force that Mark wondered whether he was trying to drown. Choke intentionally on a glass of water. He inhaled the fluid until he gasped for air.

Tom stood at the door. “Don't let him drink so fast. Use the sponges to give him water. Dad has dysphagia.” He placed firm and possessive hands on their father's frail body, pushing Mark aside. Mark pictured their mother scolding them about it, imploring the boys to share. “Let Mark have a turn, Thomas,” she would have said. “You're the older brother.”

Tom quickly grabbed the cup from Mark's hands. Water spilled over their father's front and soaked his blankets. The old man blinked helplessly.

“Now look what you've done,” said Tom. “Help me clean him up.”

Mark nodded. They lifted their father's limp body and changed his gown, raising his arms like John was a doll. The two brothers hadn't stood so close to each other for such a long time and Mark was surprised by how his brother had aged. Wrinkles and creases covered Tom's face, light brown liver spots on his arms as though he'd spent too much time in the sun.

“Mark,” Tom said loudly. “Can you please get the nurse?”

John was struggling to breathe, his eyes bulging and wet. His chin quivered; he reminded Mark of a newborn baby.

“Mark,” Tom repeated. “The nurse. Quickly!”

“Right.” Mark reached for the call button. “Which one do I press?”

“Just go outside and get someone yourself.”

Mark rushed out into the ward. There was a Filipino nurse named JP by the sink, washing his hands. He followed Mark back to John's bed.

Tom was flustered now, adjusting their father's posture. “Help,” he said. “He's not breathing.”

The nurse checked John's nose and mouth. “Hi, Mr. Hall,” JP said sweetly to the old man. He turned to face the two sons. “He's not in major respiratory distress, but his breathing is shallow. Some oxygen might help.” The nurse stuck the prongs of the cannula up John's nostrils.

John pulled on the chain around JP's neck, making the nurse's glasses swing.

“No, Mr. Hall,” JP said, prying the chain from John's hands. “You're very strong. But those aren't for you.”

John released his grip on the chain. His yellow eyes searched the room, straining to focus, darting from the nurse to Mark, and back to Tom. With an assertive stare, John ripped the nasal cannula and oxygen out, his nose wrinkling as the tube scratched the insides of his nostrils.

“Dad, what are you doing? Doesn't he need that?” Tom asked the nurse.

JP shrugged. “At this stage, the most important thing is that he's comfortable. We don't need to force him.”

Mark thanked the nurse while Tom sat beside their father's bed, running his hands over his face. His brother's complexion was pink, like the blood in his body wanted to flee.

“Maybe you need a break,” Mark suggested. “Go home, get some rest, see your family.”

“I haven't eaten all day,” Tom said. “It's funny; when Dad was diagnosed they said it'd happen quickly. But these have been the longest weeks of my life.”

John let out a low groan. He reached for Mark and looked into his eyes with a quiet urgency. The desperation of his father's stare ruffled him.

“I want to see.” John pulled on Mark's hand.

Mark moved in closer. “I'm here.”

“No, I want to see him.” John coughed. “I want to see my grandson.”

Mark looked at his brother. Tom and his wife, Jasmine, only had daughters. There was a framed picture of his brother's family on John's bedside table: three beautiful girls. But John wasn't talking about his granddaughters. He wanted to see Ethan.

Mark remembered when his father had visited baby Ethan in the hospital, over twelve years ago now. As John held the small bundle, an unrecognizable smile filled his face. But Mark's exit splintered the family, untied any ties that were supposed to bind. Ethan. This was something Mark couldn't negotiate for his dad, an impossibility where hazard outweighed hope.

“Dad, I can't. I haven't seen him since—”

John interrupted. “Please let me see my grandson.”

They watched their father fall asleep, muttering to himself. John's sunken eyes rolled into the back of his head. Mark didn't owe him anything. He'd come home because he wanted to let his dad leave the world with a feeling of peace, to restore some sense of harmony.

Tom glanced stiffly at his brother. Mark looked away. His mind ran through thousands of unordered ideas but he couldn't focus on a single thought. All he could do was count the beeps of the patient monitors, as the droning machines murmured the flat music of his father's vital signs.

Ω

CLAIRE FOUND SOLACE
in tedium. Her hands absorbed the choreography of domestic life the way a body swallows a dance, automatically traveling through every movement. The sun was coming up, pink light scattering through the window, making the white kitchen tiles blush. There was something reassuring about having a clean house. It was one thing Claire controlled when life felt uncontrollable.

The letter had arrived at her office yesterday. Crisp white envelope, her name written in handwriting that Claire wished she didn't recognize. The stamp was a portrait of William Lawrence Bragg, an Australian-born scientist who'd discovered x-ray diffraction, who won the Nobel Prize for Physics in 1915. She wondered if he'd done that on purpose. No sender, no return address, but Claire didn't need to see his name to know the letter came from Mark.

She couldn't open it, though. She didn't want to know what was written inside. The previous night she'd stared at the envelope for hours, starting to tear open the flap, stopping herself, hiding the letter in the remotest parts of overlooked drawers, then finally salvaging it again. Haven't you punished us enough? Claire asked the envelope. Mark was abstract now; she couldn't remember the details of his face or the sound of his voice. Time and space had turned him into a ghost. Everything about Mark had long faded into the background.

Love didn't work like that. It didn't fade. You couldn't turn it off like a tap; its plumbing was impossible to plug. To Claire, love was much more like a bad smell. Like spoiled meat—its rotten stench crawled into every corner and was absorbed by every surface, and you'd forget it was there only to have the bad smell resurrected by a warm breeze.

Claire held the letter over the stove. She turned on the gas, the metronome of the electric ignition clicking until the burner was alight. As she watched the envelope disappear into the blue flame, she thought back to her younger self. The paper burned quickly; white turned wafer black.

Once, she'd read anything he wrote over and over again until she knew paragraphs by heart. Now the letter was ablaze. She blew out the rising fire before it reached her fingers. Smoke filled the kitchen. Claire opened the windows and wiped the greasy ash off the stovetop.

Quark, Ethan's pet rabbit, skidded down the hallway. He was a gray lop rabbit with white streaks, Ethan's seventh birthday present. Particle physics was his obsession then; he'd watched documentary after documentary about it. Claire often worried her son watched more documentaries than he had friends. Ethan had put Quark in the palm of his hand and the little bunny shot off, thudding along the floorboards, an escape artist from his makeshift home in a drawer. The baby rabbit had made Ethan think of a quark. Ethan often spoke to the bunny like he was a dog, saying, “Up, Quark!” or “Down, Quark!” and sometimes he called him Hover Rabbit. Quark liked to eat bok choy, Dutch carrots, and—on very special occasions—Anzac biscuits.

Claire scooped up Quark to her chest and took him into Ethan's bedroom.

“Time to get up, sweetheart.”

“Mum,” Ethan groaned. “I'm really sick.”

Claire put the rabbit down and touched Ethan's forehead. His skin was pink, but he wasn't feverish; his eyes looked clear and bright. Definitely not sick. Claire knew she should send him off to school. But she remembered those rushes of anxiety she'd felt at that age: the stress of whispers, the poisonous stares, the weight-filled gaps in strained conversations.

“You can stay home.” Claire sat on the edge of his bed and ran her fingers through his hair. “I'll call school.”

Ethan brushed her hand away. “I want to go back to sleep.”

“Maybe we should talk about what happened yesterday at school? With Will.”

“Mum, I told you. I don't remember,” Ethan said, rolling onto his side.

“I'm not mad.” She reached out to pat his back before thinking twice of it and retracting her arm, placing both hands neatly in her lap. “I just want to understand what happened. Did Will say something to upset you?”

“He didn't do anything.”