Relativity (6 page)

“Was it about me?”

Ethan shook his head.

She tried not to sound accusatory. “You can tell me what he said.”

Ethan's hands were covered in beige Band-Aids and he picked at the dirty, fraying edges. He mumbled something indecipherable.

Claire stared at her son's downcast face. “What was that?”

“Freak,” Ethan said clearly this time. “Will called me a freak.”

“You're not a freak, my darling.”

“Maybe I am. They call me a freak all the time.” Despite Ethan's efforts to appear composed, Claire heard his voice start to tremble. “He said it was all my fault. Because I'm a freak.”

“What was?”

“Never mind.” Ethan pulled the bedclothes over his face. His voiced was muffled but she just made out what he said. “That he left.”

It took a moment for Claire to register. Sometimes that pain struck her like a cramp—some spasm of ancient trauma. If anyone were at fault, it was Mark. But Claire understood the irrationality of feeling responsible. She felt it too. “You were four months old when he left. You were just a baby. It wasn't your fault.”

“How do you know?” Ethan pulled the sheet down his torso. His T-shirt had gathered up around his chest, exposing his belly button. “Did he tell you? You don't talk about him, Mum. You never told me why he left. Or where he is. Or if he's coming back.”

Claire's stomach twisted as she remembered the letter. “Let's talk about it when I'm home from work,” she said. Ethan had a mathematical clock on his bedroom wall—fractions and equations instead of numbers—and she couldn't figure out the actual time.

“You always do this,” Ethan complained. “You always change the subject.”

“I know you're curious. But it's complicated. You're not going to understand yet.”

Ethan crossed his arms and looked her steadily in the eye. “You don't understand. You make everything worse. I hate it. He's my dad.”

Claire felt hollow. His dad. Mark didn't deserve the word; he'd never really been a dad, especially the kind Ethan needed or deserved. It hurt Claire that she wasn't enough, that her son felt something was missing.

“You act like he doesn't exist,” Ethan continued, his voice quieter. “He's my father. And I've never heard you say his name out loud.”

Claire could see Ethan searching her face for a response. She stared at her son's features so much, she knew the exact location, size, and color of every freckle on his face. Quark chewed a sock on the floor.

“I've got to go to work,” she said quickly, rescuing the sock from the rabbit.

Ethan climbed out of bed, ignoring his mother. He stomped down the hall, his footsteps echoing, and slammed the bathroom door. She heard him piss loudly into the toilet bowl.

Claire lingered behind, fixing the sheets on Ethan's bed.

“Mark,” she said into the empty room. “Your father's name is Mark.”

Ω

THE LAST TIME
Claire had seen Mark, they didn't speak to each other. The room was crowded and she didn't want to approach him. Mostly she knew that she shouldn't, but she also didn't know what to say. There were too many things she wanted to tell him, conflicting things: that she hated him but still loved him, that she hated herself for loving him, that she was comforted by hatred she couldn't help but feel. She'd wanted to slap and hold him at the same time.

Mark knew she was there, but went out of his way to avoid eye contact. He was nervous—understandably—she could tell by the way he incessantly pulled at his hair. Claire knew him so well, every idiosyncrasy. How he tugged at a strand of hair when he was worried; the way he chewed on the ends of pencils when he concentrated; the way he gestured like a conductor when he was excited. She stared at Mark while he looked down at his feet. That swollen silence was excruciating. They were only meters away from each other but already light-years apart.

How could you know somebody so entirely, so intimately, one minute and then suddenly not at all? The solidity of their love, even the shape of it, had been deceptive: Claire thought it was circular when it was actually square. They were married, parents together, they'd been unbelievably happy. But it was so brief. Did all marriages end up like this, whether the couple stayed together or broke apart? Strangers—toxic hostility wedged between them—and the room filled with thoughts that could never be said.

The night they first met, Mark taught Claire how to play pool. It was a mutual friend's birthday drinks at a pub on King Street in Newtown. Mark seemed shy; he couldn't maintain eye contact. But after a few beers he was a pool shark, winning game after game, fueled by a quiet confidence. Claire found his scientific approach to the game charming. Mark nailed every shot. She felt like she couldn't hold the cue correctly.

“What am I doing wrong?” Claire laughed as she missed another ball.

Mark shrugged. “It's just physics. I'll show you.” He took the cue from her hands and quickly brushed his fingers on hers. Claire wasn't sure if it had been accidental or deliberate. “Think about it like this: it's a system. The balls, the cue, and the force you hit the ball with. All of it together makes a system,” Mark told her. “The momentum in the system before the balls collide has to be the same as after the collision. It's conserved. You can't destroy momentum.”

Claire pulled her hair off her face. “I'm not sure that explanation helps.”

“Watch this.” Mark bent over the pool table and stretched his long arm along the pool cue. With effortless fluidity, he sent the white ball flying across the table. It struck the red three ball, knocking it straight into the pocket.

“See? The white ball stopped and the red ball gained its momentum. So the momentum of the red ball after the collision is exactly the same as the white ball before the collision. When the white ball struck the red ball, it gained the momentum the white ball lost.”

“I have no idea what you just said,” Claire said, scrunching up her nose.

“Come here.” Mark took her hand and pulled her toward him.

She moved into the gap between his body and the pool table, her back skimming his front.

“Bodies in motion have momentum, but when they collide momentum is exchanged,” Mark whispered in her ear as he leaned over, cradling Claire, pushing her body against his. She inhaled him. “They move. They collide. They push each other into different directions.”

Mark hit the white ball again, propelling it down the green felt. It knocked into the yellow ball—sending it on a collision course with the green ball—and they separated, forced onto different paths. The green ball went straight into the pocket. Mark squeezed Claire's torso as he pulled back the cue.

“Now, that happened because of the laws of the conservation of momentum,” he began.

“Stop,” she said. “Enough physics.”

Mark put his arms on Claire's waist and turned her around to face him. She could feel his breath on her face as their noses touched. His scent reminded Claire of being outdoors, of crisp saltwater breezes and eucalyptus leaves. Her top lip grazed against his bottom lip and their mouths lingered in one spot as they shared the same air: swapping nitrogen, oxygen, carbon dioxide. Mark ran his hand up along Claire's back and into her hair. With his fingertips, he lightly touched the back of her neck, drew her closer, and warm mouth upon mouth, they kissed.

Claire never had a mind for theories and science, but she always remembered that when bodies collided momentum was exchanged. Despite everything that happened and no matter how hard she tried, Claire couldn't forget their beautiful collision. How they'd crashed into each other; how something was exchanged between them. She still carried a piece of Mark inside: his momentum, his energy, his force. She felt it when she saw Mark appear in Ethan—sometimes it was in a gesture, a glance or the way her son spoke. Claire loathed it. She hated that she was never allowed to forget. Perhaps Mark still felt it too. But as much as she willed it to go away, that was the problem. Momentum couldn't be destroyed.

Ω

ETHAN SWALLOWED THE SHOWER WATER,
taking big gulps and spitting them out. Mum left for work; he heard her footsteps against the wooden floor. The front door slammed. He washed his hair and used the remaining shampoo to lather his body. He didn't have a lot of pubes yet—just a light scattering of coarse hairs—but they were definitely there. His body was changing. As he rubbed the area near his groin, his penis stiffened and his legs grew tight. Heat soared to his head.

These urges had only started recently, a photo or glimpse of a breast through a shirt suddenly sending Ethan into a quiet frenzy. He stroked his penis hastily, wanting to do this as fast as possible. Warmth spread to his stomach and he tilted his head backward, allowing the hot water to fall over his face. He was annoyed with his mum. She treated him like a baby. He wasn't stupid; he wasn't a child. Children might not understand complicated things, but they also didn't do what Ethan was doing right now.

When he came—a thread of fire escaping his body—Ethan let out a low moan. He choked on the sound, hoping it was dampened by the water slapping the tiles, but remembered Mum wasn't home. His tiny emission clung to his body before snaking down the drain. Ethan shivered, a ridge of goose bumps appearing on his arms. He rinsed his body one more time and turned off the tap. Then he quickly got dressed and went to eat breakfast.

It was a rare treat to be home alone. Ethan made himself a huge bowl of cereal, staring at milk being absorbed into the grains. Sometimes the finality of things struck him, like the sadness of mixing Weetabix and milk. They could never be unmixed—even if Ethan had a centrifuge and separated the milk particles from the cereal particles, he still couldn't undo how they'd changed. Other things like this made him sad too: breaking eggs, mixing a cake, untwisting the cap of a new bottle of Coke. None of those things could be undone. He ate his breakfast in front of the television.

After morning talk shows replaced morning cartoons, Ethan wandered into his mum's bedroom. He loved the smell of her bed. White sheets steeped in her scent—flowery perfume, laundry powder, the nutty smell of her shampoo. Her smell attached itself to everything in their home. Being in her bed reminded Ethan of having nightmares, waking up terrified, and creeping into her room. She'd hold him, stroke his hair, promise that there were no monsters under his bed; she was the only person who knew how to make his heart beat normally again. Sometimes Ethan snuck into her bedroom, rested his head on the cool cotton pillow and inhaled her smell. It made him feel safe. He lay under her blankets, watching the day change from the other side of the curtain.

Outside, people walked past, cars started and stopped; the postman who listened to Radio National made his rounds. Next door, the little kids played in their front yard. It sounded like they were having a tea party. The rhythm of daily life lulled Ethan back to sleep.

He was woken abruptly by a loud knock at the front door. Ethan wasn't allowed to answer the door when he was home alone. He sat up in the bed and pretended he was a statue. Mum's bedroom overlooked the street, but with the curtain drawn Ethan couldn't see who was there. Another knock. Someone stood outside at the window. The silhouette of a tall man.

The man paced the front of the house and Ethan tried to quiet his breathing. Maybe the man was planning a robbery. Ethan quickly listed the places he could hide: under the bed, inside the wardrobe, in the triangle of space behind the door. All the good hiding spots were in the back of the house. His palms started sweating. Once a robber broke into Will's house and took their television, computer, and all of his mother's jewelry. Mum would be upset if everything was stolen when she came home from work. Or if Ethan was murdered. Maybe it was a murderer.

Something slid under the door. Then footsteps and the creaky front gate banging against the latch.

Ethan didn't move for a while. His body was so still it felt like blood stopped moving through his arteries and veins. Once he was positive the robber wasn't coming back, Ethan went to the door. There was an envelope, addressed to Mum. The handwritten letters were squished together with an agoraphobic compression, scared of the vast whiteness of the envelope. Ethan held it up to the light to read the overlapping words. He saw his own name and brought the envelope closer to his face. This paper had an exotic smell, of dust and damp and gasoline.

Ethan knew he shouldn't open it but the letter had a pulse. It felt alive. Sentences beating and pounding, the paper persuaded him to rip it open and read. He peeled the envelope's flap, the sticky seal tearing apart in fine filaments like a spiderweb. Squiggly lines turned into words that fell out from the page.

Dear Claire,

I'm sorry to get in touch out of the blue like this but I urgently need to speak with you. I sent a letter to your office but I'm not sure you received it. Your old phone number is disconnected. I don't know your email address. Hopefully this is still your address; Anna gave it to me awhile ago. She said you two weren't close anymore, which was a surprise. It's been a long time.

I want to ask how you are but it feels like a stupid question after all these years. I want to ask how Ethan is too. I hope he is well. He's my son, but I don't know anything about him. Maybe I should've sent him birthday cards, called him at Christmas. I don't know. I wasn't sure if you wanted to hear from me. And I needed to focus on getting my own life back on track. I often wonder what you've told Ethan about me and about what happened. I'm his father. How have you explained the fact that I'm not around?

I've been living in Western Australia for the last few years now. I'm back in Sydney. Dad is really sick. He's asked to see Ethan.

I'm staying at my parents' house. Maybe you could give me a call?