The Boundless Sublime (6 page)

Once the dishes were done, Fox took me on a tour of the house, showing me a large formal sitting room, and a cosier living room where they had what Fox called ‘family time’
every evening. Then he took me upstairs, where a series of bedrooms led off a long corridor. At the end of the corridor was Fox’s room. We went inside, and I was surprised to see how spartan it was. Just a bed with a tartan blanket, a small chest of drawers, and a picture of a sailboat on the wall – the generic kind you might see in a motel room. No posters or books or knick-knacks. No clothes on the floor.

‘It’s so … clean,’ I said to Fox. ‘Where’s all your stuff?’

‘I only live here some of the time,’ he replied. ‘Mostly we live at the Institute, and we’re sent here to stay while we give out the water bottles.’

‘The Institute?’ It didn’t sound any less creepy when Fox said it.

‘It’s far away,’ he said. ‘It’s … different there.’

‘Different how?’

Fox’s expression turned serious. ‘It’s … away from everything else. No distractions.’

‘Is that a good thing?’

‘Yes,’ said Fox, but there was doubt in his voice. ‘Daddy says I shouldn’t stay out in the real world for too long. I get too sad.’

It was so strange to hear the word
Daddy
come out of Fox’s mouth. It made him sound like a child.

‘Sad?’

Fox nodded. ‘Sad about the world. You’ve seen how ugly everything can be. How people don’t know … don’t appreciate how beautiful life is. How easily wasted. You understand. I know you do.’

I swallowed. I did understand. Fox clenched his hands into fists and stared down at them, his brow crease a little deeper than usual.

‘I think if people don’t
do
something, humanity will end up as broken mutants, numb from all the artificial chemicals
they’ve put into their bodies. They’ll burn everything – the coal, the forests. The rivers and oceans will turn to contaminated sludge, and everything will be mountains of rubbish. A race of toxicant mutants, ruling over a kingdom of trash.’

His usually quiet voice had deepened, developing a harsh tone, and I saw anger and grief in his expression. For a moment, I was a little frightened by him.

‘What can we do?’ I asked. ‘How do we stop it?’

Fox pushed his hair from his eyes, and the anguish faded from his face. ‘I don’t think it’s difficult. It’s about understanding each other. About living honestly. About treating our bodies as precious vessels instead of garbage disposal units.’

He glanced sideways at me, his expression shy as he took my hand. ‘And love. It’s about love.’

4

I went back the next day. And the next. And the day after that. I uncurled from my cramped crouch in the darkness and stretched. My body felt clear and pure from all the nuts and vegetables. I started to join in the dinner conversations. I stopped fearing the sound of my own voice.

I got to know the other inhabitants of the Red House. Matriarch Lib ruled over everyone with a kind and watchful eye. Welling was always immaculately groomed and friendly, greeting me with a wide grin. Stan regaled me with crazy stories of travelling through India and South America in the 1970s, taking drugs and searching for enlightenment. ‘I didn’t realise,’ he said, pausing his constant bouncing motion for a moment, ‘that what I was searching for was inside of me. I had it all along. I should have just stayed home and watched
The Wizard of Oz
.’

Maggie was loud and abrasive, continually getting into heated arguments with the others and being gently chided by Lib. She was a hurricane of thoughts and ideas, whirling around the Red House, unaware of the destruction that her moods could wreak. But everyone was so warm and friendly, the house somehow closed in behind her, in the wake of her passage. Within a few minutes, everything would be back to
normal. They were accepting, like that. It made me feel safe; if they saw the cracks in me, they wouldn’t cast me aside.

I saw Maggie in full force one morning (a school day, but I seemed to have forgotten about school), when I’d come over to see if Fox wanted to go to the park. I walked into the kitchen to find Maggie scowling up at the silent mountain that was Val.

Val was the only inhabitant of the Red House whom I hadn’t got to know. Fox had told me that Val had been around forever, as long as he could remember, and that he never spoke. He just lumbered around and collected cicada husks from the garden, lining them up on the windowsill in his bedroom like tiny paper lanterns.

‘You clumsy idiot!’ Maggie was yelling. ‘What were you thinking?’

Val was staring down at the kitchen floor. As I approached, I saw fragments of an earthenware bowl, mixed with shredded kale and strawberries.

‘Nothing,’ Maggie continued. ‘You were thinking nothing. Because you don’t think, do you? You’re just a giant useless hunk of toxicant flesh.’

Val’s expression didn’t waver.

‘Maggie,’ I said, stepping forward. ‘Is everything okay?’

Maggie ignored me. ‘I don’t even know why they let you in. How can someone like you ever be sublime, when all you are is
body
? Just stupid ugly face and fat and skin.’

‘I’m sure he didn’t mean to break it,’ I said.

‘Shut up!’ Maggie yelled, whirling around on me. ‘What the hell would you know? You’re not one of us. You don’t belong here.’

I mumbled an apology and slipped from the room, down the hallway and out the front door of the Red House, pulling it closed behind me and taking deep breaths.

You don’t belong here
.

If I didn’t belong there, where did I belong? Not at home. Not at school. Not with my friends. Perhaps the only place for me was drowning deep in stifling darkness.

I headed down the garden path to the street.

‘Wait.’ Maggie had opened the front door and was following me out. ‘Don’t listen to me,’ she said, taking a step forward. ‘Of course you belong here. I’m in a bad mood.’

I could feel her hand trembling on my arm. Sweat was beading on her forehead. ‘Are you sure you’re okay?’ I asked. ‘You don’t look well.’

Maggie shook her head, like a dog shaking off water. ‘I’m fine. Feeling a bit … you know. It’s hard, trying to be a better person. I was really struggling, back at the Institute. That’s why they let me have a stint here at the Red House. They thought I might find it easier. But … I don’t know. Sometimes it’s harder being closer to all the things you’ve given up.’

I wondered what kinds of things Maggie had given up, but it didn’t seem right to ask.

‘What’s the deal with Val, anyway?’ I asked, changing the subject.

Maggie leaned towards me conspiratorially. ‘Nobody’s really sure, but there are rumours. People say he used to be a hitman, working for some proper bad guys. That he tortured people. But then something happened – his people turned on him and left him for dead. Something inside him broke, and he went all quiet and still. I think he’s been at the Institute for ten years or so. He’s like a rescued puppy, totally loyal. One hundred per cent.’

We headed back inside to the kitchen, where Val was still standing, staring down at the broken bowl.

‘Don’t worry about it, big guy,’ said Maggie, giving him a playful punch on the arm. ‘I’ll help you clean it up.’

In any other family, it would have gone differently. Val would be ostracised for his size and his silence. Maggie would have been punished for her outburst, and seethed with resentment for days. But in the Red House, things fixed themselves. When conversations got heated, they played out logically until everyone agreed with each other. When Maggie’s temper got the best of her, everyone waited patiently until she fizzled out and apologised. It seemed natural, like the shifting of the winds, or the turning of seasons. I came to learn that all storms in the Red House passed quickly, that problems were solved and disagreements were settled amicably. It was a kind of magic, and at the centre of the magic was Fox.

They all loved him, and how could they not? Fox was sweet and generous and thoughtful. He was interested in everyone and everything, and his enthusiasm was infectious. He could always defuse Maggie’s outbursts. He could always make Welling laugh. Sometimes I saw Lib looking at him, a glow of pride softening the lines on her face.

When we weren’t together, thoughts of him filled my mind. I fantasised about kissing him, running my fingers through his sandy hair. I dreamed about his soft lips, his serious eyes, the smattering of freckles across the bridge of his nose. I relived every conversation we’d had, over and over, remembering the husky gentleness of his voice, the way his mouth tilted into a wry smile. I scribbled down his words in a journal Helena had given me, trying to recreate the way he spoke, the way he could capture delicate, fleeting thoughts and ideas, and express them so simply and beautifully that it was like poetry.

I wanted him. I was consumed by wanting him. I twisted in my bedsheets every night, his name on my lips, my fingers drawing the stories on my body that I longed for him to write. I knew it should feel wrong, this
wanting
. I knew I didn’t
deserve Fox. I didn’t even deserve the fantasy of him. I didn’t deserve to want anything as much as I wanted him. But I couldn’t stop. Fox was a fire that had lit up my darkness, and I burned for him.

Did he feel the same way about me? Fox was very physical. He was constantly touching my hands, my shoulder, my cheek. He laced our fingers tightly together. He stared into my eyes and I couldn’t imagine he felt anything other than the exact mirror of my own desires. But he threw words like
love
around so easily. He was in love with everything about the world – the ducks in the park, spring flowers, scudding clouds, the smell of rain. When he told me he loved me, did he mean he loved me more than those things? He’d never tried to kiss me, but there was something sensual about the way his fingers lingered on my skin, the way his eyes would sometimes travel over my body, before he’d turn away, blushing. I didn’t believe he was as innocent as he seemed.

We’d spend hours lying on the grass in the park, gazing into each other’s eyes, and in those moments I was sure I wasn’t imagining it. What I felt was real, and it was like nothing I’d experienced before. I knew Fox felt it too. I knew it was only a matter of time before the mental and emotional spilled into the physical, and our daytime intensity would merge with my fevered night-time fantasies.

I hadn’t been to school for over a week. I got up each morning and made polite conversation with Aunty Cath, who would hand me a packed lunch comprising mostly pre-packaged snacks – mini chocolate bars and individually wrapped crackers and processed cheese dip. When I was a kid, I loved food in little packets. Opening each one was like opening presents at Christmas, special and definitively mine. Now,
I’d hold them up to read the long strings of preservatives listed on their sides, and shudder. Who knew what those chemicals did? Nothing good, that was for certain.

I would head out the front door as if I were going to school, but turn left instead of right at the end of our street, and cut across the park and up the hill to the Red House, dumping Aunty Cath’s lunch in a rubbish bin on my way. I considered feeding it all to the birds, but figured that the birds didn’t need to be pumped full of preservatives either. I was doing them a favour.

Walking through the squeaky iron gate into the dark green jungle beyond the wall was like entering the Secret Garden. I felt special, chosen, privy to secrets that nobody else knew. Occasionally I’d see someone else on the street outside the Red House – a parent pushing a pram, a postal worker, joggers and dog-walkers. They wouldn’t even see me. Their eyes glazed over the high red-brick wall of the Red House as though it wasn’t there.

Didn’t they notice it? Didn’t they wonder what was on the other side?

I knew they didn’t, because I hadn’t. Before I’d been to the Red House, before I’d met Fox, I’d never looked around. I hadn’t wondered what lay behind walls or doors. I hadn’t wondered what existed in the minds and hearts of the people I passed each day. It was as if all my senses were heightened, that I was opening up like a flower, suddenly aware of how much possibility there was in the world.