‘Sunset at Lake View’ by Anand Rathod, Unsplash.
After
It would be easy not to notice him. Just a small thing. Dappled with dried bracken and dirt. One more item amidst the trash that appears where the water subsides. Unwanted things dumped in the night; the whole town joined in a collective labour to fill this central absence.
The haze is thick. It hides the moonset and hangs low as dawn threatens. The streetlamps are still on. Little yellow haloes. There are no cars now. No birds and no bird call.
He is silent, though he did scream. Screamed hard as hell until screamed out. His stretched lips purple and then blue.
His hands scrunch into fists, grip sticks and leaves so tight they cut the soft flesh. Crust forms at his nostrils. The skin around each knuckle pales. Fog dampens the bank, leaving beads of dirty moisture on his puckered mouth and eyelids.
The haze is thick. It hides the moonset and hangs low as dawn threatens.
When the sun rises it illuminates abandoned shopping trolleys, empty beer cans, silver wine bladders, the cartoon lions on his clothes. A soft breeze agitates tattered spike rush. A bleached-out chip packet blows across the path.
Dawn breaks brightly, the haze burns fast.
But still, it would be easy not to notice him: a small thing, alone, in the reeds by the lake.
Before
From her salmon-coloured entertainer’s patio, Emma stared out across the dry lake bed. A group of figures in bright lycra bounced along the bordering track. They’d assumed an unconsciously balletic formation: the woman in the centre pushing a stroller, her four friends forming an arrow tip around her. Their arms bent and hinged as they pumped the air emphatically. The mother – Emma presumed the stroller woman took that title – had some sort of aerobic attachment on her pram, allowing her arms to pump too. The whole group marched in step, a satellite circumnavigating the dusty terrain. Emma eyed that orbit for some time. The lake was a sundial tracking her own malaise.
It should have been autumn but summer held the town under indefinite arrest. What used to be a glistening circle of water stretched out just across the road in acres of scrub that turned gradually to marsh. The lake, smaller since last spring, was dwindling to a slick disc on the horizon. Heat made the flat pan shimmery, unreal. Air had texture out there. Heavy, somehow. As though you could climb through it into another world.
It should have been autumn but summer held the town under indefinite arrest.
Common wisdom insisted weather was temporary, subject to the wills of some petulant other. The phrase ‘pray for rain’ was used ubiquitously by Shorehaven residents – secular and denominational – particularly on those muggy summer days that promised to leak into something cleansing but by evening became only pink, placid.
Men in thongs strutted around Westlake Estate with open beer cans, tossed crushed empties into piles beside the overflowing bins. People left their air conditioners on all night, rendering the drought a theoretical space to pass through but never inhabit. Even last winter – brutally cold, with winds that struck out across the water – had yielded mostly sleet that melted into long, thin puddles for the odd remaining duck to shake its wings in. Never enough to make the lake lake again. The lake was field. No, too verdant. The lake was dried-up paddock.
Since childhood Emma had understood that all the best houses in town were around the lake. It might have been the only truly funny joke of the drought, at least to those in Westlake Estate. She could read the punchline from 127 Shoreline Drive; her own conspicuous five-bedder featured a still-undrained pool, a two-car garage, reverse living, and sweeping views of that dried-up paddock. Her polished windows and glass balcony shone aggressively, concentrating the heat of the sun on her extensive yet withered front lawn. After the category-four water restrictions came in, Emma watched the ladies of neighbouring houses hand-water their flowerbeds in the scant evening hours when such activity was sanctioned but the gardeners had all gone home. Her own garden was mostly dead, planted instead with forgotten scooters and mini basketballs. Her house fell out with the street. The neighbours muttered, asked how she was doing, their mouths tight with goodwill.
Her house fell out with the street. The neighbours muttered, asked how she was doing, their mouths tight with goodwill.
The lakeside businesses were still open. The coffee cart by the Olympic Commemoration Rings advertised iced lattes in big blue letters. The newsstands and kiosks that lined the Prime Minister’s Promenade traded in refreshments and grim aphorisms. Those who still walked the lake did so with an air of civic pride, even now.
Emma squinted to see the faces of the women walking in formation. She might have gone to school with them – the tall one could be Lisa Ames. She’d never spoken to Emma in school but had attended two baby showers and a birthday barbeque thrown at Pat’s farm.
Of course, it could be any horsey, enthusiastic Shorehaven woman. Emma recognised them as a type. Like playing a game of memory. Where’s the good woman? Cards scattered across the polished floors of her life. Robust ex-rowers and equestrians, unused law degrees and sparkling Audis.
This was her type, too, sort of. By marriage. Emma was not born to it, you could see that at a glance. Too awkward in her skin. Shrinking away from the sunlight rather than striding into it. And it was impossible to ignore her smallness. Every component of her was small. Little features. Twiggy limbs. Wispy pale hair that she scraped back from her face or let hang in a thin veil.
Her life in tableau was accidentally perfect. She marvelled at how intricately it fitted together, each item showing the world who she had become. There she is! There’s the good woman.
Emma had been too small to take up oars and sweep the perimeter of the lake, back when it was full and imposing. In school she’d become a coxswain because it seemed like the easiest option in the compulsory sports program. Her first season with the twelfths ended prematurely. Partly because of the gruelling training – why did she need to run and lift if she was just sitting there? – but also because on the water even her loudest shouts got lost in the wind and the slapping of paddles. High school was one long season of recusal. Recused from hockey after her ankle popped mid stride. Recused from Outward Bound after passing out under the weight of her pack. Everyone at Shorehaven Grammar School seemed to have a heft and gravity she lacked.
Still, she could be walking the lake now. Walking was non-competitive, low impact. A mummy drill. And despite a lifelong paucity in team spirit – ‘teamwork’ had been the answer to her training question, it turned out – she was now wearing the uniform. Her outfit was technologically advanced, ready for feats of physical accomplishment. A few tugs and her ponytail would bob jauntily enough. She wore trainers with purple soles like bruises on tropical fruit. Her own dusty Audi presided over the yard. Her life in tableau was accidentally perfect. She marvelled at how intricately it fitted together, each item showing the world who she had become. There she is! There’s the good woman.
On a slice of grass by the road, a black swan pecked violently at a deflated bicycle inner tube. Decades ago, Emma’s mother had methodically named all the birds they could see from the bench by the playground, where they sat each Saturday morning. Ducks, coots, cormorants. They saw swans in courtship, gliding through the water, their necks intertwined heart shapes. Her sister Izzy running giddy figure eights on the bank. ‘Love bird. Love bird. Bye bye, birds.’
Of these childhood birds, only the gulls and the Indian mynahs now thrived. Avian opportunists. Birds you would find anywhere. At the end of the world there’d be a gull to peck at the remains.
This swan was a hold-out. Most of its kind were gone, abandoning the last traces of artificial wetlands at least a season ago. It would be gone soon, too, she supposed. Or it would die. A week ago she’d seen a swan carcass behind a boatshed, its neck folded elegantly over its rib cage, one leg torn away. A dog maybe. Or a fox. Who knew what lived out there now.
This is an extract from Echolalia by Briohny Doyle (Penguin Random House Australia). Echolalia is available now at your local independent bookseller.
