Claire Zorn - The Sky So Heavy

I have nothing to lose.

I choose an officer, the one whose eyes are slightly more glazed than his companion’s. He raises his chin defensively as I approach.

‘Morning,’ I say. He doesn’t respond. ‘Can you help me? I’m looking for my mother. I think she might be working here.’ His grip on his weapon shifts. ‘Her name is Libby Streeton, could you find out if she’s inside? This is the Disaster Response Headquarters, isn’t it?’

‘I can’t do that.’

‘Why not? Could you just ask?’

‘No. You need to vacate this area.’

‘Why? Please, couldn’t you just—’

He raises the rifle, points it directly at my chest. ‘Piss off.’

‘Would a bottle of whisky make it easier?’ I ask. He narrows his eyes, prods the rifle into my ribs.

‘I will fucking kill you,’ he says. ‘Piss off and don’t come back.’

I back away, pick up my bike and ride back to the car park.

Max runs toward me as I enter the car park.

‘Did you find her?’ He is like an over-excited labrador.

‘No. But I got a bit closer. I think. She might be at Town Hall. There’s a crisis response headquarters set up there or something. I couldn’t get in.’

‘Why not?’

‘It was barricaded off. I couldn’t get in.’ The hope drains from his eyes. ‘Don’t worry. We’ll keep trying, yeah?’

‘Yeah.’

Alan makes me a cup of strong black tea.

‘You go to your mum’s by yourself?’ he asks.

‘Yeah.’

‘I’m not sure that’s the wisest idea, mate. You should take Noll with you. I’ve heard of some very ugly things going on out there. Just the other day someone was attacked coming back from the ration handout. Stabbed. Food taken.’

‘It’s cool, I didn’t have any food.’

‘Even so. Do me a favour and take Noll with you next time.’

‘Not sure he’d want to. We’re not exactly best mates.’

‘Is that right?’ Alan eases himself down onto the floor next to me. He sips his tea and I notice his hand trembling.

‘You eaten today, Alan?’

He shakes his head. ‘Can’t keep anything down. Stomach’s crook.’

I feel my chest tighten when he says that.

‘Aw, don’t look at me like that, Fin. You’ll break my bloody heart.’

‘Alan, you know—’

He holds up a hand. ‘I don’t want to know. Knowin’ ain’t going to make any difference. Now, let’s have a talk about your mate Noll.’

‘Don’t think he’s ever really thought of me that way.’

‘He’s here with you, though. And would I be right in saying you wouldn’t have got here if it weren’t for each other?’

‘Maybe.’

‘You know what I think? I think he makes you see yourself a little clearer than you would like to. And that gives you the shits. No one wants to see themselves for what they really are.’

‘Do you think it’s alright to do whatever you need to do to survive?’

‘No. No, I don’t. But let’s put it in a bit of perspective, you took some food from another man. You didn’t kill him.’

I don’t say anything.

‘Did you?’ asks Alan.

‘No. I don’t think so. Lucy hit him over the head with a cricket bat. He was going to shoot me in the head.’

Alan laughs, a generous, cracking sound. ‘Jeez. Doesn’t sound like a very nice bloke.’

‘It’s weird, ’cause, you know before all this, he was. I liked him. I’d known him since I was a kid.’

‘Well, I’ve said it before: wars makes us all bastards. Or maybe Shakespeare said that.’

‘You think this is a war?’

‘Oh, it’s a war, son. Only we don’t know who the enemy is.’

Later I draw my mother’s apartment building from memory. I draw it as if it’s full of water, like a fish tank. Through the windows seaweed grows and fish swim. I don’t know why I’m drawing water all the time. But I know that if you breathe in underwater you die.

Lucy knows everybody in the car park by name. She goes around talking to people and joins in with a group of women who sit together and knit. There are thirteen little camps like ours, some are families, some are friends. One group are retirees from the same retirement village. They bribed their way across the border in the village’s minivan. Some families have children. We are the only group of teenagers.

Sometimes in the afternoons there is a soccer match. The four of us play and Max is better at it than I remember. Sometimes there is an argument over a foul and Alan has to step in to break it up. Sometimes things get so heated the game has to be stopped. We lie on our backs after each game, sweaty and panting and looking up at the concrete ceiling as if it were a blue sky.

Noll approaches me after lunch. I am swilling detergent in a saucepan when he comes up beside me.

‘I want to apologise about the other night. I didn’t mean to cause… unease. I know you’re stressed out about your mum. You don’t need to hear me going on about the frailties of the human condition.’

And I feel pissed off again because he has been the one adult enough to apologise and now I feel like a petty kid.

‘Don’t worry about it,’ I say. I want to add that I’m sorry for being a tool, but the words don’t come.

Lucy isn’t around in the afternoon. I ask Noll and Max if they have seen her, but they haven’t. I wander around the car park, thinking maybe she is talking with Rosa somewhere, but I don’t find her. Then I remember and I go up the concrete stairs to the shopping centre. As soon as I push open the door I can hear it: the beautiful, delicate notes humming on the air. I walk through the cavern of the shopping centre to the piano. She sits, back straight as a dancer’s, moving her head gently with the undulation of the music. I sit next to her while she plays and when the song is finished she rests her hands on her lap, head bowed.

‘Do you think they’re dead?’ she asks.

‘Who?’

‘My family.’

‘No. I don’t know.’

‘You know, they used to tell me I could do anything, my parents. They said I could be anything, do anything I wanted to do, as long as I worked hard for it. I believed it. I believed that if I worked hard enough I could get a spot at the Sydney Conservatory of Music. I would become a composer because, you know, there are a lot of jobs around for that now.’ She sighs. ‘What a presumptuous dickhead.’

‘How does wanting to study music make you a presumptuous dickhead?’

‘I don’t know. But I thought I was entitled to it. Just like I thought I was entitled to good food and a nice house and nice clothes. My family had three sponsor kids, for God’s sake. Surely that entitled me to a nice cushy life. Do you ever think about how distorted your view of life used to be? Like, my mum used to say that the greatest tragedy was someone who didn’t make use of their talents and live up to their full potential. The greatest tragedy. The greatest tragedy is children dying of starvation, don’t you think? Who gives a shit if they can play the piano.’

‘Look, I don’t know if you’re a presumptuous dickhead or not.’ Lucy punches me softly in the arm. ‘But isn’t there some philosophy about how it’s the arts that separate humans from animals?’

‘Really? I thought it was not eating our young.’

‘You know what I mean. Just because music and art and stuff doesn’t feed you, doesn’t mean it’s not important. It still kind of makes us who we are. Is that way too corny?’

‘Almost.’ She smiles. ‘You are very sweet, though, you know that?’

‘You say that to all the guys you flee nuclear winters with.’

She leans over and kisses me on the lips. ‘And you still taste good,’ she says, and I feel myself blush, just like that day so long ago on the bus.