She stood by the window as the moon flowed in. Far off, a dog’s bark echoed and a car pulled into a driveway. She couldn’t sleep. There was a time when this street was empty and it was just her and her father. The house she was staring into was once a prickly bush that would morph into whatever monster drifted into her head, the dirt of its underbelly turning into two stiff legs. Then, a man from the city bought the bush and built sleek patios and garages on top of it. Not like her little brown house.
Her closest neighbors from all those years ago were the Gallos. They lived a short walk away through the bushes and past the foothills, where she would walk, feel dew on the grass and smell rain before the clouds formed. The Gallos’ only child, Robert, had a mild look about him with his straight hair and crooked nose. When she went to visit, his father hauled around a sturdy cane that clacked on cold stone. She could still hear that clacking now.
Her hair was chestnut then, and she could sleep without seeing that looming figure, Death, waiting in her dusty hallway, examining faces in the moldy photographs hanging on her walls. Her mother passed in childbirth. Death knew her intimately—he remembered traveling down silky waters with her, their nice conversations. Her father followed twenty years later, but Death felt colder towards him and his murky eyes. Their trip together, forlorn with silence.
Her father always wanted a son; she grew tall and lanky and was made to do a man’s job around the house. He talked in calculated grunts and never looked at her directly. Still, she felt a duty towards him. She understood that he loved her in his own strange way.
By the time Robert shared his dream to leave for Italy to meet his grandparents, she had grown old enough to stare into the dark heart of the bushes and see them for what they were: bushes. She remembered now how he would tell her under the milkwood, that Sydney was nothing more than a place to pass the time—a place with no future. He told her swashbuckling tales of his homeland; of the mischief they would make together in sweeping vineyards and walled hilltop villages; of leaving on a night boat, cradled by him and the waves. These episodes would be interrupted by bats fluttering in black clusters of tar and the spell would be broken. She had duties to fulfill and she couldn’t leave them.
She worked at a portrait studio with sunken red carpets and glass cabinets, operating a heavy metal camera stuffed with leather. Its shutter glimmered under the chandelier lights. She saw families, friends, and lovers give furtive glances. Sons stood in awkward fear next to their broad-shouldered fathers, and mothers sneered at their daughters’ crooked smiles. She thought of Robert—how did he look at her when she wasn’t watching? She learnt to enjoy the comfort of independence and safety of control. Of never needing to worry about the way someone looked at her. In Italy she would be noticed, taken for an outsider. A dark rope of doubt began to tug at her.
Now, looking up by the window, the sky looked dimmer than it used to. That dog was still barking, wagging up and down the street, like she’d seen her whole life. It appeared innocent, but its bite stung for a long time. Right now, she was feeling something she didn’t want to name; something that had taken a lifetime to come to terms with. She felt like calling her grandchildren and sons, but they would be busy, like always. She wondered how life would be if she had made different decisions. She might be sitting in a Roman villa right now, instead of the same house she had lived in for the past seventy years.
She remembered deliberating over Robert’s invitation. It changed her countenance; her beautiful skin creased and crumpled. When he whisked her away at night in his navy-blue Ford, he stayed patient with her. When he talked, she would stare down at the cold, linoleum canvased seats. She just wanted him to go.
Every day as the sun crept down, she told herself to go with her gut. But as the moon began to rise, that old dog, fear, barked in muted tones and winked with a knowing smile as to how this cycle would repeat. Until one day, Robert left without saying goodbye. He wrote that he no longer believed in fairy tales and that life had to move on eventually, with or without her. She held back tears reading it. She would remember his words for the rest of her life. A few years later, her father died and the house was peaceful. She didn’t cry then, either.
By the time she noticed the house was too quiet, people had slowly poured into her street. She was thirty-two now. The bushes became pavements that would burn rubber soles in the summer; the foothills turned into retaining walls and dank Blockbusters. Cameras were now digital; anyone could take a photo—there was no need for her portrait studio anymore. McDonald’s franchises started to open, so there she went. She worked along those mustard-yellow floors, rubbery playgrounds and backlit menus for the rest of her life. You’d be hard pressed to find a trace of the world she grew up in.
And so, she hastily settled into a marriage with a man named John. They met after he gave her a parking ticket. He was a perfectly serviceable husband; their shared interests included TV dinners and the Parramatta Eels. She waited for a dim glow to light the recesses of her heart again. It never came.
She appreciated the way he would pack her lunch in Tupperware and scrawl sweet words for her to find on a tattered Post-it note. She cherished his silence, the evenings they spent reading threadbare paperbacks from the chemist. He would pretend to be the protagonist from a hardboiled detective story. It made her laugh, how he would try and fit their language into his life of filing and fussing. She would read about Italy and dream. But life went on and that dog turned silent; it no longer dug away at the cavities in her consciousness. She was afraid of nothing.
John lived everyday like a child carefully coloring within the lines. A trait their children, Robert and Alfie, would inherit. Those slimy things she birthed became their own beings, thinking their own thoughts and feeling their own feelings. The love she felt for them she had never felt before, but their individuality scared her. She felt an abstraction towards them; it resembled her father’s coldness. When the kids on the street came to knock on their corroded wooden door to ask Robert and Alfie to play, she always refused them. The thought of them in danger made her nauseous. Her boys began to fear her. John was too timid to discipline them. She hated the yelling and fighting and eventually the boys grew to treat their mother with apathy.
She never told John what attracted her to the name Robert. Even if she did, he would probably shrug and play with his thin, receding hair, as if it were a full beard. The boys grew up quickly, found wives, moved out, and she became a grandmother. Her sons felt it a chore to visit every Saturday for dinner. Week by week, they found that their family had very little in common. They would talk about the weather, the prime minister, and work. She could tell it bored her sons. Then she woke one hazy morning and John didn’t. He died normally. The house became empty again. She felt a sadness as cold and empty as a clay pot. She didn’t cry.
Now, she was old, still staring at the big house. She missed when it was just a bush. The street was full and busy with new smells of strange spices. It fascinated her how much could change in such little time. The sun was rising by the window. It was looking to be a pretty day. She hadn’t slept. She wondered when the last time was that someone called out her name.
“Georgia.”
She enunciated it slowly and with care.
“Georgia.”
Now for the first time in a very long time, she cried. Tears slithered down the weathered terrace of her face. She cried for the life she had lived and the life she hadn’t. For the people she had met and tried to care for, for the people she would never meet. For everything she wished she could explain to her sons. And finally, she cried for herself and the fear that had held her back.
