1. Post Meridiem
We passed noon in the air, so if it were somewhere, that place was behind and below, trailing a morning I’d waited out with an insomniac’s acquiescence in seat 37B.
It’s alien, to be awake so long. A day should be over, though nothing had yet happened. Nothing that elsewhere had occurred, had yet been discovered.
Last stop. It’s an overrated airport. The Changi waterfall’s business hours spoil the pretense of nature. A commercialised dystopia’s confusion; the entire city is already a garden.
My eSIM didn’t work. Airport Wi-Fi opened a channel for my mother’s messages. The notification previews of these novellas had no hope. Her focus was scrambled. Her phrasing, perhaps deliberately obscure.
Though I was heading west, I read them while redressing my persistence with the East-West Line, pacing the platform in a deserted cavern.
The time to reply would be when showered and bathrobed, I thought, but even then I knew the time to reflect might never end.
She asked me not to spit on the ground here, xx, asked me not to buy any drugs here, xx, asked me if I still smoke those branded cigarettes the young Fijian man sells from behind the counter at the servo, xx.
She told me she was taking work off Monday to pick me up from the airport, xx, told me to give love to Olivia, xx, told me not to get her another souvenir since the perfume from London is just fine darling, xx.
* * *
Airports and hotels have the same personality. We adore blandness. My mother had asked me, Why aren’t you staying with Olivia?
Because I could not ask myself to ask.
There was an issue with my hotel reservation. Well, time to ask away?
I said, I have a reservation.
They said, You see right here it was refunded three weeks ago, miss. Overbooked, miss. The capacity paradox unravelled. It’ll be $230 extra to rebook for these two nights, miss.
I had feared that if I asked Olivia she would pretend to welcome me. If I slept on her couch, and if our reunion sputtered out, well then, there would be no haven for retreat.
No Do Not Disturb. A shield I needed more than had been expected.
I walked next door and paid $380. This hotel had a second pool, so really I’d scored an upgrade, I could splash in one and slump in the other – both pools were closed that week.
If I called my mother, if I asked her to lift away this new fear of partial orphanhood, she would not pretend. We do not do such a thing.
* * *
The twin room had one towel but two stains on the ceiling that swirled when I held a squint. It was enough to keep me awake through to dusk.
Stuck in those swirls with swills and swigs and slugs of dread, I could not even get off a short reply.
Crosswords, my soft, spry father said, when people asked what he did with himself; my vague, vain father who asked strangers what they thought of his greying beard.
He’d called only once during my trip. I let it ring out.
* * *
The restaurant was in Olivia’s building, further west along the Downtown Line. It was Peruvian but the staff were not. We met at the table. Her entrance was late, not hurried.
I said, No need to apologise. She said, Okay. I said, What’s your life here like? Your Instagram stories are too cryptic to tell.
She said, I can’t believe I was away last time you came. They asked me to go just so late, and I’m still new at this job after all.
I didn’t want to talk about that, I said. I guess it happens, I said, not caring, for once, to placate, please or grovel.
We talked about her sex life, about her men’s damp beds. Her discovered connections between erogenous zones and sweat glands, having dealt with both every day. I changed my mind on humidity.
Our pisco sours were brown and our ceviche dry, warm.
She said, There's better Peruvian near the river where I’ll take you after the gallery tomorrow. It’s much better, I promise.
I said, I’m worried my father’s just died. I’m in limbo. It’s like I’m still flying home.
What the fuck? Why?
I told her about my mother’s tells. Some women are not made to keep secrets.
She said, That’s it? Call her, or just call him.
I said, We don’t do that.
* * *
I walked back after she went to bed. Along large blocks of urban greenery that could be parks or abandoned blocks, rewilded. The streets shouldn't have been so dark; this was right in the inner city. Red buses trundled through the shadows.
Here the sun sets at seven and rises at seven, and months from now it will set at seven and rise at seven. Such, such certainty. Post-seasonal, post-colonial, post-personal.
The only time I ever collected my mother from the airport, she yapped until home, where we told her, Your own mother is gone. Well, my brother told her. Held her. I held her tiny suitcase raised to my chest, cradling it with swaying moves.
Back at the hotel, the lobby was dark and locked. I was knocking when my phone buzzed; Wi-Fi the only thing passing through the doorway.
Olivia was sorry but she had to cancel tomorrow, for work. She would be at a client event and had forgotten.
She said, I do hope your mother is ok though, xx.
* * *
As my grandma died, my mother was visiting a childhood friend in Adelaide. She’s since had trouble, she told me, associating that visit with anything other than the ambush.
It is your fault, she told me, she tells me, that she has never again flown to see that friend.
I dared to cast a shadow. A shadow that at all times, through the light and the dark of six until six, persists.
Had I been in your shoes, she told me, the airport is where you would have been told. The airport, the airport, the airport. Where afternoon is still morning, and night is always day.
At the end of half a day that had started, so well, I moved my flight up one day.
I did not tell my mother.
Jaquie Stephens lives in Sydney with her husband and Shih Tzu.