Songbird

1. Dislocation-1

Dislocation

Irenya O’Neil crossed the threshold of her son’s room and leaned over his cot. Mikey lay with his head turned toward the night-light, one hand still holding Finn Frog, the other close to his mouth, a comforting thumb at the ready. Next door the yowl of cats shattered the night air. A security light flooded the room, leaching the brightly painted walls of their colour. The silk dream-catcher and its festoon of feathers hung unmoving in the humid air, yet its shadow high above the cot appeared to change shape. Mikey stirred. Irenya whispered to him while she untangled a fragment of leaf caught in one of his tight curls. Outside, the yowls rose to shrieks. Mikey opened his eyes for a few moments, staring at her as though her face mirrored the brief savagery outside. This child, she told herself, this child will have a family. He will not be abandoned.

It was late and she needed to go. The sensor light went out, plunging the room into darkness. She waited until her eyes adjusted to the night-light, then she straightened. Her head reeled and the floor shifted. I’m fine, she reassured herself. Stood up too quickly, that’s all.

In the hallway, she lifted her jacket and worn leather bag off the row of hooks. No car keys. From the main bedroom she heard David’s wheezy snore. If the keys were lost she couldn’t go. Staying home would be the sensible thing to do, but the fridge was empty. We’re out of paracetamol. And guess who’ll have the flu next. She shuffled junk mail, patted jeans pockets, and lifted bone-dry laundry that had been dumped on the table. The keys fell to the floor.

David’s voice rasped from the bedroom. ‘Irenya?’

She picked up the keys. ‘I’m on my way. Mikey’s asleep.’

‘Thought you’d gone. They close at midnight.’ His voice trailed off to a whisper and ended in a fit of coughing.

She stood at the door of the darkened bedroom. ‘Sounds awful, honey. I’ll get something to ease your throat.’

‘Are you going to be okay on your own?’ he asked.

‘I’m fine. Good as gold. Back soon.’

The front door needed an adjustment and she had to pull it hard until the lock clicked. Rain began to fall, big drops plummeting through the oppressive air. As she opened the driver’s door, everything tilted around her. She clung to the door, breathing hard, until the dizziness passed.

Five minutes later, she turned onto the deserted highway, two black lanes glistening in the circles of tangerine light. Mist curled off the warm asphalt and a gust of wind buffeted the car. She flicked through the radio stations. Wagner’s ‘Ride of the Valkyries’ blasted from the speakers. She turned up the volume and accelerated, racing the exultant Valkyries swooping over clouds on their way to Valhalla. Violins and brass swept her along on the bravura ride.

After twelve months of what her doctor diagnosed as ‘panic attacks’, Irenya knew the symptoms and dreaded the arrival of each one. They began with dizziness and a sense of other, as though she had stepped over a crack into a shadow world where no one could see her. Next, her feet and legs would lose feeling; she couldn’t tell if she was sinking into the ground or levitating. Cold and sweating, she would clutch something solid, certain her heart was about to rupture. Then came the deafness that cut her off, isolated her inside a fear so profound it left her struggling for breath.

Tonight, something had changed. The deafness clapped down without warning as she pulled into the empty car park. She slammed her foot on what she thought was the brake but hit the accelerator. The car shot forward, bounced over a low garden bed and came to rest in a parking bay. She gripped the wheel. Her vision blurred. Air scraped her throat in silent choking gasps.

Sound returned, though muffled. Agitated violins and the final drum roll from the radio echoed her heartbeat. She switched off the ignition, found a pulse in her neck and counted. The panic subsided. A jetliner roared overhead on its approach to Melbourne airport, distance and heavy cloud corrugating the noise. Christmas was only fourteen days away, nothing was prepared, and she so wanted this one to be special, the last for the millennium. Mikey would be old enough to love the gifts and a glistening tree. Nothing was going to spoil it, not the dilapidated old house that had once belonged to her parents, its walls steeped in grief and her grandmother’s madness, and certainly not her own silly fears.

She placed both feet on the asphalt and wriggled her toes. Soon the wind would change direction, bringing a promised cool change to the humid and overheated city. She so looked forward to that. Wagner’s music still rang in her ears, the five-note motif repeating itself over and over, faster, insistent, squealing like a malfunctioning tape. She leaped out of the car, stamped her feet, and counted in the nursery rhyme voice Mikey loved.

‘One, two, never guess who… three, four, fall through the floor…’ The panic retreated. She strode around the car. The headlights were still on and the door open. God! They told me anti-depressants would make it worse for a while, but this…

The exit sign beckoned; home was ten minutes away. Instead, she grabbed her jacket and bag, locked the car, and headed for the supermarket. Above the entrance, an e in the illuminated sign flickered. If it failed, the sign would read Harvey’s Nit Mart. She managed a brief smile. The lights and the hum of air-conditioning reassured her.

A concrete ramp zigzagged to the brightly lit doorway a few metres above the car park. She rounded the bend in the ramp and stopped, pinned by a presence behind her. A familiar voice in her head yelled, Turn and look! You’ve felt this before. She tried to breathe, but the air wouldn’t pass her throat. She inched her head around. The voice mocked her. i***t! You see, it’s just a wall. She stared up at the expanse of painted bricks and shivered.

Inside the cool supermarket she slipped into her jacket then discovered the shopping list was not in her bag. A popular song, flattened into Muzak, jangled in her ears. She chose a few jars of baby food then headed for the next aisle, trying to recall the list. The trolley wheels crabbed then bumped the edge of a peanut butter display. Everything swayed around her. The fluorescent glare shimmied as if the whole place was shaking loose. She tightened her jaw and kept going, edging the trolley into the toiletries section where she found pain-killers and lozenges for David. In the next bay, detergent bottles were sliding along a shelf, a double image ghosting behind them. She clung to the trolley, witless in front of household cleaners, deserted by the voice that had jollied and nagged and cursed her weakness. She had to get home.

The checkout assistant joked about Melbourne weather. His laugh barked at her, five notes in G sharp, repeating in her head as she joggled the trolley toward the exit.

The automatic doors snicked shut behind her. Night air pressed clammy fingers on her face. David’s red Corolla waited in the car park and the lights of Melbourne glittered in the distance.

She started down the ramp toward the brick wall. One, two… never guess who… Her feet were numb. Three, four… drop through the floor… The brick wall shifted in and out of shadows. Five, six… babe in a fix… The air pressed against her face and chest. One, two… never guess who… She tried to drag the trolley back to the door but the wheels refused to respond. Her hands were glued to the handle and the maddening thing set its own runaway course down the ramp, straight for the brick wall. Even as she braced herself for impact, the surface vanished and in its place loomed a dense blackness, a huge void. A sudden wind flung open her jacket. She glimpsed Mikey’s face, his eyes wide and frightened, his rosebud lips mouthing a silent Maar… mee! She felt no panic or fear, only an overwhelming regret. The black edge swept over her and the void wrapped her in oblivion.