After The Fall Part 7

"It seems cruel, doesn't it?" I said conversationally, preparing the tubes I would need to catch Shura's blood. "It's going to hurt, and she has no idea why."

"She doesn't need to know," replied her mother, lips set. "Besides, it's nothing compared to what Emma's gone through, and to the benefit it might bring."

She was right, of course, but her tone made me uneasy as I slid the needle in.

"You know that siblings don't always match, don't you?" I asked, slowly drawing up the plunger. Shura flinched as the red liquid rose in the cylinder.

"Yes, but Emma and Shura will. They have to," the woman responded with determination. It suddenly occurred to me that for a two-and-a-half-year-old Shura didn't speak much.

"Good girl," I told the toddler, withdrawing the needle and hunting in my pockets for a toy. "You were very brave. Would you like to play with this monkey?"

The child reached for the animal, but her mother pushed her hands away. "It might have germs, and we need you to be healthy for Emma," she said, heedless of her daughter's disappointment. "When will we get the results?"

The day the results were due I felt nervous, scared. Trying to hurry breakfast that morning I dropped my coffee cup, then cut a finger as I picked up the pieces. Luke heard me yelp and rushed in from the bathroom, where he had been shaving. As he helped me to my feet I burst into tears.

"Does it hurt that much? What's the matter?" he asked, turning the injured digit over for inspection.

"It's not that," I sobbed. "I'm worried about a patient-Emma, the one I told you about. We'll find out today if we can do her bone-marrow transplant. It's been worrying me all night-I hardly slept."

It was true. I'd tossed and turned while Luke slumbered on beside me. These days he was sleeping more deeply than ever. What a luxury to have nothing to keep you awake, no issues more bothersome than the latest sales figures for toilet paper.

"Oh, Cress," said Luke, kissing my finger and drawing me into his arms. "You care too much about those people. About everything. You've got to let go, my love. I know it's sad, but you can't let it consume you."

He was right, of course, but how do you stop caring? Emotions can't be turned on and off like tap water.

KATE.

The second time we made love it was at the museum. First Cary's workplace, then mine. Cressida's too, I guess-that first time, I mean-though I thought about her as little as I could.

We hadn't seen Luke and Cressida since the trivia night, and it bothered me. When I parted from Luke after our tryst on the roof I had felt elated, euphoric and supremely confident that that wasn't the end of it. How could it be? We had been too natural, too good together, the fit just right. There had been too much desire for it to have all been spent. So I left him outside the ladies' room without a backward glance or a second thought, sure I'd be seeing him again soon.

Only I hadn't. Three weeks had pa.s.sed with no word, just Cary following me around, wanting to talk about children. I snapped at him once, then immediately felt guilty. He loved me enough to be asking this, yet all I felt was irritation. I didn't even dare a.n.a.lyze why. Six months ago the idea of kids had been quite an attractive one. I was thirty-two and happily married; it was time to get on with such things. Cary would be a good father, and a break from work appealed. But now I'd gone cold, and the reason was Luke. I wanted what had happened on that roof to happen again-the s.e.x and the starlight and the subterfuge. Pregnancy and children didn't fit the equation.

Still, maybe it wasn't going to happen again anyway. I cursed myself as the days stretched by without a phone call, an e-mail, a sighting. Luke was undeniably attractive to women-maybe he did this sort of thing all the time. Heaven knows he was a flirt; I had seen him in action at too many parties or pubs to mention. But I was a flirt too, and I'd been so sure it was more than that. Something, I'd thought, had been simmering between us for a while. Was it so easily appeased?

Midway through Friday afternoon at the end of the third week the phone in my office rang. Foolishly my heart leaped, but it was only Cary. I wondered again why Luke hadn't called as Cary explained that he needed to go through some slides for a conference with Steve, and wouldn't be home until late. That was fine, I told Cary. I might go out with my colleagues for a drink after work, or even just head home for an early night. I was tired; it had been a long week.

"I'll see you later then," said Cary. Then he paused, and added, "Maybe we can even get started on that project?"

He meant the baby, of course. "Maybe," I'd replied noncommittally. Weeks ago I'd said something to him about going off the pill, but had done no such thing. After I hung up I stared at the phone for a long minute, feeling confused and unsettled. It didn't ring.

Two hours later I was leaving work when something caught my eye. It was a beautiful evening, spring easing into summer, a November night unable to make up its mind. At first I thought the flash of gold was the sun going down in the west, or reflecting off the windows of the tram trundling down Nicholson Street past the museum. For a second I was even annoyed that I'd missed that tram; then I turned my head and recognized the source of light. Luke. He smiled when he saw me, a warm, natural smile that pulled like the moon. I felt my own face come alive with pleasure and barely managed to stop myself from kissing him.

"What are you doing here?" I asked, awkwardly banging my briefcase against my legs in clumsy delight.

"Hoping to see you. Is there somewhere we can talk? Would you like a drink?"

"Yes and yes," I replied recklessly. "Yes to everything."

We went to the Pumphouse across the road. Luke had a beer, and bought me champagne without asking.

"So, how have you been?" he asked, sitting opposite me. The bubbles in my gla.s.s jumped and popped, heedlessly racing up through the liquid to explode on the surface.

"Good," I replied simply, still smiling.

"I'm sorry I haven't called," he said, pushing his beer around on the table. "G.o.d knows I wanted to. But every time I picked up the phone I thought maybe I shouldn't, maybe it was all too complicated. You know."

And I did; I understood perfectly. Three weeks of second-guessing myself dissolved like those bubbles.

"Where's Cressida?" I asked.

"At work. She's on all night. Till eleven, anyway. Cary?"

"He's working too. A conference presentation or something. He'll probably be home around nine."

Simultaneously we looked at our watches, then laughed as we caught ourselves doing so.

"Is there somewhere we can go?" asked Luke. His words were low and heavy with intent, his blue eyes suddenly darker. My hands felt shaky, and I set the gla.s.s down unfinished.

"Uh-huh," I muttered, not trusting myself to speak. We stood up from the table together.

I've always loved being in the museum after closing time. On the evenings I worked late it was a treat to wander out through galleries suddenly free from crowds and the shrill voices and smeary hands of school groups. In the quiet, I'd stop and look at some of my favorite exhibits: the Clunes goldfield diorama that I was first shown as a child at the old Russell Street site; the cross-sectioned rocks and minerals, their impossible colors glinting even brighter in the encroaching darkness; the blue whale skeleton, its jaw a perfect horseshoe of bone. My heels would tap on echoing floors, the soaring gla.s.s vault of the foyer as still as a cathedral.

Now I was making the journey in reverse. I swiped my ID pa.s.s, nodded guiltily to a security guard, and hurried Luke to my office as if he were just any visiting colleague with whom I had work to discuss. Luke trailed behind me, looking around, obviously interested.

"I've never been here before," he said.

"Never?" I was astonished. I a.s.sumed everyone in Melbourne had.

"Not this one," he corrected himself. "I was taken to see Phar Lap at the old museum when I was about eight. I think it's a compulsory childhood experience, isn't it?" He smiled, then looked around again. "But this building is something else. It's beautiful."

He couldn't have touched me more if he'd said the same about me.

My office wasn't actually just mine, but an area I shared with three other anthropologists. Each of our desks squatted in a corner of the third-floor room, which was lit by a long rectangular window overlooking the Science and Life Gallery below. I brought Luke over to it. For a moment we stood there in silence, the blue whale skeleton seeming to swim away beneath us into the gloom. In the aftermath of leave-taking, computers hummed on deserted desks, their screen savers glowing with stars or fish or family photos. Some desks, like mine, were strewn with paper; others had been cleared with more care, the list of next week's tasks already placed precisely for Monday morning.

"No one's coming back?" asked Luke.

"No one ever comes back," I told him, only just getting the words out before his mouth met mine.

We lay down this time, on the rug between the desks, beneath the fading light. Luke removed my clothes slowly, almost tenderly, scrutinizing each inch of flesh as it came into view. First he would look, then lightly touch, and finally kiss the exposed skin, moving slowly and deliberately down the length of my body. Once I reached for him, but he gently moved my hands away.

"Not yet," he murmured against a rib, tracing its curve with his lips. "I want to know you first."

So I waited until I felt I would explode with my need to touch him, then, naked in his arms, began my own survey. His chest was warm and steady, his navel a perfect O. The hair below it, I was surprised to see, was only slightly darker than that on his head, a burnished gold the color of doubloons or buried treasure. When I took him in my mouth I tasted salt and soap and heard his cry.

Later we held each other as the sky outside grew dark. Luke cradled me closely, occasionally moving to kiss an ear, a finger, my forehead, our heartbeats gradually returning to normal. In the half-light the past loomed all around: dusty files, old bones, the smell of formalin and the earth. And us, the smell of us, the present, the future, the new.

CARY.

I knew almost immediately that Kate wasn't keen, but thought that if I kept talking about it she'd come around. Children, that is. To be fair, we'd never actually discussed the issue, but she had been so eager for me to propose that I a.s.sumed she felt as I did. What's the point of even getting married if you don't want to have kids?

I thought we were of one mind when I first raised the subject after the trivia night. She'd seemed to agree, had said she'd go off the pill and have her rubella immunity checked. Some days later I noticed that the shiny pack of Nordette had disappeared from the bathroom, and my spirits soared. But as the weeks went by and no announcement came, I couldn't help but wonder if Kate had simply shifted the pills to her purse or her bedside drawer and continued to take them.

I didn't like distrusting Kate. I'd never done so before, but it was her own fault for giving me reason to doubt her in the first place. It sounds crazy, but before she'd kissed Luke at that wedding I hadn't even conceived of the possibility of her being unfaithful. What's that old saying? It doesn't matter where you get your appet.i.te, as long as you dine at home It doesn't matter where you get your appet.i.te, as long as you dine at home. Kate might tease and charm and trifle, but I thought we both knew what we had in each other, and were more than happy to eat in.

Initially everything appeared to have been smoothed over. It was just a drunken indiscretion, one tango too far. We'd talked; she'd apologized; I'd forgiven her. I'd put it out of my mind, started looking forward to the prospect of fatherhood. After a week or two, however, it became apparent that Kate wasn't rushing to join the mothers' club. She changed the topic when I brought up babies, shrugged her shoulders when I asked about those rubella results. In bed she was as accessible and desirable as ever, but something wasn't right. I'd imagined us curled together postcoitally debating the merits of potential names, or where we'd send the kids to school. She was happy to make love but fell asleep almost immediately afterward, the silky arch of her spine curved toward me like a question mark.

I didn't know what to do. Was she in this or not? I started thinking about the kiss again. And the more I did the more I began to feel that she owed me: a child to prove her love, to re-cement our vows. To be completely honest, I guess a part of me also wanted to secure her, to tie her to my side with blood. I didn't feel like this all the time-when we cooked a meal together or shared a laugh at the end of the day I'd forget about such mad mental arithmetic. But by myself, stuck in traffic or waiting in line at the hospital cafeteria, I'd suddenly recall the way her shoulders had tilted toward Luke or wonder about the absent contraception, and my hands would go rigid around the steering wheel or tray. It wasn't like me at all.

Of course, I'd wanted children long before this. That kiss might have intensified the drive or changed its impetus, but it didn't provoke the desire. I'm an only child and I'd long ago determined that I'd have a big family of my own. Three children, preferably, two at the least. That seemed big to me.

CRESSIDA.

The results weren't good. The most likely source of a bone-marrow donor is always a sibling, but Shura didn't match. She wasn't even close. Only thirty-five percent of siblings do match, so the odds were never on Emma's side, but still the news was devastating. I sat in the tiny doctors' area reading the slip over and over before crumpling it in my hand. Then I reconsidered and smoothed it out. I'd have to show her parents, explain what it all meant and where we went from here. I longed to tell Luke and have his comfort alleviate some of the pain, but something stopped me from reaching for the phone.

Luke seemed preoccupied lately, and busier at work than he'd ever been. I a.s.sumed that the two were related. At first I was glad to see him as immersed in his job as I was in mine, not always asking me when I'd be off or phoning my cell if I was still at the hospital an hour past the end of my shift. But then I started to miss those calls. I missed knowing he was at home waiting for me, preparing our dinner and listening for the sound of my car in the drive. It was childish, really-most of the time he was was at home waiting, eager to talk and share the few hours before pediatrics claimed me once more. But on a few occasions I arrived home before him to a dark and empty house, dinner unprepared, the ingredients not even purchased. Invariably he'd turn up not much later, the glow of outdoors still in his cheeks, full of talk and excitement for the campaign he'd been busy with or the deal he'd clinched. For years I'd been wishing that he'd like his job more, resent mine less, but when it finally happened it irked me. I don't know why. at home waiting, eager to talk and share the few hours before pediatrics claimed me once more. But on a few occasions I arrived home before him to a dark and empty house, dinner unprepared, the ingredients not even purchased. Invariably he'd turn up not much later, the glow of outdoors still in his cheeks, full of talk and excitement for the campaign he'd been busy with or the deal he'd clinched. For years I'd been wishing that he'd like his job more, resent mine less, but when it finally happened it irked me. I don't know why.

I ushered Emma's parents into an interview room devoid of windows or any ornamentation save a struggling African violet perched precariously on the light box. I carefully lifted it onto the desk before turning to shatter their hopes.

"The news isn't good, I'm afraid," I said, my palms sweaty on Emma's thick file. "As you know, neither of you was a perfect match. Shura wasn't either."

I heard Emma's mother swallow hard. "You can still do the transplant, though, can't you?" asked her husband.

"I'm afraid not. The HLA typing wasn't nearly close enough. Giving Emma Shura's bone marrow would do more harm than good."

"But how can that be?" cried the mother. "They look so alike I was sure they'd match. They're sisters, for G.o.d's sake!"

I said nothing, letting the news sink in.

"So you can't use her at all?" asked the father, gesturing toward his younger daughter. Oblivious, Shura played on the floor with some cars I'd thought to s.n.a.t.c.h up from the ward on the way to this meeting.

"We can look elsewhere for a match. Try the bone-marrow registry, maybe test Emma's cousins, if she has any." Out of the corner of my eye I saw Emma's mother shake her head.

"We need to tell Emma," said the father, rising to his feet. "We promised her that it would all be okay."

"It still may well be," I called after him as he left the room. I turned to the mother, but she was also collecting her things, tears streaming down her face.

"My poor baby," she keened. "My lovely girl."

Neither had thought to pick up Shura, and she toddled after them crying.

Over the next week I saw the family again a number of times. We needed their permission to start a registry search and eventually obtained it, but only after they'd insisted on having Shura retested. The match was no different, and it saddened me. After the second failure the child appeared to have been dismissed from her parents' notice. Not unwanted, but disregarded-as far as I could see her basic needs were met, but little else. Though Emma was sure to die if a matching donor couldn't be found, Shura's fate worried me more. Her sickly sister had her parents' full attention and love, while healthy Shura was left to wander out into the corridor or the nurses' station searching for company. One day I found her crying outside the bedpan-cleaning room, obviously lost and frightened.

"Mama," she shrieked, "Mama," holding out her arms to my familiar face. When I tracked down her real mother I could barely contain my anger.

"She was screaming for you. Didn't you hear her crying?"

"Oh," said the woman, barely looking up from her vigil at Emma's bedside. "I thought that was somebody else's child."

The same afternoon I b.u.mped into Cary in the corridor. I was late for a meeting; he was heading who knows where. We were both embarra.s.sed and hurried away without much more than mumbled greetings, but I realized after he'd gone how much I missed him. Not just him, but the foursome that we'd made. For over a year he and Kate, Luke and I had been so close, had seen one another so often. It had almost been like family, or what I imagined a family would feel like if they stopped being doctors long enough to actually talk. Now as I sat in that meeting, not hearing a word that was said, I felt angry at Luke and Kate all over again. Not just for that wedding kiss or their f.e.c.klessness, but for ruining something worth so much more than any momentary pleasure they might have gained. I'd liked and respected Cary-he'd been a good supervisor and a steady friend. I'd liked Kate too, been drawn to her vivacity, won over by her generous spirit and love of laughter. But even more I'd liked who I was when Luke and I were with them: part of a team, a clique, where I belonged and was welcomed. Now all that was gone, and for a moment I felt as bereft as Shura.

LUKE.

Soon it was all I could think about: Kate, and when I could see her next. Or talk to her, spend a minute with her voice in my ear and the phone cradled damply against my skin. We both had direct lines, though only I had my own office. At first we'd talk once a week, then every few days, until it got to the point that I couldn't let the morning go past without speaking to her. My work suffered and I started to bargain with myself, to use those phone calls as rewards: once I got through that budget I could call her; if I finished the presentation I would let myself phone again. Of course, she wasn't always there and then I'd have to set some other goal before dialing once more, hanging up if the shrilling wasn't answered in the first three rings. If she was there, she always picked up.

Kate rarely called me. But then, she couldn't, not with those other three desks lurking so close, those colleagues who would be sure to wonder at so much time spent talking to a man not her husband. When I called she would have to act as if it were business, restricting herself to yes-or-no answers, throwing in the occasional reference to relics or techniques I'd never heard of. Somehow she maintained this throughout even our raunchiest conversations. Or monologues rather, me at one end describing how I'd touch her the next time we met or the way she'd tasted when I kissed her, she at the other primly saying, "Yes," or, "Maybe," or, "Sorry, could you repeat that?" It drove me wild-her covert encouragement, the chance to verbalize everything I felt and wanted, being met with nothing but the faintest intake of breath and a cautiously officious, "Go on."

I'd never tried talking dirty with Cress. It just hadn't seemed right-not because she was my wife, but because she was a doctor. I wondered if maybe the words would sound crude to her anatomically correct ears or, worse still, silly. Of course, her being a virgin when we met had meant that I'd initially avoided the blue language for fear of shocking her. Then after a while it was just habit, I guess-most couples stick within the same sort of s.e.xual routine, give or take the odd anniversary experiment. That was certainly true of me and Cress, and I don't mind admitting it. It wasn't broken, so why fix it? I'd tried pretty much everything before I'd gotten married. It was fun at the time, but after the frantic maneuverings of unattached s.e.x, with all its posturing and trying to impress, there was something to be said for the comfort and tranquillity of the marital bed.

Or so I'd thought. Why, then, was I grappling with Kate on her office floor at every opportunity we had? Or making love to her in the backseat of my car, or the shadow of a Moreton Bay fig in the Royal Botanic Gardens, or against the wall in Tim's apartment once when he was away on vacation and I was meant to be watering the plants? I began to long for a bed, to feel that there would be nothing more erotic than to lie with Kate between white sheets, all our clothes removed rather than hastily pulled up, down or aside. We never used our houses. Cary's hours were unpredictable, and I couldn't relax at my place. Tim was always dropping in, or the hospital would ring looking for Cress, and I worried she'd notice anyway. I couldn't be sure she wouldn't detect marks on the sheets, a strand of Kate's dark hair in the bathroom.

There is nothing better than s.e.x: anyone who says otherwise simply isn't doing it right. In college one time some guys I had gotten friendly with invited me on a surfing trip. I'd never tried the sport, but their enthusiasm was infectious. "You'll love it," said one. "It's better than s.e.x!" Surfing was fun, but better than s.e.x? Since then I've heard the expression used in many contexts, describing chocolate, football, even in one of our own advertising campaigns-for beer, if I remember correctly. Yet I'm still not sure if people actually mean it. How could they? There are lots of things that are enjoyable, but s.e.x is a world apart. s.e.x, in fact, is the key. What else distinguishes, defines the relationship between a man and a woman? Isn't that what marriage is all about? Legalized s.e.x, recognizing that it is the carnal act that binds the two of you together, identifies you as husband and wife. For better or worse, sleeping with someone shifts the relationship from mere friendship or desire into a whole other dimension.

Kate and I rarely spoke when we were together. Sentences, that is-logical phrases with a beginning and end, the time for a reply. As soon as I saw her I was erect, aroused, the clock already ticking at my back. Who can converse in such circ.u.mstances? Instead our conversations were limited to moans and sighs, her whispered yes yes as my tongue probed between her thighs, my own half sob as I spent myself inside her. Afterward, we'd be too dazed to chat, communicating with smiles and kisses until forced to part or the pa.s.sion rose again, muting us. That's not to say we never talked. Between those one-sided exchanges during work hours and the wordless trysts outside them we found a way. Every few days Kate would work late, ostensibly sweating over a grant or categorizing the museum's latest acquisitions. Her colleagues, government employees every one, would be out of the building on the dot of five, leaving us thirty, forty minutes to laugh and chat on the phone before Cary called to pick her up. After a while, and to my surprise, I came to enjoy the talking as much as the touching, stopped regarding one as a poor subst.i.tute for the other. I'd been infatuated before and had a.s.sumed that this was just another instance of it. But I had never really wanted to talk to those girls, never wanted to know what they thought or tease a smile out of their voice. Now, with Kate, I did. And I realized it was getting serious. as my tongue probed between her thighs, my own half sob as I spent myself inside her. Afterward, we'd be too dazed to chat, communicating with smiles and kisses until forced to part or the pa.s.sion rose again, muting us. That's not to say we never talked. Between those one-sided exchanges during work hours and the wordless trysts outside them we found a way. Every few days Kate would work late, ostensibly sweating over a grant or categorizing the museum's latest acquisitions. Her colleagues, government employees every one, would be out of the building on the dot of five, leaving us thirty, forty minutes to laugh and chat on the phone before Cary called to pick her up. After a while, and to my surprise, I came to enjoy the talking as much as the touching, stopped regarding one as a poor subst.i.tute for the other. I'd been infatuated before and had a.s.sumed that this was just another instance of it. But I had never really wanted to talk to those girls, never wanted to know what they thought or tease a smile out of their voice. Now, with Kate, I did. And I realized it was getting serious.

KATE.

And then it was Christmas. For five weeks I'd been sleeping with Luke, going to work, dating artifacts, yet somehow completely missing the decorations that had sprouted like a tropical fungus across the museum's foyer and the carols spilling out of every store in town. Distracted, I guess. Intoxicated, overwhelmed by Luke, caught up in something that I didn't understand, but had no desire to get out of. s.e.x, sure, but more than that. Just being with him made me happy, as ba.n.a.l and trite as a teenage crush. I didn't know what to make of it. Cary had won my love steadily and sweetly. This, though, was an abduction, a takeover, the violence of my emotions both thrilling and fearsome. I shook when Luke made love to me.

Sarah brought me back to reality by calling me at work to ask if I could fit in drinks and dinner before Christmas.

"Christmas?" I'd asked stupidly, flicking through my diary, looking for the date. To my surprise it was December 15.

"Yeah-ho, ho, ho and all that," she replied while her brood shrieked in the background. "You'll know all about Christmas soon enough, when you have kids."

"Um, yeah," I mumbled. "How about next week, the twenty-first? After work? We could go to that pub you used to like."

"The Lemon Tree? Too noisy. I want somewhere we can talk. I feel like we haven't caught up properly in months. And you didn't rise to my bait."

I heard the chime of an e-mail arriving. "What?" I asked, nonplussed. Everything was confusing me.

"Kids. Anything happening there? You told me Cary was keen."

"G.o.d, no. Who'd be pregnant at Christmas, with so much drinking to be done?"

"Hmmm," she responded. "I don't think I'm getting the whole story. But I will next week. In vino veritas In vino veritas, or whatever it is."

I hung up the phone feeling vaguely uneasy, then opened the e-mail. It was from Cary.