I took no notice. I chose not to believe the voice. I went home and wrote him a letter. I told him all about an enthralling geometry lesson I’d done back in high school.
I know.
Not every boy would want to hear about a geometry lesson, but Jack was a carpenter. He had an innate understanding of geometry.
I told him about how our second form teacher, Miss Crane, drew the tiniest chalk mark on the blackboard and explained that a point is “zero-dimensional,” meaning it doesn’t actually exist. But once you have two points—two nonexistent points—you can fill in the space between with lots and lots of points, and you get a line, which has length, so it’s now one dimension, which you could argue means it does now exist. Miss Crane dotted her chalk against the board, over and over, in a straight line, demonstrating how a series of nothings could become something. (Actually, you could also argue the line still doesn’t exist, it’s just a concept, but I’d learned by then not to add caveats to everything I said. This was, after all, a love letter.)
I told Jack how I leaned forward that day in class as if I stood with my toes hanging over the very precipice of enlightenment. In my naivete, I believed Miss Crane was about to explain something that explained everything. Something I felt I almost already knew, but could not articulate; it was related to infinity and God, the ocean and space, the universe and my dad.
Of course, I did not achieve enlightenment in my geometry lesson. Miss Crane put the chalk down and told us to take out our compasses and protractors.
I told Jack that when I was with him, I felt like I was close to understanding what I had nearly understood that day.
I told him I was a zero-dimensional, nonexistent point, floating in space, until I met him.
Yes, I know. What an embarrassing love letter! Attempting to be poetic about geometry! A modern woman would never write such a thing. You should most definitely exist before you meet a man! You should have your own career, your own hobbies, your own thoughts, and your own financial plan!
Never mind, no need to feel mortified on my behalf, because I don’t believe Jack ever read or received my letter.
Jack had only been in Vietnam for twenty days when he and two other members of his platoon, both national service conscripts—“nashos” like him—were wounded in action by an enemy mine. Jack died in a field hospital early the next morning. The other two recovered.
Jack was born at a minute to midnight. Sixty seconds later and he would have had a different birthdate and the birthday ballot, the “death lottery,” would have had no impact on his life. Jack Murphy would have been my husband and the father of my children. I wonder if I would have liked them.
Mrs. Murphy would have been my mother-in-law. I wonder if she would have ever learned to like me. I doubt it. I saw her just once, a decade later, when I got out of my car after parking on Albert Lane, Hornsby. She looked terribly old and drawn, but I recognized her straightaway. I know she saw me, I know she recognized me. We held eye contact for a good few seconds. Her lips moved. I assume she was muttering, Clever Clogs. I went to lift my hand, but she turned her head sharply and crossed the street to avoid me.
My mother never stopped marveling at the quality of her beautifully built, geometrically perfect floating shelves.
Chapter 80
“Excuse me! Hello?”
Eve is walking up the hill from the bus stop toward the cathedral when she turns to see a businesswoman jump out of her car, keys in hand, handbag looped over one arm. She looks like someone’s capable but kind boss. She crosses the road toward Eve, all hopeful and urgent, as if Eve will be able to offer important assistance.
Eve straightens her mother’s black dress, her go-to dress for funerals. Imagine having a go-to dress for funerals. That’s what it’s like to be old. As if wrinkles were not enough.
“Hi.” The woman is now in front of Eve. She has wispy, fly-away hair escaping from a messy bun. Presumably she is in a state of terrible grief for the lovely doctors. Maybe she’s their granddaughter? Oh my God, what is Eve going to say? But probably lots of former patients will be coming to the funeral. Eve will mention the jelly beans.
“I think we were on the same flight to Sydney,” says the woman. “I’m Paula. I think…you were the bride?”
“Oh!” says Eve, relieved. “Yes, I was the bride. I’m Eve. Are you here for the funeral?”
“Yes, although I don’t—well, I never met them, I just remember them from the flight. I was the one with the screaming baby.” Paula tucks the wisps of hair behind her ears. “Did that lady—”
“Oh, yes,” says Eve. “She sure did.”
Paula breathes a little shakily and looks up at the spires of the cathedral tower. “Me too. I wondered if there was a chance she might turn up today. You know how murderers always lurk in the back of the funerals of their victims? Or they do on television, I don’t know if they really do in real life.”
“That was my exact thinking too,” says Eve.
Paula says, “I’m desperate to find her.”
“Me too,” says Eve. “I’m going to pay her to give me a different prediction. I’m hoping she will do it for a hundred dollars, do you reckon that’s enough?” It better be enough.
“But what if it’s the same prediction?”
“No, no. I’m going to bribe her to say what I want her to say. I just need to find her.”
“Oh,” says Paula. “Right. But what if she won’t?”
Doubt slithers. The story of Eve’s dad bribing the tarot card reader has always been such an established fact in her family history, she has assumed all psychics are open to bribery, but what if that assumption is incorrect, like so many of her assumptions?
“So it sounds like you think she’s definitely a fraud?” continues Paula. “Even though she’s correctly predicted three deaths now?”
“I know she is,” says Eve. “She said I was going to die of ‘intimate partner homicide.’ ”
Paula shudders. “She told me my baby was going to drown when he’s seven.”
Eve is aghast. “That’s way more horrible. He’s not going to drown! Just make sure he knows how to swim, like, that’s important…sorry, I’m sure you already knew that.”
Paula smiles strangely. “It’s okay, I’m definitely teaching him how to swim.” She studies Eve. “So your husband, he’s not…” She doesn’t say the word “violent.” She doesn’t need to say it. “I assume he’s never…” She doesn’t need to say the words “hit you” either.
This is what keeps happening now. Eve sees awful questions in people’s eyes. Questions convicting Dom without a trial. People who should know better, like her own mother, who said she was so sorry, but she just had to check, just in case there was something Eve wasn’t telling her. The injustice of it makes Eve feel huge swells of rage on Dom’s behalf. It is so wrong that her sweet Dom should be accused of something he would never do, and he can’t even prove his innocence, because his guilt is supposedly in his future.
“I’m sorry.” Paula looks at her keenly. “I shouldn’t have asked that.”
“I’m not even one percent worried,” says Eve. “He would never, ever, hurt me, not in a million years.”
“I get it,” says Paula. She frowns. “So then, if you’re so sure, why not just ignore it?”
