In those days I did not
speak. I watched,
I drew him as shadow

a pale glass offering
from the sea.
He hardened at the edges.

I drew the light that fell
through and when
he left I drew from

the tiny paintings
of the mind. No one
can take them from you.

She moves them to those brown flatlands

His fourteen-year-old body slumps in the front with a stack of LPs at his feet. The smell of Sylvia's coconut oil skin fills the car, his bare legs stick to the vinyl seat. Tar melts on the road, bubbles under the wheels as they wind down the hill.

On his lap is a box of sweet tomatoes, their skins bruise and soften as they thump against the sides of the box. One splits open, yellow seeds trapped in red pulp. Egg yolk. Bea's lumpy legs. He throws up.

Fucken hell, Federico! She swerves to a resting place.

Silence.

They watch heat rise from the basin of south Wairarapa. She gives him water. Sorry, she whispers.

Flood's farewell

I've come to say goodbye, Flood had said, like they were leaving forever.

Federico was loading boxes into the car. He saw the lumpen shape at the end of the street, the slow approach. The way he studied everything around him. Flood leaned over a fence to pick a camellia, bent down to talk to a cat lying in the gutter. The old, slow man irritated Fderico. He sat on the bonnet of the car, arms crossed. Flood held the flower out and leaned towards him. For your mother. His breath smelt stale, sweet. Federico nodded and took it. Flood looked away down the road. I was at Bea's wedding. I never told her that.

What?

I came with Marion. Bea worked with her. Everyone thought I was Marion's husband. When we left the chapel, the real husband was waiting outside. He walked straight up and punched me, hard on the nose. Flood turned sideways. That's why it's bloody crooked. Flood looked down at his big empty hands. I wish I'd told her.

Federico had a strong feeling of wanting to poke him, push his finger so it got lost in that soft round belly. Suddenly Flood took page 106in a quick gasp of air, made a sound like he couldn't breathe. His body rocked forward and he grabbed Federico's arms to balance. He steadied himself, his head hung low. Federico let the old man rest there for a while, did not turn away from his stale old smell.

I'll give Sylvia the flower.

Flood didn't look up. I love you boy, he said.

Cramp

Hot air on his face and everything seems far away—mountains on the left, distant hills on the right.

Light me a smoke will you love?

He'd rather not help her, but likes the tiny roar when the brown leaves catch. He presses a cigarette to the red coils, passes it to Sylvia.

We went to school together. I was beautiful, but Elizabeth was brilliant. She read books all the time. Sylvia takes a drag. Tom was a lawyer, like his Dad. When Amy was born he had one of those… you know, when you realise stuff? That's when he took up pottery. Sylvia snorts and slaps the steering wheel.

When Federico imagined this place it was without people, like an empty movie set. Main streets lifted from Sunday afternoon Westerns—High Noon, Shane—heavy air that hangs about like an ache. He places his bare feet on the dash. I don't want to be here.

Sylvia breathes smoke out her nose. Stony lips.

I can't stay in that house, Federico. We need a break. We need a change of scene. And now the ugly hill rolls between him and Bea.

You didn't have to sell it. He looks away to a hawk circling over a brown paddock, its eye on any movement in the ground.

It felt like Bea's house. Not mine.

He wants to piss her off. To cut her. Bea would have asked me.

I'm not Bea. She reaches over and pulls the ashtray out, squashes the smoke down like a full stop.

Tom

Solid rimu, says Tom. Bangs the bedroom wall twice with his heavy palm. Wall of their new home, on the town's edge, pasted in by tar seal and paddocks. I've been meaning to lift the carpet and polish the floorboards.

It's lovely, says Sylvia. Everything is lovely.

In the living room and in the bedrooms Federico studies the carpet. Its rose pattern is most worn where someone's feet first touched the floor every morning for years. He imagines that person, stepping into his foot-hold and slowly wearing down the pile, like a body.

Tom makes a gesture with his freckled hands. I could show you how to turn a bowl. Federico imagines bowls spinning through thin air. Weightless. He turns and runs down the hall on the threadbare roses, jumps three porch steps out into the white heat of midday.

Elizabeth

That night he sits in the paddock outside their house, kitchen lit like a stage.

Elizabeth's last to bed. She folds washing then reads. Bare feet on the table corner, book open on her legs, presses a cup to her cheek. She laughs at the book. She reads like Sylvia watches TV, like it's the world.

Stars are more visible than in the city. On the roadside, trees shift and creak.

Amy

She lies in bed at night and waits for blood to pulse at her skin's edges. Then she is a deep sea creature, alive on the bottom of the ocean, her breath slow, her body rocked and pulled by currents.

She watches the new boy watching her. His quick sideways glances remind her of a lizard, testing the air with its tongue.

Train

Federico misses the tin roofs of Johnsonville. Here, there are cows and sheep, water troughs covered in slime, the occasional horse for interest. A symmetry of paddocks and a sky like an open mouth.

He watches Tom at the wheel. Tom's large hands work the heavy clay like dough. He teaches Federico to push the air out, remove weaknesses, he says. The thermostat in the kiln clicks every few minutes, pushes the heat up slow so the pots won't shatter.

Cicadas rub their metal wings inside the grass. The green undergrowth has turned brown in the drought. A continuous haze rises from the hot earth. Elizabeth and Amy are in hammocks, reading. Amy fans her face with her book but doesn't look up at him. Elizabeth smiles. He sits down on the steps.

Amy, you could take Federico to the pool.

He can hear Amy breathe out heavily. I said I would later.

Well you could be early.

Amy gets slowly to her feet. She walks into the house still reading. Elizabeth says he can use her bike. It's a green Raleigh Twenty. Amy's is a ten speed.

Amy clicks her gears down and pedals fast onto the road. The smell of hot tarseal hits him. Wait up, he yells. Amy doesn't turn round. He rides behind her to the end of the road. They stop before the railway crossing as the arm descends. The bells start to ring. Under his pack, his back's wet, his feet puffy and tight in his sneakers. He counts carriages in his head as the train passes. From the corner of his eye he can see Amy yelling at him, but he can't hear her for the ringing and clattering.

What!

How come you're so white?

He doesn't know what to say to that and looks away, up into the swaying poplars. We don't have to be friends. She looks right at him when she says it, her face calm. He keeps counting. The train passes.

French Lessons

He cannot remember the word most useful when you are hungry. I would like, I would like…

Federico reads the book about the girl who killed her father's lover. He reads it in English. The French teacher is impressed with his comprehension. She wants them to call her Madame. She wants them to eat real French food. Sylvia cooks him coq au vin. But she can't say it. Vin, vin, she says. Madame shouts at the class, Your minds should be like blotting paper! Weekends, they soak in it. They drown in litres of DB Draught, pink Chardon.

Her laugh jangles like a wrist of coloured bangles

At a party he sees her. She's talking to Amy, their heads bowed together in secret. He can feel them looking at him. His new friend Rick is explaining the tragedy of Ian Curtis, gripping Federico's arm as he talks. Everyone talks about people like James Dean, which is crap, I mean Ian Curtis. Rick looks over his shoulder. Fly! he yells. The volume increases. James Dean didn't have the … he was just an actor.

Federico thinks of Giant. Mr Flood used to say James Dean …

Who the fuck is Mr Flood? Everyone you know has weird names. What I'm saying is Ian Curtis was beyond cool, he was so far ahead, cool people thought he was uncool, which is so, you know. Rick's eyes won't focus on Federico's face. 'Love Will Tear Us Apart' starts to play. He slaps his arm round Federico's neck, hugs him, You're strange, bro, but I like you. Rick jumps away, pogos into the room. The crowd splits in two. And she's standing there, ignoring Rick, her head tipped back with laughter.

When she's not looking he tries to watch her hands. The way she holds them as she talks, not showing off with them, not aware of them, the way a tree doesn't notice its own branches. Unlike him, she seems to know exactly what to do with her hands, how to let them be, even when there's nothing in them.

Lightmaker

An opening,
a crack in the roof.

He lies awake through nights
and days and nights.

Watches the continual sky forge
light, cool to a pale bruise.

Some places unlock the body

Too easy to slip off the earth. He wonders where Bea got to. He's disturbed the animals. Faint scratchings under the floorboards and high in the rafters. A couple of birds fly out a hole in the wall. There's a nest up in the far corner of the roof but he tries not to look at it directly. He read somewhere birds don't like that.

There's a desk. Solid wood with intricate pathways and holes made by insects that click as they eat. He knows the contents of its drawer—bottle of Teachers brand quarter-full, pages of a paperback held together with string and a bull sale catalogue from 1968. All the bull names start with F and one is called Ferdinando. There are a few meat hooks bunched up in a corner, but the rest of the room has been stripped back to floor and iron walls. He flipped through the book. It's set in Wellington, but the end is missing.

Separate from this barn, the old meat works stands. He won't go in there, scared of sheep and cattle ghosts, the way they might silently crowd in on him. Spots of light come through holes in the roof, change shape on the floorboards. One afternoon it rained and he found puddles with tiny black insects floating and flapping their wings. In the middle of the floor a steel plate covers some boards. He tried to lift it, curious to know if there were any animal bones beneath. The weight of it caught him off balance, it wouldn't budge.

He sits against one of the beams and rests his feet on the edge of the steel, looks up through the hole in the north wall. A patch of blue where birds come and go talking, fighting. He's not sure where page 111disputes end and play begins. Here in his barn everything has its own language.

He flicks the lighter, on off, on on off. There's a groove, a rhythm that washes over the body until it comes from the body. The side of his right thumb has developed hard compressed layers of skin. A callus must be worked at, regular practice so the skin doesn't soften. Here in his kingdom of one he tries to hold onto Bea's voice. Once he tried to copy her by saying his name out loud, wanted to roll over the r like she did. But the angles in his voice were all wrong, nothing of Bea left in it.

Inside the soft yellow light of the barn he lays intricate networks. Strips of bark tied round a pine cone, paper twists ripped from his maths book, a handkerchief. He lays out matches, then groups them into patterns, thinks of ignition like dominoes crashing. He loves the mechanics of the lighter, but sulphur from the matches cuts in his nostrils like horseradish. Flames have to move through different pathways to reach the bundle of twigs he's set up on the plate. When it's going, he rests against the beam and watches his fire. All the locks in his body come undone.

Sketching

Amy walks in with her pencil and pad. She doesn't even ask. Just sits there in her quiet way. He keeps watching Dallas, mind half on the show, half on the small scratching sounds she makes with her pencil. He holds his head still, but not so still to be mistaken for posing. She wouldn't like that. He's busting for a pee, but he doesn't get off the couch. Wants to see what she thinks he looks like.

She likes his silence, she's never liked talking much. When she finally learnt to speak it was as if she could see her words lie awkward on the air, her parents' faces urging her on through the thick soup. Her mother's disappointment when she'd stutter and stop. She preferred silence, moments when you could see the changing shapes of clouds and trees again.

Miss Janine Sutcliffe comes to dinner

Right now he wishes to be something startling, like a person in a snowstorm.

Her jersey sleeves don't cover her wrists. Her right wrist has this big lump like someone stuck a needle in, filled it with air.

Alone in the kitchen, Janine walks right up close, whispers to his cheek, Federico, I'm thirsty. He reaches for a glass and she grabs his arm with that inflated hand, holds him there breathing. She spells him out like a new word.

Fed-der-ree-co.

He can't think what to say so he touches her lump. It's a miniature hill. She says, Sometimes the nurse drains liquid out but it's not dangerous.

They stand there quiet, not anything.

Floating, eating lunch

He knows this feeling, felt it once before. He was seven, and he and Sylvia and Bea had gone to Mr Flood's bach for Christmas. He woke and had no idea where he was. Outside a southerly was rustling the trees and sea. Like wrapping paper. Inside he was floating on a bed, secure and lost. Lost but secure. A person can be two opposite things at once! And now what is he? Janine holds out her hand. Do you want my apple? He cannot hear the screaming, laughing, tackling sounds of school lunch hour. He bites.

Song

lying by the river
on their lumpy coats
O lying by the river
on their lumpy coats

bodies are steel rails laid
side by side
and going nowhere
lying by the river

Where the sky starts

What a grand uncertainty the sky is, hard to know when you're touching it.

She raises her arm. It's a scientific fact my hand is now in the sky.

It's a scientific fact those stars are dead, he says. Their light is memory.

She pulls her hand out of the black, places it on his chest. Breath cracks and solidifies in his throat, river water sounds like a faint backing vocal.

Swallows

Winter crawled back into the world. Day swallowed into thick night, morning coughed out again.

Federico thinks about time. Does it feel the same way for everybody or does time change from person to person? How far back or forward it reaches before it dissolves. Elizabeth said time is make-believe. There's no beginning, no end. The trouble is getting your mind to stretch round the idea.

Afternoons spent at the window, fan heater whirring at his feet. Rain falls in heavy pellets and his vertebrae crackle and readjust. Tom's stopped asking if Federico wants to help in the studio. Tom's hardly there anyway, spends his time at the kitchen table chewing the end of his pen and yelling numbers down the phone to his broker. When the numbers are good he claps Federico on the back, says, Boyo, the sky is full of it, you just need to know where to put your bucket.

Elizabeth says, Tom, when are you going to drain the back paddock? It's a mud pool. Tom puts his hand over the mouthpiece. Honey, in a few months I'll make you a swimming pool.

On fine days Federico bikes to school, breathes sharp air into his lungs. Swallows fly overhead. Switch and flash like black daystars. A shifting galaxy.

Firestarters

Riding into town, Janine stops to roll a smoke, talks with the filter on her lips. Her voice rough in her throat like salt. Hey look. Beside them a long wooden factory, unlit. There's the bin where they throw out all the mistints. He goes to ask what she means, but she's dumped her bike and is halfway over the diamond fence.

They sit in the steel container. She's found the paint she likes and she peers into a can with a lighter. Do you want to see? He shakes his head. Her eyes make glossy night ponds over the lighter. She flicks it off. He can feel her shivering beside him.

He jumps out of the bin onto the dusty ground. Alive, untouched by frost or frost-bitten stars, he gathers twigs and dirty newspaper. He loves the way his mind will clear a space for fire. You've got to organise it in your head, imagine how easily a spark will catch. He climbs back up and builds it without fuss. It lights immediately. She watches him. He's confident now, like he might win a race. Holding her hands over it she says, My fires always go out.

She's a movie he wants to be in. Her cheek pressed close to the screen in black and white, turning her head toward him. That's what he loves about her, something in her face cool, untouchable. Then she speaks and a hot knife makes tiny cuts in him. He's as big as the sky.

He stands, opens the lid of a paint tin, looks at her, then pours it on the fire. For a few seconds there's nothing. There's a crash and they both jump from the container. A fireball blows into the air under the overhang of roof above.

What the fuck was that? she shouts.

Then he's back in his small, earthly body. Flames flap against the walls of the building. Far away he can hear her yelling at him. Fire ripping through the container, up the walls. She's pulling on his arm. He's surprised by the flame's speed. She stops tugging at him, watches him watching the fire. She reaches for his hand and pulls him to the fence.

Once Bea took him to Swan Lake. People dressed as birds, beaks and terrible limbs waving, he tried to recreate their leaps and balances at home, wanted to fly like them.

She jumped so fast from the container. Like a dancer.

As they cycle, strands of hair fall out of her ponytail. They ride and fire spills up through the roof of the paint factory; heat reflects off the ceiling onto the pack-house floor. Paint swelling in neatly stacked cans. She stops to roll a smoke, but her hands shake tobacco, dead leaves over her knees. Lids on the cans pop off, paint spreads a loose circle over the floor, colours swirl into each other like oil softening in a pan, burst into blue, then orange. They ride to the river.

He delivers water to her in cupped hands. Back and forth he travels, washes the dark from her hair. Silver dawn glows. What was bubbling is now burnt away, scorched to ground level.

Birds on the river-bank chatter, they puncture the air and the sky deflates. He gathers a fistful of stones and throws them hard at the talking birds.

Stop it stop it!

He hears her but won't stop. His fingers claw the wet bank, feet slipping under him, his bare knee gashes on the shingle. Good pain in his knee. Sky turning with birds.

The Crash

They watched it on the news, he and Sylvia. Men on phones, their faces white and strained. Phone cords in a large room criss-crossed over and over like confused knitting. A giant jersey unravelling. The future of some of New Zealand's leading companies is now Very Uncertain, said the newsreader.

Now they'll have to live like the rest of the bloody country, said Sylvia.
Will this be like the Depression? he asked her.
Nah, just less BMWs in town, she said.

He read a history book about the Crash at the end of the Roaring Twenties. People jumped from buildings. They bought too many cars and refrigerators and then they were spent. It was called the Crash because the people fell, smashed their bodies open on the ground. People came down like punctured balloons. The party ended on the footpath.

Lego

He dreams a car crash.
A bend in the road
and car parts spread like Lego
on the tar-seal, in a ditch.
Broken white lines, trees
and a woman, her hair immaculate
but not wearing clothes,
explains the names of her children.
He cannot take his eyes off her skin,
transparent with delicate veins
pulsing underneath.
Please, she tells him, gesturesat
children playing in the grass,
Please remember their horse.

Aftershock

Dusk is the blue inside of a flame, and that's the colour Amy wants her ballgown, with puffball sleeves and skirt.

For once, Amy's chatter fills a space between them at the table. Then Elizabeth says, Pass the salt, Tom, and her anger spills into the room. He hands it to her and she slams it down. Amy stares at the new dent in the wood. Tom stops chewing. Elizabeth leaves the room.

In the kitchen Federico can hear Elizabeth crying. Sylvia's saying, Please, don't worry about us, sell it if you need to.

Deep beneath the houses, the fault line turns a little, plates of earth bunt against each other, like the beams of a ship docking at night.

The storm

Janine wouldn't ring. She wouldn't ring him and for three days the world was dark and wild. It started with a low hum. Like a swarm of page 117wings, the flap of a hundred birds approaching. The temperature rose by three degrees, the sky cracked with light, and seemed to laugh. Then it pissed down. Water flowed over the gutters and after the first hour the garden and grass were a swamp. The drip in the hallway became a gush. Sylvia stood still at the window, her face moving with a bitter silent argument. Then she turned her back to the outside world and started to clean. She took every chopstick, paper napkin, cake slice, drink coaster out of every cupboard in the kitchen and scrubbed until the whole house smelt of Jif. She polished the silver. Then she took to every corner of the house with her bucket and brush. And while she worked she cried. Her eyes were full of salty water, and she couldn't make it stop. Even when she shut her eyes her lids shimmered like the skin on top of a puddle. She worked until her knuckles were red and torn, and the wind ripped the guttering off the south side of the house, the roof off the shed. He didn't go to school and she didn't go to work. They didn't talk. Sometime in the black hours of the third night when they had finally fallen asleep—only to dream of a world where transport was a boat that kept filling with water—it stopped.

Meteor

There was a time when all the kids at school started saying hi to each other the way adults do. It was the latest thing. Open the classroom door Hi. Walk to your locker Hi? Walk up the hallway Hi! The world of children was fading.

They can feel summer coming. There's no suffocation in the heat yet, everything's still and waiting. Tom's back in the studio. Elizabeth rolled over in bed and told him, This government's fucking us over. When she got up, she dug holes in the back paddock. They haven't eaten together since she put up the For Sale signs.

They're studying for School C. One afternoon Amy lets him lie on the grass near her.

Amy.
Silence.
Amy.
page 118 Silence.
I can hear you breathing.
What!
Did you know Kilgore Trout isn't just in this book, he's a famous writer. He's in lots of books.
So. Pass the Cole's Notes.

He throws the slim yellow volume at her. She flicks through the pages. Do you think they'll ask that in the exam?

He rolls onto his back, holds the book above his head to cover the sun. Light illuminates the soft thumbed edges. Federico contemplates time travel. He thinks Billy Pilgrim was probably crazy because of the war. But who really knows? Bea said nothing is impossible. He thinks of city streets with soldiers in them. Streets melt and flow like fire or lava which is molten rock, which is not fire exactly. Deep inside the house the phone rings. Amy doesn't move.

Aren't you gonna get that? he says.

Nope. It'll just be the bank. Dad said ignore it. The ringing stops.

Oh.

High in the trees, birds' songs are falling from their mouths. Seeds crackle out of leaves, blow to the ground. The phone rings again. Stops. Amy slaps her leg. She scratches. I hope you don't go.

Silence.

Federico.

She's interrupted by a flying plate. If they could see in slow motion they'd see the plate, bread and butter size, hit the window from inside the studio, glass splinter into a star, then crack open as the plate forces its way out onto the ground outside. Amy and Federico sit up fast and he wants to say, The sky is falling. Another plate flies, smashes. Then another, and another. A cup. A jug. A bowl. Crockery swings through the air. Shiny vessels explode on the lawn. Every bird, every seed stops in midair, pulled in by the spectacle. Then nothing.

Amy holds her breath like she's underwater. Then she kicks, fast to the top, breath bursts out of her. Seeds drop to the grass. Then Tom appears, stands in the doorframe of the studio, big hands loose at his sides. He looks like he's sleepwalking. He places his palms hard page 119against either side of the frame and pushes his body away and out into daylight. Eyes on the distance, he walks very slowly over the lawn and past them. Doesn't say a word.

Weighing

He watches her approach from one end of the field. From far away he knows it's her by the way she moves. Upright, but floaty. Yes, Janine floats down the field. His limbs feel heavy when he sees her walk that way. She's breathless. She sits down beside him. Did your mother tell you I called? He looks at her. There's a hole in his chest, a space to fall down into.

Federico?

The trees are waving their arms her way. The wind blows her hair round her face. He puts his hands in his pockets.

Were you trying to impress me?

Federico tilts his head. From that angle the green field and oaks revolve around her. There's a lot he'd like to tell her, but his throat feels closed over, his body silencing itself. She looks away from him and turns her palms to the sky as if praying, or receiving. She speaks quietly. Has anyone said anything to you about the fire? This is not the conversation he wants. He shakes his head. He is exposed here on this strange green with this girl and her beautiful hands reckoning with him. Those paint guys haven't got jobs now, they said so in the paper. Anger, like a bolt, shoots through his spine. He stands up. Where are you going? He shrugs. Federico … you can't just ignore me. Her cheeks go red. He turns and walks away, towards the school gates. Her voice calling him is a moth caught in his ear.

Home fires

He presses his nose to a brick of clay. Fertile, like the smell of a waterfall in the bush. Tom has shown him how to cut the soft flesh with taut wire, like cold butter.

He was falling, and woke with a start. Someone told him that if you hit the bottom before you wake, you die. He pulled on shorts and stumbled through the paddock. Federico ran to the middle of page 120the road, then his legs stopped. He looked down that long dark reel. The largeness of the world stared back. Each step is tiny and the body grows tired.

He turns back to the house.

The moon is big, lights up Tom's studio. Thin metal shelves with pots stacked to dry. A wooden box with the small tools that scrape the surface of a wet clay bowl. On a high wooden dais under a large sheet of plastic sits a damp, half-finished face and shoulders. Federico pulls the plastic off, studies the face. It's like a haughty marble emperor in ancient histories. This one is ugly. An unforgiving mouth. Federico shakes the matches in his pocket. The kiln clicks. Tom's firing again. He spends the day throwing clay at the emperor, pushing and pinching his fingers into the face and body.

The kiln clicks and he moves to it. Warmth radiates onto his bare arms. He peers down the air vent. Bright orange turning white, the colour of a leaking volcano. Heat that ignites paper instantly. Everything in the kiln will be soft and glowing now, then the temperature will cool and the pots will harden to a true form.

Federico leans over so his nose touches the emperor's. He presses his finger down into the clay cheek, making an indent. Under the face he lights a match. The emperor glares at him, there's a pock-mark under the cheekbone where his finger pressed. It felt good to leave a mark. Federico bends down slowly, places the burning match on the ground under the dais. He crouches over the flame, protecting it, listening to its tiny crackle. A small flame, but something on the ground is helping it live. It could catch quickly. He would like to watch the emperor burn. He would like to melt his nose, his wicked brow.

At night-time, nothing is like itself. Cats crying are a chorus of eels rising from the creek-bed, a possum rustling in a tree is a boy quietly setting light to a barn. Night-time belongs to shifting forms, the undoing of the world. Federico leans over to the growing flame, and blows. The flame burns harder, daring him. Bea said people were broken records, creatures of habit. She said he could be anything and she looked straight at him. Her eyes were clear and he could see himself, a tiny dark form reflected. The emperor nods. Federico blows again. This time the flame goes out. He crouches there, watches the red glow of the match die. Smoke dissipates in the air. He lies down page 121beneath the emperor on the wooden floor, still warm from the evening sun. Federico shuts his eyes.

At dawn the birds wake him scratching and calling on the roof. Outside the sky is dragging mucky summer clouds over the hill. The air is cool and new. The sky is red, which means rain.

He stands in the pantry, curry powder, sweet basil, sticking in his throat

Lines of white light pour through the slats in the door. He's alone breathing powdery air. Here in the pantry he stretches his jaw, warms it up the way an actor does in the wings before he takes the stage.

Then Sylvia comes. She fills the jug, spoons coffee into a cup, seems to fall into her chair. She reaches for her smokes, but doesn't light one. She just sits, holding the smoke between her fingers. Her hair is messy, reminds him of driftwood kindling. Like his own.

He pushes the door open and the hinges creak. She turns to him, her face soft and tired.

Where have you been?

She speaks quietly, but her voice wobbles. They let the question float away. Outside in the paddock the brown grasses wave in and out of focus in the morning heat. You know, Federico, I wish … Sylvia stops. She looks up at the ceiling. The mole at the base of her throat moves up and down when she swallows, and there are tiny lines under her chin. How is he a part of her? She looks at him. Hey, you're taller than me

He nods.

I remember when you were this big. She holds her hands apart as if measuring a fish. She gives a half-laugh. From when you could talk, you always called me Sylvia, copying Bea I suppose, except you couldn't say it. You said sillier. It pissed me off.

She turns back to her coffee. He sits down beside her. For long minutes they are quiet. Outside, a patch of blue like a cut reaches up toward the stratosphere. From there he can see it. He points out the window.

Look, Sylvia.

Yes. The moon.

Epilogue

Sylvia writes in dark blue pen.
Her letter-forms don't loop
she is what teachers called him,
a very tidy printer.

She always mentions the dahlias
and, like she had just realized
she says, Federico
I wish I knew you.

She writes again.
My garden is a picture
by that French painter you like.
And, Federico,
you are my lovely son.

He keeps matchbooks on his desk
that he collects as he travels.
Sometimes he sends them to her.

The red tip of his smoke burns
a hole in the dark. Outside the boats
are strung with lights.

He writes to her, says,
Sylvia, go out to your summer garden,
lie on the grass, watch the animals
move in the sky.