love his wife the way she should be loved. “Doesn’t Heather look great in this dress?” he’d say. “Did Heather tell you she came top in her midwifery exams?” Until one day Heather mouthed the words: Stop it. So he stopped it, but he still touched her more than usual whenever they visited her family, desperate to convey through his touch: You are loved, you are loved, you are so, so loved.
He’d been too young and happy to know that love wasn’t enough; too young to know all the ways that life could break you.
Their son’s death broke her.
Maybe a son’s death broke any mother.
The anniversary was tomorrow. Napoleon sensed its dark, malignant shadow. It was irrational to feel frightened of a day. It was just a sad day, a day they were never going to forget anyway. He reminded himself that this was normal. People felt like this on anniversaries. He’d felt this same impending sense of doom last year. Almost as if it was going to happen again, as if this were a story he’d read before and he knew what lay ahead.
He’d hoped that doing this retreat might make him feel calmer about the approach of the anniversary. It was a marvelous house, so peaceful and, yes, “tranquil,” and the staff seemed kind and caring. Yet Napoleon felt skittish. At dinner last night his right leg began to tremble uncontrollably. He’d had to put a hand on his thigh to still it. Was it just the anniversary? Or the silence?
Probably the silence. He didn’t like having all this time with only his thoughts, his memories and regrets.
The sun rose higher in the sky as the Tranquillum House guests moved in unison with Yao.
Napoleon caught a glimpse of the profile of the big chunky guy who had tried to smuggle in the contraband. It had seemed like he might be a troublemaker, and Napoleon had kept his teacher’s eye on him, but he appeared to have settled down, like one of those students you thought was going to be your nemesis for the whole year but then turned out to be a good kid. There was something about this guy’s profile that reminded Napoleon of somebody or something from his past. An actor from some old TV show he used to enjoy as a child, perhaps? It felt like a good memory, there was something pleasant about the feelings he invoked, but Napoleon couldn’t put his finger on it.
Somewhere in the distance a whipbird called. He loved the sound of the whipbird: that long musical crack of the whip that was so much a part of the Australian landscape you had to leave the country to realize how much you missed it, how it settled your soul.
“Repulse the monkey,” said Yao.
Napoleon repulsed the monkey and remembered three years ago: this day, this time. The day before.
It was around this time three years ago that Napoleon was making love to his sleepy wife for the last time in their marriage. (He assumed it was the last time, although he hadn’t given up entirely. He would know if she was ever ready. All it would take would be a look. He understood. Sex felt cheap now, tawdry and tacky. But he’d still be up for some cheap, tawdry sex.) She’d fallen asleep again—she used to love her sleep back then—and Napoleon had quietly left the house and headed for the bay. He kept the surf ski on the roof rack of his car throughout the long summer holiday. When he came back, Zach was eating breakfast at the sink, shirtless—he was always shirtless—hair sticking up in tufts. He looked up, grinned at his father, and said, “No milk,” meaning he’d drunk it all. He said that he might come with Napoleon for a paddle the next day. After that Napoleon worked for a few hours in the garden and cleaned the pool, and Zach went to the beach with his friend Chris, and then Napoleon fell asleep on the couch, and the girls went out—Heather to work, Zoe to a party. When Zach came home, Napoleon did ribs on the barbecue for the two of them, and afterward they had a swim in the pool and talked about the Australian Open, and Serena’s chances, and conspiracy theories (Zach liked conspiracy theories), and how Chris had told Zach he wanted to go into gastroenterology. Zach was gobsmacked by the bizarre specificity of Chris’s career plans because Zach didn’t even know what