Cycle

By Anna Taylor

Edie

The boy says — Don't leave — and because nobody comes by for a good half hour, Edie stays with her feet curled under her on the footpath, talking to him to fill the space, every now and then pressing her fingers to his wrist to feel for the jagged patter of his pulse.
      ‘I should get help,’ she says, again, but he comes to life with every minute, and after a while is lying with his arm crooked under his head, eyes open, warmth flaring just under the surface of his skin.
     ‘This happens sometimes,’ he says to her. ‘Every now and then.’ He smiles, beams almost, a comical forced brightness, it seems to her, with the sweat still gluing his hair to his head.
     ‘Since you were born?’ she says, and he nods.
     ‘Sometimes I try to imagine,’ he says, ‘what an ordinary heart might feel like, and I always think — like a clock.’ His face breaks into a smile again.
     A seagull passes over them, flying low. Edie doesn't know what to say, places her finger on the inside of his wrist.
     ‘What would have happened if I hadn't come along?’ she says, asking herself, more than anything.
     ‘I would have waited.’
     There is the beat of an engine just behind them, and around the corner comes a car.
     Edie leaps to her feet so fast that the blood roars in her head. It is only then that she remembers — her own body; its weariness.
     ‘We need an ambulance,’ she cries into the open window. ‘The hospital.’

6.15

George arrives home to an Edie exuding purpose. She appears in the hallway as he opens the door, a bunch of mint in her hand. It seems that she is going somewhere with it. She is all teeth. Shoulders back.
     ‘Good day?’ she says, as if she expects the answer to be yes. It isn't until later, when they’re sitting side by side, trapping small, rolling beans with their forks, that she says it.
     ‘I saved a boy today,’ and then she laughs. ‘That's not true. I helped a boy; I sat with him.’
     George turns towards her, notices a line of sinew standing out on her neck.
     ‘He has a heart defect,’ she says, between mouthfuls. ‘I found him on Cornell Street.’
     Is there any reason, George wonders, why she is speaking in such a clipped tone? He has been married to this woman five years, and he feels that he may as well be sitting next to someone he's just happened across, on a bus.
     ‘What was he doing?’
     ‘Lying on the footpath. He'd come off his bike.’ Her chewing jaw repeats the identical circuit, a faint clunk with every mouthful.
     ‘A car came and we got him to hospital,’ she says. ‘Eventually. I stayed with him a while.’
     ‘Is he going to be alright?’
     ‘I think so. It's the medication he's on. Possibly.’
     She turns to George, and in that moment his heart bellows with love for her. It is the shine in her face, the feathery pieces of hair coming loose from her ponytail.
     ‘It was such a relief,’ she says, ‘to have some way to spend my day.’
     She stops chewing, starts up again.
     George reaches for it inside himself, that bloom of feeling for her in his chest, but as soon as he does the feeling dissipates, as though it was never there at all.
     He smiles at her. Nods his agreement.
     There is a hole, he notices then, in the toe of her sock. A curl of nail showing through.

Rodrigo Road

The following Friday, Edie knocks on the door, and waits. She had left her number with the hospital staff, asking for it to be passed on to his parents, but it was Isaac himself who had called — his voice on the phone, when she picked up, unsettlingly familiar; reedy.
      They sit in a triangle of sun, each sipping at a glass of water, while Isaac shows her his bicycle sketches — it is these she has come to see.
     ‘I’m an illustrator,’ she had told him, when he asked last Friday what she did with her days. He had laughed at that — an odd reaction.
     ‘I like to draw too,’ he had said.

The sketches are bunched together in manila folders, held together with pieces of black ribbon and elastic bands. He sorts through them steadily, every now and then pulling one free, giving her a faint smile as he places it in her waiting hands.
     All of them: bicycles. The drawings are intricate, exact, photo perfect — but each one with a peculiarity. A line drawing of a frame with three wheels, all identically sized, another with handlebars that enclose the rider's body, forming a back support just above the seat. There are a series of sketches — these ones quite rough — of a bike that folds in on itself; that can be carried in a little box, with a suitcase handle.
     ‘These are beautiful, ‘Edie says. ‘Crazy. But beautiful.’
     ‘I try to think of something that would make a bike hard to ride,’ Isaac says. ‘And then I see if I can solve the problem. Sort it out.’
     Later, he says: ‘I like the fact that a bike can't stand up, not by itself. It's that the pedals and our feet need to work together to make things possible.’
     He asks Edie questions — about her own drawings, her home town, George's work. When he listens he cups one hand in the palm of the other.
     ‘How are you feeling now?’ Edie says. ‘Your health.’
     Isaac shrugs. ‘I’m done with doctors,’ he says. ‘Done with pills.’
     She doesn't know what comes upon her to make her say it — a desire, perhaps, to make him feel that he isn't alone. The unspeakable comes out so simply, the words moving out her mouth and into the room.
     ‘We’re trying to have a baby,’ she says. ‘It's not going well.’ She tucks her feet under the chair, suddenly self-conscious.
     Isaac is tidying away his papers when she speaks, and he pauses only momentarily. Looks at her. Nods.
     ‘Something's not right with me,’ she says. ‘I know what it feels like when your body doesn't do what it should do.’
     Isaac knots a piece of ribbon, stretches an elastic band.
      ‘How do you know the problem is with you?’ he says.
     The cogs in Edie's torso and chest start whirring, heat pressing against the constraints of her clothes. She feels flight-headed — as if she may faint, or cry. Isaac places a folder on the pile. Presses his hands to his knees.
     Edie swallows. ‘I have never thought of that,’ she says.

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