Dom is standing in the middle of the street, frowning every time the sharp heat of the sun bursts through the patchy cloud cover. He mulls over the phone call made three days ago to his sister Erin.
‘As far as I know Mya’s free this Saturday,’ she had said, before adding, ‘but she’s seeing you whether she’s busy or not.’
He’s still unsettled by the third party directing the relationship between father and daughter.
Then he sees a flash of blood-coloured hair, tied loosely at the back with a black scrunchie, appear and vanish in the bustle of the other commuters filing on and off the latest tram. Dom wishes that his sister’s voice were on call, telling him to get a grip – offering advice as she always does, with a pressure that makes it not a recommendation but an irrevocable law.
The look in Mya’s eyes as she approaches him is nervous, but intense. Those eyes don’t belong to the same girl who stared him down on that one night only a couple of months ago when she pushed herself away, burning with all her fury and thirteen-year-old righteousness. Those eyes are like Erica come back to life, thinks Dom.
They both say hi; they speak at the same time and the voices blend together. Mya fidgets with her frock; simple and plain, her thin pale legs poking through and ending in light blue slip-ons. All her colours are soft and neutral; Dom can only think of it as a disguise. He can see the mark on the side of her nose, where she’s removed a stud.
‘I thought you might like to go to the zoo,’ says Dom.
‘Yeah, sounds good.’
‘Do you have to be back at Erin’s by a certain time?’
‘It’s more like I have to be with you for a certain time,’ she says tersely, looking up as the sun vanishes behind another cloud.
He tries to tell her things as they approach the zoo. That he’s going to the gym again for the first time in four years; that there was a fire near his house the other day, and was helpful in calming the poor man’s panicked dog; that he still can’t work out how to use his new phone properly. She gathers his comments and stories with as much enthusiasm as a waiter collecting plates.
They turn through the tight aisles and push themselves into the zoo, and Mya breathes in the scene like a woman on expedition.
‘So where did you want to go?’ Dom asks.
‘Monkeys first. We gotta go see the monkeys first.’ The hair quivers and flickers like a candle fire.
Dom stumbles through the flow of people, with Mya trailblazing. She keeps pace ahead of him, and he wonders whether she’s deliberately putting distance between them or whether it’s just her natural impatience.
At length they find the monkeys in their giant cage, but the animals pay them no attention, after all the walking they had to do to get there. Dom feels a little affronted. Sure, they’re not performing animals, but do they have to just sit around looking morose? Being in a cage this spacious surely wouldn’t be too bad.
‘I wish they’d move,’ he says finally, noting how childish he sounds.
Mya rolls her eyes. ‘I should be the one saying that.’
‘Well, value for money and everything.’
‘Stop feeling like you have to wow me. I’m still here, right?’
That’s a fair point. A walk-off would fit precedent.
They move on, and the monkeys do not wave them goodbye. They find their way to the open enclosures, watching the larger beasts go about their day surrounded by fences and gawking crowds. The animals stare mutely and munch on grass. Dom paces along the fences, and Mya follows with a screwed-up nose as he goes back and forth.
Mya elbows him casually. ‘Dad, you gotta relax.’
‘Since when were you the voice of calm?’ he says, harsher than intended.
In a heartbeat Mya’s eyes become electric, stirred to life like metal fibres aroused by a magnet. ‘I’m trying here and you don’t care.’ She lingers on this last word, sharpening it like a weapon. She moves off, and Dom follows, entranced by the chimera he’s accompanying; a composite containing elements of the young girl Mya once was, the uncompromising teenager she’d grown into and the emerging bud of Erica’s self-assured dignity.
She heads for the butterfly house as if it were a sanctuary, nearly tripping over an elderly tourist to get in before him. Dom follows, and slows his breathing as he’s immersed in the thick heat of the glasshouse. Mya pays no attention to him.
The butterflies come towards Dom in flitters, and move away when he tries to catch them. They remind him of something. Especially the one with gem-blue wings that keep moving when at rest. Mya’s watching it too. Dom doesn’t know what kind of butterfly it is, but it flexes its wings with the confidence of something that knows perfectly well what it is.
It takes flight, and Mya tries to keep her gaze on it but quickly loses track. The butterfly arcs around to the back of her head like a hawk searching for prey, and finds her hair. Only then does Dom remember the hair-clip, except that in his mind’s eye the hair is only slightly darker than Mya’s. He hated that butterfly clip, but Erica loved it, and they had plenty of playing fights every time Erica put it on.
‘I miss her too,’ he says, ‘you should know that.’
Mya’s face hardens.
‘It’s not the same. But I’d like you to come home.’
The butterfly on Mya’s head moves on, rising effortlessly, and it seems like a messenger, trying to bring father and daughter together to pick up the pieces. But Mya’s face says ‘not yet’.
Beau Hillier is a Melbourne-based writer and freelance editor. He won the Grace Marion Wilson competition run by Writers Victoria in 2011, and in 2012 was featured in Possessing Freedom, an integrated YA short story collection. He currently edits page seventeen, an annual collection showcasing emerging writers and poets.