How It Feels To Float

When Jasper and Biz arrive in Temora, their first goal is to find the sheep farm where Biz’s father grew up. They walk down the main street, and when school lets out, the kids mock Jasper and even spit on him. It is only then that Biz realizes that Jasper is gay. They are determined not to let the incident stop them. “Fuck the whole world” (298), Biz decides.

They hire a taxi and head to the Grey farm. Biz knows that her father was supposed to work on the family’s sheep farm but left for the city instead. She also knows her father’s mother abandoned the family when her father was only six. They arrive at the farm. In case things go wrong, they ask the taxi to wait for them. The men they meet barely recognize her father’s name. Biz begins to take photos of the farmhouse and of the land sloping down in the background, picturesque landscape photos of sheep against a grove of trees.

As she walks on the farmhouse’s veranda, Biz thinks of her father growing up there: “Maybe there was happiness in this house?” (310). When Jasper offers to drive the taxi back to town because the driver has been drinking, the driver simply leaves. They have to walk back to town, and the two secure a room for the night above the town pub. When Jasper collapses on the bed, exhausted, Biz feels alone. The next morning, as Jasper sleeps, Biz looks through the Polaroids she took at the house.

The photos talk to her. The image of the kitchen speaks of little Stephen having breakfast with his mother. The photo of the veranda speaks of Stephen’s mother, uncle, and father, who were sensitive and hence useless around the farm. She understands her grandfather was taking medications for his nervous temperament after the mother abandoned the family. To her, her father still feels like an unfinished jigsaw puzzle. She knows this much: As a boy, Biz’s father adjusted to the strange relationship between his mother and his uncle and then adjusted to her subsequent departure and his father’s growing depression before drowning in the creek that runs along the farm, perhaps by accident, perhaps not. A photo of the creek speaks to Biz about her own father “walking away from [her] and into water” (321). Her mind spirals into images of her dead father in the water. Jasper struggles to bring her around, but Biz feels herself collapsing into molecules and is unable to breathe.

Biz wakes up in a hospital in Wagga Wagga, about an hour from Temora. Her mother is there, and the ghost of her father sits at the edge of her bed eating ice cream. “Fuck off, dad,” Biz says, “You’re not real” (329). Biz talks with the hospital psychiatrist who assures her mother they only want to make sure Biz is stable before signing her out. Jasper visits briefly. Biz attends a yoga class and goes to a rehab gym in the hospital as part of her recovery. The psychiatrist assures Biz that although her issues are complex, she can recover.

One evening, Grace appears in her room—Jasper texted her, and Grace’s dad agreed to bring her to Wagga Wagga. Biz is unsure whether Grace is real. She suggests the night that Biz nearly drowned, Grace actually did, but Grace tells her “That’s crazy, Biz” (337). Jasper stops by her room. He has to return home and tells Biz goodbye.

Biz is to be discharged from the hospital after 10 days, on the 10th anniversary of her father’s death. She feels close to her mother; all they have is each other as they swim in the “water of losing Dad” (340). Biz remembers three events from her childhood. The first is when she got separated from her parents in a store and encountered a seedy-looking man before her father found her and grabbed her so tight she felt like she would pop out of her body. Next, she remembers when she had a high fever when she was six and felt as if she were gliding out of her body while her father put her into a cold bath. Finally, she remembers when she was seven and she confronted the drowned body of her father and, panicking, she ran out of the house and felt herself floating up into the clouds.

At the edge of her hospital bed, her father recalls bringing her home from the hospital after her birth and how fragile she seemed. He apologizes for not staying. “Don’t come find me,” (352) he tells her. As Biz whispers how much she loves him, her father fades out.

After Biz returns home, she visits Sylvia. Her new medication means that photos no longer speak to her, but she can think more clearly now. She has opened up in new ways to her psychiatrist, Max, and has found their conversations therapeutic. Now, as she looks at Sylvia’s walls, all of Sylvia’s framed photos are simply “lovely” (358). She has not seen or heard from Jasper since returning home. On impulse, she opens up to Sylvia about her father, her bouts of depression, and her hospitalization. Sylvia hugs Biz and assures her how much she loves her.

Biz decides to enroll in another photography class. Meanwhile, Grace has sent emails, but Biz has not read them. It is nearing Christmas when she and her mother sit on their veranda as the sun sets. She feels the urge to float, but it doesn’t scare her; her psychiatrist assured her the urge to float is just the mind protecting itself. She feels close to her mother now and embraces life’s contradictions: “Life does kind of suck…Life is impossible, chaotic. It’s a maze of sorrow and sunlight; it can’t be mapped…Life is terrible and beautiful” (366).

The next morning, she sends an email to Jasper. He says he will be there in 16 minutes—which he is, hopping off his motorcycle. His grin is “like the universe beginning and like atoms splitting” (370). They hug, and Biz at last feels secure in the moment, waiting for what might happen next.