The Serpent's Skin

by Erina Reddan

  Back on my heels, I was dwarfed by the mountains of crap rising up and bearing down on me. I stood to even things up and rocked, toe to heel. Heard the snap of Philly’s handbag and her telling Tessa to sit and rest. With Tessa out of the picture, I had a window of possibility to chuck rather than sort, so I dropped back to my knees to go at it hard and make a dent in things. I threw the first pile into the wheelbarrow, then picked up the next pile of stuff to hurl. But the burn of Mum’s name on a calendar on the top stopped me: Sarah.

  I dropped it like a scald.

  I scratched at my palm, digging right in. Stubbing your toe was bound to happen when you were on the business end of a shovel digging through the past. I pushed out a bit of a laugh at myself and picked up the calendar to throw it in the wheelbarrow. But the bold of the letters dragged at my eyes, tiding them back. I leaned closer. There was something odd about the date. I calculated. It got colder in that room as the answer became clearer.

  It was the day Mum left us.

  It was proof.

  Mum had been here all along. No mysterious boarding house needed. She just hadn’t wanted to talk to us. Least of all me. I would have argued her six ways to Christmas to make her come home. I shook my head. She knew she wouldn’t have had a chance.

  I slumped back on my heels. Rubbed my finger over Mum’s name, over and over, like it could tell me something and I would get it if I stuck at it long enough.

  So Peg was the liar after all. She’d lied to Tessa and me when we called that day and she told us she hadn’t seen Mum.

  And then the other thing it meant.

  Dad’s been telling the truth. All this time.

  I curled forwards, gut punched. I had punished him for nothing. He’d never got over Mum and I’d just made it worse with all my suspicion. Even though I stopped asking questions after the funeral, he’d never been the same. Something back then had broken between us. I clamped my hand to my mouth as if that could stop the sudden urge to vomit. I bent again, the other hand to the newspaper stack to steady me, dry retching contorting through me.

  Once it passed, I realised that in among it all something good unfurled. It could even be Mum sending me a message—that I could make things up with Dad. I straightened, a lightness rising up out of the unfurl and working its way across my face.

  I looked down to see the proof, after all these years, once more, that Dad hadn’t lied.

  But I’d missed something on the calendar further down and smaller.

  She’d stayed only twenty-five-and-a-half minutes.

  JACK SKIDS AWAY

  The steam of the evening heat had Tye and me up on the roof of the boarding house, our legs dangling over the edge. We licked our ice creams looking down on the top of the trees in the park opposite and over the roofs to the city in the distance. The air so still you could have sliced strips out of it. I was down to the cone, but Tye had a cautionary licking approach that made his last longer. When I’d crunched the last bit I stretched long and laid my head in Tye’s lap. He absent-mindedly combed his fingers through my hair. With the stars shimmering above, it should have felt good. But far from fading away, those jackhammers were busy buzzing up my whole nervous system.

  ‘So,’ Tye said after a long while. ‘What’s up?’

  ‘Nothing,’ I said too quickly. I rubbed one hand over the other trying to soothe the buzz.

  He wound his fingers through my hair, gathered a clump and tugged.

  ‘Ow,’ I said.

  ‘Tell the truth, JJ.’

  My hand reflexed to my stomach. To cover, I jerked upright, edged back from the edge and circled my arms around my knees. I cleared my throat a couple of times, but the words were glass sharp and stuck in my throat. In the end, I told him about the shock of Peg’s calendar that afternoon.

  ‘So…?’

  ‘That’s the thing,’ I said. ‘I run into the same dot points you do.’ I dug into my palm. ‘I mean, it doesn’t change anything. I already knew she hadn’t stayed for long at Peg’s. It’s just weird to see it in black and white. You know, proof that Dad lied.’

  ‘Proof that Peg lied too.’

  ‘That she did.’ I pulled out my ciggies and let my knees drop open. I generally didn’t smoke when I was with Tye. He wasn’t a fan. ‘I guess that’s the sticking point. What was so big that those two, who hated each other, came together for a one-time-only alliance?’

  He screwed up his face. His lashes long over his angel eyes. ‘Except it’s not a shared lie. Peg lied saying she’d hadn’t seen your mum when she had. But your dad lied saying your mum was staying at Peg’s all along when she wasn’t.’ He widened his eyes. ‘They’re kind of like opposite lies.’

  I tapped the cigarette on the ground. Put the filter between my lips. Held it away. ‘And in the middle of all that, why didn’t she stay at Peg’s? Why spend money she didn’t have to stay somewhere else?’

  ‘Unless she had somewhere else to go.’

  Something tugged at a thread in my memory. I narrowed my eyes. Something ferret sized. Then it hit me. ‘There was an address. But Dad destroyed it.’

  ‘That’s it, then. I think you have to ask your dad.’

  ‘What?’ I laughed. ‘Because of his excellent track record in telling the truth.’

  ‘You were kids back then.’ He shrugged. ‘Could be something he can tell you now. Or could be nothing. Your Mrs Tyler might be right, though. Maybe now is the time to figure it all out. This thing has been tugging at you ever since I’ve known you, and you don’t like loose ends.’

  I sucked at the end of the cigarette as if I’d already lit up. ‘You may have a point, Watson.’ I blew pretend smoke into the air and shoved the ciggie back in the box.

  My enthusiasm for Tye’s calm, rational approach waned the next day, though, when I was in the gloom of Dad’s kitchen. I mean, Tye didn’t know this world. He’d been brought up in a house of reason: lawyer father, academic mother, one child, framed Japanese prints on the wall. I eyeballed the rat in the middle of this room, up on its hind legs, the black glisten of its eyes lasering me straight back. I balled up a tea towel and chucked it at the rat, missing but not by much. The rat did drop to all fours and lumber off, but took its time about it, making sure I knew who was really in charge.

  Dad’s kitchen was almost as bad as Peg’s. Only there was something darker here. There was malevolence in the dirty dishes jumbled across the sink. The table was crowded with Vegemite and salt and butter and everything he’d had for breakfast, lunch and dinner in the last few days. I backed away and felt for the door behind me. But then I stopped.

  If I was to get Dad to admit anything after all these long, rusty, lying years, I’d have to come at him from an angle, a warm cup of tea in my hand, steady.

  I scrubbed at my face stuck between the wild need to leave and the pull of making sense of that clue on Peg’s calendar, the one clear thing in all the mist and haze of the past fourteen years.

  It had to be a sign from Mum that Mrs Tyler was right and it was time to know the truth. Tye was on point, too. We were all adults now. Whatever Dad thought he needed to hide back then could finally come into the light.

  ‘Shit,’ I said out loud, accepting that I would be staying.

  I picked up the melty butter and the cream tub with its dried, cracked smears and opened the fridge. I shoved them onto the top shelf beside containers marked with the days of the week in Tessa’s writing like tiny islands of order. No wonder Tessa bloody drank, having to wade into cleaning this every week.

  A whip-red started licking at me so I closed the fridge and went to the sink instead. I could start on something simpler. I knew about dishes: I’d supported myself through uni by dishwashing. I pulled the containers labelled with the rest of the days of the week from the sink, twisted taps and squeezed detergent. I coated up my nerves by watching the listing hill of bubbles the detergent made.

  I must have zoned out because the next thing I knew the water was lapping at the t
op of the sink. I dived to turn the taps off. This wasn’t going to work. I had to pull myself together. I straightened my back, opened a drawer and got a knife into the palm of my hand, and headed outside. It was better. The honey smell of the lilac near the tanks plunged me down the rabbit hole back to that other place when I was a kid. And it was a good place, back to BM—Before Mum. I plucked a few petals and crushed them between my fingers, rubbing the crush under my nose, just like Mum and me used to. I sawed at the smaller branches, letting them fall to the ground, and then gathered them into my arms and carried them back into the gloom. I filled a jar with water, wrestled the woody stems into it and set it beside the sink. I kept my eyes on the lilac until the rhythm of the dishes took over, and I wiped all of that malevolence away.

  Once I had everything away and things wiped down, not clean but something, there was more air. The clock said that Dad would be in for afternoon tea, so I lit a match under the kettle and set out two cups, two plates, two knives and felt like Noah saving all that was essential.

  Then I sat down to wait. The clock ticked. I bit my lip, then started to dig into my palm. The clock ticked. I dug in deeper. The clock ticked louder. I got to my feet, scooped up a pile of Dad’s clothes on the chair and walked past the fridge through the lounge and into his room. I dumped the clothes on top of everything else on the bench and crossed the room to yank open the window and spring up the blind. Dust had greyed over the red of the plush velvet of the curtains, cast-offs from the church vestry. I tried to wave fresh air into the room with my hand. But the day was full of burn and still, so I gave up.

  The blankets were flung back as if he’d got up in a hell of a hurry, off to fight a war. The creeping enemy kept at bay by the same small things done in the same small way day after day until they bled into death.

  I pulled the bottom sheet sharp and tucked it in, then pulled up the top one and the blankets, and got the pillow back to where it had started out. The effort of it heavied up everything under my skin, so I let myself collapse to sit on the side of the bed. Looked out at the lilac, the tanks, the wilting clothesline and all the parched yellow beyond. I was filling up on the forever of it, which wasn’t going to do me any good, so I found a distraction. I opened the bedside table drawer.

  Looking straight back out at me was a photo of Mum sitting on the front verandah, legs bare and swinging over the edge. My mother looked dead into the camera, a stubby of beer resting on her knee. Laughing. A girl mother, hair flying. Out of nowhere a rage of red volcanoed up in me. Maybe if we’d had this photo of her to look at as we grew up she’d have more dimension now and be more than a feeling in the dark. I narrowed my eyes and considered the wisdom of getting the hell out of there before I did something I regretted. Instead I counted. At twenty I had the red pulled back in and at thirty had it locked down. I pushed off the bed, closed the drawer, took the photo with me into the kitchen and propped it against the jam jar. Then I sat down to wait.

  The clock ticked.

  This time I ticked along with it, collecting the moments up and building something with them.

  ‘Gidday, love,’ Dad said, as if we’d only seen each other just that morning instead of who knew when? He leaned on the frame of the door and shucked off his boots just the way I remembered, although he had to lean down to pry the second one from his foot, his beer gut hanging over his belt. The rough of his cheek pricked me as we pecked hello.

  ‘Nice surprise,’ he said.

  ‘Thought it was time.’ I poured the boiling water over his teabag and then over mine, keeping a firm boot on the back of the red, keeping it down.

  He dropped papers on the bench I’d just cleared. I buttoned my lips against the violation. He headed for the laundry.

  ‘Working you hard?’ he asked.

  ‘Pays the bills.’

  ‘Reckon it might.’ He came out of the laundry and threw the towel on the back of the chair beside him as he sat.

  ‘What’s this, then?’ He jerked his head at the photo.

  ‘Keeping her to yourself,’ I said.

  ‘Only found it a while back.’

  ‘Why didn’t you show us? You know we don’t have photos of her.’

  ‘JJ.’ His voice strained, he dropped his fist helplessly to the table. ‘You’re never here to show it to.’

  ‘Tessa seen it?’

  ‘Always pushing.’

  ‘Has she?’

  ‘Might have.’ He raised his voice.

  ‘If she happened to be cleaning up in that particular drawer, you mean?’

  ‘So now that’s wrong, too, is it?’ He took a sip of tea. Straightened. ‘Your mother’s dead. A man needs somebody to tidy up a bit and your sister is kind enough to do it. It’s none of your bleedin business.’

  ‘A man?’

  ‘I look up to women.’ His voice was weedy with emotion and crescendoing. ‘Put them on a pedestal where they belong. That’s one thing you bloody feminists make sure you miss.’

  I lifted that firm boot and the red was back on its feet in a second. ‘Do they skin their knees getting down off that pedestal to clean up after you?’

  ‘Get out of here.’ He flung his hand toward the door, but only half-hearted. ‘You’re no good unless you’re making trouble.’

  I folded my arms on the table, my eyes daring him.

  He sipped at his tea, his eyes out through the window and on all that dry out there.

  I sipped from the teacup, reminding myself what I was there to do. I followed the lines deepening into craters in his face. I let the clock do more of its work.

  ‘Peg’s funeral was good,’ I said. ‘People asked after you.’

  ‘Many there?’ He uncrossed his legs and crossed them the other way.

  ‘More than I thought there would be.’

  ‘Nosy Nancy?’

  ‘Yep. Mrs Nolan did the eulogy.’

  He took another sip. Cleared his throat. Rubbed his face. The sandpaper rough of it competed with the clock.

  ‘That so?’ His voice wary.

  ‘Funny how people are at funerals,’ I said. ‘Everything rosy.’

  ‘What’d she say?’

  ‘Said Peg was a great dancer.’

  ‘So she was.’

  ‘Mrs Nolan said you cut a dash yourself.’

  ‘When I was young,’ he said, like it was a peace offering. ‘I hear she wants to talk to you. Did she?’

  ‘What does she want?’

  ‘How would I know? I don’t give her the time of day.’ He pursed his lips. ‘So she didn’t speak to you, then?’

  ‘Like father like daughter. Doesn’t get the time of day from me, either.’

  A small, satisfied almost smile flashed up on his face for a microsecond. ‘What else was said at the funeral?’

  ‘She said Mum and Aunty Peg called themselves Arthur and Martha they were that close.’

  He clammed straight up, realising his mistake in leaving the gate open for me. I jammed up a piece of bread for him and poured cream on top. I pushed it in his direction. He was only pretending to look through that window. I should have remembered the thing he did with silence, building sharp corners in it so there was no seeing around them. I should have been prepared.

  He wolfed down the bread just like when we were kids. His thick farmer fingers rough with calluses. There was fresh blood on his knuckle. I frowned.

  He followed my look. ‘It’s nothing.’

  ‘Did Tessa tell you she’s decided to go through all the stuff at Aunty Peg’s with a fine-tooth comb?’

  He sat up, a charge in the air.

  ‘Yep,’ I said. ‘She changed her mind when Mrs Tyler said Aunty Peg didn’t just hoard, she “collected”.’

  ‘Bloody waste of time.’ It blasted out of him and even he seemed surprised by the force. ‘Find anything?’ he asked in a voice he’d deliberately cranked down a gear.

  ‘Not the treasure Tessa was hoping for yet,’ I said, moving slowly into position. I tapped the table. �
��Did find a calendar.’

  He barked out a laugh. ‘Plenty of them over at Mad Peg’s.’

  ‘Dated 26 June, 1968.’

  A look slid out from the corner of his eyes at me before he could stop it. ‘Would have been hard for you,’ he said. ‘Taking you back.’ He scratched at his head and bit off another wolf-chunk of his jammed-up bread.

  ‘Not hard, more…’

  ‘Got another cuppa there, love?’ He was quick to fill my slight pause.

  I poured hot water into his mug.

  ‘Needs to be boiled again first.’

  ‘So they tell me.’ I kept pouring.

  He grunted, shook his head in disgust and stirred the teabag.

  ‘You told the truth,’ I said. ‘Mum did go to Peg’s that day.’

  His look was all out in the open this time. He got himself forwards to the table, pulled another slice of white bead from the plastic and knifed the jam right to the crust. ‘How’d you finally work that one out?’

  ‘On the calendar.’

  ‘There you are, then. All these years of bellyaching and you’ve finally got the proof your old man was on the up and up.’

  ‘I’ve never said a word since Mum’s funeral.’ I could hear the whine in my protest.

  ‘You didn’t have to.’ He gave me the ghost of a smile, one like he used to give me back before Mum died. ‘Put it behind us, then? Hey?’ He shoved the crust in past his teeth, chewing and nodding. Then he sat back, relax running along his muscles as he hummed a tune I didn’t know.

  ‘Funny thing, though.’

  He stopped humming.

  ‘You also lied.’