The Serpent's Skin

by Erina Reddan

  Philly threw her keys in the air and snatched them back at the exact right second.

  ‘How did the beach go?’ I asked.

  Her eyes darted sideways. ‘We didn’t make it,’ she said.

  ‘Philly. Not again.’ I grabbed the keys in mid air. ‘What did Ahmed say?’

  She looked down the street. ‘It couldn’t be helped. Mrs Manto next door needed her pantry done.’

  ‘Really? Philly! If she needed company, couldn’t you have taken her to the beach with you?’

  ‘She’s a seventy-five-year-old woman, JJ.’

  ‘And you are a twenty-three year-old girl who needs to have a bit of fun. With your boyfriend. You can’t always be looking after miscellaneous old women. On top of the hours you work. You’re already the account manager of their biggest client. Relax. Live a little.’ I pressed the keys into her hand, closed her fist around them. ‘We all know Ahmed is a saint, but even he’s got a breaking point. He’s been saying he never gets to see you for ages. You have to start saying no, Philly. You can’t be Miss Perfect for everybody.’

  She waved my concerns away.

  I backed away, hands waving. ‘It’s your life.’ I went around the side of the house to collect my bike. The jacket was there but no box. I looked around, even looked behind the tree where there was no way it could have been. I couldn’t work it out. I raced back out to the front.

  ‘Did you see the box beside my bike?’

  Philly shook her head.

  ‘I had a box right there.’ I pointed back around the corner.

  ‘Dad or Tim probably tossed it in the truck thinking it was Aunty Peg’s.’

  ‘That’s exactly why I wanted it.’

  She got her eyebrows low.

  ‘Peg’s dairies,’ I said.

  She held her palms in the air like a shield. ‘No. No. No.’

  The fury hurtled out of me so sudden I couldn’t have caught it even if I’d had a head start. ‘Why is it always “No” with you on this, and nothing else?’

  ‘Because I’ve been talking to Tessa. If you want to find out if Mum wasn’t where Dad said she was, you’re welcome, but leave the rest of us out of it. Dad’s right. Tessa can’t cope. And neither can he. The past is the past.’ Philly was all reason and calm.

  ‘That’d be right.’

  A kid walked on our side of the street, licking a lollipop. Walking as if she had all the time in the world, taking an interest in things. But Philly wasn’t going to give her any more of a show. Discipline was her middle name, so she waited, holding her car keys steady, giving them a tight jingle every couple of seconds.

  ‘I don’t want to say it, JJ—’

  ‘Grow a spine,’ I goaded her.

  ‘You’re fucked up, JJ,’ her voice spitting fire.

  I stepped back like I’d been winded. From Tessa, yes. Dad, even Tim. But Philly?

  ‘You’re out of control. Tessa’s right.’

  ‘The world’s messy. You can’t orchestrate every little thing. People aren’t puppets. You can’t make the past disappear.’

  ‘I’m glad Mum was in the city when she had her appendix attack. I don’t care why she was there. It means she would have got to the hospital faster. If she could have been saved, she would’ve been.’

  ‘So why did he steal the diaries?’

  Philly took a deep breath, turned away.

  ‘Why’re you protecting him?’ I asked.

  She kept moving, throwing back over her shoulder, ‘He’s all we’ve got.’

  THAT MISSING THING

  Rocco was wearing a retro purple velvet suit and carrying a plastic bag in each hand when I skidded my bike to a stop outside the boarding house. He kicked at my wheel.

  ‘What the hell?’

  ‘Where’ve you been?’ His hair was slick with oil.

  ‘Mind your own business.’

  ‘That bird from the community health centre—’

  ‘Shit.’ I locked my bike at the side and ran up the steps with him.

  Rat-Tail was in with Marge, over at the bookshelf, with a red feather duster. Marge shrugged when I grimaced my sorry.

  ‘Hey JJ,’ Rat-Tail said. ‘Got this for Marge.’ He swung the feather duster.

  ‘It’ll make the difference, Rat-Tail.’

  ‘You’ve got real nice hair, today.’

  ‘Thanks.’

  ‘Done something to it? Looked all greasy yesterday.’

  ‘Just washed it, Rat-Tail. Works really well.’

  ‘Yeah. I’ll give that a go.’

  I bent to kiss Marge in her armchair. Nodded. She nodded back. All tight and closed except for her eyes—big and shiny.

  Philly’s floral pink bedspread, matching pillowcase and throw pillows were doing their job. Rocco pulled the grapes from the bag, looked around. ‘Shit,’ he said. I dashed out the door to my place. Grabbed one of Mum’s platters. Stopped, looked around the room, ran to the drawer, plucked out a scarf. Ran back.

  Rocco pulled out apricots and plums from the other plastic bag and grouped them artfully together on Mum’s platter. I laid the scarf over Marge’s lamp. Switched it on.

  ‘Get that blasted thing off,’ Marge said.

  I swivelled at the sharpness.

  ‘Fire hazard.’

  Rocco stepped over to high-five Marge, who looked perplexed. ‘You got this in the bag, Marge. They’re not going to put away a safety chick like you.’

  I balled up the scarf into the pocket of my shorts. Pulled it out again. Laid it over the bed head.

  ‘Better?’

  ‘Can live with it,’ said Marge.

  She checked her watch again.

  Rocco jammed the scraggy striped carnations into a glass vase and filled it at the sink. I wouldn’t have gone for them myself, and not just because they were ugly, but since I hadn’t been there, had forgotten, I wasn’t in any position to complain. Just hope the community worker didn’t pick up on their vibe of refusal. I pulled the potty from under the bed so that it could just be seen. I’d ended up paying more than seventy bucks for it. Vinnies didn’t have any so I’d had to go to the lower end of the antique world.

  I switched on the kettle, which began to whistle right off. I flicked it off again. Turned to Marge, who nodded. The tea leaves were in the new teapot beside the four cups, four saucers and a banana cake.

  Rat-Tail counted the cups, then counted around the room.

  ‘Best there aren’t too many of us, Rat-Tail,’ said Marge. ‘Makes the room seem smaller.’

  ‘I’ll wait at the door for her, then.’ He took off.

  ‘Is that a good idea?’ I asked.

  Marge lifted a weary hand and let it drop, saying all it needed to say.

  Rocco stuffed the plastic bag and the fallen leaves into the rubbish bin and pushed it under the table. Straightened the toaster, the kettle and the two-ring stove, all polished up and glistening. Rocco moved the chair he’d brought from his room an inch or two towards Marge’s and the one I’d donated. I was to be on the bed.

  I took Marge’s hand. Rocco pulled at the velvet collar of his suit. Sat down and bent to tug at the end of his trouser legs. Being so tall he rarely found anything that fitted him at Vinnies. He gave up, crossed his ankles, and stretched out his hands to his knees, eyes on the floor.

  The main door slammed shut and we heard Rat-Tail’s voice.

  Rocco and I exchanged worried looks.

  When they got closer, we notched up the worry in the look between us because then we could hear what was being said.

  ‘They’re real nice earrings.’

  ‘Had them a while,’ a woman’s voice replied.

  ‘Must be heavy, but, cause they’re dragging your earlobes real bad, down to your shoulders.’

  Rocco and I shook our heads.

  Marge stared straight ahead.

  Rocco tapped her arm. She turned to him, started, then began the struggle to get out of the armchair. On her feet, she quickened to the door and into the c
orridor.

  Marge showed the woman, with her serviceable bob and her clipboard, the building, the bathrooms, the garden, the everything there was to be seen. The woman came in to Marge’s room and introduced herself as Shamira, and we took up our positions. Marge sat forwards to pour the tea Rocco had made and handed it around. She cut the cake and passed that around, too. Shamira laid her clipboard on the bed beside me. I tried to read upside down.

  We chatted about the weather, the tennis and then the neighbourhood. No, it wasn’t as rough as reputation had it. Shamira turned to stab another cross onto her clipboard. After the tea had been drunk and the cake eaten, Marge asked the question.

  Shamira pushed her glasses up her nose before she spoke. ‘The bathroom being so far away is not ideal—’ She sent a disparaging glance at the elaborate potty poking out from under the bed.

  ‘Am I late?’

  We all looked to the doorway.

  I jumped up to hug Philly, relieved that she’d turned up after all when even I’d forgotten. She squeezed me back, both of us putting the flare-up at Peg’s place behind us.

  ‘You missed the cake, so depends what you had in mind by late,’ I said.

  Rocco stood to bow. She was bowable, all dressed in a matching magenta dress and jacket with a double string of pearls, not a hair out of place. I introduced Philly to Shamira, whose face brightened at the sight of her grown-up togetherness. Philly said she came to visit Marge once a week—made sure Rocco had done the shopping, I’d done the washing and Marge had got to all her appointments. As she talked she took four Tupperware containers out of her wicker shopping basket and put two in the bar fridge and two in the freezer.

  ‘My job is to tick it all off,’ she finished.

  Shamira looked from me to Rocco to Marge. The air in the room had lightened, and Shamira started winding things up. Rocco walked her to her car, a perfect, suited gentleman to the last.

  Marge blew out her cheeks and dropped both arms to her lap.

  Rocco came back rubbing his hands together, Rat-Tail with him. ‘Think we gave a good show,’ Rocco said.

  ‘Nice touch—all that Tupperware cooking,’ I said.

  ‘She didn’t have to know I bought it all,’ said Philly.

  Rocco took out a bottle of Scotch he’d hidden in the wardrobe and poured it straight into our tea cups. Nobody complained.

  ORDER INTO CHAOS

  Icalled work, but didn’t even try to give much of a reason for taking yet another day off. Just said I wouldn’t be in. Hadn’t left a message for Tye this time, either. I winced. I mean, what could I have said? Maybe Tessa was right. I was cracking open. But I had to see her. Had to apologise. I picked up some pasta sauce and chocolates on the way and headed back down the freeway. I hadn’t rung her in case she snarled at me to stay away. I wouldn’t have blamed her. Geoff’s car was still in the drive so Tessa was bad enough for him to take the day off. I winced again. She was always so capable. Just like Mum. You didn’t see the breaking point coming. I sat in the car, drumming the steering wheel, stopped up with the guilt of having struck the match that lit this fire.

  It was Geoff’s face at the front door that got me out of the car. I couldn’t read anything in his peck as he bent down to greet me. He put the pasta sauce in the fridge. ‘Thanks, JJ, kind of you to come by.’

  The twins were sleeping and Georgie was at kindy. I was all good to go in and see her. I wanted to ask him how he was, but he sat back at the table spread over with white pages and manila folders. It wasn’t clear if he knew this was my fault.

  ‘JJ’ was all Tessa said. She was sitting up in bed with a cuppa, looking out the window.

  I crossed quickly to her. ‘God, Tessa. I’m so sorry.’

  She turned to me. ‘It’s not always about you, JJ.’ She put the teacup back in its saucer. ‘I’m just exhausted. Twins,’ she said. ‘You’ll understand one day.’ She looked out the window again. ‘If you ever have kids, that is.’

  ‘What do you mean?’ I asked, stung, a protective hand going to my belly.

  ‘You have to have worked out your own shit enough to put somebody’s needs before yours.’

  ‘Just like you have,’ I said before I could jam the words back into my mouth.

  She gave me a ‘really’ look.

  ‘Yeah, yeah, yeah. I know. Sorry.’ I perched on the side of her bed.

  ‘You just can’t help yourself, JJ.’

  I put the chocolates on her knees and we sat there in silence for a while, both looking out the window at the ducks on the dam sailing to the island in the middle as if they weren’t moving a muscle.

  ‘Listen,’ she said. ‘You do what you like. You always have. But you gotta promise me to leave Dad out of it. I can’t be looking after him as well. He’s not as strong as you think.’

  I leaned forward and cracked open the box of chocolates. Offered it to Tessa who waved it away. I took two triangle ones and jammed them in my mouth at the same time. I needed something to stop up the biting words that wanted to get out at Tessa. She wasn’t fooled, though, and sat waiting for an answer, so in the end, given the delicateness of her pink nighty and her unbrushed hair, I nodded. She raised an eyebrow meaningfully, so I followed it up with an ‘okay, I promise’.

  I sat awkwardly with Geoff for a while before I left. Offered him help with the twins and Georgie. He said his mum was coming for a visit, give Tessa a break, so they’d be right. I nodded. Put my hand impulsively to his forearm on the table. ‘She’ll be all right,’ I said.

  ‘Will she?’ He looked up, his eyes raw with questions. ‘It’s like there’s this huge empty hole in the middle of her that I can’t fill. Not me, not the kids.’

  I saw it. I saw what he meant straight away. I wanted to tell him that she was strong. But what did I know?

  ‘Listen,’ said Rat-Tail back at the boarding house, following me up the corridor to my room. ‘You really gotta call that Tye bloke back. Funny name, but. He’s bothering me all the time. Real nice bloke, but.’ Rat-Tail held out the mess of messages I’d deliberately ignored beside the telephone. His gap-tooth smile dimmed as I grabbed the pink slips and went to close the door in his face. I relented. ‘I will, Rat-Tail. Promise. Do me a favour?’ I said. ‘I’ve been too busy to drop in on Marge today—could you?’

  He grinned again, his short, bony body straightening.

  ‘Give her this.’ I shoved a paper bag at him. ‘One for you in there too.’

  Despite the caramel slices, I was pretty sure Marge wasn’t going to be happy with me for inflicting Rat-Tail and his enthusiasms on her.

  I collapsed on the bed, hands under my head, staring at the map of cracks above me. I tried closing my eyes but they kept flickering back open. The misery on Geoff’s face swam through me, the weight of his helplessness. I didn’t know him so well, him being quiet, me not having been around much. But they’d both been kids when they started having kids themselves. I lay there long, counting seconds, then minutes, then hours. Time. One second your arms were plunged into the sink up to your wrists, the next you’d fallen through its layers. There was only one true thing I could do for Tessa, for Geoff. I had to find out where Mum had been and why. I was a lawyer. So I should start acting like one. Do what Maurice was always telling us to do—‘Follow the Facts’.

  But Tessa was right about one thing. If I was doing her a favour, I had to keep Dad out of it. He wasn’t going to help, anyway. So since private facts were off limits, I’d start with the public ones.

  The next day I didn’t even bother to call work. I needed to get to the hospital as soon as it opened for business, but standing in the grey functionality of its corridors almost undid me. I hadn’t factored in the tiny yet explosive fact. This was the hospital Mum died in. Still. I made myself take one step after the other until I found the medical records desk.

  A tall woman with an afro and a white lab coat took the form with all my ticks and crosses and dropped it into the in-tray beside her.

&nbs
p; ‘Where shall I wait?’ I asked.

  She looked at me over the top of her glasses. ‘Six weeks,’ she said and went back to tapping on her keyboard.

  I bit my lip to hold back the immediate retort and took a breath. ‘Is there any way we could speed the process up?’ I asked in deliberately measured tones.

  ‘No.’ She didn’t look up this time. Somebody else in a white coat came through the glass doors and said a cheery hello as she passed the reception desk with a pile of manila folders in her arms. The woman before me was just as cheery back.

  I tracked the somebody else through two sets of glass doors and then left into another room, where I got a glimpse through the opening door of rows and rows of manila folders in boxes.

  ‘It’s for the Managing Partner at Smith and Blake on a case of government importance,’ I said to the top of her head.

  ‘Really?’ She finished clicking on the keyboard with a flourish. She picked up my document and flicked through. ‘Sarah Anne McBride, of national importance?’

  I nodded without blinking.

  She shook her head, opened a drawer and placed another form on the desk. ‘You’ll have to fill that one out instead, then.’

  I pulled it towards me, reaching into my handbag for my pen again.

  ‘That’ll be four weeks,’ she said.

  ‘Does Mr Smith really have to call you personally?’ I said, returning her frost.

  ‘Wouldn’t do him any good.’ She didn’t crack a smile. ‘He could try the premier, though.’

  On the way out, I tried to slam the door, but being modern and glass it didn’t give much satisfaction. I retraced my steps down the long grey of the corridor and sat on a seat where I could track everybody who went in and went out of the records department in the distance. There wasn’t that much traffic. After an hour or so, the records woman came out. I hunched away, suddenly interested in something on the wall. She passed me by without noticing. I didn’t lose any time. Flew down the corridor, pushed through those double-glass doors, expecting to have to sweet talk somebody, but the desk was empty. I turned left and headed for the records room. There was probably only a slim chance they kept old records with the newer ones, but still. It was what I had.