Last Bridge Before Home

by Lily Malone

  ‘Don’t call her that,’ Jaydah said, rushing to the freezer, pulling out a packet of frozen peas.

  ‘It didn’t hurt,’ her dad said.

  ‘Here, Jaz.’ Gently, Jaydah pulled the hand from Jaz’s mouth, pressed it to the table and put the frozen peas on top.

  Jaz started rocking in the kitchen chair, eyes darting between Jaydah and their father. It wasn’t the type of chair meant to rock and the legs scratched and bit at the wood floors.

  ‘Sit still, Spazzy Jazzy,’ snapped her dad.

  Jaydah lurched across at her father and slapped her palm on the kitchen table. ‘Don’t call her that!’

  And her dad got out of his chair fast.

  Jaz took one look at their father coming around the table like a bull and she broke from the chair and ran. He kicked at her foot and her slipper—a huge pink fluffy thing with a red puppy tongue at the front—flew off, and Jaz tripped.

  Jaydah sucked in a horrified breath and let it out only when Jaz missed smashing her head on the doorframe. She fell with both hands outstretched, hit the hallway wall, rebounded, and staggered to the right, running straight to her room. Jaz’s bedroom door slammed shut, but her sobs lingered, sad and miserable.

  Jaydah and her dad squared up to each other, hearing the same cries, breathing the same oxygen, feeding the same rage.

  ‘Whatcha want ya birth certificate for, hey? Why ya switching super funds?’

  Her blood froze. He caught Mum. If he’s hurt her, it’s my fault. ‘It’s a better return. My fund hasn’t been doing so well.’

  He struck his fist on his chest, making a dull thump, and then bounced that fist from his chest to the nearest chair, hard enough to make the heavy legs skittle. ‘You don’t do it behind my back. I’m the one who looks after the finances.’

  ‘Bullshit you look after the finances! It’s my money that pays the bills.’

  ‘Ya don’t pay any rent. Live here bludging off me, same as ya mum and ya sister.’ Spit caught at the edge of his mouth.

  ‘Mum and Jaz lug all those bloody rocks. I work. You’re the one who does nothing all day. You take all Mum’s carer’s pension that she gets for Jaz. You always have. You squirrel away all the money we get for the rocks. You never spend a cent on this place. Look at this place!’

  ‘Like the pension is much. This bloody tight-arse government. All those snot-nosed officials and their stupid damn assessments—’

  ‘They’re coming here to make sure Jaz is okay.’

  ‘Yeah and how’s that work? They think Spazzy Jazzy mighta got smarter in the six months since they saw her last?’ He laughed, the sound like a tin can rattling through an empty street. ‘Well, I got news for you. She ain’t getting smarter.’

  Her eyes got stuck on the knife-block between the kettle and the wall.

  Her dad took a step back. ‘Jaz ain’t ever getting smarter, and whose fault is that, Jaydah? You were born first! You made sure you were o-ky-then. You took all the ox-y-gen.’ He sang it at her and made it rhyme. Oky-then. Oxygen.

  The stab of guilt she’d lived with every day of her life—since she’d understood that she was perfectly normal and her twin was cognitively impaired—ghosted into her heart.

  She fought her hate and her rage, stepping back towards the sink, but not taking her eyes from her father.

  ‘Is Mum okay? Did you hurt her?’

  ‘Shoulda left her where I found her. Shoulda left her in that slum city, living on the mud. Houses all on stilts. Shoulda left her there. Should never have thought I’d do her a favour and give her a chance at a new life. Fat cow doesn’t thank me for it.’ He swore out the side of his mouth and his right hand hitched towards his belt buckle. ‘You want ya birth certificate, you ask me yaself. Don’t get your mother sneaking around my things. You got that?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Ya wanna ask me for ya birth certificate?’

  ‘No.’

  His eyes narrowed. ‘Why not?’

  ‘It doesn’t matter. I just won’t change funds.’ Let him think he’s won. I’ll get an extract instead.

  ‘They take it all in administration fees anyway. Bastards. Ya can’t trust them.’ But at least he was winding down now, not winding up.

  Jaydah turned to the sink and pulled the gloves on, keeping an eye on the monster via the reflection in the glass. The water had cooled. She switched on the kettle to top it up.

  ‘Better check on ya sister. I’m gonna watch telly.’

  He left the room and Jaydah finished the dishes, wishing she could wash away the hate in her heart like she washed dirt from a plate.

  * * *

  Her parents’ bedroom was dark when Jaydah tapped on the door and cracked it open. ‘Mum?’

  ‘I’m here. Don’t turn up the light.’

  ‘Turn on the light, Mum.’

  ‘I always get it wrong. I’m so hopeless.’

  ‘You don’t always get it wrong. Your English is excellent, Mum, and it always has been. It’s just those little things you forget. Don’t put yourself down.’ Her father did enough of that.

  ‘Please don’t turn on the light.’

  ‘Okay, okay.’ Jaydah left the door open. A faint glow snuck down the corridor from the kitchen. She sat on the edge of her mother’s bed. ‘Did he hit you?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Are you sure?’

  ‘It’s not badly. He pushed me and I fell. I should have stayed out of his way.’

  Jaydah hissed but said nothing, sitting in the near-dark in a room that smelled of cigarettes, faintly of bourbon, her mother and the always white rice.

  ‘I’m sorry I asked you to find the birth certificate.’

  ‘It’s okay.’

  ‘Did you find it?’

  ‘No. He found me before I could find it.’

  ‘I’m so sorry.’

  Her mother’s soft hand snuck from the covers, gripping Jaydah’s fingers. ‘It’s okay, my Jaydah. Don’t you worry.’

  ‘Do you need anything? Cup of tea? Ice?’ A gun?

  ‘A cup of tea would be good. Is Jasmine okay? She is crying.’

  ‘I’ll check.’

  ‘You’re a good girl, Jaydah.’

  ‘Thanks, Mum.’

  But she didn’t feel like a good girl. She felt mean and dirty. Good for nothing.

  She was so tired of the people she loved being hurt by that man.

  CHAPTER

  6

  It was one of those glorious almost-summer days in Margaret River when the sky was a faded blue, like old jeans spun too many times in the wash, and the air smelled of drying hay and cut grass. Brix, walking through the vineyard at Whale Rock Wines, pulled his hat back to get some sun on his face. It had been a crappy spring, and he, for one, couldn’t wait for summer to get its arse into gear and hurry the hell up.

  Plus he couldn’t wait for Christmas.

  Summer and Christmas Day merged in his mind till he had to snap himself out of a very sloppy smile at the thought of him in a suit and Jaydah in a white dress, and Anita Revel the celebrant and Gavin her pilot, with their small plane somewhere in the background of all the wedding photos at the Chalk Hill airstrip.

  All the wedding photos. Ha! Jaydah didn’t even want him to book a photographer. He’d be lucky if he could talk the pilot into taking a snap on his phone.

  He flicked at a beetle on a leaf in the Chardonnay canopy.

  Sure as anything, his wasn’t about to be one of those traditional weddings with a reception and a rehearsal and flowers. Jaydah hadn’t wanted him to come up with a wedding dance or a speech or music, or pick a best man, or think about invitations or table decorations or seating arrangements or, what did you call those fancy things for gifts? Bombonaries?

  Whale Rock Wines hosted weddings quite often in the season. An impending wedding put the gardener in a spin of lawn-mowing and pruning, and the couple usually wanted to have photos taken out in the vineyard with all that green behind them and the bride with her head
thrown back, laughing.

  The event planners would come in and erect a marquee under the two biggest gums, where the tent opened out to see sunset over the lake and its island in the middle sticking up like a humpback whale, wader birds fluffing their feathers over it like black and white barnacles.

  His wedding day wouldn’t be anything like that, and Brix would be forever damn glad.

  He hated speeches. He hated fuss. He was like Jake that way, whereas he’d bet anything he owned that when the time came for Abe to tie the knot he’d go all out. Abe would come up with some grand scheme and pull the whole thing off perfect.

  That was how Abe rolled.

  But he’d bet whatever else he owned, no way would Taylor give Abe a two-month wedding deadline to work with like Jaydah had slapped on him.

  He ticked his jobs off on his fingers as he walked up the vine row, eyes roving side to side as he looked for any sign of mildew or pests. Book the celebrant. Check. Send the marriage paperwork to the celebrant. Check. Get his suit drycleaned. Buy five suitcases for Jaydah and her mum to pack their stuff.

  The five suitcases thing puzzled him a bit. ‘Five? Seriously?’ he’d said when she asked him. It’s not like JT had fifty pairs of shoes. Although, given he’d never set foot in the Tully house, who was he to judge how many shoes Jaydah and her mum might own?

  The good thing was, he’d have JT with him and she’d be safe.

  Every day he thought of what she was living in—living with—and it burned him inside.

  Reaching the end of the vine row, he started back towards the winery buildings and his gaze took in the old cottage on the hill nestled towards the driveway entrance at Whale Rock.

  Part of his salary package included that house and it suited him fine as a bachelor, but it might start getting a bit small if he had to squeeze Mrs Tully under its roof too.

  Would it be rude if he bought a secondhand caravan for Jaydah’s mum and parked it over near the fruit trees? It was pretty there.

  Nah. Probably too far if she needed the bathroom in the middle of the night, but he could park the caravan under the carport and leave his and Jaydah’s cars out front. That could work.

  Anyway, it wasn’t like it was for long. He’d help Jaydah get her mum settled and maybe when the ghost of Keith Tully wasn’t so strong they’d be able to rent something in town for Rosalie?

  It would all work out.

  Brix favoured the mindset of not worrying too much about the future because you really couldn’t plan for what you didn’t know about. All you could do was adapt when you knew what you faced.

  Take the vineyard, for example. Everything looked perfect about now—the vines were vigorous and thriving—but a late hailstorm before Christmas could ruin everything and it’s not as if he could plan for a hailstorm. All he could do was work with what landed and nurse the vines through the aftermath. Vines were tough. Jaydah was too.

  His phone vibrated in his pocket and his first thought was JT, but when he picked out the phone the name on the screen flashed Jake.

  ‘Howdy,’ he greeted his big brother.

  ‘How’s it going? What’s happening?’

  ‘Just walking along, mate. Walking along. What about you?’

  ‘Doin’ about the same, mate. Getting all the jobs done that don’t get done while we’re all flat out with shearing. You know how it is.’

  ‘Just like vintage over here, but vintage lasts longer. Yep. I get it.’

  ‘Did I get you at an okay time? Can you talk?’ Jake’s voice changed and a tiny alarm buzzer went off at the back of Brix’s head. Jake didn’t often phone just to shoot the breeze. He was too busy with the farm and the hardware store and with Ella, Sam and now Charlotte for that.

  ‘Sure, mate. The vineyard isn’t going anywhere. I got time.’ He stopped where he was, pushing his hat up higher on his head, leaning against one of the end strainer posts, happy to feel the sun on his shoulders. ‘What’s up?’

  ‘It’s about Mum.’

  Brix gripped the phone harder. ‘What happened now?’

  His mum and dad were in their caravan on a round-Australia trip. Then his mum had a fall in the showers at the caravan park on the same weekend he was in Chalk Hill helping Jake on the farm—the weekend Jaydah proposed.

  A few days later the doctors at Tamworth Hospital told his mum she had a lesion on her brain and they needed to do further tests. They’d been waiting on those results.

  Whatever was going on, it was bad enough to make his mum and dad decide to cut their trip short and come home.

  ‘Last I spoke with Dad he said they were in Mildura. He said Mum was tired but she was feeling better than Tamworth and they’d be in Adelaide soon,’ Brix said, thinking back. When was that conversation? Last weekend, or last week? He’d been so consumed with his upcoming nuptials—now there was a word that made him smile—other things had slipped his mind.

  ‘Yeah, well, the thing is, they’re here.’

  Stupidly, Brix looked around, as if his folks might pop out from behind a grapevine, waving their hats.

  ‘Where?’

  ‘They’re here in Chalk Hill. They got home today. Dad must have hit express mode across the Nullabor. Abe’s round their place now. I just left.’

  ‘How’s Mum look?’

  A sigh over the phone. ‘That’s the thing, mate. She’s not great.’

  Again, that buzzy feeling rattled the back of Brix’s brain. ‘What’s not great mean?’

  ‘She and Dad weren’t square with us, mate. It’s a brain tumour. They’ve known about it for a while and the doctors say they can’t operate.’

  ‘Shit. Really?’

  ‘Yeah. It’s too close to other parts of her brain. They reckon they could cause more damage if they try to take it out. So they won’t operate.’

  ‘But you’ve seen her?’

  ‘Yeah. I helped Dad unload the caravan and get her settled. They only hit town this morning.’

  ‘So seriously, what’s the prognosis? Do they know?’

  ‘Ah, well. Apparently she’s been on steroid treatments for a while trying to stop the growth of the tumour. She’s put on some weight and Dad says that’s a side effect of the steroids. She’s a bit shaky on her feet too.’

  ‘I planned to be back for Christmas but it sounds like I should make a trip sooner.’

  Hesitation before Jake replied. ‘I think you should, mate, yeah. If you’ve got time. No one seems to know how quick it … she … might go. They say it’s aggressive.’

  ‘One of the girls in cellar door here, her brother had a gioblastoma and they couldn’t operate. Is it that?’

  ‘I don’t know the medical term exactly and I haven’t had much of a chance to quiz Mum. Maybe. Sounds about right.’

  ‘I’ll come over for the weekend. Is there space at the house for me?’

  ‘Your room’s there. Yep.’

  ‘Alright. I’ll see you then. I’ll text when I’m leaving here.’

  ‘No worries. Be good to see you.’

  ‘You too.’

  Brix ended the call, slipped the phone back in his pocket and spent some time watching the barnacle-birds on the hump of whale rock in the lake.

  You just never knew when your time was up.

  He’d been away from Chalk Hill a long time now. When he finished school and things hadn’t worked out with Jaydah, he’d gone to university in Adelaide to study winemaking. When he’d come home from studying in South Australia and things hadn’t worked out with Jaydah, he’d gone west to work in the vineyards and wineries of Margaret River. When he crossed paths with Jaydah over the years and they’d come at each other like wild things, and they’d fought every bit as hard as they’d loved and things still didn’t work out, well … he’d just stopped coming back to Chalk Hill at all.

  It was easier.

  Now he was heading back for the second time in a month, with another trip beckoning in the near future. Christmas Day.

  CHAPTER
/>   7

  Would Mum and Dad lend me their caravan?

  Brix parked beside the eighteen-foot beast set to the right of his folks’ driveway, wheels chocked up on blocks of wood so it didn’t roll away. His father stood by it with a hose in his hand, rinsing off the bubbles that were now popping on the grass.

  His dad waved and moved to turn the tap off and Brix climbed out of his Toyota.

  Dad looked older.

  ‘Been a while,’ he said, holding out his hand to his father. They shook, and his dad pulled Brix hard into his chest. ‘I think you’ve shrunk, old man.’

  ‘I think you’ve bloody grown,’ his dad said, taking a step back like parents did when all they wanted to do was look at you and see what they’d missed.

  ‘You going okay? How you been?’ Dad said.

  I’m getting married in seventeen days. ‘I’m good. Busy. This is my second trip in the last few weeks. Did you know I came over to the farm before Jake started shearing?’

  ‘I heard about that. Jake said he got you moving some sheep around the paddocks. Thought you woulda forgot all that by now.’

  ‘Nah, it’s like riding a bike, and anyway Jess did all the work. I just had to remember how to whistle and stay out of her way.’

  His dad laughed and his laugh was the same as ever. Big. Bright. Busty. Like a bald man on the beach.

  They talked for a while about dogs on the farm. They’d always had dogs but they were working dogs and the boys weren’t allowed to throw sticks for them or play with them, not like town kids with retrievers and staffies and labradors. You’d ruin a sheep dog that way, their dad said. Brix remembered Bob and Oscar, Jeckles and Paddy. Paddy was his dad’s favourite. Paddy set the standard. He was the dog all the other dogs had to live up to.

  The dogs that didn’t live up to Paddy’s lofty standards were the ones where their dad dug a hole down near the creek and gave the dog one last chance to come good. Usually, those holes got filled, and not with creek water.

  ‘Your mum’s inside,’ Dad said eventually. ‘I’ll just finish up here. Be in for a cuppa in a bit.’

  ‘Rightio.’

  Brix toed off his boots and left them at the door, and his socks made a faint swish on the tiles as he walked. It was cool in the house, dark out of the sun, and he took off his sunglasses and let his eyes adjust. His folks’ house was long and narrow. Bedrooms at the front on the left of a skinny corridor that led down, down, down.