The Best Australian Stories 2011

by Cate Kennedy

  Nina looks at the mask and cap hovering behind the curtain, thinking that vomit could hardly be a surprise considering the tugging and pulling at her insides. She watches the mask and cap, the focused eyes of the obstetrician. She could be a baker kneading bread.

  ‘Not long now,’ the assistant surgeon says.

  ‘Good,’ murmurs Nina, with another heave into the bowl.

  ‘Oh,’ exclaims the obstetrician suddenly, ‘Don’t go!’

  There’s a sudden flurry of gloves and masks.

  ‘He’s diving back in!’ she laughs.

  The assistant is holding onto a long white tape, which Nina imagines is lassoed around an errant ankle. Is that how they bring them in, a fish on the end of a line? She has visions of her newborn slithering to the floor and flapping around. But now she hears a cry. Someone has got hold of him and demanded he be human. They lower the blue drape.

  He is a large creature, with enormous hands turning blue and red and blue and red.

  ‘Is he all right?’ she wonders out loud.

  ‘He’s fine,’ says the goodly doctor, ‘just the oxygen swapping over.’

  Luke has the camera, though his eyes are not on the viewfinder. He’s peering over the cloth to a point she can’t see, where the squally newborn wrangles and the fat, twisting cord between mother and child is severed. They will leave a good length of it for him to cut later. For now she watches a wave pass through him – of fear, of pride, of responsibility forever theirs. It transposes him from the father of one to the father of two, and is connected somehow to his worries about shade and the symbolic, and his determined footsteps across sand. It’s the kind of love they don’t sing about – this standing side by side to receive oncoming water and live amongst the tides. Perhaps the thread still holds.

  Her child’s cry is strong and wild. The blue curtain has dropped further so she can see him better. She watches the great hands clenching and opening, stretching and curling, calling in the red across the blue.

  There are exclamations of approval and congratulations. He is a big boy. Healthy, with a good set of lungs. Listen to that cry, you’ll know about him. Look at those hands. He’s a rugby player.

  But Nina knows otherwise. She watches his great hands and listens to his voice and hears from her emptied body a whisper,

  ‘When he is a man, he will move rocks.’

  Street Sweeper

  Leah Swann

  You’ll remember this day your dog Winston dies, this day and this night, but right now the afternoon is fresh and untouched by future events. Here you are on the concrete steps, in front of a shabby weatherboard: Mathew Greene at fourteen, with a skateboard under one arm, the other filled with the shaggy warmth of Winston.

  Listless, you feel in need of something. But it won’t be found in the kitchen – where your mother, Molly, makes jam with Bridget like it’s an hilarious science experiment – nor downstairs in the mad slurry of Monopoly money and scone crumbs left by the children. You’re too old to play.

  Greene senior, the father who gave you Winston on your third birthday, is not here. He married someone else and lives in America with new children. It’s no one’s fault; it’s just the way things are. Last time he visited, you played footy on the street. You told me it was the best hour of your life.

  *

  You hear the women’s conversation through the open front door. You’re dimly aware that this jam-making business is somehow attached to your mother’s need to be accepted by the brigade of Other Mothers. You can’t stand her ostentatious efforts. If she cut off her dreadlocks and removed a few earrings, she might get further. But you can’t say such things. You don’t want to.

  ‘My goodness, if my mother could see me now,’ Molly says. Knives slash and chop on the cutting boards.

  ‘My mother didn’t make jam either,’ says Bridget. ‘But it’s a good antidote to the madness of modern life.’

  ‘These mandarins are appalling.’

  ‘Not enough rain.’

  ‘Satisfying to make them into jam, though,’ says Molly.

  There are cigarette butts in the geranium pot by the steps, Marlboro Lights, Molly’s brand. Citrus infuses the air like a pungent teabag. Hearing a cork pop, you know Molly’s opened a bottle of wine and your chest kinks with anger. The one bright spot of your day is the evening walk, when you and Molly and your little brother and sister walk the dog. It will be awful if she’s drunk – and she could well be drunk by then.

  You’re hungry but you can’t bear to return to the kitchen. You don’t want to enter that warm, womanly fug of jam and alcohol and Bridget’s cleavage. Now they’re testing the jam on a cold saucer; you can hear your mother worrying that it’s too runny.

  You’re itching for something. You don’t know what, though later you wonder if you were waiting for the car that screamed around the corner, the car that killed Winston, and the girl in velvet hipsters who tumbled out of the driver’s seat, weeping.

  You set out to skate from the letterbox to the fire hydrant and back. Winston follows, arthritic and shambling. You’ve already skated two lengths before the dog’s made it to the nature strip to relieve himself. He’s wandered out on the road when you hear the car’s engine too close and too fast.

  ‘Winston!’

  The great bushy head lifts to attention, his eyes obscured by a long fringe of grey and white hair. He doesn’t move.

  ‘Winston, come here!’

  Ponderous, as if moving through water, the dog raises a paw like a Clydesdale hoof and puts it down again. The red Astra hurtles around the bend. Brakes squealing, the car smashes into Winston and sends him soaring along the road. The Astra screeches to a stop and the driver climbs out. She’s already crying.

  Winston must be dead. You run to him and pick up his front and back paws. You’re dragging him to the kerb when you see that he’s split open – his guts are rolling out. Behind you, the girl gives a short scream.

  ‘Don’t worry,’ you hear yourself say. ‘Don’t worry about it. I’ll get a spade. I’ll clean it up.’

  The girl’s shoulders are shaking. ‘Oh my god, oh my god! I’m so sorry.’

  ‘You can go home if you want,’ you say. Please go home. Please go. I can’t stand it.

  The girl’s eyes are dripping black over her lovely face: she’s the kind of girl you’d be in awe of in other circumstances. A navel diamanté winks up at you from her flat belly, making you hot and uncomfortable.

  ‘No, let me help,’ she pleads.

  ‘I want to do it,’ you say. ‘Please.’

  ‘Do you want me to go?’

  ‘Yes.’

  *

  Running down the driveway, through the noisy kitchen to the back door, you find the spade and walk back through the kitchen. The wine bottle is almost empty. A foaming pot of gold on the stove threatens to boil over, guarded by a giggling Molly with her wine glass and wooden spoon; Bridget’s ladling the first batch into washed jars. A row of finished jars sits on the windowsill, backlit by sunshine, each one full of a dense and radiant orange.

  ‘What the hell’s Matt doing with a spade?’ you hear Bridget say.

  ‘God knows. Spot of gardening, perhaps?’ says Molly. A gale of laughter follows you up the driveway and you think to yourself, bitch; but only minutes later she’s out there beside you, helping you, proving you wrong.

  *

  When you tell me of the evening walks your voice is tender. How the littlies hold hands and walk in front, hauling Winston on the leash, while your mother’s beside you, deftly winding the conversation this way and that way and listening intently to whatever you say about school, dreams, football, skateboards – even girls. You only notice this skilfulness in retrospect. But you bask in her attention; these walks are when you love her best.

  She
knows how to handle you. When she arrives on the street that unforgettable spring day, Winston spread over the bitumen like the Pro Hart carpet advertisement, she says in a low voice, ‘What we need here, Mathew, is a box. Run across to the Stuarts’ and see if they have one, as big as you can find.’

  Bridget is standing nearby. Molly leans over and says something to her you can’t hear. Glad to leave the scene for a moment, you hand Molly the spade and dash over to the neighbours’ house.

  Molly must have worked like lightning, because by the time you get back most of the dog is in an oversized pillowslip and another, smaller slip. The small one has a faded Thomas the Tank Engine print on it, the one you insisted on having until you were ten. You set the box onto the nature strip and lift the sacks into the box. Each is knotted, so no furry vestiges of poor Winston protrude. Blood’s staining the cotton, fast.

  ‘I think it’s best if Georgia and Stefan don’t see this,’ says Molly, wiping sweat from her forehead.

  ‘I’ll take them for tea at my house,’ says Bridget.

  Once you’ve carried the box to the backyard, you go inside to clean up. In the bathroom, you wash your hands and face. There are voices outside, followed by Bridget’s car driving away. In the mirror you see a whisker poking from your chin and yank it out with your thumb and forefinger. You walk into the bedroom. Sinking into the bed, your hand stretches by habit to feel Winston’s head and swishes through empty air. You lean forward all the way and press your eye sockets into your kneecaps and cry. Tears soak your jeans.

  Eventually you go back to the garden, where Molly is busily digging under the old mandarin tree. She looks small and skinny with the apron – donned for jam-making – still hanging off her unmotherly form, dust-blonde dreadlocks tucked behind earlobes bristling with silver. There’s a tattoo of a sun on her right bicep. The arm that stirred the pot. The arm that dug the grave. It’s shaking with effort.

  ‘Let me do that, Mum,’ you say.

  She hands you the spade gratefully, and wipes at the muck and tears smearing her face.

  Later, there will be a memorial service. Georgia and Stefan will toss flowers onto the grave and say poems in Winston’s memory. Right now, their absence lets the two of you cry freely. All is quiet, save for the sound of tears and dirt falling over bloodstained pillowslips.

  ‘He was a good dog,’ chokes Molly, when it’s almost done.

  ‘The best,’ you say, and put your arm around her and again you notice the slightness of her, this woman so big in your life.

  *

  During the night you can’t stop thinking about Winston’s body coming apart. You want to stop but your mind keeps going back to it, probing it like a finger on a scab.

  You try to think of the mandarins and the hands of the women, their chopping blades, sectioning, stripping, peeling. Dozens of mandarins slashed in half, their dry gold bellies face-up. Pips and pith and shells of orange skin sitting in heaps between the blue packets of sugar. The driver’s face comes to mind and you wonder if she’s awake too, disturbed by killing a dog. Despite your efforts, you keep seeing red guts and other stuff, brown and shiny and sausage-like, on the hard road.

  Finally you fall into a hot, fitful sleep, only to be woken by the harsh noise of a street sweeper. The vast mechanical brooms whirr through the quiet, breaking it up into so many shards.

  *

  When you put on your runners, you slip through the bedroom window and out onto the street. It’s late. You pad along, jogging lightly. Cold moonlight spilling over a blossom tree makes it so sharply beautiful, so unearthly – it takes you by surprise. You will always remember its fragrance, its stillness, its lambent white blossoms.

  Up the road comes the street sweeper. You avert your eyes from the glaring gold lights, sitting on the truck like upturned jam jars, but nothing can block the noise. It passes you slowly, a moving edifice of brutal efficiency, its raucous vacuum strong enough to suck up a house brick or a dead possum. Even bits of Winston. But Molly did such a good job, there’s barely a trace of Winston left; every piece has been wrapped and buried. At least he was saved from that.

  As you hurry back along the street to your house, you see a light on in Molly’s room. Leaping through your window and sliding into bed, your heart thumps. She’s talking to someone on the phone. At this time of night it could only be America. Molly’s voice is too muffled to hear what she’s saying. Maybe the bad school report. Maybe Winston.

  When the conversation ends, you creep into your mother’s bedroom. She’s in her singlet top and pyjama pants. Her eyes are pink.

  ‘Was that Dad?’ you ask, clambering onto the bed next to her.

  ‘Why are you still awake? Were you listening?’

  ‘Couldn’t sleep. Winston, I guess. Did you ring him?’

  ‘No – he rang me.’

  She looks through the open curtains to the night sky. Her room seems dingy with its peeling paint and op-shop dressing table. Georgia’s scrappy bouquet of lavender and jasmine is wilting in the vase.

  ‘You might as well know,’ she says. ‘He asked if you’d like to go and live with him. And Cady and the little ones. Become part of their family.’

  You’re surprised at the excitement, even joy, rising inside you. Joy with a seam of dread. It’s like someone’s opened a door to let in a fresh breeze. To live with him! You take a deep breath.

  ‘It makes sense, really,’ Molly says, rubbing the skin of her forehead with her thumbs. ‘You’re becoming a man and I don’t know how to help you with that. Your father could.’

  *

  Years later, you reflect that Molly sent you away at the very moment your body grew stronger than hers; strong enough to crack open drought-dried earth with a spade. Now a grown man, you can see how such strength could have genuinely helped her maintain the house and guard the children. Had you stayed, she might have come to depend on you. Did she know she was protecting you from her own neediness, when she encouraged you – against her own feelings – to say yes to your father’s offer?

  *

  Several weeks later, you say your goodbyes to Stefan and Georgia at the house. Molly’s arranged for Bridget to mind them rather than go to the airport: they’ve been crying a lot about you going. Closing the front door, you catch sight of Stefan’s little sheepskin Ugg boots left where he stepped out of them in the hallway. The toes point outwards, the way he habitually stands.

  The two of you drive to the airport. After you’ve checked in your luggage, she waits with you. In her usual way, she keeps the conversation light and funny, teasing you about the American accent you’ll inevitably acquire and the pretty teenager she’s spotted that you could ‘chat up’ on the plane. When the boarding call comes, she gives you a jar of mandarin marmalade.

  ‘Give it to your dad,’ she says, and grins. ‘Be sure to tell him I’ve been making jam. I’d love to see his face.’

  There’s a long, awkward hug, and then she holds your shoulders and looks into your eyes, and out of love for her you strive not to squirm.

  ‘You’re the best thing that ever happened to me, Mathew.’

  Her eyes are bright with unshed tears and she swallows. ‘Good courage, son,’ she says, and laughs. ‘I’m telling you what I need! Now remember, if you feel down just go and chat with that girl.’

  Courage is what you need hours later, when the first real wave of homesickness hits you. Through the window lies a vast mass of sky and ocean. Your tray is flipped open in front of you with a packet of sweet biscuits, tea and the empty dish that held the lasagne now lodged like cardboard in your stomach. The stricken face of the girl who killed Winston floats towards you, as it does sometimes; it would have been nice to talk to her about it once the shock had passed.

  You stack the mess into a pile and fossick in your bag for the marmalade. Your hand closes around the co
ol glass jar, still sticky from where the old label has been soaked away. Drawing it out, you place it in front of you.

  The jar beams on the tray, an orange beacon. Twisting the lid till it pops, you take a spoon and dip it into the marmalade and listen to Molly and Bridget, their voices coming as though from long ago, a piece of history running through your head.

  ‘Put the jam on this frozen saucer and we’ll see if it gels.’

  That’s Bridget, followed by Molly: ‘Oh my God, it’s too runny – what will we do?’

  ‘Keep boiling it. Just keep boiling it.’

  Holding the spoon, you check the texture of the jam and find it quivers and drips in gelatinous globules onto the empty packets. She did it! A thin twist of peel dangles and glistens. Taking another spoonful, you taste mandarins transformed by sugar and heat. Marmalade coats your tongue, thickly golden. How sweet it is, and how bitter.

  Bearings

  Forging Friendship

  Karen Hitchcock

  Hannah replied to my Facebook request for friendship by email.

  Hey Keira, she said in the email. What’s it been, one year, two?

  She was no longer with Thomas, had moved interstate, was making a short film and she’d prefer – she wrote – not to use Facebook. She would close her account any day now, it was a nightmare, she knew way too many people, and they all wanted to friend her. Nothing personal; she hoped I didn’t mind. She hoped she’d bump into me one day. We should catch up sometime, when she was in town and wasn’t so crazy busy.

  Which to my mind was a fancy way of saying: Please fuck off.

  So I wrote back: I totally understand Hannah, thanks so much for finding the time to respond to me, because I do appreciate how extra precious your time is. I know that you really should have a PA to handle all this Facebook rejecting for you; how horrible it must be to tear yourself away from your city-slicking, vegan-shoe-and-blood-red-lipstick-buying, la-de-dah filmic machinations just to compose little Facebook rejections designed to make everyone else feel like a piece of crap. I mean, HOW TAXING for you, Hannah.