by Peggy Frew
Helen reaches Saltwater Creek, a brackish lick, driveway-width and only inches deep where it emerges from the dune grass and meets the sea. She splats through and keeps on. She will walk for a long time; she will be gone for hours. She didn’t tell anyone she was going.
In less than a year Helen will leave her husband, John, but she doesn’t know this yet. She will leave him for another man, but the other man has not yet appeared, the idea of him has not entered her mind and stuck there like a burr. What has happened—what is happening—is a restlessness, an irritability with John and their daughters that, no matter how much she tries to resist it, prickles and bloats until she can’t stand it, has to get away, be by herself.
She doesn’t try to understand this, to think where the feeling might be coming from. She tries to ignore it. It lessens when she has time alone, and when she moves, when she walks or swims.
It’s not entirely true to say that the idea of another man has not yet come into Helen’s mind. She is in her mid-thirties. When she got married at twenty-two she had already slept with seven or eight men, although she never told John this. Some of these men were very complimentary. It was mostly her hair and her legs that they liked. Nice hair. Nice legs. One of them said that she looked a bit like Natalie Wood. These things said by these men—or boys, some of them were, and she a girl—made her feel good. As good as the actual sex, sometimes better. Lately, along with the restless feeling, she finds herself revisited by the voices of these men and boys. From folds of memory they rise, clean and sharp and completely, miraculously, intact.
They were snapshots, those compliments, light bouncing off the surface of her. They were not real. Helen looks down at her ankles, her feet entering the sand, breaking its crust with each step. They did not know her, the men who spoke those words.
But to not be known—to be met for that first time, at her surface, her skin. Just as that skin was being entered, anything—anyone—could be inside.
The voices visit her and something flutters open and all the Helens she might have been merge and swell and lift her up. The wind forces tears from her eyes, she licks her salty lips, her fingers hook the air; blindly she grins at the beach, the mud-coloured waves, the ti-tree crouched, hump-backed, on the dunes.
THE FIRE TRACK
Junie and Anna used to fight about who sat in the front seat, but now they didn’t because neither of them wanted to sit there, next to John, in case he cried. He often cried in the car, and it was hard to know what might set him off. The tears seeped out without noise, and he would fumble for his hanky and blow his nose. Then he might say something, in a strangled-sounding voice. You kids know that none of this is your fault. Or, You’re such great kids. Such good girls.
They were always statements, never requiring an answer, and they always made Junie feel like something was closing in, and she needed to get away.
This time Anna jumped in the back like a flash of lightning and so Junie was the one stuck next to him for the whole two hours. She rested her head on her arm, turned to the window, pretended to sleep.
Before the bridge there was a long descent. The road came out from between hills and rounded a bend and there was the water, and Anna craned between the seats and yelled, ‘I can see the sea!’ and Junie looked away on purpose. Everything childish, everything that belonged to the past, gave her a shrinking feeling. It was like the feeling of homesickness, right in her gut, and it was always followed by a blast of anger, which blew it away mostly, although there would be shreds left.
‘I can see the bridge!’ yelled Anna.
‘Shut up.’
Nan’s house had never felt small before but it did now, its walls too flimsy, someone always walking in on you. The air was full of things that people weren’t talking about.
John worked in the garden, digging, pruning, sweating. Cricket scores clattered from his transistor radio. Nan picked vegetables and took them into the kitchen, her bone-handled knife taking off the ends of beans, flick-flick, flick-flick. Anna lay on the porch in her bathers and read Choose Your Own Adventure books. She ate nectarines and the juice dripped dark on the concrete. Junie could hear her slurping from the bedroom.
Between the scrubby foreshore and the back fences of the houses ran a brown dirt track. It led to a kind of dam, and it was for the fire truck, so it could fill up with water when it needed to, although Junie had never seen it do so, nor ever seen any vehicle drive along the track. Most of the houses had gates at the bottoms of their gardens, so people could go across and down to the beach, following the faint paths that ran through the ti-tree. Sometimes she did see people crossing, carrying towels and beach chairs, wearing hats—but rarely, and nobody ever seemed to walk along the track. Why would you, when there was the beach just there, and the sea, open and shining and alive with salty breezes?
Junie walked on the track. In the patchy shade, the dried mud hard under her bare feet. In hot afternoons thick with cicada drones she walked alone towards a shimmering cloud that hovered, never getting closer.
One time she opened a gate and went through it. She crept between two bushes and looked out at somebody’s green lawn and white house, blazing under the sun. When she closed her eyes the shape of the house hung in orange dimness, a bright rectangle above a less-bright apron of lawn. She could smell herself, the sweat at the backs of her knees, the briny closeness of her underpants.
There was a disturbance in the space that was the lawn, and she opened her eyes again. It was a dog, a German shepherd. It came towards her with its tongue out, walking with a kind of fluid conviction. She recoiled, branches sticking into her back. Then she changed her mind and made to crawl out, to run for the gate, but the dog was already there, blocking her way. It stood over her, its hot breath soft on her face. It didn’t touch her, or bark, but it didn’t move away either. It was huge.
She stayed frozen in a crouch, her hands and feet in the dirt, leaves tickling the back of her neck. Once she tried to inch forward, but it moved its head, drawing in its tongue and closing its mouth. When she went back to her original position the dog let its tongue out again and resumed its steady panting.
It held her there for what seemed a very long time. Her legs ached. Ants crisscrossed her skin. Then, for no apparent reason, the dog swung its great head and moved off, sniffing away along the fence line, and she crawled stiffly out and ran.
On the fire track the afternoon was unchanged, throbbing brightly. She thought she could hear John calling but she didn’t go back—she went in the other direction, towards the dam.
The water was ringed with rushes, like in a picture from a book. Dragonflies made stagey passes over it. There was a space in the reeds and she entered, her feet sinking into ooze that was warm on top but cold below. Something that might have been alive scraped against one of her toes and she lurched on, wading deeper, flapping her hands. The water slopped at her shorts.
In Melbourne, at Avoca Street, the wisteria would have let the last of its flowers down along the back fence, but nobody was there to see, to stand in its purple shade. Inside would be the Christmas tree, still wearing its skirt of torn wrapping paper. John had forgotten to put out the compost bucket and they would return to a stink and a cloud of tiny flies that pattered at their faces and went up their noses.
The ti-tree sighed. The dragonflies skimmed with indifference. She was twelve years old and nobody knew where she was, nobody in the whole world.
In Melbourne there was a house and it wasn’t the same, and never would be, because Junie and Anna’s mum was different, had turned into a different person. And there was a man that they would have to meet, when the holidays were over and the first year of their new lives began, flat and unforgiving.
When someone came along the track she thought it was the dog. A shape flickered between the branches and her heart clenched and she saw herself trapped in the water, the dog standing guard, panting evenly, sealing the space in the rushes with its body.
Then she tho
ught of Greg, whom she’d never seen, but who camped in the foreshore and left dead fires and empty beer cans, and who Nan said was once a normal boy, more or less, until he went a bit funny in the head. Greg wouldn’t walk on the track, she knew, but for a moment she imagined him, dirty and thin, slinking along.
It was a man, shirtless, a towel around his waist. His belly and the upper reaches of his boobs of fat were pink with sunburn. He stopped.
‘You right?’ he said.
Junie nodded.
The man shrugged, and walked on.
Not long after that John and Anna came.
‘Jesus,’ said John, ‘here you are. Didn’t you hear me calling you?’
When Junie didn’t answer his voice got angrier.
‘What are you doing? I was worried about you. Don’t go off like that without telling anyone.’
There was a feeling at the back of her throat that was like sadness, but it felt good.
‘Come on,’ said John, but she didn’t move.
‘Come on,’ he said, ‘it’s getting late. Nan’ll be waiting with dinner.’
She stared down at the water. Her feet were numb.
There was shouting. There were threats. There was Anna whining, ‘I’m hungry,’ in the background.
The feeling in Junie’s throat was changing, losing its sweetness. She tried to think of things to bring it back—singing hymns at school chapel service; burying Sam, her guinea pig, after he died—but they didn’t work.
At last John waded in and lifted her up. She felt how strong he was, and where her face was pressed against his shirt she could smell his sweat. She made herself as heavy as she could. He lugged her to the track and dumped her down.
‘Phew,’ he said. Then he laughed. ‘You duffer.’ He tried to ruffle her hair but she ducked and started walking back to the house.
Later, in bed, Anna whispered, ‘Why did you do that? At the dam?’
Junie didn’t answer.
‘Were you scared?’
Outside, things moved in Nan’s garden. At every level—down on the ground, up in the branches of the trees, higher, in the black sky—things twitched and scuttled and flapped.
‘Junie?’ Anna wasn’t whispering any more. Her voice quavered. ‘Junie? Why wouldn’t you come out of the dam?’
Something thudded on the roof. Something slithered.
Anna was crying. She called out, and the door opened with a slicing, yellow light. John’s big shadow came in, and her dark little shape sprang up easily into his arms.
BOYS HOME ROAD
John wishes he’d packed that morning, left straight from work. It’s harder to face at this end of the day, the dark house, the overgrown lawn, the junk mail blown into the bushes along the drive. Inside, the closed-up smell, the silence. The poor kids—and here he goes again, bloody sooking, standing in the laundry with the keys still in his hand.
He pulls himself together, enters the kitchen, puts on the light. No need to clear out the fridge; the milk will last till Monday and there’s nothing else to take. He washes his breakfast dishes and wipes the bench, although it’s clean already. He’s been avoiding the bedroom but he will need clothes. Come on. In he goes.
Like a wind-up toy losing momentum he gathers undies, socks, t-shirts. Slower now, a pair of shorts. Sliding the drawer closed and there it is, he’s run out of steam, he’s oozing across the room like a glacier and opening the wardrobe and the smell of her comes at him from the empty shelves, slinks out like a poisonous gas, and his hands have gone limp, his legs have disconnected from his brain, he’s lost his body completely, he’s an engineless stub leaking tears.
University, 1968, he’d gone with her up to her room. They were meant to be seeing a film but she wasn’t ready yet; she needed to find something—a jacket, a hat, he can’t remember what exactly. What he does remember is the mess. Clothes on the bed, clothes on the chair, clothes on the floor. Papers, books, cups with dregs in them. She searched the place like a kid tossing armfuls of autumn leaves. Nope, nope, nope. Then she started pulling clothes out of the shelves, letting them fall at her feet. Eventually she found whatever it was and put it on, flashed him a smile—Ready!—and off she went out the door, leaving him to sit a moment longer on the very corner of the bed, the only clear bit, thinking, Who is this girl?
And the evening they’d met in the city. Another film? They were always seeing films; films must’ve been cheap—cheaper than going to restaurants, anyway. They met on the corner of Collins and Swanston, and she was wearing odd shoes. Both white, but one a sandal and the other a covered thing with tiny holes punched in the leather. You’ve … he said, and she looked down and didn’t skip a beat, just smiled and made a flipping gesture with her hand. She kicked them both off, and before he could stop her she’d chucked them into a rubbish bin. Those sandals pinch, she said, and I hate those other shoes. My mother gave them to me. Up the steps to the cinema she floated, him following, bewildered and clumsy, and smitten.
It wasn’t as though she had money for all these clothes and shoes and things she treated like shit and threw on the floor and lost and forgot. She was always broke. She’d open her purse and look in it and poke around with her fingers, because there were always a million things in there—receipts and paperclips and broken bits of jewellery and packets of sugar from the caf, which she ate during lectures, she told him, to keep awake. She’d poke around, or just turn the thing upside down and shake it so everything fell out into her lap or onto a table or the floor, and then when there was no money she’d look up at him, surprised.
She got by though. More than that—she flew. When she walked into a lecture people turned to look; you could almost see the pages of their notes flutter as she passed. She wasn’t especially pretty or anything—and weren’t they all pretty, those girls, so young and lovely? Him too, with all that hair and his boy’s face, and his body lean and hard—he could cry just for that, and might as well while he’s at it. But Helen—what was it that made her stand out? She was tall and she stood up straight. She, for all her lack of respect for them, seemed to be good with clothes. It’s always been a mystery to him—cut and fit and so on; his mother bent over a sewing pattern; bias, and darts, words like snipping scissors—but he can appreciate the finished product, when a woman puts it all together.
How many women has he admired over the years, invisibly? All those university girls in their houndstooth slacks and turtlenecks and flat shoes, trying to look like French film stars. Not an easy style to pull off, but Jesus, when one of them got it right! Breezing through the union building, her hair bouncing, her hips, her sweet round buttocks. And since: women in the street, women on the tram, women at his work—Gail, with those little boob-hugging jumpers. Mothers at the kids’ school—he saw them, he appreciated them. And that’s okay, it’s okay to look, but jeez, Helen, you don’t go and fuck someone.
He finds his hanky and blows his nose. Lets out a slow breath. The bed is tempting but he can’t give in. Sitting would lead to flopping, which would lead to snuffling in the pillows for morsels of her scent, which are becoming harder to find under the accumulations of his own. Which is what? Eau de Misery. Or, no—better: Old Cuckold. Pathétique? Wait—Sad Loser, that’s the one, simple yet evocative. Unwashed middle-aged man with hints of loneliness, wallowing and cheap red.
He gathers up the clothes. When he gets back on Sunday night he’ll change the sheets. It’s been, how long, two weeks? Three. It’s getting on for late January and the kids will need to come back, to go to school again, and they—he and Helen—will need to sort something out. Some kind of arrangement. He shies away from the word, from its formality, its conviction. Can’t he—can’t they all—just stay a while longer in the shelter of not-quite, of haven’t-decided, of not-sure?
He will have to speak to her, possibly even in person, which will mean inhaling her current perfume—New Fella, or I’m so Happy, or Eau de Lots of Sex, or whatever it is. Which will mean ripping off the pitifully thi
n layer of scar tissue he’s managed to generate and exposing himself once more to his own helplessness, his lack of vindictiveness or outrage, his inability to, for fuck’s sake, stop loving her.
Thank you, she’s said, more than once, for not being angry. But he takes no credit. It’s not an intentional gift. He keeps waiting for the anger but it’s just not coming. And his bloody mother, watching. You can’t even get this right, those cold eyes say.
Frivolous was the word his mother used, right back when he first brought Helen to meet his parents, when the Red Rocks house was still new, the rosebushes not yet planted. Helen, in an action that would become one of her trademarks, wandered off for a walk by herself and didn’t come back in time for dinner. John’s mum sat at the table, refusing to start without her. The lukewarm vegies, the meat in its clotting juices. His dad drifting somewhere in the background, not getting involved.
He—John—had tried to apologise, said something about Helen losing track of time, about how they ate later at college so perhaps Helen wasn’t used to such an early meal, and she’d cut him off with just that one word. Frivolous. Rapping it out like some kind of final judgment.
At last Helen appeared, breathless, smiling, her hair wild, the hem of her skirt wet. You should see the sunset! Gorgeous!
His dad cutting the meat, making awkward noises in the back of his throat. His mother’s murderous silence.
Helen ate three helpings and said, Delicious!—and to this day he couldn’t be sure if she was completely unaware of, or unfazed by, or had perhaps even enjoyed his mother’s silent, concertinaed rage and his and his father’s squirming.
