by J. P. Pomare
‘I think so.’
‘You already have chemicals in your system, Evie. You don’t need caffeine. No wonder you can’t sleep. Why don’t you get a cup of herbal tea or something instead?’
I don’t answer. When the waitress passes by again, he reaches out and touches her forearm. She turns and smiles, charmed by him, I suppose. I can’t help but stare at her hair. I could reach out and grab it. Then what? Maybe I could tell her he locks me away at night, that he tells me lies and hurts me. Even if she believed me, the only thing she could do is call the police.
‘I think we will cancel the latte, please, if it’s not too late.’
‘Sure,’ she says. She glances at me. ‘Did you want something else instead?’
‘Hot chocolate,’ I say.
‘Good choice.’
When she leaves, I say, ‘If I want a coffee, I can have a coffee. You can’t just control everything like that.’
His expression is blank as a doll’s. ‘That’s not a decision you get to make.’
When my hot chocolate comes I push it away.
‘God, does the coffee mean that much to you?’ Jim snaps. He leans in, speaking in a voice so low I find myself straining to hear him. ‘After everything we’ve been through, it would be a shame if that waitress saw your face on the news and remembered you as the girl that had a tantrum over a fucking drink and next thing we know you’re locked away. Think about that, next time you want to make a scene.’
A pair of old women sit nearby, squawking like geese, their voices too big for the small table. They glance at me, then lower their voices.
The waitress strides past. Jim’s eyes follow her. He does have a taste for younger women. He turns back and pats my hand once.
I can see him thinking; he rests his chin on his knuckles. ‘If you could live anywhere in the world, where would you choose?’ he asks.
‘Melbourne,’ I say without hesitation.
He makes a frustrated sound. ‘What about somewhere you could start afresh, somewhere no one knows you?’
‘I don’t know.’
‘What about somewhere on the other side of the world?’
We had that choice, we could have gone anywhere, but he dragged us to Maketu. I think of Awhina, the small girl from the bus shelter, who doesn’t have a choice. I feel a narcotic heaviness in my bones. ‘No. If we leave here, I want to go home to Melbourne.’
‘There’s nothing for you in Melbourne, Evie. Can’t you see that?’
I glance back at the women. Their eyes are on me. Their latte glasses are stained with crescents of mauve lipstick. I wonder if they recognise me. The video is still out there.
The waitress returns with a sandwich for Jim and eggs Benedict for me. I can hardly eat any of it. All I wanted was the coffee, something from the world before.
‘. . .doubt it’s cancer, might be a trend,’ one of the women says, just loud enough for us to hear. The other slyly shifts her gaze towards me.
I slide my palm over the tabletop. My water glass tips, falls and explodes on the cobblestones.
‘Jesus,’ Jim says. ‘Careful.’
I watch their faces, the subtle disgusted look they exchange. I fix them with my most intense stare until I am sure they have both seen me. One of them gives a nervous laugh.
The waitress hurries out with a brush and dustpan.
‘I’m sorry,’ Jim says with a silly me expression. ‘I bumped it with my elbow.’
He shifts his gaze on the women. I turn my head so they can see the scar, the inch-long crease above my right ear where hair will never grow again. He is back, facing me, letting out his breath, blinking slowly. Then he places his hand on my wrist and rubs it back and forth until I am calm once more.
•
We roll past the abandoned surf club. In the car park a group has gathered. At least twenty people – kids with skateboards and rugby balls, and adults of all ages holding tall brown beer bottles – are standing around. Smoke rises where the heat swirls off the grill of a barbecue on the grass near the picnic area. Music thumps from a car with its doors and boot open. It’s as though the entire village has gathered. I see Tiriana from the shop among the group; she watches our car pass. Sitting on a man’s shoulders is Awhina. The man has short hair on top but a long black mullet down his back. The child, too, looks over as we pass.
The bottom of the car scrapes as we go over a speed bump. As if on cue, all eyes swing to us. Way to stay inconspicuous, Jim. There’s a stillness about the crowd. A man with thick dark hair and faded green tattoos on his face looks over. He taps the chest of the man beside him, then points at us. I feel a twinge of panic. I look over at Jim to see if he has noticed. His hands are tight around the wheel.
•
When I wake the following morning, Jim is out. I read the book I started at the airport, wondering if it has any more secrets for me. I find myself falling into the story and have read sixty pages before I find something else. No underlined letters but words written into the margin, pressed hard with an angry fist.
Death is the only escape.
I can hear my breath growing louder. Don’t trust him and now this. Is it a threat? Perhaps he found the book and put these words in here to warn me about attempting to escape. Is he saying if I were to escape I would die? The handwriting is not so different from mine. The t’s look like my own. These pages may hold more clues but I’m afraid to continue reading. My hands tremble thinking about what else I might find. The book is old and dusty, the pages yellowed and stiff. It closes with a thump and I slide it beneath my bed.
Out on the kitchen bench, he has left a pile of seed packets.
It’s been ten days since I quit taking the pills and the headaches have stopped. I feel like I am getting stronger and more lucid. I feel like when the time comes I will be able to escape, I will be able to get back to Melbourne to find out the truth. Death is the only escape. Those words are an icy hand on the back of my neck. Death is not my only escape. I can get away. I must get away.
Out in the garden I go to work thumbing carrot seeds into the soft soil. I am on all fours with the last few seeds in the palm of my hand when he returns. ‘Kate,’ he says, ‘come and have a look at this.’ He is actually smiling.
‘What is it?’
He gestures for me to follow.
I clap the soil from my palms and climb up the steps to the house. Jim leads me through the kitchen and out the front door to the driveway. I hear it before I see it; tied to the tow bar of the car, emitting a low, excited whimper, is a black dog. Its tail flicks. Its mouth hangs open with a flat pink tongue lolling to one side.
‘Welcome home, boy,’ Jim says, unclipping the leash. The dog rushes towards me, his tail swinging deliriously. He sniffs my feet and circles me. When I reach out to pat him, he leaps up and licks my fingers. Then he sprints up the driveway and back. His mouth is wide open in a perpetual grin. It may be fleeting but right now I am . . . happy. It’s been so long that I forgot what it felt like.
‘Can I name him?’
‘He’s already got a name,’ Jim says, reaching down and scratching the dog behind the ears. ‘Beau.’
‘Beau,’ I repeat.
‘He’s a staffy. A guard dog.’
To me he looks far too cute to intimidate anyone.
After spending some time exploring, sniffing, licking, he drops to his belly in a square of sun near the back door.
‘Is he ours?’ I say.
‘Well, yeah. But if he doesn’t fit in, I guess we can always take him back to the SPCA.’
A dog is a commitment. Does this mean we are staying here for good?
Jim lugs in a sack of dog biscuits and a square of lamb’s wool for Beau to sleep on. He puts the biscuits beneath the sink and lays the bed in the corner of the lounge near the sliding door.
That evening after dinner, Beau lies on his bed, staring up at me with a mopey look.
‘Come on,’ I say, coaxing him closer. Eventually he rises, s
tretches, and wanders over. I scratch the prickly fur between his eyes, feeling the bone beneath.
‘You can feed him if you want,’ Jim says from where he is seated at his desk. ‘Just a scoop.’
In the kitchen, I take a scoop of biscuits from the sack and tip it into the steel bowl Jim bought for Beau. Beau dives in snout first.
When he’s finished eating, he comes back to the couch and looks up at me.
‘Is he allowed on the couch?’
‘Sure,’ he says. ‘Why not?’ Soon enough, Jim turns from the desk and begins running through the same series of questions he always asks, while I stroke Beau’s back.
‘What do you think of when you think of Melbourne?’
I imagine the splitting sound of a human skull. ‘I think of school and my house.’
‘Who do you remember seeing, when you drove the car?’
‘I don’t remember.’
Beau has returned to the kitchen, has his head in the cupboard beneath the sink. Jim rises to pull Beau away and closes the cupboard. ‘Make sure you leave this closed so he doesn’t get into the bag.’
‘I’ll be more careful.’
‘Okay,’ he says. Then he continues asking questions. ‘What was I doing on the street that night?’
‘You were running along.’
‘And what was I carrying?’
I squeeze my eyes closed, concentrating to remember. ‘I don’t know.’
‘Alright, why don’t you head to bed and get an early night.’
I brush my teeth and go to my room. Don’t trust him. Death is the only escape. I reach for the book but before I can read more than a few pages I’m dozing off.
EIGHTEEN
I DREAM A familiar dream. I’m driving and I hit someone but this time it’s Thom. He raises a bent finger, pointing at me as I approach and lets out a howl of laughter. His body flips over the car and flies up over the power lines, crashing down on the kerb. His skull opens to reveal what looks like a soft-boiled egg. A dog is barking, the sound ripping me from the dream.
I lurch upright, breathing hard. The knocking in my chest is like a loose bolt in an engine. Was it Beau barking?
The house is quiet. But I’d heard it; a low bark. I open my curtains and look out over the moonlit lawn, towards the sea at the bottom of the hill. I feel so lucid and energised. This entire town and the man in black will be asleep. The ladder is still outside. I open my window and cool air rushes in. I climb up to sit on the sill and then, turning, extend one leg towards the wooden rung, then the other, and clamber down.
The frozen grass at the base of the ladder numbs my feet, and my pyjama shorts and the wisp of a top are hopeless against the breeze that grabs at every part of me. I take in my surroundings: the moon-shadowed lawn, the stars layered and sweeping all the way to the silhouette of the hills at the distant horizon. The night is a wonder; this night is mine.
Walking up beside the house, I hear the occasional rustling of the leaves, the movements of unknown animals in the trees and grass. The sea, too, seems louder, bigger, at night. When I reach the road I see a three-legged white dog – the same one I saw by the beach the first time I walked down the hill on my own. It is ghostlike in the moonlight. Is it waiting for me? For a second we are both still. Then it turns and continues along, its irregular gait mesmerising.
I am shaking with cold, and wish I’d thought to pull on my hoodie and trackpants. I stop and the dog swings its head back once more. Come on, he seems to say, I have something to show you. I cast my gaze out over the village; there’s nothing but shadows in the grass and pale ghosts in the paddocks. Nothing but shacks with cracked paint. Newer houses, the holiday homes, are all empty with their curtains glaringly open.
The road knuckles the thawing meat of my bare feet. Am I following the dog or pursuing him? When we reach the bottom of the hill near the beach, he bolts off. I walk faster. By the time I get close enough to see him, he is sitting on the other side of the car park near the surf club.
Beneath the lone streetlight in the car park is a red station wagon, its engine murmuring. There are two people inside. I ease back, beneath a tree. Its shadow expands and contracts in the breeze like a lung. I could run. I could run back. Before I can make the decision, the passenger-side door opens. I am trapped. If I run I’ll be seen; if I stay where I am I might be grabbed.
As a man gets out I see the dog has risen to its feet and is running towards me. No, go away. I make a shooing gesture. The man tilts his head and swigs from a bottle. The dog veers away from me and approaches the man, who aims a kick at it, but the dog scampers away before the man’s foot can connect. Someone in the car lets out a rip of laughter.
The man stands in the centre of the car park swaying. My body feels as if it is nailed to the tree. The slightest movement might draw his attention.
‘What’s the time, bro?’ a voice asks.
I hear a muffled response, and then the sound of a car door opening and closing. The car reverses before turning in a long slow arc, the beam of the headlights washing over me.
My jaw is rattling now. Despite what many people think, the jawbone is not the hardest bone in the body. It is not even the hardest bone in the skull. The temporal bones on the sides of the skull near the ears are the densest bones found in the human body. Although, as with all bones, under enough stress they too will crack. They too will chip and buckle.
Slowly the headlights wheel out over the ocean and swing up to the road. I watch as the car passes, and then I see him, staring out the window, a fearful look on his face. It’s Thom. The driver is Thom. I sprint out from my hiding place. I chase the car, stumbling as a sharp stone bites into my foot. The car is already climbing the hill. But I sprint hard, with my arms swinging. ‘Hey!’ I scream. ‘Stop! Wait!’ The tail-lights grow smaller and smaller until finally they disappear around the bend. I drop my hands onto my knees and suck in breath.
My heart is thumping. Thom, I think. It was him. He’s come for me. But as quickly as the thought comes, it’s gone. Thom hadn’t learnt to drive. And it’s not just that; Thom couldn’t be here. It’s impossible. Maybe I really am losing my mind? Maybe Jim has been telling me the truth all along? I’m too frail, too damaged to face reality. Looking up, I notice a light is on at a nearby house. The curtains move. Someone was watching me. I start back towards the house.
The dog is a fading apparition in the black of night, creeping away along the stones of the beach, a silhouette in negative before the spilt ink of the black sea.
The moonlight is enough to see by and the stars are out between the translucent sails of clouds. When I get home, my heart chases me up the ladder, through the window and into my room.
NINETEEN
WHEN I WAKE, the previous night reels in my mind. I reach down and itch the island chain of sandfly bites at my ankle. I saw Thom. But in the light of day, I realise that I hadn’t; it was one of the delusions Jim once warned me about.
It doesn’t make sense, and yet I can’t move beyond it, seeing Thom’s face in the car as it sped past. Jim can’t be telling me the whole truth about that night and I know not to trust him. I know there is more to it than simply my driving the car; there has to be more to it. He has always asked me if I remember him there, if I remember him holding something in his hand. The truth must exist in the grey area between what I sense to be true and what he has told me. The truth is in Melbourne.
As I brush my teeth after breakfast, I notice something different in the bathroom. Beside the sink there are only toothbrushes and soap and Jim’s shaving cream. I cannot see his razor. I open the cupboard beneath the vanity and find the first-aid kit. Unzipping it, I see the scissors are gone. In the kitchen, the steak knives have vanished from the drawer. Jim doesn’t turn away from where he sits at his desk, but I see then his letter opener has vanished from his pen holder. Just like the home phone, these things have disappeared without any word from Jim. One day they’re there and the next they’re gone. Maybe I really
am insane.
I need a walk to clear my head.
I go to the door, then turn back and head towards Beau’s lead, hanging up in the kitchen. The dog begins to whine.
Jim turns around from his computer. ‘Beau,’ he says sternly, ‘get on your bed.’
Beau does as he is told, but he sits up ramrod straight, alert. If I do it enough Beau will get worked up and someone will need to walk him. When I go to the door once more he barks.
‘Fuck me, I can’t concentrate with that dog.’
‘He needs a walk,’ I say.
‘Well, I don’t have time to take him,’ Jim replies. ‘I have to find somewhere else for us to stay. I don’t know if this house is helping with your mental state.’
‘My mental state?’
‘I mean, you were doing well at first, but I think it would help if we had a change of scene. Somewhere more remote. I mean your agitation . . . it’s grown.’
More remote than this?
I should be relieved – more remote means less chance of being found – but I’m not. ‘Where?’
‘Not too far. If I can’t find anywhere suitable, we’ll stay here. I just want to check our options.’
‘Can I take Beau for a walk?’
Beau fires off a volley of barks. He circles his bed, standing, looking at me.
‘Don’t say that word, Kate,’ Jim says wearily. ‘He gets excited when you say “walk”.’
More barks, and then Beau rushes to the door and sits by it, looking up at me expectantly.
‘I’ll just go along the path,’ I say. ‘Where we used to walk.’
‘Oh, alright. But be careful.’ Jim gives me a set of house keys on a thick white key ring.
I put the keys in my pocket. Jim showed me the route I should take, along gravel paths and dirt trails across paddocks. Places where I’m not likely to see other people.
Beau tugs hard on the leash as we walk up the driveway. When I get to the road I listen for cars before unclipping him. In a flash he is off, racing down the hill to the bend before turning and sprinting back to me.
