Something For a Rainy Day

by Joanna Atherfold Finn

  The spare bed’s chenille quilt had a mound in the centre of it. Cocooned inside was a child named Phoebe. The bed sighed as she rolled over. Audrey had minded her overnight. Her parents were in one of the houses that had gone up in the next stage of Oasis Estate. Steven had encouraged the arrangement saying they seemed like nice, decent people. The Trotts had originally been located on the far boundary, but they were now hemmed in. Phoebe’s parents had a two-storey house that towered over the Trott’s rear fence leaving a dark shadow on their lawn.

  Audrey sat on the edge of the bed. Phoebe had one leg dangling over its side and Audrey tucked it back in. She stared at her reflection in the mirrored built-in. The starfish glinted against the light flowing through the blinds behind her. She was wearing a white towelling dressing gown that gaped, exposing a rash of pale freckles across her chest. Flecks of grey streaked her hair. What a dishevelled mermaid, she thought. She imagined what her hair would look like if it was golden-blonde. Maybe she would dye it. She fluttered her hands by her waist like she was trying to rise to the surface.

  Eight-year-old Audrey and her dad walked down the stairs to the ocean baths. She was wearing a navy swimsuit with tiny ruffles fanning out from her waist. Her legs were patterned with purple blotches and her arms were covered in goose bumps. Her dad had a canvas backpack on, crammed with masks, snorkels and towels. They sat on the edge of the saltwater pool. On the other side, Audrey could see waves crashing over the chain barrier that separated them from the ocean. A lady wearing a racer-back swimsuit and a flowered cap flexed her shoulders, folded her outstretched arms across each other, and dived into the water. Her dad jumped in. The water slapped against his waist. He took her mask and spat in it, swishing around the glass with his thumb. She giggled.

  ‘Daddy that’s disgusting.’

  ‘Trust me,’ he said. ‘You don’t want it all foggy.’

  He took her feet and cupped them into bright blue flippers. He stretched a mask over her face and pulled the loose wisps of her fringe out, then slotted a snorkel into her mouth.

  ‘Bite on it,’ he said. Her lips puffed out and he laughed at her. ‘I wish your mum could see you like this.’

  He clapped his hands, and she jumped out from the edge and wrapped herself around him. His skin was warm. She clung to him like a periwinkle. He prised her off and laid her face down in the water.

  ‘Just breathe,’ he said. ‘Try not to think of anything.’

  He held one arm under her stomach and one under her thighs. The water lapped around her hairline. She could see his legs under the water. They looked like the legs of a giant. They were white with tiny bubbles of water stuck to them. ‘Kick Audrey,’ he said. ‘Move your hands in and out like the fins of a fish.’

  She felt the water take her weight as her arms and legs paddled in furious circles. His voice was muffled against the sound of her breath. She saw an orange starfish peeking out from the sand. She squealed and spluttered out her snorkel.

  ‘A starfish Daddy. I saw a starfish. It was huge.’

  ‘My little mermaid,’ he said.

  Audrey picked up the teddy that Phoebe had flung onto the floor during the night. She suffered night terrors. She had to tell Bob next door that the blood-curdling screams that came from their house were nothing to be concerned about. Whenever Phoebe stayed, the stuffed toys that Audrey had tucked in next to her were spread in fluffy carnage on the green shagpile rug come morning.

  Audrey had bought the rug at a department store sale at the complex, an hour’s bus ride from Oasis Estate. Her period had been late. She had thought the rug looked just like a bed of soft weed, with its fibres looping in on each other. She’d passed her money to the shop assistant saying it was for the nursery. As she walked to the bus stop, with her shopping bags slung under her arm that day, she pictured the ropes of green fibre from the rug twisting between her baby’s curled pink toes.

  It would be a boy. She could smell his skin, freshly bathed and massaged with lavender oil. She would tickle his feet with a strand of wool and he would giggle. He would have her hazel eyes. Sitting on the bus, with the breeze blowing through her hair, she had pulled the bunny rug from its bag and held it against her cheek. The woman sitting next to her nodded and smiled. Audrey rubbed her stomach. She imagined it swelling as the baby grew inside her, suspended in its warm ocean, floating and tumbling, immersed within her. She had wondered what the churning in her belly would sound like to her child. Perhaps like the echoing rumble of a shell when you hold it to your ear.

  Her stop had been just up the road. Audrey slid across the seat and rocked from side to side against the aisle. Her spare hand pressed lightly on the shoulders of passengers. She thanked the driver and stepped onto the curb. As she did, her face flushed, and she felt a warm trickle between her legs. She ran into the estate, past the Birds of Paradise; their dead flower bulbs drooped over the garden’s perimeter, discarded in brown shadows, clinging like cicadas. She reached the crest of the hill. Spread in front of her in the midday sun, was the blinding shimmer of Colorbond; brown-brick houses with patchwork shale facades teetering from their borders.

  Audrey reached her house. Bob was playing with his cat. His hand scuttled under a piece of newspaper and the cat pounced on it.

  ‘Lovely day Audrey,’ he said.

  ‘Perfect beach weather,’ she said.

  She pushed open the front door and ran to the bathroom, pulling down her pants and sliding them over her feet. She rinsed them in the sink and crouched on the tiles with her head between her knees.

  Phoebe rolled over in her sleep. Audrey turned to watch her nestle her face into the quilt. Her blonde hair spilled across the pillow. She had hair just like her mother, Kylie. Audrey only really knew Kylie on a weather-talking basis, but she did know the babysitting was arranged so she and her husband, Michael, could go on scheduled date nights. Steven played golf with him. Michael had said recently, out on the course, that Kylie thought he had an alcohol problem. He’d confided to Steven that he’d only started drinking heavily to cope with her therapy-induced manic optimism. Audrey had laughed the way you do when someone else’s burdens make your own seem more bearable.

  Phoebe had spindly blue veins on her eyelids and her mouth was open. She tucked the teddy back under Phoebe’s neck and inhaled her bitter, milky breath. Steven called out from the bedroom.

  ‘Do you want me to make my coffee Audrey? I’ve got inspections at the new subdivision all day.’

  After Steven had left for work and Kylie had arrived (flustered and an hour late) to collect her daughter, Audrey walked down the hallway to the office. For two years she’d operated a home-based typing service. It made sense, Steven had said, for her to work from home. The Trotts could after all, only afford one vehicle, and the bus service made commuting to work almost impossible. Steven had bought a new model Statesman. He’d said the car was a reflection of his ability as an agent. A luxury car was expected.

  That day she entered client records without really absorbing them. The wind rattled the window frames. As she moved her fingers over the keypad, tapping lightly and efficiently (she was a touch typist), she fell into a daze. She saw herself trudging along the sand. Her brown calves flexed as she picked her way past abandoned footprints and ribbon weed. It was the summer holidays. Parents twisted umbrellas into the sand and dabbed their children with sunscreen. Teenage girls sprawled on their stomachs, their pale heels pointing up to the sky, their boy-leg bikinis stretched tightly across their bottoms. She saw a topless woman engulfed by a huge inflatable tyre bobbing languidly in the water. As Audrey typed, the woman’s fingertips trawled through the surface of the ocean netting tiny silver fish. She propped herself up higher. She felt invigorated. Her skin was golden with tiny pale hairs. She had a mulloway bone on a piece of fishing line dangling between her breasts. She spread out her towel and leaned back pushing her fingers deep into the sand. A young boy
crawled out from the water. He was draped in a cloak of seaweed. He looked at her with yellow eyes. He shuffled up the sand until he reached her, then turned and pushed his body into the space on the towel between her legs. She picked the seaweed off his back. He was covered in dark, soft down and his shoulder blades protruded like wasted, distorted wings. Tiny moles were dotted over his body. While she waited for her file to save, Audrey rested her cheek against his back. He was damp, his skin flecked with salt. She licked the tiny indentations of his backbone. He tasted like the roe from a cracked sea urchin.

  Audrey printed the file. She moved her fingers from the keyboard and cupped her coffee mug. She let the last sip fall against her tongue. It was cold and metallic. Above her head a fluorescent light flickered. Huddles of flies dotted its casing. She heard a blowfly buzz into a gap to reach the light, hurtling back and forth against the hard plastic edge in tiny death vibrations. She should take down the fitting and clean it. On the cork noticeboard in front of her, her dad smiled up from a photo she had pierced with a thumbtack. He was standing in the front yard of her childhood home. It was a white weatherboard cottage wrapped in a hardwood veranda. In the photo, she could see the jasmine-covered bearers that she used to scale as a kid. The garden was littered with scallop and abalone shells. A sagging lounge covered with newspapers and books leaned near the front door. Netted glass floats dangled from the beams. Her dad had his hands pushed into the flowered red gills of a mulloway. It was almost as big as he was. He’d given her the shiny bones from the cavity at the top of its spine to take for news. She told the class what her dad had told her while they had eaten the fish for dinner the previous night. She told them about the humming noise the bones made that sounded like the fish was singing. Her teacher held her back at recess and told her that news was meant to be something real. She’d gone home that night and her dad had asked how it went. She’d said there hadn’t been time. She’d gone to her bedroom and dropped the bones into her jewellery box.

  Thirteen-year-old Audrey clipped her weight belt around her waist and staggered backwards in her fins like her dad had taught her. On the shoreline, a toddler giggled and twisted his body into the sand. Audrey swivelled around and pushed out into the ocean. The water worked its way through her wetsuit. She shuddered. Around her, the light played like balls of mercury swirling and bumping against each other. Clumps of weed hung in dull blooms from craggy drop-offs. Her dad held his speargun beside him and reached out a gloved hand. She clenched it and he dragged her through the water. It chinked and rumbled around her like an out of tune orchestra. Reeds flowed in speckled ribbons from puckered crevices. Her dad pointed out a flathead. It looked like a fossil camouflaged against the sand. He pulled her up to the surface. They spat out their snorkels.

  ‘You okay?’

  The water smacked against them. ‘Yep. I’ll be fine.’

  ‘Let’s keep going then.’

  They glided with slow flicks of their fins past boulders flecked gaudily with pink algae and purple turf weed. A school of bonito startled and skittered. Her dad let go of her hand and tipped himself into the drop-off. She hovered over him while he loaded the gun. A Sampson fish swam around his fins as inquisitive as a dog. Her dad fired his spear through the water and the rubber buckled and curled like a tentacle. The fish twisted and arched. It started swimming down, then turned and flicked towards the surface. She watched its body shake in silvery spasms. She could hear her dad whoop through his snorkel. He slid the spear back through the fish and toggled it onto the line. They kicked back to the surface again. The water gurgled in the curve of her snorkel and she blew it out.

  ‘Want to have a shot?’ he asked, holding the fish in his hand. It was still twitching. She kicked her legs to stay afloat. The water was dark and rippled. She felt cold. They’d travelled a long way from the shore. The ocean tugged at her.

  ‘Dad, I think I want to go back in.’

  ‘Audrey we’re safe here. We’re just swimming to that bommie. I’ll put you up on the rock and you can sit there like a shag. This one’s mine. I’ve still got to get your dinner.’ He put his snorkel back in his mouth and held out his hand. She reached across and followed him. A long strip of green weed curled around her arm. She pulled it free and let it float away.

  By mid-morning Audrey had finished most of her typing. She stood and turned to her grey filing cabinet. On it was a potted plant with waxy emerald leaves. Audrey always thought it would look more at home in the ocean. It reminded her of seaweed. Steven had bought it for her the day after she told him the pregnancy had failed. It had a pointed plastic label stabbed into the soil. In bubbled writing it said, ‘Thrives on Neglect.’

  ‘It’s just a little something,’ he’d said, oblivious to the inference that had struck her like a dull punch to the gut.

  He’d continued chatting away while she nudged the corner of her eye with her sleeve. ‘The lady at the shop said you don’t really have to do anything with it at all. Just a drop of water now and then.’ He’d put her hand between his and given her firm but inadequate pats.

  The lady in the shop was right. Then, the plant had been just two shoots with the leaves curled in on each other like clasped fingers. Now it cascaded over her cabinet falling in all directions, looping into the drawer as she pulled it out on its warped hinge. She poked her finger into the soil. It was a little dry. She lifted the leaves and tipped some water around its base. A new shoot was just starting to form, pointing towards the tiny shaft of light from the window. Audrey felt like the walls were closing in on her.

  Tomorrow would be winter.

  She went to the kitchen and washed the toast crumbs down the sink. She wiped the grease from last night’s grilled chops from the stovetop. The house felt grimy. She’d feel better if she got out for a while.

  Steven had said the new subdivision tours would take all day. He wouldn’t be home until six when they would go to church. She pulled her hair into a ponytail and yanked open the front door; it had swollen from the salty air. She slammed it. Outside, Bob had his car jacked up. He was lying underneath it with his knees sticking out. She walked past him and he slid out on a trolley.

  ‘Getting too old for this nonsense,’ he said. He dipped a paintbrush into an ice-cream bucket and smoothed off a slick of oil against the edge of the container. He was always pottering. A bit like her really, she thought.

  ‘Bit of fish oil,’ he said.

  ‘You’ve lost me Bob.’

  ‘Ever seen a rusty fish Audrey?’

  He winked at her and skated back under the car on his back. He had brown, muscular calves. He had told her that he’d been really fit once. He reminded her a bit of her dad.

  ‘Bye Bob,’ she said to his legs. He wagged one of his feet at her.

  Audrey thought she would walk along the roads in the second stage of the estate. She could then follow the path that curved around the tract of bushland. She meandered past reticulation systems and solar garden lights that were bent and pitted. The grass was strangled with clover. She turned down into Drifters Way. A pair of terriers raced along the perimeter of their yard hurling themselves against the fence and yelping at her. ‘Ssh, it’s okay,’ she said. They snarled.

  Mirage Close veered off to the right. It was a cul-de-sac lined with a series of blocks that were vacant, apart from a few surveyor pegs and signs listing the site dimensions. The ground on the lots was sandy and pliable, full of give. Her feet sunk into it. It would soon be compacted and pierced with pilings, slabbed and trussed and put on display. She looked towards the curve of the turning circle. There was a silver car parked facing the bush. Audrey thought it looked a bit like Steven’s. A bright blue sporty-looking hatch was parked next to it. She’d seen it before too, but she couldn’t quite place it. She walked a bit closer. It was definitely a Statesman. If it was him he was going to be late for his subdivision tours. She took tiny steps. She wasn’t sure why. It looke
d like there were two people in the Statesman. She could see the backs of their heads. Steven would be mortified if he was trying to close a deal, and she wandered past. She would pretend she hadn’t seen him. The way she looked, with her hair plastered against her face and her joggers on, would be bad for business. Bedraggled women didn’t feature in the brochures.

  She stared at the heads. They had turned towards each other. She could see now that the other person was a female. She had long blonde hair. Audrey watched as they moved towards each other into the space between the car seats. Their faces pressed together. Audrey stood transfixed as the man’s hands reached up and clutched either side of the woman’s face. They nuzzled in on each other. She was inching closer now, just like Bob’s cat did when it skulked along the fence with its eyes fixed on the birdbath. Slinking along the path, her heart rose in her throat so quick and sweet that she thought she might be sick. It was his numberplate. They were still locked together.

  She remembered now where she’d seen the other car. It was the one that Kylie had backed down her driveway in after picking up Phoebe. Normally Michael collected the child. Audrey was guiltily mesmerised. She wondered when they would take a breath. She felt repulsed and seduced at the same time. The blood in her ears thudded but her skin tingled. She could not remember the last time Steven had seemed so absorbed in something other than real estate. She backed away slowly in small, shuffling steps and then turned and ran down the street.