by Joy Dettman
‘It’s small, love,’ he’d said.
‘I like it small.’
‘You’ll need some drawers and a comfortable chair.’
‘I like it bare.’
Paring her life down to basics had been part of the deal, stripping herself of all she had been, weeding out all props so there was nothing to hold her to the past, or to hold her from a future.
The rent was steep for a cold concrete cavity with as much personality as the inside of a cardboard carton, and the bills were piling up. In May she’d had over fifteen hundred dollars in her bank account. Now she was gainfully employed, her balance was down to five hundred and twenty. She’d been going out with Sue, seeing a few shows, doing what people did in Melbourne. Then yesterday she’d put her two hundred and eighty dollar overcoat on Visa. Shouldn’t have. Should have put it on lay-by, but she’d wanted it now. And she loved it, loved her new hair-style too, and her platform shoes.
At ten she made a quick call to the hospital. Private calls were verboten in this place; she made it while the supervisor was in the loo. The sister gave her the usual jargon, which meant her mother was okay.
Hair pushed behind her ear, her mind cleared of Mummy, she dialled. This one would be a sale. ‘Good morning, Mrs Dunn. This is Sally, calling on behalf of –’
‘Who?’
‘Sally. I’m calling on behalf of –’
Disconnected.
From the workstation opposite, the pimply guy stared. He spent all day staring at her with his big baby-blue eyes, one finger engaged in picking at his pimples. He looked like the brother of Frankenstein’s monster but sounded like everybody’s wimpy halfwit son.
Sally flashed him a smile, just to make him blush and flush his pimples. God only knew how old he was. He could have been eighteen or a retarded thirty.
A chook cackle erupted to her left. Heads turned, faces eager for anything that might break the boredom. Pimples thought the cackle was aimed at his blush and his peach pink became a diseased strawberry red.
Giggles and sighs, coughs and cackles became badges of identification on the twelfth floor. Sally would have recognised that chook cackle if she’d heard it in the middle of Bourke Street during a blackout, but if she collided with the cackler in the toilets, she wouldn’t know the face. And there was a guy to the right, prone to great brays of laughter. She’d heard that laugh when she went to a singles bar with Sue. Swore it was him, but although she’d searched the faces, she hadn’t recognised a workmate.
Pimples never laughed. He had a nervous cough, a clearing of his throat, which he did before every call, and ten times per call. But he stuck to his spiel, got enough sales.
On his left, old coot Ron leaned, his dentures clicking, his worn-out old rat teeth eager to escape, to snarl, to bite. Rabid old sod. ‘G’day,’ he’d say. Clackety-click. ‘Voice of good news calling.’ Clackety-click. ‘I got an offer too good to refuse today.’ Clackety-click. Old creep, in his stale sweaters and vinyl shoes that smelled of rotting feet.
A crazy, nameless place. So many came for a day or two. So many left. No gain in remembering names – like in the foster homes where Sally had served time; she’d get to know a few names then be moved on, or moved home. It had been easier to leave the nameless behind. Names had a way of gluing themselves to you. Like at home. She knew everyone in Lakeside.
‘Carla Miller,’ she said as she glanced at the window and thought of the murdered child. ‘Carla Miller. Glen Waverley.’ Somewhere outside of that window, somewhere out there, a mother was crying.
She sighed. The sky still looked grey. More rain coming. Sally wanted sunshine and escape to a dry roof. She wanted a smoke.
Society’s outcasts, smokers, they’d been banished to back alleys and rooftops all over Melbourne. They didn’t argue about it, didn’t fight back. An accepting pack, price hikes and anti-smoking campaigns didn’t have them protest marching in the streets. At lunchtime some of them went down to a coffee shop which still allowed smoking but made you pay for the privilege. Coffee was free in the tearoom and the roof only a staircase and a heavy door away.
It was an alien place, a grey-black concrete and metal landscape, high above the world and silent. No phones on the roof. Age and sex didn’t count on the roof. Up there nothing counted except the right to stand in the biting wind sucking smoke to fill that inner emptiness, blowing it out, watching it hit the cold air and make clouds, watching it go up, watching it go down, hands at peace, head at peace.
A second group escaped to the roof on fine days. They were non-smokers Sally named the green bunch. They spoke conscientiously of conservation while eyeing the smokers and wondering if they could sue for smoke abuse when the wind changed direction.
There was a third tight group at Phonepross, the tearoom group. Old coot Ron, Pimples always at his elbow, Mrs Varicose and her knotted veins, Sue, toy boy Norm, married Red, and a few Sally had not yet named. They had stamped their claim on the tearoom, where they munched on packed lunches and the world’s ills, then spat out their simple solutions.
Tea break came slowly today, lunchtime even more slowly, but it came. By 1.30 the clouds were firing rain bullets at the roof, so the tearoom, a partitioned cubicle at the rear of the spaceless space, was crowded. Old coot Ron sat at the head of the table, Sue beside him, already scoffing a bag of potato crisps, dipping them into a tub of apricot yoghurt. At the opposite end, as far away from Ron as possible, Varicose nibbled on diet crackers spread thick with peanut butter, the crumbs spilling onto her massive breasts like dandruff. Pimples, on Ron’s right, stared at the breasts while he ate meat and tomato sauce on brown bread. He left his crusts on his paper bag, then picked up his apple, looked at it, like he always looked at it.
Sally smiled, wondering if today he’d bite it, put the apple out of its misery. It almost made it to his mouth. No. He placed it back on the table, turning it in circles with one long finger while his other hand picked pimples.
Old coot Ron ate rough male-made sandwiches. Sally could visualise him standing at his Bayswater bench, tossing everything in sight over his shoulder onto the bread. Meat, tomato, hunks of onion, beetroot; his sandwiches looked like him. Stale. A bit thick.
‘I’ve been in work since I was bloody thirteen years old.’ A slice of beetroot fell onto the table. Ron clawed it up, pushed it into his mouth without missing a beat. ‘Anyone can get work if he wants it,’ he said, spraying beetroot as he elbowed Pimples’ pimple-picking elbow. Pimples squirmed, looked at his apple and blushed a beetroot red.
‘You put me in the Lodge for a week, and I’d fix this country. Bring back national service. Put all the bloody kids in for six months.’ Another elbow jab at Pimples. ‘Turn them into men,’ old Ron recited for the umpteenth time. Horrible old man in his pilled hand-knitted sweaters, his stained trousers, fly always gaping. God help his grandkids.
Varicose, grossly overweight, changed the subject. ‘Did anyone hear the news this morning? Little Carla Miller.’ Varicose had twelve-year-old twins, Tania and Paul. ‘I can’t help thinking of that poor mother,’ Varicose said.
‘Why wasn’t she at home, keeping her kid off the street? What was she doing letting her wander around in the middle of the bloody night?’
‘She was picked up at 6.30, you miserable old sod,’ Sue said. ‘And what were you doing at 6.30 last night?’
Old was the insult. Ron’s hackles rose and his voice rose with them. ‘If you’d lived half as long as me and seen half the things I seen, then you wouldn’t be so bloody tolerant.’
‘I’m not fucking tolerant, am I? And when I’ve lived half as long as you, I’ll have enough sense to keep my mouth shut when I don’t know what I’m talking about.’ Sue came from a large disapproving family; she had learnt to speak fast and loud.
‘And when I was as young as you, bloody women spoke like bloody women and they knew their bloody place, bejesus.’ Ron’s snarl sprayed onion breath. Two silent eaters stood. Got away.
‘What is their place, Ron?’
‘They didn’t wander around the streets at night with their bloody nose rings and dresses up to their arses. They’re out there asking for it, I tell you.’
He made Varicose wish the table was longer, wish she was at home looking after her twins. He made Pimples pick up his crusts and stuff them one after the other into his mouth, seal his mouth. He made Sue stop licking yoghurt from the container and turning the air blue. She had an interesting turn of phrase. She could wedge two four-letter words in a three-word sentence when pushed.
Ron snarled a few final words over his shoulder as he left for the loo, his fly gaping at the ready.
‘Do up your fly, you flashing old fuck,’ Sue yelled. She always got the last word.
The tearoom settled down. Slowly, new conversations began.
A bunch of rejects from the factory of life, Sally thought as she tuned in, or tuned out, catching snippets here, there, everywhere. Sue spoke across her to toy-boy Norm, a chinless wonder with a ratty ginger moustache who would have been better off growing a beard. He’d been at Phonepross almost as long as Sally.
‘They found her on the South Eastern Freeway. Tossed out of a car.’
‘Cindy knew her, you know? She’s from Glen Waverley.’
‘Cindy?’ Sally said.
‘Yeah. She said that Carla lived two streets away, said she was in the same class as her sister. Not the type to get into a car with a stranger.’
‘Was she raped?’ a no-name asked.
‘No –’ The speaker was married Red, a quiet one who rarely opened her mouth. Many eyes urged her on today. Red had an aunt, married to a cop in Homicide. The tearoom group gained a lot of inside information from Red, who now bit into a neat triangle, ham and cheese. ‘I’m not supposed to say anything about it, but because he didn’t . . . rape her, they think he might be old, or . . . or something.’
‘He stripped her?’ Sue wanted the details.
‘And strangled her, and he tied a pink ribbon around her waist in a huge bow.’
‘Some sort of a sicko,’ toy-boy Norm said.
Red turned to him, flashed him a smile. ‘Yes.’
‘The world’s full of them,’ Sue said. She was twenty-nine, Sally’s age, married at twenty, now getting a divorce. She had a nose ring, a tattoo on her calf and she changed her hair colour every other week. It was purple today, with a deep blue fringe. Sally turned from her to Norm, then back again. Purple one side, ratty ginger on the other. Red across the way in her prim white collar and black cardigan and her neat triangular sandwiches, her husband down at the bank, her five-year-old daughter at school.
‘Cindy was saying the mother is devastated,’ the no-name said.
‘It’s terrible. It’s just . . . just terrible. I have to leave the twins in the house when I leave for work since Mum went up to live with my brother,’ Varicose said.
‘Which one is Cindy?’ Sally asked.
‘The one with the long red hair. Always with young Rosy,’ Norm replied, and his eyes stayed on to stare a while, his ratty moustache twitching in a hopeful smile.
He was in his early thirties; his wife was forty-nine and the breadwinner, an orthodontist. They had two girls. Poor Norm, bought and paid for seven years ago. He’d looked after the kids until they went to school, now he paid for their after-school care with what he earned at Phonepross. He loved the place, loved the company, always hung around the women.
I don’t belong here, Sally thought. This is a transitional period. I won’t belong here. She glanced over her shoulder at the standers who also knew they didn’t belong. Some would pick up their pay today and never come back. The supervisor would tell a few not to come back. A couple might hang around for a week or two, then grow tired of listening to old coot Ron, and of watching his dentures’ daily battle with the beetroot.
She smiled as she turned to Pimples and caught him staring at Varicose’s jutting breasts. Her eyes slid down to his apple. Was it the one he had brought in yesterday, and the day before that? She looked at her watch, fifteen minutes left; without a word she stood, walked to the passage and up to join the crush of smokers fighting for space on the concrete stairs, where they blew their smoke out the door while the sniper rain’s bullets picked them off, one by one.
No-one mentioned Carla Miller up here. Crushed together like smokes in a packet, they coughed and wheezed, and left their lungs and the problems of the world to fate.
And Friday
Time stood still in this place. The wall clock was controlled by the supervisor. No doubt it ticked as other clocks did, but the hands didn’t move until she gave the order
Case packed, waiting in her car boot. Petrol tank full enough. Money in her purse. Smokes in her pocket. Finish work at 4.45. Be in Lakeside before eight.
Tick-tick-tick-tick-tick-tick.
One hour gone. Another hour waiting in the queue. Long, aching hours of repetition while the voices on the other end of the phone merged into one.
Until old Mr Fisher. ‘You sound like a happy little soul,’ he said. ‘Go on, tell me what you’re selling today and I’ll see if I want to buy it. My little granddaughter works in one of those places.’
‘How many grandchildren have you got, Mr Fisher?’
‘I’m a Pop eighteen times over. Eighteen grandchildren, seven great-grandchildren and two more on the way.’
‘There should be a law against men like you.’
Mr Fisher laughed and Sally laughed with him. Poor old guy, eager to chat to a young bird. ‘How many children did you have, Mr Fisher?’
And the line was cut, the sweet old guy with his eighteen grandchildren lost somewhere in Melbourne. Sally swung around. The grey-blonde supervisor towered behind her; she’d been plugged into the call, doing her spot checks. She liked to listen in, catch her workers making private calls.
‘I do not give the ratsus how many children Mr Fisher is having. You do not give the ratsus. This is not what you are pay for. For talking how many children. You understand?’ A broad expanse of solid buttock. Sagging mammoth breasts too weighty for the thick jaw, they dragged it down, dragged her fat lips down, her lower eyelids down. Bloody hard, old, no-neck monster. She liked saying ‘ratsus’. Sue had been at Phonepross when the big boss, an American, imported that expression, but the supervisor had claimed his ‘rat’s ass’, making it her own. ‘Is not you place for asking how many children. Is what you learning in the training? No? How many sale you making?’
‘I’ve made five.’
‘I am not hearing you bell ring. That is why you having the bell. Yes? You ringing bell. Or right. You name going on whiteboard. Or right?’ She reached over, hit the bell, tried to drive it through the fake wood. Then she bawled: ‘This one is making five sale. Everybody give clapping, please. Clap. I want to hear the clapping.’
Sally’s gaze dropped down to the tree-stump legs, to the flattened shoes as many hands left off their dialling to clap. Trained mice. Ring the bell and get to eat. Ring the bell and get to mate.
‘You working tonight?’
‘Sorry, I have to go home.’
‘You no good for me. I think you better staying home, eh?’
She walked away and Sally turned again to the phone, her eyebrows raised. Had she been sacked? Workers fell like nine-pins in this place.
On the dot of 4.45 she left the office and drove across the city, still not confident on Melbourne’s roads. Her eyes scanned left, scanned right, scanned ahead, her brake foot at the ready. She crawled with the traffic to Ballarat Road. Could have taken the Tullamarine Freeway, but it was going to cost her soon to use it, if they ever got all of the nuts and bolts in the right places; anyway, this was the road she’d driven with Mrs Bertram, so this was the known, the preferred, way home.
The sun in her eyes gave way to the semi-dark of winter twilight before she turned off the highway at Bacchus Marsh. She’d had a picnic there with Ross and his mother one day when Bacchus Marsh had still been
a pretty country town. Too close to Melbourne, the city had swallowed it up in the great suburban sprawl. New estates everywhere, traffic thick on roads never meant to carry the load. Poor little country town, its personality lost.
The night grew dark and the road she travelled narrowed, for the last ten kilometres winding up and around misty mountains. She sat forward, watching the trees and the scrub on the sides of the road for glowing feral eyes. Wouldn’t want to brake on this road, rock wall one side, long drop on the other. An eerie section, her headlights hitting the trees made them glow green. She hated this part of the journey, almost home but lost in another world. Not much traffic, thank God.
Then that last long, slow curve down, and she breathed a sigh of relief as she saw the lights of Lakeside, the lonely glow of scattered farmhouses.
No mist here, but frosty cold. She drove directly to the hospital car park and found a space, familiar space. How many times had she parked in this same bay?
Countless times.
She loathed the hospital. Didn’t want to face the sisters again, smell the place again. Didn’t want to be here. Didn’t Mummy owe her one lousy year?
‘Don’t expect her to pay her bills,’ she whispered as she walked the corridor, her heartbeat fast. At the door she stilled her thoughts, took a deep breath and fixed on a smile.
‘Hi, Mummy,’ she said.
Like two peas in a pod, both miniature blondes, but her mother’s eyes were a lighter blue and her hair had been permed into a dry Harpo Marx frizz.
‘You know my precious daughter,’ Glenda De Rooze said to her ward mate, her pursed lips attempting a smile.
‘I certainly do. My goodness, you’re like two peas in a pod,’ the woman replied.
Then Ross walked in and suddenly the ward was too small. No coat for Ross, just short-sleeved shirt and jeans. Too big, too healthy to be in this place, he looked uncomfortable, shy with these women in their nightgowns. His hand on Sally’s shoulder slowed her heartbeat, and she leant against him, safe, stepping back with him, making room when the sister entered, making room together.
