by Joy Dettman
‘I liked that school,’ she’d said.
He’d got to know the brat of fourteen, and over the years she’d grown into his life. Watching her small hands at work – using his mother’s knives, her bowls, crocheting baby things for newborns – was like watching his mother’s hands at work.
And the biscuits she baked, and the roast dinners. He knew her well in his house, knew her body in his bedroom, but he hadn’t recognised the one at the hospital. At fourteen she’d had a barbed tongue; these days she rarely let anyone feel its edge. Sleiman had felt its edge.
At five Ross drove home to the farm to feed the dogs.
Her hair dripping, looking like a half-drowned waif, Sally walked from the bathroom when she heard him return. ‘You’re early,’ she said, staring at the walls bare of photographs, at the cabinets and windowsills bare of ornaments, the old fridge looking white, stripped of its many magnets and useless information. Her phone number and address had clung to its side since May, but her mother had never called that number.
She turned to the table, saw the breakfast cereal and the bread, the jar of homemade apricot jam. ‘The Bertrams and their food.’
‘You’ve got to eat to live, love.’ He kissed her, but she drew away. ‘I was hoping you wouldn’t be up. I was going to crawl into bed with you for a while.’
‘I’m all wet.’
He was already eating when she made her slice of toast, and still at it when she started moving the furniture, sweeping up. He moved her mother’s bed, stood it upright against the wall, exposing balls of fluffy dust and a lost shoe, another pile of newspaper.
All morning they moved furniture and cleaned, then at two they drove to the hospital. Tongue in cheek, Ross told Glenda De Rooze that they’d made a start on packing up the flat. ‘Thought we’d just check with you, make sure it’s what you want before we take your stuff around to the auction rooms.’
‘Go ahead and sell it, Ross. I knew I could rely on you.’ She didn’t look at Sally.
‘And when you change your mind tomorrow, Mummy?’
‘You still don’t understand, do you?’
‘No,’ Sally said. ‘No, but then I never did understand you. You could probably say that you were one of the truly misunderstood.’
The woman’s eyes swept over her daughter, dismissing her as she turned again to Ross. ‘Call the housing ministry on Monday. Explain that I have been unwell for some years, that I am no longer able to live alone, that I have been forced . . . forced by my own daughter to give up my home of sixteen years.’
‘You’ll have to tell them that yourself, Mrs De Rooze.’
‘Think five minutes ahead for once in your life, Mummy. I’ve got a bedsitter and one bed. You’ll have nowhere to live when Sleiman kicks you out.’
The woman’s small teeth bit, and her mouth grew ugly. ‘Live? Live? You made sure I had nothing left to live for, didn’t you?’
Sally walked away fast. Ross followed her to the car.
‘What did she mean by that, love?’
‘Who knows? So. So, what’s your next move? This is your chess game.’
‘We’ll see what Sleiman decides to do with her, and play it by ear. If she rings the housing ministry, then I suppose we move her junk out to my shed.’ He grinned, pleased with his day’s work. Six for Glenda De Rooze and half a dozen for him.
A spring wedding now on the agenda, Ross was a satisfied man when he tossed the old green couch onto his truck early the following Sunday morning. Glenda was nobody’s fool. She’d made her calls; hadn’t paid her back rent, though.
He tossed the green vinyl chairs onto the truck’s tray, rips and all. ‘Ten bucks the lot . . . or straight to the tip. What do you reckon?’ he asked three freckle-faced girls, Mrs Jenner’s grandchildren, who shook matching red heads. ‘The tip, I reckon.’
They nodded emphatically, then one by one he lifted the girls to the tray, catching them as they jumped, swinging them high.
‘Anovver one,’ the smallest said, so they all had another turn.
Sally smiled, watched him as she carried out the dining chairs. So good with kids – he should have had his own.
The heavy timber table was loaded carefully, Sally on the truck’s tray guiding it, Ross doing the hard work. They tied it down well. The grey laminated kitchen table and grey chairs were dump material, but they were tossed on, just in case.
Ross took extra care with the washing machine. ‘That should make a couple of hundred,’ he said. He wheeled the old fridge outside on his trolley. A happy man today, he didn’t know his own limitations. Six-foot-four of muscle, his waist was not as slim as it ought to be, but his shoulders were broad. Footballer’s legs flexed, hands that had once made a football look like a toy reached low, heaved, and the fridge was up.
He leaned a while then, gazing out at the street, catching his breath. People were moving about their Sunday afternoon business, taking advantage of the windy sunshine. Lawn mowers roared, an elderly Ford drove slowly by.
‘Who’s that?’ he asked, watching it pull into the drive next door.
‘Sally doesn’t live here any more,’ she said. They watched the car do a three-point turn then drive back, the driver hidden behind darkened windows. ‘It looks like a retired Mafia mob car. Karen Matthews could have hired a cheap hit-man to get me out of the picture.’
Ross grinned and turned back to his load. ‘She’s been calling in a couple of times a week since you left. Bought me over a lemon meringue pie last week. You’d better keep an eye on her.’
‘The way to Ross Bertram’s heart is through his stomach. That’s one of the courses down at the high school. She majored in it.’
The carton of ornaments went into the truck’s cabin. They put the television on the back seat of Sally’s car. Then the vacuum roared again and dust flew. Little talk now. All words, all sounds bounced against the empty walls, came back hard and hollow, like the Geelong house when the furniture was gone, and the Ballarat house, and that first flat in Carlisle Street. It was cold too; the heater had been turned off, the pilot light extinguished. Cold and dead. Just another place, just another life, another part of Sally being left behind. How was she expected to find herself? Bits here, bits there, bits and pieces everywhere.
One corner of Ross’s big tin garage took the furniture. Supermarket cartons were stacked on the fridge and on the kitchen table, but the dining room setting he squeezed in beside the lounge room window. It looked cluttered. It looked wrong in Mrs Bertram’s lounge room.
‘Put it in the shed, Ross. It’s just mass-produced junk.’
‘It hasn’t got a scratch on it. We’ll leave it in here, see how we go. I might build a bit of an extension onto the kitchen side.’
A good man. Good and honest and down to earth. They’d have a good life together. And Mummy would be better out here than in town. Dogs to bite the imagined intruders, too far for her to walk to the bottle shop, and she was never as bad when Ross was around.
Sally looked at the dark wood of the table. Didn’t like it. Never had. Didn’t want it to haunt her future as it had haunted her past. Didn’t want to live with her mother, clean up her mess again, find her pills again, cook her meals she refused to eat. Didn’t want to wake up every morning to her demands or her tears. Live with her, rot with her. Didn’t want to any more.
The linen was washed and Ross’s dryer worked overtime, but it was a big one. It took the sheets, the towels. Everything was washed. Clean. Everything had to be cleaned, sealed in plastic bags, then taped into cartons.
Night came down as she sorted through old clothing. Her mother’s few good frocks were hung in the sleep-out wardrobe, two pair of shoes placed on the wardrobe floor; the rest she stuffed into a plastic bag, sealed it, then sealed the bag in a carton. Sealed the carton too. Sealed it tight. MUMMY, she wrote on it. MUMMY in black biro.
She found her pink parka. Old but warm. Ross had bought it for her when they went up to the snow one weekend. She shrugged an
d hung it in his wardrobe. It would be good for the farm. A few items she placed inside the guitar case, which would be returning to Melbourne with her.
An expensive case, as the guitar it had once held had been expensive. Daddy and Sally had bought it one Christmas. They’d hidden it at Raelene’s house until Christmas Day.
‘What happened to the guitar?’ Ross stood amid the chaos of his lounge room, watching her work.
‘God knows,’ she said. And no doubt He did, but Ross didn’t need to know.
At 11.15 he started yawning and looking at the bedroom. ‘Are you going to be much longer at that?’
‘I’m going back.’
‘To Melbourne? Tonight? Why?’
‘Because the traffic is too heavy on Monday mornings, that’s why.’
‘Then don’t go back. Give your boss a call and explain the situation.’
‘I can’t.’
‘Do what you like then. Don’t worry about me. I’ll have a cold shower.’ He walked to the bathroom and yelled, ‘Make sure you phone me when you get there.’
‘You’ll be asleep.’
‘Phone me anyway. And drive carefully through those bloody hills.’
She drove carefully through the hills, the car crawling around the hairpin bends, and all the way she sat forward, watching the sides of the road.
‘Bloody kangaroo,’ she said. ‘Bloody useless kangaroo.’
Trams and Plans
September 1999
‘Sydney office is ahead. Is well ahead of target. What can I do? So I losing my job.’ An actress who had missed her calling, Queen Ratsus played to her captive audience. She was an old and broken woman, worn down by life. ‘And you caring? Eh? Do you caring that I lose my job?’
Sally leaned there, not caring, while the voice built to a crescendo. ‘No. You do not caring because you are all lazy. You come to here for the bludge, because in Australia you having it too good.’ The old woman blew herself up until she filled the room. Fluorescent lights flickered, dimmed, then glowed brighter, glowed on her, and she was young again, shedding the years with her insults.
‘Heil Hitler.’ It came from a new face in the front row. Not a young face. Not a big man, but his heels clicked smartly and one of Ratsus’s audience goose stepped away.
They watched him go, heads bowed low to hide the smiles. But the old queen wasn’t about to let him get away. Her eyes fired electric darts that stabbed him in the back, and for a moment his sweater glowed blue and he turned, looked back. And she had him, now she’d reel him in, shackle him to a phone, whip one more lazy Australian into shape.
He made it to the wall of lifts; then, his middle finger raised, he saluted her, and the lift doors closed behind him. One mouse had scrambled out of the rat-trap to run free.
Ratsus turned on the desperate who remained. Smiles had been sucked away. Sue wore her serious face beneath chewed black hair. Striped with red today, it matched her gipsy-style red skirt and black layer-upon-layer shirts, her shoulder-length earrings. ‘Teamwork,’ she hissed, elbowing Sally in the ribs.
‘Teamwork. We are team. Yes? If we do not pulling our share, we letting our working colleague down. We all must pulling our share. Sell now. Go. Sell. Sell. Sell. We showing them. Tonight we will be ahead of ratsus Sydney. Sell. Sell. Sell.’
Sally clicked her own heels, saluted, but allowed the salute to end in a brushing back of her hair as she wheeled around, quick-marched to her phone.
No sale.
What did it matter? She was going to hand in her notice today.
No sale. No sale.
A displaced person, that’s what she was. Just Sally threads blowing on the wind. Never settled long enough anywhere to get herself attached to the great seething carpet of humanity. Didn’t match, anyway. Never had. Just kept getting in the way of the carpet weaver.
Needed snipping off.
No sale. No sale. No sale.
While her mother had paid the rent on that flat, Sally had had a home, or a place to point her thumb at. Now someone else would call the flat home, like Carol Rigg had claimed the house in Geelong.
A beautiful variegated camellia, bought five years ago for her mother’s birthday, had been planted in the earth near the front door of the housing ministry flat. Sally couldn’t move it. She’d wanted to, but Ross said it was too big and the wrong time. They’d left it behind, like the passionfruit vine had been left behind, while displaced Sally moved on, or didn’t move on.
Shouldn’t have planted that camellia. Shouldn’t have freed it to the earth. Should have bought a big pot, trapped its roots in the pot. It was crazy to keep on planting gardens for someone else to watch bloom.
Distanced from the selling game today, her nerves were split ends. She wanted to talk, needed to talk. She wanted to open her mouth and let it all pour out. And she tried it on the roof at lunchtime. She offered Sue a cigarette and they lit up, puffing a while in silence.
Unreal up here on the roof. Great scene for a science fiction movie. Above the world, above the wires and trams. All the little people, colourful beetles bustling below.
Ladybird, Ladybird, fly away home.
Your house is on fire and your children alone.
‘I’m giving notice today. I’ve got to get married,’ a beetle said as it hung far over the concrete wall, wanting to flap its wings and fly away.
‘What for?’ Sue said.
‘Good question.’ Sally sighed, brushing windblown hair from her mouth.
‘Have they heard of abortions in Lakeside? You’re fucking mad.’
‘It’s genetic.’ She sucked smoke, blew smoke over the wall. How to explain the unexplainable? Why bother? Just lean a little further and fly. She sighed, straightened.
‘I’m not pregnant. Just coming apart at the seams. I’m up there, I’m down here, I’m up there. I’m in that car half of my life, spending money I haven’t got.’
‘Tell me about it.’
‘It’s all come unravelled. I’m coming unravelled.’
‘Who wants to be ravelled? It’s just another word for screwed-up. Who are you marrying? Not the farmer?’
‘Yeah.’
‘You? Slopping out the pig yard?’
‘He hasn’t got pigs. I herd sheep and talk bulls. He’s probably one in a million.’
‘The bull?’
‘Ross. How many guys do you know, Sue, who’d take in their mother-in-law?’
‘What’s in it for him? Has she got any money?’
‘No.’
‘Bugger. I was going to offer to marry you myself. Give us your lighter again, will you? This fucking thing has gone out.’
That night Sally drank two glasses of wine with a peanut butter sandwich and she called it dinner, then she went to bed early to save on heating bills. The old dream came for her. Out of the dawn, it came. And it came hard.
Flames. Smoke in the sky. Moon like a yellow balloon, dipping, diving, running away from the smoke. Smell of grass. Smell of burning.
‘Sally! Sally!’
Daddy’s face at the back window. Telling Sally to open the door. Mummy, sitting on the grass, singing in her cowgirl hat, singing her you killed ’em song.
‘I’m sorry, Mummy. I’m sorry.’
She was on the bed, on her knees, sobbing, her hands against the cold, blank beige wall, her eyes staring without recognition at the makeshift bedside table, stack of yellow and white telephone books, digital clock glowing red. Red embers. Like the burning.
Just the clock and that same old dream. At eight she’d named it the fire-dream; the name had been good enough now for twenty-odd years. She closed her eyes on tears. Closed them tight. And she counted while she rocked there on her knees. She counted slow; counting, counting until the tears stopped trickling and her eyes could confront the red figures of the clock. Six-fifteen. Six, colon, one five. That’s all. Just the clock.
A long, shuddering sigh.
Thursday, payday, with Friday leaning over her like the g
rim reaper. She’d have to hand in her notice. Go home.
Delete home. Have to go to Lakeside. Go up there and watch a bitter mouth spit out insults for the next fifty years.
Wet sky dripping. Tap drip-dripping. Sally drip-dripping again.
‘Put it in the too-hard basket. Be a fibre and float,’ she whispered, swiping at her eyes with her palms. Her hands were still shaking as she reached out to her stacked bedside table for cigarettes.
Only the leftovers of the dream. She’d be okay in a minute. She walked to the window to look out at Melbourne.
Matt was out there somewhere. He was beneath one of those roofs, showering, shaving. Somewhere in the distance there was a penthouse and he was inside, drinking coffee, selecting his suit for the day.
She showered at seven and drank her coffee slowly, dressed slowly, holding the unravelling threads of Sally together with pantihose and make-up, a short black skirt and a new blue sweater, her black overcoat. She looked okay. She looked together. No-one could see the fraying mess beneath that coat, but no-one ever had. Artist of camouflage, Sally De Rooze. Composer of silence.
Her umbrella in hand, her bag over her shoulder, she picked up her car keys and for a moment stood looking at them, then she tossed them onto the bench, tucked her umbrella beneath her arm and slammed the door. The bikie wasn’t going to get a free park today.
A weird little guy with a suitcase followed her along Bollinger Street and across the road to the tram stop, and he stood beside her, watched her light a cigarette. Too many cigarettes this morning. She’d been chain-smoking since she’d crawled from her bed.
‘Bad for the lungs,’ the little guy said. ‘And don’t I know it.’
‘So is breathing exhaust fumes, so go and lecture a truck,’ she replied, and she turned away to look for the tram. One in the distance, whether it was coming or going, she couldn’t tell.
Feeling his eyes burning through her coat, she spun around fast and caught him staring, head to one side. She’d seen him somewhere before. Not at the flats, though. He’d come from further down the road.
