by Joy Dettman
She stepped beneath the too-hot spray, wanting to feel pain. And she felt it.
‘Shit!’ she yelled and reached for the cold tap, gave herself a shot of cold-water-in-the-face therapy.
She was rinsing her hair when the phone rang.
Naked she ran to answer it. ‘I said I’ll be there, Ross. You don’t need to check up on me!’ There was no reply. ‘Hello. Hello?’ Only silence, but not true silence. The growl of the city beast. ‘Hello. Who’s there?’
Matt? It was probably Matt, and she’d spoken Ross’s name. And a good thing too. Let him know she wasn’t sitting here crying for him. Let him think she wasn’t, anyway.
‘Go home to your bloody wife and stay out of my life,’ she yelled and slammed the phone down. As she did, it rang. The thing had gone crazy. Weeks could pass and no-one called. This time she heard the STD beeps.
‘You’re still there, Sally.’
‘And you wouldn’t have known if you hadn’t been checking up on me. I had a shower. I had to wash my hair.’
‘You had a hair appointment up here.’
‘Well I’m not up there, am I? I’m down here and stop your nagging or I won’t bloody well be up there.’
She threw away the skirt she’d worn since Wednesday night. Tossed it in the rubbish and carried the bag downstairs. She met the bikie at the garbage bins.
‘Been having a party?’ he said.
‘Get a life,’ she snapped and she pushed by him, got rid of her bag and some of her shame. Her letterbox was loaded with junk mail. She emptied it on the way back, emptied it into Number 14 and didn’t care if he saw her. Back in her unit only long enough to pick up her handbag, she was away, out of that place.
She hit an automatic teller machine hard, then drove to the Queen Vic market. Noise and the jam of people. Smells of food and musty age and brand-new shine. All in together. Leather bags and arty junk. Clothing and kitchenware. Cheap framed pictures, silk scarves and mouldy shoes. Flowers too. She chose a bunch and some fruit, then she walked to a mess of shoes and bought a pair. She bought a bucket of salty chips and a long maroon frock with a split seam. She bought light globes and an ornament, a dark-haired boy and his dog. It wasn’t number thirteen of the old collection, but number one of the new, and it wasn’t china either. Looked like it. Didn’t feel like it.
Back in her car she unwrapped the ornament, wondering why she’d bought it, but when she looked again she knew. It was a little Shane boy, skinny little neck, cheeky eyes.
Lots of parcels to open, presents to herself. She’d wear the shoes tonight. They were black strappy things. Pure luck that she’d gone to the market, it was never easy finding shoes she liked to wear. She’d seen these and pounced on them, sure they’d be too big. But they weren’t too big. Perfect, even if they were seconds. And the dress. It was the exact colour Deb had wanted, and nicer than the one at the hire place. A few stitches and it would be okay for one night.
Black lifting, lifting, lifting. Black going, going, gone.
A Tangled Thread
Lakeside had hidden for years in its valley, no highway leading there and nowhere to go once you got there, except to turn around and drive back out again. Its distance from greedy Melbourne had saved it from the fate of many small towns. No new housing estates for Lakeside. She glanced at her watch when a herd of cows expected right of way at the intersection of Lake and Centre Roads. Farms rubbed elbows with garages and used-car yards on this side of town. Window down, the scent of milking cows and petrol intermingling, she inhaled the scent of home.
Mrs Bertram and Ross had taught her respect for cows, unlike the hoon who had tailgated her through the hills, blasting his horn. He leaned on it again, and when she didn’t move he went around her, scattering cows. She followed him through. Might as well. Her right blinker had been going; a right-hand turn would have led her by a back road to Ross’s farm, but she was in no hurry to go there. Plenty of time to pop in and see Mummy, ask her if she’d like to go out for lunch tomorrow.
From this section of the road she could see the lake, deep blue, and the park beside it edged with roses. Postcard pretty today. Lakeside was a pretty town in spring. An old town, a gold town, it had been solidly built in the 1800s. The churches were tall, the banks had flaunted their old-gold wealth. Not much wealth left these days; they played bingo twice a week in the State Bank building, now community centre.
The supermarket had retained its original grocer’s windows and grocer’s door, hiding the fact that it had extended out the back where a modern rear entrance led in from the car park. A craft shop, owned by escapees from Melbourne, had been put back the way it was a hundred-odd years ago; the department store beside it had never bothered to modernise – apart from their cash registers.
She swung a left and drove on down Hoppers Street, seeing the town as she had the day she and her mother had arrived here. Small and solid. Neat. Old pubs on three corners. ‘Accommodation’, the sign over the Royal read. Cheap rates. They’d repaired the top-floor verandah recently and restored the lace-work. It looked good.
Small towns were into the tourism dollar, and Lakeside had a worthy past no-one had recognised until the 1980s when a schoolgirl had been found in the lake, in a wheat bag, weighed down with bricks. They’d never found the murderer, but Melbourne day trippers had found Lakeside, and the big wheels in town had found the day trippers eager to spend their money viewing old buildings and gold mines. On long weekends and during holiday seasons the town went mad and the motels and caravan park were full. Locals couldn’t get a park in the main street, and speedboats took over the lake the Sleiman family had long looked on as their own.
Ten years ago a new wing had been built onto the side of the old hospital. It smelt new, clean, but a renovation with modern floor tiles and modern furnishings hadn’t killed the odour of the original building. Red bricks and narrow windows, high ceilings still trapped the pain of a hundred and fifty years. The elderly, the long-term patients, were housed in the old section, more nursing home now than hospital.
Loaded with flowers and fruit, Sally hurried down the last corridor to her mother’s ward. A glance at her watch. Time for a two-minute visit. She’d missed work on Thursday and Friday, hadn’t even checked in. Ratsus would probably tell her to go home if she went in tomorrow, so better not to go in. Save face.
Her mother’s screens were drawn and Sleiman was there with two sisters. They were connecting tubes.
‘Mummy,’ she said.
‘Wait outside, please,’ a sister said.
‘What’s happened to her?’ Open-mouthed, open-eyed, Sally pushed forward, in the way, always in the way.
‘We don’t know.’
‘When did it happen?’
‘She’s coming out of it,’ the sister said, her needle feeding drugs into an intravenous line.
‘Can you wait outside, please, Miss De Rooze.’ Sleiman the sleaze was playing life-saver.
Sally stepped back, placed the flowers down; they still gloated with life and colour. The strawberries from the market, fat and red, she placed on the locker, the red-gold mango she grasped in her hand. Her mother looked like grey death, cold fluid dripping into a fragile arm.
‘Did she take something?’ No reply. Sally backed from the room, then quickly walked away. She drove to the farm, no longer seeing the town, only Mummy.
She didn’t tell Ross. He was in the kitchen, eating apple pie doused with cream. Homemade pie. Karen Matthews had been over the fence again. He could do worse than Karen Matthews, but not much worse. Lanky dobber dork.
‘We’re eating at the wedding, Ross.’
‘Have some.’ He offered a forkful. ‘It’s proper pie.’
A shake of her head and she walked into the bedroom, where she tried the maroon frock. It was too long, but she ransacked the sewing machine drawer until she found maroon thread, a needle. She stitched the split seam, tacked up a fast two-inch hem, pressed the frock and made it to the bride’s parents’ h
ome on time.
‘You could have called us, Sally,’ the mother of the bride, carping old battle-axe in navy blue, said.
‘This time yesterday, I thought I was dying.’ True enough. ‘You look terrific.’ Not true enough.
‘A miracle recovery, by the looks of it.’ Short and skinny, tough as steak cut from a twenty-year-old bull’s backside was Mrs Davis. How had she produced Deb?
‘You know me, Mrs Davis. I always rise to the occasion.’ She’d stolen a few bottles of nail polish from the Davis’s chemist shop as a fourteen year old – and been caught once. Caught by Mrs Bertram. Hadn’t done it again, but every time she saw this woman she remembered that black nail polish.
One more walk down the aisle. She heard little of the service. Her mind was with her mother. More fake smiles for the camera, then a quick stop-off at the hospital. Mummy was sleeping.
‘She’s fine,’ the sister said. ‘It’s happened before.’
‘She’s getting hold of something?’
‘She’s fine now, love. Let’s go,’ Ross said.
Let’s go.
The reception was at the new motel, and thank God for wine. It got her through until twelve.
She hadn’t packed a case, had no nightgown, so she borrowed one of Ross’s T-shirts. He came from the shower in his giant pyjamas and stood behind her. ‘Bed, eh?’ he said.
Bed.
It complained as he climbed in. It was allowed to complain. Why couldn’t she? She stood at his window, looking at the hills, a solid black wall against a starry sky, Lakeside’s last line of defence against the outside world. All right for Deb. She’d been born here. All right for Ross too. Not all right for Sally De Rooze. She’d come from the other side of that barrier and she wanted to be there now.
‘Not a bad night,’ he said. ‘Old mother Davis wasn’t too pleased with you.’
‘Them’s the breaks.’
‘Your dress looked good. Where did you get it?’
‘The market. I only paid twenty-five for it. One of its seams was split, and another one split halfway through the night.’
‘What do you expect for nothing?’
Too much sometimes.
‘Hop into bed, love. You’ll freshen up your cold standing out there.’
Sally De Rooze, service provider, slid in beside him and he placed an arm beneath her shoulder, drawing her close, kissing her, smelling of shaving soap and toothpaste.
Sense of smell okay. No sense of feeling. Sight was good. Even in the dark she could see Mummy’s face on the ceiling. Skull face with white eyes.
His hand brushed her breast, kept brushing and she couldn’t stand it. She pushed it away. ‘Did she know I was coming home, Ross?’
‘Who?’
‘Mummy?’
‘Yeah, I rang her to let her know you were okay.’ His hand slid beneath the old T-shirt, feeling the silk of her briefs and her jutting hipbone.
They weren’t watching her mother at the hospital. She had to be watched. You couldn’t trust her as far as you could kick her. Sly like a fox was Mummy, little close-set eyes watching you while she sat on the green vinyl couch, sipping port and planning her next move. Watch her, always watch her. Read her moods. Look behind each word she utters. And check your own words too, censor every one before you let it loose, or she’ll catch it and fire it back as ammunition. And never, never disagree with her. Yes, Mummy, yes, yes, yes, Mummy.
‘She’s got hold of something, Ross. She must have. You said she’d been sitting with the old ladies. She’s probably knocked off someone’s pills. What sort of pills would cause a fit?’
‘Do we have to talk about her all night? I hardly ever see you.’ His hand crept up, feeling for rib bones, counting rib bones. ‘What do you eat down there?’
‘Do we have to talk about food all night?’ She took his hand, held it as she lay back on the pillow.
‘Just tell me if you’re not in the mood.’
‘I’m not in the mood.’
He waited for sixty seconds for her mood to alter then his hand returned to her hipbone. ‘You’re skin and bone. No wonder you’re not in the mood.’
‘If you’d stop feeling my bones and lecturing me about my weight every bloody five minutes, I might get in the mood. I don’t lecture you about your weight. You were popping out of your shirt, and your trousers looked as if they were going to split every time you bent over tonight. You’re getting as fat as a pig, Ross, and your hair looks bloody awful. Why don’t you let it grow?’
‘What’s that if not lecturing me?’ he said. ‘Will we or won’t we?’
‘Jesus,’ she sighed, and she gave up.
He peeled away her T-shirt and her briefs. She didn’t help, didn’t hinder, but she thought of Matt. He’d ripped her clothes off – the grand master of sex and she his willing student. No matter what he wanted to do, or wanted her to do, she’d never said no.
Never learnt to say no. Never learnt to argue for what she wanted or didn’t want. No-one to practise on. Oh, she’d screamed that last night – when it was too late. Too late for everything.
You need to practise arguing for what you want when you are young, she thought. You have to argue with your little brothers, argue with little friends. But her brothers had died, and Sally had moved around too often to have friends to argue with.
Poor Deb. She’s been a good friend and I nearly ruined her wedding day. How did I forget?
Matt. That’s how.
And she loved him. She did, and she couldn’t stand Ross’s mouth wearing her own ragged. She ached for Matt’s mouth and his smooth strong hands. He made her feel alive, made sex into a game they played together.
Ross’s hand moved to her breast.
‘Jesus!’ she said.
‘What now?’
‘Stop playing around, will you, and just get on with it if you have to.’
‘Yeah?’ He rolled onto his back. ‘Yeah. Well, I don’t think I’m that desperate, thanks all the same for the offer.’
She rolled away, placing distance between naked flesh, and minutes passed. ‘I’m sorry, but I can’t get Mummy out of my head tonight. She looked like a hydroponic vegetable. Tubes pouring in the fertiliser one end, draining it out the other. Maybe she is sick, Ross. People with brain tumours have fits, don’t they? Have they done a brain scan?’
‘Pity they couldn’t do a brain transplant. Go to sleep.’
Silence again. She waited for five minutes, counting them away, then she rose, found her T-shirt and briefs in the bed and she dressed. ‘I’m sorry.’
‘For Christ’s sake, stop saying you’re sorry. I said it was all right.’
‘It’s not all right, and you know it’s not all right. You’re too accepting for your own bloody good sometimes. It’s over, Ross. What we had is over. Can’t you see that?’
‘Yeah, yeah, yeah. Just go to sleep.’
‘I can say that to you, and all you can say is, go to sleep!’
‘All I know is, a man can’t do anything right tonight. You’ve got some bloody bee in your bonnet, and I’ve got to get up in five hours, and just for the bloody record, I’ll accept any bloody thing I want to accept. And I’m big and ugly enough to decide what’s good for me too. I don’t need you to decide for me, and I don’t need you to decide how I have my hair cut either. I’ll have it cut like I bloody well want to have it cut. Now go to sleep, for Christ’s sake.’
She walked from the bedroom and he called after her. ‘What have I done now?’
‘Nothing. You’re perfect. I’ve got a virus. I’m losing my voice.’
Lost it a long, long time ago.
‘There’s Aspros in the top cupboard over the sink. Make yourself a hot lemon drink and put some honey and brandy in it. It’s in the lounge room cabinet.’
Barefoot and in his T-shirt she walked out the back door, out into the cool and down the gravelled path to pick a lemon by the light of the moon.
It was bright out tonight. Yellow-ballo
on bright. The dogs barked. They liked to bark on moonlit nights.
‘Lay down,’ she growled, and they barked like demented things.
‘Lay down!’ Ross roared from his bed, pleased to have something to roar about. Silence.
There were always lemons on Ross’s tree. He had an apricot tree too, and a peach tree. Apples, figs, grapes. Such a continuity of nature. Year after year they flowered and bore their fruit. Year after year. The trees had been planted by the generations that were no more, but their planting sustained. Fruit for all seasons, had Ross. His trees would continue to bear, his sons would pick the apricots on some New Year’s Day and their wives would make jars of apricot jam. Ross’s sons; they wouldn’t be her sons.
Never cut a tangled thread if a little time and patience can untangle it, Mrs Bertram used to say when they’d sat together crocheting the double bedspread.
She’d tried, tried to untangle this mess for too long. It was time for the scissors.
Moonlight washed the land tonight, glistening on the leaves, painting them silver. She wandered the back yard, each step a careful step, a gentle touchdown before her weight was transferred to the sole of her foot. There were prickles and sticks and broken bricks in this garden. Hens wandered here, leaving their calling cards behind them.
The lemons were white in the moonlight, and she picked one, cupping it in her hand, smelling it. It was a lemon, grown on a tree with a hundred other lemons and it knew it was a lemon. It didn’t try to be an orange or a grapefruit.
Who was she? Where did she grow?
I’m a hybrid in a pot, no roots dug deep into the earth, she thought. Born to be moved around. Ross is just trying to dig it out of the pot, offer it his acres and room to spread. He doesn’t see it as a stunted thing because he doesn’t dig deep enough to see the convoluted root mass beneath the surface.
Who was I born to be? Everyone is born to be someone. What if Daddy had lived? Who would I have been? He would have let me be whoever I was meant to be.
