by Joy Dettman
Christmas cards were easy enough to buy, words easy to write, but words on paper didn’t mean a thing. Facing people was the hard bit, being kicked in the teeth and coming back for more was the hard bit. If he wanted to prove that he cared, then let him come here, face her and let them work it out, and the sooner the better.
She kissed the sleeping woman’s brow. Safe to kiss her, safe to smell the strange lost scent of her hair, safe with that venomous tongue locked away. Safe even to whisper. ‘I care about you, Mummy. You’re all I’ve got, and I’m all you’ve got.’ She pressed on twin tears with her index fingers, striving to push them back when they threatened, catch them before they escaped.
‘Haven’t you got a party to go to?’ A young sister had crept in on her rubber-soled shoes.
‘Haven’t you?’ Sally was slow to turn.
‘I drew the short straw. Go home and get some sleep, and half your luck. By the time I get home my kids will be up riding their bikes around the lounge room.’
Sally knew the face of this one but not the name. ‘How many kids?’
‘Three – and three bikes.’ Quiet voices in this room full up with sleep. ‘It’s not much use waiting for her to wake. She had her pills not long before you came. She’ll sleep until around two.’
‘Did she say anything about going out for dinner tomorrow?’
‘Not to me. She was full of life tonight, though. We had old Joe Campbell’s group come through singing carols. She was singing with them and she’s really good.’
‘Yeah. She used to sing professionally.’
‘I believe it.’
‘When I was a little kid.’
‘Old Joe and his ladies tour around entertaining in retirement homes. She ought to join them. Oh, well. I’d better keep moving.’ So young, so capable, her family waiting for her at home when her shift was over.
Sally watched her move about the other beds, envying her. She stood, stretched, then searched for a pen in the bottomless pit of her handbag. ‘Could I borrow your pen for a second?’ she said. The sister waited while Sally wrote the motel’s number on a giant Christmas card taped to the gift-wrapped frock.
Hope it fits. Give me a call if you wake early. Lots of love, Sally Santa.
‘It’s a dress for tomorrow. If she wants to get out early, I’m at the motel around the corner,’ she said, handing back the pen. Then she left.
Late now. Christmas parties all over town. Noisy now. Alcohol kicking in. Back at the motel she transferred the chicken from boot to fridge, then she read for a while, but tonight the novel couldn’t carry her away. Things would be okay in the morning. She’d watch what she said. She’d get the chicken on and they’d open a bottle of champagne. Champagne would help. Ross had something for her mother. She’d seen it under the tree. Probably slippers. It would be okay. Plenty of champagne and port.
Distant drumming of music. Bar fridge rattling every time the motor started up, and it was working overtime tonight. At twelve she decided to relieve it by emptying a small bottle of whisky into a glass and adding half a can of Coke. She drank it down fast with two Panadols. Good medicine. At twelve-thirty she hit the fridge again, opening the rum this time and pouring it into the half-full can of Coke. It was enough. Her book down, she turned off the light.
Santa Dressed in Black
She was dead asleep, flat out on her back, dreaming deep dreams, when Father Christmas made his surprise call to her motel room near dawn.
The ringing entered into a dream; it became the doorbell of the redbrick house in Ballarat. Old Papa had come calling this Christmas morning and his arms were full of presents, but he looked like old coot Ron and his zip was open.
She was on her feet in a room as black as pitch. Didn’t know where she was, or how to find the front door to stop the doorbell’s ring. And why should she open the door, anyway? She couldn’t stand the miserable old coot. Didn’t trust him either.
But it wasn’t the doorbell. It was the phone. It was the phone, and she couldn’t find it in the dark. Couldn’t find a light switch. Where the hell was it? Where was she? She found the curtains and followed them to the bench, bruising her toe on the leg of a chair but eventually feeling out the noise, stilling that ring.
‘Sally De Rooze speaking,’ she said.
Poor Sally De Rooze.
Shivering cold in a room that was warm. Teeth chattering cold, her blood turning to ice before the voice on the end of the line had said all of its words. She sat there, in the black, on the edge of the bed, the phone gripped in her hand. She sat there trying to separate dream from reality.
Then she stood, found the door, found the light and she called Ross, because she didn’t know what else to do.
‘She’s done it, Ross. She’s done it this time.’ That was all she said. And such a stupid thing to say, but Ross knew her voice and he knew her mother, so he understood, so it hadn’t been such a stupid thing to say after all.
‘Hold on, love. I’m on my way.’
She’d gone to sleep in her jeans and T-shirt. Now she searched the floor for her sneakers. Couldn’t find one. Found it beneath the bed. She pulled on socks and shoes, grabbed for her bag and motel key, and drove alone through a misty grey world as the stars started to fade.
In the hospital room she held the slim hand and said, ‘I’m sorry, Mummy.’ She brushed back the frizzy hair and she kissed the brow and the hand, but Glenda Jean De Rooze, forty-nine-year-old mother of Sally, had left.
The young nursing sister had an arm around Sally’s shoulder. Sleiman and the new doctor were at her side. And she didn’t know why, until the hand she held grew cool then cold.
She dropped it, and the legs of her chair squealed as she sprang to her feet.
‘I’m sorry, Mummy,’ she said. ‘I’m sorry, Mummy.’
Ross rushed in, his eyes bleary with sleep half-slept. Just get there. Get to Sally. The sister knew him, nodded to him, stepped away from Sally.
‘I’m sorry, Mummy.’
Her mother was wearing the same faded hospital gown. She was in the same bed. The same hair was on the same pillow. The Christmas present was where Sally had left it. The card was there, the chocolates there. Just the same.
‘I’m sorry, Mummy.’
Ross’s arms were around her. He was leading her away from the bed but she kept looking back, expecting something more. Surely God must smite her dead too. There could not be life after Mummy.
But her legs were walking her away and the toe she’d stubbed on the chair was throbbing.
Go tell that to the fucking kangaroo, Mummy.
She tried to pull back, to walk back. Ross wouldn’t let her.
‘I’m sorry, Mummy.’
And she was in the walkway and Sleiman was talking. Ross was talking. They were all talking, looking at Sally. She was looking at them too, but not hearing. Just shivering, huge shuddering shivers.
Taken a dip in the lake mid-winter? Been skinny-dipping off the Sleimans’ pier?
Did that a few times.
She stared at the beaky mouth, couldn’t hear its words, but she knew she wasn’t supposed to think about skinny-dipping off his pier. She was supposed to die with Mummy. She’d killed her – or made her do it.
Go tell it to the fucking kangaroo, Mummy. That’s what she’d said. She could collapse at least. Or bawl. Or something. Do something.
Ross walked her through to the new building, where she’d walked alone so many times before. Past the desk. She almost waved a hand to a shocked familiar face, but she caught that wave, stopped it just in time.
Then outside. She was still walking away from Mummy. Right away now. Each step was taking her further and further away, out into the air and into that perfect split second when night ended and day began. She looked up at the sky. Birds whistling, warbling, looking for the early worm, her shoes crunching gravel as they walked away from Mummy.
The scent of the garden was strong, and so sweet. No daytime odours to mask it. She breat
hed in sweet and wondered at the flower. Her footsteps slowed as her eyes searched the dark garden, but Ross drew her forward to his ute.
It looked too clean, shiny white beneath the lights. It was never clean because he never washed it. She turned, looked at her lonely little car parked in a dark corner where the dawn light had not yet reached, and she started towards it, started feeling for her keys. The Christmas pudding was still in the boot. Well-travelled, that one. Matt’s black silk dressing gown growing cold there. Ross held her back from it. He opened his passenger-side door, so she climbed in. He fastened her seatbelt while she looked past him to the sky.
Blush of a lilac dawn behind the eastern hills, small rivers of gold. She almost commented on the sunrise, but she caught herself in time. This was the wrong time for chatter. Her teeth didn’t know it. They were chattering. Had to stop them or she’d break her front filling again. Have to get that one capped one day when she could afford it. She placed a thumb in her mouth, cushioning her chattering teeth. They bit into her thumb.
No traffic on the road. Old Santa had done his job and gone back to the North Pole with his reindeer.
Giddup, Rudolf. Stretch those legs, Prancer. Run like the wind, Dancer.
Go tell it to the fucking kangaroo, Mummy.
Silent dawn. No more jingle bells. No more parties. Just the whispering road noise of a lonely farm ute driving through the dawn streets of Lakeside. Wheels made a different sound in the city. Never silent in the city. Not true silence.
Past the motel. Past that wide empty bed. She wanted to crawl under a bed and hide; that’s what she’d always done when Mummy did the killed’em song and dance. Hid. But you couldn’t get under modern beds, couldn’t get anything under them. Except shoes. Shoes got lost under them. And socks. She used to be able to get under beds. So did Mummy.
It wouldn’t be the right thing to do, though, to crawl under a bed and hide. Not after phoning Ross, waking him up. She had to go back to the farm with him. Shouldn’t have woken him.
Go tell it to the fucking kangaroo, Mummy.
Not the correct thing to say. Shouldn’t have said that. Have to do the correct, the Bertram, thing.
I could have saved seventy-five dollars on that motel bed. I could have saved sixty-five dollars on Mummy’s dress. Have to take it back and get a refund.
Not correct Bertram thinking. Mustn’t think those things.
Why not? As Mummy had always said, funerals cost money.
She shook her head, shook it hard. I’ve gone crazy, she thought. Not my fault, though. It’s genetic.
And it’s not my fault. It isn’t. She accused me of killing everyone, and I replied, Go tell it to the fucking kangaroo, Mummy. If I delete one word from that sentence then it becomes blameless. I become blameless.
Go tell it to the kangaroo, Mummy.
Everyone knows kangaroos are always into it, a joey in the pouch, one in the womb, and one hopping by its mother’s side. They breed like rabbits.
They were at the farm and she hadn’t seen the road. Ross helped her down from the ute and she walked into his kitchen, her thumb in her mouth, tremors travelling through her. She stood before the stove, watching Ross open the flue, poke in two chunks of wood. The kettle began to sing.
Old black kettle. Mrs Bertram’s kettle. Cast iron. Big, heavy, but always boiling. Sally listened to the water’s gentle song and stared at the kettle’s lid until it huffed, puffed. Ross moved it to the side, then he removed her thumb from between her teeth, held her hand, held her captive against him. She shook. Shook him too, and she didn’t want to shake him up any more.
He tried to talk to her but his words weren’t going in. Head too busy to listen. He pulled a chair to the fire and he sat her on it, drew a second chair close. Her thumb had returned to her mouth. Again he took the hand, the thumb wet. He found her other hand. She let him hold them. His hands were warm. She looked at him, knowing she was supposed to say something, like, it was too sudden, Ross.
But it wasn’t sudden. Not really. Mummy had been practising for the main event for twenty years.
Okay then, she’d say, it’s not fair. That was normal. A nice normal thing to say.
But life wasn’t a game of cricket with umpires in white calling ‘no ball’. It wasn’t like that. Never had been.
So what was there to say?
Nothing acceptable. Not one word found in her mind was acceptable, but there was a great heavy load of words there, in her throat too, in her chest. Couldn’t let them get out. Cast in iron, those words. She had to breathe carefully under them, breathe silently around them, swallow them down or she’d vomit them up all over the floor and mortally wound Ross with the shrapnel of regurgitated words.
She shook her head, withdrew one hand. Movement. Conscious movement was good. She scratched at her head and there was pleasure in that scratch, then she dragged her chair closer to the stove, seeking distance from him. Space. She needed space.
Perhaps he understood. He walked into his room; when he returned he draped her old pink parka around her shoulders, then lit two cigarettes, offered her one.
Good. At least they were doing something. She watched the smoke from the two cigarettes join and spiral up the chimney with the kettle’s steam.
A strange day, and long – the longest day of her life. She had sat smoking by the fire in the morning, sat smoking in the lounge room through the afternoon, sat smoking on the back verandah in the evening. Waiting, waiting for the sun to go down.
It had almost given up its fight. The stars would be gathering, waiting in the wings for their time to shine.
She was smoking in the back yard now, and looking at the white clouds to the west that altered as she stared. White swan’s-down clouds became the pink of a flock of galahs, a galah-feather quilt, waiting to put the weary sun to bed. But the sun never went down easily on Ross’s land. He owned a hill, thus owned the sun for longer than those in the valley. Like an obstreperous child tonight, it clung to the distant treetops, painting them red with its own blood while it bruised, abused the western sky. Not the red of Mrs Bertram’s sunset. Mummy’s was deep purple, edged in yellow with streaks of blood. A bruise on the landscape.
Then it was gone.
One by one the shy stars peeped out, twinkling, fading, returning, until it was like those other nights when she’d sat on Raelene’s garage roof and watched the million candles glowing up there. From Raelene’s roof she’d seen the big star that was Daddy and the three small stars, even the tiny twinkle she had named Teddy’s star. She’d sat up there for hours at night, singing sad songs to Daddy star, closer to him on that roof, away from Mummy on that roof.
She had known for certain that he was up there with the boys, lighting up heaven and looking down at her, watching over her. Mummy could make up songs, so Sally had made her own special song for Daddy and the boys.
The angels needed new stars for God’s heaven
And they slid down the moonbeams that shine
To take my baby brothers and take Shane from my mother
And steal that precious Daddy of mine.
The sky was so clear tonight, Mummy would find them. She’d find them.
She scanned the sky, her head turning quickly as a tear escaped. One lone tear. It wasn’t for Mummy, it wasn’t, but it blurred the landscape. She walked forward through the blurred world to the high paddock, where she climbed through the fence. Head back, she searched the west until she found her familiar family cluster. No new star had joined them but in Lakeside it wasn’t too hard to find a bright star close by, moving in on the merry group to murder their shine.
‘Close your eyes, Daddy, and she won’t see you,’ she screamed. ‘Hide behind the clouds tonight, Daddy, and she won’t find you. Stay away from her, Daddy, or she’ll kill your light.’
Lemons and Tears
From the back door Ross listened. She’d been yelling about something, now she was singing. He’d expected tears. He could have handled her tears
.
He’d never been much into music, or her sort of music, but it was her voice that was breaking his heart – like a cry coming from some lost place within her.
Tears burned behind his eyes. He lifted his chin, defying them to fall. He loved her. He’d always love her. Wedding ring or not, she was his wife. He could barely remember what life had been like before Sally. Always here, always by his side. Little Sally in the paddock chasing sheep. Little Sally running like the wind across the bull paddock, her blond hair flying, the bull behind, the dogs barking.
He walked deeper into the yard, listening.
Christ forgive him, but he was glad her mother had gone. Sleiman was worried. They’d be doing an autopsy.
‘Fool of a woman. Spent her life crying wolf. No-one took any notice of her complaints,’ he muttered as a tear rolled free. He picked a lemon and bit hard into the rind, an old trick he’d learned at twelve when his father died and he’d had to become the man of the house in a hurry. All day he’d been thinking about his mother, and his father.
The lemon in his hand, he walked deeper into the yard until he sighted the tiny figure walking across the top paddock. So small, like a little kid wandering in the gloom, trying to climb to the top of the hill and run like hell down the other side.
‘Jesus,’ he said. ‘Don’t let her get away from me.’
As if he had some business there, he walked purposely to the tractor shed where he stood in the shadows, listening to her song. He couldn’t leave her tonight.
He wished she’d howled it out then gone to sleep. Sleiman had said to give him a call if he was needed. Maybe he ought to ring him. Or maybe he’d just watch her and wait it out. He knew her black moods, and he was afraid of them. That was the truth and there was no getting away from the truth.
Four more days to get through until the funeral. He’d tried to get it done sooner, but autopsies and opening up graves took time. His own parents were buried side by side, and what was wrong with side by side? No good for Sally to have her father’s grave disturbed. How was she going to handle it? How was she going to handle seeing her brothers’ grave again?
