by Joy Dettman
‘Not long now. A few more weeks, Walter, and the waiting will be over.’
It might be a relief to hit those roads, to put Melbourne behind him again. He liked driving. A lot of his years had been spent on the roads. A retired sales rep, he’d sold men’s suits all over the western district.
That’s when he’d found the photographs, three of them, still in their frames. He preferred the small one. It was in the glove box. He’d almost left it sitting on the television when he’d checked out of the motel this morning.
Tonight he’d be sleeping at Richmond again. He’d got himself a ground floor room on the east side, two doors from the bathroom. It was cheap, and good enough, and impersonal too. And close to her. He’d wait it out there.
He looked at the photograph in the fading light, making his own mental adjustments to the features, removed the bows from the long hair but retained the smile and the eyes. Even an artist couldn’t have improved on those.
‘Essence of innocence,’ he said. ‘The little love of my life.’ He thought of that day in Ballarat; he’d seen her walking down the street and he’d known her. Should have spoken to her that day, but he’d followed her home. Hadn’t done him much good. Done him less good making that phone call. One of your better mistakes, Walter. It was like she’d been sitting there waiting for me. And probably had been. Probably been warned.
Go home to your bloody wife and stay out of my life, she’d said.
‘Hell hath no fury like a woman betrayed.’ His black-rimmed glasses removed, his fingers rubbed his eyes, kept rubbing.
His mother used to do that, take off her glasses and rub her eyes. If she’d lived a few more years, things might have turned out differently. At eighteen a boy wasn’t meant to live alone. He hadn’t either, not for long. He’d met and married Elaine in three months. She’d been too old for him, or he’d been too young for her. Bad days. Bad years, those.
His mind moved back to his boyhood. Slower, safer years. Back then a twelve-year old could put his bike on the train to Heidelberg on Sundays and ride out to the Yarra, sit by it in safety, catch a bag of fish and take them home for his mother to toss in flour and fry up for dinner.
He smiled, his dark eyes staring at the window but seeing beyond it to the past, seeing Mother and little Wally in a slum villa. Dark, narrow rooms. Smell of mould, stink of poverty in that old house. The smell of the old place in Richmond reminded him of slum villa.
Gone now, of course. A whole row of those little houses had been ripped down and high-rise flats built on the site. Maybe some of the mould had lived on to creep up those towering walls.
He could still see that old street in his mind’s eye, still see his mother at the wash trough. A hard worker, a religious little woman, wed to a gambler. At nine, Wally had sworn on the Bible that he’d never touch liquor and never gamble. He’d pretty much kept one promise – only because he didn’t like the taste of beer and hadn’t been able to afford spirits.
‘It’s in the blood, Mother. Blame the wild O’Leary blood.’
No finer woman ever born than his mother, parsimonious but fine. She hadn’t wanted her boy to grow up, and she’d had her way. He hadn’t grown much. Small feet. Small hands, not good for anything at fifteen, so they’d set him up behind a menswear counter. His occupation had given him a lifelong interest in his appearance.
His gaze concentrated now on the slim slits of light at the window where the little one had separated the blinds and was peering through. Then the blind was hitched high, and her hands cupped the glass. Such a little dot of a girl. You’d swear she was looking for him, sitting up there waiting for him to walk down that drive and up those stairs.
‘Lordy me,’ he sighed, his hand raking at his curls, attempting to claw out his need, dig through his scalp and alter his yesterdays. But they were all in there, set fast in time and there was no going back. He knew it. Didn’t like it.
She moved away, but his eyes didn’t leave that rectangle of light. Three minutes, five. Where was she? Was she coming down? Would he have the guts to face her if she did?
No.
But there she was, back at that window again.
He placed the old photograph back in the glove box and reached for his ignition key as a blue station wagon pulled in behind him. He’d seen it before, knew who owned it too. He watched the boyfriend lock his car and pick up his briefcase, walk down the drive and disappear. Walter turned his key and listened to his motor’s purr.
‘Some you win and some you lose, Walter, and you’ve lost this little one.’
Sally looked at Matt seated at her table, a glass of wine in his hand; she was all out of Jim Beam and she wouldn’t be buying any more.
‘Where did you get to on Wednesday, Matt?’ Her voice would not give her away and if her smile was false, he didn’t notice. She was still wearing her jeans and her face was clean of makeup.
‘A business trip, Sall. I couldn’t contact you. It came up on the Monday night and I had to fly to Sydney. Spent the week in conference and hardly came up for air.’
And she had him.
She smiled, stepping away when he reached for her. The kitchen bench between them, she told him that her car had died on the South Eastern Freeway.
‘No great loss, kiddo.’ So sure of himself, he poured another glass of wine from the cask.
Then she told him where she had been before her car died and he flinched.
‘You make such beautiful little boys, Matt. I played Mary’s lamb today. I followed them to school, which was against the rules. I know that.’ He swallowed a gulp of wine and he turned his back, looked out the window. She waited, ready for another lie.
Nothing.
‘You didn’t go on a business trip. You took the family away for a holiday to Mildura.’ Now he faced her. She stepped back again.
Silence.
Stereo playing next door.
Silence.
Breathing.
‘You’re a liar, Matt.’ His lips remained closed, his long finger brushing his hair back from his brow. So like her father, but not like him at all. Not those eyes. Not that mouth. ‘I had coffee with your wife today. We compared diamond rings and spoke about our favourite charities.’
That got a reaction. He caught her wrist and his fingers crushed it. His voice when it came was a whisper. ‘Stay away from my family. Do you hear me? Stay away from my family.’
‘I thought I was your family, Matty. You said that I was all you had, Matty. Wife and mother, sister, lover, playmate, friend. The only one you needed, Matty.’ She tugged her wrist free and rubbed it. ‘Get out of my sight, you liar.’
He left, and left her shaking, left her nauseated. But for once she had been in control. For once she’d said what she’d wanted to say and she’d said it well. He was out of her life.
She took a don’t-care pill from her pack and swallowed it with wine. It killed the pain, killed the anger, didn’t kill her need to cry. Always crying these days.
Good Luck Charm
Interview at Myer day. Too sick to go; but she went. Caught a tram. Found a seat beside a woman who had a newspaper. And it was on the front page – they’d got the hit-and-run killer!
Hard to read on a moving tram when another was turning the pages.
Fourteen-year-old youth . . . Driving his mother’s car . . . She had seen the damage . . . Hadn’t reported it.
Sally moved closer, but the woman turned the page. Photograph of a pretty teenager shooting up. Why? How could anyone stick needles dipped in poison in themselves?
Victoria will get five safe injecting rooms this year
Stop the world, I want to get off, she thought. Then the woman and her newspaper got off, and Sally continued on to her interview.
A sad week, sad television, sad Sally; and in Number 13, the Asian family mourned anew.
Cruel old Melbourne, it took what it would and gave no apology. Helen Lee, her life stolen by a fool of a boy. And Carla Miller. Her murderer w
as still free, still out there biding his time. Every week someone died violently. Kids overdosing, babies used as punching bags, families murdered in their beds.
But Melbourne gives back too, Sally thought. It held out its arms to me like some weird old relative, far too distant to recall the bond of blood, but eager to claim me, and to offer its all. It tested me, but didn’t blame, didn’t disapprove. You’re good enough as you are for me, Sally De Rooze, it said, but you’d better grow up fast if you want to share my world.
Sally sang her own sad song on Sunday. ‘I am a Jester’, she’d named it. Cocky said it was brilliant. A hit. They did it again later, sang it together, and it sounded like a hit.
‘You and me, babe. We’ve got the world at our feet. We’re going to be big.’
He could write music. Was there anything he couldn’t do? He said he’d put her song on paper, just like Mummy had put her songs on paper, and that night Sally didn’t want to be alone, so they sat late at his flat, getting all of the squiggles and dots in the right places and it looked . . . looked like music when it was done. Sort of permanent.
She had made something. She had created.
But Sunday ended at midnight. Monday came again, and at 6.15 in the evening she heard that familiar knock on her door.
How did he have the nerve to come back?
She wouldn’t open the door. Five times he knocked, and she stood, heart pounding, waiting for him to give up and go away. Her phone rang.
Please, God, let it be Cocky.
Please, God, let it be Sue.
She picked it up, though some ancient wisdom warned her not to.
‘I’m sorry, kiddo. Don’t hang up on me,’ he said.
She hung up. And she shook and cried a fool’s tears because she knew now. She’d been a pill-popping fool back in February, and she’d stopped denying it, stopped making excuses and started counting weeks.
She was pregnant. She was pregnant and she had to do something about it.
At ten she took her packet of don’t-care pills from her bag and popped one, popped two into her palm, needing strong medicine to turn off her tears. For minutes she stood looking at the twin pills, thinking of Sleiman, thinking of her mother and the glass of chocolate milk.
Once upon a time she’d recognised bad medicine when she’d seen it. She’d been smart back then. Pills wouldn’t fix anything. They wouldn’t make a pregnancy go away. Her hand turned, dropped the pills into the toilet, and she stood there popping more from their bubble pack, listening to their small plop-plop-plop as they hit the water.
‘Dose yourself up on reality. Gulp it down, and keep it down,’ she whispered.
Sleep didn’t come for her until daylight, then Myer woke her at 9.15. They wanted her in for a second interview. Could she come in this afternoon?
Her stomach had gone mad; coffee tasted bad, cigarettes tasted worse. Three outfits were tried and discarded on her bed before she settled on her black suit. The skirt was long, the jacket fitted but it needed colour. Her face needed colour. She took the old brooch from her purse and pinned it to her lapel and she stared at its reflection in the mirror as her fingers touched.
‘Pretty,’ she whispered.
The woman conducting the interview commented on it.
‘My good luck charm,’ Sally replied, and deep within she knew those words had been spoken before. Someone, somewhere, had said those words before.
It’s my good luck charm.
Too many interviews behind her, she’d learnt how to give the right answers, and she had the job too. Until they sat her before a computer.
She could type. She could do thirty words a minute, but she didn’t have a clue what to do with a modern computer. It had Windows 98; totally different from the one she’d learnt on in Lakeside, it had a mouse. She’d only used the keys before, and this thing was a speed freak; it wouldn’t respond to keys.
She tried the mouse. Stupid name for a piece of computer. She’d trapped mice, cleaned up their dirt, attempted to feed them to her cat once, but she’d never tried to find her way around a computer by clicking on a mouse’s haunches. The cursor shot every which way. It seemed logical to turn it around, to point the mouse head in the right direction, let it see where it was going. That wasn’t right either. She couldn’t click.
The woman’s mouth was still smiling but her eyes had lost their interest. ‘Thank you,’ she said. ‘We’ll be in touch, Sally.’ About as genuine as a bowl of plastic peanuts.
Why couldn’t anyone tell the truth? Sorry, Sall, with those computer skills we can offer you a job cleaning the toilets. So easy. Why hadn’t Matt told her the truth that first night? Sorry, Sall. I’ve got a wife and three sons.
She could have walked away from him, just like she was walking away from the job. She didn’t want to work on a computer. She wanted to sing. Cocky was trying to get them into a bar. And he’d do it. He had more push than a used car salesman.
Wandering aimlessly through the departments, she looked at shoes, at books and nail polish – considered palming one. The pale pink. A perfect match for the china lady’s throat. She used to be good at palming nail polish. At one of the homes, nicking stuff had been an initiation rite, and why not? Her hand ready to slip the small bottle into her pocket, she saw a little leprechaun watching her.
A reflex step back, a reflex dropping of the polish, but when she looked again he was gone, disappeared in a puff of smoke.
Like somewhere else. Old hallucination.
Out to the street then. Air out there. Lightheaded, her legs jelly snakes, she sat a while watching a busker toss balls. She tossed him a coin before walking on.
Her two-hour tram ticket was still valid, and she found a seat. She didn’t see him get on, didn’t see him until he sat beside her. Wide mouth, woolly head – old leprechaun, but no hallucination.
‘A beautiful brooch,’ he said, eyeing it. Her hand reached up, covered it. ‘And no doubt very precious, my dear.’
The high-pitched voice was like a breeze in her mind. The tram swayed and she swayed against him, memory whispering in her ears, nausea crawling in her stomach. Then she recognised him. He was the guy who had spoken to her at the tram stop in Toorak Road, way back in September, the guy with the brown suitcase. He was the old guy who had tossed the envelope into the guitar case.
No empty seats. She couldn’t stand all the way home or she’d fall down. She turned her face to the window, urging the tram on.
‘It’s Sally, isn’t it?’
Her head left the rest of her behind as she swung around to face him. Dark eyes behind black-rimmed glasses, hand adjusting the glasses. His features were shimmering, changing.
She stood, pulled the cord and left the tram.
He didn’t follow her.
Walking fast then, her hand unconsciously fingering the brooch. My good luck charm. My good luck charm.
By the time the next tram groaned to a halt her two-hour ticket was no longer valid, but it carried her to her stop. She was walking past the photography shop when she remembered the negative. Couldn’t find the slip of paper, but the woman behind the counter brought out a bright envelope and slowly slipped the black-and-white print from it, apologising for its poor quality.
He who expects nothing is never disappointed.
‘God!’
It was on the counter before her, and there she was. Little Sally with her knickers hanging. Little blonde head, shy smile. She looked like Robby, the serious. And she looked like Sally too.
‘The negative was damaged, and the original shot was poorly focused.’
‘It’s beautiful!’ Her eyes were filling, blurring. She caught the tears with her index fingers, and the woman stopped apologising. ‘It’s beautiful.’
She bought a frame that matched Daddy and the boys’ frames, almost, and it cost more than the print, but the woman fitted it, convinced that her customer was mad when she didn’t want it wrapped, when she left the shop weeping, the photograph held to h
er breast.
Milk and Dragons
That evening, the television on and selling hard, Sally sat at the table, staring at the child she’d been, and drinking wine. Couldn’t stop crying lately, and didn’t know why she was doing it. Everything made her cry. Even stupid television shows.
‘Fly to Bali for six nights,’ the announcer on the television crowed. ‘Only seven hundred and ninety-nine dollars.’
Bali. It made her cry again. Made her think of Ross and their planned honeymoon. Made her think of February and the night she’d made love to him. Made her think of Matt, who had made love to her three nights later.
Made her think.
So she poured more wine to turn off thinking.
Tomorrow she’d find out where you went to get an abortion.
And perhaps kill a tiny Nicky with his thistledown hair.
The thought got the tears really dripping. It was lucky she’d had the out-of-focus photograph framed because the glass was wet. Maybe she needed a cigarette. Maybe her brain was in nicotine withdrawal, but cigarettes didn’t taste the same lately, and she couldn’t find any anyway.
She emptied her bag onto the table, sipping wine as she sorted through the last year of her life.
Scrap of purple and gold wrapping paper. She crumpled it and tossed it to the floor, glancing at the ring she still wore. Should toss it too, but her hand looked bare without it. She found the packet of condoms, never opened, and old supermarket receipts, and a packet of disintegrating chewing gum stuck to a phone bill. She’d meant to pay that.
She glanced at her bankbook. Enough in there to murder a little Nicky – or buy an old car, or a ticket to fly. It was placed in the zip compartment, safe, and her glass was empty again.
