The Other Side of Beautiful

by Kim Lock

  Pulling onto the gravel shoulder, Mercy picked up her phone.

  ‘Where the hell are you?’ said Eugene. In the background she could hear the sounds of traffic, the blip and burr of a pedestrian crossing. He was on a break. She imagined him standing by the service entrance at the eastern wing of the hospital, where the nursing staff took their smoke breaks beneath a NO SMOKING sign.

  ‘One thousand, two hundred and twenty-one kilometres south of Alice Springs.’

  Silence. Then, ‘What?’

  ‘One thousand, two—’

  ‘I heard you.’ He paused and there was a scuffing sound, and then his voice was muffled, as if he’d cupped his hand around the speaker. ‘Jesus, Mercy, you must be—’

  ‘Port Augusta.’

  ‘Port Augusta?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘So—will you be back for dinner?’

  ‘No.’

  Another pause. ‘Fine. I’ll just leave the front door open. You can—’

  ‘Eugene, I won’t be …’

  Mercy was twenty-six when she met Eugene Phelps; he thirty-eight. She was into her fourth year of residency, and frustrated, beginning to worry over when she would gain entry into the fellowship. Eugene was bright, serious, older—trailing a kind of effortless Melbourne dapper into the Emergency Department. After four years in the ED at Royal Melbourne, Mercy had wondered if he found Adelaide Northern Hospital to be a little backwater. It was, after all, plonked squarely in a less desirable socioeconomic area, if you considered it from a purely real estate perspective (which of course, Mercy never did, because what kind of an arsehole doctor would that make her?). There’d been a chance bumping-into over the last decent-looking silverside and pickle sandwich at the canteen; quick snuck coffee dates; sex, quite a lot of it somehow, despite their mutually ludicrous work schedules and lack of synchronised time off.

  Then, tra-la-la, eight years later: all that had happened.

  Mercy stared through the windscreen. Up ahead the road disappeared over a low rise; the gravel shoulders were the colour of peaches. The road seemed to aim directly north. To the other side.

  ‘I’m not coming back. Please don’t call me. I need to get over it.’

  She hung up before he could reply. She set the phone down, pulled onto the Stuart Highway, and drove north.

  From here on, as far as routes were concerned, Mercy had very little choice. Australia might be a big country but as far as passable highways went, up the centre it had only one. After Port Augusta, the road north to Darwin was the Stuart Highway. That’s it. Unless one had a rugged, kitted-out four-wheel drive and was willing and able to spend weeks traversing sandy desert tracks. Which, it goes without saying, Mercy and her old Hijet were not.

  The land rolled by. The highway shimmered a dirty bronze, laying a path through a flat red earth carpeted with low, tussocky shrub. Rutted two-wheel tracks split from the highway to cut through the saltbush. Long stretches passed where Mercy saw no trees at all, only dense thickets of dry bush. Far in the distance, a low string of cloud gathered over gauzy ranges.

  The warm wind buffeted Mercy’s hair, blowing strands of it in circles around her face. She kept pushing it back behind her ears, only for it to tug loose and fly about again. Wasabi sat squinting on the passenger seat, nose to the wind, ears aflap.

  After an hour she passed a rest stop where three caravans were gathered. Someone waved; Mercy hesitated too long and the rest stop was behind her before she had decided whether or not to wave in return.

  The scrub bordering the road had grown tuftier, dotted with stunted, straggly trees; the soil popped bright red. Cattle grids sliced through the road, making the van judder. In the rear-vision mirror, Mercy watched four-wheel drives ease up behind her, pause, then overtake, dragging enormous caravans emblazoned with custom decals: Harry and Bev, channel 18; Spending the kids’ inheritance!; Adventure Before Dementia. That last one made Mercy laugh, albeit in a thin, slightly crazed sound that was lost in the wind. Salt flats appeared, glinting sheets of pink and silver. Signs warned the road was unfenced and motorists should beware of wandering livestock. Sometimes the road didn’t seem to bend or turn at all; it just rolled ever northward, the white lines disappearing under the van with the beat of Mercy’s heart.

  Eventually, after many hours, all the shrubbery and trees disappeared. The highway unfurled a path over rolling, stony desert; Mercy was left alone with the breeze, the late afternoon light blazing stark over impossibly vast red earth, and the wide flung expanse of flaming sky.

  Evening was a blanket of shadow by the time Mercy pulled into Glendambo, a pinprick of an establishment on the elephant hide of the outback. According to a sign on the side of the road, the outpost boasted a population of thirty humans, 22,500 sheep and two million flies. WELCOME TO GLENDAMBO.

  More than four hours had passed since Mercy left Port Augusta, which now seemed like a bustling metropolis. She had stopped a few times to drink water and squat self-consciously behind the van, and once for petrol. But now she wanted to eat; she wanted to walk. She wanted to stop driving and sleep. And judging by the caravans she could see clustered about in the square of orange dirt signposted as a ‘caravan park’, Glendambo, though pinprick it might be, was an oasis off the highway for those much needed things: food, fuel, ceasing of forward movement.

  Wasabi sat up and whined as the Hijet’s tyres crunched over the gravel. The temperature of the air coming through the windows had dropped sharply; Mercy smelled dry earth, cooking smoke, and diesel fumes from an idling truck.

  When she shut off the engine, the silence and lack of vibration seemed absolute. For a moment she sat perfectly still, listening to the silence. Then she climbed out, stretching her legs and lifting her arms above her head.

  ‘Stay,’ she said to Wasabi.

  The inside of a quiet pub: dark-patterned carpet, the stale stink of beer and the lurid, oversaturated colours of a sports game on a television screen in the corner. Her legs felt weak and cramped stiff.

  ‘Just one night,’ Mercy told the older woman behind the counter, who seemed to expect nothing else.

  Back in the van, Mercy followed a broad gravel driveway around the back of the pub into a wide paddock also of gravel. Scattered about were spindly, half-dead-looking sticks of trees. Mercy parked on the far side, leaving as much space as she could between herself and the nearest caravan.

  She let Wasabi out of the Hijet and he availed himself of the facilities of a nearby fence post then proceeded to trot in zig-zagging circles, nose to the ground. Mercy walked to the toilet block, where crickets sang at the base of tin walls that ended a foot above the ground, then she returned to the van, opened the back and climbed inside, leaving Wasabi out to run around.

  Mercy’s stomach growled at the scent of grilling sausages floating on the breeze. She felt a pang of envy at the fact of someone’s portable fridge. How did it run? Solar panels, gas? The idea of the setup, the complexity of it, boggled her mind. How easy it was to take for granted that which was always readily available, always there. If she was at home, she would be stir-frying chicken tenderloins in soy sauce, or maybe sizzling taco mince in spices. She thought of her couch with its deep, soft cushions, the fluffy green blanket she liked to drape over her knees as she ate, re-watching The Good Wife or Downton Abbey or The Crown. She had taken her comfort and security for granted. Now it was gone.

  Mercy selected a single-serve can of baked beans; she studied a tomato, now bruised and dubious-looking after the long drive. The bag of lettuce, once crisp in the store, was now warm and turning to wilt. But she set a bunch of leaves on her brand-new bamboo plate, along with the sliced tomato. While she waited for the beans to heat in her tiny new saucepan, she set out some food and water for Wasabi, whistling him back to the van.

  She was scraping the steaming beans onto her plate when she heard a voice.

  ‘Good evening, neighbour!’

  Mercy froze, saucepan aloft.

  A man a
ppeared: generous belly, buttoned shirt, excessive epaulettes. It was the man from the Crystal Brook caravan park last night. Her mind scrambled for a name but came up blank.

  ‘You made it!’ he said, slapping the door pillar of the Hijet.

  ‘Yes,’ Mercy said. A single bean oozed from the saucepan and dropped onto her foot.

  ‘Happy hour is at ours again tonight.’

  Wasabi pounced and the bean was gone.

  ‘Jayco Starcraft and the silver Cruiser, remember?’

  Mercy didn’t, because beyond now understanding that ‘Jayco’ was a brand of caravan (she had been overtaken on the highway by at least a dozen of them) she still didn’t quite know what the rest of his statement meant. But she nodded as though she did. She was still holding the saucepan.

  ‘Might be a quieter one this evening,’ he went on. ‘Pete and Jules haven’t shown up yet to get all rowdy! I think they’re chuffing off a bit further up the track.’

  ‘I see.’

  ‘Anyway—you don’t have to bring anything, just yourself and your … little dog. What kind of dog is he anyway?’

  ‘A Dachshund.’

  ‘One of them sausage dogs!’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Yeah, we’re from Mannum, Riverland way,’ he went on, drawing himself up and stuffing his thumbs into his waistband. He squinted thoughtfully into the distance, as if contemplating something. ‘Been on the road about five weeks.’

  Mercy set the saucepan back on the stove. Her stomach gave a loud, hollow rumble. Should she start eating? Would he take the hint? Or was that rude—should she perhaps offer the man some beans?

  ‘Jan likes to go places where she can see the horizon, you know? Clear open spaces. Not too many trees, they make her claustrophobic, she says.’

  ‘Then she must love it here.’

  He gave a blast of laughter. ‘Ahh, but it’s magic here, wouldn’t you say?’ Now he beamed into the distance, flapping his elbows happily. ‘Just magic.’

  Flies were gathering around her plate; she shooed them away, only for them to lift briefly and land again. Her beans were growing cold.

  ‘So we’ll see you at ours then?’ He pointed in what Mercy assumed was the direction of his caravan.

  Mercy looked helplessly down at her plate, as if it could help her. She thought of the ashes under her seat.

  ‘Thank you, but I really … um—’

  ‘Bert,’ a woman’s voice called.

  ‘I’ve got a nice cask of Shiraz. Not from Mannum, where we’re from, but I think it’s a South Aussie vineyard. Which reminds me! We were on the Oodnadatta Track once, on another trip, and we saw this rig broken down, and I stopped to help the bloke—’

  ‘Dinner, Bert.’

  ‘—he’d let down all his tyres, you see, because he thought that’s what you’re supposed to do on a corrugated road. But it wasn’t like sand, I said, and for rocks you need more tyre pressure, not less, right? So he’s there with two flat tyres and only one spare, and I said—’

  ‘Bert!’

  ‘Oops.’ Bert gave Mercy a conspiratorial wink. ‘I’ve overrun my leash. So we’ll see you at ours? Happy hour?’ And, giving the van another slap, he was gone.

  Mercy leaned forward and pulled the door closed. She ate her dinner in silence.

  The sun went down and the temperature plummeted. Stars pricked out like chips of ice. Citronella and the scent of mozzie coils hung in the cold air as the park descended into darkness, bracketed by two yellow pools of light from lamps on either side of the gravel lot.

  Mercy was tired, but when she lay down on the bed and pulled her new chenille throw with the picture of a cat on it up to her shoulders, she couldn’t sleep. Her body felt wired; it was almost too quiet, a suffocating silence so complete it was almost its own noise. Her ponytail was uncomfortable. She sat up, tugging at her hair tie, stuck in a tight clump of knots. Using the torchlight on her phone, she rooted around in the hessian shopping bag she was now using as a handbag and found the new hairbrush, then she sat in the dark and tried to brush out her hair.

  She hadn’t been to a hairdresser in two years; her hair reached halfway down her back. It was thick, curly and heavy—her mother’s hair, but her mother had always worn her curls in a meticulously styled, short, tousled bob. Never a hair out of place on her mother’s head. Mercy usually kept her own hair shorter too, but then she had stopped being able to leave the house and that put an end to many ordinary outings, hairdressers included.

  The bristles caught in a particularly unruly clump and Mercy gave the brush a vicious tug, stinging her scalp. Driving with the window down all day had turned her hair into a magpie’s nest; she imagined it full of twigs, chunks of gravel and the tiny, winged corpses of flying insects.

  Her phone vibrated. She glanced at the screen: the red dot on the Facebook icon read 99+. The last time she had been online her house had been standing, unscathed.

  Mercy’s finger hovered over the screen. She imagined the chain of tags, mentions, replies. Em Bee might know; Em Bee can you help? Em Bee was mentioned in …

  For the last two years, this had been Mercy’s day: wake up, make a cup of coffee, drink it while checking last night’s notifications, then make a second cup and drink that while replying to questions, challenges, sometimes downright vitriol. How dare you judge me? She got that one a lot. You’ve clearly never experienced … At first she had been mortified, her face flushing hot as she hurried to type a placating reply. So sorry. Didn’t mean to offend. Just meant to suggest … But eventually she had come to understand that the outrage of others was always their own pain playing up. Sometimes, no matter what you said, if someone was determined to take offence, they would. Because wasn’t she triggered in the same way, by her own pain? When someone held a mirror up to Mercy’s face, didn’t she want to punch it to shards? Most of the morning would disappear into ploughing through the new posts of more than a dozen groups—Pregnancy and Birth Chat Adelaide; Southern Mamas; SA New Mums and so many more—taking her all the way to lunch time. Then she would set her phone aside and try to do something else for a few hours. Tidy the house, do laundry, order groceries online. Then back to Facebook in the afternoon: cajoling, reassuring, sharing. Latest evidence shows and That’s not a peer-reviewed study, sweetheart and Check with your doctor, they should know … After dinner was when things got busy—in the evening, when toddlers had been put to bed and partners attended to and families fed, that’s when Mercy’s attention was demanded. Through the evenings and into the night, Mercy poured herself out—but not really herself, not who she really was—trying, somehow, to make amends.

  Had it helped? All those hours spent sympathising, advising, sharing the outrage of strangers—had that made up for it?

  1 new voicemail. She still hadn’t listened to it.

  Dropping the hairbrush, Mercy picked up the whisky and swigged it back. She thumbed the Facebook icon, navigated through to Settings.

  Then she pressed Delete my account.

  Gasping awake, Mercy lay wide-eyed in the blackness. Sharp hooks remained from the nightmare, squeezing the breath from her lungs. Sweat cooled on her skin. Slowly her surroundings returned: weak light from the lamps outside filtered through the windows; the van’s roof was an impenetrable black square. Curled at her hip, Wasabi slept soundly, a small lump of heat. Beneath the cat throw and wearing the man-size puffer jacket, Mercy was warm, but her feet were cold.

  Lying motionless, Mercy tried to control her breathing, inhaling to the count of four, exhaling to the same. She softened her fingers, keeping her hands loose and palms open, but her heart raced. The night was so dark, and so incredibly quiet.

  When she sat up she knocked the whisky bottle to the floor. Her phone read 12.34am. The inside of her mouth tasted like old carpet. Digging around, she found the toothbrush and tore away its packaging. Tentatively, she pushed open the back door and peered out.

  Silence. It was a kind of unimaginable silence—no road noise,
no humming radios or electronics, not even a dog barking. Stars stretched an infinite glinting banner. A slight breeze came up but it made no sound; there were no trees to catch it, make it whistle. Wasabi lifted his head and she patted him, whispering, ‘Stay.’

  Mercy slid out of the van. The gravel was cold and gritty beneath her bare feet. She glanced across the park. The caravans were motionless and quiet. The last thing she wanted was to wake somebody. She imagined Bert tugging on a many-pocketed khaki shirt and accosting her, requiring an explanation for her second absence at happy hour. Would he accept her excuse that she had shared her own version of happy hour with the box of cremated remains under her bed? That she’d lifted out the box marked Jenny Cleggett, sat it on the cabinet top next to the gas-ring stove and toasted it with a fair whack of her whisky? An obliging drinking partner Jenny Cleggett had turned out to be—the serene, silent type.

  Clutching her toothbrush and tube of paste, Mercy tiptoed across the gravel, towards the bush beyond the fence. The sleeves of the puffer jacket made zipping noises as she moved, so she brushed her teeth with her elbows stuck out, minty foam dripping onto her toes. Opening wide, she scrubbed at her tongue, then the roof of her mouth, brushing harder and harder, scrubbing against the images of blood and naked skin, the faces of the two police officers at her door, the shrill echoed Do something. Mercy brushed and scrubbed until she gagged, until tears trickled down her cheeks.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  A snuffling sound, something damp and warm slurping into her ear.

  ‘Wasabi,’ Mercy groaned, attempting to push the dog away. But he wouldn’t be deterred; the sleepy flail of her hands he chose to interpret as a game, and he began to nip playfully at her wrists before launching a repeated assault on her ears with his tongue.