The Other Side of Beautiful

by Kim Lock

Wasabi’s brown body disappeared into a thicket of bush.

  ‘Uh … sure.’ Mercy aimed the first phone in their direction.

  Wasabi reappeared. Out the corner of her lips, Mercy tried to whistle him back, but all that achieved was a fly lifting from her cheek and re-settling on her ear.

  The adults called, ‘Cheese!’ One girl spat out a sliver of fingernail and the other continued to hate the highway. Once the toddler started exclaiming, ‘Sees! Sees!’ she didn’t stop, and Mercy juggled phones and snapped as many group photos as she could until the scene organically dissolved all on its own. When the father said something about sausages and Coke, the teenagers showed mild interest and they all sloped off back to their RV.

  Now Mercy whistled to Wasabi, calling him sternly as he made to dash off after the man who’d promised sausages. The dog came trotting back, sheepish, and Mercy bent down to run her hand over his fur.

  The mother, hauling the toddler, jogged back to Mercy.

  ‘Thanks!’ She retrieved the phones, stuffing her pockets while Mercy apologised for anything blurry or for chopping anyone’s head off.

  ‘I’m sure they’ll be fine,’ the woman said, waving a hand. ‘It’s rare these days to get the girls out of their rooms long enough to get all of us in one shot.’

  Mercy laughed obligingly. The toddler glared at her. A breeze came up then, a sudden swirly gust, and blew the woman’s hat right off her head. She tried to lunge after it but the toddler slowed her down. For a beat, Mercy watched the hat bounce and roll across the gravel, before she hurried after it and scooped it up. Dust littered the brim and she brushed it off, handing it back to the woman.

  ‘Thanks.’

  ‘No problem,’ Mercy said.

  ‘I’m Ann, by the way.’ Early forties, short blonde curls, eyes a remarkable greyish colour over sharp cheekbones. She held out her hand to Mercy and Mercy shook it, feeling an uneasy flicker.

  ‘Mer—’ Mercy began. Those eyes, those cheekbones. Had she seen them before? The woman had three children, one of whom wasn’t even two years old. Had Mercy seen her at the hospital? What if she participated in one of those online groups? After all, it’s not as though Mercy was a particularly common name.

  ‘—becca,’ Mercy finished.

  ‘Merbecca?’

  ‘Yes. That’s me.’

  Ann seemed to be waiting for something, so Mercy added, ‘My mother was unusual.’

  Ann gave a short laugh. ‘Aren’t they all?’

  Mercy didn’t know how to answer.

  ‘Thanks for playing photographer. I hope we haven’t held you up too much.’

  ‘Not at all.’ Mercy pointed to the Hijet. ‘I couldn’t be in a hurry if I tried.’ Immediately she regretted identifying her vehicle.

  ‘Wow, what a fantastic little van!’ Ann said. Mercy realised they were strolling back towards the carpark together. ‘We’ve got plenty of sausages, and cold drinks,’ Ann was saying. ‘Would you and your little dog like something to eat?’

  Mercy felt the familiar squeezing inside, the sense of internal shrinking away. The rising desperation to be alone, inside, safe.

  ‘Uh, thanks,’ she said. ‘But I couldn’t. I’ve got to …’ She flapped a hand towards the van.

  ‘No worries,’ Ann said with a shrug and a smile. Giving a final wave, she trotted back to her family, the sound of sausages sizzling and the pop-fizz of soft drink cans rising up into the sunshine, and then it dawned on Mercy.

  Those grey eyes. Sharp cheekbones. Blonde curls. That was Ann Barker.

  Ann fucking Barker.

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  Eugene had told Mercy that the problem with her reading the articles was that it made things feel a lot worse than they were. Which was true—among other things, reading the headlines and blog posts had made Mercy feel invaded, personally violated. Like the opinion writers and commenters had shoved a scope up Mercy’s nostril and into her brain. Really jerked the camera around in there. Just forget it, Eugene had tried to tell her. It’s all rubbish, it will blow over. If they hadn’t been dividing up their stuff and selling their house at the time—boxes of clothes, a walnut tall boy and the faux-suede two-seater couch sitting in the middle of the driveway—Mercy might have been better able to swallow such blithe reassurances.

  Besides, Mercy had tried to point out to Eugene, Oh, Annie! had more than a million followers. Roughly equivalent to the entire population of Adelaide. Try blowing over that.

  Four long hours passed between leaving the border and reaching Alice Springs. And in those long hours of thrumming bitumen and slow-flashing white lines, Mercy could not be distracted by the red dirt and big sky, the stiff-bloated roadkill kangaroos and hopping crows, nor even the maddening crawl of burned skin on her thighs. No, for those four hours, all Mercy could think about was population statistics again. All she could think about was how in a country of twenty-five million—the majority of whom lived thousands of kilometres away from where she currently was (the middle of the outback, for crying out loud!)—Mercy could run into her.

  ‘Haven’t seen a set of traffic lights for two days,’ Mercy shouted into the wind, ‘but I have seen her. Of all people. Her!’

  What were the chances? Mercy wasn’t a mathematician but the odds, surely, had to be stacked in Mercy’s favour. One in a million? One in twenty-five million?

  But, as slim as chances could be, awful things happened. Mercy knew that. Statistics could be used to argue against all kinds of unlikelihoods but still, no matter how impossible the odds seemed, tragedy struck. Being struck by lightning, or hit by a falling coconut, or squashed by a meteorite might make you a minuscule percentage of the population but it doesn’t make the fact of it happening any less real. Any less painful.

  Mercy slowed for the outskirts of Alice Springs. Traffic thickened, more traffic than she had seen since Port Augusta. The ridge of the MacDonnell Ranges rose up like a wall, running as far east–west as she could see. The highway aimed towards a narrow gap in the range and Mercy felt herself squeezed towards a certain doom. On the other side of that ridge was Alice Springs township: the only large metropolitan centre for another fifteen hundred kilometres. What if Ann Barker was in town, on the other side of that looming ridge? An hour after leaving the border, Ann’s RV had appeared in Mercy’s rear-vision mirror. When the RV pulled out to overtake the Hijet there had been convivial waves exchanged and tooted horns and Mercy had tried to tell herself that, back at the border, the journalist had not recognised her. If she had, surely she would have said something?

  Trepidation rose as the Hijet rattled along the highway, cars slipping in close on all sides, until they were squeezed through the gap in the ranges and disgorged into the sedate streets of Alice Springs on the other side. Mercy felt chewed up and spat out. All at once that familiar, tremendous exhaustion dumped itself over her.

  Whether or not the opinion writer who had called her a murderer was in town, Mercy had to stop.

  The first caravan park she came to appeared to be full. The square white rear ends of caravans were packed to the fence lines, but when Mercy cruised a slow lap around the block, peering into the park, she couldn’t see anything that looked like Ann Barker’s RV and the sign out the front of the park said VACANCY and KIOSK so all in all, those things appealed to her. It was just after five pm; gum trees threw long shadows across the road and the afternoon light was bright yellow. She was hungry, tired and anxious.

  Mercy parked the van in front of the office and stepped out. Her legs felt doughy, not quite connected to her body. Inside, an air conditioner pumped frigid air into a small space. Leaflets rustled on a squeaky stand; a potted plant trailed waxy green leaves down the side of a desk, and when Mercy asked the lady behind the counter for a campsite for the night, the woman asked, ‘Just yourself?’ and Mercy replied, ‘Me and my dog,’ and the woman looked outraged.

  ‘No pets,’ she said, in the same tone as if Mercy had asked if she could dismember a corpse on the sh
ared barbecue tables.

  Cheeks flaming, Mercy left the office.

  Following signs down a side street to another caravan park, she found a notice that said PETS WELCOME and her heart lifted but then she saw the small NO taped in front of VACANCY. This park was complete with a boom gate and high corrugated iron fences, so Mercy couldn’t see inside, and she figured the welcoming of pets, the security and the signposted 1 HOUR FREE WI-FI must be a favourite with the grey nomads. As she drove away she was beginning to understand why they all left their camps in the morning in such a rush.

  The third and final caravan park, tucked down the end of a dead-end street behind a pub, had no boom gate, mesh fences and a faded three-and-a-half star rating sign swinging by one corner, and when she went inside she was told they accepted neither pets nor mobile payments and anyway, they were fully booked. Biting back a retort about putting those things on their sign instead of COIN-OPERATED LAUNDRY, Mercy slunk out.

  Shadows inched longer; the sun sank towards the Ranges. The thud of bass and the smell of cigarette smoke emanated from the pub up the road. Sitting in the van, Mercy wrung her hands. Wasabi looked up at her from the passenger seat.

  ‘What are we going to do?’

  There were always rest stops on the side of the road—could she drive out of town a little way and camp at one of those? After all, she had a bed, a gas burner and a can of soup—she didn’t really need a caravan park. But then more headlines began to flash into her mind: backpackers stabbed to death; tourists kidnapped at gun point; travellers vanishing into the outback, never to be seen again. She thought of bodies dumped down mine shafts and saw what they would write about her now: Women should know better than to camp alone. Women should stay in well-lit areas at all times. A sausage dog is no protection.

  Or, Mercy thought with a jolt, maybe they wouldn’t. Maybe they’d write Doctor gets what she deserved. Maybe that random anonymous AngelJax2917 would crow that their email to Mercy suggesting she die bitch die had come true.

  It was almost six pm; less than an hour of daylight remained. And Mercy might have a can of soup but she had no other food and she was almost out of water. Scrubbing her hands over her face, she felt the road grit and dust sliding under her nails. She stank, she was afraid and god only knew what could be going on with her hair.

  Pulling back onto the road, she drove to the Coles she had passed at least eight times while searching for a caravan park. Leaving the windows cracked for Wasabi, she hurried into the store and began piling boxes, cans and packets into the trolley. Fear tasted like metal on her tongue but at least the anxiety over where she was going to sleep tonight and not get murdered topped the anxiety over being in the supermarket.

  As she loaded casks of spring water onto the checkout belt, the operator, a pimply youth surely no older than twelve, asked, ‘Passing through or staying?’

  ‘Staying,’ Mercy said. ‘Well, I’m supposed to be. If I can find somewhere.’

  ‘You looking for a place to stay?’

  Mercy glanced up from a pack of two-minute noodles in alarm. The boy wasn’t offering, was he?

  ‘It’s just I know they’re still taking campers at the showgrounds.’ The cashier glanced from side to side, then leaned towards Mercy and stage whispered, ‘Only they don’t want people to know about it.’

  ‘Who doesn’t?’

  ‘The local caravan park owners.’

  ‘I see.’ She didn’t. After a confused beat she asked, ‘So … can I camp there, or not?’

  ‘Oh, yeah,’ the cashier said confidently, waving her question away. ‘You totally can. Anyone can. You just rock up. First in, first served. They’re only supposed to take thirty campers, and it’s supposed to be only the overflow from the caravan parks. But …’ He hesitated over a can of spring vegetable soup with real croutons. ‘I don’t think anyone’s policing it, you know? Like—’ he snorted a laugh, ‘—no one’s fangin’ around taking a rollcall.’

  ‘I see,’ Mercy repeated, but at least now she was beginning to. ‘So … just go to the showgrounds?’

  ‘Yep.’

  ‘And I can camp there overnight?’

  ‘Yep.’

  ‘With my dog?’

  ‘Absolutely.’

  ‘And if it’s already full is there anywhere else?’

  He hesitated before shooting another furtive look around. ‘It won’t be full,’ he said. ‘It never is, get me?’ Knowingly, he tapped the side of his nose and went back to scanning.

  Mercy thought of women after sixteen hours of labour, how they looked at the anaesthetist after the first squirt of epidural into their spine. Relief and gratitude crossed with a profound amazement, as though they’d just experienced something inexplicable, something holy.

  Stuffing loaded bags into the trolley, Mercy looked at the checkout boy and knew her expression would be the same.

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  The showgrounds were on the southern fringe of town, back the way she had come, through the gap in the Ranges. Mercy drove onto the grounds slowly, gripping the wheel and waiting for an enraged local caravan park owner to leap out from behind a bush and yell Gotcha! She was comforted to see that in the row of caravans and motorhomes parked beneath the trees, none of them looked to be Ann Barker’s. And at least, she thought, if she was to be caught red-handed somewhere she wasn’t supposed to be, she wouldn’t be alone.

  It struck her, that feeling of solidarity with the other campers, because she realised she hadn’t felt solidarity with anyone—least of all strangers—for a long time.

  Driving along the row of campers, she spotted a familiar setup and recognised it belonged to Bert, of the multi-pocketed shirt. There was no one outside the caravan, so she didn’t wave, but the realisation that she would have came as a shock. Once again there were neat chairs and tables set out on mats, tidy silver-haired folk in clean pressed linen, everyone appearing organised and fresh while Mercy rocked up late, covered in dust, sweat-rumpled and wind-blown. She felt like the drunk uncle at a Sunday morning christening.

  And there, at the end of the row, was the rental van of Andrew Macauley.

  He was sitting in a folding chair, a beer cradled in his lap, and when he saw Mercy drive in his face lit up in a way that made her entire body feel sunburned. Parking a polite distance away from his camper, she shut off the engine and climbed out.

  ‘Hiya,’ Andy said, waving. ‘Following me, eh?’

  ‘I think we’re all following each other.’ She pointed to the other caravans. It occurred to her that Ann Barker could still arrive at any moment. Nervously she scanned the highway, a murmur of traffic at the far edge of the park.

  ‘So now I’m supposed to ask you how your vehicle is going,’ Andy said, getting to his feet and coming over. ‘And then I’m supposed to stand with one foot up on your back wheel and talk about where I’ve been while you try and set up.’

  ‘I don’t have much to set up, I’m afraid.’ Lifting Wasabi out, she set him on the grass. ‘There,’ she said. ‘Done.’ The dog rocketed towards Andy, his back end curling towards his front in happiness. Andy reached down to pat him and the dog rolled onto his back, tongue lolling. ‘But be my guest,’ Mercy added, gesturing to the Hijet’s wheels, caked with orange dust. ‘And the vehicle is going fine, thank you. If a little slow.’

  ‘How’d you go with the roadtrains?’

  ‘Windy.’

  Andy laughed.

  ‘And on that note,’ Mercy said, looking around, ‘I’ve really got to find a bathroom …’ She wanted to reach up and try to smooth her hair, but that would only draw attention to it—if it wasn’t already up there whistling and swinging its hips like a showgirl.

  Andy pointed, and Mercy picked up her hessian shopping bag and hurried across the grass towards a small stone building. No showers—what could one expect when camping on the sly?—only a toilet block with a black water dump point out the back. But there was a sink with clean running water. Above the sink serving as
a mirror was a sheet of hammered steel. Her reflection was only a vague blur, but that was enough to see that her hair had reached the proportion of something extra-planetary.

  Peeling off her T-shirt, she washed up as best she could, plastering on deodorant and brushing her teeth, and then she set about trying to do something with her hair. Rooting about up there, she found the hair tie snagged in tight as fencing wire. There was no retrieving it, no matter how hard and painfully she tried. Eventually, using her hands like bulldozer blades, she coaxed it all back into some kind of bun and then looped a new hair tie over the top to hold it all in place. Then she leaned over the sink, splashed water onto her face and up into her scalp. When she was done she rinsed a slick of blood-coloured mud from the bowl.

  ‘Can I have a wee bit of your piece?’ Andy was looking down at Mercy’s lap.

  Mercy dropped her fork. ‘My what?’

  He gestured towards her lap. ‘I’ve never tried it.’ At the expression on her face, he laughed. ‘Sorry. A piece. You know—a sandwich.’

  Mercy looked at her plate: pasta salad from a packet and a brown bread sandwich cut into quarters. ‘Sure,’ she said, holding it out. ‘But you’ve never tried a sandwich?’

  ‘I’ve never tried Vegemite.’ He took a triangle and gave the bread a sniff. ‘I’m told it’s salty.’ He took a tentative bite and chewed, his face expressionless. After a moment, his cheeks sucked in and his eyes screwed up. ‘Christ!’ he said, coughing and swallowing with difficulty. ‘That’s dead nasty, that is.’

  ‘It also doubles as a good engine degreaser, I’ve heard,’ Mercy said mildly, taking a large bite.

  ‘Aye, noted,’ he said, wiping his eyes.

  Mercy and Andy were sitting on the grass between their vans. The sun was setting and the sky was spectacular. The face of the Ranges rolled like a movie screen of colour and shadow. With the liberal application of more after-sun gel, the sting in Mercy’s thighs had eased and they were now giving off more of a dull burr than a smarting heat. Laughing at Andy, with Wasabi stretched out peacefully between them and the grass turning gold in the setting sun, Mercy felt a slow, spreading warmth sink over her shoulders and down her spine.