The Other Side of Beautiful

by Kim Lock

  Be a good girl. Make Mummy proud.

  Mercy stared at the box of ashes. ‘If you happen to know my mother, wherever you are,’ she said, her voice strained, ‘can you kindly ask her to shut up?’

  Thunder boomed, rattling the van. Wasabi yelped.

  ‘Oh, so you’re still blaming me?’ Mercy tipped her face to the roof of the van. ‘I’m so tired of never being good enough for you!’

  It was the ultimate one-upping, really, to go ahead and die. When Mercy had finally, bravely—painfully—cut off contact with Loretta Blain, by the time she opened Facebook the next morning her mother had already defriended and blocked her—and so had five other people. Mercy had messages from those few who hadn’t taken her mother’s side: Are you okay? / Your mum said she’s had to cut off all contact with you / She actually used the word ‘toxic’. An ego that large simply cannot fathom being the one who does things second. So if all else fails—lie. To everyone else, Loretta Blain had always been the generous, bubbly, life of the party. It was only Mercy who saw the shadows. Copped the storms. Shouldered the blame and guilt.

  ‘Well, you died, Mum,’ Mercy said. ‘You win. I will forever be the bitch.’

  The wind began to pick up, lashing at the trees. A few spots of rain ticked onto the windscreen.

  Mercy couldn’t take the buzzing in her veins any longer.

  With shaking hands she picked up her phone, thumbing through to the voicemail. The idea of putting the phone to her ear, as if the words would be injected right into the centre of her brain, was unbearable, so she put it on speaker. But as soon as that tinny electronic voice announcing her voicemails crackled through the van, projecting out into the world, she fumbled to shut the speaker off and lifted the phone to her ear.

  ‘Mercy, this is Alison Webber from Legal Governance and Insurance Services Unit in regards to the matter of the inquest into the death of Tamara Lee Spencer. We have received the summation from the solicitor, and you will be emailed confirmation of the inquest date in due course. If you could please return my call, I just need to confirm …’

  Alison Webber’s sleek and professional voice faded away as Mercy took the phone from her ear and dropped it onto the bed. Clambering through into the driver’s seat, she fumbled the keys into the ignition. She pulled the choke and tapped the accelerator. Lightning split the sky and thunder crashed as the engine thrummed into life.

  Putting the Hijet into reverse, she swung away from the row of campers. Headlights flashed across Andy’s van and she thought of the muffler tied on by a coat hanger. A surge of irrational anger swept through her at the sense that her liberty was conditional. So the muffler might need welding—so what? So Legal were leaving sleek-voiced voicemails—so what? Why should that stop her? Right here, right now, she was fine. And besides, she was a surgeon. Surely if it came to it she could re-twist a piece of wire around a pipe.

  ‘I’m leaving first this time!’ she cried, zooming past the sleeping caravans.

  As the thunderstorm surged over the Ranges, Mercy gunned it out of the showgrounds and turned left onto the highway, out through Alice Springs, heading north into the wind-whipped night.

  Rain sheeted in the headlights. White lines on the bitumen flashed and disappeared; the road whooshed and rumbled under the wheels.

  Hunched white-knuckled over the steering wheel, Mercy peered through the windscreen. Visibility was down to a few metres. After the streetlights of Alice Springs had faded behind her, the night was black as the belly of a beast, lit up for split-seconds as lightning flashed the desert blue-white.

  When the van rattled over the first cattle grid, Mercy held her breath. The engine burped and puttered but remained quiet and she exhaled, silently thanking Andy’s skills in wire tying. When she bumped over a second cattle grid unscathed, she allowed herself to relax even further.

  Almost as suddenly as it had started, the rain stopped. Stars reappeared in the sky; the road dried and the headlights scooped out the night. As the moon-shadowed desert materialised around her, dark and still and endless, Mercy began to question her ill-considered decision to flee Alice Springs, to leave the showgrounds and her band of fellow travellers. Somehow, the storm had provided a cocoon, blanketing the world’s bigness, reducing it to a cosy centre. The urge to move that had taken over her body had quieted.

  Two and a half hours after leaving Alice Springs, it was a third cattle grid that finally did it: the muffler fell off, and the Hijet howled like a jet engine.

  Mechanically, it was perfectly possible to drive a vehicle without part of its exhaust system, Andy had explained to her earlier. Provided the windows stayed open to let all the carbon monoxide out, it was just going to be loud as hell. Maybe out here on the deserted outback highway no one would mind, but in town, people would. So would any cops. And so would her ear drums, eventually.

  ‘And if I were you, I probably wouldn’t want to draw too much police attention to that thing,’ Andy had said, pointing his sausage in bread towards the Hijet.

  ‘Why not?’ Mercy had replied, indignant. ‘The lovely old man I bought it from swore it was roadworthy. The brakes are excellent. So are the seatbelts.’

  ‘I’m sure the guy who sold you the car was convinced of it.’

  Mercy had felt a rush of defensiveness for the little van, the camper that had shepherded her and Wasabi so far, safely. It had become her home. She had bonded with the Hijet, imprinted on it like a newborn deer.

  Now, as the engine thundered like two ships banging together beneath her seat, Mercy realised she may have become overly, and problematically, sentimental. Taking a firm hold of Wasabi’s collar, she steered the van one-handed onto a gravel siding, applied the park brake and turned off the engine. The silence blared.

  ‘Bloody hell,’ she said, ears ringing. ‘Now what?’

  Cold, dew-damp gravel scraped against Mercy’s ear and shoulder. The smell of hot metal and road dust filled her nose. From inside the van, Wasabi whined—he was tied to the gear shift. Holding up her phone as a torch, lying on her side, Mercy wriggled her head and shoulders under the Hijet.

  ‘Okay,’ she said to herself as she shunted her hips forward. ‘This should be simple enough. One pipe has come out of another pipe. All I need to do, once they’ve cooled down, is slide them back together. All I need to do is …’

  Mercy looked. Halfway along the underside of the van, the broken-open exhaust pipe hung by a tidy twist of coathanger wire. The second piece of pipe should be right there beside it.

  She turned her head. There was no second piece of pipe. The remainder of the undercarriage was bare.

  The muffler was missing altogether.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  ‘Shit,’ Mercy said. ‘Shit and bugger.’

  Wasabi whined again.

  In the light of her phone she checked the underside of the Hijet thoroughly but the muffler was nowhere to be found.

  Wriggling out from under the vehicle, she stood up and shone washy light over the ground around her. All she saw were rocks and more rocks. Tentatively she walked towards the highway and cast her eyes up and down the dark stretch of bitumen. The muffler could be anywhere. It could have bounced off the road into the mulga. It could be bent, battered, smashed into pieces.

  The highway disappeared like a throat into the blackness. Cold air lifted from the asphalt. Mercy shivered and hurried back to the van. Leaning against its side, she slid slowly down until she was crouched on the gravel. Wasabi yowled and scrabbled at the closed window.

  It was just after four thirty am. Dawn was over an hour away. The cold was breathtaking, and the silence was incredible, absolute, its own shouting force. No cars passed on the highway; not a single insect clicked or buzzed in the rocks; not a breath whispered over the saltbush. The Milky Way rolled overhead, the moon cast a dim light from the far horizon, and Mercy’s heels ground through the gravel as she stretched her legs out in front of her, propped against the van in the dark, alone in god knows where.<
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  Google Maps was unresponsive. There was no service. Her phone was nothing but a clock and a torch.

  Should she just keep driving? Mercy racked her brains for the last time she’d looked at the map. About two hundred kilometres north of Alice Springs, she recalled, there was a small town, a dot on the map. How far away was it? She’d been driving for almost three hours: the town must be close, within fifty kilometres. But what if it wasn’t? What if she was remembering incorrectly? On the road she had seen no signs for an upcoming town. Besides, even if there was a tiny town up ahead, would it have a mechanic with a spare muffler? A twenty-four-hour mechanic, who’d be happy to weld someone’s busted old Daihatsu Hijet back together at five am?

  Mercy put her hands over her face. Inside the van, Wasabi howled with injustice.

  In the end, the weariness that slunk over her like a drug made the decision for her. Starting the van for another few seconds, she tucked it a little further off the highway, behind a row of low scrubby bush. Quivering all the way to her toes, she locked the doors, crawled into the back, and pulled Wasabi to her beneath the blanket. She tried not to think of dingoes and horror movies and murderers.

  Sleep came in pieces. The sky turned grey. As the birds began to twitter in the saltbush, she finally dropped off.

  Sunlight shone straight onto her eyelids. Everything was red. For a brief moment, Mercy’s mind was completely, peacefully blank. And then it came flooding back to her: the highway, no phone service, the van—its un-muffled engine thundering into the night.

  Groaning, Mercy uncurled herself slowly; she’d awoken folded into a tight ball against the cold.

  Pouring the dog some kibble and water, Mercy considered her options. She could hear the occasional vehicle passing on the highway now—could she hitch a ride back to Alice Springs? But there was little for her to do there besides fly back to Adelaide. Admit defeat, crawl back to Eugene, live in a strange, soulless apartment until her house was rebuilt.

  ‘No,’ she said. Wasabi paused over his food, looking at her. ‘Sorry,’ she added. ‘Not you. As you were.’

  In Alice Springs she could rent a car—something with air conditioning, something with speed and a firmly attached muffler—and keep going north. Get to the other side. Could she just leave the Hijet here, on the side of the Stuart Highway? What would happen to it?

  Smashed windows. Spray painted with graffiti and its wheels stolen, axles in the dirt. Ruin, just like her house.

  ‘I know,’ Mercy said to the box of cremated remains sitting on the cabinet. ‘That’s abhorrent. Next option.’

  She could hitch a ride to the nearest town north, wherever that was. From there, if it wasn’t too far, maybe she could arrange for the van to be towed?

  She climbed out of the van and stood on the gravel, looking towards the highway. The morning sun was warm on her bare legs. Her sunburned thighs itched with dry skin. It took twenty minutes before she heard the sound of an engine, a dull rumble in the distance. The sound came closer, and a truck appeared. Mercy watched it approach, gleaming chrome and jerking trailers, until it roared past, wheels churning, spitting grit and hot air. A glimpse of the driver revealed a bull-like shape filling the cab, dark glasses and hi-vis.

  Mercy said, ‘No way in hell.’

  A headache was starting to tap behind her eyes. Andy was heading north, and so was Bert, too. If she waited long enough, maybe one of them would come past. So far neither of them had proven to be a kidnapper or axe murderer. Nor had they been overly judgemental, Mercy thought, recalling Bert watching her clean Andy’s wound and nodding approvingly; remembering that even though it was Mercy’s hand touching Andy’s leg that had startled him into headbutting the underside of the van, he had only smiled and laughed about it after.

  And it was with that thought that Mercy bore herself up. The past two years might have passed largely inside the four walls of her own house, but in doing so she had successfully avoided the anxiety and obligation that comes from contact with other people. She had learned a kind of dignity in aloneness. An independence. So, no: this, Mercy decided with a flare of indignation, she would return to doing herself. She ate a floury apple and drank a cup of water. Puffing out her cheeks, she stood back from the van, put her hands on her hips. She jogged on the spot, executed some arm stretches: first one side, then the other.

  ‘Okay,’ she said, her voice carrying into the bright desert morning. ‘Let’s do this.’

  After checking everything was packed away, she rolled both windows all the way down, tied Wasabi securely in the back, and tucked Jenny Cleggett into the passenger side footwell. ‘For moral support,’ she told the box.

  Then, twisting two tissues into wads, she stuffed them into her ears.

  Her heart leapt into her throat as the van boomed into life. Birds shot into the sky. Wasabi burrowed beneath the cat blanket on the floor.

  Mercy put the van in gear and pressed the accelerator. Engine screaming, she drove back onto the highway.

  Praying that there was a town, and that it wasn’t too far away, Mercy headed north.

  Forty-five minutes later, the speed limit dropped and a sign appeared. Mercy could have wept with relief. TI TREE, said the sign. POPULATION 70.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

  Mercy pulled the roaring Hijet off the highway into the Ti Tree service station, a wide flat concrete lot open to the huge burned-out sky. Even though the forecourt was empty, Mercy was too afraid to take the thundering van near any people, so she drove to the far side of the asphalt and parked alongside a corrugated iron fence, then turned off the engine.

  Her ears rang. Her pulse pounded. As she untied Wasabi, the headache that had been hinting earlier now felt like it was cleaving apart her skull. Pushing open the door, she lost her footing and fell onto the pavement. For a moment everything swam: the blaring sun, the fence, the bitumen. Putting a hand on the ground to steady herself, she tried to suck in a few slow, deep breaths. Wasabi had clambered out of the van and started to lick her face.

  ‘Jeez, love, that’s quite an entrance.’ A man’s voice, rough and weathered.

  Shakily, Mercy got to her feet, grimacing against the sun and the pain in her head.

  ‘Where’d you lose it?’

  ‘Sorry?’ she croaked.

  ‘Lost the muffler, did ya? Whereabouts?’ Tall and broad-shouldered, the Aboriginal man approaching her had clumps of curly silvering hair and wore a pale blue polo shirt with Ti Tree Roadhouse embroidered on the pocket. He squatted and peered under the van.

  ‘I’m not sure where it is,’ Mercy said, trying to unglue her mouth. ‘Somewhere south of here.’

  ‘Hmm.’ The man studied the van’s underside, then straightened up. ‘It’s Tate you’ll need.’

  ‘Tate?’

  ‘Round the back.’ He jerked his thumb over his shoulder. ‘Me nephew. He’ll fix you right up.’ He wiped a sheen of sweat from his forehead, glanced at the van, down to Wasabi and finally back to her. ‘You by yourself?’

  Mercy couldn’t answer. Everything was swimming again.

  ‘Headed north?’

  She tried to nod.

  His voice took on a gentler tone. ‘Come inside, out of the sun. You don’t look so well.’

  Wordlessly, Mercy followed the man across the empty forecourt towards the roadhouse—a long, low-slung building with a sloped veranda and a cluster of fuel bowsers out the front. A row of air-conditioning units hummed; a huge sign reading FOOD • FUEL • SUPPLIES soared from the roof. The sky was impossibly huge.

  A buzzer sounded as they passed through the door. Inside was cool and quiet. Wasabi followed her in; she didn’t bother making an excuse to bring the dog inside, but the man didn’t seem to care, either. Nausea rolled on Mercy’s tongue and she paused, putting fingertips to her mouth as saliva gathered in her cheeks.

  ‘There, now,’ the man said quietly. ‘You’re all right.’

  Tears pricked into her eyes. He led her to a group of plastic
tables by the front window.

  ‘Have a seat. How do you like your tea? White? Lots of sugar? Never mind, I’ll just bring it over.’ He disappeared, and returned a few minutes later with a large mug.

  ‘I made it not too hot, so you can drink it right away. You want some chips? Wendy’s just put ’em in the fryer. Won’t be long. I’ll bring you some.’

  Mercy looked into the mug. The tea was the colour of a paper bag. She took a sip. Sugared and warm. She took another sip, feeling it moisten her throat, then a big gulp.

  The man had disappeared again. Mercy looked out the window. Apart from the Hijet sulking by the fence, the forecourt was empty. A lone four-wheel drive passed on the highway. Over the road, spread across a flat expanse of red earth and pale green grass, a scatter of buildings shimmered in the heat, white iron roofs reflecting the sun.

  The door buzzer sounded, and a wiry young man approached Mercy.

  ‘Uncle Kev says you’ve got a broken muffler?’ He wore long, shiny black shorts and a red Sydney Swans jersey, baring lean, muscular shoulders. ‘Reckon I’ve got something that’ll fit that.’ He nodded towards the window, looking out at the van. ‘That’s deadly, that one. You had it long?’

  Mercy took in the Hijet, parked sheepishly in the sun. Flat-nosed, it looked like it had been pinched by a giant hand. Home is wherever you ARE. It had only been five days since she had compelled herself across Eugene’s street to the van on the side of the road, FOR SALE sign propped against the tyre, but it felt like months. Years.

  ‘A little while,’ she said. The sweet milky tea was starting to make her feel better; sitting in the cool quiet of the roadhouse was easing the sickening pulse in her head. ‘You must be Tate.’