‘Biltong, or the American kind?’
‘You really cleaned Rupert out, huh?’
‘I can’t remember.’
She chewed and spat, a proper cowgirl. At the end of the bag she found the salty dregs and tipped them into her mouth.
‘Are you still leaving tomorrow?’ I said.
‘This afternoon, actually. Seven hours’ driving and then prettying up my Daisy at five in the morning.’
‘Oh, right,’ I said. Would Dave get me up with the sunrise? What if I missed it?
‘But, as a special treat before I go, I’m taking you to the shitty counsellor.’ She raised her glass of juice. ‘Cheers!’
‘You are? Where’s Dave?’
She put down the glass, pushed me towards the door. ‘He called before. Has to stay late, something about the boys putting a cherry bomb in the toilets.’
‘Why didn’t he call me?’
‘Dunno.’ She opened the passenger door with a flourish. ‘Get in.’
She drove into town in her disconnected way, not knowing quite where she was heading. At each intersection she frowned, looked left and right, moved on with hesitation. The streets hiccupped with children in uniform; they gathered in clumps around tables and bins and bus stops and any other anchor they could find.
‘Is everything okay?’ I said, after a while.
‘I went to one, you know.’ She stared straight ahead, one hand on the wheel.
‘One what?’
‘A shrink. A psychologist, anyway.’ Wound down the window by hand, let her arm drop out of it.
‘You did? Why would you need to see a shrink?’
She passed me her pouch. ‘Roll me a smoke, would you?’
‘I’m pretty rusty,’ I said, licked the glue, pinched and rolled the tobacco between my fingers. It was peaty and warm, like her. ‘Why?’ I said again.
She shrugged. ‘It was after I got divorced. The first time. Thought I should get on top of some stuff I was feeling.’
‘You felt stuff?’
She looked at me. ‘It’s important to nip it in the butt.’
‘In the bud,’ I said, passing her the feeble cigarette.
‘You’re missing the point.’ The cigarette sizzled as she lit it. ‘Did the school ever make you see one? After?’
I thought about the grey man in his grey corridor. The way he had looked through me to his billable hours and the box he had to tick for the school’s records. ‘I can’t remember.’
‘I asked them to.’ She flicked ash to the road. ‘Guess they forgot.’
The way his door had clicked shut as I left, locked and final. How I’d thought about walking into the sea that day and every day for weeks afterwards, but pushed my face into my pillows instead.
‘This is the place,’ I said with relief. ‘You can park round the back.’
‘Don’t have time, I’m afraid.’
‘Oh,’ I said. ‘Right. The sheep carnival.’
‘Yeah. Gotta get me some ribbons.’
‘Will you come back?’
She drew deep breaths, her face obscured by her clouds.
‘Do you need me to come back?’
‘Maybe.’ I closed the car door. ‘I’m at fairly high risk of buying the town out of snacks, as you’ve seen.’
‘Tell you what,’ she said, grinding her butt into the bitumen. ‘You get me something better to sleep on than that bag of hay, and I’ll give you another week of my illustrious company. Play your cards right – two weeks.’
‘I’ll see what I can do.’
She put her hands on my shoulders, stared into me as intently as I’d ever seen her do anything. ‘No one else can do it for you. Do you get it? Only you.’
I pulled off her fingers one by one. ‘I get it.’
The ute pulled out. She flicked her lit cigarette to the bitumen. The building breathed behind me, its lungs full of people.
*
Jenny Greer’s desk had a photo of a drop-eyed dog in a gold frame. I stared at it. It had the kind of face that might have collided with a window pane.
‘Sorry about the air-conditioning,’ Jenny said as we sat. ‘I know it’s freezing in here.’ She pulled her tiny cardigan around her bones, took out her notebook and found my page. ‘How have you got on since last week, Heather?’ She left the vowel sound open at the end. Heath-uh. How have you got on this week, Heath-uh.
It looked like the kind of dog she might take to the beach. The other dogs at the beach might chase it, just to watch it on its short legs. Seagulls might swoop at it. It was definitely the kind of dog that would run and hide afterwards.
‘Did you get out of the house?’
Maybe it had a bed by the heater. No, it probably slept in her bed. Maybe she had a weird adult son still living at home and the dog and the son both slept in her bed.
‘David said there’s a café you like to go to. Did you give it a try?’
‘No,’ I said. ‘I was just so busy. Still unpacking.’
I wondered if Rupert had a dog. It would be a small dog. The kind he could take under his arm to the larder and pop on the counter. The kind that would charm and enchant customers into buying fifteen-dollar pickled figs. The kind that could sit in the window as an enticement, like a jar of sweets. Children would pat it and Rupert would take it home at the end of the day and give it a juicy bone as commission.
Jenny read over her notes. ‘So, last time we got to your parents. Can you tell me about them? What about your mother?’
The dog stared at me. ‘She had soft hands.’ Did it blink? The picture shuddered in its frame.
‘Soft hands, huh.’ She made a note. ‘Anything else?’
I thought about another dog, shaking in Mum’s lap. No meat on her bones. Barely a dog at all.
‘No.’
She reached over her notebook as though to touch my hand, but didn’t. ‘You’re safe here, Heath-uh. Nothing you say will leave these four walls.’ She looked around at them, as though their ears might spring forth.
‘Yeah, that’s what they say.’ I looked for the ears, too. ‘Then you say something real and suddenly everyone knows.’
Through the window, I saw the blue Jetta pull up. Dave’s legs came out first, stretched him up and down the car park with his face out of shape.
‘What do you know that’s real, Heath-uh?’
‘Elephant poaching.’
She smiled thinly. ‘And what about your father?’
‘He lives in Queensland with his wife. She’s practically a teenager.’ I had a photo of them in my bookcase. Him: bloated and greyed; her: thin and dark-haired. ‘Every few years he comes down to pretend to care about us.’
‘Why do you think he’s pretending?’
‘I don’t. That was dumb.’ My shoulders were heavy. The story strangled me. I blinked at Jenny. She wrote on her paper, drew another circle.
‘Do you like dogs, Heath-uh?’
One time, when we lived in the house at the beach, we found a dog in the scrubland. Maybe a bigger dog had found it. Or a fox. The bits that were left were a ruddy colour and Fleur thought it might have been a Labrador. Everything dies, girls. Dad always had that way of comforting us.
‘You must have had a childhood dog, right? What was his name?’
Clack-Dog. Clack-Dog. Clack-Dog.
‘Well, that’s time.’ She closed her notebook.
‘When should I come back?’ I said.
Her head snapped up. ‘Thursday morning?’
‘Okay.’
There were other people in the waiting room and they watched me, watched the way Dave met me by the door, watched the way Dave paid for the appointment, watched the way Dave took my arm to the car park. I watched them, too. Thought about wondering why they were there, but then didn’t. Decided not to take on anyone else’s stuff. Looked at Dave and wondered about his stuff. Sat in the car with my ear hot against the window and the backs of my knees burning on the seat.
‘Dave,’ I said.
He raised his eyebrows. ‘What would you do to have her back? You know, just for another minute.’
‘Anything,’ he said, ferocious.
His naivety infuriated me.
‘What does that mean?’
He sighed deeply. ‘I don’t know. Anything. It’s a nonsense question.’
‘Great, thanks.’
‘You know what I mean.’
I did know.
*
Each night I laid myself down in the darkness and willed sleep to come, but when I began to hear the voices of the shadows I took myself into the air instead. Almost inevitably, Noel found me, or I found him, turning myself inside-out at the corners of my restlessness. He pulled my hand into the crook of his elbow and I leaned against him. I felt the odd coldness of his body and the newness of his heart.
Some nights the mouse came along and jumped at nocturnal creatures hiding in the bushes. Others it was just the grey man and me, him charging through the night on his long legs and me plodding through the mud on wobbling feet.
The certainty of his gait drove me forward into new corners and fresh undergrowth. Sometimes we walked in pitch darkness. Noel seemed to be guided by the curvature of the Earth and intuition, whereas I just grabbed for his shirt and held on. I trusted him implicitly.
Occasionally we ended up at the edge of the hill, watching the first white lights of workers heading into their days across the plains like luminescent ants. We sat there until sparks of daylight fingered the horizon, when Noel would slip away into the cool pre-dawn. Once or twice I had lost him altogether at that point, and stumbled my way through the gullies on my own, only to find his house dark and closed.
My body began to feel like my own again. I drew fewer breaths in my climb up the hillside and no longer felt the strain of my empty body pulling against each step. In the daytime I moved around the house with the strength and ease of a younger version of myself. Late in the evenings, after Dave had dropped into sputtering slumber, I took to staring into my sketchbook on the borrowed, humming chair.
Noel blew out from under the deck.
‘You’re drawing,’ he shouted.
‘Trying to,’ I said. I had sharply turned leaves with bloodied clumps of impatiens, and a family of olive trees heavy with fruit. I looked for Dave, but the house was closed tight, so I took the book down to Noel and we sat together on the patch of flat lawn.
‘These are good,’ he said, flipping through the pages. ‘You have a real knack.’
‘Thanks.’
He closed the book. It hissed and flickered.
‘You’d die to have her back, right?’ he said. ‘Just for one minute.’ He looked past me, over my shoulder.
The hospital walls shot up, black and still. A heartbeat. My heartbeat. The room pulsed and shifted. Dave? Are you there? Babies crying down the hall, their lungs full of anger and of life, and the mothers going, Won’t you just be quiet? and me going, Good girl, so quiet and making sure the blanket was tucked around just right. Me peeling the sticker off the bassinette and rolling it into a piccolo and then staring, staring across the inner city buildings and the lights of the dock and out to the water where the boats carried everything away.
‘Yes,’ I said, my breath short. ‘Exactly.’
IT’S TOO HOT, Fleur says.
It’s too hot, I say.
If I look at the walls sideways they look like they’re breathing. I stand on my head. The material on the couch clings to me like a dog. Mum’s upside-down face stares at me. She’s drawing me in her sketchbook. I know she is because her tongue is sticking out and she’s smiling.
I want a Zooper Dooper, I say. Then the house stops humming and Mum says, Shit! and gives me and Fleur five Zooper Doopers each because the power has gone off. Above my feet the fan goes slower and slower until it stops.
Eat up, she says, or they’ll just melt.
I’ve got two blue ones and a pink one and two brown ones, and Fleur’s only got orange and green, which are the worst flavours. She doesn’t eat them, just rubs them on her skin and sighs a lot.
Can’t I go to the pool? she says. Everyone else gets to go to the pool.
Then Mum gets the look on her face that means she’s having an idea and I flip over to my feet and start cutting the corners of my mouth on the first blue Zooper Dooper. The packet says it’s bubblegum flavour but it just tastes like cordial, which I know because of the time I drank cordial from Gran’s kitchen and had to lie on the couch all afternoon, but it’s cold which is the main thing I wanted anyway.
I’ve got a better idea, Mum says, and she drags Fleur into the street so I follow them. It’s so hot it’s like the sun is right on top of us. Mr Johnstone over the road waves to us from under his verandah and Mum says, Hello, Gary! so I say, Hello, Gary! Mr Johnstone has his feet in a blow-up pool. I run across the road and put my feet in it right next to his.
Do you want a brown Zooper Dooper? I say. They’re my favourite flavour but I don’t mind sharing.
Sure, he says, and Mum says, Is your power out? and he says it isn’t but he doesn’t have an air-conditioner so it doesn’t make much difference anyway.
Then Fleur says, This is your great idea? and Mum tells me to hurry up or we’ll miss it.
We walk down to the beach and Fleur starts moaning because she hates the beach, All the fucking sand, she says, and Mum smacks the back of her head. My feet are starting to blister on the hot road and I wish I’d worn shoes but just for a minute because then Mum takes us along the jetty and we all look at Mr Johnstone’s boat, which is less like a boat and more like a bit of old metal with two paddles in it, but it’s still more of a boat than what we’ve got, which is nothing.
Oh no, Fleur says, and Mum is pulling up the rope and winking.
Say, Aye aye, cap’n! Mum says, and Fleur rolls her eyes.
Aye aye, cap’n! I say, and jump into the boat from the jetty, and it rocks and moans.
Come on, Fleur, Mum says. She’s standing up in it with an oar in each hand and laughing. Now, away to sea!
Fleur climbs into the boat like it’s going to eat her.
There are two men on the jetty and they just stare at Mum while she pushes the boat out. Isn’t this fun? she says. Her cheeks are wet and shiny. She says, There’s an island out there somewhere. Let’s go find it.
I feel a bit funny where my heart is, like there’s a bird trapped in there, and the boat is going from side to side and maybe a few bits of wave are coming in over the top. Mum says, Ah, the open sea! and I might be sick any minute so I concentrate on my pink Zooper Dooper and put my feet in the puddles in the boat to help the bits where they got burned on the road.
This is stupid, Fleur says.
Mum’s arms are like bits of meat when she tugs on the oars, like you can really see the muscles moving and her face is scrunched up like a wet towel.
Is that it over there? she says. She points.
No, says Fleur.
I can see it! I say, but it’s not true. All I can see is water and a couple of seagulls bouncing around on it.
Well then! she says. Land ho! But we just keep going around on the spot, even with Mum’s arms going so hard we’re just going around and around until Fleur says, Just give them here! and then we start to go in a straight line. Mum sits back and starts laughing. How could you even tell we were going in circles? It all looks the same. And it does all look the same, but I know we were going in circles because I’ve seen my same smear of vomit on the water sixteen times.
Fleur is strong, like Dad. She pushes the boat right into the wind. Mum takes my other brown Zooper Dooper. Her face is shiny and her hair drags in the water.
What a beautiful day, she says.
Then there is an island, we can all see it. Fleur drags the boat along the sand. She’s huffing and puffing like a big, bad wolf and Mum is laughing and she pulls a picnic basket out of nowhere, like magic.
I’ve got your favourites, Mum says to Fleur.
Fleur sa
ys, Whatever.
We sit near a shack with the door hanging off. On the other side there’s a bigger boat tied to a jetty and a man comes out of the shack. His face is so round it looks like his eyes have been pushed back into his head.
I’m Ernest, he says.
Hi, Ernest, Mum says.
He sits on our tartan rug and we eat scones with three types of jam and cream with sugar in it. The sun shoots off the water into our eyes. My feet feel like someone’s scraped all the skin off. But we all just watch Mum, because her hair is flying in the wind like a golden lion, and when I kiss her cheek it tastes like butter and sugar.
*
We get the boat back to the dock and tie it on before dark. The road is still hot like fire so Mum gives me her shoes and I shuffle along and she goes dancing up the street. Fleur’s following behind her. I can see her shoulders going up and down.
Dad’s going to be so mad, she says.
Mum does a little spin on her toes and kisses Fleur’s forehead.
I reckon you’re right, she says. What say you and me make him an apple pie? Fleur walks right past Mum and Mum curtseys and says, M’lady.
I’ll help you make an apple pie, I say. Shuffle shuffle. We pick some apples from Mrs Duong’s tree. Her cat stares right at us.
What are you, the apple police? Mum says. She’s laughing. I know because her voice goes up at the end. She holds my elbow with one hand, and in the other hand she’s got four apples. Big ones too. I don’t know how she holds them all.
Want to see me juggle? she says, but I don’t want the apples to get bruised so I say no. Mr Johnstone waves from his porch.
Hello, Gary! I say.
Mum gives me a whack. Call him Mr Johnstone, she says.
We get to our door and Dad is standing there with his face open, same as when I got lost at the Royal Show except I wasn’t lost, I was just looking at the Smarties showbag. He grabs my shoulders and says, Where have you been? and I decide not to tell him about the boat. Then he wraps himself all the way around Mum and I stand next to them for a while and listen to her body rattle.
DAVE WATCHED ME. I felt him everywhere. I checked bookshelves and bags of flour and light fittings for secret cameras. And on Monday afternoons he waved to me from the car park with changing expressions, ones I didn’t recognise.
The Paper House Page 7
