A Constant Hum

by Alice Bishop

  ‘You know it was ten metres taller than those gums out there?’ he asks, nodding at the view and reaching towards Rose for a glass. ‘Hard to believe something that big can just begin with a spark.’

  The man drinks half of his champagne in one mouthful as Rose takes a small sip, bare lips pressed against the glass rim.

  Blue

  Five years and you say Daisy, baby, Daisy. Five years and we drive up through the paperbarks, the wattle, golden, to touch the softest parts of one another by the reservoir, Sugarloaf. Five years and your plum-coloured ’98 Toyota feels like my own. We listen to Lyle, to Lykke, to Townes—driving Ridge Road: young enough to feel like we have something no one else has, old enough to know it’s somehow dumb and fleeting. Five years and we hold onto each other like we’re holding onto ourselves. I love you, you say, the veins of your long white hands bulging, a milky blue.

  Six years and you say Daisy, baby, Daisy. But it’s an accident and we’re in your new shared home, long after you’ve left my own. Six years and you’re still telling me No, don’t worry—I was too drunk to come. Six years and you look at the clay-coloured wall behind my head, saying But remember, baby, Daisy, baby, I was lonely and she reminded me of you. Six years and we meet for faux chicken, faux friends—you in the blue linen shirt I once sewed and ironed, your hair much longer than mine. I can’t sleep. I can’t eat, I say, looking at those five-year eyes, the colour of Araucana eggs. Six years and you say: Well, baby, I’d hate to know where that mouth has been.

  City Girls

  Girls dress differently in the city. Heaps nicer. Nearly all of them are so much prettier than me too. I notice it the first time I get the 96. My sister and me catch that tram every morning, now that we’re here ’cause our Flowerdale house burned down in the worst natural disaster, pretty much in forever. My new English teacher in Brunswick says it was devastating—a real shock, she says. She asks us to call her Lucy ’cause she doesn’t believe in Mrs or Ms—not even Miss. Our teacher Lucy wears dresses that look like big sacks. Mum says they cost more than we pay in rent. That people in the city spend money on a lot of things she wouldn’t, ever. ‘Mum,’ I have to say. ‘You know, new things can actually be good.’

  There are a few City Girls I already recognise before school. Before I even notice them, though—with their galah-coloured Nikes, their real cute floral stick-and-poke tattoos—I have to try to stop staring at two old guys Pa’s age, maybe, a couple, always at the stop the same time as us. They wear shiny loafers and sometimes look like they’re holding hands too tight. Maybe they never really got the chance before. I’d never seen anything like that back home. Things are different out there. I mean, I always loved Pa but he wasn’t into holding anyone’s hand. Not even Small Gran’s. Gran never wore any rings. Mum said it’s because she had claustrophobia. But I really don’t know how those things are linked.

  Mum says she’s glad Pa went before the fire, and by that she means died. Pa never spoke about his feelings—Mum says it’s ’cause of his generation. But I dunno. One day Pa drove his fancy new Hilux into the back-paddock dam. It was while Small Gran was peeling things in the kitchen sink. If I let myself, I sometimes wonder if she heard a sound: maybe a thump, or maybe Pa calling; people change their minds last-minute a lot. Sometimes I see it in Mum. She sits on the new apartment balcony like she’s still looking for the cockatoos we used to feed—like maybe she’s waiting for trees. Mum’ll always come back inside after the staring and ask if we want sushi—the California rolls she likes to get from the shopping centre called Barkly Square. She still thinks we’re excited by city takeaway food. ‘Mum,’ I always end up having to say, ‘it’s not like we’re ten.’

  Hannah has a different dad to me but the same thick short hair. She’s two years younger, so that makes her twelve but almost thirteen. We used to swim a lot together back in the bush. I loved putting my head under the surface to forget about everything—all you could see was gold. Things felt soft down there. Real calm. But I don’t like summer or swimming like I used to since everything burned. Not like the bush girls still do.

  My old school friends still go down to Warrandyte River, but now they take their boyfriends, sometimes bottles of Bacardi—the nice lemon flavour that tastes like Wizz Fizz. Most of them have boyfriends, but none I want. Jake Spencer, muscly Dean and Casey, always in his fluorescent-yellow Adidas hat—they never even noticed me anyway. If I asked her, Mum would say that’s a good thing and that, looking back, I will understand.

  It takes a while to work stuff out sometimes; Mum’s still working it all out even though she’s nearly fifty. It sounds obvious but sometimes it’s easy to overcomplicate things. I do it a lot. Often—especially if it’s a Sunday night and Mum’s making my favourite—tacos, the packet kind—I feel a bit worried and wonder if I’ll ever get to be in love. I mean, my style could be better, even though everyone always comments on my height. ‘You look just like Nicole Kidman,’ my aunty Janine always says at Christmas. But I think it’s just because my hair is the same colour: like peach skin.

  The 96 tram goes from Brunswick all the way through to St Kilda Beach. There’s sometimes a girl on it who I recognise from somewhere: maybe from YouTube, maybe from the TV. She has eyelash extensions and those wide kind of pants that look like they’re from one of Mum’s vintage sewing patterns. The women modelling the patterns on those packets are just drawings—course I know—but when I was smaller their bodies didn’t make sense. All those paper-pattern envelopes have burned up, now, but you probably know the kinds of pictures I mean: French-like. The drawn triangular women looked important—like they wouldn’t have to catch the tram anywhere. They wouldn’t have to wait for love, or anything really, like I know I probably will.

  Mum sewed Small Gran all kinds of clothes from the Lincraft sewing packets after Pa’s funeral. This was before the fire, before Small Gran died too. I heard Mum telling her best friend Ross with the beard that they found her in the same dam Pa drove his truck into. Mum was all red ’cause she was drinking. Her head was on Ross’s shoulder. I couldn’t hear everything from my spot behind the hallway door but I do know that Mum was being dumb. She was saying that Small Gran didn’t even try to run from the fire. She reckons that small Gran yelled at the man trying to help her and jumped in the dam. Mum snorted, but not in a funny way, when she cried—saying all Small Gran wanted was to see crazy Pa again.

  The girl I recognise on the 96 tram looks smart but not easy to talk to. She has thick-like model eyebrows and one of those cheap mood rings you get at shops near the beach. I reckon she’s got someone to text good morning to on her phone. I bet whoever is texting her smokes those special kind of cigarettes at lunchtime—the ones you need to roll yourself.

  ‘A smile wouldn’t hurt now, love,’ a businessman in a purple shirt says to the girl I recognise on the tram one morning. The man even gets a bit too close as he passes. He smells like men’s perfume: a bit like Small Gran’s old poisonous blackberry spray and a bit like the pool. When he moves on, the City Girl looks at me and I almost think she’s about to smile—maybe wink like we’re in on something. But I keep on forgetting: I probably look like I’m from the country still—in my dumb Hot Options track pants and shit Big W shoes.

  Mum’s old Flowerdale work friends got together and bought me a Westfield voucher: three whole hundred dollars’ worth. I thought it was heaps until Mum said I should put aside some for new underwear. You know—the proper kind: bras, not just crop tops from Kmart. It was fun buying it; I kept thinking how good it would be for when I find someone to love. But almost two hundred spent at Myers and I still have to get weekend clothes and new shoes too.

  A lilac and lemon lace set, Elle Macpherson brand, whoever she is. I think the choice shows I’m fun but also soft, like the pictures of models with balayage hair in magazines. I bet those girls don’t have to wait for love either. I bought the set in a size too small ’cause I want to get skinnier before anything happens. A lot of girls online s
ay that’s how they get motivated to get better bodies, ones that make people fall in love with you. I won’t tell Mum that, though, ’cause she’d be so upset; she’s a feminist and she wants me to be one too. I mean, I know I shouldn’t care about some of the things I do—but I want to meet someone soon. Sometimes I think about someone being there to text me goodnight. They might even add some of those new little emoji clouds. I reckon they’d mean something like ‘sweet dreams’.

  Mum hasn’t bought new underwear or anything much for herself; she’s spent most of her fire money on stuff for me and Hannah, who at the moment is in love with greyhounds. Mum doesn’t know she donates her fire pocket money to a special foundation, though. The creepy man calls the house sometimes, to update Hannah on any new dogs: Felix, Howard, Chester, Blue—they always have names I’ve never known people to have. Not even old people, like Pa’s friends. Pa and his friends always used to call me names like Poss and Little Mate—or Sarah, even though my name has always been Kate.

  I don’t really miss much from my old room except the photos of us when we were small. Sometimes—if I felt a bit bad—it was nice to look at them. I used to smile heaps when I was little. I didn’t care about what I looked like at all. Even though I had the same not-really-red, not-really-blond hair. In one of the photos, one that’s gone forever now, I have coffee froth on my nose. It was probably taken in Carlton. When my sister and me were in primary school Mum would sometimes drive us into the city for fancy Italian food. We’d go to the movies too.

  I never liked breathing city air. It’s all clogged up with petrol and important people. But it’s different now. I mean, I still don’t really like it but I could never go back to the bush without being scared. It’d also mean school in the valley with Short Jasmine, bleach-haired Jade and Caitlin, who’s heaps mean. Those girls don’t even know you can buy ice cream with coffee poured over it in Carlton. It’s called an affogato. It means ‘drowned’ in Italian and now I get one every weekend after we go out for sushi, just ’cause Mum’s so obsessed.

  Mum actually never told me how Pa or Small Gran died but we know they both ended up in the water. One day I’ll ask Mum what Small Gran was wearing the day of the fire. I mean, it’s not really important but in my dreams she’s wearing the dress she loved. The one mum made. It had a print of big Queensland palm leaves on it. Sometimes Small Gran’s clothes were all powdery with flour. She made us all kind of special desserts when we went to stay: lamingtons, Cadbury brownies and even the kind of cake that was in the shape of a swimming pool. Gran used blue jelly for the water. Aeroplane jelly. Hannah wouldn’t eat it, because of the pig hoofs that make up gelatine. She cried for hours when she found out. ‘Oh, Hannah, you’re a golden girl,’ Small Gran said. Then she added something about Hannah’s heart, how it would be broken soon. ‘That’s life,’ Small Gran said, smiling. ‘I’m so sorry, beautiful girl.’

  We only went back once to visit the place where the house used to be. Mum had already paid someone to bulldoze the leftovers, so there was just really an empty spot. We ate a whole packet of Monte Carlos in the car on the way out and Mum told Hannah not to worry. But Hannah was always worrying. Both of them were. Mum was always worried about Hannah worrying, and Hannah was always worried about all the animals that got burned up in the fire.

  There was nothing left in the place where my bedroom had been but Hannah kicked the dirt around a bit. She found one of our old cereal bowls. Well, bits of it. We tried to match all the pieces together while Mum called her best friend Ross—the one with the beard—and cried.

  Mum has one T-shirt left from before the fire and it’s her favourite. It’s a faded grey one with a rainbow Greenpeace logo embroidered on the pocket. She wears it to bed mostly—sometimes to the supermarket. I remember when she would wear that T-shirt in the old house. Things always smelt like wet dog and washing powder when we lived there. Now, when I smell either, it’s probably the one time I get properly sad, but not the normal soft kind of sad. It’s two kind of sads mixed together: like the dark sad I felt when I heard about Small Gran in the dam, mixed up with the panicky sad I used to get when I was little and had to go to bed during daylight savings. I hated going to sleep while it was still light; even with the curtains closed it felt real depressing. Like I was missing out.

  Girls in the city wear faded T-shirts too. But they’re bought like that and cost heaps of money. Mum doesn’t understand. City Girls also don’t wear as much makeup. I bet they have really neat bedrooms with nice quotes in frames on the wall. Ones like You just do you. Mum bought me a whole collection of quotes on corkboards from Kmart once: ‘Strong Quotes for Strong Girls’. Not really that inspiring, unless you’re a bit thick. My bedroom was never neat either; Mum always put cut bottle-brush on my desk and made sure there was a bowl of browning bananas for after-school snacks. I just wanted it to all be white and elegant: like in the ads you see in special magazines.

  ‘Morning,’ the City Girl with perfect eyebrows says, one morning before school. She’s drinking coffee from a printed-paper cup. City cups have pictures of little animals and logos and grids for games even, to play on the tram. I see the girls from other schools around here with them, and older girls who might already be in uni. They probably drink their coffee black and with no sugar to stay skinny, like I’ll be one day. City Girls keep the hair under their arms and have dresses that people as old as Small Gran used to wear. Florals, but not like ones with palm trees.

  ‘Morning,’ I say back to the girl as we wait for the tram. She’s not in wide-legged pants today but high-waisted denim shorts with a red little tag. Her legs are glowy and her shoes are the kind you buy second-hand. They’re faded and scuffed but somehow still just right. ‘Morning,’ I say again. ‘I’m from Flowerdale,’ I say. ‘It’s a while away but not actually that far.’

  ‘Flowerdale.’ The City Girl smiles. ‘That sounds like a dream.’

  Later, when I know her name is Léa—and she knows my name’s Kate—we’ll buy our morning coffees together and talk about TV shows. She’ll smell like the Impulse spray you get at the Brunswick Coles—like oranges and a bit like wood. Sometimes I’ll wonder what her room looks like and if I’ll get to see it. I reckon Léa would wear just a T-shirt to bed. Her long hair maybe tucked in at the back.

  City hot-air balloons float over us as we keep waiting. A burning thing from one of them roars, real loud, and I remember I have to reply. ‘Flowerdale is nice,’ I say, sounding so basic, but the City Girl smiles.

  The balloons get all quiet again and keep floating over the tram stop. I imagine Small Gran’s up there. She’d be looking down on us all—the dress Mum sewed her, the one with the palm leaves: it’d be warmed by being too close to early morning city sun, though, not flames.

  February Again

  ‘I never really thought of that,’ the man says, sitting opposite his daughter. Maybe she’s thirty, maybe more, her hay-coloured eyes small but searching.

  ‘I never even thought about that?’ the man repeats, a question this time. He’s wearing a black T-shirt, over-washed and faded across the shoulders: sun.

  It’s the anniversary; there’ve been quite a few already. They’re having coffee. Sharing a fat vanilla slice.

  ‘It’s okay,’ the daughter says. ‘I know there would’ve been no reception anyway. No help, even if you got through.’

  The man stops stirring sugar into his coffee. Loose granules sparkle across the cafe table. He looks down, trying to hide that he has to close his eyes—prickling—for just a moment too long.

  ‘It was flipped, exploded,’ the man says. ‘I was running. Everyone was.’

  ‘I know,’ the daughter says. ‘It was a stupid question. I know.’

  ‘Would’ve been already dead—000 is just a number,’ the man says. ‘Everyone was running.’

  ‘I’m sorry, Dad,’ the daughter says. ‘I didn’t mean it. I know.’

  Follower

  See Elle ridge-bound on the Eastern Freeway, acc
elerating home. It’ll always be an in-between time—maybe dusk, maybe dawn. Times, anyway, when the white lines on the bitumen are too easily crossed. She will always be in her tiny silver ’99 Barina, its bonnet spray-painted gold. Hear your own car radio’s soft drone and wonder how you got here, following—so sure you’re meant to hold her, this girl from your hometown, out east: now blackened, now burnt.

  Wonder why you’re so sure Elle listens to 774; why you think she’s twenty-two/three and, like you, hungry to know. Perhaps you first notice her because she’s shining and corduroy-clad: looking like a girl from uni you once loved. Watch her in the city sometimes, haunting Collingwood backstreets like they’re nobody’s home. Elle Birks, the bills in her mailbox read. Find out that she gets letters from the DHS, in this small Gipps Street share home.

  Her housemates—you count four—always receive cream-white packages tied with twine: of wine, linen sheets and all sorts of brand-less boxes labelled bespoke. Some nights you see those girls spill out of lemon-coloured cabs, all heavily flavoured gin and cheap perfume. Elle, she’s different, though: quieter, more of a homebody, like you. Wonder where her parents are. Or if they’re long gone—like yours—and she doesn’t really know.

  Those tiny Tic Tac teeth of Elle’s might be all you ever need. Lie back in your car, parked, and imagine her yours—smiling at you from the left-hand lane as you overtake. Elle, you imagine saying, sleepily—in bed, or over the phone. Feel your veins fill with something honey-like: hope. But really, you know she’s never around for more than a few hours; she’s always bush-bound on that Eastern. Always trying to get back home.

  The following of her only starts, really, out of care. So you pull up behind her at the halfway mark some mornings—at the Coldstream highway Kaffeine Kart. She always stops for a lukewarm latte, always with soy. That’s how you first heard her name: That belle, Elle, the coffee man always calls—his ginger moustache darkened at the edges: cappuccino dust. Elle’s face is almost as white as ghost-gum trunks, those mornings. Her limbs are twig-like and somehow crooked. But she still smiles, reaching for her coffee-filled, ash-cracked mug. Time for a new one, the coffee man, he also says.