Wedding Bush Road

by David Francis

  I stare down the table past my father. A table generous enough for twelve, without its leaves, but just the four of us now, spread out with feet between us, the empty setting alone at the end, opposite me. Earley sips from one of Granny Rawson’s sherry glasses, his thoughts behind his eyes, drinking his Christmas Frangelico and waiting for the women to return. He peers across the table as if unsure what to say, gazing into the rustling fireplace.

  “Are you expecting Father Christmas?” A joke my father doesn’t deem worthy of a response, and I wonder if he’s chosen to spend the day here to be with me, Elsie launched on her own to meet some sister-in-law. Poor Elsie. Or, more likely, he’s come for Sharen. Lured and now disappointed as Ruthie toys with her out in the kitchen, monopolizing her on purpose.

  In the thickening heat and the silence between us, I eat without waiting, my attention drawn to the array of portraits watching down from the walls, my shovel-jawed grandfather, “all bottled trout and polo,” as my mother once called him, and Great Aunt Emma Charlotte, black-veiled and now possum-stained, the maiden great aunt from some horror film. The table set with the “occasional” silver retrieved from deep in the sideboard, the green-framed hunting scenes from Stubbs. Parents who met out hunting with the Findon Harriers, my father appearing at every crossing, hounding her. That’s what she called it. As if she was the fox.

  “We’re coming,” she shouts and then a gale of laughter and I imagine the pudding being delivered to the floor and frantically scooped up. But Earley isn’t amused. He won’t start without them. Now he’s gazing up at the oil of his own shiny-eyed father.

  “He warned me she’d be no day in the country.” He says it half under his breath, as if talking to the portrait.

  The dog barks and Reggie appears like a shock in the veranda doorway. Dark and shirtless as usual, his hair wet and plastered down. Standing in a pair of loose-fitting pants and black shoes, his feet in them are more like branches forced into flowerpots.

  “What are you doing here?” I ask.

  “Ruthie,” he replies, but he seems more cautious than usual. His skin looks shiny as if he’s been oiled, not ashy as it has been. Maybe he hosed himself down in the garden, or stole some body lotion. “Invited me,” he says and then, gingerly, he takes the seat at the far end, as if knowing it’s his. The artificial flowers and the snowman, the Christmas candles lit between us. I don’t reach forward to move them, to examine his face as he leans to take an empty plate, his fingers folding around the Wedgwood. Rounded nails not bitten like mine or ingrained with dirt like my father’s. He’s made an effort to clean himself up and it has me both sad and more fearful somehow, wanting to go to the kitchen and shake the truth out of my mother. “No sitting at this table without a shirt,” my father says suddenly, the lines ruckle up from the sides of his eyes, but the boy takes eggs and pulls at the chicken with his fingers. My father slaps his hand so fast the boy retreats, stunned. The speed of my father’s movement is as quick as when he’d swipe me as a kid. A stickler for shirtsleeves at table, my father obsessed with unlikely manners, cutting toast in quarters, napkins in rings.

  “I don’t have a shirt,” says Reggie.

  My father turns to me but I’m shaking my head. “Really?” I say. This boy who’s already rummaged through my things will not be swanning about in my clothes.

  Ruthie comes in, doesn’t react to who’s sitting at the far end. “Everything okay, boys?” she asks. I feel myself glower in disbelief—it’s Reggie who’s standing, clearly relieved.

  “I need a shirt, Ruthie,” he says.

  She studies him, wipes her hands on her cockatoo apron. “Hang on,” she says, and disappears into the hall.

  The boy seems heartened by her, and I observe him leaning forward, using his fork to scoop the macaroni salad. He pierces some beetroot, ignoring the silver servers, and then hauls the last leg off a chicken. Probably starving, poor kid, but I doubt it, the wisps of my compassion curried with uncertainty, the sight of Reggie chewing as if there’s nothing here but food, then glancing up at the image of Aunt Emma Charlotte. He points at her with his fist around his fork. “That one spooks me,” he says. “Ev’ry time.”

  How many times would that have been? This room so familiar to him; this room only used for special occasions. It’s more than just stashes and blankets stowed up in the ceiling, the bedroll in the linen closet. He knows the place by heart.

  “The forks are for eating, not pointing,” my father says, still huffy, and I wish my father would talk about something other than etiquette. So English and irritating. Nonetheless, Reggie has locked his elbows, looking down at the mess on his plate.

  Sharen is heading from the kitchen out into the hall. “I’m taking a leak,” she announces and I wonder if that entails scouring the cabinets for pills and medicine, trying my mother’s goanna oil and tiger balm, hunting for lipstick. Good luck with that. I imagine Isabel confronted with this. Would she be amused or sympathetic? In sympathy with whom? I remind myself I’m not the underdog here.

  Reggie leans forward to eye the store-bought ambrosia, soft marshmallow infused with cherries and fruit. Please God don’t put your fingers in it; then Reggie glimpses his reflection in the great-mirrored sideboard, his skin against the shelves and tarnished silver. The ache in my hand as I pour myself another Pimm’s from the jug my father’s prepared with dry ginger, mint, slices of orange. I feel the dog under the table, resting its head on my foot.

  My mother returns with a bright blue-and-gold-striped shirt. Mine. Left here years ago. She balls it up and tosses it down the far end, her aim still strong; her dexterity seems to be returning. She knows how throwing things inside annoys Earley, unless he’s the one having a tantrum and then the rules turn upside down, ancient lamps can hit the floor. Then she returns to the kitchen, leaves the boy pulling the shirt over his narrow shoulders, the colors brought to life against his chest. He leaves the buttons undone. “That okay for you, Mr. Earley?” he asks.

  My father’s disdain looks somehow hopeless.

  “Don’t call him that,” I say and the boy averts his eyes, looks back out the door he came in, then he reaches for a red and silver bonbon.

  “It’s a Christmas cracker,” I tell him for fear he might think it a napkin. I know it sounds patronizing, as I remember the ornate ones my grandmother always gave us, with tiny wooden hand-carved toys, miniature Aston Martins and Mini Minors, hard-boiled lollies that tore cuts in the roof of my mouth.

  I watch the slender arm and narrow wrist of the boy, the shining cylinder wrapped with twists to contain its trinkets. “Someone has to pull the other end,” says Ruthie, reappearing. She walks down to Reggie’s place at the table, doesn’t make sure her thumb is well extended; the way she used to be sure she’d win. She wants Reggie to. “Now,” she says and crepe and cardboard burst open.

  The boy leaps back in fright, the glossy bonbon still in his hand, Ruthie retrieving an orange plastic dinosaur that bounces on the table. She hands it over. “This is yours,” she says. He picks out a card rolled inside a plastic ring and reads haltingly: “‘Your ship will be coming in. If you can stay a . . . board.’” He smiles and unfolds a multicolored paper crown, puts it on his slicked-back head of twisted hair.

  “King Reggie,” says my mother and he beams a nervous smile, but Sharen comes through from her visit to the bathroom, wiping her hands in her hair. The bruise on her cheek’s been covered in makeup.

  “It’s time,” says Ruthie, motioning Sharen back into the kitchen and to my amazement Sharen takes her order in stride.

  “For what?” I ask, but in a moment she’s back, emerging with oven mitts, the steaming pudding on a plate she sets down before me. She pulls out a cigarette lighter from her pocket and next thing I know, the pudding’s whooshing up in flames, right near my face, brandy burning blue and orange.

  “Merry Chrissie,” Sharen whispers to me. “We’re glad you’re here.”

  It draws me back, the liquid green of he
r eyes, and I feel I’m sliding both into them and yet retreating. She picks up a bone-handled knife and as she slices, the innards steam and the blade scratches against the buried coins. An essence of the boy reflected in the shape of her brow, the way I see myself in the blue of my mother’s gray eyes. I glance over at her but she’s bewitched by the pudding, so I glance at the boy in the paper crown, spooning the remains of the ambrosia from her good crystal bowl.

  My father refuses to look at the pudding or Sharen or anyone, studying his glass of Frangelico, as if doing all he can to stay in his seat. A time he’d have thrown the drink at the fireplace, but he’s already on probation in here. He stares at Ruthie with a sudden vigilance. “That place was set for my mother,” he says.

  “Your mother’s no longer with us,” says Ruthie.

  It makes him stare up at the portraits, his red face darkening as if almost in tears. Sharen pays him no mind, awards me a lavish slice, the euphoric brandy smell of Christmases with my grandmother here, when I was young and wore that same striped shirt, buttoned to the top to be formal, tucked into my burgundy flares. And I feel a prickling guilt, growing up with this odd hard privilege, and this boy who has nothing and just wants more. Impulsively, I find myself reaching down near the dog, feeling for the gift for my mother stowed on the floor. I rip the card free.

  “I got this for you,” I say to Reggie.

  Everyone stares, especially the boy, as I stand and present the blue-wrapped parcel and Reggie searches my mother for guidance, but she clutches a hand to her chin and is silent. Sharen puts down the knife.

  Cagily, in a kind of slow motion, Reggie unwraps the gift. Greasy fingers on the Tiffany blue and the brown leather case, and inside it, the small polished silver clock revealed uncertainly, as some unwarranted accomplishment.

  “For helping Mum with the tree,” I say.

  The boy’s eyes get larger, suspicious. He strains to hear if the clock is already ticking.

  Against my wrist, I feel the brush of Sharen’s hand.

  THE DOG BARKS then silence but for the din of crickets, the occasional flapping of wings cast up by the night. My fingers throb, my hand re-bandaged too tight. Steadily, I unwind the gauze, feel the roughness of the stitches, scabbed slightly. Then a vague thrumming, like rain but far away on another roof. I look for my watch. Two in the morning. Still that sound. Not my mother’s radio, no static; it’s from the small bathroom down the far end of the hall, the shower’s running. The image of my mother splayed out with her neck caught in that chair. I spring from the bed, wrap myself in a towel, wind the bandage back about my hand.

  Without knocking I open the bathroom door, a shroud of steam through the light—a cattle-hide vest strewn on the floor, giant work boots, jeans with a leather knife sheath thrown at the chair. No sign of my mother, just a too-large silhouette in the white shower curtain, the top of a wet, balding head above the rod. “What the fuck . . . ?” I shout over the sound of the water as a wide weathered hand appears round the edge of the curtain, another hand wiping water from a gaunt windburned face, freckled and undaunted. A high receding brow but still easy to recognize. Walker Dumbalk.

  “What the fuck you doing?” I ask, my voice cracked with fright.

  “Sharen locked me out,” his voice is raspy and deep, his stare unblinking. Leaden rings below his eyes.

  “It’s bloody two a.m.!” Tucking my towel as if it might protect me from the dark wells of his eyes. “I’m out looking for Reggie,” he says. Steam rising off him like hot damp smoke. His unshaven jaw even meaner than I remember, flecked with gray. “I know the little bastard hides up here.” He disappears back behind the curtain as though this is his house too, for all the years his mother put in cleaning here and cooking, not spending time with him. Washing himself with my mother’s cloth, her soap in his underarms, the acrid smell of his steaming clothes, as I stand here on the tiles. His work boots on her towel, a thick leather belt with a silver longhorn buckle drapes off his jeans like a python.

  He opens the curtain again, his face creased up as if inconvenienced. “I’ll be out in a minute,” he says. An accusation in his tone that has me close the door behind me and stand like a child in the hall. The memory of him out in the paddocks making trouble, while his mother served us food. Coming back to haunt us. All that happens as my mother sleeps.

  The dog chews a small slab of meat on the living room floor. I kneel and hold him, pray he’s just been silenced, not poisoned. A squeal of taps from the bathroom, the scrape of curtain rings then a hollow quiet. The dog skulks off with the piece of red flesh in his mouth. I wonder if this is the ritual, if Walker’s been up in here before, and what would have happened if I searched his dirty pockets?

  Edging my way to the phone, I view the list of numbers in the dull light on the wall. CRANBOURNE POLICE: 59910600. I pick up the receiver, just to let them know, but the bathroom door skreighs open, the shadow of Walker’s head in the hall. “Wouldn’t if I was you.” He says it casually but I think of the wood-handled pocket knife in the sheath on his jeans and know better than to dial, than to tangle with the likes of him when my hand is already in gauze.

  I wait, uncertain, as Walker gets dressed behind the bathroom door, unsure if I should search for my grandfather’s rifle in the linen closet, sleep with it. I enter the small room with its high rows of shelves, folded towels and blankets, napkins, the same for thirty years, leather suitcases and wooden boxes of cutlery. I kneel and reach behind my mother’s safe for the canvas gun bag, but there are only rolls of old Christmas paper, fading maps of the original farm. Whispering the dog’s name for it to follow, I creep back up the hall, hinge the bedroom chair tight against the doorknob. Back in bed, I cradle the dog and listen for creaks, this house with its myriad doors and windows, lost skeleton keys, ancient rusted locks. I look into the dog’s open eyes and think of the bruise on Sharen’s caked cheek, wait for the footsteps in the side hall, the scratch of the flywire out onto the bluestone, and the sound of his boots stepping off the veranda into the dew.

  BOXING DAY (FRIDAY)

  The vulgar glare of Boxing Day morning has me driving the Prius to town. No sign of Walker when I woke, just his dirty boot prints in the hall, the licked up blood from the meat on the sitting room floor, but meat from where? The image of Sharen’s bruised face, Reggie ogling the silver Christmas clock. “Love that timpani blue,” said Sharen, quietly prizing the gift from the hands of her son but he didn’t let go, his eyes fixed on the delicate leather-cased silver. The things they know that we don’t. Only once did Reggie glance at me, unsure whether to smile, unclear if it was a trick or some new alliance. I wasn’t sure myself. All I know is there’s no alliance with Walker.

  The car runs eerily silent on the bitumen, past the caravan park where Bobby Genoni first saw Walker. The “new-car” scent better than the Camry’s engine oil and wet dog smell. The fence lines sliding by like the years already have, the landscape greened by the aviator glasses I bought at LAX. I never imagined I’d yearn for Los Angeles, the strange realms of it just down the canyon—driving Sunset Boulevard, Santa Monica, Melrose, the distractions. Isabel. To take me away, I push in the Krishna Das CD she gave me for Christmas—repetitive mantras with sitar and percussion. A relief from the radio versions of “Silver Bells”: Bing Crosby’s to Wilson Pickett’s to Olivia Newton-John’s. A local girl who made good.

  Strange my mother didn’t want to come with me, said she needed to “hold the fort” even though I didn’t mention what happened in the night. Wonder if Reggie watched his father from a tree?

  At the South Gippie Highway, holiday traffic peels past, en route to Cowes or Wilson’s Prom. Everything abbreviated, holidays to hols, Gippsland to Gippie, Promontory to Prom. Falcon wagons mounted with surfboards, pulling boats, or trailers with sand bikes, jet skis. Pale people hungering for the beach, drinking in sun with zinc on their noses. City people. I come from a family not beckoned by water, from this local, unappealing coastline, not the cream
sand beaches of Portsea or Flinders, or the cliff tops near Cape Schank the locals call the Gaza Strip, where the rich Jewish families from Melbourne build their weekend mansions.

  I try not to keep searching the side roads for Walker, examine my hands on the steering wheel—my fingers dry and wrinkled, morphing into their true selves. Fried as a kid in this sun that beats down now through the slope of the windshield. I turn the CD off. Making the U-turn through to my mother’s side of the highway, I park in the service road in front of the bakery. It’s now called Buns in the Oven, a new sign I didn’t notice the other day. My mother’s instructed me to pick up a ploughman’s wheel. Thick rolled pizza bread with onions, tomato, and cheese, served cold and mushy.

  Isabel tells me I eat without appreciation, using food to stuff feelings; she says it’s nothing to do with weight. She wants me to join her for therapy. “Couples,” she calls it with a kind of relish. Open up in a safe place, talk about what intimacy looks like for you. Her tone so kind and encouraging it urgently makes me not want to go. Not keen to be trapped in some office with three Miró prints hung behind a cushiony couch, cornered, waiting to be torn apart by the sincerity of their concern, sharing some varnished version of the truth of all this.

  Stepping out of the car, I see Cloudy Gray making his way from the butcher’s to the pub with his paunch and braces, pushing loose strings of hair away from his face in the wind, plastering them back on his mottled red scalp. As I turn to head into the bakery, I spot Sharen and Bobby Genoni at an outside table at the Kettle Café. She sits cross-legged in faded, red denim shorts. As I make my approach, Bobby gets up with an awkward smile.

  “I thought you two had put a lid on it,” I say.

  “We’re working out what’s next for Sharen,” he says.

  Bobby Genoni: career counselor.