Desert Fish (7 page)

A blush creeps up from my neck. ‘You know, I've forgotten the name of the place. But it's in the desert. My husband's got a job there.'

‘It'll be one of the mines up north,' she says. ‘Trev knows all of the mines. Or maybe it's a station?'

‘It's a station, I think.' I bite at my forefinger nail. Even light conversation is hard work, giving my lies legs to walk on, filling in the gaps and covering my tracks as I go. ‘You know, I don't know your name.' I sit up and lean over to her.

‘Oh.' She puts out her hand. ‘Janice,' she says.

‘Missy,' I say, without hesitating. I point to the pale bottle of varnish. ‘That's a nice colour.'

‘Pink Chiffon,' she says. ‘And this one's Cherry Viola.'

I laugh. ‘Don't they have silly names?' It reminds me of Lexie, with her testers of lipstick in coral and pink and plum, but I push her out of my head, not wanting thoughts of her to poison my enjoyment of this new friend.

‘Glamour is a very serious business,' Janice says. ‘Why don't I paint your nails?'

‘Oh, but look.' I hold up one hand, the nails still bitten close to the quick. ‘I never paint them. I can't stop biting them.'

‘A lick of varnish might help,' Janice says. ‘The colour will remind you to keep them away from your mouth.'

‘Maybe, but … It's just … I don't have any remover.'

‘I'll do a pale colour. The Chiffon. Try it for a day. And if you don't like it, I'll take it off tomorrow. You'll still be here tomorrow, won't you?' She smiles, encouraging. ‘Go on. Treat yourself.' She's unscrewing the lid, and holding the brush up, examining the colour. I like her tone, her light laugh and the way she can make talk out of nothing. ‘I'll pamper you a little,' she adds. ‘It's so nice to have some company. It'll be fun.'

‘Oh, okay,' I agree, pleased. I sit forward carefully so as not to show how sore I am and I lay my hands flat on the table. ‘Like this?' I ask.

‘Perfect,' she says, and stroking the colour on to my forefinger she murmurs, ‘Look, that's just lovely.'

While the first coat dries Janice lies back, stretching her legs out and turning her arms over. It's strange, the sensation of something coating my fingernails. My instinct is to wipe it away. The nails themselves feel porous, as though the paint is soaking through to the skin. But I want to try being like her, breezy and light, with that wash-and-wear sort of honesty. She has nothing to hide. She can unpack her bag onto the table and reveal herself to a stranger like a friend. She can paint her nails and talk about her life as easily as the weather. I fight the urge to press at the wet nails, to clench my fingers into a fist and rub everything clean with a tissue.

‘Do you do this when you're at home?' I ask. ‘Paint your nails and sunbathe?'

Janice turns towards me, sleepy-eyed with sun.

‘Oh yes. Trev thinks I look like a doll when I'm all made up. I used to be a nurse, you know. Before I met him. We had to wear a uniform. A hat. Proper shoes. No nail varnish. We weren't supposed to wear make-up either but you could get away with a bit of lippy.' She leans back and rubs her toes together so her calf muscles grow taut. ‘It was like being in school again.' Lying her arms flat on the arms of the deckchair, she turns them so that the insides of her wrists will colour. ‘Do you travel with your husband?' she asks.

‘This is the first time we've been away together.'

‘Really?'

I hesitate but then the words run away from me. ‘He went away once before, but I had to wait with his sister.'

‘What's she like?' Janice asks.

‘She's nice enough,' I say.

‘Really?' Janice drags out this word dramatically and gives me a low look from under her lashes.

‘Well … I'd rather have been with him.'

‘Naturally.' She smiles. ‘So why didn't you insist?'

I swallow. I can't think of what to say, but she's very kind, Janice. I can tell. She fills the silence before it grows awkward. ‘Not all of these places have decent married quarters. When Trev worked in the mines he used to go on ahead and make sure he could get us a decent place, though they were all pretty nasty. Still, I didn't care, so long as I was with him.'

‘I think I'm like you, I want to travel with him. Honestly, when he was gone I thought of him every day. I missed him so much I couldn't sleep some nights.'

‘Oh, pet,' she says, the endearment making me flush with pleasure.

I hold my hand up and look at the pink glistening with the sun on it. How easy it is, talking this way. ‘Actually, I didn't like his sister all that much.'

‘I could tell straightaway,' Janice says. ‘You sounded very uncertain. That would have been horrible, being newly married and then marooned with someone you
didn't really like. You must have missed your husband. Is she much older than you, his sister?'

I look into her face, carefully. It is open and curious, not critical.

‘Just that your husband looked a bit older than you,' she adds. ‘I didn't mean to be rude. I just wondered.'

‘Yeah, she is a bit older than me. Older than him, too. And not very friendly.'

Janice is sympathetic. ‘You poor thing,' she says. ‘How did you meet your husband?'

I don't even hesitate now. I tell myself this story all the time and I've never had a chance to tell anyone else. ‘I saw him by a river,' I say. ‘I was swimming and I saw him there on the bank. I'd never seen him before and I could tell he was from out of town and I just knew he was the one.'

Janice smiles. ‘So young,' she murmurs, ‘to know that.' But she doesn't disapprove. She's so different from Lexie. She takes my hands and examines the varnish. ‘Let's put another coat on.' She dips the brush delicately and draws it over the first layer of colour, from the base to the rough ends of my nails. ‘Look, they're so much nicer like that. It'll encourage you not to bite them. Just think how pretty your hands would look if your nails could grow a bit. Your husband would love it.'

‘Yes,' I say. I imagine Pete taking my hands and kissing the glimmery tips of them. Noticing the smooth ends that I've grown out and filed neatly. ‘You're right. I'll have to try.'

While the second coat dries, Janice cools herself in the pool. She takes a great deal of care with this – lowering herself into the shallow end and turning slowly. My mother was the same in the water. She didn't like her head to go under, even in the pool.
It's dark with your eyes shut, and blurry with them open. Ugh.

But I don't want to think about my mother. I don't want to think of her or Lexie because they will ruin the picture I am making of Janice and me as friends. Real friends. With me phoning her when Pete is at work and I'm bored at home. And Pete and I stopping off to visit her and Trev whenever we travel back through to the city. I try to imagine her house.

‘The water's lovely,' Janice calls to me. ‘Perfect temperature.' Crouching, she allows it to reach her chest. Then she stands with her arms held across her breasts. Carefully, carefully, she glides from one end of the pool and back. Her head bobs above its surface, chin jutting upwards. The water moves around her, but she doesn't allow it to reach her neck or her hair. Beneath the surface her form undulates, her outline shifting but unbroken.

‘You should come in, Missy,' she says. ‘Come in when your nails are dry. It's so lovely.'

Of course I can't, what with bleeding and having the stitches down there, but I don't have time to make an excuse because just as she says it a car drives in. Janice kicks her legs frantically beneath the water.

‘Trev!' she says breathlessly. ‘He's come back for lunch,
or maybe he's got the afternoon off,' she mutters with excitement, only half to me, paddling quickly to the pool ladder. Around her the water ripples, the smooth image of her limbs beneath it shimmers and then breaks up.

‘Trev,' she calls again, to him this time, climbing out of the pool, drawing a robe around her and stepping into her shoes. She grabs her case and zips it quickly. ‘I'll leave those for you,' she says, breathlessly, ‘in case you want to put on another coat.' She is already running towards him.

They move quickly, arm in arm, towards their room and Janice doesn't say goodbye or thanks for the company. The door shuts on me with my wet pink nails, uncomfortable now on the slatted seat of the deckchair.

It takes ages for that second coat of colour to dry. I press the nail on my little finger to test it and it leaves a dull matte print so I wait a little longer before I abandon the bottles of varnish on the table, and the chocolate bar, and return to my room. There, I hear them, through the thin partitioned wall, their murmuring and laughing, their lingering moans. Carefully I curl into the bed, lying on my side, drawing my knees cautiously in. Beside me is the empty chair with the orange peel and the crumpled packet from the stale crackers. I blink back tears. Soon, Pete and I will be moving again, I tell myself. We will pack up and leave this place. We will make our way into the desert, to our new life.

My mother always said Love would be unmistakeable when it found me. As if I'd have no say in the matter. Even when I was a little girl she talked like this. I remember how I thought her Love must be like the wolf in a fairytale. Or a bear in a fable. Something large and heavy that would make quick pursuit. ‘When I met your father, I just knew,' she'd say. ‘I had no choice.' She'd be smoothing cream on her face to prevent the craze of lines that the sun was going to make anyway. Or plucking her eyebrows. They were dark and she shaped them in a high, thin arch. ‘You'll know when it happens,' she'd say. ‘You'll just know. It will be –' she'd pause – ‘Inevitable.' I could hear how she capitalised the word.

I didn't really believe it, because I was nothing like her. There were my nails, which, even as a little girl, I bit right down. My mother didn't decorate her hands in any way, but she kept her fingernails long and manicured them regularly. If a nail snagged or broke she'd be irritated
until she could file it smooth again. And there was my hair. I wore it in a longish style. It kinked and waved its way to my shoulders and didn't seem to grow any longer than that. I never tied it back. I wanted to be able to pull the bits at the front protectively across my eyes. My mother wouldn't have been able to bear that, hair falling about everywhere. She was neat as a sparrow, with her hair sitting close against her head. My father was drawn to her poise, and her control. Not that she didn't have a soft side, but it had to be carefully unwrapped. It wasn't easy to get to because she had to keep it safe. I was unlike her in this way also. I was soft all through. If my mother was right, if her sort of Love ever did come for me, I would have to be prepared.

Lexie fell in love every few weeks. She didn't come to my house for a while after the time she drank from my dad's can, but it must have ended with her and Mick Flaherty because she turned up early one evening dressed up in her white canvas shorts and a yellow halter-neck top. You could see the flesh of her breasts popping out the sides. Her eyes were lined with smoky kohl with the lids pale blue. She'd worn the coral lipstick and I could see that the strap of her left sandal had already given her a blister.

‘Do you want a plaster for that?' I asked, annoyed, as she pushed past me.

She ignored me. ‘Is he here?' Her voice was low and insistent.

‘Lexie …' I began, but I couldn't think of a reason to send her away.

‘Where's your dad?' she asked.

In the kitchen my dad was sitting in a way that mirrored how Pete sat, with one leg resting across the other knee, arms folded casually. Mum was spooning Maxwell House into four cups.

I could tell my dad was pleased to see Lexie.

‘Here she is,' he said, casual as could be, but there was the thin vibrato of excitement in his voice. Lexie was something he could offer to Pete.

‘Would you like a coffee, Lexie?' my mum asked.

‘I'd rather have a beer,' she said.

My mum opened her mouth and closed it again and my dad said, ‘Go on, Maureen, they're old enough. Let's all have one. Take them outside.'

I went and got a blanket to lay over the brittle grass and we all trooped outside with the drinks and the esky to sit in the warm half-light. I spread the blanket near the mango tree and we made ourselves comfortable. My mum sat neat and protective beside my dad. Lexie got herself right up close to Pete.

‘Do you like it here, Pete?' she cooed. ‘Do you like our little town?'

‘It'll do for now,' he replied. ‘It's got all the things a person might need.' He half-smiled as he said it and I felt a surge of jealousy, certain that he'd never smiled at me that way.

‘Hmmph. You reckon?' Lexie lay back, propped on her elbows, so her chest was sticking out. She stretched her funny long legs in front of her. In the twilight you
couldn't see the blister on her foot. ‘A person, you say,' she teased. ‘I think by that word “person” you mean a man. All the things a man might need.' She let go of a breathy sigh. ‘It's a nice enough town most days, but I don't think it's got all the things a woman might like.' She looked up at Pete. ‘There's not a whole lot to get excited about.'

My mum snorted with laughter. If I hadn't been so irritated I would have too. Lexie was always so obvious. ‘You seem to keep yourself pretty well occupied, Lexie,' my mum said. ‘From what I hear.'

‘You're only young once,' my dad said. ‘She's just making the most of it. Aren't you, Lex?'

‘Hmmmm.' I could sense she wasn't going to be deterred. She sat up and folded her legs together. My mum had mixed us both a shandy. I sipped at mine, wishing she'd added more lemonade. Lexie reached for hers and drank it down.

‘Slow down with that,' Pete said.

‘It's so sweet, it goes down easy,' Lexie replied. ‘You can hardly taste the beer in it.'

I could feel my mum pursing her lips with disapproval on the other side of the rug.

‘And anyway, I drink beer all the time,' Lexie said. ‘It's not like I need it watered down.'

‘You're not legal yet,' my mother said.

‘Old enough to work,' Lexie said. ‘Old enough to leave home and earn my own money. And other things besides.'

My dad grinned. ‘Go on, Maureen. Let her have a beer.'

Mum huffed and passed Lexie a can from the esky.

‘Thanks,' Lexie said.

Pete was laughing.

‘Do you like dancing, Pete?' Lexie asked.

‘I'm not much of a dancer,' he replied.

‘Oh.' She appeared crestfallen. ‘There's this club here, on Fridays. It's upstairs where the function rooms are, at the Criterion.'

Pete was rolling a fag, smiling again for Lexie as he did. It was a slow sure smile, bathed in the light from the porch. The sun was gone now but the air was as warm as it had been all afternoon and there were insects everywhere, the rum smell of them thick in the new night. When he'd licked the end of the paper and poked the stray wisps of tobacco in, he offered it to Lexie. She took it, of course, and he rolled another which he offered to me and I took it too, even though I didn't want it. Then he made one for himself. I felt crushed, because of the rollie he'd made me on the porch just a few weeks earlier, and what I'd made of it. All the careful watching I'd done, the subtle brushing up close to him. Pete winked at my dad and then lit our cigarettes and said to Lexie, ‘Let's just have a smoke for now and leave the dancing talk for another time.'

I drank my shandy slowly because I didn't trust the light-headed feeling it gave me, and I counted the mangoes on my mother's tree. The porch light illuminated them, small and hard as olives. Some were shrivelled and dry. In all the summers since my mother had planted the tree, its
fruit had never been more than the size of a small plum. They had never grown properly and they did not know to fall. I remembered how once my father had said they would drop if they thought they were ripe and ready but they never did. They clung there, every year, until they shrivelled away, or until my mother went out and cut them loose.

Soon my mother got up and went in the house to bring out some more cans. Pete went with her to help. When the door had banged behind them Lexie sat forward and ground her cigarette end into the grass.

‘He doesn't like me,' she pouted.

‘Of course he does,' my dad said.

‘He doesn't want to take me dancing,' she said.

‘He never said he wouldn't. I didn't hear him say he wouldn't,' Dad soothed. He moved over and got himself in to the space that Pete had occupied, right up close to Lexie. He put his arm around her and rubbed his hand along her forearm. ‘Give him a chance, girly! We can't all come running as soon as you whistle!'

Lexie laughed and wriggled out of his embrace.

‘Yeah, alright,' she said. She rubbed her hand along her arm. ‘Get back in your corner, Creighton,' she said. ‘I hear what you're saying. You don't need to demonstrate.'

I wanted him to stop now but he was on a roll. He'd always take things that little bit further, just to see if he could get away with it. I tried to catch his eye but he wasn't having any of it. He wanted to pretend I wasn't there. He wanted to have some fun and he didn't want me in his face reminding him that he shouldn't.

He laughed. ‘C'mon, Lexie,' he said, and I knew that nothing I could say was going to make a difference. He moved to try again, but then the screen door banged and my mum was there and he was sitting down, rolling his smoke, reaching for his drink and keeping his hands to himself.

 

That was the thing with my dad. He couldn't help but touch and you never knew what it meant. I can't ever remember thinking that Love had found him.

After the time I took his money at Mrs Martin's he made sure to lock his wallet in the glove box of the car. ‘I'll get you a sweetie on the way home, Missy,' he'd say, ‘after you've been to Kerry's house. But only if you do as you're told.' And even though he never said, I knew not to bother going indoors again. I always waited under the umbrella in the backyard and played with Melanie until my dad had finished what he'd come to do.

But I remember when I knew that Love had found Yvonne Martin. She came knocking on our door one afternoon a couple of months after the time I took my dad's money, and although I was only nine years old I understood that something had shifted. An invisible boundary was about to be crossed and when she got into our house, I wasn't sure how she would be able to walk around without leaving a mark that my mother would find, an oily smear on a surface or the imprint of her
behind on the sofa. The shape of how she felt about my dad. It would be impossible to hide that in my mother's tidy house.

‘Vonnie,' my dad said.

‘Hello, Creighton,' she breathed, dabbing at a damp curl that I knew was not real, because it was dead straight at the top where the perm was growing out. ‘I saw Maureen downtown. She was in the cafe.' She fanned her hands at her face and neck and lifted the cotton bodice of her dress away from her skin.

I sensed my father weighing up the risk Yvonne Martin was aching to take.

‘This heat,' she exclaimed, noticing me. ‘Any chance of a cuppa? To wet my lips before I collect Kerry.' To me, she added, ‘She's out at ballet, you know.'

‘But it's Tuesday.'

In the kitchen, Dad took down the coin caddy and counted out change.

‘Here, Gilly,' he said. ‘For Paddle Pops. Get the banana for me, and one to put in the freezer for your mum.'

‘What about her?' I asked.

‘Yvonne,' Mrs Martin said. ‘Call me Yvonne, love.' She pressed her fingers on the dewy skin of her neck. ‘I won't be here for long.' She looked at my dad. ‘Just long enough to cool off.' Her lips formed a faint smile.

I walked the long way to the shop, fingering the coins in my pocket, taking one out and pressing it into the centre of my palm. It left a heavy smell, of nickel and iron. It made a dirty print, too. After I put it back in my
pocket, I rubbed at my palm with my thumb, making dry dark slivers out of the dirt and sweat.

When I got to the bridge, I crossed to the middle and squatted. It was built on tall cement pylons, high above the water. Spliced between each paving slab was a clear view of the rapids. There had been two bridges before this one, both carried off by floods that sucked away the pylons with such little effort that I shivered whenever I saw the rush of the water beneath.

I stood and looked over the guardrail. It reached to my armpits and I liked to frighten myself, leaning in to watch the rocky crags and the dizzy pull of the rapids around them. The air was crisp and dry, there had been no rain, but the river didn't seem to have suffered. The water was not especially high, but there was enough of it and it poured over the weir like there was plenty more where it had come from.

Opening my hand I blew the dirty slivers I had made with the coin. They were thin and tapered but did not float like catkins or dandelion wisps. They were there in my hand one minute, and gone the next. A wish would never have stayed adrift on them.

When I got back I'd finished my Paddle Pop. I had chewed the corner away and sucked the melting milk slowly. I felt as if I'd made it last for ages but when I reached the front gate I had no idea if Mrs Martin might still be inside. I sat on the step by the door, holding the parcel with the remaining ones and hoping they'd be screened from the heat by the newspaper they were wrapped in.

I waited. A light breeze sighed and stirred the long grass along the fence. Cicadas chirruped and my stomach churned. I pressed my fingers into the parcel. The Paddle Pops had grown soft, so I tore away the newspaper and peeled the wrapper off one and ate it. Yellow milk clung to my skin and dried in a thin sticky smear, webbing my fingers together when I clenched my fist. The second one was softer and I finished it so quickly it made me gag. I needed a glass of water to get the taste out of my mouth and this was what finally drove me inside, clutching at the damp remains of the wrappers, my tongue furry and dry.

My dad was sitting at the kitchen table in just his shorts. His hair was damp. There were droplets of moisture on his forehead which I took to be from the shower because he smelled of Palmolive soap.

There was no Yvonne Martin.

Dad was shaking his head.

‘Geez, Gilly.' He didn't have to say anything else. The wrappers were balled in my hands; the smell was thick, and too sweet.

‘What've you done, girl?'

It seemed important not to cry. Tears and snot would make even more mess.

In the bathroom my father washed my hands and face.

‘Brush your teeth,' he said, ‘before your mother gets back.'

Then he rinsed the sink and we returned to the kitchen
so I could drink my glass of water. ‘You need to learn some self-control, Gilly,' he said as I gulped at it.