Roadside Sisters (17 page)

The idea of Meredith sitting on a pile of gravel by the roadside, eating a flyblown ham sanger, was, indeed, beyond belief.

Meredith popped the last wine gum in her mouth and bit down. She wasn’t being quite as truthful as she might have been. She’d edited out that particular afternoon when she had kicked the back of her father’s front seat and he had swung his hand back, slapped the side of her head and sworn furiously at her. He’d skidded the FC sedan to a stop in the gravel at the side of the road, got out, wrenched open the back door and dragged her from the back seat by the collar of her beaded green cardigan.

‘You can bloody well walk home from here, Miss!’ Meredith remembered her father’s face up close to hers, snarling with anger.

‘Sorry, Daddy. Sorry. I didn’t mean it. It was an accident.’

Then he had driven off, up around the curve of the hill. Kevin and Terry hadn’t dared to turn around to look at her. She remembered running up the asphalt road after the car, crying and wiping her runny nose on her sleeve, not believing they could have left her, terrified at finding herself alone in the bush. She also remembered her relief when she saw the familiar shape of the FC tail-lights up ahead. She had stood in the middle of the road, not able to go a step backwards or forwards, and wet her underpants.

‘Filthy, filthy, disgusting girl!’ her father scolded as he pushed Meredith into the back seat.

‘Ee-ew, stinky Meredith!’ Kevin and Terry had held their noses and complained as she wiggled her toes in her sodden white knee-high socks. Meredith had never forgotten that long, damp drive back to Camberwell, but what was the point in telling that particular part of the anecdote? It would only spoil a good story.

‘When we got home, Bernie would get out of the car and say: “Wasn’t that a fascinating day, children?” We’d probably driven two hundred miles. If we’d been in Europe, we would have driven through France, Spain and Portugal, and seen something worth seeing!’

The van rounded a bend and there at last was the sign to Mimosa Rocks National Park. A grey blur bounded across the road in front of the van.

‘Look, a kangaroo!’ shouted Nina.

‘I can see it.’ Meredith pointed. ‘I can see it.’ She was starting to think that, on this particular drive, she was seeing a whole lot of things she’d never seen before.

After a short walk from the Mimosa Rocks campsite through the banksia trees, the wild beauty of Gillard’s Beach unfolded like a pop-up picture in a child’s book of fairytales. The pulsing surf had given birth to a luminous pearly moon suspended in endless twilight. Meredith couldn’t quite locate the shade of the sky on her personal paint chart. It was a curious mix of
velvet cape
,
admiralty
and
prelude
. She gave up and named it ‘beautiful’.

For Annie—sitting beside her on the dune and joining the peaceful communion—the years of viewing the sunset over vast, flat inland plains had in no way prepared her for the dynamic restlessness of the darkening sea. She was astonished every time she saw it. She was intrigued by the notion that she might be able to watch it every evening for the rest of her life.

Nina slammed the flywire door on the RoadMaster and flicked on the fluoro over the cook top. She paced the galley from bed to bed and scanned the iridescent screen of her mobile phone. When it finally showed she had coverage, she dialled.

‘Jordan?’

‘Hi, Mum.’

‘Darling! I’ve missed you so much. How are you?’

‘Good.’

‘How was school today?’

‘Gay.’

‘Did you hand in your assignment?’

‘Yeah.’

‘Where are Anton and Marko?’

‘Upstairs having a shower. They have to get up early tomorrow, if you haven’t forgotten.’

‘Have they packed everything?’

Silence.

‘Have they?’

‘Nah. They’re goin’ to the nation’s capital in the nude.’

‘Don’t be a smart alec, Jordan, it doesn’t suit you. Is someone there with you? I can hear voices.’

‘It’s the TV . . . oh, and a home invader in a balaclava who says if I don’t get off the phone he’s gunna waste me with a semi-automatic.’

Silence.

‘Is your father there?’

‘Nuh. He went out.’

‘YOU MEAN YOU ARE AT HOME BY YOURSELVES? WHERE DID HE GO?’

‘Dunno.’

‘Jordan James Brown, this is your mother speaking. I will find your father and he will be back home soon. There’s no need to be thinking about home invasions. Stay calm. Do you understand?’

‘Not really.’

‘What don’t you understand, darling?’

‘How you reckon you can still nag us from over the phone.’

Silence.

‘What time did your father go out? Did he tell you why?’

‘Dunno.’

‘Did he say when he’d be back?’

‘Nuh.’

‘You just hold tight, Jordy.’

‘Whatever.’

‘I’ll call back. I love you.’

Nina leaned against the cupboards as she felt her knees give way. Her face was instantaneously hot and her scalp was tingling with perspiration. She stabbed at the phone with rubbery fingers. Brad’s number rang and rang, and was finally picked up. She heard a brief muffled greeting, and the phone went dead. She gasped—a short intake of breath so intense that surely the walls of the van would crumple and implode. Before she could exhale, she was dialling again.

‘The mobile phone you are ringing is either out of range or switched off.’

‘Oh my God. Oh my . . .’ Nina dialled Jordan’s number.

‘Jordy, it’s Mum.’

‘Who?’

‘THIS ISN’T FUNNY, JORDAN! Have you got Grandma Brown’s phone number? And Baba Kostiuk’s?’

‘Why? What’s wrong?’

‘Nothing. Everything’s fine. But if you need them, you know they are always there and . . .’

Nina could hear the line breaking up. Jordan’s voice washed in and out on a gravelly tide.

‘Mum? Mu—’

‘Jordy? Jordy?’

The phone line spluttered, expired and that was the end of it. For the next half-hour Nina stood outside in the wind—under the banksia tree to the south, knee-deep in bracken to the north, east and west—holding the phone high and low. All was silent. There was no reception. She was six hundred kilometres from home—supposedly beyond all care and responsibility—but now reduced to a simple and terrifying helplessness.

She managed to at least get the van’s lights and hot water going. Maybe she would be doing all these things without Brad from now on . . . now that he’d abandoned his family. When Meredith and Annie returned from the beach, they found her curled in a ball on the bed, bawling like a baby.

‘So Brad’s gone out—’ Annie tried to make sense of it one more time—‘and left the boys in the house by themselves?’

Nina snivelled and nodded her head.

‘And you don’t know how long for?’

Nina snorted into a tissue and shook her head.

Meredith slumped back into a seat with relief. ‘So he’s gone down the road to pick up a pizza for three grown boys who are apparently watching television and having a shower, and that’s enough to reduce you to a blubbering basket case?’

‘I can’t get through.’ Nina threw her mobile phone on the floor. ‘Piece of shit!’ She was immediately down on her knees, scrabbling under the table for the battery that had come loose.

Annie took her by the arm and hauled her to her feet. ‘Look at yourself, Nina! This is . . . what can we say that hasn’t already been said? They—will—be—fine.’

An hour later—after Nina had been more or less tranquillised with a plate of grilled chicken, a rocket-and-parmesan salad and two glasses of red—Meredith tackled her again. ‘This isn’t just about Brad and the boys, Nina. It’s about
you
. Your constant fussing . . .’

‘I do it all the time. I can hear all the crap coming out of my mouth, and I hate myself. I’m sorry.’ And with that the tears sluiced down the spillway of her pink cheeks again.

Meredith shoved more tissues into Nina’s outstretched hand. ‘Now, don’t carry on like this,’ she said crisply. ‘Being a nag’s hardly the worst crime on earth.’

‘What about being a fat, middle-aged pain-in-the-arse who can barely hold a conversation because she’s been in front of her kitchen sink for fifteen years?’ Nina’s bosom heaved under her faded T-shirt.

Meredith looked at Annie with wide blue eyes. She didn’t have a clue how to handle this abysmal level of self-hatred.

‘Come on now, honey,’ Annie crooned, ‘we’ve come this far together and we’re going all the way. What’s this about? And I’m not just talking about ringing Brad or the kids to say goodnight. What’s it really about?’

Nina kept her head down and honked loudly into her tissue, startling Meredith, who almost fell off her seat. ‘I think Brad wants to leave me . . .’ Nina whispered.

Annie and Meredith put their heads in their hands and groaned. Apparently Nina was worried about—in no particular order—being fat, stupid, old, a bad mother and, now, being dumped by her husband. What else could she possibly add to her list of woes?

‘. . . and I’ll bet he wants to take the dog.’

The moon was high when Annie stepped from the RoadMaster onto wet grass. She still couldn’t bring herself to use the inside toilet. A stiff wind blowing in from the Tasman Sea tore the door from her hands and bashed it on the side of the van. She quickly secured it against marauding midnight pests.

She hesitated for a moment, adjusting her sight to the silvery threads of light woven through the banksia trees, and then saw that what she had thought to be tall clumps of grass were moving. She was standing in the midst of a mob of grazing kangaroos. They stopped for a moment, sensing her presence, and then bent their heads, intent on feeding.

Annie squatted, the blades of grass tickling the inside of her naked thighs. She looked to the heaving black sea. Luminous lashes fringed every wave, winking in the moonlight before crashing onto the shore and exploding with energy. How different it all was to the muddy, blank surface of the dam in the bottom paddock at the farm—that evil, unblinking eye that followed her everywhere. No matter how far she roamed.

Annie stood and pulled up her cotton pyjama pants. Her thoughts turned to Matty and she wondered if by any chance
he could be standing on a beach close by, surrounded by kangaroos with fat pouches, looking at this very same moon, at this procession of black and silver waves and thinking of her. She had to find him and ask.

Dawn heralded an autumn day of still perfection. Nina tumbled down the stairs, mobile phone in hand, and saw she still had no reception. Not that it mattered. Who could she call at this hour? She dared not wake the girls after yesterday morning’s effort. There was nothing to do but go for a walk . . . maybe a swim. She exchanged her phone for a towel and headed down the path through the dunes for the beach.

Nina chose a formation of yellow and pink sandstone rocks to aim for and padded across the sand. The sun was over the water now, blindingly bright and already warm on her skin. She knew she had to beat the urge to run back home and keep pushing onwards. Turning over last night’s events in her head, she was sorry for herself. Sorry for immediately doubting Brad. Sorry for panicking Jordy. Sorry for losing it so badly.

Meredith was right. Looking at it logically, Brad had probably just gone out for a moment. Jordan had sounded fine and he was a responsible kid, even if he couldn’t make his own bed or his breakfast. That was her fault. At sixteen she was crawling out her bedroom window with a bag stuffed with a tiny skirt and high-heeled boots to catch the tram into town, and getting in to see rock bands with a fake ID. Apparently she’d raised a kid who didn’t even know how to use a toaster. The twins
would manage. They always did. In truth, it seemed they’d hardly needed her since they could walk.