Roadside Sisters (23 page)

‘It sounds like you’ve forgiven him for trying to rape you.’ A blast of icy water had defogged Annie’s brain. She was coolly surveying the crime scene. ‘That’s very big of you.’

‘All that was twenty years ago. We’ve spoken about it. He’s apologised. We were different people then.’

‘But you’re still furious with Meredith? Sorry, I don’t get it.’

Corinne turned, her pupils two glittering pinpricks in the taut, pale canvas of her face. ‘She’s so high and mighty, as if she thinks she’s better than everyone else. Taking the moral high ground. She was always like that and she hasn’t changed. I saw her tonight pawing my things like some fucking know-all from
Antiques Roadshow
. I know what she was thinking.’

‘What was she thinking?’

‘That I don’t deserve all this!’ Corinne flung her arm to the ceiling. ‘That I must have fucked my way to where I am. That I wasted my life on something stupid and inconsequential.’ Corinne downed the contents of her glass. ‘That’s what everyone thinks, apparently.’

‘And have you?’

‘You’re in real estate, you’re forty, you’re single. You tell me how our lives get wasted on meaningless shit.’

‘You’re pissed, Corinne.’

‘Oh, truly! Why don’t you all just piss off.’ Corinne turned her back and swiped the bottle from the table. Annie shook Nina’s shoulders.

‘Come on, Nina, sweetie. We’re going.’

Nina lifted her head. Straw-blonde hair was sticking out like the stuffing from a scarecrow. A string of saliva dangled from the corner of her open mouth to the sleeve of her cotton shirt. ‘Huh?’

Annie hooked her hands under Nina’s armpits and heaved her to her feet. As she steered Nina towards the door Corinne followed on spindly heels that peck, peck, pecked on the floor tiles. She would have the final word: that was part of her contract with the world.

‘You might be content with the way things have turned out for you, but it’s not over for me. Corinne Jacobsen’s got plenty to say yet. You just watch.’

‘’Night, Corinne. Lovely to see you,’ Nina slurred and waved a floppy hand. ‘Thanks for having us.’

Annie, her foot on the bottom step of the RoadMaster, looked back to see stumps of candles flickering. She could make out Corinne, still restlessly pacing, a small black insect flitting among the flames.

It was just on dawn and the bats were coming home to roost in Corinne’s garden when Nina attempted to back the RoadMaster through the wrought-iron gates. She had an award-winning hangover. The pressure behind her eyes made her head feel like an overinflated basketball.

Annie was in the laneway, feebly calling directions in between leaning against the fence to cool her forehead on the sandstone
blocks. It was while she was picking grit out of her eyebrows that the corner of the van collected a pillar and sent a carved stone gargoyle crashing to the ground. Nina climbed from the front seat and they both stood surveying the pile of pink sandstone rubble.

‘Ah, stuff it!’ said Annie. ‘She won’t be up yet. Let’s just go—I’ll ring her later.’

‘Bloody hell, look at the van!’ Nina gasped as she saw one side of the aluminium had folded like tinfoil. Annie shrugged. There was nothing that could be done about it now. Another five minutes of manoeuvring and the van had cleared the lane-way and swung into the quiet street. With the tension of it all, Nina thought she might throw up on the steering wheel.

‘Navigate me to Centennial Park and we’ll stop there for the day and head off late this afternoon,’ directed Nina. Annie reached for the street directory and saw that Meredith had organised her corner of the cabin perfectly: the road maps were neatly stacked under her feet; the tourist brochures were tucked into the compartment by her side; the glovebox held sunglasses, sunblock and packets of lollies, all tidily arranged on top of the elegant travel diary. It was Meredith herself who was a mess. She was still passed out, fully dressed, on top of the bed down the back.

Soon the van was parked under a Port Jackson fig tree at the edge of Centennial Park. From the front seats Nina and Annie watched a parade of early morning joggers, walkers and cyclists with iPods plugged in to their ears. They groaned in unison and headed back to their beds.

A short taxi ride and Nina was sitting at the open window of a café overlooking Bondi Beach. A low, sodden canopy of cloud hung over the water, threatening to rip and dump rain for the first time since they had left home. She watched a freakish parade saunter past on the footpath in front of her perch—seedy derros swigging from bottles in paper bags; Goths wearing skull pendants and nose-rings; Japanese tourists toting dinky Gucci handbags and photographing everything in sight; half-naked yoga freaks with rolled-up rubber mats tucked under toned arms. It was 11 am on a Thursday, and she was in a foreign land.

In fact, Nina reflected, she could have been sitting in a booth at the Mos Eisley Cantina in a pirate city on the planet of Tatooine (
Star Wars IV: A New Hope
). She had to smile to herself, thinking of how the boys would have fallen about, laughing to be in on her ‘spot-an-alien-life-form’ game. At this moment she missed her sons—missed their passionate kisses when they knew their brothers weren’t watching, their demands for one last cuddle after the lights were out, and their whispered declarations that she was ‘the best mumma in the world’.

How had she landed at this particular breakfast bar at the end of the universe? Nina thought everyone must be looking at the chunky middle-aged woman in the oversized shirt and leggings, wondering why she was there. Except that no-one was paying her the slightest bit of attention—including the tattooed Maori waitress in the bikini top, shorts, cowboy boots and blue-black Mohawk—a refugee from the planet Aruza, if Nina
wasn’t mistaken. Only she remembered that particular race of humanoids shared their memories via cybernetic implants, and Nina seemed to have been long forgotten.

The remains of Nina’s ‘brekkie with the lot’ were slumped on the plate in front of her. She’d ordered refried beans, poached eggs, bacon, hash browns, mushrooms and crusty toast, thinking they might cure her hangover. Instead, she now had a bloated stomach to go with her mighty headache. Two cups of peppermint tea hadn’t helped. There was nothing for it but a reviving shot of vodka in a Bloody Mary.

‘There you go, dollface.’ The drink was dumped on the bench and the plates cleared with a clattering efficiency that made Nina wince. She found a couple of painkillers in her handbag, gulped at the spicy, alcoholic tomato juice, crunched the celery and imagined it was all doing her good. Only it wasn’t.

She watched the surfers in the distance. In their wetsuits on the flanks of the rolling grey surf, they reminded her of buzzing flies on the hide of an elephant. Nina thought of the morning when she had ducked under the aquamarine waves at Mimosa Rocks. It was a moment of exquisite freedom on this trip that she would never forget. But, in truth, the journey had mostly been exhausting.

For so long Nina had imagined being away from her ‘boys’ own’ life of football, electric guitars and computer games. She would commune with treasured women friends and come to a deeper understanding of the feminine.
Women friends help us define who we are and who we want to be.
But now, when she saw Meredith and Annie close up, she saw they had no idea of
who she was. As for who she wanted to be, Nina wasn’t quite sure she knew herself, so how could they help?

Nina rolled the cool tumbler of juice between her palms. She had to admit that all the behaviour she had indulged in over the past few days—the crying and doubting and questioning—had been ridiculous theatrics. She should have known Brad had an important reason for leaving town while she was away. That was the thing about her husband, she thought, as she fished for the ice in the bottom of the glass—he was a simple, loyal soul. Could the same be said of her?

Nina sucked the chunk of ice, and then held it to her throbbing forehead. Had she said anything out of order last night? Nothing she could think of, specifically. And anyway, if she had, Corinne wouldn’t tell anyone. Would she? Nina’s stomach lurched and she could taste a vomity sourness in the back of her throat. She put up her hand to order one more for the road.

Annie chose three promising wisps of silk and jersey, and headed for the changing room. She pulled the curtain closed and dumped the clothes on the wooden floor. She hadn’t seen herself in a full-length mirror for some days, making do instead with her unsatisfying waist-high reflection over sinks in caravan park shower blocks and the poky bathroom in the van.

A quick inventory came up with: red curls exploding into a bedraggled mop, puffy eyelids, cracked lips, jeans with grass stains on the knee, an orange tie-dyed singlet and a pair of scuffed suede flatties. Brilliant! Here she was in one of the country’s
most exclusive shopping strips—Queen Street, Woollahra—and she looked as if she was on her way home from the butcher’s after buying cat’s meat.

As the van had droned up the highway towards Sydney, Annie daydreamed about where she’d go and what she’d buy on her shopping expedition. There were boutiques in Paddington and Double Bay she’d read about in magazines, and been looking forward to ransacking for years. Now, racks of gorgeous clothes, display cabinets full of beaded scarves and jewellery, shelves of handbags and rows of fabulous shoes lay before her—an uncharted land brimful of treasures—and she couldn’t find the energy to explore. It was all too hard. It was as improbable as Captain Cook traversing the globe to land in Botany Bay, and then deciding not to go ashore.

Annie reached to unhook her bra and fancied she could smell the sour tang of last night’s alcohol seeping through her skin. Curse Meredith and Corinne and their pointless, stupid argument. What a bloody nightmare this trip was turning out to be. The term ‘emotional rollercoaster’ didn’t do it justice. It was more like enduring a turn on the Mad Mouse—a tortuous, vertiginous ride that made you long to get off and feel firm ground beneath your feet.

Maybe they should just chuck it in. This trip was proving one thing: that all the crap Nina spouted about women’s
special friendships
was just that—complete and utter shit. The only thing holding them together for all these years had been the memory of the sisterhood of Sanctified Soul—but a less saintly bunch of women would have been hard to find.

They were all fakes and liars back then. They had stood and sung about the ‘oppressed women of the world’—while Briony seethed that the purple of their gospel gowns was the last shade she would have chosen; while they all saw the needle tracks on Genevieve’s arms and told each other that it was her decision how she lived her life; while they all sang about the war in El Salvador, but Nina couldn’t even point to it on a map; while Meredith and Corinne battled each other for the spotlight; while poor, dumb Jaslyn moaned about her faithless boyfriend and she, Annie Bailey, nice little country girl, was screwing him on the grass behind the tour bus. How had they ever thought they were improving the lot of women through their unholy alliance?

And two decades on, nothing had changed. Women still clawed and kicked each other for a prize no-one could identify or articulate. She had always thought that her female friendships were not much more than shallow gossip over an inconsequential cup of coffee. They were designed to look substantial and nourishing to other women but in reality were no more use than—what was it her father said?—‘tits on a bull’.