Roadside Sisters (5 page)

‘Elvis. King of the Road. Get it?’ said Nina. ‘It was something Brad’s father had done,’ she added lamely. ‘I like it. I think it gives the van a bit of personality.’

‘If you’ve got the personality of a rednecked hick!’

‘He’s always loved Elvis,’ Nina said staunchly. ‘And it’s a good safety thing too. See all the lettering and the jewels on the jumpsuit? They’re light-reflective, so you can see the van better at night. You know how the big trucks have lights right down the side so that . . .’ Nina hesitated as she saw Annie stalk up the drive, her high heels tapping on the concrete. She stopped and slowly, theatrically, slid her huge sunnies up on top of her head.

‘Jesus! You could see this fucking thing from the moon, Nina! You could look out the window of the space shuttle and there
it would be, parked right next to the Great Wall of China! You never told us how big it was. You CANNOT be serious!’ She lowered her black Gucci frames and folded her arms firmly across her crisp white shirt. Meredith raised her eyebrows at Nina. It sounded like Annie hadn’t promised to come after all.

‘But, we all agreed . . .’ Nina protested.

‘It was late, I’d had too much to drink . . . so had you!’ Annie accused. ‘We can’t go in this thing! We’ll look like travelling carnie folk. The Beverly Hillbillies. The only thing missing is the Confederate flag.’

‘Actually . . .’ Nina coughed and walked to the back of the van. Meredith and Annie followed, paused and stared in silence. There it was, in all its red-and-blue starry holographic glory—the rebel flag of the Southern States, unfurled from tail-light to shining tail-light.

The awful moment was interrupted by the bleating of Annie’s BlackBerry. She fished it from the pocket of her black trousers, cupped her hand over the device, and spoke in an urgent whisper.

Nina jiggled the key in the lock on the van door and finally wrestled it open. Honestly, she fumed as she stamped up the stairs, who gave a stuff what the mobile home looked like from the outside? The dodgy artwork would be long forgotten when they were all on the road, sitting up front, singing some of the old songs and taking in the vast, arid beauty of the Australian landscape. They would be two thousand kilometres from home and care and responsibility. Nina really wanted to take this trip. More than anything she’d wanted for a long time. She’d been fantasising about it for days—awake, asleep, it didn’t matter.

As she spoke into her ‘smartphone’, Annie sought Meredith’s eyes and telegraphed an irritated shrug. How had they let themselves be talked into the madness of coming here to view the monster vehicle? Meredith shook her head. She had no idea either.

Annie terminated her call, in time to hear Nina plead: ‘Come inside and have a look, you’ll
adore
it.’

Meredith took Annie by the elbow and steered her towards the open door. She had the distinct feeling that if they left now Nina might just stick her head in the . . . Did the thing actually have an oven? She pushed Annie up the metal stairway ahead of her.

Just as Nina had hoped, Annie expressed her surprise when she stepped inside the RoadMaster. It was like a cosy playhouse—everything just slightly smaller and dinkier than in real life. Annie opened cupboards and drawers, pulled curtains, slid screens and expressed a girlish pleasure at the way everything had been configured to pack away so neatly.

‘I can’t believe this!’ she exclaimed. ‘There’s a toilet, a bath . . . even a place to plug in my hair dryer. Come and have a look, Meredith.’ Annie backed out of the narrow bathroom doorway.

Meredith squeezed past and poked her head inside for the briefest of inspections.

‘Well, I’d hardly call it a bath. I’d be extremely lucky to fit my backside in there.’

‘It’s not supposed to be a
proper
bath,’ Nina called from behind them with some exasperation. ‘Let me in and I’ll show you everything.’ The three women paused as they considered how they would negotiate this tricky manoeuvre. Annie shuffled
forward, Meredith flattened herself against the cupboard and Nina eased her way into the small space and began her spiel. ‘It’s got shelves behind this mirror, and plenty of space under the sink for all our stuff. Towel racks. A shower. You can even use the toilet when you’re driving along. I mean, it’s not strictly legal, but it does mean we’re not going to have to stop at some spider-infested dunny by the roadside.’

‘But there’s no window,’ observed Annie, examining the smooth expanse of white extruded plastic in the prefab unit. ‘It must get really . . . humid in here.’ It was exactly the detail a real estate agent would spot.

‘You just open this vent.’ Nina stood on tiptoe and wound open the cunningly concealed hatch at the rear of the shower cubicle.

‘Yeah, that’ll work,’ Annie conceded. In fact privately she also had to admit that the bathroom was considerably larger and better appointed than some of the ensuites she’d recently encountered in brand-new home units.

‘What else could we possibly want?’ Nina added with more than a hint of desperation. ‘There’s a microwave, oven, fridge, freezer, DVD. You just wind up this aerial . . .’ Nina again reached for a knob on the ceiling, turned it and then fiddled with the remote. The TV blared. She lunged for the off-switch.

Annie refolded her arms. ‘Like I said the other day, it’s about
time
. Two weeks away? Meredith will have to leave the shop, I’ll have to take holidays. It’s crazy! I’ve got so much on. We should just fly.’

Nina leaned one hip against a cupboard and clasped her hands in front of her. She wanted to snatch up the tartan tea towel on the counter and flick them both to their senses. ‘I understand all that,’ she said in her most patient tone, ‘but getting there is half the fun.’

‘Yeah, we could play “Spotto” and sing “Ten Green Bottles”,’ drawled Annie.

Her sarcasm didn’t faze Nina. She was used to these exchanges with her teenage son Jordan. She simply drove around the conversational speed hump. ‘Think of what we’d miss out on if we just flew.’

‘Mosquitoes, sandflies, spiders, snakes, ants . . .’ Annie counted off the bio-hazards of the Australian bush on her fingers.

‘That’s just silly,’ Nina finally snapped. ‘You’re from the country, you can handle all that. Besides, we’ll be travelling in five-star comfort all the way.’

‘I’d hardly call this five-star,’ Meredith sniffed and plonked herself on a synthetic doona cover festooned with bright orange and yellow hibiscus flowers. ‘The décor in here is just . . . appalling.’

Nina saw an opening and jumped at her chance. ‘Look, all this can go,’ she said, indicating the nasty matching citrus-hued cushions and floral bedsheets. ‘You can bring some of your gorgeous stuff in from the shop. Your linens, tableware, crockery. Have it any way you want—give the whole van a makeover.’ Nina saw Meredith’s eyes brighten at the magic word ‘makeover’.

Now, Nina calculated, was the time for the centrepiece of her argument . . . except that the smartphone stowed in Annie’s squashy leather handbag squalled again. Annie dumped the bag on the table and rummaged for the thing.

‘Annie Bailey speaking,’ she smoothly announced, stepping into the bathroom cubicle and closing the door after her.

This time it was Nina who quizzed Meredith with a ‘look’. Being with Annie and her dumb phone was like watching a mother let her toddler with Attention Deficit Disorder ruin story time at a playgroup. Meredith nodded in mute agreement.

Nina reached into a cupboard and produced a tablecloth—an Irish linen one she’d bought specially for the occasion—and spread it over the wood-veneer plywood table. She opened the fridge door with a theatrical flourish and presented a sumptuous antipasto platter—zucchini and mozzarella rolls, baked mushrooms with parmesan, potato fritters, roasted peppers with olives, capers and garlic, grilled clams and bacon on the half-shell. A bowl of her famous home-made parmesan cheese and chive biscuits followed.

Annie, her call concluded, stepped outside the cubicle and joined Meredith to lean over the table and coo with pleasure at the feast glistening with virgin olive oil. Nina was a fabulous cook—they’d forgotten that. The freezer gave up a bottle of good chilled Margaret River sauvignon blanc.

With Annie and Meredith both sitting at the table and swooning over the food and wine, Nina continued: ‘Just think, you’d have me cooking for you all the way! You could both do with some fattening up.’

Meredith and Annie sensibly ignored this comment. That was Nina’s mother, Wanda, talking. But it was true—the food
was
spectacular.

Now that they both had their mouths stuffed full, Nina made one final, heroic effort. ‘The thing is,’ she said softly, ‘I’ve been thinking about those times on the road with Sanctified Soul and, well . . . they were the best times! After all that, I met Brad, and had kids. It feels like I’ve been a wife and mother for almost half my life.’ Her bottom lip trembled ominously. ‘You don’t know what it’s like living with three teenage boys. It’s never quiet. I can’t hear myself think, and I’m not sure I’m actually thinking anything anymore. I need to get away, I really do.’ She sniffed back tears of last resort. Meredith and Annie set down their knives and forks. Maybe Nina was closer to the edge than they’d realised.

‘And I remember you, Meredith,’ Nina snuffled, ‘leaving Sigrid and Jarvis at home because you knew, even back then, it was important for women to spend some time on themselves.’

‘“Self-actualise”, they called it in those days,’ Meredith interrupted. ‘But I think really it was just about getting away from smelly nappies.’

Annie took up her wineglass. ‘But you could go away with Brad, or by yourself. What do you hope this whole . . . exercise . . . will
achieve
?’

‘I want to be with women friends.’ Nina was genuinely passionate on this point. ‘People who speak the same language as me. We’ve known each other all these years, but never spent
real time together . . . not . . . you know . . .’ Nina gripped the edge of the table, trying to avoid sounding like a cut-rate Oprah.

‘If you say
quality
time, I’ll hit you.’ Annie was only half joking.

‘Maybe we’ll never have the chance again. Maybe in another ten years’ time, when we’re almost sixty . . .’

‘Hey, I’ll only be forty-nine then!’ Annie protested.

‘Yes, yes, Annie, we all know you’re the “baby” of the group.’ Meredith was doing her own sums and realised that in ten years’ time she
would
be almost sixty. How had that happened?

‘Anyway,’ Nina continued, ‘let’s go while we can. We’ve got the occasion—Siggie’s wedding—and we’ve got the van. Brad’s father says he’ll pick it up in Byron. He wants to keep going north to Fraser Island, so we can fly back.’

Nina took up her glass, her fingers gripping the stem tightly. If they didn’t agree to come right now, she’d have to throw in her tartan tea towel. She had nothing more to offer.

Annie kept her head down, silently tearing at a crust of bread. Meredith sighed loudly. Nina took a nervous sip of wine and watched them both intently. Silence and sighs. That had to be a sign that she was making some headway, surely.

Meredith was almost beaten. She set down her glass and raised one last feeble flag of protest. ‘What about that thing?’ She pointed accusingly at the wall. It was a gold-framed photograph of Gracelands, Memphis, Tennessee.

‘It’s gone!’ declared Nina. She scrambled over Meredith to pull down the offending item and shoved it in the locker under the bed.

‘I can’t believe I’m saying this, but . . .’ Meredith dropped her head into her hands and pressed her palms into her eyes, ‘OK. I’ll come. Let’s start packing.’ Nina whooped and jumped in triumph.

‘But when it all goes pear-shaped,’ Meredith added, ‘remember . . .
I told you so.
’

‘Thank you, thank you, thank you!’ Nina clapped her hands. ‘This will be such fun, you’ll see. We should have a toast.’ She raised her glass. ‘To Byron or . . .’

Annie’s leather handbag vibrated with shrill alarm. ‘I can’t. I’m sorry.’ Annie’s hand plunged into the depths of her bag. ‘It’s just . . . impossible.’

Nina lowered her arm. ‘. . . bust,’ she sadly concluded the salutation.

The screen door on the van was wrenched open, banging hard on aluminium. Nina winced at the tinny clang and turned to see her son Anton in the doorway. He was shivering, despite the towel draped around his shoulders. Water was dripping on the black rubber doormat from every angle of his skinny frame.

‘Geez, Mum, what are you doing?’ he whined. ‘You’ve been in here for ages. I’m hungry.’

Meredith regarded the pile of items she had gathered on the front counter next to the cash register and, once again, saw that her instinctive good taste had not failed her. There were three queen-size doona covers in plain white with a taupe grosgrain ribbon trim; two single covers, contrasting, in the same taupe with white trim; and six oversized continental pillows with cotton covers in a subtle
fallow
.

Meredith liked the name
fallow
. It was a colour a few shades darker than
ecru
—and
ecru
(from the French meaning ‘raw’ or ‘unbleached’) had been done to death. It was also lighter than
bole
(rhyming with ‘mole’), the shade Meredith had once championed in her interior decorating business.

She had been pleased to inform her clients that
bole
was one of the oldest colour names in the English language, dating from 1386. When children were presented with various shades of brown and were asked to paint the trunk of a tree, the shade they invariably chose was
bole
. Meredith liked knowing these
sorts of details. Even if, secretly, she thought
bole
was the ugliest colour on earth.

All her life Meredith had been creative and artistic, and she could often divine what a person’s true emotions were through colour. For example, clients would come to her and say they wanted their room decorated in their favourite colour
pistachio
, but Meredith would just know that they needed to let go of the past and embrace something more nourishing, like
moussaka
.