Treading Air (19 page)

‘That was a long time ago, but.'

‘Maybe.' Lizzie decides Dolly's not worth more talk.

Thelma unwraps the ribbon, runs it through her big toe, separates the two ends and ties it around her ankle. She holds it out to Lizzie, ‘Pretty, eh?' She does the same for the other foot.

‘Mermaid's shoes,' Lizzie calls them.

‘Yeah, that's right – completely useless.' Thelma gives some ribbon to Lizzie, and they agree that they love the feel of it between their toes. ‘Almost as good as sex,' Thelma says. They wave their feet in the air, pointing their toes like ballerinas.

They model for the men who arrive, wearing nothing but the ribbons. The next night, a new fella requests the ribbons, and Lizzie and Thelma feel like Coco Chanel, like they've made something new, even if they can't wear it anywhere but the house. Then, out shopping a few days later, Lizzie buys a pair of silk pyjama trousers, along with a silk dressing-gown, like Bea's, that cuts across her neck. Something to wear over the ribbons. It reminds her of the kimonos that the tattoo artist told her about, so she knows instantly that she must have it.

But Dolly starts stealing Lizzie's ribbons. She hears this from one of the men, who tells her, probably to save his balls, that Dolly was a pale imitation. Lizzie storms into the lounge room, where Thelma drinks gin and tonic in a mug with a chip at the rim. Lizzie's alight with anger. ‘She leaves the bed unmade too. You can see her imprint, the wet-patch stain. Puts me right off.' She screws up her nose. ‘One man called me “Dolly”, you know? Like we all look the same to him.'

Thelma hands her the bottle of gin.

During the long afternoons, Lizzie doesn't like to be by herself too much, so she often invites Thelma over. On a Thursday they sit in the shade of the frangipani with the breeze curling around them and brush each other's hair, enjoying their lack of stockings, not needing to please anybody. They eat biscuits straight out of the tin and agree about the awkwardness of lipstick, that men love it but hate the way it smudges. How do the girls in the movies do it?

‘That's probably why they leave the writing up so long,' Thelma says. ‘Gives the girls time to fix their faces.' She mimes madly trying to touch up her lips, pouts. ‘Get bored, when they leave that writing up there,' she says, and Lizzie wonders if she can read, if that's why she's always asking what's going on in the film.

Joe finds them relaxed on the lounge chairs, already into the beer. ‘You girls are hopeless.' He pats Lizzie's legs, and she tucks them up so he can sit down. ‘Don't you have anything better to do?'

‘Isn't it only a bit after five?' Thelma asks. ‘Plenty of time.'

Joe frowns. ‘Don't expect me to clean up after you when you have to go running off.'

‘You can't even find the broom,' says Lizzie, laughing at him.

‘It's in the cupboard.'

‘Which one?'

Joe gestures vaguely. Thelma and Lizzie share a glance and keep laughing. He stalks off.

Later that night, he stands on the cottage verandah and talks at Lizzie through the screen. ‘Why do you always treat me bad in front of Thelma?'

‘What?' Lizzie rolls her garters over her thighs. ‘It was a joke.'

‘Am I laughing?'

Lizzie comes out to him and puts her arms around his waist. She speaks into his shoulderblades. ‘Were you really hurt?'

He doesn't say anything, but cups his hands over hers. ‘Just want to know you love me.'

‘'Course I do.' She runs her hands down his back, slides her fingers along his arms. He doesn't move. She wonders if she's going to lose him over something so trivial and promises herself that she'll never lust after another man, after McWilliams, again. Joe's hers. ‘I do love you,' she says.

He grabs her hands, turns around and kisses her, and she feels the power in the movement of his body. She'll make sure Thelma only comes round when he's not there. She'll understand; she's a good friend.

The woman who looks after Thelma's boy gets sick, so Thelma brings him in. They take turns watching him between men, make up a bed for him in the kitchen at the back of the cottage and lock him in when they're both busy. He sleeps fitfully, spasming in his dreams, fists pumping. Lizzie thought only dogs did that, and Thelma says he does it all the time. Lizzie would like to feel something for this child, but she's too frightened.

He wakes up to tell her his dream of a blue starfish that sucked on his earlobe until his ear fell off, and she doesn't know how to react. He asks her to lie next to him, so she stretches out stiffly on the sheets, the lino pressed against her back. He kicks her thigh in his sleep – ‘He does that all the time too,' Thelma says. He seems fascinated by the workings of his own body. He likes to inspect his snot. He draws a picture and gives it to his mum, and she fastens it to her door with string on a hook, showing him as she does it. He jumps up and down, flapping his hands in excitement.

A black man who visits Thelma that night says her son's skilled, he'd like to show him how to paint someday. Thelma touches her son's sleeping head. When another man comes in, Lizzie hears Thelma pointing the picture out to him. A moment of silence between the two of them as they look.

Lying on the thin mattress in the kitchen, Lizzie hears a woman's voice on the verandah. She goes out to see who it is; this time of night, it's mostly just men. In the doorway she halts. Dolly. Joe's standing close, his head tilted down to her. Lizzie opens her mouth to demand what Dolly's doing here, but then Joe laughs. Lizzie stops. Hovers in the darkness, wondering if she's been missing something. She's spent so much energy hiding her feelings for other men, it hasn't occurred to her seriously that Joe's been looking at someone else too. And now here this bitch is in her black dress with lace at the sleeves and hem, and her obsidian beads plunging down her neckline, flirting with him. Her hands are on her hips, and she rocks back on one leg, pressing against the heel of her shoe so her toe points up and towards Joe.

Lizzie can't take it. ‘What're you doing here?'

Joe and Dolly turn to her, Dolly's blonde bob swishing around her ears.

‘She's just been playing fan-tan,' Joe says.

Lizzie stands next to him, their arms touching. The gas lamp reflects off a jet brooch on Dolly's shoulder, sends two starbursts of light right at Lizzie.

‘Yeah, sorry,' Dolly says. She glances back up the street, towards Bea and the fan-tan parlour. ‘It's just, I told Colin I'd be here. Thought we could use the bedroom for a while.'

‘Well, you can bloody well tell him that you can't.'

Dolly slides her eyes back to Lizzie and then up to Joe. ‘Your hubby said you weren't that busy, thought I might –'

‘No.' How could Joe just let Dolly walk in here and then offer her Lizzie's bedroom? Have that man over while she's still in the house?

‘Come on, peach,' he says. ‘Dolly says it'll only be for an hour or so.'

‘No bloody way.' She's on the edge of something. She'd like to clout Dolly right across her overdone face.

‘Betty –' Dolly gazes at her with her chin lowered and her eyes wide, as though Lizzie's some bloke going to fall for that trick. She can't handle the way Dolly uses her name.

‘Joe, tell her she can't stay.'

‘I can't see why –'

‘What flamin' use are you? Tell her to wait her turn.' Glaring up at his puzzled face, she'd like to clout him too.

‘It's alright, Joe,' Dolly says. ‘I'll go find Colin, ask him to meet me somewhere else.' She already has her back turned, ready to leave.

Thelma walks out, holding her boy. ‘What's going on?'

Dolly eyes off Thelma's son. ‘So you turn me out, but have this baby in here with you? Hell sort of operation is this? You're putting the men off.'

‘Fuck you,' Lizzie says, and Dolly moves for her then, her hands out and clawed. Joe's body comes in between them, rocked by Dolly's on the other side. Lizzie reaches out to get at her, but Joe pushes her back, his hand flat on her chest. ‘Leave it.'

‘She's the one went for me,' Lizzie says, struggling.

Dolly steps out of Joe's reach.

‘Reckon you should go,' he tells her.

She shrugs. ‘Was about to.' She walks down the stairs off the verandah and into the darkness. Appears again under a streetlight, heading towards the road.

Lizzie glares at Joe. ‘Hell, why'd you tell her she could use my room?'

‘Last I looked you were sleeping with Thelma's boy,' he says, and she faces away from him. To her back he says, ‘Really shouldn't have that kid here, but.' She shuts her eyes and doesn't respond.

When Thelma and her son leave in the early morning, the boy hugs Lizzie unexpectedly. He does this all the time, to everyone, Thelma says. He lies with his cheek pressed against his mum's shoulder, his lips puffer-fishing. Lizzie thinks his father must be a white man, his skin is that light. Thelma carries him out into the darkness, his head bouncing on her shoulder. A longing kicks Lizzie right in the stomach to hold a baby like that, but as Thelma and the boy dissolve in the night, she sees the weakness of them both, Thelma tied to him and never escaping. Lizzie's going places bigger than that.

McWilliams stands out the back of fifty-three and calls to Lizzie. She's pressed under Old Bill and sighs when she hears him. Picks his bloody moments. Bill looks down, sweat dripping off his face onto hers. He shudders, collapses on top of her. She lies still for a polite amount of time and tries to slide her body out from under. He's too heavy. Crushed, she's short of breath, lungs compressed. She moves a foot from beneath him. He grunts. She freezes, waiting to see if he'll react any more, but he's completely passed out.

McWilliams calls her again. ‘Hang on a tick,' she whispers, hopes he hears and shuts up. It's embarrassing, having him turn up while this fella's ten tons of weight lies on top of her. She tries again to escape – she's slick with Bill's sweat, but the bloke has her pinned. He snores, and she shuts her eyes. ‘I'm stuck,' she calls faintly to McWilliams.

‘What?' His voice is too loud.

‘Shhh. Got a dead weight on me.'

‘Should I go?'

Bill wriggles in his sleep, settles more heavily on her. She sucks in air and heaves upwards with her chest, tries to bend her elbows so that she can sit, gets a glimpse of freedom, but her arms give out. With a sigh, she tells McWilliams, ‘I can't see you right now. Bugger off.' His footsteps on the grass fade away.

She puts her head outside after Bill wakes up. She can't call McWilliams' name with Joe on the front verandah, and she can't see him hanging around. A bat wings down the corridor of the river, seems to crash into a tree, then clings to the bouncing branch. These creatures bring a sharp scent, potent, haunting the windows of the cottage. Their droppings change colour depending on the time of year, and cling, pulpy, to the paint, the stairs, the omnibuses of Townsville.

She pictures the imprint Old Bill will leave on her bed, a padded indentation heavy with grease, and feels her own impression will be so light that she won't leave a mark, she won't be missed, can be replaced by anyone. She's strangely comforted by this, to know she can walk away from here at any time and someone will take her place. But despite her own weightlessness, she's tied here.

The bat takes off. The branch, lightened, springs into the sky.

Lizzie goes to sit on the back verandah, and Thelma emerges from the darkness of the yard. She's got a man walking a couple of paces behind her; he's tied to her at his belt with a ribbon that runs from the waist of her dress. ‘Look,' she calls to Lizzie, ‘I have to drag 'em now.' But the man seems to be enjoying himself well enough, trotting along with a grin. Thelma brings him up the stairs. He holds on to the ribbon, the trail that leads to her, and looks at Lizzie. She smiles at him, but his face doesn't change, he hasn't stopped grinning.

When Thelma comes out of her room with him later, he's still wearing the grin. She gives him a cheerful wave, lets the darkness suck him away. She and Lizzie sit on the couches in the lounge, their legs over the arms, and share a longneck. Thelma tells Lizzie that the man comes up to Townsville this time every year because his friend died in the meatworkers' strike. ‘He spends the afternoon at the cemetery, then has a flutter with the ghost of his friend at his shoulder, is what he said. Last night he won ten pounds and was about to be fleeced, so I stepped in, took him under my wing.' She takes a slug, scrunches her face, complains about the bubbles. ‘He's a gentle fella,' she says.

‘Probably could have taken all his money yourself, he was that docile.'

‘Where's the fun in that?'

Lizzie puts her hand out for the longneck, and Thelma passes it over. ‘He had sad eyes,' she says.

Lizzie's struck by the sentimentality of this and is embarrassed. She wants to be emotionally detached, treat the men like they're nothing, in the same way that men work in the soup queue she's seen at the railway yards, dishing out the stew with even strokes as though they have mechanical arms. But when Lizzie's happy with a man, she can't help but think there's something significant to it, or that there should be. McWilliams comes to her mind, with his kiss in the dark behind her house, and she wonders if her response to him, her longing, means nothing or everything. She needs to stop this, return to Joe and make herself love him again. This thing with McWilliams is just a passing feeling.

She finds Joe smoking at the back of the cottage and cuddles up to him, is pleased when he responds with an erection. His kisses linger on her mouth. He smells of tobacco and underarms. She loves this odour; her father used too much aftershave, so she hates artificial smells on men. She washes their faces too, as part of the cleaning ritual, if they smell too badly of Pinaud.