Desert Fish (11 page)

I thought of Lexie then, and I wanted to see her. If I could undo what had happened, if I could make it into something else, then things might be okay, everything else might come good too. Lexie would like it if I asked her advice, I thought. She would like it if I confided in her. She might know what to do.

I picked up my plate and carried it to the sink.

‘Not hungry?' my mum said.

‘Not really.' I tried to smile. ‘I might have something later.'

 

There were fifty leaflets, written in my father's awkward capitals with a crude picture of a paintbrush on one side. My mother had stencilled them on the Rhoneo in the municipal library. The smell of the ink still hung thick about them. I put them straight into my bag so Pete wouldn't see them.

I could feel the heat of the paving stones through my sandals. I made my way along four streets without depositing a single one. I had not yet decided what to do.

When I got to the main street Lexie was standing outside Alderson's Pharmacy, smoking.

‘What are you doing here?' she asked.

I shrugged. ‘Just out,' I said. ‘Are you allowed to do that?' I pointed at the cigarette.

‘I'm on my break,' she said. ‘And I'm outside the shop, so I can do what I like.' She fiddled with her hair and stared across the street as if I wasn't there.

I looked at the ground. In my sandals, my toes were shaded with dust. You could see the grimy outline that I'd sweated into the soles.

‘How are things with your dad's business?' Lexie asked. She looked at me very deliberately as she said it, drawing back on her cigarette.

‘Fine, I s'pose,' I said. ‘Why are you so interested?'

‘I'm not,' Lexie said. ‘Calm down. I was only asking.' She knew something I didn't and she was pleased with herself. I decided to ignore this. I thought I might put things right if I could manage it.

‘You haven't been around,' I said. ‘I wondered what you'd been up to?'

‘Not much point. I don't fancy Pete anymore,' Lexie said.

‘Don't you?' I said, forgetting to be hurt or insulted, because I was so relieved. ‘That's good.'

‘Why?'

‘Why what?'

‘Why is it good?'

‘I don't know …' I heard my voice fade away. I stepped closer. ‘Give me that,' I said, taking Lexie's ciggie and sucking on it.

She watched me. ‘What's with you?'

‘Lexie, something happened. With me and Pete.'

She snorted. ‘I don't believe it.'

‘No, it did. So I'm glad you don't like him. Because I really like him.'

Lexie rested an elbow in the palm of her other hand. Her cigarette jutted into the air. She crossed one foot in front of the other in a sculpted sort of pose and I felt a little intimidated.

‘What happened, then?' she asked.

I paused and wondered how to say it. ‘Everything,' I whispered, blushing furiously.

‘Really. At your house?'

‘No. At the river.'

‘The river.'

‘The night of the party,' I said. ‘After you went.' I looked down and concentrated on the grey dust and the walked-in pats of old chewing gum dotting the concrete. ‘But Lexie,' I said. ‘I wondered. It only happened once and nothing since. And I don't know what to do.'

‘You want him to do it to you again?'

‘Yes,' I said, quietly.

Lexie flicked some cigarette ash at the ground. ‘Well, geez, Gilly. I'm not your love coach.'

‘I was only asking. Because I thought you might know.'

‘Why would I know?'

‘Because you've had … boyfriends, you know … experience.' I looked at my sandals.

‘Experience.' She snorted. ‘The way you see things, Gilly, sometimes I wonder.' She folded her arms now and squinted to look into my face. The sun was in her eyes
but she must have wanted me to feel the full force of her meaning. ‘It's the sort of thing I'd expect your dad to say,' she said.

I stared down at my feet. When I could look at her again I saw that Lexie was smiling to herself. ‘Bernie came in here,' she said. ‘After your party.'

‘Did he?'

‘Yeah. He looked pretty pleased to see me. He's nice, isn't he?'

I shrugged. ‘He's alright.'

‘He asked me out.'

‘Are you going to go?'

‘I already did. And he's asked me again. He's dead funny, isn't he?'

‘You reckon?' I tried not to sound surprised.

‘Yeah. And he knows how to behave. If you know what I mean?'

I turned around when Lexie said that, so that the sun would be in my eyes too. I said nothing for a moment. I let the light blind me and then put a hand to my brow to screen it. When I turned back to Lexie everything was a little hazy like I wanted. I had a feel of what was coming and I wanted to soften the moment and make it less real.

‘So,' she said, ‘are you going to tell me if your dad's doing his painting business, then?'

‘S'pose he is.'

‘Not with Bernie though.'

‘Dunno. Bernie's not been around.'

Lexie smirked. ‘Is Pete still thinking of joining in?'

‘I don't know. Maybe.'

Lexie dropped her cigarette butt to the ground and covered it with her sandal.

‘Why do you want to know anyway?' I didn't mean it to sound aggressive but that was how it came out.

‘I reckon he's a bit of a creep, eh Gilly, your dad? Trying to feel me up all the time.' Lexie folded her arms and I knew I had to meet her eye. ‘Is he like that with all the girls?' she said. ‘Bernie says he is.'

Shame crept in a bright warm blush from my neck and into my face.

She continued. ‘And your mother, fawning over him all the time as if nothing's going on. It makes me sick. She treats me like some sort of low-life, sticks her nose up at my clothes all the time and not a word to your dad about his sleazy carry-on.'

I had to say something because I couldn't bear her having this moment at my expense. It wasn't fair.

I backed away from her and the words peeled away as if they'd been mine in the first place. ‘It's because you're a tease,' I said. My voice was hard, my tone was deliberate and I knew Lexie would be no friend of mine now. ‘You're a tease,' I repeated. ‘Pete reckons you are. And I think he's right.'

I turned then, and I ran. I ran for four blocks until I was too hot to go any further. My underarms were slippery and crescents of damp ringed the sides of my top. My fingers were swollen. I walked along the length of Lennox
Avenue that did not have a single tree to shade me, but only a path of parched yellow grass, until I reached our town's only industrial estate. There was a shed at the end of the block, clad in corrugated iron.
JW Albright
, its sign said.
Painting and Decorating, Interiors and Exteriors
.

I was never going to be able to put things right now, and I was tired of being carried along with it all – my dad and his whims and my mum doing nothing about it.

I didn't go inside Albright's. I stood at the mailbox and pushed a leaflet inside, being careful not to burn my fingers on the bright metal lid. One would have been enough, but I let another go and I was sure I felt a weight lift as I did so. Then the door opened and a man in overalls came out. He walked towards the mailbox, lifting his arm in what might have been a gesture of greeting, or he might have been shooing me away. I didn't wait to find out. I dropped the rest of my father's leaflets into the letterbox and darted away before he could call out.

I went home the way I had come, and all the way I felt like I was made of something flimsy and complicated, knotted around pockets of air.

The feeling did not last. When I got home I felt ill in my stomach. I decided to stay outdoors until I had absorbed my lie and could face my parents without giving myself away.

I walked the perimeter of our yard. Despite my mother's efforts, her cottage garden was struggling. The sun squeezed living things from the soil like splinters from flesh. The marigold was dying. The tops of its roots were exposed where the soil had cracked with thirst. Now the plant perched at an angle, desolate.

In the backyard the grass under the mango tree was patchy and colourless, blending with the dirt. But even away from the tree where there was nothing else to compete for the goodness in the soil, the lawn did not thrive. At the back near the fence was a wooden plinth with my mother's rain gauge on it, and at the bottom of that were the faint traces of minerals, the crystals forming
a rough pattern where the last beads of moisture had been drawn away by the sun.

I flopped down near the mango tree and dropped my face into my hands.

I stayed there in the grainy shade for nearly an hour. I watched my mother carry a tub of dishwater out the back door and around to her cottage garden. When she brought it back empty a moment later, she stopped and looked my way. I'd curled up and now lay on my side in the dirt beneath the tree. I heard her put the tub down and then she was there beside me.

‘What are you doing, Gilly?'

I didn't answer her.

‘What on earth are you doing? He'll be home any minute.' She whispered but anger and urgency made her words too loud for discretion. ‘Don't let him see you like this. Gilly?' She prodded me. ‘Oh, Gilly! Don't be such an idiot.' She prodded me again but I made myself go floppy. ‘God, I can't bear to watch this.' She left me and I heard the screen door bang shut behind her.

When I knew she was gone I opened my eyes and shifted my feet and watched the small puffs of dust rise around them.

By the time Pete came outside I'd sat up.

‘What's the matter, Gilly?'

‘Nothing.'

‘Is it me?'

‘No. Did my mother say something to you?'

‘Have you told her?'

‘No.'

He sat down. ‘Is it something I've done, Gilly?'

‘No,' I said. ‘Of course not.' I thought of the empty weeks since I'd lain with him by the river and I wondered how I should say it. ‘Maybe it's something you haven't done.'

He swallowed. The muscles of his throat tightened, and when they relaxed I saw the faint pulsing, the movement of the things inside that I could not reach. ‘Gilly,' he said, ‘I don't know if it's such a good idea.'

‘If what's such a good idea?'

Gently he put his hand on mine. ‘I can't let it happen again, Gilly. Not under your parents' roof.'

‘Oh,' I said, but in my head I was only hearing,
Not under your parents' roof
.

‘I hope you can understand, Gilly.'

‘I just saw Lexie, you know.'

‘Did you?'

‘She told me something that was true.'

‘Gilly, I don't want to hurt you.'

I lay back. A rosella landed noisily on the waratah bush across the fence in Mrs Delaney's garden. ‘Listen to that racket,' I said.

Three more birds joined it.

Pete turned and watched them clinging to the flowers. ‘I used to work on farms,' he said, ‘where birds like that came in clouds to the trees beside the fields.'

I watched his mouth forming the words. I remembered the feel of his lips moving over mine.

‘After the hailstorms,' he continued, ‘you could pick up birds, cockatoos and cockatiels. They got knocked out by the ice. It was as if stones had been thrown at them. You wouldn't think a bit of water could knock out a bird like that.'

‘What did you do with them?' I asked.

‘Sold them, Gilly,' Pete said. ‘The ones that survived. People will pay a lot for a bird like that. And when a storm comes out of nowhere and wipes out a crop and your job, well, you've got to make the most of the situation, or you'll just get run down by circumstance.' He looked at me then. ‘Do you know what I mean, Gilly?'

I didn't answer right away. I was thinking of the birds and if they'd feel anything lying there, stunned and still. I wondered if you'd feel their hearts fluttering when you held them in your hands.

‘How do you know if they're dead?' I asked him.

He looked away and said, ‘Sometimes you don't. You just collect them up and put them in a box and wait and see.'

‘Do you think they panic when they wake up?'

Pete sighed. ‘Do you know what I'm trying to say, Gilly?' he said.

‘Yes,' I told him. ‘Of course I do.'

But I wasn't sure. I was thinking of Lexie and my dad and how my mum looked at me from the back step. I was thinking about love knowing when it's at home, and
not under your parents' roof
. I was wondering about all these things and trying to put them together with me in the
middle. And more than anything I was trying to work out where I might fit into Pete's little tale about the birds.

 

Just because a man touches you doesn't mean he's in love. My mother told me that so often that I can't even remember the first time she said it. It was already familiar when Yvonne Martin was my dad's special friend. So of course I knew my dad would stop seeing her when my mum said so, and I knew before Mrs Martin did when that was going to be.

Hovering in her living room doorway her eyes shifted from my father to me.

‘Do you …' she began, and then dragged a hand through a sprayed curl, pulling it almost straight, like a pipe cleaner. She looked to my father. ‘Does she …' But she didn't ask the question. She didn't know what to do, because I was not behaving as I was supposed to. I should have gone straight outside, and instead here I was, standing as my mother had instructed, waiting for my father to understand what was to happen next. He, at least, appeared relaxed. He rarely came unhinged in awkward situations. He could improvise and make do.

‘Maybe I should make a drink,' Mrs Martin said, at last. ‘I could bring you a drink outside, Gilly? Would you like to play in Kerry's sandpit?'

‘I don't think so,' I said. I shifted from one foot to the other. ‘My mother says I'm to stay indoors.' I looked to
my father. ‘She says you shouldn't send me outside all the time.' I sat down.

‘Ah well,' my dad said. He looked relieved. ‘That's that, Vonnie. Time's up.'

‘Are we going home?' I asked.

‘In a tick.'

He leaned back into his seat and rolled a cigarette. Yvonne Martin looked deflated.

‘But Creighton,' she said, stepping away from the doorway and dropping into a chair. ‘Surely we could …'

My dad squinted against the smoke that drifted from his roll-up and past his eye. ‘Yvonne,' he warned. ‘Not in front of –' He jerked his head in my direction. ‘Not in front of the little Missy. We'll have a cuppa, love, and then we'll be off.'

My dad finished his roll-up in silence and then went to make the tea. Yvonne Martin sat on the couch, desolate. She curled her fingers into her palms and stared at them. The tap ran and I heard my dad clanking around, probably washing cups in that dirty kitchen. When the kettle began to whistle Mrs Martin looked up, as if surprised to see me still sitting there.

‘Oh,' she said. ‘Gilly. I thought you were in the kitchen with Creighton. Do you want to play in Kerry's room while I talk with your dad?'

Her eyes were dewy and there was the sweet, fermented smell of her breath. She dropped her gaze after a minute, as if she couldn't bear to look at me.

‘No,' I told her. ‘I'd better not.' I sat further back in
my chair, pushing my hands under my thighs. With her limp hair and creased face, Yvonne Martin didn't seem like a grown woman, or even a person. She seemed like a bird to me – a pigeon, greasy-feathered and weary. A feeling that was almost sympathy washed over me and it seemed important to say a little more, to soften the edges of what was happening, to explain. Cautiously, I told her, ‘You mustn't worry, Mrs Martin. My father, you know, he just can't help himself. But it doesn't mean anything.' Considering my mother, I added, ‘Love knows where it belongs, Mrs Martin.'

Her mouth dropped into a soft ‘O' and she put her hand out to me, but I stepped away. Mrs Martin pushed her face into her hands and began to weep. She was like that. She was the sort of person who would weep noisily, right there in front of you. I watched, half amazed, half disgusted.

But then something new rose in me: a feeling with no name that unravelled and pulsed, making my arms shake. My throat felt swollen, as if I couldn't swallow. I stared into the carpet with determined concentration. There was enough to look at: the patterned swirl in maroon and cream, its texture and detail enriched with bits of fluff and lint, the dust that had been walked into the weave. I noticed that the skirting board needed to be cleaned, there were moth husks collected along where it met the carpet. I imagined myself becoming smaller and smaller, as small as those shells of moths. As small as a carpet beetle, crawling inside the gritty fibres. I felt dizzy, but
I didn't look up. The feeling was still there, and I knew that if I did not see Mrs Martin, I could make it go away. That was the most important thing. To make the feeling go away.