Roadside Sisters (26 page)

‘Anyway, it’s only football,’ said Meredith.

Only
football? Nina would have laughed if she’d had the energy. Meredith didn’t understand that most of Nina’s adult life had been ruled by goal umpires—the loathed men in white coats who adjudicated between the posts and semaphored success or failure. At any time during those years when he had played first grade, Brad was one whistle-blow away from despair. And when he was down like that, he wouldn’t talk, wouldn’t take any interest . . . in anything. He left the care of their sons, their house and their lives to her. Nina may have been a spectator, but she’d been in the game as much as anyone on the team.

Nina had nursed Brad’s corked thighs, ministered to his bruised shoulders, massaged his knotted muscles—
glutei maximi
and
medii
,
gastrocnemii
,
tibiales
,
deltoids
,
pectorals
,
latissimi.
She could name every sinew, ligament and joint. She had more knowledge of the intricate workings of the male groin than any woman should ever have been expected to acquire. Nina inhabited the black-and-blue landscape of her husband’s skin. It was more familiar to her than her own body.

Back then Nina had imagined that, when Brad retired, he might ‘settle down’, although she didn’t quite know what that meant. Wasn’t sure what she was wishing for. All she knew was that, every time her small boys heard that Richmond had lost a game, they would run upstairs to their rooms, dreading the slam of the front door that announced their father was home. And every time they did that, it was as if they were trampling Nina’s heart underfoot. Brad didn’t shout at her or the boys—Nina supposed she should be grateful for that—but
his brooding, silent presence sucked the joy and light out of the house.

When Brad did finally hang up his football boots, things got worse. There had been the mandatory round of boozy testimonials and media tributes, but they were over within a month. Nina had hoped Brad might find a job with her father’s food import business, in a sports store, an office or as a commentator. Instead, he had spent the next football season at home, refusing to find a job, watching the matches on television. He played and replayed the games, and raged at the screen. When the offer of the team manager’s job came, Nina had surrendered, embracing Richmond Football Club as The Way, The Truth and The Light. Football was not a sport—it was a religion. That’s what everyone said, and in Nina’s house it was true. She saw herself crucified in a black guernsey, decorated with a martyr’s yellow sash.

Brad would never understand what his football career had cost his wife. For nine months of the year there was never a weekend the family could call its own. She could never speak freely when she left the house. Brad had warned her that anyone she might meet would have their own team allegiances. In any seemingly innocent social situation, a West Coast Eagle, a Sydney Swan or a Collingwood Magpie would pounce on a crumb of a secret she might drop and flap back to a rival nest with it.

Nina now felt uneasy at any gathering outside the family. She couldn’t trust herself. It was not in her nature to keep secrets . . . mostly because she couldn’t tell what was a secret and what wasn’t. A few times she’d confided in one of the mothers from school, only to be met by gales of laughter—that
‘secret’ had been on the news last night! So, year by year she had found her social circle dwindling. She now mixed mostly with the wives of other past players, who were in the same predicament—their husbands’ old jealousies and rivalries haunted every conversation.

Now, as team manager, Brad was on call 24/7. The phone rang incessantly. Brad assumed she knew by heart the medical records and match performances of dozens of players; the names of the sponsors, the coaching staff and the board members; the history of the club and all the words of its song. And when, one by one, Jordan, Anton and then Marko had announced that they wanted to play for the Mighty Tigers one day, the final siren sounded for Nina—she could see her future stretching before her, divided into endless twenty-minute quarters.

‘I once added up how many pairs of football boots I’ve bought,’ said Nina. ‘It was fifty-two. Just once, I would have liked to have bought a pair of pink slides with butterflies on them, or a pair of patent leather Mary Janes with a little buckle on the side. I wish the twins had been girls.’

‘Oh, Nina,’ Meredith scolded, ‘you don’t mean that.’

‘Maybe you’ll have grandchildren one day.’ Annie kindly came to her rescue as she poked at the fire. ‘All girls. You can buy as many pink shoes as you want.’

‘I’m going to tell you a secret,’ Nina announced, ‘and then you both have to tell one too.’ Annie nodded her agreement. Anything that might cheer Nina up was worth a try. Meredith was also glad for the diversion. She was huddled in her chair, wrapped in her
Rajasthani pink
pashmina shawl, her face
warmed by the blaze and remembering her Girl Guide days. She had been just about to suggest they sing a hearty round of ‘Ging Gang Gooley’.

‘I want my own café,’ Nina declared. ‘I want to cook. I’ve got the whole idea in my head. There’s an old bakery in Balaclava for rent. I could do big home-made breakfasts—Symyky fritters, grilled chicken and pork sosysky. Big stuffed rye and black bread sandwiches for lunches and precooked things people could take home for dinner. Real traditional Ukrainian dishes—potato pancakes with sour cream, boiled cabbage dumplings and meat dishes like kotlety, shpyndra, sicheniki. And for dessert I could do sweet little pampushky filled with poppy seeds and tossed in cinnamon. I’d have a long table down the middle, and smaller tables off to the side. I’d paint the whole room pink and call the place Nina’s.’

There it was at last. Nina’s secret cherished plan had made itself known. There was silence and Nina had expected it. She was sure that Annie and Meredith, both successful business-women, couldn’t possibly think she had enough talent to make a go of it.

‘
Prussian blue
would be preferable.’ Meredith finally spoke. ‘Better for the digestion. You get pink and all that heavy food, and it would be too much.’

‘I know that place,’ Annie added. ‘It’s been up for rent for a while. I reckon I could help you get a good deal on it. But that doesn’t have to be a secret, Nina. It’s a plan. A good one too. You should do it.’ She reached over and clinked her glass with Nina’s.

‘I guess I’ve kept it secret from my mother and Brad. They can only see me at home with the boys. But they’d cope, wouldn’t they? I could be back home in time to make their dinner.’

‘They’d
have
to cope,’ said Meredith. ‘And it would do them good. Your future daughters-in-law will thank you every day of their married lives.’

Nina was thrilled with their votes of confidence. She sat back and nursed her drink. Her hands were trembling. She was already behind the counter ladling steaming borscht into bowls.

‘Now it’s your turn, Meredith.’ Annie took up the wine bottle and filled her glass. It seemed to her that the flames of the camp fire flickered with an almost supernatural intensity.

Meredith leaned back in her chair. She couldn’t remember ever seeing so many stars—an immense, broad canvas of glittering eternity, tonight as close as her own bedroom ceiling.

‘I painted Donald’s den that colour on purpose. I was sick of him being in there for hours talking on the phone, working at his stupid computer on his ridiculous ideas, leaving his toenail clippings on my pure wool carpet, taking up useable space. We’d run out of things to talk about after nearly thirty years and all I could see ahead was another thirty years of vacuuming around him, cleaning whiskers out of the sink, wiping his muddy boot prints off the parquet floors. To be perfectly frank, Donald had become just one more thing to dust.

‘I spent weeks looking at paint charts trying to decide what colour would annoy him the most and, when I found a lovely grey named after a duck—
mallard grey
—that was it! Donald in his mallard grey duck den! I don’t think he ever got the joke.
I’ve turned the room into a place for gift-wrapping. I believe Martha Stewart has just such a room, and now, so do I. You can’t tell anyone I did it on purpose though. It’s a secret. But I’m glad I shared it with you.’

Annie and Nina weren’t sure whether to laugh or cry. To think that the dynamic partnership of Donald and Meredith—their shared artistic passion and determination to change the world—had come down to whiskers and muddy boot prints? And that Meredith had chased him out of the house as if she was taking a broom to trespassing poultry?

Annie disappeared from the circle of light and raided the haul of stolen scraps she’d stashed under the van for the fire. Her petty thievery from the nearby cabin woodpiles might be something she’d keep to herself. As she turned back to the fire with her arms full of offerings for the blaze she thought of what secret she might give up.

Annie could have come up with more hair-raising tales of illicit and outrageous behaviour that would have shocked her companions, but that wouldn’t have been in the spirit of things. So perhaps, she thought, now was the time to trust her companions with her secret. Maybe this was the real reason she’d decided to come on this trip. To find a time to tell it and rid herself of the burden that seemed to be getting heavier with each passing year.

When the fire was stoked once more, Annie began. ‘This is a strange secret, because I think I’ve kept it from myself more than I’ve kept it from anyone else.’ She paused to consider how she might best continue.

‘When I was eight, my six-year-old sister drowned in our dam.’ In her mind’s eye, Annie saw the flat oval muddy surface of the water blink in surprise.

‘I remember Dad running up to the house with Lizzie in his arms and her long black hair dripping. The drops of water made little round marks in the dust. I remember thinking that even a black tracker would never be able to find someone who’d drowned and been carried away, because I watched the drops sink into the brown earth and disappear. Water’s not like blood that stays there, and you can follow the trail.

‘The last time I saw Lizzie was in Dad’s arms—her hair was swinging and the sun was shining through the water. It was this beautiful rainbow spray. It’s weird because I can’t remember the funeral or anything else after that.

‘When I was a kid, I was always trying to follow trails of water ’cause I thought they might lead me to Lizzie. Even now, when I see water dripping on a floor or a path, I have to follow the drops. It’s silly, I know, but it’s this compulsion. I have to do it, just in case . . . As if I’d find Lizzie in a bucket, or at the end of a garden hose!

‘Every time I see a rainbow on a wet day I imagine that Lizzie might be at the end of it. I remember my mother crying endlessly for Lizzie—for years, really. And I think I made my mind up then that I never wanted a child of my own. I was scared to love someone that much and then lose them like that. I think I’ve only just realised it now. I know that sounds stupid, but driving away from everything has given me some sort of perspective on it all, I guess.

‘I’m sure that’s why I married Cameron. Deep down I knew he was gay, that he’d leave and we’d never have kids. And in some ways, I think I’ve chosen every man I’ve had a relationship with for the same reason. Every time I met a man who said he wanted kids, I ran away. And now I’m probably at the age where I might not get to have them . . .’

Nina and Meredith sat forward in their chairs. They began to protest that she did have time to have children, she could adopt . . . Annie headed off their sympathies. She’d heard it all before.

‘No. Really. And I don’t want you to feel sorry for me. I’m fine with it. I’m relieved to tell you the truth. I saw how my mother grieved after Lizzie left us, and I don’t ever want that for myself. So that’s my secret. And you’re the first people I’ve told it to.’

Nina and Meredith could say nothing. As mothers, they had both lived with the daily dread of losing a child. They understood Annie had entrusted them with a precious secret. It was one secret Nina vowed she would always keep.

Annie let her mind reel back to her childhood. After Lizzie died she had always tried to stay close to her mother. She knew, even then, that with her father away with the cows in the paddocks all day, it had been up to her to fill the old house with the noise of childhood. If she could laugh loudly enough, play happily enough, catch her mother’s attention—then perhaps Jean wouldn’t notice Lizzie was gone.

Annie had sat at her mother’s feet listening to the soft whirr of the sewing machine. She would trawl through the pile of fabric scraps and tack together small triangles or squares
of stripes and florals to make dresses for her dollies. Everything was dutifully held up for her mother’s inspection. Everything was extravagantly praised.

‘Just lovely! You are a clever girl. One day, Annie my darling, you’ll be able to sew for your own children. And you
must
have children. At least four. They’ll all play together and watch out for each other.’

Annie thought of the small space by her mother’s feet under the sewing table. She could smell the rich, dark tang of sewing-machine oil, hear the clunk of pinking shears on wood as they chewed through fabric . . . and her mother crying. Blizzards of linen and cotton threads had floated through the air and Annie had imagined she was looking out the window of a fairytale through falling snow. The swish of a satin evening skirt or a silky petticoat would drape and billow from above, falling and blocking her view. The curtain at the end of a play.

All over Treachery Beach Camp, through the branches of paperbark and ti-trees, Annie could see the twinkle of small camp fires. How many secrets were being shared tonight, she wondered. How many friendships were being forged in the heart of those flames?

‘
Jesus on the main line, tell Him what you want
,’ she sang softly.

‘Jesus on the main line, tell Him what you want,
’ Nina joined the refrain.

‘Jesus on the main line, tell Him what you want,
’ Meredith completed the trio.