The Lost Child (30 page)

Mum waits until the side gate clicks closed then she comes at me. ‘You're fifteen!' she screams. ‘Barely fifteen!' Then she's hitting at me with wild, spinning arms. ‘After all I've done for you.' Hitting me about the head, ears, face, neck, shoulders, arms, anywhere, everywhere. ‘Who do you think you are?'
Hit. Hit.
‘You ungrateful.'
Hit.
‘Selfish.'
Hit.
‘Brat.'
Hit. Hit.
‘After giving up my whole life.'
Hit. Hit.
‘For you.'
Hit.
‘Putting.'
Hit.
‘You.'
Hit. Hit.
‘Before.'
Hit.
‘Everything.'
Hit. Hit.

At first I hold up my arms to ward off her blows but she has a crazy mad look in her eyes that makes me feel half-crazy too. ‘Don't hit me!' I yell. ‘Don't. Hit. Me.' Our arms spin like windmills and I hit so hard that I can hardly feel where she's hitting me. I hit and hit but she keeps slapping and whacking until our arms are all tangled up in an embrace of rage and hate so huge that all I want to do is hit her and hit her and hurt her. For the dirty word divorce. For not being my father. For not being Dunc. For blaming me. For Pardie leaving. For Will Pickles not being Elvis. For him not wanting me. For the kittens the kittens the kittens.
For all she's done for me.
For
putting me before everything
. For sleeping with me. Smothering me. Not seeing me. And I hit and hit and hit until she stops. Then I stop too.

She leans over the table, shoulders shaking. The foghorn has stopped too and there's only the sound of our breathing, loud and uneven. Her hair is all messed up and I can see the scar on her skull, tiny and white. I wait for her to turn, to say something—anything—but she doesn't.

In the spare room, I pull back the bedspread and make up the single bed.

23

Burley Point has been partying. All down Main Street, balloons are bunched on telephone poles; coloured streamers litter the path outside the Institute and hundreds more are draped on top of the Christmas decorations on the roundabout pine. There's a white cowboy hat on the rotunda roof, and someone's pants are tied to the top of the flagpole, fat legs filled with a stiff breeze.

I prop on my bike and look over the bay. Everything seems the same. The usual Sunday morning quiet. A whisper of pink on the horizon. All the boats out. A few kids in the playground. Lanky Evans on the steps of his van in the caravan park. Yet something is different.

Me. I'm different. And Mum? The way she couldn't look at me, the flash of disgust in her eyes as she grunted:
Take this. Get me the
Sunday Mail
and a bottle of milk.

Please?
Of course, I didn't say it.

Pedalling around the lagoon, I tried not to feel the shame between my legs. Now I wonder:
What if I'm pregnant?
It can happen the first time, everyone says. I'd have to leave school. I'd have to get married. Would I want to marry him? Would I have a choice? But would he marry me? I keep getting lost in the questions. Then Roy is skidding to a stop next to me, wheels gouging grass.

‘What happened to you?'

His eyes are innocent, interested, as if he doesn't know about me and Will Pickles. But he must. Surely Chicken would have told the whole town.

‘Whaddya mean?'

‘Last night.' Surely Will wouldn't have? Or would he? Roy smiles at me like he did in First Form when he knew a Latin verb that I didn't, the same dimply grin. ‘You don't know?'

Perhaps he doesn't know?

‘Didn't you hear the foghorn last night? They found oil, drongo. You missed the best party.' He lumps the front wheel of his bike around until he's facing the fish factory. ‘I'm heading out to Big Tree, want to take a look?'

The siren? Not a fog warning. Not a false alarm. Red lights on the drill site: it all fits in. And, of course that's the difference: no thump of drill hitting rock.

Roy is already riding off when I tell him I'll take the milk home and meet him at the bridge if he'll wait. And then I fly along streets like a winged beast instead of a common hussy who has gone all the way with Will Pickles and might become pregnant. I pedal faster than I've ever pedalled before; the breeze slurps down my throat; my thigh muscles stretch like lacker bands ready to snap.

Mum is having a smoke on the back step.

‘They've found oil. Last night. That's what the foghorn was all about.'

She looks at me for a second, surprised, as if she's forgotten we're not speaking.

‘I'm going out to the turn-off.' She looks away quickly, stubs out her butt, and doesn't even reply. As she disappears into the washhouse, my face burns hot. I want to race after her. I want to hit her—hit, hit, hit—like I did last night, like she hit me. But straightaway the crazy mad feeling leaves me and my stomach aches with a kind of empty shame. And the whole way to Stickynet, I try to pedal faster, faster, faster, to find the rage again.

Lizzie is waiting with Chicken and Roy. It's as if she's afraid to look at me, and I'm careful about looking at her.

If I'd expected oil to be gushing into the air and showering everything around, I'm disappointed. The lake is silvery bright in the morning sun and it's hard to see the rig on the other side: there's no burning flame, just greenish black smoke rising off to one side like rubber tyres burning, the same sharp smell.

‘It fountained out last night,' says Chicken. ‘Now they've capped it. I'm gunna leave school and get a job here.'

I watch Chicken carefully, wary of how he might treat me, but he's leaning on the bridge, drooling over the rig, not even bothering about me. ‘So what happens now?'

‘Your uncle gets rich,' says Roy as they climb on their bikes. ‘Bet your old man wished he still owned it.'

Lizzie and I follow down the road. ‘So where did you go?' she asks as the silence between us grows. ‘What were you doing?' But before I can even open my mouth, she tells me how much I missed: that everyone—except us—went to see why the foghorn was wailing. That everyone—except us—joined the people at the dance and had a party in the street. That cars drove around town sounding their horns, and didn't I hear? And Chicken was drinking beer and threw up behind the cafe hedge. Then: ‘So where were you?'

‘With Will Pickles.'

Her front wheel veers off the road. ‘Where?'

‘West End.'

‘And…?' She wobbles back.

Should I tell her? For a while I watch Chicken and Roy, now far ahead. Soon the silence speaks for me and she squeals: ‘You didn't?'

Let her guess.
And she does. A guess so momentous that she stares at me as if I've grown devil horns. ‘How far did you go?'

Behind her head, a yellow vehicle crosses Stickynet and shapes into the council grader, coming closer, growing louder. We push to the side of the road. ‘Five? Six?'

It's my father on the grader.
A Meehan working on the roads,
said Mum when she first heard he had a job with the council.
How
the mighty have fallen. And what does the Queen Bee think about
that?

‘Eight?' says Lizzie, her voice rising in disbelief.

I can't remember whether eight is letting them see your breasts or touching you down below, but the grader is barrelling down the road, smoke pouring from its stack and, before I can reply, Lizzie squeaks: ‘Not ten? You didn't, did you? Not ten?'

For a moment, our eyes meet. I feel suddenly old. And Lizzie seems shocked and suddenly young, like the girl I was before I went to West End with Will Pickles. I wish I could be just like her again. But the grader is almost on top of us and the roar so loud that we both turn to watch as it hurtles past. From his throne above the road, my father waves. My head wrenches around in surprise. It was just a little wave—nothing special—a finger lifted off the wheel the way people do when they're driving. Straightaway I tell myself I must have been mistaken. But as the grader passes, I hear a shout almost drowned out by the engine.
What did he say?
I glance at Lizzie but she's still looking at me as if I'm an alien with two heads and she doesn't seem to have heard. Anyway, what could he have to say to me? Except,
Get out of the way
. I stare after the grader until it disappears around the next corner and only the sound of its full-throttled whine lingers behind.

Lizzie doesn't linger. ‘Well,' she says as she pushes her bike onto the road, ‘you missed everything.' And without looking back, she pedals towards town, leaving me there like a leper.

I open my mouth to call her back, but then I close it again and watch her backside swivelling from side to side as she stands on the pedals and rides away fast. I'm glad I didn't really tell her about Will, glad I made her guess and, as I ride on, I have a big long argument with her in my head where she tells the whole world about me going to ten with Will and I accuse her of lying, of being jealous, of wanting him for herself. I say terrible things about her and, with every push on the pedals, I grind her into the ground.

The road shimmers into water far ahead with Big Tree pointing bare arms into the sky like a giant signpost. Riding towards it, I feel like a dot caught on a road between sea and land. Between Lizzie riding home and me riding away. Between Mum and me in separate beds. Between wanting Elvis and not wanting Will. Between growing up or not. That almost makes me stop. Do I have a choice?

By the time I arrive at the turn-off, Chicken and Roy have disappeared. I can't be bothered following them; no one is going to let them near the oil site, and I don't want to run into Will either. Then, hearing the sound of the grader further down the lane, I decide to ride on. Topping the rise, I find it nosed into a wire-netting barricade pulled across the lane as a temporary gate where the fence separates Uncle Ticker's land from the lake.

Who would have blocked a public road? Esso? Or Uncle Ticker? Why is Dad working on Sunday? And why is he just sitting there with the engine bellowing like an angry bull? The thoughts rush around with no answers and I'm almost ready to leave when I see the Blitz bumping through Bindilla's bottom paddocks, twisting and turning to skirt potholes and rocks, heading towards the grader.

Uncle Ticker arrives before me, jumps down from the Blitz and walks towards the battered fence, cautiously at first. Closer, he scrambles over the netting and runs at the grader, swings up to the cabin and reaches inside. The engine dies. In the sudden silence, lorikeets squeal and shriek past my head, circling back on themselves and then away again.

Uncle Ticker calls down to me, ‘Bit of a problem here, Sylvie.' And that's when I see Dad slumped over the steering wheel. I find mud-caked steps on the side of the grader and climb up. What's he done now?

From the other side of the cabin, Uncle Ticker is reaching inside, trying to lever Dad off the wheel. I crawl onto the seat and try to push too, his shirt warm and clammy under my hands. He is too heavy. Then he groans and moves his head a little.

‘Together,' says Uncle Ticker. ‘Careful.'

Dad sags back in the seat, blinks at Uncle Ticker and me as if he's had a bad dream, then his head flops forward onto his chest. He looks awful, his face the colour of wet cement. Uncle Ticker scratches at his beard in a worried sort of way and gives me a little smile that's meant to be reassuring but isn't.

‘Heart, I reckon. I'll get up to the house and phone for help. Be as quick as I can. You be okay here?'

The lorikeets are back, squealing and swooping at the grader as if they've found a new kind of tree. Uncle Ticker drives off and I want to shriek after him: Don't leave me. And sure enough, the Blitz is barely halfway to the house when Dad tips upright, looks around with huge glazed eyes and slumps onto the wheel again, right back where he was before.

What'll I do? I stare at the back of his neck. His hair is thick and wavy with hardly any grey. He has a soft brown mole near his ear. The Blitz is a speck disappearing behind the pines, the lake unmoving except for a huddle of black swans far out. Should I push him back? What if moving him isn't the right thing to do? Dropping my head below the steering wheel, I look straight up at his face. He seems to have gone to sleep. Perhaps that's a good thing?

But he hasn't. ‘Shit,' he winces, lifting his head inches from me.

‘You'd…better sit back,' I tell him, sitting back myself. I try to breathe deeply. Maybe that's what he should be doing? Breathe deeply: that's what the ambulance man told us at school after Eddie Jones collapsed in the change-rooms and no one knew what to do. ‘Breathe,' I tell him as I kneel on the seat and again try to push on his shoulders, timidly at first and then firmer. He doesn't move; he's a great heavy lump of wood. He smells of tree stumps and wattle leaves and the strange earthy scent of summer heath. ‘Sit back,' I say. ‘Help me.'

He laughs. At first I think it's a snuffly sort of moan, but as he rolls back in the seat, I see there's a speck of dry spit at the corner of his mouth and a twist on his lips that is definitely a grin. And in a flash the oily smell of his hair makes me remember an emu egg, someone singing—him?—I can't remember the tune, the words. And then I remember him outside the post office with Phil.

His heart. What if he ‘carks' it? What if he dies right here beside me? I turn to the side window, willing Uncle Ticker to hurry, seeing the red iron roof of the shearing shed, cattle nosing around the bottom dam, Herefords with early calves, red against the straw-coloured grass. Why is he taking so long?

‘Sylvie.'

I can't ever remember him saying my name before. Is that possible? I turn quickly to find him arched back against the seat, the skin under his chin speckled with tiny black hairs. His colour is bad: it makes him look faded, smaller, as if he's shrunk into the skin of a stranger.