Desert Fish (10 page)

He leaned over to Lexie now and he put his hand on the crescent of flesh that bulged from the side of her top and he stroked it softly. ‘Lexie, darlin',' he said. ‘I don't know how he can resist.'

Lexie looked down at the ground. I couldn't see what was in her face but her voice came away from her, thin in the heavy night.

‘Yes,' she said. ‘Maybe he's just being polite.'

I told myself that it was just that she was looking down that made her voice so small. Given what she'd worn and how she'd danced she wouldn't be surprised by what my dad had done. She'd be used to that sort of thing.

It's just touching,
I told myself.

I wondered if my father had forgotten I was there. I wondered if he meant me to see, or if he just couldn't help himself and had chosen to forget my presence.
It's just touching
. I pulled at the grass.
It doesn't mean anything.

My mother would say Love found me. But perhaps I made him follow. I can't remember. I only know I couldn't wait for Lexie to leave.

My mother called out and my dad went inside, as if nothing had happened.

‘What are you going to do?' I asked her quietly. I was still crouched, silent, where I had let it all unfold.

Lexie wouldn't look at me. ‘What do you mean?' she asked. Her face was pale in the flat, hot night. She had crossed her arms in front of her chest. Her clothes looked all wrong now, as if she had accidently come out in her underwear. She had rubbed her eye and smeared her make-up. Even in the low light from the back porch I could see the smudge she had made. She didn't look like Lexie at all.

I couldn't bear the sight of her. ‘You should just go,' I said. ‘Don't you think? Before anything else happens.'

She nodded.

I rose and went inside. She didn't follow me. I was relieved when I heard her close the front gate. I went straight to my room and pulled on my sandshoes. I walked past them all sitting there on the back verandah, drinking.

‘Where's your mate?' my dad called. ‘Where's Lexie?'

‘Gone,' I said. ‘She's had enough.'

‘Ah, what'll we do for fun now?' my dad said. ‘What'll Pete do?'

I picked at my fingernail. ‘Guess he'll have to think of something else.' I said nothing more than that, but perhaps I turned and smiled. Something made me want to push at the space around me, to make room for what I wanted.

My dad never noticed. He was sniggering at his joke with Bernie and Bol. My mother quietly took their ashtrays and replaced them with clean ones.

Outside the sky was perfectly black now and there were stars in it. Our driveway was just a dirt track with a streak of grass up its middle and I kept to this narrow strip, moving quietly.

Apart from porch lights, most houses were in darkness and there was only a little traffic about. I moved quickly, cutting my way through the night air. The frangipanis were in flower; I could feel the soft fallen petals beneath the thin soles of my shoes. They silenced my footfall and made me feel safe.

At the top of the hill it was darker and I thought I heard footsteps behind me. The smell of the cattle yards
thickened the air. I could see the dark shapes of cows on the other side of the fence, standing in the warm night. I moved my feet softly, creeping along, touching my fingers to the barbed wire, aware of the longer grass, brittle and dry and how anything moving, a fox or a cat, would make a sound. The moon was high in the sky. Apart from its waxy glow, there were only the distant sparks of light from the houses on the far side of the river.

When I reached the gate to the river path I stepped into the undergrowth and crouched, listening as the footsteps grew closer.

‘Gilly.'

He didn't shout and I knew straightaway who it was. I rose and came out of my hiding place.

‘Gilly, wait, it's me.'

When he reached the place where I was, he put his hand at the small of my back and said, ‘What are you doing coming out on your own at this time of night?'

‘I just wanted a walk,' I told him.

We continued in silence down the track and as we neared the river I could hear the water lapping at the stony bank. There was no sound from the weir. The concrete ledge had been dry for some time now. In the heat of the day it was a baked colour, rough as goanna skin. But in the moonlight it floated, a soft ghostly grey. If you put your hand flat on it now there would be only dried moss and no guppies beneath your fingers. I wondered where they went when there was no water.

Usually at this time of year people came to the river to
swim at night, parking their cars at the end of the track, leaving their headlights on for the brief time it took to light a fire. But no-one would come now, not until it rained. I was glad. I sat down in the sand and took off my shoes.

‘What are you doing?' Pete asked.

‘I'm just going to put my feet in,' I said.

I waded until the water reached my calves. The rocks at the bottom were smooth, some were slippery with moss and I moved with caution. There might be broken glass where people had thrown their empty bottles, the sharp edges invisible in the darkness. I drew my hands through the water until I found a stone and I threw it, as hard as I could. It hit the dry bulkhead of the weir and rebounded into the water, disturbing a bird as it did. I heard its wings beat the air and it cried out, before settling back down.

I went and sat beside Pete. ‘Why are you going to work with my dad?' I asked him.

‘I never said I was.'

‘You told him you would if he could match what you get at McGill's.'

‘Yes.'

‘So …'

‘Gilly. I don't know your dad very well, but I don't think he's going to match what I make at McGill's with a cash-in-hand house-painting malarky. Do you?'

Relief welled up in me. ‘No,' I laughed. ‘I guess not.'

Pete shifted so he was closer to me. His shirt-sleeve tickled my arm. ‘Why are you so worried anyway?' he asked.

‘I don't know,' I said. ‘He messes things up sometimes, my dad. He annoys people, even when they like him.' I leaned over and drew circles in the fine sand. In the daylight it was pale and mottled, dirtier than the sand on a beach. I felt the words taking shape. I knew I wanted to say them but I had to force myself. ‘I like you living with us, Pete. I don't want you to go.'

‘It's okay, Gilly,' Pete said. ‘I'm not going anywhere just yet.' He put his hand at my back again, under my shirt this time, and I felt him drawing his fingers along the skin there.

I sat back, relaxing into his touch. ‘Lexie likes you, doesn't she?' I said.

Pete was silent. His hand was smooth and warm.

‘Do you like her?'

‘She's a little immature,' Pete said. ‘I don't want to offend you, Gilly. I know she's your friend.'

‘She's not really my friend,' I said. ‘She mainly comes by to see my dad.' I put my finger in my mouth and clamped my teeth on a nail. I wondered if he could feel me trembling.

‘I think she's a little bit …' Pete paused. ‘She's what some men might call a tease,' he said. ‘Do you know what I mean by that?'

‘Yes.'

‘No offence to her, Gilly, but I don't find that very attractive.'

‘Oh.'

‘I'm not really sure she knows what she wants, even
though she acts as though she does. Does that make sense?'

‘I'm not like that,' I said.

‘I know.'

‘I know what I want.'

I got up on my knees and knelt with my legs on either side of Pete. In the darkness I could feel his breath, warm and beery on my face.
I deserve this
, I thought to myself.
It's my turn now. I deserve this
.

‘Gilly,' Pete whispered, as though he'd been waiting for me.

I leaned in and he pulled me to him. I opened my lips beneath his and let him slide his tongue along my teeth. He slipped his hands under my skirt and rested them against the skin of my hips, his thumbs stroking gently downwards. He kept his mouth on mine and when I lifted myself up a little he was able to move his hands to the insides of my thighs. I parted my legs for him so he could slide his fingers beneath the elastic of my underwear. When he put them inside me it didn't hurt at all. He felt how I wanted him. He eased me onto my back.

Afterwards, he lay down beside me in the soft river sand and I put my hand on his damp stomach and pushed my face into his shoulder so I could breathe the salty closeness of him. There was still the imprint of the sand on my knees from earlier. I rubbed at it, wanting the feel of it to remain there, so I would know that what had happened was real.

‘I belong to you now,' I whispered. ‘And you belong to me.'

He touched my face. ‘We'd better go back, Gilly,' he said.

‘Okay.' I got up. Already my head was full with the thought of it, the warm press of our flesh with no space between us. I couldn't bear for it to be simply a memory.

On the way back up the track I noticed a rotting smell, a lizard or a bird perhaps, decaying somewhere in the long grass.

By April the warmth was still in the air, pressing and spreading like water. The light was slippery and sharp. It was the middle of a Friday afternoon nearly three weeks after my father's party. I squinted as I tipped the grey water onto my mother's geraniums.

‘Look at the jasmine,' my mother said. ‘It's really suffering.' She pointed at the vine that lay along the back of her plants, waiting for the trellis. My father still hadn't got around to it, and now the leaves had curled with fatigue. My mother put a temporary stake in but it was never going to do the job. I poured the last of the oily water onto the patch of soil around the jasmine and I sighed.

‘What's wrong, Gilly?' my mother asked.

I jumped, startled, as if my sigh was a private confidence my mother had overheard. ‘What do you mean?'

‘Is something the matter?'

‘No. I'm fine.'

‘I mean with you and Pete.'

I bristled. ‘Of course not.'

‘Why aren't you speaking to him?'

‘I am.'

‘No you're not.'

I walked over to the fence. There was a small bush there, hanging over our fence. It grew in the garden of our neighbour, Mrs Delaney. She was a widow and her garden was her passion. Flowerbeds were dug in long thin borders around the perimeter of her yard, shrubs lined the fence at the side and she managed to keep everything going, even in drought.

‘What's this called?' I picked a small red flower from a shrub.

‘I don't know,' my mother said. ‘It's something native. Not a garden flower.'

‘It's pretty, isn't it?' It was bell-shaped and I made a tear with my fingernail and peeled away one side of the flower right down to the bottom of the stamen. There was a drop of liquid there, clear and round. I put my tongue to it, thinking it was water, but it was sweet and honeyish. Nectar. When it was gone I dropped the flower and took another.

‘What are you doing?' My mother had stopped what she was doing and she was watching me, her hand shading her eyes from the sun.

‘Lexie hasn't been by for a while.' I tore the second flower and put it to my lips. I could see how this change of subject surprised my mother. She turned from me, shoving the spade into the dirt, needlessly turning it.

‘Are you bothered?' she asked.

‘She's my friend.'

My mother laughed. It sounded brittle. ‘Is she?'

I closed my eyes against the feeling I got when she laughed like that. I wanted to hurt her. Because Lexie wasn't my friend and we both knew it. But I wanted to hurt her because I wished it wasn't true.

But I couldn't hold the feeling because my mother bent down and took the spade out of the dirt, and then she didn't know what to do. She stood there looking at her plants so she wouldn't have to look at me. She was holding that spade as though it was something other than a garden tool, something soft and precious. My stomach lurched.

‘Gilly, Pete likes you, I can tell,' she said. ‘Don't push him away.'

‘I'm not,' I said, ‘I'm not pushing him away because there's nothing going on.' I crouched and pushed at the damp soil where I had poured the water, trying to loosen it a little. ‘This jasmine's going to die soon,' I told her. ‘Look how dry the leaves are.'

‘Gilly,' my mother pleaded. ‘Don't waste your chance, love.'

‘I don't know what you're talking about,' I said.

My mother dropped the spade and picked up the dish tub and shook the last drops on the soil. ‘It's your choice,' she said. Her voice wavered. She drew a breath and composed herself. ‘I can't make you do anything.'

My mother could distil anything troubling to a single clear certainty. This made her seem oddly vulnerable to me. I was clumsy by comparison, always blurting out a question where there wasn't supposed to be one, wanting something more, an explanation or an illustration or something that I could hold in my hands. I liked to accumulate things, keepsakes, like that key from the river when I saw Pete.

I knew when my mother found out about Yvonne Martin. I found her in the living room one Saturday afternoon after I'd returned with my father, nearly three months after the whole business began. My mother had pulled a length of the curtain into her lap and caught a piece of its cheap gauze between her fingers. You could hear her rubbing the fold of it between thumb and forefinger, the sound of it sparked into the stillness of the afternoon. Occasionally she whispered to herself. I shifted my weight and a floorboard moved, startling her.

‘Gilly.'

I went to her. ‘Are you alright, Mum?' I asked.

‘Oh. Yes, Gilly,' she said. ‘Of course.' She dropped the bit of curtain she'd been holding. It swung back into place and a pale shadow caught where she'd creased it. ‘Did you have a nice time this morning?' she asked.

‘Yes.' I fidgeted, pressing the fingertips of my left hand against those of my right.

She didn't want to know but she couldn't help asking.

‘Did you play?'

‘Yes.'

‘And did you … did you play with Kerry?'

My mother's eyes were dark and unreadable. She sat with one leg coiled tightly around the other. I clasped my hands together and stared at the floor. I remembered what I had said about the librarian and how angry my mother had been. The long, even lines of the floorboards seemed to rush at me. I drew my shoulders back and met my mother's eyes. ‘Of course not,' I said. ‘I never play with Kerry. I thought you knew that. I play with Melanie. I played with her today and I nearly got all the sand out of her arms. But I'll have to start all over again next week.' I put my hand on my mother's. ‘Melanie lives in the sandpit, Mummy. She's not allowed indoors. And neither am I.'

I didn't wait for a response. I turned and left my mother there.

In my bedroom, the air was still and heavy. Through the window I could see how nothing moved. The mango tree reached halfway up the pane and that year, for the first time, there were small nodes of fruit on its branches. Beneath the tree, the blades of grass were etched sharp against the loose dry dirt. I sat down on my bed.

My mother appeared in the doorway. Her hands shook and her breath came fast and light. She came in to the room and stood over the bed.

‘Gilly,' she said. ‘Next time you go to Kerry's with your dad I want you to tell Yvonne Martin to let you play inside.' She shuffled back a little, away from me, as she spoke. ‘I want you to tell her I said so.'

‘Okay,' I said.

‘You tell her I said that you are not to be sent outside. Do you hear me?'

‘Yes.'

Her voice grew softer now. ‘And Gilly?'

‘Yes?'

She looked past me, through the window. ‘You should say it when your daddy is in the room with you. Do you understand?'

‘Yes.'

She sat on my bed then and took my hands in hers. ‘Your daddy, Gilly, the things he does … it's not always what it seems,' she said. ‘Love knows where it belongs,' she added. ‘Love knows when it's at home. Do you understand, Gilly?'

‘Yes, of course,' I said. ‘Well, I think I do.'

‘What I mean is, he never really goes away,' she continued. ‘I only have to say and he'll come back.'

‘Yes.'

‘I only have to say.'

She let go of my hands and I waited until she had gone before I lay down.

Later I heard her in her room and I thought she might have been weeping.

 

Now I thought of what she had said to me in front of the flowerbed.
I can't make you do anything
. She wanted to know what had happened with Pete. She wanted me
to confide in her as though we were sisters so she could tell me what to do. But I didn't want to share it.

‘Let's just keep it between ourselves for now,' Pete had said. We were standing in the cool dark hallway just a couple of weeks ago, soon after that night at the river.

My mother was in the kitchen and I sensed his wariness.

‘Okay?' I breathed, but I stepped towards him and put my hand on his chest. He took it away, smiling gently as he did so. I was happy that there was something that existed only between us. I loved the secrecy.

Since that night at the river, whenever my mother and father were out of the house I went into his room. If he'd been at work he'd shower and walk in from the bathroom wearing only his shorts. There'd be water sprinkled across his back where he hadn't towelled himself dry. He didn't wear deodorant. He showered every morning before work, and again when he came in, quick efficient showers. In the hall, I listened to the water running over him and slapping onto the bottom of the bath. The brush moving over his teeth. Once, when I couldn't bear not to, I stood and pressed myself against his skin and put my face to his shoulder, breathing him in, the soap and steam and beneath that, the damp spicy smell of his skin. He waited a moment then stepped away from me, rubbing the towel over the back of his neck. ‘Give it some time, Gilly,' he said.

So instead of touching him, I sat in the chair where he had been and soaked up the warmth of him. In my room
at night, I listened for the rustle of garments being shed and the dull low creak of the bed when he lay down on it. I waited. For weeks after our night at the river, whenever I moved I thought I could feel inside me where he had been. I rubbed at my knees, where the imprint of the sand had marked me, as if the texture, the very map that the grains had made, was somehow still there, beneath the skin.

Love knows where it belongs
. The words were in my head all the time.
Love knows when it's at home.

But surely, I thought, sometimes Love might come and find you. It might crouch on a rock and see you treading water there, behind the reeds. It might sit on the dusty front step and smile down at you. It might catch up with you on a warm night.

I carried the key from the tin in my pocket wherever I went.

 

During those weeks after the party Lexie didn't stop by at all. Nothing much was said about this, and all talk of the painting business went quiet too. I thought that maybe my dad had realised his error in both things and was letting things lie. Or perhaps he'd just lost interest.

But one night at dinner, forking the corn my mother had warmed from a tin, he asked, ‘Where's your mate?' There was steak and kidney too, cooked in a sauce and spooned over mash.

‘Lexie?'

‘Yeah.'

‘I haven't seen her,' I said. ‘I haven't been to the pharmacy.'

‘She hasn't been over?'

‘No.'

‘Wonder what's got into her?'

Pete shifted in his chair.

‘Probably met someone,' my dad said. ‘Ah well, Pete, there goes your chance. For now.'

Pete laughed.

My dad laughed too. ‘She'll be back.'

My mother leaned over and put her hand on mine. ‘She's Gilly's friend, Creighton. Watch how you talk.' She gave me a soft smile.

I pulled my hand away. ‘Nothing's wrong. She's probably just busy.'

My dad snorted.

I didn't feel hungry. The sauce on my plate had congealed. I pushed it away.

‘How's your house-painting getting on?' Pete asked my dad.

‘Slow,' he replied. ‘For now. Bernie's taking a while to get back to me. He said he'd get us a truck. Made up my leaflets though,' he said. ‘Gilly'll take 'em around for me, won't you, Gilly?'

‘Yes.'

‘Tomorrow?'

‘Okay.' I picked up my knife and pushed it into the food on my plate, even though it made me feel ill.
I pressed bits of corn into the mash, cut away pieces of the hardened sauce.

My dad adjusted himself in his chair and stretched his legs out beneath the table.

‘Say, Pete,' he said. ‘If Bernie's gone slack on me, are you still interested?'

Pete sighed. ‘I haven't changed my mind, Creighton,' he said.

‘But, I mean, there'll be fewer of us to spread the cash around,' my dad insisted.

‘But there isn't any cash yet, is there?' Pete put his knife and fork down. His voice had the tone a weary parent might have, speaking to a child. I had always sensed the distance he kept between himself and my parents, but it was carefully managed. They were drawn to him, each in their own way. And even while he kept himself separate, he never pushed them away. But his distance had a different quality now. He was irritated, and I sensed a barrier that hadn't been there before.

‘Look, Creighton,' Pete said. ‘If I ask you about your business, it doesn't mean I want in. I'm just asking. If I want in, I'll tell you. How about that? We'll assume I'm happy with where I'm at unless I tell you otherwise.'

My dad shrugged. He wasn't going to be offended. ‘Fair enough,' he said. But I knew he'd soon forget about what Pete had said. He'd ask again.

A sudden panic rose in me. Pete had said we needed time. If my dad kept on at him he'd go as quickly and
unexpectedly as he'd arrived. What had happened between us was real but I knew I was not yet a reason to keep him here.