Desert Fish (14 page)

But she didn't get one for me. She stood and rested the two bottles she'd taken on the fronts of her hips. ‘You didn't leave those leaflets in the cafe,' she said. ‘Bernie told me they all came through the letterbox at Albright's. About fifty of them.'

‘Yeah? So what's the big deal?' I leaned down around her and took a bottle myself, then went to the drawer for the opener, picking through the utensils to find it.

‘You're an awfully good liar, Gilly,' Lexie said. ‘Makes me wonder how much of what comes out your mouth is true.'

The opener wasn't in the drawer. I closed it but I didn't turn. I felt I couldn't face her. ‘I'm sorry, Lexie,' I said. ‘I'm sorry about what happened.' And in a way, I was. Even with the way she carried on and how she didn't care how I felt about Pete. I thought of how she looked when my dad put his hand on her. How small and shocked she seemed. I wished I hadn't said what I did outside the pharmacy. It seemed so cruel and pointless now. ‘I didn't mean it, you know, that thing I said to you.'

‘Yes you did, Gilly. And anyway, sometimes it's better that these things are out in the open,' she said. ‘So we all know where we stand.'

‘What things?' came a voice. I turned and there was my dad, in the doorway, clutching the bottle opener he'd brought for us. His voice was like someone else's. Not jovial or teasing like he usually was around Lexie. However much he had heard, it was enough for him to know he was out of his depth and he didn't know how to sound.

‘She said I was a tease, a tart,' Lexie said.

‘Gilly, that's a bit out of line,' he said. My dad stepped into the room with Bernie close behind him. I could see Pete still sitting on the easy chair on the verandah. He hadn't moved, but I knew he could hear everything. My mother too.

‘She told me Pete said it.' Lexie jutted her chin out, challenging me to deny it.

‘I'm sure he didn't mean anything by it, love.' My dad reached out to her but she shied away from him and continued.

‘He meant that a girl like me should take whatever's on offer,' Lexie spat, pink-faced and angry now. ‘But I told Gilly that some people should know when to keep their hands to themselves.'

My dad blinked.

Bernie put his arm around Lexie.

It was unbearable, everything being said out loud like that. Truth making everyone feel naked. Nobody knew what to do.

My dad didn't move. I saw him searching for something to say. He'd never been in this position. No-one had ever told him. ‘It was only a bit of fun,' he said.

‘It's only fun if you know when to stop,' Lexie hissed.

My dad looked lost.

I snatched the opener from him and slammed my bottle down on the counter. ‘I wish you would,' I blurted. I hooked the cap off it and turned. ‘I wish you did know when it's time to stop. I wish you knew how to keep your hands to yourself.'

I pushed past them all and rushed to my room.

In the end, it would all be down to me. My mother would never cope with things being said out loud like that. More than four months had passed since Pete had come to us, and now that I loved him she wanted to lose sight of how it had started. She'd got a lodger to make the private places in our house more public – a stranger to make it safe. Now she wanted to forget how it had begun.

I remember it was the sort of day where you notice the light more than the heat. This was only a week before I saw Pete at the river. New Year had passed and there was only the flat glare of summer to look forward to. You expect that sort of light to illuminate everything, but it doesn't. After a while, the brightness will make things hazy.

It was the middle of the morning and I was washing cups. I'd filled the sink and I looked down as I swished the soap in its wire basket. The water had grown hard as
the dry spell dragged on. It smelled metallic and it was difficult to make the soap spread. Light glinted off the surface of it, catching in places, hurting my eyes.

My dad came into the kitchen. He opened the fridge and closed it again. He shifted things about. He wanted to be entertained.

‘What are you doing?' he asked.

‘What's it look like?'

‘All day?'

‘Nearly done.'

‘What then?'

‘Dunno.' I put a cup on the sink. ‘Might go for a swim.'

‘Can I come?'

‘I was going to go with Lexie. She's got the day off.'

‘Excellent. I'll join you.'

‘I wanted to go to the pool. You don't like the pool.'

‘We can go to the river, can't we?'

I shrugged. ‘It's getting mossy. Lexie mightn't like it.'

‘I'll talk her into it. We'll find a deeper spot downstream.'

He was fidgeting. He couldn't wait. The afternoon was taking shape now that there was something for him to look forward to. But I didn't want him around. I left the last two cups in the sink. Dried my hands on a towel and turned.

I had to say it. He was in the doorway. I didn't know which words would be right.

‘Dad?'

‘Yeah?'

I went to him. I lowered my voice. ‘I don't want anything to happen with Lexie,' I said. She was coming around a lot. I was getting wary – she was the same age as me. She wouldn't see it the way he did. I knew it couldn't turn out right.

‘Oh, Missy,' he said. ‘What are you talking about? It's just a bit of fun. I'd never do anything to hurt you.'

Then he put his arms around me. He stroked my hair and laid his hand on my side beneath my T-shirt and I could feel him sinking. It was only skin to him. But he was sinking and he was taking me with him. I wanted to pull him back to the surface.

I thought of the things my mother had said.

When it's not me he's with, it's not love, only touching. It doesn't mean anything.

Why does he do it, then?
I asked her once.

It doesn't matter why,
she said.
He can't get from them what he gets from me
.
That's why he always comes back.

I went over this in my head as my father held me too close and stroked my skin. I thought he had forgotten who I was. I was only flesh beneath his fingers. I kept myself perfectly still, afraid of the truths that any movement might reveal. Perhaps I was wrong? Perhaps it was nothing at all.

But I saw her then, pale and still, in the doorway. I prised myself away, stepped back. I didn't want his hand on me like that and I didn't want her watching. I couldn't bear to imagine what she made of it.

She moved away soundlessly and I went outside. I had to shade my eyes with my hands. Shadows fell sharp and crisp-edged from walls and fences. I blinked and there were spots behind my eyelids. I wanted to see what the light would do to my memory of what had just happened. How would the house look when I went back inside? Would it be dark, the way it is when you come in from a shining day? You can walk straight into something and not see it. It could be the middle of the night and you wouldn't know any different.

When I did go in, my feet felt cool on the concrete floor of the laundry. They made no sound at all on the linoleum in the kitchen. I squinted at the sink with the cups stacked on it, already dry, and I thought maybe I'd imagined the whole thing. But then I saw the two cups still lying in the basin. I put them up on the sink. My arms felt loose.

I turned and stared at the narrow doorframe. When I blinked I pictured my mother's face still in it, paused, quiet. A face without expression, apart from her mouth that gaped a little, then closed. But everything else was just as it had always been and it should have been different because now something had to change.

I was so weary. I wanted to tell her. I was too weary to wonder what I would be to her now.

Their love had lost its shape. It seemed true because it kept returning to the same place, welling up and then draining and then somehow collecting in the same spot
again. When they were full up with it, they'd drown each other, because they couldn't stay afloat on their own.

 

Pete was detaching himself and my mother was desperate. She had acted foolishly because she didn't know what else to do.

She didn't come to me now, and I was glad. I listened as Bernie and Lexie left and then as she cleared away the glasses. I didn't sleep because I had slept all day. I put on my nightdress and I sat on my bed and drank from the bottle slowly. I felt soft all over. My head felt thick. I thought it might be the beer but I wasn't drunk. I had a clear idea of what I should do next.

When they'd all gone to bed and the house was dark and the bottle was empty I went to him. Barefoot, I crept along the hall and across his floor and lifted his covers back, remembering the secret look that had passed between us.

‘Gilly,' he whispered.

I slipped between the covers.

‘What are you doing?'

‘Sssshhh.'

He hesitated but he didn't send me away. ‘Gilly, your parents.'

‘I don't care,' I said. ‘And anyway, they already know.'

‘Are you sure about that?'

‘It doesn't matter anyway,' I said. ‘I don't care.'

‘Well, I do,' he said.

I heard my voice rising. ‘Why? What does it matter? This is all that matters.'

‘Ssshhh,' he cautioned.

I kissed him.

‘Alright,' he said. ‘Okay.' He kissed me back and put his hands on my hips and drew me to him. I lifted my nightie to feel his skin on mine.

‘Make it like last time,' I said. ‘I want it to be exactly like last time.'

He turned me onto my back and pulled my nightdress over my head and he knew what I wanted him to do.

When it was over he put his face in my neck and said, ‘I'm not sorry about what has happened with us,' he said. ‘Any of it. I've thought about it a lot and I'm not a bit sorry. I'm glad. If I had the chance again I'd do it all just the same.'

‘Would you?'

‘Yes.'

I wondered what he meant.

Then he sent me back to my room. ‘You shouldn't wake up here,' he said.

‘Why not?'

‘Not this time,' he reassured me. ‘It wouldn't be right.'

‘Okay.' I was so happy, then. He'd said
not this time
. He'd hinted at a future for us. Even if he didn't stay, I would be with him. Perhaps we would leave together.

I went to my room as he'd asked and I slept easily and
dreamt I was walking across the slippery bulkhead of the weir with the water passing thinly beneath my feet.

I didn't wake until late the next morning, and by the time I did, Pete was gone.

With everything that's happened and how desperate I am to get to the desert, I don't expect to hesitate when we leave that motel room. I don't think of her when I'm waiting for him, but perhaps she is there, laced in tightly somewhere between all the other things buzzing about my mind. Her breath, shallow but certain, and her soft moulded limbs. The curl of her fingers, and the back and forth tick of her arms shifting through the air in jerky rhythm. Her movements were those of a creature not yet come to life, something not properly in the world.

After Janice leaves, after I've packed up our things and made the bed, I get in a warm bath and apply pressure to my breasts so the milk will run out of them. That way, it won't leak from me during the journey. I can't bear the thought of it there, seeping like blood around a wound.

Janice left me some Panadol and I take two to keep the fever at bay. I walk back and forth across the floor, taking small steps so I can't feel the stitches, remembering what
it felt like when I wasn't joined up with thread. When they pulled that baby from me I swear I felt myself grow lighter, just lying there. Fluid rushed out of me and splashed against the floor. I was on a bed in a small room. I was covered with a white cloth that was smeared with my own filth. I sat up and I saw it there, blood, bright and fresh, and all the other stuff that had been plugged up inside me. A nurse was holding the baby and there was a stretch of thick bluish cord still joining us. I wished I hadn't seen it.

‘Lie back,' someone said. ‘It's not over yet. There's more to come.' As if I was a spectator.

I did as I was told. I lay back and waited, counting the minutes and the seconds until I would be completely empty again.

 

When Pete gets back it's past midnight. He appears tired, his shirt is creased across the back. I don't ask where he's been.

‘It's time to go,' I tell him. ‘We have to leave right now.'

He doesn't ask why. In the wastepaper basket is an empty soft-drink bottle. He rinses it in the bathroom and fills it with water. I smooth my dress over the loose skin of my stomach.

‘I'll put all this in the car,' he says.

‘Yes.'

I wait while he takes our suitcases outside. The room
looks the same empty as it did with our few belongings in it, and a knot forms somewhere inside my stomach, a sad sort of weightiness that I don't expect.

‘Gilly,' Pete says. Perhaps he has seen me, noticed the slim fissure in my resolve. In the doorway, his face is white beneath the flat orangey light. His hands are in his pockets and he looks almost boyish. ‘Gilly, you know, I …' He steps properly into the room. ‘If this isn't the right thing to do, it's not too late.' His voice is quiet and weak and I can't bear to be let down like this.

‘How do you know?'

‘It doesn't have to be like this.'

‘Like what?' I ask.

But he won't let me say it. ‘I'm sorry, Gilly,' he says, ‘I just …' but he doesn't finish his sentence and at that moment I hate him for his uncertainty and his apology and for making me the boss of everything that I have done.

Tears threaten and I have to squeeze my eyes shut. I can't move. My breasts swell with milk and the pressure is unbearable. I want to lie in the bed one more time. Place my hands on the cool thin walls, or pull at the curtains. Something.

It must be the room, I tell myself, with its sense of respite, the walls, low and narrow, already familiar. And perhaps Janice and how kind she was, staying with me while her husband was out. It seems important to slow these last minutes.

I close my eyes. That baby was so light. But her weight
was concentrated for such a small thing and I was surprised at how quickly she grew heavy in my arms, how soon my shoulders began to ache with the effort of holding her. Her eyes were deep and colourless. Blue, a nurse told me. She said that all babies are born with blue eyes. But I couldn't see it. They just seemed dark to me.

‘Come on then,' Pete says, sounding like himself again. He turns and the porch light outlines his hair as he moves to the car. I picture the space between the dashboard, the doors and the windscreen, the feel of the wheels moving over gravel and how soon we will come to the place where we need to be. Thinking about her will do no good now. She is lost to me.

I remember Pete's story so clearly; after all that's happened I can recall every word of it. The storm and the birds and all those other things he said. I can feel the close damp air; see the hailstones melting on the ground. I close my eyes again and picture myself there. I have picked up those birds. I have put them in a box with a tightly folded lid. I mustn't hesitate, because I have already made my choice.

 

We drive for a long time. I don't sleep. Stars wink and conspire, conjuring their soft pretence of light. There is no moon.

At first we pass a lot of cars. The headlights begin as dots, separating as they grow nearer. It feels like a miracle that on that long ribbon of road so many vehicles pass so
close and so often without colliding. Sometimes there is a truck or a road train, and the weight of them seems to lift us a little.

Once or twice we cross a bridge and I wonder if there is water beneath. The bridges are made of wood. They are old and the boards rattle beneath the rolling bulk of us.

Eventually the traffic thins to almost nothing and I stop thinking. The low hum of the engine; the glow of the dashboard; the lights from the car that make a soft tunnel of road ahead of us, drawing us into the desert: these things lull me into silence and calm.

We don't stop for hours. Not even when the stars vanish and the sky is stained with early light. It's a different kind of dawn to the one of only three days ago, when we left the city. It's fast and fluid, uninterrupted. Very little pushes upwards from the sand to block the spread of light. The long shadows dissolve and the cold, which I had not expected to feel, vanishes so quickly that I can't believe it was there.

Only when it is properly morning does Pete turn off the headlights and slow down. He pulls in to the side of the road and cuts the engine.

I'm excited now, by the vast emptiness and all its possibilities. I no longer mind about how Pete behaved back in the motel room. I can make small talk and it doesn't matter about the other things. Here, there will be space enough to forget.

The road is rough and narrow where we have come to, just a potholed track. On the map it belongs to a sparse
drifting web of lines, a mere interruption to the desert. You can't imagine anything else except what is here – the dirt, rich and red with nothing to give away, the rocks, and in the distance, the shallow rise and fall of sandhills. There are the friendless bushes that lie low, huddled against the absolute cold of the desert night, crouched against the heat of the day. The road we're on looks like it might be absorbed so easily into the rest of what is here, as if the desert might open up and swallow it in an instant.

My door clicks shut in the silent morning. I find a flat rock several metres beyond the road for us to sit on and Pete pours tea from a thermos. It's dark and thick, with no milk or sugar to disguise the strength of the brew. A swelled leaf floats to the surface and I catch it between my teeth when I take my first mouthful.

‘Is it like this? Where we're going?'

‘What? Desert?'

‘Yes.'

‘I suppose so.'

‘What's different about it?'

Pete shrugs. ‘Well, there's a house.'

I laugh. ‘Is that all?'

He laughs too, but without joy. ‘A place like this just looks like money to me, Gilly. I wouldn't come here otherwise.'

‘Oh.' I shift position, sip the bitter tea. ‘What else is there? Besides the house.'

‘Some outbuildings. We'll live in one of them.'

Pleasure rises in me at those words coming from him.
I hide my face in my tea until my smile is under control.

‘And?'

Pete twitches. Impatient. ‘A tank, for water. A fence, to separate one miserable bit of dirt from the next.'

‘A tree? Or a garden?'

‘Not really. A patch that turns green when there's rain. That doesn't happen much. There might be some excuse for a tree. I can't remember.'

‘Have you been here before?'

‘Where?'

‘Here, right here. Where we're sitting.'

‘Of course. Been past. I drove this way before. But to be honest, it all looks the same to me. Once you're out here it's just dirt and stones.'

‘Is there a creek or a river where we'll be?'

‘No, Gilly. Nothing like that.'

‘We came over bridges on the way here.'

‘Yeah. But unlikely there'll be any water under them.'

‘At all?'

‘I don't know.' Pete drains his cup and scoops the leaves out with his fingers. ‘Gilly, you don't come to a desert expecting to find water.'

‘I know. I was just making sure.'

I can feel the sideways look he gives me. I drink more of the tea because I'm thirsty, and I swallow it quickly, not wanting to taste its bitterness.

‘Tell me about the house where we'll live.'

Pete sighs audibly. ‘It's nothing, Gilly. Not even a
house. It's a shack made of fibro. The roof is tin. It's hot in the day and cold at night.' He removes the last of the leaves with his finger and flicks them at the ground. Then he examines the inside of the cup. ‘I don't know what you were hoping for, Gilly, but I don't think it's this.'

‘What?'

‘Living in a stinking shed in the desert.'

‘I'd live anywhere with you, Pete,' I tell him. ‘I don't care what it's like. I just want you to describe it to me so I can imagine being there with you.' I move closer to him and brush my fingers along the skin beneath the hem of his shirt but he stands up and steps away from me.

‘Christ, Gilly. Just leave it,' he says.

‘What's the matter? Why won't you touch me? Why can't I touch you?'

Pete stoops and picks up the thermos and makes sure the lid is on tight. He doesn't look at me. ‘Isn't this enough?' he says in a low, clenched voice. ‘Haven't I done enough yet?'

He begins rolling a cigarette. He does it with great care, focusing on getting each strand of tobacco in tight and I sense he is doing it to settle his anger. He moves several paces away from me, places the rollie between his lips and lights up. He says nothing and for a while he just sucks in smoke and blows it into the air. The tobacco appears to calm him. After a short time his shoulders relax and I feel a sharp wash of relief. Here, in the desert, Pete can't leave me. Where would he go? We've come too far now to go back.

He throws his roll-up down, half-smoked, and stands on it. ‘Come on then,' he says. ‘We've got a way to go yet. We'll stop again in a couple of hours and eat something.'

I stand. ‘Are you okay, Pete?' I ask.

‘Yeah.'

‘I'm sorry,' I offer. ‘I didn't mean to … to push things.'

He doesn't look at me. ‘It's alright,' he says. His boots make loose red prints in the dirt. Following him, I stand inside one and make my own shape with my canvas shoe. All the way back to the car I do this. My stride does not match his. I have to take more steps. But each time I stand in his footprint, I tell myself it's going to be okay, it's going to be fine. Like casting a spell. When I reach the stony verge I turn and look at the awkward trail I have made, my small lonely path following his, disappearing intermittently into it.

‘C'mon, Gilly.' Pete's already in the car. He hasn't got his belt on. The metal clasp will be too hot. ‘What are you doing?'

‘Nothing.'

He reaches over and opens the door for me and then sits back and drums his fingers on the steering wheel.

We're going now
, I whisper to myself.
It'll be fine. What can stop us?

Perhaps I shouldn't have said it. Perhaps I broke the spell.

Pete leans in as soon as I've closed the door. He turns
the key in the ignition and … nothing. There is no whining working sound, not even a reluctant cough. The engine doesn't turn over at all. There is only the empty click of the key. Pete tries again and I lean forward a little in my seat, as if by doing this I can change something. I might remind the car of what it has to do. Pete's movements are fearful; there is panic in his stabbing turns with the key and in the quick jarring way he works the clutch. But in these moments, as the reality of this new situation dawns, I realise that I'm not afraid of the desert or the heat or even of the very real possibility of being stranded here. I am only afraid of what I have left behind.