Desert Fish (17 page)

Pete's house was made of weatherboard and it still had an outhouse at the back, though the toilet was indoors now, and the outhouse was used as a shed. I was surprised at how neglected it was, given how particular he'd been about his room. The taps had worn-away washers so you had to turn them two or three times to get the water to come on. If you didn't close them tightly they'd drip until it drove you crazy. The bath was streaked with green where hot water had stained the enamel and the glass in the front windows had warped with gravity and heat and age. I was surprised that glass could do that, could remain brittle but move like liquid in extreme slow motion. It melted the view and I soon grew reluctant to look out onto the street.

There were three bedrooms. The one I slept in was like a closed-in verandah with louvred windows. Directly outside it was a grapevine draped over a high wooden trellis. The floor was covered with cheap carpet tiles, tan
coloured and so scratchy that I couldn't sit on them unless I pulled my skirt down to cover any skin that would otherwise be touching them. Apart from the bed and the oak dresser beside it, there was nothing to furnish that room but my blue suitcase that I kept under the bed and out of sight. I didn't want to feel like a guest.

Each day during those first weeks was exhaustingly empty. Pete left early and Nora went soon after. I ate breakfast and lunch alone in the modest kitchen, pouring cereal or cutting cheese and placing it between slices of white bread.

I waited for Pete to come to me, so we could talk about what we would do. But apart from showing me the room and telling me where to cook my food nothing else passed between us. I hoped I might see him at the weekend, but he left the house then too, and I had no idea where he went. Sometimes I heard him in the kitchen late at night, talking to Nora, their voices low and soft and private. I couldn't hear what they said. He didn't tell me to go away so I figured I was safe so long as I didn't go out the front door.

Eventually the days found a listless pattern. A man came before eight each morning and delivered bread. When he was gone I'd open the door and lift it in without stepping onto the porch. The mail came in the early afternoon, but I never walked down the path to collect it from the box. I stood behind the curtain in the front room and watched as the image of the postman wriggled its way across the bottom of the glass. Often, I took a
Reader's Digest
or a
Women's Weekly
from the bookcase in the living room and read it on my bed. Once I switched on the television. I watched half an afternoon soap opera. Then I switched it off. I didn't want Nora to find me in front of it.

She came back at three each day, wearing a beige collared shirt and trousers, smelling of perspiration and cleaning fluid. I kept to my room then. Although we were both in the house for dinner, it remained a private ritual, more like going to the bathroom than eating a meal. I'd wait until Nora had prepared her food and eaten it at the kitchen table. She'd wash her dishes and return them to the cupboard, closing the kitchen door before she moved into the living room and turned on the television. Then I'd go in and make my meal.

I lay awake in my little bed at night, wondering where Pete was, waiting to hear him come in. I'd fall asleep exhausted and unsatisfied. In the mornings I knew he'd been back. His toothbrush was damp in the holder and when Nora hung his laundry out I estimated there to be roughly a week's worth of clothes. But I couldn't ask her where he was and I felt her satisfaction in my not knowing.

Nora seemed to me to be a living, breathing piece of furniture in that neglected house. There was a noticeably joyless quality about her. Her lips were thin and didn't stretch into a wide smile like some thin-lipped people's do. Once I saw her with lipstick on and I thought it seemed to disappear into her mouth. I couldn't tell how old she was. Older than Pete, for sure. Too old to be my friend.

I began to look for things to do around the house that might seem helpful. I wanted to feel like I lived there. But there wasn't much that needed doing. Although the house was old, it was clean. I washed my sheets and my towel each week in the twin tub machine. Because I had only a few garments to fit my swelling body, I laundered my clothes every three days. I hung them on the clothesline and I walked around Nora's back garden. As well as the grapes on her trellis, there was a lemon tree in the corner near the fence and a patch of newly turned soil. I suppose she was going to plant vegetables. There were no flowers anywhere. Nora did not appear to go in for decoration. Her garden was neat and spare and I felt more of an intruder there than I did in the house.

I passed from each day into the next. I had almost no money and no key to re-enter the house if the front door closed on me. So I made sure to keep behind it. I was afraid of being shut outside, and that if I was, Nora might not let me back in.

 

September crawled to an end and then Nora came in from the garden one Saturday and made a pot of tea. She knocked on my bedroom door and invited me to share the tea and I thought it was a significant gesture: that she might tell me what I needed to know to fix things with Pete.

She put cups out, with saucers, and poured milk into a small white jug. After she had made the tea she sat down,
then leapt up again and reached for a crocheted tea cosy that she placed on the pot. With its dotted embroidery of flowers, it looked out of place.

‘That's a nice tea cosy,' I said to her.

She said nothing for a moment. I knew that Nora didn't care for ornamental things any more than she cared about flowers in her garden. I'd never been particular about the things that surrounded me either, not in the way that my mother was. I only kept the things that meant something.

Perhaps the silence became too harsh for Nora, because after a moment she said, ‘It was my mother's.'

‘My mum never uses a tea cosy,' I said. ‘She says that if the tea has time to get cold, you didn't really want to drink it. But I think it's nice, like dressing the pot.' I giggled, a little hysterical about what might happen. ‘Do you think it's a hat or a vest?'

Nora breathed out through her nose. ‘My mum's dead,' she said. ‘She died when Pete was a little boy. He wasn't even in school.'

I felt her drawing Pete to her as she said it and I was silent. I didn't even say I was sorry for this loss.

She poured the tea, spooning sugar into hers and stirring it loudly.

I put some milk in mine and sipped it. It seemed thick and metallic – nothing tasted right anymore – but I drank it anyway.

I decided to act as if she'd not told me what she just did. ‘This is the first time we've sat down together, Nora,'
I said, and regretted it immediately. I sounded so awkward. My words clanged around the room.

Nora shrugged. ‘No point really, is there? Not that much to talk about.'

‘Is there something to talk about today?'

‘That depends.'

‘On what?'

Nora sighed. She drank her tea down quickly and poured another cup from the covered pot. She didn't pour me a second. ‘I was just wondering how long you're staying,' she said.

‘Did Pete tell you to ask me?'

‘Not in so many words.'

‘Then why are you asking?'

‘I just wondered.'

‘In any case, I think Pete should be asking.'

Nora folded her arms and sat back in her chair.

I felt a sense of threat mixed with a kind of hunger. Nora had said so little since I came and even this dangerous discussion made me feel like I was moving in a direction. Like I wasn't simply treading water, waiting.

‘But he wouldn't, would he?' she said. ‘If you knew him at all you'd know that.'

‘Maybe we know each other well enough that he doesn't need to,' I said. I picked up my cup and sipped at the remaining tea in it and something in that casual gesture must have angered her.

Abruptly, she stood. ‘That his?' she asked, raising
her eyebrows, jabbing her finger in the direction of my stomach. Her eyes were round and angry.

‘What?'

‘Did he put that there?'

I felt my face burn with the threat of tears but they didn't spill. I knew if I spoke I'd cry so I just nodded. Shaking, I replaced my cup in its saucer.

She shook her head slowly. ‘It's quite a lot to take in, you know. See, I know everything about Pete. I looked after him from when he was five. But I don't know a blind thing about you, Gilly. Not a blind thing.' She said nothing more. She put her cup in the sink and then she took the pot and emptied it. When it was rinsed she replaced the cosy and put it up on the fridge. Then she left the room.

I tried to finish my drink but somehow the mechanics of lifting the cup, of putting it to my lips and swallowing, were beyond me. A dribble of tea made its way down my chin and I wiped it away. He had told her nothing, then. Nothing at all.

I got up and emptied my cup in the sink. As I stood there, the baby moved. A part of it seemed to slide deliberately and uncomfortably along the inside of me. The contents of my stomach rose. Down the hall a door slammed.

For a while I nurse the strange cold feeling in my belly, balancing it against the heat of the sun. I can sense the fever crouched there, waiting to return. The hours crawl by and the sun seems to stop where it is, perched high above us. There is nowhere to shelter from it. The only shade is the strip of shadow alongside the car. We get out and Pete spreads a blanket. I ease myself into a comfortable position. He offers me a sip of water and I let it wet my mouth. I can't tell if the heat is on the inside of my skin or the outside. My breasts prickle and despite the water, my tongue is dry.

Pete runs a hand through his hair. It's grown longer since he went away. Though it still clings to his scalp, it waves a little now. In the bright desert light I can see where it's thinner at the top. You can't hide anything here. There's too much light.

‘Gilly, did you tell anybody?' he asks.

‘Tell them what?'

‘Where we were going?'

‘No. Of course not.'

‘It doesn't matter if you did, Gilly.' Pete searches the road, as if trying to coax a vehicle into being. ‘That woman, your friend at the motel. Do you think she might have guessed where we were headed?' he asks.

‘No,' I tell him. My skin tingles, my head buzzes with the relief of him speaking to me directly after so long. I don't want anyone to come yet, especially not Janice. I smooth my finger over the varnish on my nails. It's still smooth with no chips. It feels like a long time ago that Janice and I sat by the pool. ‘She guessed at some things,' I confess, ‘but I didn't give her the full picture. I only said you worked in the desert. Are they expecting you where we're going?'

‘No, not for a few days,' Pete says. ‘There wasn't time to call.' He pauses. ‘And … I didn't really want to tell them, Gilly? Just in case … I didn't know if you …'

‘Well anyway, we're here now,' I say. ‘We're in this together, Pete. It'll be okay.'

‘Yeah,' he says, his voice empty.

I get up then, more for something to do than for any practical purpose, looking for a way to distract from Pete's evident fear. I open the driver's side door, to make another patch of shade, and tucked down the side of the car is the magazine from the motel room, the one with the fish.

‘Did you bring this?' I ask.

‘Yes.'

‘Why?'

Pete shrugs. ‘Something to read.'

‘Have you read it?'

‘No.'

‘Are you going to?'

‘Geez, Gilly. What is this?'

‘Nothing.' I sit down with the magazine in my lap. It's ridiculous, but I don't want him to see it. I want him to want my desert. The gorgeous emptiness with just us in it.

‘Y'know, Pete, if nobody came, I don't think I'd mind,' I say.

‘What do you mean?'

‘Well, for me, it's enough just being here with you.' I wipe my hand over my face. There's a fine film of sweat there.

‘What's the matter, Gilly?' Pete says. He puts the back of his hand against my skin. ‘You're hot all over, girl,' he says.

‘Well, we are in the desert, Pete,' I reply, trying to layer my words with humour, to hide my sickness, clutching that magazine in my slippy fingers.

He purses his lips a little. He looks and I can tell he's beginning to see me now. ‘You feel alright?' he asks.

‘Yeah. I'm fine. I feel fine.' I sit again and gently stretch my leg out of the narrow strip of shade, testing the temperature of the air there, as if it were water. ‘I was sick when you went,' I tell Pete. ‘I was sick every day. I missed you so much.'

Pete pulls his legs in, folds his arms across his knees and
rests his head there. ‘I don't know who you were missing, Gilly,' he says. ‘You hardly knew me. We hardly know each other now.'

I continue, ignoring him. ‘I kept on being sick until I found you, and then I was better. I felt closer to you when I was there, even with Nora how she was, and even though you weren't around much.'

Pete turns away but I know he's listening.

‘I wasn't exactly sure what you wanted, Pete, you never said. But I thought it was the right thing to do, to come to you. When I got there you were different. I didn't know why. But I only ever wanted to do what was right for you. That was the most important thing. That's why …' my voice trails away. I wish he'd say something. ‘That's why I've done this thing. That's why it happened the way it did.'

‘Yes.' Pete's voice is muffled. He speaks downwards. He doesn't look at me.

‘I was certain it would bring us together again.'

‘Yes.'

‘Nora helped me decide too.'

Pete lifts his head now. ‘Whatever you've done is nothing to do with Nora,' he says.

‘But –'

‘Just leave her out of this.'

I fidget but I say nothing.

‘How did you find me, Gilly? How did you know where I lived?'

‘I had to find you.'

‘I know. But how did you find me?'

‘I got the address from McGill's.'

‘All by yourself?'

‘No. My mother helped me. And my dad too.'

‘Your mother. Yes.'

‘She only wanted what was best for me,' I say. My words sound hollow, even to me. They hang between us while I try to find a way to explain. ‘I couldn't come at first,' I tell Pete, ‘even though you left that money. But I wanted to.'

‘The money,' Pete echoes.

‘Yes, the envelope that you left in the drawer. My mother told me. And I believed her. I knew you'd left it so I could come and find you.'

Pete smoothes his hand across the stubble on his chin. He opens his mouth to say something, then closes it again and rubs his face in his hands in an agitated way. ‘Geez, Gilly,' he says. Leaning his head back, he asks, ‘Did you know then? Did you know already?'

‘Know what?'

‘You know what I'm talking about.'

I press my fingers across my empty belly. ‘Yes.'

‘What did you think? When you knew?'

‘I can't remember,' I say.

But of course I can remember. I was excited because he had left something behind in me, a proper souvenir, something solid and alive that was evidence of what had happened between us.

‘Well, I was … I …' It's too much to explain. ‘Anyway,
it didn't matter once I knew you wanted me to come. It was in an envelope, my mum said. She told me you wanted me to find it, that you might have been worried about them being angry. But they weren't. She wanted me to come to you.'

Pete looks at me, hard. He keeps his arms folded. Then his face relaxes and he blows his breath out slowly through pursed lips. ‘It doesn't matter now anyway,' he says. ‘What's done is done.'

‘Yes,' I agree, relieved. ‘What's done is done.'

 

I don't know when I realised. But eventually I knew that Pete wouldn't come near me until the baby was no longer between us, and then I was desperate for the whole thing to be finished so we could start over.

But it was hard to tell where that baby ended and I began again.

The baby knew it too. Frequently the nurses brought her to me, making sure I took her in my arms. In the blanket she writhed and did not settle. Her mouth rooted the air and she turned her face to my cool blank skin, still seeking.

‘They all do that,' a nurse told me. ‘It's a reflex.'

‘I don't think she's comfortable,' I said. ‘Look at her. She doesn't like it.' I held her away from me. ‘She wants to lie down. Will you take her?'

The nurse put her arms around the baby. She stopped crying immediately.

I knew better than to bathe her again. I knew to stay away. She was strong and she was slippery. And there was always the memory of how she came out of me. I longed to put that day in my past but it clung to me. My stomach remained swollen and soft; my body still felt occupied. Maybe it was the milk. Or perhaps the blood: dark and rich and constant. I hadn't known I'd bleed and now I found I was a stranger to my body, which would not let me forget.

 

Nora certainly knew how to put the fear into Pete. She steered clear of me for a while after that day in the kitchen but she got to work soon after.

One night, past eleven, I heard Pete return and then Nora knocked on my bedroom door.

‘I've got something for you,' she said. ‘Come and sit with us.'

She knew I would.

Pete was at the kitchen table with a beer. He nodded hello, looking at my face and not my body.

I sat quickly, to conceal the part of me he didn't want to see, but he was staring at the top of his drink now.

Nora went into her handbag and pulled out a small parcel. She passed it across the table to me. Carefully I unwrapped it. There was no ribbon, only tape around brown paper, and inside that a layer of tissue. My hands began to shake.

‘Go on,' she said. ‘Give us a look.'

I pulled the tiny garment from it. It was knitted in flawless white.

‘Apparently it's called a romper suit,' Nora said. She was more animated than I had seen. Her face was flushed, her eyes seemed to burn. ‘The woman in the shop told me you'll need at least three. She said some women buy one for every day of the week.' She spread it out on the table and smoothed her hand over it. ‘They wear them all the time in the first few months. Maybe you should buy her a few, Pete? Don't you think you ought to? You won't have any money of your own, will you, Gilly?'

I swallowed and stared at the floor, at my feet that wouldn't move. I cleared my throat. ‘Only a little,' I said.

‘Pete hasn't given you any?'

I opened my mouth. I wanted to tell her about the money he left at my house to pay for my ticket here. I wanted to tell her that I was grateful, and that it was enough that he had done that. But the words wouldn't come. And anyway, Pete wasn't listening. He was drinking down the last of his can. When it was empty he dropped it on the table and it fell on its side and rolled towards me. I picked it up as his chair scraped against the linoleum. Then he was gone.

Nora raised an eyebrow. ‘Or I suppose I could get the things you need,' she said airily to the empty place where Pete had been. She smoothed the tiny suit out again and folded it back into the wrapping, then pushed it across the table to me. ‘There you are.' She reached into her
pocket and pulled a small key from it. ‘You can have this, too. Since you're staying you might as well.' I took it. ‘You should go to bed,' she said.

I waited for a moment, trying to think of the right thing to say, but nothing came. Nora got up and put Pete's empty can in the bin and it was as if I was no longer in the room, so I did as she'd told me and I went to bed.

 

When the shade disappears altogether Pete and I get back in the car. I touch my finger to the vinyl at the edge of the cushion and find it's burning hot. Pete leans into his seat without reacting.

‘Are you sure this is the best place?' I ask.

‘“Best place.” Jesus Christ, Gilly.' His voice breaks as he says it. He turns his face away.

‘Well, perhaps we could drape a blanket from the roof of the car. Or we could lay it over the windscreen? It would still be hot but we'd make some shade.'

‘It's not going to improve our chances, Gilly,' Pete says.

‘But it might make us a bit more comfortable.'

Pete huffs but I know he thinks it's a good idea. He opens the boot and pulls a towel from it and a blanket. The blanket lies neatly over the windscreen. He winds my window down, drapes a towel inside it and then winds it up again, creating a kind of murky shade in the front of the car.

‘This place that we're going to, is it where you went before?' I ask.

‘When?'

‘You know, when I was at yours, with Nora.'

‘Yes,' he says. ‘It's the same place. The same job.'

‘When you got the job, how long did you know about it before you left?'

Pete scratches at his chin, then shrugs. ‘I don't know. Few weeks. Few days. Does it matter?'

‘Was it Nora that made you go? Bringing those things back and making you sit through it?'

‘No,' Pete says. ‘I would have gone anyway. Just not so quickly.' He sighs and looks out the window.

‘Do you think she knew she could make you go like that?'

He shrugs moodily and stares at the blanketed windscreen. ‘It wasn't just her, Gilly.'

‘I told her she should leave you alone.'

‘Well, you didn't need to. Nora knows me better than anyone.'

‘Does she?'

Pete is silent.

‘She doesn't know what I do about you. She'll never have that.'

Pete's look is a mix of curiosity and pity. But before he can say anything a shiver ripples through me, and softly, I gasp. A sweat breaks out over my skin.

Pete leans over and his brow creases. ‘Gilly, what's the matter?'

‘Nothing,' I say. ‘It's okay. Someone walking over my grave. You know, it's just a shivery feeling. It's nothing.'

‘You've gone pale,' he says. He puts his hand to my face. ‘It's not the heat, is it?'

‘I don't know,' I breathe, resigned. ‘Maybe not.'

He reaches down for the water and unscrews the cap. ‘Here,' he says. ‘Just a sip.'

The water runs warm around my mouth and down my throat. Pete leans over and fusses with the seat, making it go back so that I am semi-reclining. His arms are around me as he does it, his skin hot and dry and close. My breath comes quick and shallow. I close my eyes.

When I open them he's in his seat again, rolling a cigarette. He doesn't smoke it though. He lays it down on the dash. ‘Christ,' he mutters, ‘what have I done, bringing you here?'

‘But I wanted to come, Pete. I wanted it more than anything. You know that.'

‘I shouldn't have let it happen.'