Desert Fish (3 page)

‘So you know about the rent …'

‘Yeah. It's all settled, thanks.'

My mother looked doubtfully past Pete and into the room. He'd shifted the sheets out of the top drawer and they sat in a neat pile on the bed.

‘The linen –' my mother said.

‘Yeah, I hoped you wouldn't mind. Only I'd like to keep my clothes in the top drawers. I'll put these down lower. If that's okay.'

The top drawer was open and Pete's shirts were stacked neatly. He leaned down and relocated the sheets just as tidily as she'd have done.

‘Well,' my mother breathed, ‘I don't suppose that will be a problem.' She turned and surveyed the room. ‘But I hadn't expected to let the room so quickly. I haven't cleaned under there.' She pointed down at the sea-grass matting. She was gathering pace and running out of steam at the same time. I could see she was caught between sending Pete away, since my father had gone ahead without her and got him in, and letting him stay, because he clearly impressed her. ‘The dust,' she continued, ‘it falls down through the straw. I'll have to lift it up and clean before the room's properly ready to let.'

‘It's fine for now,' Pete said. ‘I'll do it later.'

I stood and moved to leave the room. My mother turned and caught my eye. She gave me a little smile. ‘Alright, Gilly?'
Will he do? Will it be okay now?

‘Yes, of course,' I said.

She turned back to Pete. ‘Okay, then,' she said. ‘I'd
appreciate that, Pete.' Her brow was smooth now and she'd let go of her lip. Her annoyance was fading and I felt that she was secretly pleased. That even though my dad had done this without consulting her, the situation might work to her advantage. She was seeing Pete and possibilities were opening up to her.

I've never stayed in a motel before. This place is like one from an American film, with numbered doors around the parking area and a small fenced pool with deckchairs. The sign at the entrance says there is a colour television in every room.

My dress is stuck to me so I get in the shower with it on. I stay in for ages. There's so much to wash off me, milk and sick and blood and that other smell, soft and sterile and strangely pervasive, of hospital. It's in my hair too and if I drew my finger along my skin it would probably collect beneath my nails.

Pete is lying on the bed, his arm hanging over the side. He doesn't stir as I search for a comb and drag it through the wet ropes of my hair. I'm not tired at all. When I take his hand it is dry and warm in mine, the hairs on the back of it trace a fragile pattern against my cheek. I kneel there for a while and listen to his soft snore, breathe his scent of smoke and sweat and the
disinfectant that over-lies it. His fingers are ruddy from scrubbing the car seat.

I'm buzzing. It takes all my will to leave him sleeping there.

 

Outside, I sit at the edge of the pool. The ‘Motel' sign is high up above the fence. It's supposed to do a neon flash, ‘
Motel
… Motel …
Motel
… Motel …' but the sun's so bright you'd be hard pushed to notice. For a while I watch that sign trying blindly to announce itself to the cars that scud by on the other side of the fence.

In the still air you can hear everything. Doors opening and closing, traffic going by, the water glugging and slapping against the sides of the pool. I listen for Pete but there's no sound from our room.

The water is tepid but if I move my legs about some coolness slips between my toes. I plan what I'll wear tonight. After my shower, I found everything packed in the blue suitcase I first left home with, all of it exactly where I put it. When I tried to dress, my clothes felt like someone else's. My jeans wouldn't go past my thighs. My corduroy skirt didn't zip up. I had to cram myself into a T-shirt and some elasticised trousers and I was relieved Pete was out of the room. Now I can feel my skin pressed against the fabric of my clothing and the sun burns through them.

I picture my mother in the chlorinated ripple of the pool. She never swam in the river like I did. She preferred
to take a magazine to the swimming baths. She liked the lawn there, it was clipped and bright, and there were hardly any ants if you lay your towel down near the path. Ron the pool manager spread Antrid on anything that crawled within inches of his tightly edged lawn.

My mother liked the striped umbrellas and the hot concrete floor of the dressing rooms. There were no puddles of water anywhere. Whatever wasn't in the pool dried out quickly. There were hooks for towels and benches for bags and cubicles to get changed in. Everything had its place, and I belonged beside her.

Soon after Pete moved in, she came to find me.

‘C'mon, Gilly. Get your towel. We'll go for a swim.'

‘I don't know what bathers to wear,' I said, trying to care. You had to have several for the summer. In a hot year you'd wear them every day. To the river, or the pool. Or under a sundress, just in case an opportunity for swimming arose. My mother always wore a bikini, despite the stretch marks on her stomach. They were masked by her tan. I wore a one-piece. If I had chosen it, it was in a solid colour, with perhaps a contrasting trim, but if my mother had brought it home for me, she'd have got me a print, nearly always floral.

On this day, we walked over the bridge. You could see the thirsty river through the railed fence.

‘It's drying out,' I said to my mother. ‘Look.'

She shuddered. ‘Too far down for me, Gilly.'

‘I saw an eel the other day,' I told her. ‘It was in a rock pool that had dried out. It must have got stuck.'

‘Well I hope you didn't touch it,' she said.

‘No,' I told her, even though I did. I turned it over with a stick and examined its shrivelled belly. It must have been there a few days; there was a powerful stink about it. I wondered how it had got caught in the pool, how the river had shrunk away and forgotten it. Did it lie there for ages, sensing the current close by but unreachable, hoping for a brief wash of water from up in the catchment to flush it out?

‘Do you think it'll rain sometime soon?' I asked her as we lay our towels out.

‘Yeah, I guess. It's got to.' She didn't really care though, and I was just trying to make conversation. She stretched her legs out in front of her and shifted them, knees together, from side to side, smoothing her palms along her thighs. ‘Don't worry, love,' she said. ‘They'll keep some water in the pool, even after that river dries out.'

‘I reckon this Pete is going to work out just fine,' she said a bit later, drowsily.

‘I suppose so.'

‘He's quite tidy. Have you noticed? And very well mannered.' Her eyes stayed closed but she left a space for me to nod and agree. ‘And I think he might …' She paused and I felt her searching for the right thing to say. ‘I think he might even things out.'

Almost imperceptibly she sighed and then she turned her head away from me, into the sun.

My mother always spoke to me like this, even when I was a little girl. I was her only one and for as long as I can remember I was her confidante. Once, when I was maybe ten, my father went out and didn't come home. I could see her watching the clock as she peeled potatoes and cooked the meat. Distracted, she washed the pans, chewing her lip. She was quite short with me until I asked, ‘Where's Dad?'

‘Oh, his social life's much more important than us, Gilly.' She spat her briny words at the sink. Then she clunked a pan onto the rack and I knew not to say any more. She would keep talking if there was anything else to say and I would sense if cues were required.

Later, when he still hadn't come in, she slipped in to my room. ‘I'll sleep here with you, Gilly,' she said. ‘It'll be just us girls tonight.' She sighed and patted my hair back from my eyes, spooning her warmth against my back. She must have crumbled a cube into her bath water; there was a scent of lily of the valley on her skin. ‘It's his loss, isn't it? I was planning a really intimate night for us.' She paused, as if to taste the promise of it. ‘A really intimate night.'

I wasn't sure exactly what she meant by that but already I knew that this was something my father could have elsewhere if he wanted.

It was Mrs Martin when I was nine. Life was getting complicated in ways that I could sense but had no words for.

Mrs Martin was a divorcee. Her garden had no trees. She had a flat, cropped lawn with a tall slatted fence
around it. The paint had peeled off and the wood beneath was a faded and splintery grey, clouded with wood algae, like the mottle on rock. Mrs Martin had a daughter called Kerry. Kerry was in my class at school but she never sat with me at lunch or stood beside me at line-up. I had hoped she might like me better if I came to her house. But whenever we visited, Kerry was at ballet. I had been going with my father to Mrs Martin's for several weeks, and each time it was the same: hot and dry, an empty garden and no-one to play with.

Kerry had a sandpit at the back corner of the garden. An umbrella garnished the side of it making a small circlet of shade. On this day, I found Kerry's Barbie doll buried in the sand and I played with her for a while. I called her Melanie, a name I loved, and I brushed the sand off her clothes. Her arms made a scraping sound when I moved them. There were fine grains lodged in all the places where her limbs joined to her body. It made me feel a little squeamish, how it made her stiff and immobile.

‘Out and play in the lovely sunshine,' Mrs Martin had said.

‘But Mrs Martin –'

‘Oh, you must call me Vonnie,' she tinkled. ‘Look, it's so gorgeous out there. I'll call you in when I've made some cool drinks.'

Out I went, where there was nothing but hot sun and the sandpit with the doll that I'd been so pleased to find at first. Now she seemed tragic. I tried to fashion a chair out of sand for her. I thought I could be a doctor and operate
to save her. But then the sun pushed the umbrella's shade right out of the sandpit and I knew I would never get all the grit out of her joints.

I watched the door for a while. It stayed closed and I could see no movement behind the opaque glass. I wanted that cool drink, my mouth was dry, my hands sticky and hot. I wanted to pee too.

Mrs Martin's kitchen was warm and still. A slick of old milk was hardening to a solid curdle on the tabletop and I could smell stale butter. There was no sign of my cool drink or of my dad, who was supposed to say goodbye before he went to get the two-stroke for the lawnmower while I played with Kerry.

What a trolloping mess
. I could practically hear my mother saying it, and I thought about saying it too. Out loud. What a trolloping mess this kitchen is! But I kept my mouth shut.

The bathroom was in a state too. You could see that without even going in. From the hallway, I could hear the low brush of Yvonne Martin's voice through the door to my right. I couldn't hear my father but his trousers lay in a crumpled heap among the mess on the bathroom floor.

I was quiet as a snake, but calm, because I knew that whatever they were doing, they wouldn't come to the door if they heard me. If I made a sound, the voices would drop out of the air and I would feel them go as still as if they were paralysed.

In my dad's wallet I found three notes. I took one of
them, holding it neat and flat between my thumb and forefinger until I'd got out the back door.

At Lonsdale's corner store I bought a can of Fanta, a sherbet dipper and a packet of Capstans. ‘For my mum,' I said to Mrs Lonsdale, even though she didn't ask.

When I got back I sat on the grass where the shade had moved to and drank the Fanta. I ate some of the sherbet and then folded the top over and put it in the pocket of my sundress with the Capstans. After that I squatted in the sandpit and peed.

 

An hour later and my dad had Yvonne Martin's own can of mower fuel in the boot and a Curly Wurly bar on the seat between us.

‘Had to go to three garages to find the two-stroke,' he said, winking. ‘That's what took me so long. And I had to get a sweetie for my little Missy.' He ruffled my hair with the hand that wasn't on the wheel and pushed the Curly Wurly bar over the seat to me. I took it even though I hated them, how the caramel stuck your teeth together by the time it got soft enough to eat, and the chocolate was always white from melting and hardening in the sun and the fridge.

‘It was nice of Mrs Martin to watch you, wasn't it? While I went out to get these.'

‘Vonnie,' I corrected him. ‘Not Mrs Martin.'

‘Maybe call her Mrs Martin,' he said. ‘Your mum wouldn't like you calling her Vonnie.'

I looked out the window at the parched lawns and dry gardens.

‘Okay,' I said.

 

At home, my mum was bleaching the mould that lined the kitchen sink.

‘You took your sweet time,' she said.

Dad lifted the two-stroke onto the table.

‘Not there, Creighton. We eat off that.'

‘It's just motor oil, Maureen,' Dad said.

I stood quietly beside him.

‘Did you have a nice time?' Mum asked.

‘It was alright.'

‘Did you play with Kerry's dolls?'

‘Yes,' I told her. ‘Their house is a pigsty.'

‘Really.' Mum's eyebrows shot up. ‘Is it, Creighton?' She smoothed her hand over the front of her hip, pleased.

‘I haven't really been inside,' Dad told her. He picked at a spot on his arm and I could tell he didn't believe his lie. To tell a good lie, you have to say it to yourself first, enough times that you can forget it's not true. Then you can look someone in the face and say it without flinching. But my mum didn't notice. She was touching all the neat things around her. Her pressed skirt. Her cropped hair. The edge of the table, wiped clean of crumbs and smears.

I pulled the sherbet out of my pocket and dipped the licorice into it. The powder fizzed on my tongue.

‘Did Daddy get you a sweetie?' Mum asked me.

‘Yes.' I produced the Capstans. ‘And he got you a present too,' I told her, placing them on the table where the two-stroke was.

Dad was silent. He put his hand on his wallet. I'd already put the change in my room. There was nothing to give me away. He scratched at his stubble and waited to see what would happen.

‘Well,' Mum said. ‘That was thoughtful, Creighton. I was nearly out.' She pulled one from the packet. ‘I could do with one now,' she said.

Dad put his hands on Mum's shoulder and she folded herself into him, pleased at his display of affection. Then she lit her cigarette.

‘Daddy got me this too,' I said, holding up the Curly Wurly.