The Grass Castle (8 page)

Abby steps centre-stage into a drama which has frozen mid-scene. Brenda seems paralysed, as if she can’t quite believe what she has done. Abby grasps a blue-checked tea towel from the back of a chair and goes to her father, loops an arm around him and guides him to a chair. He sits slowly, like an old man, and gently she levers his fingers away from his brow and dabs at the oozing gash that weeps blood like water seeping from a cracked hose. She finds herself uttering cooing sounds like a mother comforting a child, reassuring verbal music that takes its origins from the beginning of time. Her father recoils in pain, winces as she wicks the blood away.

‘I’ll have to take him to the hospital,’ she says to Brenda, who still hasn’t spoken, and who stands limp and somehow deflated by the kitchen sink, sagging now, all her anger departed.

‘I didn’t mean to hurt him,’ Brenda says, a notch above a whisper.

Abby turns a searing gaze on her. ‘I hope this is over now,’ she says. ‘You both need to move on.’

In the ute on the way to the hospital, Steve holds a fistful of cotton wool to his head, which Brenda fearfully offered to him as Abby ushered him out the door.

‘Sometimes I wonder what you see in her,’ Abby says, hands firm on the steering wheel.

Steve says nothing, sits curled into himself in the passenger seat.

‘You can’t tell me you love her,’ Abby continues. ‘And if you do, it’s a strange kind of love.’

He grunts something she can’t hear and she asks him to repeat it.

‘All love is strange,’ he says. ‘That’s nothing new.’

Abby considers this for a moment and supposes it is true. Her father’s love for her mother was no ordinary love, and he didn’t walk out on that roller coaster relationship. Perhaps this is his strength, the skill to wait things out, to cut through where nobody else would persist. ‘So you wouldn’t consider leaving?’ she asks, just to put it out there.

He shakes his head. ‘Can’t live on my own, and she’s bearable most of the time. It’s just me. I bring out the worst in her.’

‘What would happen if you did leave?’ Abby asks. ‘Would you have to sell the farm? Hand it over to her?’

Steve shakes his head again. ‘Nah. I had the brains to organise a prenuptial agreement. The farm is yours and Matt’s. Brenda can own me, but she can’t take that from you. The farm is a gift from your mother and me. The only thing we’ve got to give.’

He says it in the present tense, as if Grace still lives on the farm, alive in the wind that blows through the leaves of the oaks and the pines down the driveway, sweeping down from the mountains where her soul might still exist within the symphony of landscape and sky.
A prenuptial agreement
; Abby hadn’t expected such foresight from her father.

At the hospital, they wait two hours even though there’s no-one else in the waiting room. Abby wonders if perhaps the doctor has a special date and won’t appear until a breakfast of eggs Florentine and strawberry crêpes has been eaten and digested. She kills time staring at the TV mounted in the corner of the room, volume turned down. There’s nothing worth watching anyway—just electric shadows moving meaninglessly, dulling impatience.

The doctor, when she appears blank-faced with a clipboard, is only marginally apologetic, mutters something about a cardiac patient and waiting for blood results, which Abby reads as being caught up with a cup of tea and Scotch Finger biscuits. She directs Steve to an orange plastic chair in a small room with bright lights, and pulls away the fibres of cotton wool which have stuck to his congealed scab.

‘You didn’t have any Steri-strips?’ she asks, as if this should have been sorted without medical assistance.

‘If I’d had any, I would have used them,’ Abby says.

The doctor flashes her a look and dabs at the wound with an alcohol swab, making Steve grimace. ‘Suppose I’d better stitch it.’

‘That’d be good,’ Abby says.

The doctor pulls from a cupboard a plastic bag of instruments, a brown bottle, a syringe and needle, and a stainless steel kidney dish which she fills with some sort of pink liquid. She absently draws up some other liquid in the syringe, then sets it on the bench and turns her attention to cleaning the wound more thoroughly. ‘How’d you cut yourself?’ she asks.

‘Flying saucer,’ Steve grunts, and the doctor frowns with annoyance, thinking he is joking. Steve refrains from elaborating.

The doctor slides the needle in under the edge of his wound and he flinches. ‘Hey, steady on.’

‘It’s local anaesthetic,’ she says. ‘Stings at first, then you won’t feel a thing.’

The doctor’s smile is as tight as a cat’s arsehole, Abby thinks.

‘You new here?’ Steve asks.

‘Been here a few months,’ the doctor says, biting her lower lip as she slips the needle in again and injects more local anaesthetic. ‘I have to complete a country stint before I can get a city rotation.’

‘Enjoying it?’

‘It’s okay.’

The doctor opens her kit, then she washes her hands in a cursory manner, as if sterility is only a marginal matter with rural beasts like Steve. She draws out a length of white thread for stitching and does a quick job of pulling Steve’s forehead together. He frowns and winks involuntarily every now and then, as she probes into areas not quite numbed by anaesthetic.

‘Am I better looking now?’ he asks, as she secures the last stitch. Abby is impressed by her father’s joviality with this seemingly disinterested young woman who manages only a half-smile at his game joke.

‘Depends on your perspective,’ she says.

‘Starting from a low base, eh?’ Steve adds with a grin.

On the way home, sitting beside a scrawny Frankenstein’s monster with a patched forehead, Abby asks if he and Brenda will be okay now.

Steve smiles wanly. ‘We’re even,’ he says, ‘at least for another year, till your mother’s anniversary comes up again.’

‘Or until you step out of line.’

‘I guess that’s possible.’

Steve’s grin reminds Abby of Matt. It’s good to know a measure of spunk still runs beneath his skin.

The next morning Abby calls Matt and asks him to pick her up. He’s amazed she’s still alive, and he comes willingly to save her from the house of monsters. She waits for him outside, sitting on her suitcase in the middle of the turning circle, her goodbyes said and accepted. Her father has retreated to the vegie garden, a lonely figure leaning against his shovel like a scarecrow on a stick, small and stooped, older. But what can Abby do? She can’t change his life, can’t alter the fact of Brenda—it’s his choice, not hers. Consumed by guilt, Brenda has immersed herself in the fine art of constructing a caramel slice in the kitchen—Steve’s favourite. From here, the path to peace may still take a few days. There’s no point in Abby hanging around; at least they’ve declared a truce.

Abby likes the stillness and emptiness of the yard, the large quiet of the shed where the battery for the electric fence ticks with monotonous regularity and the orange Kubota tractor stands in oily sleep, and the hay bales sit neatly stacked, waiting for winter. She can hear the soft clucking of the chooks turning over this morning’s scraps in their pen, the wispy voice of the wind sounding in the pines, the distant rattle of Matt’s Nissan coming down the driveway.

Now that yesterday’s tension is subsiding, and she is relaxing into peace, she’s aware she could almost live here on the farm if it wasn’t for Brenda. The air carries the thick rural scent of her childhood, rich with good things, and coloured with memories of her mother. But it’s the same each time she comes back now—if she stays too long, the cloudiness returns, and she begins to think of her mother’s death. Today, however, the sun is warm on her skin, and here is Matt, swinging open the car door for her. He’s wearing that perpetual frown, so quirky and quizzical it’s almost funny.

‘Get in before Brenda appears,’ he says from the driver’s seat.

‘What, you’re not going to lift my bag for me?’

‘You’re strong,’ he says. ‘And I have to prepare for a fast getaway.’

‘Afraid Brenda might inflict dessert on you?’

‘Afraid she might invite me to dinner.’

Abby deposits her bag in the back then settles herself beside Matt. He clunks the old car into gear and performs his usual wheel-spinning exit specifically to irritate Brenda.

‘You must have worked your magic pretty quick,’ he says as they bounce down the driveway. ‘Thought Dad would be held hostage for days.’

‘They’re on the mend. All I had to do was show my face and Dad sank down on his knees in apology.’

‘Bullshit!’ Matt laughs and the pleasant spread of his face renders him close to handsome. ‘Did you threaten him?’

‘No. He threatened me. Said he’d come and live with me in Canberra.’

Matt flings her a glance of horror. ‘Christ. That was good motivation for you.’

‘Yep. I thought it was all done and dusted before I got out of bed yesterday. Thought they’d kissed and made up. Then she threw a saucer at him and cut his head open and I had to take him to hospital to get stitched up. He’s uglier than ever now.’

‘It’s like a bloody soapie.’ Matt’s lips kink with amusement. ‘Still, I suppose it’s easier for him to apologise and be done with it.’

‘Easier for me too,’ Abby says, ‘both of them eating humble pie. I need to get back to Canberra. I have work to do.’

In town, they find a café near the bus stop and sit at a small round table by the window. Abby shouts a coffee for each of them, a pie for Matt, a croissant for herself. Matt slumps in his chair, shoulders rounded, his hands cupped around his coffee mug; it’s obvious he doesn’t socialise very often. He stirs two lumps of sugar into his cappuccino, focusing on the swirling patterns his spoon makes in the froth. She notices his nails are rough and dirty, could use a trim. His face is shuttered and lonely. She wonders if there’s a way to reach him. More hope, she thinks, than trying to undo her father’s self-imposed messes.

‘I’m sorry I can’t stay longer,’ she says. ‘It would have been good to go for a hike or something. A bit of soul-time in the mountains. But I suppose you have to work.’

His brow crinkles as he raises his eyes to look at her, his skin brown as a walnut—the product of his outdoor life. Then he’s distracted by something in the street and his glance shoots out the window. Abby follows his gaze, but nothing’s happening out there—just a few cars driving by. ‘I’m out of work at the moment,’ he says, avoiding eye contact. ‘It’s quiet at the vineyard. Vintage is done. Nothing much on now till pruning. They put me off for a while.’

Abby is worried by this. Matt has never been good when he’s under-occupied. Too much time to think isn’t constructive for anyone—it’s too easy to tie yourself in irrational knots. ‘How are you managing?’ she asks.

‘I have a few savings,’ he says, bum-shuffling on his seat. ‘I’ll get by. I don’t mind having a bit of time off so I can get some other things done.’

‘Like what?’ she asks.

‘I dunno. Might service my car. The engine’s a bit off. Could use a tune-up.’

‘Will you get another job?’

Matt’s eyes speak of hurt and injury, and Abby suspects she is a burr digging under his skin. But who else will push Matt out of his unemployment hole? She tries to lighten the atmosphere. ‘Looks like I should have brought my pack down after all,’ she says. ‘We could have gone for a bushwalk.’

Matt stares out the window again, silent, and Abby waits. His face has changed. She sips her coffee, allows time for him to work up to whatever it is he wants to say.

‘I’ve been thinking about Mum a bit lately,’ he says, still fixed out the window.

‘Me too,’ Abby says. ‘I think about her all the time.’

He shakes his head. ‘Not like that. I think about what life was like for her. The way she saw things. I think I might be similar. More than I thought. Maybe I’m a chip off the old block.’

Looking at him, Abby sees for the first time the dark smudges under his eyes, the jitteriness in his fingers around the coffee cup. ‘What do you mean?’ she asks quietly.

He hesitates, flashes an agonised glance at her then flicks his eyes away. ‘I get down sometimes. Can’t seem to lift myself out.’

A knot of worry hitches in her throat. ‘But you’re all right, aren’t you?’