The Serpent's Skin

by Erina Reddan

  ‘She strived,’ Tessa made quotation marks in the air, ‘for us. Putting food on the table, loving us, keeping us together. You’re the only one who doesn’t get it.’

  ‘Me?’

  ‘The rest of us are getting on with our lives. You’re sitting around rotting in some boarding house dump that’s worse than the hole we all grew up in.’

  I felt a wildness rip along my spine, red and licking out. I tried to get hold of my breath, send it back into the ground. ‘Dad lied,’ I said from between my teeth.

  ‘I can’t do this any more.’ She threw a tea towel across the room. ‘I can’t stand in the middle looking after you both because neither you nor Dad ever got over losing Mum. The both of you walking around bleeding, one just like the other and the rest of us in between.’

  I shook my head, not seeing through the cloudy air. ‘You don’t look after me—I’m not even around.’

  ‘Present or not, we all know you barely hold things together at the best of times, and since Peg’s funeral it’s clear you’re unravelling, JJ. What does Tye say?’

  ‘He told me to go see Dad.’

  She tsked. ‘I thought he had a head on his shoulders.’ She crossed the room to snatch up the tea towel from the floor. ‘Georgie! Check on the twins,’ she called. Georgie aeroplaned out again and buzzed through the door. Tessa sat, reining in her frustration. ‘Mum spent most of her time protecting you from the world and from yourself. So we do, too. For her.’ Her voice on the verge of breaking.

  I stood up. Kneaded my palms. I couldn’t work the sounds into words and my mouth made shapes but nothing came out. It never felt like she’d saved me from anything. ‘Nobody asked you to.’ I finally got out.

  Her eyes were two pools of pity. I wanted to stab pencils into them.

  ‘Look,’ she said, still choked up on her own compassion. ‘It doesn’t matter where she was those last six days.’

  ‘So I’m right.’ I focused on that fact and not her bloody eyes. ‘You don’t think she was at Peg’s, either.’

  ‘I—am—say—ing,’ she articulated every syllable, losing all that niceness, ‘the—end—is—the—same. She died!’

  ‘Bullshit! If he did something, or she took off with another bloke, we should know. And then he can stop pulling that poor-widow-single-father act.’

  Tessa flew her hands to her head and pulled at her hair, which was loose and wispy around her shoulders instead of being swept up into its usual practical ponytail. ‘Of course it wasn’t anything like that. She loved him. I’m older. I remember. It was just some tiff. It was nothing.’ She dropped her hands and sat, leaned her hands long across the table to me, shaking her head. ‘Let it go,’ she said in a lullaby voice. This time there was some of Mum in her. The soothe in her voice lulled me back into my chair.

  ‘I found proof,’ I said.

  She jerked against the back of her chair, all lullaby gone. ‘I don’t want to know.’

  But I told her anyway about Mrs Tyler’s suspicions and Peg’s calendar.

  Tessa laid her head on her folded arms.

  ‘You know what that means?’ I pushed.

  She banged her head against her arms a couple of times. ‘This is what makes me tired, JJ. This—’

  ‘Dad and Peg both lied. You can’t ignore it any longer.’

  She shook her head, but I didn’t let her speak.

  ‘Why don’t you want to know the truth?’ I asked.

  ‘Truth is, you blamed Dad for Mum’s death.’ Her voice soared and I was glad. ‘And you’ve been trying to make up some drama to give you a reason for blaming him. But it was just you being a baby. Grow up, JJ. Shit happens. It is what it is. You can’t trust whatever Peg wrote. Dad did his best. End of story. If Dad did hide something, he had a reason. People hide stuff from their kids all the time to protect them.’

  ‘We’re not kids any more. It’s time. You’re not the only grown-up now. We all are,’ I just about screamed.

  ‘What the F are you on about?’ Her voice was up, too, but she had one eye on the front door for Georgie’s return.

  ‘From the moment Mum died you’ve been trying to protect us all by keeping a lid on everything, all the “unpleasantness”.’ I air quoted, but did manage to drop my voice to her level. ‘But Mum wasn’t like that.’

  ‘I’m not trying to be Mum.’

  ‘Really?’ I accused. ‘You were only thirteen and you never missed a meal.’

  ‘Mum had left a lot in the freezer. It was nothing.’

  She started to say something else, but I got in first. ‘So why do you drink?’

  She backhanded a pile of clothes and they flew through the air and landed in a tumble on the floor. ‘I bloody drink because I’m bloody tired. That’s bloody all.’

  ‘You bloody drink because you’re all bloody twisted tight, but the roar is in you anyway and you can’t keep it under lock and key. You know something’s not right, but you think you’re betraying Dad and therefore failing Mum if you admit it.’

  She shook her hands in the air above her head. Her eyes wild and pulled back and behind them something giving way. ‘You’ve got no idea, Miss All-The-Pain-On-The-Outside, and making the rest of us dance to your tune. That’s not courage. What’s courage is putting one foot in front of another and holding it all together. What Mum did, day in, day out: food on the table, clothes on backs. If you want to honour Mum then get on with your life. Don’t you come into my house telling me I’m missing a card from the deck of emotions. You weren’t the only one to lose Mum, you’re just the only who needs to keep losing her over and over, every day, punishing everybody.’

  I backed away from the punch of her words. My skin was peeled back, raw. My head shaking like it belonged on somebody else’s shoulders.

  She picked up the clothes and she dumped them back on the table. She pulled out a pair of Dad’s overalls and started folding them again, pressing things back together. ‘What did Dad have to say about all this when you were over there last night?’ she asked.

  My head wouldn’t stop shaking.

  ‘Just what I thought.’ She picked up a pair of shorts. ‘Peg wasn’t right in the head, can’t trust anything she wrote. Dad would know. Dad would tell us.’

  ‘Dad would know, Dad wouldn’t tell us, hasn’t told us, drowns us like kittens in his lies—’

  ‘For fuck’s sake. The drama—’ Tessa got to her feet and opened the fridge. ‘You think long and hard,’ she said, ‘about your next step.’ She poured herself a wine and sat before the squared-up pile of clothes. ‘Unless you think he’s murdered her or something, and you know he didn’t, then it’s not worth it. Leave it alone. You’re already on the edge. You need to get a grip. She wanted you to be happy. So be bloody happy and leave this alone.’

  ‘Muuuum,’ Georgie yelled. ‘They’re awake. I’ll get em.’

  Tessa jumped to her feet and disappeared out of the door, leaving me by the table.

  WHAT’S JACK SCARED OF?

  The next day, Tye pulled me into the photocopying room as soon as I arrived at work, took the two lattes from me and rested them on a bookshelf and hugged me tight. ‘What the fuck?’ he murmured. ‘You can’t disappear like that.’

  ‘I know, I know.’ I groaned back into the smooth of his sweet-smelling neck. Feeling my insides melt. But something else as well. A creeping guilt. I hadn’t told him. He had a right to know. If I decided not to go through with it, would I tell him at all? Jack all over again, I castigated myself. I knew it, but it didn’t mean Tye’d get the truth in the end.

  ‘Let’s go to Mario’s tonight.’ I squeezed him. ‘Drink some wine, eat some pasta, drink some wine.’ I’d keep drinking until I’d made a decision. It was like I wasn’t giving myself any truth, either.

  He squeezed back. ‘But you gotta promise. No more disappearing.’

  I nodded.

  ‘Also, Maurice is looking for you.’

  ‘Shit,’ I said.

  I told Tye about goi
ng to Tessa’s.

  He lowered the latte from his lips. ‘You left work when you’ve got the Stintini case about to go to court to go and see your sister? The one who drives you nuts?’

  I quickly charged past the concern on his face. I, too, could sense Peg’s breath whisper close. Instead I told him about the meals Mum had made ready as if she’d expected to be away. I didn’t tell him about the wedding ring she left behind as if she’d expected to never come back.

  ‘Listen.’ He wrapped his arms around me. ‘Maybe this isn’t good for you after all. Instead of chasing it down, maybe now is the moment you should let it go. You’re okay, JJ. You’re the most compassionate, smart and, yes, sane person I know.’

  I closed up tight against his words. He always surprised me about how much he knew and didn’t say until a moment like this. How the hell did I make enough good karma to get him? On the other hand, his eyes saw too deep into the raw. I pushed away and covered my face with my hands, like a kid who thinks if they can’t see the world the world can’t see them.

  Instead of pulling my hands away, he manoeuvred behind me and placed his over mine, enfolding me. ‘You’re not like your Aunt Peg.’

  I bit my lips to stop the whimper. ‘If I made it all up about Mum, I probably am. That’s what Peg did. Said any old crap to match whatever the hell mess was going on inside her. It’s better to know now, so I can—’ I broke off. ‘Prepare,’ I finally finished.

  He laughed quietly. ‘Now that’s insane. How you going to do that? Start stacking newspapers in the shed waiting for the moment you might need a shitload to hoard?’

  I let a little half-drowned sound escape that could’ve been taken for a baby ghost of a laugh.

  I went the long way to my desk so I could avoid Maurice’s office. My in-tray had disappeared under the pile of yesterday’s documents. I pulled my chair into my desk, opened the large bottom drawer and tipped my in-tray straight into it. I couldn’t think with all that swamp. Didn’t know how Peg did it, letting things build up into screaming piles around her. I pulled the Stintini files forwards and went through Suze’s work. After an hour, my head was exploding with too much information. I dropped it into my hands. Rubbed my eyes. Maybe I did need that day off I’d told Tessa I had. Made a few more notes on the files for Suze. I went by Tye’s desk to ask him to cover me while I went out for a while. Told him I’d got a call from Philly who needed a bit of help. Lied. Told him I’d be back. Lied. He raised an eyebrow, but didn’t say anything.

  Aunty Peg’s house was peeled back like a skun rabbit—the doors flung open, windows yanked wide. The violence of it stopped me dead. Aunty Peg had filled every space of her house with things, bringing the walls closer and closer until the house fit around her like a glove. I hoped her spirit had long pissed off so she wasn’t around for this violation.

  ‘Get behind it, Tim.’ Dad’s voice from deep inside the house was low and guttural like he was herding up sheep. We could all speak dog.

  I wished for a sec that I hadn’t skived off work after all so I’d didn’t have to face him again. I wheeled my bike up beside Peg’s house and leaned it against the wall beside the apple tree. Dad’s back came into view, down the verandah steps followed by a couch, then Tim, who grinned.

  ‘Ah, you grace us.’

  ‘As you didn’t at Peg’s funeral.’

  ‘Gidday, love,’ Dad said with a glance as he backed towards the truck. It was his superpower—ignoring stuff.

  I kept my distance. I picked up an apple that had fallen from the tree and rubbed it shiny on my jeans, which I’d changed into. When they’d passed, I went in: all that was left of the lounge room were the stepping stones across the floorboards where sofa legs and sideboards had been. The pale vulnerability of them crawled through me.

  ‘Where are the girls?’ I called, trying to shut it out.

  ‘We got an early start, been here since five,’ said Tim.

  I frowned, thinking of how Tessa would take the news they’d been working for five hours, throwing out things she hadn’t sorted. And given the haul she’d already scored, she was on to something. It wasn’t like her to be late.

  I wandered into Aunty Peg’s bedroom. It was empty as well and so was her sewing room. I wondered if they’d come across a sewing machine or anything that might have given the room its name. I bit into the apple and its slight flouriness of over-ripe.

  ‘Tessa’s going to be pissed off. She’s going through all this stuff,’ I called.

  ‘We’ve all got lives,’ Dad called back. ‘Got to get on with the job and get back to them.’

  I grunted and went down the corridor to the back of the house. The door of the spare room was chocked open with boxes. I nudged them forwards and squeezed in. There’d been a bed once, but it was lost underneath garbage bags and piles of clothes. I took another bite of the apple and chucked the rest through the window. I put my hands on my hips, kicked at the nearest bag. So heavy it didn’t budge. I got to my knees and opened it. On the top was a ruler, a fan with a dancing Chinese girl on it and a whole lot of wire coat hangers. A sigh took a long time getting out of me. But still. I’d spent the night chasing sleep from one corner of my room to the other, and stubbing my toe against the same thing—Dad was damned keen to get in here and get rid of everything, so there was something he didn’t want found. Of course I knew that whatever it was had probably already been shipped off to the tip, but you never knew, and hearing Dad in the next room got me going.

  I pulled gloves out of my back pocket, shoved my fingers into them. I poked about in the bag until I hit a lot of rocks at the bottom, and then went through another one a bit half-heartedly. All that uselessness was greying my insides. As I stood to put the box out onto my sorted pile, I banged my shin against a sharp edge. ‘Shit.’ I bent to rub like mad at it and saw what had got me. It was a rectangle wooden box—all blonde wood. I shoved the stuff off the top of it. It was an old-fashioned butter box. Mum had one exactly the same. She used to set me up by the fire with it and I worked my way through the buttons and ribbons and odd socks, my feet tucked under me, up and away from the licking moan of the wind through the cracks in the wall.

  I couldn’t get Peg’s box open, but it turned out Peg was right: junk did come in handy. I got hold of a nearby screwdriver and I jimmied the lid up. Inside, dozens of hardback notebooks were sardined in. I wiped my hand on my jeans and opened the first one. The writing was all flamboyant loops and loud capitals like Aunty Peg’s.

  ‘JJ?’ called Dad.

  ‘Here.’ I shoved the diary back in the box and pulled a nearby jacket over it.

  ‘We’re in there next.’

  ‘I need to bag up these clothes for Vinnies. You can do the laundry first,’ I called back.

  ‘Straight to the tip with this lot.’ He pushed into the room. ‘Rat infested.’

  I was about to argue when we heard Philly’s voice at the front door.

  ‘Fuck,’ we heard Tim say.

  ‘What’s wrong?’ Dad called, striding up the now cleared and echoing corridor, me in his wake. Philly was kitted out in a matching tracksuit with a mauve sports band around her head. I would have laughed if it weren’t for her look of serious.

  ‘Tessa drove into a ditch.’ You didn’t need to ask questions with Philly. She went on. ‘Just shaken up. Last night, ten past one in the morning. She’d been out putting Sophie to sleep. They’re both okay. Just lucky Bill Malcolm was passing—he towed her out.’

  ‘Shit,’ said Dad. He rubbed his hands together making something of the information. ‘But all good now. Let’s get back to it.’ He turned to go.

  ‘No, Dad. All bad.’ Philly put a hand on his elbow. ‘She shouldn’t have been driving.’

  ‘Why the hell not?’

  ‘She was drunk—and with Sophie in the car.’

  ‘What’s she got to be drinking about?’

  I rolled my eyes.

  ‘What?’ he challenged. ‘Geoff’s a good bloke. What’s wr
ong with her?’

  I pushed past and went back into the spare room. I sat on the butter box and my face found its way into my hands, cradling the sudden heat of guilt. I knew what she had to be drinking about because I had been the one with the shovel digging it all up. I rubbed my arms, trying to coat them.

  ‘Tessa’s got too much on her plate,’ said Dad, coming into the room, the others behind him. ‘Let’s get this sorted so that’s one less thing she has to deal with. You girls put some muscle into getting that lot into the truck.’ He pointed at the crap under the window. ‘Get around behind that dresser, will you, mate?’ he said to Tim.

  I tried to catch Philly’s eye. But she was with Dad: the sooner this was over, the better, and twenty dollars here and there was not enough to change her mind. It felt like the air had hissed from my tyres, too. I had what I needed, anyway. I took a while piling up my arms and adjusting the load to give Dad and Tim time to manoeuvre the dresser out. I had to keep Dad off the scent that I’d found something. Once I was looking at their backs, I dumped the lot, picked up the butter box and disguised it under the jacket. I scuttled with it out the front door and around the corner to where my bike was. I wasn’t sure how I’d carry it home in the basket, but I’d worry about that later.

  Tim gave me a grin when I got back inside. ‘Good to see you back.’ He swatted me. ‘Have a nice trip?’

  ‘Everyone needs a smoko.’

  He grinned. ‘Especially you.’

  ‘Shut up.’ I shoved him, but my eyes were all over the room, looking for more butter boxes.

  ‘Less talk, more action,’ said Dad.

  Dad revved the truck as Tim closed up its tailgate. Tim pecked our cheeks, one after the other.

  ‘Stay out of trouble,’ he said to me with a further slap on my back.

  I darted forwards and punched him on the arm. ‘Don’t keep Daddy waiting.’

  He twisted out of the way and laughed as he swung up into the cabin, the truck taking off before he’d got the door closed.