The Serpent's Skin

by Erina Reddan

  Shelley grinned again. ‘Think Tim’s coming around. He’s worried it’s a breach of my dad’s trust if he sleeps up here.’

  The fly-screen of the front door slapped shut behind us and the cool of the dark in the corridor got its arms about us.

  ‘Funny boy, that brother of mine.’

  ‘He’s got morals. Like your dad.’

  I sewed my lips up tight so not a sound could get out about how Dad might not measure up to his publicity.

  I followed her into the solid weight of the Baxter kitchen. The kind of sturdy money could buy. Big-bellied canisters, floral curtains that hung to the floor, a carved oak table. Things that held time.

  ‘You need fattening up,’ Shelley said. She put her arm up to showcase her muscles through her own comfortable layer or two.

  ‘Bring it on.’ I pulled the cake tin to me and yanked at the lid.

  ‘Help yourself, then.’ She laughed.

  ‘I’m practically family.’ I had the moist chocolate cake out and on three plates before she’d got the cups and saucers organised. ‘Do we have to wait for Tim?’

  ‘Maybe for the second piece.’ She sat down opposite. She twisted her hands together and leaned forwards. ‘Now that you’re here…’

  ‘Mmmm…?’ I said with my mouth chock full.

  ‘Could you talk to him?’

  ‘About?’

  She shrugged. ‘You know…’

  I put the cake down. I kept my eyes on her, emptying the space between us.

  ‘It’s been six years,’ she said.

  ‘You’re only twenty-three.’

  ‘I want babies.’

  It was like a stab in my guts, right next to where my maybe-baby was giving growing a go.

  ‘Why don’t you propose to him?’ I said, trying for lightly.

  ‘He’d just say no.’

  She was right. There was a dark place in Tim, deep down below the waterline. He was smart enough to know there’d been something up between Dad and Mum, but not smart enough to know that whatever it was had nothing to do with him and Shelley. I screwed up my eyes for a second. That needed to go on the Map of Mum under ‘weird shit’. Tim couldn’t make a decision about Shelley until he’d worked out what was wrong with Dad and whether he’d got the same wrong.

  ‘He doesn’t listen to me,’ I said.

  ‘I know.’ She grinned. ‘But it was worth a shot. If even you thought he should settle down.’

  I leaned over the table to flick her on her arm.

  ‘Why didn’t he go to your Aunt Peg’s funeral?’ she asked.

  ‘You’re asking me?’

  ‘Told me he had to finish drafting the last of the cattle before Dad headed off, but Dad couldn’t have cared less.’

  I took a bite and closed my eyes to get closer to the mint in the chocolate.

  I saw Tim, ramrod stiff, refusing to get in the car to go to the cemetery to bury Mum, his skinny body shaking with the effort of keeping the pain all locked away. My eyes flew open at a sudden brush against my calf. Shelley burst out laughing and the cat hunkered back and launched itself into my lap. I got my hand to my heart and cringed away from its settling bones.

  ‘It’s only Clementine,’ she said.

  ‘Black freakin demon.’

  She rolled her eyes.

  ‘Has Tim had any nightmares recently?’ I asked.

  Shelley pursed her lips. ‘A couple.’

  I raised my eyebrows over the top of the cake.

  ‘Ah,’ she said, realising.

  ‘Yep,’ I said. ‘Death dredges up a thing or two from the dark.’

  The fly-screen door squeaked open and flapped shut.

  ‘Little sister,’ Tim said by way of hello. His long, football-fit limbs strode out of the corridor gloom. I slapped his hand away but too late: he had my cake up and into his mouth. He dropped it back on the plate, half of it wolfed away. ‘Now that’s how you eat Shelley’s cakes, JJ. You’ve gotta commit.’

  He went over to the sink to wash his hands. His moleskins, glove-tight and finished by a carefully chosen leather belt; a big improvement on the bit of twine Dad favoured. Why he thought he was like Dad I had no idea.

  ‘To what do we owe this honour?’ His back still turned, scrubbing dirt from his nails.

  ‘Been round at Dad’s.’

  He turned and made a mock sign of the cross, wiping his hands on the tea towel. ‘How was he, then?’

  ‘Out.’

  He dried his hands and kissed the back of Shelley’s neck. ‘That so?’ he said, his eyes on me. ‘Doing the rounds, then. Seeing Tessa next?’

  ‘Nah, did that a couple of days back.’

  A look of ‘here we go’ raised his eyebrow and settled over his face.

  ‘I didn’t do anything,’ I said defensively.

  ‘I dropped in a casserole this morning,’ Shelley broke in to defuse the tension. ‘She seemed good, given everything.’

  ‘At least she’s sworn off drinking for a bit.’ Tim backed off and laughed. He balled up the tea towel and threw it at me.

  I caught it and dropped it on the table.

  ‘Now Tessa’s off the turps, just you to sort out,’ said Tim.

  ‘Roses look good,’ I said, deliberately ignoring him, and looking only at Shelley.

  He laughed again, showing us his straight white teeth. With that and his mussed sandy hair, he could have been December for sunbaked and farm fresh in the Young Farmers calendar.

  ‘You and the old man. Peas in a pod,’ he said.

  I snorted. ‘Off your pills, mate?’

  ‘Me no looky, me no see,’ he said. ‘Now, what you need is a boyfriend. Relax you a bit.’

  Shelley hit him. ‘Leave her alone.’

  ‘What?’ he said, all injured. ‘You think so, too.’

  She screwed up her face, caught out.

  ‘What happened to that Tye bloke?’ asked Tim, still full of grin.

  ‘Still around.’ I folded my arms, smug, because for once he was way wide of the mark. ‘You’d be left on the bench if the amateur psychologists were picking sides.’

  His grin widened even further as he tipped forwards to tap the table. ‘Yet here you are, still all messed up, JJ. So what do you need?’

  ‘Me. What about you? You should bloody tal—’ I began, but Shelley flicked the tea towel at Tim.

  ‘Stop winding her up.’

  He opened his arms wide. ‘It’s too easy.’ The front of his shirt slid open and a glint of silver shone from around his neck. It took me a second to recognise the cross Mum had given him on his first communion. We’d all got one except Philly who didn’t make her communion until the year after Mum died. I didn’t know where mine had got to.

  ‘Still wearing that?’ I asked.

  ‘What?’ His hand closed around the cross. ‘This?’ He did a ‘it’s nothing’ wave with his hand.

  But this was what I’d come for. For this small light in the darked-out room I was stuck in on my own. Mum and Tim had been tied up tight together. He saw her in a way none of the rest of us did.

  We all knew the story.

  Mum had been wearing a new day dress she’d just finished sewing. Nobody else noticed. But after the milking Tim had burst into the kitchen with his little-boy energy. He flew straight at her. He put his hands up to her waist. ‘You look real nice, Mummy.’ I wanted that seeing on my side.

  ‘Missed a good funeral,’ I said. ‘Mrs Nolan had her talons out, though.’

  ‘I hear you kept out of her way.’

  ‘Did you now?’ I bit into the cake. ‘She tell you herself?’

  He shrugged a yes.

  ‘She’s certainly doing the rounds, then.’

  He picked up the slice of cake Shelley had slid before him and bit off half of it in one go again. ‘Nancy’s not a bad old stick.’

  ‘She’s a bloody nosy cow,’ I said, with my mouth equally full of cake. ‘And I don’t need her apology after all these years.’

  ‘
Old man’s been weird since Peg kicked the bucket,’ he said. ‘Thought it best to stay and keep an eye on him.’

  ‘You were with him?’

  ‘Needed a loan of his vice about that time.’

  ‘What kind of weird?’

  Tim shrugged. ‘Edgy. Bit my head off when I told him he needed to put Max out to pasture.’

  Shelley shuddered. ‘Hate that bloody bull.’

  ‘Like an old man and his mongrel dog,’ said Tim. ‘Stuck with each other.’

  ‘Max is a mongrel,’ said Shelley.

  ‘I tell him nearly every time I’m over there, but the other day he flew off the handle.’ He nodded at me. ‘You’ve got time on your hands, JJ. You should talk to him. Find out what’s got him cranky as a cut snake.’

  I laughed.

  ‘I mean it,’ he said, suddenly serious.

  A dead quiet followed.

  ‘I tried,’ I said finally. ‘After Peg’s funeral. Same old. Hasn’t told me one straight thing in more than a decade.’

  ‘You think this has got to do with Mum, then?’

  I told him about Mrs Tyler. I told him about the calendar, about Peg’s diaries. I pulled my backpack closer and reached in to take out the Map of Mum. He reached for Shelley’s hand. He watched me, saying nothing as I unfolded it and smoothed it flat against the table. Both he and Shelley moved in closer, his eyes busy on the forest of colours where only red facts should be.

  ‘Mmm,’ he grunted. He turned to scrabble about in a drawer in the sideboard. Found what he was looking for. Held it out to Shelley and me. ‘If you’re after facts, you’d better see this.’

  I took the photocopied page in the clear plastic sleeve from him. ‘Where did you get this?’

  He waved a dismissive hand. ‘Round at Dad’s. Just gathering dust there. Thought it needed a bit of looking after.’

  I ran my index finger over the facts and figures of Mum’s death on the certificate. ‘Mmm,’ I grunted back. ‘Nothing we don’t know here.’

  He nodded. ‘But it’s something.’ He gestured towards my Map of Mum. ‘You can turn at least one of those things red.’

  He was right. I’d had a question mark over the exact time. And now we had the doctor’s name. Shelley found me a red Texta and I made the new additions.

  ‘Reckon you should talk to Nancy. I reckon she’s got more on her mind than an apology.’

  ‘She’s just a bloody busybody. Mum didn’t even like her.’

  ‘Grow up, JJ. She drove Mum to the station. You say you want facts.’

  ‘Why haven’t you spoken to her, then?’

  ‘I’m not the one constructing timelines and maps.’

  He stared me out.

  ‘I’m not interested in her stupid opinions. I’m after facts.’

  ‘In that case, you should check out that address in Mum’s Mass book.’

  ‘I never saw—’

  ‘Ninety-five Righton Street, Richmond,’ he broke in.

  ‘You remember it?’

  He did a half shrug.

  ‘Why didn’t you check it yourself all these years?’

  ‘I’m not like you, all broken and bloody, and holding on to all of this.’

  ‘Me?’ I exploded. ‘I haven’t said boo to any of you for fourteen bloody years.’

  ‘You never had to say anything, JJ. It was always saying it for you.’

  The cat yelped as I stood up, flinging it from my lap.

  ‘What about you?’

  ‘I’m getting on with my life.’

  ‘You can’t even propose, you gutless wonder.’

  He glared at me, and sent an uneasy glance towards Shelley, who was busy looking out the window as if she was wondering when it might next rain. But she did her own glaring at me as soon as the coast was clear.

  ‘Maybe I shouldn’t be chasing it down then, either,’ I said. I wanted to know how far he’d go. He liked to pretend it wasn’t any of his business, but underneath I could see he was all burn to know what happened to Mum, just as long as I’d be camouflage he could hide behind.

  ‘Maybe,’ he said, calling my bluff. He took his cup and saucer to the sink, rinsing them under the tap.

  I let him crash things about a bit. Then he turned back. ‘Ever get there to see her?’ he asked, tone all reasonable curiosity now, nodding towards the end of his road where the cemetery was.

  ‘What good would that do me?’ I narrowed my eyes, wondering what new bait he was laying out.

  He shifted like he couldn’t find a comfy spot against the sink. I didn’t miss the look he exchanged with Shelley, though. ‘Dunno,’ he finally said.

  ‘What about you? You ever go?’

  ‘Too busy.’ He got his arms crossed up.

  I let the silence do some work.

  ‘Maybe. Sometimes,’ he said.

  ‘Does she talk to you?’

  He shook his head like he had to get rid of a fly. ‘She’s dead, JJ.’

  With my elbows to the table, the hollows of my palms made beds for my eyes. The darkness made more things possible.

  I felt the heat of Shelley’s hand on my forearm.

  ‘Look,’ Tim said without any hint of her compassion. ‘If you’re even half serious, you’ll go to that address. But maybe not knowing suits you a whole lot better so you can keep your tortured-soul act up.’ He cracked his neck. ‘Dad’s a good bloke, JJ. Been through hell.’ He bared his teeth. ‘So either put up or shut up.’

  ‘You can’t have it both ways,’ I spat. ‘You can’t figure out what happened to Mum and protect Dad at the same time.’ I smashed one fist into the other. ‘Because sure as shit he’s hiding something fucked up.’

  Tim turned away, two hands gripping the side of the sink, shoulders hunching, making a cave for his chest. I felt the strain of all the knots he was tied up in from where I sat, and the red in me dissolved with a pop. I wanted to get up and put my hand to his back. But we weren’t like that. In the stillness of him I saw it was even worse for him—I felt the years of its rust—this tug between the loyalty for the lying living and loyalty for the beloved dead. And he didn’t have the red to help him.

  ‘Got to get back on the tractor,’ he finally said, voice evened out. ‘You should go. See Mum. If you think she’s got something to say about all this, it’ll be there.’ He turned fast and pecked Shelley on the cheek. ‘Shelley will sort you some roses.’

  After he left, Shelley brought the kettle over to pour boiling water into the teapot. She put the kettle back on the stove and sat at the table again. ‘See what I mean about Tim?’ she asked.

  I nodded, still too churned up to trust my voice.

  She didn’t say anything else. Instead she turned the teapot three times. I stared at the blue rosebuds across the china long enough to let the silver of their outlines put down some roots into me. Blue roses were always tricky to interpret. They weren’t in Mum’s book. She said they could mean something as simple as love at first sight or as complicated as reaching for the unattainable. She’d taken my two hands and weighed them in hers, smiled her tired smile deep into me. ‘Sometimes you got to feel, here,’ she placed the tip of her index finger to my heart, ‘for what the flowers are telling you. You’re a feeler, JJ. That’s a powerful thing.’ Then she pointed to my head, nodding like it had the same power. ‘With this and this,’ pointing back to my heart, ‘nobody will be able to put a thing over you, JJ.’

  ‘I haven’t seen this tea set before,’ I said.

  ‘Mum’s. Wedding present. Dad had it put away when she died. I was going through the attic.’

  ‘My mum would have liked them.’

  ‘Dad said my mum did.’

  ‘Was it hard for him to see them out and being used?’

  ‘He said you have to draw a line sometime and go on living.’

  ‘Do you miss her?’

  ‘I miss something, but it’s all talcum powder stuff because I never knew her. Better than what you and Tim go through, though.’

/>   ‘Hard to say—’ I began.

  ‘I don’t have nightmares,’ she cut in. She drained the last of her teacup to make way for the new. ‘Go see your mum. At least you had one you remember.’

  WHAT NANCY REALLY KNEW

  The spray of Shelley’s all kinds of red and pink roses across the seat beside me meant that at Tim’s gate I could do nothing but turn right towards the cemetery. I couldn’t ignore all that love and appreciation. At the wide iron gates I turned off the rumble of the Austin’s engine and wound down the window. I couldn’t figure out if the hush of the breeze was telling me to grow a backbone and get out of the car, or drive the hell away fast. I had Mum with me every day so maybe I didn’t need this under-the-ground, only dirt thing. The crowing stutter of a kookaburra cut into the hush, but I couldn’t track it down when I looked for it in the tall pine trees encircling the dead. I opened the car door.

  I used to like the weight of time here, with the weeds pushing up through the baked hard ground and the broken gravestones, but that was before Mum went under it. I got the roses into my arms so I could smell them. The Catholics were right up the back and there were a lot of Protestants to get past first.

  I couldn’t remember where she was so I wandered up one row and down the next, reading names, dates, all the love contained to the most affordable number of letters. Not Mum’s, though, I saw when I found it. Dad had spat chips about the sister part, but Aunty Peg was paying so there was nothing to be done. He’d sworn out of his window in the ute, Aunty Peg had smiled out of hers, and I’d sat in between.

  I kneeled to Mum’s grave and felt to see if she was any closer. I couldn’t feel her at all. I thought about dumping the roses and getting away, but I was there and she hated dead flowers, so at least I could give her fresh ones. I flicked away the old stems withered dry in the plastic vase at the end of her gravestone. Tessa must not have been for a while. I opened Shelley’s newspaper and laid the new flowers out, reds by reds by pinks, just like Mum and I used to. The blooms like velvet footsteps across the newspaper. I took my time feeling out their fullness, texture, height and rightness as I put them in the vase, as if there’d be dozens of Sunday eyes next morning sizing things up, or swimming in whatever it was I was pulling together. I tried to imagine Mum’s hand on my shoulder, reaching over me to straighten one rose, push another a heartbeat away. I reached right into the ground for her, right down, but she still wasn’t there. I tried not to let it knife at me, but it got in anyway. I attacked the centre of my palm with my nails, then squeezed my hands into fists and held them at my sides. I was trying to stop all the palm attacks because my skin there was a mess. Before I’d even counted to three I was back ripping into the skin again, full up with self-disgust that I’d even imagined there could have been a sign from Mum about what to do next, all neoned up and flashing, just because it was a cemetery.