by Tim Winton
Raelene felt the ricepaper cling to her sweaty fingers. She had to shake the thing free and she left the pages badly crumpled. Shit, she mumbled. Sorry.
It’s fine, said Dan, shrugging.
I wondered what it was.
The Bible, said Sherry.
I know what the bloody thing is, she said, catching herself. I mean, I wondered what made you different, what it was you had. It’s religion, isn’t it?
Well, faith, yeah, said Dan with a nervous smile. That and plenty of Vitamin C.
Dan, said Sherry in the mildest scolding tone.
Raelene began to cry; she couldn’t help herself, she didn’t know why she was doing it. Sherry led her to the couch and held her. She smelt of garlic and tomato and Givenchy and Rae felt her patting her hair and stroking her neck while she howled. She was aware of Dan still in the room, of Sherry’s body firm and cool against hers. It was like a trap, as though they’d been expecting this, and now was the moment they’d fall on her and drag off her blouse and reef up her skirt and hold her down for each other, whispering weird shit at her like on the movies and the sick thing was that she was ready for it. She wanted them both, wanted to be them. For a moment she didn’t care if they killed her, even, as long as it was over quickly.
But nothing happened. Nothing more than Dan bringing her a cup of tea and Sherry reaching for a box of Kleenex. In the end, out of a kind of dismay, she stopped blubbering.
You look so tired, said Sherry.
Tired of my fuckin life, said Raelene, chewing her lips.
Well, what about Max? How about the girls?
I’m a shit mother, you know that.
You two wanna go for a walk? asked Dan.
There’s nowhere.
The beach? The dunes?
I’m bloody stuck. I’m fucked.
The moon’s out, said Dan.
I can take a hint, Dan. I’m goin, orright?
Don’t be silly, said Sherry.
But Rae was on her feet now and her blood was up. She shook Sherry off and waved her arms at whatever it was that Dan was saying and launched out into the yard and the street where there was no one, only a salty wind.
Because it was still early, and she’d been bawling till her eyes felt lumpy and swollen as balls of sago, she could hardly waltz into the pub or just give up and slink home with Max still awake. So she went to the beach anyway, walked out along the great white sandspit that bordered the lagoon. Dan was right, the moon was up. It washed everything ghostly-bright. The air had a real winter sting to it. She was way under-dressed. Breaking waves flashed on the reef, flickered like her thoughts.
She was tired, yet it wasn’t ordinary fatigue. It was a deeper exhaustion. She was sick of herself, appalled at what she’d been thinking only minutes ago, ashamed of what she was, a mother who didn’t much care. Maybe someone like her didn’t deserve better than Max. She didn’t love him at all. But she was too scared to leave him, and not just because she was afraid of what he’d do to her or the girls if she did. No, she was really more frightened of being alone. The girls’d never be enough for her. She needed a bloke, she hadn’t been without one since she was thirteen years old and now it was just unthinkable. The only way she’d leave Max was in the protection of another man. She needed a rescuer. She couldn’t go alone. And in a town like this the available men were fat-gutted skippers whose wives had already left them or the adolescent deckies in the Cesspit across the van park. There was nobody. And now she’d have to endure it without even the comfort of friends.
When she got home, shivering and heartsick, Max was out to it and the girls needed extra blankets. She sat between their bunks and felt the contours of their bodies under her hands. She felt so low it almost hurt to breathe. She wondered if one day she’d ever work up the guts to top herself.
Late next morning Sherry dropped by but Rae saw her coming and retreated with the girls into the van. While the other woman knocked and called, Rae lay under the table with her hands over the girls’ mouths. When Sherry was gone Rae went into a cleaning frenzy, scrubbing and scouring until her hands burned. The girls looked on bewildered. She roasted a chicken for Max’s lunch and wore her sluttiest little dress, despite the weather.
The sun came out next day and Sherry found her making Play-Doh with the girls. She seemed uncomfortable, anxious, and several times tried to shift their stilted conversation away from the good weather or the comings and goings of people in the park but Rae cut her off. For half an hour or so they just played with the kids and said nothing at all.
Raelene watched Sherry closely, saw the attention she lavished on the girls, how she always had her hands on them. She wondered if Sherry and Dan were able to have kids. Maybe they couldn’t. Maybe that’s why she befriended her, to get hold of her girls. They weren’t your ordinary people, that’s for sure. Maybe they were from some kind of cult that preyed on people like her. But then she caught herself. Jesus, she was sounding nuts now. Only yesterday she was crawling around in her own caravan, lying on the floor, hiding from her own best friend.
Sherry didn’t come by the next day, nor the days afterwards. Raelene felt herself sinking. Her recent efforts to please Max fell away. She bought a fifty-cent Bible at the junkshop next to the bakery and spent the rest of the week reading in fits and bursts that made her head ache and caused her to grind her teeth in frustration. She found a couple of stories the girls liked but they were buried under whole avalanches of stuff so boring, so impossible, you could scream. The whole business made her wild.
On Tuesday she gave darts the flick again and went over to Dan and Sherry’s. They seemed surprised and relieved to see her and they’d barely let her in the doorway before she launched into them about religion, about how she didn’t believe a word of it and how sick of bloody hypocrites she was. She gave it to them about the Pope and George W. Bush and the priests who abused children and it just didn’t help matters that they kept nodding and agreeing. She ran out of puff. Dan put the kettle on.
You never have any booze in this house, said Raelene, laughing to mask her awful embarrassment.
That’s . . . there’s a reason for that, said Sherry, smoothing down her skirt.
Because you’re churchy, right?
Actually, said Dan, it’s because I’m an alcoholic.
Oh. Jesus. Sorry.
Dan smiled, folded his arms.
White Point’s a kind of second chance for Dan, said Sherry. For us.
That’s why you don’t work, Sherry?
Sherry shrugged.
And that’s why the religious stuff?
Partly, said Dan. Booze leaves a pretty big hole.
A higher power? That kinda thing?
More or less.
We’re kind of finding our way, said Sherry.
Shit. Raelene began to laugh again.
What?
I thought . . . I thought you were gonna kidnap me. It’s so stupid.
Well, said Sherry, we had considered it.
Raelene fell into fits and Dan made the tea. They talked until midnight and Rae left restless, ashamed, full of yearning.
Raelene kept up the charade of heading off to darts night but she never actually went. In addition to spending every other morning with Sherry she put in a whole evening with Dan and her on Tuesdays. It was something to look forward to because what they talked about – argued about, most of the time – made her mind race. They prattled on about whether people were basically good or evil at heart. For a whole night they talked about souls and Dan confessed that he believed animals had them. Homosexuals were a troublesome topic. Raelene found herself arguing against their being consigned to Hell, even though she didn’t much care for poofs, whereupon Sherry expressed doubts about Hell itself and Dan brought his Bible out and there they got bogged down.
Raelene warmed to the idea of Jesus and the business of forgiveness. The word sacrifice gave her goosebumps, reminding her of gory midday movies from childhood. She could see for hers
elf what all this guff had done for Sherry and Dan; it was the thing that lit them up and she leaned toward it, even pined for it. If they’d been plain, homely people you’d have to dismiss everything they believed as weakness, as consolation, but they were beautiful. When someone as sexy as Sherry talked about becoming whole you had to take notice. Yet for all her yearning Raelene was not convinced of the details. She appreciated the sense of it – well, some of it – but she didn’t feel anything.
Even so there was a time on one of those walks home along the stormy beach when there was no moon out and you could sense the heavy cloud but not see it racing inland and you only had the pale, vague strip of sand to navigate by. Rae found herself walking with her hands outstretched, overcome by the apprehension that she was about to stumble into something on the smooth, empty beach. She became breathless, panicky, and just as she’d started muttering aloud, talking herself down from this queer spin she was getting herself into, a patch of stars opened up low in the sky ahead of her and stopped her in her tracks. At first she thought of a shimmering bit of cloth, like a piece of the dress her mother once got from a bloke she almost married, but the image didn’t last because she went on to thinking of candles and lamps and campfires and she felt woozy for a moment as if she was in the clouds herself and looking down through a gap to see the fires of a thousand desert camps. There were lights impossible to count and around them, in her mind’s eye, people huddled, all of them searching like herself, afraid, wondering, looking into their fires, with the sky a blank over them. She didn’t know why she thought of deserts and campfires except for the reading she’d been doing, all those name-strangled stories from the Old Testament that left her cold. That night in bed, still rattled by the dizzy moment on the beach, while Max honked and farted beside her, she remembered a night from childhood. Other fires. A long, flat estuary and the shadows of trees and the smell of prawns cooking. Crabs on the boil. The smell of mud. Mosquitoes. The whole beach strung with lamps and campfires, so many families out there in the dark dragging nets through the water and laughing. And out of the darkness a man singing. A high, lovely voice. So slowly around it, like the tide rising, the sound of others joining in, men’s voices, children, women, the whole night singing. But still at the core of it, that high sweet voice, her father’s, faceless forever in the dark.
The cray season wound down into the last lean days of May. It hadn’t been much of a season to begin with but now, with four weeks left and the water cold and the swell up most days, Max came in shitty. He was on two-day pulls; he should have been mellow but Rae could see he’d be looking for work in the off-season and the prospect made him nasty. He snarled at her, turned his nose up at her cooking and pissed his pay away at the pub. In the first week of June his brother quit football, just walked. It was a scandal. Max put a bloke through the window of the pub. There was talk of him pressing charges. He pushed Rae’s face into the fridge door and her eye came up something awful.
While her shiner was still puffy Raelene drove Sherry to Perth with the girls for a day. The country was green again, the light soft and grey. The girls slept.
You know you should leave him, Rae, said Sherry. I have to say it. I couldn’t live with myself if I didn’t say it.
Raelene was shocked. She put a hand to her eye. She’d really bogged the make-up on but it hadn’t fooled anybody. Having Sherry say this – it was like a betrayal. She’d never once judged Rae before.
I’m saying it as your friend, Rae. I mean it. We could get you somewhere today, someplace safe.
I’ve got no money.
I’ll give you money.
You’re paying me to leave him?
Rae.
What about love conquers all?
Nobody has to put up with—
And commitment? And forgiveness? All that stuff you talk, it’s just talk then?
No, Rae.
Raelene suddenly felt like shit. It was worse than being hit. But she refused to give in and howl. She looked out at the road. This was her day in town.
In the city they trolled through boutiques and sat in cafés and let the kids arse about on escalators in department stores. They were careful with each other, subdued, but Raelene enjoyed herself. She came upon a shop that sold only religious stuff, books and crosses and statues of Mary. Sherry was amused by its gaudy window display but surprisingly reluctant to go inside.
A shop full of holy hardware, Rae. It’s not really me.
I don’t get you, said Rae. C’mon, it’ll be fun.
I’ll buy the girls an icecream, said Sherry.
Annoyed and bewildered, Raelene agreed to meet outside in ten minutes. She went in and checked out the books on prayer and the beads and the photos of the Pope in his bubble car. There was a whole table of statues, mostly Mary and the baby Jesus, and some with Christ holding his heart half out of his chest. Lying flat were several crucifixes with a suffering body on them. Always the crown of thorns, dabs of blood, a big, tanned, manly chest, a loincloth. Beside all these were snow-domes, the kind of thing you shook to make snow. They featured nativity scenes, mostly, but one in particular caught her eye. It was Christ walking on water. She knew the story. Yet it wasn’t the setting that captivated her, nor was it the fact that the blizzard you created when you shook the little dome was not snow but a descending cloud of tiny white doves. She was seized by the look of him, his hair flying in the wind, the robe pulled back from his chest. He was all man.
She bought it and when she saw it Sherry gave a wry smile and just shook her head.
On the drive home they relaxed with one another again. Sherry talked about her old job as a legal secretary, told her how the drink had cost Dan the biggest job of his life, how humiliating it was, what it was like to see a man reduced to an incontinent, screaming mess.
And you didn’t leave him, said Rae.
No, Sherry conceded. I never left him.
They drove in silence for a bit, the girls exhausted and dozing, the paddocks falling by, rolling green beneath a haze of rain.
The born-again business, asked Raelene. What’s it like?
Sherry sighed thoughtfully. Well, she said, it’s about getting into—
I don’t mean what it’s about, Rae interrupted. I mean, what it feels like.
Sherry glanced at her, confused.
The moment you suddenly got it, when it clicked, said Rae. You know, the change. When you turned, or whatever you call it.
Oh, murmured Sherry, that.
Yeah, said Raelene half laughing. That.
Well, it was a moment, actually.
Just curious how it felt.
Like a hot knife going into me, murmured Sherry sounding all foggy, a woman with her pillow voice on. Like . . . like I was butter and here was this knife opening me up. That’s the best way I can describe it.
Raelene could only nod, saddened but somehow fortified in the knowledge, the confirmation this gave her, that she didn’t believe. She’d come near, she was sure. From desperation, from outright need. Times when she and Sherry and Dan talked she felt tantalizingly close to some kind of breakthrough. True, she was often overwhelmed by emotion at their place, but that was, she now realized, just friendship, mere love. And once, walking home, there were the stars, that heady moment. That was the closest she felt. For a few days she’d thought she was only an arm’s length, a breath away from copping something. But there was no piercing moment, no sudden unmistakable feeling.
You’re happy, then? she asked. You and Dan?
Lucky, said Sherry. Grateful. Very happy.
Rae thought of them, doomed to drink orange juice and endless cups of tea with awful secrets and lost careers behind them, childless and peculiar, stuck in a shitty little joint like White Point after what they’d done and where they’d been. Still happy. Unless they were fakers. But she doubted it. She’d watched them too long, too closely. She was, finally and indisputably, jealous.
By the end of that week there was no heat left in the
June sun. Raelene dug the warm clothes from the bottom of the closet, all the sexless shrouding gear she hated, the girls’ nylon dressing gowns, their winceyette pyjamas, the whole lot stinking of mothballs bad enough to make your eyes water. The sea was up so often Max hardly went and when he did the catch was never enough to cover fuel and bait; they were losing money. He was around all the time and with the rain thrashing the roof and walls day after day, the caravan felt like a 44-gallon drum they were all crammed into.
The few days Max went surfing he came home sated, almost content, but the rest of the time he was just simmering. Rae was glad when he had ropework to do at his skipper’s shed, even relieved when he drifted over to the Cesspit to get wasted all day with the single blokes.
After her trip to the city Raelene didn’t see as much of Sherry and Dan. She knew they were puzzled but she felt a distance between her and them, something she couldn’t bridge. Only rarely did she drop by on a Tuesday night. More often she rugged up in her mothbally coat and walked the beach alone. She looked at stars when they were out but never felt any dizzy moments again. She thought about her father once or twice, wondered where he was. He was just a hole in her life now, no more than a shape, something she wanted but couldn’t really remember. By her bed she kept the little cheap-arse snowdome of Jesus walking on the water. She liked the dinky birds and his rock star hair and how his chest looked, bared by the billowing robe. He had real pecs and a six-pack. Like a bodybuilder. He was ripped. After a few Bundy-and-Cokes she liked to think of him in his little dome and her in her little aluminium box, both of them trapped.
She was painting her toenails one afternoon, half watching the girls arrange their smelly cuttle collection on the old car seat they used as a sofa, when through the open flap of the annexe Raelene saw Max striding purposefully across the grass. Her skin tingled with alarm. She’d thought he was at the pub.
She got up to meet him, went out into the dull day, but he seized her by the arms and bullocked her back into the annexe. She felt the van slam into her back and head and he pinned her there.