by Kim Lock
Jenna bit back her irritation. Her bladder was full and urgent; she glanced at her watch. One hour. One hour and the doctors would have their ultrasound results and she’d be ready for the final step. She sighed as she knelt and hooked her hands beneath Henry’s arms, picking him upright. He stopped crying, looked at her with tear-streaked cheeks, then turned away to continue stumbling on without her. She stood and dug in her handbag for her keys.
‘Car, Mumma,’ she heard Henry say.
‘Hang on,’ she called. ‘I’ll be there in a sec.’
‘Car, Mumma. Car.’
‘Yeah, yeah.’ Searching through the mess of receipts, washcloths, a disposable nappy and the odd stuffed toy – wishing there was a way to do this without Henry.
‘Car, car, car!’
‘Just wait, Henry,’ she snapped. Where the hell where her keys? Kneeling again, she began taking items from her bag: purse, notepad, a toy giraffe.
‘Car!’ Henry screamed. ‘Car! Car! Car!’
‘What, Henry?’ Jenna cried, finally looking up. ‘What?’
Alongside the shed that housed Ark’s Mercedes and LandCruiser, the tidy patch of mowed lawn with the well-worn wheel ruts was bare.
Her car was gone.
*
The police officer said there was little they could do. No witnesses, no other theft, no evidence. The uniformed young man was polite, but resigned and efficient.
After the police officer left and she heard Ark’s car in the driveway, she looked at her watch and saw where she was supposed to be. In Mount Gambier, at the ultrasound. She’d missed it. Now she’d have to make another appointment; more waiting, more planning. Racing to the bathroom, Jenna locked herself inside and wept with fury.
*
Leaving the door ajar, Jenna crept from Henry’s room and padded into the kitchen. Black blocks of night filled the windows.
Ark had returned. He was sitting at the dining table sipping a cup of coffee, finger swiping absentmindedly across the iPad screen. When she sat across from him he looked up.
‘I found it,’ he said.
Jenna’s eyes widened. ‘Where?’
He reclined in his chair. ‘Mulligans Road, up near Burke Swamp.’
Jenna frowned. ‘Where?’
‘Behind Wynns Estate. Not that far.’ He slurped his coffee.
Jenna made to stand. ‘Great. Let’s get it. Did you call the police?’
‘It’s gone, Jenna,’ he said. ‘Burnt out.’
Jenna felt the breath leave her body. ‘What?’
‘Your car – there’s nothing left of it. It’s burnt completely to the ground.’
*
They went in the morning.
Mulligans Road was a rutted dirt track bordered by waist-high bracken between two sagging, rusted barbed-wire fences. On one side a vast irrigated pasture swept towards the horizon, dairy cattle were black and white dots in the distance. On the other side a verdant lucerne plantation rolled in the breeze.
What remained of Jenna’s car slumped in the centre of a charred circle on the edge of the track. The surrounding weeds and grass had been burned away. A million fragments of glass glinted in the dirt around the blackened metal shell – the windows blown out by the heat. Rubber hung in melted black tongues across bare wheel rims and the car’s belly squatted on the dirt. Inside, a tangled mess of wiring hung from beneath what was left of the dash and the hood-lining dangled in shreds.
Chips of charcoal ticked and sifted from the metal as the breeze undulated across the lucerne and swirled through the burnt-out hollow of her car. And as that same breeze pressed against her ankles, her wrists, her face, it carried a smell that wouldn’t ever leave her: an acrid, repulsive smell of blackened rubber, of scorched metal, of white-hot destruction.
Jenna turned and was sick into the bracken.
ii
Jenna stared at Ark through the steam from her coffee. His jaw worked slowly as he chewed, his gaze on the iPad screen, a strip of bacon in his hand.
‘I don’t understand,’ Jenna said. ‘If the insurance payout has come through, why can’t we use it to buy a new car?’
‘Because, babe, we don’t need another car.’ He smiled at her, reaching across to pat her hand. ‘We already have two. Most families manage perfectly fine with only one vehicle – three is just ridiculous. The only thing we need to replace is Henry’s car seat. Careful, Henry,’ he added as the toddler slopped milk and cereal onto the tabletop.
‘But . . . it was my car. Now I don’t have one.’
Ark leaned to save Henry’s bowl from tipping to the floor as he chased it across the table with his spoon. ‘Like I said, you don’t need one all of your own.’
‘So I’ll just drive the Merc?’
Ark stopped chewing, took a sip of his coffee; the cup made a plonk sound as he set it back on the table.
‘Actually, I’m going to sell the Mercedes. It’s an extravagance we don’t need.’
‘And replace it with . . .?’
‘Nothing.’
‘Leaving us with only the LandCruiser?’
‘Sure. It’s reliable, cheap to run.’
‘But it’s a ute.’
‘Exactly. It’s functional.’
Jenna looked at him. ‘It only has two seats. Where will we put Henry? In the back? With the hay?’
‘There’s no need to be argumentative,’ he said. ‘It’s a bench seat. Child seats can legally be installed on a bench seat if there’s no passenger airbag.’ He smiled.
Her foot began to tap on the floor. How would she get to the clinic in Mount Gambier without Ark finding out? ‘It’s your work car,’ she pointed out. ‘What if I need to go somewhere while you’re not here?’
‘Where would you need to go?’ he asked dubiously, like she’d suggested she needed transport to the moon. ‘We’d work it out. Like all those other families do. Don’t obsess about it – you know how you get.’
Henry let out a wail as his bowl tumbled from the table and crashed onto the floor. Milk and wheat flakes splattered an asterisk upon the tiles. Furious, he flung his spoon and it bounced across the table and clattered against the far cabinet.
Ark stood, leaving his plate and coffee mug on the table. ‘You don’t need to go anywhere, honey,’ he told her lightly. ‘You’ve got plenty to do right here.’ He kissed the top of her head, his thumb brushing her collarbone. ‘I’m sure we’ll work out how to share just fine. I’ll be home around seven. Make something nice for dinner, maybe that chicken saltimbocca? Text me if you need ingredients, I can pick them up while I’m in town.’
He left.
*
For a long while, Jenna sat at the table. Unmoving, she stared out the window, her gaze roaming the lush lawn that swept away to the gum trees, to the quilted rows of vines stretching towards the thin ribbon of highway in the distance. Even walking down the drive to the highway tired her out, let alone the six-kilometre walk into Penola. And even then – what? Call a taxi to Mount Gambier? There’s a two-hundred-dollar round trip that would demand explanation. Wait for the once-daily Stateliner bus to Adelaide?
She could call Fairlie.
The thought ripped through her. No, she could never see Fairlie again. She remembered the horrified look of judgement on Fairlie’s face: her insistence that Jenna not leave her son, her contempt that Jenna could even contemplate such atrocity. No. Like Ark’s mother had abandoned him when he needed her protection from his father, like Fairlie’s birth mother had abandoned Fairlie when she was a helpless infant, Jenna too must fall prey to the unthinkable. Severed ties, the rupture of lifelong bonds.
This was her punishment.
Jenna dug her phone from her pocket, thumbs uneasy as she pressed in the letters of the text message. Before she could change her mind, she hit send. Chewing her thumbnail, s
he stared at the screen, telling herself it had been too long.
But it was only a matter of moments before the phone lit up and buzzed in her hand. Jenna’s heart kicked up into her throat.
Jenna. R U OK?
She hesitated, her mouth dry. Then she replied: NO
The starburst of cereal remained on the floor for three days. At first she left it there, unmopped in a kind of protest, but in the end it was nothing more than a hardened, gluey mess that she bruised her knees scrubbing away.
iii
It was one of those dreams where a thread of lucidity crept in to remind her that she was dreaming. But rather than bring comfort, all it did was make her dream more difficult – because she knew she was asleep, but she couldn’t wake herself up.
Jenna was groping her way through an old house. The mould-dampened ceilings were warped, the floor swayed and the walls juddered dangerously as she dashed from room to room, searching for an exit. She didn’t know what floor she was on, only that she was a long way from the ground. At any moment the house would come crashing down upon her, burying her in a pile of plaster and timber beams, asbestos cladding sending lethal shreds into the air to ensure no one would search for her. In her dream she cried out as hands grabbed at her, dragging her into a darkened room off a narrow hallway.
Disoriented, Jenna fought to catch her breath, realising only too late that she was awake. Ark was on top of her, grappling at her skin. Jenna shoved at him, but he grabbed her hands and pinned them above her head.
‘Ark, no.’ She whipped her head to one side. She said it again, no. Didn’t she? He muttered something unintelligible, a dark laugh in her ear. Twisting her hips, she tried to move out from beneath him but he pinned her with his weight, forcing her legs apart with his knees. Panic surged through her. She opened her mouth to scream – but what would be the point? There was no one to hear her. A scream would only wake Henry, and it wouldn’t stop Ark.
‘Keep still, babe,’ Ark growled. ‘You’ll make it hurt.’
‘No,’ she whispered. ‘Please no, Ark.’ This couldn’t be real. She must be dreaming.
‘All right then, if that’s the way you want to play it.’ He laughed again. It took him two rough, searing thrusts to force himself inside her, and she knew he was right. It would only hurt more.
So she let it happen. Although that might hurt more later, right now, she needed to do everything she could to keep from screaming.
Because there was no one to hear her cry.
iv
The man at the door didn’t have a neck and he was completely bald. Not through age, but through a razor. He was dressed in head-to-toe black: polished black boots, black suit pants. A leather jacket was unzipped and open over a black open-collared shirt, its buttons straining across a substantial torso. A fine dusting of blondish hairs covered the backs of chunky hands. Gold rings adorned several fingers.
‘Hello, Mrs Rudolph,’ he said, sliding opaque sunglasses to the top of his head. The smile he gave her undressed her. He didn’t wait for an invitation, he just stepped inside. With one hand she gathered her shirt closed over her neck.
‘Can I help you?’
‘Not at all, Mrs Rudolph,’ he said, strolling into the living room, gazing at the furniture like a fine art dealer. ‘I know Ark’s out. I’ve just come to chat about the shipment he owes me.’
‘Are you a buyer?’
‘Something like that.’ His smile broadened and he swept the length of her languidly with his gaze. ‘Where’s Henry?’
Her mouth went dry. ‘I’m sorry I can’t help you. Why don’t you come back this afternoon when Ark’s home?’
The man stepped closer. He gave off a strong scent of cigarette smoke and something else, furtively sexual, like women’s perfume and new cars. Again his gaze dropped to take her in, lingering where her hips pressed into her pants.
‘Please tell him he’s three weeks late. I have buyers of my own who don’t like waiting. If he can’t supply the stock, we’re open to negotiating a loan of some other . . . goods . . . while we wait.’ He lifted a lock of her hair from her neck and tugged it gently, before smoothing it down over her breast.
Jenna jerked away from his touch.
‘I’ll see myself out. Have a nice day, Mrs Rudolph.’ Laughing, the bald man replaced his sunglasses and walked from the room. The front door clicked behind him.
v
Bent low over her phone screen, Jenna’s thumbs worked hesitantly. Send.
A few moments later, the phone vibrated silently in her hand with a reply. Back and forth messages went; she imagined their words spinning stealthily through the atmosphere until they spelled out their humiliating message at the other end. Could she trust the recipient? No, she could not. That had been made abundantly clear. She couldn’t trust anyone. Human egos were simply too powerful.
But she didn’t have anything else.
In an hour or so, when the conversation was over, she would delete the entire thread. She had to do this right.
vi
Jenna pushed pasta around on her plate, arranging and rearranging it into meaningless shapes.
Ark had been only fleetingly concerned about the frightening visit and strange threats from his bald-headed buyer. Forget it, he’d said when he came home that afternoon, dismissing her alarm with a wave of his hand. Just a friend playing a joke. Instead, Ark was excited. His voice carried that energised and emphatic timbre he used when plans for the business smacked along at a rate with which she could barely keep up. Enthusiasms of us and our family and our future. Pride swelled from him so perceptibly she could almost taste it. She could taste it – he’d cooked this dinner. This was his olive branch, delivered by way of linguine with a rosé sauce.
Honey, I do it for us. Here, have a bowl of carbohydrates.
He would want to fuck her tonight. She knew it with the certainty one knows the sun will sink behind the horizon, and inside she fought desperately against the dread of it.
As she watched his fingers work his fork into a slippery twist of linguine, her skin crawled with the thought of those same fingers pawing at her flesh, later. He opened his mouth wide to take in the food and she gritted her teeth at the fervent press of those lips, that tongue.
Quiet acquiescence was the surest way for it to be over in minimal time. Give in, open her legs, let it happen – swallowing a sleeping tablet that she had stolen from work, so that she could at least fall numb. But that didn’t stop her from hating herself for that resignation. The gut-ripping pain of it was almost as strong as the sear of his thrusts. Every single time.
Her self-loathing had swooped to depths lower than she’d imagined possible. Trying to recall the last time she’d felt joy was like trying to imagine what it might be like to sprout wings. She poked at the grey mass of her self-loathing with the skeletal fingertips of her mind and it sank and pitted like oedema. Bottomless.
Jenna pushed her bowl away.
And gave up.
Dear Jenna,
Pattie came to visit. She didn’t call beforehand because I’m sure she knew by now that I would cite some pathetic excuse to decline. So she just showed up.
When I opened the door, Pattie said, ‘Hey, stranger. It’s been a while.’
I told her that time was slipping away from me and I realised that for the first time in months – years, perhaps – I was telling the truth. That was why I hadn’t seen her: the ineluctable slip of time, passing around me whilst I hid, cowardly and hoping for . . . what? A miracle?
Following Pattie into the kitchen, I could feel the trepidatious drag of my feet, the nervous dart of my gaze up the stairs. But here was human company, here was the warmth and solicitude of another person – a dear friend – and on that day I was so desperate for her that I thought my heart might burst in my chest, and in that case would it even matter if she foun
d out?
I wanted to tell her the truth that I hid within the hulking solidity of these stone walls. I wanted to weep for my lover, fighting for his life in hospital. As Pattie gathered things for tea, as I sank into a chair with exhaustion sapping my bones, I opened my mouth to speak the words: tentative, stretching, desperate for liberation.
I swear this, Jenna, I was sick with the repression of it.
And yet, despite my desire to confess it all, despite how much I missed my friend, and the companionship and exquisite pleasure that comes with the simple touch and sound of another adult, I couldn’t help but look briefly at the clock. Still, that familiar clench of anxiety beneath my ribs, the thin edge of panic that rushed in every time someone came to the door.
Whilst I, for months, had tried to conceal the colossal mess of my life, Pattie undoubtedly had worried what she had done wrong to cause this distance between us. Of course the lapse of the months had widened our gap – but everywhere I turned there was nothing but these walls. What could I have done?
Pattie asked when I was to return to work. When I answered that Jack had extended my leave, Pattie raised her eyebrows, but said nothing.
Finally, I said, ‘Are you okay?’
With a sigh, Pattie lowered her teacup, her fingers tracing the rim. Her lips drew into a line, and then began to quiver.
‘No,’ she answered at length. She couldn’t look at me as she said, ‘I was pregnant.’
Was. Past tense. It felt like a bullet. And even before she said it, I knew.
‘I miscarried. At ten weeks.’
As she wept, I held her and I held her. The breaking of my heart was surely so loud that it caused the ripples spreading in the top of my tea. But when I dropped my face, I saw it was the steady drip-drip of my own tears.
Love, Mum.
17
NOW
The stately limestone home, unchanged for a century but for fresh paint and the constantly morphing garden sprawled around it, is set back slightly from the road, nestled into the side of the hill that swells the southern end of Bay Road as it rises onto the lip of the crater lake.