‘You mean them?’ Trevor nodded in the direction of Chris and Megan.
‘Yes, Trev. I mean them.’
‘No, that’s not–’ Trevor cleared his throat, but his voice stayed scratchy. ‘I just wanted to ask you something.’
The tips of his ears were as red as his hair.
‘What?’ Amelia asked, sounding suspicious.
‘I wanted to know… Like, um, do you want to go to the, um, formal with me?’
Amelia blinked. Then she sharpened, baring her teeth. ‘Did Chris put you up to this?’
‘No! I didn’t even tell him I was going to ask you. You’re his sister, man. He’ll probably kill me.’
‘Oh,’ said Amelia. And just for that moment she lost all her edges.
In the silence that followed, Trevor concentrated on scratching his thigh. Amelia stared at his chewed fingernails, his freckled forearms, and the long golden hairs on them, and a balloon of warmth expanded in her chest.
‘I didn’t think anyone was going to ask me. I thought I’d have to go by myself.’
‘So is that a yes, or what?’
‘Yes. That would be–I’d like to.’
‘Cool.’ Trevor snuck a glance at her, and then looked straight ahead, his Adam’s apple pumping up and down like a piston.
Amelia faced the front as well. After what was probably an acceptable interval, Trevor manoeuvred his legs down and headed towards The Back. And Amelia pressed her forehead to the window so that she could grin as hard as she wanted to without being seen by anybody.
* * *
When they got off the bus, Amelia didn’t bother trying to catch up to Chris. She dawdled along behind him, floating in a honey-coloured haze. He took his time, too, throwing rocks at the trees that lined the laneway. Watching him, Amelia could see that he was freewheeling in his own body, and she wondered idly what would happen if he and Megan had sex together. Would he take his jeans off for that?
She didn’t even care. That was for them. Because as it turned out, she was okay with them. She was okay with the whole world.
They were halfway towards the house when she was knocked out of her haze by the sound of a car starting. She looked up to see a red Commodore reversing in a rapid semicircle. Then it powered down the laneway, travelling at such a high speed it quickly lost its two-dog escort, leaving them barking in the red dust.
Like her, Chris took to the grass, and just as well because the driver didn’t slow down as he passed. If anything, he sped up. Amelia got an impression of brown hair and tanned skin. He was younger than her stepfather–which might have seemed like a random comparison to make, but Amelia always did have good instincts.
The Commodore rattled across their grid and then slid out as it hit the soft shoulder of the dirt road, turning in the direction of town.
Chris watched it go, squinting, because he was looking into the sun. ‘Slow down, wanker.’
‘Who was it?’
‘How would I know?’
‘Don’t talk to me like that.’
‘Don’t ask stupid questions.’
They glared at each other and Amelia knew that Chris had also recognised the Commodore for what it really was: the final piece. It turned what had until then been a collection of disparate moments into the whole picture. Jessie starting to take baths, obsessively shaving her legs; Jessie singing along to the radio; Jessie elbowing Amelia out of the way when the phone rang one day, and taking it into her bedroom, lowering her voice and laughing a low, throaty laugh that Amelia had never heard before; Jessie painting her toenails; Jessie trying on different shirts to wear stacking, suddenly indecisive. Jessie doing overtime–so much overtime.
And Jessie’s sighs. She had filled the house with restless air.
Inside, Chris and Amelia exchanged a glance, then Chris walked down the hallway–soundlessly–to stare into Jessie and Ray’s bedroom. Amelia found Jessie in the lounge room.
‘Home, eh?’ her mother said. She had the ironing board set up. The television was going, but the sound was turned down.
Amelia nodded, and waited for her mother to look at her. She didn’t.
‘Who was that?’
Jessie smoothed one of Ray’s work shirts over the board, thumping the iron on it, rubbing it back and forth vigorously. ‘Dunno,’ she said eventually. ‘He wanted to know how to get to Alligator Creek. I told him he was a long way from the highway.’
‘Mum. What about us?’
Jessie stopped moving then. She placed the iron on its base, and didn’t so much look at Amelia as expose her face to her. In that moment, Amelia was shocked at how much older she’d become. It was the drinking and the smoking, but most of all it was the bitterness.
Jessie started to iron again, pressing harder on the shirt, which remained wrinkled and unresponsive.
Chris appeared in the doorway. He took the iron out of Jessie’s hand and pressed the hot plate into his palm. ‘It’s not on.’ He handed the iron back to her. ‘And your shirt’s inside out.’
* * *
‘So the reason I wanted to see you, Amelia, was to discuss your choices for next year.’
‘Okay.’
Mrs Jowitt lowered her glasses, peering over them at Amelia’s feet. ‘You can sit down, dear.’
Amelia pulled out the chair on the other side of the desk, placing her backpack on the floor.
Mrs Jowitt had already turned her attention back to Amelia’s student file. She made little Mmm-hmm noises while she read, as though the file was confirming things she’d long suspected. Amelia pushed her cuticles back with her teeth while she waited. The noise of the students outside–all of them on their lunch hour–was muted inside the Administration building. Everybody in grade twelve had an appointment with Mrs Jowitt over the next couple of days, and Amelia felt it was typical of her luck that hers fell during recess rather than class.
‘So what are we looking at here?’ Mrs Jowitt said, tapping her pursed lips with what Amelia was fairly certain was an acrylic nail.
When Amelia didn’t rush to answer, Mrs Jowitt raised her head. She wore tinted round eyeglasses, but they weren’t so dark you couldn’t see her eyes, and she seemed to be curiously incapable of making eye contact.
‘Amelia? Have you any idea what tertiary courses you’ll be applying for?’ she asked, addressing her in-tray.
Amelia frowned, feeling a sudden rage at Mrs Jowitt for not looking at her.
Mrs Jowitt consulted her file again and said in a problem-solving tone of voice: ‘Well, you’ve always had excellent grades in English and Modern History. Would you like to do anything further in either of those fields? An Arts degree perhaps?’
Amelia shrugged.
‘Amelia?’
Amelia waved. ‘Over here.’
Mrs Jowitt removed her glasses and carefully massaged the corners of her eyes. ‘How about we take it back a step? Let’s start with what you would like to do. I mean, if the world was your oyster.’
‘But it’s not my oyster.’
‘Just say it was.’
‘But it’s not,’ Amelia said, and there was a wobble in her voice. Her eyes were filling and she hated herself for it. She felt like scratching off her own skin.
Mrs Jowitt stretched her mouth in a tolerant smile, and started flicking her way back through the papers in Amelia’s file.
Don’t you want to know about my world? Amelia wanted to say. There are no oysters, only bad outcomes. Three months ago, she told us we could keep our Austudy payments, and now I know why. It’s because if she leaves, she won’t be taking us. And if she leaves, we can’t stay. But if she doesn’t leave before he finds out…
Then she won’t have left in time.
‘I’m moving out of home. I’m going to need money, so I’ll have to get a job.’
Mrs Jowitt pushed at her glasses and for the first time made eye contact. ‘That’d be a shame, Amelia. Not to take opportunities as they are presented.’
Opportunities looke
d rather like oysters from where Amelia was sitting, but she didn’t bother sharing that.
‘Humour me then,’ Mrs Jowitt said, tapping Amelia’s file with her false fingernail. ‘Tell me what you wanted from life when you were a little girl.’
‘When I was a little girl, I wanted to live somewhere else and buy lots of white things,’ Amelia said. She grabbed her bag and stood up. ‘And I don’t need you to tell me how to do that.’
* * *
In the beginning there was silence, but in the end there was noise. Amelia was vaguely aware of it as she and Chris said goodbye to Barry the bus driver for the last time. It sounded distant, though, so she didn’t give it much thought. Anyway, she was distracted, because Barry actually got out of his seat and gave her a hug, and he patted Chris on the shoulder, and then shook his hand. Who would have known old Barry was sentimental?
‘Sorry about the seats, man,’ Chris said, sounding unusually contrite.
‘What about the seats?’ Barry asked, his voice sharp.
‘Ah… nothin’. We’ll see you later, hey?’
Chris jumped from the top step straight out of the door, landing with a crunch on the gravel. Amelia waved one more time at Megan and Trevor, and then followed him.
As the bus started to drive off, Trevor squeezed his face through the top partition of his window and yelled: ‘Five-thirty, right? So get ya makeup done quick, Coady! ’Cause I’m not waiting if you’re late.’
Chris blew kisses at him. He glanced at Amelia, a smirk on his face. ‘Jealous?’
‘Oh, yeah.’
‘He was mine first.’ Then Chris rattled off his machine gun laugh, and said, ‘Barry is going to bust Trevor’s arse if he decides to check those seats.’
‘Idiot,’ Amelia said, but there was no hostility in her voice. They crossed the road, passing through the bus’s dust tail, feeling its chalky kiss on their skin. The western sun was hot on their backs. Summer.
‘Oi, what’s this? Gone all goopy? Trevor melted your little stone heart, has he?’ Chris said with puckered lips, getting in her face.
‘Shut up.’ Amelia pushed him away, but she was smiling while she did it. On the bus, Trevor had told her he’d got his mum to get her a corsage in town. It was blue, right? he’d asked, sounding worried. Your dress? Well, it was actually red–and it was probably going to clash with Trevor’s hair–but what Amelia said was, Yeah, blue’s great.
Thinking about this now, the fact that Trevor had not only done what you were supposed to do, but had been anxious about getting it right, gave Amelia a weirdly good feeling, like someone had scooped out her stomach and filled it with fizz. She walked straight into the back of her brother, who’d stopped just before the grid.
‘What’s that noise?’ he asked.
Amelia listened. ‘Maybe the Gibsons are pumping water, or something.’
‘Nah, it’s coming from our place.’
Chris picked his way over the grid and started up the laneway. Amelia felt the beat of anxiety start in her chest. She ran to catch up with him.
‘What is it?’
‘I don’t know. That’s what I’m going to find out.’
Chris sped up, striding out rapidly now, his backpack swaying like a pendulum, until he got the shits with it and tossed it into the grass. Amelia picked it up and followed him. She couldn’t force herself to keep up. She would have been happy to never reach the end of the laneway. Whatever they found, she knew already that it wouldn’t be good.
Not now, not now, not now. Please, don’t let it be now, she prayed. But she didn’t know what she was praying against.
By the time they reached the house, there was no doubt that the noise was coming from their property. A mechanical thrumming filled the air, sounding oddly hollow.
‘Well, fuck me,’ Chris said. ‘It’s a jackhammer.’
* * *
‘What if it’s not her?’ Amelia asked. Jessie’s station wagon wasn’t out the front.
‘You mean Fitzgerald?’ Chris said.
‘Yeah. He knows the safe’s there, too. I mean, he’s not exactly straight, is he?’
They bolted up the front steps and took off down the hallway, jostling against each other in their rush to see Jessie and Ray’s room. The wardrobe was open, displaying Ray’s clothes and a lot of empty hangers. Likewise, the top dresser drawers were pulled out and now empty.
Amelia checked the bathroom and found it lacking the usual mess of Impulse, hairspray and make-up. She’s probably taken the hairdryer, too, Amelia thought dully. Which meant she wouldn’t be able to wash and style her own hair for the formal. The formal that now seemed to belong to some other girl’s life.
There was a heavy-duty orange extension cord running from the sleep-out, across the yard and under the door of the shed, which was closed. Chris and Amelia completed a full circuit of the building, noting that the double doors around the back were closed, too, and almost certainly locked from the inside.
‘Her car must be in there,’ Chris told her, shouting to make himself heard over the noise. ‘They’ll load it in the back when they’re done.’
They retreated to the clothes line, where the noise wasn’t quite so deafening. The pigeons were distressed by it, Amelia noticed. They’d retreated to the far corner of the chook house, huddling in a restless flock there. And the dogs, tied up beneath the house, were whining, giving the occasional yelp.
‘I can’t believe she’d do this now. Why now?’ Amelia said.
‘It’s probably taken longer than they thought. She would have wanted to be gone before we got home.’ Chris cleared his throat and spat. ‘Because she’s gutless.’
Amelia buried her face in her hands. Her stomach still felt hollow, but now it was an awful feeling. The bottom had dropped out of her world and she was falling.
‘Don’t you just love her timing? That’s why she let us keep the Austudy. So we’d have somewhere to go,’ Chris said. ‘Schoolies. What a joke.’
Chris was right, Amelia realised. Like everybody else in their grade, they were going to celebrate Schoolies in Yeppoon. Amelia and Megan had booked a caravan with a couple of girls from school at the Dolphin Caravan Park. Trevor and Chris were with the boys, who’d booked out all the rooms at the Strand Hotel, which was on the main drag, just across from the beach. Not that it mattered, Megan said, with a secretive smile, because everybody was probably going to end up sleeping everywhere, anyway. Trevor had a car, and Chris had his licence, and they were going to follow the convoy of students heading down there after the formal. Just in time for the afterparty.
There was a sudden silence from inside the shed. Then they heard a man swearing.
Their mother’s voice: ‘Don’t start with that carry on. It’s nearly there–just finish that side. We can use the crowbar then.’
‘Mum!’ Chris screamed. He started sprinting towards the shed, as though he wanted to charge straight through the tin, but at the last minute he stopped and punched the door instead. Then he clutched his balled hand. ‘Ow! Fuck!’
‘Don’t stop,’ Jessie howled at her companion. ‘I can’t talk to ’em. It’ll kill me.’
The jackhammer started again.
‘You know how stupid she is?’ Chris shouted, and Amelia knew it was for Jessie’s benefit, not hers. ‘She’s got the doors locked, like we’re gonna try and break in there or something. But all we’ve got to do to fuck them up is turn the power off.’
Jessie probably couldn’t hear him anyway.
Shaking his head, Chris started walking towards the house.
‘What are you going to do?’ Amelia asked, following.
‘Nothing. There’s nothing to do.’ He sniffed, pressing his sore hand to his mouth. ‘Just get ready for the formal, and pack anything else you want to take. When Trev gets here, we’re leaving.’
‘And then what?’ Amelia asked–her angry voice somehow making it his fault.
‘How would I know?’
* * *
Am
elia had already packed for Schoolies, which meant most of her decent clothes were accounted for, so there was that at least. She looked around her room, suddenly overwhelmed by what was happening, and burst into tears. But she didn’t stop. She just shovelled things indiscriminately into the plastic bags she’d taken from the kitchen. Jewellery, shoes, her diaries, underwear, cassettes. When this was done, she glared at herself in the mirror, knowing that her eyes would be red and puffy, and that she’d look like shit for the formal–which was supposed to be one of the best nights of her life–and she slapped her cheek, welcoming the sting of it.
From the noises coming from Chris’s room, she knew he was breaking things, not packing them. The jackhammer had stopped. From time to time, Amelia heard a faint banging, but she tried not to think about her mother and that man down in the shed.
She got dressed, pulling on her stockings, and then her dress, no longer caring that the lace and tulle were delicate. The satin made swishing noises as she moved across to the mirror, where she patted on some makeup, and sprayed on a bit of perfume.
Then she stuffed her feet into her high heels and clip-clopped her way out to the front door, lugging her stuff out there in a couple of trips, and then repeating the process until she had everything stacked at the bottom of the steps. The sun hadn’t eased much, and by the time Amelia had finished she could feel her dress sticking to her back.
She sat on the bottom step to wait for Trevor and Megan, pressing her lips together and holding her nose–for some reason that stopped her from crying.
In the distance, she heard a metal moan–the shed doors opening. A car started, and she heard it reverse. Then it stopped, just idling, and Amelia stiffened, expecting Jessie to appear at any moment. And she wasn’t strong, she wasn’t strong at all. Because every bit of her body was aching for her mother.
But her mother didn’t come. What happened was Amelia heard the whistling of wings overhead, and she looked up at the sky.
Jessie had let the pigeons go.
Review of Australian Fiction, Volume 3, Issue 4 Page 9