‘Who are we talking about here, Julia?’
She feels her cheeks burning.
‘Anyway,’ Summer says. ‘Bryant is a healer. He knows what he’s doing.’
The truth is like a white hot coal lodged in Julia’s throat that she can either spit up or swallow in silence. She could enlighten Summer about her husband’s lack of qualifications; tell her that he only did a short course in natural healing at the Adult Learning Centre. She could tell her how even the tiniest seed of knowledge planted in Bryant’s fertile mind sprouts like a dangerous weed.
But she takes a deep breath and appeals to Bryant. ‘Leave Tom alone for a while, honey. You could help him most by referring him on to someone else.’
‘I won’t refuse him, if he wants my help,’ Bryant says.
And Summer nods her head in agreement.
Julia folds her arms. ‘Summer, can I have a chat with you for a moment?’
She looks startled. ‘What about?’
‘Something …’ Julia can feel her cheeks flushing. ‘In private.’
Bryant laughs. ‘Oooh, am I in trouble?’
Summer pushes herself off the couch by using Bryant’s shoulder as a support. ‘It’s secret girl stuff.’ She winks at him.
In the kitchen, Julia abandons preliminaries. ‘Are you having an affair with my husband?’
‘You must be joking.’
‘It’s just that you see more of him lately than I do, and it’s obvious Bryant likes you.’
‘We’re just friends.’
Summer has yet to meet her eyes. She is watching something over Julia’s shoulder with a slight smile on her face.
Julia tries again. ‘Look, I know you two are both friendly people, and maybe …’She stops when she senses a flash of movement in the shadows of the hallway and Summer begins to laugh.
Julia turns around to see Bryant crouching in the hallway behind her. He jumps when she turns on the hall light. He looks guilty, but he’s obviously enjoying himself too. He holds up both hands and says, ‘Okay, you caught me.’
‘I wanted to talk to Summer alone.’
‘What about?’
‘That’s none of your business.’
‘I have to get going anyway,’ Summer says. ‘My husband will send out a search party if I’m too long.’
‘You’re married?’ Julia’s tone is more incredulous than she’d intended it to be.
‘I’m not that bad, am I? Even old Charlie thought I was a pretty good catch at the time.’
‘You’d make any man very happy,’ Bryant says.
Julia feels stupid now. She’s overreacted again. ‘You’ve never mentioned him before, and he wasn’t at the barbeque or anything, I just thought …’
‘Charlie had a function at the RSL that night, otherwise he would’ve been here.’
‘Charlie has the butcher shop in town.’ Bryant walks past Julia and puts his arm around Summer. ‘I’ll walk you out to the car, Madame.’
So, she is married. Married to the butcher. He seems like a nice fellow. Julia goes into the kitchen and pours herself a glass of wine.
Here she is, getting all jealous for nothing. She should have known better. Bryant is friendly to everyone and Summer has that same kind of personality.
Perhaps Bryant is right, she thinks. She is too tense. She is overly suspicious of people. Her heart is full of fear, but that can be changed.
She takes a piece of paper out of the kitchen dresser and a pen from the top of the fridge. She taps the end of the pen against her chin, thinking.
Then writes:
It is now safe for me, Julia, to trust other people.
And again:
It is now safe for me, Julia, to trust other people.
She will do twenty a day, morning and night, for thirty days, like Bryant recommends to his students.
He comes into the kitchen and pours himself a glass of wine. ‘Let me see,’he says, leaning over her shoulder. He reads for a moment and then kisses the top of her head. ‘You might just reach enlightenment yet.’
Tom
I creep out of bed while the sky is still umber, and my parents and the two cats squeeze their eyes against the world. As I pour my tea, the seams of night begin to come apart and, in a narrow opening between the hills and sky, the dawn comes sneaking through.
This time of the morning I can see the atoms clearly, they dance in front of me like golden tadpoles, swirling and curling before my eyes, as though teasing me to join them.
Come apart, they seem to say, come apart and blend with this day.
My mind is filled with thoughts of Julia and the memory of her makes my body glow like a salt lamp. She touched me, her slight weight rested against me, as though I was capable of holding her up above the clutter of the world. Her atoms and my atoms entwined for a moment, and I can still feel the shimmer of that connection.
Slopping tea over my hand, I lift up a bale of lucerne hay and carry it towards the round-up paddock. With the sun still nothing more than a shy spectator at the other end of the field, the cows are joined to the grass. Only when they move is it possible to distinguish them from the earth.
‘Come on, girls, come on,’ I sing.
Maisy, Tess, Pritty and Bongo — our oldest Friesians and my favourites — already stand near the gate, their udders dripping, tails swishing, regarding me with their serious eyes. The younger ones will be rounded up with my motorbike.
***
In the shed, I hear the spit of tyres and wait for Wilson to enter.
He looks at me, a cigarette hanging from the corner of his mouth. ‘Where’s your old man?’
‘In bed, I think, or having breakfast.’
‘And you’re pretending to be a dairy farmer, are you?’
‘I’ve nearly finished,’ I say, indicating the row of machine-attached udders and swishing tails.
He chews on the end of his cigarette. ‘Everybody — except you — knows that your old man isn’t going to be able to keep this farm running for much longer.’
A push of energy fills my chest; it makes me straighten up my spine.
Wilson’s eyes narrow. He drops the cigarette butt on the floor and presses it into the concrete gutter with the silver tip of his boot. ‘So, loser, what are you staring at?’ He spits after the butt.
‘Don’t call me that.’
He walks confidently towards me. We’ve known each other since forever. I think we used to be good mates until our friendship went bad and he started to hate me. I can’t remember how many fights we’ve had; at school and after school, teachers or parents tearing us apart and shaking our collars like naughty puppies.
He is an inch away. His breath smells of fried food. There is a scar butted up against his eyebrow, a silver semicircle that he got when he fell against a barbed-wire fence.
He lifts his index finger and pokes it into my chest. ‘Murderer,’ he says, and pokes it again, harder this time. ‘Loser … of a fucking … murderer.’
I lift up my arm and push his finger away from me. ‘Don’t.’
‘Did you say don’t? Did you say don’t?’ Wilson jabs his fist into my right eye with a sharp crack and I almost fall backwards. He smiles the whole time.
Standing upright, I pull my own fist back and send it whistling into Wilson’s left eye. Without intending to, I fly my other fist into his nose.
The bright spray of blood is like a bouquet of roses between us. We stare at each other for a second through the mist, the surprise mirrored on both our faces, and then Wilson bends forward and cups both hands beneath his nose to catch the blood. There is a river of it and his hands quickly overflow.
‘I didn’t mean to,’ I say. And the powerful energy in my chest is deflated by shame. Wilson is still a kid, I realise. He had to grow up tough, his dad gave him no other choice, but really he is still that knock-kneed boy who couldn’t understand the rules for rounders and wet his pants once when Mr Illester held him in for lunchtime detention. ‘Sorry I
hurt you, Wilson.’
‘Fuck off.’ Wilson’s voice is muffled.
This time I am not offended.
He sniffs, wiping his nose on the sleeve of his shirt. He pushes his fist into his trouser pocket, searching for a tissue or maybe his cigarettes.
‘Don’t sniff it back up,’ I say, remembering Mother’s advice. ‘You should sit down and pinch the bridge of your nose.’ I rinse a towel under the tap and hand it to him. ‘Come on, I’ll help you.’
Like a spooked horse, he thunders towards me. His eyes are ringed with white, and blood bubbles from his nose. With a roar he throws his weight against me and presses me into the gutter between the milking stalls where he pummels my face with his fists. I don’t have the heart to stop him, and only mildly shield the blows. He is crying, sobbing in fact, calling me a loser in rhythm with his punches, which are as soft as a girl’s.
Only when Dad pulls him off me and orders him out of the shed, and Wilson has left, do I get to my feet.
Dad looks a hundred years old in his pyjamas and gumboots. He wheezes and coughs, pressing his hand to his chest, as though something is eating him up from inside. ‘That boy is fired,’ he says.
‘Don’t, Dad. He couldn’t help it.’
We usher the cows back into the paddock together in silence. Wilson has been sent home to ‘Think about things’, and I finish cleaning up, while Dad has a lie down. This cold has really affected him. It’s as though the germs are eating his flesh to make themselves stronger. And then I remember the medicines Mother has been feeding him and my skin goes cold. It’s not the germs destroying him, it’s her. She’s poisoning him.
I know what festers inside those tablets. Not nourishing white powder from the doctor, but bits of cloud, crushed-up dirt, shadows, the odd herb. She must go out at midnight, when I am asleep, calling on the magical powers of the moon. Forming secret concoctions to wither Dad, to make him grow smaller and weaker, until he shrivels up into nothingness.
But I have the solution.
In the afternoon, when Mother is taking flowers to Wilson’s mum, and Dad dozes over a newspaper in the sitting room, I take down his bottles from the cabinet and pull apart one of the capsules. My fingers are not used to such fiddly work and the first one springs apart, spilling white powder over my shirt and the bench top.
I brush myself down and try again. This one cracks down the centre. I swear under my breath and put both capsules in the rubbish bin. My heart beats like a trapped rabbit. Thumpity thumpity thump. I hear Dad’s newspaper rustle but I can’t stop myself. Painstakingly, I open each one of the little capsules, tap the nasty poison into the sink and refill it with caster sugar.
When I am done my fingers are sticky and won’t stop shaking. I go into the sitting room where Dad sleeps crookedly. I pick his newspaper up off the floor, fold it into quarters and wait for him to wake up.
Julia
They take Oscar to school together. Amber stops to play in the sandpit, scooping piles of sand between her knees with a pearly shell she’s found. Oscar runs immediately to the window, in the foyer, watching the chaotic movement of the flies as they buzz against the glass. Bryant enters the quiet of the classroom and strides over to the teacher, who is trying to write something on the blackboard.
‘Leave the flies alone, sweetheart,’ Julia reminds Oscar. ‘They’ve got germs.’
‘Have not.’ Using the net curtains, he captures one of the flies in the material, and lets it dance between his fingers.
She pulls him away and makes him look into her eyes. ‘Oscar, I asked you not to do that, didn’t I?’ He nods. ‘Now, I don’t mind if you want to collect insects, that’s all right. I’ll even get you a jar with holes in the lid to put them in if you like, but flies are dirty. They have germs.’
‘Well, I like them. They’re funny.’ He pokes out his tongue, and then runs outside to the sandpit, where he stomps down the castle his sister has been building. Amber, bless her, simply shrugs and starts building again.
Julia decides to leave him for a moment to let him calm down, and there’s still five or so minutes before the children will be called into class. She walks over to the doorway and leans there, watching Bryant talk to Ms Phillips. Julia can hear his loud voice from here.
‘Oscar is an extremely intelligent child, Ms Phillips,’ he says. ‘But I expect you’ve noticed that already. Intelligent children can be a big challenge though. They’ll test your boundaries and I’m sure you’ll have days when you want to tear out your hair, but it’s important to retain a calm manner.’
He pulls one of his cards from his wallet and hands it to her. ‘That’s where yoga can help. I’ve started up a centre in town. Actually …’ He hands her some more cards. ‘You might want to put these in the staffroom. I know how difficult these little buggers can be, especially if you’re with them all day. Yoga can help teachers cope with the stress.’
‘Why, thank you Mr Heath, that’s very kind.’ Ms Phillips is still smiling, but she has a strained look on her face. Her hand with the chalk is poised, patiently, an inch away from the blackboard. She starts writing as soon as Bryant’s back is turned.
‘Good morning, everyone,’ he says to the group of mums waiting in the foyer. ‘I just wanted to let you know that I’ve started teaching yoga in the old scout hall. There’s a class on tomorrow morning at nine-thirty. First lesson is half price. I hope you can all be there. The theme,’ Bryant says, pausing for effect, ‘is releasing guilt. It will be good for any woman wanting to release blockages to love in their relationships …’
Julia sneaks outside and watches her kids in the sandpit; Oscar has decided to help his little sister this time and they’ve constructed a large sandcastle between them. She smiles.
‘Come on, Oscar,’ she says. ‘It’s time to go into class.’
‘But I’ve got to crash this down first.’ He points to the castle.
‘Mum.’ Amber looks horrified.
Julia quickly marches over, before he can set his boot to it, and pulls him up by the hand. ‘School for you, buddy. Now in you go.’
And miraculously, this time, he does as he’s told.
In the car, Bryant tells Julia he will put up brochures at the schools in Shawtown too. ‘Half of those mothers look like death warmed up, don’t they?’
‘Not really.’ Julia thinks they all look like her.
‘No make-up, scruffy clothes, overweight, bags under their eyes.
You know, as soon as the kids come along, most women stop caring for themselves. Why is that?’
Julia can’t speak for the other women, but in her case it’s plain exhaustion. It puzzles her though. When she was dancing, she put in such long intense hours; there were endless rehearsals, pressures to get everything perfect, but she always had energy left over to party, or go with friends to the movies, or a nightclub. Even with a hangover, she’d be there bright and eager the next morning, strong coffee downed, stretching, warming up, hand on the barre, waiting for the eleven o’clock class to begin. Now, though, doing a job she loves, with relative freedom and autonomy, she can barely pull herself out of bed in the morning.
‘Do I really look that bad?’ She turns the rear-view mirror around and stares at her face, searching for the woman she used to be. The strong sunlight doesn’t help, of course; nor does the magnified lens of the mirror. But it isn’t the dull hair, or the pale skin that disturbs her; it’s that look of defeat she sees. Her eyes are devoid of any spark. Where have I gone? she wonders. What happened to me? Somewhere along the road, from single young woman to tired housewife, she lost a valuable part of herself.
‘Don’t stress.’ Bryant pats her hand. ‘I still love you.’
‘I’m tired, that’s all.’
‘I know, I know. I tell you what, once we get on our feet, you can get your nails done. Or have your hair styled. Whatever you like.’ His smile is warm and she can see that his eyes are making an effort to connect with hers. ‘You’ll always be beautiful to
me.’
And Julia smiles too and uses all of her energy to meet him halfway. There is only one snag, and it’s like a splinter she can feel, but can’t reach to pull out.
Tom.
He is constantly in her thoughts now and has even been sneaking into her dreams. And the thought of him is accompanied by mind-numbing confusion. Her feelings are a tangle of different coloured wools and even the contemplation of detangling them leaves her exhausted.
She remembers the hardness of his body. He had been wet from the dam and the muscles in his chest and stomach had been as solid as a brick wall. Even though their hug had been innocent at the time, to remember it now causes the cradle of her pelvis to ache with desire.
And that beautiful humming sound she hears whenever he is near. She suspects that Tom is somehow responsible. Whatever it is, it has an incredibly soothing effect on her.
Bryant is still talking, his mouth opening and closing, his hand circling mid-air to emphasise a point, but it’s all blurring on the edges of her hearing.
Tom had whispered such intimate things to her, about wanting to lie down and blend with her. The memory of his words makes her feel like she’s melting. She imagines being squeezed against the hardness of his chest, their heartbeats synchronised.
Bryant’s voice finally penetrates her daydream. ‘Anyway,’he says, ‘it’s worth trying, don’t you think?’
Julia smile sat him. ‘Absolutely,’ she says and hopes that she hasn’t committed herself to anything too serious.
After collecting the children from school and taking them for an ice-cream, they swing the car into their driveway and almost collide with a taxi reversing out onto the street. Julia’s intestines do a slow descent towards her feet.
The motherin-law has arrived.
‘Sweethearts,’ Barbara cries, kissing Bryant on the cheek, and then bending down with some difficulty, due to her rather large torso, to scoop the children one in each arm. ‘Such little darlings,’ she says. ‘How wonderful to see you again.’
‘Grandma, what did you get me?’ Oscar says, impatiently. His ice-cream covered face is turned expectantly towards Barbara’s bulging suitcases.
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