Taking a sip of her champagne, she leans closer. ‘I thought most young people had more friends than they could poke a stick at. Ah, well, you see, I don’t know everything.’ She smiles. She doesn’t realise that I can see the glee behind her concerned expression; she can barely suppress it. She lies to herself that she is a kind person. In truth, I suspect her only pleasure comes from imagining herself better than other people.
Fortunately, Bryant saves me. ‘Here you are.’ He wraps his arm around my shoulders and looks at me sideways. ‘Having fun?’ The fat lady detaches herself from me and begins to take Bryant’s energy. He doesn’t seem to notice.
Music thumps from the stereo. A man grinning on the other side of the room flashes a CD cover and Bryant holds up his thumb to him. Summer is dancing with her arms in the air.
I tell Bryant that I’m having a great time. But I’m not enjoying this party as much as I thought I would. I feel as though the real me wouldn’t be wanted here, so I left it outside on the doorstep, probably with hunched shoulders and folded arms, feeling sorry for itself. ‘I’ve decided to have a good time though,’ I tell Bryant.
‘That’s the way.’ He gives my shoulders a squeeze.
The fat lady doesn’t look so happy. She tilts her glass back over her mouth and brings it back empty. ‘Do you think the music is a bit loud, Bryant?’
I use the moment to escape and position myself between Julia and Charlie.
Charlie nods at me and smiles. ‘I was telling Julia how she’ll get used to living here soon enough.’ He turns back to her. ‘It takes a while, of course, especially after the city, and everything being just around the corner and all but, given time, you’ll begin to really appreciate what the country has to offer.’
Julia laughs. I turn to look at her, so does Charlie, but she just takes another sip of her drink.
Charlie clears his throat and continues, ‘I remember when Summer first came up here. Boy, did she hate it, cried herself to sleep every night, refused to go out of the house. I was worried about her, I really was. She lost a lot of weight and the doctor wanted to put her on anti-depressants. But then you’d know all about that, I suppose, Julia. She clocked up quite a phone bill, calling you in the first few months.’ He reaches out his spare hand and touches Julia on the elbow. ‘I think your friendship helped her get over the worst.’
Julia is blinking at her empty glass as though she can’t believe she has drunk it all. I think she has left her real self outside too, standing on the doorstep next to mine perhaps, commiserating together.
‘Anyway,’ Charlie says. ‘The day she found out you were moving up here too; well, you should have seen her, dancing around the lounge room like a kid.’ He chuckles to himself. ‘And now she’s pregnant. What could be more perfect? After years of IVF and god-knows-what kind of kooky alternative treatments, it’s finally happened. But I’m sure you know that already, hey? In fact, I bet you knew before I did.’
Charlie winks at Julia, who is looking deathly pale. She turns quickly, bumping her shoulder into the door frame on her way out. I can hear her crying before I get to the back door.
‘Go away.’ Her voice is muffled but I can hear the pain in her voice, even over the music. She sits on the back step, arms hugging her knees, rocking over herself.
I should go, but I know she doesn’t want me to. ‘I feel pain like that,’ I say. ‘Sometimes it makes me want to dissolve into the ground and stop existing.’
She lifts her head and stares at me. Make-up is smudged beneath the lower lashes. ‘I hate it here.’ Her voice is soft, as though she’s frightened of being overheard. ‘I feel as though I’m slowly dying.’
Someone is singing loudly and out of tune to the music. A party whistle blows.
I sit down on the step next to her. ‘What did Charlie say to you that got you so upset?’
She sighs. ‘He thinks that Summer and I knew each other before we came up here.’
‘Did you?’
‘No.’
I have no idea why this is upsetting but I nod my head, trying to look like I understand.
‘Julia?’ a voice calls from inside.
‘That’s Bryant.’ Moving her face close to mine, so her eyes are huge, she says, ‘Let’s get out of here.’
‘But Bryant …’
‘Fuck him. Let’s get away from all these people.’
Her swearing is a shock, but it arouses me too. I can see Bryant searching for her in the kitchen. He looks drunk. Before he can turn and look at the back door, I grab her hand and pull her down the steps. She stumbles a little and I pick her up and carry her, across the yard to the fruit trees that border the property.
The moon is creamy yellow and so full it can barely lift itself above the trees. It lends a milky phosphorescence to the cows grazing in the paddock behind us. The night is warm and sweetly scented.
And I am alone, at last, with Julia.
Julia
Side by side they stretch out beneath the tree. A spell has been cast over Julia; she feels dreamy and safe. The normal world has vanished, and time has lost her. Dirty dishes, Bryant’s lover and grimy bathroom tiles, all forgotten. She sighs a week’s worth of tension away.
Tom smiles at her. ‘Do you feel better now?’
‘I do.’ She stares up through the branches of the peach tree, where she imagines tiny green fruit are hiding, temporarily camouflaged by the green of the leaves but growing pink and luscious as the summer ripens. She’ll place them in a big bowl on the kitchen table and encourage the kids to devour them. This is the best part of country living.
She wriggles her shoulders against the earth and smiles. Again, she can hear that humming sound. She can almost feel it on her skin now.
Tom stares at her profile for a long time. ‘Do you love Bryant?’
The question takes her by surprise. ‘Of course,’ she says. ‘I mean, he’s my husband. Of course I love him.’
‘How long have you been married?’
‘Seven, nearly eight, years.’ She doesn’t really want to think about her husband. It will only make her angry, or depressed. She turns her head away and stares at the fairy lights on the back porch of their house. Bryant put them up earlier and already one side has fallen down into the bushes. The rest will fall by the end of the evening. She sighs and turns back to Tom, who is smiling at her.
‘Are you happy though?’ he asks.
She makes her voice sound more confident this time. ‘Yes, I am.’
‘You don’t look very happy when I see you with Bryant.’
She laughs at his cheek and honesty. ‘Okay, so maybe I’m not as happy as I used to be.’
‘Why’s that?’
‘I don’t know. Life gets harder when you’re married. Picnics by the sea and romantic dinners sort of go out the window. There’s more responsibility and obligations. You’re always arguing about silly things, like who was supposed to call the electricity company to ask for an extension on the bill, or who was supposed to put oil in the car, or take the kids to basketball and ballet class. I mean, you still love each other, but you become so petty, or tired, or something.’
She stops herself. ‘God, listen to me. You know what, Tom? One day you’re going to meet a woman, fall in love, and have your own experience of marriage without me ruining things.’
‘I have met a woman.’ He looks at her for a long time, not blinking.
She stares back, trying to convey her weariness, expecting him to draw away from her gaze. But Tom doesn’t flinch. He opens himself up for her inspection and she sees nothing hidden there, only a wise, calm honesty in his eyes.
She clears her throat. ‘We’d better get back to the party.’
‘Don’t.’ He places his hand on her arm.
‘But Bryant will be looking for us.’
‘I’m in love with you, Julia.’
She experiences a jolt in her chest. She fumbles, ‘You don’t know me …’
‘I’ve heard your soul,’
he says. ‘And it’s beautiful.’
She shivers.
Tom is like a god fallen out of the sky; strong, handsome, yet gentle. If she doesn’t get out of here soon, she will do something stupid. Come on now, stand up, walk across the pad dock, go in the back door and rejoin the party. Find your husband.
‘Can I kiss you?’ he says.
She should say no. A good, respectable, married woman would just say no. But her mouth is incapable of forming words. Her body refuses to move. Maybe ten per cent of her wants to move, but that small sensible part is vastly outweighed by a stubborn majority. What is she hoping to achieve by just lying here? What does she think will happen?
Tom leans forward and she feels the softest brush of his lips against her own.
This.
A small spark of electricity as they touch. The humming swells in volume. His lips taste of the sea and honey. She can barely breathe, or move, as he kisses her, soft at first, then more deeply, until her body becomes swirls of energy. Her breath is suspended. Her mind extinguished.
Never has she experienced such intensity. Whatever barriers exist between people, whatever forces are in play to keep one body delineated from another, they are dissolving now, into Tom. She is a liquid being poured into his container. There is no distance between them. No gap. This merging must be what people talk about, what poets and artists try to evoke.
But where does it lead?
As her mouth opens and her lips soften and everything goes into a warm, slow-motion dive, she realises that she’s terrified to find out. She presses him away. And takes a sobering breath. ‘Stop it, Tom. We mustn’t.’
He leans back beside her and points through the trees, as though nothing has happened. ‘You see that constellation of stars, there? Left of the Southern Cross. It has all these rays that come down to earth. On a full moon, like tonight, they make a velvety noise, like hundreds of cellos in an orchestra.’
She blinks at the sky. It’s strange, and quite possibly the effects of the alcohol, but Julia can see a pale light coming from the stars and falling like a shower into the trees. ‘I think I see it too. What is it?’
‘Energy. Sometimes it’s strong and easy to see. Like when you looked at your daughter the other day. It was pouring out of your heart.’
Tom raises his hands into the air and moves them indelicate circles. ‘It flows like golden tadpoles around us,’ he says. ‘Like this. The cows melt into streams of it every night. And I suspect cats do too, but they’re harder to catch. And if you listen carefully, everything has a sound — trees, people, animals, stars and the lake. All different pitches and keys, blending together into one harmony.’
She feels as though her edges have melted into the trees and the soft night. Her body is exquisitely undefined. She turns to face him. ‘That sound I keep hearing, that humming, it’s you isn’t it?’
‘You can hear me?’ he says, amazed, yet smiling wide. ‘Yes. That’s my note.’ He reaches over and kisses her temple.
Across the backyard, Bryant is yelling her name.
Tom
There have never been so many stars in the sky before. Millions and millions of them stretched over my head, disappearing into the trees, and falling behind the corrugated roof of the saw mill. I feel connected to every single one.
I am so in love with Julia that I can barely contain myself.
She made me go through the front door and say that I had been for a walk. The fat lady had looked at me suspiciously, but I could do nothing but smile back at her.
‘You look like you had a great time,’ Bryant said.
I told him it was the best birthday ever.
When he offered to take me home, I said I would walk. He pressed a bottle of beer into my hand and I left it on top of his nextdoor neighbour’s letterbox.
And here I am; the ending point of all stars.
Julia loves me.
What would Shelley Ryan say if she knew that a beautiful woman loved me?
When I was thirteen, I thought I loved Shelley Ryan. She kissed me behind the school canteen, letting me touch her breasts through her jumper, until the year eleven boys had seen us. Then, she’d turned on me like a copperhead snake. ‘Get away from me, Tom.’ She had erased my kiss with the back of her hand, then watched with a frown on her face as Gary Cruet and the others had kicked me to the asphalt.
She works down the line now, folding trousers and hanging up shirts in the men’s department of Dimmey’s. Her dimples are gone, traded for four kids and an alcoholic husband who puts her in hospital once a year, and she probably wouldn’t care whether I was loved or not.
The hall clock chimes in three muted bongs as I enter the house. I take off my boots and sit on the end of my bed, listening to the croak and buzz of the night, replaying Julia’s kiss, feeling waves of pure wonder pour over me. My body’s edges stretch out into space and I shine up like a comet’s tail. This is love. I am in it.
When I see the first powdery light of dawn against my window, I put my boots back on, and sneak out of the house to round up the cows.
There are crystals in the grass. Mother’s vegetable patch is sprinkled with them and the pumpkins look like Cinderella’s coach, waiting among the scramble of old broccoli stalks and cauliflower heads for a prince to come.
I have the chores done, and eggs and bacon and soldier toast piled on a plate in the middle of the table, when Mother comes out.
‘Good God.’ She presses the back of her hand against my forehead. ‘Are you feeling all right?’
‘Do you want coffee or tea?’
She eyes me suspiciously. ‘Tea.’
I look over her shoulder into the hallway.
‘Forget it. Your father has to stay in bed.’ She picks up a piece of toast and bites the end. ‘I want you to leave him alone.’
She puts the food and bottle of pills on a tray and carries them in to him. I can hear Dad from the bedroom telling her he wants to get up. But I know she won’t let him, and he will stay there, staring out through the window at the overgrown potato creeper on the back of the garage until he needs the toilet. He’ll ask about the cows, the tractor, the south fence and whether the calves have got out again. Mother will tell him not to worry about any of these things and eventually he’ll fall into a frustrated sleep until he needs the toilet again.
I run out of things to do by eleven o’clock. I have sprayed the thistles in the old sacrifice paddock, chased two stray heifers back onto our property and repaired a good length of the south fence, but there is nothing to busy myself with, apart from housework and Mother won’t let me do that.
Julia asked me to stay away for a couple of days, but the need to see her is like some kind of terrible fever. My head is full of images of her and I have had to sneak into the old stables twice already to relieve the pressure that builds up inside me whenever I remember kissing her.
After lunch, I walk into town and stand outside the yoga centre, ready for the Sunday afternoon class.
Bryant’s not at all surprised to see me. ‘No hangover, I hope.’
‘Did Julia get one?’
He thinks for a moment. ‘She seemed well enough this morning. Ah, here she is …’ He smiles at someone over my shoulder. ‘Is the nausea easing up a bit?’
Summer shrugs. ‘A little.’
‘Did you get the herbs?’
‘They taste foul.’
Bryant holds out his arms for her. ‘But they help, don’t they?’
She snuggles against his chest.
‘Trust Doctor Heath again.’ He leans over to whisper something in her ear and she smiles. ‘Come on, you two can give me a hand setting up. I want to use the blocks today.’
I fold the blankets carefully, copying Bryant. He looks up at me and smiles every now and then. ‘Put the block next to the blanket, and the strap on top of the pillow,’ he tells me. ‘That’s right.’
‘Where did you find Julia?’
‘A friend introduced us. He said s
he was beautiful, and she was too; stunning, in fact. I remember watching her in rehearsal once and I just stood there, mesmerised.’ Summer has stopped putting out the ropes to listen. ‘And when I talked to her afterwards, she seemed so self-contained. Although I knew it had to be an act because Craig told me things about her. I guess I was fascinated by what lay under her smooth surface.’
‘Did you find out?’
He smiles. ‘As much as any husband can.’
‘So did your friend like her too?’
‘Which one?’
‘The one that introduced you.’
‘Oh, him. Yeah, Craig loved her, but not like that, not physically. He was more interested in guys.’
‘How do you mean?’
Summer giggles. ‘I bet he thought you were gorgeous.’
‘Something like that.’ Bryant turns his back on us and continues to put out the blankets.
‘Do you still love her though, like you did back then?’
Bryant lifts his head, but doesn’t turn around. ‘That’s one of the reasons I like you Tom, you’re so refreshingly open. Now, let me light these candles here and we’re ready for class.’
Summer strokes one hand down her stomach. She looks as though she wants to say something, but she turns away to study the picture of an Indian temple with the sun rising orange over a peaked roof.
We wait for quarter of an hour. Bryant occasionally walks up to the front window to check the empty street. ‘What’s wrong with these people?’ he asks, but doesn’t seem to expect an answer — and no one comes to his class, so eventually he ushers us back outside and we stand beside him as he locks the front door.
They leave me alone, beside the yoga hall, and walk away together, hand in hand.
Julia
She pushes the stack of bills a side; the reminder letters, the disconnection notices, the warnings, unable to concentrate or make the numbers add up. Since the weekend she is oddly detached from it all. On one level she knows that they are in serious debt but, on another, she feels ridiculously peaceful about it. Even the bathroom, with its mocking off-white tiles, can not disturb her equilibrium this morning.
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