Tom has done something to her. He’s made her feel beautiful. He’s removed the tension from her mind; sluiced it away like a miner washing a pan clean in the river, leaving her bright and pure.
Where is the terrible guilt she should be feeling? She kissed another man. How can she feel peaceful about that?
She imagines a life with Tom; a world that sparkles with his energy. She imagines his strong arms lifting her up and holding her close and then lowering her onto a bed. Maybe Lauren was right, perhaps an affair would solve her marriage problems.
The water pipes rattle for a moment and Julia comes back to herself, glad there is no one around to see her red cheeks.
And she is wrong about the guilt. It is there. But it has nothing to do with her husband. She feels guilty about Tom. He seems so innocent and Julia probably encouraged him too much. Although they only kissed, she experienced a deeper connection to him than she ever has in the most intimate moments with Bryant.
Julia puts her cup in the sink and turns to her espresso machine.
How difficult could it be to plumb this thing in? None of the tradesmen have got back to her yet, despite two of them promising to give her a quote. She inspects the back panel and tries to identify where the different pipes need to go.
Barbara emerges from the shower, her hair in a towel, her face starkly naked without its usual make-up. ‘Have you finished your coffee, Julia? Because I need you to drive me into the city this morning.’
‘The city?’ Julia checks the clock on the kitchen wall. ‘But it’s eleven-thirty.’
‘And?’
‘There won’t be enough time to drive there and back, and pick the kids up from school. Why don’t you take the car?’ she says. ‘I can always walk to pick up the kids.’ Julia pats her hips. ‘The exercise will do me good.’
For a moment Barbara doesn’t say anything. She rearranges her lips. When she finally speaks, her voice is clipped. ‘I don’t like driving, Julia. Especially in Melbourne. With all those silly hook turns. And trams.’
‘Let’s go tomorrow morning then. I’ll drive you straight in, after we drop the kids off at school.’
‘Forget it. I thought you might like to spend some time with me.’
‘I’d love to, but —’
‘Do you actually want to be part of this family, Julia? Because you can be so …’ Barbara purses her lips. ‘What’s the best word? Distracted, maybe? Distant? I don’t know. But I worry about Bryant.
He’s trying to do this yoga business thing and all you seem to be concerned about is your espresso machine. Or worse, trying to find a job of your own.’ She flips the towel over her shoulder and walks out of the room.
Julia leans back against the sink. Even Barbara’s criticism, which usually upsets her for hours afterwards, has no negative effect today. And, if she’s honest with herself, maybe her motherin-law has a point. They do need help with their finances and, if getting a job will cause too much upset in the family, and it surely will, she can at least make Bryant’s job a little easier.
Twenty minutes later, Barbara returns to the kitchen, where Julia is mopping the floor. ‘I’ll see you later this evening then,’ she says.
‘I don’t mind going with you tomorrow morning.’
‘No, thank you. I’ll catch the bus.’ Under her breath, she adds, ‘At my age.’
‘Let me drive you to the depot, at least.’
Barbara turns away. ‘I’d much rather walk.’ And she stomps out of the room and leaves the house with a slammed front door.
Julia can’t help but smile; her motherin-law will have to try a lot harder than that if she wants to out-slam Oscar. No one can make wood and frames crash with as much volume and dramatic argument as that little boy; he’s got it down to a fine art.
Julia has finished washing the floor and is about to make a start on the ironing when there is a knock at the front door. Before she even gets there she knows it is Tom. He stands on the edge of the veranda, his arms uneasy at his side.
‘I know I shouldn’t have come.’
She checks the driveway and the street for any sign of her motherin-law and then invites him inside.
He sits on the edge of the couch, wearing faded jeans and a black T-shirt that has been washed into deep blueness and has to stretch to accommodate the width of his chest. He leans forward, resting his elbows on his knees. His arms are dark brown, coloured by the sun, with two faint immunisation scars on the right shoulder, more scars on his knuckles, and the kind of muscle definition that only comes from working outside every day. How easy it would be for Tom to lift her into the air. What effortless elevation. She would feel as though she was flying.
She mustn’t look at him; if she does that, her brain won’t work properly. She turns her attention to her lap, and swallows. She no longer has the energy for words or excuses. The truth is she longs for Tom. If her world is a dark cell, then Tom offers the only light shining in through a window high above her.
But an image of her mother’s face, buried in a pulp of wet tissues after a lover’s rejection, steels her and brings her to her feet. She won’t be that kind of woman. ‘You should go, Tom.’
‘Don’t make me leave. I can’t bear being away from you.’ His voice is deep and low. ‘Please, Julia.’ He turns her name to silk. He takes her shoulders and holds them. His touch travels past her skin and she can feel something coming undone inside her, like the loopy knitting she did as a child. It’s as though he has found her end, and is pulling her defences apart.
‘I can’t stop thinking about you,’ he says. ‘And every time I remember kissing you, I feel as though I’m about to explode.’
The vibration of his voice runs through her bones. And the smell of him; that clean, hay-like smell, it’s making her dizzy. If he lets go of her arms, she will be unable to stand.
‘I can’t do this.’ Her voice breaks. ‘If I get involved with you, Tom, then I won’t be able to carry on with my life.’
Gently, he allows his hands to run down the outside of her arms, making the hairs electrically charged, until his fingers are touching hers, and they entwine. His face is close. He is breathtaking in his openness. There is something so bright and pure about him, like a child freshly born or the first star of the night.
But what does Tom see in her? she wonders. There are so many holes in her that she is like a broken kite, flapping in the wind. There is barely anything of substance left, just threads and filaments working furiously against the breeze, trying not to fall apart.
‘Our colours are perfect,’ he says. ‘Can you see how we blend?’
No, she can’t, but Tom obviously can. He sees something wonderful in her, she realises, something her husband hasn’t noticed for a very long time, if ever. ‘We’d have to be so careful,’ she says, wondering if she is suffering from some kind of temporary brain fever.
‘I’ll agree to anything,’ Toms says. ‘Just let me see you.’
This is insanity. What is she doing? Julia has smashed reason against the floor, and now her housewife shell lies in pieces at her feet. But she also feels free. Deliriously free. ‘I’ll meet you at the end of your driveway, tonight,’ she says, ‘at nine o’clock.’
Tom
I wrap my arms around Julia’s waist and draw her to me. I lower my head and kiss her lips. Her body is hot and beginning to pulse. Our atoms dance in faster and faster circles. I want to surrender to this weaving and let our energy join and let our notes merge and crescendo.
But, without warning, the front door opens.
The fat lady enters. She doesn’t see us straight away but, when she does, her already hard face becomes a slab of concrete.
Julia pulls away from me. ‘Barbara, you’re, um … back. You didn’t happen to find Tom’s sunglasses, did you? He left them here the other night.’
The fat lady stares at me as though I’ve stolen something. ‘I don’t recall him wearing any.’ She folds her arms. ‘Do you even own a pair of sungla
sses, Tom?’
I don’t. Sunglasses are for city folk and blind people.
Julia gives me a wide-eyed, tight-lipped look that tells me to leave. But, as I move towards the front door, the fat lady delays me with her outstretched arm. ‘You don’t have to go, Tom. I just forgot my Senior’s Card. I’ll be out of your hair in a minute. If you two can wait that long?’
‘Tom wasn’t staying,’ Julia says.
I say goodbye and step outside into the blades of the sun. Halfway up the drive I hear the women’s raised voices.
It’s going to be hot this afternoon. I can feel the air being sucked dry already, evaporating into the white sky, accompanied by the flat drone of cicadas. The road is a river, soft on the edges and shimmering in the distance where it meets the old railway tracks. Grass on either side of the hills is brown as toast and will be full of dozy snakes. On the walk home I see two tiger snakes and one brown hanging from a barbed-wire fence as a warning to kids to be careful if they take shortcuts through the paddocks.
Make lots of noise, stamp your feet, don’t tread on any sticks.
Wilson has beheaded dozens of them — the smell of milk draws them into the shed like babies and they lie curled up in the hay, lazy and satiated. I’ve tried to reason with them, tell them to go away to the creek perhaps, where it’s cool and refreshing, but they say the milk and mice are worth the danger.
Dad sits in the lounge room, nodding his head over the local newspaper. I sit down on the couch beside him and wait for him to wake up.
Eventually he snorts himself upright and wipes at the corners of his mouth. ‘Hey, Son.’
‘Where’s Mother?’
He straightens himself some more in the chair and folds the paper. ‘Refilling my prescription in town.’
‘Do you have to take her medicine?’
He gives me a weak smile. ‘If I want to beat this cold, I do.’
‘You never used to get sick like this. And, if you ever did get a cold, it would never hold you back, it never forced you into bed.’
He chews on his lip and I see his false teeth appear for a second. ‘I’m older, Tom, that’s all. When people get old it takes them longer to recover.’
His eyes look cloudy and his skin is so fine I can see all the bones of his face. Overnight, he has aged some more. I squeeze my hands into fists. ‘You’ll recover if you put your mind to it and stop taking all that poison.’
‘In a week or two, I’ll be back out there, giving you a run for your money.’
‘But you won’t get better if you keep taking her tablets.’
Mother is in the doorway. I didn’t hear the screen door screech to announce her arrival so she must have crept in. She stares at me without speaking.
‘How did you go, pet?’ Dad puts a hand on either side of the armrest and starts to get up.
Mother opens her handbag; her hands are shaking as she removes a tablet bottle and holds it up in front of me. ‘Do you know what he did?’ She looks at me, but her question is meant for Dad. ‘He tampered with your medicine.’
I shake my head, but can’t deny what’s she’s saying.
‘I got the pharmacist to check these. I knew he’d done something to them, I found the broken capsules in the bin.’
‘Come on, pet,’ Dad says, but begins to cough. He sits back in his chair and rubs his chest.
‘He put sugar in them.’ Her words are delivered one at a time, like punches I cannot defend. ‘He could have killed you, if I hadn’t suspected something.’
Dad is laughing. He wipes his eyes and says, ‘Sugar.’
‘It’s not funny. It’s not a joke. He could have killed you.’
‘He can’t die from a cold,’ I say.
She marches over to me, her fury like a wall about to topple. ‘Your father has cancer, you stupid, stupid child. Lung cancer.’
‘Don’t,’ Dad says.
I stare at him, shaking my head in disbelief. Cancer kills people. It will silently devour my dad from the inside out until there is nothing left but a worn pair of clothes. It can’t be cancer.
‘It’s a cold,’ I insist, and wait for Dad to agree with me.
He looks down at his feet and he lifts his toes against the plaid grey material of his slippers.
‘It’s a cold,’ I say, more firmly. ‘Remember, Dad? You said it was just a cold. Tell her.’
‘I’m sorry, Tom.’ His gaze remains on his slippers.
I shake my head. What Dad doesn’t understand is that he is essential to me. He’s always been there; reliably, like my heart beating, day in and day out. Not one day of my life has passed without the beat of him in it. When I was a child I followed him everywhere he went. I watched him milk the cows and run the farm. When I got older we milked the cows together. We share a bond of silence and respect and of the arcane working of the land. We share blood and bones and breath. I know what this man thinks and dreams. I know what rhythm his heart beats to when it’s happy and when it is not. I am part of him and he of me. And if he dies, then I will too.
I glare at Mother. ‘It’s a bloody cold,’ I say, and dare her to contradict me.
‘What in God’s name is wrong with you?’ she says, her face flushed with anger. ‘Do you not understand English, boy? Your father has cancer.’
Dad lifts his gaze away from his slippers and tells Mother to stop it.
But she’s gone past the point of stopping. She breathes in bumps and jerks; her chest is an engine of puffing emotion. ‘He’s been a disaster his whole bloody life,’ she says, her voice lifting and wobbling. ‘From the moment he was born he was stubborn and disobedient.’
She takes a step towards me and I duck my head instinctively, expecting a blow from her fist, but she keeps her arms folded against her ribs, her hands clutching desperately to the fabric of her dress. ‘You wouldn’t come out properly like a normal baby,’ she says, and her voice is high now, almost scrabbling against the ceiling. ‘The doctor had to …’ She hiccups. ‘He had to tear me apart to get at you. I lost half of my womb in the surgery. I couldn’t have any more children after that.’
‘No, Virginia,’ Dad says.
‘And then Simon and the others …’ Her bottom lip does a strange dance and she blinks rapidly. Her whole body is trembling.
‘Virginia,’ Dad says crossly, getting to his feet. He hobbles over to Mother and presses her head to his shoulder where she cries and he soothes her with words I can’t hear.
Julia
Barbara cooks them lasagne, and Bryant and the kids make appreciative noises all through the meal. Julia’s attempt at caesar salad lies soggy with too much dressing and burnt croutons, ignored and abandoned on the table. What has happened to her cooking skills? Did she leave them in the old house along with the granite bench tops and stainless steel hob? She can’t even blame the oven this time, because a salad doesn’t require any cooking.
A brittle tension lies between Barbara and Julia. Julia is almost certain she has convinced Barbara that nothing is going on with Tom, but it’s impossible to be sure, and now it sits between them like a boil about to rupture.
‘You’ll have to give Julia your recipe, Mum,’ Bryant says, talking with his mouth full. ‘This is amazing.’
‘I’m sure Julia is far too busy to cook lasagne.’
Bryant shrugs. ‘She loves cooking though. In the old place she was always trying new recipes.’
‘But here, in Lovely,’ Barbara insists, ‘I’m sure that Julia is preoccupied with more important things. And more important people.’
‘Like?’ Bryant cocks his head to one side.
‘Oh, a certain someone.’
Amazingly, Bryant doesn’t notice any of the not-so-subtle hints from his mother. Julia can’t believe her husband doesn’t suspect anything; even Oscar’s suspicious. Does Bryant consider it impossible for another man to be attracted to her?
She clears her throat. ‘You know, Bryant, I was thinking I should start helping you at the yoga centre.
Fold brochures, take the money at the door or clean up. Anything really. I could even hand out some more pamphlets in the mall.’
He doesn’t seem as keen as she expected. ‘Well, I’ve got all that covered, actually. I told you last week. Summer helps me.’
Julia tries again. ‘Summer could have a break. Or we could take it in turns.’
‘I do like Summer.’ Barbara lowers her fork to the plate. ‘She’s so friendly, and pretty.’
Bryant takes a sip from his wine. ‘Summer? Yes, she’s nice, isn’t she? Married to the local butcher. They’re expecting soon.’ He takes another sip and smiles at Julia. Mr Innocent.
‘I spoke to Charlie at the party.’ Julia can’t resist. ‘He was under the impression that Summer and I were best friends.’
‘Really?’
‘Yes, he said she was overjoyed when I moved up here, although I’d never laid eyes on the woman until you introduced me to her.’
‘Obviously confusing you with someone else.’
‘I still don’t understand why you wanted to move here, Bryant?’
He has stopped chewing. ‘I’ve explained why.’
‘Nothing that makes any sense. I mean, out of all the beautiful country towns, why this one?’ Julia takes a careful breath. ‘Why such a horrible place?’
‘It’s not that bad.’
Amazingly, Barbara is her ally. ‘I’d be curious to hear that, Bryant. I mean this town doesn’t seem to have very much going for it. You could have gone to Gippsland or somewhere along the coast. The Yarra Valley is supposed to be nice.’
‘It was fate,’ he says. ‘I felt drawn to this area. And I thought the houses would be cheap and there wouldn’t be any competition. I could have gone to Daylesford or the peninsula, but how many people are doing yoga there? Here, though, I’m starting something new.’
‘Charlie said until we moved up here Summer was really depressed.’
Barbara snorts. ‘I don’t blame her. This town is a backwater.’
‘That’s all very interesting, Julia, but is there a point to any of this?’
‘I’m just talking.’
Milk Fever Page 15