Wintering

by Krissy Kneen

  Rhianna tapped her knife on the glass tabletop and Jessica could see the yellowed marks on her fingers, could smell it on her clothes.

  ‘Gosh,’ Jessica blurted, ‘the winter’s cold this year.’

  ‘Can’t get the wood dry for burning.’ Matt shook his head. ‘Do you find that? Or do you buy it in, like?’

  ‘We buy most of it.’

  ‘Well. You haven’t got the acreage.’

  ‘She’s got that whole forest down there, Dad. You’d get some in the forest, Jess, right?’

  ‘No. That’s national park.’

  Matt shook his head. ‘Time we claimed it back off the parks. Open it up. Bloody waste to lock all that good wood up like that.’

  Matthew would have jumped in here to rescue her. A joke, something charming said with a nudge and a wink. She found she had nothing but her own truth. The forest needed some protection. It wasn’t going to fight back and protect itself.

  ‘We might have to agree to disagree,’ was all she could manage.

  ‘You staying on now?’ Gina interjected.

  Rhianna stared sharply at her mother. ‘Give it a rest. He’s not even definitely dead yet. It’s only been a couple of days.’

  ‘I wasn’t…’ Gina’s eyes flooded with tears and she stood, moving towards the kitchen, ‘I just meant now she’s finished at the university. You’ve finished there, right?’ Gina thrust her hands into flowered kitchen gloves, lifted a steaming pot off the stove and lugged it to the table.

  ‘Just got to submit. Then the corrections, if I pass…’

  ‘See? So I was just asking—’

  ‘I’m not sure if I’ll stay. I haven’t…I didn’t get time to think about it.’

  ‘Your mother will probably be glad to see you go home, right?’

  ‘I imagine so,’ Jessica said.

  ‘Do you want us to say grace?’

  Jessica looked up. She had no idea what Gina could mean. She didn’t know what the answer should be. They were waiting for her to speak.

  ‘If you want to.’

  ‘Only for you,’ Gina said. ‘If you need that. With your mum…’

  ‘Oh.’ Jessica shook her head. ‘Oh, then no.’

  ‘So.’ Glen scooped a ladleful of stew onto his plate. ‘You work up them caves, right?’

  ‘Yeah, I’m there three days a week. Cave tours, mostly; a bit in the hot springs and the cafe. Cleaning.’

  ‘Do they get dirty much?’ said Glen.

  ‘Worms,’ Jessica said. ‘And leaves. But lots of earthworms coming in after the rain. And kids dropping things in the change rooms.’

  They all nodded. There was nothing really to follow with. She stared down at the meat on her plate and all she could smell was that reek of feral animal, the scent that had woken her on the night he disappeared. A dog in the house and her hands slipping easily around the grip of the gun.

  ‘What do you say to a girl with a PhD in Hobart?’ asked Rhianna.

  ‘Can I have fries with that?’ Jessica nodded. She had heard it before.

  Rhianna snorted. Jessica half-smiled. She liked Matthew’s sister. Maybe they could be friends.

  She cleared her throat. Find something to fill the silence. ‘Do you do much fishing up at Bay of Fires?’

  ‘Nah. Can’t stand boats,’ said Matt. ‘Bloody money wasters. Got to clean all the parts out every time, flush the motor, scrape them back. Bloody useless things.’

  Glen shovelled food into his mouth and spoke through it. ‘You go out, don’t you? Matthew said you like to put a net out.’

  ‘Yeah. Now and then.’ It suddenly seemed excessive to tell them that she went out on the water every day.

  ‘What you bring in? Cray?’

  ‘Sometimes, yeah. Trumpeter. Pull in some flathead in the bay.’

  ‘Bony bloody things,’ Matt said.

  ‘You’ve got to know how to fillet it, I suppose.’ Jessica bent to her food. She had nothing to talk to them about at all.

  ‘They won’t find him,’ Gina said finally. ‘You know they won’t find him tomorrow or the next day. You should start thinking about that.’

  Her husband thumped his palm against the table and Gina flinched as if she had been hit.

  Jessica sucked her breath in. Did she look like that when Matthew flew off the handle? Did she look so…cowed? She hoped not.

  ‘Well, where can he be?’ Gina said. ‘It’s fucking minus two degrees out there of a night. Two nights, Matt.’ She had her head ducked low to her shoulders as if she was anticipating a slap. When she picked up her glass it shook.

  Jessica reached for her wine and clamped her fingers tightly onto the stem. It was what they were all thinking. Tomorrow the police and volunteers would pick up the search again, but it was what they would all be thinking. Minus two degrees of a night. And Matthew out there in it.

  Jessica was nothing to them. She was living with their son and she wouldn’t have been their first choice for him, either. She saw herself through their eyes. City girl, short, a little fat, her years in lecture theatres bleaching away any prettiness she might once have had. She had seen photographs of the girlfriends before her, blonde or red-headed, thin as his sister, flirting with the camera with their harsh practical eyes and lifted bosoms. One of them wearing a bikini underneath a down-filled jacket with desert boots and a beanie. Ridiculous. But she had noticed the way his family looked her up and down when they met her, their obvious surprise.

  This meal was a kind of goodbye. A wake for him, but mostly for her.

  ‘You know I’d better…’ she began.

  Rhianna tapped a cigarette out of the packet, slipped it between her lips, clicking her lighter on the table as if beating out Morse code.

  ‘Write him off, Mum. Go on. You bloody know he could be anywhere? Have they followed up with all his bitches? Ouch.’ She flinched. ‘Don’t frigging do that, Glen. She’s smart, Miss PhD. She knows what he’s like. Even bloody—the last one, what’s her name, Sharon, was it? Even she picked it and she was dumb as fuck. We should be asking Jess for all their names and numbers. Did you check his phone already?’

  Jessica found herself standing with her mouth agape.

  ‘I don’t think—’

  ‘Jesus, Rhianna.’ Glen pushed his plate away and stew slopped over onto the tablecloth.

  ‘Well, what the fuck are we doing talking about fucking flathead or whatever when our fucking brother is gone? Our brother. And you know what he’s like. If he’s not dead already, he’s gone into hiding somewhere. We all know he could’ve just ducked his head down, get the heat off.’

  ‘Shut your fucking mouth, Rhianna!’ Matt stood and Jessica noticed the way they all leaned away from him. Even Rhianna, who seemed unfazed by anything. This temper, Matthew’s temper, running through the men in his family.

  Matt picked up his dinner plate and for a moment it was held, suspended. All faces turned to watch as he carefully aimed his plate over the heads at the table and flung it towards the kitchen. The plate smashed. Runnels of gravy trickled down the side of the refrigerator.

  ‘Take Jess home now, Glen.’

  His voice was quiet and cold. It slid into Jessica’s veins and stayed there.

  She pushed her chair back from the table. ‘Thanks, Mrs Masterton, for dinner.’

  Gina didn’t answer. Her eyes never strayed from her husband’s stony face.

  ‘I’ll do it.’ Rhianna hurried to get her coat.

  ‘You’ve had three glasses—’ Glen started, but his father tutted and he shut up.

  ‘What? Cops going to pull me over?’ Rhianna was pulling her boots on, lacing them. Jessica hurried to do the same.

  In the car Rhianna offered the packet and Jessica hesitated, then took a cigarette. She wound down the window and it was like pressing a block of ice to her face. She was getting a headache just from breathing it.

  ‘Arsehole,’ Rhianna said, nodding her head back towards the rental house. ‘They’re all arseholes.’<
br />
  Jessica leaned over to catch a light.

  Matthew had broken a plate once. Jessica remembered, didn’t want to remember. The same way his father did, no real rage in him, just a cold, calculated lift and throw. It must have been pesto. She remembered the green splatter she had to wipe off the wall. She remembered apologising—of course it had been her fault. She had been a constant provocation. Opinionated, snobbish, rude. She shuddered when she remembered how awful she had been when they first met, straight out of undergrad, knowing everything and nothing.

  ‘No one’s going to tell the cops where he is. Am I right?’ Rhianna turned her head away from the road to stare at Jessica for an extended moment. Matthew’s eyes. She began to feel nervous about the bend coming up.

  ‘I really don’t know what you mean.’

  ‘Really?’ Rhianna was mocking her accent, putting English plum into it. City accent.

  ‘Seriously.’

  Rhianna shrugged. Looked back to the road and adjusted the wheel. ‘Okay.’

  ‘Well?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘What do you mean?’ asked Jessica.

  ‘If you really don’t know, I’m not going to tell you, am I?’

  ‘But you think he’s alive?’

  She pursed her narrow lips. ‘I’d give it fifty one way and sixty the other.’ Which made no sense at all, but Jessica left it at that. She threw the butt of the cigarette out the window, wound it up and huddled the coat tighter around her shoulders.

  ‘Fucking freezing,’ she said.

  ‘You’re not wrong, doctor girlfriend,’ said Rhianna. ‘You are not wrong.’

  She had been out in the boat. She still held the life jacket clutched to her chest like a baby. She preferred it out here with the fishermen. They were used to the silences. Ten of them on the water, checking the very edges of the land. The water so clear she could see straight to the coarse sand at the bottom. Clumps of kelp, flathead pretending to be rocks. The volunteers peered towards the bottom, reversed, moved on, peered again. Looking for a body. He would have had to push through five kilometres of thick forest before plunging to his death at the bottom of a cliff face, but she supposed it was possible.

  She heard someone shout across the waves, saw a second boat churn towards the first. Both men peering into the water, both boats tilting to one side as they did so. She watched, heart racing, as one of the men leaned over and started to drag something into the boat. She thought it might be over right there. But then the boat swivelled. He was pulling a net and there were at least eight large salmon still twitching in it. A break-out from the fish pens. They would all be putting their nets out later. There’d be fish in hers too; she made a note to herself to take some over to his parents’ place. To make up for last night.

  She stood at the side of the road and hugged her life jacket as if she might drown without it. She had no idea how many men were out there. Mostly men—she had seen two women check in with the police and disappear into the forest together. A helicopter circled. It was pointless now. If he was out there they would be looking for a body.

  She noticed how people avoided her. They looked down at their boots when they passed by, reporting directly to the police officer, giving her a wide berth. They all knew each other, stopped and enquired about wives and children and cousins. It seemed she was the only person who could not recall one name.

  Eight years and she knew no one. You wouldn’t like them, Matthew would tell her. Just some locals. Just some do up the pub. Rednecks. Them up the road.

  She stared at strangers’ heads adorned with leaves. It was like they were all wearing wreaths, participating in some rustic ceremony that she was excluded from. Then Glen emerged from the forest, one familiar face, and walked towards her. He was panting. A cut on his arm had begun to bleed.

  ‘I don’t know how you could find anything in there,’ he said to her, leaning against her car. It was cold but he was sweating. She could smell the acrid scent off him: stress-sweat. Matthew would smell bad, too, when he was angry or upset. Most days. They seemed to have hit a patch of bad days. Always reeking of anger. Family trait, then. Odd. She had never noticed the similarities before. When Matthew and Glen were standing side by side she saw only their differences.

  ‘Hey,’ he said, ‘do you mind if I ask you something?’ They had not yet mentioned the night before but it was there, a cold dead place between them.

  ‘Were you okay? I mean before…’ He indicated the bush, tilting his chin. ‘Were you guys solid?’

  The police had asked about their relationship, their sex life, the intricacies of how they lived together. She had practised her answer and she gave it now, as if reciting a script.

  ‘We have never been happier.’

  ‘Okay, it’s just that Matt—’

  ‘What about Matthew?’

  ‘Well, I know what he’s like.’

  ‘I don’t know what you mean.’

  ‘Come on, Jess. I’m on your side here.’

  ‘I honestly don’t know what you’re talking about.’

  He stepped away from her, looking closely at her face, examining it. Jessica felt exposed under his gaze. She looked away.

  ‘All right.’

  ‘He’s not dead.’ She sounded like Rhianna, the crazy edge to her voice, she knew it. Tomorrow they would call off the search. He was dead, or as good as dead. She had to start believing the evidence. She had to start coming to terms with it.

  Glen shrugged. ‘Maybe. Big country, isn’t it?’ He looked out at the tight bushland, the trees clinging to each other, separated only by prickly brush and tall grass. He pulled his cap off and rubbed his head. His eyes narrowed; he continued to rub the same spot. ‘That’s a fucking tick, isn’t it? Is it?’

  He had to bend down so she could confirm that, yes, he had picked up a fucking tick. He swore and threw his cap down on the ground.

  ‘Here. I’ll take you back to the shack. I’ve got some tweezers, I’ll get it out.’

  For a moment she thought he might refuse. He looked back towards the forest. It was so dense that they would miss him even if he were lying ten feet away from them. It was impossible. The search was impossible. Finding a body would be out of the question. The helicopter hovered low and close overhead. Jessica saw Glen duck involuntarily.

  ‘Come on.’

  After a moment’s hesitation he opened the passenger door and climbed inside.

  Rhianna was there, sitting on the balcony, dropping her ash over the edge into the septic garden below. She stood guiltily when they pulled the curtain and opened the door. Crushed the butt under her shoe and kicked it off the balcony.

  ‘I got a tick,’ said Glen.

  ‘Fuck.’ Rhianna pulled on her brother’s shoulder till he dipped his head and let her search through the dark hair. ‘Remember that New Year’s Eve?’

  Glen laughed. He pulled one of the dining-room chairs out and sat on it. ‘God, Matt was a pussy, wasn’t he? No headache yet. Just itching. Better get it out quick, though.’ Jessica passed Rhianna a pair of tweezers and stepped back to let her concentrate on the inflamed patch of scalp.

  ‘For a tough guy he was such a fag.’ Rhianna leaned in with the tweezers and twisted, pulling at the same time. Her brother didn’t even flinch.

  ‘He was a dickhead, wasn’t he?’ he said.

  Rhianna pulled a second time and Glen yelped, the smile suddenly gone as he pushed her firmly in the chest and sent her stumbling back against the couch.

  ‘Fucking hurt.’

  She recovered her balance and lunged at him, and he caught her by the wrist. Twisted it till she begged him to stop. Then he laughed.

  ‘Fucking idiot.’ Rhianna spat. Actually spat: Jessica stood in a corner of the room, staring in disbelief at the gob of spit on the floorboard.

  ‘Slag,’ her brother shouted after her as Rhianna stormed past him and out the door, cradling her hand.

  She turned and spat again. This time she hit her target,
landing the gob squarely on her brother’s cheek. ‘Fuck you.’

  Glen watched as she thundered down the wooden stairs and stomped off along the high tide line. He licked the moisture that hung at the edge of his lip then rubbed it with his sleeve.

  He turned to Jessica, as if finally remembering that she was there. ‘Everyone’s a fucking drama queen today, right?’

  She said nothing.

  ‘You should fuck off now too. I mean fuck off to the mainland or whatever. You can’t stay here.’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘Well…they know you’re alone now.’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘The dogs.’ He nodded with his chin back along the road to where the holiday shacks dotted the side of the road in pretty shades of pink, blue, lime green, yellow. ‘Local fellas.’

  ‘I’m not afraid of them,’ she said.

  ‘No?’ He laughed. Cruel. She thought it sounded cruel. ‘You should be.’ The way he looked her up and down, she felt like her skin was crawling with lice. If he hadn’t walked out then she would have asked him to leave.

  Jessica shut the door behind him and locked it. Pulled the curtain across. She waited, listening to the sound of his car starting. When she heard it wheeze up the road she realised she was shivering. She opened the fireplace and laid another piece of wood across the coals.

  There were no helicopters. There were no parked cars. A scrap of police tape still clung to one of the trees, trailing like a spent party popper.

  She left the car idling and walked over to the flash of yellow. Tugged at the stubbornly knotted tape till it tore free. This was not a car accident. There would be no wreath taped to a pole. She stood there and tried to figure out what it was. Not an accident, not a heart attack, not even a murder, or at least there was no sign of a murder. What was it, then?

  An act of God. Her mother’s voice, so clear that she flinched, hunched her shoulders, ducked her head a little.

  She was thirteen years old again and cowed. Eyes on the ground, trying not to look challenging, hoping not to catch the eye of Silas. Silas, standing at the front of the assembly, pontificating in that stupid accent; even now she could feel her lips curling back in a sneer at his Midwestern drawl. Silas pointing to one of the women, to her mother, a gesture for her to follow him, and then Jessica would curl up on her bunk wondering if one day he would point to her like that and she would have to follow him. To confession.