Lara and Kylie sprawled on the verandah steps, watching flying foxes loop from tree to tree. Kylie’s hair had grown back red and curly—now long enough to form a pretty bob after two years of remission. Lara felt a lock of it with slightly drunken fingers.
“It’s nice having you here, Kye. It’s nice not to be fucking miserable.”
“Things still rough with you and Joel?”
“Yeah, it’s the drought.”
“That all?”
“There’s no all about it. It’s fucking killing us.”
“You can come stay with us if you like,” said Kylie.
“I can’t do that.”
“Yeah, you can.”
“I belong here. It’s my destiny.”
“Fuck destiny.”
“I can’t leave this place. And Joel needs me.”
“Don’t make me slap you with my fake tits; you know I will.”
“How about I get us some more drinks, hey?” Lara was already up and away, climbing the stairs.
“I mean it,” shouted Kylie to the back of her sister’s head.
“I love you too, Sis.” Lara turned her head to speak, ducking her head down with a smile.
January was one of the hottest on record, and tempers boiled over. February was hot and torrential, cyclones tearing the shit out of half the coast and coming much too far inland before dissipating. March, the government refused their emergency loan request. And in April, the avocado groves died for good.
Lara was hospitalized twice. She refused to give a statement to the police. Lara zoned out and looked out the window when the hospital counselors tried to talk to her—she wouldn’t let them trap her.
And Joel visited her every day. Sometimes she would wake to see his hand clasped in hers as if in prayer, his face soft and yearning, tears in his eyes. It was like looking into the face of a child or a puppy that could only be comforted by her. Nobody needed her like he did, nobody loved her like he did, and only he could bring sunshine to the deepest parts of her heart. She hadn’t known what love was until he’d come into her life.
Her cracked ribs took a long time to heal, and for a while he was solicitous, bringing her tea and rushing to open gates so she wouldn’t have to lift a finger. That was until he grew frustrated and decided she was putting it on—conspiring with the doctors they could ill afford just to punish him in a petty and selfish way. Maybe she was; sometimes it got hard to tell her arse from her tit. Her lips cracked and her hair stringy, she was a fucking disgusting lazy cow who couldn’t be bothered with basic hygiene. Put some lipstick on and tart herself up a bit, and she was a fucking slut and who was she winking at? And at some magical space in between, the boundaries always blurring and shifting, she was his angel.
A lot of the time she felt dead inside, and so it frightened her, the pleasure she got sometimes, poking the growing cyst of his temper. It made her feel like a warrior, fucking bring it on, she could take it. There would be moments in the fight, screaming at each other face-to-face, not giving a fuck what the neighbors thought (who could hear them yell just fine from two miles away), not giving a shit how full the water tanks were or how they were going to pay the fucking bills. When she was yelling face-to-face instead of carefully treading around him on broken glass, she felt alive and vital. Sometimes she just didn’t give a shit, and the only way he could get her bitch mouth to shut up, the only way he could win, was to beat it out of her, and while that meant he won, it also meant he lost.
She didn’t always feel that way afterward. But at least he’d say sorry, and she would love him and hate him in a great twisted ball that consumed her whole body. At least for a little while, he’d be as good as gold and be the man she married. And at least she knew how to deal with cuts and bruises and physical pain—they hurt, but they followed physical rules she could control that were less torturous than the jagged realms of the heart. She took a strange comfort from that slip of paper, carried always in her purse, worn soft by her fingers to the texture of vellum. It wasn’t her fault; she wasn’t a bad person and neither was he; this was just how it was.
And so it came as a complete surprise when, after her third hospitalization, she walked out. She didn’t even have the clothes on her back; the bloodstains would never come out. A purse empty of everything except for the paper, hidden away in an inner pocket and as tenacious as destiny. She had clothes donated from the hospital’s lost and found. She still didn’t want to talk to the counselor or the police, but the counselor gave her enough for a bus ticket.
Lara had no illusion that she could escape her fate; the Machine of Death obituaries made it all too clear she couldn’t. She didn’t feel brave, and she still loved Joel. It’s just that her legs itched; she missed her sister and was tired of thinking. She just wanted to go for a walk and be somebody else for a while.
Lara walked, and when her legs threatened to give out she hitchhiked, and then, after thirty hours on a musty Greyhound bus, she arrived in Melbourne. It took her longer to get the guts to walk to Kylie’s house, the city’s smog coating her tongue and making her jaw ache. She didn’t want Kylie to see her bruises and split lip. It was bad enough when the rest of the world saw that shit; she wanted to spare her baby sister from her ugliness.
When Kylie finally answered the door, Lara couldn’t speak. Fucking drought threatening to break behind her eyeballs and a frog in her throat the size of Tiddalik.
Lara smiled, trying not to wince at the pain of it, hiding within Kylie’s embrace before she was ushered in and brought a steaming mug of tea.
It took a while for Lara to get her voice back and find a heart that wasn’t consumed by Joel—that special smile of his with a kissable dimple. The promises for change that had never quite happened. Their honeymoon in Bali, back before the waters rose. And how perfect the sky was out on the farm—a wash of stars you never got in the city, twinkling like a thousand butterfly kisses sent down by angels.
Kylie, her little sister, became her big sister in the darkest hours, smoothing her forehead and saying soft words of enduring love until the storm had passed. It was Kylie who talked Lara down when Joel’s pleading phone calls threatened to pull her back. And it was Kylie who held Lara tight and wouldn’t let her go out when Joel turned up at their door—raging and weeping on the footpath.
Lara’s body healed first. Her mind healed fast and slow, bumping into old habits and reopening scars with varying frequency. With Kylie’s help she found counselors and group therapy, narrative therapy to help rewrite her life, and got through eleven and a half steps of Co-Dependents Anonymous. She built rituals and routines to help her through each day without Joel at its center, starting each morning with tooth-shockingly sweet tea and reading the obituaries. She got dentures young to replace the damaged teeth that never recovered from her earlier life. The sweet tea probably didn’t help either.
Lara got a few boyfriends, a few girlfriends too, drawn to the slightly wild, the slightly needy. Sometimes they drifted apart; sometimes she broke it off when she recognized the roller-coaster cycle of domestic abuse beginning. Sometimes she didn’t break it off as swiftly as she should have, but she learned to forgive herself for those mistakes in judgment too. She had some good times, but there was a certain ice in her heart that never could lift.
“Move in with me,” said Rae—friend, lover, and animal rights activist. Lara wanted to say yes a hundred times. Rae was fast becoming her countryside in this city of fermenting car exhaust, yellow lights, and not enough sky. Rae was like dancing in the monsoon, making all things sacred with every caress.
“I can’t,” said Lara.
“Why not?”
Lara almost showed Rae the paper, worn thin and protected now by a ziplock bag, but she couldn’t. Lara didn’t say anything and held Rae close, as if the pressure of skin against skin could overcome the drought within. Maybe, if they held each other tightly enough, tomorrow would never come.
Lara ran a group for women who were escaping o
r trying to escape abusive relationships. “You’re an inspiration,” said one of the women. “I never hoped change was possible, but you live it every day. I thought that if I left I would be alone forever or just end up with an identical jerk or maybe someone worse. That was my mother’s lot, but not me. I’m going to do it. I can find love and happiness and nonabusive relationships, just like you.”
Lara had smiled uneasily, and when Rae broke up with her, she did not mention it. Lara left the group a short while later, citing increased hours as she became the campaign manager for a grassroots aid organization. She tried to forget, and she delighted in the camaraderie of the work, occasionally escaping up the coast to surf with a car crammed full of community activists and wild agents of social change.
Three years after Rae left, Kylie fell out of remission for the first time. Treatment was tough, but so was Kylie. Lara cut back her hours so that she could take care of her kid sister.
“Fucking treatments,” grizzled Kylie as she struggled to down pill after pill. “They took my tits; they took my thyroid; you’d think that would be enough. What good are they?”
“I could ask the Machine of Death,” said Lara.
“Don’t be stupid,” snapped Kylie, her breath smelling of ulcers and old blood. “Every idiot who does that just gives up and dies.”
Lara winced a half smile and made Kylie a fresh cup of tea to wash away the ache.
Seven years after Rae let her go, Lara got a text message. “Come away with me for a dirty weekend. No strings attached you commitment phobic loon :-). Miss you. Love Rae.”
Lara dialed in return, a schoolgirl blush running through her body. “Are you mad?”
“Just a sucker for punishment,” said Rae.
“Are you sure you want this?”
“It’ll be fun. I’ve won a weekend for two in a raffle and I could just share it with a friend, but I’m single right now, horny as hell, and I’d rather share it with you.”
Lara chuckled. “Smooth talker. Fine, I’ll come.”
“I certainly hope so.”
“You are all class.”
“I promise I won’t do anything awkward like declare my undying love for you or propose. I know you hate that.”
Lara felt far away from her body for a moment. Rae’s voice rushed to fill the gap, not hearing and speaking over Lara’s scarcely verbalized “Thanks.”
“I can pick you up from work if you like, get a running start.”
“It’s a date.”
They spent the weekend at an emu farm that doubled as a bed-and-breakfast. The gardens were reminiscent of an English country garden, all roses, lavender, and things that belonged in posies, nestled at the foot of lumpy mountains speckled with eucalyptus. They woke early to the incoherent screeching of guinea fowl. They snuck into the neighboring vineyard when the day baked siestas into the hardiest of souls and made love—stretching out languorously under a lemon myrtle tree as young leaves, as soft as petals, brushed their skin. Their meals were simple but tasted of heaven. They could have eaten crusty baked bread, cheese, tomatoes filled with sunlight, and salami for every meal.
On the last night Rae’s face became serious for a moment, asking the question Lara had always avoided.
“Will you ever tell me why?”
Lara’s fingers picked at the edge of the doona for a long time before replying. “I would love to be your partner forever, Rae.” Lara tried to look up to speak, but seeing Rae’s face hurt too much. “I would love to be your spouse, defacto or with great ceremony, upside down and inside out. But if I did that I’d be doing something terrible to you.”
“No, you wouldn’t.”
“Yes.” Lara choked the words out between her teeth. “Yes, I would.”
“You’re not a bad person.”
“Just a cursed one. And worse, I’d make you a bad person.” Lara held the curse tight, like a disease. Joel had become a monster because of her fate. She wasn’t going to let it spread to anyone else.
“I—”
“Shut up.” Lara gently pressed her finger against Rae’s lips. “Please, Rae, this is a wonderful weekend; don’t spoil it.”
They held each other into the dawn, and it felt good and warm and safe. Eventually Rae said, “Maybe some other time?”
Lara wanted to say yes, forever, and so she said, “I can’t see you again. This has been wonderful, but it’s over now.”
Lara kissed her good-bye at the gate of her house. When she got inside she changed her phone number so she wouldn’t be tempted to answer if Rae called.
Nine years after Rae left, the Queensland state government began to slash benefits for single mothers, defund crisis services, and repeal the 1989 legislation that made marital rape illegal. Lara became obsessed with the unfolding protests, as essential services took to the streets and analysts predicted what cuts would happen next. She watched with horror as the regressive attacks up north in Queensland grew legs and started to infiltrate the politics of surrounding states.
Lara became hollow eyed and plagued by mystery pains as Kylie faced a new round of chemo and radiotherapy. They’d take the number 1 tram down to what remained of Albert Park and watch the cold ocean eat away at the levee, the sky and the sand both the same worn-out gray. A bit of fresh salt air out on the pier to cheer them up, tinged by a clamor of diesel.
“You need to be up north,” said Kylie, throwing pebbles at the crowing hordes of seagulls. “It’s eating you alive.”
“I can’t leave you,” said Lara.
“I’ll get the help I need. And what kind of a carer are you if you fall over sideways? A bit of Queensland sun’d do you good.”
Lara felt a yearning for country stab through her from throat to clit. “Do you reckon everyone just has the one place? The one bit of country they’ll always belong to?”
“Nope,” said Kylie, brushing the sand off her hands. “The bush can go fuck itself. But land’s always meant more to you. That mob up there could use your skills and you could do with a break anyway. Just make sure you come home.”
“Don’t worry,” said Lara. “I will.”
It felt good to be home and making a difference. Lara spent long hours in a car ripe with the home-brew diesel smell of stale fish and chips. She drove back and forth across the border between Queensland and New South Wales as she worked on the Healing Australia campaign, the windows wound all the way down to feel the warm air, spicy with the scent of crushed lianas. It felt good to be in this landscape again. She skimmed stones in their favorite creek, her hands remembering how Joel had taught her—his hands so patient on hers, so believing when she had just wanted to give up in despair.
Lara worked hard, organizing meetings, media events, and protests. The campaign crew played hard too, although Lara didn’t have the puff she used to and often found herself dizzy just going up stairs or eating a big meal.
Three months into the campaign, Lara saw Joel at a protest, marching with them and holding his banner proud. He was older now, dressed neatly and walking with a slight limp. Joel nodded and smiled when he saw her, like a shy boy, before the crowds pulled them away.
At the next protest they found themselves drifting to stand beside each other. Almost, but not quite, by accident.
“I sold the farm after you left,” said Joel.
“I heard.”
“Wasn’t much left after the bank took its share, but it paid down most of the debts. The water rights were worth more than the land itself.”
Lara braced herself, ready for a stream of abuse. She had left him without a word during their greatest crisis. Her hand slipped into her pocket, finding the slip of her fate. Her fingers ran over her plastic-covered fortune in guilty comfort.
“I’m sorry about how things turned out,” said Joel.
The intimacy of apology made her suck in her breath. She didn’t want him to be kind. She felt her voice close up on her as she nodded with a grimacing kind of smile.
“How long are
you in town?” he said.
Lara squeezed the words out of herself, like the very last dregs of toothpaste from the tube. “Couple more days.”
“Could we meet up? Have coffee maybe?”
Lara shook her head, fucking drought threatening to break from behind her eyes.
“I’m doing better now. Got a bit of help and went back to school. I’m a fitter and turner. Have an apprentice of my own, even.” He smiled at her, that special smile with the dimple just for her. She wanted to trace the curve of his lips with her finger.
“We’re bad for each other, Joel,” she said, clearing her throat. “Once a dog gets a taste for it, no amount of love in the world will stop him killing sheep. Doesn’t matter how good the dog is in every other situation, once he’s a killer. You’ve got to take that dog far away, where he’ll never see a sheep again, or you’ve got to kill the dog. Doesn’t matter how much you’ve changed, doesn’t matter how much I’ve changed; we’ve got a taste for each other’s blood.”
The crowd started to pull them apart; Lara was needed on the podium.
“Here’s my number. Just think about it.” Joel placed the piece of paper in Lara’s hand and walked away. He turned and called over his shoulder, “We’re not dogs, Lara; remember that. Nothing’s set in stone.”
Lara placed her hand over her mouth and felt the pressure of her lips against her fingers—torn in memory and lost in the crowd.
Joel’s phone number mocked her. She shouldn’t have programmed it into her phone, but messy scraps of paper annoyed her and she couldn’t bear not filing it. And now that it was there, she couldn’t bring herself to delete it.
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