Ash Mountain

by Helen FitzGerald

  She lit a cigarette, inhaled, and held it loosely. She saluted the Housewives of New York and skulled her pink drink in one, immediately pouring another and doing the same. She had been celebrating for two hours, and would continue to do so until she was unconscious.

  She tossed a set of beads into the fire and was certain they hissed. She didn’t need them. She knew heaven was off the table.

  She settled into the couch. ‘Hi,’ she said to the girls on the telly. ‘My name might be Izzy, but I sure ain’t dizzy.’

  She had seen the priest off two hours ago, then locked the gate and thrown the key in with the general waste. No dark vehicles would crunch her gravel again. There was no reason, now the cellar was empty. Now the children were gone.

  The habit was dust, the fire weakening, her eyes closing. At last, unconsciousness was coming. She hugged her empty glass to her chest. Her cigarette fell into the overflowing ashtray on the floor beneath her. Such a quiet thing, the coming of unconsciousness.

  Were her eyes open? She thought they were closed but everything was bright red. She tested it out – open, shut, open – shut, and decided she must be asleep. She often saw hell in her sleep, after all. And when the noise came, Sister Mary Margaret didn’t question it. She often heard hell in her sleep too, and it was often as loud as this.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

  One Day before the Fire

  Fran wasn’t the only one to choose the 8.30 am. It was going to be hot again, maybe even hotter than yesterday, if you could imagine. St Michael’s was jampacked with people wearing their lightest Sunday clothes and fanning their faces with hymn books. She’d been in and out of the cold shower all night, had even spent a few hours on the veranda, but there were too many hazards out there: the wind had picked up and was hot and dusty and thick. The mozzies were hungry, buzzing around the outside light. They would eat her alive and so would a snake, probably, or a spider. There were spiders in every corner, many of them with the potential to kill her while she lay sleeping. A bull had appeared on the veranda once, when she was ten. It wasn’t safe out there, and it wasn’t any cooler than inside anyway. It wasn’t just the heat that had kept her awake. It was like she’d been dropped without even getting the note saying, Will you go with me?

  She totally would have. But his daughter had been in trouble twice since meeting hers.

  And vice versa. Fuck’s sake. Vonny hadn’t punched anyone. That was his kid. Screw him if he was being judgemental.

  Father Frank never usually did the early mass and Fran would have walked out again if it hadn’t taken her two hours to persuade Gramps (on a stick) to come. She was in a seat at the back, her dad’s head beside her in the aisle. They could hardly hear Father Frank’s sermon.

  ‘What did he say?’ Gramps bellowed at one point.

  This week, Fran was not inclined to turn down the volume. Let him talk. ‘Something about footy,’ Fran said, also loudly.

  ‘What did he say?’ Gramps yelled a moment later. ‘What are we supposed to do regarding hand balls?’

  ‘He’s making no sense at all,’ Fran almost yelled. She recognised many of the faces that turned to give her a dirty look: Sister Mary Margaret, Tricia Gallagher and her cousin-lover Chook, and thirteen-year-old Cathy Ryan.

  When the collection came, she found herself taking a dollar from the plate and putting it in her pocket.

  She deserved a refund.

  After mass, her dad was determined to go to confession. Bugger.

  ‘Can we not go to The Tree instead?’ Fran said. She’d been trying to take him there all week, but he was not having it.

  ‘I have made all the plans I am ever going to make,’ he said.

  Confession it was. She wheeled him to the waiting area, and sat beside him on a wooden chair, both staring at the solemn curtained booth, which was currently occupied.

  Mrs Verity O’Leary came out at last, almost tripping as she did. ‘Ah hello!’ she said, going bright red. Her sins must have been doozies.

  Fran parked Gramps on a Stick in the box and closed the door. ‘Can you please yell when you’re done, Father?’

  ‘Sure thing,’ said Father Frank from inside.

  Twenty-five minutes later, Fran was still sitting there. Ridiculous. Her dad hadn’t committed one single sin. She knocked on the door: ‘Is everything all right?’

  ‘Yes, done,’ Father Frank said, coming out of the goody’s side and opening the other door.

  In the opposite booth, her dad was crying. ‘Gonna switch off, Franny,’ he said.

  She did so immediately.

  ‘He gets down. It’s understandable.’ Father Frank leaned in: ‘By the way, didn’t I tell you not to step foot on parish property?’

  ‘Did you mean the church? Can you do that? But what about Dad?’

  ‘I’ll drive him here myself, in the flesh, not with that ridiculous contraption of yours.’ A group of parishioners were heading their way. Father Frank put his nice voice on. ‘I take it you weren’t wanting confession, Francesca?’

  Suddenly, she did. ‘I do, Father. I do.’

  ‘Bless me Father for I have sinned,’ she said. ‘It has been – it’s been twenty-nine years and eleven months since my last confession, and these are my sins.’

  She was expecting to list numerous venial sins, for example that she had sworn at her daughter three times in the last week and twice fantasised about her father’s peaceful death. She had expected to then say: ‘For these and all the sins that I have committed during my life, I am deeply sorry.’ Instead, this: ‘Actually, Father, I can’t think of any sins.’

  ‘Take your time, my daughter. We are all sinners.’

  Fran took her time. She sat in the dark a long while, then answered, ‘Nup.’

  ‘Have you had bad thoughts, perhaps you’ve disobeyed orders?’

  ‘Anything I tell you, anything at all, you won’t tell anyone else?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘I have had bad thoughts, I have. About a man.’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘In a dress.’

  ‘Yes…’

  ‘I’ve fantasised about calling him names: hypocrite, homophobe, pervert. During mass I imagined bludgeoning his head with a baseball bat.’

  She waited, but the priest did not respond. In fact, she couldn’t even hear him breathe.

  ‘So that’s definitely in the bad thoughts category – thought I should mention it. Oh, and I stole a dollar from the collection plate,’ she said, slamming the tiny door behind her.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

  One Day before the Fire

  Fran had no intention of going to The Red Lion, but Vonny (on her big brother’s strict instructions) booted her out at 8.50 pm. She was not to return for at least three hours; she was to get a life.

  Thanks, Vonny. She walked along Ryan’s Lane in the darkness. She hadn’t bothered to change out of her shorts and T-shirt as proof to herself, or as insurance, that she would not wind up at the pub. At the population sign, she felt a vibration on her upper thigh, and took her phone out of her pocket. Nothing. The Captain had not been in touch since the pool incident. Her thigh had developed a psychosomatic alert sensation.

  Her shorts and T-shirt were wet with sweat by the time she reached the monument. The eucalyptus forest was still, no leaves shuffling. She was hoping to climb to the top, but the door wouldn’t budge. She heard a boy talking on the other side, and a girl laughing.

  Fran had at least two and three-quarter hours to fill. She ran down the eastern side of the hill and stopped at the oval, taking in the clear sky at the graffitied feet of Bert Gallagher (two dicks, one on each foot, original).

  The tap beside the statue was a tease – no water came out – so she decided to head to the pub for a drink of water, that was all. She was thirsty.

  He wouldn’t be there anyway. He wouldn’t be there waiting for her.

  She was right. The Captain wasn’t in the bar. Only three people were, all members of the fete
committee. They’d moved tomorrow’s extravaganza indoors due to the forecast, and were now calling round, gathering as many fans as the mains in the convent would allow.

  Tricia Gallagher was waiting on her Bacardi and Coke at the opposite side of the bar. ‘I hear your grandfather’s statue’s about to go,’ she said to barman Pete.

  ‘About time,’ said Pete, ‘he was an aggro fucker.’

  ‘There’s quite a strong case for Father Frank,’ Tricia said, ‘for what he did – rebuilding the town after, well, you know, the difficulties.’

  Fran suddenly realised that everything Tricia Kelly had ever said or done irritated her. It wasn’t just that Tricia dumped and bullied her when she got pregnant, or that she got with The Boarder for a while. Or that she dropped her all over again when the baby thing got boring – three months after he was born, it was. She and her mean-girl cronies had been round daily after the birth, excited and friendly all of a sudden. They brought gifts, took turns holding Dante, argued over who would push the buggy down North Road. Then Dante started crying a lot. Too much, and Tricia and her friends stopped coming.

  Fran often thanked Dante for screaming his lungs out and driving them away. She was happier being a mum on her own. She was really busy.

  Tricia’s roots were showing, you could see that a mile away. And she was far too skinny for a woman of forty-five. Fran shook herself. She should not waste energy on Tricia Gallagher. The dislike was chemical and powerful, always had been, or at least it had been since those childhood summers they spent at the college pool.

  The air in the pub was thicker and hotter than it was outside; like in the old days, when it was filled with cigarette smoke. Fran ordered a pot of blackcurrant and lemonade and sat at a table at the far end of the lounge area, arranging her crossword and her legs until she looked relaxed, purposeful, and potentially attractive. She was not very good at not looking at the door. Every time she heard a noise, her head bobbed up. Is it him? Is he here?

  From her table, she could see the convent hall out of one of the front windows. A dark BMW turned into the driveway at the side, and drove all the way to the back. Sister Mary Margaret had a visitor.

  10.00 pm. She checked her phone. No new messages.

  ‘Tequila,’ Fran said to Pete.

  ‘Coming right up,’ he said.

  By 10.30 pm, Fran had consumed four shots of Tequila and half a pot of beer; shunned Tricia Gallagher harder and stronger than she’d ever managed thirty years ago, and had given up on her crossword. She was certain she was far too attractive for a geek like Brian Ryan Junior anyway.

  Bzzz. She felt it, she did, just where her pocket was.

  Her phone wasn’t even in her pocket, it was on the table. This place was making her crazy. She hated this town, she hated this pub. She hated Brian Ryan Junior. She picked up the phone to check it was still working. In the last 0.5 seconds, there were no new messages. ‘Another one,’ she yelled over to Pete, and as Pete walked to her table the door behind him opened. For a moment, she couldn’t see who was coming, but it was surely him, thank God, please God, be The Captain.

  It wasn’t. It was The Boarder.

  After the oval incident, Fran never wanted to see The Boarder again. When she realised she was pregnant, her resolve became stronger, and it wasn’t hard. Soon as word spread, as well as her belly, The Boarder’s parents removed him from the school in a clandestine Rolls-Royce moment that boarders and day boys and Mountain Sluts talked about for years.

  Fran found out later that The Boarder’s dad had driven to the ostrich farm a week earlier, where Gramps had signed a legal contract saying they could never ask for anything – money, contact, money, money. Gramps hated signing that contract as much as she hated that he signed it. Neither of them ever wanted anything from those scumbags. Parasites, Gramps said to her later, disappointed in himself. He shouldn’t have been. All he’d done was make sure The Boarder was no longer in her life. He was irrelevant.

  And yet she had imagined this moment thousands of times – daily at least for the first two years. Sometimes even now, in bed at night, she fantasised about seeing The Boarder. Somehow telling him to fuck off sent her straight to sleep.

  Before she met Vincent, she fantasised that The Boarder would seek her out – walking home from Dante’s kindergarten behind the convent, for example, or waiting in the playground at the primary school. He would beg her for two minutes of her time. He would tell her he was sorry he ignored her after the oval, and that he told his mates he fucked her three times when it was only once. He’d say sorry for neglecting to inform her about Tricia, as well as about his other sweetheart, who came with a lot of cattle. He’d beg for her forgiveness because she was so clever, so promising, and it was all his fault that she was a motherless single mother with embarrassing form-five results and no prospects whatsoever. He’d cry, he’d tell her he wanted to be involved with his son in any way possible. She would tell him to fuck off.

  Nowadays, she always imagined a bar, just like this. She would see him first. She would approach him immediately, and tell him to fuck off.

  He hadn’t seen her, as far as she could tell. He took a stool on the other side of the bar and ordered a whisky. He looked serious, unhappy. Women would find him attractive on Tinder, she thought, but not in the flesh. His hair was too blond for a man his age. He had absolutely no neck. Even when he put his chin up.

  She turned the other way just in time. Phew.

  Head down again, he wrote something on a piece of paper. Pete said something to him and they laughed. He continued writing.

  Vows probably, for his wedding tomorrow. Whatever he was writing was intense – he rubbed his forehead, ordered another whisky. Could that Emily woman be his old sweetheart? Not likely. What was he writing that was making him scrunch his face like that – You complete me? You complete meathead.

  Tricia Gallagher was taking the stool beside him. She was flicking her grey hair. She was sipping from her straw, saying something.

  Fran couldn’t hear the conversation, but so far it didn’t look like there was much of one.

  Tricia had probably just asked him how things are going. Whatever she’d said, it wasn’t very exciting.

  He had probably just said ‘good thanks’, seeing as how his lips moved but the rest of him didn’t.

  Tricia had probably just said: ‘What’s that you’re writing’, seeing as how she was pointing to the piece of paper he was still scribbling on, getting in his way.

  The Boarder was probably telling Tricia to fuck off, because her face turned red and she stood up, her chair making a loud scraping noise that Fran found almost as irritating as the fact that people like Tricia Gallagher and The Boarder still existed.

  It was time. It was the moment. She should get up, walk over, and deliver her line. But there must be something better to say than fuck off, which was very undramatic in the above Tricia scenario. She’d never managed to come up with anything, mind you, other than being indifferent, which was boring, never made a satisfying fantasy, never once sent her off to sleep.

  She stood, head high, walked to the door, and pushed. She should have pulled. She was drunk. Her exit was not nonchalant.

  It was even stuffier outside. She began walking towards the college – screw Father Frank, she’d walk through parish property if she wanted. She’d looked it up online and he was probably allowed to ban her under C843-1, which states that Catholics have the right to receive the sacraments when they a) have an opportunity to ask for them, b) are properly disposed, and c) are not prohibited by the law from receiving them. She was definitely not properly disposed. She breathed in through her nose and out through her mouth – that’s it, that’s it. She had no time for any of this nonsense. What with the physio for Gramps, and the fete, and Vonny, and the forecast – she had so much to do tomorrow and if she didn’t hurry she would never get enough sleep.

  ‘Collins?’

  It was him, behind her. This was just like one of h
er early fantasies, exactly here, exactly this.

  She turned into the college driveway. The rambling buildings were empty, quiet, unlit. A spooky place for unwanted boys to spend their holidays.

  ‘Collins!’

  He was really calling her that, Collins. He probably never even knew her first name, and that it changed to ‘Mountain Slut’ forever because of him.

  He was gaining on her. She was considering running. He grabbed her elbow.

  Without thinking, she turned. ‘Fuck off!’ she said; the unexpected twist being that she also elbowed him in the stomach.

  He doubled up, groaned.

  ‘Sorry, shit, sorry,’ she found herself saying.

  ‘Jesus Christ, are you fucking crazy, woman?’

  Yeah, she was, particularly now he’d spoken. ‘Stop following me. Go away.’

  ‘I will. I will. I just wanted to say one thing, it’s important. I’m just asking for two minutes of your time.’

  ‘One minute and fifty-eight seconds.’ She showed him her phone – she had set the timer. She’d honed that line in one of her many fantasy threads. This was unnervingly real, and was about to get satisfying. So sorry, he was about to say. He was going to be so pathetic.

  ‘There’s not gonna be any trouble at the wedding is there?’ he said, having retrieved half an inch of neck.

  She did an hour’s therapy a few years back, after someone on the tram told her off for having her foot on the seat. She got so angry and embarrassed that she jumped off the tram at the next stop and walked three kilometres along St Kilda Road. She was not the kind of person to put her foot on the seat!

  Rest with your anger without reacting to it, the therapist said.

  One minute and thirty seconds.

  She rested with the heat in her head and the sting in her chest and the desire in her arms and legs to elbow this fuckwit in the stomach again, and then in the head.