Everyone was talking at once. The room was too full, too warm.
‘Right,’ someone said, ‘we’ll get the minutes out early next week. Anything else?’
‘I just wanted to ask about carer’s leave,’ Franca said. The room of faces turned to her. ‘I saw in the last transcript something about medical certificates.’ Her hand hovered by her ear as if she were a schoolgirl with a question.
She drove past Stephen’s on an impulse. His car was in the driveway. She tapped on the door and watched his figure approach through the bubble glass. He asked if she wanted coffee. She said, I have to get the kids. They fucked in a hurry. He held her wrists and pinned her down. His face hovered over her. His features blurred when he came. She thought, dimly, that there was something pathetic about the two of them, her thighs clenched around his hips.
Afterwards she fell asleep. It was only few minutes but she woke panicked, scrambled to sit up. His heavy arm fell away from her.
‘W hassatime?’
‘Ten past six.’
Franca lay down again, jackhammer heart.
‘Have you been here the whole time?’ she asked.
He stared at her. She felt foolish, dazed.
When she left the sky was paper-coloured. All the cows had started their journey home, their tender ears flattened. She parked out the front of Cate and Sonja’s. No one answered when she knocked. She heard the high cuts of the kids’ voices out in the yard. She pushed through the side gate.
‘That baby, I mean, she had lead rings under her eyes,’ Sonja was saying. ‘They had to get out of the city.’
The two women were sitting on the deck, rugged up against the thin sun. They looked like royals surveying a kingdom: their sloping lot, the ashy grass, the kids kicking a footy at the bottom of the yard. Franca did a small wave.
‘Hullo!’ said Cate. She spread her arms. She had a quilt around her shoulders. She was holding a glass. ‘Do you want some? It’s Tasmanian whisky.’
‘I’d better not,’ said Franca. ‘I don’t like drinking when I’ve got to drive with the kids.’
She sat down. Sonja slid her a smile. She worked at the Koorie care facility in Bairnsdale. Once she’d told Franca, Sometimes when I finish I need to be alone for a bit. She had wild pale eyes. I just know if I go home and the kids and Cate are hanging off me, I’ll do something awful.
Franca liked to think they understood each other.
‘How’s Clive?’ Cate asked.
‘Oh—not good today.’
‘Have you heard of anyone else from Hazelwood with it?’
‘No. He’s lost touch with a lot of the blokes from work.’
‘I imagine,’ said Sonja, ‘that’d be the sort of illness that men don’t understand.’
‘I was thinking. Remember all that talk about asbestos a couple of years back?’ said Cate.
‘You don’t get chronic fatigue syndrome from asbestos,’ said Franca.
‘I know that. You just can’t help wondering if somehow—if there’s something—’ said Cate.
‘Anyway,’ said Sonja. She began to rake her hair into a braid.
Franca watched her brown hands working away. ‘It’s not that we’re really struggling,’ she said. ‘It’s just that we’ve got no safety net. If the car needed a new windscreen tomorrow, we’d be buggered.’
The wind had picked up by the time they were heading home. On the radio there was talk of storms and flash flooding.
‘Know what Cate told us today?’ Emily asked.
‘Hm?’
‘“You can’t bullshit a bullshitter.”’
‘No,’ said Franca. She craned her neck to check if it was safe to pass the car in front. ‘That’s true.’
‘Mum, Emily said shit.’
‘It was in direct speech,’ Franca said, batting at the indicator. She could feel Kurt’s foot through the back of her seat.
‘She said it twice. She said “You can’t—”’
Gold headlights streaming towards them, the dull blare of a truck horn. One of the kids shrieked. Franca jerked the wheel, overcorrected. The car behind honked its horn, too. Someone was crying.
‘Will you two shut up?’ she said. ‘We’re fine. Nothing happened except this fuckhead in front is travelling thirty kilometres under the limit and I’m trying to get home.’
Her arms were weak with shock. She could barely hold the steering wheel. She wondered if this was how Clive felt all the time.
The house was unlit. The kids dropped their schoolbags at the front door. Franca heard the thud of their bodies against the beanbags, the fight for the television remote.
Clive and Billy were where she’d left them. There was a box of Duplo upended at the foot of the bed.
‘Have you two been there all day?’
‘We had some lunch,’ Clive said. ‘We played Lego. We watched some footy on YouTube,’ he said, ‘didn’t we, mate?’
Billy smiled at Franca, then burrowed his blonde head into the pillow. He looked dopey, stunted.
‘He needs sunlight, Clive.’
‘I’m sorry. I had a bad day.’
‘So he could have gone to childcare.’
‘We don’t have money for that more than once a week,’ Clive said. ‘You’re the one keeps saying it.’
Franca knelt to gather the coloured blocks. They made a hollow clatter.
Clive’s face appeared above her. ‘Sorry, babe,’ he said.
‘I’m going to Mum and Dad’s for tea,’ she said, ‘remember?’
‘Oh, yeah.’
‘I said you didn’t have to come if you’re not up to it.’
He touched her hair. ‘What if I stay here with Kurt and Em. I’ll make us dinner. You just go with Billy.’
Her parents managed a motel in Omeo. This time of year it was filled with people on their way to and from Hotham, rich people who stopped overnight before they fitted their snow chains and drove up the mountain to ski.
Used to be that Clive always drove. Franca hated driving the Great Alpine Road at night. She still hated it—the 70 kilometres of high-beam light, the sudden twists, the narrow places—but she had no say in it anymore. Clive hadn’t been up that way in months. She wished he could see it now. It looked healthier since the drought had ended.
Her mother cooked a roast. Franca was embarrassed, turning up with only Billy in her arms. There was too much food.
She tried to tell to her parents about the meeting. She thought if she could explain it, she might understand it better. She thought of the lawyer. That’s why the CPI forecasts are low; everyone knows that.
She felt sick.
‘This happens time and again,’ her father said. ‘Remember how worried Clive was about the carbon tax? Thought he’d lose his job? It all blew over.’
‘He lost his job anyway,’ Franca said.
‘Well, not because of the tax. All I’m saying is, the agreement might still get voted down.’
‘We could move closer,’ her mother said, ‘and look after Billy.’
‘Don’t be silly.’
The rain fell in sheets.
‘I should move the car. I parked under the big tree,’ Franca said.
‘Do that. Then sleep here tonight,’ her father said. ‘No good going home now. It’s bloody cyclonic out there.’
She stayed in one of the motel rooms. It smelled of eucalyptus cleaning product and old carpet. She undressed Billy and tucked him in. She turned on the television. The football was just finishing. At home, the kids would be watching the same match. Maybe Clive would have made it to the couch, too. The muscles in her thighs had begun to ache.
She waited all night with the baby in her arms but the sunrise didn’t happen; the light just got grey. She stripped the bed so the cleaner wouldn’t have to. She washed Billy’s face and rubbed a flat cake of soap between his tiny hands. She sat at her parents’ table. Her mother scrambled eggs in the microwave. On television they were reporting the storm damage.
; ‘Lucky you stayed here,’ her father said. ‘They’ve had trees down all along the highway. Flooding from Traralgon to Paynesville.’
‘They just had a bloke in Bairnsdale,’ her mother said, ‘reckons almost the whole town’s without power. You spoken to Clive?’
Franca shook her head. ‘His phone might be dead. If there’s no power, he won’t be able to charge it.’
There was a tree across the road at Doctors Flat. She stood in her parka, hopping from foot to foot, while the SES crew finished clearing it.
She stopped for petrol in Bruthen. She tried calling Clive again.
‘Was your power out?’ she asked the guy at the servo.
‘Nah, we were fine, but they were rooted in Sale,’ he said. ‘You been listening to the radio?’
The roads were slick with water that hadn’t drained; flooded in parts. Franca pictured the footy oval in town. It’d be marshy. Maybe Kurt’s match would be called off. She hoped their spouting at home had withstood all the bark and leaf shit, but she was sure she’d be up there all afternoon with a pair of gloves and a garbage bag, clearing out the muck.
She saw it as soon as she pulled into the driveway. The great dead red gum had come down. It lay across the yard, the priestly trunk like a spear. The front room of the house was caved in; roof beams exposed, weatherboards splintered to matchwood.
The caravan, the kids’ room, was cleaved in two. It looked absurd, the metal folded into itself.
Franca heaved open the car door. She saw a striped doona cover beneath a sheet of corrugated detritus. She saw her daughter’s gumboot. She started to run. Suddenly she was on her knees in the mud, calling for Clive. He was in front of her. His mouth was moving. He helped her up.
‘They’re okay,’ he said. He was shivering. Franca clutched at his arms. ‘The kids are inside,’ he said. ‘They’re okay.’
VOX CLAMANTIS
When Johnny told me his mother was dying, really dying, I didn’t know at first what he meant.
‘They said ten months first,’ he said. ‘Then they said three. Now they’re speaking in weeks.’
Speaking in weeks. Like that was a language.
On the phone he sounded fine, just tired. I knew he was living in a new place but I pictured him standing in our old kitchen, kneading his forehead with his knuckles, the frontal sinuses where he got pain. I pictured him standing in the bathroom with its pond-green tiles, with that big window that opened out to a view of a vacant lot. He liked to stand there when he was on the phone.
‘I know it’s really weird,’ he said. ‘I would never—ever—want you to feel like you had to do it. I’ll understand.’
He would have rehearsed that call.
I said I’d come. Speaking in weeks.
I packed some things. I phoned work. I met my friend Suze for coffee. She kept saying, I don’t believe it. She really was appalled. She said, ‘I want you to be mad about it.’
I shrugged. ‘He’s not forcing me to go.’
‘So why would you?’
‘He’s not a bad person. It just seems like the right thing to do.’
‘What the fuck, a bad person.’
He called again that evening. He asked how much money I’d be losing, not working. I told him not to be silly. He was insistent. I didn’t know how to be graceful about it.
The bus from Tacoma to Portland took three and a half hours. It was the time of year for white skies. I couldn’t see Mount St Helens at all. I’d offered to drive down, I’d said we could take my car. He said no. I wasn’t going to argue with him. He came and met me at the station. It was midday. The Greyhound depot stank of piss and other people’s cigarette smoke. He was waiting. He put his hands on my arms. He kissed my hair. The first thing I said was I’m sorry.
We went to Blueplate, I think more out of custom than nostalgia. Afterwards he drove me back to his new place. It was in Mt Scott. We stood in the kitchen.
He rubbed his eyes. ‘Listen, I’m sorry, but I have to work tonight.’
‘It’s okay,’ I said. ‘But what are they going to do without you for the next couple weeks?’
‘It’s not my problem once I’m out of there, but it is until I go.’ He opened the refrigerator and stood looking in at its contents. ‘There’s consommé in there if you want it. I’m just gonna throw it out otherwise. Um. There’s bread.’
‘It’s okay,’ I said again. He nodded.
I didn’t trust his new place, on the other side of the city. I made up my own bed on his fold-out sofa. He hadn’t said when he’d be home. I locked his front door and started up Woodstock, towards the university. I’d lived in this exact neighbourhood when I first moved to the city, when I’d gone to college for dance at Reed. After you’ve gone to college for dance there’s not much you can do except low-budget music videos and Disneyland, so I did both of those things. I worked for a year in Anaheim, long days, first cartwheeling down the clean cartoon streets in the twice-daily parades. Then it was six months as a character actress. I was a princess look-alike. Tiana, from The Princess and the Pea. That was what I was doing when I met Johnny. He thought it was real funny. I hated the way he told his mother, the way he made it quaint. I think he even said, Can you believe that’s a job? and Cathy frowned and said, Of course it’s a job, John, Christ. There are all different important ways of earning a living. Cab driving’s a job, grave digging’s a job, Jesus Christ, John. This is not how I raised you. Discussions of class disturbed her in the way they could only disturb the west coast bourgeois.
She always told people he was a chef, not a cook. She said his name more when she was frustrated with him.
When the Disney contract expired I was finished with it all. It’s a short-term prospect. The Australian girl and the Portuguese girl I’d worked with said they were done, too, and went home. Over dinner Johnny’s mother said, Maybe you need to go to New York.
We moved to Portland and I went to school for nursing. It felt good to be back in the cold with all those trees. At OHSU our scrubs were pine green. Johnny and I had lived in Goose Hollow. For a long time it felt like a new sweet place we’d carved out for ourselves. I never wanted to tear a hole in it until later.
In the morning he was up and about, showered before I’d dragged myself off the couch. It wasn’t even light. I wondered if he’d slept at all. I pulled the blanket up over my face and watched his figure moving around the kitchen through the wool. At last I heard him carting bags out to the car. It was my cue to get up. There were two travel mugs of coffee ready to go on the bench. Johnny came back inside, saw me standing with my ass to the heater.
‘I kind of wanted to hit the road early,’ he said. ‘You know, it’s just such a long way, and—I’m sorry.’
‘No, no, of course,’ I said. ‘I can get ready quick.’
That first day was mostly strange. We didn’t speak until we were out of the city. I watched it get light through the windscreen. We’d barely talked about his mother. All I knew was this:
1. She was dying.
2. She wouldn’t say it, but she wanted to see Johnny settled before she went.
Johnny’s mother was what my mother called, a little disparagingly, a bohemienne. But she wasn’t; it was just that she’d always had the money to do more or less whatever she’d wanted. Cathy had come from a Palos Verdes family, she’d studied at Berkeley, then she’d taught Comparative Literature there. She was a small woman. She moved like a dancer. She wore classic navy trousers with the cuffs expertly turned.
Palos Verdes family, Frank Lloyd Wright, Toluca Lake meant nothing to me before Johnny. When I met him I’d never seen the ocean.
He didn’t show it to me.
We’d been separated for almost five months. I’d been in Tacoma for four.
Speaking in months.
Still, though. I couldn’t believe he hadn’t mentioned it to her. Somewhere near Eugene I said, ‘I sort of can’t believe you never told her we split up.’
I guess that surpris
ed him, as a first thing to say.
‘She loves you, Abby,’ he said.
‘She doesn’t love me. She loves the idea of you being married.’
I guess he agreed with that.
‘They could make a reality show about us,’ he said at last.
‘Two exes forced to behave civilly on a three-day road trip.’
‘I feel like my dying mother is a very crucial part of this,’ he said. ‘Anyway, we’re civil, aren’t we?’
We don’t speak enough to know, I thought, but I just said, ‘I guess we are, Johnno. I guess we are.’
We made good time. After Grants Pass he headed out west, and we stopped in Brookings for gas. I got out to stretch my legs while he filled the car. We stood either side of it.
‘How come the coast?’ I asked.
‘This is shitty enough,’ he said, ‘that I want to do anything I can to make it less so. And anyway, if I ever have to drive the 5 again, I’ll kill myself.’
It was windy and our voices were straining over the car.
‘It’s going to take longer,’ I said.
‘A couple hours,’ he said.
I thought maybe an extra day, but I didn’t say it. If it were my mom, I wouldn’t be driving at all; I’d be in an airplane and there by afternoon, but you can’t pass judgement on other people’s grief. Maybe he needed time to warm up to it.
We went to a bakery for coffee. It was right on the highway, in a strip of shops. I knew the ocean must have been beyond there, but I couldn’t see it. While I waited for Johnny to piss, I smoked a cigarette standing in the parking lot. I looked out at the lumberyards. The smoke made ashy columns in the sky.
When he came out he said, ‘You started smoking again.’
‘Yes.’
‘I’m sorry. I feel like that’s probably my fault.’
‘Not everything is about you,’ I said. He laughed.
Things were easier after we crossed state line. He played Loudon Wainwright.
‘Where are you working these days?’ he asked.
Pulse Points Page 13