‘You can handle it all without me,’ Luc went on. ‘I’ll still be here to help.’
It didn’t escape Laura that by enrolling in Law, Luc was doing what his father had longed for. Another bloody lawyer? she thought, but didn’t say as much. It was clear how desperately Luc needed her to confirm that he wasn’t selling out. He led her over to the old futon couch, talking all the while. Sipping her tea, Laura picked at the Indian throw hung over the back, electric pink, covered in mirrors. Their images repeated, embroidering the fabric.
Taking his lovely face in her hands, she let Luc off the hook.
But by the next morning, Laura couldn’t ignore that she felt dumped in it. Her resentment was a burn. Angrily buttering toast, she told Luc that he had set her up in his job, and gone off to tackle the next thing on his long, private list of things to achieve.
‘What am I, your worker?’ Laura’s fists were rolled like batons.
Luc told her she could do something else if she liked. ‘It’s a free world,’ he said.
Through clenched teeth, Laura fought him. ‘I thought we were doing all this together.’
She stormed along their street and into the main road, glaring at couples arm in arm, sharing umbrellas. Water ran into Laura’s eyes; she turned her collar up, frowning. Despite the rain, the shopping strip was crowded. People everywhere, forcing her to slow and edge her way through, as though wading in waves. When had this daggy little suburb become fashionable, busy? It seemed to have happened without her noticing, time passing. Had she changed as much?
Have I lived here that long? she thought.
Pouring from cafes, people sheltered under awnings, inhaling the steam of their coffees. Pedestrians carried small dogs, good-for-nothing animals with mashed-up faces: couldn’t smell a rabbit, a fox, if one bit them on the arse. People with cloth bags of overpriced vegetables; people with imported cigarettes and fingerless gloves; people drinking boutique beers; eating meals worth less than half what they’d paid; with expensive prams; with old clothes they considered ‘vintage’; with laptop computers; with hours to while away, just reading the paper. Pushing through, muttering, ‘Excuse me, excuse me,’ and then just pushing, Laura gnashed her teeth.
She hated them all.
She found herself at the bus stop, rode down into town. Walking along the harbourfront, she was filled with rage. That her whole life was spent taking care, being good, doing what she thought she should. She glanced about her through the drizzle and didn’t know where she was. Was there anything I ever really wanted to do?
She shoved the thought away. It was too awful. She was afraid of the answer – that there was none. Her eagerness to please, her loneliness, had ensnared her inside a perfectly workable life. She was a wife – or near enough; had a man by whom any woman would want to be loved. Luc was kind and smart and made jokes. They were both healthy. They had nice enough things. Her work was meaningful. It kept her busy. Most days she enjoyed it. What more could she want? But there was still the sense that she was living someone else’s life.
Immersed in her work, in Luc, in the city, Laura sometimes found it hard to tell which of her selves was real. From the slick streets of Sydney suburbs, the bald, baking farm seemed so far off. When she went home, her damp Sydney flat, and Luc’s back pressed against her chest at night in bed, seemed hazy, dream-like against the solid familiarity of the farm. It was disconcerting. She would try not to look back at Bruce’s figure as she cycled down the road, heading for Kyree Station. Her father – shrunken and dusty, reduced by distance – looked inconsequential, part of the bald hill face. Made of drought-cracked earth.
Luc’s semester started; the restaurant and nursery picked up. Laura rarely got an afternoon to herself – each hour was accounted for. As they had most of her life, the tasks piled up like foundation stones beneath her.
Months passed with little more contact than the obligatory calls she made of a Sunday – brief and business-like – in which Bruce filled her in on his week: jobs done and jobs left to do.
Then he announced that he was coming to see her. ‘Understand you’re busy, love,’ he said. ‘But you’re my daughter!’
The intimacy of the words stunned Laura. How much she must mean.
‘Oh, Dad,’ she said, voice a little wobbly. ‘Be back at Christmas, promise.’
‘But that’s ages.’
It wasn’t just about the extra pair of hands she provided, Laura realised. Bruce missed her. The longing was painfully sharp, a cracked rib: to be home in Kyree. How badly Laura wanted to feel the length of Vik’s small body in bed at night, reassuringly solid; to see the pleasure on Bruce’s face as she served up his meal. But the things she desired lay behind her, years in the past. They could not be exhumed.
Laura told Bruce that they would be delighted to see him in two weeks. Gazing across the room at Luc as she spoke, she was already defensive, pre-emptively annoyed by the way she knew he would respond to news of her father’s visit. And guilty for making him put up with Bruce, guilty that she couldn’t just go up to Kyree as she normally did, keeping everyone happy.
‘You take care, love,’ Bruce said in her ear. His tenderness was there, uncharacteristically raw. ‘Hear?’
Luc watched, raised eyebrows asking his question for him.
As Laura put the phone down she caught Bruce distantly saying, ‘Lor? One more thi–’
But she’d already hung up. The unfinished thought hung in the air, a haunting.
Months after Bruce had come and gone, Laura would yearn to return to the instant she cut him off. If only she could listen a minute longer. Hear what he had to say.
She picked Bruce up from Central Station when he stepped off the train, busting through the crowd to get to him. He stood squinting into the steam, swaying slightly. She noticed his mangy clothes and thought, I’ve left him alone for too long.
‘Dad?’
He jolted when she took his arm, flinching it away. Then his eyes found her face, focusing. The smile he gave was radiant. ‘Oh, love,’ he said breathlessly, staring at her. Were those tears? ‘I found you. At last.’
Laura felt a twinge that his pleasure was too great, somehow misplaced.
‘Reckon I found you,’ she said blithely.
He resisted slightly, picking at her sleeve. The way he kept looking at her, like he hadn’t seen her in years. ‘The storm, the flood,’ he was rambling. ‘So dangerous. But you’re safe!’
‘’Course.’ Laura’s annoyance was a low buzz. She hated herself for feeling it. But couldn’t he just let her get him home? The crowds, the humidity, were impossible. It would be so much easier to catch up once they were in the flat. Laura was thinking of the nice cold beers, ripe tomatoes and fresh bread that were waiting. She pulled Bruce out onto the street. Once he had taught her how to make fire without matches, and here she was, hustling him like a child.
‘Where’re my things?’ he said suddenly, jerking away from her, craning back.
His luggage. Laura suppressed a groan – she should have realised. She left Bruce sheltering in the bus stop and dove back into the station. But there were no unclaimed suitcases on the platform, no bags in overhead racks.
‘I’m so sorry,’ she said when she got back. What an introduction to the city. There five minutes and already robbed. It distressed her, how upset Bruce got then. Somehow, shakily, she got him back to the flat. Apologising profusely, talking him down. Thinking, He should have never left the farm.
Later, in bed, Laura turned to Luc and said, ‘God he’s aged.’
But it wasn’t Luc she wanted to talk to about it.
Vik just laughed her off, jiggling Cait distractedly, baby bouncer squeaking down the phone.
‘Shh, shh, Caity. Calm down, sweetheart,’ Vik mumbled tiredly, lurching between conversations, hardly concealing her impatience. ‘’Course Dad seems older, Lor. He’s old. What is he, sixty-something? Sixty-five?’
Listening to the baby scream, Laura understood now w
hy Vik had declined travel, to bring Cait up to see Bruce. She wished she hadn’t asked her at all, but she hadn’t fully realised the toll it was taking, all those sleepless nights, the colic. So she didn’t press Vik about their father, but let the issue drop, let her sister ramble on about dummies and nappies, mothers’ group and sleep.
Desperate to keep things nice between Bruce and Luc, minimising contact, Laura tried to bustle her father out of the flat each day. He resisted, seemed hesitant to leave, scared of getting lost. Out on the main streets, he clutched at her arm as she propelled him along.
‘North is … what?’ he kept saying as she said her goodbyes before work, squinting for the sun, trying to get his bearings. ‘That way?’ But the rain and smog turned the sky uniformly silver. He found it hard to navigate through the jammed buildings and narrow, haphazard streets; he was used to wide-open spaces that offered up the lie of the land at a glance.
Bruce literally could not believe the weather, the daily rain. Each afternoon he came in soaked, having forgotten an umbrella. They watched the news together of an evening, as Bruce always did at home. Heard a story about climate change shifting demographics. Some in the south had packed up their farms and properties, sick with the smell of dust and dying stock, and moved north. Others, after watching their farms wash away, were moving south, preferring drought to potential drowning. Meanwhile, cities were filling with other rural families who had simply had enough. All over the country, citizens were reporting strange local weather: too much rain in one town, and in others, nowhere near enough.
It was a potential flashpoint between Bruce and Luc. Laura knew they both held fiercely strong views about this. In his darker moments, late at night and after one too many beers, Luc liked to talk tough. ‘No point moving,’ he would insist. ‘My advice? You live in the south: secure your own source of water, and be prepared to defend it to the death.’
But they sat together, watching the screen, and pretended it wasn’t happening. How hard Luc and Bruce tried with each other. How much they loved Laura, going out of their way. Luc was on his best behaviour. His books piled up by their bed, where he normally sat, cocooned, reading; he was cooking special meals, setting the table. Doing his bit.
Laura rushed home from work of an evening to find the house potpourried with spice, her men cheerfully waiting. Just a little strained.
She phoned home each day to ask, ‘Everything alright?’
She could hear the television blaring.
‘Relax,’ Luc always said, though one day he hesitated.
‘What?’
‘He’s dismantled the bloody washing machine,’ Luc said cheerfully. ‘Reckons it’s not working properly.’
Laura listened but there was only mild annoyance in Luc’s tone. That was like Bruce, she thought. He would want to keep busy, help out. The washing machine was a problem – Luc kept promising to do something about it, but never seemed to have time. It heartened Laura to think that the machine might get fixed.
Laura’s routine engulfed her in the weeks after Bruce’s visit. Struggling to manage, she barely thought about him. The lull at the cafe between lunch and dinner was her favourite time. She went through the restaurant: dim, gleaming, still as a theatre tableau, through to the nursery office. There were rosters to write, stock to order, menus to plan. She was slouched down in a chair when the phone rang.
‘That you, Laura? Donald here. I need to talk to you, love.’
Listening, Laura covered her mouth with her hands. Her cry clamped off. She groped for the arm of the couch. The phone clattered. Laura’s stomach, drum-skin tight. She found Luc.
‘I’ve got to go home,’ she said.
‘I’ll come.’ He scooped up his things.
Laura cocked her head. She laughed. Strangled, the sound was of another throat. ‘No. Home. Kyree. Dad’s sick. He’s had some kind of fall.’ She edged around Donald’s phone call, his words a knot of exposed nerves. ‘Alzheimer’s, they said … One of them memory things … Couldn’t look after the place no more, turns out … Thought it was getting the better of him, what with the drought … Should’ve stepped in sooner, but was up in town with Joe … Nurse said he needs looking after … Had to take care of the sheep. Not in good shape, poor buggers … You and little Vik, you girls’ll want to come home.’
Luc quietly held Laura. She sat with her head against his chest, heart beating in her cheek. Donald had insisted: Bruce had been sick for some time. Her failure to see it was like vertigo. Falling from solid ground, while standing still.
The sun was already up and glaring when the train pulled in, a jewel being fed on a chain, to Kyree. Laura went straight to the new hospital from Kyree Station.
She peered through the ward door – wished she hadn’t. Her father’s eyes were sunken, shut in sleep. She clocked the cast on his arm. He was a strange, worn version of himself made of liver-spots and bone. In the hallway a specialist, his voice medical, cold and precise, outlined Bruce’s condition. Laura tried hard to absorb the details, but was overwhelmed.
‘There are options,’ the doctor was saying. ‘Homes.’
Laura said, ‘He already has a home.’
The doctor coughed. Laura excused herself and left.
Out on Main Street, she turned left without thinking and went along a footpath radiating heat. Her body knew the way. Back when she was a kid, long brown grass had grown and then been eaten to the roots in vacant lots. Agisted townie horses, tired old nags, had endured the cruel attention of bored rural boys. The school bus, always late, offered no protection on long hot afternoons.
But the horses were long gone, the lots razed. In their place: charcoal chicken, a fish’n’chip shop, a pizza joint. Newly laid suburban roads crosshatched Main Street. New estate houses, like Lego blocks, made of brick veneer. The town had seeped across the land, a human grid.
Out on the highway, Laura crunched along the verge. The road rolled out, shimmering. She felt crushed by heat, by the vast, bleak desert that was the farms beyond town. She knew the weather had been hard. But she had not pictured this. What trees were still standing were now mostly dead. The paddocks, worn down to dirt by wind and stock, sapped.
At the crossroads by the letterbox, a rusty old ute skidded a little in the shale at road’s edge. Donald leaned out, elbow on sill. He seemed softened by age. Laura recognised the elderly man Joseph would become.
‘Bloody hot to be walkin’,’ Donald said. He had more gaps than teeth. The landscape swam, ripples of gold. Laura staggered over, climbed in. ‘Need a hat on, love.’ He shoved the ute into gear, grinding. There was an old dog in the tray, scrabbling to keep still. Donald spoke about finding Bruce. He was careful with words, taking time over the selection, choosing just the right ones. ‘What with all you kids in the big smoke, thought I’d drop in. Started playing cards, downing a coldie now and then. Just a coupla old codgers, us. What else?’ He tutted. ‘This bloody drought!’
It had taken a few months for Donald to work out that something wasn’t right with her old man. Bruce sometimes seemed to forget that Donald was coming, or was confused about their plans. Some days it was all Donald could do to stop Bruce from heading up the creek, searching.
‘Got real angry, too,’ Donald said. ‘I wouldn’t help. Was when I came back I saw how crook he got. Joe had your number, lucky.’
She could hardly believe the state of the place. Never had she perceived so acutely the day-to-day maintenance required to keep it in good shape. There every day, you did what needed doing according to seasons and stock and the weather, and you barely noticed the difference you made. It’s hard yakka, Laura thought, but that’s what it is to keep a place running.
The last few years, Bruce had avoided hiring hands when he could get away with doing things himself – what with the drought, so little money coming in. Of course, one or two people working all day can never really improve things much. The landscape was wearing back to rock. Every day, great clouds of dust and dirt blew away
across the valley. Hardly anything but weeds would grow. The valley like the moon, a monotonous surface. All those hours of work, they had merely been holding the place steady, preventing decline. Laura saw all of this in a blink. The farm had only been left to its own devices for a few months, but it might have been decades.
They turned off the sealed road and into the drive. The paddock fence was slack. When had that happened? Laura started crying. ‘Oi!’ Bruce had used to shout. ‘Use the bloomin’ gate! You’ll stretch the bloody wire climbing over like that!’
A couple of skinny wethers milled, snuffling dirt around the house.
Donald said, ‘’Fraid there’s not much left of the stock.’
Three of Bruce’s decorative pines were dead, their corpses littered along the drive. Laura remembered planting them as saplings, Bruce pressing her small hands into soil.
The house looked long-abandoned, falling into the dry earth. Paint worn away by weather. Verandah sagging. Foundations shifted like rheumatic joints, as though it hurt the wooden skeleton to stay still. Lopsided, the house gave the impression that after sliding into disrepair for years, soon it would slip all the way into dust. With only so many hours in the day, so many pairs of hands, Bruce had concentrated on the animals, the land. Laura understood. She would have done the same.
Even so, each time she’d come home to visit, she had been given a sharp shock. She did her best to help out, pressing her uncertainty down: that familiar, darkened mulch. Back with Luc, when she thought of the farm, she remembered it the way it had been when she and it were young. In Sydney, whatever concerns she had about how Bruce and the farm were faring became tiny, blanched scraps of image, fluttering faintly. Consumed by bulk-ordered lentils and rostering staff, her days flashed by. Stacking the commercial dishwasher, load after load, she had little time to dwell on anything else. I’m needed here in Sydney, she had told herself, unhooking from responsibility. What more can I possibly do? Now guilt threatened to overwhelm her.
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