Audrey drew a bath. The steam fogged the mirror over the sink. She left the bathroom door open so she could still hear the music. She held her breath to sink below the surface. She watched her knees turn pink with heat.
She walked to town. She sat with her book in an Italian restaurant and ate a bowl of salty mushroom linguine. It felt good and hot in her body. The only other customers in the restaurant were two men arguing about a car. Audrey thought they might have been brothers. There was a television mounted on the wall playing an old Harrison Ford film.
At the newsagency she bought three postcards: one for her mother, one for her sister, one for Adam. The sky was heavy and dull. There was an op-shop set up in the Uniting Church. Audrey poked around the used books. They were mostly pulp romance novels, but she found a biology book from the fifties. She opened it to the page on symbiosis. Symbiosis occurs when two or more different organisms have a relationship in which they depend on each other. There are different kinds of symbiotic relationships, including mutualism, commensalism, amensalism, or parasitism. There was a helpful illustration of a hermit crab and an anemone. She read about parasites.
‘You right there, love?’
His smile was benign. Audrey dropped the book as if it were burning.
She walked down to the water. It all seemed very quiet. She sat on a rock and tried to think about the lake being artificial, but she couldn’t imagine what had been there before.
She phoned Adam. He didn’t answer. She watched an older woman struggle by with two schoolchildren, all of them bundled into ski jackets. The woman huffed a greeting. Audrey smiled at them. Her nose was running. When she walked back up to the road, all the cars had their headlights on.
Pip and Julian came back late in the day. They were tired and laughing.
‘What did you get up to?’ Pip asked.
‘I read. Went for a big walk. It was nice.’
They went to the pub for dinner. Audrey borrowed an old parka that was hanging in the wardrobe. It was enormously thick, lined with tartan fleece.
‘Nice eighties-soccer-mum aesthetic,’ Julian snorted. ‘I reckon you might pick up tonight.’
‘I thought it was more, you know, early Dana Scully,’ said Audrey.
She was glad to have them back.
The pub was at the edge of the lake. It was a bright country sky. The moon on the water reminded her of an ultrasound image.
‘I’m already sore,’ Julian groaned.
‘Wait till tomorrow. Your body repairs itself overnight,’ Pip said, ‘you’ll be fucked.’
‘I won’t be able to walk.’
The pub was crowded. Julian explained something to Audrey about it being a party town in the snow season. The music was loud. Audrey wished she’d bought the biology book.
They clinked their glasses, shed their coats.
‘I can’t have gin,’ Pip said. ‘It makes me depressed and spewy.’
Audrey was laughing. ‘Whiskey makes me sin but I can’t say how.’
‘Sin,’ Julian said. ‘What a word!’ Audrey wasn’t sure what had made her say it. They started talking about funny things that had happened all day: the lift operator, the woman at the petrol station, Julian falling over. They were saying it in a way that involved Audrey.
By the bathroom, after dinner, someone offered Julian some speed. ‘It might have been fun,’ he said when he got back to the table. He and Pip tried to out-do each other with stories. Audrey had a flash of Katy’s face, eyes swimming, joyful and dancing. It wasn’t a story she could tell. It had no punchline. She stood to get another round.
Someone started talking to her while she waited at the bar. He was a slow speaker, nondescript. He wore a fleece sweater. Audrey was bored, but only in a dim way: she was drunk, he was going on about snowboarding, it was bearable. She looked back at their table. Pip and Julian were still talking. The guy in the f leece sweater wanted to buy her a drink. They sat at the end of the bar. He touched her back, down low. Audrey tried to remember what to do with her body. In the bath she’d touched her own skin, pretending it was someone else’s hands. Now the hands were here they meant nothing. Audrey finished her drink. She smiled and made to thank him, to excuse herself, and he leaned in. His mouth was soft. She wanted to want it.
‘I have to go,’ Pip said over the music. She was leaning against Julian. ‘I’m spent. This always happens when I’m tired and I drink.’
They were both grinning at her.
‘You guys go on,’ Audrey said. ‘I can meet you at home.’
Pip raised her eyebrows.
Julian spoke close to her ear. ‘Be safe.’ Audrey felt him squeeze her arm through layers of clothing. He and Pip left, arms linked. Audrey watched them push through the doors.
‘They friends of yours?’ the guy asked.
‘My housemates,’ Audrey said. He nodded, as though the topic were exhausted. He kissed her again. She put her face to his neck. She wondered if the spasm would pass.
‘What are you doing?’ he said. He scratched his head. ‘Do you want to come back to mine?’
His motel room was cold. Audrey already knew it was a mistake. He handed her a can, rum and cola, and they sat side by side on the edge of the bed.
‘You wanna take your jacket off?’
Audrey shook her head, put the drink on the bedside table. He began to, he began to, he began—
‘Hey,’ she said, but her voice sounded like someone else’s. ‘Stop. I’m sorry. I don’t want to.’ His face was too close for her to see it properly. She breathed in rum and beer and that cold motel smell. And woodsmoke: it made her think of the fire pit at Charles Street, of Nick, of that house. ‘Stop,’ she said again. He went on kissing her neck. ‘I’m serious.’ She pushed his hands down, away from her face, but he was finding his way under her shirt, one hand on her wrist. Audrey was suddenly frightened, pinned up against the bedhead. All she could think was not to lie down. His face swarmed over her. His lips were making soothing shapes, he was smiling, his hair was hanging over his forehead. She wondered if she should just let him do it, wait for it to be over. His eyes were yellow.
She swiped out. Her hand hit the brick wall. The bedside lamp crashed to the floor, taking the phone with it.
‘The fuck are you doing?’
‘Fuck off. I said stop.’ Audrey clambered to her feet. The phone cord was caught around her wrist. There was a thudding at the door and then Julian was in the doorway. He grabbed Audrey’s wrist roughly, yanked her from the room.
‘Listen, mate—’
‘You stay away from her,’ Julian said. He grabbed the other guy by the neck of his shirt. The three of them stood there as if suspended. Audrey looked at the two men, grunting and struggling in the freezing night.
‘For God’s sake,’ she said. She turned and walked away.
She’d left her scarf back in the room. Her chest was cold. Julian caught up with her halfway across the carpark.
‘What’s wrong with you?’ he said.
‘I’m sorry.’
‘Your hand’s bleeding.’
Audrey looked down at her hand. Her knuckles were grazed.
‘It’s not bleeding,’ she said. ‘How’d you know where I was?’
‘Pip told me to follow you. She had a feeling about that guy.’
Snow was falling, tiny flakes gathering under the floodlights.
Audrey stopped walking. Her arms were shaking. Fight or flight, Nick would have said. She realised her shirt buttons were undone but for two. ‘I’m sorry. I’m sorry. Thanks,’ she said. She wrapped her jacket around herself, zipped it up, pulled the cuffs down over her hands. ‘I thought he was okay.’
‘Didn’t your mum teach you about stranger danger?’
‘Don’t talk to me like I’m a child.’
‘Don’t act like one.’
The blood was rushing in her arms. ‘Fuck you. I can hold my own.’
‘Hold my own. God, you’re a loose unit.’
They stumped back to the house. It seemed a long way. Pip was waiting in the kitchen, three mugs set out.
‘Everything okay?’ she asked. She looked from face to face.
‘Fine,’ Audrey said.
After Pip had gone to bed Julian and Audrey sat at the table.
‘Did you ever argue with your mum or dad and then go out to pick a fight?’ Audrey asked. Julian looked at his mug of tea. ‘I mean, you knew you were in the wrong, but instead of apologising you tried to get your head kicked in. Then you could feel like you’d copped the punishment without having to think about what it was for.’
Julian said nothing.
‘Forget it,’ Audrey said. ‘I don’t really know what guys do. Sorry.’ She left the mugs in the sink, left Julian at the kitchen table. They didn’t talk about it again.
The fog hung low when they drove home on Sunday. Pip fell asleep. Julian tuned the radio to an oldies station, volume down. Audrey dozed, too, in the back seat, but somewhere near Goulburn she jerked awake when she heard it: Springsteen singing ‘Badlands’. She said to Julian, ‘I was just listening to this yesterday.’
‘What, Bruce?’
‘Yeah, at the house, it was in the CD player.’
He turned it up and sang. Pip lifted her head and said, irritably, ‘Don’t be a jerk, Julian, I was asleep.’ She settled back into her seat. ‘My mum loves the Boss. This reminds me of being at home.’
Audrey looked at the poplars, the paddocks, the bleached-skull trees by the roadside. ‘There’s this sign in Melbourne near the city,’ she said. ‘Near the river. It’s on top of one of the factories. It’s this rainbow that just says OUR MAGIC HOUR.’
‘“Our magic hour”. That’s nice.’ Pip yawned. ‘What made you think of that?’
‘I don’t know,’ Audrey said. Julian met her eyes in the rear-view mirror. She looked away.
At home she left her bag and washing, and walked down to the beach. She phoned Adam again. She was so relieved to hear his voice. He said What’s wrong, you sound weird. She told him about Jindabyne.
‘I don’t know if he was going to do anything. I don’t think he was a bad guy.’
‘You told him to stop and he didn’t,’ Adam said. ‘Are you okay? Do you want me to come up?’
‘What? Don’t be silly. I’m fine. You know, it just gives you a fright.’
A flock of gulls took off nearby. Their wings made a sound like paper rippling.
‘I keep waiting to be punished,’ Audrey said, ‘but it never comes.’
‘You’ve done nothing wrong. Spence? Are you crying?’
‘No!’
‘You have to care about yourself enough to be safe. You’re behaving like a very depressed person. This risk-taking shit, it’s textbook. You know that.’
‘You can’t just pathologise people. It wasn’t risk-taking. I didn’t know it was going to happen.’
Adam was silent. Scabs had formed on her knuckles, and they itched.
Gritty Underfoot
When children died at Westmead, it was at the hands of some terrible division of abnormal cells, not a parent who knew no better or was too stoned to care. It was Audrey’s job to make the families comfortable, to offer taxi vouchers, food vouchers, emergency housing, support. She no longer visited houses where syringes lolled on stovetops and dog shit laced the floorboards. Still. It was a shock the first time one of the kids died. It was the first time she’d really hated the commute: she only wanted to be home, closed off from everyone, but it was the train to Central, then the bus across the city. She sat in the window. The streets were green with growth, the bougainvillea was out. At Randwick the horses were being walked around the track. Everyone sang out Thank you when they got off the bus. Meningioma tumour, neglect: they were just different kinds of defeat. Audrey wondered when she’d build up the muscles for it again.
The front door was open. Audrey went to the kitchen to find a beer. Julian was in the living room playing a car-racing video game. He said Hey without looking up. A furrow of concentration snaked across his forehead. Audrey was halfway to the stairs before he said it—‘Hey, could you transfer the money for the internet?’
‘I did it the other day.’
‘Oh’—irritation in his voice—‘well, can you tell me next time?’
Audrey stood looking at him. At last he threw down the console in sudden frustration and turned to her.
‘Yes,’ she said. ‘I’ll let you know.’
There was a string of missed calls on her phone. She sat on the floor to play the messages. Three from Sylvie, one from David, one from Bernie: Irène had had the baby at four o’clock that afternoon, a boy, seven pounds something, it was very quick, everyone was fine. Bernie’s message was like a performance piece for radio, an impression of Sylvie. Audrey laughed until her eyes were streaming. She missed him.
She called her mother. Sylvie was still at the hospital.
‘I wish ton papa could see him,’ Sylvie said. ‘You remember how happy he was when Zoe was born?’
Sometimes Audrey wondered if they recalled the same man at all. There were a few photos of Neil holding Zoe as a baby. He’d been sick by then. He’d ended up in a palliative care facility on the peninsula, near the golf course, not far from the home all the children had escaped. The roads were poorly lit. Audrey hated driving there at night: tired, she’d hallucinate ragged figures or animals by the side of the road, lurching out from behind trees.
There came a time when Audrey was no longer afraid of him. He’d suddenly become as harmless as a plant. He changed quickly. His body bloated, the shape of his face changed. He was an old man and in pain.
When he was close to the end, Audrey had submitted her final essay for her Masters and drunk a glass of wine by herself somewhere on Elgin Street. She’d phoned Nick from her sunny window seat. At home there’d been a surprise party: all her friends crowded into the front room of the Charles Street house, bunting on the wall spelling out BRAIN PARTY, confetti and champagne in her hair, Nick kissing her in the kitchen. She remembered Katy shrieking You brilliant woman! Audrey was unshowered, in a sloppy shirt, sleepless from the night before. Yusra poached her an egg on toast and they drank Veuve, then Yellowglen,
and then beer. She remembered a spirited 4 a.m. clean-up, Paddy singing Many hands, make ’em light. Giggling at the clatter of the bottles in the recycling bin outside. Katy wiping down the benchtop. Dustpan and shovel for broken glass. Audrey and Nick stood on the front step to wave the last of them off.
Sylvie had phoned the next morning. Your papa is gone. Audrey sat on the couch looking at the wall opposite where the bunting had come unstuck overnight. Relief and sorrow were already grinding against each other. Nick asked if it felt like the end of an era. He was trying to understand. Audrey hadn’t known how to explain that it was just a fresh mystery. She might never have simple feelings about her father. A week after his funeral she’d already begun to forget his face, and she wondered if maybe he hadn’t meant as much as she’d thought.
After she’d spoken to Zoe and Irène, Audrey sat on the floor for a long time, on the bright rug Katy had brought her back from Mexico. The coarse fabric still smelled of somewhere she’d never been, even after all the years she’d had it. She saw herself in the mirror by the clothes rack she’d assembled the day she’d moved in. Shirt unbuttoned to the chest, handbag puddled beside her on the floor. Untidy hair, crooked nose. Bare face, a look of mild astonishment, as though she couldn’t quite believe she was seeing herself there.
Claire suggested the bookshop to her. It was on Oxford Street. It must have been a home or boarding house in another lifetime, an old terrace whose rooms divided the genres, with a café at the bottom. It was out of the way, but Audrey had time to waste. Her weekends were empty. She was still working out the city. She still paused to examine bus routes.
She stood upstairs in front of the shelves. She was holding the book close to her nose. A man—a boy, he was younger than her—made to squeeze past. He had a teapot and honey in his hands. Audrey realised he was an employee. She was embarrassed about how distracted she’d been, standing in the passageway. She stepped back. The boy said Sorry, darling as he passed. Audrey felt old for the first time in her life. She paid for the book downstairs, reeled out of the shop into the thick afternoon. She guessed her way to the Botanic Gardens and lay on the grass to read, but it began to rain in sudden, fat drops. Her feet slid in her sandals. She stood in a greenhouse and waited for the weather to ease. She paced up and down the brickwork between the staghorn ferns and the cyclamen. Her parka was wet and cold. She thought about the fastest way to get home. She was stunned with loneliness.
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