Inbetween Days

by Vikki Wakefield

  ‘I didn’t hear you,’ I said, raising my head. My feet drifted down and found the bottom.

  Jeremiah lied, too. ‘I said your skin smells.’ He sniffed his fingers. ‘It’s oily.’

  ‘Gee. Thanks. What do I smell like this time? Eau de duck shit?’ I swam away from him. ‘Way to kill the moment, J,’ I said.

  Regret passed over his face. He wrinkled his nose. ‘No. It smells like…kerosene. Or oil of some description.’ He scooped a handful of water and it dribbled through his fingers in strings.

  I turned and noticed the spreading slick on the surface, marbled with rainbows, like the last time but more definite. It swirled around us like a living thing.

  Jeremiah bolted out of the water and towelled himself dry.

  I pulled myself up onto the jetty and stood, rubbing my arms and legs. The water beaded and ran off. The oil stayed. ‘The water level is way down,’ I said through chattering teeth. ‘It’s like somebody’s pulled the plug out.’

  ‘It’s spring fed. It’s normal to fluctuate, particularly in summer.’ He wrapped my towel around my shoulders. ‘Hey, what is that?’ Jeremiah said, pointing. ‘Can you see it?’

  The sun had gone behind a cloud. I stared at the oil slick, tracing its origin to the widest thicket of reeds. Where once the reeds were dense and green, they were now brown and bent over, leaving a visible crop circle in the centre where nothing grew. A pale bubble-shaped shadow seemed to hover just below the surface. The sun reappeared and the shadow was lost in ripples and reflections.

  ‘Jack…’

  I handed Jeremiah my towel and dived back in. The unknown presence in the water was somehow less frightening than whatever he might have been about to say.

  ‘Wait!’ Jeremiah paced the bank. ‘What the hell are you doing?’

  I swam towards the field of reeds. As I got closer I put my feet down and inched carefully through the clustered roots underneath. Here, the waterline was still up to my neck. The reeds were tiny swords, slicing into my skin. When I reached the inner circle, I couldn’t go any further. My body hit something smooth and unmoving. I knew instantly what it was.

  Jeremiah had worked his way around the outer edge, through the scrub. He stood on the nearest bank, peering over the reeds, about twenty metres away.

  ‘It’s a car!’ I called.

  ‘Come on, Jack.’

  My toes and the front of my thighs were starting to go numb. I parted the slick with my fingers and ducked under. When I came back up, my eyes were stinging. The smell here was pungent, the slick thicker. The oil had been starving the plants and the marron of oxygen—was that why the marron had taken their chances on land?

  I reached below the surface and mapped the shape of the car with my fingers. Roof. Windows. Doors. Boot. I worked my way around to the bonnet and my hand closed over something hard, slimy and square. I pressed my feet into the bumper and rocked the car, hanging on to the object.

  Jeremiah was yelling. ‘Get out of there! Don’t make me come in after you!’

  ‘It’s okay!’ I yelled back. ‘I just want to see…’ But I had stirred up so much mud and oil it looked like I was floating in a bowl of soup. I couldn’t see anything.

  I rocked harder. A pocket of air, just like the one Luke and I had seen, bubbled up and burst, and the slippery thing in my hands came free. I juggled it madly but it shot from my fingers, flew into the air and landed in the soup. Plonk. I tried to find it on the bottom but I couldn’t feel my feet. It didn’t matter—I’d seen enough.

  I gave up and paddled back to the jetty. Jeremiah hauled me out like a greased pig, his fingers sliding on my skin.

  ‘You need a shower,’ he said. ‘And some bandaids. Your legs are bleeding.’ He wrapped my towel, and his, around me.

  ‘It’s nothing,’ I said.

  ‘I’ll take you home.’

  I unclenched my jaw. My teeth chattered uncontrollably and I bit my tongue.

  You’re asking the wrong questions, Mads had said.

  Now I knew exactly where to start.

  I need, you need, we all need to talk.

  As Jeremiah drove, I hunched in the seat, chewing my fingernails. I thought that if I spoke my rage would sputter out, and I wanted to hold it close.

  We pulled up in front of the house—not only was there nobody home, but I couldn’t find my keys, and the scent of my own skin was making me feel ill. As Jeremiah cheerfully pointed out, the odours I’d left behind in Meredith’s car (Tutti Frutti, Chinese buffet food and now rank dam water and engine oil) were blending and leaching from the upholstery like proof of poltergeist activity.

  It was the weirdest thing, showering while Meredith Jolley sat in her kitchen. When I came out draped in her towels, she handed me a loose pinafore dress with a ghastly floral print and some clean knickers. They were too small and the elastic bit into my waist.

  As I finger-brushed my hair in her bathroom mirror, Meredith came up behind me and took my wrist in a pincer-hold. She seemed bewildered that she couldn’t close the gap between her fingers. Then she opened a drawer and pawed through a tangle of jewellery. She held a pair of pearl drop-earrings up to my earlobes and shook her head. She picked up a chunky marquisite watch, undid the clasp and fastened it around my wrist.

  ‘Yes. It suits you,’ she said. ‘You must keep it.’

  ‘No,’ I started to say, but she pushed my arm away.

  ‘Please. I want you to have it.’ Her eyes were glassy.

  I thanked her because there was nothing else I could say without sounding ungrateful, but it felt as if we’d made some kind of deal, only I didn’t understand the terms. This moment—being accepted into my boyfriend’s family, even thinking of him as my boyfriend, doing normal things like sleeping over and using the shower—it didn’t feel normal. It wasn’t quite how I imagined it would be.

  The watch felt like a miniature anchor. It left dents in my skin.

  I stood outside of the Mobius pub wearing the borrowed dress and the gifted watch. I smelled of foreign shampoo. I had begged, borrowed and stolen, my haven had become a prison, and I was bursting with questions that, should I ask them out loud, might change my landscape forever.

  Trudy was behind the bar, cleaning the sticky tops of spirit bottles. There were about five punters sitting alone with their TAB tickets and beer.

  She looked up and froze at the sight of me. I didn’t often venture into the pub and I certainly didn’t do it dressed like that.

  Trudy laughed. ‘What on earth are you wearing?’

  I went up to the bar and climbed aboard a stool. ‘It’s borrowed. I locked myself out.’

  ‘Borrowed from where? Little House on the Prairie?’ She picked up another bottle.

  ‘Meredith Jolley. And she gave me this.’ I held out my arm.

  Trudy inspected the watch.

  ‘It looks expensive. Why would she give you an expensive watch?’ She ran her fingertip over the face. ‘And what are you doing borrowing her clothes?’

  I sighed. ‘It’s a long and winding story,’ I said.

  And because Trudy was a sucker for long stories she walked right into it. ‘I’m on a break.’ She squirted lemon squash into a tall glass and pushed it across to me.

  ‘So,’ I said. I joined two short straws together and took a sip. ‘I went to the dam with Jeremiah today. We went swimming. Well, I went swimming and…wait, I have to go back further.’

  ‘Get on with it.’ Trudy came around to the other side of the bar and took the stool next to me. ‘And for the record, I’m not sure about this thing you have going with Jeremiah Jolley. He’s not your type.’

  ‘You’re the one who told me if it feels good, do it. And who, exactly, is my type?’ I asked.

  ‘Just tell the story,’ Trudy said. She flopped her head onto her arm and faked a snore. ‘I’m fast losing interest.’

  ‘Oh, you’ll love this one.’ My anger flared again. ‘The marron in Moseley’s Dam have been dying. I noticed it a while bac
k—way back with Luke. I didn’t think much of it. Critters die all the time, right? Mother Nature can be so cruel. But there was something different today and I swam out to…’

  ‘Oh, for fuck’s sake, Jack. Get to the point.’ She grabbed my wrist and performed an exaggerated reading of the time. ‘I’ve got to get back to work.’

  I thought I was losing her but her eyes flickered strangely. Was it an act?

  ‘You know what I’m talking about, don’t you?’ I pressed.

  ‘Go home,’ she said. ‘Get out of that revolting dress. Take my keys. Shit, take my car if you have to.’ She went back behind the bar, her hands grasping for something to do.

  ‘It’s your car, Trudy. Your car is in Moseley’s Dam.’ I waited. I couldn’t be absolutely sure and Trudy was giving me nothing.

  She turned her back on me and busied herself with the till. ‘My car is parked out back.’ She took a deep breath and spun around. ‘Here.’ She slipped her front door key from its key ring and slapped it on the bar. ‘Get out of here. Some of us have to work for a living.’

  ‘But…’

  ‘Out,’ she said.

  I took the key and pushed through the swinging doors. Without proof, all I had was a brief encounter with the slimy bonnet emblem from Dad’s old Ford Falcon, which was given to Trudy the day she turned eighteen. The same car she’d driven off in six years ago; the same car now parked in the reeds at Moseley’s dam.

  I didn’t know what it meant and I had no clue why it was there.

  On a hunch, I sat behind the icebox in the car park for about twenty minutes. Just when I started to doubt myself even more, Mads drove into the car park and went inside. A few minutes later, Trudy came out. She got into her Mazda and burned off, spinning her tyres, in the opposite direction from home, heading up towards the dam.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

  ‘There’s probably a body in the boot.’ I paced up and down Meredith Jolley’s driveway while Jeremiah tinkered with the engine of her car. ‘She came back to hide the evidence.’ Any attempt I’d made to shake Trudy up had been met with a twirling finger and a two-note whistle. ‘And she calls me crazy.’

  ‘Who’d she kill?’ he mumbled with a socket wrench between his teeth.

  ‘I don’t know.’

  Jeremiah waved the wrench. ‘Let’s assume you weren’t seeing things and it is her car. So where was it the whole time she was away? Or did the car drown before she left?’’

  ‘I don’t know. I don’t know anything.’ I did another lap of the driveway, wringing my hands. ‘Well, I do know this: I know it’s her car.’

  He popped his head out again. He said, ‘Why don’t you just ask her? Surely that’s the reasonable thing to do?’

  ‘People lie, Jeremiah. My sister lies. I lie. Everybody does it.’

  ‘I don’t. Seems to me all it does is create more trouble.’ He wiped his hands on a rag. ‘Where are you going?’

  I threw up my hands. ‘I’m not in the mood for your logic. I’m going home!’ I started walking.

  He caught up and fell into step beside me. ‘There’s probably a simple explanation and it doesn’t involve a heinous crime, unlike your body-in-the-boot theory,’ he said. ‘I really don’t understand why you’re so upset.’

  ‘That’s because I’m a why person,’ I yelled. ‘And you’re a how. I can’t get my head around this.’

  He grinned. ‘I love it when you’re angry.’

  I turned around and walked off in the opposite direction.

  ‘Where are you going now?’

  ‘Home. I mean Ma’s. I’m hungry.’

  ‘It’s you,’ Ma said.

  ‘It’s me.’

  ‘Well, you might as well come in. I can’t stand here all day. I’ve got something in the oven.’

  From the set of her shoulders, she was brewing a fair wicked temper.

  ‘Will you be staying for dinner?’ she asked.

  If there was a right answer to that question, I couldn’t tell. ‘Yes?’

  ‘Wash your hands. And do me a favour, go get your father and tell him I’m ready to serve.’

  The glorious scent of Ma’s butter pastry was coming from the kitchen. It was the one thing she cooked that made me think of home and happiness at the same time. My stomach growled.

  One of Meredith Jolley’s cats had made himself at home on the back verandah. I wondered how long it had taken before it realised that Gypsy wasn’t there anymore.

  ‘Dad?’ I called. I turned the shed handle. ‘The door’s locked.’ He had the music turned down low.

  ‘It’s you,’ he said, opening the door.

  ‘Don’t look so happy to see me.’

  ‘I didn’t mean it like that. Come here.’ He wrapped me in a hug. I realised for the first time that I was taller than him. ‘Has your sister driven you out of the house?’

  ‘Has Ma done the same to you?’

  He chuckled. ‘It’s more peaceful out here with my subwoofer.’

  ‘Is there any room for me out here?’

  He looked horrified.

  ‘I’m joking. Trudy and I get along. When I can get past the fact that every time she opens her mouth, spiders come out.’

  Dad laughed. ‘It’s a female trait. I mean family—family trait.’ He shot himself with his finger. ‘I’ve got to get that under control before we go inside.’ He sniffed. ‘Can I smell butter pastry?’

  Ma had set an extra place where I used to sit, right above Trudy’s bubble gum graveyard. I sat down and kept my elbows off the table. I reminded myself that I was a guest: I would not throw myself in Ma’s firing line to deflect any attack on Dad, thus ruining my chances of finishing my meal and licking the plate. He was on his own.

  Ma stood in the kitchen with her hands on her hips. ‘I take it you’re ready for me to serve. Did you wash your hands?’

  Dad ignored her, but I dashed to the kitchen sink and gave them a quick rinse. There was still a space left on Ma’s shelf from when I took her china bird. Dad had tracked sawdust from the back door to the table and he was paring his fingernails onto the tabletop with a small chisel. He’d also brought in a woodworking magazine, which he was reading.

  Ma was doing her sorcery in the kitchen. She carried a tray to the table and set an exquisite, steaming, golden, meat pie in front of Dad. On top, she’d cut a lattice shape and rich brown gravy bubbled from each window.

  Dad kept reading.

  ‘It smells amazing, Ma.’

  She waited. Dad ran his finger underneath the words as he read. He was on the first page of a double spread. I watched Ma carefully, wondering whether a flung pie cooked at a hundred and eighty degrees, or thereabouts, would inflict second or third degree burns.

  Dad read on.

  ‘Would you like me to serve, Ma?’ I stood up.

  ‘Sit down,’ she said quietly.

  I did. My heart was hammering so hard I thought I might bust a rib.

  Ma scooped a mound of mashed potato and slopped some onto each of two plates. She used tongs to place baked carrot, pumpkin, broccoli and sprouts in perfect piles, like miniature funeral pyres. Finally, she pressed the point of a carving knife into the centre of the pie. She cut two quarter wedges, slowly and deliberately, and used a cake slice to slide one onto my plate, and then one onto Dad’s. Her plate was still empty.

  She stood in front of Dad and waited.

  I froze.

  Ma held up the dripping knife with the tip to the ceiling.

  Dad reached for the tomato sauce and smothered the pie without looking up from the magazine. He forked a mouthful, cursed, blew and tried again.

  I waited.

  Gravy ran along the glinting blade of the knife, down Ma’s forearm, and dripped onto the floor.

  I put down my fork and slid my chair away from the table. The legs made a crude grating sound against the linoleum.

  ‘Dad…’

  Ma looked like she’d just watched everyone she ever loved sink on a boat, while s
he was stuck on the bank, unable to swim. It was as if I wasn’t there.

  Dad had eaten all his pie and half his vegetables before he realised I hadn’t touched my plate, and Ma wasn’t in the room anymore.

  ‘What?’ He shrugged. He wiped his mouth with a napkin, closed the magazine and pushed the plate aside.

  I followed Dad out to the shed. Ma was in her bedroom with the door closed. Dad hadn’t noticed the gravy he’d spilled down the front of his shirt. He turned on the radio but lowered the volume.

  ‘I don’t mind. Turn it up if you want to. It’s your shed.’

  ‘Well, thank you.’ He smiled. ‘You know, for years it was your sister’s music shaking the walls. Then yours. Now it’s my turn.’ He chose several pieces of twisted wood and started sanding.

  ‘What about Ma?’

  ‘What about her?’

  ‘Does she ever turn the music up? Does she dance around the house when nobody’s looking?’

  ‘How would I know, if she does it when nobody is looking?’

  I frowned. ‘You know what I mean. Is she ever happy? Does she have anything besides us?’

  Dad winced as if I’d prodded a painful nerve. ‘We are not a demonstrative family, if that’s what you’re getting at,’ he said. ‘But that doesn’t mean we don’t love each other. We show it in different ways.’

  ‘Like baking pies,’ I said. ‘And folding shirts.’

  Dad heaved a shuddering sigh.

  ‘Dad? Could I have my room back? If I wanted it, I mean?’

  ‘You know you can always come home, Jack,’ he said, but his eyes went snaky. ‘You don’t have to ask.’ He picked up a tin of clear varnish and jemmied the lid open with a screwdriver.

  ‘But I do.’ I sat on a stool in the corner and watched him stir. ‘It’s not a halfway house.’

  He stopped then. ‘What is this really about? Is it money? Is it Trudy?’

  ‘I think it’s me,’ I said as honestly as I could. ‘Dad, are you and Ma okay? Did I make it worse?’ My voice cracked.