Inbetween Days

by Vikki Wakefield

  ‘Worse, how?’ He frowned.

  ‘Worse, like…without us here, is there nothing keeping you two together?’

  ‘Oh, Jack.’ He put the dripping brush down in the sawdust.

  He was struggling with emotion. What he really wanted was for me to leave the shed so he wouldn’t have to answer my questions. He wanted everything to stay the same. I understood that on more than one level: to say nothing was far less destructive than letting it all out.

  ‘You should have thanked Ma for the pie,’ I said.

  ‘I should have done a lot of things.’

  ‘I’m sorry,’ I told him. ‘You’re a good man.’

  Dad shook his head. ‘I’m the one who let your Ma go cold. It’s my fault. Don’t you go thinking any other way.’

  ‘It’s nobody’s f—’

  ‘You’re wrong,’ he broke in. ‘But I don’t expect you to understand. You’re still a kid.’

  ‘I am not.’

  ‘You are. You know how I can tell? It’s because you ask so many bloody questions—but you might as well ask them before you get so guarded you can’t say what’s in your heart anymore and your mouth does all the talking. And your mouth doesn’t know any better.’ He slapped his chest. ‘This gets all dried up and tough if you don’t let it take a punching once in a while.’

  ‘Stop. You’re going to make me cry.’

  He cupped my chin. ‘Now, the first time you ask, Ma will say you can’t come home. But she’ll only say that once. It’s not what she really means. You can get all angry and storm off, or you can ask her again. You have to ask twice. Okay?’

  ‘Okay,’ I said. ‘I will.’

  Ma stayed in her room and Dad drove me back to Trudy’s house after I’d cleaned up the dinner dishes. Mads was home, but I didn’t tell her I was there. I prowled the front deck, bugs circling and colliding around the sensor light. Inside, the phone rang four times while Mads’s bedroom light was still on, and rang out once after she’d turned it off. It was past ten and Trudy still wasn’t home.

  I slouched in the hammock and dozed. At eleven, I went inside, tripping over Gypsy, who was curled up on the mat just inside the door. She barely raised her head.

  In my bedroom, the window was still open. Somehow, the screen had come off and fallen onto my bed. Ma’s china bird was in pieces on the floor. The moment I switched on the light, I realised my mistake: bugs swarmed in, clicking and clacking, fluttering around the globe and dive-bombing onto the bed.

  ‘Aargh!’ I danced around, waving my arms. I struggled to push the screen back and the catches broke off in my hand. ‘Goddamn it!’ I gave up and flicked the switch, ran out into the hallway and slammed the door behind me.

  ‘What the hell?’ Mads came out of her room, rubbing her eyes.

  ‘I’m going to sleep in Trudy’s room,’ I declared. I put my hand on the doorhandle, daring her to challenge me. I opened it. ‘And by the way, did you know Trudy’s car was at the bottom of Moseley’s Dam?’

  Mads took a step backwards. ‘She told you.’

  Gypsy yelped and Trudy stumbled through the front door, swearing. Gypsy skittered across the floorboards out of her way.

  ‘Bloody dog!’ She looked at Mads, blinked, and focused on me. ‘What are you doing in my room?’

  ‘What are you doing to my dog?’ I said.

  Her eyes were tired and bloodshot. ‘What the hell is going on?’

  ‘I have to sleep somewhere.’ I told her. ‘My room has a plague now. The demonic possession is complete.’ I waved my arms around to simulate the bug swarm.

  Trudy jerked her thumb. ‘So sleep on the couch. It’s custom-fit for your arse now.’

  ‘Hey, I have a better idea. Let’s all sit up and have an honest conversation. Let’s talk about why you didn’t bother to stay in touch for five whole years and then you roll back into town like the freakin’ Pied Piper. Let’s talk about why your car never even made it out of Mobius. Shit, for all I know, you never made it out, either!’

  It was a dart in the dark.

  Mads closed her eyes and pressed her fingers to her temples. Trudy dropped her handbag and something inside it shattered.

  ‘She knows,’ Mads said quietly.

  ‘What? What do I know?’

  Trudy’s face turned purple. She pointed at Mads. ‘You…’

  ‘I didn’t tell her. Obviously someone else did.’ She sighed. ‘I’m going back to bed. You can scream all you want at each other but I’ve had it with being the meat in this sandwich.’ She smiled at Trudy, then at me. ‘Tell her. Please. And not in the hallway.’ She slammed her door.

  ‘Am I right?’ I whispered. ‘You never left?’

  Trudy shrank. She left her bag on the floor and went into the lounge room. She slumped onto the couch.

  ‘I knew it was coming. Who told you?’ she asked. ‘Was it Ma?’

  I held up my hand. ‘Wait. Go back. You never left, and Ma knew?’ I was so furious—surely I was letting off sparks.

  ‘I left home. I left Mobius. I didn’t get quite as far as Europe.’

  ‘How far did you get?’

  ‘Williamstown.’

  I let that sink in and it did—like a stone. ‘That’s, like, two towns away. Less than a hundred kilometres. It’s practically next door.’

  She nodded.

  ‘Do you have any idea how much that hurts?’ I yelled. ‘Everything I believed about you is a lie!’

  Trudy’s magic lay in the places she’d been, the things she’d seen—places I’d probably never go. Hearing her admit it never happened was like seeing the dust rubbed off a butterfly’s wings and watching it flap on the ground. The magic was gone.

  ‘That’s not true,’ Trudy said. ‘Some of them were lies you told yourself. I don’t know who started the rumour about Europe but Mads told me that’s what you all thought and I figured it was better that way.’

  ‘And the car?’

  ‘How’d you know?’ she said. ‘It sank pretty deep. I thought it was gone forever. I went up there but I couldn’t find it.’

  ‘The water level was down. The reeds died. Jeremiah saw it and I swam out. The bonnet emblem snapped off in my hand.’

  Trudy pulled one of Mads’s cigarettes from the packet on the table and considered lighting it. ‘I was waiting at the dam,’ she said. ‘I’d told Mads and she was supposed to come, but she didn’t. Ma had kicked me out after one of our fights. I had no idea where I was going. I just wanted out. When Mads didn’t turn up because her folks wouldn’t let her leave, I was so mad and so lost. Then the car wouldn’t start. So, I pulled it out of gear and tried to push it backwards—to jumpstart it down the hill—only it started rolling in the wrong direction, towards the dam. I jumped out.’ She put her hands over her face. ‘God, it went under in less than a minute. Everything I owned was in it. I had nothing.’ She laughed. ‘I walked back into town.’

  I asked the question but I knew the answer already. ‘Why didn’t you just go back home?’

  Trudy made a harsh sound in her throat. ‘And prove Ma right? Not likely. I caught a ride to Burt in Ken Watts’s truck and from there I called some friends. They helped me get on my feet, no judgment.’

  ‘And Ma knew the whole time.’

  ‘No. I only told her when I got back.’ She squeezed her eyes shut. ‘I wanted you to think I was happy,’ she said. ‘I had three different jobs, paid my rent, hooked up with a few guys and none of them worked out. Five years go by so fast.’

  ‘Not when you’re the one left behind.’

  She sniffed and wiped her nose. ‘It doesn’t make you any less important, Jack. It just makes me less honest. I’m sorry. It wasn’t about you. None of it.’

  That hurt. I picked up a cushion and threw it at her. ‘You sold me this whole stupid dream about living with you and being like, best pals, and it was all going to be boys and parties and…it’s all turned to shit. It’s shit!’

  Gypsy put her tail between her legs and curled up in
the corner.

  ‘Maybe it was your dream.’ She gave me a hard look and stood up. ‘Yeah, shit. There’s a lot of that. But you’re telling me you wouldn’t have moved in with me even if I had told you the truth? Get over yourself. You couldn’t wait to get out.’ Trudy threw the cushion back.

  I punched it. ‘You didn’t give me the choice.’ I knew she was making sense and I’d forgive her, eventually. I always had. But right now I just wanted to find her weak spot and press it. ‘You’re such a fraud.’

  She smiled. ‘You always thought I was a stronger, better person than I really was, Jack. That’s really hard to live up to.’

  She got up. She brushed past me and went to bed, leaving me alone with my shaking dog and a throbbing headache. As she picked up her bag in the hallway I heard the broken thing inside it tinkle. That’s us, I thought.

  I turned her story over in my mind and tried to think of it in a way that wasn’t all about me, but I couldn’t.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

  ‘Jeremiah Jolley is on the phone for you again,’ Mads said, clamping the receiver to her chest. ‘He called last night, too. Are you home?’

  I shook my head. All those times I’d complained about the phone being cut off and now I wished Trudy would unplug it. I drew my finger across my throat and made an X with my arms.

  ‘She’s right here,’ Mads said, frowning. She offered it to me, stretching the cord as far as it would go. ‘I’m tired of playing secretary.’ She yawned and went into the kitchen.

  ‘Hi,’ I said brightly.

  ‘I have something to tell you,’ Jeremiah said, his voice a note higher than usual. ‘Well, ask, really. It’s a surprise. I’ll pick you up at six tonight?’

  Something to tell me. A surprise. All perfectly fine words arranged to arouse my curiosity and give me butterflies, except I felt like I had a stomach full of curdled milk. I plucked at the cord and deliberately cut off the circulation in my thumb.

  ‘I have something to tell you, too,’ I said, thinking of Trudy’s revelations, but then I realised I didn’t want to tell him about it. He wouldn’t understand.

  ‘Oh,’ he answered.

  Immediately I felt more guilt: that I could so easily suck the joy out of him. ‘Hey. Looking forward to it! I’ll see you tonight.’ If he knew me even a little bit he would have seen right through it, but to Jeremiah words and truth went together. He didn’t know me well at all.

  I waited, slouched in the hammock. Trudy and Mads were having a girls’ night out and I would have done anything to trade places, to be laughing, drinking, dancing, even if I hadn’t forgiven Trudy. But I wasn’t invited.

  Mads said we both needed time to lick our wounds.

  I gave the hammock a violent twist. One of the ropes snapped. I landed painfully on my side. I just lay there and contemplated life from what I thought was rock bottom. The deck boards were peeling and several shoots had come up through the gaps, searching for something to strangle. If I stayed there long enough, it would be me.

  I got up, untied the hammock, balled it up and threw it in the outside bin. Even my possessions were turning against me.

  ‘There’s a hole in my bucket, Jeremiah, Jeremiah,’ I sang to myself.

  A car pulled up and did a U-turn on the front lawn: a dark blue coupe with racing stripes and a powerful, throbbing engine.

  ‘What do you think?’ Jeremiah called, hanging his head and both arms out of the window. He gave it a rev. ‘Do you like it?’

  So this was the surprise. I was so relieved he hadn’t arrived with flowers and a different surprise that I smiled and said, ‘It’s amazing.’

  He opened the passenger-side door.

  I slid into a deep bucket seat that held me like a tight hug. It smelled of frangipani deodoriser and leather. ‘I am in love with this car,’ I said, running my hands over the dashboard.

  Jeremiah flinched. He straightened out his hurt expression and got back into the driver’s seat. ‘Look.’ He measured the distance between the roof and the top of his head and stretched his legs out until they were locked at the knee. ‘Do you know what this means?’

  I was too afraid to know what it meant. I whooped and turned up the stereo instead.

  Jeremiah grinned and put his foot down.

  With the new leather smell in my nostrils and the seats slid all the way back, the mushroom lights glowing, the speakers crackling and the screen all lit up, the tension was almost more than I could stand. Jeremiah and I were going to make love, in a car, at a drive-in, while the credits rolled. A normal, everyday date. I was stuffed with cold buttered popcorn and Coke. My hand had been held. We were alone and I was cherished.

  It was perfect.

  We made it almost to the end of the movie before Jeremiah exhaled and spoke, all in a rush.

  ‘Jack, I have to go back to Melbourne and get some things sorted. Then I can come back here for another week, and after that I figure I’ll drive home for the weekends. It’s only a few hours,’ he said. ‘But what I want to know is…will you come with me? For a couple of days? We can drive down the coast and my place is small but nice…you know, separate from my uncle’s house. You can stay. I’ll show you around.’ He glanced at me shyly. ‘If it makes you uncomfortable we can stay in a hotel in the city.’ He ran his free hand over the dashboard. ‘I’ve been thinking about buying a car but until now I’ve never really needed one.’ He let his hands fall into his lap. ‘I know it’s sudden. I’ve tried to ask you before, but…I want you to come with me. What do you think?’

  What did I think? I let go of his hand.

  I thought that if he had thrown a bucket of cold water over me, I would have been less stunned. I wished we’d gone straight to the last part first. I didn’t know what I wanted. Things were moving so fast and in a direction I didn’t expect, even though, in hindsight, I had been at the wheel for the whole ride.

  ‘Gosh,’ I said. ‘Now things are complicated.’

  He moved his body away from me. ‘What the fuck is that supposed to mean?’

  I sounded like him and he sounded like me.

  ‘I don’t know. I just thought you were here for a good time, not a long time,’ I said, trying to lighten his mood. ‘Summer’s almost over, and so is the movie.’ Why couldn’t he see? I was letting him off, no strings. He didn’t owe me flowers and everlasting love; I wasn’t like other girls. I clamped my hand on his thigh and squeezed. ‘I thought this was what you wanted.’

  He tensed. ‘You’ve never asked me what I want.’ He gestured to the screen: John Cusack was serenading Ione Skye with his ghetto blaster. ‘So what was all of this?’

  My blood ran hot. Why did everything come down to a choice? Why ruin what we had right now by making me choose? I was still caught between, trying to flush out my lingering feelings for Luke and trying to fix my messed-up life. I wasn’t ready to make a choice, and Jeremiah had made a rookie mistake: he gave me his heart too soon, before I knew how to be careful with it. ‘Something to do,’ I mumbled, and I wished I could take it back.

  ‘And what am I? Or what was I?’ His deep voice cracked and his eyes were hollowed out. ‘Jack? Was I just something to do?’

  So I leaned over and I kissed him. It turned out I could fake it. A kiss was the only thing I could think of to make him stop talking, and he was breathing hard and kissing me, too, but not touching me with his hands at all, as if there was a force field pressing him back. I got angry. I got scared. I played the ace. I unzipped his jeans, tugging them down while I held eye contact and lowered myself onto him. He lifted his hips and he didn’t look away; our breath misted the windows, but suddenly his lips were telling me no, and in his eyes I saw pain, anguish, confusion, desire. And it was familiar.

  ‘No?’ I pulled away and folded into myself. I dragged hot tears away with my fists. ‘Really?’

  I wanted to take his hand and tell him I understood. But I was fumbling around in the dark, half-stunned and blinking, being held accountable for mistakes
I’d made before I knew any better; my body said one thing while my heart yearned for something more, and the whole time the answers were somewhere in between, just out of reach.

  ‘No?’ I sneered. ‘Then what the hell did we come here for?’ I reached up and switched off the speaker. There was nothing but silence as the credits rolled.

  Jeremiah pressed his lips together. He got out of the car, slammed the door and pulled up his jeans.

  I waited, curled into the seat, as he shut everything down. I closed my eyes, but the ghostly silhouette of the screen and the shape of Jeremiah were still there.

  As he drove me home, I practised lines in my head that might get us talking again, might tell the truth or something like it, but nothing would come out.

  Thom and Trudy’s cracks were beginning to show. She niggled at him over nothing and Thom stayed over less often. Mads spent more time in her room to avoid the tension, but I made sure I hung around. I reclaimed my end of the couch and commandeered the remote; I ate whatever I wanted and left dirty plates lying around. Trudy couldn’t attack me without running the risk of a very public counterattack, and so she picked on Thom. I used Trudy’s lies as currency. Trudy skirted me as if I was a bomb that might detonate without warning.

  If I let things play out, Trudy would sabotage herself: she’d deliberately pick the unstable block rather than allow anybody else to knock over her tower. I knew, because we were both becoming experts in self-sabotage. But this was the waiting game, and I was already a master.

  On cue, Trudy hissed, ‘Why don’t you ever put your shoes away?’ She kicked Thom’s boots across the lounge-room floor. She picked up a glass I’d left on the table and took it into the kitchen.

  ‘Sorry,’ Thom said, and got up. He started putting on his boots.

  Trudy came back in. ‘Where are you going?’

  I felt sorry for Thom. Trudy’s weapons were loaded for me, but she had to fire at an innocent.

  ‘I’ve got to go and check on this bloke up in the forest,’ he said. ‘I’ll head home after that. I’ll call you tonight.’

  My stomach dipped. ‘What bloke?’ I asked too quickly. So Thom had seen him, too.