She wondered if Caro would call again, whether she would pick up if she did. Just answer your fucking phone, her last voicemail message had said.
Their family had always been small, no grandparents and, after her early childhood, no father – just the three of them – but her mother had always made a big deal of Christmas. Food piled on the kitchen table, presents under the tree. The first Christmas after her mother had died had been the hardest. They’d become easier since that.
Her cap lay on the passenger seat beside her. The breeze from the air-conditioner slid across the bald patch on the side of her head; the difference in texture between that and the rest of her head was so pronounced.
Bruck, bruck, bruck. What’s wrong with you?
She started the ignition, turned the four-wheel drive around and drove back towards Boney Point.
She stood in front of the supermarket shelf; fluorescent lights pulsed erratically above her. The echoes of the bush still surrounded her – the stark streets of town did nothing to quieten the voices. She considered the plastic packets of razors hung on hooks just above her eye line. Paused at, and then took down, a bright pink razor in a plastic carton: Venus. The packaging was covered in phrases like curve-hugging and sleek. She put it back and chose a packet of dark blue, no-name disposables instead, pulled her cap further down on her head so that the edge touched her ear; she could feel the fabric resting on naked skin where her hair should have been.
There was tinsel wound around the tops of the shelves. The electronic hum of the television behind the register fizzed through the aisles. Too loud. The whirr was inside her head.
The girl at the checkout swiped the razors and shaving cream through the register and said something. She saw her lips moving but heard nothing.
‘No, he’s not with me.’
The girl frowned. ‘I said, do you want a bag?’
‘No. Actually, yes. Thanks.’ She was going to need a plastic bag when she’d finished what she was about to do.
The girl wordlessly licked her fingers, flicked open a bag, and dropped the razors and cream inside. They clanged against the metal counter beneath the plastic.
You bald bitch.
She drove to the picnic area beside the inlet. Took the bag of shaving gear and a pair of scissors into the public toilet – a dank, brick building. There were puddles on the floor, and the faint smell of urine lingered. Battered, silver sinks sat under a dirty mirror. Scrawled biro graffiti across the walls: Candace is a scrag. How hard is it to GET FUCKED? A two-brick-wide gap up near the roof was the only light. There was a box for safe needle disposal in the corner.
She took off her cap and ran her fingers around the naked expanse of skin on her head. Fluffy, wispy bits of hair were still there, the downy beginnings of regrowth. You bald bitch, just like your mother. The patch was the size of a grapefruit now and extended right down behind her ear, finishing just shy of her hairline at her neck. Her fingers were already twitching against those fleecy strands. She recognised this behaviour. Caged birds gnawed their bars, paced along their perches, pulled feathers from their skin and dug their beaks into the flesh beneath. They were not meant for captivity.
What’s wrong with you, what’s wrong with you?
She tugged her shirt over her head and stood in her bra before the mirror. Her upper body was hardened, wiry. Months in the bush had turned it stringy and taut; it wasn’t completely hers anymore.
She put her fingers into the scissor handles, picked up a chunk of hair and held the open blades close to her scalp. She clicked them shut. Each snip echoed against the bricks. Lumps of hair slid down her bare shoulders.
When she finished, a dark fan splayed out around her feet. She bent to scoop the hair into the plastic bag; it was straight and shiny like her mother’s. Clippings stuck to her hands. She washed them again and again. The spiky ends left close to her skin were all uneven lengths. She sprayed the shaving cream between her hands and smeared it onto her skull; it felt cool and fizzed gently. Tugging open the packet of razors, she slid the protective cover from one, tested the blade against her thumb, drew blood, and held it up against her scalp.
32
ON CHRISTMAS MORNING, Pina lay on the couch and listened to the birds chatter outside. The light was still the dull blue of dawn. She closed her eyes again and turned onto her side so that her face was pressed into the backrest. Today she would let Alan sleep in, but she kept an ear out for any movement down the hall.
Lil had phoned the day before. ‘Are you sure you don’t want to come round?’ she’d asked again.
‘No, really.’ She knew the way people would look at Alan, how they’d whisper to each other when they thought she wasn’t able to see them. ‘I couldn’t do that to you,’ she said to Lil, but really she meant: I couldn’t do that to myself.
It was midmorning when Alan stirred. She used a flannel to give him a quick bed bath; just enough to keep him from smelling. It was already hot so she dressed him in the lightest clothing she could find; stopped herself from chasing after him as he shuffled outside barefoot. It was a day where she would do no nagging or bossing or anything but let him be. They could both use a break from that.
Even in the midst of their monotonous routine, the day already felt like a pause. She had noticed it as soon as she’d woken up – the stillness. The world had slowed to a halt while everyone else was at home with their loved ones, enjoying perhaps the one day a year when there was nothing else to do except be together. How nice for them. She remembered the chaos that Christmas Day could bring and was sure that she was the only person in Boney Point who was experiencing its emptiness. Well, her and those others who’d been left alone. Stop feeling sorry for yourself.
Alan was pacing a distance from the bird feeders while a few cockatoos chewed at the edges of the platforms and flapped their wings.
She made some toast and kept an eye on him through the kitchen window. Took it outside and forced it into his hand.
‘Eat it,’ she encouraged, miming the action.
He crumbled most of it and scattered it on the ground.
At least the birds will enjoy it. She remembered back to the time he’d teased her for scattering crumbs across the bird feeders. How long ago that felt now.
There was another reason she hadn’t wanted to go to Lil’s today, although she’d not mentioned it to her friend: her and Alan’s Christmases together were numbered. Would this one be the last? Would the next?
It was too hot to do much cooking, especially not for just the two of them.
‘Come inside,’ she suggested to him when the sun was its fiercest.
When he resisted, she grabbed a bottle of sunscreen and rubbed as much into his exposed skin as she could manage before he fought her hands away.
At about one-thirty, she made them both a sandwich for lunch, took them out onto the verandah. The winds gusting across the land were blistering. By then the chattering cockatoos had retreated to the shade of the casuarina again. Alan was too busy watching them; she couldn’t convince him to come up and eat. She sat on the verandah as he paced the back fence. The cockatoos were such a part of the landscape now that she almost didn’t hear their cries anymore.
All through their relationship, Christmas had been a special day. They’d eaten pretty much the same thing every year: prawns and oysters that tasted like the inlet, sticky-sweet ham, potato salad with chunks of gherkins. For several years before Alan’s diagnosis, Lil had come around in the evening for a drink. They’d all been lethargic and stuffed from the day’s feasts, sloppy and happy on wine. Lil made them brandy alexanders one year; cream spilling all over the kitchen bench and the dog lapping ecstatically at the drizzle down the cabinets. She remembered how Alan had gagged on the sweetness.
‘This is the most ridiculous drink I’ve ever had,’ he’d crowed, holding his throat in mock agony. He was usually a beer drinker, if he drank at all, which wasn’t often.
‘Shut up and get it down you,’ Lil h
ad said. ‘If you’re going to do Christmas, you might as well do it properly.’
Now she couldn’t do Christmas properly, not after Alan had stopped noticing what day it was, had stopped knowing who she was.
It’s me, your wife.
Today, she didn’t want to make a fuss – there was nothing left to celebrate.
She watched Alan stare at the cockatoos – calm and unusually focused – and thought about the one Christmas present she wanted but would never get.
Later that afternoon, she moved lazily about the house; there were still chores to stay on top of. Alan was now sitting out in his armchair, and she took a basket of dirty clothes into the laundry and began to sort them into piles: colours, whites, delicates.
In the lounge room, the television was on and the Queen was quoting Mother Teresa in her Christmas Day address to the Commonwealth: She once said, ‘Not all of us can do great things. But we can do small things with great love.’
Pina scoffed. What would either of them know?
She picked up a couple of pairs of her trousers that she hadn’t worn for weeks – ever since the summer heat had really gone up a gear. They’ve been lying in the dirty clothes basket that long, she thought with embarrassment. As she was emptying the pockets, she felt the crinkle of paper in one: it was the photograph of the two of them, standing in front of the Western Australian wheat field after her father’s funeral. She stood for a moment, looking at their faces. Then she went to the kitchen, found her wallet and slid the photo inside.
33
TIM ARRIVED BACK in Murrungowar the day after Boxing Day. Earl gave him a lift from town along with a man from the Country Fire Association, come to inspect the site. She watched the Parks Vic truck roll in, stomach churning.
Tim jumped out first, spotted her and stopped in his tracks – even though she was wearing her cap. Eyes wide. Frozen. She saw him gather himself then start towards the campsite with the other two blokes as though nothing was out of the ordinary.
Earl was shocked, too, she could tell. He nodded a greeting to her and then kept his eyes deliberately focused on the other two.
‘You got to check the fire ban every morning,’ the CFA guy was telling them. ‘This weather’s only going to get worse and worse.’ He was staring at her.
She knew what she looked like. In the mirror of the public restroom before Christmas, she’d evaluated her new reflection. There was a pale outline where her hairline used to be; the skin of her face and neck were a different shade to that on her scalp, which never saw the sun. Her ears seemed to stick out, and her eyes were huge in her face. Men weren’t used to seeing women with no hair – it made them uncomfortable when women didn’t look as they were supposed to.
What’s wrong with you? She told herself not to care what they thought.
‘Monitor the weather forecasts,’ Earl was saying. ‘I can’t stress that enough. You’ve got to give yourselves the biggest heads up. Out here, help will be hard to come by.’
The CFA guy was still staring at her oddly.
She tugged her cap down further onto her head. It didn’t hide things entirely – she knew that the nakedness of the skin above her neck was still visible.
‘There’s a decent-sized creek about six hundred metres that way,’ Tim said, pointing. ‘We know which roads are open. We’ve got a radio; there’s a fire blanket in the truck. We should be right.’
‘We’re not out here to nag you,’ Earl said. ‘But this summer’s already turning nasty.’
When they’d gone, she took her cap off and ran her hand over her head. It was soft and smooth.
Tim stood there assessing her for a long time. His forehead was slick. The temperature had been stubbornly above thirty for days now. ‘Are you sure you’re doing ok?’ he asked, eventually.
‘Yep.’ She readied herself for his taunts but, instead, he placed a hand gently on her shoulder and then walked back to his tent without saying a word.
She followed him. ‘We should go back to that house,’ she said. ‘Talk to that woman again.’
‘I don’t think that’s a good idea.’
‘It’s been a few days.’
He crossed his arms. ‘We need to think about it a bit more. What about relocating the nesting boxes?’
‘This is the area we chose. This is the best place for them.’
‘You have to be more flexible.’
‘We have to back ourselves.’
Her voice bounced off the trees. Men did this sometimes, tried to make you feel as though you were acting irrationally, crazy. Who will want you?
‘Don’t you want this to be a success?’ she asked.
‘Of course I do,’ he said. ‘Look, Arianna, I’ve just got here. Let me put my bags down.’
She turned around then, walked over to her own camp through the trees and the sedge-grass. She stood in the centre of the clearing and tipped her head back to peer at the sky. It was bright blue between the leaves and branches of the trees above. There should have been cockatoos in that sky. She felt dizzy. They needed to move quickly.
She would go and tell Tim she was leaving, that she just wanted to talk to the woman. It was reasonable.
She strode back towards his camp. As she drew close, she heard him talking. He was on the phone, facing away from her.
‘I’m worried, Rod,’ he was saying. ‘It’s just not normal behaviour. I don’t think I can handle this by myself. We’re pretty isolated out here. I am really concerned about her.’
She felt as though the bush was whirling around her in wild circles. She’d suspected it would come to this.
Sometimes I’m not sure if women have it in them, the bush whispered at her.
She stumbled as she returned to her own camp and climbed into her tent. It was still light out, would be for another couple of hours. But she lay on her back, watching the shadows grow up the side of the nylon walls and waiting for the world to stop spinning.
The next day, it took her until after lunchtime to find a reason to go into town alone. Tim was always hovering close by, watching her. Always asking if she needed help, offering to do things for her. It made her crazy.
‘I need to go to the supermarket,’ she told him.
‘I’ll go,’ he said, getting up from his camping chair. ‘What do you need?’
‘No, I need to get some things. Women’s things.’
He’d let her go after that. She drove into town, balancing the radio receiver on her knees. She turned right past the hotel and followed Wallangamba Road out of town again until she reached the weatherboard house, where she sat in the Land Cruiser, tugging at her eyebrows.
The driveway was empty, but she parked behind a small hatchback out the front of the gate. Her cheeks were aflame. She knew the skin of her head was blotchy and pink. She kept running her hands over it.
You bald … but, in fact, shaving had fixed nothing. Her fingers had directed their hunt elsewhere. That morning she’d woken to a pain between her legs: a plucked and bloody mess. Pubic hair patchy, and the soft, secret skin beneath angry and bruised. She shifted in her car seat; the distressed skin of her pubic mound stung from sweat.
In her peripheral vision she kept catching sight of a pale figure walking across the paddocks. A ghost-like shape. Pretend it’s nothing.
She checked the receiver on her lap.
210 26588 0, 210 26588 2, 210 26588 4, 210 26588 6.
Every one of the radio-tagged birds that was still alive was close by and, even from the car, she could see that there were at least seven birds in the trees behind the house.
The temperature on the dashboard read thirty-nine degrees, and the sun magnified itself through the glass of the car’s windows and stung her forearms.
When she got out of the four-wheel drive, clutching her cap, the door slammed shut behind her. She could feel the scabs already forming across her skull in the sunshine. Don’t think about it. The ground ferns on the verge were brown and crumbled when she brushed them. E
verything was on the edge of igniting.
The heavy lock was still on the front gate; it held a thick chain tight around the latch. Cockatoos screeched – the tops of the casuarina shaking with their wing beats. She turned to face the hatchback. Someone was home, she was sure. She pulled on her cap and rattled the chain.
‘Hello,’ she yelled.
Nothing, just the whisper of the bush behind her.
34
PINA WAS IN her ute, driving towards home along Wallangamba Road. When the house came into view, she noticed a figure standing at her locked front gate. She drove up, parked behind Tracey’s car and got out.
‘Can I help you?’ she asked, recognising the woman from the bird release program.
‘I was here a few days ago – with my colleague. I’m Arianna.’
Pina noticed that her eyes were red. Beneath her cap she was starkly bald; the kind of bald that speaks of illness. Or madness.
‘What happened to your hair?’ she couldn’t stop herself from asking.
‘It’s hot,’ the young woman responded.
Pina heard her front door click open. Tracey appeared, carrying her bag, and walked down the path towards them.
‘I thought I heard you come back, Pina,’ she said, unlocking the gate and walking through. ‘I hope you don’t mind but I need to get away. We’re doing training up at the CFA. I’ve left some documentation on the bench, and he’s on the back verandah in his chair now. Seems happy enough to stay there.’
‘That’s fine.’
‘Hang on,’ the young woman interrupted, annoyed. ‘You were in there the whole time and you didn’t come out? I’ve been yelling.’
Tracey turned to her. ‘This isn’t my house. It’s not my job to let strangers in.’
‘It’s ok, Tracey, you can go. Thanks for everything.’
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