by Joy Dettman
‘Why bother when she’s got three males to wipe her arse?’ Jackie said, and Bob, one of the three males, forgot who he was, where he was.
‘Stuff your comments up yours,’ he said, then blushed to the roots of his receding hair, and Jackie laughed. She’d made a bet in the tearoom with Shane that she’d break through Bob’s managerial façade before Crow sacked her, and she’d won. It was an unfair bet. She knew someone who knew someone who used to work nights with Bob Webb at Kmart, long before he’d been an office manager.
Shane turned his wheelchair to salute her. He was small enough to be a twelve year old, looked twenty but was Sarah’s age, almost thirty-two, and he was in love with Jackie – because she refused to acknowledge his wheelchair. She’d accused him yesterday of sniffing around Barbie doll’s arse like a mixed-breed mutt at a pedigree poodle. He’d accused her of being jealous.
‘Crow needs her trained,’ Bob said.
‘She coming back, I will go home,’ Sarah said.
*
At two forty, Detective Senior Sergeant Ross Hunter took his place in the witness box for the second time, and when he mentioned the grandparents’ home videos for the second time, he didn’t clear the courtroom.
At two forty-five, Sarah raised Barbara Jean Lane to her screen and saw the inflated figure she’d receive for a month of sitting on her backside looking decorative and it was too much for diseased tonsils to swallow.
She sat staring at the figure, which her hand refused to transfer. She told her hand to get on with it. It responded by closing that knowledgeable accounting program down then sending a fast email to HR, claiming a doctor’s appointment.
A 75 tram from Flinders Street would deliver her to the Kmart Plaza where there was a medical centre, and if she wanted to pay herself for this afternoon and tomorrow, she’d need a doctor’s certificate, which would cost her sixty dollars. She didn’t have sixty dollars in her purse, so she walked the shorter distance to Museum Station and rode a train to Blackburn, the bus to Hawthorn Road, then walked, and was close to collapse when she got there.
School was out. Marni fed her two Panadols. She told her to go to bed.
‘Mrs Vaughn dinner.’
‘I’ll feed her. You do as you’re told, Mum.’
She went, and woke at dawn feeling worse.
Marni looked at her tonsils at eight and told her they looked like diseased minced steak and that they were getting a taxi to see a doctor.
No money, Sarah signed, her throat too sore to talk.
Two Aspros and hot porridge eased it, but not enough to argue when Marni picked up the phone to make an appointment. She got one for ten o’clock, then refused to go to school until her mother promised to keep it.
A walk south through the pipeline took her to Burwood Highway, only a short tram ride from the Kmart Plaza. At nine thirty she withdrew a hundred dollars at an ATM, then took a chair in the clinic’s waiting room where she was still sitting at ten thirty, and when her name was finally called, the doctor was Asian.
Those who spoke with accents were near impossible to lip-read, so she showed him her hearing aids, took her notepad and pen from her bag, and wrote, I have a very sore throat. I need a certificate for my work.
‘Where do you work?’ he asked, and accent or not, his words were clear.
‘Office. City,’ she said.
He came from behind his desk to shine a light down her throat, and like Marni, he said, ‘Yuck.’ Then, ‘Take your hearing aids out, Mrs Carter.’
She understood that too and took them out fast to prove it. He looked in her ears, felt her glands, then her forehead.
‘You’ve got a temperature,’ he said.
‘Outside is very hot.’
‘Are you allergic to any antibiotics?’
‘I don’t want, thank you. Only certificate.’
He took her temperature, took her blood pressure, and if it was high it was caused by Barbara Lane, not her throat.
‘You need antibiotics and bed rest,’ he said, and he started writing.
He gave her a prescription, and a certificate for work, not for today and yesterday but for the remainder of the week. And the payroll wasn’t finished. Bob’s fault, and he knew that accounting system, so let him worry about it.
*
The doctor watching, she replaced her hearing aids, and he asked how much she heard with them.
‘Big noise. Fire truck. Banging things. Not much.’
‘Your lip-reading skills are very good,’ he said, and opened the door.
‘Thank you.’ She knew she said that well. She’d worked with a speech therapist in Perth to perfect the Y in you.
And he bulk-billed her. She had to give the receptionist her Medicare card but no money. There was a pharmacy at the other end of the centre. She considered the distance and the cost. Some scripts cost a fortune. Saltwater gargles and three days off plus the weekend would fix her throat. She had Panadol in her handbag and Aspros at home.
Couldn’t read. She tried to. Couldn’t find anything to watch on the television, so decided to turn a lump of frozen mince into bolognaise.
The microwave thawed it. The meat was frying in the pan when she heard, or felt, noise. Her hand traced it to the phone. It vibrated when it rang, and if she was at the bench where it lived, she usually felt its ring.
She felt it again while she was dicing an onion, and this time she hit the talk button and listened. Couldn’t hear a voice, but the rhythm of the vibrations was different. Someone wanting to sell her something? She hit the off button and added the onions to her frying meat. And felt that noise again.
Indian call centres are tenacious – ten-a-shuss. Or was it Jackie, letting her know she’d sent an email? She’d done that once when Sarah had been at home on holiday. She stood over the phone, palms on the bench, feeling the rhythm of the sound. If she had an implant she’d hear a phone ringing, and maybe voices, if her auditory nerve woke up and learned to listen.
The noise stopped and she turned on the laptop. It was old and took its time warming up, but when it did, three emails came through, two from Bob.
Hi Sarah, will you be coming in today? Bob Webb. He’d sent that one at eight forty, then another at ten twenty. Hi Sarah. If you feel up to it, grab a taxi. The company will pay. Bob.
And Jackie’s. They’re in the shit! Take a month off. J.J.
Sarah wrote one reply she sent to Bob, Jackie and HR.
The doctor gave me the week off. I will be in on Monday.
Bare seconds after she clicked send, another message came through from Bob. It echoed Jackie’s, minus the expletive.
Again Sarah replied. I’m turning the computer off now and going to bed.
She didn’t go to her bed. She grated carrot, added it and a heaped teaspoon of minced garlic to her pan, then a flat spoon of curry powder. She was opening a can of crushed tomatoes when Mrs Vaughn smelt the garlic and invited herself in.
‘What’s that stink?’
‘Dinner,’ Sarah said.
‘I’m telling you now, I won’t be eating it, and what are you doing home at this hour of the day?’
‘Doctor,’ Sarah said. ‘Very bad throat.’
‘You young people don’t know what sick is. I take twelve pills a day just to keep myself alive, and I need a new script for my heart pills.’
‘I get the car out?’
‘I’m not up to going out in this heat. If you’d told me you were going to the doctor I could have given you my script this morning.’
‘Sorry,’ Sarah said as her landlady came closer to sniff. There was little left of her. Sarah wasn’t tall, but taller than her landlady.
‘What the hell are you cooking?’
Bolognaise too hard to say, Sarah replied, ‘Sauce.’
‘What sort of sauce?’
‘For pasta.’
‘It stinks, and what am I going to do about my heart pills?’
‘Marni will go. After school.’
; ‘I’ll probably be dead by then.’
The mess of meat transferred to a saucepan, the can of crushed tomatoes poured in plus a palm full of dried oregano, two bay leaves, salt then black pepper, and Sarah sneezed. Mrs Vaughn, who’d spent twelve years dodging her lodgers’ germs, didn’t trust that sneeze. She toddled back to her house.
*
Sarah was sleeping when Marni came in. Unaccustomed to having her mother at home before six, Marni went about her usual business of turning on the computer, making herself a milk coffee that she drank while checking the emails. One new email came through, an impersonal Thank you from HR. She read the previous messages, checked the bench then her mother’s handbag for pills, and found a prescription. She checked the purse for money. There was plenty to pay for a prescription, and whether her mother wanted it filled or not, it was being filled. Marni had lived through Sarah’s sore throats before.
The script folded and safe in the purse, she emptied her coffee mug, checked the level of milk left in the bottle, knew they needed bread. She was almost out the door when Mrs Vaughn came across the lawn wanting in – as if she owned the place, which she did, but she had no right to wander in and out of it, not when they paid her rent.
‘Mum’s sick,’ Marni said, guarding the door against her.
‘Your mother said you’d get my heart pills. I’ve been out of them all day.’
And the phone rang, and for once Marni picked it up willingly, pleased to listen to someone selling funeral insurance if it got rid of Mrs Vaughn. ‘Marni Carter speaking,’ she said.
‘Bob Webb,’ he said. ‘I work with your mother. How is she?’
‘Sick in bed. The doctor gave her a prescription I have to get filled.’
Mrs Vaughn was in and waving money and prescriptions under Marni’s nose. She took them, waved a hand at her to go, then gave her attention back to the man on the phone, who was offering to pick up the script and have it filled.
‘We need bread and other stuff at the supermarket,’ she said.
‘Make a list,’ he said.
Couldn’t give him Mrs Vaughn’s scripts. If he forgot to get a receipt, she’d argue about her change.
‘I have to get a few other things, but thanks,’ she said.
‘I’ll drive you over,’ Bob Webb said. ‘I should be there in half an hour.’
Marni was thinking Freeway Killer before he came. He worked from Monday to Friday. She knew he lived at home with his mother. She was thinking of waiting for a bus too and walking in the stinking heat, so she waited to get a look at him.
He didn’t look dangerous. He was small, had a boyish face and he drove a shiny blue-green car.
‘I hope you’re not the Freeway Killer,’ she greeted him.
‘Your mum will vouch for me,’ he said and he smiled. He had a nice smile.
THE WANTING
He saw her again, that leggy gazelle of a girl, in the supermarket where the air was full of scents. A sniff of roasting chicken, of cheese, of fresh-baked bread – but behind those scents today he could smell her.
He edged closer in the meat aisle, close enough to watch the fall of her hair as she looked at the bloody displays.
Wanted her. Knew he couldn’t have her. Knew he shouldn’t have been tailing her, not in this place where big brother watched his every move. He took a step back then looked up, seeking big brother’s hidden eye. Couldn’t find it. Knew it was up there watching him, had been watching since he’d sighted that pretty thing, and he swung around on his heel and walked back to the coffee aisle. He’d come here for coffee, not to window shop.
And there she was again, walking towards the self-service checkout. Perfection in school uniform.
An Easter gift, his inner voice urged.
Too early, the voice of control replied.
When could you resist an early-bird special?
Wrong time. Wrong place. Wrong way. Go back.
Baked beans were on special. He picked up two cans, their weight in his hand a tangible promise: that though today’s delay was necessary, it may be temporary. He was on his way to the checkout before he noticed the cans of beans didn’t have ring-pull seals. He required ring-pulls. Annoyed, he returned them to the shelf and chose a more expensive can, with a ring-pull.
She was gone when he reached the checkouts. He knew where to find her, when he was ready. Twice now he’d seen her at this centre.
PLAYING MILLIONAIRE
Sarah was in the kitchen boiling a pot of pasta when they came in, loaded with supermarket bags. Caught barefoot, in short shorts, she was mortified, and more so when she saw what they’d spent her money on.
They’d bought a large bottle of orange juice, cans of tomato soup, Aspros, Nurofen, anti-bacterial lozenges, bananas, expensive bread, a huge bottle of milk Marni knew not to buy. There was nowhere to fit it in the fridge. And they’d found that script and paid for antibiotic capsules.
‘You have to take two straight away, then one three times a day, half an hour before meals until they’re all gone,’ Marni said, popping two from their bubble pack and offering them, and with Bob watching, Sarah had to swallow them.
‘He won’t take any money for that, Mum,’ Marni said, and left them in the kitchen while she delivered Mrs Vaughn’s pills.
He stood, looking as uncomfortable as Sarah felt – and looking at the faded green curtains, at the two battered wooden chairs and Sarah, wanting him gone, did a fast totalling of what was in the supermarket bags, then pushed two twenties at him.
He wouldn’t take them. He was on his way out when Marni returned.
‘You’re not leaving until we pay you,’ she said, refusing him exit.
‘Bossy boots,’ he said, and took one of the twenties. ‘I hope you’re feeling better soon, Sarah. I live nearby – if you need anything. It’s no trouble.’
‘Thank you,’ Sarah said, and Marni saw him out and closed the gate behind him.
‘He’s nice, Mum. I thought he’d be sort of … rotten,’ Marni said.
‘I don’t say rotten.’
‘You said he was a robot, that Crow pressed buttons on his remote control and Bob Webb moved. And you said he was little. He’s taller than you. How tall was my father?’
‘Taller than Bob.’
‘It felt funny, shopping with a man,’ Marni admitted, making space on the lower shelf of the fridge for the large bottles, squeezing them in on their sides. ‘People probably thought he was my father. How come he isn’t married, Mum?’
Sarah shrugged and read the instructions on the packet of Nurofen tablets, small tablets, white, and the packet said take two. She took one.
*
Be it the Nurofen, the doctor’s capsules or the salt gargles, her throat improved in the night, and by midday on Thursday, after two more capsules and an overdose of Mrs Vaughn, Sarah sent Bob an email. It was the last day of February and she was well enough to work, if Crow provided a taxi to get her there.
His reply was immediate. Taxi ordered for one o’clock.
It picked her up in the driveway and delivered her to the kerb outside her building’s door, where Bob was waiting with one of Crow’s cabcharge cards. He rode up with her in the lift, walked in with her, and kept Barbara Lane busy in her own office.
Crow came to Sarah’s workstation at four, effusive with his appreciation of her commitment to the ‘team’. He didn’t offer a cabcharge for a taxi home, but at four thirty, she felt the huntsman creep across her shoulder.
Bob drove her home. He picked her up on Friday morning and when she thanked him that night in Mrs Vaughn’s driveway, he told her he’d see her on Monday at seven thirty.
‘I can get train. Thank you.’
‘It’s no trouble for me to swing by here. Seven thirty,’ he said.
Marni killed the discussion. ‘The jury just came back and he’s guilty, Mum.’
‘Michael Swan?’ Bob Webb asked while Mrs Vaughn hammered on her window.
‘It only finished at lun
chtime,’ Marni said. ‘A news man outside the court just said it took the jury less than four hours to reach their verdict – and you’d better go before she breaks that window.’
*
He went, but was back on Saturday morning. He and his mother were on their way to Forest Hill.
‘Do you need anything at the shops?’ he asked.
‘We need a lift there,’ Marni said, and Mrs Vaughn came out her back door to complain about cars in her driveway and the three cigarettes in her packet.
She followed them to the car, and when they were in, and the doors closed, when they’d met Bob’s mother, she asked if Mrs Vaughn was their grandmother.
‘Landlady,’ Marni said.
A different Saturday morning, that one. Marni helped Bob and his mother choose a dark grey suit and two shirts, and she watched Bob hand over his card to pay three hundred and twenty dollars, then watched his mother hand over her own at the supermarket to pay for a leg of lamb and a pile of expensive items that Sarah never even looked at.
Then the best part of that morning, when she nicked into the Telstra shop to dream about mobiles, Bob followed her in and told her he had an old mobile she could use. For two minutes Marni thought she had her mobile, but phones needed a sim card and a plan and they cost money.
It was still a good morning. No walk home from the bus stop, loaded down like pack mules. Bob unloading their shopping in the driveway. They’d forgotten things. They’d meant to look for a dress for Marni to wear to Samantha’s party, and to buy her a present. They’d forgotten curry, but they’d bought a huge bottle of tomato sauce and a whole pumpkin and a big bag of potatoes they wouldn’t have been able to carry home from the bus stop.
Some days just get better and better. Marni’s team won at basketball, and when she thought her perfect day was over, someone knocked on their door.
Bob again, with his old mobile and its charger, and a computer printout of Telstra’s prices. He’d highlighted one which claimed that if they bundled their landline, broadband and mobile on the same plan, it wouldn’t cost them much more each month than they paid now – and they’d get fifty free text messages every month.