The Other Side of Beautiful

by Kim Lock

  The blanket slid further. Mercy put a hand up to stop it from falling. ‘So when can I go home?’

  A beat of silence came down the line. The investigator cleared his throat and said, ‘I’m sorry, Ms Blain, I’m afraid you can’t.’

  Last night, Mercy had pleaded with the fire officers that once the fire was out, couldn’t she please just go back inside? She wouldn’t mind, she implored, if the carpet was squelchy, or if the walls were a bit sooty. Wasabi wouldn’t mind, either. She wouldn’t even tell anyone—no one had to know that she was back inside; it could be their little secret. But the wearers of hi-vis had been adamant: under no circumstances was she to go back inside her house. Until they could find the cause of the fire, the house was a crime scene. And besides, they pointed out, half the walls were missing. And the roof was caved in.

  ‘Why not?’ she asked now. ‘It’s not still a crime scene, is it? There’s nothing … suspicious?’

  ‘No, nothing like that. You’ll need to speak with your insurer, but at present, the house is unfit for habitation.’

  ‘Unfit?’ she echoed.

  ‘I’m very sorry.’

  Mercy’s throat began to squeeze. She concentrated on drawing air into her lungs, fighting the rising terror. She wasn’t safe. She wasn’t safe. Where could she put herself to be safe? She wanted to climb out of her own skin. She wanted to get out of this terrified body.

  The blanket slid from the rail and dropped to the floor. Light flooded in.

  Mercy crouched on the floor, her chin on the window sill, blanket hanging behind her head and her breath steaming up the gauze curtains against her face. She closed her eyes and sunlight pressed through her eyelids, casting the world red. If she were in her own home she might have felt cocooned. But she wasn’t in her own home. Her home had burned into the night. Her home was unfit for habitation. Instead, she was holed up in the spare room of her ex-husband’s house, hating its unfamiliar laundry powder and new carpet smells, bristling at the sounds she heard from outside the room: the flush of a toilet; the clink of cutlery; men’s low, muffled voices. They would be talking about her, she knew. When would she come out of this room? When would she leave?

  What the hell was she going to do?

  Mercy opened her eyes. Another of Eugene’s Valium had made her muscles slow, her movements swampy, but the drug had not eased the racing of her mind. It was why she had never really taken to benzos—even right when it all began. Having an out-of-control mind trapped in a limp, gooey body was an unpleasant experience, to say the least.

  Mercy’s knees ached from crouching. Her ankles were stiff, bent at an angle. Her head throbbed; she hadn’t eaten or slept in almost twenty-four hours. From the bed, somewhere behind her, she could hear the dog snoring softly.

  She tilted her head, resting her cheek on the window sill. Tears slipped from her eyes, wetting the gauze curtain. She closed her eyes again.

  That’s when the images came rushing in. Sharp and vibrant, familiar as a movie she had watched a thousand times: naked skin, clammy and pale; a voice, shrill with distress, crying out, Do something!

  Mercy’s eyes bolted open. She stared unseeing into the filmy sunlight until the voices echoed, fading.

  When she rubbed her eyes, blinking away the sting of the images, movement caught her attention. Down Eugene’s sloped front yard, over the low brick fence and across the street, someone was moving about. Lifting her head from the sill, Mercy squinted through the curtain.

  Parked on the far kerb opposite Eugene’s house was a very small, square, squashed-looking van. It was mostly beige, although one side panel appeared dark green and there were what looked like red spots in a row under the windows. Something was written in black letters beneath the red spots. Mercy inched the curtain aside, making a gap just large enough to peer through. She pushed her face closer to the glass, but couldn’t make out the lettering. Bending down by the van’s front wheel was an old man. The man propped a large piece of plywood against the van and on that board were the words: FOR SALE.

  Mercy let the curtain drop. Withdrawing from the window, she resumed her prone position on the floor.

  A soft knocking on the door. Eugene poked his head into the room.

  ‘How’re you feeling?’

  Wasabi hopped off the bed and bounced over to Eugene to scramble at his shins. Mercy, lying on the carpet, took her arm from her face. What was the answer to his question? Lousy? Sick? Homeless?

  She put her arm back over her face. ‘I’m so sorry,’ she mumbled. She didn’t know what else to say.

  ‘I thought you might like some dinner. Jose’s made pasta.’ He paused, and she heard the door click shut. She waited, thinking he had left, but after a moment he spoke again. ‘You should probably eat something. You haven’t eaten all day.’

  ‘I didn’t realise you’ve been keeping track.’

  ‘I’m concerned about you. We both are.’

  Mercy sighed and lowered her arm. She didn’t want dinner. Her stomach was a hard knot rammed against her oesophagus. But after almost twenty-four hours of not leaving Eugene’s spare room, she was beginning to despise herself.

  Eugene lowered himself to the end of the bed and sat awkwardly. Mercy struggled to sit up. They both looked at the dog, a safe territory, wagging his tail at Eugene’s feet, waiting for Eugene to let him out for another lap of the backyard.

  ‘Happy birthday,’ Eugene said at last.

  ‘Thank you,’ Mercy answered automatically.

  ‘Have you been in touch with your insurer?’

  He still didn’t look at her. The question was a veiled implication: When are you leaving?

  Mercy nodded. ‘I can get … they’ll give me … accommodation.’

  ‘That’s great news.’ Finally his eyes darted to her. ‘Not that you’re not welcome here, of course. I mean, that must be great news for you.’

  In spite of herself, Mercy gave a small laugh. Because how could she tell him that she couldn’t possibly take herself to a sterile block of furnished apartments? Offices, strangers, bureaucracy, obligation—it was all as incomprehensible a prospect to her, as physically impossible, as growing another limb.

  But Eugene was smiling at her, his best calm and reassuring doctor’s smile, and the intensity of her wretchedness and self-pity was intolerable to herself so she could only imagine how intolerable she must be to Eugene. So Mercy got to her feet. She said, ‘Thank you, dinner would be nice,’ and made her way into the bathroom to wash up.

  In the shower was where things were unbridled. Lush of belly, bottom, hair. Little firm except her elbows and heels—everything else was pillowy. Thirty-six and already she was a paddock run to seed. Not that she’d minded, really; there was a sublime pleasantness in self-seeding. Nor had there been anyone else close enough to notice. But now, as she stepped out of the shower and tugged Jose’s borrowed skinny jeans over the stippled white flesh of her thighs, she remembered Eugene once putting his mouth to that flesh and bit back a yelp of dismay.

  She scraped her hands through the limp wet curls tangled over her shoulders and down her back before hauling them into a semblance of a ponytail. She bent to roll up the hems of Jose’s jeans.

  Finally she straightened up and looked in the mirror. She squared her shoulders. Pinched her cheeks.

  You can do this.

  In the kitchen she found the table set for three. Music was playing softly, instrumental and tinkling with piano. Wine glasses, bread plates, a bowl of salad. Something with cream and garlic simmered on the stove and Jose was opening a bottle of white wine. It was a lovely, simple scene of suburban after-work domesticity, the sort of thing that friends and family around the world did every day, without even thinking about it. Mercy’s heart rocketed up into her mouth.

  I can’t do this.

  But Eugene smiled at her and served pasta and Jose sliced bread, and when Mercy asked what she could do to help, they both made appropriate tsk, no, you sit down noises so she sat and
said thank you when Eugene poured Sauvignon Blanc into her glass. She tried not to recall the last time she and Eugene had actually sat down and eaten a home-cooked meal together, because honestly, did that time even exist?

  When they were all seated around the table, Eugene raised his glass and said, ‘Happy birthday, Mercy.’

  Was that a muscle clenching in Jose’s jaw?

  ‘Please,’ Mercy said, ‘don’t worry about it. I’d forgotten. And thank you.’

  ‘We got you something.’

  Eugene produced a small, neatly wrapped box with a foil bow on top.

  Mercy was aghast. ‘You shouldn’t have.’

  Yes, Jose’s jaw was definitely working. He wore huge, round tortoiseshell-framed glasses and a flop of dark hair swept down towards one eye. As the muscles in his jaw clenched, he jerked his head to flick the hair back.

  ‘Should I—would you like me to—now?’

  ‘Yes!’ Eugene’s voice was over loud. ‘Open it.’

  Inside the paper was a pink and silver box. Ralph Lauren Romance.

  ‘Perfume,’ Mercy said. ‘Thank you.’ Should she apply some now? It wasn’t exactly polite to spritz at the dinner table, but was it a display of ingratitude to set it aside? She settled for dabbing the nozzle on her wrist and making a point of lifting her wrist to her nose.

  ‘Jasmine,’ she took a guess.

  Forks went to plates. Salad was passed around; bread was buttered. Knives clinked and the piano plunked and it was all Mercy could do to stop the top of her skull from shooting off and affixing itself to the ceiling.

  Jose was talking. Specifically, Jose was talking about coffee beans. Oh god, Mercy thought, did he really want to talk about coffee beans? At the dinner table?

  Wasabi, sitting hopefully beside her chair and waiting for crumbs, nudged Mercy’s leg with a forepaw. It was as if the Dachshund was offering a Zen reminder, a caution not to fall into the trap of following her mind off into the depressing past or an unknown anxious future. Instead, the reminder said, stay right where you are, here, wholly in this present moment. Be here now.

  Mercy dropped a shred of chicken to the dog and steeled herself.

  ‘Are you …’ she began to ask Jose. ‘Are you still at the coffee cart, by the hospital entrance?’

  A bemused expression crossed Eugene’s face. ‘Jose has his own cart now.’

  ‘Mobile refreshment service,’ Jose corrected, giving his head another pert toss. His tone was thick with the kind of loving, resigned exasperation of a long-term spouse. ‘“Cart” sounds like something you put your groceries in.’

  Mercy wanted to put her head on the table. She imagined mashing her face right into the chicken carbonara and just waiting until they had both gone to bed, gone to work the next day, or better yet, maybe moved house altogether.

  Clearing his throat, Eugene set down his knife. He glanced at Jose.

  ‘I have to go back to work tomorrow.’

  Mercy blinked, looking back and forth between them. ‘Okay.’

  ‘I can’t take time off.’

  ‘I wouldn’t expect you to.’

  ‘I’m about to go back on nights, though, so tomorrow I can run you back, uh, home, to pick up your car?’

  Mercy felt another paw-nudge on her leg.

  ‘I don’t have the car,’ she said.

  ‘The Lexus?’

  ‘I sold it.’

  ‘You sold it?’

  ‘Yes. I didn’t … need it, anymore.’

  ‘Did you get something smaller?’

  ‘No, I …’ She trailed off. What was the point in telling him? She had sold the car because it was sitting in her garage, largely unused, for almost two years and she was better off with the cash than a whopping great SUV sitting ridiculous and idle. But Eugene wouldn’t understand. He would start prescribing, she knew. You don’t face anxiety by hiding from it.

  Mercy felt a shifting, old resentment flaking up like sludge from a stirred pond. The few mouthfuls of pasta she had managed to eat sat like mud in her belly.

  The pasta went through Mercy like a hot needle. It was just after midnight when the cramps roused her from a restless half-sleep. Pushing open the bedroom door, she made her way in the dark to the bathroom on her hands and knees, as though taking up less physical space would make her feel less pathetic.

  On the way back, she was crawling across the floorboards in a waft of Ralph Lauren Romance (she couldn’t find any air freshener) when she heard voices, low and urgent, coming from the end of the hall. Eugene’s bedroom door was ajar and light seeped out. The voices began to quicken and rise.

  ‘Seriously?’ said Jose.

  ‘It’s complicated,’ said Eugene.

  ‘It really isn’t!’ Jose’s voice pitched up. ‘You bought her perfume. It’s bloody simple if you ask me.’

  Mercy paused, embarrassed, suddenly aware that she had sprayed too much perfume and it was wafting up the hall. She imagined the floral scent of it rolling in a great cloud towards Eugene’s bedroom, announcing her presence.

  Retreat, she told herself. Quickly, now, before they find you. But she didn’t move.

  ‘You’re not responsible for her, Eugene.’

  She couldn’t make out Eugene’s response.

  ‘—keep her in your life, like this. It’s not healthy.’

  ‘—not healthy, Jose. You’re the one who keeps coming and going—hot and cold—’

  Mercy crept further forward.

  ‘She has to go,’ Jose said.

  ‘But she has no one else.’

  ‘That’s not your responsibility. She’s a big girl.’

  A hot flash of anger ran over her. For six years she and Eugene had been married. Six years. And that marriage had ended as suddenly as a slap. They hadn’t drifted apart, her and Eugene, they had severed swiftly, like the chop of an axe. Leaving arteries bleeding all over the place. At least, that’s how it had felt to her. And Eugene knew that, he had acknowledged that, and that’s why Mercy was here, now, calling on him when her house had burned to the ground. Not because she wasn’t a big girl, but because Eugene wasn’t an arsehole. Because they had history. Because Eugene, even when he left, had admitted he probably did still love her, and probably always would.

  Mercy pressed her face into the floorboards. Her fingernails scraped as she curled her hands into fists, the square glass bottle of perfume digging into her fingers.

  ‘Jose—’

  ‘She’s a thirty-six-year-old woman—a doctor, no less—and she can’t even get her own shit together?’

  ‘Jose, please—’

  ‘She is not your problem, Eugene. She is her own problem.’

  The bottle broke when it hit the wall, and the cloying scent of perfume filled the air.

  CHAPTER THREE

  The next morning Mercy stood inside Eugene’s open front door. The day had dawned warm and oppressive. A thin sheet of cloud covered the sky, trapping heat to the earth. It was one of those October mornings in Adelaide where everything felt pensive, paused. The leaves on the jacarandas lining the street hung motionless.

  The scent of pine cleaner slunk out from the hallway behind Mercy, but it couldn’t quite cover the smell of perfume. Last night she had cried while she mopped, apologising, and although Eugene had sighed sadly and patted her shoulder, saying Don’t worry about it, she had not seen Jose at all.

  Sweat pricked Mercy’s temples. She wiped her palms on Jose’s skinny jeans, letting out a long, shaky breath. When she had opened the door, Wasabi had uttered an excited, surprised yip then fallen silent, settling his slender bottom on the tiles and looking up at her expectantly. They weren’t going for a walk, were they?

  She bent and picked up the dog. Before she could hesitate, before her mind had a chance to catch up and pounce, burying her beneath reams of terror, she slipped through the open door, hurried across the front yard, and stepped out onto the street.

  It was just after eight am; garages rattled open and closed, ca
r doors thudded as people dressed in smart suits and heels hurried brisk and purposeful to work, while Mercy trembled, sweat slicking her skin, thongs on her feet and her arms full of sausage dog.

  The badges on the little beige-coloured van read Daihatsu Hijet. Now she could see that the red spots beneath the window were hand-painted flowers. In rough brushstrokes below the flowers were the words: Home is wherever you ARE.

  ‘She’s a good-un, love.’

  Mercy shrieked and spun around. Her heart hammered in her ears.

  The man at the end of the driveway appeared to be in his seventies. Short and hunched over, a few strands of white hair combed over his scalp. An oil-stained collared shirt was tucked into faded navy work shorts and woollen socks were pulled up to his skinny knees. On his feet were steel-capped boots.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ Mercy said. ‘I was—I wasn’t …’

  The man continued forward, coming up to the van and placing a weathered hand on its side. His fingers were as dark with oil as his shirt. Wasabi wriggled in Mercy’s arms, straining towards the man.

  ‘Good old bus, this one,’ the old man said. ‘Doesn’t look like much, but the flowers painted on there pretty it up a bit, don’t you think?’

  ‘Uh, yes. Lovely.’ Mercy focussed on breathing as slowly as she could. In and out. Just keep breathing.

  The man straightened, looking up and down the road. He frowned at Mercy. ‘You don’t look familiar. You’re not on foot, are you, love?’

  Mercy glanced at her feet. Her thongs had cost two dollars; Eugene got them for her from the supermarket yesterday. They were currently the only footwear she owned.

  ‘Well,’ she said, searching for something polite to say. ‘These—’ she gestured to the thongs ‘—are temporary.’

  A confused silence ensued, in which Mercy’s pulse continued to race. She realised that he had meant to ask whether she had walked here—on foot—and felt heat rise to her cheeks.

  ‘So, the van,’ the man said, giving the vehicle a kind of hearty slap. ‘You keen? I’ll give you a good price. Two thousand.’

  Mercy looked towards Eugene’s house. Next door a clutch of neatly uniformed children were climbing into a shiny SUV while a woman dressed in active wear with a blonde ponytail and a huge handbag issued chirpy commands. Mercy looked away. Her T-shirt belonged to Eugene (red in colour and printed with, inexplicably, a stylised graphic of a Kombi van), her jeans belonged to Jose, and she had been wearing the same undies for three days now.