The Fine Color of Rust

by Paddy O'Reilly

  Gabrielle sits in the office armchair with the foam spilling out of the holes in the fabric and leafs through some old committee minutes while I walk around turning off the alarm, unlocking the rooms of the House, switching on lights. The House seems even shabbier than usual today. We can’t get money to paint the rooms, so the walls are scuffed and the paint on the woodwork is chipped. The colors they chose originally were jolly lemons and greens, supposed to cheer people up. Now they look like prison colors. The furniture is all mismatched. The polished floorboards have lost their polish where everyone walks and dirt is being ground into the boards. I trudge back to the office, making a note to apply for funding to repair the floors.

  “So how are you coping, darling?” Gabrielle asks once I’ve dropped into the office chair.

  My email opens as she speaks. I have three hundred and forty-four unread messages after two weeks of being away. I don’t want to talk about how I’m coping. For the first time in my life I want to work slowly through a huge number of outstanding emails and think about nothing else.

  “We’re OK. Thanks for asking, Gabrielle,” I answer in a crisp, businesslike voice. I move a pile of papers from the left side of the desk to the right. “Look at all this. I’d better get on with it.”

  Gabrielle doesn’t look as if she’s about to move, so I open my emails one by one. The first twenty or so are course and child-care inquiries. Why these people can write an email but not look at a web page is beyond me. I reply with a link to the web page. At least thirty emails are from the funding bodies who think the main purpose of the Neighborhood House is to fill in forms about funding. If you fill in enough forms and are lucky enough to get some funding, you’ll spend the rest of the year filling in forms about how you intend to spend the funding, how you are spending the funding, and then how you did spend the funding. And then they’ll want a report on the success of the funded project. Which you haven’t had time to do because you’ve been flat out filling out forms about funding and they only gave you a quarter of what you needed to do the project anyway.

  Helen’s sent me a joke. I’m scared to open it because it might have sound, and Gabrielle is still sitting beside me in the House’s most uncomfortable chair, the one we put in the office to discourage people from sitting and complaining for hours. The last joke I opened from Helen was a jaunty song about penises that rang out across the office of the Neighbourhood House for what seemed like an hour while I withered at the desk, apologizing, because I didn’t know how to turn it off. Helen doesn’t realize that I’m a professional woman doing a professional job and I have an image to uphold. Plus we have a large sign over the office window saying Offensive language will not be tolerated in this House, which Tina put up after her son Damien heard one of the visitors shouting abuse at someone on the phone. I was the first to be graced with his new vocabulary when I arrived on a Tuesday morning and said, “Hi, Damien,” only to be answered with, “Hi, you fucking slag.” Tina was mortified.

  “What’s going to happen to Mr. Stevens’s yard?” Gabrielle asks out of the blue.

  “I don’t know.” I keep clicking through my emails as we speak, hoping she’ll get the hint.

  “It is an eyesore. I don’t think many people will be sorry to see it go.”

  “An eyesore?” I repeat. I remember Norm’s description of it—an abstract interpretation of the changing face of Gunapan—and smile. “I find it rather attractive. An unusual work of art.”

  “But most people won’t think that way, will they, darling. Most people will be glad when it’s gone.”

  “I’m not sure why we’re talking about this, Gabrielle. The yard is none of my business. And I don’t feel up to talking about Norm, I’m sorry.” I turn reluctantly away from the computer to face Gabrielle and find to my astonishment that she has tears on her cheeks. “What is it? What’s wrong?”

  “I didn’t know he was ill,” she says, breathing in with a stutter between words.

  “Nobody knew. It’s OK.”

  “It’s just that we were at supper and talking about the yard and how ugly it made that road and how it wouldn’t look good for people driving to the resort, and I don’t know, suddenly I was the one who was going to make the complaint. I didn’t want to. And if I’d known he wasn’t well . . .”

  “You mean to the council?”

  “I only said to them that they should ask him to put up a fence! And then they sent him that notice and everything blew up.” She takes in a long, shaky breath. “And then he died.” She pulls a tissue from her bag and honks into it.

  “Who was at supper?”

  “No one special. Just our book group.” She does another honk and brings out her makeup mirror. “Oh, look at me. I’m a mess.”

  “Who’s in the book group?”

  “It’s no one you’d know, darling. A couple of ladies from Halstead, a councillor, members of the Lions Ladies Auxiliary. We have a glass of wine and a nibble once a month and sometimes we even talk about the book.” Gabrielle’s perking up now. She smiles as she mentions the glass of wine.

  “Samantha Patterson?”

  “Yes, Samantha. And Ann-Maree, who makes the most delicious tiny party pies. Or maybe she buys them from that Halstead patisserie. I try to put on a lovely supper too, but some of those Lions ladies can cook like chefs. It’s rather intimidating, I have to say. I’ve been tempted to cater, but that wouldn’t be in the spirit of things, would it.”

  “Samantha Patterson,” I mutter again. “Samantha Patterson suggested you complain.”

  “No. No, it wasn’t Samantha. I can’t remember who it was. It was everyone. We were all talking about it. It just came up.”

  “He was a sick man.”

  Gabrielle’s eyes fill with tears again. “I didn’t know.”

  “It was Samantha Patterson, wasn’t it?”

  “I can’t remember. We were chatting. It was only a harmless little message to get him to clean up.”

  “But it wasn’t harmless, was it? He was ill. It caused him terrible stress.” I feel a little ill myself, hearing these words coming out of my mouth. But I’m furious. Norm knew Samantha Patterson had something to do with it. How dare they do this to Norm, my Norm.

  Gabrielle dabs at her eyes with a new tissue. “I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.”

  “I have to get to work now, Gabrielle.” I feel unkind, but not as unkind as I’m going to feel when I get hold of Samantha Patterson.

  The day flies past as I answer emails and fend off sympathetic calls, and when I knock off I only have two hours until I have to pick up the kids. Luckily, I know exactly where Samantha Patterson will be. She’ll be where all the wealthy women of this area appear on the first Monday of the month. The mobile day spa.

  30

  THE WOMEN WHO go to the day spa would never have a haircut at Hair Today Gone Tomorrow in the main street of Gunapan. They have their hair done in Melbourne. But once a month a van arrives in Gunapan and spills young Asian women carrying manicure and pedicure kits and boxes of creams and lotions into Hair Today. The blinds go down in the windows. The pub delivers bottles of champagne. Four-wheel drives pull up and park along the street like some beauty-hunting club and the women disappear into Hair Today, which is closed to normal business for four hours in the afternoon. Helen tried to book in last year, but they told her it was full up. “Full up, my arse,” she said to me.

  When I push open the door of the salon, the first person I see is Gabrielle in a bathrobe. She’s sitting with her hands spread flat on a table. The girl on the other side of the table is shaking a bottle of nail polish. Farther inside are two women, lounging in reclining chairs with their feet in footbaths, chatting and laughing. Several more toward the back of the room are lying on massage tables, their faces covered in goop. Jazz music and a delicious smell of orange and cardamom fill the room. Candles are burning. A young woman comes toward me carrying a tray of hors d’oeuvres. Am I still in Gunapan?

  “Do you have a booki
ng?” the young woman asks, surprised, looking me up and down.

  “No, I’m here to see someone.”

  At the sound of my voice Gabrielle looks up. When I shake my head at her she looks away again, her face pink. I don’t want to cause Gabrielle any harm. I have never wanted to cause anyone harm—until today.

  “Sorry,” the young woman says quietly, “this is a private club.” She puts the tray on the shop counter and moves behind me to open the door and usher me out, but I’m headed for the back of the salon.

  The elegant figure lying with its eyes closed and cream all over its face on the table near the basins is unmistakably Samantha Patterson. Her sleek hair is fanned across the pillow. Like the other women she’s wearing a fluffy white robe and pink toweling scuffs. Her fine-boned hands, which have obviously never encountered a scourer, are crossed daintily over her flat stomach.

  At this moment, the full extent of my scragness is very clear to me. My rage deserts me. I have a terrible feeling I’m going to open my mouth and a screech will come out.

  Samantha opens her eyes, frowns at me for a moment, and closes them again.

  “Tran, somebody’s here,” she says, her eyes still closed. “Can you look after them, please.”

  So much for my rage deserting me. It was only on a brief holiday. “I’m here to speak to you, Samantha.” I can hear a shade of screech in my voice, but there’s nothing I can do about that.

  She opens her eyes again and gives me the once-over. “I’m sorry. I don’t think I know you.”

  “I’m a friend of Norm Stevens. You know Norm, the one with the unsightly property. I’m also interested in the development on the Bolton Road. I think you might be the person to talk to about that.”

  Samantha doesn’t even blink. She lies on the massage table like Cleopatra waiting for her slaves and turns her face away from me before she says, “I am in the middle of a facial. Do you mind?”

  “Yes, I do mind. I want to know what’s going on.”

  “I’m sorry, I don’t know what you’re talking about.” She sits up and swings her legs over the side of the table so she’s facing me. “I can’t believe you’ve been so rude as to barge in here and interrupt our afternoon. If you’ve got some issue with the development, take it up with council.”

  “No.” That screeching voice coming out of me is getting louder. “I want to take it up with you. Norm told me you were behind this. I’m going to finish what he started.”

  Everyone’s listening now. The girl doing the pedicures has her scalpel poised in the air and is staring at us.

  “I hardly think the ravings of some filthy old junk man are anything to rely on.” She looks around at her friends, who half-nod and half-smile, not knowing what else to do. “And coming in here like this is completely inappropriate. Please take your concerns up with the council.” She waves an indolent hand at the girl near the counter. “Tran, can you show this person to the door.”

  “No, Tran. Don’t bother. I’m not leaving.”

  The salon, usually full of chatter and the rush of water and the hum of hair dryers, is so still I can almost hear the guttering of the candles. Tran holds on to the counter.

  Samantha looks around at her friends, but they’re staring at the floor or the wall. I recognize one of them from the creative-writing class at the Neighbourhood House. She seemed like a kind person. Her list of pleasing things included hugging her granddaughter and smelling the flowery scent of her flyaway hair. Why would she be friends with this nasty woman?

  “My friend Norm died. He was a good man.”

  “I’m sure he was.” Samantha relaxes her shoulders, rolling the left, then the right, and brings her hands to rest in her lap. “I’m very sorry. I am really very sorry.”

  As soon as she says this everyone in the room starts to breathe again. Relief ripples through the salon. I start to see the funny side of this. Samantha’s face is covered in cream. It’s like talking to a pavlova.

  “Should I call the council and make an appointment for you? Tran, could you please bring my handbag here?”

  “No.” I will not be put off. Norm is dead and I owe him.

  Tran hurries past me with her head down and passes Samantha a red leather bag.

  “You’re obviously grieving. I’m very sorry about your friend. Go home and rest and we can organize an appointment with the council for you.” She pulls a gold notebook and matching pencil from her handbag. “Now, what’s your name and phone number? I’ll get my assistant onto it first thing tomorrow.”

  I can hear murmurs of approval from the front of the salon. So her friends think she is doing the right thing. Perhaps I am blowing things out of proportion. Samantha has her pencil poised over the open notebook.

  But no. Grief, stubbornness, anger, whatever it is, she’s not getting rid of me this easily. “I want you to tell me about the development and your connection with it.”

  From her small pink mouth I hear a tiny tsk. She turns to the woman at the next table and rolls her eyes. “For heaven’s sake,” she mutters.

  I am not sure exactly why this sets me off the way it does. It’s not only about Norm, or the development, or the council. It’s everything about who Samantha Patterson is and who I am and who Norm was. It’s Samantha Patterson rolling her eyes as if I’m some annoying bug that got inside her big air-conditioned house. It’s the way she said, “For heaven’s sake,” as if my life and Norm’s life and the lives of most of the people I know in this town are a waste of time. It’s enough to make me take a step forward and do something I’ve never done in my life.

  I slap her face.

  Even as my hand connects, I realize what a stupid thing I’m doing. Not because it won’t give me satisfaction—it will—but because her face is covered in cream. What should have been a resounding smack that leaves her with a stinging cheek and a good dose of humiliation becomes a slithering swipe that unbalances me and leaves my hand greasy and Samantha with the look of a half-eaten cream bun. A giggle rises in me.

  “Tran, lock the door,” the cream bun says through gritted teeth. “Call the police. I’ve been assaulted.”

  • • •

  “GEEZ, LORETTA, WHAT do you think you’re playing at?” Bill asks when I’m sitting in the passenger seat of the police car heading for the station.

  I shrug.

  “Samantha Patterson is not a person to get offside.”

  I shrug again. I don’t care.

  It’s only a ten-minute drive from the salon to the police station, a small brick office at the front of Bill’s house. We should drive past the CWA Hall and the school on the way, but Bill swings the car around the corner at the supermarket and heads along Grevillea Street. He says he doesn’t want my children to look out of the window of their schoolroom and see me in a police car. I tell him I would probably go up ten points in Jake’s estimation if he did see me in a police car. We drop by the doctor’s surgery, where I run inside to ask Helen to pick up the kids after school and take them to her house. When she asks why and I explain I’m under arrest for assaulting Samantha Patterson, I think I go up ten points in her estimation too. An old lady I know from the Neighbourhood House hauls herself out of her chair in the waiting room and asks to shake my hand. Unfortunately my hand is still greasy from Samantha’s face cream.

  At the station, Bill sits across the desk and gazes at me with the sorrowful expression of a disappointed father. He shakes his head as he reaches into the drawer and pulls out a form with several colored copies attached.

  “Full name?”

  “Loretta Judith Boskovic.”

  “Address?”

  “You know that perfectly well, Bill.”

  “Answer please, Loretta. This is serious. Mrs. Patterson has insisted I charge you with assault.”

  “Fine. I’m glad I slapped her. Do you have a tissue?”

  “You know you could lose your job if you get a conviction?”

  That shuts me up.

  “You�
��ll be charged on summons. You’ll come up in front of a magistrate. You’ll be a criminal if you’re convicted, Loretta. It’s not a joke.”

  31

  THE KIDS SIT quietly in the back on the way home from Helen’s place. It’s likely they can see the steam pouring from my head and they’re worried it’s about them. I keep thinking about Samantha Patterson calling Norm a filthy old junk man, and each time that phrase goes through my head another surge of steam builds up. Sure, Norm was the local junk man, and I do admit that on occasion he was filthy, but that’s not for her to say. And now I might lose my job.

  “If you’re looking down—or up—from somewhere, Norm Stevens, I’ll show you what a battler I am. Nothing is going to stop me bringing that woman down.”

  “Mum!” Melissa says crossly. “You’re talking to yourself again. And you missed our street.”

  “All right, all right, no need to blow your top.”

  “Not like some people,” she says, pursing her lips in that special Gunapan way.

  I swing the car into the next street, then do a blockie, heading for our road. With the silence broken, Jake can’t help himself.

  “Our class got a mouse today and the teacher said if anyone screamed she’d send them home and Jamie wet his pants and he had to wear the spare ones and they were blue and I got—”

  He’s stopped midstream for the same reason I’m applying the brakes. Sitting outside our house on a trailer behind an old Bedford truck is a massive yellow machine with a bucket at the front. It has caterpillar treads and a square cabin on the top with a seat in the shape of an upturned hand perched above the engine and levers sticking up from the floor. From this angle it looks like it could scoop up the whole house.

  I’m expecting Justin to jump out of the truck, but when we pull up in the driveway, it’s Merv Bull who ambles up beside the car. He leans in, shading his eyes against the sun.

  “G’day, Loretta.” He taps on the glass of the back window. “G’day, mate,” he says to Jake.

  Jake scrambles to get out of the car so fast he nearly knocks Merv over with the car door. I try to emerge in a more seemly manner. Melissa gets out of the car on her side and looks hard at Merv, then shouts across the car roof to me.