by Anna Taylor
Mr Fin was there wearing shorts and a long-sleeved shirt, tucked in, despite the heat. He had a beer in his hand.
‘Here she comes,’ he said, ‘my little working girl.’
Ellie’s Mum coughed.
‘Wrong choice of words, maybe. Sorry ma’am.’ He lifted his hand to his head, as if to tip his hat, but there wasn’t one. Ellie’s Mum patted his side. They both laughed.
Ellie wanted to say that she was a working girl now, Mr Fin had already paid her three dollars, but Jhumpa came along and tweaked her cheek and planted a frosty glass of Fanta in her hand.
Mr and Mrs Mildenhall were there, Mr Mildenhall in his wheelchair since the accident, everyone trying not to stare. The Whitebridges from no. 28 sat in the corner with their two fat babies, twins, one on each lap. Mr Ford stood by the snacks table and looked glumly out the sliding doors at the fountain—a concrete bird with water pulsing out of its upturned beak.
‘Wayne drew up the designs for that,’ Jhumpa said to him, pronouncing ‘that’ as if it ended with a ‘d’.
Mr Ford said, ‘Really?’ and ate a sausage roll.
Ellie and Laura stood by the billowing netting curtains, gulping their drinks. The smell of the popping, spitting sausages, cooking out on the deck, wafted in on little gusts. Wayne was busy telling Mr Whitebridge about how Jhumpa had started singing lessons; how he thought she might have the makings of something big. He slid his palm across his thinning hair as he talked.
‘Voice of an angel,’ he said. ‘Great breath control.’
‘Keeping us all well entertained,’ Ellie’s Dad said, ‘isn’t that right, Finley?’ And Ellie’s Mum, bouncing one of the babies on her hip, took two side-steps in his direction and kicked the back of his heel.
Neither Wayne nor Jhumpa had heard, thank god, she said later. But what if they had? Mr Fin, leaning against the Steinway piano, said, ‘What, indeed,’ and raised his glass, making the ice tinkle softly against its sides.
He had a photo of Mindy Malone in his shirt pocket. A recent one. She had sent it over in a package, all the way from Jacksonville, along with the shirt he was wearing, and a cap, he said, with the American flag on it, to keep the sun off.
‘It must be so hard for you,’ Ellie’s Mum said, ‘being so far away.’
‘I miss her something awful,’ said Mr Fin, and he passed the photo round.
She wasn’t as pretty as Ellie thought she might be. Her face was round, slightly soft, and she had a gap between her two front teeth. Her yellow hair was piled on top of her head, tied up with a scrunchy. She held a handwritten sign in front of her chest that said Miss You Honey!! and had circles for the dots of the exclamation marks, with little smiling faces.
Mr Fin slid the photo back into his pocket, and sat down on a chair next to where Ellie and Laura were standing. He cupped one hand inside another.
‘Your sister,’ he said to Laura, ‘is quite a wee worker. Busy as a bee.’
Laura chewed on her lip, and raised and dropped her shoulders carelessly.
‘She’s something else all right,’ said Mr Fin.
Ellie looked around at the neighbours, standing in little groups, tipping wine glasses and beer bottles up towards their mouths. She wished he would say it again, louder; maybe stand up on his chair and announce it to the room. Everyone would turn around, she thought, and see her, and see that she was something else all right. They would see her, suddenly illuminated in the corner, glowing a soft gold. And Mr Fin beside her, placing a large heavy crown tenderly on the top of her head.
A week later they went to the pet store. Mr Fin had started on the fishpond, even though there was still so much to do on the house. Mindy wouldn’t be able to come for another six months or so, he said. There was plenty of time for everything.
He drove Ellie to town in his ute. She put her best summer dress on for the occasion, the one with rosebuds on it and bright green leaves. The freshly washed fabric sat stiff against her skin.
‘Look at you,’ Mr Fin said, opening the door for her so she could climb on board. ‘What a picture, eh?’ He looked happy, she thought, shutting the door firmly once she was in.
‘Be back in time for lunch,’ her Mum called out. And he nodded and waved. Maybe they could have a treat at the dairy, he said. Just a little one.
Ellie was all buckled up in the front seat, the wind streaming in the open window making her hair flap against her face. The hot vinyl of the seats burnt against the backs of her knees. Her legs jolted from side to side. Mr Fin shot her a wink.
‘You can name all but one,’ he said. ‘One of them’s mine. That’ll have to be Mindy Malone.’
They drove down past Clifton Road, across the bridge. Ellie couldn’t see the river at all but Mr Fin said, ‘She’s looking dry all right,’ and she nodded in agreement.
The seatbelt strap dug in slightly, up her neck and across the edge of her face.
In the pet store there were puppies and kittens and rabbits and guinea pigs, all penned up in little cages. Ellie wanted to take them out to give them a pat, but Mr Fin said you could only do that if you bought one.
They weaved through the shop, to the back, where the fish tanks were in a dark corner. They had lights shining up through the water, making the weed glow as it swayed around in there. There were big fish and little ones, but none of them looked like Jhumpa and Wayne’s cake-fed gold one who had started to grow a black lump on the top of its head.
‘You can choose five, Miss E,’ Mr Fin said.
She watched them for a long time, and some of them, she thought, were watching her too. They swam round and round, flicking their tails so fast she could hardly see them move, opening and shutting their little mouths. Sitting on the pebbles there was a boat that blew bubbles out its top.
Ellie chose a black one with an orange stripe, and a big one with gold scales, and three smaller ones that matched.
They drove home with the fish sitting in a bag on her lap.
‘Hold tight!’ Mr Fin said.
And Ellie looked down at the water tipping dangerously from side to side, and at the fish flapping their fins, and said, quite loudly, ‘I think they want to get out.’
The fishpond, with its Japanese-inspired waterfall and border of boulders, was never completed. Mr Fin drew plans for it and everything, but it just ended up being a round hole in the ground, filled with water. That day, though, he believed in that pond with all his heart.
‘Mindy will love it,’ he said, standing back proudly, his arms folded in front of his chest. Ellie sat on the ground beside him, the bag of fish at her feet. Mr Fin had bought her an ice-block and its stickiness coated her fingers.
‘She loves Japan,’ he said. ‘The simplicity. And with the bamboo—’ he pointed behind his head— ‘and that pond. Think we have a bit of a theme here. What do you reckon?’
‘Will it have water-lilies?’ Ellie asked. The pond in the Town Square did, its surface covered with leaves green as frogs and sharp-petalled flowers.
Mr Fin raised his arms above his head and raised his voice a little too.
‘Water-lilies?’ he called out. ‘Ladies and gentlemen, she wants water-lilies!’
He swooped down then, into a grand bow.
‘Then water-lilies,’ he said, his head close to the ground, ‘she will have.’
*
By the end of January the temperature was reaching the mid-30s, most days. Ellie had earned ten dollars working for Mr Fin. School was due to start on the third of February. There had been no rain for four weeks, and even the sprinklers couldn’t stop the grass from getting parched round the edges. All the adults starting moving slower and slower, it seemed, flapping newspapers, straw hats, plastic plates in front of their faces. At night, tucked tightly in bed under nothing but a sheet, Ellie could see the last of the light seeping in below her curtains. Her Dad would go outside with the hose about that time, to try to keep the flowers alive. Sometimes Ellie would sit up and hold the curtain back and watch
him stepping back and forth across the edge of the lawn; the grey evening light; the hose spluttering and choking in his hands.
Katie-Ann Small’s body was found on 24 January, all folded up in a bag under the sand. When it was announced on the radio news, Ellie’s Mum jolted across the kitchen, patty mixture spread up over her wrists, and placed her two sticky palms, flat, across Ellie’s ears. She still heard, though, the news-reader’s deep calm voice moving through the slits in her Mum’s fingers, and when she went to bed that night she crossed hers tightly and prayed, though she didn’t know to whom, that Katie-Ann Small could breathe properly now: that she didn’t feel sad and scared, wherever she was.
Ellie kept her money in an envelope inside her favourite book, Bedtime for Frances. Sometimes, when no one was looking, she took it out and held it in her hand, feeling the coolness of the coins growing warm against her skin. Laura said, quietly, that if she found where Ellie was hiding the money she’d steal the lot and buy herself ten one-dollar mixtures at the dairy. This made Ellie cry. She wasn’t sure what she was going to spend the money on, though. She thought maybe a Real Live Feed-Me Baby, like the one Sarah Strand had, that went to the toilet in its nappies.
On the Friday before school started, Ellie’s Mum gave her and Laura a hose-down in the front garden. She couldn’t be bothered taking them to the pool, she said, and so they put on their togs and ran up and down squealing, getting prickles in their feet. Up close, the water from the hose was so hard it stung, but when the hose was waved up and down the water seemed to separate, forming into hundreds of little droplets, moving up towards the sky, whoosh-whooshing and then hitting the ground with a soft thud.
Mrs Whitebridge walked by with the babies in a double pushchair. There were circles of sweat on the fabric underneath her arms and between her breasts. She waved her fingers at them.
‘Thought I’d go for a walk,’ she called out, ‘but down to the end of the street’s quite enough for me!’
‘Need a lie-down?’ Ellie’s Mum said.
‘I wish!’
They both laughed wearily, and Laura flapped her arms and said, ‘I’ve got a prickle, I’ve got a prickle,’ and hobbled onto the front porch.
Ellie said she was going to go over to Mr Fin’s, but Laura was whinging and whining and her Mum was scolding, and neither of them seemed to hear.
She wandered out the front gate.
Her wet feet left dark prints on the pavement. She could see the pads, and her toes, but the wetness was swallowed up rapidly by the heat, as if she had never been there. She walked past Mr Ford’s long sloping driveway, and hopped the rest of the way to Mr Fin’s. The trees they had planted together were looking dry; one of them was dead. She pushed past the flax and onto the worn path leading to his sleep-out.
The sliding door was shut, but the windows were open. He was lying on the couch inside.
‘Come on in, Ellie H,’ he called out.
She stepped in, sliding the door shut again behind her.
The air was thick, and the sound of flies buzzing around, bumping against the walls and windows, filled the room. Ellie stood in her damp saggy togs, her towel hanging round her neck. Mr Fin didn’t move. He was wearing his underpants. The tops of his thighs were covered in thick blond hair.
‘Hot enough for you, little Miss E?’ he said. ‘Been swimming?’
‘Just under the hose.’
‘Bet you’re nice and cool.’ He waggled his feet on the edge of the couch. ‘It’s pretty darn hot, that’s for sure.’
Ellie could feel a drip gathering at the edge of her togs and beginning to slide down the outside of her leg.
‘Yep,’ she said.
‘What can I do for you, Ellie H, my little Trojan? Would you like a drink?’ He snapped himself up off the couch, moved towards a box by his fridge. ‘An apricot?’
‘Yes, please. Thank you.’
She moved towards the box too, and realised that that was where all the flies were coming from. Slightly mushy, bruised apricots were piled high, and a moving shell of black swarmed across them. Mr Fin flapped his arms and they all lifted in unison, and then fell back down, like a deep breath.
He placed a warm apricot in her hand and turned towards the fridge, and Ellie saw that his underpants had tiny holes in the back, and hung down a little.
‘Well, I’m going to have a beer,’ he announced. ‘If no one objects.’
She stood still, holding her apricot, not wanting to look at it or bite, feeling the slight wetness of its broken patch of skin against her palm.
Mr Fin collapsed back onto the couch.
‘Gee I’m tired today, Ellie,’ he said. ‘I really am.’
She nodded.
‘So hot, isn’t it? And me just building, building, building all day. Christ I’m tired.’
Ellie looked down at the ground and saw that she was dripping all over the place. She tried to move her feet to cover up the patches of wet.
‘Look at you in your little togs there,’ he said, moving his feet aside and up onto the back of the couch. ‘Take a seat, Miss E, take a load off.’
She did, perching right on the edge, her knees tight together, the bruised apricot still sitting in her hand.
‘Want a drink?’ he said. ‘Did I already ask? Jesus.’
Ellie said no thank you, she was fine, but he didn’t seem to hear, getting up regardless, knocking his knee slightly against her side.
She sat quite upright, a buzzing in her chest and the buzzing in the room. There was a framed photo of Mr Fin and Mindy Malone on the wall in front of her. They wore matching green caps and had their arms slung casually over each other’s shoulders. Mr Fin was smiling hard—Ellie didn’t think she’d ever seen him smile that much before—but Mindy wasn’t really smiling at all. Her doughy face was quite smooth, and her eyes and mouth were round and open, as if she had just seen something she didn’t expect. A panda bear, maybe, in the distance.
Mr Fin came back with a glass of water for her, and tried to lie down again, lifting his legs up and over her head.
‘There you go, my girl,’ he said. ‘Sorted.’
The edge of his leg, scratchy with hair, kept brushing against her shoulder. Her mouth felt dry. She took a small sip of water.
Out of the corner of her eyes she could see his chest, rising and falling, and his tummy button, and a line of hair snaking down underneath it, right in under the elastic band of his underpants. She took another sip, more of a gulp this time, and rested the coolness of the glass bottom on her knee.
‘You’re very quiet there, Miss E,’ Mr Fin said. ‘You all right?’
Ellie nodded. If Laura were here, she thought, she would know what to do. She would poke Ellie in the ribs with her elbow, and point to the apricot and say, eat it, under her breath, and Ellie would. She would have Laura sitting next to her, eating one too. Then they could go home. If Laura was here, they could go home.
She squeezed the apricot in her hand, and felt its skin burst a little more, a pouch of wet flesh moving out into her palm. Its juice drizzled down onto her leg Mr. Fin shifted his foot, the cracked skin of his heel resting, lightly, against the side of her leg. Her mouth tasted salty, almost like blood, and the saliva seemed thick and heavy. She swallowed hard.
Above the sound of the flies, quiet at first, and then rising and rising, Ellie heard a noise, like a cat or a bird: something from outside. Mr Fin lifted his head off the arm of the couch and made a sound in his throat. He’d heard it too. It was Jhumpa.
It was not the morning, and Mr Fin was not working outside, and Jhumpa was not having her shower, but she was singing nonetheless, her voice high and wavering, winding in through the open windows. She was singing for India, maybe; or maybe for Mr Fin; or maybe, even, for Ellie sitting on a damp patch on the couch, her knees and feet pressed tight together.
Mr Fin closed his eyes. With one hand he started pulling bobbles of lint off the edge of the couch, his face quite slack, listening. He looked sor
t of sad, she thought, breathing so slowly, his curled fingers resting against his chest. She hated her Mum’s or Dad’s eyes being closed when hers were open. She would lift the lashes out and up, exposing the jelly white of their eyeballs, waking them. But she was glad about Mr Fin, that his were closed, one hand still moving rhythmically, pulling and then flicking the little bobbles onto the floor.
Ellie looked out through the closed door. The half-built fish pond, filled with her fish, was like a bowl in the ground, or a small bath. The wood of Mr Fin’s half-built house glowed slightly in the afternoon light, its mirrored windows reflecting back everything outside, a white cloud above it, heaving its way across the sky. She lifted the apricot to her mouth.
Eat it, she said to herself.
Electricity
That spring things grew vigorously, but in an odd way, decay blooming like flower buds. Boulders in riverbeds sprouted algae—thick and slimy—that couldn’t be scraped off, even with a stick. Schools of fish were washed up on beaches, their fins adorned with clusters shaped like tiny stars. Scientists were excited—they’d never seen anything like it before, it was a phenomenon, they said—but everyone else was disturbed. Seafood sales plummeted all over the country; the local fish and chip shop put up a sign in the window, stating that it would be closed until further notice.
People started cleaning their houses and patios feverishly. When searching for a lost earring one morning, Beth discovered a patch of bright pink mould growing in a perfect circle under her chest of drawers.
The air also seemed odd that spring, as if it were charged, electric. It felt to Beth as if all of them—people, plants, houses, sky—were being held hostage inside an enormous generator. She began to get electric shocks off anything. Not just when she closed the car door, but when she pushed start on the washing machine, or stacked the plates in the cupboard or, worst of all, once, when she went to give her mother a hug. They jumped away from each other when it happened; jumped away simultaneously like two opposing magnets.