Riptides

by Kirsten Alexander

  There’s nothing to pack, so I sit on his bed and assess the state of my body. I have a headache and my empty stomach is turning somersaults. Through the window, I watch a skinny girl push a stroller on the concrete footpath that stretches a few metres in front of a tacky shopfront. She can’t be much younger than I was when I wheeled Sarah around the streets.

  The woman’s head hit the steering wheel. She would’ve felt a moment’s panic, a painful blow, then nothing. I need to convince myself this is true. But the baby . . . How long does it take for a baby to die once its mother is gone? Was the roll and shudder that I felt through her smock the baby’s dying moment, or did it lie alive in its dark space while we drove away?

  Next year Sarah will be six. The twins will start four-year-old kindergarten. No more strollers for me. They’ll sleep better as they get older. I’ll have the energy to apply myself. This is the time: my time.

  I almost didn’t enrol. I was nervous about whether I could fit study into my life again and, later, how I could work as a lawyer with children, a husband and a house to run. Then I met Lou’s cousin Eliza. We were at Clancy’s for a last-hurrah lunch for Eliza, due to have her first baby in a few weeks. There were five of us there, all of whom knew Eliza except me. I was introduced as Lou’s friend and a mother of three, to sounds that made it clear I had more children than anyone else at the table.

  ‘Are you ready for the baby?’ I asked Eliza.

  ‘Oh yes,’ she said, smoothing down her blue-and-white seersucker dress.

  ‘Do you have family around? It’d be so much easier with family.’

  ‘You don’t have a family?’ she asked.

  ‘My dad’s in the country, my brother’s overseas and my husband’s family are interstate. But we manage.’

  I could see from her expression she found this puzzling, jarring. ‘My parents live in the same street as us. They’ve put a nursery in their house. Mum says the baby can stay there when we need a night off.’

  I should’ve felt strong, hearing this. I raise my children without any help aside from Mark. When Dad visits, he’s only another person to feed. I manage the long nights. I learned from books what my babies should eat and how to settle them when they cried. There’s no time off.

  Eliza gazed around the table. I pictured her walking the halls of her spotless house, with her husband at work, her baby being rocked by her mother, and realising her life would be a line of same-same days, like a panda in a cage. I made a face at Lou to make it clear she’d cop it if we didn’t leave soon.

  I filled in my enrolment forms when I got home. Twenty-five, a mature-aged student and mother. I felt sick at the idea of it, but I did it anyway.

  Did the woman beep her horn? I think that’s what woke me. She’d been wide awake, assessing her options. Deep gullies on both sides, our car taking the whole middle of the road, coming right at her. She must have been terrified. I think about why she was on the road, alone, at night. Was someone waiting for her at the other end?

  I force myself to focus on something else. I’ve bought my textbooks. I have Mrs Lewis lined up for babysitting. The Christmas presents are wrapped. The trip to Dad’s farm was the last thing to tick off before the end of the year. I can get it back on track. I can’t – I won’t – throw away my life because of an accident that’s not of my making. But I know I’m an accessory. I let Charlie drive. I sit still so I don’t vomit.

  ‘What’s the plan?’ Charlie is standing in the doorway, toothbrush in hand, his hair wet and finger-combed. The drips from his head have made a dark cowl on his shirt.

  ‘We get some food. They serve breakfast downstairs. You’ll need to put shoes on . . . Let’s eat fast though.’

  We pad down the hallway on plush floral carpet that seems strangely grand given the boarding-house decor in the bedrooms. All the doors are closed. I wonder if other people slept here or if we’d had the building to ourselves. Maybe the men in the bar live here. Maybe they know the woman in the car.

  I shouldn’t have left Charlie alone last night. God knows what he said.

  To get from Chinchilla to Dad’s farm we need to travel past the crashed car. We’ve only been driving for a short while, though, when we see a tow truck coming towards us. I pull over to the edge of the road so it can pass while Charlie twists around to watch the wreckage of the Holden dragging behind the truck. I listen to the gravel being flicked up by the truck wheels. It’s the sound dry rice makes when it hits the bottom of a saucepan, plastic peas churning inside Sarah’s favourite toy dog as she drags it across the floor, grit going into the vacuum cleaner near the kitchen door.

  ‘What are you doing? Abby?’

  I pull the car back onto the road, roll down the window to a blast of hot wind.

  We don’t speak again until we get to the bottom of Dad’s driveway. My mind is racing as I park in front of the metal milk can Dad has painted lime green and nailed onto a post as his letterbox. Charlie opens the gate. The driveway winds a few times and goes up a steep incline before the gum trees lining it on both sides give way to a cleared expanse and we can see the house.

  ‘Okay, we need to be normal, talk about Bali and Christmas and the kids. Make sure you say something nice about his garden. You could mention the chicken pen. And the new water tank. He’ll have installed that by now.’

  ‘Cool it, Abby. You sound like you’re on speed.’

  ‘Charlie, look.’

  A police car is parked near Dad’s open front door. I pull up behind it and turn off the engine.

  ‘Do you think they’re asking locals about the accident?’

  My nerves are on high alert. ‘That makes sense. Or else they’re here because of the robbery, the stolen ring.’

  He stares at the house. ‘What if the police being here is nothing to do with her? What if Dad had a heart attack?’

  ‘A heart attack? What are you talking about?’

  Charlie leaves the car, slams the door. I hurry out, too, and rush after him. We stand in the doorway calling out ‘Dad’ and ‘We’re here’, and jostling to get inside first.

  ‘Living room,’ Dad replies. His voice is small. He is standing next to a policeman and looks scared and deflated, a soft balloon of himself. He’s wearing such a long frown it’s as though the edges of his mouth are pulling his whole body towards the ground.

  The policeman is schoolboy young. He nods in our direction. No one speaks until Dad sees Charlie, whose presence jolts him from his trance. ‘Son.’ He lurches forward and hugs Charlie in an unusually large show of affection. The policeman turns to me.

  ‘Constable Roberts.’

  ‘Abigail Campbell. That’s our dad.’

  I touch my father’s wiry arm. ‘Dad, what’s happening? Are you okay?’

  Charlie seems unable to extricate himself, so I unhook Dad and lead him to the couch. Dad loves this couch, this knobbly mess of orange, beige and green stripes, with big buttons and wide arms. There’s a copy of a Frederick Forsyth novel on the carpet next to the chair; maybe he was reading when the police showed up. I sit beside him and hold his hand.

  ‘What’s going on?’ Charlie asks.

  ‘There was a car accident last night,’ Constable Roberts says. ‘Your father’s fiancée was caught in some bad weather and ran off the road. I’m afraid the accident was fatal.’

  ‘Fiancée.’ No, no, no.

  Constable Roberts studies me.

  Charlie drops into an armchair with a thud. ‘Dad,’ he whispers.

  Dad lets his head fall back onto the couch.

  ‘Fiancée?’ I say.

  Constable Roberts frowns, picks his hat up off the coffee table. ‘I’m sorry for your loss, sir. We’ll be in touch again soon.’

  The policeman leaves the room, closes the front door behind him. Dad doesn’t move. I hold him as best as I can sitting sideways, and he briefly rests his face on my shoulder before pulling back and wiping his hand briskly across his mouth. Charlie stares at Dad, says nothing.


  ‘I’ll make us a pot of tea.’ My voice cracks; my throat is clenching. ‘Do you want tea? Charlie?’ No one responds. And then, like a punch that’s made its way across the room, gathering force as it travels, the horror of the moment hits me. I try to stand but my legs won’t hold me. I crumble onto the couch, next to my father.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  Saturday 7 December 1974

  Charlie

  ‘What was her name?’

  ‘Skye,’ he says.

  Abby’s banging around in Dad’s kitchen. She’s making sandwiches but there’s enough ruckus it could be a four-course meal.

  ‘Need some help in there?’ I call out. I can see her: the kitchen and living room are only nominally separated by the kitchen bench and the fact that lino covers one floor, shag carpet the other.

  ‘I’m fine.’

  I look in Dad’s direction, hoping for a moment’s bonding, but there’s no shared understanding between us. He’s staring at the leg of my chair, not at me.

  ‘She would have called,’ he says, ‘or asked Mal to. When she hadn’t come back by sunrise I phoned him to see how it was going. He didn’t know about Skye coming round, said Carol wasn’t in labour. It doesn’t make sense. It was a woman’s voice. I should’ve asked her name. I can’t figure it.’

  ‘What can’t you figure?’ Abby sets down a tray with food, plates and paper towels on the coffee table.

  ‘It’d been a good day. She sang in the bath.’ I don’t know why he’s telling us that but I can see it matters to him. ‘The house smelled of her bathwater, lavender and rose. She left the door open and when I put my head in, the room was warm and she was singing. She was happy.’

  ‘She lived here?’ Abby asks. ‘How long had you been living together?’

  I turn around to glare at her.

  Dad ignores us both. ‘She was excited you were coming. We’d put sheets on the beds, tidied up. She made a carrot cake while I trimmed my beard.’ He grimaces. ‘Tried to remember all the things I’d told her you two don’t eat.’

  ‘I eat everything,’ I say.

  ‘Condensed milk.’

  ‘Yeah, that’s not food. What meal would use that?’

  Abby walks to Dad’s side and places a small plate of sandwiches on the wide pine arm of the couch, touching his fingers to alert him to its presence.

  ‘A cheesecake,’ Abby says quietly. ‘If she was making a cheesecake, maybe.’

  ‘She stood there, dripping onto the carpet. The towel was too small to wrap around her, belly pushed it out.’ He turns his face away from us. ‘If I’d known it was the last time, I would’ve got in the bath like she asked.’

  ‘You should rest, Dad,’ Abby says.

  ‘Her cheeks were pink, hair piled on her head in a bundle, stray bits.’ He points to the side of his head. ‘She splashed water towards me. I could see her footprints pressed into the mat. If I’d known I wouldn’t see her again . . .’

  ‘You loved her,’ Abby murmurs.

  He lifts his chin up and regards her sternly. ‘Yes. I loved her.’

  My heart is pounding in my chest, it must be audible.

  ‘I don’t understand why she was out driving,’ Abby says. She crosses her arms, stays standing. ‘You said your friend wasn’t expecting her. Where was she going?’

  Dad shakes his head. ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘But there was a phone call?’ I ask.

  He looks at me as if I’m a simpleton. He must have made his students quake with those glowering expressions. ‘Yes, that’s what I said. And she was flustered by it. I thought it was the timing, a few hours before you were due.’ His bottom lip shakes. ‘We’d come inside from a walk around the property, checked on her tomato plants.’

  ‘So the phone rang when you came back from your walk?’ I ask.

  ‘It was a woman, but it wasn’t Carol. Spoke in an almighty rush. Said she had to talk to Skye right away. And Skye listens then says to her –’ he shakes his head in distressed confusion – ‘says, “Will you help me?” I thought it must be a complicated birth for her to ask the person on the phone for help. Then “Tell him I’m coming,” she says. The father, I assumed. She was in a flap after that, didn’t sound happy like she usually does heading to a birth. I followed her to the kitchen. We keep the keys on a . . .’ He points towards the kitchen. ‘She was so bothered she forgot her birthing bag. Rushed to the door without it until I called her back. I could see a storm was coming. But babies don’t wait, and she wouldn’t let me drive her.’

  ‘Why didn’t you tell me you were engaged, Dad?’ Abby says. ‘I’ve never heard her name before and now you’re engaged and she was about to meet us.’

  ‘Abby, not now,’ I say.

  ‘How did you meet her?’

  ‘Abby, c’mon.’

  She ignores me. ‘I don’t really understand why you’d keep this from us. Did you think she might not like us?’ She has tears in her eyes.

  This is beyond belief. ‘Abby, I need to talk to you in the other room.’

  ‘Not like you?’ Dad raises his voice, a bear poked with a stick. ‘Not like you? That woman didn’t have an unkind bone in her body, wouldn’t have known how to not like you, wouldn’t have dreamt of it as a possibility. Do you know what she said?’

  ‘I’m sorry, forget it,’ Abby says.

  ‘She asked me if you’d like her. She was worried about you not approving, judging her. Which you would have.’ He slumps back into the couch, his energy spent.

  I will Abby to stay silent.

  Dad gets up with a grunt. As he stands, Abby steps back. Mum always said Dad’s temper was a war wound. He’s a tough nut. He likes to tell me how easy my life is, as if it’d be good for it to be otherwise. Abby’s out of line but Dad doesn’t say any more, just walks out of the room.

  ‘Why didn’t he tell us about her?’ Abby asks me.

  ‘More importantly, why is that the thing you’re fixing on?’ I crane around to be sure Dad has left the room. ‘He hasn’t mentioned she was pregnant. He said something about her stomach being big but he never said she was pregnant. So don’t bring it up.’ I lower my voice. ‘If the baby’s his, that means it was our –’

  ‘Don’t,’ she says. ‘I can’t take any more in, Charlie. Please.’

  I hate when she does this, tries to dominate me.

  ‘And that’s on you,’ she says in a hurried whisper. ‘You said “let’s go”. I wanted to take her to a doctor. I wanted to help that baby.’

  ‘Stop.’ I frown at her. ‘It’s done.’

  She leans forward. ‘How does this not bother you? How are you –’

  ‘What are you talking about? Of course it bothers me. Fuck, Abby, I’m just trying to survive this.’

  She makes a low moan, then covers her face with her hands and sobs.

  There’s nothing I can do to comfort her. So I go outside, walk a lap around the house, past the chicken pen, an impressive vegetable patch that holds more food than two people could ever eat – staked tomato plants in careful rows, interspersed with basil, some flowers – and a locked-up corrugated-iron shed I know will be as orderly as a library. The ground is spongy under my sandshoes. I take a slow drag on my cigarette. I wonder if the baby was a boy or girl, then push away the thought.

  The afternoon is quiet. The birds make a few warbles and peeps but are chill compared to the free-for-all I wake to in Bali. A magpie perches in silence on the arm of a nearby spotted gum. The hum of bees and crickets is set to lull; possums and wallabies snooze. I see a dozen cows milling together at the bottom of the hill, near the dam, chewing grass and swishing away flies.

  The heat here is wet. It’s the heat I grew up with and it’s what I live with in Kuta. Sal grew up in Melbourne so she struggles with humidity. At KD, I tell her to do her running around early then to slow down in the afternoon if business slacks off, sit in the shade at the end of the day rather than throw herself straight into the clean-up. In this kind of heat you need to seek
out shade, be around water, and stop when it’s too much.

  I rest against the coarse brick wall by the front door. Abby’s car is parked nearby, mud-splattered, but unmarked by the accident. The rain will have washed away our tyre tracks and footprints. There’ll be nothing to show we were there, which is a relief but a hollow one. Something huge has happened but there’s no one I can talk to about it except my sister. And that’s the last thing I want to do right now.

  Late afternoon, I sit in the white wicker chair next to Dad’s bed. I figure what I need to do is keep him company and listen.

  Dad lies on his back with his hands by his sides. He’s black-eyed, and his skin has taken on a yellowy-grey colour, as though he’s the one heading for the funeral home. He snorts in disbelief. ‘She was here yesterday, wearing that dress I bought her in Montville, stringing beads into a necklace, taking a bath.’ He lifts his head up and looks at me. ‘We walked around the garden.’

  ‘I know, Dad.’

  He drops his head back onto the pillow. ‘There isn’t much of her here,’ he says. ‘She left that place in a rush so whatever belongings she has are there, but I suspect she never had much. Only him.’

  ‘Him?’ I sit forward.

  ‘I would’ve judged Skye if I’d met her ten or twenty years ago. I didn’t know Adam from Eve when I was young. It’s true that you get wiser with age, Charlie, learn to forgive people their mistakes, their bad choices, learn to hear what they’re telling you.’ He faces me. ‘You should know that.’

  ‘Sure.’

  ‘I didn’t judge her. I could see she was an angel, couldn’t think about anything but her for days, weeks, jiggered around the house like a teenager, got a whole lot of nothing done. You wouldn’t understand.’

  ‘I’ve been in love, Dad.’

  He ignores me. ‘When I was with her, I felt hopeful. I hadn’t felt that way in years. I used to laugh with joy when I’d see her, and she’d be hurt, and I couldn’t explain, so I’d say I couldn’t believe my luck she’d want to be with an old bloke. Fifty-four to her twenty-six. You may as well know.’ I resist the urge to tell him I had sex with my grade twelve geography teacher. ‘Some of the women in town didn’t approve. I don’t care much anymore what people think, but I didn’t want Skye to be uncomfortable.’ He pauses, frowns. ‘I was shocked when she told me what she’d done. I did ask a lot of questions.’