The Fine Colour of Rust. P. O’Reilly A.
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dicouldn’tfindyooooooo.’ His sobbing is slowing now. ‘So, so so Itriedtofindyouand, hic, Icouldn’tfindyouandIwent, hm, downthestairsand, ugh, theladysawmeand…’
‘Ssh, ssh.’ I squeeze him tightly to me.
‘I’m tired now,’ my mother says from the bed. ‘Thanks for visiting, darlings.’
On the way back to the motel I ask the kids what they’d buy if they had a thousand dollars.
‘A motel!’ Jake screams.
‘What would you buy, Liss?’ I can see her in the rear-view mirror. She looks out through the window for a while, down at her hands, back out through the window.
‘I dunno.’
‘Go on, a thousand dollars. What would you get?’
She sighs a great heaving sigh and writes something on the car window with her fingertip.
‘Some proper clothes. From a proper shop so I’m not the world’s biggest dag.’
‘Don’t be silly, you look beautiful. You could wear a sack and you’d look beautiful.’
We pull into the motel car park to pick up our bags from reception and have a toilet break before the long drive back to Gunapan. Once we’re on the highway I drive for an hour, and when it gets dark we stop at a roadhouse. We order the lamb stew with chips and milkshakes and sit down at a table beside a man who resembles a side of beef and who appears to be eating a side of beef. At the far end of the roadhouse café is another family. They seem to be trying to stay away from everyone else, like that family at the waterhole.
‘Who are those people we saw up on the hill at the waterhole the other day?’ I ask Melissa, who’s leafing through an ancient women’s magazine she found on the table. She shrugs. ‘I don’t think I’ve seen them before,’ I go on talking to myself.
‘Can I watch TV when we get home tonight?’ Jake asks.
‘No.’
‘Miss Claffy had an engagement ring on yesterday,’ Melissa says. The magazine is open at the page of a starlet wearing an engagement ring that could sink the Titanic. The food arrives at the table. I can tell immediately that I’ve made a mistake ordering the stew. I thought it would be healthier than hamburgers.
‘Is this lamb?’ Jake asks.
‘I think it was lamb a few years ago,’ I tell him through a mouthful of gristle. Grinding this meat down to a consistency I can swallow is a full-body workout.
‘Can we have pizza tomorrow night?’
‘The ring had a diamond on it. Miss Claffy said diamond can cut a hole in glass.’
‘You must have seen those kids at school. Isn’t one of them in a class with you?’
‘I don’t want anchovies on my pizza tomorrow. I want double cheese.’
‘Someone should welcome them. You kids have no idea how hard it is for a new family in a small town.’
‘Why don’t you have an engagement ring, Mum?’
‘What?’
‘Didn’t Dad give you an engagement ring?’
‘I don’t want olives either. I hate olives.’
‘We didn’t really have an engagement. We just got married.’
‘Miss Claffy said her fiancé asked her to marry him in a restaurant and everyone heard and they all clapped.’
‘We had a lovely wedding though. I can show you the pictures.’
‘We’ve seen them,’ they both say quickly.
Melissa and Jake have pushed aside their stew. They dip their chips in the stew sauce and suck on their milkshakes. I wish I’d ordered myself a milkshake. The side of beef beside us finishes his meal, burps ferociously and sways his bulk out to the car park where his rig is waiting for him like a tame T-Rex. Jake wants to go out and have a better look, but I hold him back.
‘Is Nanna going to die?’ Melissa asks.
‘Oh, Lissie girl, of course she’s not. It’s worse. She’s moving to the Gold Coast.’
‘Really?’
‘Really. With her new boyfriend.’
‘She’s an old lady! She can’t have a boyfriend.’
‘And what about your poor mother? Am I too old to have a boyfriend?’
‘You’re married.’ Melissa’s disapproving frown would qualify her instantly as a headmistress. ‘To Dad,’ she adds, in case I’d forgotten.
8
My sister Patsy has only been in the house for five minutes and she is already enthusiastically embracing the joys of country life.
‘When are you going to leave this dump and come back to Melbourne?’ she says.
She’s parked her brand-new Peugeot on the street in front of the house, and I think nervously of Les, the farmer further down the road. On a hot day Les sometimes drives the tractor straight off the field and heads to the pub. His Kelpie sits beside him on the wheel hub, barking madly at cars overtaking them. Late at night, Les will steer the tractor back home down the road, singing and laughing and nattering to himself, the dog still barking. No one worries because the worst that can happen is him driving the tractor off the road somewhere and him and the dog sleeping in a field. But no one ever parks on this road at night.
‘So Patsy, let’s move that beautiful car of yours into the driveway and swap with mine. Wouldn’t want anyone to steal it!’
‘You’ve got no reason to stay here,’ Patsy goes on. ‘That bastard’s not coming back and the kids are young enough to move schools. Mum’s gone to the Gold Coast, so she won’t bother you. Come back to the real world.’
I have thought about going back to Melbourne. A part of me believes that being in Melbourne would magically make me more sophisticated and capable. My hair, cut by a hairdresser to the stars, would curve flatteringly around my face and my kids’ teeth would straighten out of their own accord.
‘Can’t take the kids away from the clean country air,’ I tell Patsy. When Tony and I first moved to the country for a better-paid driving job he’d been offered, we shifted from an outer western suburb, treeless, grey and smelling of diesel, the only place we could afford a flat. Everyone there was miserable and angry and even our neighbours tried to rip us off. For the same money as that poky flat we rented a three-bedroom house with a yard in Gunapan, only forty minutes’ drive from his work in Halstead, and still had enough money for dinner out once a week. Now I’m a single mother with two kids, I could never survive back in the city. I’ve developed a vision of a life where I, deserted mother scrag, can’t get a job in the city, don’t know anyone, spiral down the poverty gurgler until I become an over-the-counter pill junkie watching Judge Judy in my rented house in a suburb so far from the centre of Melbourne it has its own moon. I can’t feed the kids because I’ve spent all our money on an Abserciser off the telly and the chemist keeps asking me has my cold cleared up yet.
‘Loretta!’ Patsy shouts. ‘I said, are you a member of the golf club? George is getting into golf in a big way, so I thought we could play a round when she gets here. Apparently the local course isn’t too bad.’
‘No,’ I mutter, still feeling queasy from my Melbourne vision. ‘I think you can buy a day pass. It’s a bit yellow, though. They’re using recycled water on the greens.’
The next evening, when Norm drops in, George has arrived. She’s sitting on the couch with her arm around Patsy. I’ve wondered how Norm will react when he finally meets Patsy and George. I haven’t told him a lot about my sisters and their families.
‘Unbloodybelievable,’