The Fine Color of Rust (21 page)

Any kid walking around after ten o'clock was in trouble if Glenn and Gary caught them. They were the angriest boys anyone had seen in this town for a long time. Bill, the local policeman, drove around the streets in his patrol car, trying to keep an eye out, but they were fast and on foot, and they always got away over fences and down lanes and through the paddocks on the outskirts of town.

The local lads who'd thought they were tough until Glenn and Gary were let loose came home with black eyes and bruises and a sudden desire to spend more time with their families. Bill once joked to me that the Giles boys had done
a better job of cleaning up the streets than he ever could. But they got more and more violent. The black eyes turned into cuts. The bruises became broken bones. They started carrying chains and bats.

One night, after most of the local kids had learned their lesson about staying indoors after dark, a couple of boys visiting their cousins down the end of Ables Court ran into the Giles boys out in the scrub behind the abattoir. The visitors were from a tough part of Melbourne where proper gangs identified themselves with tattoos and pledges and special haircuts. No one knows exactly what happened, but the Giles boys disappeared for two days. Then, on the third day, they turned up at the emergency ward in Halstead Hospital. Glenn slipped into a coma and only woke up after five days. That's what got Brenda out of her bad patch. She had to farm out the other kids for a week and stay in the hospital while Glenn was in danger of not pulling through. When she got home the kids made her swear she'd never drink again. They told her that the people they'd stayed with had made them do their homework and no way were they going back to that.

I wonder if I've been neglecting my children. Is that why they've turned into monsters? A stinging tear forms in the corner of my left eye. Perhaps I should give up the campaigning.

“Have I been neglecting them?” I say out loud. “All the Save Our School stuff and the rest, don't they realize I'm doing it for them? So they have a good place to live? No one else is going to do it. No one cares about us in the small towns. We have to fight or we'll go under. But maybe they're asking why me? Why have I decided to do it? Maybe that's what's happened. I should be doing more things with them.
Nature walks. Art projects. I'll start sewing lessons, learn to make them clothes. I'll—”

“For God's sake, Loretta, snap out of it. Where's your sense of humor gone? It's not the end of the world.” Norm sounds impatient.

I sniff. Pull another tissue from my pocket. Helen's tapping her foot and leafing through the TV guide.

“Sorry, love,” Norm says. “I didn't mean to jump down your throat. I'm a bit tired. But will you leave it for a few days? Let the kids go to your sister's place and we can talk about it when they get back.”

“You don't have to deal with it, Norm. I have to deal with it. Let me ask you something important. Should I try to get in contact with Tony? Is it because they haven't got a father?”

After they've finished laughing so much that Helen has a coughing fit and Norm spills his beer, Norm leans back in his chair and sighs.

“Norm's right. Give it a rest, Loretta,” Helen says. “Let things settle. There's such a thing as being too proactive.”

Too proactive? Helen's been reading the back of my breakfast cereal box. The other morning I was gazing dreamily at the box and the word caught my eye. Proactive. Or was it a margarine container? Whichever. I read it and realized I'd been in a non-proactive slump. That's what decided me to start up the SOS Committee Mark II. But how did Helen know? How does she know these things about me? It's unnerving. It makes me cross.

“I have no idea what you mean by ‘proactive,' Helen. You must be picking up jargon from that therapist of yours.”

Helen blinks slowly. “Actually, Loretta, therapy helps people with anger issues. You should try it. You and your bullying children.”

So this is how a friend behaves when you're in trouble. Puts the boot in.

“Yes, Helen, you're right. My bullying children might need to see a therapist. At least they have a real problem. They're not middle-aged women so desperate for attention they'll pay for it.”

Norm pushes his chair back from the table. “Right. I'm out of here.”

From the bedroom comes one of Jake's shrieks. I ignore it like I usually do, knowing it's not a desperate shriek, only one of his night shrieks.

“Aren't you going to see what that's about?” Helen asks.

“It's nothing,” I answer impatiently. “They both scream at night.”

Helen raises one eyebrow. I've sat with her and laughed when she used that look on someone else. Now I know how it feels to be the victim of the single superior arched eyebrow.

“Not real screaming. Night cries.”

“Everyday screaming, then,” Helen says. If anything, the arched eyebrow goes even higher. She'll lose it in her hair if she's not careful.

Norm heaves himself up off the wooden kitchen chair and picks up his old straw hat.

“I'll drop by Sunday, once the kids are gone. Leave it a bit, OK, Loretta?”

They obviously don't care. I can't leave it. I'll have to do something before the kids go to Patsy's.

Helen, still looking miffed, is stuffing her phone into her handbag and rummaging around for her keys. Norm ducks on his way out the back door, but I notice he's shorter, or stooping lower, or something, because the top of his head is nowhere near touching the architrave anymore. He must be
getting old. I hear him talking to Terror as he heads down the back stairs and the thudding of her hooves following him down. She likes to escort visitors to the gate.

“Do you want a coffee tomorrow?” I ask Helen as we walk down the hallway to the front door. I talk softly so I don't wake the kids.

“I'll be busy attention seeking tomorrow,” she says, looking at me in the dim light of the moon that comes through the glass panel in the front door.

“Oh, Helen, don't. I didn't mean it. I'm sorry.”

“You never mean it, Loretta.”

She steps out through the front door and pulls it shut quietly behind her. I stand in the half-light, shocked, suddenly shivering.

THE NEXT DAY
is the last day of term, and the parents are at the school gate early. Helen's here to pick up the Tim Tams. She's making a big show of chatting and laughing with everyone but me. I stay sitting in the driver's seat of the Holden, my left bum cheek almost impaled on the broken spring that poked its way through the vinyl last week.

Melissa and Jake are so excited about their visit to Patsy's house that when they get into the car their shrill voices sound like squeaking bats. Melissa is talking about the shops she's going to visit in Melbourne and Jake keeps interrupting with descriptions of the food George cooked both times she came to visit us. He seems to expect she'll spend his whole visit in the kitchen, whipping up culinary masterpieces to thrill a six-year-old—chocolate crackles, hot dogs, toffee, pancakes.

“Auntie George is a chef!” he screams at no one from the backseat.

I can't understand how I made these children.

It takes them a while to realize we're not going home.

“I have to pack!” Melissa shrieks. “Mum, we have to go home now!”

Who knows what she thinks she's going to pack. It's as if
the promise of a trip to Melbourne has addled her mind and she thinks she has more than four outfits.

“Sit tight,” I tell them. “We're going on a little trip.”

In the rearview mirror I see Melissa fall back against the seat. How on earth will she have time to choose between her three good shirts if we waste our time driving around the countryside?

I take a full tour of Gunapan, starting at the CWA Hall, following the route of the annual Rhododendron Parade, which passes the eleven Gunapan houses with rhododendron bushes and ends at the local park, then I ease the car off north to the footy ground and travel the dirt road out to Wilson Dam and then further north. Melissa and Jake quiet down and sit staring out through the windows.

This is all a ploy to buy time while I plan what to say to them. I considered leaving “the talk” till they got back from their holiday, as Norm suggested, but I know I'll fret the whole time anyway so I might as well have a crack at this problem now.

When we reach the lookout on Bald Hill, I climb out of the car. Melissa and Jake stay sitting in the back. They won't look at me.

The wind is barely blowing down in town, but up here it's brisk and biting. We're the only people here. The view looks over Gunapan, the abattoir, the farms. The first autumn rain came last week, but the land is still dry and the grass and trees are like children's models made of straw and sticks. I can see our little house over to the south with the neatly paddocked hobby farm opposite. It's incredible to think I've been in Gunapan for thirteen years. Shouldn't I get some kind of award?

A long way away, to my left, the Bolton Road winds through the forest. The gash of the development is even bigger
than I'd realized. In the center of the cleared land is a deep rectangular hole with large yellow machinery parked around it. Maxine told me she drove past last week on the way to Merv Bull's garage and they've put
Do Not Enter
signs all along the road. That used to be public land. I'm mad about this. Right now I'm mad about everything.

When I'm completely chilled through and the kids still haven't got out of the car, I go back and get into the driver's seat. At first I turn around to look at them, but twisting my neck is painful, so I turn to face the front and adjust the rearview mirror to see their reactions. They're both looking down as if something very important is curled up in their laps.

“You're bullying those new children.”

They don't reply. I thought Melissa would jump in to defend herself. I thought Jake might cry. Nothing. They sit still and stare at their hands.

“I'm ashamed.” It's me who starts to cry. I press my lips tightly together and hold my breath, but tears gather at the corners of my eyes and run down my face. My nose fills with snot and I have to breathe through my mouth. I'm afraid to say anything else because my voice will give away that I'm crying, and I don't think they can see that I am because I'm facing the windscreen. I want them to know I'm angry, not think I'm a pathetic, crying mother.

The wind is buffeting the car, whistling through the perished rubber seals around the windows. A single splat of autumn rain hits the windscreen. Inside, we're saying nothing. The tears stop dribbling. I pull a hankie from my pocket and dab away the wetness, then blow my nose as quietly as I can, but the wet snot sound is a dead giveaway that I've been crying.

“Why? Are you unhappy?” I decided on the drive here not
to mention Tony. If it's about Tony, I'm sure Melissa will let me know.

Bald Hill isn't bald anymore. The Gunapan Beautification Committee built a park up here, with benches and a lookout tower and shrubs and trees and a toilet block. The vegetation is stunted from the hot wind in summer and the sudden frosts of winter. When we first moved to Gunapan, Tony and I came up here for a picnic. I dropped the sandwiches in the dirt, Tony drank too much beer and got a headache in the hot sun, his car battery went flat for no obvious reason, and we had to wait two hours for a tow truck. “Welcome to Gunapan,” I said to Tony, laughing, as we sat waiting on the picnic bench and watching nothing move in the town below. He didn't laugh. That would be lesson number twenty-three no one taught me: don't marry a man who has no sense of humor.

“We're not leaving till I get some answers.”

The only time they're this quiet is when they're asleep. I can outwait them. I know Jake simply cannot say silent for much longer. I'm fairly certain that Melissa is building a case in her mind and will soon present the argument for the defense. I reach for my bag and my trusty Caramellos. Chocolate and caramel can soothe any situation, if administered early enough. Naturally, my evil, bullying children will have to do without. They watch me cram three into my mouth. I consider a fourth, but decide that only a death in the family is a four-Caramello crisis.

I like to close my eyes when I'm sucking on a Caramello. It makes the taste stronger and the bad things of the outside world disappear for a few minutes. However, having my eyes closed doesn't mean that I lose my other faculties. I hear the click and creak as Melissa opens her door.

“Montchu dare nget outf dis kaa,” I say, mouth glued up with Caramello.

The door groans and clunks as Melissa pulls it shut. In the rearview mirror I see her look at Jake. Jake looks back at her. I can't read their expressions. The silence continues, punctuated by the whistling of the wind. The Caramellos melt to nothing but a sweet aftertaste. As I'm wondering what to do next, a thick foul miasma creeps over the seat and encloses me.

“Jake!” Melissa screams. She flings open her door and falls out of the car. So do I. It's incredible that a six-year-old can produce so much stink. Jake sits with his legs clenched together.

“I need to do poo,” he says firmly. “I need to do poo very soon.”

The gray concrete public toilet block squats on the very peak of Bald Hill. I point Jake in that direction and stuff a wad of tissues in his hand.

“No more than five minutes!” I shout after him as he hurries off in a tight waddle. He's inherited his father's habit of spending fifteen to twenty minutes on the toilet, pondering whatever they ponder.

Over at the picnic area Melissa perches on a table with her feet resting on the bench below. She's having a growth spurt and her school dress is too short. I can see the faint outline of her budding breasts pressing against the cotton of the dress. I have to take a deep breath and remember how hard it is to be a girl going through puberty. Of course, my puberty only arrived when I was fourteen. A late developer in so many ways.