The Fine Color of Rust (7 page)

“Hi, Mum. How are you feeling?”

She turns her gaunt sallow face to me and frowns. “Did you bring me a Milk Tray?”

I produce the box of chocolates with a flourish from my handbag and pass it to Melissa. “Give these to your grandmother, sweetie.”

“My name is Melissa,” my gracious daughter answers.

“Give me the chocolates, girl,” my even more gracious mother says. “I've been waiting for them since eleven o'clock.”

“Are you sure you can eat those, with your liver?”

My mother reaches for the nurse alarm button.

“OK,” I say, taking the box from Melissa and tossing it onto the bed. “So how are you feeling?”

I send Jake to the vending machine next to the ward for a packet of chips while Mum tells me about my sisters, Tammy and Patsy. Tammy visited yesterday with her three immaculate children. Tammy brought a hand-knitted bedjacket, five novels, a basket of fruit, and best wishes from her husband, Rob, who is smarter than Einstein and a better businessman than Bill Gates—apparently Bill could learn a thing or two from Rob about point-of-sale software. One of the children had written a poem for her nanna.

“Melissa, do you want to read your cousin's poem?” I ask sweetly.

Melissa smirks into the magazine she's picked up.

My other sister, Patsy, visited with her friend. Mum thinks that Patsy's friend would look so much nicer if she lost some weight and started wearing more feminine clothing. And took care of that facial hair, for God's sake. Then she might be able to get a man.

“Speaking of which, have you heard from thingo?” she asks.

“Nope,” I say. “So when do you get out of here?”

“Where are you staying?”

“We're in a motel.”

“It's horrible,” Melissa says. “The bedspreads smell of cigarettes. And they're baby-shit yellow.”

“Melissa!” I protest, but she gives me the as-if-you've-never-said-it-yourself look.

“You could always stay with Tammy. They have a six-bedroom house.”

They do have plenty of room at the house and we did try staying once, but Tammy and I discovered that these days we can only tolerate two hours of each other's company before sisterly love turns sour. It became clear that she thinks her wealthy lifestyle exemplifies cultured good taste and mine has degenerated into hillbilly destitution, whereas I think Tammy is living a nouveau riche nightmare while I represent a dignified insufficiency.

Tammy's husband rarely comes home because he's so busy being successful. When he does arrive he's late, and Tammy's favorite nickname for him is “my late husband.” “Allow me to introduce ‘my late husband,'” she announces to startled guests. Her husband smiles distantly and gives her a shoulder squeeze like she's an athlete. Last time the kids and I came down we ate luncheon—not the meat but the meal—at their place on Sunday. Jake swallowed a mouthful of the smoked
trout and dill pasta and before it even reached his stomach he had puked it back into the plate. It looked much the same as before he had chewed it, but the sight of the regurgitation had Tammy's delicate children heaving and shrieking. “Haven't they ever seen anyone chunder before?” Melissa remarked scornfully on the way home.

My mother turns her attention to Melissa. “And you, young lady, are you doing well at school?”

Melissa looks at her grandmother with an arched eyebrow.

“Yes, Grandmother,” she answers.

“I won't have any granddaughter of mine being a dunce.”

Melissa turns her head and gives me a dead stare. I can't believe she's only eleven.

“All right,” I intervene briskly, “let's talk about you, Mum. How are you feeling? When do you get out?”

“I'm yellow, in case you hadn't noticed.”

“Can I get a packet of chips too?” Melissa says, so I give her some money and tell her to find Jake while she's at it.

“Good.” My mother pushes herself upright in the bed as soon as Melissa has left the ward. “Now the children are gone we can talk. I'm going to sell up and move to Queensland, the Gold Coast. Albert's bought a house on the canals with a swimming pool and a sauna. My liver's packing up. I don't know how I got this hepatitis thing, but I can only guess it was from your father all those years ago. That lying cheat. Apparently it's contagious. You and the kids had the test like I told you?”

“Yes, we're fine. Who's Albert?” I am incredulous.

“He's from the bingo. He's no great catch, I admit that, but who else is offering me a house in the sunshine?”

“Not the one with the five Chihuahuas? The one you used to make jokes about?”

“Having those dogs doesn't actually mean he's homosexual. He's quite virile for an older gentleman.”

“Oh, Mum, enough detail. And why can't you say this in front of the kids?”

“You need to tell them in your own time. I know they'll be upset I'm leaving, but when they get older they'll understand.”

“I'll break it to them gently.” I don't want to point out that we only come down to Melbourne at Christmas and her birthday anyway.

“Tammy and Patsy'll miss you,” I say. “And the junior poets.”

My mother almost smiles before she says, “I love Tammy's children dearly, you know that, Loretta.”

“I know.”

“Anyway, when I sell, I'm giving you a few thousand dollars. Don't tell Tammy or Patsy. You need it, they don't.”

From down the corridor comes a long howl, followed by grievous sobbing.

“They torture people in here, you know,” Mum says. “The nights are hell. The screaming and moaning, it's like being inside a horror film.”

I have a bad feeling that I recognize that howl. But rather than spoil the moment, I think about the good things.

“A few thousand dollars?” I say.

“Depending on the price I get for the flat. You'll get something, anyway. Five or six thousand, maybe.”

A holiday for one—or two?—in Bali, I think. Or an air conditioner. Or both! A proper haircut and blond tips! A bra that doesn't creak! Champagne and sloppy French cheese and pâté! Silk knickers!

“I expect you'll want to spend it on the kids, but keep a
couple of dollars for yourself, won't you. You could use a bit of smartening up. Any men on the horizon?”

“Actually,” I say, “there's a rather good-looking mechanic who definitely has eyes for me. He keeps himself quite clean, too.”

“As opposed to that grubby old junk man you hang around with?”

“Yes, as opposed to Norm, who has his own special standard of hygiene.”

“And has this bloke asked you out?”

“Not yet.” Needless to say, he hasn't recognized yet that he has eyes for me. I wonder if I am talking about Merv Bull. Have I developed a crush? Am I becoming Helen?

From down the corridor, the howling and sobbing is growing louder. I can't avoid it now.

“You need to look for your mother,” I can hear a woman telling Jake. “Open your eyes, dear.”

“Loretta, you should give up that political hocus-pocus you've got yourself into. Put your energy into finding a partner and a father for those children.”

“The Save Our School Committee is precisely for ‘those children.' Anyway, we've had a win. The minister for education's coming to Gunapan in a few weeks. We've got a chance to change his mind about closing the school.”

“Is he married?”

Jake's sobbing, very close now, startles awake the man in the bed across from Mum. He raises his spotty head and shouts, “You buggers! You buggers! Get out of it, you buggers!”

“Shut up,” my mother calls over at him, and he stops immediately.

“Nutcase,” she says to me. “Every time he wakes up he
thinks the Germans are coming for him.” Mum lets her head drop back onto the pillow and stares at the ceiling. “The Gold Coast. I can't wait.”

“So when do you go?”

“Mummeeeeeeee,” Jake screams as he runs into the room and flings his round little body onto my lap. He buries his face in my shirt, covering me in snot and tears. Melissa strolls in behind him eating a chocolate bar.

“The lady says she's going to clean up Jake's chips.”

With Jake in my arms I stagger out to the corridor and call out thanks to his rescuer, a woman in a blue cleaner's uniform who is hurrying back toward the lift.

“What were you doing on the second floor, Jakie?”

“Idroppedmychipsntheysaidicouldn'teatthemoffthefloor ndicouldn'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 rearview 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 dork.”

“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.

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 farther 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.”