The Fine Color of Rust Page 6

  “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.

  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 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.”

  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, gray, and smelling of diesel, the only place we could afford a flat. Everyone there was miserable and angry and even our neighbors 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 center 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,” Norm announces from the doorway, before he’s even put a foot in the room.

  “What’s that?”

  He’s got something under his arm. Something green, with wheels.

  Norm looks down as if he’s forgotten he was carrying anything. “Oh, a trike for Jake. Found it when I was rearranging the junk in the yard. It must have been hidden in that tractor rim for years. No, what’s unbloodybelievable”—he puts the tricycle on the floor and waves a sheet of paper in my direction—“is this.”

  “You’d better meet my sister and her friend first.”

  I introduce them all and Norm stuffs the paper in his pocket before shaking Patsy’s hand, then George’s. He looks George in the eye and says, “Welcome to Gunapan.”

  “Thanks,” George says, wiping her hand on her jeans. “Into cars?”

  “Nah, love, I’m a recycler. Salvage and parts for all things man-made,” Norm says. He splays his hands in front of him. They’re spectacularly dirty today.

  “Norm, didn’t I buy you some soap?”

  “Don’t want to strip the natural oils from my sensitive skin,” he says, turning his hands over to examine the palms, which are equally filthy.

  In the old cars and house lots that turn up at Norm’s junkyard, he finds wo
men’s magazines and house-and-garden magazines and reads them cover to cover. Then at unexpected moments he’ll give you a beauty tip. “Your hair could do with a lift, Loretta,” he’ll say. “Have you tried lemon juice to bring out the blond highlights?” Sometimes he puts on a camp voice to do it. Other times, like today, he’ll be completely deadpan. Most people don’t know how to react, but George looks back at him, equally deadpan.

  “Very wise. That must be how you’ve maintained that remarkable complexion.”

  Norm’s fingers reach up and play gently across his stubble. “Exactly. And I’m very careful about my diet. Not too many colorful foods.”

  “Like vegetables?” George suggests.

  “Exactly,” Norm answers.

  I’m thrilled that George and Norm are getting on so well. I’ve never seen Norm be rude to anyone who didn’t deserve it, but I was wondering last night how well I actually know him. Sure, Norm’s looked out for us like a grandfather since Tony left, but I hardly hear anything about his life before we met him. For all I know he might have been a member of the Ku Klux Klan or the anti-lesbian league of Gunapan.

  Norm stays for tea and we cram around the kitchen table with our plates of wild-mushroom risotto. Having George, a two-star chef, in the house, I decided to have a go at something more adventurous than my usual Tuesday-night chops and salad, but the anxiety of cooking for a professional was too much for me. I’m shattered. Now I’ve drunk a glass of the wine Patsy brought and all my anxiety is gone. The light around the table is glowing golden and everyone is charming and attractive, even Norm. I look at my darling children, full of wonder at their beauty and intelligence.

  “Mum, is the rice supposed to be crunchy?” Jake comes in once again with the wrong question at the wrong time.

  Patsy leans over and whispers in Jake’s ear. The wild mushrooms cost a fortune so I keep chewing, trying to ignore the gritty bits grinding against my teeth. George is telling Norm all about Paris.

  “Patsy was writing notes for her book and I was shopping for meals and washing the clothes. Very Gertrude and Alice.”

  “Right, Gertrude and Alice,” Norm says. He looks at me and I smile a knowing smile. George is obviously talking about a fashion label.

  “Anyway, Paris has the most amazing charcuteries full of cured meat. I wish my French was better. I pointed at things in the display cabinet and took them home to try and figure out what they were. The most amazing flavors! I never realized you could get so much out of a pig.”

  Patsy groans. “Here we go. Now we’ve been to Paris she’s obsessed. She’s threatening to build a meat-curing shed in the backyard in Carlton. She’ll be wanting a piggery next.”

  “I might have a few odds and ends at the yard to help out with a shed. You could even knock up a smokehouse,” Norm remarks. He lifts Jake’s books and pencils off the dresser and he and George start sketching smokehouse plans on the back page of an exercise book.

  “What was unbloodybelievable?” I finally remember to ask Norm.

  He colors a watermelon pink under his stubble. A pink of righteous outrage by the tone of his voice.

  “That bloody council has sent me a bloody notice telling me that the yard is ‘unsightly’ and has to be tidied up.” He pulls the crumpled letter from his pocket and hands it to me. “Unsightly? If you call Picasso unsightly! That yard is an abstract interpretation of the changing face of Gunapan, I’ll have you know. It’s art. And they want me to clean it up before May.”

  “Why?” I scan the letter, but it has no explanation of why anyone would care about whether Norm’s yard is unsightly or not.

  “It’s got to be the development.”

  At last, someone who knows about the development. I should have asked Norm in the first place. He knows everything about this town.

  “What’s going on, Norm? I saw a big hole in the forest.”

  “The development,” Norm says again, as if he’s talking to himself. He’s like me—we spend far too much time talking to ourselves, even when people are in the room with us. “What else could it be but the development trying to smarten up the town for when the tourists drive through? That council has got a lot to answer for.”

  “Sorry.” I turn to Patsy and George. “This must be boring for you, but I want to find out about this development thing. They’ve trashed the forest down on the Bolton Road and—”

  “Mike from the council’s waste department said he’d seen that councillor Samantha Patterson with a whole lot of blokes in suits, poking around the bushland, and next thing they’ve got a license to pump water from a spring underneath,” Norm butts in.

  “Pump water? But this town’s desperate for water! If there’s water, it should be coming into the town.”

  “I’ll do the dishes,” Patsy says, standing and stretching.

  “You help Aunty Patsy with the dishes, Liss.” I’ve already worded up Patsy on the bush-pig question, hoping Melissa might feel more inclined to talk to a more glamorous relative. I tow Norm off to the lounge room to interrogate him about what’s going on while George takes Jake outside in the last of the evening light to teach him about riding a trike.

  By the time Norm’s told me everything he knows about the development, which is only that some big corporation bought the land and the council approved the building plans and the pumping of the spring, I’m spent. With Patsy here for two full days already and George for one, I’ve run out of words. Adult conversation takes so much more work than telling someone to brush their teeth. After Norm heads off to the pub to show his unsightly letter around, I decide to take a catnap before dessert.

  9

  THE NEXT MORNING at seven o’clock, mouth gluey, skirt rucked up around my waist, blouse twisted into an armlock, I struggle off the bed, calling out that the kids should be getting up now. Melissa pops her head around the door.

  “Aunty George is making homemade crumpets for breakfast.” She shakes her head reproachfully at me. “You slept in your clothes last night!”

  Jake races into the room and throws himself on the bed. “Aunty Patsy says I’m probably the smartest boy she’s met in her whole life!”

  We’re eating crumpets with butter and jam when the doorbell rings. It’s too early for anyone I know to visit so I decide to ignore it. Everyone looks at me.

  “It’s seven thirty! Who could it be? The Queen? Someone’s probably asking for money for charity.”

  The doorbell rings again. I keep chewing my crumpet. I had no idea homemade crumpets were so muscular.

  A head passes the kitchen window and a minute later something clatters on the back veranda.

  “Wait,” I hear Norm say.

  George opens the back door. Patsy screams. Jake jumps up from the table and starts running.

  “Meet your lawn mower,” Norm declares.

  The goat stands as high as his waist. It’s rubbing its stubby horns up and down the veranda post and pawing at the floorboards.

  “Good God.” George steps closer to inspect the goat. “Look at the size of that thing. Is it, is it . . .?”

  “It’s a goat, George,” Norm replies calmly. “Loretta keeps complaining about mowing the lawn. Here’s a free lawn mower.”

  “No,” I protest.

  “She’s a beautiful goat. A lovely nature. She’ll be a good family pet as well.”

  “No.”

  To my amazement, while Jake is cowering behind the kitchen door—there, he does take after his father—Melissa gets up from her chair and goes over to the goat. She leans down and presses her face into the goat’s neck and sniffs. Then she moves around in front of it and looks into its eyes.

  “Hello, goat,” she says.

  The goat pushes its head forward and gently butts her shoulder. I feel Patsy’s hand take mine and squeeze it under the table. Melissa has her arms around the goat’s neck and she’s leaning her face against its creamy curly coat.

  “I hope that goat’s clean,” I say to Norm. Norm shrugs, picking someth
ing black and crumbly off his pants and flicking it into the yard before he speaks.

  “Animals have their own kind of clean.”

  We’re all mesmerized by Melissa, who seems to have turned into a goat whisperer. The goat’s nuzzling her right hand, and with her other hand she’s stroking its chest.

  “Is it a male or a female?” I ask Norm.

  “Female,” he answers. “You don’t want a buck. Very smelly, bucks.”

  “Can I give it some crumpet?” Melissa asks George, who graciously agrees that Melissa can feed her two-star crumpet to an animal of a species known to eat clothes and the clothesline they came on.

  The goat nibbles the crumpet from Melissa’s hand. Without my noticing, Norm, Melissa, and the goat seem to have edged further and further forward so that now they are in the kitchen. As if it can hear my thoughts the goat turns to me and burps loudly.

  “No,” I protest again.

  Melissa swings around from goat adoration to give me her well-practiced “evil mother” look.

  “No goats in the kitchen.” I have to take a stand. Norm and Melissa and the goat start backing out the door. They jam up halfway and have to wriggle around. It’s the goat that clatters out backward first.

  “It has to have a wash.”

  “I’ll help Melissa with that,” Patsy the traitor says.

  “Never in the house.”

  Everyone nods. I realize they’re all against me.

  “We don’t know how to look after it.”

  “Nothing to it.” His jolly tone says that Norm knows he’s won. “Let it eat the lawn and give it some feed from the livestock feed shop. A bit of water, and you’re right. My mate who owns goats’ll drop by now and again to check it’s OK.”

  “I’m not picking up its poo.”

  Strangely, no one jumps in to solve that problem.

  “I said, I’m not picking up its poo. If you want to keep it, Liss, you have to clean up after it.”

  “I will,” she calls out from the veranda, where she’s still busy having a goat love-in.

  Norm leans in and whispers to her. At least, he thinks he’s whispering. Norm’s slowly going deaf, but he hasn’t realized yet.