The sun came in the windows midmorning—about 10am in summer—and then by midday it was overhead, leaking light down on that solitary house in the valley, making the surface tension on the dewdrops break and flow into pools of damp. You didn’t know if it was better to keep the lights on during the day: the artificial, soft, orange glare? Or the natural, grey twilight glow? The whole house was changed when the direct sunlight plunged in through the dirty windows for those two hours. Life found them here and it tried hard to give of its weak, heartless light. The corners of the room were suddenly visible. The pile of washing looked valid and possible: a step in the circle of life. You could get a glimpse at the original colour of the carpet and upholstery. You could see the artist’s signature in the corner of that painting. The spiderwebs and the dust lit up and sparkled, willing to be cleaned away if someone chose to. There was even half an hour where you would have to turn the television off because the sunlight was direct on the screen. Does sunlight make a chemical reaction to the air, to make it more breathable? Was it a natural disinfectant, washing the bathroom tiles down as it flooded the room through a frosted glass window? Beth was still in bed usually. She got up to find the house dim once more, peering out at the sunshine around it.
The middle of nowhere. A strip of houses and farmland thrown out of cars as they sped up the Bass Highway. Mangled eucalyptus trees staggered into one another, finding their footing in long grass filled with bark, snakes and insects. The dark, wormy earth swallowed up sunlight like the grave. The weatherboard shack had gradually unpainted itself, clutching corrugated tin over its sickly frame. It marked out its boundaries in mockery of a house: a metal letterbox slouched against the driveway entrance, weedy gravel drooled down about a hundred metres to the posts and palings of the front garden. The front of the house couldn’t tell the difference between the iron table and chairs under the willow and the farm machinery by the gate. Blackberries crept their probing fingers where prudish hands should have slapped them off. Spiders abandoned dusted webs in the veranda roof and made their homes in old gumboots and under bicycle seats.
The backyard ended in a condemned toilet, with a green plastic awning. There was a floodlight that lit the area at night: beer bottles lined the wall of the house; newspapers and foodscraps; an axe and a woodpile; a clothesline and a pegbag. An old bathtub sat there, squatted in the shadows, green and black with mould. The small vegetable patch had gone to seed, garlic stalks almost as high as the roof. The backyard was fenced in on all three sides. Chicken wire and straw could still be seen in the scrub, but no hens to lay eggs there anymore. No eggs you’d want to eat, anyway, if a featherless chicken creature still lurked in there. They called the dog Toby. An erratic red heeler who lived too long. Toby went blind, then deaf. He would pace around in slow, manic circles, still able to see the familiar places in his mind’s eye. He lay down one day in the middle of the backyard and didn’t get up. His body slowly melted into the earth. Stretched skin, like leather, still covered the skull’s snout, jutting out of the mud like the land itself was howling.
She didn’t plan on this. This sort of thing doesn’t happen to people like her. So you don’t worry about it. But very occasionally it does. And it catches you by surprise. It was like sinking. Gradual, gradual sinking. Things you could always return to, like parents and work, one day were out of reach, high up among the branches, hanging free from mud and insects. And other things, things you would never ever consider, rose up around you. Knee height, waist height: you might find yourself doing it when you are really drunk or really, really down. Chest height, neck height: it’s all around you. It’s normal now. You can’t get out if you wanted to. You can’t remember what it was like up there, with your head in the branches. Like stars in the sky. Things you look at and wonder about sometimes. She wanted to be a TV news reporter when she was a little girl. As she grew up she thought maybe a designer or an architect. Or maybe a journalist. She never really wanted kids. She didn’t think about it. That’s the way things normally work. You’re allowed to wait until something makes you start thinking about it. And you get used to the idea and talk about it more often. And one day you know what’s right. You just know.
Jarrad came from Elizabeth Town. He left when he was seventeen, swearing he’d never come back. He met Beth at Knopwoods and made his move. He asked for her number before she left his place and he called her and she answered the phone and that’s how it started. They were just using each other but she got pregnant. He didn’t want to get rid of the baby. She was angry at first, but she changed her mind. Because what? It was something to do. And it’s what you do next. His mum had shacked up with the bloke who ran the Roadhouse so the family house was empty. Maybe some kind of instinct made him say she should come back home with him and he’d get work at one of the dairy farms. And she agreed to it. Why graduate? Why get a job? Why be happy? Why be cool, even? Why do anything? Who says? Just leave with fucken Jarrad. Just have a baby and rot. Fuck it. This whole thing, moving up here, in the middle of nowhere, was just a joke. Just a big 3D bloody prank. Makes things simple, though. Makes things quiet. And really goddam cold.
Beth was patient through the next seven months and Jarrad settled into what he thought was the rest of his life. He didn’t see it coming. He’d wonder out loud if they should get married sometime. He had his morning routine: cigarette, coffee, eggs, pack lunch, take a dump, boots on, kiss her cheek and out the door. He had his afternoon routine: check the mail, fuss in the yard, kiss her cheek, can of beer, cigarette and paper, walk the dog. Drive “all the way” into Deloraine for appointments and the big shop every week or two. He didn’t see it coming.
Seven months of pacing around the house all alone and walking, then later waddling, through soggy fields or scuffing along the highwayverge gravel. Silence everywhere. Except shouting in her head. And often nothing in her head either but big, spacious silence. Dim, cold, soggy silence. She and her mum had the worst fight before she left. She’d still talk to her on the phone but told her don’t come visit. Her dad came up every six weeks or so but he didn’t try to say anything. He gave her money and gifts. Every time she told her mum don’t come visit, her mum’d start crying. Jarrad named the baby after his mum’s mum and middle name after his dad’s mum. When Mable Agnes was born, it hurt like hell and then felt like nothing. Cute fussing little creature. But Beth felt like she was two centimetres back inside away from her eyes, watching the baby feed, watching her hands roll up and chuck a dirty nappy in the bin, wiping clean, rocking to sleep. When she wasn’t needed she just slept or stared. The more upset her mum got on the phone, the further back Beth retreated inside away from her eyeballs. And Jarrad doted and stroked and kissed. He didn’t see it coming.
Eight weeks after Mable was born, he turned off the highway and parked halfway up the driveway, tired and peaceful after another massive day on the farm. Rattled the keys as he checked the mailbox and dicked around with bits and pieces in the front garden on the way to the front door. Cleared up a can chucked out of a car window probably. He needed to do some work around here eventually: tidy things up properly and plant some stuff. And he opened the door and gave a shout of surprise because Beth was right there, Mable in her arms, right in the hallway, right in front of him. He laughed at himself, smiled at Beth and opened the flyscreen. She smiled slightly. Jarrad leaned forward to give her a kiss and she put Mable in his arms instead. He looked down at Mable in his arms and saw a couple of bags in the hallway floor. Jarrad looked up at Beth and then she slapped him really fucking hard in the face and he stepped back, out onto the veranda. Then in four quick movements, there’s three bags thrown out beside him and the door closed and locked.
She remembered that time when her parents dragged her to dinner with Kylie and her family. That was years ago now, before she’d finished school. Before she’d left home. Before her parents split up. She had stood in her room, paralysed by furious irritation at her mum and the immense desire to just be free from everything. She and her mum had been in wordless conflict for days about everything. And her mum wanted her to play nicely for Kylie and her family and she just wanted to explode in her mum’s face like a car bomb. Dress nicely, she had said. Put in some effort, please Beth. She considered dressing even wilder than normal. Hate brewed inside her. She’d make this dinner a fucken misery. But she kept dropping her black lipstick. She got frustrated and threw it across the room and stared in the mirror. Back in Grade 6, Kylie and Beth were going to move into a house together when they grew up. They’d get cats and pick out plants and host dinner parties they thought. What would Kylie be doing now? How long had it been? Three years? She’d feel like she’d have to explain why she’d stopped sending Christmas cards and birthday cards, because Kylie always remembered. Kylie would be there same as she always was. Just the same. So she cooled off and she did try to dress nicely and she went willingly and happily and tried really, really hard to make it work out fine. She would stoop to Kylie’s level. It was the decent thing to do.
The memory sunk down in the bottom of her belly even now, because she got it all wrong. She tried to dress normal and nice but totally missed the mark because she was out of practice and actually hadn’t bought new clothes like that in years. None of it fit properly and the colours were wrong and maybe the make-up was overdone? When she met her mum in the hallway, her mum looked at her funny because she didn’t look quite right, but her mum didn’t want to say anything probably because at least it was better than ripped fishnets. But Beth could picture it now. And then when they got there she found out that Kylie was actually really cool and sophisticated and interesting. She wasn’t doing Kylie a favour, which just made it so much worse. There she was eating her garlic bread happily and kind of glamorously actually and she was being nice and friendly and cool. And what about Beth? She just remembered the look on her mum’s face as she walked back from the bathroom on those drunken cork platform sandals she still had in her closet. Her mum was pouring water into her glass and her dad was talking to Kylie’s stepdad. Her mum just looked up and smiled sadly at her as she came towards the table. Looked up at her and loved her. So innocent and wooden in her dressups. And here they all were having a nice time. And the thing was that everyone else was just in their clothes.
When she came to the door, she could tell that Stephen almost asked her if Beth lived here. But he recognised her. She just looked with an empty face and said:
—Oh, it’s you.
And left the door open and walked back inside.
Her hair was tangled, limp and brown, with rusted orange at the ends. She moved in a startled sleepwalk. She wore a massive, filthy, black woollen jumper and grey longjohns. Her shins tapered into thick orange socks. He found her slouched in a brown suede cornercouch in the lounge at the back of the house. She looked at him dopey but suspicious because the smack was wearing off now and she was coming awake.
—I don’t need you, she mumbled.
—I’m still here.
—You can’t stay here.
—I’ll find somewhere to stay.
—I don’t need you. I didn’t ask for you to come here.
—I know.
She was hoping he might get angry but was pleased to at least see his uncertainty. He was hesitating about sitting down and finally sat in a faded floral armchair. She got up and went to the toilet. He almost stood up again, until he realised what she was doing and sat back down again to wait. She came back and they sat in silence while. That cold, twilight, silence.
—I just. I… I bought a Honda Civic, haha, he showed her the car key as evidence. His little sword. Got it cheap. Too cheap, actually: it broke down before I got past Bridgewater. Cost as much to fix it as to buy it. Anyway here I am.
—Here you are, she raised her eyebrows sceptically at him. You shouldn’t be here.
—I… I prayed about it, he said clumsily, looking at her earnestly. And I felt bad about things. I thought. I dunno. I.
—You prayed about it? she snorted. You prayed about it? she felt intelligence somewhere deeper inside laughing, but her eyelids were so simple and heavy and blocked him from view for a few moments. Expression dropped off her face.
—Yeah… I prayed about it, he said to her blank face and closed eyes. I prayed about. I asked your Dad where you were. He’s worried about you, you know—
—That’s none of your business, Stephen, she groaned wearily, and her skull flopped into her palms, cheeks squished up around her eyes. That’s none of Dad’s business. As she looked up at him, her palms pulled back her bottom lip and her fingertips pulled down the skin under her eyes: a zombie looking up at him
—I felt… bad. I dunno, he said softly, looking away. I wanted to do something to help. To make things better.
—That’s not my job… I’m not your… she exhaled loudly through her palms and sort of let herself almost doze for a while.
He sat for a while but she didn’t move. He wandered around the room, in slowly dilating circles, curious, nervous. He walked to the back door, and looked out into the yard, then up at the hills beyond the trees. He stepped out, lit a cigarette, prayed halfthoughts and noticed he was hungry. After ten minutes he heard her at the door and turned around. She was smoking too, looking more awake, more Beth.
—Prayed, huh? You got religion, didn’t you? That’s so weird.
—Yeah, I did. I became… a… Christian, he said straight into her eyes.
—That’s so weird, she said in the back of her throat, cigarette in mouth, ready to inhale.
—Maybe it is. I don’t think so.
—What happened to you? she said through the remnants of exhaled smoke.
He looked her in the eye. He looked lighteningfast from her head to toes to eyes again. He looked past her into the lounge room beyond.
—What happened to you? he said.
—Fuck off, she said.
Jarrad moved back with his mum and she helped look after Mable. They tried a few times to fix things: he came with his mum and they called to her through the door. When he started getting worked up, Robyn took him away again. Maybe she was kind or maybe she was cunning: after all, Jarrad had no chance if he got mean. Robyn came one more time and she brought Mable and this time Beth did answer the door and talked to her on the front veranda. She wanted to know why? She wanted to offer help. She wondered would Beth like to hold her baby again? Told her one or two little nothings about her. About her namesakes, Mable and Agnes. And this black empty fog just unfurled in Beth’s heart, a deadness where love should have been. And she began to cry from the diseased despair and the baby would’ve weighed an emotional tonne and Robyn’s face like forceps trying to pull her out from hiding deep behind her eyeballs. As the crying thickened, she asked Robyn politely to go and never come back and then she closed the door. It was an answering machine message that told her when Jarrad was killed in a farm machinery accident, along with date and time for the funeral.
Never once did they tell her she had to move out of the house. Over the following months, she did enough of the wrong things with enough of the right people that she didn’t have to find work and she could also get the drugs that she wanted and the food that she needed and the money for the bills. This undead existence was as easy as it was horrible. At least she didn’t have to feel anything or be anything. That was a cold, soggy comfort. It kept things simple. Kept things quiet. But so fucken cold.
Stephen came around again the next day in the afternoon and he didn’t stay long. He had a room at the pub just up the road. He was thinking about finding work there at the roadhouse or a farm. Or nearby town somewhere or something. She didn’t take him too seriously. Lizzy Town was a hole and she was not much better than that. He came again the next day but she was in bed and she was really well deep down in the soggy earth. She was Toby the dog, melted down howling from the abyss. Stephen had left some fresh food for her and some chocolate for her and left again.
He waited a few days after that. On Sunday he attended the St Alban’s Anglican Church in Parkham. One young man in a tiny coven of elderly women. The brief homily from a frail, robed priest, more Buddhist than Christian. But the Shakespearean liturgy they recited together in that miserable chapel opened up heaven itself. He went to see Beth after the church service. She greeted him more warmly and offered him coffee. She sat near him on the suede couch and drew him in. She rarely felt like it but she could if she needed to and it was too easy to lead him on. Not really something a bornagain Christian should be doing after church.
Beth wriggled from under him, and sat up on the couch, reaching for clothes, slowly and calmly. He watched her sleepily.
—This means we’re the same, Stephen, she said and looked at him to make sure he was hearing her. She looped and clipped her bra and pulled on her jumper. I don’t want you to talk to me about God. She pulled pants on one leg, the other, and then jumped into them. And you can’t talk to me about Mable. We’re just the same, she said, standing over him. That’s what this means.
—Ok, he said, sitting up. But he looked so not ok.
—But you can stay here if you want, she said, crossing her arms and smiling.
He just kept sitting there, still, like something had broken, trying to think through what he really thought.
—Thanks, Beth.
She went to the kitchen and turned on the kettle. He just sat there some more. Then he stood up.
—Sorry. I… I think I need to clear my head a bit. Sorry. But thanks, he said in a daze. And he pulled on his clothes and touched her shoulder as he left the house.
He walked up the highway, shoes crunching in the gravel. Thinking about tomorrow and then the next day and then the day after that. A car booming past him and disappeared around a corner. Wherever he walked, there he would be. The road wound off endlessly before him to the north, to the coast: to Sassafras, Devonport, Melbourne, Mildura, Broken Hill, Longreach, Thursday Island, Port Moresby, Tokyo, Sendai, Sapporo, Yuzhno-Sakhalinsk, Magadan, Seymchan, Srednekolymsk, Chokurdakh. He walked sadly and happily; simply and quietly. The grey daylight began to fade to damp twilight and he turned around and walked back home.
