The Break (6 page)

‘Yeah, busy. The usual.' She smiled.

He'd asked her out, once — she was so vibrant and gorgeous, and they always had a bit of a chat when he went in — but she'd said she was married. ‘Yeah, so am I,' he'd replied, amused but not exactly laughing. Married, still. Even though he hadn't seen his wife for years. She'd never come back from overseas. He didn't blame her, either.

He'd had to wonder:
was
Annemarie married, or was that just an excuse to bring the conversation to a rapid close? Really, what kind of intelligent, well-adjusted woman would ever want to go out with a junkie?

He swallowed the sweetened-up syrup. Annemarie always mixed it with a little cordial for him; it was too much, otherwise. Even after all this time, he couldn't stand the taste. He tried not to let it touch his teeth, the stuff rotted them away, dried up your saliva. Terrible, that he was here, how he got here. But he was luckier than some, he was on his way down, his
doctor reckoned he could be off the methadone in a year. He'd been detoxing for a year already, but you had to take it slow, the stuff was more addictive than the smack. Nice and slow. No stuff-ups. He knew some who were on it for life, couldn't even reduce their doses by a milligram without getting the full-on sweats and runs. The thought of never being free of it. No, he had to keep going well for the doc to let him go down south. He wanted to try to patch things up with Ferg, if he could, do a bit around the farm. They were the ones who'd always saved his arse, Ferg and Liza, and they were kind about it, despite what he'd done, the stress he'd brought to the family. Ferg still brewed on it, Mike knew that, but what could he do? You can't actually change the past. Lord, how he wanted to! He'd hated Ferg and Liza at times —
despised
them — for how good their lives were.

Yeah, he wanted to prove to Ferg that he could be okay too, live well, be … responsible. He'd never found the time to show the old man, but while his mum was still around, well, he ought to spend time with her. He sure as hell hadn't bothered before.

They lay together, trying to summon up something positive. It was Wednesday. Cray should have been at the mine, but things had gone awry. He wouldn't be going back. When he'd arrived yesterday he had rings greyly circling his eyes. Rosie felt sick, tried not to show it, made him a cup of tea after hugging him for as long and as strongly as she could.

She nearly said,
This all means something, has a reason
, but shook her head at the ceiling, remembering a friend once saying to her: ‘Those people who say
it was meant to be
, that's just bullshit. These things happen. You just have to try to go on, look ahead.'

Charcoal thunderclouds blocked the sun from their window.

Cray said, ‘I can't move, I can't think.'

Rosie felt scared. She pushed it back, diverted it. She made toast, spread vegemite on her piece, marmalade on his, took it back to bed.

He looked clearer after the food, propped himself up against a few cushions, looked around the room.

She turned to him. ‘Let's leave — go down south.'

He stared at her.

‘I mean, you're there every chance you get. Every long weekend, summer. You could go anywhere on your salary but it's always down to Margies.'

‘I know. You mean live there?'

‘Yeah.'

The woman next door was clattering about in her garden, shushing the dog when it barked.

‘Well …' He struggled to get it into his head. ‘Why would we do that, exactly?'

This. That guy at Leighton.

Cray rolled on to his side to face her, searching.

‘To be our own people,' she eventually managed, in a whisper.

‘Instead of …' And he was quiet for a moment. ‘Being other people's people,' he said finally.

Rosie let the tears come. ‘God, let's do our own thing, live the way we want to live, grow vegies and things. Pick grapes for a job. Whatever! Do something that's meaningful to
us
. I mean, I feel like everyone's waiting for us to
sort ourselves out
and
settle down
, but I couldn't care less about any of that. And I don't care what they think about us.'

Cray's fingers traced the shape of his receding hairline, and Rosie was reminded of the eight years between them. ‘But we
do
care, Rosie. That's the problem.'

‘It's too late now, isn't it?' Rosie said glumly. ‘It's too late to do it our own way.'

She got off the bed, moved around the room. ‘We've formed habits, we've already begun to fill the oldies' expectations — our bosses', even! And it's people our age, too — you remember Zoe and Al? I bumped into her today. They've bought a house, Cray, and they're getting married at the end of the year. She's got a
rock
on her finger!' Panic came in shifts. ‘We're stupid, we should never have started with any of it!'

She looked at Cray pleadingly, wanting him to disagree, say it wasn't true.

He didn't say a thing. Not for a while. And then he nodded.

‘Let's go anyway. Let's go there. Margies.'

 

 

 

The fridge grumbled into the night. Peppermints swished over the roof of the van. Rosie decided to get up rather than struggle with sleep.

All the caravans were in darkness, little curtains drawn on miniature homes. The toilet block was lit up like a late-night diner, and hundreds of insects batted themselves without reward against the white light of fluoros. Rosie ran over in her t-shirt and Cray's boardies, barefoot, avoiding the crippling gravel as much as possible. She chose the cubicle with the best light, read the holiday graffiti —
Sarah R 4 DS, together forever
, that sort of thing — and then relaxed.

The last couple of days had been full-on, packing, storing furniture, cleaning out their place in Freo — a total sweatathon thanks to a cyclone up north. To see the house empty of their things, to let it go. But a relief, too. Shedding
stuff
. Then not to have another place to go to. The drive down south, knowing that it was one-way, that they wouldn't be coming back after the weekend. They were driving into something, and it felt full, like they'd have to carve a space for themselves, rather than just sliding into a waiting spot like they always had in Freo.

They'd decided to relax and look around for the first few days, go for walks in the relative southern cool, and Cray of course wanted to surf. The boards had taken up most of the room in the car on the way down: extra passengers, the rubber-tipped noses pressing into the dash, tails against the back windscreen. Rosie'd had her arm over Cray's favourite board, the rhino chaser, for much of the long, sweeping drive, and had to reach over it awkwardly to touch Cray.

She tried not to think about her folks, their silent
disappointment
when she told them. It would just undermine her, get to her, if she let it in. Sometimes you have to be hard, uncaring, or you'll never be free. But what if that's not you, she thought, hardness? Then you're twice caught: being something you're not just to have the freedom to be who you are.

One of the barbecues still had a few warm coals under it, ticking and whispering away as the night grew thick. Rosie looked over at the orange-striped caravan they'd rented, where Cray was sleeping, where they could wake up and potter around, come back to after walks, and where they could read over mugs of tea in the afternoons and cook pasta to keep their bellies warm and full. That van was it. They had no other stuff to busy themselves with. It was so simple.

Cray was embracing the opportunity to sleep in. Rosie grinned, thinking she might have to check his pulse soon. She wanted him to wake up but didn't want to disturb him, so she put the kettle on in the hope that the rising noise of it would wake him.

He began to shift in the bed, then made a few grunts, which became slightly frenzied, until he made a loud
uh!
, which alarmed her, and woke him.

‘Jeez! Are you okay?' Rosie was sitting beside him on the bed.

Cray closed his eyes against the light and smiled at the sound of coming tea. ‘Oh, a dream about Shitslinger — I was … sharing my thoughts with him. Anyway, god, I want to forget it.' He opened an eye. ‘Man, it's warming up in here! What's it like outside?'

‘Beautiful. That sound of gravel under people's thongs and kids' bikes — summer holiday stuff. You slept for
ages
. Talk about sleep debt — do you know what time it is? Past eleven! I thought you might be dead in there!' She carefully wound the teabag string around the teaspoon. Clean air cooled across the curtains, across Rosie's hands.

Cray put the paper down. Unemployment and corporate fraud. The sound of TV came babbling in through the window.
TV
. The van next to theirs was decked out to the max, a couple in their sixties doing the round-Australia thing in style. All they needed was a satellite dish and they'd have a brick-and-tile on wheels.

‘Birth, school, work, death.'

‘What?' Rosie turned around.

‘Birth, school, work, death. It's hypnotising, just saying it,' he said, looking outside at the old biddy with a suitcase of toiletries heading off towards the shower block. ‘Life according to our parents' generation.'

Sam was gunna be late for the bus, and he still had another wet-sponge Weetbix to get through. He looked up to see if Mum or Dad were watching him, but they were talking about something in the kitchen. Sam scraped the sloppy remains onto the cartoons page of the paper, right on Modesty Blaise, who, as usual, was flashing her boobs at a crook. He squashed her up into a little package, pushing it into the bin on his way through the kitchen.

‘Okay, bye! See you this arvo, Mum.'

‘Have a good day, Sam.'

‘Sam —' Ferg looked at Liza, he hadn't had a chance to ask her yet. ‘We thought it might be nice to have a picnic down by the river this evening. Do you want to ask Jarrad?'

‘Unreal! Can we take the handlines?'

‘Yeah, I'll fix 'em up today, after I've been out to the trees. We've got enough reels, haven't we, Liza?'

‘For sure.' His mum looked surprised. ‘Of course, you know that women are better than blokes at fishing. More sensitive to what's going on under the surface.' She raised her eyebrows in challenge.

Sam and Ferg looked at each other.

‘They are
not
,' Ferg puffed.

‘More sensitive? What, like the last time we went to Denmark — you only caught buff bream, Mum!'

‘You've been reading too many of those fantasy novels, Lize.'

‘Well, we'll see, won't we?'

The cat pushed its head further into Liza's hand as she scratched and stroked it, and when she stopped, it opened its mustard eyes to see what other, more important thing she could possibly be doing.

She had the bright red and yellow plastic reels out, and the smelly, sandy tackle box. Puss snuffled around, shoving its nose into the fishiest compartments. Liza loved to fish, to catch just enough to eat, to cook over a fire, to eat the soft flesh. That's why she loved camping. The basics were genuinely basic. They went off in the truck when they could, but it wasn't often enough. They used to go overseas, but it was too expensive for them now. Anyway, all that travelling, Liza thought, all that soul-searching. You could do it in your back garden under the Hills Hoist, find the most serene place in the world next to the agapanthus.

From her bed, Pip saw Liza walk down the corridor with a pile of Sam's t-shirts. On her way back, Liza knocked lightly on her door. ‘Pip, we're going to have a picnic by the river tonight, are you up to coming?'

Pip looked up from her book. ‘Oh, that sounds lovely.'

‘Sam's going to ask Jarrad. I'll get a cooked chook, and make a salad. We'd love you to come, Pip. And it's going to be a beautiful day. Twenty-six.'

Pip definitely wanted to go. She was sick of lying on her bed reading, not that she'd admit it. And she could get Fergus to take her to Jack's … well, she could visit him, anyway. But she had to be careful about giving those two their space.
After all, it's enough just living here
, she thought.
Poor things, having to live with a craggly old woman.
She'd noticed the two of them talking in the kitchen this morning. Fergus'd said something about
nourishing
everyone, themselves — that was all she
caught, her hearing wasn't too good these days — and then he'd held Liza's hand, while Sam sat at the table eating his breakfast.

She looked at Liza now. What would Jack have done? Damn, she missed that man.

‘I'd love to. Give me a shout when you're ready. Oh, Liza? Would you like me to make some bread?'