Black Painted Fingernails (3 page)

Last week, my mother came indoors after tying brightly coloured Christmas streamers to the fruit trees to scare away the birds. She poured us each a glass of iced tea and sat beside me on the sofa.

‘You’re worried about something, aren’t you?’ she said, squeezing a lemon into her glass.

‘I’m . . . fine.’

She reached over and rubbed my shoulder, gently. ‘That’s what everyone says, James, right before they snap.’

‘Maybe I’m telling the truth, Mum. Ever thought of that?’

‘Don’t be silly. I know my son!’ She pulled my ear playfully.

‘Can you let go of my ear, please?’ I tipped the glass back, gulping quickly, and a piece of ice clunked against my nose.

‘James, you’ve got so much promise, so much to look forward to.’

‘What, such as leaving home?’

‘Don’t be like that.’

I stood and walked to the back door. ‘I’m not
like
anything, Mum.’

‘That’s why I’m worried.’

‘That’s the issue, isn’t it? What
you’re
worried about.’ I slid open the verandah door and said, ‘Well, don’t worry.’ Then I tripped over the entrance mat.

The highway is full of potholes and loose gravel. Clouds roll in from the west, their grey and white patterns giving shape to the distance. There’s a tattered billboard on the side of the road. Someone has scrawled a sign over it.

The Possum Man

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It’s written in black paint on a yellow background. He’s even tried to draw a possum: beady eyes, small mouth, ears the size of a donkey. Perhaps he can catch them, but he certainly can’t paint them.

I wonder how many calls the Possum Man receives.

The hitchhiker’s voice brings me back. ‘I reckon his name is Harry. Harry Burns.’

‘Who?’

‘The possum man.’

‘How did you know I was thinking . . .’

She gives me a look as if to say,
psychic
,
remember?

‘Harry wears an old hat given to him by a customer who thought money wasn’t enough. He shoved it on his head and he hasn’t taken it off since, except for bed and showers. His wife puts it through the wash occasionally; that’s why it’s so crumpled.’

‘How many possums does he catch each week?’

‘Five, no sweat. He takes them into the forest and lets them go. He’s hoping they’ll mate. The more possums, the more work.’

Suddenly a crackle of cockatoos swoop from a gum tree and the windscreen fills with white balls of feathers, flapping wings, pink eyes. I slam on the brakes and veer off the road, expecting the thump of bird on glass. The front wheels start to skid on the dirt, bumping over potholes. I ease off enough to give the tyres a chance to grip, too scared to change direction in case we roll.

We finally grind to a stop as dust envelops the car and a light on the dashboard blinks. The breath is high in my throat. The cockatoos land in a field beside the road. I switch off the engine, fingers of one hand locked on the wheel.

We look at each other, then at the birds. A semitrailer thunders past. I reach for the bottle of water in the cup-holder, twist the cap and offer it to her. She shakes her head. The water trickles down my shirt as I take a long gulp. I start the engine and slowly pull out, my eyes alert for birds, kangaroos, wombats . . . possums?

After a few minutes of silence, she says, ‘That’s twice you’ve swerved off the road.’

‘I didn’t want to . . . hurt the birds.’

‘Now that you’ve saved the wildlife, can I tell you a secret?’

‘If you do, it won’t be a secret anymore.’

‘I trust you – despite your driving.’

‘I’m not going to surprise my mum.’ She takes a deep breath. ‘I knew my mother had left home before I was told. By the look in my father’s eyes when he picked me up from school. I didn’t let on that I knew. I kept right on talking.’

‘How old were you?’

‘Ten. When Dad told my eldest brother, he punched the wall. How’s that for a reaction? My other brother just looked dull-eyed and sad, like a calf separated from the herd.’

‘What about your dad?’

‘Every time Dad walked past the damaged wall, he touched the splintered plaster. It was years before he fixed it. And he didn’t repaint it. That’s the only reminder we had of her leaving. An unpainted wall.’

Her eyes focus on the steering wheel. ‘Your parents, are they happily married?’

It’s not a question I’ve ever considered. They’re just . . .  there. I shrug. ‘Yeah. I suppose.’

The silence expands between us. Up ahead are two grain silos, painted white, with the name of the town written half on one, half on the other: DAH MOOR. Parked under one silo is a truck, loading grain in a swirl of dust and noise. The driver covers his mouth with a hankie. I pull over, letting the car idle, thinking of a little girl in a house full of boys.

She sighs. ‘None of us have seen her since she left.’

The truck moves from under the silo, the truckie watching us as he drives slowly by. A skinny tomcat pads across the gravel, eyes on a sparrow in the tree. The cat creeps forward, measuring the distance. Can a cat climb that high, that quickly? The sparrow flickers from branch to branch. I don’t want to see what happens next.

‘I owe you lunch,’ I say, putting the car in gear and pulling out.

She leans across and looks in my rear-view mirror, smoothing her thick eyebrows with her index finger, first the left, then the right. When she sees the dusty roadhouse and the cattle dog sleeping beside the petrol pump, she says, ‘No chance of a tofu burger here.’

I park in the shade of a flowering wattle. On the petrol pump is a hand-written sign that reads
Pay before you pump!
The dog gets up and walks to a tap dripping slowly into a battered dish and takes a drink.

‘By the way, my name’s Sophie.’ She holds out her right hand.

It feels small in mine. ‘Don’t tell me,’ she says. ‘Yours is Michael, Andrew . . .’ She clicks her fingers. ‘William?’

‘James. William is my middle name, Michael is my dad.’

She smiles and reaches to open her door. ‘Great. I’ll have a hamburger and a coffee, James.’

Sophie sits at the bus shelter and admires her painted nails. Damn. The nail polish is in the bathroom cabinet. Carlos can give it to the next girl, if he’s capable of finding another. It was she who found him, tapping away furiously on his laptop in a café not far from the flat.

A writer?

Beside the computer was a stack of magazines.

A student?

He had a hex tattoo on his bicep.

An anti-religious anarchist?

None of the above.

Carlos was a share trader who smoked too much dope and lived in his pyjamas. At first she thought it was curiously subversive. From Bob Marley to stock floats seemed an awfully long way. In fact, it was as close as the click of a tab on his MacBook.

He was scruffy, homely and oddly endearing. After a few weeks together, she moved into his flat. He rearranged the wardrobe and chest of drawers, leaving just enough space for her clothes and her two books. He picked the books up while she unpacked.

‘
Of Mice and Men
. What’s it about?’

She looked up quickly, thinking he was joking. His face was as unreadable as a spreadsheet.

‘Men . . .’

He grinned. ‘And mice?’

‘Something like that.’

He tossed it on the bed and reached for the other book.

‘
Travels with Charley
. Don’t tell me it’s about travelling . . . and this bloke named Charley.’

‘Charley is a dog.’

‘Oh.’

‘You’ve never heard of John Steinbeck?’

He shook his head, then turned back to his computer screen and the certainty of figures. She thought of her father and his collection of Steinbeck books stacked neatly on the shelf beside his bed, the covers worn from being read on the back of a tractor during long hot breaks from his job with the shire council. While the other workers slept in the shade, he travelled the backroads of America with his favourite writer.

During her first three months with Carlos, Sophie took extended walks along the beach, caught the 382 bus to the city and spent hours curled up on the State Library lounge reading every Steinbeck in their collection, leaving him to his insider tips, his financial projections and his calculated search for profit.

When Carlos cashed in shares, he ran down to the strip and brought home a bottle of Jim Beam and a cube of hash. The bright lights of the beach promenade sparkled temptingly a few blocks away as Carlos blissed out on the couch, reggae playing in a fog of smoke. He made love like he worked: taking what he could, giving just enough. Sophie felt the smell of dope infesting her skin, her hair.

When the offer of a night shift at the pub came along, she took it. It allowed her to sleep under an umbrella at the beach all day with the sound of waves and children cleansing her. Sometimes she swam out past the breakers and drifted, wondering how long she could stay in water so deep and cold.

And Carlos proposed marriage. As if she could be acquired on a hunch, like bank shares.

The moment she steps aboard the bus, there’s no going back.

The bus driver raises his hand to touch his Cityline cap in a welcoming gesture. He has a ponytail and wears silver chains on his wrist. Sophie punches her ticket into the machine and sits where she can see him in the mirror, wondering if he has a spare room. She rides the bus through the hill suburbs, watching the old ladies with walkers struggling aboard, the young schoolgirls with iPods chewing gum and dreaming, the men in suits standing close and looking down at her tight top. The bus is never empty. The driver never offers.

Sophie gets off at the train station. She walks around the corner to O’Driscoll’s, through the dark entrance and across the red-patterned carpet to the bar with the rows of spirit bottles, where Nigel is watching a football game on the television.

‘I gotta quit, sorry.’

Nigel shrugs.

‘Can you pay me now?’

Another shrug.

‘Please?’

He walks to the register and unlocks it, pulls out some notes and counts them, making an issue of finding a rubber band and tightening it around the roll. If Sophie wants to check the amount, she’s going to have to make a scene.

‘How much are you paying me?’

‘One hundred and thirty.’

‘It should be one hundred and fifty.’

‘Less twenty for . . . tax.’

‘Bullshit.’

Nigel looks up at the television. Sophie is dismissed.

She shoves the roll of notes into her bag and silently counts to ten. Nigel scratches his beard. She leans over the bar and grabs a bottle of Johnnie Walker. Nigel makes a lunge, but he’s slow and on the wrong side of the bar. Sophie steps away, holding the bottle aloft, and calls back, ‘Tax.’

She stops at the first chemist to buy more nail polish.

Her mobile buzzes. A text.

From Carlos? In between buying stock options, he’s asking her to come back?

She walks slowly along the footpath, a tide of people heading towards the station and the train to the mountains and beyond. She sees a young man in a café with a coffee and a laptop and goes inside, sitting near him, not really wanting to repeat her mistake, just avoiding the rush outside. She orders an espresso and rummages in her bag for the phone. She reads the message.

Her breath catches in her throat.

It’s not from Carlos.

She remembers when she was a child, waiting at the school gate for her mum to pull up in the station wagon and wave for her to climb in.

One day she waited so long after school even the principal was ready to leave. He noticed her sitting on the fence as he nudged his car over the grate, and wound down the window. ‘Sophie, where’s your mum?’

‘I don’t know.’

‘Do you want a lift?’

She shook her head. It wasn’t about stranger danger – he was the principal, after all. She was just hoping her mum would turn up.

Mr McCluskey switched off the engine and got out of the car. He walked over to her, and sighed. ‘I’ll wait for a bit, shall I?’

She noticed he was wearing old riding boots. ‘Do you live on a farm, sir?’

‘Pardon?’

‘A farm. With chickens and goats and cows and . . .’

‘You’re a very insightful young lady.’ He grinned, a wide ruddy-faced smile that made her want to giggle.

‘Do you have sheep?’

He laughed. ‘Lots.’

‘What are their names?’

‘Far too many to name, I’m afraid,’ he said, scratching his chin. ‘But we have dogs.’ He held up four fingers. ‘Maisy, Daisy, Lazy and Chuffle.’

‘It doesn’t rhyme!’

‘We couldn’t think of a suitable one.’

‘Crazy?’

The station wagon braked in a rush of dust. Her father leant across to open the door and nodded at the principal. Mr McCluskey lifted Sophie’s backpack onto the bench seat and she climbed in beside her dad.

‘When the dogs have another litter, I’ll ask you for suggestions, okay, lass?’

Sophie smiled in answer. Her father reached over to fasten her seatbelt. She wished they had a dog.

Her father’s eyes were tender blue, as if the sun had drained the colour away. He stared at her for a long time, one hand on the steering wheel, the other on the gearshift.

‘Dad?’

‘Ummm?’

‘What’s
insightful
mean?’

Her father put the car in gear, checked his mirror and slowly pulled out.

‘It’s when someone sees things for what they really are.’

‘What else?’

He shrugged. ‘I guess it’s when people know stuff you don’t expect them to.’

‘I know Dave kisses Lisa Becker.’

‘Does he now.’

She looked closely at her father, waiting for him to laugh. She always made him laugh. His eyes were fixed on the road, his voice drained. ‘And have you seen this with your own eyes? Or only in your mind?’

‘Both. But I saw it in my mind first. It looked better in my mind than on the couch.’

She screwed up her face, her long ponytail twisting behind. Her dad hardly ever picked her up from school. Sometimes when her mum was visiting Aunt Julia’s, and on her eighth birthday as a surprise. Sophie’s brothers both rode their bikes home. Sophie was promised a bike when she turned eleven.

When they arrived home, her father turned the car into the driveway and switched it off, but didn’t get out. Sophie reached for her schoolbag and waited.

‘Sophie.’ His voice sounded strangled.

She looked up into the lounge room; the windows were open, the curtains tied back.

‘Has Mum gone to Aunt Julia’s again?’

The look on her father’s face made her feel the same way as when she fell out of the tree last month. He wound down his window and slowly shook his head.

Sophie scrambled out of the car and ran upstairs, flinging open the front door and calling for her mother.

She knew there wouldn’t be an answer.

In the kitchen, her father made her a tall glass of orange juice, tossing the wrung-out orange halves into the sink.

The juice tasted bitter and tart, the pulp stuck to her teeth.

They sat together at the table, waiting for her brothers to return from football training.

Sophie looked at her dad. If he wouldn’t cry, neither would she.