Diamonds in the Mud and Other Stories (9 page)

The vinyl seat and I have become one, welded together by perspiration. Six long hours of driving behind me and I am almost there, almost home.

The town slinks out of a flat red landscape, its dusty trees sprinkling dusty shade on dusty walls. Tin roofs glare as I pass, small windows stare, trees still gossip about me; I tell stories of my home town but I edit them well and polish each word.

Same garage on the corner – Johnny used to work there, used to dream big dreams of owning it one day. For an instant I see myself entering that dark place, finding him still tinkering with his old ute. But he is married now, and not the reason I have returned. I am here to see my mother, and for her to see me as the businesswoman I have become, not as the weeping child who ran from her anger.

She is not expecting me. My trip is a spur of the moment thing – I had no time to write, and she has no need for a telephone.

Her farm is five miles from town. As I cross over the bridge the old boards complain at my passing. No red carpet rolled out for me, but the road raises a cloud of red dust.

Same warped old wooden gate. It carps at me when I open it, slams hard behind me, aiming for my heels. I know it well. I dodge its bite. But Lord, how Pete's willow trees have thrived. Planted on either side of the home track, their green suggests a place of peace and serenity. A dreamer, my brother Pete, a weaver of childhood magic, but his avenue of willows, unlike the fairytales he told me and my sister, lead only to the abode of the wicked queen.

She is working in the garden but she hears my car and looks up, her old hat pushed back, one hand lifted to shade her eyes.

A mist blurs my vision. I want to believe in fairytales. I want to run to her, place my head on her breast and cry, look at me, see me, love me for what I am, not for what you wanted me to be. As I cover the ground between us, my arms reach out, but tentatively.

‘Wonders will never cease,' she says. One step away. One step back. ‘You could have warned me you were coming.' Slowly my arms fall to my sides. The script long writ is unchanged, unchangeable. ‘I suppose you want a cup of tea.'

‘I'll make it.' For a moment I watch her tending obedient vegetables, her old hat bobbing there, faded straw amid the green, then I turn and walk alone to the kitchen.

Tea in the same canister, I measure it into the same chipped enamel pot, lift the same heavy black kettle, but I find new mugs. My mother enters and takes the cake tin from the pantry, cuts two slim slices. Same old fruit cake. We sit at opposite ends of the table and for an hour she speaks of the weather, and of who died, and how they died, but by four thirty polite conversation wanes and she begins her questions.

Ah, I am saved by the truck rattling into the yard, by the dog barking. She takes a cigarette from her pack on the mantelpiece, lights it. I turn away from her smoke and walk to the window. Pete and a new dog are checking out my car. Pete turns, sees me waving, then walks quickly towards the house.

‘G'day.' His head is inside. ‘What are you doing back here?'

‘Just passing. Thought I'd pop in.' My smile is wide, real.

‘There's tea made on the hob,' Mother says. ‘Wipe your filthy feet before you step into my kitchen.'

He wipes his feet, but walks through the kitchen to his room, returning with a book, which he hands to me. The cover shows a woman feeding her lover grapes. It looks new, but a business card advertising farm equipment marks. Mother's back is turned. She is mean peeling potatoes at the sink, so I am free to scan the story that begins.

The name of the author has a familiar ring. My brother's name is Peter James Adams. The author's name is James A Peters. My mouth opens, my finger points.

‘You?'

‘I'm the culprit, or Mum thinks so.'

With a toss of her head, Mother leaves the room. We wait until she is in the bathroom and the shower running, then I add more tea and water to the pot and we talk and we laugh, but quietly, and we steal thick wedges of cake, drink tea, old friends, good friends, Pete and I.

He writes my name on the book, signs it with a flourish. ‘I bought twenty copies. They cost more than I got paid for the story, but what the hell, eh? They're my proof that I
can
do it, my licence to do it, Deb.' He speaks quickly and I listen, aware he has been starved of an ear in which to pour his dreams, but she returns, sits at the table and he is silent again.

‘You're not married,' she states. I wear no ring on my third finger.

‘No.'

‘Where are you living?'

‘In a flat, not far from the city.'

‘Alone?'

‘No.'

‘You're living with a man?' Her words are innocent enough but her expression screams whore.

Pete reads her expression. ‘She just got here, Mum.'

I place my hand on his arm. ‘I don't live with a man.' He is embarrassed by my touch. People in this house never touch. Love in this house is never spoken.

‘Who is she?'

‘Her name is Karli.'

‘Carlene?'

‘Karli,' I say clearly, then I spell the name.

‘Karli? What sort of a name is that?'

‘Australian.'

‘They all call themselves Australians these days, don't they? You know what I mean. Where did she come from before she was an
Australian
?'

‘She's one of the oldest ones.'

‘An abo? You're shacked up with an abo!'

‘Shacked up, living together, sharing a life . . . I love her.' I speak the ‘L'word only to bait her, and how well I succeed.

She is on her feet, her height lending her power. She thumps the table and Pete's book jumps. ‘You
love
her. You were always determined to bring this family down, you little slut. It's in your blood. You're like your cursed father and always were. Love?' she snarls, and on her lips it is surely a four letter word. ‘Obsessed by filth, the bloody lot of you.' She picks up Pete's book, tosses it at his head.

He catches it, smoothes a page then hands it to me as we watch her walk to the stove. I wink at him, place the book beneath my handbag. ‘Why didn't you use your own name?' I ask. ‘Why call yourself James Peters?'

He makes no reply, but winks towards the stove where our mother is lifting a baking pan from oven to hob. A leg of lamb impaled on a large fork, it is carried dripping to a plate. Fat sizzles, smokes. My mother is pleased with the sizzling. She kicks the oven door shut, stabs the meat that is me.

‘God knows, I tried to raise you kids decent, I slaved my guts out to keep this place together after your father deserted me, and what do I get for it?'

God knows we have heard this lament too many times before, I think to reply, but Pete stands, bumps the table, spills my tea. He has never been a party to family wars. He looks at the clock. ‘It's time to pick up Lyn. Want to come for a ride?' he asks, offering me escape.

I shake my head. I have already escaped.

Pete was the first born, Lyn the last. I am the middle-man, buffered from the wicked queen on either side. She enmeshed them in her snare of guilt and duty. She could not net me.

Lyn turned twenty-three two weeks ago. She looks older, her hair now worn short, sensible, like Mother's hair. Her shoes too are sensible, like Mother's shoes. She will grow old in this town. Will she grow sensible? She lights a cigarette, sucks life from it, as does Mother. Their blue smoke is slow to coil free; both resentful of its escape, they hold it long in their lungs attempting to possess it to the end.

‘She's shacked up with some abo woman. They're in love,' my mother scoffs, needing to get Lyn on side, and fast. Lyn, who had greeted me with a smile, now eyes me, blows a cloud of smoke towards the ceiling.

‘Johnny married Janey Johnstone less than six months after you left town, you know?' she says.

‘Pete told me,' I reply, studying my sister's hand and the cigarette in it, identical to our mother's. I look at my own hand, at Pete's, pleased that we have our deserter's hands. Where is he? I have blamed him for his desertion since I was ten years old. Today I blame him only for not taking us with him when he ran.

Their smoke begins to irritate my eyes. My lungs ache with it as Lyn continues to speak of Johnny. I rub my eyes, nod, smile, watch her mouth, already setting into Mother's bitter lines, but I do not listen until she says, ‘They didn't have any kids.'

‘I wonder why not?' My mother's tone is sarcastic as she picks up the carving knife, carves the meat. ‘Did you get rid of it?'

‘It?'

‘You were three months gone with his bastard when you took off. I asked you a question.'

‘Yes?' I reply – to her former question or to her statement.

She eyes me but says no more, and I turn to Lyn, ask about her job. Mother walks to the stove where her constant anger spills out onto the dinner plates. Meat is flung, lumpy mashed potato served with a dip and a hard flip, boiled pumpkin slopped to one side – gravy thin and mean to douse surviving flavour.

I look at the wall behind her. It is grey with smoke and with her miserable existence, and I think, fool, martyr – fall down, wall; crush her and set my siblings free.

‘Eat your dinner,' she snarls. ‘Stop your talking and eat your dinner – all of you.'

Pete and Lyn eat. I play with the potato. I build castles, then flatten them. I place a spot of pumpkin on my tongue but can't swallow it. The pumpkin and this place are choking me. Then I push my chair back and walk to the door.

‘You're staying the night?' Pete asks.

‘There's no bed for her here,' Mother says.

‘Oh, a slut can always find a bed, Mum,' I say.

‘Christ! Will you give it a rest – both of you. She hasn't been home in seven years, Mum.'

‘That was her decision –'

‘No. It was your decision, Mum,' I say.

‘They're all your decisions, Mum. James A Peters was your decision,' Pete says. ‘She's staying, and that's my decision. She can have my bed. I'll bunk on the couch.'

I had a dream once, I dreamed that time would age her, mellow her, that I could come here with Karli, show her where I had grown up. I stand at the door shaking my head, then I walk to my car, drive away fast, the trees, the dust, the bridge a blur as I speed by, crying, laughing at my tears then crying again, until I almost collide with a cattle truck at the intersection.

When the emergency has passed, my car is facing the town, so that is the way I drive. I need a drink, a long, mind-numbing drink – or two.

I look for a car park close to the hotel. A busy night in town, but I sight a gap near the corner, in front of the old takeaway shop. So it is to be salty chips and diet Coke. Six hours to home. Perhaps I'll drive straight through.

I walk inside, take my place in the queue, my mind already in the city.

‘Two hamburgers with the lot and extra onions.' Familiar, soft spoken words whisper in my ear, or in my mind. Too often I stood at this counter with him, and always that same order. Only my head playing tricks, but I turn.

He is behind me.

‘Johnny?' One word; it says too much and quickly I add, ‘What are you doing here?'

‘Buying a hamburger.' He smiles and I watch his mouth, and his eyes above his mouth, and I know every curve, every line. My heartbeat fills me, steals my breath.

‘How long have you been home?' he asks.

‘Since four.'

‘What will it be?' The woman is waiting for my order.

‘Two hamburgers with the lot and extra onions,' Johnny says. ‘And a serve of chips.'

‘Queue jumper.' I look around for his wife. ‘Where's Janey?'

He shrugs. ‘Wrap them separate – if you don't mind, Mrs Morris.'

Together we step back from the counter. People keep crowding in. Many know us, or know of us. They stare, whisper, gossip, as we speak of the weather and the land, and of the city, making hard conversation until the hamburgers are done and wrapped separately.

Johnny pays and we walk together to the street where I search for my keys. They are not in my handbag; they taunt me from the ignition. My car is locked, my windows closed.

‘That's all I need. That's the perfect end to a perfect bloody day.'

He touches my arm, then pulls his hand away as if my skin were acid. ‘Relax,' he says. ‘I'm the local NRMA man,' and he walks to a modern ute three spaces away, returns with a small toolbox. He opens it, hands me a plastic bag, sticky, dusty, full of bits and pieces.

‘Yours,' he says. ‘I cleaned out the glove box before I traded the old bomb in. Amazing how much of your life you left in it.'

I reach for that plastic bag, delve deep in search of better days. I find cheap earrings, a comb, a photograph, a book, a nest of hair pins – and a small blue velvet box.

‘That's not mine.' I offer the box.

‘I bought it for you and you left it in the glove box with your bobby pins. Toss it in the rubbish if you don't want it.'

I flip the box open. A fine gold band nestles on a blue satin pillow. A small lonely diamond, locked too long in darkness, fires beneath the street light. I close it away from the light and place it back in his toolbox.

He takes it, aims it at the rubbish bin. ‘Bullseye. So now it's gone too.'

‘Don't be crazy. You can't throw away something precious.'

‘You're a great one to talk. You invented the bloody game,' he replies, his attention now on the driver's side door where he works a moment with his tools. Then my car is open, but I am standing beside the rubbish tin, one hand holding my hair back as I search through cans, bottles and wrappers until I find that small blue box sitting on a half-eaten pie. My eyes accusing him, I take a tissue from my purse and wipe the blue velvet clean.

‘Take it home and give it to Janey.'

‘She cleared out with some bloke from Wagga, decided she didn't like my suntan – or my job, or my relatives. Had nothing against taking half my house and business though,' he says. ‘Try it on, Deb. Take it out of that box and try it. Just once.'