‘Australians?’
‘About as Australian as you can get,’ she said, pulling me up.
Halfway back Denny suddenly swore and broke into a run.
‘The roast,’ she said over her shoulder.
It wasn’t until I smelt the charred meat and smoke that I also felt the need to run.
She’d been crying, and that was hard enough, but when she dry retched into the sink it was too much.
‘It shouldn’t be like this!’ I said. ‘We burnt a leg of lamb – we’ve got a couple of dozen more of them running around in the paddock. It’s ridiculous he has you like this. We can’t play, can’t sing, hardly allowed to talk to one another, and if we burn dinner you completely break down? What is that? What the hell is the point of that?’
‘I can’t believe it,’ she sniffed. ‘I can’t believe I forgot. He’s going to be so angry.’
‘Don’t be frightened of him, Denny. I don’t want you to be frightened of him.’
‘I feel like I’ve let him down. I think that’s it – why I’m upset; he’ll be disappointed in me.’
‘Ohh, Christ,’ I moaned. ‘This is bullshit.’
The blackened roast was in the baking tray on the sink, the uncooked vegetables yellowing in a container beside it. Everything smelt of smoke; it still hung in pockets of the living room. My hands were shaking, so I had them tucked away under my crossed arms. I think they were shaking from anger – I wanted it to be anger.
Denny’s lips were full, her eyes red-rimmed, and her cheeks flushed; she looked feverish, skittish. I wanted to hold her and put the side of her face to my chest. I wanted to kiss her sad mouth and promise her things. Good things. The need to love her was thick in my chest. All the corny things, manly ideals that seemed to belong in the dark ages, were in me and so close to real. And yet I felt like a kid, nothing of what she needed. Not even with the right to hold her.
She began to chew her nails, staring at the roast. ‘How can we fix it?’ she mumbled.
‘We can’t. We’ll put the vegies on, see if we can salvage some of the meat and drown it in gravy. Let’s just have something on the table when he gets back. He hasn’t had your bread yet, so maybe —’
The belief in her face stopped me; I walked over to her and gathered her against me. She slid her arms around my waist and I put my fingers under her chin and lifted her face to me. I saw the faint lines radiating out from the corners of her eyes, the slight flare in her nostrils and the disproportion of her small nose to her mouth; I saw she was my brother’s. I kissed her. It was slow and tentative, a first kiss.
We’d cleared the place of the last lingering wisps of smoke, brewed some strong coffee to try and mask the smell. The vegetables were cooked, and although the meat was dry and stringy we’d covered it in gravy and figured it wasn’t so bad. We hid the worst burnt bits in a dish in a cupboard. The table was set. Denny was standing by the oven. She had a red mark on her neck, from me, but it could have been from last night, and Rohan might not notice it. We’d stopped – I could look Rohan in the eye, and be honest about that, because we’d not moved on to the bedroom. It still felt like we had cheated on some level, because I’d backed her into the bench and kissed her and touched her like she was mine. I’d spoken her name in a way I never would in front of him; whispered that I wanted her.
‘He’s coming,’ she said without looking out the window or seeming to hear anything in particular.
I went through to the lounge room to stoke the fire, not trusting my face. The sound of his boots on the steps made my heart thump, and I hated him for it. I was so sure he’d say something about the smell of smoke that I froze a moment, head to the side, waiting, but he only put his bag down and murmured something to Denny and walked down to the bedroom.
I went back out.
Denny and I exchanged sidewards glances while I helped her dish up dinner.
A couple of currawongs were fighting over territory, or in the middle of mating ritual, and the narky noise was irritating. I wanted to go out and throw something at them. Denny was sitting across from me. She’d brushed her hair. Her eyes were still red from crying and it amazed me that Rohan didn’t notice this. He was in an unusually good mood, quiet and self-contained, distracted by his own contentment. I ate around my meat. Denny hardly ate at all. Rohan moved through his meal methodically, a childhood habit, least favourite first, best left to last. Meat was his favourite. The birds nagged on and the afternoon deepened.
Rohan sat his knife and fork down with slow deliberation, and lifted his head to look at Denny.
‘The meat is overcooked,’ he said.
‘Yes. Sorry.’
He nodded.
‘I know,’ she said, her voice already rising. ‘I feel bad about it. I’m not used to the oven yet, especially for something like that.’
‘It’s not just overcooked. It’s inedible.’
She looked at me, and back at Rohan.
‘What do you want me to say, Rohan? I’ll say it. Just tell me so we can get it over with. I’m stupid? Hopeless? I feel terrible about it, and all those things you think I am, so is that enough? Or do you want me to say each of them?’
He pushed back from the table, crossing his arms.
Denny turned from him, her hands curved cautiously around the sides of her plate. ‘I’ll make up for it,’ she said. ‘I won’t eat meat until you think I’ve made up for it.’
‘Jesus,’ I said under my breath.
‘I’ll stop cooking if that’s what you want, or I’ll only have half serves. I understand that you’re angry. It’s a waste, I know; I’m serious when I say I want to make it up. I’m sorry, Rohan. I feel bad about it. Have some more bread – I’ll take the meat away.’
‘I’m angry you burnt the meat, Denny, and it is a waste, but what I want to know is
why
you burnt the meat.’ His eyes were strangely light when he looked up, and his face was soft and aged. He looked straight at her. ‘What were you doing to forget?’
Denny gave up on any chance of eating and pushed her plate away. Her hands came together on the table and she intertwined her fingers. ‘I just forgot.’
I might have said something, but Rohan’s face had me transfixed; as I watched, a flicker of raw vulnerability passed over it.
His voice though, when he spoke, was even and ominous. ‘What exactly were you doing to forget?’
‘Nothing. I don’t know …? I was outside.’
Rohan put his fingers under the edge of his plate and flicked the plate so that it spun in the air before clattering and splattering down the length of the table. ‘Answer me! What were you doing!’
Denny cringed. I stood and my chair rocked and fell back with a loud clunk behind me.
‘Stay out of it,’ Rohan barked across at me, getting up.
‘Stay out of it? Stay out of it? Are you mad? Don’t tell —’
‘It’s a simple question, Denny. Why’d you burn the meat? What were you doing? Can you think of
anything
you did today? Have you done anything, apart from the one bloody thing I think you’ve been doing all day?’
I looked at Denny, waiting for her to explain, wanting her too, but she dropped her gaze and pressed her lips as if deciding not to talk; her guilt was so real that I had to think back to be sure we hadn’t had sex. Her silence was confirmation enough for Rohan.
‘You bitch,’ he seethed. ‘This is it, isn’t it? This is what you wanted. I gave you some credit, but you might have misjudged things this time.’ He rounded the table towards her. ‘You think you can have us fight off like a couple of rutting bloody stags?’
‘You’re wrong,’ I said, but Rohan didn’t hear.
‘This is what you wanted all along —’
‘Rohan! Stop, you’re wrong.’
And he did stop. It surprised me, and more so when I looked and saw that I had him. He wanted to believe me, he wanted to be wrong. His face paled as he saw the truth in my shaking head. His rapid return to reason made me realise what he’d been about to do, what I’d just stopped.
‘It wasn’t that,’ I said. ‘We were in the paddock, playing the guitar.’
He blinked once and looked away. Denny was stiff in her seat, her eyes fixed off in the distance and her expression blank. Her hands though, were shaking in her lap. I breathed out. ‘We were just playing the goddamn guitar,’ I said.
The spilt food was squalid on the table, the fallen chair overly dramatic. I had no experience of this, the pressure coming down and in from every angle, the very tangible threat of violence worse than any I’d even known – because it involved a woman. That was the difference, the horrible anomaly – the woman, still and ready, waiting to be hit. I put both hands on the table, either side of my dinner.
‘It can’t be like this,’ I said to Rohan.
He sniffed and widened his eyes as if clearing his head. ‘You’re right.’
‘We can talk about this … everything.’
‘Yes.’ He cleared his throat and rolled his shoulders.
Wariness crept through me. ‘I don’t think it’ll work the way it’s been.’
‘Yep, I agree. That’s big of you, Pup. Now you run off and get your guitar and I’ll let you have the honour of smashing it before we put it on the fire.’
Denny made a small sound in her throat. The room was getting steadily darker, the long shapes of afternoon light drawing back and retreating. I thought how outside would quickly change things; if we could only agree to go outside and continue this with our elbows on the railing it would turn out very differently. But I also didn’t want to. I was taken and truly perplexed with the dilemma I faced – there was no way I would let him set fire to my guitar, yet he’d do it anyway. How
would
that work?
My gaze was on Denny, but I didn’t see her; I was very calm and aware how strange it was that I was so calm.
I think she saw it. She saw that I simply could not lose my music this way. I’d do anything. She stood up in front of Rohan. He narrowed his eyes at her.
‘We weren’t playing the guitar,’ she said. ‘We didn’t even take it. I was with Shannon, that’s why I forgot. That’s why I burnt the meat. I took a blanket into the paddock where I could see if you were coming back and we were there most of the day. It was my idea.’
Rohan’s eyes dropped to look at the red mark on her neck and returned slowly to her face.
‘It was my idea,’ she repeated.
‘Oh, I know that,’ he sneered.
In a trance, I picked up the chair and pushed it neatly under the table. I was resigned and ready to fight him. Not particularly scared. ‘She’s only saying it to save the guitar,’ I said. ‘Denny, don’t bother; it’s better we just do this.’
They didn’t acknowledge me, I’m not sure they heard me. Denny stood straight and Rohan stared at her, his hands open by his sides.
‘I’m sorry,’ she said quietly.
‘For what.’
‘For hurting you.’
He snorted in disgust. ‘Don’t flatter yourself. What upsets me is that you’re only good for one thing – one single thing – and you don’t even know the time and place for that.’
She stepped back. ‘Don’t, Rohan.’
‘You really think you’ve got things worked out, don’t you? You’ve got it all under control. But you’ve overestimated your appeal, I’m afraid. Badly misjudged.’
‘I know why it upsets you,’ she said. ‘And I know what you want.’
‘Don’t,’ he spat in her face. ‘You haven’t got a clue.’
She instinctively turned her face away from him. ‘You’d be surprised,’ she said, ‘how similar we are. What we care about and what we’ll do to protect it.’
‘It’s disappointing how stupid you are. You think I’ll choose you? You think I’ll let him choose you? What you’re trying to do is hardly clever stuff. Did you really think you’d have us knock one another out?’
‘That’s not what I want.’
‘You know what – I don’t give a shit what you want. You’ve done nothing more here than make yourself totally redundant. The sex is good, Denny – but only if you get down when I tell you and know to stay down. Tell me the point of you now?’
‘Stop it. You don’t mean it.’
‘Oh give it up; I’m not gunna regret this in the morning, I couldn’t care less what you think of me. You’ve got an over-inflated idea of what you are in this house and it would do you good to face up to it.’
She tightened her jaw and lifted it to him. ‘It’s pathetic the way you revert to this.’
‘Well, come on,’ he said, ‘tell us the only thing you’re good for.’
‘Fuck you.’
‘Close, but even a sports teacher should know not to drop her INGs.’
It was fast and came from nowhere. I’d been watching Rohan’s hands, and they were curling in, his fingers moving and his thumb running over the back of them. I’d been watching his body, imagining the tightening in his biceps and the thickening of his forearms, seeing the squaring of his shoulders. I’d been gradually stepping around the table towards them, watching him, thinking if he hit her I’d kill him. I was aware that Denny was angry too, but only because it worsened the situation. I was not looking at her hands. I was not expecting it to come from her.
She hit him. She didn’t slap him, or lash out, but clenched both fists, took a fighting stance and punched him in the face. He reeled back. His nose began to bleed. I knew what was coming next and lunged the final distance. I wasn’t quick enough. Rohan recovered too fast and she backed away. I heard the sickening smack, saw the swing of his arm only in hindsight. She was on the floor and holding her face before I’d even come to terms with what had happened. Rohan shoved me back as I bent to her. He dragged her to her feet and walked her backwards, pushing her into the wall. She didn’t struggle. Her right eye twitched and the side of her face held the imprint of the back of his hand. He pressed his body the length of hers and gripped her chin in one hand.
‘What?’ he hissed. ‘What are you up to?’
‘I’d be too stupid to be up to something, wouldn’t I?’ she muttered through her held jaw.
He let go, stared at her a moment, wiped his bleeding nose, and turned and left the room.
THE
U
NDOING
1
I WOKE SUDDENLY
and with the feeling I’d missed something important. I listened. It was early morning. I couldn’t hear any movement in the cabin. The turmoil of yesterday started up again inside me, confusing me before I’d had a chance of clear thought.