The Fine Color of Rust (15 page)

She has a point. In the last year the only new businesses to start up in town have been her and Merv Bull. Before that, a member of the Neighbourhood House Committee opened an antiques shop in the main street. What she called antique was the same stuff most of us use at home—Laminex tables, Bakelite flour canisters, old bassinets. If we had a lot of through traffic it might have worked, but the highway only passes by close enough for us to have the four a.m. thunder of the road trains without a single visitor ever pulling off the highway and driving into town.

Thinking about that reminds me of the development. How did they even find Gunapan to put a resort here?

“Let us pray for guidance,” someone from the right gallery calls. The Church of Goodwillers and the Catholics get down on their knees, slowly and with much grunting and bone-cracking, to begin the Lord's Prayer.

“And one more thing,” Leanne says. “Religious freedom. You'd never do this to a Jewish person or a Muslim person.”

From out of a pocket hidden in her flowing dress, she produces a stubby silver knife. Trudy gasps.

“Trudy, get a grip,” Leanne says, waving to her mother to come to the front of the room, where Leanne begins drawing a circle on the floor with the knife.

“Actually,” the mayor says, his chain tinkling as he steps toward Leanne, then back again. “This is shire property. It's
probably best not to mark the floor? Not that I want to interfere with your religious freedom.”

Leanne turns to him, still pointing the knife, and the mayor clutches at his chest as if she has pierced it.

“Oops, sorry,” Leanne says, and pockets the knife. She takes her mother's hand and pulls her into the circle. Her mother is beaming proudly as if this is Leanne's wedding day. She lifts her feet as she steps over the imaginary circle line, then clasps her hands together and nods at several people in the front row of the Church of Goodwill crowd.

“Hi, Moira, lovely to see you,” Leanne's mother says. She seems not to have noticed that Moira believes Leanne is the spawn of Satan. I can't get the picture of Leanne behind the Revlon counter out of my mind. The white smock she always wore, and the blue satin eyeshadow.

The door at the back of the room swings open with a creak. Five children are standing there, my two at the front. They've obviously heard the praying.

“I'm bored,” Jake says to no one in particular.

“Hi, Leanne,” Melissa says.

“Hi, Melissa. Hi, Jake. It's Leonora now,” Leanne answers.

The praying fades away. Everyone's looking at my children as they wander down to stand beside me. Jake's dropped half his dinner on his T-shirt. And I hadn't noticed when we left the house that Melissa's got hold of my foundation again. She's caked it on and it ends in a dark line at her jaw. I wonder if I look like that when I wear it.

“Hey, Leanne, you look great. No more pimples,” Melissa says.

“Melissa!” I say. I pull the two of them into the row beside me and wonder if anyone would notice me holding my hands over their mouths and noses. Just for a little while.

“Can we go home now?” Jake whispers.

“Have you heard from Dad?” Melissa asks, as she does every five minutes at home. No, I haven't heard from her father, even though he's staying in a hotel ten minutes from where we are now. I used to hate him. Now I despise him.

Trudy has moved to the side of the room where her congregation is still praying.

“What about love potions?” Maxine calls out. “Can you make them, Leanne—sorry, Leonora?”

“Oh yeah, no worries. And amulets and charms to attract a lover. That's easy.”

Excitement hums in a surge of current through the left gallery, made up mainly of single mothers. The Christians don't stand a chance. Before the mayor has an opportunity to make a pronouncement on satanic practices in the town, people are crowding around Leanne, who blushes and hands out business cards.

“I declare the meeting closed,” the mayor shouts above the hubbub.

Jake's got hold of my hand and he's trying to pull me out the door. I call goodbye over my shoulder to Norm. As I get dragged past I see the members of the right gallery look at each other.

“All we can do is pray,” one of them says, shaking her head sadly.

Jake, stronger than a runaway lawn mower, propels me through the corridor toward the car park. In the alcove near the front door stands a knot of people. Perhaps they came late. Helen has spotted them too. It is as though all the unmarried men of Helen's dreams have come together to taunt her. The grade-three teacher is talking earnestly with Merv Bull. Beside them, the widowed farmer from beyond Riddley's
Creek stands with his thumbs hooked through his belt loops, staring into space.

I smile at the group as we pass. Helen tries to nod at the men, but she's carrying her neighbor's two-year-old on her shoulders and the sudden shift in balance makes her stagger past like a drunk.

“At the end of the day,” the grade-three teacher says to Merv Bull, “it's all about civil liberties, isn't it.”

Merv nods. “And a little bit of magic in your life never hurts either,” he says.

I glance back when I hear him say that. He's looking straight at me and I feel a heat in my face. He nods. My face starts to burn. Jake tugs at my hand and before I know it I'm out on the street.

THE SHIRE MEETING
last night was a distraction, but the moment I put the kids to bed and tried to get some sleep myself, the night demons arrived to torment me. Perhaps Melissa is right: it
is
my fault that Tony hasn't visited the kids. I am horrible. I am an ogre. He is right to have left me. And so on and so on until I sobbed myself to sleep. This morning I drifted through my chores in a dreary haze. In the afternoon I arrive at the school to pick up the kids. Helen is at the gate too. Today my life is small and pinched and the sky seems vast and filled with a relentless glare.

“What's wrong with you?” she asks, prodding my forearm with a finger. “Have you heard anything I've said?”

“No,” I answer.

“I said we've only a two-year extension for keeping the school.”

“I know.”

“So are you going to do something about it?”

“Not right now.”

Helen stares at me. I stare back. My eyes are so tired that staring makes them water and I rub them with my fists.

“Don't do that—it'll make your wrinkles worse,” Helen says.

We peel ourselves away from the side of Helen's car, where we have been leaning as we wait for the kids to get out of school. She's picking up her cousin's eight-year-old twins. Helen had her boy, Alex, when she was eighteen and now he's doing an apprenticeship in Melbourne, so she's one of the people we call on to help out with our kids. She says she'll get it all back when Alex comes home with his own children, which will be fairly soon if family history is any indication.

“It's Tony. He left a message on the machine last night about how he's going to have them visit him in Mildura. He hasn't even left Gunapan! He hasn't even visited the house! Why is he taunting them with these stupid promises?”

I've left a sweat print of my body on the faded red paintwork of the car that could be mistaken for the crime scene outline of a corpse. I pluck my T-shirt away from my sweaty back.

“What did he say anyway? You didn't tell me. How did he explain three years without a word?”

“He didn't. He acted as if nothing was special. And the girlfriend's behaving like we're all going to be great mates . . .” I trail off, suddenly realizing.

“What?”

“He hasn't told her.”

“What?”

“That's so typical.”

“Loretta!”

“She doesn't know he ran off. That explains the other day here at the school, why she was acting as though it was a regular visit.”

Tony's method of dealing with difficult situations was always to wait and see if he could get away with it. He never did. Only smart people can do that. Rather than get into trouble by telling the truth, he'd hedge or lie outright, even when he was bound to be caught out. If I asked him whether he'd been at the pub, he'd say no, he was working. That was after he'd parked the car on the flower bed, vomited at the foot of the steps, and tripped on the torn lino in the kitchen before landing on his face and shouting abuse at the floor.

“She's still a dimwit,” I mutter. “Got a flat on the highway. Sure.”

As kids come belting out of the school I look up and down the road. No sign of Tony and Miss Happy.

“I'll call you tonight,” Helen says. The twins zoom up and immediately start asking what's for tea. Helen takes one in each hand and heads off. “Come on, we've got baked beans. The best money can buy.”

“We don't like baked beans,” they whine simultaneously. I'm sure their mother was in a childbirth fog when she named them Timothy and Tamsyn. Everyone else calls them the Tim Tams.

Jake climbs straight into the car and starts kicking the back of the passenger seat. Melissa shades her eyes and gazes up and down the road.

“They're not here, sweetie.”

No response.

“Let's go home. They might call.”

“No, wait. I want to wait a bit.”

“Ten minutes, then we're leaving.” I open the four doors of the car to let the air circulate and drape a towel across the windscreen.

“Your back's all sweaty,” Melissa says with distaste.

Jake roots around in his school bag and comes up with a piece of prechewed bubble gum he's stored for emergencies such as this. I wave at Brenda and Kyleen and Maxine and Brianna and the grade-three teacher and the headmaster and Liz and the grade-six teacher and some woman I don't know but who waves at me. Small towns. Soon only two kids and us are left waiting at the gate.

“Melissa, we're going home.”

In ten minutes of full sun her face has burned. I find some cream in my bag and try to dab it on her face, but she pushes my hand away and gets into the backseat of the car. We slam the four doors and I roar away from the curb, putting my foot down even harder than usual. Just like when we were married, Tony makes me angry when he's around, and even angrier when he's not.

As we're passing Norm's junkyard I toot the horn. Norm's skinny brown arm reaches out of the door of the shed, gives a thumbs-up, and disappears back inside.

“Why do you always do that? And why's he always coming around? And why do we go there all the time? That junkyard's stupid. You never buy anything.”

“Because he's our friend, Liss. He cares about us.”

“He's old and ugly. And he smells of petrol.”

At home she pulls out the phone book, looks up the number of the pub where Tony's staying, and calls. I leave the room. When she comes into the kitchen I ask if she got hold of him.

“It was her,” she says. “She doesn't know anything.”

I'm glad we feel the same way about that. After tea, with Melissa crying in her room, I ring the pub again. They put me through to the room and the idiot child bride gets Tony on the phone.

“Listen and only say yes or no.” I speak quietly so the kids won't hear. “You've made up some crap about seeing us regularly and sending us money and your girlfriend believes it, right?”

He makes nothing but a
mumumum
sound in reply.

“I'm way past taking any bullshit from you, Tony. Am I right?”

“Yes.”

“And she wanted to come here and meet the kids, but you can't let her near them because she'll find out you deserted us.”

No reply.

“Then leave her at the pub and get in your precious car and get down here. Your daughter's almost slashing her wrists in the bedroom, you bastard.”

Silence.

“I'm not going to dob on you unless you make things worse by not seeing Liss. Get down here and pretend to be a father. If you don't turn up tonight I'll tell your girlfriend everything.” I slam down the phone and then pick it up and inspect it to make sure I haven't broken it. I definitely cannot afford a new phone.

•  •  •

I'VE FINISHED CHEWING
my fingernails and moved on to the skin around them by the time he arrives. He stomps past me at the doorway. It reminds me of when we were together. Because he stomped everywhere I could never tell from his footsteps whether he was in a good mood or a bad one. I had to wait and cop it.

He's smiling. Those expensive white teeth put me in
even more of a fury. He's carrying a bulky white plastic bag stamped with the logo of a department store in Halstead.

“Loretta.” He grins even wider and bends down to kiss me on the cheek. “You're a bloody champ. I swear I'll make it up to you. Talee's a great girl. She's making me a better man, you'll see.”

My breath is steaming in and out of my nostrils like cigarette smoke. I try to steady my respiration, in through the nose, out through the mouth, yoga-style. Helen did a yoga class once. She used to come over after the class and demonstrate the positions to me in the lounge room.

“The positions massage different inner organs. Apparently this pelvic floor one makes your sex life dynamite. If you have a sex life, that is.”

One of the positions she tried to demonstrate, before she got the cramp, was called the Camel. She was on her knees, face scarlet from the exertion, rump thrust in the air. The problem happened when she realized she was bent over in the wrong direction and attempted a backflip. After she had finished screaming, she explained to me what she'd done wrong from the get-go.

“It's the breathing. The key is how you breathe. Once you're doing the good yoga breaths, everything flows from there. Good breathing will change your life, that's what the teacher said.” We practiced our yoga breaths between sips of wine cooler.