The Fine Color of Rust (2 page)

“I thought you wanted to live in a hundred-room mansion with ten servants and a personal homework attendant.”

“Nup.”

“I know what it is—you love what I've done with the place.” My children were so impressed when I fixed the damp patch beside the stove with a hair dryer, a bottle of glue paste, and three of Jake's artworks. I had been calling the agent about it for months, but my house is clearly outside the real estate zone of care and responsibility.

“Mum, I'm serious. If Dad sends a letter and we've moved we won't get it.”

I want to believe he'll send a letter—to his children, at least.

“Well, that's settled. We're staying.”

When we get inside, the kids brush their teeth without a single protest and climb into bed.

“You OK, Jakie?” I lean down to kiss him good night.

“Brianna and her boyfriend had a fight,” he whispers. “I think he hit her.”

I kiss him twice, then again.

“I'm sure she's all right. I'll call her tomorrow. You go to sleep now.”

“I don't want bananas in my lunch.”

“I wouldn't dream of it. Bananas stink,” I say as I turn out the light.

•  •  •

NEXT MORNING, AS
I'm packing bananas into their lunch boxes, I realize I forgot to thank Norm for the lemons.

I drop into the yard on the way back from the shops. He's down the back of the block with three other blokes, all of them standing in a line with their arms folded, staring at the body of an old tractor. This would be the matching statue to mine: bloke standing, feet apart, arms folded, staring at a piece of broken machinery. No idea how to fix it. We could put Him and Her statues either side of the highway coming into Gunapan.

I wait beside the shed while the delicate sales negotiations go on. I've never understood exactly how the communication works. Perhaps the meaning is in the number of head nods, or the volume of the grunt as the customer shifts from one leg to the other. After they've stared at the tractor body in apparent silence for five minutes, Norm sees me and ambles up.

“Don't tell me you're going to sell something, Norm?”

“Not bloody likely. Every month these three clowns are here with some new scheme for making money.”

“None of them happens to ride a Harley?”

He doesn't even bother answering, just nods his head at
their ute on the road. We step inside the shed for a cuppa. The radio's on the racing station.

“Harlequin Dancer made a good run from fourth in race seven last night,” I remark.

“You need a new car. I'm working on it, love. Shouldn't be too much longer.” Norm hands me a cup, covered in grease, and a paper towel to wipe it with.

There are enough parts in Norm's yard for him to put together ten perfectly good cars, and he has been trying to build me a new one for years. But his specialty is disassembly rather than assembly. As soon as the collection of engine parts and panels begins to bear a resemblance to an actual car, he decides it's not right and has to pull it apart and start again.

He takes a noisy slurp of his tea before he speaks. “Sorry I didn't get to the meeting.”

“The school's not your problem.”

“Course it's my problem. It's everybody's bloody problem.”

We drink our tea. The three blokes wave as they pass the shed. There's a protest at Randwick in race two. The jockey on the second-place horse is alleging interference from the winner at the final turn.

“I've got money on that horse.” Norm turns up the volume.

“Which one?”

“The one that'll buy you a bottle of bubbly if it wins the protest. Long odds. Very long odds. Bring me luck, Loretta.”

The day's starting to heat up and blowflies are banging against the tin roof of the shed. Norm picks up the trannie and holds it to his ear. I look out at the heat shimmering over the piles of junk. Norm's touching his crusty forehead as he listens for the outcome of the protest. He must win against the odds sometimes, I think—otherwise why bother betting?

Thank you for your letter of 9 January. I fully understand the concerns you have expressed and would like to take this opportunity to explain how these concerns are being addressed by your government.

WHEN I SHOW
the committee members the letter at the next meeting they hoot like owls. “Fully understand!” “Take this opportunity!” It's as good as a party, they laugh so much.

“I told you it wouldn't work.” Brenda nods sagely.

“It's a step.” I'm not letting her get away with
I told you so.
“The first step. It's a game. We make a bid, they try to negotiate us down.”

“Sure.” She's still doing that nod. “Like we've got real negotiating power.”

“Shut up, Brenda,” Norm says.

Helen is here again but the grade-three teacher is missing, so Helen is downcast. No, she's more than downcast. Her high hair has flagged. Perhaps the heat in the air has melted the gel. Whatever happened, the fluffy creation that brushed the architrave when she walked in has flattened out to match her
spirit and she's slumped in the orange plastic chair beside me, motionless bar the occasional crackle as she winkles another Kool Mint from her open bag, pretending no one can hear the sighs and crunches of her working her way through the packet.

“I've written another letter,” I tell them. “This time, I've copied it to our shire councillors, the local member, the prime minister, the headmaster, the school board, all the teachers, and all of the parents at the school.”

Silence. Kyleen opens her mouth and closes it when Maxine jabs her in the ribs. Norm flips through the pages of minutes in his hands. The air is close and still, and next door at the Church of Goodwill meeting someone is talking loud and long in a deep voice.

“I spent our whole budget on photocopying and postage,” I go on. “You'll get the letter in the mail tomorrow.”

“Is that why we haven't got biscuits?” Trust Kyleen to ask. I've always wondered how many of them only came for the biscuits.

“I buy the biscuits,” Maxine answers. “I didn't have time, that's all.”

We fall back into silence.

Eventually I speak. “We could give up. Let them close the school—we can carpool to get the kids to Halstead Primary.”

No one moves. Brenda's staring at the floor. I'm expecting her to jump in and agree with me. Her house is painted a dull army green and her clothes are beige and puce and brown, and her kids stay out on the streets till eight or nine at night as Brenda turns on light after light and stands silhouetted in the doorway with her cardigan pulled tight around her, waiting for them to come home. She turns up to my meetings as if she is only here to make sure nothing good happens from them. But tonight she reaches over to pat me on the knee.

“Loretta, I know it won't work, and you probably know deep down it won't work, but you can't give up now,” she says.

Kyleen stands up and punches the air, as if she's at a footy match. “That's right! Don't give up, Loretta. Like they said in
Dead Poets Society
, ‘
Nil bastardum
—'” She pauses, then trails off, “‘
Carburetorum
' . . .”

“‘Grindem down'?” Norm finishes.

•  •  •

NEXT DAY, NORM'S
cleaning motor parts with kerosene when I knock on the tin frame of his shed.

“Knew it was you. You should try braking a little earlier, Loretta.” He doesn't even have to look up.

“Norm, what happened to your forehead?”

“Bloody doctor chopped off half my face.”

“Oh, God, I knew it. I knew something was wrong with that patch of skin. Not skin cancer?” My heart is banging in my chest.

“Not anymore.” He reaches up to touch the white bandage, which is already covered in oily fingerprints. “They think they got it all.”

He dunks the engine part into the tin of kerosene and scrapes at it with a screwdriver. I want to hug him, but he and I don't do that sort of thing. I'm going to buy him sunscreen and make him wear it, especially on those sticking-out ears of his. I'll buy him a hat and long-sleeved shirts. I can't imagine life without him.

“Mum, I found some flat tin.” Melissa is in the doorway, shading her eyes with her hand and watching Jake teetering on top of a beaten-up caravan, his arms whirling like propellers.

“Jake, don't move!” I scream.

My toe stubs a railway sleeper as I bolt toward the caravan.

He was probably fine until I panicked. His eyes widen when he looks down and realizes how high he is. His first howl sets off the guard dogs. His second howl sets off car alarms across town. By the time Norm and I coax him down we've both sustained permanent hearing loss. I hold him against me and his howls ease to sobbing.

“Come on, mate, it wasn't that bad.” Norm lifts Jake from my grasp and swings him down to the ground. “I'll get you a can of lemonade.”

Jake takes a long, hiccupping breath followed by a cat-in-heat kind of moan as he lets out the air.

“Mum! I told you, I found some.” Melissa pulls me, limping, to the back of the yard.

My toe is throbbing and I'm sweating and cross. I wonder why I don't buy a couple of puce cardigans and sink back into the land myself, like Brenda or that truck.

We drag the bits of tin to the shed, where Jake is sitting on the counter listening to the golden oldies radio station while Norm scans
Best Bets.

“Have you got any paint for this tin? I'm going to make signs for the school.”

Norm shakes his head. “You're a battler, Loretta. And I suppose I'm expected to put them up?”

“On the fence.”

•  •  •

ONE OF MY
best dreams is Beemer Man. Beemer Man powers his BMW up to the front of the house and snaps off the engine. He swings open his door, jumps out, and strides up my path holding expensive wine in one hand and two tickets to Kiddieland in the other.

“We'll need the children out of the way for a week or so,” he explains, “while I explore every inch of your gorgeous body.”

“Taxi's here. Have a lovely week.” I can feel his eyes on my effortlessly acquired size-ten torso as I give the kids a gentle push out the door.

They run happily to the taxi, clutching their all-you-can-eat-ride-and-destroy Kiddieland tickets, then Beemer Man closes the front door and presses me against the wall.

“Mum, you've painted ‘Save Our Schol.' And you've got paint on your face,” Melissa interrupts to tell me before I get to the good part.

Why did I decide to do this in the front yard? My arms are smeared to the elbows with marine paint, and I'm in the saggy old shorts I swore I'd never wear outside the house. Imagine if Harley Man or Beemer Man went by.

I have a terrible thought. Did Norm mean “battler” or “battleaxe”? The school had better be worth all this.

NORM'S COME BY
to drop off more lemons and pick up a few of my lemon tarts. He leans in an old-man-at-the-pub kind of way on the mantelpiece and picks up a postcard I've propped against the candlestick.

“Who's this from?” he asks, turning it over without waiting for an answer.

“My sister Patsy, the one who works at the uni in Melbourne. She's on a research trip to Paris.”

“She works at the uni?” He props the card back up after he's read it.

“Yep, she's a lecturer there.”

“She must be pretty smart. What happened to you?” Norm winks at Jake, who giggles and scratches his face the way he's been doing since he got up. I know what's wrong but I'm trying to pretend it's not true. Even though the kids in his grade have all had the vaccine, some have still come down with a mild case of chickenpox.

“Dropped on my head as a baby. So did you get the windscreen?”

“Didn't get it, but tracked one down. A new bloke is doing car repairs out the end of the Bolton Road. Set up the
other week. Actually, he's about your age. Not bad looking either. Good business. Nice and polite.”

“Beautiful wife, six well-behaved children,” I add.

Norm leans back and frowns. “Really?”

“No, but probably.”

“I don't think so. He smelled of bachelor to me. Divorced, maybe. Anyway, he quoted me a good price, said to bring the car and he'd put in the windscreen straightaway. So you can take it down whenever you like.”

“What's his name?” I ask Norm.

“Merv Bull.”

I shake my head. Only in Gunapan. Merv Bull sounds like an old farmer with black teeth and hay in his hair who scoops yellow gobs from his ear and stares at them for minutes on end like they'll forecast the weather. The image keeps replaying in my mind as I finish wrapping the lemon tarts in waxed paper.

“You can't judge people by their names, Loretta, or you'd be able to carry a tune.”

“That's unkind, Norm. I may not have turned out to be the talented country-singing daughter my mother was hoping for, but then, neither did Patsy or Tammy. We haven't got the genes for it. I don't know why Mum keeps up these crazy fantasies.”

•  •  •

A WEEK AND
a half later, after having been held hostage in the house by a child even more itchy and irritable than normal, I set out to get the new windscreen.

It's years since I've driven down the Bolton Road. I remember when we first moved to Gunapan I got lost down here. I was heading for the Maternal Health Centre. My first
pregnancy. My face was so puffed up with heat and water retention I looked like I had the mumps. I took a left turn at the ghost gum past the stock feed store as the nurse had advised on the phone, and suddenly I was in another world. Later, of course, after I'd found my way back into town, I realized I'd turned left at the wattle tree past the Pet Emporium, but anyway, it was as if I'd magically slipped out of Gunapan and into fairyland. The bush came right up to the roadside, and in the blazing heat of the day the shade from the eucalypts dropped the temperature at least five degrees. I got out of the car, waddled to a picnic bench in a clearing, and sat drinking water for twenty minutes. Hope bubbled up in me. The baby would be fine, my husband Tony would turn out not to be an idiot, we would definitely win the lottery that Saturday.