Sticks, Stones, Page 2

  Her son tightened the towel more firmly around himself. ‘What are you doing?’

  ‘I think it’s about time you did your own laundry.’

  ‘What are you talking about?’

  ‘I was not put on this earth to be your slave.’

  ‘No, but you are my mother.’

  He thought he’d won, she could see a half-smile flicker across his face. She could smell the cologne he splashed on his face, under his arms, a cheap birthday present from Rick’s mum and dad. All-chemical imitation of roses and jasmine. You’re so full of it, you think you are God’s gift. It delighted her that the odour was so appalling, that it revealed his ignorance, showed that he knew shit.

  ‘I’m not washing your clothes anymore.’

  ‘Oh, piss off.’

  ‘And that includes your handkerchiefs.’ Her eyes dared his. ‘I don’t want to touch them.’

  That wiped the smile off his face; he dropped his gaze. For a moment she thought he would sob. And then she flinched, as though he was about to strike her.

  ‘Get the fuck out of my room!’

  She knew her son, she knew his shrugs, his fears, his shames, his strength. She had received a warning. She knew she had hurt him. She had hurt him more than if she had struck out at him, more than if she had raised a belt, a hand, a fist, at him. She was in a daze as she walked down the corridor. My God, she thought, a coldness settling in her, do I hate him?

  At work she could forget. She joked with Aliyah and Siobhan, listened to Darren boasting about the woman from Jet Start Travel he had picked up at the pub on Sunday night, smiled at Aliyah making faces at her behind his back. It felt so good to laugh. She had gone off to visit agencies in Elwood, Sandringham and Elsternwick. She had lunch on her own by the beach at Elwood, had taken off her shoes and stockings and walked into the freezing shallow waters of the bay. When Kalinda and Jack were babies, they had taken them down to this beach, stood with them as they fearfully entered the water, squealing at the cold of it, their eyes growing enormous with astonishment at the first roll and pull of the waves around their little feet. Rick had never been a swimmer and it was she who had first taught them to swim. She’d been awed by their trust in her when they had first battled with the power of the sea – she had held them, released them, held them and released them, till they understood they could master the waves, the rolling of the sea currents, till they were able to laugh and relax and enjoy the water.

  She loved Elwood Beach. On achingly hot Melbourne summer days, the whole esplanade would be filled with families from across the world: Greeks and Italians with baskets of food; Muslim families, the women in their heavy dresses and their veils, hoisting up their skirts to above their knees like strange black birds at the water’s edge; Tongans and Vietnamese, Turks and alabaster white families like her own caking on layers and layers of sunscreen to protect themselves from the unforgiving glare of the Australian sun. Her kids had played in the water, in between the wading Muslim women and the beautiful young gay men cruising each other as they tanned to gold on the beach. Holding them, releasing them, wanting them to be free and good in this world. Mong, mong, mong. Wog, Maco, poofter, nigger, faggot.

  She met up with Joyce from Tourism Tasmania for an afternoon coffee in Richmond and they gossiped about the weekend trade show. Joyce worked with a man equally as conceited and deluded as Darren. He too had boasted of picking up some bright young travel agent at the drinks session at the end of the trade show. I mean, do they honestly think we believe them, Joyce had giggled incredulously over her coffee, don’t they ever look in the mirror? They talked about work, then the conversation moved on to their husbands and then their sons. Marianne had said nothing to Joyce about the word that had made her so contemptuous of Jack or about how she had humiliated him that morning. She listened as Joyce rolled out her usual complaints about her own son, how lazy Ben was, how absentminded and forgetful he was. But there was no harshness in the complaints, no bile. Her love tore the sting from her words.

  Marianne had returned to the office though there had been no reason to. She hadn’t wanted to go home. She’d deliberately left at the hour the traffic would be at its worst, had driven twice around the block to hear an interview on ABC radio with the minister for transport justifying the appalling performance of the state’s public transport system. Round and round the blocks of her suburb: young men with their ties loosened, swinging their briefcases as they trudged up the hill from the railway station, groups of Indian students waiting at the bus stops, the drinkers and the smokers crowding the café tables on the footpath of High Street. The sun had set by the time she was home.

  Rick had phoned earlier in the day to tell her that he was going to be late, there was a message from Kalinda saying she was coming over for lunch on Sunday. Marianne stripped off her work blouse and skirt, stretched out her feet on the bed. She thought she might sleep but the silence of the house was too intense, created its own din. She turned onto her side, rolled her hands across the fleshy padding of her belly, looked across to Rick’s bedside table, at his jug of water, the clock radio, the book on the history of the Ottoman Empire he had been reading for months. What if he didn’t come home? What if there had been an accident? She gave herself over to the shameful release of imagining the funeral, the never-ever again of having to explain herself, the run of an empty house. She reached for the table next to his side of the bed, touched wood, mouthed Rick’s name and lightly sketched a crucifix on the naked skin above her breasts.

  She sat upright on the bed. She must have dozed but now she was sharply awake. Jack had left no message on her phone, nor was there any word from him on the answering machine. There was no training tonight, no soccer, no swimming. The silence was all around her, seemed to have weight and mass, to be slowly suffocating her. A slow nauseating wave of panic uncurled in her stomach, pushing upwards, tugging and clutching at her heart. She scrambled off the bed, put on a jumper and her pyjama bottoms and walked into Jack’s room. Its emptiness startled her. She wanted it to be full of him, his smell, his presence; she wanted to fill the house with him. She lifted the cane basket under her arm and walked, stumbled, to the laundry. She pushed the buttons to fill the machine, then pulled the clothes out one by one and tossed them in. His school shirts, his trousers, his T-shirts, his shorts, his singlet, his socks, his underwear, the crusted handkerchiefs. Come on, Jack, she pleaded, please come home. She was carrying the cane basket back to his room when the exterior light on the back verandah flicked on. She waited, holding her breath, listening for sound of the sliding door.

  Her son walked into the dark kitchen. ‘Mum?’

  She could breathe. She inhaled. She could breathe him in. He switched on the light and the brightness hurt, making her close her eyes. No, it wasn’t the brightness. She opened her eyes. He had come up next to her, his shirt untucked, his schoolbag over his shoulder, looking down at her (how much taller could he grow, how much more handsome?), alarm in his eyes, concern.

  He moved towards her. ‘Mum,’ he said softly. ‘Are you all right?’

  She shut her eyes again, kept them closed. She could hear the washing machine chugging through the cycle, she could hear his shallow anxious breaths, smell the day and the sweat and the boy of him. She couldn’t open her eyes. She didn’t dare look at him. Looking at him, how it hurt.