Black Painted Fingernails (10 page)

I toss my suitcase into the car boot and close it.

‘Can you drop me at the crossroads, where you turn?’ Sophie looks at her watch, and I know she’s calculating the hours she’ll spend waiting for another lift while I’d be cruising north-west.

‘Sophie, I’m going to phone the school and make up a story about the car. That’ll give me time to drive you home and I can start a day late. Okay?’

Sophie looks down at her boots for a moment, considering my offer. It’s the first time she’s seemed lost for words since we met.

We both get into the car. A light rain mists the windscreen as we drive slowly over a cattle grate and turn onto the highway. A cockatoo lands beside the road ahead and pecks at the seed fallen from a truck. It flaps its wings as I drive by, but is too involved in the food to fly away.

I’m not sure if Sophie’s silence means yes or no. ‘Maybe I can meet your Dad?’

Sophie looks up sharply but still doesn’t answer for a long time. She stares at her fingernails, feeling the chipped enamel.

‘It’s very kind of you, James.’

The rain folds in soft curtains from the west.

When we pass the crossroads, I deliberately ignore the distance marker to Hillston. The town could be a million kilometres away for all I care. Sophie crosses her legs and presses the button to wind down the window so that the smell of wet earth fills the car. She turns her face to the rain. Drops run down her cheeks. She tries to catch them with her hands before they reach her skirt.

‘Wind down your window, James.’

‘I’ll get wet.’

‘That’s the point!’

I fumble with the electric window and put my head out. The wind buffets my hair into a frizzy parachute. My eyes narrow and teeth ache with the blast. Above the beating of the wind, Sophie says something I can’t hear.

‘Pardon?’

Sophie touches the button again and both windows silently close.

‘My dad would never have bought a car with electric windows. He’d go on about how if you ended up in a flooded creek, the electrics would be swamped and you’d be trapped in the car, unable to climb out the window.’ She added, ‘He also hated leaf-blowers and cats.’

I slow the car for the roadtrain ahead, caked dry mud falling off the rig and bouncing in front of us, and the vacant eyes of cattle staring through the bars. ‘Mum reckons I’d never risk crossing a flooded road in the first place.’

‘Your mum is . . .’ Sophie bites her lip.

‘Go on. My mum?’

She folds her hands in her lap. ‘Your mum is always with us, like a ghostly chaperone.’

I laugh, imagining Mum in the back seat listening to Sophie.

‘What?’ Sophie’s eyes widen.

‘My mum would think you’re a bad influence.’

‘And you?’

‘Me?’

‘Yeah. What do
you
think?’

‘Truth factory?’

Sophie nods, waiting for my answer.

I repeat, ‘Me? I think . . . it hasn’t rained out here for ages.’

‘James!’ She punches me lightly on the arm, winds down the window again and shouts, ‘James is a mummy’s boy’ over and over, until the rain forces her back inside.

‘You’re soaked, Sophie,’ I laugh. ‘Serves you right.’

She leans across and lifts my shirt, using it as a towel to dry her hair. I tense in surprise. Her hair falls across my skin and I smell the faint perfume of shampoo and soap.

She checks herself in the mirror and leans back in the seat, satisfied.

‘Sophie?’

‘Mmm?’

‘My mum just fainted in the back seat.’

Michael Spalding sits out on the café balcony, his legs stretched in front of him. A waitress slips the coffee across the table and smiles. He registers she’s a similar age to his son.

Where are you, Jim
?

Who are you with
?

Michael hopes his son is with a girl, as pretty and self-assured as this waitress who stands before him now, asking if he’d like anything else. He shakes his head and she starts clearing the next table.

If he answered the waitress truthfully, what he’d like is for a girl like her to take his son by the hand and lead him astray. To tempt James into a life of inner-city houses with messy kitchens and cluttered bathrooms; cooking meals together any hour of the night; staying up until dawn and sleeping through the day; having sex on a foam mattress supported by a stack of stolen milk crates; living a life not stage-managed by parents and routine and study.

He pictures his son driving the M3, cautiously under the speed limit, hundreds of kilometres further than he should because he’s picked up a hitchhiking farm labourer down on his luck, who’s convinced James to detour, maybe with the promise of a few dollars?

And he knows Jim couldn’t say no, couldn’t think quick enough to come up with a reason not to. He wonders how James will explain to the school principal that he’s going to be a day late. He hopes his son doesn’t use the excuse of a broken-down car and the next day roll through the school gates in an M3.

You learn by your mistakes.

The flat white is stronger than he prefers, so he adds sugar and stirs slowly. He thinks of last night and he and Angela, like crazy teenagers with nowhere else to go. He savours the memory, fearing he may have dreamt the whole episode. Except this morning, before leaving for work, he saw the pillows scattered across the verandah and the chaise lounge pushed against the box hedge.

He wonders if Angela is calling James’s mobile now, valiantly hoping he’s switched it back on. Michael pulls his own phone out of his jacket pocket and checks the screen. No missed calls. For a few seconds, he contemplates phoning Angela and telling her not to worry.

He laughs to himself.

The waitress wiping the table nearby looks up quickly with a smile. ‘What’s so funny?’

Michael feels the colour rise in his cheeks. ‘I was . . .  thinking of my son. He’s about your age.’ He realises he’s still holding the phone, and slips it back into his pocket.

‘Oh yeah. What does he do?’

Her hair shines in the afternoon sun, the colour of Bondi sand. ‘He’s at university.’

‘So am I. Which one?’

Michael shifts uncomfortably in the chair and reaches for his coffee. ‘Sydney.’

The waitress sits down at the table. ‘You’re kidding! Me too.’

If Angela was here, she’d invite the girl over for dinner to meet James.

‘What’s he studying?’

‘Oh . . . um, teaching. But I’m not sure his heart is in it.’

If only his wife could hear him now.

The waitress shrugs. ‘I’m doing a major in sociology.’ She glances inside towards her boss at the cash register. ‘I spend my afternoons here and my nights studying.’ She gets up, tosses the cloth into the air and catches it. ‘And when I’ve finished my degree, I’ll probably work here full-time.’

‘You should meet m-my son Jim,’ Michael stammers.

‘Sure. Tell him to drop in sometime. He can buy me a coffee.’

She walks back into the café. Michael finishes his flat white, wondering how he’d explain this to his son. As he walks to his car, the waitress comes outside to pick up his empty cup and wipe the table. He unlocks the car and waves to her.

Hair like Bondi sand.

I remember a story my father used to tell me of when he was a kid, fishing with his best friend Wayne, where the river flowed swollen and fast outside of the town where he was born. They threw their lines in and watched them tense downstream, picturing the worms wriggling on the hooks. That day they caught three rainbow trout, tossing them live into the half-filled bucket.

On the way home they crossed the river upstream, Wayne carrying the bucket, Dad with the lines. Dad shook his head each time he told the story, as if he couldn’t believe what happened next.

They were stepping from rock to rock, bragging about what their fathers would say when they saw such fish. Wayne reached into the bucket and grabbed one of the trout, still squirming and snapping. He grinned madly as he held it above his head like a trophy.

My dad reckoned the fish smelt freedom, or realised it was being held by an idiot. It twisted contemptuously from Wayne’s grip and dived into the rushing stream. Wayne made a futile lunge, lost his balance and fell into the water. The bucket clattered on the rocks and the other fish skidded free from their metal prison. Wayne screamed. Dad flung his fishing line to the far bank and dived in.

‘I’m not sure if I was trying to save Wayne or catch the fish with my bare hands.’

Both boys got swept along the river, waving their arms, shouting fit to burst, struggling against the current. Dad paddled wildly towards Wayne and grabbed onto his shirt, trying to keep both of them afloat. Dad said, ‘And all the while I was thinking of those beautiful trout, smirking, swimming right under my flailing legs.’

Dad wrapped his arms tight around Wayne to stop him from going under. Wayne spluttered and kicked and fought while Dad clung on and wondered how long he could last.

Luckily, a farmer heard their screams and hurled them a rope. It took three attempts for them to catch it and be dragged ashore.

‘And here’s the kicker: as soon as I caught that rope, I relaxed and swam to the side, easy as pie. I was safe because there was a man watching over me, holding the rope as we climbed the bank. His name was Jim. That’s how you got your name. Even if your mother prefers James.

‘I certainly wasn’t going to call you Wayne; he threw away the best fish I ever saw.’

Sophie and I drive past a mail van parked on a dirt track beside a row of letterboxes. The postie wears a bright yellow jacket and a hat pulled low over his face, and is stuffing the mail into the boxes. A kelpie sticks his head out of the passenger window and barks at the sheep huddling in the paddock. The postie runs back to the van, flinging his hat onto the dashboard.

Sophie looks out the window at the rain. ‘Do you know what I was doing yesterday morning?’

I shake my head.

‘Standing under a window, while my boyfriend – my
ex
-boyfriend – proposed.’ She rolls her eyes. ‘He locked me out of the apartment and was going to keep me out until I said yes. He’s probably still waiting.’

The wipers idle across the windscreen.

‘You just walked away?’

‘He didn’t give me much choice.’

‘Ultimatums are so . . .’

‘. . . final!’

‘And stupid. My parents forced me to go to uni. Mum was going on about medicine, about following in Dad’s footsteps. In the end, no one got what they wanted.’

‘What
do
you want, James?’

I shrug. ‘I only know what I don’t want.’

‘That’s a start. Tell me?’

I take a deep breath. ‘I don’t want to drink with my mate Pete and talk about girls who don’t even know we exist. I don’t want my mother to tidy my room or buy my underwear or find me a suitable girlfriend. I don’t want to – I don’t want to be a teacher.’ My hands tense on the wheel and I breathe out like a slowly deflating balloon. ‘Can we change the subject?’

A tractor ploughs the paddock on my right, the farmer with one hand on the wheel, his head turned to check the accuracy of his line.

‘The day after I turned thirteen,’ says Sophie, ‘when no one was home, I went out to the back shed and rummaged through the bag of clothes Mum had left behind. I don’t know why Dad hadn’t thrown them away. Perhaps he’d forgotten they were there.’ Sophie shakes her head, as if she’s catching herself getting away from the point of what she’s saying. ‘I took the bag back to my room and spent hours trying on all the clothes. There were cotton skirts and long smocks and sheer halter-tops and even a pair of daggy high-waisted jeans. And everything fitted me.’

She shivers.

‘Did it help you to remember her?’

‘It was worse than that. I heard Dad’s car pull into the driveway and I panicked. I ripped off the dress I was wearing and stuffed everything back into the bag, then tossed it under my bed.’

‘Then what?’ I ask.

‘I put my own clothes back on and walked into the kitchen where he was packing away the grocery shopping.’

‘What did you do with all her clothes?’

‘The next day, I dropped the bag into a Salvos bin. I was ashamed of myself for wearing them. In my dad’s house. After everything he’d . . .’

She lifts her skirt and admires her big black boots. ‘But
my
boots, I love. Do you know why I wear them?’

‘Kicking boyfriends?’

‘Do I look like the kicking type?’

‘No. It’s because you’ve got long . . . nice legs. Maybe you hope the boots will draw attention away. You’re sick of guys looking.’

Sophie puts a finger to her lips, licks it, and draws the number one in the air. ‘Lucky that wasn’t for lunch.’

‘Does it work? Do men stop looking?’

‘No. But it makes me feel better.’

The highway narrows and the shoulder becomes cratered with potholes and crumbling bitumen. I imagine broken windscreens, punctured tyres and the long wait for roadside assistance. Sophie and me, sitting beside each other on the bonnet.

Sophie and me.

I shake my head, unwittingly, and tell myself I’m dreaming.

‘What are you thinking about, James?’

I smile, despite myself. ‘Don’t you already know?’

She shakes her head. ‘You looked to be in another world. The way my dad would sometimes sit in his garden for hours and I never knew what he was thinking about.’

There’s not a car in sight. Just Sophie and me. And our stories, our past.

‘I had a lecturer at uni, for Modern Literature,’ I say. ‘One day he came in and instead of lecturing us on the Australian novel, he stood at the podium and talked about his recent visit to the doctor. Testicular cancer.

‘Every guy in the audience squirmed, without meaning to. The lecturer looked like a caged animal. He said, “I can’t sleep, can’t work. I spend hours on the computer looking at the survival rates, miracle diets, the effects of drugs.” He kept glancing at the exit door. “All my life I’ve wished I could write like Tim Winton, now I wish . . .” He leant against the podium with his shoulders slumped and his head bowed. A woman in the front row got up and put her arms around him. We all just sat there, not knowing what to do. No one said a word.’

‘If that was me,’ Sophie says, ‘give me morphine until it’s all over. I’m a coward.’

She looks out at the retreating showers. ‘Can you stop, James. Let’s walk.’

I pull over beside a stand of scribbly gums. Sophie is out of the car before I’ve opened my door. She walks quickly to the trees, reaches out and traces the scribble with her finger. A slow tear rolls down her cheek.

‘I’m sorry, Sophie. It was just a story.’

Tears. I want to stop them in case they wash over me and sweep me away.

Sophie leans against the fragile bark and looks at me, her breath shallow and tight.

Do I hold her?

She steps forward and hides her face in my chest. Her fists beat softly against me. Her cheeks are wet on my shirt. I wonder what snatches of her past fight each other now, what is surfacing: the last boyfriend? The brother with his camera?

My arms tighten around her.

A line of sentry ants climb the tree, following the scrawl in the bark. A crack of thunder disturbs the distance and the rain returns, sheeting in, funnelling off the leaves. In a land where it rarely rains, we huddle under the flimsy shelter of groaning branches.

Sophie reaches down for my hand. Our fingers entwine. She turns and leads me back to the car.

As I put on my seatbelt, she says, in a faint voice, ‘I might sleep. Whistle when we reach my town.’

She reclines the seat, tilts her head towards the window and closes her eyes. I look out on the forcing rain, the blurred horizon, the pale sky. We’re three hundred kilometres from my new school. I picture a boy from Year Six running across the playground to the verandah outside the principal’s office, knocking on the door and grabbing the old-fashioned bell on the desk, walking back to the balcony and swinging it low and rhythmic by his side, clanging across the town. Lunchtime and the new teacher still hasn’t arrived. The boy running back to class, stamping in every puddle he can find.

My lecturer stopped attending classes and was replaced by a young woman, one of the tutors. I saw him again a year later promoting his first book on morning television. He was wearing a suit and tie and looked healthy and robust. He held the book in his hands, as if it were a precious diamond.