Stephen Irwin - The Dead Path

T ristram Hamilton Boye! Come in here this minute!”

Laine’s eyes flew open.

“Where is your brother?” shrieked the elder Mrs. Boye. She was in the kitchen, and slammed down a saucepan lid like a cymbal. “Your father will be home shortly and the carport has not been swept!”

Laine rolled slowly out of bed. The queen-size was one of the few new things in the house-a concession to physical comfort she’d been intractable about when the prospect of moving in with Gavin’s mother moved from possible to probable some six months after Mr. Boye succumbed to cancer. But now, even the new bed felt tainted. It was an inner-sprung monument to lies, a petri dish of mendacity she had shared with her faithless husband, and shared now with creeping dreams that flew from light but left harsh scratches and diseased, black feathers. Laine promised herself that, as soon as she could, she would rid herself of this house, this bed, her clothes, her jewelry-everything but the flesh she lived in. She would scrub herself clean and flee to start a new life whose first and only commandment would be: Never let thyself be lied to again.

She sat on the edge of the bed, wondering how much of yesterday-strange yesterday-she had dreamed. The almost ridiculously neat young minister Pritam Anand. The haunted, angry, oddly attractive Nicholas Close. The dead bird. The photographs. A shadowed haberdashery where an ageless woman once kept shop and watched and spun plans.

And where now a pretty young woman sold health food, she reminded herself.

My dead husband was one of her customers.

That was exactly the kind of coincidence she’d poured scorn on last night. She pulled back her hair and went to face the crazed force that was her mother-in-law.

Laine tended to Mrs. Boye, gently steering her away from unfocused rage to eat, to bathe, to sit while she picked up the telephone and sifted through the bones of a diminishing list of potential live-in caregivers. Two encouraging interviews were set for the afternoon, and Laine felt satisfied enough to shower, dress, and step into the misty drizzle and walk toward Myrtle Street. It was stupid, it was childish, but she needed to see for herself this young woman from whom Gavin-Gavin, of all people, for fuck’s sake-had started buying health food.

The fine rain was cold and held the world closely in a gauzy veil. She tried to avoid the puddles on the footpaths, but her shoes soon squelched and her feet turned icy. A pair of crows huddled on the branches of a tall gum let out a half-hearted protest at her passing. The birds brought back the memory of the miserable dead thing Nicholas Close had placed on the young reverend’s coffee table, its limp wings flopping around that bizarre fist of a head.

Laine had been very proud of herself last night. Nicholas Close had talked about ghosts and magic, and woven a bit of a spell himself. He’d sounded so convincing, so logical, so sad, that she’d found herself wanting to believe him. But testing prods at his argument had made him angry, and long years with Gavin had taught her that angry, defensive people shared the lousy habit of being wrong.

Ahead, she heard water dripping a monotonous tattoo in some downpipe and the jut-jaw awning of the shop appeared out of the misty drizzle. Closer, she could see the wire frames outside holding the banners for women’s magazines and newspapers. One headline read: Health Minister Under Fire. This was the real world. What room was there for magic when Palestinian rockets and Israeli smart bombs could snuff a hundred lives in a moment? An overflowing trash can, a nearby car with a flat tire, dog shit on the nature strip, a ludicrously yellow chip packet that seemed to leap out in the watery gloom. Even the shop front was frank and wonted: Plow amp; Vine Health Foods written in a hokey rustic font and flanking a logo of a rustic hand plow and a rustic trellis that combined to give an effect that was, let’s face it, hamfisted and artless. A less magical facade was hard to imagine.

For two long minutes, Laine stood in the drizzle and debated turning around and sloshing home. But the prospect of returning to the twilit house where Mrs. Boye shouted at ghosts was a strong disincentive. So, she stepped under the awning to the door of the health food store and went inside.

T he shop was pleasantly warm, and smelled delicious. Warm pools of light fell on jars of bush honey, open sacks of coffee beans, tantalizingly spiced joss sticks, wooden boxes of fragrant tea leaves. Every step brought an appetizing new aroma, a tempting and sapid morsel.

“Are you looking for something in particular?”

She turned to the voice.

Two downlights over the counter flicked on. A slender young woman stepped out from the back room and flipped a switch on the side of the electric till; it beeped and its zeroes lit green.

So this is her, thought Laine.

The young woman was pretty, but naturally so. She carried herself more like a country girl, pleased with her looks, but they didn’t factor on her top ten issues of the day.

“Just getting out of the rain, really,” answered Laine.

The woman nodded and smiled warmly. “You’re welcome to browse as long as you like.”

“Thanks,” said Laine. From the corner of her eye she saw the other woman open the till and stock its drawer with notes from a cash bag.

Laine drifted along the shelves, sniffing the lotions, rolling small hessian sacks of beans in her hands, plucking a leaf of rosemary from a sheaf and lifting it to her nose and savoring its autumnal spice. Then she saw the pumpkin seeds.

“They’re pretty popular. Have you tried them?” said the woman, shutting the till.

Laine shook her head. “Just opening?”

“Yeah, late start. I had to…” The woman wiped her hands on her jeans and wrinkled her nose. “Mammogram.” She smiled and shrugged-what can you do?

Laine nodded. “All okay?”

“Yes, thank God. It’s a stress. My mother, she had a double full mastectomy. I don’t know how she coped. I guess you just do.”

“Yes.”

“I don’t know how I would…” She trailed off, then laughed. “I kind of like mine!”

Laine found herself smiling. “I hear you.”

This girl is no husband-stealer. And as for the old seamstress who Nicholas said had nested here, this place was so inviting, so pleasant, it was impossible to imagine.

The woman opened a box of tea tree shampoos and began marking the bottles. “I mean, it’s not like I’m going to have kids, but you never-”

She bit off her last words. Laine watched. Embarrassment bloomed in the other woman’s pale cheeks.

“Pardon?” asked Laine. She could see the girl’s jaw was tight.

“Nothing.”

Christ, she had some other kind of sickness? Cervical cancer? That would be so cruel, a girl this attractive and young unable to have kids. She touched her shoulder.

“Are you okay? Jesus, I’m sorry. It’s none of my business. But is it serious?”

“No, nothing like that. No.”

She gently took Laine’s wrist and lifted her hand off her shoulder. Laine found her skin on the underside of her wrist tingling. How long has it been since anyone touched me there? The girl kept her eyes on the floor. “It’s a preference thing.”

Laine’s eyes widened just a little as she understood. “Oh.”

The girl nodded and smiled.

Laine kicked herself. Gavin might have tried to crack on to this woman, but it certainly didn’t happen the other way round.

“I didn’t… I wasn’t trying to pry,” she said.

“That’s okay.”

“Does your… your partner must have been relieved your tests were clear.”

The girl put her hands in her pockets. Her blush deepened, then she frowned and laughed. “I’m… I’m not… I’m single right now.”