P. O’Reilly - The Fine Colour of Rust

‘Oh, Loretta, I’m sorry, I completely forgot. I’ve made other plans.’

I can imagine Helen’s plans. They’ll involve a cask of white and six changes of clothes before she collapses on the bed in tears and starts ringing her friends – me – asking why she can’t find a man. Is she too old, has she lost her looks? It helps to leave the house occasionally, I have to remind her. She certainly hasn’t lost her looks. Auburn hair without a single grey strand. Straight white teeth. A country tan. Unlike mousey-haired skinny scragwoman me, she even has a cleavage.

‘The grade-three teacher’s coming,’ I tell her, certain this will change her mind. ‘And Brianna’s offered to mind all the kids at her place. She must have hired a bouncer.’

‘He’s told you he’s coming?’

‘Yeah, he left a message on my machine,’ I lie.

So Helen’s in. After I herd up seven others with more lies and false promises, I put the sausages on. Sure enough, the sulphur smell fades once they start to burn. I used to enjoy cooking quiche and fancy fried rice and mud cake. Gourmet, like on the telly, the boyfriend would boast to his mates. Then we get married and it’s, ‘Listen, darl, I wouldn’t mind a chop for a change.’ Now the kids think gourmet is pickles on your sandwich. They won’t even look at a sundried tomato. Last time I tried that, Jake picked them out of the spaghetti sauce and left them lined up like red bits of chewed meat on the side of the plate. ‘Gross,’ he said, and I had to agree, seeing them like that.

The meeting’s in the small room at the Neighbourhood House because the Church of Goodwill had already booked the large room by the time I got round to organizing tonight’s meeting. We’re sitting pretty much on top of each other, trying to balance cups of tea and Scotch Finger biscuits on our knees. Maxine is supposed to be taking the minutes.

I thought I’d made it up, but the grade-three teacher has come, and Helen’s paralysed with excitement and terror. She’s wearing enough perfume to spontaneously combust and the smell’s so overwhelming that Maxine has to swing the door open. Two minutes later the noise from the meeting next door starts up.

‘Yes!’ they all shout. ‘Yes! I do, I do!’

‘Well, I don’t.’ Maxine swings the door half-shut so that we’re dizzy with perfume but still having to shout over the frantic clapping of people being saved next door.

I give the list of apologies and welcome everyone who’s come, introducing the grade-three teacher in case the others don’t know him. Helen’s gone as pink and glistening as a baby fresh out of the bath. She’ll have a seizure if she’s not careful. I can’t see the attraction. The teacher’s five foot four, stocky, and always says, ‘At the end of the day.’

‘At the end of the day,’ he says when I introduce him, ‘I am totally committed to this cause. Our jobs are at risk too.’

Just in case, I look down at his feet, but no spurs. I read out the list of agenda items. Brenda sighs loudly.

‘Do we have to do all this agenda crap? And the motions? I motion, you motion. My Mark’s doing motions you wouldn’t believe and I have to be home by nine in case I need to take him to Emergency.’

‘Yes, we do. Because we’re trying to be bloody official. And as you well know, an emergency department that closes at ten in a town half an hour away is one of the reasons we’re here. Soon this town will have no services for a hundred kilometres.’

‘Oh, yes, ma’am.’

I roll my eyes. Maxine rolls her eyes. For a moment I think of us all rolling our eyes like a bunch of lunatics in the asylum and I almost cheer up.

‘Item one. I’ve written a letter to the member for our local constituency about the closure of the school.’ I pause for the inevitable joke about members which, to my amazement, doesn’t come. ‘We need everyone who has kids in the school to sign.’

‘It’ll never work.’ Brenda is the optimist of the committee.

‘Does anyone know how to drain the oil from a sump?’ Kyleen pipes up.

Only another half an hour, I think, and I can pick up the kids from Brianna’s, drop them at the orphanage and drive straight down to Melbourne. With the experience I’ve got, I’ll land a good job in a centre for adults with attention deficit disorder.

When I pull up at Brianna’s, the kids run to the front door, looking pleased to see me. They’re way too quiet in the back seat. They must have done something horrible.

‘So did you have a good time?’ I ask. I speed up to catch the amber light and the Holden roars with the might of a drunken trucker. I can’t make out exactly what Melissa says, but I might have heard the word fight. I think back. Were they limping when they got into the car? Was there blood? I can’t remember anything like that so I turn on the radio and keep driving along the dark highway, listening to the soothing sound of a voice calling race seven of the trots, something I’ve learned to love since the radio got stuck on this station.

‘Mum?’ Melissa says, as we pull into the unsurprisingly Harley-free driveway.

‘Yes, sweetie?’

‘I don’t ever want to leave this house.’

‘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 hairdryer, 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 goodnight.

‘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.