Tim Winton - The Turning

When she woke it was five o’clock and Max was gone. She stretched, luxuriating in the sudden spaciousness of the bed, and slept on until old man Harrison’s mower came by at ten.

Sherry came by at noon and said nothing about the pancake foundation on her face. Rae knew she looked like a bad job from the panel beater. You could see it in the girls’ faces. Sherry just hugged her and helped her pick up around the van before Max’s boat got in.

In the afternoon, while Max ate his steak and eggs in weatherbeaten silence, still in his singlet and shorts and seaboots, Rae wondered about Sherry, what it was, apart from looks, that she had. It was a bit of a mystery.

On darts night Raelene left an hour early to drop by Sherry’s on the way home. When Sherry came to the door she seemed alarmed. She held Rae by the shoulders and inspected her face, and it was only when she satisfied herself that there was nothing wrong that she relaxed and asked her in. Dan got up from the couch and offered her coffee, went and made it himself. For an hour or so Rae regaled them with tales of the darts girls. She stank of beer, she knew, and she smoked her Benson & Hedges and they gave her a saucer as an ashtray and were too decent to wave the smoke away. She wondered if it was money that made them different. But plenty of fishermen made loads more than Dan; it couldn’t be that. She went home happy but puzzled.

Raelene made a habit of dropping by on darts night. Dan and Sherry were usually still up, watching TV. Some nights she was weaving a bit when she arrived but they didn’t seem to mind. There were times when she knew she was pestering them, when she really was a pain in the arse, and once or twice, when she was completely pissed, she felt herself trying to provoke them like a bloody teenage daughter, but they remained unfailingly polite and courteous. Deep down Rae sensed that she wanted something from them. She just didn’t know what it was.

One Tuesday she came by late. It was after eleven and the lights were out. When Dan came to the door he was only in his boxers. He looked startled, embarrassed. He said her name so loudly that Sherry appeared in the hall behind him with her lipstick awry and her hair all rumpled.

You’ve been at it! she yelled.

Would you like to come in, Rae? asked Dan.

Don’t think so, said Raelene. It wouldn’t be fair.

Sherry began to laugh. She tossed her gorgeous hair and stood there in her lace teddy a second before clapping a hand on Dan’s shoulder and drawing him back from the door, smiling all the while at Rae and wiggling her fingers goodbye. For Raelene there was nothing for it but to pull the door to and walk back out into the quiet street laughing. But by the time she got home she felt desolate. She wanted what they had, that special something, and when she looked down at the outline of Max snoring in her bed she bawled quietly and the effort to keep silent hurt worse than a beating.

When Sherry didn’t come over for a couple of days Raelene felt frantic. The first real cold front of the season came through and rain drove in off the sea. The swell spewed mounds of stinking kelp and seagrass onto the beach and all the boats stayed in, shaking and lurching at their moorings like chained dogs. Max was around the whole time, scratching his beard, eating and farting and sulking, and the girls got on Rae’s wick, whingeing about going outside and needing the toilet, while all day every day the rain pissed down.

Why can’t we have a bloody house? she screamed over the TV and the wind and the squalling girls. With a toilet, for fucksake, so we don’t have to walk a hundred yards to have a shit! I mean, how bloody hard is it?

Max didn’t even answer.

She trudged across puddles with the girls and bowed before the rain. While each of them sat in a cubicle swinging their legs she tried to light a little joint she’d been saving but the bastard of a thing was too damp to catch so she ate it instead and five minutes later puked it back up.

Raelene couldn’t stop thinking about Sherry and Dan. She was hooked now. Maybe even in love with them. The weird thing was that she felt no envy, not the hot green bilious envy you’d expect when you saw their stuff and their doll-like looks and what they had going between them. When she was with them they didn’t make her feel low, they didn’t rub her nose in the mess she was. They lifted her up somehow. They were kind of straight and maybe they wouldn’t last long in White Point but she felt different with them.

There came a Tuesday when Raelene blew off darts night altogether and just went straight to Dan and Sherry’s. When they let her in, surprised to see her so early but not at all reluctant to greet her, she saw that beside the empty plates and glasses on the dining table there were books open. Not just books — they were Bibles.

Raelene began to laugh. She heard herself, she sounded like a bloody madwoman and she wished she was drunk.

No darts tonight? asked Dan, putting the kettle on. His black hair was just too fuckin perfect.

Cancelled, she lied.

Feel like some gnocchi, Rae? asked Sherry. There’s plenty left.

No, said Raelene, unable to settle, to sit, to look them in the eye.

She knew things about them, what they did in bed, what labels they wore, the kind of towels they bought and the sort of fabric softener they used and even, having laid the paper in them herself, how their bloody bathroom drawers were set out, but she suddenly realized that she didn’t know them at all. She blinked like an idiot and thought about it. All the stories Sherry told the girls. Rae’d thought of them, if she’d noticed them at all, as old-timey tales, adventure stories. But it was church stuff.

So it’s this, she murmured.

This? said Sherry, sitting and crossing her lovely legs and raking her fingers through her hair.

This! said Rae. She slapped a hand down on one of the Bibles.

Oh. That! said Sherry with a laugh.

Raelene felt the ricepaper cling to her sweaty fingers. She had to shake the thing free and she left the pages badly crumpled. Shit, she mumbled. Sorry.

It’s fine, said Dan, shrugging.

I wondered what it was.

The Bible, said Sherry.

I know what the bloody thing is, she said, catching herself. I mean, I wondered what made you different, what it was you had. It’s religion, isn’t it?

Well, faith, yeah, said Dan with a nervous smile. That and plenty of Vitamin C.

Dan, said Sherry in the mildest scolding tone.

Raelene began to cry; she couldn’t help herself, she didn’t know why she was doing it. Sherry led her to the couch and held her. She smelt of garlic and tomato and Givenchy and Rae felt her patting her hair and stroking her neck while she howled. She was aware of Dan still in the room, of Sherry’s body firm and cool against hers. It was like a trap, as though they’d been expecting this, and now was the moment they’d fall on her and drag off her blouse and reef up her skirt and hold her down for each other, whispering weird shit at her like on the movies and the sick thing was that she was ready for it. She wanted them both, wanted to be them. For a moment she didn’t care if they killed her, even, as long as it was over quickly.

But nothing happened. Nothing more than Dan bringing her a cup of tea and Sherry reaching for a box of Kleenex. In the end, out of a kind of dismay, she stopped blubbering.

You look so tired, said Sherry.

Tired of my fuckin life, said Raelene, chewing her lips.

Well, what about Max? How about the girls?

I’m a shit mother, you know that.

You two wanna go for a walk? asked Dan.

There’s nowhere.

The beach? The dunes?

I’m bloody stuck. I’m fucked.

The moon’s out, said Dan.