Tess

Caitlin

TESS

At first she was a blur of light and movement on the steaming road. The rain had stopped and the sun was breaking through the cloud in bright patches. Lewis wound down his window to let the stream of sweet fertile air pour over his face as he drove. His foot came off the accelerator and the car slowed as it topped the hill. That’s when he saw her, moving through fresh light. She had a pack on her back and her hair hung in wet strings on her shoulders.

He could feel the car’s weight, its urge to roll downhill and coast the straight, but he braked and changed down a gear, prepared to stop though she didn’t have her thumb out. He let it roll, engine slowed to a walking pace. She walked on as if the car wasn’t there, and he wasn’t sure what to do. She either didn’t want a ride or didn’t want to risk a ride, even though she was soaking and in an hour or so it would be dark.

He accelerated and changed gear to drive away, but the car jerked to a halt and the engine stalled. He swore and hit the steering wheel. He’d spent hours on the clutch last summer. He’d fixed it. At least he could fix that.

The young woman was looking back at him. He gave a brief impatient smile. She didn’t smile in return, and now the anger he’d contained all afternoon rose up and buzzed in his ear.

She walked over to the passenger window, pushed her hair behind her ears, bent down and looked in at him.

Her eyes were glassy and she stared hard. He felt she was looking right through to the white noise of him, and his face flushed. She gave him nothing in return, only searched him as if she was reaching into his pockets, his ears, mouth, throat. He could feel the air pressure change.

Overwhelmed, he broke her gaze and stretched over to the passenger window and wound it down. She stepped back one pace.

‘I was going to offer you a lift. And then I thought you didn’t want one and then … problem with the gears. Where are you going?’ he said.

‘That way.’ She tilted her head.

‘I’m going to Masterton, if you want a lift.’

She looked south, gauging the distance, and clasped the edge of the door where the window was down. The rings on the three middle fingers of both hands were silver, turquoise, brass—junk found at market stalls. She peered in through the window.

He felt it as she looked—a pure intelligent animal intent—but he couldn’t read her in return, could only be seen, and his skin bristled. It was as if she was below the surface of him, looking through him the way he’d search a water hole before diving in. Jean flashed before him, eyes glaring, mouth spitting names, the slam of the door and the long empty silence. He hadn’t heard from his daughter in six months.

The young woman’s rings drummed a light pattern on the passenger door.

‘Sure.’ There was a mountain ahead of them, and the road wound around it. ‘I’m soaked through,’ she said.

‘My kids peed on these seats when they were little,’ he said. ‘But I cleaned it up.’

She didn’t return his smile but she opened the car door and got in. A fresh earth smell came with her. She put her pack at her feet.

‘What’s this car?’ she said.

‘A Mark IV Zephyr. 1970. I’ve worked on it, you know, over the years. I don’t get to take it out much.’

She said nothing more, and sat looking straight out.

‘You should do up your seatbelt,’ he said. ‘You know, for safety …’ He heard himself as he pointed at the belt and knew he sounded uptight. Why do you always talk like we’re five? Jean would say. Because you act like you’re five, he’d reply. The girl clicked in the belt, then sat back in the same passive position. ‘I’m Lewis, by the way. Lewis Rose.’ He felt he should hold out his hand but he wasn’t sure if she would take it.

‘My mother’s name was Rose,’ she said.

She didn’t offer her own name and he didn’t feel he should ask. What was she? he wondered. Petty thief? Boyfriend trouble? Christian parents and pregnant? He started the engine and the car pulled away easy as if there was no problem. It picked up speed on the straight and he felt it glide over the road. A shaft of sun hit the mountain, and the green bush was lit and brilliant ahead of them.

‘Look at that,’ he said.

She nodded.

The mountain got closer and closer, and then they were on the winding road that had been cut in the side of it.

‘Were you out in the rain the whole time?’ he said.

‘Yes.’

She was wearing jeans and a T-shirt, canvas shoes.

‘You must be freezing.’

‘I’m okay.’

‘There’s a rug, um …’ He pointed behind and took one hand off the steering wheel to reach under the seat. She moved forwards at the same time and his hand brushed her bare arm. She jumped. The car swerved. He sat up and steadied the wheel with both hands.

‘Sorry,’ he said. ‘The rug …’ Then he remembered the rifle.

She reached further beneath the seat. He felt her hesitate. The rifle was hidden under the rug. But she pulled the rug out anyway and wrapped it around her, no eye contact.

He thought to explain, then thought better. He remembered the times he’d hitched as a young man. The uncertain people you went with, being grateful when someone stopped and seemed normal. And being hungry.

‘There’s energy chocolate in the glove box,’ he said. ‘It might help warm you up.’

She nodded and found the chocolate. She opened the wrapper, snapped off two squares and ate them quickly.

‘Want some?’ She held the bar out to him.

‘No. I had a big lunch.’

She didn’t offer again and continued to eat the whole bar. When she finished she made a small satisfied noise.

‘That was some rain,’ she said.

‘Spring rain. The farmers will be pleased. Although I don’t know what it takes to please farmers. They only ever seem to moan about the weather, the government.’

‘I guess you’re not a farmer.’

‘No. But I see a few of them in town when their teeth are sore. I’m a dentist. They’re not so fond of me. Lots of them have bad teeth.’

‘A dentist,’ she said, as if she didn’t believe him. ‘Is that how you got this nice car?’

‘Ah. No. I bought it for nothing when I was a student and did it up myself. I used to do up cars in my spare time.’

‘Mouths and engines,’ she said.

He wasn’t sure if she was teasing him. ‘Yes,’ he said.

In the silence she could hear the oncoming hum, like a large flock approaching. She didn’t want to hear his story, she’d had enough of them. She turned away and kept her eyes on the view in front, though every now and then turned her head to peer out at the thick bush that lined the sides of the valley. The bush had its own peculiar language, unconcerned with human noise.

‘I don’t take this car out much. I’ve been to see my mother in Palmy today. She’s in a rest home there.’

She looked down at her hands, fingers pale and wrinkly from the rain, and willed him to shut up. But she could feel it: he was desperate for company, for anyone. She looked back up at him.

‘She’s been there for four years now. It’s nice enough. My mother’s seventy-nine. Not so old, but she doesn’t know who I am anymore. Today she called me a nice young man and asked me how my wife was.’

He didn’t meet her gaze because there was the road and he was ashamed of how needy he sounded.

His mother was gone. She wasn’t angry, as she had been when it had first come on, the rage that came with losing herself and the bearings in the town she’d lived in all her life, losing the names of her friends, of things. Now she was blank-faced Dorothy, staring Dorothy, who barely seemed to notice he was there. She’d been silent for two hours before she’d turned and said, Where’s your wife? The pretty one?

‘You staying in town?’ He wanted the girl to stop staring now.

‘Hm.’

‘Family?’ he said.

‘Huh?

‘Are you staying with family?’

‘No.’

He tried to quell his frustration. This young woman didn’t owe him anything. She hadn’t even asked for the ride. And Dorothy, her mind was gone, that was the simple truth of it.

They drove out of the valley onto the plains. Neat grids of paddocks stretched out either side of them, their boundaries lined with tidy rows of eucalypts and macrocarpas, wire fences beneath them. Sheep and cows dotted the grass like a scattershot of ornaments. He felt the pleasure of the green wash over his eyes.

Lewis looked at his passenger. Her hair was pulled to one side, and he noticed her neck. It was long and slightly gawky, because she was still growing into her body, the skin youthful. He felt a pull in his groin and he turned away. He guessed she was his daughter’s age.

‘How old are you?’

Their eyes met and he saw her face pull into a scowl as if she’d seen his want. He composed an approximation of calm and turned his eyes on the road.

‘Nineteen, if it matters.’

‘Oh. It’s just … my daughter Jean is around your age. She turned eighteen in October.’ The twins turned eighteen and he didn’t talk to either of them. ‘It’s a good age. Hannah and I married at twenty. I’ll be forty-five in January. When I was your age forty-five seemed so old.’

‘It still does.’

‘Thanks. I was going to say, I don’t feel any older, not really. It’s just that everything in life seems to happen so quickly. You see,’ he said, ‘my wife is dead. I told my mother that three times today. Hannah is dead, Mum, Hannah is dead. And she just kept asking me where my wife was, over and over like a broken fucking record.’

She was quiet, but it seemed to him actively so now, giving his anger some space.

‘Sorry. I know it’s not her fault but I got angry at her and walked out. I’m still angry. But at least she won’t remember any of it.’

‘You remember.’

‘Yes.’

‘Then you should forgive yourself.’

‘Oh. Well. I hadn’t thought of that.’

She shrugged.

Outside, inch by inch, night was coming on. The sky had a streaked ruddy hue. Tomorrow will be fine, he thought, tomorrow will be a good day.

They drove the rest of the way in silence and it wasn’t until Lewis reached the roundabout by the supermarket that he thought to ask her where she wanted to be dropped off. He was unsettled and his thoughts raced with the voice of his mother, of Hannah and Jean. People used words like brave and strong. He was neither. And forgiveness? That was one thing his will failed with. ‘I need to go to the supermarket,’ he said. ‘But I can drop you anywhere you like. There’s a hostel down the end of this road.’

‘It’s okay. I’ll just get out when you stop.’

‘It’s no problem. It’ll be dark soon.’