Over This Backbone, page 9
I’ll say hi. But I do have to go now, I’m fucking freezing. I laugh.
Sure. I’ll call you soon, Peetie. It’s nice to hear your voice.
Don’t.
You too. Talk soon.
Hey. Be careful.
I turn my phone off without reading any messages and stare into the night—let the roller-coaster of my own feelings grind to a clanking, shuddering halt.
Mum is already curled into her sleeping bag as I crawl into the tent and my headtorch flashes into her eyes.
Sorry.
It’s fine. She shifts onto her back. Were you on the phone?
Yeah.
Who was it?
I shuffle loudly with my sleeping bag, hesitate as I decide what to say, whether it’s worth it. Honesty.
It was Ben. He called me.
How is he? Is he at the Farm? Her voice is straining to be light.
Yep, yeah, good. Busy and happy. A little drunk, I chuckle.
Oh. That’s great.
I wriggle into my sleeping bag. When I pull my headtorch from my head we’re plunged into darkness, and I hear her draw a breath and I know what she’ll say.
So, are you two seeing each other still?
No, Mum. We’re just friends. And we were never seeing each other.
Because he wouldn’t allow me to use such language.
Oh, okay. Good. That’s probably for the best, isn’t it.
I know that she’s right and that’s she’s only trying to support me. I want to agree, but the rage is like a hot poker to the lower back. She’s just like everybody else—thinks I’m incapable of handling myself, is too overprotective, doesn’t know the things he battles like I do. She knows enough to understand how toxic it has become, but doesn’t know how he struggles every day with self-hate and impulsive, mental-health fuelled spirals. I could never tell her the things he has done and said to me, both because the knowledge would break her, and because she mightn’t understand why I have stayed for him—even as a friend.
But I am angry at myself, mostly, because I don’t understand my own actions. Maybe the fear of him collapsing without me keeps me clinging, fuelled by my endless inner monologue of being strong enough to handle him. Perhaps I am simply too weak to wrench myself out from his grip.
Either way, I am ashamed.
In the tent, this quick, heady stream of thought comes out in one childish sigh. I roll away from her and clench my eyes shut tight. The conversation is abandoned there.
December 2015
Bonnie Doon was all heat and hunger, with the hunger pressing in from every side.
Donut? He offered up a tray of cinnamon rings in the car as we left Nunawading station.
Nah, thanks, I said. Some deeply conditioned part of me felt that I’d appear less sexy if I smashed that sticky mess.
He inhaled every last one as he drove. I wondered where in that rake frame they went.
In a basic sense, I didn’t eat enough because it was all too new. I let the skipped lunch on the train morph into something close to starvation, while for two days Ben heaved food in like a dying man. I picked and felt hollow—nibbled a banana for breakfast, scraped dip onto a carrot for lunch, floundered over my salad for dinner.
I’m fine. I’m just not that hungry at the moment, I told him when he asked. I didn’t read my own insides.
And Bonnie Doon itself was emaciated. Leached of shade and water. A drying lake churning with boats and sunburnt pissheads on swerving jet skis blistering and peeling under the kind of unrelenting sun that melted thongs into the bitumen.
Why did your aunt and uncle get a holiday house here of all places, I laughed, half serious, on the deck when we pulled in.
They like sailing and four-wheel driving. It was actually a great place to visit as a kid, he said.
You’d come here from Yallingup? You’d fly here? Isn’t Yalls the most beautiful place in the world?
Isn’t this?
Well …
He laughed. My aunt and uncle came to us sometimes. He grinned and we locked eyes.
My face flushed from the intensity of his stare. I smiled slyly, I can’t believe we’re in bloody Bonnie Doon.
Stop talking, he whispered.
Then his hands were on my hips and he was backing me through the flywire. Pressed up against the couch, mouths together, him so tall that his erection butted against the base of my rib cage as he pulled me against him.
We fucked on the mustard-coloured couch.
The main hunger was for him. I grabbed at him and ground my hips back into his groin as he slept just to feel the rise of his cock, the hot wanting in him. Hungered for him and consumed him until my insides had a dull ache that met with the bone-deep starvation. Until I was sore. It was exhilarating and I felt new, all unknown possibility and raw nerves, even though I had swallowed back any ripple of hope. Knew the story was going nowhere, that it never went anywhere. No point catching feelings. I hungered for him while I searched for the parts of him that I didn’t like. I needed to reinforce myself against wanting him too much.
But he took my hand across the long bridge to the pub. No one had done that before. Lake Eildon mirrored the orange of the sky.
Back in the room, he turned the lights off before leading me to the low bed.
I kind of like seeing you, I said softly into his neck as he pulled me down on top of him.
I don’t like people looking at my body … it makes me really uncomfortable, he said.
Why? You’re sexy.
I just don’t like it.
There was a finality in his words that stamped out my protest—said it wasn’t my place to protest.
Okay, I answered.
I stood in the fibro house by the kitchen window on the first morning in the dazzling gold of the sunrise and watched the inland breeze disturb the lake. The light ricocheted from the dimpled copper rangehood—the whole house was a time capsule of the seventies. I sipped water from a frosted glass while he slept on in the sunken bedroom with the yellow gumleaf-patterned curtains pulled tight against the early heat.
My stomach ached. Hadn’t been able to sleep properly with him beside me, every nerve and thought alight. The urge to reach for him and trace gentle lines across his skin disrupted any drift towards unconsciousness.
Don’t know why I did it—kept waking and pulling him to me. Perhaps it was because I never came, even though I pretended to, and so the wanting never subsided, the flush of release never calmed me. There was also an addictive power in making him need me, then making him come, watching his face collapse in relief. There was control.
There in the kitchen, I took out my old camera and framed the ludicrous rangehood and the window with the peeling paint and the gleaming sink, then snapped a picture.
It’s nice in here, isn’t it? he said from behind me and looped his long arms around my shoulders.
Like a time warp.
He unthreaded himself from me and reached for the fridge.
What are we going to do today? I asked.
Have you ever been to Mount Speculation?
No. Dani talks about it a lot, though. Apparently it’s a pretty special place.
It’ll take a couple of hours to get there, but we can drive most of the way. What do you reckon? Escape the heat?
I thought about the oily haze of the mountains and walked to the sink to stare across the brown of the lake. The jet skis had already launched. I broke a single banana from the bunch on the bench and cracked it open.
Bloody oath, let’s do it.
As we drove higher into the mountains, the snow gums became skinny and crowded, and we wound down the windows of his troopie to cop the scent of eucalyptus and sun on dirt.
I’ve spent so much time up here, he said.
With work?
Yeah, St Peter’s. But also with my uncle. I know it like the back of my hand.
My stomach had stopped its dull ache and churning, but a heavy tiredness had settled over me, the banana long burned off. Splashed my face in the King River as we crossed because he told me to. He watched me grin and drip in my soaked singlet. No one had ever watched me like that before.
At the end of the rutted four-wheel drive track was a rocky turnaround blocked by a National Parks gate, with a narrow path winding off to the right through stiff prickling heath. Ben silently pocketed an EpiPen as we left the car and gave me an admonishing look. I rolled my eyes. I’d forgotten mine. He’d known I would forget.
We followed the track through the buzz of bees and horse flies. The sun bit my shoulders and the ripped Hard Yakka shorts rose up my thighs and my Blundstone boots slipped and rolled as we scrabbled past cliff edges.
From the summit the mountains yawned into the distance on all sides, overlapping spines of block colour shimmering in the heat. We caught our breath and let the sweat dry.
What’s that over there?
The Viking. He followed my gaze. It’s a tough walk.
The Viking rose distinctly from the surrounding folds, double-horned and saddle-like.
And that way? I pointed in the opposite direction to a wildly undulating ridge plummeting from the summit—the spurs of a dinosaur spine on a colossal scale.
That’s the Crosscut Saw, said Ben. You know that Tomorrow, When the War Began is based on these hills? ‘Hell’ is down there, in the Wonnangatta.
No way! I love those books. I read them over and over as a kid.
Me too.
I sat in the shade on the elbow of a long snow gum while he stood behind me with his hands on my waist and his chin on my shoulder. Both of us faced out to the dipping heat and the range.
Mountains are amazing, I said.
You’re amazing, he said.
I was so happy that I choked on the response, just leaned back into him and watched the knotted knuckles of the ridge and the paper collage layers of the Great Dividing Range.
Maybe this would be something unfathomable—something that lasted, not just a drunken fuck. The tall, curly, handsome older boy liked me and I was moving to the city, moving nearer to him. Maybe he would make it bearable—leaving the country and starting a double degree in classical trumpet and arts.
The end of the story cracked wide open. A near-imperceptible bubble of hope and excitement rose into my throat, and for the first time in a long time I didn’t swallow it away.
We drove back into the city on 24 December, Christmas celebration for the German side of my family. He tried to make me get behind the wheel, to practise and rack up some hours so I could go for my licence, but I couldn’t muscle up the courage so he drove me to my Oma’s house in Clayton. Was almost late to our early dinner because we’d stopped to go rock climbing at Mount Macedon on the way home. He was a spider against the wall, gear rattling on his harness, deft, competent fingers.
In the car, my arms ached and the cuts on my hands stung and my mouth hurt from grinning and my cunt throbbed where it pressed into the seat and my stomach was shrunken and desperate and the city wobbled and sizzled.
Left here, I said, and he turned onto Banksia Court and I saw Mum and Dad’s car ahead. It’s just up the end of the street, as far as you can go.
He pulled to the side of the road.
It’s a bit further up, I said, confused as the car stopped and he slipped it into neutral.
Peetie, I don’t want to get sucked into talking with your family, he said.
I’m sure they’d love to meet you, but they won’t suck you in. Come and say hi.
There was that familiar blank resolve.
Nah. I don’t like meeting parents. I’ll drop you here.
Okay. If you want.
I started gathering the things around my feet and reached for the door.
Hey, he called.
I turned and he pinched my chin, drawing my face across the centre console and pressing his lips into mine briefly.
I’ll see you at the Farm next week, he said.
Okay.
I smiled then opened the door.
Didn’t watch him drive away. Felt too drunk with sick or lust or fatigue to turn back. Hauled my bag over my shoulder and started towards Oma’s and the awaiting feast with hunger sharpening the edges of every feeling I tried not to feel.
136 km
I wake up feeling leaden. I want to call him, but I don’t let myself near the phone. The pain of this self-control manifests in an unstoppable aggression.
Although we walk out together side by side across the pale, frosted plain, it doesn’t take long for me to grow sick of Mum. I can’t handle the sound of her feet on the tracks and the neat click of her poles and the soft heave of her breath as we wind upwards and closer to Jagungal. I push hard to walk ahead. Strain to move faster, my legs cyclic and burning up the hills. For a brief hour, she tries to catch me, but I pull away and offer her no conversation. Eventually she gets the hint and hangs back, just in sight.
I think about how she overstepped last night—she knew that proffering an opinion on Ben wasn’t wise but did it anyway. With each footfall, I become more aggravated and the tight muscles between my shoulder blades knot until I can’t turn my neck. As the morning passes, I become the arsehole I told myself I wouldn’t be. I’m aware that it’s all so unfair, this anger and the way that I freeze her with it, but every part of her irritates me, and the more irrational I become the more I can’t stand my existence or hers.
I tumble in circles of self-loathing and annoyance and pain as the track climbs and the sweat pours from me. The sky is still clear, the sun bright and high, flame robins flashing red against pale trunks, but I barely see anything other than my boots.
We walk like this for hours, her a few hundred metres behind, both of us in our own spaces. Finally I stop at Mackays Hut to wait for her.
Ooph, you’re going quick this morning. Mum drops her pack and collapses onto a patch of grass. The sweat hasn’t dried on me yet, but as my breathing calms so does my mood. A flood of post-exercise endorphins and the world is bright again. She hasn’t heard my thoughts, and I haven’t voiced them, though she might have read that fierce charge and known it was directed at her. She must have—I came from her, am part her; she knows me inside and out. The guilt runs hot through me.
Sorry for taking off. I just wanted to walk. Had a Forrest Gump moment. I try to laugh.
That’s okay. You seemed a little in your own head, she says cheerily. Should we have some lunch?
I smile. Yeah, I reckon.
As she opens her pack to retrieve cheese and crackers, I stretch my shoulders and roll the tight knots beneath my fingers—emotion like rope coiled into the body.
I watch her and think about how much I love her.
I watch her and wonder why I can never say the things that should be heard.
We climb the final hill to O’Keefes Hut side by side with aching feet and low blood sugar as the sky swells and greys.
You can feel the weather changing, can’t you, Mum, I pant as we reach the hilly clearing. Like more than just the temperature. I reckon I can feel the pressure changing.
Definitely. I’ve felt that before. Do you remember that time the storm came at the Cape, when we tasted the lightning?
I do! Our hair stood on end when we got to the beach. But the waves were so good we didn’t want to leave.
We laugh breathlessly and swing our packs down.
O’Keefes is little more than a tin shack from the outside—square against the mountain and the building clouds. There isn’t a verandah and the black ants are spiralling frantically into our boots and over our shins.
God, they’re terrible, says Mum, swatting at them. I’m going inside.
She makes some comment or other about the interior as she enters, but I’m fixated on the creek—I’m down to the final pair of clean socks and need to give them all a rinse. I push my pack through the open door and trudge to the rocky stream, utterly exhausted. The air feels thicker than it has for the last week as I yank my socks and shoes from my feet and drag the stinking wool through the water. Brown silt and pale salt swirl as I wring the fabric dry. I perch on a rock with my feet dangling into the icy water and I make a promise to myself here among the rustling heath and the dead skeletons of snow gums to be better—to her and to myself.
Back at the hut, I drape the socks over the front steps.
No tent? I call into the first of three rooms. She’s in the second.
I thought we could stay in here tonight. Give ourselves a nice treat. It’s not as grotty as the others.
She has already pulled her sleeping bag and mat from her pack and unrolled them in the furthest corner. I’m about to reply when I notice the wallpaper. Hundreds of newspaper clippings, mostly from the forties. Grainy black-and-white images and tiny, blotched type coat every wall. I trundle around the perimeter of the room reading of church picnics and landslides and missing children and high jump champions.
Wow. This is amazing.
It’s like a time capsule.
Mum bends towards her bag.
I’m going for a little wash in the creek, she says and drapes a fresh pair of underpants over her arm. Should we have laksa for dinner?
Hell yeah.
It rains heavily during the night and the world rumbles like a garbage truck through an amplifier.
The laksa is still liquid and heavy in my stomach when I twitch and sweat myself awake from the dream, when the rain has stopped. I roll my stiff, knotted shoulders. Mum lies still and silhouetted across from me. I worry for a moment that I’ve yelled out, but she seems to be deep in sleep.
The room is lit by the single window and the moon is now bright enough that I can read the walls from the floor by the spill of its light.
My hot hands slowly unfurl, unclench—nails retract from palms, leaving crescent indents. My jaw aches from grinding and I can still feel that desert soil, the pinch and pierce against the soles of my feet. I can feel the burn of my lungs as I run from them—those men with their joke that went too far. Can feel the shame of it.
