Over this backbone, p.10
Over This Backbone, page 10
I hate that this fucking nightmare has come back for me.
But I take a breath and scan my surroundings, as I always do, and the memories slip away fast and slick like an oyster down the throat—the fishy taste lingers, but the flesh of it slides somewhere deep and unreachable.
The heart calms.
My eyes lock on a wallpapered article. Betty Prendergast grins wide beside her CWA prize-winning potato. I give a soft chuckle and lay back. It’s funny, the things we celebrate.
The oyster stays buried inside and I fall asleep thinking of giant spuds.
January 2016
On the final night at the Farm in January I lay on my back in my cabin in the kind of unnerving and sad silence that descends when many beautiful and loving people leave you behind. I wondered how I would survive the real world.
The Farm wasn’t real.
Real was that I didn’t know how to play the trumpet anymore but was about to walk into a music degree.
Real was that David Bowie had died of cancer the day before and that some of my childhood and myself had carked it with him.
Real was Melbourne and the horrible noise of it.
I didn’t want to go to that real world. I didn’t want the same problems they all had—phones and greasy skin and disconnection.
I wanted to be nowhere but the mountains. The only solace was that Ben’s small flat was twenty minutes down the road from the bungalow in Oma’s backyard. It filled me with something like joy, but also with trepidation because I didn’t want to need him.
It’d taken me hours to pack up at the Farm, but it was all done and gone as I lay there on that final night, all inside a box trailer in my Oma’s driveway by now. I imagined the city pulsing and pushing around my dirty smoke-soaked jumpers.
Ben was gone too. He’d only stayed a week for the summer festival.
The new staff had come on the night before the celebrations. They were fresh and unbattered. They didn’t know yet the unstable tyranny of Jen, or the trouble of this place. I’d watched them arrive from the kitchen window above the stove in the same curious way I’d watched Dani—wary of a disruption to my home and my role in it.
Anna was my replacement—the youngest in the team, energetic and boisterous and straight from school. She had eyes like blue ice and a smile that was rampantly infectious. Her Akubra was wide and clean, her skin smooth and tight. I felt a twist of envy for her beauty. Wondered what it was like to catch every eye.
Leigh was taking over from Billie as the program manager. They were American—arrived both jet-lagged and culture-shocked, straight off the plane from West Virginia to this weird wide Victorian valley side. Olive skin and gleaming white teeth and a thick, curly pile of short hair. They had a wicked sense of humour and a deep, fierce defiance. I feared for them coming up against Jen.
The last one to arrive was tall and slender. He unfolded himself from the car then scuffed his boots up the drive. I noticed the mess of straight red hair and the shy downward cast of his eyes, then launched from the dining hall steps and ran. I hit him with the full force of my body. The wind heaved out of his lungs but he wound his arms around me.
Tommy! I screamed into his chest.
Aw hey Peet, he wheezed.
Tommy, my old freckled friend from my days as a student at the Farm—the rough country boy who sang like Paul Kelly about trees and birds. We were back together after all these years.
I’d introduced him to Ben and they’d both smiled but not with their eyes. There was instinctive distrust that I didn’t understand.
And Ben had watched me closely all weekend as I’d ricocheted from friend to friend, elated and central and loved. I felt electric and at home—swinging axes and directing traffic and barn dancing and flipping snags and driving the tractor with the Furphy on the back to wet down the dusty drive. He’d watched me when I made the crowd laugh and when I’d bustled through the kitchen and wrestled with Tommy.
Ben had watched, then pulled me into quiet spaces away from them, had taken me all for himself. I didn’t mind.
We woke that morning, my last day in the empty room, a warm breeze padding from the open door to the open window. Lay in the light and the dust motes drifted over our heads. White sheets. Slow movements, hands shifting and lifting more dust into space.
I’ll see you in the city, he’d said as he climbed into the car.
Now, as I lay on my back in the cabin, there was only me and a blanket and the mattress and my pack and the crackling radio that I’d flicked on to drown the silence.
That room was a ghost of me, the Farm a ghost of my year. I didn’t want it to be over, but everyone else seemed ready to go—Dom and Dani, Billie, Maya. They were ready to run.
I stared at the dusty roof and the candle flickered on the shelf, and I let my eyes swim a little. Then I sniffed and looked out the open window. The sky was that grey and ashen pink that comes between blue and black and the night noises were soft but very present. I was happy yet churning because I was on the precipice of something, like my gut had been peeled open to the mountain air.
‘Changes’ came on the shonky radio, just recognisable through the static. I chuckled at the cliché.
All I knew for sure in that empty shell cabin was that David Bowie had had more to give.
157 km
It’s a shambles, the way the packs are dropped and tipped on the path, their lids open like mouths spewing toothbrushes and muesli bar wrappers and orange peel. The ravens tussle with browning apple cores and sacks of scroggin. One lets out a mournful caw and takes off across the damp heath with a pen in its gob.
I think they’re from the university, I say as I stuff some of the explosion back into the lid of a pack and read the neat permanent marker on the canvas.
How do you know?
The name. Rylie Fenton. I reckon I’ve seen her on Facebook.
Mum scrabbles to pin a fluttering wrapper with her boot.
This is pretty poor form for a uni group, she says.
We’re at the base of Jagungal where the track splits off towards the summit or over the plains towards Grey Mare Hut.
Do you want to go up? She gestures to the scrubby mountain.
I don’t think so. Do you remember that archaeologist I met at the Farm? He said that it’s a sacred men’s site. Don’t think it would be right.
Really? That’s good to know. She takes one last look at the packs and we start walking again. Do you think the university tells their students about it?
I guess if they do, the students don’t care.
How are you feeling about going there next year?
We walk another few paces before I answer.
Yeah, good, I think. I was hesitant because I feel like I’ve done the course vicariously through Ben and Dani. But I know I haven’t.
You’ll get so much from it.
I’m sure I will.
Might learn how to take a fucking bearing.
I think you’ll find your people there. University is where you find your people.
Is it? All I found at Monash was a hoity sea of stuck-up trumpeters fighting for the front row in the ensemble, I say grimly.
She laughs. You gave that course all you could and it wasn’t right for you. I think outdoor education at Bendigo will be different. It’s a different university. Who knows?
I bloody hope it will be different.
We walk a ways in silence. I slip the straps of my pack from my shoulders to stretch and roll them as we plod. The knots tighten and click.
We yank our shoes on and off to cross creeks when the track dips and rises into gullies. It’s frustrating but our feet relish the cold. We discuss walking off-track, following the creek to Valentine Hut in order to find a waterfall. We decide against it. The day is already close to twenty-kilometres long, plus it’s muggy and we’re tired.
A final creek, wide and rocky and swimmable, then the hut.
It sticks out like a flame robin against the muted bush: compact and fire-engine red, and surrounded by soft thick grass onto which we collapse. But as I feel the joints in my back stretch and click, I see a jumping jack flit past my face. I scramble to my feet.
Fuck! I yell.
Mum sits up and gives me a worried look.
It’s fine. I haven’t been bitten. Just got a fright.
I sit on my pack and we catch our breath.
The thought of you being out here every day of your life with anaphylaxis is a bit scary, Peet. Especially when you start working in the bush all the time.
I’ll be right, Mum.
I know you will, but I can’t help worrying—it’s a mother’s right. She pauses. It’s scary, but I do think you’ve made the right choice with uni.
How so?
You’re happy out here, and you were happy when you were in the desert. You just didn’t seem that happy in the city. Oma and Dad and I were really worried about you. Maybe it was the lack of friends. You were always the most social and charismatic and busy person—you are, still—but it wasn’t there in the city, was it?
I laugh sadly and say, Nah, I hated it. But I’m good now. No stress, Mum.
I stand up. I’m too tired to have these kinds of conversations.
A swim, I announce with a flourish of my hand. And I reckon if the hut’s any good we sleep in there—keep the no-tent streak going.
Sure.
I hear the worry in her. It has racked up over years of watching me steamroll happily through life, worry compounded by the last ten months of watching me drown in it. I wish I had the capacity to assuage her anxiety, quieten it. But I don’t even have the capacity to dampen my own. I head for the water.
February 2016
It was blissful for the weeks before university began. Before Ben went back to work as a freelance outdoor educator, before the sun was swallowed whole by the Melbourne autumn, before the novelty of it all flaked away, there was something delicious about the real world.
Woke most mornings in the backyard bungalow to the elm tree dappling patterns across the white walls and brushing gently along the roof. The floorboards glowed warm. The cream cotton curtains billowed inwards on the summer breeze.
It had been Mum’s room through high school and university, separated from the main house. I liked walking slow laps of the small space, past the clean bench and low tiled coffee table, and imagining her in there. She’d been a lovely, beach-haired, book-smart thing with smoky blue eyes and a string of sexy European boyfriends. I’d seen photos.
Most mornings, as I made a percolator on the cramped stove and sat on the concrete step with my back resting against the weatherboards and watched the kangaroo paw and callistemon hum with bees and flies, I felt adult. Mum would’ve sipped on black coffee in the same sunny spot as I did—only, for a brief period back then she’d have had a durrie cinched between her fingers too. She was Noni Hazlehurst in Monkey Grip—Helen Garner’s seventies summer.
I liked to pretend I was like Mum.
I wasn’t, really—didn’t smoke and wasn’t rake thin, but I did have something like a lover, which was perhaps more bizarre. It baffled me. Still marvelled at the tight curls of his hair and those hollow creases in his cheeks when he smiled that made my heart clench. It was like a dream but simultaneously he was so tangible that it shook me up.
But he hated coffee—the taste, the smell, the idea—so when he was there I’d delay being upright for as long as humanly possible, until the sun forced us from the sweaty sheets. I’d shake and prod and irritate and chatter at him for hours while he tried to sleep. My body was hardwired for an early rise but was also magnetised to him. Couldn’t just get up and get on with life while he lay there. So I waited for him.
He lived close to the bungalow in a flat behind his aunt and uncle’s house in the suburbs. I’d been only twice. It was crowded with outdoor equipment—climbing gear, life-jackets, hiking packs—and fairly messy. But it smelt like him, like woodsmoke and boyish musk. He was private about his space, so largely came to me.
Slowly, he unravelled parts of his life. Told me about the challenges of his own family—a drug-addicted younger brother who never left home, parents who couldn’t acknowledge it. His past relationship battles.
I fuck it up, every time, he said. Which is why I can’t be in a relationship.
I understand, I said, but I assumed that the end of this sentence was, apart from with you, because these words didn’t apply to me. We were in a relationship, weren’t we? I was different.
I never thought to confirm my assumption.
Besides, each day was spent together—our lives were linked.
Once, after we’d been climbing at Mount Macedon, I coiled the rope into the boot and walked to the passenger door to find him in the front seat dangling the keys from one finger and grinning.
What are you doing?
You’re driving. Put this on the back while you’re at it.
He handed me a magnetic L-plate, then swatted me from the doorway. I walked slowly around the car, stuck the magnet to the bumper and climbed into the driver’s seat.
I really don’t want to drive, I said after a moment—reduced to a cowering child; conflicting emotions, nervous and vulnerable.
Aw, Peetie. Don’t worry so much, he said. You’ll be fine. We won’t go through the city. I’ll be right here.
I slid the seat forward as far as it would go—clunk—stretched my short legs, rested my feet on the pedals.
I still had to drive another hundred hours supervised before I could even consider booking my driving test. I needed to start or else I’d be trapped for eternity in the outer suburbs.
So I slid the key into the ignition and pressed the clutch and turned on the engine. And I didn’t stop grinding my teeth until we’d hooked left into Banksia Court and had come to a stop in the shaded drive. I’d almost cried with each stall, the blood reddening my face.
You did well, Peetie, he said gently.
I sounded a feeble laugh, full of self-loathing.
Hey, he said, and pulled my hand into his. You did really well. We’ll keep doing it and you’ll get more comfortable, okay?
Fragile and incompetent.
I smiled weakly.
Come on, he said. Hop out. I have a CFA meeting.
He climbed cheerily from the car while I quivered and my hate for the city brewed.
He was right. Slowly I was more confident among the traffic and our drives stretched further from the suburbs—Torquay, the Peninsula. This is what we did together to pass a day.
Each time we hit the coast I plunged into the salt like it held an answer, while he watched from the beach with his arms looped around those long, bent legs. Never swam.
There was a trip to the coast a week before university began. He took some convincing—the fear of meeting parents never wavered. He caved under my promise that I wouldn’t make him do anything he wasn’t comfortable with. I wasn’t sure what this meant, but agreed anyway.
The five hours of shimmering heat across the Princes Highway almost put me to sleep behind the wheel. Eyes gritty.
I stalled in the driveway and Dad clapped from the deck.
He’s lovely, whispered Mum in the laundry. We pulled beers from the fridge.
He’s alright, I chuckled.
He’s so passionate about outdoor education. And he’s cute!
Swelled a little with pride and glee.
You just seem to make him laugh so much, she went on. He looks at you with so much affection!
Do you reckon? I said, then blushed because through the kitchen window he watched me with exactly that—a quiet, loving warmth. The big ocean view wide behind him.
Dad wasn’t as easily convinced.
Why can’t he get friends his own age?
He has friends his own age. And age doesn’t mean anything anyway, Dad. Look at me! I’ve never felt my own age.
Ben and I slept cramped into my sinky childhood double, had slow, quiet sex, and listened to the ocean and the honeyeaters warbling through the flywire. My old dog, Mordy, tapped with his paw to wake us. We lay calmly and stroked one another to consciousness.
He watched me surf, but still didn’t come in. Sat in the sand while Mordy chewed sticks at his side.
I’m gonna head in, I called to Mum from across the water.
She waved an acknowledgement but stayed with her eyes locked to the horizon, her toes swilling the sea and her nails scraping mindlessly at the wax on her board—dogged and meditative and in love with the ocean, with the act.
Sure you don’t want to come out? I flicked water from my hair towards him as I sat.
I don’t really like the ocean. I told you that, he said, flinching at the droplets.
I would never understand it.
Finn had a twentieth birthday party on the second night.
He’s one of my oldest mates from school, I explained to Ben. Absolute legend. But we really don’t have to go.
No, you should go! I’ll come if you want me there.
I want you everywhere. I grinned.
We walked to Finn’s parents’ property in the sunset. Ben held my hand on the sand track through the bush and was then glued to me through the night. Clung to my side like a shadow—quiet, protective, only just friendly without extending himself into the social space.
He watched. Always watched.
On the track home he said, So Finn is totally into you.
I snorted. Yeah, maybe when we were twelve. We’re just best mates now.
I don’t know. He shrugged. I reckon that blond guy was as well.
You’re drunk.
No. Just observant. You never notice these things. Remember when you didn’t notice that I was into you?
Well, that was different. It didn’t make any sense.
Why not?
Because I thought you hated me! You were so bossy. I rolled my eyes.
Come off it! I was stressed about your welfare. He laughed and bumped against my shoulder. Teeth bright in the dark like the sand track against the mahogany.
Why? We’d only just met.
