Jim dropped Alison off, mumbled something about needing to finish checking fences on his property, and reversed away. Alison was alone at the house for the first time since the fire. She felt a chill in the air, despite the midafternoon sunshine, and hustled inside to figure out what she needed.
Standing in front of her chest of drawers she saw the room with what felt like different eyes. The paint on the walls was dull the way old paint scrubbed too many times shines unevenly. It was palest green in here, her grandfather’s favorite color. There were splits and cracks in the high-gloss white that sealed the window frames, and the floorboards were worn almost clean of polish. Alison’s bed was a simple ensemble, no headboard, no space underneath to shove winter coats or love letters she’d never received. It felt impersonal, with white sheets that could be anybody’s and the two sad overlslept-on pillows. There was nothing visible here to make the room hers.
She sat on the edge of the bed and pulled out the drawer of her grandmother’s old-style dresser. It squeaked on its ungreased slide, the roughly sanded rosewood catching as it pulled against the grain. In here, Alison had unceremoniously dumped the evidence of her life. Cards, sketchbooks, little scraps of paper, or receipts she’d scrawled ideas on. Letters she’d written but never sent. In the pile, a card from her mother on her graduation day. Alison stared at it until the words swam. She hadn’t looked at it since the accident. She pulled another one out. From the sulfur-crested cockatoo on the front she knew it was from Gil.
Ally,
The bird on this card is sweet like you. Happy birthday darlin, I love you.
Gil
She smiled at it still. Remembered how in those early days they’d shared so many good moments, lying in bed wrapped in the loud floral sheets that matched the personality of Cairns, the weather, the flora, the reptiles and birds that Alison would paint on her own time, when she wasn’t thinking about making money. Wasn’t hustling at all, was just enjoying the sensation of paint on paper, on canvas, on the wall even. Above their bed in the Cairns flat she’d painted a lush tropical scene, dripping ferns and crimson finches, palm cockatoos with their spiked black combs. He’d loved the wall when he first saw it and he was always encouraging Alison to add more.
“Saw a little gold bird on the way home, Ally—brilliant, like a coin fresh from the mint. Don’t know what it is, but I couldn’t stop thinking it’d look proper up here on that branch.”
They’d pore over the book, find the right species (in that case, Alison remembered, it was a golden bowerbird), and Alison would sketch it out, carefully filling in the colors at night while she waited for Gil to get back from the pub, or the RSL, or the pier where he smoked up with his mates—or the bed where he fucked Simone, apparently. Alison felt a bitterness rise inside her; she pushed it down again.
“Don’t get jealous of a dead woman,” she told her reflection as it stared at her from the mirror. Shoved the cards back into the drawer a little too hard.
Alison had grown up feeling like she never really fit in and with an aching desire to get away, anywhere, but especially to Paris. When she’d left for art school in Melbourne, it hadn’t felt far enough, so when she was done, she’d gotten into her absolute bomb of a car and driven as far north as it would take her, ending up in Cairns. She’d been happy there, building a profile through a series of art shows that had grabbed the attention of the local paper, mostly because they featured a set of nude self-portraits, something that almost guaranteed coverage. Alison was savvy enough to know she wasn’t going to make it painting nudes in North Queensland, but after she met Gil, she was too in it, too distracted, and then too terrified to go anywhere or even dream of any other life.
Alison still remembered the day her mother called. It was late May, not so humid as it wound down to the dry season in the tropics. She’d been sketching something trivial, a flower maybe, or a shell; she couldn’t see it on the page anymore when she closed her eyes. The phone buzzed, on vibrate, no sound; Alison hated the way phones sounded when they rang. Tinny, insistent, like a mosquito flying too close in the night. She ignored it. It rang out. It rang again, immediately. She rolled her eyes and picked it up.
“I’m working, Mum, what do you want?”
Her mother was crying through the words. Alison had never heard her cry like that before.
“Your father’s seeing someone else.”
Alison didn’t believe it. “What? Mum, no. Don’t be silly.”
“I saw an email he wrote. He is.”
“Aw, Mum, you’re probably overreacting to something completely innocent. Dad loves you. He wouldn’t.”
“You always take his side.”
Alison knew that was true.
“I don’t, Mum, I don’t believe he’s cheating. He loves you.”
“I’m going to send it to you. Do you have your computer?”
Alison got up from the table and roamed around the flat, looking for the laptop. It was on the floor on Gil’s side of the bed. She grabbed it and perched on the mattress, opened it up, and went to her email account. There was one new email from her mother.
“Do you have it?” Alison heard her mother ask down the line. Her ear was hot from holding the phone so close. She focused on the words on the page. It was filth. Her father was definitely cheating on her mother. I want to thrust inside your wet pussy right now. Alison gagged a little. Your tits are like the ripest mangoes. I want to suck their sweetness. Alison didn’t want to read it all, but she couldn’t turn away. She looked at the email address of the person it was sent to. He’d begun the email with the charming nickname “Baby Girl.” Alison’s father was fifty-eight. Who the fuck was “Baby Girl”?
“Mum, I believe you. Look, I’m going to call you back, OK? I just need . . . I need a minute.”
“What am I going to do, Ally?”
“Mum, I promise, I’ll call you back.”
She ended the call and stared at the email. Read it over and over again. It made her feel sick.
Alison stared next at the email address, but it looked like a throwaway Gmail address: bbygrrrrl88@gmail.com. She knew she wouldn’t be able to trace who it was. She tried to feel less sick. It didn’t go away. Alison lay on the bed, closed her eyes. Waited for everything to settle a bit. Felt the room spin as though she’d drunk too much wine. She called her mother back. Told her to kick her father out. Told her she’d support her, whatever she wanted to do next.
“Leave him, Mum. He doesn’t deserve you,” she’d told her over and over, both of them crying.
When he called she didn’t pick up. She never picked up again. Her father’s filthy words, the image of him rutting like a pig—Your tits are like the ripest mangoes—enough to rupture their lifelong bond. Alison vowed to never be like her mother. To never allow a man to use her like that. How fucking naive.
The knock on the door came late enough to give Alison pause. She looked at her phone, glowing in the low light of her reading lamp: 11:43. Some people don’t remember the small things. The color of the sky on the day they started a new job. The small tear in the shorts of the man who is walking away. The team logo on the cap of the driving instructor who just told them they passed their test. The height of the grass in those early spring days, when rain and warmth push it up faster. The time, the minute, everything changes forever.
Alison had always remembered the details. The smell of rain on the air, the sound of a plane somewhere distant overhead, the television blaring out the Rage theme on the morning she left for university, walked out the front door expecting never to come back, except for visits. And this time, the time: 11:43 p.m. Alison felt a knot in her stomach as she slipped out of bed to see. Her phone in her hand, ready to call the police if it was Gil. The knocks again, more insistent this time, and then a voice, female, clipped, succinct.
“Alison King? Alison King, if you’re home please come to the door. It’s the police.” Alison’s heart leaped, surprise overtaking her. The cops? She quickened her pace, got to the door, and was about to wrench it open when she stopped. Gil could still be there. He could just have a woman with him. She felt wildly out of control in her own head. She went to the window and peered out. There were two police officers out there, a man and a woman. No sign of Gil. She opened the door.
“Yes?”
“Are you Alison King?”
“Yes.” She was confused.
“Your parents are Malcolm and Marie King, of Lake Bend, Victoria?”
She didn’t understand why, but the question made her queasy. “Yes. What is this about?”
“Alison, may we come in?” The woman spoke gently now, the business in her voice giving way to tenderness. It was somehow more unsettling.
“OK, it’s very late.” She stepped aside, was aware of her light T-shirt and boxer shorts, and wondered, should she put on pants? She didn’t know how to ask the question, so she didn’t.
“Yes, we’re very sorry. Say, do you think we could have a cup of tea maybe?”
What the fuck was going on? The police didn’t just invite themselves over for tea at 11:43. “Um. I—I’d rather know what you are here for?” She tried to keep her voice calm.
“Of course, why don’t you and me sit down here, and Constable Crow can put the kettle on?” The female officer nodded toward the kitchen, looking pointedly at the man.
“On it,” he replied, and moved away from them. Alison let the cop guide her into a chair; unsure what this late-night kindness meant, but confident it was nothing good.
“Could you tell me what this is about?”
“Alison, my name is Senior Constable Sonia Andrianakis.”
“OK.”
“We’re here tonight with some news about your parents.” The click of the electric kettle seemed so much louder than she remembered it. Alison took a deep breath. Pushed the bile back down.
“OK.”
“Alison, there was an accident tonight on the highway between Melbourne and Lake Bend. Your parents’ car lost control and veered off the road. They unfortunately hit a tree at what appears to have been a very high speed.”
There is a particular rush in your ears, a pressure change, or something; Alison has never understood the mechanics of it. But it’s an immersion thing. You dunk your head under; there’s a cushioning there, something confining and isolating. Senior Constable Sonia Andrianakis is still talking. Alison is thinking about words, phrases. She feels the absurdity of it. She pushes down a ridiculous laugh. She tries to listen.
“Your mother, it looks like it was very quick, she probably didn’t feel anything. Your father sustained a very serious wound to his leg and it caused a significant loss of blood and he unfortunately wasn’t—he didn’t make it either.”
Constable Crow set a weak, milky cup of tea down in front of her.
“I put two sugars in, it’s good for you when you’ve had a bit of a shock.”
A bit of a shock. A mosquito buzzed past her ear and landed on her arm. She whacked it, hard. The sound made the police officers jump. When she lifted up her hand a smear of blood and black remained. This blood, their blood. Their flesh. They had made her, and now she was all that was left.
She booked a seat on the first flight to Melbourne. Suzie Marsh met her at the airport, drove her out to Lake Bend. Past the curve in the road where safety glass and plastic light casing and twisted shards of tire scarred the spot, patched up with flowers left anonymously in great piles.
Coming back had been a shock, but as she spent the days and weeks clearing out her parents’ things from the house, she found a sense of satisfaction and peace in her new, solitary life. Out in the bush, with no neighbors close by, and enough in the bank to see her through quite a few years of unemployment, Alison was able to focus on painting in ways she’d never thought she could.
A spring day, a list of errands too long to count them. Alison had been back in Lake Bend a few months, and they had blurred together mostly.
“Alison King!” The voice had been familiar, but Alison had still had to search her memory for the name that went with the face before her, and then she realized—this was her first friend. The green-crayon girl. It had been too long.
“Meg Russell.” Alison smiled big and meant it. Meg cocked her head to one side, sizing Alison up warmly. Then she opened her arms and pulled Alison in for a hug. She smelled like oranges and cinnamon, Alison thought, and it reminded her of her mother.
“I thought you’d moved to Cairns.” Meg kept a friendly hand on Alison’s shoulder, her palm warm, but not uncomfortably so, where it squeezed her.
“I did, but I moved back when Mum and Dad . . .” She still had trouble saying it.
Meg’s face scrunched up into a twisted flinching grimace, but she quickly maneuvered it to wide-eyed empathy. “Oh god, Alison, I’m sorry, I did hear that, but I guess I . . . forgot in the moment. I’m really sorry.” She didn’t meet Alison’s eyes as she spoke, as though she were ashamed.
“No, it’s OK, you know, it was actually nice to have someone greet me so damn cheerfully for once.” Alison smiled, still meant it.
Meg made a straight line with her lips, slid her hand through the crook of Alison’s elbow, and gently tugged her in the direction of the Imperial. “Come on, let me buy you an apology beer.”
“Well, sure, won’t say no.” Meg and Alison were so close at school, until in year nine they’d had a fight about a boy. The bond hadn’t recovered properly before Alison left for Melbourne. Meg had been married, she told Alison, but he’d gone to Afghanistan. Hadn’t come back. Alison told her she’d left a man in Cairns, didn’t tell her all the reasons why. One beer became two; two became four.
“So, you working now?” Meg had asked Alison three beers deep.
“I’m painting, a few private commissions. I sold one to a big-name restaurant in Melbourne. That got me some more attention, and I have a steady income from it. I’m not—I don’t—I mean, I’m not strapped for cash right now. The house is all paid for, and both Mum and Dad had insurance and super and all that, so yeah, I’m OK.”
Alison hadn’t planned on staying put in Lake Bend long enough to draw breath, but somehow, she’d lasted almost three years. It was unexpected, and in spite of herself, she enjoyed it. Now here she was. She stared at her reflection in the mirror again. Pale, her cheeks hollower than usual, her hair greasy, unwashed. Meg gone, her car the wrong side of the hill, of the wind, of the moment. What would Meg say about Billy? About Simone? About any of this? She thought about Simone’s parents. Anne Arnold had sounded like her own mother on the day she’d called about her world falling apart. Alison wished she could go back, not be so fucking stupid as to involve herself in this mess. But she was involved. It was her Simone had been looking for.
She got up from the bed, pulled her hair back with the tie on her wrist, and picked clothes from the drawers indiscriminately. She went into the kitchen and cleaned out the perishables from the fridge and the cupboards. She found an old canvas that fitted the blown-out bathroom window and wedged it into the gaping hole. She made quick work of shutting the house up enough to leave it indefinitely. She would come back. And she would stop by Meg’s house and help her parents clear it out, but she couldn’t do it right now. Right now, she had to do other things. She wouldn’t be safe here until she had figured all of this out. It was a low-level hum, a feeling of constant vigilance. She could still feel his hands on her, his strength and rage, his menacing calm. She wanted to be far away. She wanted to never come across him again. She dragged Sal’s bike onto her own back seat, packed into the boot what she’d collected from the house, and left again as quickly as she possibly could. Didn’t stop to look back.
It was raining, hard, and Gil was out cold beside her. Alison was down to wearing her bathers as underpants, and even though her head throbbed with the reminder of last night’s vodka, she forced herself out of the bed and pulled on her swimsuit and a pair of running shorts. The laundry basket in the corner was overflowing. She picked it up, moved through the flat, adding things as she went—a tea towel, a bath mat, the shirt Gil had peeled off her when they were drunk last night. She padded barefoot along the communal balcony, hugging close to the wall to avoid fat droplets that fell hard on the concrete and split open like eggs. She got to the laundry room and began separating the whites and colors. In the middle of the stack, a pale pink G-string. It wasn’t hers. Alison didn’t wear G-strings, ever.
It was quiet in the cool of the laundry room. No whirring drums on spin, no tumble of dryers today. Just Alison, the steady pops of the heavy rain, and the silent heat of her tears snaking down her cheeks. She piled the laundry into the machines, set them to cold, and pushed the start buttons. She wasn’t wearing any shoes. Didn’t have her phone. Her purse was on her bedside table. She’d have to go get it. She couldn’t even just get away. She stuck her hands in the waist of her shorts, felt around for the little inside pocket. There was a crisp plastic note tucked in there. She pulled out a tenner. Not enough to get anywhere. She didn’t know where she’d go anyway.
The washing machines were revving up. Alison decided to go for a walk. Under the cover of wet palms, she walked along the ocean path. Soaked to the bone; the water felt as if it had expanded her skin and shrunk it all at once. Her hair clung to her neck, her cheeks, her back, her ears, in thick ropes. The salt of her tears was lost in the sweet of the sky’s. She tried to take long deep breaths, suck in the ocean’s calmness. But it wasn’t working. She kept seeing the mystery woman and her father. I want to suck their sweetness.
She had convinced herself Gil loved her. That he loved her too much. That he hurt her because he loved her so much, he couldn’t bear the thought anyone else might even look at her. What they had was unique. Special. Except, it wasn’t. I want to thrust inside your wet pussy right now. Alison felt like a fool. A fucking idiot. He was the same as her philandering father. He was worse. Every bruise. Every scar. Every excuse she’d made to cover for his violence sickened her. It was over.
On her way down the drive, Alison pulled over at the pile of wood that used to be the red gum. The dirt underfoot was crunchy with ash, and she could see a smattering of crushed orange plastic still on the ground where she assumed the lights of Simone’s car had smashed under the weight of the tree. It surprised her there was still debris, proof of Simone, littering the ground. She’d watched enough crime procedurals to assume someone in a lab was supposed to be reassembling the light covers for fingerprints or blood spatter or some such shit. Guess not here.
In the still-breathing trees she felt a rustle of breeze. The snap of sticks startled her—was it still too early for lizards and birds? Too early for roos and the rest? Alison didn’t know. She felt the fixed intensity of surveillance, like she had on the drive after the fire, before she’d known about Simone, about Gil, about any of it.
The hair on her neck stretched out toward the sun like spines. She whipped around once, twice, three times; there was nothing moving, nothing corporeal, that she could see. The breeze didn’t even push the leaves anymore. The stillness was its own kind of unsettling. She closed her eyes and tried to quiet her brain. Tried to slow the pumping blood that beat in her ears and made it hard to hear or think or stand up straight. If she sliced her wrist open and let the blood drain out onto the dirt here, it would be warm and slick. A record of the damage. Proof of life and death and trauma. It would be honest and real; it would mean something. Unless it didn’t.
Her back to the road, she heard the unmistakable sound of a car on the drive. It contrasted starkly with the silence of the burned bush. Alison turned around, waited for the source of the noise to emerge on the driveway, her lungs tightening.