The thing about high school sweethearts is that you remember how good they smelled, even when you’re still cringing about the time that they dumped you. Seeing Jack in the window brought back that sharp, overheated boy smell, something that was still a novelty when I was sixteen. I’d pretend to be cold as an excuse to wear one of his jumpers, then I’d forget to take it off when I went home and wear it to bed, wrapped up in heady teenage musk. Driving to Dad’s house, I wind the windows down to get some fresh air into the car.
Jess is snuffling at the front door when I turn the key in the lock. She twists and wags when I push it open then bounds toward the kitchen. I leave my case by the door and follow her. First things first. If ever I was going to have trouble finding the dog food, Jess wasn’t. She has her paws on the kitchen bench and nose pointing to the ziplock bag where her minced chicken has defrosted. I mop up the ice-melt and take the bag outside to where Dad keeps her food bowl. She sits without being told, her haunches tense, her butt barely touching the ground.
‘Are you a good girl, Jess?’
She barks, once.
‘Really truly?’
She barks twice. Woof, woof.
‘Good girl.’
I squeeze the pale, mushy meat into the bowl and she leaps at it. She’s finished by the time I reach the back door. As I close it, I see her circling the lawn looking for the best place to poop.
My bedroom is at the other end of the house, the opposite end to my parents’ room. I drag my wheelie case past the loungeroom and Matt’s room and lean it against my bed. The curtains are open, and I can see across rooftops to the orange harbour lights and the water. I open the window and the sound of the sea fills the room. Outside the protection of the harbour, it is free to break onto the beach, and I can hear the thud and slap of the waves. I breathe it in and the salt tingles my sinuses and rushes all the way down the back of my throat.
I haven’t been able to smell or hear the sea from my bedroom since I left home. The first room I had was in a residential college. It looked out at treetops, which at least swished in the sea breeze. That room was noisy in more insistent ways; thumps and shouts from students on either side, calling over their pocket balconies or running down corridors that were barely narrower than our bedrooms. No running in the hallways, said the signs. Yeah, right.
The second room was closer to the sea but not close enough to hear it moving. Sometimes, when the wind was right and I stood on the front veranda, I thought I could smell the salt, the clean air not yet tainted with the oil of eucalyptus leaves or the fertiliser on struggling English gardens. It’s not really salt that you can smell when you smell the sea; it’s dimethyl sulphide, a gas released by bacteria that feed on decaying seaweed. So, it’s bacteria fart in my lungs, not pure, cleansing salt.
There were five of us in that house. Two couples and me, alone in another skinny room on a sloping, enclosed back porch. It was a house with a long and proud history of student rentals. At Eric’s thirtieth, I discovered that Alice had lived there seven years before I took over the sleepout. Did you discover the cellar? she’d asked. Of course we’d discovered it. When I moved in, the subterranean garden was already twenty centimetres high, and a light shone up through the floorboards day and night. The gardener, a medical student from down south, shouted us Friday night pizza once a month in appreciation of our silence.
I still don’t have a sea view in my apartment, but I can hear the sea on most days, especially when a storm has been through, and the swell makes the waves boom on the sand. Here, in my childhood bedroom, I open the windows and curtains before I go to sleep so the sea can wake me in the morning. I burrow under the blankets, listening to the water mutter, and turn my face to the cold air falling through the window. I drift. Behind my closed eyes I see the dark, unbroken swell against the rocks on the breakwater, watch it chase Jack’s heels and cover the pale crabs. I breathe out as it recedes, sliding away before it gathers itself again, seeking out the cracks and crevasses, pushing higher. Then together we exhale, and I feel myself drift a little deeper. Eric is telling me about his grandmother’s birthday party. She’s changed her mind at the last minute and wants to go to the concert in the park. Do I know where they can get tickets? He has his feet on the table in the pod, but the table is Dad’s kitchen table, and I can’t work out why it fits in the small office space. I am worrying that the table might have been broken at some point when a car starts up next door and I hear voices leaving for the day. Don’t forget your lunch. I love you. I love you too.
I swing my feet to the floor and look at the ocean.
By the time the hospital calls to say that Dad is out of theatre, I’ve caught up on my emails from yesterday. I fold the laptop shut and push it away across the kitchen table. This is the table from my dream, where we sat in real life, the four of us in a line so we could all eat looking at the water. It sounds unfriendly, but we still talked. Mum especially. She couldn’t eat in silence. She’d interrogate Matt and me about school, about football, about netball, about our friends, and then when she’d exhausted our day, she’d grill Dad. Did those parts arrive today? Why not? Well did you call them? Do you want me to do it tomorrow? And then when she’d exhausted him, she’d tell us about her own day, about the storeman who kept losing consignment notes and how she’d never get ready for the audit if she had to do everything herself.
I close the curtains against the heat that has started to build despite the cold morning easterly, ruffle the dog’s head, collect the newspaper from the doorstep, and drive to the supermarket. I buy bananas, two jam doughnuts, and two takeaway lattes, juggle them back to the car, then juggle them into the hospital. Dad brightens at the treats and reaches for the paper.
‘How’s Jess?’
‘She’s fine.’
‘Did you feed her?’
‘Damn, I forgot.’ I take a deep bite of my doughnut and jam spurts out the other side and onto my lap.
‘Yeah, right.’ He passes me a paper napkin. ‘Make sure you take her for a walk today. Did she sleep inside?’
‘She sure did.’
‘On the big bed?’
‘Yep. I could hear her snoring from my room. How do you stand it?’
‘I slept next to your mother for thirty years.’
‘Mum didn’t snore, you did.’
His mouth is full of doughnut, and he just shakes his head and jabs his finger at a colour photo on page three.
‘What’s that?’
He chases the doughnut with coffee. I peer over his shoulder. The photo is part of an advertisement For Sale by Public Tender – Guaranteed Rental Income. It seems Harbour Lights is a front-runner in the government’s privatisation agenda.
‘All the tall blond people. Look at them. You’d think the Dutch had made it ashore after all.’ He tosses the paper onto the bed. ‘Don’t tell me any of the people in that photo actually live there.’
I start to tell him that the newspaper advertisement would have been made in Perth and the people recruited from a metropolitan modelling agency when a nurse comes in with Dad’s meds.
‘Hi, I’m Mei, you must be Joe’s daughter.’
‘Frances.’
‘Your dad’s told me all about you. Never stops. I’ve heard all about how it was you who exposed the government’s maintenance contracts stuff-up last year.’
‘Yeah.’
‘Those incompetent bastards. They should sack the lot of them. I saw the pictures of the houses they live in. One of them’s even got a yacht moored in the marina up here.’
‘Nah, that bit’s not true.’
‘Well, you’ve got them on the run. I hope you got a promotion out of that.’ She gives Dad his meds and points to the picture in the paper, lying open on the bed where Dad tossed it. ‘Oh, that’s Harbour Lights. Are you looking into that now? There’s plenty of people up here who could tell you some stories about that place. Ask about Weymouth Builders and how they got the job. That’ll be another front-page story for you.’
‘I’ll do that, thanks.’ I have no intention of looking up Weymouth Builders. People give me hot tips all the time. If I followed up all of them, I’d single-handedly bring the state government to a standstill while I rifled through their files.
‘Just make sure they put any money you find into employing more nurses. We could do with some extra hands up here.’ She takes Dad’s pulse and writes up his chart. ‘Do you know what they call that place? The White Palace.’
Dad nods. ‘Tell her why.’
‘Because that’s where you get all the good white stuff.’ She presses a finger against one nostril, sniffs, and grins.
Dave twitches the curtain. ‘No, you’ve got that all wrong, it’s because you have to be a whitey to live there. No blacks or Asians allowed.’
I blink and Dad clears his throat. Mei presses her lips together and they turn pale against the blush on her cheeks.
‘I don’t think they can do that, Dave,’ I tell him.
‘Oh, Frances, there’s what people are allowed to do according to the rules, and what they actually do out here in the sticks. Or have you forgotten?’ He lifts Dad’s chart. ‘Never mind, we’ll get you back on the right path tonight at the Murch. Gin should do the trick. Time for handover, Mei.’
She follows him out of the room. Dad looks at me and shrugs.