AS WE WERE HEADING through the front door we bumped—literally—into Wishy Ozolins lumbering in from the opposite direction, his mouth grim, his arms laden with flowers and chocolates.
‘Emily,’ he said awkwardly. ‘I was just coming to visit you.’
‘Made it by the skin of your fingers.’
‘You going home already?’
‘Time off for bad behaviour.’
‘I—heard what…I mean, about your…’ His voice caught.
I put him out of his misery. ‘Shit happens, Wishy. Fortunately, most of it happened to the shit.’
He gazed down at me, his expression almost paternal, his blue eyes damp and swimming with emotions I found it hard to decipher. Affection, which was welcome—I liked him too. And pity—inevitable, perhaps, but from my perspective the less of it the better.
But there was something else there, something as elusive and tricky as a speck of gold in a gravel wash. Sorrow? Not guilt, surely. What did he have to feel guilty about?
He stepped back, nodded at the waiting car. ‘You’ll want to be on your way then?’
‘That’s the general idea, but technically we’re still on hospital grounds, so if those Ferrero Rochers have got my name on them…’
‘Must be getting better,’ said Jojo. ‘Her mind’s moving on to lower things.’
Wishy smiled, presented me with the chocolates, added the flowers with as much aplomb as most men of his ilk could muster in such a situation.
‘Why thank you.’ I buried my face in the bouquet, breathed a heady blend of bougainvillea and gardenia. ‘From your own garden?’
‘They are.’
‘Say hello to those gorgeous girls of yours for me,’ I threw back at him as we walked out the door. ‘Tell em I’ve been polishing up my bowling—be back for the rematch before they know what hit em. And thank Loreena for the flowers.’
We left him looking lost in the foyer.
‘He’ll have to wait a while to do that,’ Jojo commented as we walked towards the Tojo.
‘Do what?’
‘Thank Loreena.’
‘Why’s that?’
‘She’s in the States.’
I almost dropped the chocolates.
‘As in United?’
‘Yep.’
‘What the hell’s she doing there?’ I was more than a little put out that Jojo, just back from a spell out bush, seemed to know more of what was going on round town than I did. That was Jojo, though; he had a way of gaining instant trust and stumbling onto information that your more spiky individual—me, for instance—had to work for.
‘The oldest girl…’
‘Simone.’
‘She and her mother flew out yesterday. Gone to Seattle for an operation.’
My chest tightened. A sense of foreboding reared.
‘What sort of operation?’
‘A transplant.’
‘A trans…what of?
‘Her bone marrow.’
‘What’s that mean?’
‘I suspect it means leukaemia.’
‘Oh, that poor girl. I knew there was something wrong.’
We climbed aboard, but I was too stunned by the information I’d just received to do anything other than sit there and find what comfort I could in the familiar seat, shaped to my body, the eucalypt and bougainvillea smells that permeated the vehicle.
‘How do you know all this?’ I asked.
‘Wishy’s was one of the places I called on when I was running round looking for you this morning. Found myself being interrogated by a rather commanding little person called—Tiger Lily, was it?’
‘It wasn’t, but it is now.’
‘She filled me in. Would have given me the full medical history if her father hadn’t joined us. He wasn’t saying much…’
‘Never seems to…’
‘…but he’s flying out himself, tomorrow morning.’
That all made sense; it explained Simone’s wasted appearance, her relentless personality, the trouble I’d sensed brewing beneath that solid family surface. I liked that girl a lot, but the news of her illness left me with a stronger sense of unease than it should have.
We sat there, corralled by silence. The first time we’d been alone since…
Jojo put an arm around my shoulder, his face up close to mine. ‘Grim times,’ he said.
‘You can say that again. My god, what she must be going through.’
‘I meant you.’
‘Oh. That…’
‘Can’t say how sorry I am about this whole horrible business, Em.’
I felt the sadness, the shame, come biting at the borders. I didn’t want to go there. Worried I’d never make it back.
‘My fault,’ I said curtly. ‘I fucked up.’
‘We all fuck up, time to time. Don’t usually pay a price like that.’
I found some skin among the whiskers, gave it a kiss. ‘It’s okay, Jojo. Thanks, but I can handle it.’
He got the message, backed off and backed out. Headed for the Three Mile.
We pulled up at the shack, and I spotted a lick of smoke drifting in from the scrub alongside it.
‘Visitor,’ Jojo said.
I climbed down. Under a tree, a shimmering, bluesmoke fire. On the other side of it, a square-browed woman in a turquoise dress.
I walked towards her. She looked up through the haze, her eyes as luminous as a worn-out horse’s flanks.
‘Hey sister.’
‘Hazel.’
I sat beside her. ‘Where’d you spring from?’
‘Jojo come out to Moonlight and got me.’
‘Trust Jojo. Never stay still, that feller.’
‘I was comin in anyway.’
‘Why?’
She took my hand. ‘Knew you was in trouble Emmy.’
‘How?’
Her silence said more than most speech.
My head found its way to her lap, my tears onto her dress. She ran her fingers through my hair, her palms along my spine. The smoke stung, but it was a good, invigorating feeling. I looked at the base of the fire, saw melting spinifex rosin. A healing agent. Like the bush oils she worked into my temples, the songs she whispered in my ear.
‘I’ll get over it, Haze.’
‘Dunno that you ever get over it, Em. Not all the way. Carry it round forever. But you get by. Jeez, we’re all carryin something.’
Strings of thick black hair drifted across her forehead. Her arms felt like a blanket round my body, then they were a blanket. I looked up, saw Jojo kneeling alongside us. He’d covered us with an old Wagga rug. He stoked the fire, kissed my forehead.
It’s not the smoke, I reflected as I floated away; it’s not the rosin or the oil, or even the songs.
It’s the love that bears them.