Josephine Rowe
And she had this way of swivelling her head round like an owl to talk to you as she drove, except not like an owl because the skin of her neck creased up in folds and she looked so old when that happened, though she wasn’t, not then, and Luke would lean over and say Watch the road, Mum.
And what I’ll remember of this time is split vinyl and continental breakfasts, fights about who gets the passenger seat, a wallaby cracked over the head with the jack handle and none of us talking till Lismore even though we know she’s done the right thing.
We pull in silent to the motel, a low, sandy-brick L shape, with all the doors facing onto the car park and the car park mostly empty, mostly dark. Our room is number seventeen and there is a TV that only gets two stations and one double bed which my brother and I fall into fully clothed with only our shoes kicked off. But something wakes me a few hours later and I panic, forgetting where I am. I go over to the window on shaky legs and see her from the back, standing out by the road. A blonde in denim pedal pushers and white tennis shoes, standing in the light of the motel sign, like the ghost of 1967. Ghost of her younger self, holding a slim beer bottle down by her hip, fingers round its throat like she wants to swing it at something.
In the dark of the room I find the bar fridge and take a bottle of cola from inside the door. Luke lifts his head from the pillow and says Eli, don’t you drink that. Those cost like four times as much as they do in the shops, and I say Shut up I’m not going to, and I go back to the window. Try to stand the way she does, the bottle dangling loose from my fingertips. Like I don’t care if I drop it. Like I don’t care about anything. She stands like that for a long time, just looking out at the road like she’s waiting for someone to come pick her up.
In the morning there are flecks of rust-coloured hair dye in the bathroom sink, and Luke takes one look at her and says That’s not going to change anything, Mum, because he’s older and sharper than I am but he still gets a slap for it, so we’re all silent in the car again, all morning, and I wish the radio still worked.
When we get to Brisbane, she’s telling us, you won’t even remember. And I don’t know if she’s talking about Dad or the slap, or the wallaby or Victoria or that she was ever a blonde, but in any case I know she’s lying, cause she’s got her lips pressed into a pale line and her eyes fixed hard on the road.
Small Room