“I keep thinking, what kind of man marries a girl like that?” Cliff said. “She’s a stubby short of a six-pack. Two stubbies short.”
“I don’t know,” Jack said, watching his wife.
“You do know.” Cliff pointed his beer at him and laughed.
Celia said nothing more. She reached up and twirled her hair into a messy bun. Her smile was icy. She had decided not to make a scene, and Kim and Cliff would not realize how furious she was. They would have another glass of champagne, turn up the music, and enjoy the afternoon. Later, she would let him have it.
“I’ll talk to Joelle,” Jack suggested. “I got along well with her. I’m sure I can calm any concerns she might have.”
“You’ll stuff it up more,” Cliff said.
“He’s right, you will make it worse,” Celia said. “You’ve done the wrong thing. You don’t need to drag her into it any more than she has been.”
“Maybe she didn’t even know what she was looking at.”
Celia stared at the ceiling. No one spoke. She cleared her throat, and when she started talking her voice was smooth and cool, the voice she used when she was trying to contain her emotions.
“That sweet woman has seen more of the harsh realities of life than all four of us put together. Do you remember the Pieman’s Junction Murder?”
Jack did, for the crime had saturated the news at the time. He could not recall the exact details, except that a young woman had been murdered in an abandoned hut in the western mining country. Judging from the sorrowful expression on Celia’s face, Joelle must have been related to the woman somehow.
Cliff was confused. “Huh?”
“Joelle was there,” Celia said.
“A witness?” Cliff asked.
“It was terrible. Look, I don’t want to talk about it. It’s none of our business. But I do think you both should leave her alone.”
Cliff started to speak but she cut him off with a charming smile.
“It’s not something she would want people to know,” Celia said gently. “That’s why I’ve never mentioned it before.”
“It amazes me that someone can change their life so dramatically,” Kim said. “It’s magical, in a way.”
She sounded loopy, like she had drunk too much champagne. Jack filled glasses with sparkling mineral water for everyone.
For the rest of the afternoon, Celia was particularly attentive to Cliff—refreshing his drink, playing his favorite songs. As night fell, Celia and Cliff shared a cigarette on the veranda. There was nothing odd about it—it was something they usually did after a few drinks—but Kim sighed and began to gather her things. Jack helped her find the boys’ jackets and shoes. In the space between songs they heard Celia and Cliff laughing loudly. As Jack and Kim watched through the kitchen window, Celia dusted her fingers down Cliff’s back.
Jack looked around the room, at the dirty glasses and empty bottles, plates of half-eaten food everywhere. Celia’s new pink silk scarf had fallen to the ground and he placed his foot on it, grinding it into the floor. It was childish, but his wife frustrated him.
“One day,” Kim said tightly, “they’ll wake up to themselves.”
“No, they won’t.”
“We should behave like that for a change.”
He laughed.
“I wasn’t suggesting that,” Kim snapped, and began stacking the dishwasher. “I just don’t know what to do.”
He didn’t know if she meant Cliff’s drug problem or that Jack had encouraged it today by having some with him or that Celia was being flirtatious. Ordinarily he was good at reading people, but he could not tell if she was angry or sad. He tried to recall if he had ever seen Kim cross. In social situations, she was wary. She smiled and drank the wine, told a few stories, laughed at the jokes—she behaved exactly as the other women did—but always with a quiet watchfulness.
“Do you ever wish you had a life other than your own?” she said. “I guess you probably wouldn’t.”
He didn’t blame her for feeling like that sometimes.
“I’m sorry.” He hoped that covered everything.
He helped her pack the leftovers into a container. No one ever commented on Kim’s habit of taking home food from the Lilys’ house. He couldn’t imagine Celia packing a lunch box of uneaten chicken wings from the Gatenbys’ table. Helping Kim was the right thing to do. Some people needed more help than others—that was one thing he and Celia always agreed on.
* * *
Cliff
Calendar House
Cliff tapped his jeans pocket, reassured to feel the thin outline of the pipe and, to the side, the small bulge of the little ziplock bag. His last hit was a quick one in the bathroom. Jack had asked him to be discreet and he had. Cliff might not know which of Jack’s couches had once belonged to Tasmania’s first premier, or whether it was the carpet or the wall light that was made in France, but he possessed a high level of social intelligence. He was well tuned to smaller details, such as Jack’s reluctance to show off his new painting.
Jack knew how Cliff felt about art. Despite this, Jack often liked to brag about the latest addition to his collection of dull depictions of gum trees and bush huts, bushrangers on horseback, and naked Aboriginal people hunting possums. It was odd he was being precious about this painting. Cliff was not interested in seeing it. The interesting part of the story was how Jack came to have it.
He watched Jack help Kim put her jacket on. Everyone thought Jack was the perfect gentleman—but he wasn’t. Gambling was not one of Cliff’s shortcomings—he didn’t see the point of it—but he would happily have put money on it that Celia did not know how Jack acquired that painting.
* * *
Joelle
The Smithtons’ house
In winter, Joelle was the only person along the creek who used her outdoor clothesline. She liked smoothing the sheets so they hung broad and white. Later, she would drape each one over a door inside the house so it would dry properly. Here in the high country, washing never dried completely on the line. You had to look on the bright side—the washing stayed clean at least.
Her birth mother’s house was near the Pieman’s Junction quarry and the washing got covered in grit. Those flannel sheets of her mum’s were so old and faded, Joelle couldn’t remember what color they had been in the first place.
No grit blowing in from moonscape hills here. In this garden the air was sweet and clean, like the cool water running in the creek. Beyond the garden was the rain forest, a damp cathedral of fragrant myrtle and sassafras, sprawling mosses, and ancient lichen. The forest rose up and up around Vanishing Falls valley like the walls of a giant fortress. The first time she came to Vanishing she didn’t think she would like it so much. There was only one road in, a narrow set of hairpin turns cut into the mountain above a churning river. Looking down at that water unsettled her and she wanted to leave. But past the Cutting, the road meandered through hilly green pastures where black-and-white cows grazed, past pretty weatherboard farmhouses with splendid man ferns out front, hedges, and rose gardens.
Looking on the bright side was something her foster mother, Darla, had encouraged her to become good at. Darla also liked to say, You’ve coped with worse and you will cope with this. She said it when Joelle found a kitten but couldn’t keep it because Darla’s husband was allergic to cats. If Joelle told her what the man in the bathroom at the fair had said to her, she would say either of those pieces of advice. Joelle could just hear her.