Brothers & Sisters - Charlotte Wood [71]
All my life I’ve been told I’m not very good at reading people. There is, I think, some truth to this. Baby, in particular, was so changeable that any attempt would usually be offside and out of step. But in that moment, I was inspired by an intense insight to say nothing, to sit still and let her ravelled thinking tease itself out. In my concentration my face must have lapsed into a frown.
She looked over, cringed slightly. ‘I guess you already know,’ she murmured. ‘I don’t know what to do.’
‘Do you wanna pull over? Talk about this?’
‘I would love that.’
She pulled into a petrol station and parked by the air pump. Again, I waited for her to speak.
‘You’re sweet,’ she said nervously. She tilted the rear-view mirror down and checked her face. Then she told me how, when she’d gone back to plead with her ex, one thing had led to another. Not like that. But she still wasn’t sure how it had happened.
‘What happened?’
She paused. ‘I don’t want your brother to think I’m a slut.’ Her voice was small but quickly hardening. ‘That’s what he called me last time.’
We sat in silence as the car ticked. Slut. The word led me to the image of her bent over a wobbling suitcase, pants scrunched down to her knees. Sand and salt on her wet skin. The lie of the bikini on her body.
‘Yeah, but you did fuck him, didn’t you?’ I could feel my heart throttling my ribs as I thought this, and then, unbelievably—as I said it. Now the new word—the new image it called up—landed heavy and wet between us.
Baby jutted out her jaw. She jerked her head in my direction but didn’t look at me. ‘You can’t . . . Look, it’s not like I’m going out with you.’
‘Right.’
‘You can’t talk to me like that.’
‘Right. It’s not like he’s my brother. Like the last time you fucked around, who was it that patched everything up for you?’
She inhaled sharply. She said, ‘I screwed up.’ Then she turned to me, her face gone cunning. ‘But what’s the deal with you two anyway. What sort of fucked-up thing is that?’ Her skin was clenched tight around the eyes, her jaw muscles working her thoughts. ‘I don’t even know why he lets you follow him around. Almost like he’s scared of you or something. Like you’ve got something on him—the way you’ve got something on me—’cos that’s what you do, right, Big T? Spy on everyone? Get all the dirt?’
As she spoke, the space inside the hatchback seemed to shrink. It was as though everything real, dimensional, was happening here, inside, while the windows were actually screens broadcasting a program of outside movement and colour. In this enclosure I became acutely aware of her smell—sweat from where her body had kneaded the seat, the chemical tang of her shampoo.
Without thinking I reached for her.
She flinched. ‘I’m sorry,’ she coughed, then, somewhat unsteadily, she undid her seatbelt, leaned forward, and peeled her cardigan off. I realised her cheeks were wet. I didn’t know what I wanted. ‘Sorry,’ she repeated, and offered both her bare arms to me. She was sobbing now, quietly. And then I saw what it was she was trying to show me. The two dark mottled bands around her wrist, and two more around her biceps. The bruises yellow and orange and green, and myself enraptured and repulsed by them. The rot and ripe of them. Most strangely, I felt myself powerfully flushed with a sense that I only much later recognised—and ultimately accepted—as betrayal.
I told my brother a friend had seen her go into the ex’s house. I told him to ask her himself. I told him—thinking he’d be happy to hear it—that this ex was gearing up for a major attack against the Footscray crew. I told him my source was unimpeachable.
The day, finally, is cooling down when Thuan returns. He catches me half-naked in the kitchen. ‘I’ve washed up in plenty of kitchen sinks,’ he assures me. He’s carrying a slab of Carlton Bitter under one arm and holding a supermarket bag in the other. ‘Meat,’ he explains, ‘for the barbie.’
‘Where’d you go?’
He ignores me, sets the bag down, rips a couple of cans out of their tight