Like I Can Love Read online

  Ark stands in the doorway, so Fairlie holds the child towards him. Henry yawns and says, ‘Mummy?’

  ‘Ark?’

  Ark’s face is impassive as he stares at his son. Henry pats Fairlie’s face, as though re-familiarising himself with its fleshy contours. Fairlie exchanges a glance with the detective.

  ‘How did we get here?’ Ark says quietly, his hands limp at his sides. ‘She was my everything. My life started when she arrived. How do I get that back?’ He looks at the child for a long moment before finally he says, ‘I can’t right now. You take him.’ Then he turns and strides from the room.

  Henry stills in Fairlie’s arms as the front door slams.

  The sound jolts Dallas Morgan into action. ‘Mr Rudolph,’ he calls, tearing from the room, footsteps pounding across the verandah boards. ‘Mr Rudolph!’ His voice is drowned by the sound of Ark’s LandCruiser roaring to life: the frenzied, labouring whine of a diesel engine in reverse, then the noise disappears down the drive.

  The detective returns to the bedroom and looks at Fairlie, standing helplessly by the bed and holding the small child.

  ‘Mummy?’ Henry says inquisitively, then with more conviction: ‘Mummy.’ He gazes brightly about, waiting for her to appear.

  Trying to keep the desperation out of her voice, Fairlie says, ‘I’m so sorry. Mummy’s not here.’ Drawing back to look at Henry’s face, she forces a smile. ‘Want some food?’

  Henry shimmies from side to side, his hands playing with the buttons on her blouse; she’s still dressed for work.

  ‘You want a banana?’

  Vehement nod. ‘Nana.’

  In the kitchen, Fairlie slips Henry into the chair with the thick padded cushion at the table. The bananas in the fruit basket are perfectly ripened, a pile of fragrant bright yellow crescents alongside mandarins and green apples. Next to the fruit basket is a loaf of fresh bread in a wrapper, a bowl of grapes, and a jar of strawberry jam. There’s something repulsive in the fecundity of this image, Fairlie thinks, because who will eat all this food?

  Once Henry is settled with his banana, attentively peeling away strips of skin, Fairlie asks the detective to watch him for a moment and then says to Henry, ‘This is Mr Morgan. He’s Mummy’s friend. I’ll be right back, okay? Just have to get something from my car.’

  Quietly, so as not to alarm the child, Fairlie slips from the room, then she turns and thunders down the hall. Her palms smack the screen door and it snaps back against the wall as she bounces from the verandah and skids in the gravel at her car. Stuffy air envelops her as she rummages on the passenger seat, locates her mobile, and swipes the lock screen.

  The sun has slunk to a violent slash of orange on the horizon. Grapes splashed dirty with shadow tremble in the breeze as Fairlie holds the phone to her ear. One ring, two rings; seven rings, then Ark’s recorded voicemail.

  ‘Fuck,’ she mutters, her thumb slicking across the screen. Redial. Ark’s voice again, asking her with enthusiasm to leave a message, promising to return her call as soon as he can.

  ‘Ark, it’s Fairlie. Where the fuck are you? Come back. Immediately.’

  Mobile clasped in her palm, she hurries back inside. Henry is pasting the remains of his fruit onto the tabletop with his fingertips. Detective Morgan leans against the island bench in the centre of the room. ‘Did you get hold of him?’

  Fairlie shakes her head. ‘Voicemail.’ She brings the phone to her ear again, but still no answer.

  While Henry devours another banana and a box of juice, Fairlie tries to reach Ark. The first seven calls go unanswered. But on the eighth call, the line diverts straight to voicemail. ‘Ark, please,’ she hisses beneath her cupped hand, her back to the child at the table, ‘when are you coming home? Let me know, so I can at least take care of Henry.’

  ‘He’s switched his phone off,’ she tells the detective. ‘Shit.’ Lowering her phone she stares at its blank screen yet again.

  Long moments of silence tick by, punctuated by the sticky sounds of Henry making his way through the fruit, and the zip of fabric between Fairlie’s thighs as she paces back and forth across the tiles.

  At length, the detective speaks up. ‘I’m sorry, but I really have to go.’ His tone is apologetic and he indicates with a tip of his head towards the toddler, who fusses and rubs at his eyes. ‘Do you have anyone you can call for help?’

  Fairlie feels abruptly exhausted. ‘My parents are just in Mount Gambier.’ But the thought of her mother and father invokes an image of Evelyn Francis, Jenna’s mother. Jenna and Evelyn will never recover – forever now, they will remain estranged. It strikes Fairlie like a punch in her gut.

  Keys jingle in the detective’s hand. ‘Can you stay the night?’

  A picture of Jenna’s spilled blood cooling in the drains beneath the floor. The bathroom – the bath – where Jenna had walked in and would never come out. This enormous house amongst the grapevines to where Jenna had flitted, arm-in-arm with the man who became the person Fairlie couldn’t be.

  ‘Mummy?’

  Fairlie smiles at Henry through her tears. ‘I’ll take him to my place.’

  ii

  The next morning, with Henry balanced on her hip, Fairlie pushes her hand into the back of her letterbox. She ignores the busy drone of bees in the thicket of lavender she has to stretch over. Vaguely, she wonders if the bees will sting her. Would she feel it? Would her nerves register the prick of their tiny barbed stingers, the sharp ache of their venom?

  Beneath her feet the pavers are rough and already warm. As she bends awkwardly around the toddler’s weight, her phone falls from the pocket of her pyjama shorts and clatters onto the pavers. With a groan, she sets Henry down and retrieves the phone, swearing at the fresh cobweb of cracks trailing across the screen.

  Jamming a fist into the hem of her singlet, she scrubs at the screen. The phone appears to still work, so after sending Ark yet another undeniably concise and rather colourful text message, she jams the phone back into her pocket and looks over in time to see Henry lurch forwards and disappear amongst an undulating cloud of bees, his hands thrusting out to grab at the fragrant purple fronds. Mortified, Fairlie takes his hand and ushers him backwards. ‘Sorry buddy. Better get out of there.’

  Last night, Henry had been hesitant to leave his house, and had asked frequently after his mother. Murmuring reassur­ances, Fairlie had brought him to her cramped flat and his bottom lip had quivered as she’d tucked him into her own sheets. But in the dark he’d threaded his small arm around her neck and he’d slept, and all night Fairlie had lain, slipping in and out of sleep, unsure of what images were real and what were not.

  As she trudges back along the short drive the sun beats down overhead, spreading indolent heat across her shoulders. In the weedy strip of paddock next door, two dirty-cream alpacas stretch giraffe-like necks above the fence to glare at her. The minuscule town of Penola is sleepy and quiet. Birds chirrup in the trees, a car door thuds, a cow gives a morose low. Overhead an aircraft tows a silent foam contrail across a sheet of ocean-blue glass. The world is oblivious to yesterday’s tragedy, time marches on. Birds chirp and planes fly and the earth and its ever-watchful moon circle the sun but Fairlie is stuck in a numb still-life of pain and bewilderment and, yes, denial.

  This isn’t happening.

  Inside the flat, the curtains are drawn and it takes a moment for her to readjust to the dim light. Henry clings to her leg and takes some coaxing and promises of a treat before he toddles away to try to reach the cat staging a protest beneath the couch.

  The sound of her phone’s ringtone jumps through her like an electrocution. Ark, she thinks. But it’s not Jenna’s husband, it’s Fairlie’s mother.

  ‘Is Henry still with you?’

  ‘Yeah.’ Fairlie tosses the mail onto the kitchen counter and opens the fridge. ‘Poor baby.’

  Her mothe
r sighs heavily down the line, her breath whooshing against the speaker. ‘I’m just putting a few more things in the car and then I’ll be right up. An hour at the most.’

  ‘Okay,’ Fairlie says. The remains of a three-day-old Betty Crocker box mix Devil’s Food Cake sit beneath cling wrap in the fridge. ‘Thanks.’

  ‘What is Ark doing?’

  A cheap ceramic parrot on a magnet slides to the floor as she slams the fridge door. ‘Fuck knows.’

  ‘Fairlie.’

  ‘Sorry.’

  ‘Sit tight. I’ll be there soon.’

  A search through the drawers heralds no clean forks. She locates one in the sink and wipes it on a towel, then peels the plastic wrap from the plate. It comes away with a chunk of icing. The cake is slightly stale, but cold and richly chocolate. She sets the plate next to the unopened mail. After breaking off a small lump of cake to hand to Henry, she is on her third mouthful when her phone rings again.

  ‘Ms Winter, Detective Dallas Morgan – Mount Gambier CIB.’

  It takes Fairlie a moment to recognise the name but when she does she grits her teeth against a painful flash of the previous afternoon: egg-yolk light spilling from the lounge room; the vision of the empty, blood-stained bath; Henry, rousing from innocent sleep and asking for his mother.

  ‘Have you heard from Mr Rudolph?’ There is the buzz of voices and rustling in the background; a telephone warbles.

  ‘No,’ Fairlie says, chewing slowly. ‘I don’t know where he is.’

  A muted sigh. ‘Keep trying.’ He hesitates, gives a small cough. ‘Have you called on your own support? Your parents?’

  ‘I’m fine with Henry,’ Fairlie says, ‘until Ark shows up. I’m sure he’s not far away. Probably went to the pub, slept in his car.’ As her hand smooths the fine curls on the crown of Henry’s head, the idea of handing Henry – Jenna’s flesh and blood – back to his father fills Fairlie with sadness.

  ‘Thank you, Ms Winter,’ Detective Morgan says. ‘I’ll be in touch.’ After a pause he adds, ‘Are you sure you’re okay?’

  ‘No,’ Fairlie says softly. ‘But I don’t have any other choice.’

  She hangs up. Atop the pile of mail is a Telstra notice. The blue envelope signifies her bill is overdue. When they lived together, Jenna used to take care of all that. They often joked that Jenna was the husband of the pair, financially responsible and ordered, while Fairlie was flippant and hopeless. You can’t tie me down, Fairlie would say. I’m rootless, baby.

  It’s a mocking kind of blue, that overdue notice. Pastel, the shade of a spring dawn sky, so the recipient can’t get angry. But what kind of an arsehole sends a notice about fifty-two dollars and eighty-nine cents that’s twenty-one days overdue when a woman has just killed herself? And not just any woman – a mother. A daughter, a wife. A best friend.

  With the side of her hand, Fairlie sweeps the mail from the bench and it scatters across the floor like autumn leaves. Henry watches as she kicks it all angrily beneath the couch, tears blurring her vision.

  It’s because of those tears that she misses the envelope – she doesn’t see her address penned in green ink, in handwriting as familiar as her own.

  2

  THEN

  His skin was pale. Even in the murky light of the swarming pub, it shone cool white. Along with his plait-belted jeans and popped collar, he wore a lively, unbridled self-assuredness and he laughed fearlessly, with his head thrown back. Backlit by the bar, his hair glowed in rakish, burnt gold spikes. But later, as she drew closer to him, Jenna saw it was a deep shade of rusty auburn.

  At first, she hadn’t noticed the tall stranger’s gaze fall on her as she’d slumped after Fairlie into the crowd.

  ‘Just a few drinks,’ Fairlie had assured her, tugging her towards the bar. ‘It’ll help take your mind off things.’

  And then Jenna glanced to her right, and he was watching them. No, not them, Jenna realised – her. The man, standing half a head taller than the group of blokes packed around him, had his gaze fixed on Jenna alone. His look was steady and curious. As Jenna returned his stare he lifted his left shoulder and his head tilted, ever so slightly, and he smiled. Revellers in varying stages of drunkenness seethed between them like penguins gathering on ice – honking, waddling, jostling for space – but for a moment that all fell quiet.

  Fairlie, observing this brief unspoken dialogue, delivered a poignant, raised-eyebrow look at Jenna and her sashay dis­appeared. ‘That was fast,’ she said.

  Out of the side of her mouth Jenna reminded Fairlie, ‘We don’t come all the way to the Mount for just “a few drinks”.’

  ‘Fine then,’ Fairlie said. ‘Drinks for me, and you can admire the scenery.’

  Strangers, drinking and laughing in their dozens, were exactly what Fairlie had insisted Jenna needed right now. Although Jenna knew there was little point in arguing with Fairlie, she had still voiced her dissent during the forty-minute car trip to Mount Gambier as she stared unseeing out the window. Instead of watching the streaky white and grey gums flash by, her mother’s face had haunted Jenna’s vision. While Fairlie employed a multitude of conversational tactics to pry Jenna’s grief open, her mother’s words had knifed inside her.

  Now, the man’s smile broadened and he nodded at her over the swarm of heads, a wordless greeting.

  At the packed bar, Fairlie caught the attention of a hassled-looking young barman with tattooed forearms. She grinned at him, batting thick, blackened lashes and pulling her elbows together either side of her breasts to exaggerate the depth of her cleavage. But his expression was neutral as he slid over their drinks and asked bluntly for twelve dollars.

  ‘Darn, Jen, the puppies didn’t –’ Fairlie began.

  Then, there he was. Standing alongside Jenna, as though he’d always been there. At the moment he appeared, two women behind him yelped and hugged each other with a physical vigour that displaced everyone within a metre radius, like a blast zone, and the man was pitched bodily into Jenna’s space.

  ‘I’m so sorry,’ he said.

  The heat in Jenna’s cheeks flushed up a notch. He stood so close that she had to tip her head back to regard him, and the damp warmth of his breath blew on the exposed hollow of her throat. Goosebumps rippled across her skin.

  The man leaned towards Jenna, reaching past her shoulder. Jenna’s breath caught as he carefully pulled her shirt away from the back of her neck and peered at the tag.

  Muscles tensing, her hands curled into loose fists. ‘Can I help you?’

  He drew back with a wry smile. ‘Just checking,’ he said with a shrug.

  ‘For what?’ Jenna’s hand floated to the back of her neck.

  Moving toward her again, he said, ‘To see if it says made in heaven.’

  Fairlie chortled beside her. ‘Please!’ she scoffed, drained her vodka and signalled the barman again.

  Jenna’s immediate reaction was to turn away. To roll her eyes and laugh with Fairlie, likely utilising the sentiments dick and head. But she hesitated, as though her entrenched, lifelong reactions to any given situation had been flung off-kilter, like a needle jumped from a record’s tracks.

  So, in spite of herself, Jenna snorted, then smiled. ‘That was terrible,’ she said. ‘Really, really bad.’

  He laughed, and the sound was so self-deprecating that Jenna smiled again.

  ‘I apologise,’ he said, genuinely, then made to move away. ‘Have a good evening.’

  It happened before she knew what she was doing. Jenna put her hand on his arm.

  He stilled, not quite turned away from her. Leaning closer she said, ‘Try again.’

  He dropped his head, his shoulder shaking as he laughed again. When he looked up at her he was biting the side of his lip, sizing her up.

  ‘All right,’ he said and extended his hand. ‘Hi there. I’m Ark Rudolph. I’m a dickhea
d when a pretty woman smiles at me.’

  Jenna shook his hand. ‘I’m Jenna,’ she said. ‘I’m a nurse with a hair-trigger crankiness for hangovers in progress.’

  Ark Rudolph held her gaze, an inquisitive half-smile drawing up one corner of his lips. He held his beer towards her and, after a hesitation, she raised her glass and he clinked it, softly. He watched her as he took a long drink.

  Letting the crowd blur and melt around her, Jenna held the man’s enigmatic attention and felt the lump of shock inside her become bearable. She knew that Fairlie wanted to keep her close, balm her unspoken wounds with drink, carry her home and keep trying to lever the truth from her but it occurred to Jenna at that moment in a flash of furious inspiration: what is true anymore? Does anyone know?

  Christina Aguilera’s ‘Dirrty’ belted out over the sound system, bodies bumped and whirled and grinded around them as the room thickened with heat and alcohol-fuelled hormones. Fairlie settled herself on a bar stool and buried her face in her glass, throwing pickup lines at the tattooed barman that became increasingly tawdry as the evening wore on. Occasionally she tossed curious glances in Jenna’s direction, her face arranged as if to say, Well, this is new. And it was precisely because it was new, and thrilling, and narcotic, that Jenna continued. She let it carry her along like rapids, just to see where it went.

  Ark’s head tilted towards her as he spoke in her ear. She was acutely aware of the heat of his flesh, the alcohol-sweet scent of his breath, the bass throbbing through the floor and up the soles of her feet. When she made him laugh, she felt the shudder of it through his chest. Later, when she let him slide his hand into the back pocket of her jeans, pulling her closer still, she felt the heady curl of desire spool between her thighs. When she stepped back, reopening the briefest of spaces between them, he smiled at her so hungrily she felt her throat constrict.