‘I came to talk to you last night,’ he said. ‘I thought we could, you know … I came by myself.’
‘Why?’
‘Why not?’
She moved the gear stick into neutral.
‘I got the company books for you,’ he said. ‘I brought them to your house. I was going to leave them on the veranda, but you didn’t come home all night.’
She felt her hair prickle on the nape of her neck. ‘I was at my father’s,’ she said.
‘That’s who you had dinner with?’
‘Yes. It is absolutely who I had dinner with.’
‘But you went out to dinner with Uncle Jack.’
She turned to look at him. He was smirking.
‘You don’t want to waste your time with him,’ he said. ‘He’s a creep.’
‘Benny, what do you want from me? What is it?’
Benny shrugged and looked out of the window at a pair of men at A.S.P. Building Supplies loading roofing iron on to the roof-rack of an old Ford Falcon. ‘How old are you?’ he asked, still not looking at her.
Maria started the engine.
‘How old are you?’ He turned. He looked as if he was going to cry.
‘I’m thirty-four.’
‘I like you,’ he said. ‘I never liked anyone like that before.’
‘Benny, that’s enough.’
‘This is serious,’ he said.
‘Enough.’
But he was unbuttoning his shirt.
Maria turned off the engine and opened her door. ‘I’m going to get your father.’
‘My father is a joke,’ said Benny. He pulled down his jacket and his shirt to show her his upper arm. ‘Just look, that’s all. Please don’t turn away from me.’
Maria Takis looked. She saw a smooth white scar the size of a two-cent piece surrounded by a soft blue stain.
Benny looked at her with large tear-lensed eyes. ‘My mother did this to me. Can you imagine that? My own mother tried to kill me.’
‘Benny,’ Maria said. ‘Please don’t do this to me. I am an auditor from the Australian Taxation Office.’
‘I was three years old.’
‘What is this serving?’
‘For Chrissake.’ Benny kicked out and smashed the glove box. It flipped off and fell on to the floor. ‘I’m trying to show you my fucking life.’ He looked at her. His eyes were big and filled with tears. ‘You wouldn’t come with me. I wanted you to come with me. I can’t stand that.’
‘Benny, what can I do? I’m a stranger to your family.’
‘You’re kind,’ he said. He rubbed his nose with the back of his hand. He picked up the glove box lid and tried to fit it back on. ‘I know you’re kind.’
‘Benny,’ she gave him a tissue from her bag, ‘just take my word for it – I’m very selfish.’
He wiped his eyes and blew his nose. ‘You care about other people, I know you do. You live all by yourself and you’re having this baby. That’s not selfish.’
Maria looked forward out the window, not wanting to hurt him, fearing his anger, wishing it would end.
‘You could have had an abortion.’ He persisted with the glove box lid. Every time he closed it, it dropped to the floor.
‘I often wish I had.’
‘No, you don’t.’
‘You want to know the truth? I wanted to hurt the baby’s father. That’s why I’m having a baby – to make him feel sorry for the rest of his life.’
Benny took the glove box lid and squinted at it, as if trying to read a part number.
‘You’re kind,’ he said. ‘You can’t put me off by lying to me. I can replace this glove box,’ he said. ‘If you come back tomorrow I’ll replace it free.’
‘Benny I’m not coming back. I’m sorry.’
‘You come out here, you try to screw my life. I’m interested in you. I’m interested in your baby, everything. I like you, but you don’t even take the trouble to see how I live. You know how I live? I live in a fucking hole in the ground. You wouldn’t even use it for a toilet. Come and look at it. I’ll show you now.’
The Tax Inspector shook her head. She looked down at her skirt and saw it rucked above her knees. They looked like someone else’s knees – old, puffy, filled with retained fluid. In the middle of the anxiety about Benny she had time to register that she had developed œdema.
‘You can’t just dump me. You think you can go away and leave me to rot in my cellar, just let me rot in hell, and nothing will ever happen to you because of it.’ He was folding his jacket. He was opening the car door. He was leaving her life.
Maria Takis waited for the door to slam. It did not seem smart to start the engine until it did.
50
Granny Catchprice had made her life, invented it. When it was not what she wanted, she changed it. In Dorrigo, she called them maggots and walked away. She had gelignite in her handbag and Cacka was nervous, stumbling, too shy to even touch her breasts with his chest.
There was no poultry farm, she made one. There was no car business, she gave it to him, out of her head, where there had been nothing previously. She freed him from his mother. She gave him a yard which he paved with concrete so he could hose it down each morning like a publican, a big man in his apron and gum boots. He was Mr Catchprice. She was Mrs Catchprice. She hired boys and girls in trouble and showed them how they could invent themselves. Little Harry Van Der Hoose – she tore up his birth certificate in front of him. He watched her with his mouth so wide open you could pop a tennis ball inside.
‘Now,’ she said. ‘What are you?’
Years later he wrote a letter from Broome where he had a drive-in liquor store. He said: ‘Before I had the good fortune to be employed by yours truly, I was what you would call a dead-end kid. Whatever life I enjoy here today, I have you to thank for.’
Mrs Catchprice stood in the annexe on Wednesday afternoon and watched them bring the horrid-looking ‘Big Mack’ tour truck right into the yard. It belonged to Steven Putzel, the pianist – a nasty little effort with sideburns and a tartan shirt. They had to move the Holdens and that black foreign car to one side. They made a mess of the gravel doing it.
Her daughter ran out from under the LUBRITORIUM sign, carrying guitar cases.
‘That’s a joke,’ Frieda said. She lit a Salem and folded her arms across her prosthetic chest. It was a bumpy, silly thing and she was sorry she had put it on.
‘What is?’
She looked and saw Mort was standing next to her. This sort of thing happened more and more. She damn well could not remember if she had known he was there or if he had sneaked up on her. She said nothing, gave nothing away. She held out the Salem pack to him. He shook his head.
‘What’s a joke?’ he said. She remembered then – he gave up smoking when he married Sophie.
She looked out of the window at her daughter who was now struggling out into the sunlight carrying a big amplifier.
‘Where’s she think she’s going?’ she said.
‘You know exactly what she’s doing,’ Mort said.
She guessed she did know. ‘She can’t sing.’
‘Jesus, Mum. Give up, will you?’ Mort grinned. She was a tough old thing, that’s who she was.
‘She used to sing as well as you. She used to sing the “Jewel Song” for your father. People would pay to hear that.’
‘Come on, lay off – you know she’s popular.’
‘Is she?’ said Granny Catchprice. ‘Truthfully?’
Mort folded his arms across his chest and looked down at her with a thin, wry grin on his face. ‘You’re not going to get a rise out of me.’
She was not sure if she was taking a rise out of him or not. She knew, of course, that Cathy sang in halls. She was popular enough to sing at a dance in a hall. She could sing for shearers, plumbers, that sort of thing.