Page 35 of Queenslander
“It’s accurate,” Ron said.
“Don’t judge her.” Nev wondered how to explain love to someone born after Live Aid. “She couldn’t have saved them.”
“What happened to her?”
“How would I know?” The woman probably went back to her parents’ house and rebuilt her life from scratch or killed herself.
Ron pointed to the photo. “It’s a self-portrait.”
Nev frowned. She lifted Gumball’s water gun off the table, pulled the trigger. Ron didn’t flinch.
Afterwards, dripping, Ron held out her hand. Nev handed her the super soaker, contrite. Ron pumped it for a while, then soaked Nev’s pants. Luckily the family room floor was tile.
“Are you done?” Nev asked.
“Are you?”
Nev snorted. “Don’t you have something useful to do?”
Ron left.
Nev looked at the photo, studied the tiny reflection of herself in it, the image of the photographer clutching the camera, a young woman with long blonde hair and a black circle instead of a face.
13
LAWYER
Sunday evening in late February, the day before Ronnie was supposed to meet with the lawyer, she had Rainbow. She listened for the lightning that would electrify Reg’s metal counters, vibrate the glass and shock the cousins through their chairs. Aunts, uncles and cousins sat at the long table on the veranda eating boiled dinner when spatters of rain ping-ed off the roof and a wall of water fell between them and the grassy yard. A waterfall from the heavens beat the grass, saturating the loam, filling it to overflowing.
Rainbow planted her fists on the table and howled. She blew out a whooping banshee cry, eyes squeezed shut, mouth wide in an "O" showing a perfectly round unchewed slice of salami. Ripping off her shirt, she jumped up on the bench and ran across the table whipping it in circles above her head. She stood in the grass grinning and catching rain on her tongue as more kids ran out tipping their heads back as the rain soaked their long hair and plastered it to their necks. The little cousins jumped on each other's backs and galloped out of sight up the jungle path.
Her uncle looked up from his card game. “That was you. You were like that.”
The next dawn, riding childless again, lonely and relieved, she parked her motorcycle under the carport at Stone House and turned off the engine. Nev wasn’t there, so Ronnie stood on the veranda under the eaves to wait. The older woman walked up the hill towards the house with the dogs in the rain. Nev looked like a shepherd in a waxed canvas barn coat, stick in one hand, other hand tucked in a pocket.
Ronnie watched the front door swing open at Nev’s touch and followed her inside. Nev hung her wet Akubra in the mudroom and flicked on the electric kettle in the kitchen before leading her to a table in the family room covered with books.
“Big day, meeting with a lawyer. How do you feel?”
Nev offered her a plate of raw vegetables before biting into a thin slice of white radish that looked like a full moon. Nev ate them mandolined every morning from August to March.
“Good.”
Ronnie picked one. It was wet with its own juice. Sunlight from the window illuminated it from behind, revealing inner patterns like the cratered surface of the moon. Rubbery, slimy, it had the surface texture of a carrot and mouth-feel of an apple. It was delicious. Peppery and surprisingly sweet. She swallowed it, took another.
Soccer practice was cancelled, so after work she drove back to her donga in Tinaroo, fed the dogs, reached under the kitchen sink and grabbed the box of garbage bags. She shook one out, then pulled it over the cast until her fingertips pressed against in the corner of the bag. She pulled the plastic taut, pushed her fingers through the thin black plastic one by one. She bit a rubber band, stretched it out with her free hand, pushed the cast hand through, then let it snap shut around the garbage bag ather elbow. She admired her homemade cast-cover, opened and closed her hand. It would keep the cast dry for a while.
The two-lane paved road north to Mareeba was slick. If this continued, there would be washouts soon. News radio was all updates about the path of Cyclone Marcia. She had been upgraded to a category five cyclone off the coast sometime last night. She was making land now, near Shorewater Bay, north of Yeppoon, striking a relatively uninhabited area. The State Emergency Service (SES) was helping people evacuate from the path of the storm.
The lawyer’s office was in a commercial building between a petrol station and an athletic field. Ronnie ran inside, head-down against a wall of water.
Inside the atrium of the office building she pushed down the hood of her sweatshirt. Indoor trees, some kind of ficus. The lawyer’s office was on the second floor. The building smelled like a doctors’ office. Soft jazz played in the elevator.
The secretary, older woman, handed Ronnie a clipboard with forms to fill out in the waiting room.
A middle-aged woman wearing a polyester dress that fit her like a glove, and high heels, came out and offered her hand. “You’re Reg Madonna’s daughter?”
“That’s me.”
