"Cash?"
She stepped out from the stone recess and a breeze snapped up a fistful of her hair, suspended it above her head.
"We could go to the bottle shop," she said.
He thought frantically for a moment. "What about ID? Do you have — I know, we could get Cale's ID."
But she was already somewhere else in her head. It struck him she was bored with him. Without warning she came over and leaned into his shoulder and, slowly collapsing her knees, traced her upper lip — inch by inch — all the way down to the tips of his fingers. He stood there inside the stone walls, suffused in sun, shock-still, the hot tension through his body almost painful. What happened now?
"It's you!" She crinkled up her nose. "You! You stink of fish."
His cheeks flared red. "Shit," he said. He brought up his fingers and smelled them. Bait. "You're right. Shit, sorry."
She hopped back with a childlike little scowl. He struggled for an excuse and she watched him, letting him struggle, saying nothing. Finally he slinked off. Now she was saying something but he was too busy with shame to take in her final words. The easterly gusted up. Then, at the edge of the granite ruin, he forced himself to turn around.
"There's tonight," she called into the wind's low howl.
"What?" He cupped his ear.
"Thursday night," she was saying. "See you Thursday night."
***
HIS MUM WAS dying and seemed torn between ignoring it and rushing toward it. She wanted to meet it in the middle of many arrangements. After the first relapse — the scans, the taps, the tests — she sank back into her work, her only concession to the diagnosis being a switch from spatulas to paintbrushes. She spent even more time outdoors, painting, gardening. She was always a physical gardener: sporting Blundstone boots and a singlet, gloves up to her elbows and her ginger hair scrunched back with anything at hand — a rubber band, a torn strip from a plastic bag. She was indefatigable. If asked, she'd say it was just like pins and needles. What was the phrase people used? — she refused to become her illness. She beat it back.
Then, two years ago, the second major relapse. She claimed, afterward, that she didn't remember any of it. But she'd seen him. They'd seen each other. She'd lain on her side, the easel also knocked on its side. It was as though she'd been dancing with it and they'd tripped over together. Her face was compressed against the floor, strands of hair streaked diagonally across it, captured as though in a thrash of passion. Everywhere there was bright cerulean blue paint, the entire floor slick and sky-colored, a centimeter deep, leaching into her arms, her scissored legs, her smock and boots. Her palms were vivid orange.
"Mum," he said.
But she couldn't speak. The blue paint coated her lips — through it he saw the tip of her blue tongue — it matted her hair, enclosed her right eye like a face mask. That eye was open. It didn't blink. You could see. It was nightmare in her head.
"Mum?"
Never — it'd never been this serious. Once before, he'd come upon her slumped on the kitchen lino. Just dizzy, she'd said. She'd made him promise not to tell Dad. He knelt, now, watching her. He put out his hand but it seemed incapable of touching anything. Her eye roved, jerkily, like a puppet's, around the room — to him — away — to him again. She was frozen in the middle of her mangled sidestroke, the paint frothing in front of her mouth. Slowly it hardened into a lighter blue paste. He felt as if he were breathing it as well. Then the footsteps, the bottomed-out growl of his dad's voice — what happened, how long, how long — how long — the dark form crouching down, standing up, crouching down again and cutting off her hair, the crunch of the scissors, then stripping her up, limb by limb, out of the dry blue muck. A long pause.
Come on, Jamie.
Once, he'd seen her in front of the bathroom mirror. She was plunging a bone-gray comb again and again into her hair, as though punishing it. Arms trembling. She caught his eye in the mirror and smiled. Here, she said, holding it out. Help me.
***
He washed the sand off his feet at the outside tap. When he came into the living room she shifted in her reclining couch, in his direction. She looked shrunken, he thought, diluted somehow. The red of her hair slowly ashing.
"I could see you," she said, "at the courthouse." A mischief in her voice, even through its slow woolliness.
He kissed her on the right side of her face. Then he stuck his head out her window, dodging the potted plants and flowers and trailing philodendrons. She wasn't lying. There was a clear view the whole way.
"It was nothing," he said.
"Didn't look like nothing."
"I was fishing with Michael."
"Yes, I know. He came home an hour ago."
An electric saw revved up from the workshop downstairs. Despite himself, Jamie started smiling. Silly with the memory of kissing Alison. He recalled his dad's instructions.
"How're you feeling, Mum?"
"You're avoiding the question. Do you like this girl?"
"Yeah."
No other answer occurred to him. Her illness had had the effect of completely opening up their conversation.
"And she likes you?"
He hesitated. Summoning back the smell of her, the smell on your hands after scaling a wet chain-link fence. He smiled again. Then he remembered her reaction when she smelled his fingers. "I dunno," he said. "It's more complicated than that."
"One more reason for us to stay here." The right side of her mouth edged upward; automatically he gauged the bearings behind the effort. Too much. During the worst spells, her face lost most of its sensation. "Yes," she went on, "I know why you're here."
"Dad said to tell you — "
"Tell your father," she said, "he can stop having his secret meetings." Her breath was coming out serrated now, in little huffs, and he realized she was trying to clear her throat. "Tell him to tell those bankers, and real estate agents, and all those others…"
She stopped. He wasn't used to seeing her this bad. Speechless — almost entirely immobilized. Not so long ago she'd have never run short of a few choice words for real estate agents. The scum of the earth, she called them. Nor would she have been able to get out of her chair — any chair — fast enough. But she'd already been a couple of weeks in this one. She'd missed his semifinal in this one.
He shook his head. "I'm with Dad," he said. "We'll go to Maroomba and come back when you're better."
"Live with the enemy? You kids."
"They need to know by Friday, Mum."
She attempted another half smile. "Look at you now," she said. She scrutinized him for some time, then turned back toward her window. She said, "It's more complicated than that."
He left the house. Partway down the drive he saw Michael sitting on the bungalow steps. Jamie went over to him and yanked out his earphones.
"Hang out in your own room, will you?"
Michael shrugged.
"Go tell Mum you wanna move to Maroomba."
"What? I don't, but."
"I don't care. Go tell her."
Michael slouched up from the concrete steps, sheaves of hair — he cut it himself, using kitchen scissors — hanging over his brow. He was too skinny and his arms too long and every part of him that bent was knobbly. No way they looked alike.
"I hate Maroomba, they're all posh there."
"Would you rather move to the city?"
Michael jerked his head up. "Do you think she '11 get better if we go?" At one point his voice dipped into a lower register and sounded like their dad's. The earphones still buzzing around his neck.
Jamie tsked impatiently. "Why else would we go?"
"Cale said he'd teach me how to surf."
"Cale won't teach you shit." He instantly felt bad for saying this. "Look, it's not till next year anyway."