The Break (9 page)

‘Yeah. You're
horrible
. You guys are lucky to have
me
. I could be someone else's son, you know.' He poked her in the side.

Liza felt it, would feel that poke for a long time afterwards, and she tried to keep her voice light as she said, ‘But we wouldn't let anyone else have you, Sambo.'

There was a small pause then, before Sam got her a beauty while her defences were down, working his wormy little fingers into her ribs. She hoisted him off her, crying, ‘Dirty rules!' and he scooted out the door and ran, all the way to where Mrs Perry was watering the hibiscus along the fence.

‘Safe!' he called.

Rosie went into the hotel to get an idea of whether or not there was any part-time work going, and came out with a full-time position, and heat creeping up her back. She wasn't even sure if she wanted to work there, and now she was completely roped into it: uniforms, tax forms, bank account details.

They could do with the money, though, what with the bond and rent in advance they'd had to pay for Greys Bay. And the folks would be pleased, she thought, slightly grimly. Shit. She needed to think this through. She could ring up and say she'd changed her mind. What about the grape-picking thing? Where was Cray when she needed to talk to him? Then again, she didn't have to think too long over that one.

From the rocks at Surge Point you could almost reach out and touch the surfers. The rocks led right up to the waves, after a thin dusty track that began at the boat ramp and wound through the low bush. You could see their individual take-off styles, you could see where they should be sitting, wanted to shout out
Over to your left a bit!
when you knew they weren't quite in the take-off zone, when they'd hump over the frayed edge of the wave as it carried off some other stoked punter.

Rosie perched on a rock waiting for Cray to turn around, feeling like a bit of a surf groupie waiting for her man to come in, which she was, she supposed. Surfers passed her, heading towards the dark water. Most of them were older than the Perth crew; these guys, and the odd chick, thankfully, were at least thirty, they walked quietly, often on their own, with boards under their arms, leg ropes slapping beloved glass with
every step. Most did a few back stretches, balancing on a rock, before paddling out from one of the two entry points. Once in, once slippery black, they paddled parallel with the shore for about fifty metres before turning head-on into the swell.

Looking back, Rosie could see the bay cradled between the two arms of land; between Surge and Edge points, whose gnarly fingertips provided the meaty surf, the glossy water, the turquoise barrels.

She could see the rough gravel carpark, full of half-buggered Kingswoods and utes, and the occasional work vehicle — a long lunch for some.

And up on the hill was their house.

Filling the kettle, Cray shivered. White lines of salt snaked along his skin. Sand coated his ankles like breadcrumbs, coming away with each step.

Rosie shed her thongs at the door. ‘How'd you get back so fast?!'

‘Was bloody freezing!' he said, heading into the bathroom. She heard the hot water system fire up.

When you saw a sand trail, but weren't on the beach, it would lead you to Cray. Small anthills of sand in the shower could be attributed to him also. It seemed to collect in his hair, in the cuffs of his jeans, in his pockets, in his shoes. It never ceased to amaze them both, just how much sand Cray was responsible for transporting round the world.

A muffled call came from the bathroom: ‘Kettle's on!'

Rosie made a cuppa for each of them and stood in the bathroom while Cray finished his shower. She told him about the hotel thing.

‘The hotel or the tav?'

‘Hotel.'

He opened the curtain slightly, so they could see each other. ‘Waitressing or behind the bar?'

‘Both.'

He lathered his belly. ‘Do you want to do it?'

She paused then. ‘Yeah … the bar work would be fun. It's just the full-time thing. And the fact that it's so soon. We've only been here a couple of weeks, Cray. I should be relaxing.'

She noticed the faint new tan line at his ankles, where his wettie ended.

‘Well, we'll have to get work sometime, and it's not grape-picking season yet, so unless you want to work at the supermarket …'

She grinned. ‘I wouldn't mind doing that. Or I could always go on the dole …'

‘Or go to the local rag … what's it called … the
Southern Way
?'

She looked at him wryly. ‘Maybe I'll see how it goes at the hotel.'

Cray tried to keep an open mind about what Marty was saying, when he rang to tell him about the new house. He thought he owed it to him, owed it to himself, to consider Marty's point of view, even though there was nothing he could do about it now even if he'd wanted to; he and Rosie'd signed the lease, settled in, were beginning to get used to life down south.

‘Mate, you're looking for something that you won't ever find. Stop struggling, stop fighting it.' Marty laughed, then spoke in inverted commas. ‘Go with the flow, Cray.'

Maybe that was it, maybe if he just put his head down and got stuck into it, it would all make sense when he was sixty, when the grandkiddies were bouncing happily on his knee. Maybe.

Cray was sitting on the verandah on an old deckchair, the phone cable nearly fully extended from its jack. He looked over the scrub towards the waterbed ocean. He shuffled forward as far as the phone lead would let him as a set gathered momentum out the back. ‘But what's it all for, Marty? Couldn't you think of better ways to spend your days than in the orifice?'

‘A guy's gotta live somehow, Cray.'

‘Yeah, but
live
isn't boats, swimming pools, years spent getting them.'

‘Isn't it? I reckon that
is
living, mate. It sure isn't eating beans for the next fifty years. Money gives you options. Jesus Christ, Cray, Rosie might be twenty-two but you're not!'

Cray laughed at his mate's frustration. ‘But, Marty, when you've got that gear, you want more. Possessing stuff, accumulating it, becomes an end in itself.'

‘Look,' Marty sighed, ‘I know what you're saying, you
freaking idealistic hippie, but I reckon you've gotta provide for your family. What about Rosie, what does she think?'

Cray glanced behind him, to where Rosie was filling in her tax form. ‘She doesn't want anything. She just wants to be happy, Marty.'

‘
I'm
happy, mate! Just because you're screwed up doesn't mean the rest of us are!'

Screwed up.

‘Sorry, sorry Cray, I didn't mean that.'

‘No, it's okay.' Cray's mouth went dry. ‘That's what friends are for. A bit of honesty.'

‘No, no, I really didn't mean …'

But Cray knew what Marty meant, and was glad — well, sort of — that he'd said what he thought.

‘Just come down sometime, you and Caro,' Cray said, eyes swinging over the blue. He wanted to dive into the middle of that hugeness, plunge right in, swim down into that world. ‘Stay the weekend, Marty, there's plenty of room. And bring your board.' He began to laugh. ‘That's if you can still remember how to paddle, you kook.'

‘Yeah,' Marty said. ‘Might see you down there sometime.'

Cray leaned back in the chair, looked out at Edge Point. He knew where he'd be in about five minutes.

Sam was on the phone to Jarrad when Mum and Dad walked in; when his bum began that tingling, that heating prickling. There'd been arguing and night-time whispering for nearly a week now and Sam had had enough. Even half an hour ago there had been raised voices in the kitchen and when he came out of his room he saw Mum marching Dad outside for what looked like one of her Talking-Tos. They were legendary, and you knew your game was up if you were getting one.

It was great to have a normal conversation for a change, even if it was on the phone. Jarrad's family seemed super normal compared to his.

He looked away from their smudged faces, tried to continue his conversation with Jarrad — they were taking bets on whether Lumptor was going to fall to Valstran, or come up trumps, as Nanna Pip would say. Not proper betting, just stuff that would be a bummer to lose, like Jarrad's basketball cards, which Sam didn't even want — he hated basketball — but Jarrad would be spewing to have to give them away. He was trying to think of something he could safely bet but his folks walked in and distracted him, got him all confused.

‘How about your modem?' Jarrad slipped in.

Sam's ear snapped back to the phone. ‘Oh, yeah, sure, Jar. My
modem
against your poxy basketball cards — sure. How about Mum's potato peeler? That'd be more even.'

Mum and Dad stopped at that, looked at Sam. He could see Mum trying to figure out what they were talking about, but she gave up and went back to what she was doing before. Which was giving Dad the death-ray glare: the official end of a
Talking-To. The two of them headed towards their bedroom, and Sam heard his dad say something rude. Something about Mike.

Sitting on the fluffy circular rug in his bedroom that night, Sam couldn't understand why, when there was nothing wrong, he felt kind of sad. It happened to him every now and then. Now. He didn't cry or anything, he just felt, well, quiet and sad, and noticed things like the wind on his face and the way the bad cat snoozed with its paw over the end of its tail. They weren't even sad things to be thinking about, but they made him feel sad. Mum seemed to know when he was feeling funny like that, would give him extra slices of vegemite bread and cuddles that squeezed his ribs, and would ask him what he'd like for dinner.

‘Chicken casserole!' he'd say, diverted for a moment.

‘Aaah, the old favourite, hey?'

‘
Hearty
chicken casserole.' His dad would nod. ‘Good for country families and growing boys.'

‘Hearty chicken casserole,' Sam would say, feeling sadder than ever.

Liza tilted her head towards Sam's room. He was talking to himself again, or to his computer, though there wasn't much difference in that, she reckoned. Poor little tacker, things were a bit stressful at the moment. Ferg was dwelling on Mike coming down and she and Ferg had had another big blow-up before dinner.
Sam
, she thought. A brother or sister would've been perfect. Someone to mess around with, someone to go exploring down the river with, to gang up with against her and Ferg. They were a kid's rights, weren't they? That whole
kid
world, with their secret languages and silly humour. Liza remembered it from her childhood — the laughing, mainly. The knowing looks and jokes at the dinner table, the general frivolity; it was all part of growing up, and provided enduring memories. She felt guilty about Sam's singledom (she quietly blamed that on Ferg), but tried to reassure herself: there were plenty of only children in this world who made it through life fine, and Sam was one of them. He didn't have any hangups about brothers and sisters, and what he
did
have was her and Ferg's undivided attention. And Jarrad. They were good mates, and she was glad of it.

She pulled clean clothes from an overflowing basket, and plopped them into piles on the table.
Pip, Ferg, Sam, me.
She'd wanted to try for another baby, years back, but Fergus had thought
the time wasn't right
; he'd wanted to wait until things were
more settled
on the farm and until things were better between the two of them, though he never said as much. If she was going to be brutally honest about it, Liza reckoned maybe she
had
thought of it as a way of improving things between them; she certainly couldn't forget the joy of having
Sam. He was an angelic baby, they were almost hypnotised by him; felt truly blessed. She'd wanted to breastfeed him forever, she loved the connection, the sight of him clamped, half asleep, on her breast. Now he was growing up, he was more and more in his own world, and the unspoken ties they had both known — she knew they had both felt them, they had
lived
by them — were weakening as Sam did what he must, and what Liza knew she must encourage in him, what any happy child must do: pull away from them.

But that was a long time ago, those discussions with Ferg. The thought of another child now was somehow wrong, a jigsaw piece from another box. Things had settled on the farm and they'd grown into their life with Sam and each other and the idea had disappeared, like so many things do, with the passing days and shifting skies; with passing weeks and events that come and go and months and words and years.

Liza was trying to fill the kitchen sink so she could do the washing-up, but the plug kept slipping away, opening a little crack that would slowly siphon out the water. She'd move it back into place, making sure it made a snug fit this time, and it would slip away again. Six or seven times this happened, and she watched in disbelief as the cumulus suds lowered, as the water shrank away, exposing the fingermarked sides of glasses and mugs.

She stared at them. Tried the plug again. Twitched in her sleep like a slumbering animal.

Sam clicked on his bedside lamp. He couldn't stop thinking about the astronomy mags he'd bet on Valstran being crushed by Lumptor's army. He went over to his desk, wanted desperately to start up his computer but didn't want Mum or Dad to hear. He looked around the room. Shirts, jeans, boogie board, star maps, rug. Rug. He picked it up and carried it over to his desk, a whole bedroom ecology of sand and dust and cracked M&Ms falling from it in the move. Once the computer was well covered, he pressed the
on
button, and cringed. He could still hear it, the singing start-up, though it was muffled. Could they hear it? Were they still awake? He'd be in huge trouble: he had a science test tomorrow. Photosynthesis and chlorophyll. Yawn.