Treading Air (12 page)

McWilliams smiles. ‘Any way I can sit next to a beautiful girl. Gets lonely for blokes like me.' He slaps his right thigh, the leg Lizzie noticed earlier. She wonders again what happened to him, made him that way. Has a little flutter too, at his compliment. He seems harmless, funny even. She's comfortable around him.

Bea's serving drinks at the bar, and Lizzie can make out a few figures in the lounge beyond, maybe Dolly. At the table are some Chinese men. Lizzie recognises Mr Zhang from the other day by his white hair and watch chain, and she thinks the other is the bloke who runs a grocery store at Rising Sun because of the way he does his hair – shaved close on one side, then sweeping high and cleanly over his forehead. Zhang calls him something that sounds to her like Lee.

McWilliams sits at the table with her, and they buy in. Lee stares at her, his eyes almost black. He holds her gaze. She looks away, unsettled. He says something to Zhang in what her dad calls their ching-chong lingo. Talking about her? She runs her fingers through her loose bun, feels it untangle, gives up and turns a shoulder towards Zhang and Lee.

‘What d'you reckon?' McWilliams asks her, sliding a tile around in his fingers.

She looks back at Lee. He's staring at her in a way she recognises from men in the street. She didn't think his kind found white women attractive, and she holds his gaze for longer this time, then answers McWilliams' question. ‘Three,' she says. She takes the tile out of his hand and puts it on the square.

Lee and Zhang say something else in their lingo. A man in the lounge calls out to Bea to make them stop talking like that, he can't bloody stand it. Bea walks over, all smiles, and says something that makes Lee and Zhang go very still. Bea returns to the table, playing banker. She wears a leopard-skin cavewoman number that barely contains her. Lizzie thinks of the beast that once inhabited it, haunting the skin, stretched at the seams, unable to recognise or inhabit its own saggy pelt.

Zhang counts again, the curved stick moving quickly over the coins.

Bea smiles at Lizzie. ‘Good to see you back. How you been?'

‘Alright. Me hubby's lost his job. I'm looking for work. Cleaning, laundry. Anything really.'

‘You like that?'

‘Don't have much choice.'

Bea nods. ‘I might have something. An opening in a week or two. Come and see me if you still need it.'

A week or two seems a long time to wait – hunger still cuts at Lizzie's belly.

Zhang's almost done with the pile of coins. She hopes that her luck is back with her, and sure enough when the count's over, only three coins are left. They play a couple more rounds, but she's desperate to quit while she's ahead.

She and McWilliams step from the parlour into the bright light. She can barely see what she's doing when she pays him back. A surge of gratitude towards him. She won't have to find work just yet, and maybe something will come up for Joe in the meantime. They can eat properly. She thanks McWilliams with a kiss on the cheek, her lips prickling where they touch him. She ignores it and heads back to Joe, the money heating up in her hand.

To celebrate her win, they walk to the Causeway. Sweat slides down her back. She hates being in the hotel all sweaty. One of the sofas in the ladies' lounge is free, and she makes her way to it. Joe nods his approval and threads through the loose groups of men to the bar. He'll give me a smile, she thinks. And, from the bar, he does. She loves these moments when she's safe in knowing he'll respond to her.

Joe says something to a man who turns abruptly from him without answering. Joe makes his way back to her. He's holding himself strangely, his eyes sliding over her, around the room, back again. He puts the glasses on the table but doesn't sit down. She pats the sofa next to her. He's not paying attention, and they were supposed to be celebrating their win. She takes her drink and settles into the material, not looking at him.

Then Joe's back at the bar, staring out at the group of men standing by the door, loose-limbed. One of them, collar cupping his neck, no tie, walks towards Joe. His face doesn't move, and Lizzie wonders if he was hurt in the war. She once talked to a man at a Brisbane pub who wore a tin mask. Wasn't till she sat down next to him that she noticed his left eye never moved, while the other roamed all over, except to her. He put his hand up and touched a scar that scooped his cheek – no, a seam, not a scar. The end of a mask that covered who knew what: an empty eye socket, maybe, or a cheek pierced and opened up.

She said, ‘Golly, they did a good job on you,' and she wasn't sure if she meant the breaking or the remaking of his face.

He took this well enough, delivering up the details breathlessly, with a smile that ruined the illusion because the creases slipped under the mask, lifted the whole thing. ‘They try to match the skin colour exactly. Paint the thing while it's on your face. Woman painting it went over the lines, though. Enamel took days to scrub off.' The mask was held on with glasses, their lenses flat and useless.

Lizzie wanted to see under it really badly, but there was no doing with this fella. He never made a move, and she was young enough to want all the men to love her before she even let them kiss her, going about it back to front.

Now she looks into the face of this man striding up to Joe, searching for some part he's trying to hide. The impression dissolves when he reaches Joe and socks him in the chin. Joe's face changes, the whole of it crumples up, and he puts his hand to his mouth, blindly swings the other hand down on the man's head. The man makes a winded sound. His three mates swell from the door and pull him away. The barman comes out from behind the taps, holding a cricket bat, and tells them all to leave.

Lizzie stands up and says, ‘The hell?' but Joe just walks out with his hand over his face. She goes to follow him, remembers her drink bought with the fan-tan money, downs it and rushes outside. She hears a grunt and recognises his voice, coming from behind the hotel. The guts drop out of her. She bolts round the side. The four men circle Joe, who's on the ground, his hands over his head. He tries to sit up. One bloke brings a fist to his cheek. Joe's neck snaps back, and Lizzie screams, running closer, because it looks as if he's broken it. When another sinks a boot in, she launches herself onto the man, still screaming.

She catches a whiff of Joe's body, a sick sweat, like he's an injured animal. She's all teeth, hands, voice, trying to get the men off Joe, his grunts driving her wild, the sight of him down on the ground like that, the way his body lifted with the heft of the boot.

The man she's on staggers backwards with her weight, trying to reach round and pull her away. She's yelling, ‘Get off 'im, you bastards.' She loses her grip, hits the ground, jarring her leg, and then bounces back at the man, but he's already moving over to Joe and the others.

She lashes out again, grabs his hand. He could turn round and whack her one, but he doesn't. He might be squeamish about hitting girls. The others have pulled back now, standing around Joe, who's not moving. One shouts, a sound with no words. The only things that Lizzie understands are the feelings: half pain, half victory. The one she's got ahold of says, ‘His missus's here, fellas.' His voice is disgusted – with them or her, she can't tell.

The man who shouted puts his arm across his eyes and groans. The other two, panting, cast a glance at her and back to Joe on the ground. She runs over and flings herself in the dirt next to him. ‘You bastards, you fucking bastards. What's he ever done to you?'

The man she'd been holding on to says, ‘Me brother's lost a hand 'cause a him.'

Pain in his voice. Lizzie doesn't know what to say. She sees that Joe's eyebrow has opened up. Blood on his face and shirt, she can't tell from where. She puts her hand on his chest, and his heart is beating fast and all wrong against her palm. When she looks up again, the men are walking off, their bodies tense and their hands at their sides. Hatred rolls through her, clenching her body. She wants to shoot them dead right there and have their bodies laid at her feet with blood pouring out.

She yells at them, she doesn't know what, something meant to frighten but that comes out weak.

One of them calls back, ‘Don't tell no coppers. Or we'll send your hubby to gaol, you'll never hear from 'im again. Then we'll come over, fuck ya up the arse.'

This scares her out of the haze. She has to stop herself from bolting right there, leaving Joe down in the dirt. He has his eyes open now, but the lids flutter and the eyeballs roll back. ‘Joe, here, please,' she says. ‘Get up and beat those mongrels.' He's in no fit state, but she wants them dead so badly. Her helplessness is like a fist squeezing in her back, across her shoulders. He groans again. She's sick at the sound, the pain in it. He brings his hands up to his face but doesn't touch it. Kicks his legs in the dirt.

‘Have to get you home, Joe. Get a doctor to you.'

‘Don't want no bloody doctor.' She's relieved he can say that much.

‘Get up, then.'

He only shakes his head. She tries to lift him – nothing, his body weight overwhelming her. Puts her shoulder into it. He cries out so loudly when she does, she pulls away quickly, burnt by the sound. Tells him she can't do it for him. He lifts on one palm and a knee, collapses again. She tries for his arm, and he's with her enough that she can tug him up, tripping backwards but keeping her feet. He leans on her, more than an extra foot of him to her five foot nothing. She's crushed by the weight of her man. Won't get him home by herself.

They stumble across the dirt before she flings him, uncontrolled, to the bottom step of fifty-one. She rests her forehead in the crook of her arm and inhales deeply. Can't bear to look at him, lying with his legs out oddly, his hands held tight around his stomach. She doesn't want to think about his insides being torn up.

The black woman who teased them on that drunken night appears at the top step, a man close behind her. She takes one look at Joe and says, ‘Jesus, what happened to him?'

Lizzie's voice is so rough her own dad wouldn't recognise it. ‘Have to get help.'

The woman glances at the man behind her, says, ‘'Scuse me,' and walks back inside. He follows. She shouts across the voices in the fan-tan parlour, asking if anyone's a doctor.

A man without a coat and thin hair so blond it's almost white walks out to them. He introduces himself as Dr Neumann and frowns down at Joe.

‘We've no money,' Lizzie tells him, though she wants badly for him to help.

‘Don't worry,' he says. ‘I'm winning in there.' He hooks his thumb towards the fan-tan parlour. Then, on his way down to Joe, he touches her elbow, his hand dry and cold. His eyes are sheened red. He blinks in the last of the evening light. She wonders if he's been drinking, but his hands are steady enough when he lifts Joe's head and peels open his eyelids. ‘What happened?'

‘Fight,' she says. The man's boot connecting with Joe's gut. Her thoughts are slipping away, and she tries not to start crying again.

‘Let me see your stomach,' Neumann says, and when Joe doesn't move he shifts his arms aside and lifts up his shirt. Already a dark purple stain is blooming around his navel. Lizzie's bowels clench. ‘He's concussed,' the doctor tells her. ‘I'd like to look again at his stomach tomorrow.'

‘I've told you, we can't pay.'

Neumann waves his hand. ‘You need to get him home now. Wash the blood off. I don't think any of the cuts will need stitches. Put him to bed and keep him there. He'll be confused and in pain, but I don't see why he shouldn't recover.'

‘How'll I get him home?'

‘No friends to give you a hand?'

Lizzie shakes her head, and the doctor nods and goes back up the stairs. She doesn't know if she should follow or stay. A heaviness settles on her. She can't move. Her thoughts have gone beyond her reach.

Bea emerges from the house, followed by Neumann. She greets Lizzie with a small wave. ‘Need a lift?'

‘We're just on Roberts Street.'

‘I'll send one of me fellas out. He can get your hubby – is it? – in the car.'

‘Thank you.'

Bea waves her away. ‘You've been good to my place. We'll sort you out.' She smiles at Lizzie, all teeth. As Lizzie's eyes shift back to Joe, Bea turns to Neumann and says, much more quietly, something like, ‘I don't want him out front any more than needs be.' Lizzie knows she wasn't meant to overhear it. Now she wants to get home fast, the heaviness lifted and replaced with churning. Her fingertips and upper lip prickle.

Bea disappears into the house. Joe's quieted. He sits with his head against the railing. Another bloke comes round the side, his strides big. Lizzie wonders what it would be like to have such a man at her beck and call. She recognises him, has seen him keeping bar at fifty-one. Reckons his name's Murray.

‘Bea said you wanted a hand.' He and Neumann crouch on either side of Joe and hook his arms around their shoulders, haul him up. Lizzie follows, reaching out to Joe uselessly. They veer past the side of the house where an Australian Six is parked in a patch of dirt scored by the curved line of tyres, the dent of footprints punched over the top. Murray and Neumann ease Joe into the back of the car. His limbs hang oddly, the doctor angling his back. Murray gestures at Lizzie to go in after Joe and, as she does, she sees her husband in a car for the first time. Not like how she pictured it in their future, with him up front behind the steering wheel, the motor humming in front of them, but all broken in the back seat, blood drying on the breast of his shirt.

Neumann visits in the morning and decides to stitch up the cut across Joe's forehead. His eyebrow'll never be the same. Lizzie likes this stitched-together look, its combination of meanness and vulnerability. Neumann pokes the flesh of Joe's stomach and reckons he'll be right, but out of action for another three weeks to a month.