Too Much Lip Read online

  ‘Small-dog syndrome. Has to mark everything he sees.’ Kerry lifted her drenched boot to demonstrate. ‘The dirty little cunt.’

  Ken laughed as he took in the extremely interesting fact of his baby sister on a late-model Harley. ‘He’s got anger issues,’ he said, raking his fingers through his mullet.

  ‘Show me someone who don’t, brah, and I’ll lick their crack for em,’ Kerry joked.

  Ken leaned over the veranda rail, six foot two and heavy with muscle from years of basketball and footy. Sweat glistened on his corded neck. Enough had already trickled south to turn his navy singlet, fresh that morning, to a clammy charcoal. Kerry squinted up at her oldest brother. He’d stacked on the weight since he got out. Now, with his long flat nose and greying hair, Ken was looking more like a giant overgrown koala every time she saw him.

  ‘Bugger me, two visits in a year.’ He grinned, his busted teeth showing. ‘Stalking us now are ya?’

  ‘Don’t get used to it.’ Kerry was climbing the stairs.

  Ken nodded down at the Hog.

  ‘Might have to take this for a burn.’

  ‘It’s hot. I flogged it on the Goldie last night,’ Kerry said, deflecting his suggestion and pushing past him to dump her backpack on the kitchen table. Safe in full view. Beside the fridge an upright fan was blowing a gale of hot air around the small fibro house.

  Kerry looked around at the changes in a home where nothing ever, ever changed. A narrow hospital bed had been squeezed into the lounge room, beneath the louvres that looked out onto Scruffy McCarthy’s bull paddock. So Pretty Mary had moved Pop back indoors, then. A notorious snorer, Pop had been exiled for decades to the Viscount caravan that sat out the back, rusting beside the chook shed in a forest of dockweed and fourth-rate yarndi.

  Home at last, thought Kerry. Great godamighty, he’s home at last. Though Pop had appreciated the privacy of the caravan, he had never quite felt it reflected his status as patriarch of the mob. Now, nearing death, he was back squarely in the centre of things, with everybody knowing his business. And I wonder just how well that’s going down, Kerry mused.

  Upended beside the empty bed was a red Crazy Clark’s crate, piled high with pill packets, betting slips and Homebrand ginger ale cans. Form guides and well-thumbed racing mags littered the sheet and every other flat surface. On the TV leggy thoroughbreds were walking around a saddling yard.

  Just inside the back door a Watchtower magazine lay on the kitchen table, untouched inside its clear plastic wrapper. Kerry picked it up and gammon crossed herself with it for Ken’s benefit.

  ‘Bless me Father, for I’m a lezzo and a crim!’ she laughed.

  ‘Don’t let Mum hear ya say that,’ Ken warned. ‘She’s gorn natural-born Christian again.’

  ‘The JWs in Durrongo, ah, fuck me roan.’ She tossed the magazine back onto the table and began unlacing her boots. The smell of her feet would give a baby a nosebleed, but that was too bloody bad.

  ‘It’s all go round here, I tells ya. There’ll be quinoa salad at the pub next,’ Ken answered, deadpan. ‘Keep that door shut, willya? The flies are gonna carry this feed off, the dirty little black shits,’ he added, returning to the stove.

  ‘Got one of them for me?’ With her chin Kerry indicated the stubby holder in Ken’s left hand. He was on beers, thank Christ. Her brother hesitated for a split second, a hesitation so brief it would have been invisible to anyone not a Salter. Ken wanted Kerry to drink with him, naturally, because he wanted everyone to drink with him, all the time. If, in this particular instance, Kerry drank with him, it added unspoken weight to the fantasy that being on your third beer at eleven in the morning was nothing remarkable, something anyone – even your little sister – might do. But on the flip side, there was only half a six-pack and one single solitary tallie in the fridge, with payday two days away, and both his credit cards maxed out since who could fucking remember when. A third, complicating factor was the distinct possibility that Kerry, who had come into possession of a Harley-Davidson Softail since he’d last seen her, might have arrived bearing gifts. Hard cash, even. And so Ken hesitated.

  Suddenly overcome with irritation that he had to be hospitable when he was on the bones of his arse, he grabbed a stubby from the fridge. Without warning, he flicked it backhanded to Kerry. Acting on pure reflex, she jerked sharply sideways to keep the bottle from crashing onto the worn lino; her hands met around the slippery brown glass. Triumphant, she straightened and casually knocked the bottle cap off on the table edge with an emphatic thump of her right fist. You’ll have to get up earlier in the morning than that to fuck with me, mate.

  Ken turned back to the stove.

  ‘Cheers, big ears.’ As the icy liquid hit the back of her throat Kerry realised how parched she was. Must have been pushing forty in the middle of the road, arguing with them bloody waark. ‘Fuck, that hits the spot. Judge Judy home?’ Kerry meant her mother.

  ‘She took Pop up to see the specialist.’ Ken was stirring hamper on the stove and swatting furiously at the half dozen flies that had slipped inside with Kerry. ‘His head was shocken again last night.’

  Ken’s ancient blue Falcon stood not five short steps from the veranda; the spiderweb of its permanently busted windscreen was visible from where Kerry sat. As a former captain of the Patto footy team several years running, Ken had an understanding with the local constabulary, and usually got away with trivial shit like that.

  ‘On the bus.’ Kerry’s voice was flat. Dangerously so, since Ken had long held the monopoly on anger in the Salter family. But Kerry didn’t give a rat’s. She couldn’t see Ken busting her up today.

  ‘Yeah-on-the-bus.’ Ken swung around fast and eyeballed her. He’s literally twice my size, Kerry thought, instantly on high alert. But it’s okay. Chill. He’s only on beers. A spot of bright yellow grease dropped from Ken’s spatula onto the floor. ‘So fucken what?’ he challenged, chin thrust forward, the ropy veins in his neck beginning to swell.

  If a person was anything close to smart, she’d backtrack now, kowtowing all the way. Yes sir. No sir. Three bags full sir. But Kerry had been away in the city, hanging with a crew of hard-headed Logan dykes.

  ‘It’s a million bloody degrees out there.’

  Death stare from Ken.

  Why did I even come back? Why put meself through it again? Am I some sort of simple bitch?

  ‘She won’t ride in my car cos the brakes are shot. I fucken offered!’

  Ken scowled, then – luckily – noticed the grease spot. He grabbed a paper towel from the sink and Kerry looked away to the photos on the TV cabinet, all telling their ancient family-approved lies. A sepia Granny Ruth as a young woman, smiling wide on her father Chinky Joe’s arm, long before she was claimed by the flooded Richmond River. Dad Charlie, all of twenty, in his khakis, off to Nui Dat. Herself and Ken and their cousin Chris at a supermarket booth in the nineties, skinny brown kids in school uniforms. Kerry’s younger brother, Black Superman, a throwback on their father’s hip, so dark the pair of them looked like a different breed altogether. Mum, very beautiful at an early Lismore show, back when she really was Pretty Mary. Donna, the palest of the litter, with that fair skin that used to make Dad Charlie joke about the milkman leaving more than just full cream milk behind. Ken, young and fit in a trophied state basketball team. His lad Donny holding a surfboard on a rare weekend trip to Bruns. And off to the side, Donna again, blowing out birthday candles; a dead ringer for Amy Winehouse and sixteen forever.

  ‘Aircon’s gone in the Falcon anyway. They’re better off on the bus, day like this.’

  Ken could have driven Pop himself, left Mum home, but no. Arsehole.

  ‘Whatever.’

  A rigid silence fell. Kerry leaned against the kitchen doorframe. She used a pointed purple fingernail, one last memento of Allie, to shred the label on her beer bottle, seesawing between impotent rage and guilt t
hat she had left her mother to suffer in Ken’s orbit for so long.

  ‘The ambulance took em.’ Ken turned the stove off and flapped a tea towel in a hopeless gesture at driving some of the heat out the screen door. ‘Ya think I’d put em on the bus when the poor old prick’s on his last legs? Jesus, gimme some credit.’

  That was the thing with Kenny Koala. You could never be quite sure which version you were dealing with.

  ‘Yeah, yeah, yeah.’ Kerry plonked herself down at the kitchen table and pushed aside a stack of betting slips and Watchtowers to clear a space. She idly flicked through the tarot pack Pretty Mary kept handy for daily consultations. Should I, or should I not, fuck off back home to Logan right this minute?

  ‘So how bad is he?’

  ‘Driving me up the bloody wall. He’s demented. Keeps asking the same thing over and over again until you’re just about ready to knock him on the head yerself …’

  Kerry glanced up from the Ace of Cups and The Tower. Christ. Look in the dictionary under self-centred.

  ‘I meant, what do the doctors reckon? How long’s he got?’

  Ken laughed mirthlessly.

  ‘Keep taking these for the pain, Mr Addison. Could be weeks, could be months. He coulda checked out half an hour ago and be lying in the ambulance doing the dead man’s tour of Coolie. It’s all a bloody bingo game, eh. He just wants to get his bets on, or sleep. Can’t blame him, the poor bastard. Except when he wants the same bet on forty fucken times a day.’

  Ken plonked two sizzling plates of hamper and onions on the table and slid one towards Kerry. Then he added bulk bread, slathered with Norco butter. No mystery where them extra kilos had come from.

  ‘Mmm. Heart attack on a plate. Yer good for something after all.’

  Ken grinned. ‘Who loves ya, baby?’

  ‘Fuck knows. I ask myself that on a regular basis.’

  Ken was nonplussed. ‘What’s happened to Allie?’

  Kerry wolfed her feed, blinking away the sudden threat of tears. She didn’t want pity. Much less scrutiny. And she especially didn’t want Ken on her back about her seriously fucked-up choices of the past few years. Ah Christ.

  ‘Brisbane Women’s. On remand.’

  ‘Fuck sake!’

  ‘It’s all gotten kinda … complicated.’

  ‘Have another bad hair day, did she?’

  Uncharacteristically shame, Kerry didn’t look up from her plate. Allie had made the papers two years ago for putting a Woodridge hairdresser in hospital (‘I told the dumb bitch not to take too much off’). Then, several weeks ago, exactly as predicted by Pretty Mary, Allie had graduated in spectacular fashion from hotwiring Commodores and AOBH. Kerry had lain in bed every night since and flashed back to Allie’s pale blue backpack flying over the tall hedge between them, seconds before the sirens started up. Manna from heaven, except for the price, which was steep, and cruel, and as unexpected as the backpack itself.

  ‘I fucken wish. She went off her meds and decided to knock over the Springwood TAB with Tyrone’s replica. There was cop cars at Maccas. She’s lucky they didn’t blow her fucking head off.’

  Kerry now had Ken’s undivided attention.

  ‘Armed rob? Yeah … I can see that being complicated.’

  They both laughed in disbelief.

  ‘It’s fucking hectic as,’ Kerry said.

  ‘You in on it?’ Ken asked coolly. Kerry gave him a look.

  ‘I told ya. It was a brain snap.’

  The wrinkle lines around Ken’s eyes had fanned out, longer and deeper than they were last Christmas, Kerry saw. He was getting old fast, the way Goorie blokes did, especially in little shitbox joints like Durrongo. Deep into middle age at thirty-five, decrepit at forty-five; you do the math.

  ‘Armed rob ain’t as easy as people like to make out,’ announced Ken. ‘Blokes think, oh I’ll get a shottie off some dude in a pub, turn up and do the job and fuck off quick without anyone getting killed. But there’s a lotta preparation involved, if ya doing it right. Them cunts that buy a gun in the morning and pull the job that afternoon, they’re the same blokes ya see, year in and year out in the visits room at Grafton, waiting to see their kids.’

  Kerry gazed at her brother. It never ceased to amaze her how men could flap their gums and have absolutely no doubt that women would hang on their every word. That everything coming out of their mouths was pure genius.

  ‘What’s the lawyer reckon, anyway?’ Ken continued.

  Kerry held up one splayed hand and kept shovelling kai with the other. Ken winced. Sucked his teeth.

  ‘I’m guessing that ain’t five months.’

  Her mouth full, Kerry swung her head wordlessly from side to side, a sad Ekka clown. Ken sucked his teeth again. Five years made his pissy little stretches seem like nothing at all.

  ‘Fuuuck. That’s all kinds a crazy. But at least you’re still out walking around.’ He paused for a long, thoughtful slug of beer. ‘Bloody nice bike you got ya hands on.’ Did you dog her, he meant. Roll over to the cops then take the bungoo and run south on a shiny new Softail. Kerry smiled bitterly. She wiped her mouth, then gestured with her fork to the window, the big world beyond it, precious freedom stretching every direction you could look. So long as she stayed under the radar.

  ‘I didn’t know fuck all about it till the lawyer rung up. She just had one of her stupid bloody bipolar episodes.’

  Ken folded a piece of bread in half and popped it in his mouth, considering Kerry’s dubious claim to innocence. When he spoke he was abrupt.

  ‘Ya sound like ya bailin’ on her. Youse split up?’

  ‘We’re not splittin’ up,’ Kerry retorted angrily, although they were. Allie’s last phone call had winded her.

  Nah, bitch, you put the pedal to the metal and fucked off on me. It’s ride or die, remember?

  ‘I just … Five years is five years, eh? It’s a bloody long time. And she might even cop more …’ She stared down again at the smears on her plate. The words sounded nonsensical, spoken aloud. Five years. How could Allie possibly stay in the one place for five years? As if she’d suddenly turned into a house, or a tree. She belonged in the world, cuddled up behind Kerry on the Hog, or sitting on a forklift at Aldi, shifting pallets of soft drink and baked beans. Dancing up a storm at The Beat of a Friday night. Her arrest and all that came with it felt like some gigantic stupid mistake, fixable if only they could explain the misunderstanding to the magistrates and gunjies of the world. If only Allie could see she’d had no choice but to cut.

  ‘Without a scrape? Welcome to my world.’ Ken had a talent for losing girlfriends.

  ‘It’s a long time without a partner, full stop.’

  ‘Long fucken time to be sitting in the big house worrying where ya missus is, too.’

  Ken was getting proper goolied up. He’d done a lot more time than Kerry over the years. Lost his missus and kids over it. Jealousy had undone him. The mind games the screws played, the bullshit gossip of the other blokes sending him to any number of wrong destinations, like Google Maps directing them Jap tourists into the cool blue waters of Quandamooka. His anger was misplaced, but Kerry couldn’t bring herself to say so. Admitting out loud that she’d been dumped would make it real.

  ‘Long time to be walking around outside waiting for that tap on yer shoulder, too,’ Kerry countered.

  ‘So you were there.’ Ken pounced. ‘I knew it.’

  Kerry laughed him off.

  ‘Black doob don’t have to be guilty of nothing to have the booliman after her, brah. Anyway, forget all that. How’s the neph?’

  Ken stood and snatched a fresh stubby out of the fridge. He twisted the top off and flung the cap at the sink. It rattled for two laps. Kerry froze, and then very carefully lowered her head to start eating again, hoping that Ken would shift his focus to the food, to her chewing, to the harmle
ss movement of her fork and elbow, or something else, anything else, to do with her, and away from whatever Donny had done this time. Oh, I hate this walking on eggshells shit, hate it, hate it, hate it.

  ‘Donald Duck will be asleep. As per usual. Donny!’ Ken bellowed down the hallway, before adding tightly, ‘Lazy little cunt.’

  ‘I might take him for a swim later, eh,’ she said, placating Ken with might. Should take him would have worked, too. Not will though. All actual decisions about Donny, even tiny ones, were Ken’s to make.

  ‘Yeah, good luck with that,’ he retorted. ‘This place is like a fucking coma ward. Pop in bed with the remote welded to the nags. Mum sits doing her cards and reading about the Second Coming of Christ our Lord, and I’m just about ready to harvest Donny for his organs if the useless prick don’t move his arse soon. Talk about Limpet Dreaming.’

  Kerry laughed. If Ken felt like he was a comedian, he was less likely to lose his shit. Plus the organ harvest thing was pretty funny. She finished eating, put her rinsed plate on the sink, then wandered past her precious backpack and down the hall. She stuck her head in the end bedroom. A tan teenager lay, a corpse on the bottom bunk bed, torn cotton sheet over his bony backside. Overhead, a ceiling fan was threatening to lift the entire house into the stratosphere. Kerry turned it down and kicked the teenager’s foot, none too gently.

  ‘Oi. Wake up.’

  There was no response. A thrill of ridiculous fear ran through Kerry; maybe the kid really was dead.

  She peered down at him. Nothing moved. Alarmed, she grabbed him by the shoulder and shook him, hard.

  ‘Piss orf,’ Donny mumbled, mostly asleep, turning to curl and face the National Geographic posters on the wall. Other teenage boys had sleaze and machismo in their rooms. Donny had Invertebrates of Australia and a taxonomy of coastal mammals.

  ‘Nice way to talk to yer Aunt Kerry.’

  The boy lifted himself onto an elbow and pawed at his face. Two grey-green eyes blinked at her beneath a peroxided fringe.

  ‘Sorry Aunty.’

  Kerry sat and put an arm around him. ‘Ya better be! Give us a hug. Crikey, where’s the rest of ya gone?’