Soft serve, p.3
Soft Serve, page 3
Seen from afar, it would make a striking painting, he thinks. A lone figure, looking younger than his twenty-two years, in electric-blue tracksuit pants and a black singlet, a nylon bumbag slung over his shoulder, and his sandy orange mullet peeking out from under his cap. He stands ensconced in a sepia haze with his fishing rod held up like a sword – a harried Huckleberry Finn. The watery smoke from his vape mingles with the heaviness of Mother Nature’s. His stillness is in opposition to his thoughts, which are leaping around unpredictably, like a grasshopper. He often comes fishing to quieten body and mind, and usually it works – a lullaby for the sugary sleeplessness of his sticky Fanta mind. It’s one of the great mysteries of his existence. Put a schoolbook in front of him and he can’t focus for more than thirty seconds, but put a fishing rod in his hand and he can stay there all day, thinking things through, comfortably, in his own time.
Not today, though. He rests his rod on his bony waist and holds it with one hand while he pulls out his phone with the other. He sees Ethan’s text: Never guess what happened last night. I need you here.
He feels a tug and the line goes taut. A fish is pulling and jerking on the other end, fighting for its life. The veins in Jacob’s forearms pop to the surface and he drops his phone to the ground as he tries to reel in the fish, but somehow it saves itself and the line goes limp.
Out of the corner of his eye, Jacob sees an ember dancing down from above. It hits the brown grass on the bank beside him. In the time it takes him to blink, it has silently and ferociously wrought a patch of angry orange, about the size of a six-pack of beers. He blinks again and it’s the size of a kiddie pool. He looks around, but he doesn’t know what for. A grown-up? But then he realises that the grown-up is him.
He drops his rod and picks up his electric-blue tracksuit top, which has been sitting next to his tacklebox, and launches it over the flames. It doesn’t cover the burning patch, and the flames lick out from underneath. He frantically stamps his foot around the edges, the smell of charred rubber floating up from his soles. It’s not working. He runs back to his tacklebox, empties the contents on the ground and scoops up as much water as he can out of the river. He sprints back and throws it onto the mess of blue and orange and black. The fire hisses and then subsides. Bloody horrific, he thinks. It feels for all the world like he’s seen some devilish beast surface from some ancient hell. He stands there, panting, trying to settle himself.
After a few minutes, he reaches down and slowly pries the remains of his top off the scorched earth. He’d saved up for this tracksuit. He inspects the mess of melted synthetic fabric and, not knowing if he feels like a hero or an idiot, says out loud to nobody, Fuck. Now they don’t match.
Jacob picks up his phone, wipes the dirt off it and reads Ethan’s text again. He sends off a reply: Whaaat happened? He notices the time and, with his heart still knocking, thinks: better head off to The Ceremony.
* * *
Pat’s grief counsellor once said: The mindless and the manual will be your best friends. Stupid, Pat thought. Yet here she is, cleaning inside the bottom of the slippery dip. It’s one of the times she thinks, dammit, I am too old for this. It really is a young person’s job. Normally she delegates it to one of the junior staff, but today she needs it to keep busy and, well, there’s nobody else. It’s three thirty, and she’s been able to hold her own so far today. Various groups of people have come in throughout the day, but not many. Mostly big orders. Food for the troops, she reckons – families taking shifts around the clock and keeping watch.
The spray of the surface cleaner is loud inside the plastic tube, and the divots holding the plastic sections of the slide together hurt her knees as she scrubs away. It’s like being inside the belly of an enormous snake. The light at the top of the slide is far away, and it’s so dark in here that she doesn’t even know if what she’s scrubbing is getting any cleaner. She feels infantile and trapped, and her grunts and sighs echo inside the plastic.
She hears a voice say a cautious hello? and she clumsily extricates herself from the slide. Her heart stutters at the sight of Ethan. They’re arriving, she thinks. She knows it’s not fair for her to dread this. They’re just trying to do the same thing that she is – fill in a sinkhole with a trowel. Besides, she likes Ethan. He’s quiet, freckled, kind, with the wide threat-wary eyes of a chihuahua. A nice kid. Well, not a kid anymore. Watching him grow up over the years, she’s always harboured an inward smile – a sense of warm dramatic irony from seeing him meander towards his own self, a destination that remains, as yet, unclear to him. The boy who walks on tippy-toes, asking gingerly about difference.
Ethan appears just as uneasy to see her face poking out of the slide. Perhaps he didn’t expect she would be working today, of all days. She hadn’t last year. But here they are, and she wonders if they’re both making the same decision: whether to name the silence between them.
Hi, love.
Hi, says Ethan.
Pat lets the beat lengthen. She waits to see if he’ll ask her how she is. She can’t remember the last time a young person said to her, How are you? Yes, it might be because of what happened, making them too frightened to knock on that particular black door, but she suspects it’s something different. The same reason kids don’t make phone calls anymore, whatever that is. But then, as she takes him in, she senses his anxiousness, his awkward breaths.
You okay, hun? she asks.
* * *
Ethan is unsure what to say. Pat’s question seems unanswerable. He’d wanted to order a drink because his mouth had gone dry, so he’d gone searching for whoever was on staff. He can feel Pat registering his nervousness, so he tries to cobble together a response.
Just … everything going on out there, I guess. He nods towards the hazy carpark.
But what has truly knocked him off balance was what happened the night before.
He and Fern had gone for a drink at The Fox, and the vibe inside was uneasy. Tense and hot. With most people at home, fearfully packing up their photo albums, there was a charge in the air, like it could be the last night on earth, like everyone here was trying to cram in as much life as possible while an orange glow pressed against the windows. The music sounded louder than usual.
Fern and Ethan were perched at a table on the edge of the dancefloor, and she asked his thoughts about the paint colour on the walls and said how cute it was they had both ordered the schnitty. The volume of the music forced her to yell, giving everything she was saying a momentousness that Ethan found unsettling. But what made him especially uncomfortable was her eye contact. Whenever she asked a question, her eyes would burrow deep into him, as though willing the correct response from within, and she kept laughing too hard at some of the things he said. Things that weren’t even funny.
After they finished dinner, Fern hooked her arm around his and said, It’s too hot in here. She dragged him outside and around the corner, where she bought two Drumsticks from the servo, then handed one to him, saying, My treat, baby. They walked, Ethan blindly following, until they ended up at the river and scrambled down the bank to the part that formed a small dark brown beach every now and then. It was the best place to get into the river for a swim.
The four of them used to come here together: Ethan, Fern, Jacob and Taz. They would lie on their t-shirts, swatting away flies and passing around a packet of Doritos. The orange dust from the chips covered their sticky fingertips like pollen, and the slowness of summer holidays made their bodies heavy. Ethan and Jacob would wrestle in the waist-deep water, glistening and slippery, and Taz would shake his wet hair like a dog, sprinkling Fern as she turned pink in the sun.
But last night, Fern led him towards the end of the beach – to the not-so-nice bit under the bridge. As he began to wonder why they were there, Fern picked up a stick and started drawing in the sand with it. Two straight lines, then two diagonal ones. She was drawing a house. She added two windows and a front door. He looked down at the two-dimensional home and could feel her staring at him. He tried to contort every muscle in his face into a neutral expression, to give his mind some time to catch up with itself. When she took his hand, he was glad the night was so hot that the sweat on his palm, a prisoner in hers, didn’t give anything away. His Drumstick was beginning to melt, and he licked it in order to buy himself more time. After an eternity he managed to push words into the air.
Oh, wow.
What do you think? Fern said, the same way she’d asked him at dinner about her new nails.
The moment was unclear. It had the trappings of a proposal, but that couldn’t be it. By her demeanour he could tell she had meant it to be romantic, but to him it felt rickety and airless. Every now and then, flakes of ash would appear around them and flutter onto the brown sand. As it dawned on Ethan what was happening, an oozing dread began to settle in.
His silence seemed to send Fern into overdrive.
I’ve done it. Can you believe it? I’ve hit my half of the deposit. Twenty k. So with the other half you say you can get from your parents, we can do it. And there’s a place over in Booralie that’s perfect. We wouldn’t even have to do anything to it. It’s, like, actually really nice.
Oh.
So I’ve worked it all out. If we go to the bank together for the loan, with my job and your parents, then all of the time living at home and eating tuna and rice will have been worth it!
They had discussed this before. Ethan knew she was saving for a deposit, but he’d said very little on the subject and hoped she might take the hint. Yes, he’d told her that his parents would be good for it, but the truth was he had never asked them. He hadn’t envisaged that Fern would be able to save enough. He thought the idea might stay fuzzy and distant while he figured everything else out. But now, here it was in front of him. Lines drawn. In the sand.
When he didn’t reply, Fern tried to laugh it off. It’s fine, it’s fine, it’s just a bit of fun, you don’t have to say anything now, I just thought it would be cute, maybe we can talk about it later, it’s probably a much bigger conversation, isn’t it …
It was a narrow escape hatch, and Ethan took it. Yeah, he said, it’s an interesting idea and I know it’s something that we’ve definitely talked about, and something we should talk about more, but there’s so much going on right now with the fires, and everything sounds so busy at your salon and I think they’re about to make me full-time at work and everything – it’s a bit of a crazy time, right?
To repay a favour, a friend of Ethan’s dad had taken Ethan on as an assistant at his office, a legal firm. Ethan would sit there, scroll on his phone, and occasionally print and laminate something when instructed. The brown carpet and fluorescent lights sapped all the energy from the room, and Ethan would finish the days exhausted, despite having done precisely nothing.
His parents would probably be happy if he told them about Fern’s plan. They’d been sending little signals – saying how pretty Fern was, or tutting louder than they used to when they channel-surfed past Graham Norton on the telly – and he assumed they’d seen something on his computer. He knew they would never talk about it openly: they’d push it down. Petrify it.
Ash continued to fall onto Fern’s drawing. Ethan made an excuse, telling Fern he forgot he had to help his mum and dad pack stuff up. He and Fern walked home in silence, Drumstick wrappers in their hands.
* * *
How about I get you something to drink? Pat says to Ethan.
Thanks. Vanilla thickshake, please.
They move back inside. Pat gets Ethan to wait at the counter as she dispenses the thick white mixture into a cup.
Anything else?
No thanks. Not really hungry.
How’s the folks? she asks, before telling him the thickshake is on the house.
It’s a trick question. She means a couple of things. It’s a gentle poke (why aren’t you there helping them?) but she also means it more broadly. She knows the trouble Ethan’s had at home. His parents are transplants. City money. The family moved here when Ethan was ten for his property-developer dad to oversee the building of the new mall. His mum sells furniture online that she buys in Bali, or the furniture is in Bali and she pays people to sell it. Pat’s never been able to get it straight. They’re a curious pair. Often people who move here from the city bring their open hearts and open minds – the primary school teacher come to do good in the regions, the tree-changers with their community garden projects – but not Mark and Sylvie. They carry around with them a granite-benchtop energy, forged in leafy Church of England childhoods and hardened in shiny glass mega-churches. Pat’s always friendly; she’s had to be. Taz, Ethan, Fern and Jacob would float from house to house and the parents would have dinner at the pub once a month on Thursdays, but to her relief their socialising was limited to that one night. Pat always felt as though Sylvie’s champagne flute was frostily judging her schooner.
They’re okay, Ethan replies. Said I was just getting in the way. They say that quite a bit, actually.
They must be worried up there, Pat says.
They’re always worried.
Hell, I’m nervous we’re gonna go up in flames here.
What about your place, Pat? How come you’re not there?
Done everything I can. Up all night. Me and a hose is no match if embers get it. So I thought I might as well come in.
Could embers really get us here?
Unlikely, mate. But anything can happen. We know that, right?
Yeah.
The thought hangs swollen in the air, but there doesn’t seem to be anything else to say about it. The radio that Pat has on for the news mumbles soft warnings into the air. She busies herself as the awkwardness between them descends again, and she’s glad to hear Ethan telling her he’ll wait for Fern in one of the booths.
* * *
Through the window, Fern watches Pat as she leans against the counter. She looks tired. A different person altogether to the one who taught Fern to hold her keys in her hand when walking through the park at night. Fern sees Ethan pull out his phone as he sits in the booth. His fingers seem to hover with indecision. Grinning, she enters through the sliding doors and sneaks up behind him to tickle his side. It backfires: she sees his eyes light up with terror.
It’s just me, she says, with a shaky laugh. Didn’t mean to scare you.
She goes to kiss him on the lips but misses, and they kind of bump cheekbones.
Who were you texting? Fern asks.
No-one.
No-one?
I mean, Jacob.
Ah.
She wants to say, You didn’t tell him about last night, did you? But she doesn’t, because that would break the promise she made with herself this morning: to pretend that everything was normal and nothing soul-crushing happened last night.
Her ashy blonde hair is half up, half down, and her eyes are coated in light blue eyeshadow. She’s wearing her special-occasion yellow halter-neck, her white denim skirt and her strappy cork wedge sandals. She hopes her foundation – an attempt to conceal her mild but persistent acne – isn’t sitting too dry on her face. She’s made an effort. Fern is usually making an effort. She sits opposite Ethan and gazes at him, her eyes round and wide open like today is a brand-new day.
I didn’t tell him anything. Don’t worry, Ethan says.
She’s relieved. But her mind is now cast back, stuck on the thing that neither of them wants to talk about.
* * *
Pat comes to attention as the doors lurch open and, along with the heat, two people come in. Grey nomads. Not from around here. She’s in tie-dye, with both sunnies and reading glasses perched on her head, and her thongs flapping like lorikeet wings. He follows, a few paces behind, sturdy-gaited in beige chino shorts and hiking boots, ready for a tyre change at any moment. His t-shirt says: I worked my whole life and all I got was this lousy t-shirt.
It’s clear to Pat that the end of the world won’t stop these people experiencing what they believe they deserve: a saggy camping chair and a glass of riesling by a different river each week. A simple life, albeit in their $100,000 motorhome. All the spreadsheets, the case briefings, the nightly cooking, the stayed-back-late-at-works, the school concerts, the kids with gastro, the surprise grandparent school pickups: a whole life in service of this new stage. A whole life spent longing for this moment. They won’t be denied their reward.
The couple bypasses the self-serve kiosks (Pat imagines them muttering, Sometimes it’s better to just speak to someone) and the woman puts on her glasses to scrutinise the menu. She lowers her gaze to Pat. Because of the thick lenses, her eyes look enormous, and Pat sees them wander over her uniform.
Two large McChicken meals.
No please or thank you. Pat feels her body tighten, like a dog being sniffed.
What these two customers don’t know, Pat thinks as she goes about preparing their order, what she wants to say to them is that after Taz had died she’d returned to work (she’d been the careers counsellor up at the school for fifteen years) but she couldn’t focus. She tried her best for a while but, with each new student that she set off on their path, she felt the walls of her stuffy demountable close in another inch. She needed something mindless, and this job was it. She’d lost count of the number of times she had referred kids to the Maccas website. The hiring manager in her interview was an ex-student, for god’s sake. But work is work, and over the last eighteen months it’s served her well.
