Desert heath-myrtle
Meaning: Flame, I burn
Thryptomene maisonneuvii | Northern Territory
Traditionally, Anangu women beat pukara (Pit.) with a wooden bowl to collect dew containing nectar from the flowers. Thryptomene, derived from Greek, means coy or prudish; this bush appears modest but in winter through to spring produces a cloak of tiny white flowers with red centres, blooming as if revealing a secret.
Alice’s twenty-seventh birthday fell in the middle of her four days off. She hadn’t told anyone about it. Not even Lulu.
She lay in bed watching the winter sky and naming the changing colours – soft navy and lilac to peach and champagne pink – before the sun rose and lit up the red earth. She’d taken to leaving her fairy lights on day and night. She thought of the gossip she’d overheard in the staff kitchen at headquarters: Dylan had taken leave to visit his girlfriend, Julie. It had hit her hard, especially as Dylan had met her at Kututu Puli the day before but hadn’t mentioned it.
Alice propped herself up in bed. Her breath puffed little steam clouds into the air. Pip scampered out of bed to scratch at the back door.
‘Only for you, Pip,’ Alice groaned, dragging herself up to let her out. She switched the heater on, shivering while she waited for its warmth to kick in.
On her way back inside, Pip gave Alice a lick. Alice nodded.
‘Birthday drinks are an excellent idea.’
She went into the kitchen and warmed a pot of milk, pouring half into a bowl, which she set down for Pip, and the rest into a mug with a shot of espresso coffee. She took a book from her bookshelf and scurried back into bed. Pip followed, licking her milky chops.
Alice propped herself against her pillows. She sipped her coffee and opened her book, but the world outside was too beautiful a distraction. Overnight frost melted on the thryptomene flowers, glittering as it caught the sun. The sky was china blue, dotted with plump clouds. In the distance, the crater wall was luminous in the morning light. Her mind swirled with the stories she’d learned about this place, of the mother who put her baby down to rest in the stars, and lost her child to the land. The story and the landscape were one and the same; even the arcing path of the stars over the northern rim of the crater mirrored its circular formation.
She snuggled further under her doona, watching as yellow butterflies hovered over the flowering bushes; were they in Dylan’s garden too? What was he doing, right at that moment, while she was at home, on her birthday, alone? Alice’s eyes welled. She didn’t often let herself wonder who she might be if her life had been different. Today she couldn’t stop herself. If June hadn’t intervened, would Alice be in Europe with Oggi now? Would she be his wife instead of Lilia, and would Iva be their daughter? If Alice hadn’t found out how June betrayed her, would she ever have left the flower farm? And, underneath, the most painful question: would her mother be alive if she’d never gone into her father’s shed? The next thought hit her hard, straight in her heart: Alice was a year older than her mother was when she died.
Someone knocked sharply at her front door. Alice pushed the doona back off her head. The skin around her eyes was tight from tears. Pip licked her salty cheeks. Another knock.
‘Chica? It’s me.’
Alice sat up and wrapped herself in her doona. She got out of bed and shuffled to the front door, opening it a crack.
‘Dios mío,’ Lulu said under her breath. ‘Alice, what’s wrong?’ She pushed the door open and bustled inside, carrying an enormous pair of handmade butterfly wings and a small bag. ‘These are clearly not important right now,’ Lulu said, putting everything on the table. Alice allowed herself to be guided to the couch, where she curled up in a ball. Lulu flicked the heater off and flung the back door open to let warm winter sun and fresh air into the house. She made two cups of honeyed tea, and settled herself beside Alice. Pip bounded outside to chase butterflies.
‘What’s going on, chica?’ Lulu asked gently. ‘You haven’t been your normal self for ages.’
The image of Dylan’s face consumed her. Alice couldn’t look at Lulu. ‘I just miss my mother, Lu,’ she whispered. ‘I miss my mum,’ she repeated, her voice breaking. She didn’t think she had any tears left, yet a new stream flowed freely down her nose and dripped into her teacup.
‘Can you call her? Or your dad? Or one of your brothers? Life out here can be hard, being so away from family, especially one as big as yours.’ Lulu rubbed Alice’s arm. Alice didn’t understand, until she tasted the ashen lie of her fairytale family. Her face crumpled.
‘Hey,’ Lulu said, her eyes heavy with worry.
Alice shook her head and wiped her face. She reached under her shirt and pulled out her locket. Offered it to Lulu. She took it from Alice and ran her thumb over the desert pea inlay.
‘That’s my family.’ Alice popped it open for Lulu. Her mother’s young and hopeful face looked up at them. Alice eyed her garden of wild thryptomene flowers. Flame, I burn. ‘The truth is, I don’t have a big family. I don’t really have anything left of a family at all.’ Somewhere in the distance a crow cawed. Alice braced herself for anger, but after a moment Lulu smiled warmly.
‘So, this is your mother?’
Alice nodded. ‘Her name was Agnes.’ She wiped her nose.
Lulu looked between the photograph and Alice. ‘You look so much like her.’
‘Thanks,’ Alice said, her chin wobbling.
‘Don’t answer this if you don’t want to, but, I mean, how did she …?’ Lulu trailed off.
Alice closed her eyes, remembering the feeling of muscle and sinew under her father’s skin when she held onto his legs on the windsurfer. The bruises on her mother’s naked, pregnant body as she came out of the sea. The brother or sister Alice would never know. The lantern she left alight in her father’s shed.
‘I don’t really know,’ she answered. ‘I don’t know.’
Lulu took Alice’s hand and placed her necklace in her palm. ‘This locket is beautiful.’
‘My grandmother made it.’ Alice closed her hand around it. ‘In my family, desert peas mean courage,’ she said. ‘Have courage, take heart.’
They sat together in silence while they drank their tea. After a while, Lulu stood with her hands on her hips.
‘You can’t be alone today,’ she stated. ‘Aiden’s got the fire going and the skillet oiled up. We’re having an afternoon barbecue and you’re coming over.’
Alice started to protest.
‘No, this one’s non-negotiable, chica. Besides, I’ve made extra guacamole.’ Lulu knew Alice’s weaknesses and how to use them.
Alice sniffed and looked over at her kitchen table. With the butterfly wings splayed out, it seemed ready to take flight. She raised an eyebrow at Lulu.
‘Oh, I’m making a costume for my cousin. She’s in a play, and is about your size. I need to know if it fits,’ Lulu stated.
‘What? You want me to get dressed up? Right now?’ Alice glanced down at herself.
‘Yes. Although, can you shower first? Maybe wash your hair?’
‘Pardon?’
‘Chica, I can’t send my cousin her costume with your tears and snot all over it. Besides, my abuela always said cleaning yourself up was one of the best remedies for sadness. In addition to her guacamole. Which, I may have mentioned, I have made fresh and have waiting for you at home.’
As Alice stepped under the hot shower, she listened to the sounds of Lulu clacking dishes together in the sink, humming as she tidied. Despite herself, she couldn’t help but smile.
Freshly showered and dressed as a giant monarch butterfly, Alice followed Lulu down the dirt track between their houses. The burnt orange of her wings was the same fiery hue as the red dirt.
‘Why have I let you convince me to wear this out of my house?’ Alice asked.
‘So Aiden can take photos for my cousin. I forgot to bring the camera with me to yours. Besides, who cares what you look like, chica? In case you’d forgotten, we’re in the middle of fucking Woop-Woop.’
Alice snorted with laughter. She was reluctant to admit that putting on the costume did make her feel better. Lulu had spared no detail: from the wire antennae pinned in Alice’s hair, to the black and white dotted dress and the carefully hand-painted monarch wings strapped to her back, she was unquestionably transformed.
They walked through Lulu’s front yard into her house.
‘Aiden must be out at the fire pit. Let me grab the camera and we’ll go out.’ Lulu scurried down the hall. Alice spotted the guacamole on the counter and darted over to it, fumbling with the cling wrap covering to dip a finger in.
‘Don’t even think about it,’ Lulu hollered from one of the bedrooms. Alice laughed as she sucked guacamole from her finger.
‘Okay, got it.’ Lulu returned holding the camera. She narrowed her eyes at Alice. Alice held up her hands in innocence.
They walked outside. ‘Aiden?’ Lulu called.
A single paper streamer curled around the corner of the house, and then another. And another.
‘Lu?’ Alice asked uncertainly.
Lulu came to her side and wrapped an arm around her waist, walking her into the backyard and full view of most of their workmates.
‘Happy birthday!’ Ruby, Aiden, several other rangers, even Sarah, stood with plastic cups raised.
Alice’s hands flew to her face. Lulu and Aiden had turned their yard into a birthday bazaar. Butterfly bunting was hung around the patio, and brightly patterned fabric awnings were strung between the trees. A fire was glowing in the pit. There was a pile of cushions and a couple of beanbags on a huge rectangular rug, with streamers tied haphazardly in the bushes. Dips and salads and corn chips were spread over a trestle table, alongside what must have been a fifty-litre cylindrical Esky, with a hand-drawn sign that read Dangerous Punch. And, to Alice’s absolute delight, everyone was wearing butterfly wings.
‘As if we didn’t know it was your birthday.’ Lulu grinned.
Alice gaped at Lulu, her hands pressed to her chest in gratitude.
‘Come on,’ Lulu urged, laughing. ‘Dangerous Punch time.’
Someone put music on. Aiden manned the kebabs sizzling on the skillet over the fire pit. Alice, light-headed from the surprise and rush of booze to her head, greeted everyone with exuberant hugs and cheer. She refilled empty punch cups, stoked the fire and offered around nibblies. She did all she could to avoid focusing on the one person who wasn’t there.
When the sky was dark and the punch was flowing, Alice sat with Lulu under a blanket by the fire. Flames reached for the inky sky, shooting sparks like stars.
‘I don’t know how to thank you,’ Alice said.
Lulu squeezed her hand. ‘It’s my pleasure.’
The fire burned in a sea of colours: yellow, pink, orange, cobalt, plum, bronze.
‘Can I tell you something?’ Lulu asked.
‘Please,’ Alice said, smiling.
‘I knew there was something special about you, chica, the first day you arrived and I saw your truck.’
Alice gave Lulu an affectionate nudge. ‘Well, that’s a bloody lovely thing to say.’
‘I’m serious,’ Lulu said as she took a sip of her punch. ‘In my family monarch butterflies are daughters of fire. They come from the sun carrying the souls of warriors who fought and died in battle, and return to feed on the nectar of flowers.’
Alice watched the fire as it hissed and popped. She tightened the blanket around her, thinking about everything hidden under the monarch butterfly stickers on her truck, and whose daughter and granddaughter she was.
‘When I first saw the fire warriors on your truck, I knew that you’d change everything about life here,’ Lulu said.
Fire warriors. Alice didn’t know how to respond.
‘Dangerous Punch! Get your fresh Dangerous Punch refills here!’ Aiden called across the yard. His wings were lopsided and sagging. One of his antennae was broken and flopped over his eyebrow. Lulu snorted with laughter. Relieved for the distraction, Alice joined in.
‘C’mon.’ She pulled Lulu’s hand in the direction of the Esky. ‘More Dangerous Punch.’
They drank and danced under the winter stars. As Alice twirled in the light she caught sight of her monarch wings. She couldn’t shake Lulu’s story from her mind. Daughters of fire.
He came in the early hours of the morning when the music was mellow, the fire burned bright, and everyone who hadn’t passed out in their swags or stumbled home was snuggled in beanbags with blankets. Alice watched over the flames as he swung out of his four-wheel drive and headed for the Esky. Aiden clapped him on the back and offered him a cup of punch. Dylan downed it in one gulp.
‘Rough trip?’ Aiden raised his eyebrows, refilling his cup.
Dylan downed it again.
‘How’s Julie?’
Dylan shook his head. ‘Not my problem anymore.’
Aiden gave him a third cup of punch. ‘Ah, mate. Sorry.’
‘It is what it is.’ Dylan shrugged.
He turned to scan the yard. Through the fire, his eyes found hers.
When the sky started to lighten, Alice and Dylan were the only two awake.
‘Is this your first desert all-nighter?’ he asked.
Alice nodded, smiling drunkenly as she chewed on the lip of her plastic punch cup. His attention was hypnotic.
‘Well,’ he said, looking up at the sky, ‘I dunno if anyone’s told you, but it doesn’t count unless you see the sunrise.’
They left Lulu and Aiden’s swag-littered yard and, wrapped in blankets, made their way up a sand dune.
‘Here comes the sun,’ he said, his voice low, his eyes on her. Her skin tingled. The sky was so clear, so alive with shifting colour, that Alice flung her arms out wide as if she might soak it in.
‘It reminds me of the ocean,’ she murmured. ‘So vast.’ Her head spun with memories.
‘It was,’ Dylan said. ‘Once upon a time, this was an ancient inland seabed.’ He motioned around them. ‘The desert’s an old dream of the sea.’
A kaleidoscope of butterflies spun in her stomach. ‘An old dream of the sea,’ she repeated.
Their skin was painted by the fiery dawn light. He stood to the side of her. Though they weren’t touching, he was so close she could feel the heat of his skin.
‘You’re so beautiful,’ he whispered near her ear. She shivered.
As the world lit up, he inched closer and wrapped her in his arms. They stood that way, held together by the sunrise, until the sound of the first tourist buses broke the spell.
Lulu waited at her back door, teetering off balance as she clutched a half-empty cup of punch to her chest. The yard was littered with streamers, butterfly bunting and bottle tops. She swayed, eyes fixed on the sand dune behind Alice’s house, where Dylan was hiding between mulga trees, the same place Lulu had seen him standing for months, watching Alice through her windows.
It started the afternoon Alice arrived, when she drove through Parksville in her yellow truck for the first time. Lulu was filling up at the petrol bowsers when Dylan had pulled in. He was making overtly mate-ish conversation with her, which she guessed was his way of erasing their history, until he stopped mid-sentence, staring at the road. When Lulu turned, she saw what he saw: Alice with her long, dark hair streaming out her window, dog beside her. She’d looked straight at them. Straight at him. Lulu kept talking but Dylan wasn’t listening. He was besotted by Alice. The way he’d once been by her.
Later that night, after Alice had dinner with Lulu and Aiden and walked home, Lulu was sitting outside on the dunes with a glass of wine when a movement in the shadows caught her eye. She’d remembered the smell of Dylan on her skin, and squinted to sharpen her vision in the darkness, sucking in her breath at the sight of him sneaking along the back fence line of Alice’s house. Before she could stop herself, Lulu moved to the corner of her yard to better see Dylan crouched under the stars, hidden by a mulga bush, watching Alice. Inside her new home Alice went tentatively through the rooms, as if she were a guest. For a while she sat on the couch staring at the wall, cuddling her dog. Her face was so sad. Dylan waited until she went to bed and turned out the light. Then he stood, silently, and walked home. Lulu had retreated to bed, where Aiden sleepily asked why she was shaking.
At dusk the next evening, Lulu was in the kitchen grinding up chilli and cocoa beans when a passing figure caught her eye through the window. She waited until the gloaming before she slid out into the shadows of her garden. Again Dylan sat in the red sand, drawn by the open, lit windows in Alice’s house. Alice was dancing in her kitchen, cooking, her wet hair hanging down her back. Blues music wafted on the thin, violet air. She shook her body around the stove, set out two plates and served dinner. Some for her, and some for her dog. Dylan stayed until she went to bed, then retraced his steps home.
Night after night, Lulu couldn’t stop herself watching Dylan as he was drawn across the sand dunes by the light falling from Alice’s windows, yet hated herself for it all the same. She began to wait for the hour when the shadows were long enough to look for him creeping among the trees. Protected by the darkness, he sat outside while Alice drank tea and read a book, or watched a movie on the couch with her dog. Or tended her pot plants and books, once she began decorating her house. He mostly kept his distance, until the night before Alice’s birthday. Alice had returned from a walk, when Lulu saw Dylan move from the shadows to slip noiselessly through the gate in Alice’s back fence. He wound through the thryptomene bushes, daringly close, nearly in the glow of her fairy lights. Watching. Seemingly waiting for something that was out of Lulu’s view.
She didn’t bother trying to resist following him: Lulu left her yard and took a wide arc around the dune behind Alice’s house. Hid behind the thick trunk of a desert oak where she could see Dylan in the bushes watching Alice inside at her desk, emptying flowers from her pockets. She pressed them into her notebook, which she handled as gently as if it were a bird’s egg. She started writing, then paused. Looked blindly into the darkness. And that’s when it happened, when Lulu heard Dylan catch his breath, as though Alice was looking straight at him with her big, green eyes; as if he was what caused her face to fill with hope. Lulu had sprinted home hard and fast. Told herself that was why she retched stinging, hot bile in the sink.
At the end of the surprise party, Lulu had pretended to be asleep when Dylan and Alice left together. Would Dylan’s first move on Alice be to share a sunrise with her too, like he had with Lulu?
Lulu stood at her back door watching and waiting until, sure enough, they came stumbling over the dunes. He walked Alice home, lingering long after she’d gone inside. The sun burned high into the sky before he turned to leave, a besotted, drunken smile on his face. She couldn’t stop herself staring, long after he’d disappeared behind his front door.
The evening after her surprise party, Alice curled up on her couch, gazing across her yard to the gate in her back fence. Silhouetted birds tumbled through the air, a constellation of inverse stars returning to their nests. On the blackened dead tree just outside her door, the evening light illuminated a rope of silk trails left by the winter procession of caterpillars. Alice had read about them in the park’s annual flora and fauna guide: they followed each other by the trails of silk they left behind, which were invisible except when they caught the light.
Her house was quiet, except for the occasional click of the electric heater, Pip’s snores and the bubbling pot on the stove. Hints of fresh lemongrass, coriander and coconut made her stomach growl. She watched the gate. She waited. The light changed from gold to cinnamon. Dylan’s voice rang in her ears. I’ll go home for a shower and come over. Back gate way.
She’d been on her way home from town when she’d spotted his ute on the side of the ring road and his figure at the nearby radio repeater stations. He saw her coming and waved. She pulled over and hopped out of her car. Her body grew feverish at the sight of him.
‘Pinta-Pinta.’ He’d beamed, tapping his hat brim to greet her.
‘G’day.’ She’d grinned.
‘Not too hung over?’
She shook her head. ‘No, weirdly. More just sleep deprived, I think.’
‘Me too.’
The air was heavy with the sweet scent of winter wattle.
‘How was your first day of being twenty-seven?’ he asked.
‘Truck delivery day. I went food shopping.’ She laughed.
‘Ah.’ He nodded knowingly, laughing along. ‘It was a great day.’
‘It was. But it’s not over yet.’ She paused. ‘What are you doing tonight?’ she blurted, looking up at him.
His eyes searched hers. ‘Not much.’
‘I’m making fresh Thai green curry soup. From scratch?’ she offered.
‘Yum.’
‘So,’ she said, trying to keep her voice even. ‘Join me?’
‘Love to.’ He smiled.
‘Six?’
He nodded. ‘I’ll go home for a shower and come over. Back gate way?’
‘Sure,’ she’d said, breezily.
And there it was, the beam of his torch, cutting through the spinifex, lighting his way to her. She got up and scurried into her bedroom. Stood in the shadows by her window, watching, waiting.
He came to the back gate, slid open the latch and closed it behind him. The pale light of the stars fell on his shoulders. He flicked the torch off and wound his way through the thryptomene to the patio under her fairy lights.
‘Pinta-Pinta?’ he called from the door.
‘Hey,’ she said, giving him an easy smile as she crossed the room and opened the back door. He scuffed his feet across the mat and walked inside. She inhaled the invisible curlicues of his cologne, briefly closing her eyes. He took his Akubra off and cast an appreciative glance around her house: her pot plants, her paintings, her books, her rugs, her cooking, her desk. She’d pretended it was for herself, but it had all been in hope of this moment.
‘Hungry?’
‘Oh yeah,’ he replied, plonking down on the sofa.
‘Hair of the dog?’ she asked.
‘Always,’ he said. She opened the fridge and reached to the back for two beer bottles. The effervescence when she cracked the tops brought her such relief she wished she could open a dozen at once.
‘Cheers,’ she said, handing him one.
‘Cheers,’ he said with a nod. As they clinked bottles, a Catherine wheel of nerves spun through her body.
After soup and more beer, they slouched on her couch. Their faces were flushed, from the heating, the beers, the chilli, and something else besides. They’d been telling stories, about where they’d grown up. They knew how to do this, how to reveal certain parts of themselves and not others. They’d been doing it for weeks. But now their stories dried up like a salt flat in the sun.
‘Those bloody fairy lights,’ he mumbled after a while.
The heater ticked and hummed.
‘What about them?’ she asked quietly.
‘They’re all I can see from every window in my house. They’ve been distracting me for months.’
A thrill shot through her. ‘They have?’ she asked.
He turned to her. She didn’t look away.
His mouth was on hers, suddenly, softly. Urgently. Alice kissed him back, deeply, unwilling to close her eyes. It wasn’t a daydream; he was there.
They shed their clothes like skins on the floor. When he sat back to take in the sight of her, she covered herself with her arms. But he drew them away, pressing one of her hands to his chest. She felt it under his skin and bone, the storytelling of his heart.
He’s here. He’s here.
She drew him close; a sharp intake of breath; he pushed into her. Limbs entwined, indistinguishable. Raw, thrilling. Almost frightening. Sensory fragments in her mind. Wet sand underfoot, lightness in her lungs, salty skin, cawing with the gulls by the silver sea. The drift and tilt of wind through her hair between the green cane stalks. The hush and flow of the river. Fistfuls of red flowers being torn from the earth.
