Lantern bush
Meaning: Hope may blind me
Abutilon leucopetalum | Northern Territory
Tjirin-tjirinpa (Pit.) is found in dry, often rocky inland regions. Leaves have a heart-shaped base. Yellow hibiscus-like flowers appear mostly in winter and spring, but can sometimes appear endlessly, their bright colour shining all year round. Used by Anangu children to make small toy spears.
Candy broke down. She rushed to Alice and fussed, stroking her face and hair.
Twig hung back. She dropped her smoke at her feet and put it out under the heel of her boot. Once Candy let her go, Twig stepped forward and pulled Alice into her arms.
Alice shook as she made tea. Smoke clung to her skin, to her hair. Dylan’s rage continued to play on her. The revulsion on his face. The harmful intent of his strength.
She carried three cups of tea to the table where Candy and Twig sat, so familiar but so out of context in her desert life. Set them down, trembling.
‘Are you all right?’ Candy reached forward, putting her hand over Alice’s.
Alice sat, closed her eyes briefly and gave a nod.
‘How did you find me?’ she murmured.
They exchanged a glance.
Twig took a sip of tea. ‘Moss Fletcher.’
‘As in, the vet?’ Alice exclaimed, her mind reeling. ‘In Agnes Bluff?’
Twig nodded. ‘He read the insignia on your truck when he took you to the doctor. Googled Thornfield, called us looking for next of kin. He rang us after you emailed him and said you were here.’
Alice couldn’t look at either of them. ‘He had no business doing that.’ Dylan’s voice: You play them like a fucking song.
‘Maybe not,’ Candy said gently. ‘But we were so relieved when he rang.’ She wiped her eyes. ‘You just left, sweetpea,’ she said. ‘I texted and called and emailed you every day …’ her voice broke. ‘You just left.’
Outside her fairy lights twinkled in the bruised sky. Would he call? Her head ached. The adrenalin was fading, leaving a silt of exhaustion in her body.
‘You know why I “just left”,’ Alice said. ‘What else was I supposed to do?’
‘I know it’s so hard to see it this way, but June was trying to protect you.’
‘Oh god. This isn’t …’ Alice abruptly stood and pushed her chair in. ‘I can’t do this,’ she said, holding her hands up. She had no fight left in her. She didn’t want them there. Her mind was a mess; all she could think about was Dylan. She didn’t have room for ghosts and old memories. Besides, deep down she knew she was being unfair. They didn’t deserve her fear, pain and anger. The best thing she could do for everyone was take some time out.
‘I just need a moment.’ Alice turned her back and headed for the shower. As she was about to shut the bathroom door, Candy spoke.
‘She’s dead, Alice.’
The words hit her like a trio of explosions. She could see Candy’s lips moving, but heard only snippets.
‘… a massive heart attack …’
Alice shook her head, trying to hear. Her legs were numb.
‘… we were cut off from town by the floods. Day and night she sat on the back verandah, watching the water rise. We found her, eyes wide open, staring out at the ruined flowers.’ Candy’s face was empty.
Alice looked at them both, as if seeing them properly for the first time. Candy’s eyes were bloodshot; her blue hair was dull and brittle. Twig’s hair had silvered at her temples. Even under her utilitarian clothes, her frame was visibly gaunt.
June was dead.
Alice stumbled into the bathroom and shut the door behind her, pressing herself against it as her legs gave out. She sank to the floor. Desperate for comfort, she turned on a warm shower. Clambered in, fully clothed, and sat under the water. Held her face up to it. Pulled her knees to her chest, wrapped her arms around them, and let herself wail.
Alice stayed in the bathroom long after she’d showered. She wrapped herself in towels and lay in the empty bath, her eyes closed, unwilling to move, unwilling to speak.
Through the walls came the muffled sound of Twig and Candy talking in the lounge room. Sliding the back door open. Teacups being washed in the kitchen sink. The squawk of her dining chairs on the lino. Footsteps to the bathroom door.
‘Alice.’ Twig’s voice. ‘I think it’s best we go and get a room at the resort. Give you some space. It was a mistake to bring you this news without any warning.’ A pause. ‘We’re very sorry.’ Another pause. Receding footsteps. At the sound of her front door opening, remorse hauled Alice out of the bath. She flung the door open. Pip rushed in, weaving herself around Alice’s legs.
‘Wait,’ she called.
Twig and Candy were already outside. At the sound of her voice, they stepped back through the front door.
‘You could stay. There’s plenty of room for you here. I’m off work now for four days.’ She raised her chin. ‘You should stay. We should talk.’ Her heart beat steadfast in her ears.
They glanced at each other. Candy was the first to speak. ‘How about I rustle up something for a late dinner? We aren’t of any use to each other on empty stomachs.’
While Candy helped herself to the kitchen and Twig sat out the back to roll a smoke, Alice went into her bedroom to get dressed. Every movement took monumental effort. Knickers on. Had June been in pain? One leg. Next leg. Did she know she was dying when the heart attack happened? Shirt over her head. Did she cry or call out for anyone? Was she scared? Alice’s head felt too heavy for her neck to carry. She crawled into bed, just for a moment, seeking the comfort of her pillow. Curled into herself.
There he was.
The smell of his cologne on her shirt, the wending green scent and something else besides. His body, his dreams and his breath, earthen and salty.
Alice lifted the neck of her shirt over her nose, inhaling deeply. He’d been upset, he’d been excluded from the burn. He was sensitive to her attracting other men’s attention. She should have been more mindful. She should go to him and apologise. He’d just lost his temper. Everyone does that now and then.
Alice tried to quell her tears. She sat up and turned her lamp off. Looked across the dunes to his house. It sat dark and unlit, a shadowy hulk under the star-splashed sky.
When she awoke the next morning to the smell of brewing coffee and the sounds of Candy and Twig in the kitchen, Alice didn’t know where she was, in time or place. She could have been nine. Sixteen. Twenty-seven.
‘Cuppa?’ Candy asked as Alice plodded into the living room, bleary-eyed.
‘Yes, please.’
‘How’d you sleep?’ Twig asked.
‘Dreamlessly.’ Alice yawned. ‘You?’
‘Fine.’ Twig nodded.
‘We felt like schoolgirls on camp. Imagine that at our ages.’ Candy smiled, handing Alice a steaming cup of coffee. She nodded in thanks.
Silence settled over them. Outside, Pip chased her tail in circles.
‘She needs to get out.’ Alice took a sip of her coffee. ‘There’s a track I walk sometimes, from my back fence to the crater wall. It leads to a view I think you’d like.’
With Pip scampering ahead, Alice, Twig and Candy walked through the bush. Occasionally one of them stopped to point out a desert rose, or wedge-tailed eagle gliding overhead. Mostly they walked wordlessly as they followed the trail up the crater wall. When they reached the viewing platform, Twig was wheezing. She sat in the shade to catch her breath.
‘It’s those bloody durries you smoke all day long,’ Candy chided. Twig shooed her away.
Alice passed water around and poured some in a bowl for Pip, who lay panting by Twig. The morning air cooled their skin. They turned to the view of the crater. The desert peas swayed bright red.
‘How spectacular.’ Candy sighed. ‘I don’t think I’ve ever seen so many desert peas in one place.’
‘They draw tourists from all over the world.’
‘They’ll flower now right through summer until autumn.’ Twig jutted her chin towards the crater. ‘Where my family’s from, down south, we call them flowers of blood,’ she said quietly. ‘In our stories, they grow where blood has spilled.’
‘You’ve never told me that,’ Candy said. ‘Is that why you always took such care growing them at Thornfield?’
Twig nodded. ‘One of the reasons. They always reminded me of the family I lost. And,’ her voice cracked, ‘the family I found.’
‘Have courage, take heart,’ Candy murmured.
Alice picked up a stick and pointed it at the desert peas. ‘The story here is that this is the impact site of a mother’s heart. She pulled it from her body and threw it from the stars, to be near her baby who fell to its death from the sky.’ Alice snapped the stick in half, picking bits of bark from it. ‘The peas bloom for nine months of the year, in a perfect circle. They say every flower is an earthbound, living piece of her.’ She snapped the stick into smaller and smaller pieces until it was a pile at her feet. ‘My friend Ruby says if the flowers are sick, she and her family get sick.’
‘Sounds about right,’ Twig said.
The three of them sat together quietly.
‘Was she buried or cremated?’ Alice couldn’t look at either of them.
‘Cremated,’ Candy replied. ‘She left instructions in her will to scatter her ashes in the river so she might find her way to the sea.’
Alice shook her head, remembering when she’d dived into the river and dreamed of following it all the way home.
‘Maybe we could head back now, Alice. We have something to give you,’ Candy said. Twig nodded.
‘Sure,’ Alice said. She whistled for Pip and led the way back down the trail towards home.
The sun was hot and high when they got in. Alice filled glasses with cool water and handed them around.
Candy went out to the rental car, returning with a small parcel wrapped in a piece of cloth. Alice instinctively recognised it.
‘Oh, god.’
‘She said in her will that you were to have it.’ Candy rested the parcel in Alice’s hands.
Alice unwound the cloth until the Thornfield Dictionary was laid bare. Memories rushed back to her. The first time she went into the workshop with Candy. Twig teaching her how to cut flowers. June showing Alice how to press them. Oggi, just a boy, looking up from his book and waving to her.
‘It took her the best part of twenty years, but she kept her promise in the end.’ Twig’s voice was gravelly. ‘Everything you’ve ever wanted to know is in there. We didn’t realise, but June spent the last year of her life writing Thornfield’s stories, including your mother and father’s.’
Alice tightened her hold on the book.
‘When you read it,’ Candy said, ‘you’ll learn what was in Ruth Stone’s will: that Thornfield was never to be bequeathed to an undeserving man.’ She paused, seeming to choose her words carefully. ‘Alice, when your father was young, June had a heart attack. Not major, though enough to make her write a will. But she kept it a secret,’ Candy’s voice caught, ‘because she decided to leave Clem out of it. June saw how possessive Clem could be of your mum when they were kids. And sometimes, she saw how aggressive he was with the rest of us. Jealous if he wasn’t the centre of attention. Mean-spirited if he wasn’t in control. Sometimes violent when he lost his temper. When he heard June confiding in Agnes that Thornfield would one day be hers, mine and Twig’s, that she’d made the choice not to leave it to Clem … As he was leaving he vowed never to speak to June, or any of us again. Said that’s all we deserved.’ Her voice broke. ‘That’s why we didn’t know you, until you were nine. We never saw or spoke to your parents again.’
‘So …’ Alice trailed off, as she pieced things together, ‘my parents left because June made a choice she knew would anger my father?’
‘It wasn’t as simple as that. June felt she had good reason to do what she did. She was too wary of Clem’s nature to leave everything she and the women in your family had worked for to him. He could be so volatile.’
‘Yeah,’ Alice retorted. ‘I kind of know that, Candy.’ A headache started to pound in her temples. ‘Why didn’t you tell me that’s why they left?’
‘I couldn’t, Alice. I just couldn’t. I couldn’t betray June. Not after everything she’d done for me. It was her story to tell.’
‘So that just cancelled out your own feelings? June’s fuck-up became yours too?’
‘Okay, that’s enough,’ Twig interjected. ‘That is enough. Take a breather.’
Alice got up and paced the room. Tears slid down Candy’s nose.
‘I think it’s important,’ Twig said slowly, ‘that we don’t get caught in the past.’
‘Caught in the past?’ Alice shrieked. ‘How can I get caught in the past when I don’t even know what that means?’
‘Alice, please,’ Twig reasoned. ‘You need to try to stay calm. We need to talk about what’s at hand.’
‘And what exactly is that?’ Alice shot back.
‘Sit down,’ Twig said firmly. Her face was unreadable. Candy was the same. A sense of foreboding washed the anger clean out of Alice’s body. She looked from Candy to Twig.
‘What?’ she asked. ‘What is it? Tell me right now.’
‘Alice, sit down.’
She started to protest but Twig held up her hand. Alice pulled out a chair, and sat.
‘This is a lot for you to take in, and we want to spare you as much as we can.’ Twig pressed her hands together.
‘Just tell me,’ Alice said, clenching her jaw.
‘Okay,’ Twig began.
Candy took a deep breath.
‘Alice,’ Twig said.
‘Just bloody tell me!’
‘Your brother survived the fire, Alice,’ Twig said, sagging in her chair.
Alice recoiled as if she’d been slapped. ‘What?’
‘Your baby brother. He survived. He was adopted, not long after you came to Thornfield.’
She stared numbly at them.
‘He was born premature, and was very sick. The doctors weren’t sure if he would survive. June was worried about caring for a sick newborn, and didn’t want to put you through more grief if he didn’t survive.’
Alice shook her head. ‘So she just left him behind?’
‘Oh, sweetpea.’ Candy reached out to her. ‘I’m so sorry. This is such a big shock, and a huge amount to take in. It’s going to take time. Why don’t you come back with us, to Thornfield? Please. We’ll look after you. We’ll –’
Alice ran for the toilet. She retched and gagged, gripped by convulsions.
Twig and Candy’s faces, full of fear, worry and love, bent over her, calling her name.
Candy slid the back door open and brought two bowls of pasta out to the patio. She handed one to Twig and sat beside her under Alice’s fairy lights. For a while they ate in silence. The sky faded from blue to amber to pink. The crater wall, backlit, looked like the hull of a beached ship.
‘When do you think we should wake her?’ Candy asked.
‘Let her sleep, Candy.’
‘She’s been in bed for more than a day now.’
‘And, by the looks of things, she needs the rest,’ Twig sighed.
‘What about her phone, though? It must have rung half a dozen times.’
‘Candy –’
‘But where do you think she got those bruises?’ Candy interrupted, whispering.
Twig shook her head. Put her bowl down and reached into her top pocket for her tobacco pouch. ‘They’re probably from her job here. You know how knocked about we get on the farm.’
‘I feel like we’ve lost her,’ Candy said in a quiet voice.
‘You’re just feeling that way because we don’t know what’s been going on in her life since she left. But she’s not exactly had the chance to tell us, has she? We’ve brought too much else with us.’
Candy didn’t respond. They watched the sun sink under the horizon.
‘You didn’t tell her June died waiting for her to come home,’ Candy said after a while.
‘Neither did you,’ Twig replied.
‘I know.’ Candy rubbed her forehead. ‘The last thing she needs is that kind of guilt.’
Early stars blinked in the sky.
‘Did you see her notebooks?’ Candy asked.
Twig shook her head again as she lit her smoke.
‘They’re on her bookshelves. Full of flowers and their meanings. Some pages have sketches, others have pressed flowers. Not in any order, not like they’re a dictionary series or anything. They look random, but flicking through them felt like something more. Like they’re a story.’
Twig took a drag, and exhaled her smoke upwards, shooting Candy a sideways glance.
‘What?’ Candy said. ‘I was just looking. They were on her bookshelf. I was curious.’ She jabbed her fork at her pasta. ‘I’m worried.’
Twig took another drag. ‘Me too.’
Candy put her fork and bowl down. ‘We need to convince her to come home with us,’ she said. ‘Thornfield is a third hers now, after all.’
Twig tapped the ash from her smoke. ‘All of that can wait. We’re not going anywhere.’
‘But don’t you think she’s in trouble? We’re her family. She needs us.’ Candy’s voice wavered.
‘We’re not her only family,’ Twig said pointedly.
Candy sat agape. ‘We love her. We raised her.’
‘And when she’s ready, we’ll be there for her. But right now, we have to give her the time she needs. To do what she needs to do.’
‘Which is?’
‘Live,’ Twig said simply. ‘You know that. Your head and heart aren’t talking sense to each other about this right now. She’s desperate to live her own story, and trust it enough to make mistakes and fuck up, and still know she’ll be okay.’
‘But,’ Candy’s bottom lip quivered, ‘what if she’s not?’
‘So what, we smother her like June did, to try and protect her? You know the saying. The road to hell …’ Twig trailed off, picking flecks of tobacco from her tongue.
Candy fell silent. Somewhere nearby dogs howled.
‘We won’t lose her again,’ Twig said. ‘Give her some credit.’
Candy nodded, her face creased in pain. ‘Okay,’ she said.
‘Okay.’ Twig took another long drag, the tobacco crackling in the quiet.
Alice sat on the couch drinking a cup of coffee. She’d been awake for a few hours, but her head felt as empty as the sky outside. Candy had told her she’d slept for two days. So much for you to take in; you must have really needed it.
Pip scurried underfoot while Candy and Twig ferried their things out to the rental car. They wanted to get back to Agnes Bluff before dark. Their return flight left early the next morning.
‘I think that’s everything.’ Twig came inside, dusting her hands. ‘I know I’ve already asked you twenty times, Alice, but if you want us to stay …’
Alice shook her head. ‘I’m okay. Time alone to let everything sink in will be good for me.’
‘Promise you’ll call us,’ Candy said, her face pinched. ‘When you have questions, or need to talk, or just want someone who knows you and loves you.’
Alice got up and went to her.
‘I hate goodbyes,’ Candy wailed, wrapping her arms around Alice. ‘Promise you’ll come and visit. We’re going to try to start over. Sowing season starts soon. Thornfield will always be your home.’
Alice nodded into Candy’s shoulder, inhaling her vanilla smell.
Candy stepped back. ‘Alice Blue,’ she said, tucking a strand of hair behind Alice’s ear before she got in the car.
It was just Alice and Twig. She couldn’t meet Twig’s eyes.
‘You okay?’ Twig cleared her throat.
Alice forced herself to look up. ‘I’ll be okay.’
They held each other’s gaze for a moment. Twig pulled a thick envelope from her back pocket.
‘When you’re ready,’ she said, ‘everything you need is in there. I should have given this to you years ago.’
Alice took the envelope. Twig pulled her in for a tight hug.
‘Thank you,’ Alice said. Twig nodded.
Alice waved until their rental car had disappeared from view.
When she went back inside, everything Twig and Candy had told her was waiting. June’s death. Alice’s brother’s life. She walked in circles, trying to make it all fit inside her somehow, but when she did that, all she had room for was Dylan. Days had passed. Where was he? Twig and Candy could have forgotten to mention that there’d been phone calls while she was sleeping. Putting the envelope Twig gave her aside, Alice hurried to her phone. Sure enough, there were messages. All from him. The first was apologetic, but his voice grew colder after the second. The last message made her sick to her stomach.
‘I’ve been the bigger person, I’ve called you and apologised, and you’re just ignoring me? Nice.’
Driven by guilt and her compulsion to make it right, Alice grabbed her keys and went out the back door. She walked along her fence line towards his house. She would apologise for going on the fire burn. She would apologise for not being more aware of his feelings, and for not coming to apologise sooner. She’d explain she’d had an unexpected family visit. She’d tell him. There’d been death, and life. He’d understand.
But Dylan’s gate was closed and padlocked. Neither his work ute nor his personal four-wheel drive were in the driveway.
‘He’s not home,’ Lulu said flatly behind her.
Alice turned. They hadn’t spoken for months.
‘He’s gone,’ Lulu said, burying her hands deep in her pockets. ‘Said he’d been to see Sarah at headquarters and had urgent work things to take care of. Said he needed to leave suddenly.’
Alice searched her face, trying to comprehend. ‘W-when?’
‘I saw him yesterday at the servo when he was filling up. Did he not tell you?’
Alice couldn’t suppress a wail of pain. What urgent work things? Had he talked to Sarah about what happened in the workshop? Was he hurt? Sick? Was he okay? Lulu grabbed Alice just before her knees gave way.
‘What have I done?’ Alice sobbed, clinging to Lulu’s frame, not realising her bruises were visible.
‘Qué chingados,’ Lulu said under her breath, seeing Alice’s arms. ‘What the fuck, Alice? Has he been hurting you? Has Dylan been hurting you?’
Alice slumped in her embrace.
‘Right,’ Lulu said, her voice caring but firm. ‘Inside, to my place. Let’s go.’
