CHAPTER NINE
Fighting: the stupid kind.
When Travis finally came inside, soaked to the bone and shivering, he headed straight for the shower. After dinner when everyone was gone and Travis had given Matilda another bottle, we headed to bed.
Stripped down to our underwear, we lay facing each other. Travis smiled all suggestive like, and he traced his fingers along the side of my face. I considered kissing him to the sound of the rain, but after Ma’s words of wisdom of trying the whole talking thing instead of the sexing thing, I took his hand, threading our fingers, and he flinched.
Unthreading our fingers, I turned his hand over, and even in the dark room I could see the palms of his hands were red. “Your hands are sore.”
“Shovelling all day will do that.”
I gently traced over the swollen skin. It was hot. “You should have let me help you.”
Trav smiled and closed his eyes. After the work he’d done in the rain today, I had no doubt he was tired and sore. “’S’okay,” he mumbled sleepily. “Was my idea.”
I slid my hand along his cheek and traced his eyebrow with my thumb. He sighed and slipped into sleep while I just lay there watchin’ him. He looked so peaceful, so beautiful. His eyelashes cast moonlit shadows on his cheeks, his lips looked silver-purple, slightly open, slightly smiling.
I pulled the blanket up to our ears, gently took his fingers under the covers and just held his hand between us. I whispered that I loved him, and the heavy ache of regret crept into my chest that I hadn’t told him when he was awake.
* * * *
Day two of the rain, and it was set in, cold and miserable. It didn’t stop Travis, though. Happy with the filtering and drainage system, he started to move the sleepers back into place for the borders of the new garden.
He didn’t want my help, which pissed me off, and he told me to try doing some actual study because that assessment won’t write itself, which pissed me off even more.
“This assessment is bullshit,” I cried.
“You still have to do it.”
“It not relevant. Maybe to some little farm on the coast somewhere, but out here it’s not worth a pinch of shit.”
“So write that.”
“You can’t write that the premise of the whole assignment is bullshit,” I told him. “I’m sure my professor, who probably wrote the fucking question, would love some outback hick telling him he don’t know squat.”
Travis took a deep breath. “Charlie, that’s exactly what you should tell him. Just tell him why. You can discredit every point he makes, as long as you can back it up and justify your reasons.”
I huffed and threw my pen on the desk. “It’s bullshit.”
“What are you supposed to write about?” he asked calmly. “Exactly, word for word.”
“We need to assess the quality of the meta-analyses carried out in agronomy with the intent to formulate recommendations, and illustrate these recommendations with a case study relative to the impact of agricultural activities on the environment or biodiversity. Use the following eight criteria defined for evaluating the quality of blah blah blah.”
Travis smiled at my eye roll. “Look, Charlie, you’re overthinking it. Tell me what’s wrong with it.”
“It’s not relevant to farming out here.”
“How?”
Ugh. Like I needed to spell it out. “Because everything we do is different. They’re basing their eight criteria on regional New South Wales data only, which is not relevant to what we deal with, yet I am supposed to use that as the basis of my assessment. They use the term heterogeneity of data, yet the two models are, by definition, not comparable at all. They should be analyzed with random-effect models and weighted accordingly.”
A slow smile spread across his face. “You need to write that down.”
“What part?”
“All of it.”
I huffed at him. “You’re not helping.”
“You don’t need my help by the sound of it.”
“Yes, I do.”
He took a deep breath, but his nostrils flared and instead of replying, he just went back to the garden. He worked in the rain wearing one of my dad’s old Driza-bone long jackets, which would at least keep him dry. His boots were caked in mud, but he only stopped for lunch. And after we’d eaten, I went back out to my seat on the veranda to find Ernie out in the rain helping him.
Which didn’t exactly piss me off.
It stung.
So of course I sat out there and watched them and stewed on the fact it wasn’t me he wanted to help him. In fact, it seemed like I was the last person in the world he wanted help from. I think I bounced between pissed off and hurt a good dozen times, and in the end, I snatched up my books and went inside.
I stomped a bit and huffed and puffed like a fucking brat, but threw myself into my office chair and read the stupid fucking textbook. I highlighted shit and made stupid notes, getting crankier with every-fucking-thing the longer I sat in there. I could tell it was close to dinner time by the smell wafting through the house, and I considered telling Ma I wasn’t hungry but decided it would be more satisfying sitting at the table in a foul fucking mood so everyone could enjoy it, including Travis.
Especially Travis.
So what did he do? He ignored me.
And who’da thought my level of pissed off could possibly get any higher. It kinda went from a sunshiney kind of pissed to a nuclear kind of pissed.
And all the while, the rain didn’t stop. Almost like it knew, like it was trying to simmer and soothe when all it was doing was making things worse.
So I went back into my office and pretended to be doing more reading, while Travis pretended that was what I wanted. I waited for him to go to bed, then he pretended to be asleep when I crawled in, and I pretended it didn’t cause my heart to ache in my chest.
Morning was no better.
And it was still fucking raining. The forecast said it wasn’t stopping any time soon, so I shut my laptop with more force than necessary and opened the goddamned textbook. I knew it wasn’t rational to be so damn angry—I didn’t even know what the hell I was mad at. Just everything. I was mad at everything. I didn’t need a reason. And I didn’t need to be stuck in the fucking house reading a stupid book written by some city farmer who didn’t have a fucking clue what it was like.
I snatched my hat off the hook at the front door, and not even pausing at the rain, I jumped off the veranda and crossed the yard to the shed. I needed to be doing something else, something constructive, something destructive, it didn’t matter. Just something else.
So I hooked up the angle grinder into the vice on the bench and collected all the tools I could find and started to sharpen them. The power, the noise, the strength of refining metal, the smell, it felt good.
I’d finished all the shovels and chisels and started on the fencing pliers when Travis spoke behind me. “You gonna throw things around in here all day?”
I didn’t look up. “Yep.”
He waited for me to finish the one I was doing. “Charlie? You wanna tell me what’s bothering you?”
“Nothin’s botherin’ me.”
“Yeah, right.”
“You wanna tell me why you ignored me last night?”
“Are you fucking kidding?” he yelled. His anger made me turn and face him. “You wanna know why? I ignored you because you’re behaving like a fucking child, that’s why. Isn’t that what they say to do when a toddler’s having a tantrum? To ignore them? So I did. You wanna have a conversation like a fucking adult, then I’ll start listening.” He spun around and walked back into the rain, and I stood there speechless.
I knew I should have chased after him. My hammering heart was telling me to call out, call him back, tell him he was right and I was sorry. But my pride-leaden feet wouldn’t move.
So I added sulking to my already colourful mood of irrational anger and petulant pride. If I was bein’ truthful, I could probably add childish and foolish and a whole lot of stubborn and stupid.
I didn’t go after him. I didn’t call out to him. I didn’t want to face anyone. Considering the pouring rain outside, I could hardly take Shelby and disappear into the desert, so I did the next best thing. I went into my office, shut the door behind me and locked it, something I only did when I wanted absolute fucking solitude.
I heard Ma’s hushed voice outside the door, probably telling someone to steer clear. I couldn’t even bring myself to feel bad. Dinner time came and went and despite my protesting stomach, I didn’t show. It was childish, and I knew it. But I figured no one wanted to see much of me right now either.
Normally when I got into moods like this, I’d pack a swag and head off to the lagoon for a day or two and the space would clear my head. Not that I’d felt like this in a long time. Not since my father…
Fuck.
I sank back in my chair and wallowed in self-loathing while I stared at the ceiling until I went to bed. Travis was asleep for real this time, his soft, even snores giving him away. He was curled into a ball on the far side of the bed, and I climbed into bed as quietly as I could.
I watched him, wanting to touch him so much, so fucking much, but didn’t dare wake him. I wanted to feel his skin, I wanted to hold him against me, to smell his hair, to kiss the side of his head.
But I couldn’t.
I’d put this distance between us, and I had no clue how to make it right. I was being irrational, and it was like a runaway train I just couldn’t stop. I didn’t want to feel like this, I certainly didn’t want to hurt him. I just didn’t know how to stop it.
I pulled the blankets up over him so he was warm and let his sleepy-smell wash over me. I lay back down and remembered how much I’d adored seeing him in my bed when I thought it was just temporary—fleeting—and here I was taking it all for granted.
Like it wasn’t the most wonderful thing in the world. Like it wouldn’t kill me when he was gone.
Because it was, really, just a matter of time.
* * * *
Travis’s side of the bed was empty and cold when I woke up. I felt it just to be sure.
Breakfast was quiet, everyone was wary of my mood, which just made me feel a whole lot worse.
Travis gave me a tight smile, and I tried to return it, but I guess I couldn’t quite get it right. Thankfully it was everyone’s weekend off, and they were all headed into town after breakfast. They needed downtime, and I needed space. I was sure by the time they got back on Sunday afternoon, I’d be out of this foul mood and everything would be back to normal.
Then George asked the inevitable. “Travis, you headin’ into town?”
I froze, waiting for him to answer, waiting for the guillotine to drop.
He cleared his throat. “Nah, I’ll finish up the garden today.”
George looked at me. “Charlie?”
I pushed my plate away. “I, um, I have… stuff to do here.” But I looked up at everyone and gave them the best smile I could muster. “Thanks, guys. It’s been a good week. See ya’s on Sunday.”
Everyone was gone with a nod or a polite, strained goodbye, except for Travis. He didn’t move. “Charlie,” he started.
“I’m sorry,” I blurted out.
Just then, Ma walked in and seeing us sitting at the table, she backed up. “Oh, sorry. Sorry.” She just about tried to run out of the room.
“No, Ma, wait,” I called out, stopping her. I had everyone walking on eggshells, and it was killing me. “I’m sorry,” I said pathetically. “I’m sorry. I don’t mean to make everyone so uncomfortable.” I stood up. “This is your home too, and I’m being selfish, and I’m sorry.”
I walked to the door and stopped. I looked at them both, but couldn’t think of anything else to say. Well, nothing to excuse my behaviour or explain it. I tried to say sorry again, but I don’t know if the words came out. I only made it as far as the hall.
“Don’t fucking ignore me, Charlie!” Travis yelled. He was four steps behind me, pointing his finger at me. “If you’ve got a problem with something, then fucking speak to me.”
“I don’t have a problem.”
Travis looked up at the ceiling and took a deep breath. He was trying to stay calm. “Charlie, what’s going on? Why are you pushing me away?”
“Jesus, Travis. I don’t know. I said I was sorry.”
“You’re shutting me out.”
“I’m not,” I said, then amended, “I don’t mean to.”
“Why are you so mad at me?” he asked. It was the first time I think I’d ever seen him so unsure. “I don’t know what I did.”
“It’s not you. It’s me.”
He threw up his hands. “Oh that’s fucking lovely. It’s not you, it’s me. Can’t think of anything more original?”
“It is me, Travis,” I yelled back at him. “This is the real me. This is who I am. I’m the boss of this place, and I need to run it like I am. Sorry you don’t like what you see.”
“So, is it Charlie the boss speaking or Charlie the boyfriend speaking?”
“Both. I’m both. You knew that when you were so fucking adamant on staying.”
He looked like I’d slapped him. “Do you want me to go?” he asked quietly. “Is that what this is?”
“Argh.” I ran my hands through my hair. “No!”
“You keep saying the words, but everything else you do says yes.”
I paced into the lounge room with my hands in my hair. “I don’t know what’s wrong with me.”
“Please, Charlie,” he cried, begging. “Talk to me.”
“I don’t know how.”
He was staring at me, right into me. He looked open and raw. “Tell me what you feel, please, Charlie.”
“I don’t know,” I said. I rolled my shoulders, like I was struggling in my own skin and tried again, “I feel… bound.”
“What?”
“I don’t know!” I cried. “Bound. Restricted, confined, I don’t know.”
“By me?” he whispered.
“No,” I answered quickly, “not you. This place, the rain, the responsibility. I feel like I can’t stretch properly.”
He just stood there, not saying anything.
“Not you,” I said again. “You’re the one person who sees the real me.”
“Charlie…”
“Guilty. I feel guilty.” I didn’t even mean to say that. I don’t know where it came from. It just came out.
“What for?” he asked. He was so damn concerned, and it made me feel worse.
“I don’t know,” I said again. I know it was lame, but it was the truth. I didn’t know. I couldn’t find the words to describe it. “It’s a weight. In here,” I said, pushing against my chest. “I don’t deserve you.”
“You’re not your father.”
His words stopped me cold. I blinked. “What?”
“You need to let it go, Charlie. I thought you had. Or, at least I thought you were trying to.”
“I’m trying! I don’t know if I will ever be able to!” I cried. “I don’t know, Travis. This is me. This is who I am.”
He shook his head.
Then I told him, “I’ve changed. A year ago, I was happy being out here, being alone. It’s who I was, it was how it had to be, and I was fine with it.”
“Were you?”
“No, I was fucking miserable.”
He smiled a little, despite the conversation.
“And now, now I can’t do anything. It’s like everything I do isn’t good enough.”
“That’s not true.”
“It doesn’t matter if it’s true or not,” I shot back at him. “It’s how I feel.”
“Why?”
“I don’t want to disappoint you. It’s like a pressure, and it’s not from you. It’s from me. I know that. Because I don’t want to let you down or make you regret your decision to stay.”
“Oh, Charlie,” he whispered.
I ran my fingers through my hair and huffed out a laugh. “You wanna know something? I watch you when you’re sleepin’ and think how amazing it is, how you gave up everything you’ve ever known to be here with me, and I can’t even bring myself to say three little fucking words out loud.” I shook my head. “How pathetic is that?”
“It’s not pathetic, Charlie,” he said quietly. “I chose to stay here, remember?”
“You didn’t just decide to live on the other side of the planet for me,” I said. “You stepped back in the closet for me, and I’ll never forgive myself for asking you to do that.”
His eyes narrowed. “No I didn’t.”
He wasn’t getting it. “I can’t be the person you want me to be, Travis.”
He sighed, and he kind of turned to leave, but didn’t. He looked… stuck. He wouldn’t look at me. “I don’t know what I can say that will make you…” He swallowed thickly. His voice was barely a whisper. “Sounds like you’re saying it’s all too hard. Like you don’t want this…”
I shook my head. “I want it, too much. Maybe that’s the problem. Maybe I’m holding on too tight.”
Travis stood side-on to me, still looking at the floor. “If it’s a problem, then maybe you need to let me go,” he whispered and walked out the door.
I wanted to tell him not to walk away, not to leave, not to hate me. But I couldn’t speak. I could barely breathe.
I stood staring at where he’d been, blinking back regret and breaking-heart tears, when a door slammed, making me turn around. It was Ma. She looked pale and pissed off, and a whole world of sad.
“I was told to stay out of it,” she spoke through clenched teeth. “But I won’t stand by and say nothing. You want to be alone out here forever, Charlie? You want to be just like your father, you want to push everyone away and hate and resent everyone, then go right ahead. Spend every day of the rest of your life being as miserable as he was. He was bitter, and it put him in an early grave.”
“Ma,” I tried to speak, and tears burned my eyes.
“I haven’t finished talking,” she spat. “Not every relationship is meant to last, Charlie, but what you and Travis have isn’t dying. You’re killing it. Like you won’t be happy until you’ve driven him away so you can spend the rest of your life miserable, so you can what? Say that you were right all along?”
I couldn’t speak. I shook my head, and hot tears spilled down my cheeks.
“You know what?” Ma said. “You should go. Take Shelby and disappear for a while, clear your head, sort out what it is you want, and when you come back, you wanna hope that man is still here.” She folded her arms across her chest. “If he wants to go, I won’t stop him.”
“No,” I said, wiping away stupid tears. “Ma, I don’t know what’s wrong with me.”
“What will it take for you to realise, Charlie?”
I let out a shaky breath, shook my head and shrugged. “I don’t know.”
Ma left me with that and a resounding, hurt-to-hear silence.
* * * *
I don’t even remember sitting down on the sofa, and I don’t know how long I’d been there staring at nothin’, but two little black paws on my thigh snapped me out of my head.
Matilda.
She looked up at me with her big brown someone-please-love-me eyes and leant up on her toes so her little twitchy nose could sniff me. She wanted food.
I scooped her up and held her like Travis did and walked into the kitchen. The house was silent. Empty. No wonder Matilda came to me; no one else was here. I was her last resort, an irony I’d have probably found funny if it didn’t hurt so fucking much.
When her bottle was warm, I sat back in the lounge room and fed her. It was oddly comforting, the warmth of her against me, the flutter of her heartbeat, this little living thing.
And I think I realised right then and there why Travis refused to get rid of her.
“I’m not saying he was right,” I told her, my voice was croaky and hollow.
She blinked up at me as she drank in I’m pretty sure what was kangaroo for “of course you wouldn’t, you idiot.”
I sighed and leaned back in the sofa. The last four nights of not sleeping weighed in heavily, and I must have closed my eyes. I didn’t mean to fall asleep, and I didn’t mean to dream of what Ma said, but the words what would it take for me to realise woke me up.
Matilda was still tucked into my arm, snug, warm and sound asleep. Someone had stoked the fire, and there was a blanket over my legs. I don’t know who had seen me, who still cared enough to make sure I was warm. But I felt horrible. Not in a sick kind of way, but in a what-have-I-done kind of way.
I sat my aching body up, careful not to wake Matilda, but she stirred and woke anyway. I helped her into her makeshift pouch that hung from the door handle, and that’s when I noticed it had stopped raining. I could hear hushed voices from the kitchen, which I soon realised were Ma and George.
I had no idea if Travis was still here, and quite frankly, I didn’t want to know. It was stupid and it was childish, but if he was gone, the longer I didn’t know, the longer I could put off having my heart ripped out.
Instead of finding Ma and George and telling ’em how sorry I was for acting like an arse, I went into the bathroom. I avoided eye contact with myself in the reflection and almost laughed when I saw the pile of Travis’s dirty clothes still sittin’ on the floor.
It meant maybe he hadn’t left my sorry arse.
Or maybe he didn’t take them when we went. They were my clothes anyway, he just wore ’em. So maybe he only took what he came here with. Maybe Ma and George were in the kitchen trying to decide how to tell me he’d gone.
I scooped up the laundry and walked past the kitchen. And what I saw stopped me cold. Ma and George were there, and so was Travis. I should have been happy he was still here. Thrilled, ecstatic even. I should have dropped the stupid laundry and sat my arse down and begged him to forgive me, but I didn’t. The looks on their faces stopped me.
Somehow I knew. Somehow, without bein’ told, I knew he was leaving. Their faces told me. There was mail strewn across the table and a newspaper—I’d forgotten how just the other day, I’d organised to have them delivered for him. It’s funny the stupid things you think of at times like that, but I thought, Now I’ll have to cancel it.
“Charlie?” Ma called out.
“I’ll just be in the washroom,” I whispered and somehow got my made-of-stone feet to move. I dumped my armful of dirty clothes on the floor in the laundry and blindly started to sort them. My eyes burned and my chest ached and bile rose in my throat. I heard the door open behind me, but I couldn’t turn around. I didn’t want to hear it. If he didn’t say it, then it wasn’t happening, and it wasn’t all my stupid fault.
I stuffed some clothes into the machine and turned it on, and started re-sortin’ the clothes on the floor. I held up his red-dirt-muddy inside-out jeans. “It’s bad enough you leave your shit on the floor and I have to pick up after you and sort your shit, but is it too much to ask that you can turn the fucking jeans in the right way? I mean, I’ll do all the washing, I don’t fucking care—” I sucked back a ragged breath and tried not to cry.
“Charlie,” he said, just a whisper. I almost didn’t hear him over the pounding in my ears.
“But could you at least try and fucking help?” I asked, wiping my eyes with my sleeve. “I mean, it’s not too much to ask, but some of this shit needs soaking.”
“Will you shut up?” he cried. “Just for two fucking seconds. I know it may come as a shock to you, but the world doesn’t revolve around Charlie fucking Sutton.”
It was really only when he stopped talking and I looked at him, I mean really looked at him, that I should have known something wasn’t right. He was holding some half-folded white pieces of paper, his hand down at his thigh. He was looking kinda pale and whole lotta scared.
“Trav?” I asked, my voice was real quiet, and there was a sense of dread creeping up the back of neck. “What’s that?”
“It’s a letter,” he whispered back. “To me. From the Australian Immigration Department.”
Oh. “Oh.”
He swallowed hard. “They’re sending me back, Charlie. They said I can’t stay.”