Read Online Treading Air by Ariella Van Luyn - Free Book Online Page B

nurse, freezes, doesn’t seem to know which way to step. She looks so obvious, exposed out on the ward. ‘’Scuse me, love,’ the nurse says. The woman presses herself against the end of a bed and tucks her arms in. There’s a lady in the bed she’s leaning against who sticks her toe through the frame and pokes her, warning her out of her space. Ten women are lined up in this lock hospital, a new one just sent in yesterday, and they’re getting on one another’s nerves. The coathanger woman must have pinched those blanket-covered toes, because their owner pulls her foot up, a snail’s eye sliding into its stalk. The woman gives her a sharp glare and moves on towards the hangers.
    Not only does the woman have a familiar voice, but now Lizzie’s sure she knows her face – that dirty look has dug something up from a bloody long time ago. Lizzie picks the woman to be about her age or maybe a bit younger, so she tries to imagine her without the wrinkles and the blurry edges. As usual, her eyesight fails her. Ages ago she realised that with her poor eyes, she has two options: to be always ready or never ready for anything to strike out at her. She chose the first. She had to make choices like that after Joe was sent down. Before, he’d been between her and the horizon.
    The woman stands at the end of the ward. When a matron comes in with a tea tray, Lizzie loses sight of her. Then she appears again, back near her own bed. As she climbs in, her nightie opens to show the coathanger, its lace frothing around her breasts. She lies down, runs her hands over her chest, seems comforted touching the hanger. It reminds Lizzie of a man in a sinking ship, checking that his life jacket is tied on, but she can’t work out what the gesture means here, where they all went overboard long ago.

Townsville, 1923
    L izzie is wedged, longways, on the bench seat of the train. She can lie out straight with her head against the padded wall, and her feet don’t touch the other side. Joe’s do. He can’t have slept much. But he smiles, and something moves inside her. She holds this moment, the power of him to move her. He sees it, stands up and puts an arm on either side of her. He leans down to kiss her on the mouth. ‘Better watch it – might get yourself in trouble, looking at a man like that,’ he says into her face.
    His breath is sour. She notices the smell on herself too. She doesn’t like the feel of sweat at the creases in her elbows and knees. Acrid smoke drifts through the window above her bed, smogs the rectangle of sunlight. Joe swings on the doorway, shifting with the motion of the train. He braces himself against the frame and lifts up his feet, letting the train rock him. She notices the muscles on his arms and sucks air between her teeth.
    She shuts her eyes, and the motion of the carriage gives her the sense that she’ll be hurled off the bench at any moment. She presses her fingers against the wall, something solid. When she opens her eyes, the doorway is empty.
    Joe’s still gone when they arrive at Townsville Station, and she has a moment of panic. She’s a thousand miles from everyone else. What if Joe’s abandoned her? No, she’s being silly. He’s just buggered off somewhere. She ungraciously attempts to salvage his bag out of the overhead compartment and is forced to stand on the seat to get it. Dragging her own suitcase with both hands, she slides his bag with her foot. When she gets to the carriage door, she looks around for some man to help her and, finding none, kicks Joe’s bag onto the cement platform where it tumbles twice and nearly knocks over a child in a pram. Lizzie shrugs at the mother, swings her own bag forward into the gap and allows it to carry her onto the platform. She stops to retrieve Joe’s bag and apologises to the woman with the baby. ‘My husband’s gone,’ she says.
    The woman nods.