The Bus on Thursday Page 9

  Jesus Christ, there is so much to write, so much has happened in one single day. But I think it’s very, very important that I write down all this shit, even though it is very late and I am extremely tired, because I swear writing all this down is the only thing that is keeping me from completely losing my sanity.

  Where to begin? Okay, well, why not begin where I left off, with the sudden horrible realization that quite likely Ryan’s drawing of me was not an unfortunate coincidence, but very likely Gregory sat Ryan down and said, “By the way, your teacher has one breast without an actual nipple, and I should know because I fucked her. Several times. And she was extremely willing, not to say desperate.”

  I drive myself so demented with this horrible, horrible thought that I get up, get dressed, look up Ryan’s address in my student information folder, and even though it is four thirty in the morning and pitch-dark and freezing cold, I just go right around there. I have no idea what I think I am going to do.

  So their house is this ordinary fibro cottage, pretty similar to every other house in Talbingo except maybe a little more run-down. And sure enough, there’s the Charger sitting in the driveway, looking all muddy and bedraggled from its episode in the Pondage. I try peering in the Charger’s windows, which is impossible because they’re so heavily tinted, so I try the door and, guess what, it’s unlocked. Very quietly, very stealthily, I open the passenger door and climb in, because I have now full-on turned into a madwoman. And it all looks pretty tragic inside. There’s puddles of dank, stale water in the footwells and duck poo on the seats and ribbon weed wrapped around the gearshift. And I suddenly have this crackpot idea that I should somehow get the air horns going and blast Gregory awake with an extended remix of “Dixie.” Except I have no idea how to actually do this. And chances are the air horns may no longer work after their dunking in the Pondage.

  I slide my hand down his sodden velour seat covers. For a moment, I allow myself to fantasize about being his girlfriend. I imagine us pumping the music up loud and roaring down the Snowy Mountains Highway. And unlike possible other girlfriends, I’d never admonish him for speeding or beg him to slow down—no, I’d just laugh recklessly, tossing my head back, with the windows down and the wind blowing my hair around. The thought of other girlfriends prompts me to rummage through the glove box in search of any evidence of predecessors, and then all of a sudden, Gregory opens the door and slides into the driver’s seat.

  It’s like he hasn’t seen me, although I don’t understand how this is possible, because the interior light came on when he opened the door and there I was, plainly visible, rummaging away in his glove box. But if he’s seen me, he pays me no attention. He puts the key in the ignition and takes a moment to check his appearance in the rearview mirror. Runs a hand through his tousled curls. Picks his teeth with his pinky fingernail. Spends quite a long time picking his teeth actually, like he may have just felled and eaten a wildebeest. For the first time, I notice just how long and sharp his teeth are, hence the bruise I’ve been sporting on my neck. I smell his earthy, minty, wild-creature smell and marvel silently at his beauty.

  He turns the key and the Charger roars into life like a baited bear. He jerks the gearstick into reverse, puts his foot to the floor, and belts back out the driveway so fast my neck snaps. Then he executes a very aggressive, very testosterone-heavy three-point turn, and we roar down the road toward the highway.

  I am quietly freaking out. I mean, he is going so fast, I can literally feel the g-forces wrapping my intestines around my spinal cord. I don’t know what to do. I’m thinking, Does he know I’m here or does he not know I’m here? I figure either way, maybe I should ask him to slow down a bit, so I say: “Gregory, do you mind—?” whereupon he jumps right out of his skin like he’s seen me for the first time, and slams the brakes on. The Charger skids off the road into the long grass, stopping just short of a second dunking in the Pondage.

  “WHAT THE FUCK ARE YOU DOING?” he screams at me.

  The sky is just beginning to lighten now—it’s this very murky gray light, and the atmosphere is so thick with mist that I can’t actually see any kangaroos, although I can hear them, thumping away in fright. I can’t even see the Pondage because the mist is completely covering it. I can just barely make out the shape of the sign forbidding recreational boating. It’s truly so misty it’s like we’re sitting in a cloud, and I make an observation along these lines to Gregory, but he is having none of it.

  “WHAT THE FUCK ARE YOU DOING IN MY CAR?” he screams, literally at top of lungs. “ARE YOU FUCKING NUTS?”

  If I had a dollar for every time someone’s asked me that last question, especially Josh. Still, it hurts to hear it coming from Gregory, so I decide the best thing to do is to act completely calm and composed, completely not nuts. So in a very quiet, reasonable voice I try to tell him that the reason I am lurking in his car in the wee small hours is because I simply wanted to ask him a couple of questions, specifically regarding what Ryan knows or doesn’t know about my missing nipple. But before I even finish explaining, he completely turns on me.

  He says, “You know what? I really don’t have time for this shit. And you know what else? You have no moral compass, which I find repugnant. All the more so because of your responsibilities as a primary school teacher. Here you are, charged with instilling in our children the moral values that will carry them through a lifetime, and yet you have no compunctions about engaging in casual sex with a virtual stranger. While intoxicated. Your behavior appalls me. And clearly the problem is systemic because the other one was just as bad.”

  I am stunned.

  I am rendered speechless.

  I feel exactly like I’ve been punched in the guts; it literally hurts to take a breath.

  So then I do this very strange thing. I open the door of the Charger, and I get out. I take a few steps forward into the mist till I can feel the water beginning to slush around my ankles, and then I start to wade into the Pondage.

  Okay, so I admit I have always been one for dramatic attention-seeking behavior in a crisis. Ever since I was a kid. If I got in trouble or anything, I would hold my breath—and I am extremely good at holding my breath, I can actually do it till I pass out. It used to scare my parents half to death. Also, it used to drive Josh mad. And once when we went on a cruise to New Caledonia, and we’d had a few too many mojitos in the Starfish Lounge and inevitably started fighting, I climbed over the railing of this fucking great ocean liner and threatened to jump, which was a very dangerous, insane thing to do, because I was standing on a very slippery perch about one inch wide, and with the slightest roll of the ship, I would have fallen hundreds of feet to certain death in the Pacific Ocean. Josh was furious, as were the Sea Princess security people, who threatened to put me off in Noumea and make me fly home, but I cried so much they finally agreed to let me stay. So what I’m saying is, I guess I was engaging in this kind of typical Eleanor dramatic gesture by walking into the Pondage. I think my plan, if you could call it a plan, was to walk right in and then hold my breath underwater for a very long time, basically just to scare him so he’d feel really bad about what he’d just said to me.

  So I’m wading in through the mist, and I’m suddenly remembering that the sirens went off last night, which means they released water from the Reservoir, which must be why it’s so unbelievably frigging cold—it’s so cold, the muscles in my calves seize up almost instantly with cramp. It’s agony. I reach down to try to massage my cramping legs, and as I do, my hand brushes against something slimy lurking in the water, which for some reason, maybe the texture of it, makes me involuntarily recoil. And I look down, thinking, What is that? And right there in the misty dawn light, I see it.

  It’s a hand.

  A human hand, just below the surface of the water. A human hand attached to an arm. Which is attached to a body. All quite decomposed, but definitely recognizable as human. And the hand is open, palm up, what’s left of the fingers slightly curled, and the motion of
the disturbed water makes it look like—I know this sounds crazy—but almost like this hand is beckoning me in. And because I have bumped it free of whatever it’s been entangled in, the other hand rises up to the surface now too, and this hand is clutching a clump of long stalks. By which I mean a loose clump of stalks, like it’s pulled them out of the ground, because they still have their roots attached. And then, horribly, the head rises up.

  And I know, I just know instantaneously, that this is Miss Barker.

  Well, I scream—I mean, the sound that comes out of my mouth is barely even human—and I scramble the fuck out of there just as fast as I can. And I’m like, “Oh my God, it’s Miss Barker!” And now Gregory gets out of the car too. “Miss Barker?” he says. “That’s bullshit.” So very casual, very nonchalant, he wades in to have a look. And seeing her, he changes his tune completely. He cries out: “Oh God. Oh God. Oh God. Oh God.” And then he throws up really violently, like practically projectile.

  I mean, I am shocked, of course, at the sight of the body, but Gregory is completely beside himself. He keeps lurching around, groaning and throwing up and clutching his belly. I mean, even though it is admittedly a very shocking and unsettling thing to see, his reaction seems a touch excessive. And meanwhile, I’m thinking, What do I do, what do I do, I better do the right thing for once in my life, I better go get the police. So while Gregory is staggering around and vomiting and carrying on, I start running off in the direction of the police station. And Gregory calls out, “Where are you going?” So I’m like, “I’m going to get the police!” And he goes, “No! Wait! Come back!”

  So now it starts to get really weird.

  He wades back into the water and, right before my very eyes, he grabs the hand that’s clutching the clump of stalks and he is trying to pull the stalks out of the hand. I’m like, What are you doing??? But this dead hand has a ferocious grip and it’s not letting go of these stalks, not for anything. And I’m screaming at him, “You can’t do that! That’s evidence! You can’t touch the body!” And he’s struggling like crazy, grunting with the effort of trying to open up this hand and release the stalks, and suddenly there’s this sickening almighty cracking sound, and the hand actually breaks off the arm and he screams like a girl, I kid you not, and flings the hand into the water.

  “Oh God!” he cries, and he stands there gasping for a moment. Then, next thing, he suddenly dives under the water, and he remains below for a tremendously long time. I mean, I thought I could hold my breath, but this guy is like a free diver. Five solid minutes pass by and I’m starting to wonder if he’s ever going to come up. And finally he does come up and he’s all panicky. “I can’t find it, I can’t find her stupid hand!”

  And he dives under again, and this time he stays under for what feels like ten minutes. He stays under so long, I’m actually convinced he’s drowned. I’m just standing there, whimpering and fretting and wondering what I should do, and finally I wade back in, which I really don’t want to do because of Miss Barker, and I’m calling, “Gregory! Gregory!” And suddenly I hear a rippling noise, and Gregory emerges from the water right next to me. He’s dripping mud and slime and pondweed, and he’s furious. The word apoplectic comes to mind. He’s all red-faced and crazy-looking and the veins in his neck are bulging out, presumably from holding his breath all that time. I’m like, “Did you find it?”—very meekly, because he’s scaring me—and he’s like, “No, I didn’t fucking find it.” Then he strides out of the Pondage, gets back into the Charger, starts it up, and just reverses the fuck out of there. It’s actually almost comical because at first he doesn’t realize that the passenger door is still open, and it’s snagging and scraping amid the long grass, so now he has to stop the car and try to pull it shut but he can’t reach it from inside, so he has to get out of the car and walk around to the passenger side and slam the door, which he does very forcefully to make a point, because of course he blames me for leaving it open in the first place. Then he gets back in the Charger and drives off at speed toward the highway, with a big gurgly blast of “Dixie” as a final fuck-you. Leaving me standing in the Pondage with what remains of Miss Barker.

  So that was my Thursday morning.

  Well, no, actually; that was just the beginning of my Thursday morning.

  I did not like being left alone with poor Miss Barker. She was not a pretty sight. And yet I felt uncomfortable about just abandoning her there.

  “Give me one minute,” I say to her. “I’ll go get the cops.”

  I run up to the police station, which is a good ten-minute run entirely uphill, so by the time I get there I am really puffed out and exhausted and I have a really bad stitch. The police station is this little one-room weatherboard shack, with a big sign that says POLICE and a very tall flagpole from which the Australian flag is drooping like it’s depressed. It’s still early and the building is locked—there’s a cheery SORRY WE’RE CLOSED! sign on the front door, like you’d expect to see in a milk bar. Regardless, I pound away on the door for a solid five minutes. Then I hear this irritated voice call out, “It’s closed!” and I realize there’s a dwelling behind the police shack, and this woman in Ugg boots and a terry-cloth bathrobe has come out onto the veranda. So I’m like, “I need the police!” And she goes back inside, and a minute later, this big fat uniformed copper walks out with a mug of coffee. And he’s peering at me suspiciously from the veranda, like he doesn’t appreciate being interrupted during breakfast.

  I literally scream at him, “Miss Barker is down in the Pondage!”

  Now he starts to take an interest.

  So Senior Sergeant Saunders drives us down to the Pondage with one hand on the steering wheel and the other balancing his coffee mug on his belly. By now, the sun is just beginning to poke over the mountains, and the mist has mostly lifted except for these sparse ghostly patches floating on the surface of the Pondage. The whole thing is feeling so surreal that I’m beginning to wonder if maybe I actually dreamed it. But sure enough, there is poor pathetic Miss Barker floating gloomily about in the pondweed. And Senior Sergeant Saunders picks up a big long stick and pokes her with it, and says, “That’s her, all right,” because poking a corpse with a stick is his idea of identifying the victim. And he immediately hypothesizes that she has floated down from the Reservoir when they opened the sluice gates last night. And then he says, “Most likely she jumped off the Ridge. That’s where they generally like to do it. Well, it’s a good hundred-foot drop, isn’t it? Plus, you’ve got the freezing water.”

  So we stand there a few minutes staring down at Miss Barker while he drinks his coffee, and finally he tosses the dregs in the water and tidily rinses his mug, like he’s a boy scout. I’m staring at him, dumbfounded. I’m like, “Haven’t you ever heard of contaminating the crime scene??” And he’s like, “Guess who’s watched too much CSI?” And then he gets distracted by these two big kangaroos getting stuck into each other nearby, and he starts commentating the action like we’re watching Manny Pacquiao and Floyd Mayweather Jr. Every now and then he glances over at me to see how I’m enjoying his humor, and finally I get fed up and I say, “Are you actually going to do anything about this corpse we have here???”

  “Calm down! Calm down! Wheels are in motion!” he says, although clearly no wheels are in motion. And he tells me he’s going to go back to the station to call the Tumut boys in, unless I want to help him drag her in myself.

  I totally can’t stand this prick.

  So he’s about to jump in the car and head back to the police station and I’m like, “You’re seriously just going to leave the body unattended?” I cannot believe how unprofessional he is. And he’s like, “Well, you can stay here and mind her if you like, but I don’t think she’s going anywhere.” And I’m like, “I have to get ready for school.” And he’s like, “Fair enough,” and as I’m walking away, he drives past me and yells out: “Hey! Tell Dracula to stop biting your neck!”

  So I go back home and get dressed, and try to c
over up my love bite as best I can with concealer and foundation, and then I head off up to school. The children are all clustered at the back fence, staring down toward the Pondage—clearly word has got out already, because they all seem very serious and preoccupied like they know full well it’s their poor dead teacher down there. I can see that the Tumut police are now at the scene—a number of officers have waded in, someone is photographing the body, a couple of them are talking to Senior Sergeant Saunders. At one point, he gestures toward the school, and the other cops turn and stare up at us. I have this sudden irrational impulse to duck down so they don’t see me, but I realize that will only make me look guilty, so instead I just turn away and pretend to be closely examining the mural of the Hydro-Electric Scheme till I think it’s probably safe to look back again.

  I realize they are about to drag the body out—no attempt to hide the grisly spectacle from onlookers—so I herd the kids inside quick smart. And, of course, I have nothing ready to teach them because I have spent most of the night prowling around stalking Gregory, so I decide that now is probably the time to stick on a DVD to distract them from what’s going on in the Pondage. I find one labeled Talbingo’s Got Talent! which turns out to be a recording of the school talent show, and I realize that it must be pretty recent because all the kids look more or less the same age. They each have a turn singing or playing a musical instrument or doing little comic skits pretending to be newsreaders, the usual stuff, but the absolutely mesmerizing thing is that every now and then you get a glimpse of Miss Barker as she dashes onstage to turn someone’s sheet music or adjust a microphone or introduce the next student. Quite buxom, full-hipped. A bit staid and middle-aged in her dress sense. A penchant for floaty scarves secured with a brooch (in this instance, a cat brooch). Really lovely with the kids. Very gentle, very patient, always encouraging. And as I watch her, I am gradually overcome with a vast, bottomless sense of deep personal shame. The stark contrast between us is so marked, how could I feel otherwise? She is absolutely wonderful. Teaching is truly her vocation. No wonder the children love her. No wonder they don’t warm to me. Me and my never-ending personal dramas. My love bites and my hangovers. My screeching the f-bomb at them.