Best Australian Yarn: Sunday by Julia Howlett

We are moving further west where the roads are wider and houses cheaper.A progression predetermined by his parents. We buy a property from a man named Mick, who had a wife that left him.He is there when we arrive with Darren the real estate agent.Darren wears a suit that cuts off above the ankles and no socks. The country flies mock him for it.A broken down tractor stands in the paddock. A bitter reminder of tribulation for Mick. Something else is said about a mortgage and a big win at the club, before Mick drives away in his ute, leaving everything else. Even the dog. So we name the dog Keno. * Somewhere between retiling and painting, he asks me to marry him.But my parents and neighbours taught me marriage had a start and finish line. Game, set, match. If you mess up, you cross the line alone, or, best case scenario, you cross together amicably and in similar time.Good sportsmanship.Someone may even suggest a rematch with a hesitant shrug. But it’s too hot here for sport.So I say no. When shadows appear on the house and the cicadas lull, we go to the local pub for dinner. Two schooners in, he has met a builder that will take him on.The lack of jobs being offered to the new city girl is suddenly apparent so I take out my phone and google jobs in the local area. An electronic buzzer sits motionless yet full of promise on the table as I look at my cv from fives years before. I was prettier then. Short hair and something flirtatious about the way the sides of my mouth creased.Emailing a handful of regional offices, I go back to drinking my beer wondering, should my hair be shorter?A Barn owl sits on our front fence. I watch as it takes flight, wings illuminated by headlights. Home. Smelling of fresh paint, eucalypt and the neighbours sheep. * We have been here six weeks now. He is tired and I, hormonal and nothing feels romantic about a bad shoulder and adult acne.So we fight.The grass is so short, our failures and doubts stretch as far as the horizon. Prices rising with inflation and we,with indignation. He is in the car, with a bag of clothes and a half drunk coffee.I think about going after him but something keeps me standing on the porch of an unfinished house. Maybe it’s the way the morning sun hits the silky seed tops of the Wallaby grass. Or the lemon scented gums that reminded me of my grandparents.The same grandparents that would call each other dear and hold hands and go for drives on Sundays and everything seemed so easy. Lemon scented easy. Then one day grandma died and my granddad said his goodbyesand joined her.Everyone knows you can’t die of a broken heart,that’s what your mother tells you when the boy from school stops texting, or your boyfriend cheats. But when you’re old and your heart breaks, you die anyway. Autospy ruled unnecessary. We were just thirty and thirty three. So I go to work and hope he comes home.I call my mother and she assures me that I won’t die and when dusk plays tricks with shadows, I look for his shape in the driveway.The shape that led me from city to here. A crow picks at the flesh of a joey caught in the fence line. I watch, wondering if we had moved somewhere else, would things be different?The weight of this place had quickly formed an overcast of resentment, with no rain or reasoning. I stare at Mick’s old tractor under an arbitrary moon, before heading inside to sleep alone. This country would not make a fool of me. The following afternoon, I stop at the mailbox.An overdue electricity bill and some state election brochures.At the house, I see him with Keno. He is yelling, with boots half on and half off and his belt unbuckled, an exhausted attempt to be one step closer to showering.I watch her barking back at him.Hearing the familiar engine approaching, she comes hurtling off the porch with both guilt and glee. I open the car door and she leaps in smelling of death and vile as his defeated silhouette disappears down the hallway. There’s a dead rabbit on the porch. Tossing aside my jeans and blouse, I pause to notice the lace bra I had intentionally chosen in the hope he would return today. We meet under a soft cascade.His body leaning on the shower wall, he looks at me and we decide to forgive. “It’s ok” he breathes. * On Sunday morning we wake late and I suggest we take a drive.Keno comes too and we stare down wide roads at trucks and cockatoos.It’s easy. Lemon scented easy. * We fight again on Friday morning and I stay late at work with Michelle, who tells me I’m better off without him. Michelles husband had met someone online and so she had taken the kids to her mums.They were now in negotiations about school picks ups and Christmas.Michelle pours another wine and offers me a glass. Her slick pony tail smells of tea tree. Head lice again at preschool.I hesitate briefly, but politely pass on the wine. He is asleep when I get home, skin sunburnt from hot roofs.I study the new lines forming around his eyes, reminding me of his fathers. The father that had told him to marry.I remember thinking how could it end, if it never begins? I stir sometime around when the sky turns from caliginous grey to red.Keno is beside me whining and panting and there is a pain somewhere low, below my stomach. I look at my underwear pulled half way down. A spot of red.In the toilet bowl. More red.Keno taps at the bathroom door.Another knock, less instinctual, more familiar.He calls the Hospital and there, a doctor confirms what I already know.More instinctual but not so familiar.A statistic is given and no one explains why I feel empty today and yesterday full.I hadn’t even told him. We were going to stop fighting in a day or so and I would tell him that we were now more than two. We drive home and all I see is red.Red dirt,red lightsand tears on red skin. *On the porch again, I am listening to the whispers of the gums. A missed call from mum. His sister and pregnant wife are here in the kitchen, speaking carefully while out of the oven comes a perfectly baked focaccia.Rubbing sea salt and rosemary into the wound. He comes to lean against the splintered doorway. The hinges having given way some days before. He watches me, waiting for when it’s all too hard and he is there to tell me it’s ok.But his hands are shaking and he looks at the floor. Keno is there, at his feet.We were never two.We were this house and everything that came with it.Walking towards them, I touch Keno gently with my foot and brush termite dust from his shirt. It’s ok, I say. He nods and his hands stop shaking. Tomorrow is Sunday, I think we might take a drive.