The
truck had the company name on the side, done with a home-made stencil and pink
spray-paint:
TOBY AND BINAAR: REMOVALIST SERVICE
Dina rode in the truck
all day with the two happy young men and listened to their enthusiastic singing
with bemusement. They had a fondness for Cheryl Cole.
The trip took under an
hour once they got on to Windsor Road, and for the last five minutes of it they
were free of the established suburbs and driving through flat, old farmland. Here
the mountains loomed as a thick blue line on the horizon, and to Dina it seemed
that the distance between was broken only by a few fences and stands of wind-break
trees.
‘Going to the new house,’ Binaar sang,
adlibbing between CD tracks.
‘Going to the McSuburb,’ Toby added.
Dina smiled and said, ‘It’s not a
McSuburb, it’s a “curated residential experience”.’
The boys laughed through the next chorus, as
the wide gates of Dina’s new suburb slid into view on the left. The polished
stone plaque glinted at them in the afternoon sun:
“Greenhills on Windsor – your life starts here”
*
Dina
stood on the new-laid road in front of her new beige house and watched the
removal van drive away. It was done. All her stuff was in one place again.
‘They would not stop singing the whole
time!’ Angela, her wife, was messing around with the front screen door with a
phone hanging from her ear. ‘I reckon Dina liked it, meant she didn’t have to
speak to them. Hang on. Hey! Coming in?’ she called, waving, then the wave
turned into a vicious slap to her bare forearm, ‘Shit, these mozzies.’
Dina turned to her wife. ‘You signed on
the dotted line, remember?’
‘Yeah, but I wanted to live next to a picturesque wetland, like it had on the
pamphlet. Fuckers didn’t mention it came with a mosquito-specific Hellmouth.’
‘We will live next to a wetland, but
they’ve got to finish building it first. You saw the satellite images, there
was barely a creek running through here before.’
Angela slapped at her arm again.
‘Shit off!’ she snarled, then spoke to
Dina in a pained voice, ‘Seriously, come inside. I need to pretend we have
neighbours.’
‘Give me a minute,’ Dina said.
The sun was sinking low, and if she
squinted she could almost imagine that the house on the next block over had a
roof. With a little more effort she could pretend that the expanse beyond was a
new suburb full of green smells and warm rectangles of light, and not three
acres of torn soil awaiting forty-eight identical beige houses. There were
dozens of concrete slabs down, and the four lots next to hers had their timbers
in. Only her house, No.2 Parkway Close, was finished, aside from the show-home,
No.1 Parkway Close, which was the developer’s office and was empty between 5pm
and 9am. The two houses sat opposite each other in the deepening gloom like
guardian monoliths locked in an unblinking stand-off. Dina stood between them
on the road and gave a sigh, breathing in the rich smell of cooling soil.
Maybe the imagining would be easier in half an hour when the sunset was sufficiently advanced, and then maybe she wouldn’t spend the night trying to shake the feeling she was becalmed, her house a beige boat on a clay sea. She went inside.
*
Dina
and Angela took breakfast in what would become their sliver of a backyard.
There was no fence or grass yet; it was a trampled patch of soil full of
crumbly concrete from their slab, but they had brought a bench for the pavers by
the back door. Dina sipped her tea and stared out over the dirt expanse while
Angela sat forward, eating watermelon and spitting the seeds out.
‘This is so weird,’ Dina said, as she rubbed
the night’s grit from her eyes; this morning it was dirt-coloured, ‘I can’t
stop thinking about all the trees that used to be here. It’s that smell. It’s pushing buttons in my head.’
‘I know, it’s strong, eh? Binaar reckons
it’s ‘cause they dug down to the clay layer.’
‘And it’s really quiet. I thought there
were supposed to be crews out today?’
‘Me too. You should go over and ask
Connie,’ Angela said, chomping and spitting.
‘Her name’s not Connie.’
‘Uh-uh. She works in a developer’s office,
her name is Connie.’
Dina looked at the ground where the pips –
dozens, now – were hidden amid the dirt and gravel. The soil was trampled;
evidence of work boots and wheel barrows and Utes and small,
caterpillar-wheeled machinery, with the bottle tops and cigarette butts and sandwich
wrappings that came with them.
Just then the wind picked up, whipping
red-brown silt from the drying dirt and throwing it into the air. The field
before them transformed into something otherworldly: a ruddy haze obscuring the
distance and great curls and waves of dust dancing ever higher into the sky
above. Angela began to splutter.
‘Bugger this for a joke,’ she said as she
took her watermelon inside.
Dina sat mesmerised until her vision was
obscured with tears and she, too, fled into the house. Angela was running around
closing doors and windows and swearing every time a gust blew grit into her
face. Within fifteen minutes, the haze was higher than their house.
‘It’s a sign,’ Angela said.
‘You think the ghosts of the trees are
sending us a message?’
‘Yes. It’s that we should get on with the
unpacking before our mortgage eats us alive.’
Dina sighed.
‘Let’s start upstairs,’ she said.
*
It
rained that night, clearing the air and washing wet swathes of red-brown stain
into the gutters, across the concrete slabs, and on to the roofs and beige
walls of Nos. 1 and 2 Parkway Close. Dina woke to the sound of Angela banging
around downstairs.
‘Good morning,’ Dina said as she stepped
into the family room. The back door was wide open and a chill breeze swept in,
forcing her to wrap her dressing gown tight. Angela poked her head around the
corner from the kitchen.
‘Fucking. Dust. Everywhere,’ she said, then
resumed sweeping.
Dina looked around, blinking the night’s
fog from her eyes. Every surface had a coating of fine, red-brown dust.
‘Wow,’ she said, ‘is this… more than yesterday?’
‘Yeah. And I closed everything! Might have
to pack the ventilation holes with tissues… ’
Outside the morning sun was drawing steam
out of the dirt in little curls that turned to chaos when the wind grabbed
them. Angela tossed the broom aside and snatched up the dustpan.
‘… and I tried to speak to Connie about it
when she drove in this morning, but she was yelling at someone on the phone. Totally
ignored me. You notice there are no crews out again, today? Construction was
supposed to be kicking along,’ Angela continued, trailing off to a mutter as
she closed her eyes, ‘Christ. I hope the developers haven’t gone bankrupt or
something.’
‘Let’s go for a walk, get away from this,’
Dina said.
‘There’s nothing within walking distance
except more dirt,’ Angela said bluntly.
Dina stood back as Angela bustled around
the back room, sweeping the surfaces with grim determination.
‘I’ll… go unpack things that won’t stain,’
Dina said.
The hours passed, and Dina woke from an
unintentional afternoon nap to the sound of the front door slamming. She opened
the bedroom window – immediately flinching from the dust-laden breeze – to see
Angela throwing her bag into the car.
‘Where are you going?’ Dina called.
Angela looked up, squinting, and flapped a
hand at her angrily.
‘Close that damn window!’ she cried.
‘Sorry! But what… why are you charging off
without even saying bye?’
‘I can’t! I fucking can’t! The dirt has it
in for me!’
Dina shut the window and hurried
downstairs, just catching Angela before she drove away.
‘Hey!’
Angela wound down the window. ‘You keep unpacking, okay? I’m going to figure something out. I’ll be back in an hour or so.’
*
Dina
closed the front door and turned to face her empty house. The smell of the dust
was less potent than the smell of the clay outside, but it was drier, more intrusive.
She stood with it until the sun dropped low and a shaft of light from the
kitchen window broke across her ankles, and the sound of a car door stirred her
from her reverie. It wasn’t Angela; the timbre was wrong. The next moment Dina
was turning the door handle and hurrying into the street.
‘Connie,’ she cried, ‘Wait!’
The woman glanced up at her from the boot
of her car, a scowl on her face and a phone at her ear. Dina realised her
blunder too late.
‘Oh, sorry! Um, I don’t remember your
name. Can I just ask you about the–’
Connie slammed the boot shut, and strode
to the driver’s door.
‘No, Jeff,’ she said, ‘I’m not interesting
in tabling something. I’m suffocating here!’ As she got into the car she threw
a nasty hiss in Dina’s direction, ‘These people are beasts!’
With that she slammed the door and drove
away.
Dina frowned, then strode up the driveway
of No.1 and banged on the door.
‘Hello?’ she called, ‘Anyone? Whoever the
hell works with not-Connie? I’m a resident and I have some bloody questions!’
When no answer came, she peered through
the front window. What was the formal living room in No.2 was the main office
in No.1, complete with curved reception desk and binder-lined bookshelves. It
was unbelievably clean: nothing in the bin, no post-its, and no plants. Connie
didn’t seem like a neat type; she seemed like an
eating-fish-tacos-over-her-keyboard type.
Dina glanced over at No.2, at the empty
driveway. Ribbons of red dust tumbled down the street ahead of the breeze,
coming to rest in the gutters for only a moment before a gust picked them up
and rolled them out again. An uncomfortable feeling stirred in her guts.
A moment later she had picked up a
fist-sized lump of concrete from among the chunks of clay in No.1’s front
garden.
It took more force than she expected to
break the glass. The month-old deadbolt turned smoothly and she was in, sneaking
behind Connie’s desk with a dreadful excitement running through her bones. The
desk bore only a stack of blank paper, a few pens, a laptop, and a printer.
Dina poked the laptop tentatively. It was made of cardboard, with a high-res
print of a keyboard and screen, and an exploratory prod told her the printer
was similarly constructed. She looked around, taking in the stock photos of a smiling,
blonde, white woman, and on instinct she walked to the bookshelves and pulled
out a binder.
Empty.
Another instinct – a firmer, and more
troubling, one – led her inexorably down the hall to the back room. A breeze
reached her from somewhere, bringing with it the smell of damp, freshly cut
grass. Dina looked up, and out at the yard.
It was green.
She slid the glass door aside and stepped
out into a garden – a metre wide sliver of green boxed in by a tight fence of corrugated
teal panelling. Sunset was fading, and the encroaching night brought with it a
lone dog barking, voices and laughter from nearby, and music – a familiar
refrain that drew Dina out the back gate and down the access path to the road.
“I
see it, I want it, I stunt, yellow-bone it.
I dream it, I work
hard, I grind ’til I own it…”
Dina
smiled, some of her anxiety fading. Before her sat the neighbourhood of her
imaginings: the rectangles of light, the lawns and trees, the scent of
eucalypts. And someone was playing Beyoncé.
Confused
but elated, she turned to see her own house. Her mouth fell open. The windows
were dark, the front garden was a trampled mess of dirt and weeds, and the
garage door was ajar in a way that suggested a serious hoarding problem. The
sweet night breeze brought a rush of dust, and the smell of clay.
Dina
turned around, staring at the lawns and young trees, the clean modern frontages
and wood-panelled detail under-lit from the garden beds – a whole suburb of
gallery spotlights – and back to the squat goblin that sat on her land. She
swallowed, her throat thick with grit.
Just
then, strange sound reached her: a gentle shoosh-shoosh, coming from behind and
some distance away. She turned. A man was wandering along the gutter, carrying
a hand-held pesticide sprayer. As she watched, he deposited a barrage of
strategic sprays into a drain.
Dina
regarded him silently for many moments. He looked up and waggled the sprayer so
that the reservoir sloshed.
‘You
should keep clear, Miss. This ain’t good for humans, neither.’
He
began spraying again, and Dina quickly scuttled up the nearest driveway. Behind
her, the front door opened and she was flooded with inviting light and Beyoncé
coming from quality speakers.
‘Oh
hi! You must be new. Please, come in!’
The woman’s face was familiar, and Dina found herself agreeing automatically.
*
Dina
stood in the entry hall to a house that was identical to her own. The music was
coming from the living room, accompanied by low conversation. In the hall was a
man dressed from head to toe in pastel yellow. He was leaning into a golf
swing, sans club.
‘Tok!
Whoooosh!’ he said, as he mimed watching the ball disappear into the distance. A
trio of spectators clapped dutifully.
Dina
stepped into the living room and was confronted by a group of blonde women who
smiled at her with their teeth.
‘Oh
hi!’
‘You’re
so interesting!’
‘Where’s
your husband?’
‘Yes,
we must introduce him to the boys.’
Dina
looked over at the group of men standing nearby. They were gathered in the
middle of the room, listening to the surround sound focal point with
expressions of intense concentration. None of them moved. Dina was quietly
crafting a polite dodge for both the concepts of ‘husband’ and ‘the boys’ when
she realised the women weren’t paying attention; they had resumed their
conversation the moment she broke eye-contact.
‘Oh,
honey! They sell pre-sliced eggplant, now?’
‘Game
changer!’
There
was another round of applause from the hallway.
No-one
noticed Dina backing carefully into the kitchen, putting distance between her
and the teeth.
“Sometimes
I go off (I go off), I go hard (I go hard)
Get what’s mine
(take what’s mine), I’m a star (I’m a star)”
The fridge was huge; double doors in
chrome that matched the kettle and toaster. Dina walked by the marble-topped
island, running her fingers along the cool stone until she reached the
microwave nook. Without looking, she prodded the microwave and was unsurprised
to feel it shift a good inch: cardboard was very light, after all. She wandered
over and leant on the toaster heavily and precisely, her elbow sinking through
it until it no longer resembled an appliance so much as a punched hat. The
kettle she knocked to the floor, where it rolled until it ran up against a
small pile of red dust.
The night had grown colder, and Dina
shivered as she stepped out into the backyard. She had taken only a step
towards the back gate when a glint caught her eye.
There, sitting in the metre-wide strip of
grass that comprised the backyard, was a ride-on lawnmower. Dina stared at it
for a long while, until the song filtering through from the party behind her
died away and the silence that followed sent a jolt of fear down her spine.
She had remembered where she had seen the
hostess’ face before.
The
mower forgotten, Dina threw the latch and ran out the garden gate. She ran
straight through No.1, not daring to look at the stock photos as she passed. She
emerged into the quiet and dust of her street just in time to see Angela step
out of the car with a grin on her face. With a triumphant flourish she popped
the boot and showed Dina a box containing an over-sized, industrial vacuum
cleaner.
‘Look! The damn
dust doesn’t stand a chance!’
‘Ange, call Toby
and Binaar. Tell them to come back first thing tomorrow.’
‘What? Why?’
‘We can’t live
here. No-one can.’
Angela gave her wife a long look, and then quietly pulled her phone from her pocket.
