Free Wind in the Wires by Joy Dettman Page A

with her shoulder swiped at a leaking tear.
    ‘I wasn’t allowed to see him for days, and when I did, his head still looked like a bruised egg. He was scratched, one of his eyes was swollen shut. And he was the most beautiful thing I’d ever seen in my life. And he’s mine, not your bloody sister’s.’ And she tossed the loaf from her, tossed the knife and opened the fridge.
    He stood watching her, the table between them, Jimmy between them. He’d always be between them.
    ‘I’m sorry, Jen.’
    ‘Me too,’ she said, wiping her eyes with her fingers. ‘Granny knew. The minute she saw his hands she knew there’d be trouble with your father. I don’t think she believed he was yours until she saw his tiny double-jointed thumbs. The first things your father looked at were his hands. If Margot’s baby lives, the first things I’ll look at will be its hands. Margot’s inherited the twins’ stubby paws – and I still can’t stand to look at them, can still feel them all over me . . .’ She sniffed, wiped her nose with her forearm.
    ‘Will it live?’ he asked.
    ‘Ask Him,’ she said, pointing with a packet of cheese towards the ceiling. ‘He’s running this bloody show.’ She reached for her frying pan and dropped it. It bounced beneath the table. She picked it up and looked at its dented lip.
    ‘Old when I bought it,’ she said. ‘Cheap. Good enough for me. All my life, second best has been good enough for me. I didn’t wear a new dress until I nicked off to Melbourne and got run over by Georgie’s father.’
    ‘Sit down, Jen.’
    ‘I don’t want to sit down. I want a fried cheese sandwich.’
    Turned on a small hotplate. Placed a knob of butter into the pan. ‘Jimmy wasn’t second best. You weren’t either. Do you think I give a damn about your wooden leg and your screwed-up head? I wouldn’t care if you had three wooden legs, a white cane, were cross-eyed, screwed-up, or otherwise buggered-up, you fool of a man, I love you, and . . . and I need you to hold me before I crack.’
    He held her whether he was second best or not. He kissed her hair, then her face and she wanted his mouth. He got lost there, and when she pulled away from him, he wanted to bawl.
    Men don’t cry. And only the butter burning in that dented pan. She turned off the heat, placed the pan on the sink, then returned to his arms.
    Narrow bed in the kitchen. Jimmy had been conceived on a narrow bed in Monk’s cellar. Jim hadn’t been with a woman before that cellar. Hadn’t been with one since Sydney. Didn’t know if he was man enough to be with a woman.
    An artificial leg can’t be removed without embarrassment, and when it was off, he couldn’t hide the puny stump of scarred calf attached to his knee. Didn’t want her to see his mutilation.
    Be a man , his father said.
    Fear of failure, desperate not to fail, Jimmy between them and Vern Hooper in his head –
    ‘It’s all right,’ she said. ‘I need you, not that. It’s all right.’
    And it was. She hadn’t been with a man since Ray in 1947, and had sworn she’d never do it again. There was peace in the holding of Jim, in him holding her. They were Jen and Jim again. That was all that mattered.

A C ONVOLUTED L IFE
    H e slept in her double bed that night, stayed with her on Sunday, held her hand when they caught the train back to the city and another to Box Hill, then he continued on to his caravan and she walked around to the Keatings’ to claim Raelene – hoping to walk in on a tantrum but meeting a happy Raelene at the door, a Raelene wearing new red shoes.
    ‘I hope you don’t mind, Jenny,’ Florence said.
    ‘They’re very pretty.’
    ‘We had a lovely time. We’d like to do it again next week.’
    ‘We’ll talk about it, Florence,’ Jenny said.
    She spoke to Vroni about renting a flat that week. She had no argument with what went on in the neighbouring rooms – and what would continue to go on in back rooms all over the world while women