On the bus from Seymour, there is the imprint of a pursed pair of thin lips, the misty white triangle of a nose above it and the round ball of a chin. A small face, pressed to the window a time earlier, another one just next to it.
Earlier that morning, in a grey Melbourne drizzle (the memory of which evaporates the further I get into the country) a friend tells me she grew up in Seymour and I think of her as I pass a complex of uniform beige tin warehouses – a Curves gym, a signmaker, a mechanic. This is her town. The bus passes mothers with their daughters and sons in tow, all wearing shorts, buying ice cream from the corner store, jumping up and down their white porches, texting three abreast on the sidewalk. What must it be like spending long summer days living a life here? I look at every place as a site of activity. An empty carpark where teenagers trespass and smoke? A bakery where they get their first job? I don’t care much for the adults. Someone else can think of them.
I feel a bubbling moment of inexplicable happiness, with the sun glaring on the left side of my face and the roads seemingly empty from our height. I love that I have left behind Melbourne’s cold winds, my suitcase full of books. I am looking forward to seeing Ruth. The moment is brief but strong, and I hope to make it grow, or keep it with me.
Jacobson’s Lookout, a stretch of water at our first stop. The shine of sun on the chopped up glass of a small lake adds lustre to a country town. The glitter makes everything a little brighter.
Before the bus, I was on a train. I fell asleep, the deep drymouthed head-tipping sleep that feels like a significant blip in time. Drool spots the corner of my mouth as I wake, the woman in front of me anxiously checking her watch. This is such familiar sleep, like a quick drop of the curtains before they lift to a brand new view. A necessary transition – the seamless blur of moving from one place to another.
The house is gleaming wooden floors and other people’s bedrooms. Ruth removes the porcelain doll in my temporary room, on my request. I see it lying down on another bed as I walk down the hallway to the bathroom.
I slip into the indentation of their leather couch, into the rubbery blue of their pool. I look at the cerulean blue of my dress hem against the black tights covering my knees as I read a whole book in the lazy afternoon, in this cool, high-ceilinged house. There are details everywhere that remind me I am not at home, that I am “away”. The dogs pant at the door, and bring us balls and toys as entreaties, and we ignore them because we are not dog people, and we are not much into play.
I come home with a dozen stories in my brain, and another layer of tan. My suitcase wobbles behind me as I drag it home, and the sun is a bright dot in the sky, setting behind the train windows. Moving, always moving.
