Tess by Kirsten McDougall

Author:Kirsten McDougall
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Victoria University Press

Tess walked the bike home with Toby loping beside her, his tongue out. The heavy cloud had moved out to the ranges and the sun burnt fierce through a clear patch of sky. The air was thick and she felt winded by it all. She hadn’t imagined how Jonti would be, but it made sense now she’d met him. In some respects, he wasn’t so different from her. She just hid her strangeness better. People like Jonti, like Tess, weren’t cut to fit this world.

Just as they reached the driveway, Toby sniffed, picked up his pace and ran off across the front lawn and around to the back garden. Tess wheeled the bike up the gravel and leaned it against the side of the house, thinking of the last bit of work she’d do before Lewis got home. She was tired, deflated, but she could do another hour at a slow pace. She came around the corner and saw what Toby had run to.

On the back lawn, in the full glare of the sun, a young woman was lying on a towel, wearing only her bikini pants, her breasts bare. A thick pelt of yellow hair spilled around her head like a wild halo. It was startling: something was both natural and staged about the scene—like glossy pictures in a National Geographic of a lioness grooming herself. The woman was beautiful.

Tess knew who she was from the photos Lewis kept on the mantelpiece: Jean. And there was Toby, already lying on his back, submissive beside her, as if he’d been there all afternoon. Her hand was on his stomach, and Tess could hear her talking to him low and soft. Tess wanted to call out, to indicate she was here, but her voice was stuck in her throat.

Tess thought of the lioness, but also of a queen, a queen of some superior tribe. Jean’s body indicated possession of her domain, luxuriant on a towel, as if the towel were an extension of the house and the garden, and both were in her sphere of control. Her skin was tanned and her breasts were like those in the Penthouse magazines Benny kept under the bed. Tess had not seen breasts like this in real life. She’d paged through the magazines when he was out, running her hand over those glossy bodies. There was something thrilling about these women with their breasts like perfect cakes. Her own were insignificant lumps on her chest, barely flesh. How reduced she felt next to women like this, a weed grown in the shade, whereas the young woman in front of her was a hothouse plant. Tess cleared her throat. Jean startled and sat bolt upright.

‘Who the fuck are you?’ A look of annoyance on her face. But she didn’t cover her breasts, just glared at Tess.

‘Sorry, I didn’t mean to frighten you.’ Her voice sounded pathetic, apologetic. ‘I’m Tess. You’re, um, Jean, aren’t you?’

‘Is that your shit in my room?’

Jean’s sunglasses slipped down her nose,

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