Wind in the Wires by Joy Dettman

she couldn’t pass it over the counter. Ripped it into tiny bits and scattered the bits as she walked home.
    She was ironing in the kitchen when Robert came in. He kissed Myrtle, put his car keys and wallet on the fridge and went to the bathroom to shower. Cara didn’t speak to him. She hadn’t spoken to him for a week.
    And as if he’d care if she was there or not. A week after she was gone they’d both forget she’d ever been born. She was going to Sydney and when she got there, she’d go out to Uncle John’s place and live with them.
    The cases were stored in the garage. She found her own and carried it through the house.
    ‘What do you need with that, pet?’ Myrtle asked.
    ‘I’m going to Sydney.’
    ‘Don’t start that foolishness again.’
    ‘He’s the fool,’ Cara said. She fetched her ironing from the kitchen and tossed it into her case, shoved in the bits that hung over the edges and attempted to close it.
    ‘Robert!’
    He came from the bathroom, clad in trousers and singlet, his hair still wet from the shower. He didn’t stand in the doorway with Myrtle. He walked into the bedroom, picked up the case, emptied what was in it to floor and bed, then returned to the bathroom to finish shaving, and he took the case with him.
    ‘I’ll go in what I’m wearing then,’ Cara yelled.
    ‘I wouldn’t place my last ten bob on that,’ Robert yelled back.
    ‘You’re not my father and you can’t tell me what to do!’
    ‘I wouldn’t place my last ten bob on that either.’
    She didn’t have ten bob to bet with. She didn’t have five bob. Hated Myrtle for cheating on him, hated him more for being fool enough to let her get away with it. Wanted to get Dino to cut HATE into her knuckles – and THEM into her other hand.
    ‘Hang up those clothes,’ he said as he walked by with her case, walked outside to the garage with it.
    She picked up a handful of clothing and chased him, pitching pants and shirts at him. Myrtle collected the scattered garments. She was howling. Robert looked angry – and silly. She didn’t often see his skinny old white arms sticking out of a baggy singlet. He was over sixty and he looked every year of it when he wasn’t wearing a shirt and tie.
    ‘Hang up your clothing then come out to the kitchen and help you mother with dinner.’
    ‘I want my case!’
    ‘Tell her, Robert.’
    ‘Tell me what?’
    ‘That we’ve got this crazy idea that you’ll start coming to your senses in another year or two, and that we plan to be around to see it,’ Robert said.
    ‘What do you care what I do? She had an affair while you were in the war, and you took me in like you’d take in a stray cat –’
    ‘A stray cat might have been easier to live with.’
    ‘I’ve got a right to know who my father was.’
    ‘You’ve just about cancelled any rights you ever had in this house.’
    ‘This house stinks and so do both of you.’
    ‘Your room stinks, as does your behaviour. Pick up your clothing and hang it up.’
    ‘Who did you do it with, Mum? Or did you have so many boyfriends you don’t remember which one he was?’
    Myrtle’s handkerchief was out, and like the fool he was, Robert put his arm around her so she could cry on him.
    ‘I hate the way you crawl around her all the time. How can you crawl around her when she cheated on you?’
    ‘Wash that muck off your face,’ he said. ‘You look like a racoon with conjunctivitis.’
    He didn’t care why her makeup was running. She returned to her bedroom to bawl on her pillow, then changed her mind, stripped the pillow slip from it and began stuffing clothing into it. Stuffed it full then pitched it at the closed door, because she had no intention of going up to Sydney with someone who thought he was a cross between Jimmy Dean and a skull and crossbones bikie, who ten miles out of Traralgon would be trying to shove his tongue down her throat. The only thing she liked about him was his cigarettes.
    She had a packet in her school