Texas by Sarah Hay

it was why she stopped eating and drinking.
    Because someone had to do it for her. Susannah knew that would never happen to John. Looking after him and the children was her reason for existing. Why did she think it could be any different?
    John didn’t seem to know much about Irish other than the fact he was written in as a clause of the station’s purchase agreement. No one was apparently allowed to get rid of him.
    Although John reckoned he could kick him off if he wanted to. ‘What’s he going to do, sue?’ John added, laughing. Susannah looked forward to seeing the old man again. He didn’t expect anything from her.
    She wiped the lino tabletop, watching her hand move in a circular motion, leaving behind little droplets of water, satisfied by the way the dirty marks were being obliterated. The thought of being here indefinitely left her with a vague pain in the head.
    It was as though her mind was overflowing with things that had to be folded away. There was plenty of medication she could take for it in the Flying Doctor medical chest. The heavy grey enamelled chest was kept under the bottom shelf in the pantry. Its key was on the top shelf among all the other keys she was responsible for, keys that opened the stores cupboard and the cool room where the beer was kept. Reading the literature, the chest open, she discovered five closely packed trays, apparently containing eighty-five items. She checked them off against a list and read the manual and worked out how to
    Texas reach the Flying Doctor in an emergency. The possibilities for injury and death out on a station three hours from town seemed almost endless. She settled for a packet of paracetamol, taking two tablets with a glass of water. Rinsing her glass at the sink, she gazed out through the louvres and remembered that John had just asked whether she was happy. Why had it taken him so long?
    In the afternoon she left the boys lining up Matchbox cars like a miniature traffic jam across the floorboards in the sleep-out while she connected the hoses to rusty sprinklers and moved them around the lawn between the trees. Overhead birds darted and dived from one branch to the next, one after another, screeching. She thought of what Ollie had just said. After they had woken from their nap, she had taken them across to the kitchen for a drink and something to eat. He had stopped on the path and looked up at the sky.
    â€˜How high is the sky, Mummy?’ he asked. ‘Like how many metres long is it?’
    It reminded her of how she and a group of girls from boarding school had camped out in the paddock of a farm owned by the parents of one of her friends. They slept in sleeping bags around a mallee-root fire and imagined their lives. Looking up at the stars, the possibilities had seemed endless.
    â€˜When I grow up,’ Ollie said, ‘I’m going to be an astronaut. Mummy, what are you going to be when you grow up?’
    It was too hard to keep up with the news of all her friends’ activities, especially when she had nothing to tell. The spray from the sprinkler arced over the leaves and everything glittered.
    Little birds with black-banded eyes dipped and trilled. She walked across the lawn to the storeroom after collecting the list of stores from the desk in the house. John had produced it last night. She would need to place another order for the second half of the year: all the groceries except perishables for the next six months. They’d come up by truck from Perth. She checked off what they already had. There were cans of food stacked on shelves that bent under their weight. Beans and corn and beetroot arranged at random, and then more cans in unopened boxes on the floor, along with drums of flour and large containers of tea and coffee and sugar and oil. A line of light shone where the walls met the floor, and the gap made her think of snakes. She looked up again and noticed the layer of dust and what may have been mouse