Joel & Cat Set the Story Straight

by Nick Earls

  She pops her head round the doorway, ‘He looked fine when I saw him after school yesterday.’ She disappears again. I forgot that she saw him yesterday.

  ‘Well, don’t let looks fool you – it’s a slippery slope to obesity. One more packet of Tim Tams and Dr Phil will be calling you Mark’s “enabler”.’

  My mother reappears around the corner, a smile on her face. She’s dressed in a purple silk sarong decorated with green-and-red swirls. It’s wrapped around her chest and then knotted – halter-neck style – around her neck. I thought asking her to get changed would make her look more normal, but it doesn’t. She doesn’t. She takes a seat.

  ‘This thing between you and Dad is affecting Mark. You know what he did in class yesterday, don’t you?’ I grab a Tim Tam, then I think better of it and put it back. ‘I went to pick him up and Miss Clelland told me that when they were all singing The Wheels on the Bus Go Round and Round and she asked Mark for a suggestion for lyrics – you know, like “the horn on the bus goes beep beep beep” or “the wipers on the bus go swoosh swoosh swoosh” – you know what Mark said? He suggested vaginas. “Vaginas on the bus go la la la.” And before Miss Clelland could do anything the kids just ran with it.’

  My mother laughs at this. Laughs at my brother’s vagina lyrics. I watch as she bites into a Tim Tam. ‘Come on, Cat. That’s pretty funny.’ She winks at me. ‘I s’pose he hears words like that because of your father’s job. And they were only going “la la la”, after all. Not that I’ve ever known one to do that. I’m sure Miss Clelland thought it was funny.’

  ‘Yeah, sure. I’m sure she was cracking up about it as she DIALLED FAMILY SERVICES.’ I turn to look at my mother. ‘Yesterday I asked him to set the table and he told me to shut my cakehole. This split is affecting him. He needs you at home.’

  My mother puts down her apple juice and leans forward. ‘And what about you, Cat? What do you need?’

  She looks at me. I look at the nearest parrot.

  ‘Cat?’

  ‘I couldn’t care less where you live.’ Even out of the corner of my eye I can see my mother’s face fall. I watch her flick her fringe out of her eyes, and she says, ‘Well, okay… I, ah, think I need some ice for my drink.’

  For some reason I can’t bring myself to tell my mum how desperately I want her back. I don’t know why. It’s like the evil me wants to see how badly I can hurt her feelings – the way she hurt mine by leaving.

  ‘I have a spare room and everything, with two beds,’ she says, sliding an ice tray back into the freezer. ‘For the two of you, for whenever you want to stay.’ She points towards the bedroom door, trying to convince me to take a peek inside. ‘I went out and bought all the latest magazines that I know you love reading and I put a stereo in there and there’s heaps of closet space so I thought maybe you could even leave a few clothes here. Now, this place isn’t airconditioned, but when I signed the lease the real estate agent said the owner was planning to put in –’

  Lease?

  I interrupt her. ‘Mark shouldn’t have to get a train to Toowong to see his mother. He’s five years old. You should be at home. With us. With Dad. You don’t even look like you’re trying to work this out.’

  ‘Cat, believe me, I’ve tried.’

  ‘Dad’s not coping. He keeps listening to Tina Turner, keeps playing “Private Dancer”. And he’s drinking all the time. He drank my graduation champagne.’

  My mother nods at this, at least, and leans against the kitchen doorframe. ‘Your father rang my mobile eighteen times last night.’ Her tone is weary.

  ‘Was it that bad, living with us? Are we that horrible?’ Despite my best efforts, my eyes fill with tears.

  ‘Of course not, of course not,’ she says, rushing towards me, back to the lounge. Holding my hands. Patting my back.

  And then she’s talking at me. Telling me that I need to understand that she and Dad haven’t been happy for a long time. That work and kids changed their relationship. She tells me that all the spontaneity is gone. That all they do now is fight about money. That there are too many nights when they have nothing to say to each other. And that Dad’s long hours were never part of the deal. She goes on and on about how she gave up university to have me. About how she has all these unfulfilled dreams as Vanessa Lang – the person she was before she married my father. Before she had us kids and her life became all about lunch boxes and soccer practice.

  ‘I need to get to know myself again, Cat. My likes and dislikes. Who I am underneath the labels of wife and mother. Aunty Fiona is loaning me the money to rent this apartment for a while. I’m looking for a job, and I’m actually thinking of going back and studying design. I had plans to open my own interior-decorating business when I met your father, and before I knew it I was pregnant and final exams were –’

  ‘I can’t…’ I get up from the couch. ‘I can’t have this conversation with you. You’re my mother. I don’t want to hear about you being unhappy and feeling like Mark and I are the two biggest mistakes you’ve made.’

  ‘No,’ she reaches out for my hand. ‘I didn’t say that! Darling, I didn’t mean it to sound…’

  But it’s too late, I’m walking out the door of unit number eleven to the sound of my mother’s voice calling me back.

  I don’t go home right away. Instead I walk to the Toowong Library, just down and across the road from my mother’s unit, and spend the rest of the afternoon sitting in front of one of the library computers. I google ‘marriage counselling’ and ‘couples’ therapy’ and ‘sugar addiction’. I read the first chapter of Dr Phil’s Relationship Rescue and download his Relationship Autopsy for couples, minimising the page whenever anyone walks past or lingers around my carousel. I pray that no one from school turns up, and I decide that I will simply announce that I’m doing an assignment on divorce for Legal Studies, or Australian Society or Religion. After thirty minutes of solid reading, I feel as convinced as the bald Texan doctor that my parents’ relationship has simply hit a slump and that, with a bit of work, it is entirely salvageable. Except that I think my parents need more than a book. They need counselling. Outside help. I go back to one of the sites I bookmarked earlier: Re-Relate Australia. This is what my parents need. And my dad, right now I think, needs some support. People to talk to. Someone to point him in the right direction and get him back on his feet. Mum, on the other hand, just needs some clothing.

  I print off the information and put an asterisk next to the bit about the variety of ‘Abandoned Partners’ support groups that are available, and an even bigger asterisk next to the paragraph about the counselling for couples who are having marital difficulties. And, while I’m at it, I put a mark next to the session for people going through a midlife crisis. I decide to leave this information on my dad’s pillow and to raise it with Mum next time I see her.

  When I get home and walk through the front door I trip over Mark’s rollerblades.

  ‘Shit,’ I say, more ferociously than usual. I stay on the ground for a moment with my eyes closed, feeling as though any sharp, quick movement could see my entire insides shattered. Eventually I get up. Straighten my skirt.

  My dad appears round the corner wearing a pair of faded, baggy-in-the-bum tracksuit pants and an old Heineken T-shirt. His face remains unshaven.

  ‘Did you go and see your mother?’

  I nod and continue walking down the hallway.

  ‘How is she?’

  ‘She’s signed a lease.’ I keep walking, don’t look back, because we both know what this means. She’s not coming back anytime soon.

  By six-thirty, my stomach is audibly rumbling and I realise I’ve barely eaten anything today. For the briefest moment I wonder what we’ll be having for tea. And then the realisation hits – we’ll be having whatever I decide to make. In less than a week, my life has completely and utterly changed. Now, my before-school routine involves putting on a load of washing and hanging it out. And yesterday, in a newsagent with Emma, I actually bought a c
ookbook called Easy Dinners. Emma was so shocked I had to tell her it was for Mum’s birthday. But before I can think about dinner, before I can be freed from my desk, I need to respond to Joel. Joel and his ridiculous paragraph. Joel who I am beginning to resent even more because of his repeated attempts to make this harder than it needs to be. I have other more important things in my life right now. Not that he’d understand. He’s a typical spoilt only child who probably has nothing to worry about but himself. I bet his mum does everything for him. I bet she makes all his meals and does all his washing and ironing and drives him around. All the stuff my mum used to do for me.

  Joel, Joel, Joel,

  If the only people who get to see Max’s ‘mad eyes’ are his victims, explain to me how exactly they get to spread a nickname? Or do you envisage the victims are all whipping out mobiles and SMSing their mates as the icicle goes through their flesh, saying, ‘I’m being iced to death by Max “Mad Eyes” Eislander… pass it on.’

  Would it kill you to try a bit harder, Joel? I’ve got enough on my plate right now without having to fix up your work.

  Cat

  A crashing wave of guilt hits Elizabeth as she stares at the black-and-white photograph of Christopher on her dressing-table. She walks down the hallway, smiles weakly at Anna who is heading towards the boudoir with the usual tray of Lady Grey tea accompanied by a selection of breakfast delicacies. With just the merest nod of her head, Elizabeth indicates that Anna should set the tray for her in the drawing room. Elizabeth watches Anna’s heel turn the corner and then picks up the heavy, gold receiver of the phone, dials the number and makes what will be the first of today’s many calls to Dr Manning. There was a small incident last night, he says. When refused a second serving of custard, Christopher put on his Batman costume and then went into the music room and started playing Copacabana over and over and over on the old upright. Dr Manning explains delicately that they had no choice but to sedate him, place him in a straightjacket and then lead him back to his room – a safe, padded place, where Christopher can’t hurt himself. Elizabeth sighs and says, ‘Not again.’ She had never understood Christopher’s love of custard.

  – Sunday

  What the? The expression ‘lost the plot’ is suddenly meaningful to me in a way it never has been before.

  Is there even such a thing as Lady Grey tea? I thought it was Earl Grey tea. What next? Young Master Grey tea? Ralph Grey tea? Earl Grey’s Crossbred Dachshund tea? To be served in the boudoir with a selection of breakfast delicacies? Jesus. Can’t people just have a piece of toast or two before the paragraph actually starts? Do we have to live through their poncy breakfasts? The Davis household at breakfast time must be even worse than I imagined, all fine china with little fingers extended.

  Except Cat’s mother’s in hospital at the moment, so maybe I should go easy on how they’re handling breakfast. Besides, at my place there are nights when we serve up packet tacos as if they’re a Central American festival, until the whole clumsy house of cards built by Jorge the Liar folds in on itself.

  What’s got into Cat? She must have read my email before I saw her at Indooroopilly and she didn’t seem to have any issue with me then. After that she goes home and I cop this tirade. And this unfollowable piece-of-crap paragraph. But why should I be surprised? She was a mess at Indooroopilly. She could hardly have been stranger. Her mother was in a coma, or just drowsy, or sick with appendicitis, and, as her story was ducking and weaving, Cat seemed to be manoeuvring as if she was setting up to headbutt Luke. And then she was gone. Maybe it’s not appendicitis that her mother’s got. Maybe it’s something much worse and Cat couldn’t talk about it. Maybe her mother’s mad on custard, all superheroed up and tinkling the ivories in some locked ward across town.

  My mother, on the other hand, varies between melancholy and indignation, with a little self-loathing thrown in from time to time to keep me on my toes.

  Jorge Rivera, poor war-damaged master of salsa, has been unmasked as Enzo de Pasquale, taco klutz and fruit packer from the Rocklea markets, son or grandson of Italian migrants to North Queensland. The closest he’s been to war is the occasional turn he’s had on my PlayStation 2. So, no more of that hot Latin dancing for my mother at the moment.

  ‘I trusted him…’ The words come as though out of a grinder, forced under pressure, her jaw clenched. She’s on the sofa this morning, glaring at the river, a mug of unfinished coffee and a dishevelled newspaper nearby. ‘Why are they all…’ Then she lets her fists go loose, shakes her head. ‘Some. It can’t be all. It can’t be all men.’ She stares outside, saying nothing, then flares again. ‘But why are they such liars? Cheats and liars and hopeless bloody disappointments.’ Then back to the staring. Is she counting to ten? She looks my way. ‘Don’t mind me,’ she says, with a new fierce-eyed personality that’s all about false calm. ‘I’m just ventilating.’ Ventilating. The word could not have been more carefully, deliberately chosen if it had been lowered in by forceps. ‘It’s therapeutic. It’s necessary. At least it’s honest…’ The tone of her voice is again on the rise. ‘Which is more than you can say for…’ She stops, purses her lips, breathes like a weightlifter.

  My mother, right in front of me, is ransacking every dubious self-help book she owns for crisis-coping strategies, and coming across as if our next good option is probably a complicated exorcism.

  ‘I feel kind of bad, making all that happen the other night, but –’

  ‘Bad? Bad?’ she says, as if I’m crazy to suggest it. ‘I’ve been living a lie and you brought it out into the open. Painful, but necessary. The way you and Betty ran your good-cop bad-cop routine…’ She gives a smile, but it’s not entirely real. ‘It was just what I needed. Though I’m not sure who was the good cop and who was the bad cop. I think you might have been the bad cop. That’s the only “bad” thing going on. From your point of view anyway. Jorge was a liar. I needed to see it for myself.’

  She shrugs, as if it suddenly matters less. I know it doesn’t. ‘Your pH is up a touch,’ Luke says indignantly as soon as his head surfaces for the first time. ‘Who looks after this pool?’

  ‘How can you tell it’s up?’

  ‘It’s a feel thing,’ he says, like a jaded star who has been asked the question far too many times. ‘Trust me, it’s up. Not by too much, though.’

  I fling the old tennis ball at the water, and it skids off and into his left hand. He throws it back. He’s been working with his father, servicing pools at other blocks of units in the area. His father’s now off doing some quotes.

  ‘Your mother,’ he says, as the ball slaps into his hand again. ‘She’s not too good today.’

  ‘No. It’s a rollercoaster ride up there on the sixth floor. Well, it would be if there were some high bits.’

  ‘You had to do it, though.’ He takes a look at the ball, tries to smooth down some of the wet fluff. ‘You knew he was a fake, so you had to let her know.’

  ‘Well, yeah. But I kind of liked it. There was this evil moment of triumph. He’d been irritating me for a while so –’

  ‘You had to let her know.’

  He hurls the ball flat against the water, it bounces high, hits my thumb and I just miss the catch on my second grab.

  ‘Yeah, I guess. I prefer life when she’s not feeling like shit, though.’

  ‘Sure. And this is all about your life, isn’t it? Not really about her. I hope she’s aware it’s having this negative impact on you.’ He laughs, but the splash of the ball in front of his face stops him, or at least interrupts him. His head snaps back instinctively, but he catches the ball cleanly in front of his nose. The water settles. ‘So, how about Cat Davis at Indooroopilly yesterday?’

  ‘Yeah, what was that about? The vague answers, the weird ducking around, making herself shorter.’

  ‘I didn’t get to say this at the time…’ He throws the ball hard. It skims the water and again I don’t take it cleanly. ‘Since I had to go. But I think she’s hot for you, man. She we
nt all blotchy, just seeing you. I think she knows you don’t like tall chicks and she wants you bad. She’d shrink for you, or at least crouch a lot.’

  ‘I thought we were talking about my mother, and my selfish outlook on life.’ My throw goes wrong, and the ball bounces high and slowly, and plops into the water in front of him.

  ‘We were. And we’re agreed. You’re selfish, and you think your mother should snap out of it because she’s bringing the mood down. And now we’ve moved on, and it’s about Cat Davis. About Cat Davis wanting a big hot slice of the Joel.’

  ‘I think that’s highly unlikely.’ This needs to be squashed, and quickly. And I don’t know when I became ‘the Joel’. ‘That whole definite article thing – I’m not sure it’s how anyone’s thinking.’

  ‘She was going all dreamy-eyed and dizzy.’

  ‘She was neither of those, and you know it. She was strange and maybe even disturbed, and her mother could be quite sick.’ Or maybe she likes me. Surely not. That’s all Luke’s idea – Cat Davis dreamy-eyed and dizzy at the sight of the Joel. Okay, I’ve got to get over that thought pretty quickly, particularly the part that goes ‘the Joel’. ‘The way Cat treats me… it’s a veneer of politeness on top of a big slab of inexplicable hatred. That’s the extent of our relationship.’

  ‘I bet she emailed you last night.’ He’s giving me a knowing look, tossing the ball from hand to hand, and water’s spinning off it.

  ‘She had to email me last night, dickhead, and you know it.’

  ‘She just loves riding the tandem with her Joel.’

  ‘You’re insane. And that “tall chicks” thing is insane. Throw the ball.’ He doesn’t throw the ball, and we both know I’ll keep protesting. ‘I’d take ’em any height. I’d stand on a box if I had to. But not for the deeply disturbed Cat Davis. Could be drugs, Lukey. You’ve got to watch these kids.’