Joel & Cat Set the Story Straight

by Nick Earls

  He shrugs, nods as if it’s not a bad suggestion. He starts spinning the ball from one hand to the other. ‘Teamwork,’ he says. ‘Nice.’

  ‘Do you know how they finish off the examination for suspected appendicitis?’

  He narrows his eyes, gives it some thought, shakes his head. ‘Nuh. Take your temperature?’

  My turn to shake my head. ‘They stick their finger…’ A pause, since I can still hardly believe it myself. ‘Up your arse.’

  The ball flips out of his hand and off somewhere under the bench. He blinks. His mouths gapes. And then he laughs and laughs, laughs until he pinches his nose because he tells me he’s about to blow pastry out of it. My pastry.

  ‘Up your arse?’ he squawks loudly, when he finds the breath to do it. ‘Up your arse?’ Getting louder. ‘Why in god’s name would he stick his finger up your arse?’

  The nearby handball games stop. The lunchtime clamour stops. A tennis ball bounces a final few times, then rolls until it stops too. Ten people, fifteen maybe, are staring in our direction.

  ‘Nothing to see here,’ I tell them. ‘No finger, no arse. Keep moving.’

  ‘Yep,’ Luke says, also loud enough for them all to hear, as if he’s helping me out. ‘Nothing weird going on. It was just Cat Davis’s dad.’

  The bell rings for us to go into class, and a rumour walks off in all directions. Luke picks up his books from the bench and starts laughing again. He holds up his right index finger and inspects it. Looks at me.

  ‘Extension English,’ he says. ‘Are you ready for this? You and Doctor Finger’s daughter?’

  ‘And I haven’t even told you half of it yet. I haven’t told you Sunday.’ I lift my pile of books, and we walk towards the classroom block.

  ‘He did you again on Sunday?’ His mouth has that stupid gape thing going for a second time.

  ‘He didn’t “do” me ever. All right? There was no “doing”. There was a medical examination.’

  ‘In which your ass got worked over by an old orange man.’

  ‘That’s the one. And then on Sunday, Cat told me why Emma dumped me. Remember that? Remember that mystery? Not such a mystery now. She saw me at Indooroopilly with Laurel. She didn’t know Laurel, so she thought I was cheating on Emma. So I get dumped. And a mere fifteen months later, the facts come to light and that’s when I find out all about it. When it’s long gone and all kinds of people probably think I’m some cheat.’

  We’re at the steps and the classroom’s upstairs. The second bell will go any minute.

  ‘You’re probably fine now,’ he says nonchalantly. ‘Even if they did talk about it, we sorted that out today. Cheating’s of practically no interest compared with you being the guy who got the finger love from Doctor D.’

  ‘There is no finger love. All right? Finger, yes. Love, no. There is no love. Just an extreme lack of privacy in the midst of an annoying life.’

  We start up the steps and, when we get to the top, I can see Cat Davis approaching the classroom from the other direction. She looks at me, gives half a wave. I look right past her, and stop on the steps until she’s walked inside.

  ‘So, what about Emma then?’ Luke says, as the second bell clangs above our heads.

  ‘What about Emma? There’s nothing about Emma. I’ve got no interest in going back there. Anyway, Cat said she’s got someone in her sights now, I think.’

  ‘Bugger,’ he says, and he rearranges his books and heads for the door. ‘I’d been waiting for you to stop being shitty so that I could have a crack at her.’

  ‘That’s a very sophisticated approach to the ladies you’ve got there, Lukey.’

  He leads the way – saunters in, shirt hanging out, hair looking like it’s been surfed in too many times, ‘sophistication’ practically a word from a different language – and Mr Ashton gives us his raised-eyebrow didn’t-I-just-hear-the-second-bell look. The only spare double desk is on the other side of Cat Davis and two rows back, and that’s where Luke takes us.

  As we pass, she looks up at me. Her mouth opens and I show her the hand and say, ‘Don’t,’ and keep walking.

  She seems to say the first part of a word, but without any sound, and then her mouth shuts and she looks away, straightens up her pens on the desk.

  This will all be over in a couple of days. That’s the best thing I can tell myself. Two more paragraphs from me, one from her, and this is all done. No further contact. Somehow we still have to get between my mother and Sleazy Pete, but I’m prepared to beg and plead and let down car tyres, and even tell the whole truth if I have to. My mother simply can’t have anything to do with Sleazy Pete again once she hears about Cat and the Laurel sighting, and how badly I got done over. On the other hand, I told her about the finger business, and she was briefly shocked, but somehow Sleazy Pete convinced her it would have been negligent if he hadn’t gone there. He came out of the conversation sounding like some kind of hero.

  Mr Ashton is talking, and I zone back in to hear that it’s about Wednesday, the dinner on Wednesday night. He says we should now be thinking about how we’ll wrap up our tandem stories, shaping them in a way that’ll deliver an ending.

  ‘Any problems?’ he says. ‘Anyone got any issues particularly relevant at this stage of proceedings?’

  Across the room, someone says, ‘What if you’re working with a partner who keeps sending late?’ It’s Courtney DiStasio, who’s teamed up with Josh Landon.

  ‘I’ll assume that’s a general question,’ Ashtoe says, looking right at Josh. ‘And not one specifically about your partner.’ In case we missed the intense, unflinching stare. ‘I’m sure Josh is making certain he always acts in a timely fashion, so I’ll answer it generally. And the general answer is, this is Extension English, and the “Extension” bit is about your ability and your enthusiasm, not about the time frames. No room for extensions there. Part of the thing with this tandem-story exercise is that you keep the ball in the air. No rumination, no procrastination, just on to the next brisk paragraph. The assessment is principally on your individual analysis, remember, and you haven’t even started that yet. So, barring calamity, please ensure you send on time. And if, after Wednesday, anyone feels they’ve got a particularly raw deal from their partner, please come and talk to me. Anything else?’

  ‘What if your partner’s someone with who you can’t have a relationship based on trust?’

  As soon as I say it, the whole class goes ‘Oooh’. Heads whip around. Cat goes red.

  Ashtoe glances in her direction, then looks back at me. ‘I think you’ll find that’s with whom you can’t have a relationship based on trust, Joel.’

  For no good reason, the whole class goes ‘Oooh’ again. Cat’s in front of me and to my left, and I can see her right ear and cheek blazing red as she looks straight ahead at the whiteboard.

  ‘Should we talk after class, do you think?’ Ashtoe says. ‘Do you and Cat want to talk?’

  ‘That’d be –’ Cat starts to say, rather feebly.

  ‘Quite unnecessary, sir.’ We’re not going to talk. No way. ‘It was a general question. I thought we were asking general questions. I just wondered if any of the others might have struck any ugly trust issues along the way – since that kind of thing can happen when you least expect it – and what kind of impact it might be having.’

  ‘I’d be interested in that too, sir,’ Luke says, and I think he’s actually about to be supportive. ‘If anyone could put their finger on anything uncomfortable in a penetrating kind of way…’

  At least six people laugh, and they laugh a lot. Cat’s head clunks down onto the desk. Ashtoe gives Luke a stare that says he knows code was involved, but that’s all he knows. For now.

  Appendicitis. Why appendicitis? Did she set me up? I don’t need more reasons to be shitty with Cat Davis.

  It’s hot on the way home, and when I get there my back’s covered with sweat under my backpack.

  I swim laps, though the pool’s not long. It’s better than j
ust bobbing around staring at the palms and the ferns and the small neat square of grass, all the time wondering how many SMSs your mother and Sleazy Pete have exchanged between meetings and patients.

  I get to the river end and turn, and that’s when I see Betty approaching with a tray. She takes a seat at the table under the shadecloth, and I swim over to that side of the pool.

  ‘I thought you might like a drink,’ she says. ‘I’ve done a batch of my ginger beer.’

  It’s murky and brown and looks like a pond sample, but from experience I know it tastes pretty good. She hands it to me, in a plastic glass with bright fruit motifs on the side – a slice of melon, a banana, a bunch of grapes.

  ‘So,’ she says, fanning herself with her hat. ‘Your mother mentioned the literary dinner to me yesterday. She thought I might like to come along. I didn’t say yes or no. I thought I’d talk to you first.’

  ‘Wise move. I can’t say I’m expecting great entertainment. Not on the stage, anyway. Our table could be another story. Dr Davis is bright orange. Did my mother tell you that?’

  ‘No,’ she says, and laughs. ‘Bright orange? It’s a very safe colour, orange. Good on a building site or any time there’s low visibility. I’m not completely sure why you’d choose it if you were a Taringa GP, but each to their own. She sounds a bit interested in him…’

  ‘Too interested. They were awful when we went to Sizzler last week. If they’re even half as bad in front of our Extension English class, it’ll be unbearable.’

  ‘I could sit between them and be that annoying old lady who can’t hear properly and who won’t be pushed around. Would that help?’

  We clink our plastic glasses together. We have a deal. We’re well short of the whole plan, but having Betty on my side is progress.

  It’s starting to cool down, and there’s a breeze running up the Regatta Reach of the river when I get out of the pool. My mother gets home when I’ve been back in the flat no more than ten minutes. I’m expecting the usual gleeful texting, but there’s none. No updates on the wit of Sleazy Pete. I don’t ask. She doesn’t tell. Maybe she’s finally decided to handle it a little more discreetly. Or maybe she’s planning something. Something that will appal me. That’d be more like her.

  I sit in my room doing my homework, waiting for her to appear in the doorway, waiting for news. There’s none. She turns up once to say she doesn’t feel like cooking, and what takeaway do I want?

  Meanwhile, I’m sitting staring at Cat’s email.

  ‘Let He Who Has Never Sinned Cast the First Stone.’

  God she makes me angry. I can’t reply to that, not yet.

  ‘Go right, Enzo, go right.’ It’s Betty’s voice that wakes me. It must be midnight. It is midnight. Perhaps later. She says it in some kind of shouted whisper.

  ‘Sandra… Saaan-draaa…’ Now it’s Enzo’s voice, in a moan, coming up from street level.

  Pebbles ping and clatter on my bedroom window, and my mother’s, and on the bricks nearby, and where the window’s open they trampoline from the screen and back into the night.

  My mother’s window shudders along its runners as it opens wide.

  ‘Enzo,’ she says gruffly, sleepily. ‘What are you doing?’

  From down below his voice comes, mournfully. ‘Sandra, it’s been eating me up inside, all this lying.’ Out on Gailey Road, a single car passes. The breeze moves through the palm trees and the poincianas. ‘I’ve never… I’ve never had the attention of such a beautiful woman. But you wanted me for a lie. An innocent lie, but a lie just the same. I wanted you to want me for me, Sandra, but I never got to be me.’

  More windows open, other people’s nights are being caught up in this, other ears are listening. I get out of bed, and I can see him far below on the grass, at the edge of the yellow light that’s spilling from the foyer.

  ‘But what…’ my mother says, still not awake, not properly. ‘What was I supposed to do? The lies went on and on.’

  ‘I know, Sandy, and that was wrong. Very wrong. But I want to start again. This time with the truth, if you’ll have me. Let me come up.’ My mother says nothing. ‘Just let me talk. Let’s sit down and talk.’ He turns and reaches into the shadows behind him, and holds up a box. ‘I’ve brought some mangoes. From my family in Mareeba. These are the ones they flog to the Japanese for fifty bucks a pop. They’ve each got their own little sock to stop them getting dings, and everything.’

  He holds the box up in both hands and the light flares off its white sides and puts his face in shadow. From my mother’s room, there’s a sigh.

  ‘All right,’ she says. ‘Come up.’ There’s no feeling in her voice, none that I can make out. ‘I’ll buzz you in.’

  On a floor below, someone goes, ‘Yay,’ in a quiet cheer, and a window shuts.

  I hear my mother leave her room, and the intercom crackles as she lets Enzo in downstairs. Then she’s at my door.

  ‘Sorry,’ she says. ‘Sorry this woke you.’

  ‘They sound like they’re great mangoes.’

  ‘I’ll make sure you get your share,’ she says, still silhouetted in my doorway.

  ‘So, what are you going to do?’ The lift creaks and groans as its muscles work to draw Enzo up to our floor. ‘Not that it’s exactly my business.’

  ‘What do you think I should do?’

  ‘Well…’ This is it. This is my chance to torpedo Sleazy Pete, my chance to block anymore of those Sizzler-type evenings, to stop vile innuendo-laden food-play at the Presentation Night, to put Cat Davis out of my life. ‘Everyone makes mistakes. I’m sure he’s got a good heart…’

  Of course, I’m nauseated. Nauseated by my own fake decency, and by the door I’m opening that might let Enzo back into our lives. But this is the lesser of two evils. And I can undermine Enzo as soon as the coast is clear, if I have to. Okay, mean thought.

  ‘Maybe another chance would be fair.’ That’s what I say, and maybe it would be. I can’t claim that’s why I said it, though.

  The lift jerks to a stop on our floor. Enzo hits our front door with three big beefy knocks.

  ‘Come out with me,’ my mother says. ‘Come and I’ll make some tea and we’ll see what he’s like. I don’t think either of us has ever seen a fifty-dollar mango before.’

  But the mango box stays shut. He hands it over, my mother puts it down. He shakes my hand, calls me ‘mate’.

  He talks about the phrasebook, about how he still doesn’t fully get Almodóvar but he’s willing to try if it’s important, about how my mother needed him to be exotic. ‘And I’m just a bloody Italian mango grower from Mareeba.’

  ‘Italian’s exotic,’ my mother says. ‘Dammit, there’ve been months when the concept of a live male with working parts has looked exotic… No offence.’

  ‘None taken. It’s all workin’, darlin’.’

  Suddenly, he’s the most Aussie person I know. But a weight has lifted. He talks like a human, not like a bad accent looking for a place to hide.

  ‘Except I picked the wrong window,’ he says. ‘I counted my way across, but I came up a couple short and made a move on Betty instead.’

  ‘She’ll settle for a mango, I’m sure,’ my mother says, and they both laugh. ‘It was all very Streetcar Named Desire,’ she says. ‘Very nice.’

  And I know the scene she’s talking about – Marlon Brando, shouting ‘Stella’ up at the window, full of sad frantic passion. Enzo’s not quite Brando, but Brando had no idea where mangoes might have got him.

  I leave them to their tea, and I go and lie on my bed in the dark, listening to the murmur of talk, and the wind in the trees. I can’t sleep.

  ‘Let He Who Has Never Sinned Cast the First Stone.’ As if a film would ever have a name that long. What was she thinking?

  What did Ashtoe say? Shape it in a way that’ll deliver an ending…

  Cat,

  Don’t even try to talk to me. Let’s just get this job done.

  J

  Meanwhile, Ma
x Eislander is close to breaking point. He knows they’ve based the Elizabeth character on his ex-wife, he knows the lies she’s told since it ended. In this matter at least, he is completely without sin. Around him, other extras fill their food trays. The stars have eaten and are standing with Spielberg in their costumes, laughing – David Spade in his torn dress, the airheaded bubblegum pop-star bitch, Kat Perfect, making her debut as the schoolgirl. Eislander can feel the anger rising. His eyes are flaring again, those panther’s eyes. The madness is back…

  – Tuesday

  My mother returns and the muesli stays. A part of me assumed her homecoming would see the end of Dad’s crazy breakfasts, but Monday morning he served up the same homemade, vomitous Bircher muesli with the type of verve usually reserved for game-show contestants. Mum stopped Mark before he could pour half a packet of Coco Pops into it. At least this means someone’s paying attention to what he eats again. Other than me.

  ‘Things are going to be different,’ Mum said, reaching out to stroke my face and then Mark’s. ‘Your father and I love each other very much and we’re committed to making our marriage work.’

  Mark clapped, as though what we were watching was a very bad piece of student theatre. Or perhaps he assumed it meant the end of the muesli too.

  Then Dad said something about how he’d taken Mum for granted. How he’d realised that he had to make all of us his priority. How he was going to hire another part-timer at the surgery and make a commitment to be home every night by six-thirty. And then Mum looked at him and put her hand on his arm and said, ‘At the latest,’ in the same tone she uses with me when we’re discussing my eleven o’clock curfew. And Dad said, ‘Absolutely.’

  Plus Mum is going back to uni part-time.

  ‘I’ll be a mature-age student,’ she said, her eyes twinkling. ‘It’ll be just wonderful to have the chance to explore my own dreams.’

  Continuing to gaze into my mother’s eyes, Dad continued, ‘And we’re going to have counselling. Find a way to reconnect and a better way to communicate.’