by John Larkin
I feel a little that way myself as I meander along through the stalls. These people are Hong Kongese and, unless they have relatives Down Under, simply have no concept of Australia. Or if they do, it’s the heavily clichéd one of the kangaroo in a corked hat surfing down the Opera House while eating a jar of Vegemite, which, as far as I know, has never happened.
After about half an hour, I abandon my quest for anything worth buying and settle on a Hello Kitty pencil case for Lisa as a sort of a joke, which I hope she gets. The stallholder wants to give me a special price if I buy two or more. Seriously? What the hell would I do with multiple Hello Kitty pencil cases? She kind of growls at me like a rabid dog when I insist on just the one but then I change my mind and get one for Kate as well and so when I hand her the money she smiles.
Having survived the experience with the stallholder, I take Mum’s advice and escape from the maddening throng to the sanctuary of Le Café (groan). I order a coffee and a blueberry friand and take a seat in the corner. While I am waiting for my coffee, I open up Lisa’s Hello Kitty pencil case. There’s a little card inside on which I write ‘Hello Kitty says Hello, Kitty’. And yes, before you ask, I call Lisa ‘Kitty’, or ‘my Kitty Cat’ or (and please don’t let this get out) ‘Snuggle Bunny’. Fortunately Chris and Maaaate are back in Sydney, coming to terms with either their sexuality or the fact that they regularly scarf down the contents of the pantry, otherwise I would have to write something more blokey on my Kitty Cat’s Hello Kitty card. God! Kitty Cat? Snuggle Bunny? What’s happened to me? I’ve turned into a complete sap. Still, it’s a damn sight better than being turned into mulch on train tracks.
As I’m waiting for Mum, I take out my writing pad and try to think about what I’ll do with my life now that I have one. I was thinking of doing an arts degree majoring in English and history as well as a bit of politics and then joining the army with a view to getting into the SAS. Though if I’m going to be honest, that career plan was largely to impress the chicks. A guy who could quote Tennyson while taking out a Taliban stronghold? You really couldn’t go wrong. But, I suppose, in order to take out a Taliban stronghold, you generally have to shoot a couple of people, and that goes against my pacifist principles. And I’d imagine that the SAS would have a way of weeding out any pacifists in their midst, so I’m kind of forced to rule that option out. And besides, I’ve got a girlfriend, so I don’t need to impress anyone with my Tennyson-quoting manliness.
I jot down a list of possible careers:
Doctor
Investigative journalist
Paramedic
Psychiatrist
Psychologist
Youth worker
Spy
Writer
Historian
Liberal Party politician
High-school English teacher
Human-rights lawyer
Aid worker
Giggolo
I figure that it’s okay to have one joke career option on my list. As if I’d join the Liberal Party! Ha ha ha.
Several coffees and a couple of pastries later, Mum bustles into the cafe doing a fairly decent impression of a bag lady. She plonks herself down in the seat next to me and lets the multitude of bags fall where they may.
‘What the hell did you buy?’
Mum looks at her bags. ‘Pretty much one of everything.’
‘Looks more like two.’
‘Get me a coffee, please, Dec. I’m dying.’
‘Of what? Alcohol withdrawal?’
It’s only when I return with Mum’s latte and croissant that I realise I’ve left my writing pad open and, showing strict adherence to the mother stereotype, she’s snooping through it.
‘Thanks, darl,’ she says, as I put the coffee in front of her.
‘Mum! That’s private.’
‘Nonsense,’ she says, mainlining what must be her fifth coffee of the day. If I sliced her now – and it’s tempting given that she’s reading my private thoughts – she’d bleed caffeine. Though having practically sculled down a bucket of coffee myself, I can’t really talk. ‘We should talk about prospective careers.’
She runs her eyes down my list and they widen slightly when she reaches the bottom. ‘If you’re going to be a gigolo, I don’t really want you bringing your work home with you. We could clear out the garage, I suppose, and you could take your clients there.’
‘Cut it out, Mum! It was a joke.’
‘Maybe you should think about it. You’re handsome and you have a good physique and you can quote Tennyson.’
I groan. KMN. ‘The Tennyson, SAS stuff was a joke, too.’
‘There’s only one “g” in gigolo, by the way.’
‘And how would you know?’
‘I read, Declan.’
‘What, Fifty Shades of Beige?’
‘Don’t talk about your father like that,’ she says, and we both laugh at poor Captain Beige who’s probably being driven around the bend right now by a sugar-infused Katie Bear.
I think about Dad and Kate in Disneyland, about Kate’s general weirdness and Dad’s overall annoyance and hopelessness, and I have to admit that I miss them. I miss my dad and my sister. I miss my family. A family I came within a whisker of giving up. A family that I genuinely believed would be better off without me.
We leave the cafe and head for the MTR. I’m still feeling a little raw when we emerge blinking into the daylight from the Tsim Sha Tsui MTR station. I’m feeling raw not because again I’m being bombarded with offers to buy copy watches and suits, though that’s certainly a contributing factor. It’s more that I’m feeling bad about the way I (well, we – Mum isn’t innocent in this) treat Kate and Dad. It’s kind of us and them rather than just us, which is how it should be. I wind up Kate (and she does me) because we’re siblings and that’s the law. But Kate has issues that I should be more understanding and sensitive about; instead I treat her with disdain. She finds it hard to make friends because she’s so exact and not very good at social stuff, so she can be made fun of at school. She used to want to blow out the candles on whoever’s cake it was. We would be at a restaurant and some random spawn of Satan would be having a birthday party and Kate would run over and blow out the candles. By the time she was in year two she wasn’t getting invited to parties anymore. Mum had to put on special birthday parties for her stuffed toys just so that Kate could blow out the candles. In primary school she used to hide in the library at lunch time. Occasionally I would venture in myself and see her reading alone in the corner or nestled into a beanbag. I wouldn’t even say hello. I completely ignored her. I didn’t want to be associated with her for fear of being recognised as her brother and being tarred with the same brush. I feel disgusted that I treated her like that and I promise myself that I will make it up to her. Somehow. Because she’s a total brainbox – well, her mind’s brilliant at storing facts and figures; she got into Reeve Road High, which is the top-ranked school in Sydney. But she chose Grosvenor Girls’ instead because she claimed that she had a friend who was also going there, a friend whose birthday party she’d obviously never attended. Because it’s still a selective school, she’s surrounded by other brainiacs, so I suppose things are easier for her now and, yes, she does have some friends – girls like her, I guess. Girls who, just like any other tween girls, love boy bands but, when all is said and done, would prefer to come up with a mathematical model predicting their decline from both the charts and teenage girls’ consciousness. So Kate’s doing okay, with or without me, though I still feel bad about how I treat her. And I will be better with her from now on. I will. That’s a promise.
Then I think about Dad and I feel even worse. I’m going to make more of an effort to laugh at his jokes and to not tease him, but sometimes I just can’t help myself and Mum makes it worse by piling on. The problem is that he gives us so much material. I could pay out on him for a year about his Hawaiian shirts alone. And then there are his shorts. Since when is it okay to wear shorts with zipper cut-offs o
r those little triangular cut-outs on the side. What the hell are the triangles for? Do they make it easier to maintain the optimum sprinting stride as you tear away from a ravenous pack of lions as you streak across the Serengeti plains? See what I mean? I just can’t help myself. It’s one of those things that I know I’m going to think about when he’s on his deathbed. We won’t be talking about that time we went fishing (well, I guess we haven’t been yet) or bushwalking or mountain-bike riding or that time we went to see a concert and we ended up bouncing off each other and slam dancing in the mosh pit. Though who the hell would appeal to the both of us is anyone’s guess: AC/DC plays Enya maybe. No, I’ll be thinking about his stupid Hawaiian shirts and triangular cut-out, zip-up shorts, and I’ll be all choked up and when he dies I’ll ask Mum if I can keep them – his shorts and Hawaiian shirts, I mean – and I’ll end up wearing them as a sort of tribute to him and my son will pay me out because I’ll be wearing Hawaiian shirts and embarrassing triangular cut-out shorts. But he won’t understand that I’m doing it ironically and then when I die he’ll feel sad because he paid me out and on and on it goes … Maybe it’s one of those circle-of-life things.
I feel sad about the way I treat Dad. Really sad. But that’s okay. I should feel sad. It’s normal. It’s part of what makes us human. And I’m going to feel sad at other times in my life but the thing is, I will recover. I’ll recover from sadness, from grief, from bereavement, because they’re all parts of life. And I know now that life will improve. That I won’t throw myself in front of a train because my girlfriend or wife dumps me. That I won’t throw myself in front of a train because I feel bad about how I treat my sister or my dad and his Hawaiian shirts and triangular cut-out shorts. And if that voice in my head starts up again, I will stamp on it or take medication to shut it up. Because feeling anything – even if it is pure agony – is better than feeling nothing.
‘You right, Dec?’ says Mum as we walk towards the Ocean Terminal shopping centre through the artificial wind tunnels created by all the buildings.
‘I was just thinking we should buy Dad a present. Maybe a Hawaiian shirt.’
Mum smiles at this suggestion. ‘What about Kate?’
‘I bought her something at the markets.’
‘I’d like to get them something, too. From me. From both of us.’
I nod.
Mum reaches over and holds my hand.
It’s a quarter to three and I’m lurking across the road outside Lisa’s school trying to appear inconspicuous. Though I suppose trying to appear inconspicuous while you’re lurking around outside a school kind of makes you conspicuous. If I get any closer to the front gate, the school will probably go into lockdown.
After lunch at a noodle bar, Mum and I shopped in the upmarket Ocean Terminal for a while. We bought Kate a GoPro and a heart necklace, which kind of makes my Hello Kitty pencil case look a bit sad. However, rather than buy Dad a Hawaiian shirt, we decided on a complete makeover. It’s the sort of silver fox/David Jones’ catalogue look that will enable him to stroll along the beach at sunset thinking his poetic and poignant thoughts as a storm rolls in and a designer labradoodle frolics about beside him with a stick. The thing is, even in these brand labels he’ll still somehow manage to look like a farmer at a wedding. I mean, the mannequin in the shop looked more stylish than Dad, and it only had half a head.
After Mum had finally had enough of the shops, we caught the Star Ferry across the bustling and choppy Victoria Harbour to Hong Kong Island, the salt spray churned up by the wash both cooling and invigorating. We took a tram up to the Peak for that panoramic postcard view that you see in every travel agent’s window.
We had a quick drink in one of the bars then, around two, Mum said that she was meeting up with a friend for high tea in the Peninsula Hotel. I had been wondering why she’d only bought me a one-way ticket. Before catching the tram back down she put me in a red taxi and together we were able to give the driver directions to Lisa’s school. As we were heading off, I told the driver that I was a student at the school, hoping that he wouldn’t take me on a costly and time-consuming detour around the New Territories.
Around three, a bell goes off somewhere in the school and soon enough a couple of students trickle out. It eventually builds to a steady flow. Ten minutes later, there is a torrent. Being an international school, the student body is a cross-section of race and cultures, the way the planet is supposed to be.
And there, in the midst of the multitude, is Lisa, weighed down by an oversized backpack and what I assume is a violin case and just life in general.
If this were a movie I would raise my hand to attract her attention but then we would cut to a close-up of my face as it freezes with the sudden realisation that she’s with someone – a guy. An extremely good-looking, confident guy. They would be laughing and carrying on, safe and happy in their clichéd couple bubble. After they disappear into the afternoon, a storm would hit and I would just stand there staring, the torrential rain only marginally masking the tears that would be cascading down my cheeks. I would montage my way back to the hotel, walking in a slow-motion trance as everyone else runs for cover from what turns out to be a once-in-twenty-years typhoon. Later that evening, after looking out my hotel room’s window at the lights far below, I would phone Lisa and terminate our relationship. I would protect her from my breaking heart by citing the tyranny of distance, how I’ve only ever wanted her happiness and will always love her, and if she ever needs a friend then I will be here for her, blah, blah, blah … (well, not here as such, but back home in Sydney because she would be blissfully unaware that I am actually in Hong Kong). And I would assume her silence was the masked joy of being let off the hook and that she was now free to pursue her burgeoning relationship with a guy who would have designer glasses and a hairstyle that would be just shy of an Elvis duck arse and yet he would still somehow be able to pull off. But then later, just as I’m about to leave for the airport, Lisa would call one more time, and it would slowly be revealed that the guy she was with wasn’t her boyfriend, just a friend who happens to be both good looking (haircuts aside) and has zero interest in Lisa (apart from as a study buddy). With the confusion cleared up, but our airport taxi inbound, a noise in the background (possibly someone ordering tea in Cantonese – perhaps even me) would reveal that I’m actually in Hong Kong. With our wires finally uncrossed, Lisa and I would race towards each other down Nathan Road, dodging shoppers, commuters and those annoying a-holes peddling suits and copy watches, before leaping into each other’s arms hugging and kissing in the rain while the camera circles around us, credits rolling.
Fortunately this isn’t a movie and there is no Elvis-hairstyle impersonator to muddy the waters. Instead, Lisa is struggling with her violin case and backpack, which must weigh more than her.
I quickly cross over and sidle up beside her as she begins her trek down the street towards a set of shops. I can see that she is aware of my presence, but she hasn’t looked over at me yet, possibly in case I’m a fat old guy with a balding ponytail who lurks around parks with a video camera …
‘Can I give you a hand, miss?’
Other than a gulp there’s no response.
‘Your backpack looks heavy.’
Lisa keeps her eyes locked to the pavement. ‘Piss off or I’ll scream.’
‘Lisa.’
She stops and turns towards me, a look of realisation and relief slowly washing over her. ‘Oh my God!’ she screeches like a banshee. ‘Declaaaaaaaaan.’ She shrugs off her backpack, drops her violin case and, as per the end scene of my movie, she leaps into my arms, her legs wrapped around my waist. And even though she’s wearing her school uniform and is still in sight of the school grounds and is in danger of losing her, her family and her school a tremendous amount of face, she showers my face with kisses. The feeling of being needed, of being wanted, is so mind blowing, so overwhelming, that I can hardly breathe.
When she unhitches herself from me, I hitch on her ba
ckpack and pick up her violin case, which seems bigger and heavier than a violin case ought to be.
‘When did you take up the violin?’
‘Saxophone. Not all Asian kids play the piano and violin, Declan. Only about ninety-seven per cent.’
‘You’re such a rebel.’ It’s tough: she probably wouldn’t have wanted to continue with the piano, even if she was good at it. Too many bad memories, I guess.
We walk down the street, fingers interlocked, hearts racing.
‘I’ve got about a million questions but firstly, what are you doing here?’
‘I came to see you.’
‘Seriously?’
‘Seriously.’
Lisa is quiet for a moment. I look over and realise that she’s crying.
‘Is everything …?’
‘No one has ever done anything like that for me before. Not even close.’
I don’t know what to say to this, so I unhook our fingers and put my arm around her. ‘I’m with you, Lisa. I’m always with you.’
We walk in silence for a while.
‘How do you get home? Bus?’
‘My … my aunt picks me up. If she’s not working.’
‘What? Where?’
‘Just down the road here.’
‘Is that where we’re going? Shit. Oughtn’t I get out of here?’
Despite the danger, Lisa laughs. ‘“Oughtn’t”. That’s not a word.’
‘Yes it is. It’s a contraction of “ought” and “not”. As in, “Ought not I get out of here?”’
‘Who would say that?’
‘Why are you so calm? There’s a fire-breathing dragon just down the road who toasts penis-wielding teen gweilos for breakfast, and you’re arguing about grammar.’