The Pause

by John Larkin

  ‘Thanks for understanding,’ she says.

  ‘I love you, Lisa. Always have. Always will.’

  Lisa props herself up on her elbow and looks at me. ‘We should do something though,’ she says with a mischievous grin. ‘We’ve got the room to ourselves for hours yet.’

  ‘Room service? Banana split or something disgustingly chocolaty and sweet?’ I suggest.

  ‘If I eat any more I’ll explode,’ says Lisa.

  ‘What then?’

  Lisa grins at me again. ‘Spa bath?’

  ‘Seriously?’ Now it’s my eyebrows that are raised.

  ‘Seriously. And champagne.’ She gets up from the bed and sashays towards the bathroom. ‘Give me five to get it ready.’ Even though she’s wearing her jeans and a bra, she still covers her breasts with her arms as she disappears into the bathroom.

  While Lisa organises the bath, I delve into the minibar and take out the champagne. When five minutes are up I carry two wine glasses and the champagne through to the bathroom. I try not to swallow my Adam’s apple when I see that Lisa is already in the bath. Naked and – gulp – all wet and slippery. Double gulp. Well, I have to imagine that she’s naked, wet and slippery because she’s covered with an avalanche of suds. I can only see her head. She looks like an otter poking its head out of a snowdrift.

  ‘Where did you get the bubble bath?’

  Lisa looks about her as if she hasn’t even noticed the mountain of foam. ‘It came out of the tap that way.’

  ‘Seriously?’

  ‘No, Declan.’

  Duh!

  ‘I used your mum’s shampoo and some bath gel. I was surprised how much it frothed up.’

  Stupid Mum’s shampoo and bath gel.

  I pop open the champagne like a seasoned champagne popper and pour us both a full glass.

  Lisa sips hers. ‘Mmm. More bubbles. Delicious. So,’ she says after she’s placed her glass on the side of the bath. ‘You coming in?’

  Uh oh. Big problem. ‘Er.’

  ‘Don’t be embarrassed.’

  ‘That’s easy for you to say. You’re already in there and what’s more, you don’t have a part of your anatomy that has a mind of its own.’

  ‘What?’ she says, then immediately snorts in laughter. ‘We could always use an extra towel rack.’

  ‘Close your eyes,’ I insist.

  ‘No,’ she says, taking another sip of champagne.

  ‘Please.’

  Lisa is loving my predicament. ‘Absolutely not.’

  ‘Right. Then stand up and wash all that foam off you.’ That hot, slippery, wet foam. Gulp.

  ‘Okay then.’

  Double gulp.

  She closes her eyes. Blast.

  I quickly remove my clothes and clamber into the bath about as elegantly as a rollerskating giraffe on a slip ’n’ slide.

  The water is hot. Seriously hot. Almost – but not quite – hot enough for me to leap into the air like a frog that’s accidentally landed on a barbecue. I man up and take the heat.

  When I’m used to the temperature, Lisa moves over and lies back against my chest. It’s a little awkward at first but Lisa is eventually able to wiggle into a position that is comfortable for both of us.

  I decide to wash Lisa’s hair, massaging the shampoo into her scalp slowly and firmly with my fingertips. Her sighs tell me that she’s enjoying it. That I’m doing it right.

  Lisa goes quiet and suddenly I feel the elephant entering the room. ‘Declan. We haven’t talked about it yet, and I think we need to.’

  I knew this was coming.

  ‘What happened to you when I left? On the station. Was it a su– … an attempt?’ She can’t say the ‘s’ word. No one can say the ‘s’ word. It’s too big.

  ‘I paused.’

  ‘What do you mean, paused?’

  ‘What happened with your mum?’ I ask.

  ‘Declan …’

  ‘I’ll tell you but please tell me what happened with you and your mum first. Susanne said that you stood up to her. To Joy, I mean. Is it true?’

  ‘Yep.’

  ‘So if you stood up to her, why are you still living here?’

  She turns and looks up at me. ‘You haven’t worked it out yet, have you?’

  ‘Worked what out?’

  ‘It was the night we came back late from Bombay Bicycle Club – you remember. The last time we saw each other.’

  It’s not something I’ll ever forget.

  ‘Reverend Tong had phoned Joy and told her that it had been weeks since he’d seen me at youth group and the few times I had been, he’d seen me with a boy. And what’s more, there wasn’t any Christian youth concert that night. I was obviously lying. As soon as I kissed you goodnight and walked inside the house, she was waiting there with her cane.’

  ‘When did she start hitting you?’

  ‘As soon as I walked in the door she just went berserk.’

  ‘No. I mean, how old were you when it started?’

  ‘Oh. She’d always hit me. For as long as I can remember. It wasn’t just the physical stuff, it was emotional abuse, too. Name calling. Mind games.’

  ‘Such as?’

  ‘Like taking family photos but deliberately leaving me out.’

  ‘What about your sister and brother. Did she …?’

  ‘Nope. Just me. For a long time I wasn’t sure why. I spoke to my school counsellor about it. She said sometimes it’s one child who cops the lot.’

  I feel her relax even more against me. I enjoy the moment, the silence, and use my empty champagne flute to rinse the shampoo out of her hair.

  ‘I started fantasising that I was adopted. I suppose all kids do, at some point. You know that one where you pray you’re the long-lost Princess of Manchuria sent to live with commoners but now emissaries are on their way to restore you to your rightful place on the throne …’

  ‘Can’t say I’ve had that fantasy.’

  ‘Well, if you’d had my life, you would have. I fantasised about it every night. It became my safe place. Somewhere to escape to, every night as I cried myself to sleep. I was alone, Declan. All alone with no one to turn to. I hated my life so much, I just wanted to die. And then a handsome prince showed up on a train quoting some guff about To Kill a Mockingbird.’

  I feel myself choking up. I practically did nothing for her and she thinks I’m a prince.

  Lisa looks up at me and sees the doubt in my eyes.

  ‘You showed me another life. You showed me that it was okay to be a bit rebellious. You made me feel worth it. No one, not even my family, especially not my family, made me feel like I was worth anything. You showed me that I was. You made me feel special.’

  ‘You are special, Lisa.’

  Lisa turns around and kisses me. ‘And it turns out that I was.’

  ‘You were what? Special?’

  Lisa eases herself up from my chest, still covered in foam (when will these bloody bubbles burst?) and moves back to her side of the bath. She takes a sip of champagne and looks at me. ‘Adopted.’

  My chin practically goes under water. ‘So you’re like, what, a Chinese princess?’

  ‘Not quite a princess.’

  ‘I’ll be the judge of that.’ I scoop up some bath-water with my empty glass and toss it over her chest, clearing away the suds so that I can finally see her in all her glory. ‘I anoint you Princess Lisa of Hong Kong.’

  Lisa looks down at her breasts but doesn’t attempt to cover them.

  ‘Now arise and take a bow.’

  ‘Nice try, Declan.’

  ‘Seriously, though. You’re adopted?’

  ‘Yep. Well, sort of.’

  ‘When did you find out?’

  ‘That night we arrived home from the concert. The night I stood up to her.’

  ‘So what happened?’

  ‘She’d been hitting me more than usual since – I have to say it, sorry – since I started seeing you.’

  I reach over and hold her hand.
I pull her towards me so that we can hug. I love her warm skin against mine, the feeling that I’m protecting her as she is me. I soap and massage her back as we hug. Anyone can have sex. I’ll choose love, I’ll choose closeness, I’ll choose friendship every time.

  ‘Well, you remember how I told you about how when I got home she went crazy? She was screaming at me that I was a worthless, black-hearted whore. I knew I was going to get caned, and I could tell that this was going to be the worst one yet. And it was, but I guess even worse than the beating was what she was saying. She kept telling me it was my fault, that this is what happened to deceitful, disgusting, ungrateful, selfish hearts. And all the time I knew what she was doing was wrong. So wrong. None of my friends’ mothers treated them this way. She never laid a finger on my sister or brother. Just me. Susanne’s right. She’s crazy.’

  I could kill Joy right now. What an effing sadist.

  ‘Well, she was so mad she started stomping on the floor. It was only then that I realised that she was left-footed. She probably didn’t even know herself because, seriously, how many middle-aged women get the opportunity to play football? And I was kind of laughing at the idea of her trying out for the local Aussie Rules team when her slipper went flying off. And this made it worse – I was hoping that the slipper would decapitate one of those stupid figurines she decorates the house with, and I couldn’t stop laughing. And then when she went to retrieve the slipper she said it, the …’ She trails off.

  ‘Said what?’

  Lisa holds up her fingers, one after the other, as if she’s counting. ‘Hang on a sec.’ She mouths as she counts. ‘Okay, got it. She said the eleven words that changed my life.’

  ‘Eleven?’

  ‘I know. Ten would have been better – rounder – but it was eleven.’

  ‘So what were they?’

  ‘“You are nothing but a cheap whore, just like your mother.”’

  Although she’d prepared me for it, it still takes a moment for this to sink in.

  ‘It was like the world just stopped for a second and then we exchanged this look. I actually smiled at her because we both knew that she’d just lost her leverage and she was in a very awkward position.’

  ‘Awkward position for what?’

  ‘Well, after she got her slipper, she came back and she was leaning over me but she was off balance, so I used my judo skills and threw her off me.’

  ‘You know judo?’ I know this isn’t the point, but it hits me that there’s still so much I have to learn about Lisa.

  ‘I don’t. But I went for a lesson with my cousin when I was ten and I remembered this one throw. It’s about using your opponent’s weight against them.’

  ‘Lisa. You are my hero.’

  ‘She kind of flew off me. I saw it all in slow motion. She was actually airborne for a moment, and she squeaked when she hit the floor. She literally squeaked! Then she was rolling around on the ground as if she was the victim. I got up and ran to my room and slammed the door, daring her to come in.’

  ‘Where was your dad?’

  ‘He usually went into hiding when she went ballistic. Probably scurried away to the pub.’

  ‘What a guy.’

  ‘A couple of hours later, the phone calls started. She was screaming down the phone to Hong Kong, and it didn’t take me too long to figure out who my mother was.’

  ‘Susanne?’

  ‘Susanne.’

  ‘How old was she when she had you?’

  ‘Fifteen. She bought us the condoms tonight because she doesn’t want us making the same mistake.’

  ‘So who’s your father?’

  ‘He was some guy from school she was seeing at the time. Works in New York now. Financier or something mind-numbingly boring. Never wanted to know anything about me. Has his own family now.’

  ‘His loss.’

  ‘Okay, that’s me. Not exactly Anastasia or Anne Frank but there it is.’

  ‘Why didn’t you tell me about what happened when we spoke the next morning?’ I ask her.

  ‘I was still processing it myself. And it wasn’t definite that Susanne was my mother. She only confirmed it when we went out to dinner the first night I arrived back. Now, what about you?’

  The water’s getting cold and we’re out of champagne. We scissors, paper, rock to see who goes for a beer. I can’t believe my luck when my paper covers Lisa’s rock. I promise to close my eyes (yeah, right) as she climbs out of the bath and glides across the bathroom without bothering to cover up with a towel or robe.

  I top up the hot water while Lisa slides gracefully back into the bath, more swanlike than my earlier rollerskating giraffe. I twist the top off the beer and pour us both half a glass.

  ‘What happened to you at the station?’ She hesitates. ‘Please tell me that it wasn’t me. I don’t think I could take it …’ She trails off.

  But I’m not going to sugar-coat it. If we’re going to stay friends, a couple, or whatever this is, then we have to be truthful. ‘Your leaving kind of tipped me over the edge.’

  Lisa slumps. I reach forward and pull her to me again.

  ‘It wasn’t you, though, Lisa. I promise. It wasn’t you that put me on that platform. There was something that happened that I kind of tried not to think about. It was our dirty family secret and it was chewing me up inside even though I didn’t know it. Everyone thought I was pretty normal, but until I met you all I ever did was go to school, do a bit of weight training in the garage, then hide in my room reading and watching movies.’

  ‘Same as me.’

  ‘So we were good for each other. We kind of saved each other.’

  ‘But you almost died.’

  ‘Almost.’

  ‘Tell me, Declan. Tell me what happened.’

  I tell her and she cries for two hours.

  I sit at the breakfast bar listlessly stirring the dregs of my Coco Pops and feeling like something that the cat pooed out.

  ‘He’ll just have to go to school,’ says Dad. ‘That’s all there is to it. He can’t have the day off for every little sniffle.’

  ‘Look at him,’ replies Mum. ‘He’s not well.’

  ‘His temperature’s fine. He’s just putting it on.’

  ‘I’m not!’

  ‘Don’t talk back to me, Declan.’

  ‘He’s got a cold coming on, Shaun,’ says Mum. ‘For God’s sake, show a little compassion.’

  ‘When I was his age …’

  ‘Stop!’ snaps Mum. ‘Spare us the “When I was a lad we used to walk barefoot to school across broken bottles and arctic icefloes to get to class” routine. You went to a bloody private school.’

  ‘Gabriella! Language.’

  ‘Can you take the day off work?’ says Mum.

  ‘You know it’s the end of financial year.’

  ‘And the world will stop turning if those accounts don’t get reconciled.’

  ‘Well, can you?’

  ‘I’m in court today.’

  ‘What about your mum?’ says Dad. ‘Surely she’s the obvious solution.’

  ‘You know she can’t handle the two of them at once. Even Kate’s too much for her at times.’

  Right on cue from the playroom, Kate attempts to beat a Lego policeman into compliance with a lump hammer.

  ‘Could you ask Mary?’ suggests Mum. ‘I’m assuming she’s still on the wagon.’

  ‘Mary’s fine,’ says Dad. ‘She hasn’t had a drink in years.’

  ‘I don’t want to stay with her,’ I say.

  Dad crosses his arms. ‘And why not?’

  ‘She smells.’

  Despite the domestic bind that they’re in, Mum has to snort back a laugh.

  ‘Aunt Mary does not smell,’ says Dad.

  ‘Does too.’

  Before Dad has the chance to issue his ‘Does not’ rebuttal, Mum chimes in.

  ‘Actually she does. Kind of like mothballs and gin.’

  ‘This is my mother’s sister you’re talking about, Ga
briella.’

  ‘Okay,’ says Mum. ‘Your mother’s sister smells like mothballs and gin.’

  After dropping Kate at Grandma’s, we pull up outside Aunt Mary’s house in the Western Suburbs. The house resembles Aunt Mary. It’s neat enough on the outside, but inside it’s falling apart.

  This is a big detour for Dad and he isn’t happy about it. He’s been grumbling like a wino’s dog since we left home. He’s going to be late for work and late home tonight. Despite this, I stand my ground. ‘I don’t want to stay with her,’ I say. ‘She’s mean.’

  ‘So what is it, Declan? She’s mean or she smells?’

  ‘Both. And she’s ugly.’

  ‘She took me in through the goodness of her heart when I first came to this country,’ says Dad. ‘I know she’s got a bit of a temper but she’s a good person. She hasn’t had an easy life.’

  ‘She’s still ugly.’

  ‘That’s enough!’ snaps Dad. ‘You used to like staying with her when you were little.’

  ‘She’s mean and she hits me.’

  ‘She does not! Don’t lie, Declan. You know I can’t stand liars.’

  ‘Can I come to work with you?’

  ‘There are no crèche facilities at the office.’

  I don’t have a clue what crèche facilities are, but I suppose it means that I can’t go to work with him.

  ‘Okay, I’ll go to school then,’ I plead.

  ‘You don’t have your uniform.’ Dad’s got me with this one.

  ‘I can tell Miss Stevely it’s in the wash,’ I suggest.

  ‘You should have thought about that this morning before you decided to skive off.’

  Dad carries my toys and library bag up the path. I trudge along behind him, staring at the creepy-looking gnomes that are scattered about the garden.

  ‘And put a smile on your face when you see her. Don’t you embarrass me in front of her, you hear? She’s doing us a favour.’

  The door creeps open before we even knock.

  ‘Hello, Aunt Mary. You well?’

  ‘Grand, Shaun. Yourself?’

  ‘If I was any fitter I’d be dangerous.’

  Aunt Mary’s disturbing screech-like laugh is the type you would normally associate with the sort of person who owns a squadron of flying monkeys. I wish I had a pair of red shoes that I could tap together and fly away to Kansas in.