That evening, when they’d said goodbye amid the just-getting-started folks of Rundle Street who were dressed in black and walking in small groups to dinner and drinks, they shared that moment where no one existed around them. They both returned to their teenage days (which wasn’t much of a stretch for young Jean) and felt nervous and anxious and compelled to kiss, or at least say something awkward.
‘So don’t study too hard this weekend,’ Philip had said. But then Jean had kissed him. An unstoppable kiss. He knew then he would fuck her. Even when she pulled away and said goodbye, he knew that he would fuck her.
When he got home, Rebecca was still dressed in her work clothes, busying herself with a few groceries. She’d been prepped earlier during the week that he would be attending a debate at the university between a philosopher and a theologist on the prevalence of God.
‘It was fascinating. Really impassioned. I felt I was on the edge of my seat for at least three-quarters of it.’
‘What did they say?’
What did they say? ‘Nothing new, really, it was how they said it, I suppose. Inspiring, if not enlightening. I reckon I can get a poem out of it. In fact, that’s what I’ll do after we’re done here. That’s exactly what I’ll do. I’ll write a poem.’ Just shut up, he’d told himself.
‘How’s Jim?’
Philip went to help Rebecca put the groceries away but got flustered because there was only one bag and he was getting in her way so he started going on and on about sin and redemption and free will and natural instinct – where he got it from he did not know because it certainly wasn’t the debate. Except, of course, he did know – it was from his rendezvous with Jean.
‘Have you eaten?’ he asked.
‘I’m late,’ she said, her smile almost devious. She moved to put the kettle on. ‘Only by two days, I mean it should have come Tuesday, so technically two and a half days.’
Philip walked to the freezer to get himself the chilled vodka for the martini he suddenly wanted. He moved past Rebecca, sucking in his stomach, not touching her. ‘Let’s not get too carried away, Bec. Don’t want to get disappointed over two and a half days.’ He knew his words were cruel. Could he still fuck Jean if Rebecca was pregnant? He hated himself.
‘Don’t shit all over my hope, Philip.’
He watched her kick off her heels and walk toward the toilet, all tailored and business-like for her appointment with a urine stick. No, he did not want to be a father. He did not want to be a father to Rebecca’s baby. He did not want to – suddenly this had stopped being about a baby; Philip realised that his relationship was hanging in the balance.
She came out of the toilet crying. ‘Bloody negative.’
Philip breathed out, walked over to Rebecca’s defeated body and put his arms around her waist. She put her head on his chest. He held her and kissed her forehead. He told her he was sorry. And he was. For everything.
Over dumplings, he knew he would fuck Jean Harley. Later it was ‘Dance with me!’ and Jean pulling him towards the other bodies that jumped and fist-pumped and jerked their hips at some club Philip hadn’t known existed. The first thing he thought of was what if any of his students were there? Then he became conscious of his age. Was mid-thirties hip? But then they’d started dancing, rocking, mocking, laughing, holding each other closely, then letting themselves get loose; sweat beaded and dripped.
After the tequila they’d found a new rhythm. They were practically fucking now. He said, ‘I don’t want to leave,’ and she said, ‘Don’t,’ and he said, ‘I have to,’ and she said, ‘Is there someone waiting for you?’ and he said, ‘No.’
Then, in the tiny bedroom at the share house where she lived with four other students he’d managed to avoid in the sneakiest, most immature way, Philip dressed slowly, wondering what he had done with this naked girl, leaning on her elbow, her breasts full and her hips barely there.
‘So maybe we’ll see each other when I get back?’
Who knew? While she was in Tasmania, Philip just might find his way back to Rebecca and forget all about the girl. Remorse setting in, he began to realise he couldn’t see her again. ‘I’m already hard just thinking about it.’ And as much as he’d wanted it to be, it wasn’t a lie.
Jean Harley filled his thoughts. He became agitated and absent-minded. Each essay he marked reminded him of the fact that she was his student, such a young woman, that he had marked her essay, her essay! And he thought about her hot tequila breath. And he thought about the noises she’d made when he went down on her. In the evening, as he fluffed the couscous and stirred the chickpeas so they’d be waiting pretty for Rebecca’s arrival home from work, he dreamed of a time he might cook for Jean and teach her what an older, cultured man knows: that cumin loves ginger, that sex is always better if fuelled by chilli. At night, as the switched-off light cued Rebecca’s ovulating body to fold into Philip’s deceptive one, Jean Harley was in bed with them. In the morning, there was sun and Jean Harley.
A typical afternoon might have even gone like this: Philip checking his emails, anxious for one from Jean; the computer not working fast enough (it was still the twentieth century); Rebecca coming home in a couple of hours and no new messages in his inbox. Jean had not emailed him – how could she email him? – the point being maybe she hadn’t thought of him at all, was maybe meeting a boy her own age, perhaps another adventurer like her who would drink with her until they were both drunk enough, cheeky enough and confident enough to take the risk and kiss and touch one another, go further and deeper, and Rebecca wouldn’t be home for hours, how good it felt to jerk off!
But the fantasies were short-lived. Eventually the sound of the garage door and the subsequent slam of a car door had Philip’s chest high, his shoulders up. He tried to grumble at the televised face of John Howard so that Rebecca would think he was his normal self when she walked through the door, but the minute she touched his shoulder, kissed his lips, pushed her tongue inside his mouth, Philip pulled away, said, ‘No,’ and she said, ‘What’s wrong?’ and he said, ‘This,’ and she said, ‘What?’ and he said, ‘Everything.’ ‘Everything?’ and he said, ‘I’m in love with one of my students.’
Philip rang Jim. No answer. There was no chance of hearing Jim mention Jean’s name tonight. Philip felt like he should be annoyed at this, but instead he walked to the refrigerator for another beer. In the crisper he found half a sweet potato that needed eating. He grated the tuber, rustic skin and all, and mixed in an egg. His food became a dirty orange concoction, so pleasing to turn, to smoosh and release with his own hands. He had never made this dish before, but he understood it intrinsically: when the oil started to sizzle he threw in some diced onions and garlic, then the dirty orange mixture, which he moved quickly and regularly with a spatula as salt and pepper and more than a pinch of tarragon were quickly added, quickly dispersed. He moved the patty to the side of the pan and set a fat gourmet sausage smack in the middle of it. Vegetarianism went out of style with the daily yoga. He’d reunited with meat when he moved to Newcastle and began teaching again, a welcomed downgrade from university to TAFE. A new city. A new job. A new man.
As he ate he thought about Felix Baumgartner, the man he’d recently watched on YouTube suspend his toes over a void of 39,000 metres, below him solid ground. Philip’s own stomach had caught in his throat as he anticipated the more than four minutes of freefall awaiting Baumgartner. When he had exhaled, his lungs still felt inflated. Now he was poised in full knowledge that there was poetry in the moment before the moment: in the moment before Felix jumped; in the moment before he’d told Rebecca he was through with their relationship; in the moment before he’d turned in his resignation; in the moment before Jean Harley had walked through the door of his Intro to Ethics tute after her cycling trip to Tasmania. Philip knew, too, that he was not so different from Felix Baumgartner, who’d stepped off his small capsule and become nothing more than a lonely bo
dy plummeting through the void.
He’d been trying to busy himself as students began filling the room, and he continued to busy himself when he felt Jean enter. He was tight, nervous, completely wound. When he did look up, there she was. She was darker. She appeared to have more freckles. Her aura was different.
When Philip caught her eye, Jean smiled quickly and looked away. What was that? But maybe she didn’t want anyone to catch on that they were having an affair. He began talking about Kurt Baier’s essay on egoism. Watched Jean while she wrote.
After class Jean waited for the others to leave before she approached Philip. Ah, he thought, she comes to me! He smiled at her as if to say, I knew you’d come.
‘That’s interesting, the consistent egoist not being able to make a moral decision.’ Was she nervous? She sounded nervous. Was she making a comment about his ego and lack of morality? He quickly freaked out and thought, Was Baier? But how good it was to hear her voice. He could smell her when she was this close to him. He kept his cool. He was a grown man, after all.
‘How was Tasmania?’
‘Amazing.’ Her smile grew; she relaxed. He could see she wanted to talk about it and he wanted to do everything he could to keep her talking.
‘Do you want to grab a cuppa?’
‘I can’t. I’ve got to get to the library. I want to get started early on an essay due next week.’
This was more than awkward for Philip. No, this was wrong. Jean started to move away.
‘Are you OK, Jean?’
‘Yes,’ she said. ‘No,’ she said. And No, he thought, no no no no. ‘We can’t do what we did ever again.’
‘What’s happened, Jean?’ Philip got out of his seat, moved dangerously close to her, thinking she would change her mind if only he could touch her.
‘I met someone in Tassie. Well, I already knew him. From America. It’s a long story, but an incredible story. He’s an Aussie, but I met him in America and then I met him again in Tasmania. Anyway, he’s … I just know I can’t be with you after seeing him again. It’s not right. It’s not fair.’
Philip wanted to ask how old he was, did she sleep with him, was she in love with him, did she despise Philip for being so old? But he just looked at her, crestfallen, and then she said she was sorry. And then she was gone.
Seven years of new mornings and lotus positions in the bush had passed before Philip realised what he was doing was more insane than what he had done to get to this point. Cutting himself off from the world was literally getting him nowhere. When he gave it all up it had been surprisingly easy. Not the sex, though. Not really. Seven years of celibacy is a long time and maybe that was the problem: it had been too long. Over the next fourteen years, during his time in Newcastle, he’d had only a handful of flings and they’d made him feel awful: the two tourists from America had become his first threesome (and it did bother him, this penchant for American accents and unbridled energy); a widow from town had drunk herself into his bed; he’d felt sorry for a lonely friend with severe chronic pain. There were a few more, but Philip couldn’t even remember the details they were that insignificant. Jean had been his last truly significant fuck and it was decades ago. Of course it had been different with Rebecca. He rarely thought of them as fucking when he remembered sex with her. Sometimes they got dirty, and that might’ve been fucking, but Philip had loved her body and her soul when they’d been intimate. During the best years of his life, he’d felt such a strong spirituality with Bec he now wondered if he’d ever feel anything close to it again.
After dinner and five beers down, Philip knew this to be his burden: to spend the rest of his life thinking about how easy it was to mess things up. ‘Rebecca.’ He began a mantra, laughing at himself but curious as to where it might go. ‘Rebecca.’ He tried to focus on what she’d looked like. ‘Rebecca.’ But he couldn’t find her. Jean Harley filled his mind instead.
The phone rang once. ‘Jim,’ he answered.
‘Philip.’ An old friend’s laugh on the end of the line. ‘How you going? Long time.’
‘It’s been a bloody long time.’
‘Too long. When you coming back to Adelaide? We need to catch up.’
‘Well, when’s the funeral?’
‘Yeah …’ An old friend’s silence followed by the two words he’d promised he’d never say: ‘Jean Harley.’
Call Me Charley
The train engine settled in the noise of its own long sigh, deserving rest after travelling through the South Australian desert. At the platform, Charley fidgeted. He had no pockets and didn’t know what to do with his hands. Finally, he settled on an old habit of picking at the skin surrounding his nails. He had a twitch in his left eye that attracted a determined fly. He wanted a shot of whisky – another old habit – but it was only 10 am and he wanted to be at his best for Lisa.
When he’d found out Jean Harley had died, Charley wrote to Lisa. Just as he’d written to her the day he’d worked up the courage to go to the hospital to find out if his victim was OK. Just as he’d written to her after his first (ill-fated) relationship began when he’d left prison and tried to lead a quiet life. Just as when he’d left prison and grappled with what ‘a quiet life’ might entail. As with all of these and so many more letters to Lisa, he needed to write in order to think clearly. He needed to ask himself if he had the right to go to the funeral, so he asked her. Charley had always seen Lisa as much a teacher as she was a friend. She’d opened up reading and writing to him, so how could he not put her on a pedestal of Biggest Influence and Supreme Mentor? He wrote to her that he was an outsider in the worst way, asked her what he should say if someone asked him how he knew Jean, said he wanted to avoid her family at all costs because he didn’t want to tell any of them his name. Lisa’s reply was: ‘I’m coming to Adelaide. We’ll go to the funeral together.’
Now, on the platform, watching the passengers disembark and hug their loved ones, Charley wondered if he’d ever been so nervous. It had been thirteen years since he’d seen Lisa and in that time they’d shared so much. Too much? It had never seemed too much when there were so many kilometres between them and only pen that translated thoughts and paper that reflected feelings. Charley had never been good with speaking. He stumbled over big words and hid the most complex ones far from his tongue. It was through writing letters to Lisa that he got beyond his fear and really looked at life and language. Now, with Lisa nearing the space he guarded, with Charley over-burdened by his own bulk, how was he supposed to communicate?
There she was, carrying more weight than he remembered, carrying more age, a roughness in her skin from the heat of the Alice sun, more lines from what he assumed to be frequent smiling and laughter – she had a husband and four children to thank, triplets for fucksake. There she was raising her hand to her mouth when she saw him. Charley, who’d not gained more weight but lost a lot of muscle so that he’d grown a fatter gut. Charley, who’d taken on a darker colour from his work outdoors yet still carried that ashen skin reserved for someone so much older, a smoker with his big toe in the grave. She’d raised her hand to her mouth and he lifted his in an uneasy wave. She didn’t bother wiping away her tears as he approached, allowing familiarity to lightly drown him. Still, what to say at a time like this? What to do with one’s body?
‘Look at you, you big old bear,’ she said and hugged him.
Charley patted her back at first, self-conscious of their closeness. Then he stilled his hands, let them rest on her warm back. Then he let them hold her just that little bit tighter.
‘I was always a blubberer,’ she told him, laughing. ‘You had to expect this.’
‘I didn’t know what to expect,’ he said, looking at the train. ‘Never do.’
At first he’d had to get his cellmate to read him the letters.
My dear son Charley,
I won’t ask you how you are because it would probably break
my heart. The only advice I can give you is to take each day one at a time. That’s what I do. Each day that I get out of bed and take my shaky legs to the bakery, I survive another day. The doctor said the tumour is the size of an orange! I’m surprised my brain can hold something so big. It’s bad more than it’s not, but I won’t let it get me down just yet. As long as I’m up I’m winning. That’s what I tell myself. It surprises me that on days when there’s pain and I feel like there’s no hope I’m actually glad because those are the days I have to look hard to find strength and those are the days I end up being the most thankful. I hope you’re seeing your time in prison as a way to search for strength. I hope you can forgive yourself. I also hope you can be thankful for the life you still have ahead you. You’re a good man, Charley. I know this even if you don’t. And I love you, my beautiful son.
Mum
It was OK for a while, but after he’d begun feeling the weight of his mum’s devotion and the ache of her tumour, he hadn’t wanted anyone else to read them.
‘I want to learn to read,’ he’d told Doc.
‘But that’s wonderful, Rascal!’ Doc clapped his hands together. ‘And how do you think you might go about learning to read?’
Charley shifted in his chair. Having never outgrown the boy he was in school when the teachers called on him for an answer, he didn’t know what he was supposed to say. ‘There’s that lady who teaches here—’
‘Ah yes, Lisa. A lovely woman. But how do you plan to go about learning to read?’ Doc’s smile brought rows of wrinkles to his face.
This was a trick, right? Like some kind of riddle? So he sat for a long time, staring at the turquoise diamond shapes on the dirty red carpet under his feet. If he put his hand out he could make the diamonds disappear. Just like that. Then he got it. ‘You mean I have to really want it.’
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