The Helpline

by Katherine Collette

  ±

  I knew Jack lived in a bungalow out the back of his mother’s house but had assumed it was accessible via some sort of side gate—I’m sure that’s what he’d told me—but this was not the situation. We had to go through the house to get there, which I did not feel like doing. I planned to walk very quickly behind him with my head down, so if anyone was there I wouldn’t have to talk to them. But unfortunately the front door opened straight into a lounge room, i.e. there was no hallway.

  As if the atypical layout wasn’t offputting enough, there was something even more perturbing inside—was this what Jack wanted to show me?

  Two women were sitting on the couch watching TV. One I took to be Jack’s mother, by her age. The other—and this seemed very insensitive of Jack—was Marie Curie.

  Jack lived with Marie Curie.

  ‘Germaine,’ said Marie, getting up. She waved at Jack’s mother to pause the television or turn the volume down but Jack’s mother clutched the remote to her chest and kept watching.

  ‘Mum,’ said Marie, trying to get her attention. ‘Mum, it’s Germaine.’

  Jack’s mother did not respond; she didn’t even seem to hear, which was weird.

  It was also weird that Marie was calling her Mum.

  When I was small Sharon made me call her friend Marion ‘Auntie Marion’, even though we weren’t related, so I supposed there was some precedent for this, but it was still odd. Typical Marie. I was annoyed with Jack. I should have known he was going to show me something stupid.

  Jack said to Marie, ‘How is she?’

  Marie, who’d come over to us by now, looked behind her and said, ‘She didn’t have a good day. She kept saying someone came in and stole a bag of onions. I had to put the TV on to calm her down.’

  Jack glanced at his mother and said, ‘She was like that on the weekend.’

  ‘It’s getting worse,’ said Marie. ‘Maybe we should think about—’

  I interrupted. ‘I should go.’ Now I’d seen ‘the thing’—Marie living there—I should have been free to leave and that’s what I wanted to do, quick as possible.

  But Jack said, ‘You haven’t seen it yet.’

  There was more? I wasn’t sure if I wanted more. I felt very worn.

  Jack told Marie we were going out the back. She was happy about this, nodding at me meaningfully. ‘It’s good to see you, Germaine. I’m glad you’re here,’ she said.

  Sharon used to say if you have nothing nice to say don’t say anything at all. She didn’t offer much in the way of useful life advice, but this I tried to follow on occasion. I kept my mouth shut.

  We had to go through the lounge to the kitchen and then there was a hallway that led to the back door. At the other end of the yard was a small building with an outside light on.

  Inside, it was one big room divided into sections like a motel, without the folded towels on the bed. The single bed. Jack and I sat at the table between the microwave and the bathroom.

  ‘Want a cup of tea?’ he said.

  ‘No.’

  ‘Beer?’

  ‘No.’

  I looked around the room. There was a ukulele in the corner on a stand and a poster of a comic book character I didn’t recognise. On top of the TV was a laptop and papers, but not many other personal effects. I was glad there weren’t photographs of Marie. Having just escaped her, it would have seemed particularly gruelling to have to sit in a room where she was staring at me from all angles.

  Jack said, ‘Mum’s…unwell. That’s why Marie and I are here.’

  ‘Okay.’ I didn’t care where he and Marie lived. I wanted to go home to my apartment. ‘Did you have something to show me?’ I said.

  ‘Yes.’ He went and got his laptop then sat beside me so we could both see. The screen was much smaller than the one in the mayor’s office. I wondered what Marie would think, the two of us sitting so close. Probably nothing. She seemed to have very liberal attitudes.

  Jack said he wasn’t surprised about Don and the mayor.

  ‘I don’t really feel like talking about it.’

  ‘This isn’t about that,’ said Jack, ‘it’s something else.’ He clicked through to find a file on the computer.

  It was an old newspaper article entitled Sudoku Champion Pays Large Sum in Confidential Settlement Agreement.

  Jack said, ‘I did some research on that sudoku incident.’ He pushed the laptop to me, wanting me to read. When I said I didn’t feel like reading, he paraphrased.

  According to Jack, Alan had paid the World Puzzle Forum a lot of money in early 2008. ‘So?’

  ‘So then everyone shut up about his cheating. It stopped being an issue.’

  ‘Maybe they realised it was all a big misunderstanding.’

  ‘Maybe he paid them to shut up about it.’

  ‘So?’ I said.

  ‘So he lied to you.’

  It was very late. I wished I was home in bed, curled up in a ball with the air conditioning on.

  ‘Well?’ said Jack after a bit.

  ‘Well…I guess you think I’m pretty dumb.’

  ‘I don’t think you’re dumb.’

  But I was dumb. I was stupid. Maybe even insane by Albert Einstein’s definition, doing the same thing over and over again, and expecting different results. First Peter, now Don. I was the common denominator in both equations.

  ‘You’re not dumb, Germaine. I think you’re…optimistic. You gave Don the benefit of the doubt. I think you thought he’d changed.’

  ‘People don’t change,’ I said. Wasn’t that what I’d told Sharon?

  ‘People can change,’ said Jack, but I shook my head.

  He gave me a condescending look. ‘You don’t know anyone that’s ever changed? No one?’ The way he was saying it was like there was an obvious answer, but there wasn’t. Or there was, and this was just another example of what a halfwit I was.

  ‘Would you have ever thought you would be working on a telephone helpline?’

  ‘That’s not changing. That’s getting a different job.’

  ‘But you chose to do it.’

  ‘No.’ I swallowed hard. ‘I didn’t choose.’

  The cover on Jack’s bed was brown and had shaggy edges that touched the ground. It had probably never been washed but I had the urge to rip it off and hide beneath it. Bury myself in darkness, ignoring the old skin cells and whatever bacteria.

  ‘There were some extenuating circumstances,’ I said.

  Jack didn’t move. The computer screen turned black as it went to power-saving mode.

  ‘I had some challenges with my references.’ A familiar, queasy feeling returned. There were aspects of my relationship with Peter that I was loath to talk about. I couldn’t think of them without feeling nauseous.

  I’d never told Jack about Peter. With the exception of Sharon, I hadn’t told anyone. Peter asked me not to, and in those quiet moments when it was just the two of us, that didn’t seem to matter.

  I remembered how it was having Peter’s hands on my shoulders, his hot breath in my ear. He’d say, ‘Is the pressure okay?’ when he was massaging, which it never was. It was always too soft but that wasn’t only his technique, it was also because he didn’t want to hurt me.

  Peter was quite sensitive. He worried, for instance, that other people teased him for dyeing his hair. He used to ask me all the time if anyone had. I’d say, ‘Who cares?’ and he’d say, ‘I’m not as strong as you, Germaine.’

  I told him no one ever said anything, even though they had, they said it all the time. But he didn’t have to know—what purpose did it serve? I didn’t care if it was dyed. I would have dyed it for him if he’d asked.

  ‘That’s nice,’ said Jack, sounding strained.

  But that was Peter’s problem. He worried too much what other people thought. Certain other people, I should say. Not me.

  Figure 2 (Persons at Fault for The Incident) is incorrect; The Incident was not caused by other people. Peter was just a straw on the
back of the camel. If you have a logarithmic function that tends towards a number, all you need is a small amount to tip it over. It was a lot of things over a long time is what I’m saying.

  ‘Peter sounds like…’ Jack shook his head as if to say, an unpleasant person, or stronger words to that effect. ‘He sounds like Don,’ was how he eventually put it.

  ‘See?’ I said. ‘It’s the same situation. I am stupid.’

  ‘Not stupid…Maybe a slow learner?’ Jack folded the computer screen down, got up and moved the laptop to the sink. Then he shifted his chair so he was sitting opposite me.

  ‘You might not have chosen the helpline but you’re good at it.’

  ‘Yeah, yeah.’

  ‘It’s true,’ Jack held his hands out, as if to ask for mine. I didn’t give them to him, but slipped them under my buttocks. He let his fall to the table, turning the palms down.

  ‘You’re probably the best person on the helpline, you know.’

  There were only two helpline workers, three if you counted Marie, but still I blushed. Jack seemed to enjoy my blushing because he tried to exacerbate it.

  ‘Maybe I’ll nominate you for Employee of the Year,’ he said, even though he was the one who told me there was no nomination system, it was all up to the mayor.

  ‘Hey, are you hungry?’ said Jack. ‘There’s three-fifths of a tomato inside, and I could probably cook some pasta.’

  ‘I’m okay.’ I was still tense, stomach clenching.

  I looked around the room. The key feature was the single bed. ‘Do you guys top and tail?’ I said.

  ‘What?’

  ‘You and Marie.’ I flapped my hand in the direction of the bed, very quickly, like I was flicking something disgusting off. ‘Do you top and tail?’

  Jack looked horrified. I knew how he felt; I wasn’t even sure why I was asking. ‘Marie’s my half-sister,’ said Jack.

  Oh, God. ‘Is that legal?’

  ‘We’re not in a relationship, Germaine.’

  ‘Oh. Oh.’

  Jack’s face was still contorted, like he was having trouble removing the image from his brain. I felt a bit better myself. Maybe it was helpful, this talking.

  ‘She seems quite nice,’ I said.

  Jack shook himself.

  ±

  I could have stayed longer but then I wouldn’t have got eight hours’ sleep. I had to go for this reason. Jack walked me back to the main house. Before we went in I said, ‘Jack, you might be able to get some help for your mother, you know. You could call the helpline.’

  ‘Germaine. You know there’s no nomination system, don’t you? You are aware of that?’

  ‘Are you sure, though? I’m just saying maybe check.’

  38

  On the way home I was wide awake, buzzing like I’d had multiple cups of coffee. I turned the radio to a popular music station. I didn’t know any of the words so I repeated them after the singer, a few beats behind, and wiggled on the driver’s seat in the way of chair aerobics but with fewer leg lifts.

  Marie was Jack’s sister. I had a bit of a laugh to myself thinking about it. She was a nice person, actually. Fairly interesting, and had lots of helpful comments. I was glad they didn’t top and tail in a single bed.

  It was a very quick trip home. I got all the green lights and the elevator at the apartment block was at car park level, just as I needed it. Everything seemed okay, what happened in the mayor’s office moving from short- to long-term memory, until I walked in the door of my apartment and saw the trophies on the mantelpiece. A heavy coat the exact size and weight of Don Thomas fell across my shoulders. It buttoned itself up and couldn’t be removed.

  How embarrassing. Despite what Jack said, I wasn’t a slow learner; I was a fool.

  I didn’t get my eight hours’ sleep. I tossed and turned in bed, dredging up unpleasant memories—and what a lot there were, half-buried in the sludge of my subconscious. The times Don and I talked and how what I thought he was thinking was not what he was really thinking. How he’d probably been thinking about her—the mayor. How the mayor used to like me but didn’t anymore. How that was the course of most of my interactions with other people (except for the ones where people hadn’t liked me to begin with). How it had been the course with Peter.

  How I was not likeable, how flawed I was and in what specific ways. E.g. bad at sports, terrible at board games. Even my hair: underwhelming in both colour and style. I was unattractive. I had never not been unattractive.

  There was nothing new in any of this, but cataloguing it all at once created an ugly picture.

  When I was with Peter and he’d said, ‘Let’s keep this a secret,’ at least he’d acknowledged there was a ‘this’. Even if only in private.

  Don hadn’t. Because there was no ‘this’. Sharon’s words came back to me, You have a way of latching on, Germaine.

  I began to doubt myself. What if I was latching on to Jack as well? Maybe my enjoyment had been one-sided. He and Marie could be discussing me right now.

  ‘I couldn’t get rid of her,’ Jack was saying.

  ‘She is very strange,’ Marie was answering.

  I put the pillow over my face and told myself, Germaine, you will not make the same mistake again. You will not make the same mistake again. I kept repeating it like counting sheep until I fell asleep.

  In the morning, on the way to the office, I realised the one benefit to my relationship with Don ceasing to exist/never having existed was I didn’t have to worry about hurting him anymore. I could try to stop the senior citizens centre from being sold without any of the internal angst that previously characterised the situation. Isn’t that great? I told myself.

  Betsy had sent me the recipes they planned to use for the catering company and I had to work out how much they cost. It was simple. I just had to convert the wholesale price for each ingredient into a per-recipe figure and then divide by the number of serves. The only fiddly bit was converting the units. I had to write some basic algorithms based on weight-to-volume ratios. They were easy but for some reason I kept typing the formulas wrong.

  Francine interrupted me. ‘Germaine.’ She was standing at the door, holding my handbag aloft. ‘Is this yours?’

  I squinted at it, as though it might not be. ‘Yes.’ Then I dropped the pretence. ‘I can explain.’

  Francine shook her head, her fuzzy hair moving in a single lego-like block. ‘No explanation necessary,’ she said.

  But I did want to explain, at least partly. I shuddered to think what Francine might have thought we were doing in the mayor’s office. An incorrect assumption could have been more embarrassing than the truth.

  ‘Germaine.’ Francine held her hands up to stop me from speaking. ‘I don’t need to know. All I want to say is: be careful. The mayor’s got enemies but she’s also got friends.’

  ‘Yes, friends. That’s what I’m saying about Jack and me. We’re friends. Less than friends, even. He’s like a brother I don’t even like. We weren’t doing anything—’

  Francine came in closer and put the handbag on my desk. Her enormous front teeth bit into her lip. ‘There’s something else you should know.’

  ‘Okay.’ It didn’t sound good.

  ‘I told the mayor about your spreadsheet, the one with all the data. It was ages ago now, but she just sent an email. She’s thinking about automating the helpline, making it all recorded messages.’ Francine adjusted one of the handles on the bag.

  ‘Oh.’ When I’d imagined this moment, I thought it would be very different.

  ‘She wants you to send it to me.’

  ‘I can send it,’ I said, slowly. ‘I just have to…fix a few things first.’

  When Francine was gone I opened up my lovely spreadsheet. All that beautiful data, all those graphs and charts. It was so satisfying, the way I’d constructed it, how I’d linked the formulas, how I’d used different tabs for different types of analysis. I’d built a very clear picture, a convincing argument based on the eviden
ce. Professor John Douglas would have admired it greatly—not as a father, but as a fellow mathematician.

  I clicked on the raw data page. There were rows and rows of information; almost every call I’d ever taken was listed there.

  I scrolled down to look at them. A call from James, one from Betsy, one from Celia…They weren’t all annoying. In fact, I noticed the ‘annoying’ flag, the one I hoped would help identify people and numbers to block, had reduced in usage over time. It was as though fewer annoying people were calling. But this wasn’t actually the case. The population hadn’t changed; what had changed was how irritating I found them. They weren’t strangers anymore, which made them harder to dislike.

  It still broke my heart to do it.

  I highlighted every single cell on every single sheet. When the screen was a dark colour I pressed:

  DELETE.

  Then I saved the empty file.

  39

  In the afternoon there was a meeting at the seniors centre. Everyone was going, even Ralph, even Eva, even Jack. I didn’t want to drive with the three of them but we’d agreed to go together the previous day. There was no easy way of getting out of it.

  Jack was driving and I was in the seat behind him. I didn’t say one word the entire journey, just looked at the back of his head and avoided his eyes in the rear-view mirror. He must have had limited visibility, because he kept turning around and looking out the back window.

  Celia was thrilled with what Jack and I had discovered. She called the emails between the mayor and Don ‘leverage’. She said now we had ‘leverage’ there was no way the place would ever be sold. ‘Of course, we still need to discuss the matter with the mayor, and this catering business will be important if we’re going to be self-sufficient, but that’s all just details.’ She pointed at me. ‘You’re going to have to talk to her.’

  ‘Me?’ I didn’t think it had to be me. It could be any of us. I was no more articulate than the next person, as I’d often been told.

  ‘Oh, please. Don’t be stupid. Germaine has to, doesn’t she?’ There was no formal vote but everyone present seemed to agree.