by Kirsty Eagar
A warm, dry wind’s coming from the northeast. It’s a hot day for March. Ugly weather. Ungrateful weather. The sunlight’s harsh, burning my skin like something chemical, but I have goose bumps on my arms and legs. I don’t like being outside. I feel exposed. Hannah hands me my tea and I’m straining to hear all sounds under the steady buzz of traffic passing, tense, in case I hear the flap of thongs coming down the steps.
Hannah reaches for something on the tray and then holds it out towards me. My car keys.
‘Ryan brought your car back.’
I take the keys, more relaxed now I know he’s been and gone. I’m grateful that he didn’t try to see me. ‘Thanks.’
‘I gave him a lift back home.’
I know they will have talked about me and it makes me hate the two of them. All I want is to be left alone.
Oi, it’s me. Wanted to see how you’re getting on. How’s your car going? I was gonna say hello when I dropped it off, but … I mean, I wanted to see you, but I was thinking you mightn’t want it. I had a talk with Hannah and … Well, you know I’m back for the week, so just give us a call when you’re ready, okay? I’m thinking about you all the time, Carly. I’m sorry for what happened to you. And I’m sorry I couldn’t help you with it better. I hated leaving you like that but I didn’t know what to do, which is shit because I should have done something or said something …
Saturday night. Danny’s working and he’s helping me with the prep, making batches of muffin mix to be baked off the next day. At work he still hangs around me like a pilot fish. If Emilio tells him to do something he glances at me first as though checking it’s all right.
I’m taking a stack of dirty bowls across to Roger when Marty rushes through the kitchen nearly crashing into me and I flatten back against the pass. Emilio follows Marty, brushing past me as well, his face red. He’s shouting.
‘That’s it, Marty! You’re out of here. That’s not acceptable. What if a customer had come in? Found you –’
Adam sidles up to me later while I’m slicing cold, raw chicken thighs for the Thai curry. Raw chicken is so ugly.
‘Did you hear what happened? Emilio caught Marty with a girl in the toilets, that one that comes in every day to get her coffee. They were doing it.’
I put my knife down and stare at him. There’s the sheen of grease on his forehead, smudges on his glasses and a smirk on his face. He’s like a vampire, sucking on the details. When I don’t join in, he focuses his attention on Danny, who listens with his nose wrinkled.
I feel like I’m looking at Adam’s face through a tunnel. Everything else has gone black and sound has been sucked away from my ears. It’s just all so ugly.
When Adam goes, Danny looks at me and the kindness on his face is unbearable. He reaches across me and moves my knife up so it’s not hanging off the edge of the bench.
33
flammable
Wednesday afternoon, driving to work, I catch a whiff of salty grease and realise the chef’s jacket I’m wearing is dirty. It doesn’t really matter, I guess – I won’t be the first staff member to fall short of the official franchise dress regulations and there aren’t any really obvious stains – but still, it bugs me. I bleach the stains out of my whites with Napisan in a tub I keep in my bathroom. I wash them in warm water and iron them with enough starch to make the cotton stiff. I’m not a neat person, but I’ve always kept my whites neat. The order of things is that I drive to work feeling crisp and clean and at the end of the night I peel my dirty whites off. Now it’s all wrong. I must have hung the jacket up in my wardrobe by mistake instead of throwing it into the tub. But what I can’t understand is why I didn’t notice when I was getting dressed.
The Laser is running on empty so I pull into the Quix service station on the way through Dee Why. I hate the stink of petrol but it’s better than the smell of grease. I’m pumping fuel, watching the dollars it’s going to cost me flick over rapidly, when a guy cruises past me on a BMX.
It’s Shane. He’s wearing aviator sunglasses, long black dress shorts, a studded belt and a black Rage Against the Machine T-shirt. He looks like a rock star. I recognise him by his tattoos and cropped blond hair. When I see him I release the handle of the fuel pump and pull the nozzle out, dripping petrol all over my boots. Then I realise I haven’t paid, so I can’t just drive off. I shove the nozzle back into my car and start pumping fuel again, not wanting to bring attention to myself. As soon as he’s inside I’ll sit in my car and only when he’s gone will I get out and pay.
He leaves his bike resting against the bait freezer near the automatic doors into the service station. And instead of walking inside, he walks over towards me.
‘It’s little Carly.’ He sounds relaxed. The reflective lenses of his sunglasses show me my own face.
‘Hello.’
‘How’re ya goin’, little Carly?’
‘Okay.’
‘Yeah? That’s good.’ He leans against the back of the Laser, not seeming to care that it’s all dusty. I look down at my own hand gripping the fuel handle.
‘How’s the man?’ he asks.
I look at him. ‘Sorry?’
‘Ryan. What’s doin’ with Ryan?’
I can’t say he’s looking at me for sure because I can’t see his eyes, but it feels like he is. ‘I don’t – I haven’t –’
‘When you talk to him, tell him I left some shit in the laundry I forgot about. I want it back. You don’t have a key, do ya? You could just let me in.’
‘Sorry?’
‘A key to the house.’ The reflective lenses make him look like a beautiful android. He waits for me to answer and when I still look blank, he says, ‘You don’t know, do you?’
I shake my head.
His voice changes, gaining an edge. ‘Ryan kicked me out. Sweet, eh?’
The handle clicks off and the noise of the pump stops. My car’s full. I pull the nozzle out, shaking it off this time, and hang it up. All of a sudden I feel tired. So, so tired. I’m expecting him to start in on me. To say it’s all my fault. To ask why I freaked out so badly that night.
He doesn’t say anything. He’s looking over towards the traffic passing on Pittwater Road.
After a while, he turns his head back to me. ‘Yeah, that’s just life, isn’t it? Mates for years and then your mates get too good for ya.’ He straightens up. ‘See ya round, mate.’
He walks off and is swallowed up by the automatic doors into the service station. I’ve still got to pay but I don’t want to follow him in so I think about cleaning my windscreen to fill in time until he goes. But then I hear the faint noise of my mobile ringing and I lean in through my open window, plucking it off the passenger seat. It’s Keith, my brother, calling. I straighten up, resting one elbow on top of the car, and I answer the phone because I’m surprised Keith’s calling me and it gives me something to do until Shane’s gone.
‘So I’m supposed to convince you to return home,’ he says by way of greeting. He sounds a little self conscious. ‘Because, little did we know, I have a lot of influence over you. You’ll listen to me, apparently. So I’m just ringing up to do my bit.’
Through the glass front I can see Shane inside, up at the counter. ‘God, she must have really hounded you to get you to do this.’
Keith never gets involved in family politics. My brother is one self-contained unit. And he’s never clashed with Mum and Dad the way I do. With Mum, he holds an unfair advantage because he’s male and doesn’t say much, which she chooses to interpret as him being wise. With Dad, he’s just never rocked the boat.
‘Auntie Yvonne has stirred things up.’ Keith’s voice has dropped in tone and now he’s just talking. ‘She had a go at them. Told them it’s disgusting that they don’t even know where their own daughter is.’
‘What? Him, too?’ For a moment I feel a flash of gratitude towards Auntie Yvonne, but it’s distant and passes quickly like sheet lightning.
‘Yeah. You can imagine how that went do
wn. Mum’s in a tizz. Hence, the call …’
‘I’ll bet he doesn’t know Mum asked you to call me.’ My voice is flat.
Keith sounds resigned. ‘No, he doesn’t.’
The automatic doors slide open and Shane reappears, holding a packet of Tim Tams. He rips the packet open and pulls out a biscuit, clamping it between his teeth like a cigar, then tucks the rest of the packet into the waistband of his shorts.
‘How are you going, anyway?’ Keith asks.
‘Okay.’
Keith says nothing, waiting for me to fill him in, but I’m focused on Shane. He’s sitting on his bike, munching on his Tim Tam, one arm outstretched, pointing at me. I frown at him, confused, a little freaked out. He stuffs the last of the biscuit into his mouth, still pointing, his face unreadable, eyes hidden by the lenses of his sunglasses. Then he grins. He rides off, giving me a salute.
‘Probably a bit late now, but if you want to stay with me for a while, you can, you know. I’m sure Mum’s told you I bought a place.’ When I don’t answer, Keith says, ‘Carly?’
‘Did she tell you to say that?’
‘No, that’s from me. They wouldn’t have to know. I wouldn’t tell them if you didn’t want me to.’
And I realise he probably wouldn’t. Keith’s always been okay to me, we’ve just never been very close. I don’t know if it’s the five-year age gap between us, or because he’s so focused on getting ahead in whatever it is he wants to get ahead in.
‘No, I’m all right. I’ve got a place. But thanks anyway.’
Shane turns left onto the side street heading towards the beach. He must live here now.
I realise Keith is saying something. ‘Sorry, what?’
He raises his voice as though I’m deaf. ‘I said, so where are you anyway?’
‘Right now I’m at a service station, filling my car.’
Keith’s voice is sharp. ‘And talking to me? Carly, it’s dangerous to use mobiles at fuel pumps. You better go. Ring me later.’
He hangs up.
After I’ve switched my mobile off I catch sight of the warning sign near the pump: an encircled image of a mobile phone with a diagonal line slashed across it. I realise, then, it was probably this that Shane was pointing at.
Yeah. Well. So, it’s me again. Thought I’d give you a call because there’s not much going on out here, that’s for sure. Surf’s shit, conditions are brown and flat, sort of dirty. What can you do, eh? Bloody tired, I can tell you. How’s crazy Hannah? What have you been up to? You been working? Surfing?
Surfing. Not any more. It’s just something I used to do. The time for all that stuff has passed. There’s no point to it. There’s no point to anything; that’s the big secret I’ve been let in on. Sometimes I think it’s not right, to lie in bed all day like this, but it doesn’t really matter. Ultimately, nothing does. That’s the thing about life, we all end up in the same place. Dead. In the face of that, who gives a shit what you do while you pass from point A to B?
It doesn’t hurt when I listen to his messages anymore. But I don’t want to go outside. I don’t want to do anything. Sometimes I wonder how long this can go on. I’m just existing. I remember Maslow’s hierarchy of needs from school. I’ve got food, shelter and air, so I’ve got all I need to exist. But just existing is horrible. Everything in my world is grey. I don’t have any urges or wants at all. I keep wishing for something to kick in, anything that will make me get out of bed, make me want something. I’m just holding on, I think, waiting for that to come. Sometimes I wonder what I’ll do if it never does.
I go to work, but it’s not an answer. It gets me out of bed for a while, but that just makes it easier to lie down the rest of the time.
He doesn’t ring as much now. I know it must be hard for him to keep ringing and ringing without hearing anything back from me. I can hear it in his voice. He’s starting to doubt that I want to hear from him, that it’ll do any good. I know it’s costing him to do it. In the beginning I thought Ryan had it all together; he just seemed so sure. But he’s not like that. He was just like that with me. He’s the sort of guy who keeps himself to himself and, for some reason, with me, he really put himself out there.
I think these things, but I can’t feel anything about them.
The other night I was driving home and came to, realising I was leaning forward, gripping the steering wheel really hard, frowning fiercely at the road ahead. The radio wasn’t on and I was driving in the quiet. When I became aware of this I couldn’t remember the last time I’d thought to put the radio on.
What surprised me was how much I was straining. It had nothing to do with crashing or not crashing; I haven’t felt that for a long time. It was about how hard it was just to drive.
So here’s the story from the middle of nowhere. Cold at night, hot during the day. And dry – my lips are cracked to shit. DVD player’s on the blink, which is typical. Ensuite’s bigger, but it’s still a box with a fancy name. A rat cage. What else can I tell you? Twelve hours is a long time to sit in a truck. I want to surf. I want to see you. I want to hear your voice. This is doing my head in. It’s Ryan, by the way. Are you there, Carly? Are you even … (Sigh).
He’s stopped calling. It’s funny, when he was ringing me, I never used to keep track of when he’d called last or when he might call again. I’d just see the message on my phone and know it was something I had to get through. Now, I have this count in my head, how much time’s passed since I heard him sigh. What I don’t get is why I’m doing it. Will I magically feel better when I reach a certain number, like twenty-seven days or forty-five? Or will that sigh get softer as I keep going along? Except I’m not going along, am I? I’m not leaving him behind. I’m not even moving.
Another Friday night. We get slammed early and then things quieten down after nine. There are a couple of groups of customers sitting around tables out the front but their orders were filled ages ago and now they’re just using the place as a base, somewhere to sit and stare at the river of people surging past on the Corso. Adam’s on tonight, but he’s not talking much, which is good. He’s in a dreamy mood, singing to himself. He drifts out the back and turns the radio on and grabs a cloth before going back out the front where he won’t be able to hear it anyway.
Danny wrinkles his nose in Adam’s wake but doesn’t take his eyes from the slow trickle of melted butter he’s pouring into the food processor. I’ve got him making the hollandaise sauce for the first time and he’s stressed it’s going to curdle. I’m standing at the pass, filling out the fruit and vegie order before I ring it through.
‘Hey, do you want to go for a surf tomorrow?’ he asks suddenly.
‘Ah … no. I mean, thanks, though.’
‘How come?’
I frown down at the clipboard in front of me, tapping it with my pen. ‘Um, I don’t know. I just haven’t been surfing lately.’
‘How come?’
‘I don’t know. I’m just … busy.’
He stops pouring and straightens up to look at me. I can see by his face he knows full well I haven’t been surfing and there’s a challenging note to his voice I’ve never heard before. ‘Like doing what?’
For a moment we just stare at each other.
‘Not surfing, okay?’
‘Huh.’ He turns his attention back to pouring, bending down to get eye level with the top of the food-processor jug. ‘That’s dumb.’
It takes a second for me to register that he’s muttered this and that he sounds almost snaky. ‘Why?’
‘Because you like it.’
34
easter
The light’s changed. It’s gold and weak, not white and glary. Autumn. We’re well into April now, so it had to arrive sometime. I’m as cold as anything, shaking I’m so cold, which must be why I’ve woken up early. I’ve only got a sheet over me and I get up to find my doona, which is lying crumpled on the floor at the end of the bed. Then I think I may as well make the bed so it’s nice to get back into
. I get as far as yanking the bottom sheet straight and lose interest.
I’m restless. I went to sleep irritated by what Danny said to me about not surfing and I’ve been chewing on it all night, even while I slept, because it’s still irking me. I don’t feel like going back to bed. This panics me a bit if you want to know the truth, because it’s only six-thirty, which means there’s a lot of day to get through before it’s time to go to work. But maybe I can go back to bed later. I hope I’ll want to, that I’ll feel that heavy tiredness again, because now it’s gone I can see how safe it was.
Right now I need to get outside because it doesn’t feel like there’s enough air inside the room. I wrap the doona around me and go out on the deck, where I have to squint because the world seems too sharp. There are no clouds or wind, the sky is an eye-aching blue, the sunlight undercut by the chill rising up from the earth. Summer’s over, winter’s coming, but right now is the in-between, the change. I’ve always loved this time of year the most, always loved Easter more than Christmas. It’s because of surfing. The swell’s mixed, which means you still get runs of easterly swell, not like winter where it’s usually coming from the south all the time. And there’s not much wind about, or if there is it’s often offshore. The ocean’s still warm but the sand is chilled. The water loses the emerald green of summer and starts to keep secrets, turning a deep, dark sapphire blue.
Most of all I love the light. I love how everything is golden, precious. Some days it makes things so beautiful it hurts.
My first time was at Easter. I was nine. It was school holidays and we were at Wamberal with the complete set of Lee aunties and cousins. We’d set up camp down the south end, near the entrance to the lagoon where you can hire paddleboats and canoes and the little cousins could splash about in the water with floaties on their arms.
Those holidays Dad had dug out a battered old shortboard: thick knobs of dirty wax on the deck, pastel blue at the tail morphing through a range of eighties fluoro colours to a hot pink tip, Maddog slashed across the nose. At the time he acted like he used to ride it, but I think maybe he’d found it somewhere or it was somebody else’s old board given to him to try. Anyway, he wasn’t a surfer.