When I told Thomas later what he had done he went weak and had to sit down. So much for first impressions. It would be another year before Thomas finally felt that he had earned my father’s forgiveness and that was only because my father accidentally ran into his car and tore off the back end. It was the first and only time I have ever seen someone relieved to be in a car accident.
The next morning my sister Wendy and I drove out to the caravan park to pick up the others. She was still laughing.
‘He said “fuck” at the dinner table, Corinne! Maybe we can get him to say grace tonight. “Hey, God, thanks for the fucking chicken.” ’ More laughter.
Adam came running out of the caravan as we parked. ‘Jamie knows the bull spoof guy!’
What a wonderful trip this was turning into.
‘The bull spoof guy! J went to school with him!’ Adam was waving excitedly as if he had just found out that Jamie was related to Mariah Carey.
‘We saw him on the telly! He’s selling bull spoof!’ Adam was laughing maniacally. I could not figure out if Thomas looked amused or sick.
I shut the car door and kissed my boyfriend hello. ‘They sell bull semen to farmers for breeding. It’s not some kind of weird sex thing. At least not until J and Adam found out about it.’
Jamie grinned. The part of a country kid that delights in grossing out city people never disappears. When I was in high school I made a video for my city penpal that showed me sticking my arm into a cow’s mouth to prove they didn’t bite. (The cow did bite—a lot—but we managed to edit that out.) Now Jamie, like a true country kid, was standing in the doorway of the caravan, arms folded and laughing as Adam breathlessly told my unimpressed sister everything he had just discovered about artificial animal insemination.
I watched as Jamie climbed into the back of my sister’s car. Although we were both from country Victoria, a childhood desire to disturb city people was where the similarities between us ended. He had done a far better job of assimilating into city life than I had. He was groovy. He had groovy wavy blond hair, long, but not too long, just groovy. He wore T-shirts bearing the names of indie bands. He had an earring. Admittedly, he also drove a Barina with cow-print seat covers, so the transformation wasn’t complete, but he was a long way ahead of me. I had turned up that morning in a flannel shirt, track pants and Blundstones. I looked like I should be heading out to a paddock to collect bull spoof myself.
Jamie was the only one in our party that I was not worried about. Adam was a constant source of concern for too many reasons to list and Thomas had already proven himself a disaster. Jamie was supposed to be the one who was in control. So it took us all by surprise when he proved to be the most unfit for country living out of all of us.
That morning, we were going to visit the local trout farm. Thomas had never seen a trout farm before and Adam thought it would be funny. Wendy and Jamie came along, acting as nonchalant as possible. Trout were nothing special; only city folk got excited about fish. So we went and we looked at ponds and we saw some fish flapping about. Adam and Wendy went off to hire some rods and Thomas took a call and went off to say ‘fuck’ a lot in private.
I was quite proud of the trout farm. It was one the town’s biggest tourist attractions and it sold a trout pâté to which I am yet to find an equal. It even had an underwater viewing platform where you could watch the trout swimming about undisturbed. Jamie and I went down for a look. The viewing area was not perhaps as spectacular as I had remembered it. It was smaller and murkier. It was pretty much a thirty-centimetre-square piece of thick glass looking into some cloudy water. Jamie complained that he couldn’t see anything and pressed his face right up to it to get a better look.
Essentially, a fish is nothing more than a shiny, smelly muscle with a flipper on each side. Muscles move quickly. Jamie should not have been at all surprised when one of them shot into view right in front of his face. Even so, he screamed so loudly that the fish, stunned into unconsciousness, instantly turned upside down and floated to the surface. After a moment of standing completely still and open-mouthed, we both ran up the stairs to see if we could find it. Adam came running towards us.
‘What happened? Corinne, are you all right? Why were you screaming?’
‘It wasn’t me, it was Jamie. He screamed at a trout and we think he killed it.’
‘What do you mean, “Jamie screamed at a trout”? Who’s scared of trout? Jamie? Did you scream at a trout?’
‘It came out of nowhere!’
‘You’re at a trout farm, it didn’t come out of nowhere, it came out of a trout pond. Why did you scream at a trout?’
And then we saw it floating on the surface. Jamie put his head in his hands. Then, just as quickly as it had stopped moving, it started again. It was like someone had pushed a reset button and it swam away as if nothing had happened.
Everyone was quiet. Then my sister, standing behind us and holding all the fishing gear, called out, ‘Hey, J, how about we forget about these rods and bait and we just let you wade out into the middle of the pond to scream until all the trout float to the surface? You’ll be like an aquatic version of Shelley Duvall in The Shining.’ Adam clapped his hands in delight.
Later that day I took us for a drive somewhere dry, where the fish couldn’t hurt us. We drove out the other side of town, my sister and I pointing out the sights along the way. Here’s the cemetery that everyone’s forgotten about, here’s the place that was nearly the capital of Australia, here’s the place that was used in a movie once. As we were driving, I saw something in the middle of the road, and as we got closer, I realised it was a turtle. The middle of the road is not a good place for a turtle to be hanging out. Cars are fast, turtles are slow. I pulled over to the side of the road with the plan of picking it up and putting it back onto the grass, safe from oncoming traffic. I will also admit, I had never touched a turtle and I could not envisage a time in the near future when I might get to touch one again. It was an opportunity too good to pass up.
Everyone got out of the car to watch and stretch their legs, which unfortunately made them witnesses to what happened next. I had parked right beside the turtle, so any cars coming along the same side of the road would have to swerve into the centre to get around me. And in the centre of the road was my new little reptilian friend. Where car tyres were once safely passing either side of it, they were now going to go straight over the top. I realised this about a second before a car did exactly that. The turtle took a direct hit and skittered across the road like a gruesome tiddlywink. Now it was my turn to scream. And then I cried. I’d never killed anything before and now, in what was supposed to be my shining Harry Butler moment, I had murdered a turtle.
Perhaps I overreacted. I think I mentioned that I should go to the police station and confess. We all got in the car and drove back to my parents’ house. Everyone was stone quiet until Wendy started chanting, ‘Corinne killed a turtle, Corinne killed a turtle . . .’ Thomas laughed louder than anyone else. I lost my mind and yelled at him, ‘Shove it up your arse, fuck boy!’ Everyone laughed even harder.
Now, back in Corryong again and talking to him on the phone, I was missing Thomas terribly. I was missing everything terribly. Thomas, Jamie, Adam, my childhood, everything. I was spiralling down into a vortex of sentimentality and I had to end the phone call quickly before I told him that I wished he was with me.
This was all just to do with packing, I told myself. Along with all the dust, I was stirring up a whole lot of emotions. I just needed to calm down and focus on what I was doing. The problem was, what I was doing was making things worse. Moments of extreme emotion were coming thick and fast. How was I going to throw any of this out? I was sifting through it, cherishing it, fondling it and reminiscing about it. Everything, down to the woollen beanie with the pompom ties that my sister wore when she was three, was bringing tears to my eyes. Wendy was picking stuff up, shoving it in bags and throwing it out. She was making huffing sounds every time she looked in my de
wy-eyed direction. No wonder. I was sitting in a pile of Fido Dido T-shirts and Cherry Lane singlets remembering my first ever Blue Light Disco and softly singing the lyrics to ‘Maniac’.
The only things I had managed to turf were two skivvies, one maroon and the other bottle-green, and even those I photographed before discarding. And when Wendy wasn’t looking, I carefully rolled up her Bros poster, stuck it in a cylinder and secreted it away in the boot of my car.
When we were kids, Wendy’s and my tastes were worlds apart and neither of us approved of the other. Wendy preferred the crass commerciality of a Mickey Mouse T-shirt or a pair of Garfield shorts. I, being older and wiser, shunned her fashion-enslaved sensibilities and instead preferred to wear whatever took my fancy. Consequently, I often wanted to wear pink trousers and team them with things with pictures of spaceships on them. Sure, Wendy may have looked stylish and hip and up to the minute, but I was comfortable and that was what mattered.
I did once accidentally buy something fashionable, a ‘Choose Life’ T-shirt. Of course I was completely unaware that it had anything to do with Wham!, I just liked the pink writing on the front. (I was holding it again now, smoothing out the wrinkles and remembering the denim pedal pushers that had completed the ensemble.) But even when I was wearing that T-shirt Wendy was still far ahead of me, with a red crop-top and white plastic hoop-earrings that looked like the whites of a sliced boiled egg with the yolk popped out. She was a little Anglo-Saxon, pre-adolescent version of Grace Jones. She was the Skipper to my Barbie. She was the one who looked like fun.
I snuck out to the shed where Wendy had made her pile to go to charity and reclaimed the red crop-top. Perhaps she was able to let it go, but I couldn’t. It was etched into my memory and summed up the essence of my little sister.
I wish I could say that sentimentality was my only reason for taking that top. I know I believed that at the time; I even chastised myself for being silly and I knew that Wendy would roll her eyes if she saw what I was doing. But when I was out in the shed, before I stashed it away in my car, I’m ashamed to say that I tried it on. The only thing sadder than a twelve-year-old trying to look cool is a thirty-year-old woman trying to look like a twelve-year-old trying to look cool. When I came back into the bedroom, I tried to act as nonchalant as possible, but I’m sure there was a glittery lunacy to my expression that was betraying me.
The day was not going well. I’d been trying to ignore it, but everything felt wrong. There was a pounded-down grief in the room that was almost suffocating me and I couldn’t find where it was coming from. I kept carting things out to my car and taking deep breaths of hot summer air but nothing helped. It felt like there was something in the room that was unspeakably sad and while I was scared to find it, I was equally scared that I wouldn’t.
When the packing ended, my sister and I parted on gruff terms. She was pissed off with my sentimentality and I was pissed off with myself as well. I didn’t tell her that though; she was my sister. I blamed her instead. We wound up having a terrible fight and I left, each of us vowing never to speak to the other again. At that stage neither of us knew that promise would only last a week.
Driving back to Melbourne I could feel my hands shaking on the steering wheel. There was something terribly wrong. I didn’t seem to be able to breathe. I counted down the kilometres until I passed the old pine forest that marked the edge of the boundary of my childhood world. I pulled over to the side, staggered from my car and collapsed in the grass with snot pouring down my face. I had never felt so physically torn apart by grief. I couldn’t move. I just lay in the long grass, face down, hidden from the road by my car, and screamed into the dirt. It was like my bones had gone. I had lost my family home, I had lost my sister, I had lost my boyfriend.
When I was able, I got back in the car, drove a little further to the edge of the Hume Weir, got out and sat by the shore, my face swollen and red and just a little bit covered in grass. I was looking for another turtle. I wanted to see something special. I wanted to see something self-contained. I wanted to see something I hadn’t ruined.
Chapter Seven
I had arrived home late after the trip to Corryong, dragging one box into the house and leaving the rest in the car. I cleared a space on my bed and lay down amongst newspapers, coats and what probably used to be a sandwich. I knew I should finish emptying out the car, I knew I should make some room in the house for the boxes that were about to come in, I knew I should get whatever wet thing I was lying on out from underneath me, and yet I couldn’t do any of it. All I could do was lie on my side and stare at the wardrobe door, thinking about the crap lurking on the other side. I was a complete failure.
I thought about ringing Thomas and asking for his help but stopped myself just in time. Maybe Adam was right, maybe I was relying on Tom too much. Then again, every day that I didn’t call him, I felt bad for abandoning him. I rubbed my eyes. This was a quandary I was in no fit state to consider. Even on a good day I would have had trouble with it, let alone on a day like today, when I was a floppy mess and I wasn’t sure why. I rolled onto my back, stared at the ceiling and took stock of what might be causing me to feel so bad. There was the loss of the family home, there was the stuff in the car, there was the stuff in the flat, there was the fight with my sister, and yet the problem didn’t seem to be any of that. It felt like something bigger and scarier. The problem was that I didn’t know what the problem was. I rang Adam.
‘Hey.’
‘Hey, honey. You sound miserable.’
‘I am.’
‘Do I need to come around with a bottle of wine?’
‘No. Just tell me something outrageous and make me laugh.’
We reminisced about Corryong, the fish and the bull spoof guy, and I hinted that the fight with Wendy might have been why I was so upset.
‘I don’t think that’s it at all, Corinne.’ Adam was in full psychiatrist mode and I imagined he was pacing his lounge room, gesticulating as he spoke. ‘I think you’ve just spent a weekend dredging up your past and you’re feeling vulnerable. The good thing is, it’s over now. You’ll wake up tomorrow and feel fine.’
He didn’t know about all the stuff. He didn’t know that I had packed so much into my hatchback that the only space left was around the accelerator and brake pedals. He didn’t know that I had filled my car to the brim with guilt and then parked it outside my flat. And he didn’t know that one object in particular was haunting me worse than everything else: an oversized piece of exercise equipment my father had given me for Christmas ten years previously.
Like most fathers, Dad left the gift-buying to Mum, so it was always a big deal when he came up with an idea himself. On Christmas morning 1987, after breakfast and the obligatory phone calls to relatives, we sat down to open our gifts. Dad was grinning with anticipation as I ripped off the paper to find a large box emblazoned with the French title Le Marchepied #1 Step!, or The Super Step, as the helpful translation said beneath.
Le Marchepied #1 Step! was essentially a platform that rested on four separate feet (or pieds as those fancy French folk would say) that could be heightened or lowered depending on your fitness level. It also came with an instructional video for step aerobics, presented by Brenda Dykgraaf, a US aerobics champion who, if the shiny tan stockings and high-cut, hot pink leotard were anything to go by, knew what she was doing. In terms of being up to date, my father had it spot on: it was the eighties and aerobics was all the rage. In terms of impressing his fickle teenage daughter, he’d missed the mark completely.
A good daughter would have been thrilled to receive such a thoughtful gift, and even if it wasn’t exactly what she was after, she would have enthusiastically pulled it out of its box, popped on the video and jumped around the living room, whacking her knees to her elbows, and yelling, ‘I feel the burn!’ Instead, I rolled my eyes. I didn’t even inwardly giggle at the name ‘Dykgraaf ’.
‘Put it on and have a try,’ my mother encouraged. She knew what was up.
She knew nothing would thrill Dad more than to see his daughter bouncing around like a slightly less girly version of Richard Simmons while panting out an earnest, ‘Thanks, Dad, this is brilliant! Happy Christmas to you too!’ But I was fourteen. I was a turd.
I reluctantly stuck the video in the machine, hit the play button and made a great show of how exhausting it all was. I heaved up and down on the step, wincing and puffing as if I was an arthritic eighty-year-old. Brenda Dykgraaf bounced along on screen, shouting out instructions and grinning iridescently. I scowled back at her. How dare she expect normal people to find this kind of torture enjoyable—what did she think I was, an idiot? Who in their right mind would voluntarily endure this kind of pointless up-and-down puffy stuff in their lounge room on a regular basis? The more I did it, the more I started to believe that I was a martyr and I was being asked to do something unreasonable. I think I even faked a cramp to further illustrate my point. Eventually my mother snapped that if I didn’t want to do it, then I should stop carrying on and just pack the damn thing away.
I didn’t feel vindicated, I felt childish. However, instead of letting that show, I dismantled it, slid it back into its packaging and sulkily kicked it under my bed, knowing it could take the abuse because it said on the box that it was solide et robuste. I never used it again.
Back in Corryong cleaning out the house, I had found it under my bed. Although a little dusty, the box was undamaged and Brenda was still there on the cover, still smiling and resting one foot on top of Le Marchepied as if it were a mountain peak she had just conquered. But her expression was no longer inviting or encouraging. Now she seemed to be saying, ‘I am the ghost of Christmas Past. You don’t love your father.’ I immediately lugged it out to the car. Guilt is portable.
Lessons in Letting Go Page 6