Jo stifled a yawn. Her sister watched way too much Oprah, or Dr Phil. She hoped her glazed expression was giving Belle the hint that she wasn’t taking anything more in.
‘Anyway,’ Belle said finally, ‘she’s going to be here for a week or so, surely you can fit us in somewhere in your busy schedule?’
The very idea aroused a sense of dread in Jo. It was not that she refused outright to see Charlene, or that they weren’t speaking as such. She just avoided contact where possible, and her mother certainly made no overtures in that direction either. It had ever been thus. Jo was well and truly old enough to make her own decisions about how she wanted to spend her time and who she wanted to spend it with. But Belle had this annoying compulsion to mark the milestones of her life with a celebration – getting married, having babies, that kind of thing – so Jo and Charlene had been thrust together over the years, lined up in the same photo, clinking glasses to toast the occasion, playing happy families when really they were barely more than strangers.
‘It’ll depend on work . . . and that,’ said Jo, clutching at her last straw.
‘Of course, we’ll fit in around you,’ said Belle sweetly. ‘We could even come into the city to meet you.’
Jo thought about that, her mother coming to her flat, the sneers, the criticism. ‘Well, we’ll see.’
‘And if I don’t hear from you, I’ll give you a call.’
Jo didn’t doubt it.
JO LIDDELL
BITCH
I thought it had peaked, I honestly did. I knew that the eighties were the real boom time for the self-help industry, but I thought it had well and truly peaked, and it had been on a steady decline ever since. I truly thought we’d moved on, that we were looking outward, trying to explain the big picture instead, to solve some of life’s more pressing issues – like how to save the planet, perhaps.
Surely, I thought, we’ve all had enough of naval-gazing and blaming our parents, our teachers, our peers, the place we were born, the method of our birth, whether we were breastfed, our religion, our lack of religion . . . I could go on, but I’m sure you get the drift.
But a quick squiz the other day at my local bookstore revealed otherwise. Shelf upon shelf of self-help, self-healing, self-growth, self-fulfilment. In fact, it appears we don’t even need an obvious problem any more, if we can’t find something wrong, we probably have repressed a memory of some hideous, childhood trauma. Puhlease.
When are we going to get over ourselves? When are we going to stop obsessing and get on with living? I know you’ve heard this before, but really, what about the starving children in Africa? Have they got time to grizzle about being the middle child? I think not. But we don’t have to go all the way to Africa. In your own street there are people with real problems, who have to get up every day and wonder how they’re going to get through it. Really.
The fact is, everyone has crap from their past they have to deal with, but do you want it to be what defines you?
My grandmother used to tsk tsk, and mutter she was glad she had teenagers before they invented ‘adolescence’. I think I understand what she was getting at now. She used to say, don’t pick at scabs, or else they’ll never heal. She also said stop whining. I think it’s about time we all did.
[email protected]
Tuesday morning
It was the first editorial meeting for the week. Sunday’s paper was already lining guinea pig cages across the metropolitan area, and they had another edition to put out in five days’ time. Everyone generally attended this meeting to get an overview of the direction and flavour of next week’s paper, and to make sure there were no major conflicts of interest.
Don McAllister was in the middle of outlining his progress on a series he was compiling on the continuing saga of the war in Afghanistan. He was a nice man, and he knew his stuff, but he was dull as dishwater. Not on the page, thank God. On the page he was thought-provoking and ground-breaking and award-winning. Which was why he was a print journalist. His personality didn’t have to sell the story, his words were more than up to the task of doing that.
Lachlan was the one who got invited onto Meet The Press and Lateline and anywhere the paper did need a personality to sell a story. The meeting had moved on and now Lachlan had the undivided attention of the assembled dilettantes. Which was how he referred to his colleagues, though he’d never say it to their faces.
‘I assure you, Leo,’ he said, ‘there’s nothing to the rumours. I’ve spoken to my contacts at the highest level in state government, and I’ve personally examined scads of confidential documents. The whole process is above board and completely open to scrutiny.’
‘So why do the rumours persist?’ asked Leo.
‘Because the average punter has a fundamental distrust of Public Private Partnerships,’ said Lachlan, ‘fuelled by the usual suspects, the Opposition and the Greens amongst others. People can’t see why if they pay taxes to fund roads, they should also have to pay a toll to drive on them.’
Jo used to be able to listen to Lachlan all day. She loved the timbre of his voice, the cadence of his speech, his turn of phrase. He was mesmerising, even when he was talking about the current account deficit.
But today Jo was distracted . . . aimless . . . discomfited . . . She couldn’t even say which word best fit her mood, she was so discombobulated. Now that was a great word, you didn’t get the chance to use a word like that every day. But it was exactly how she felt. She’d spent the whole day yesterday doing nothing much. She had plenty of unpacking to do, and she could have knocked most of it over in a day if she had really set her mind to it, but she felt strangely unmotivated. She fiddled about, poking into boxes and pulling things out at random, but then she couldn’t make up her mind where to put anything. Truth be told, the mood she was in, she just didn’t care enough. So now the place was in a mild state of disarray. A bit like her head. Lachlan had rung a few times since he got back from Tasmania. He wanted to see her; translation – he wanted sex. Jo didn’t pick up when he called, so he left long messages, ranging from eager and insistent at first, to miffed and annoyed a day later. She wasn’t sure why she was avoiding him. It wasn’t that she was against the idea of sex, it had been more than a week, after all. But she just didn’t feel like dealing with him, and his ego, and his needs. And it wasn’t just Lachlan. Jo really didn’t feel like dealing with anyone. Sometimes she found her mind drifting back fondly to that elevator – sans the panic attack part – when no one knew where she was, and no one could get to her.
This morning she’d woken up hours before her alarm went off. She’d just lain there, staring up at the ceiling. The new ceiling in her new apartment. Wondering when her great new life was going to begin.
‘It’s what’s called an anticlimax, poppet,’ Oliver had told her authoritatively, when she arrived on the doorstep of his café, right on opening. What with the move and the late starts, she’d missed Oliver this past week, and not just for his silky scrambled eggs and that defibrillator brew. He was the mainstay of her working week, a bizarro voice of reason who somehow made sense of the world by flipping it on its ear. He had inadvertently helped frame literally dozens of her columns. She didn’t know how she’d get by without him once the Trib moved to the new building.
‘You put way too much stock into this whole moving thing, Josephine,’ he went on. ‘You’ve been a bore for months. No wonder it hasn’t lived up to the hype.’
‘I suppose you’re right,’ Jo said wistfully, taking the coffee he passed her across the counter. ‘But even so, I have a brand-new apartment in the middle of the city, which is literally a dream come true for me. I have a great job, I have good sex on a regular basis –’
‘Stop skiting.’
‘My point exactly. Isn’t it a bit self-indulgent for me to be feeling anything less than happy with my lot in life?’
‘One would think. But happiness is an elusive thing, petal, the more we pursue it, the further out of reach it gets,’ Oliv
er mused. ‘It’s the next big thing, you know, everyone’s clambering onto the happiness bandwagon. It seems now that we’ve all got jobs and we’re richer than our parents ever dreamed of being, and we have every convenience, diversion, sexual freedom, you name it, well, we’re finding it’s not all that it was cracked up to be. People are not happy, and they want to know why.’
Jo sipped her coffee. ‘Mm, that’s what that positive psychology movement’s all about, isn’t it? I’m pretty sure we did a feature on the guy who started it over in the States. All about mindfulness and wellbeing and having a life purpose –’
‘Yes, yes, blah de blah, blah and blah,’ Oliver waved his hands in a dismissive flourish. ‘You want to know what I think?’ he said, leaning over the counter towards her. ‘I think people think too much. Apparently during wars and famine and other major catastrophes, depression is all but nonexistent. Everyone stops contemplating their navels because they’re too busy just trying to stay alive.’
‘Are you saying we’d be better off if we were at war, Oliver?’
‘Last time I looked, we were at war,’ he had declared. ‘Don’t you read the papers, sweetie, or do you only write them?’
Jo stirred, sensing she was being watched. Lachlan was frowning at her from his place further up the conference table. He had finished his spiel, and from the look on his face, it was obvious that he knew she hadn’t been paying attention. She gave him a wan smile but he was unmoved, his gaze lingering long enough for her to get the full measure of his disappointment, before he gave a wounded sigh and lowered his eyes to the notes on the table in front of him.
‘Haven’t we done real estate to death?’ Glen Nicholas was saying. Someone had obviously suggested another startling exposé on the price of real estate, the real estate crisis, the urban sprawl, the urban squeeze, the property boom, the property slump . . .
‘You can never do too much real estate in this town,’ said Leo. ‘Show me what you’ve got in a couple of days, Kylie, and I’ll decide if it’s got legs. Next.’
Kylie Chen was a new recruit and her eyes were shining with anticipation of a Walkley. Jo remembered a time when she used to get that excited. She wondered if she was getting jaded, and there was nothing worse than a jaded old hack.
‘. . . wait for it – offal!’ Hugh Moncrieff, the food editor, was beaming, his hands outstretched as though he had just announced he’d located the holy grail.
‘No way,’ Leo said flatly.
‘But Leo, it’s making a comeback, all the best restaurants are serving simply exquisite offal dishes. It’s the new black, if you will allow me to borrow a metaphor from the world of fashion.’ He nodded deferentially towards Carla Delacqua, who rolled her eyes with unconcealed disdain.
‘I don’t care,’ Leo was adamant. ‘Liver is liver, no matter how you dress it up. And tripe is tripe and kidneys are kidneys and they all taste, well, like offal. If you do a feature on it, people will give it a passing glance before they come over nauseous when they remember being force-fed sheep’s brains as a child. And next week they’ll buy the other paper. What else have you got?’
Hugh looked anxious. ‘Nothing. I didn’t expect –’
‘Bring me something by tomorrow. Next.’
Carla launched into a rundown of her list of engagements for the week. As social editor that was pretty much all she had to do. Show up, keep her ears open, remember everyone’s name and especially the name of whatever designer they were wearing.
Brett Bowman was next, slumped over in his chair, his chin propped in one hand. As media editor, he had an encyclopaedic knowledge of TV and films, if that wasn’t an oxymoron, but he always sounded bored.
‘I’ll be doing a double page of the new US releases and what the networks are likely to pick up,’ he said wearily.
‘What’s the buzz?’ asked Christine, one of the senior editors.
‘There is no buzz, that’s the problem,’ Brett replied. ‘In their increasingly desperate attempts to hold onto ever-decreasing audiences, the only thing the networks seem to be able to do is keep reinventing the wheel. Case in point is Case in Point, a new legal drama-com that’s being touted as a cross between Ugly Betty and Grey’s Anatomy, with a smattering of The Sopranos, as it involves a girl who’s somewhat plain in the looks department, whose father was put away for mob-related activities, and now she’s sharing his house with a bunch of law students, including a pretty blonde former Miss Idaho who falls in love with a guy on death row, as well as an uber-smart Asian woman, an arrogant black man, and, in another breathlessly original concept, a loveable gay guy.’
‘That sounds familiar,’ Christine mused.
‘You think?’
A lull descended on the room. Perhaps everyone was thinking about the new show, more likely they were thinking about lunch. Jo was up next, and she didn’t know what she was going to write about in her damn column . . . and worse, she didn’t much care. She did wonder, however, why Joe Bannister wasn’t at the meeting today. Would he ever come to meetings? Were they beneath him? Was he really not going to be around much, like he’d said? Maybe she should have taken his office –
‘JoANNE!’ Leo boomed from the far end of the table.
Jo hurtled back from inner space, to find everyone’s eyes trained on her.
‘Now is when you tell us what you’re planning for this week’s column,’ he finished in his best patronising tone.
She cleared her throat. ‘Well, I was thinking . . . maybe something about . . . um . . .’ Nothing, nothing, nothing, then click! That glorious little switch inside her head turned on the light bulb hovering above it. ‘Happiness,’ she announced.
Leo sat back. ‘Could you be more specific?’
Damn, he wanted details. ‘Well, you know, this whole movement going on now, the search for happiness. Why despite our apparent wealth, low unemployment and, well, everything, people just don’t feel happy.’
‘Positive psychology,’ blurted Kylie. Everyone turned to look at her, and she shrank just a little in her seat. ‘I went to a seminar last week, actually,’ she added in a smaller voice.
‘It’s quite a booming industry, boss,’ said Christine. ‘It’s the new black.’
‘I thought offal was the new black,’ Leo grunted. ‘Christ, I’m sick of that expression. What’s your take gunna be, Jo?’
‘Huh?’ she stirred. She’d started to drift off again.
‘What the hell’s going on with you?’ asked Leo. ‘Big night last night?’
Jo didn’t look at Lachlan, but she could sense his jaw clenching from here.
‘What’s the angle, Jo?’ Leo said slowly. ‘Are you going to bitch about happiness itself?’
‘Oh . . . I don’t know.’ She wasn’t sure how one would do that.
Leo tapped his pen on the notebook in front of him. ‘Have a bitch about the industry growing up around it, people profiting out of it, that it’s self-help by any other name . . .’
‘That’s not exactly what I had in mind –’
‘Well that’s what I have in mind. Next.’
As everyone filed out of the boardroom Jo felt a hand on her elbow, and then Lachlan’s voice in her ear, ‘My office.’ He pushed past her and everyone else, and she just saw the back of his head disappearing up the corridor.
She didn’t appreciate being summoned, but she couldn’t keep putting him off either. As she walked towards his office he appeared in the doorway.
‘Have you got a minute, Jo?’ he said, loud enough for anyone nearby to hear. ‘I’d like your input on some research I’ve been looking into.’
‘Sure, Lachlan.’ She didn’t know why he made such a to-do about the subterfuge, she was quite sure everyone at the Trib knew or at least suspected they were having an affair. It was pretty obvious when he closed the blinds every time she went into his office. Besides, who would seriously believe that Lachlan Barr wanted her input on anything?
As she stepped into his office, he closed the door
behind her and had her pinned against the back of it in one slick manoeuvre. As his lips came down on hers, Jo realised he’d not so much as said hello, how are you, or engaged in any of the usual polite pleasantries.
‘Morning Lachlan,’ she said matter-of-factly when he eventually drew back. ‘How are you today?’
He considered her curiously. ‘Missing you. Why haven’t you been answering my messages?’
‘I’ve been caught up with everything, you know, trying to unpack and get organised.’
‘So you can’t even reply to a text message?’
She paused, thinking about all the unanswered messages she had sent over the course of their relationship. There was an understanding that if he didn’t answer, he couldn’t. That was that. Apparently that didn’t apply both ways.
‘There was no point answering,’ Jo said finally.
‘What’s that supposed to mean?’ he frowned.
‘Look, I knew you wanted to come over, and I still had too much to do around the place, and I would have had to argue the toss with you for ten minutes. So I decided to spare myself the hassle.’
His expression suggested a begrudging acceptance of her excuse. ‘So can I come over tonight?’
Jo winced. ‘Everything’s still a mess.’
‘You know I don’t care how the place looks.’
She groaned. ‘I’m not worried about impressing you, Lachlan. I just want to get it done. If I stop now, I know what’ll happen. It’ll stay how it is for months.’
He pressed in closer against her. ‘I could help,’ he said, brushing his lips against hers.
‘But you won’t,’ Jo said plainly. ‘You’ll get in the way and you’ll pout if I don’t pay you attention.’
‘Sometimes I think you don’t have a very high opinion of me.’
‘Maybe I just know you too well.’
He pulled back. ‘You really think I’m so self-centred and inconsiderate that I wouldn’t give you a hand when you needed it?’
He looked sincere, and just a little miffed. So now she’d hurt his feelings. She reached up to kiss him softly on the lips. ‘I’m just tired,’ she said. ‘There was a lot happening while you were away.’
Crossing Paths Page 13