Between a Wolf and a Dog

by Georgia Blain

  So she stopped, her skin clammy, her throat dry as she tried to utter a simple word, a practice ‘hello’, her voice, when it eventually came, harsh and grating.

  I can’t do this, she thought.

  She caught sight of herself in the shop window, a stranger she didn’t know. A woman about to try and meet up with someone who had once held her safe and loved, only to betray her in a way she could not forgive.

  I don’t have to do this, she realised.

  And she sat on a low brick wall, the realisation that she could just turn her back on this meeting both light and terrifying.

  I’m not ready, she told herself.

  At the end of the street, she could see Lawrence’s car. He was already there. She tried to imagine herself walking in, staying upright, opening her mouth, uttering adult words, looking at him, eyes clear and open — and it was all so impossible to visualise that she knew she had no choice.

  Have had to cancel, she wrote, fingers trembling as she tapped on the letters, frequently missing the one she wanted, the predictive text quick to make sense of the jumble she was writing. Will email this evening with proposed arrangements.

  She pressed ‘send’, relieved as the message turned green.

  It was going to be a long time before she could talk to him.

  Perhaps it would never happen again.

  And the solid weight of that sorrow pressed down, bruising and ugly, cloaking the shape of her, close.

  NOW

  THE LAST TIME ESTER saw Steven was a fortnight ago. She had gone into the city to complete the second part of the mediation course — a half-day workshop. She hadn’t known whether he would be in this group, or another.

  ‘Ask him,’ her friend Marta had encouraged. ‘I’m sure you could find him on the internet and email him.’

  Of course she could. She’d found him already, googling him the day after their drink together, surprised by his picture on his website. It wasn’t how she recalled him. It was a black and white studio photograph, a bit like a magazine shot, showing him in a grey T-shirt and jeans, sitting on a chair and leaning forward, eager to listen. There was something fake about it, and, embarrassed, she closed the page immediately, only to reopen it later that night, a glass of wine by her side.

  She read his bio with the same degree of discomfort.

  ‘Steven Lansdowne works closely with clients to help them achieve their full potential. He provides individual coaching sessions for executives and runs highly acclaimed leadership courses.

  ‘Steven began his working life as an actor, appearing in films, commercials, and on stage. In his late twenties, he completed an MBA, with a major in psychology, and commenced a successful career in change management consultancy, working with companies in the finance industry. During this time, he discovered the importance of tapping into people potential, harnessing the full creative power of the individual to fully realise success.’

  Hilary would hate it.

  Maurie would have hated it too.

  She trawled though old entries under Steven’s name, digging up short films, television series, and plays he’d appeared in years earlier. A couple were on YouTube, and she sat back, slightly embarrassed, as she watched — his roles usually those of a pretty boy, a minor love interest at the sideline of the story. He was someone who’d been just a few shades away from becoming a recognised actor at the same time as she’d been letting go of painting. Feeling as though she was spying, she shut down the computer.

  Ester remembered the period of giving up painting. Her work was formalistic, strong architectural shapes that repeated themselves with an order that never varied, very different to the seemingly chaotic riot of her father’s canvases. Hilary had never been a fan, but she had nonetheless been dismayed by Ester’s decision. Maurie had been more sympathetic.

  ‘You can paint,’ he’d told her. ‘But so can a lot of people.’

  She had waited for him to continue.

  ‘You’re always going to battle with being my daughter. Sometimes you’ll be lauded for it, at other times you’ll be pilloried. In order to overcome that, you’ll need a certain “fuck you” temperament, and a real desire to be known for your work. I’m not sure that you have either.’

  He was right.

  She’d glanced across at him. ‘I’d like to do something completely different,’ she’d confessed. ‘Something that’s just mine.’

  He’d understood.

  ‘It’ll mean I’ll be a Sunday painter.’ She’d smiled at him, knowing that he had little time or patience for weekend artists.

  He’d grinned. ‘Ah, but you’ll be different to all those other Sunday painters,’ he’d told her. ‘You’re my daughter.’ He’d folded her close, and told her he’d keep a space for her in his studio, whenever she wanted to use it.

  He didn’t, of course. The area that she’d occupied was soon filled with his work, and she would laugh when she came to visit him, referring to her ever shrinking corner — a space that he would hastily clean in embarrassment, telling her he was just using it temporarily.

  Marta continued to urge her to ring Steven.

  She’d been a friend of Ester’s and Lawrence’s, and, like so many of their friends, she’d chosen to stay with Ester during the split. She looked at Steven’s bio on his website but was quick to dismiss Ester’s unease. ‘A little cheesy, yes,’ she’d agreed, pouring herself another wine, ‘but he’d have to present himself in a certain way to get work. I mean, look at you —’ and she flicked over to Ester’s homepage. ‘All caring and sharing.’

  ‘Which I am,’ Ester insisted.

  ‘I know. But you’re more than that.’

  Ester tried to articulate her fear a little more clearly. ‘What do they call them now? “A player?” That’s what he looks like — a player. Smooth and charming.’ She shook her head, her words barely audible as she uttered them: ‘Like Lawrence.’

  Marta looked at her. ‘Does this mean you’ll dismiss anyone who’s handsome?’

  ‘I probably should,’ Ester smiled. She remembered the man she’d met on the internet date so long ago, and how quick she’d been to write him off. He was the type she should be considering, she told Marta. Someone safe. She sat on the floor, and looked up at the ceiling. It had been so long, and she was terrified.

  Marta slid down the wall and sat next to her. She took Ester’s hand in her own and squeezed it. ‘Of course you are,’ she said gently.

  Ester sent him an email in the end — carefully worded, asking him if he was going to the second part of the course on Friday, and if so, did he want to have lunch afterwards?

  He never replied.

  And so she turned up on the day, hoping he wouldn’t be there because she felt so foolish. They took their seats at the round table, the moderator in the middle, and just as she began to speak, he arrived. Seeing her, he raised a hand in greeting, a smile on his face as he tried to squeeze a chair in next to her.

  She nodded, hoping she wasn’t blushing, and then looked steadily at her notepad as she continued to write. At the end of the session, he asked her if she wanted to have lunch.

  ‘Oh.’ Her confusion was obvious.

  ‘You can’t?’

  She shook her head. ‘When I didn’t hear from you, I thought you weren’t coming today.’

  And now he looked confused. He’d never received an email from her. He checked his junk mail on his iPad, and there it was — her carefully worded invitation. She couldn’t watch him open and read it.

  ‘Love to,’ he said.

  They talked over a bowl of soup, her nerves soon gone. He asked her if she was religious, or voted Liberal. ‘Possibly insurmountable problems if you say yes to either.’

  She shook her head. ‘What about you? Do you go shooting for a hobby? Maybe we need to give each other a questionnaire.’ She smiled, and
told him she’d lived with a pollster.

  ‘He came to hate it more and more.’ She was about to continue, to talk about the corrosive effect it had on Lawrence, but she stopped herself, wary of being one of those people who talked too much about their past relationship.

  ‘I’ve never voted Liberal. I had a teenage flirtation with Jesus that ended when the guy who ran the youth group was outed for kissing just about every girl over thirteen. I thought about Buddhism briefly, but never seriously.’ She narrowed her eyes. ‘Do I pass?’

  He nodded.

  ‘Be careful,’ she added. ‘I could now do something just as bad as vote Liberal or go to church. I could bring out an iPad covered in a pink fluffy case with “Princess” written on it.’

  ‘Possibly worse,’ he agreed. His phone beeped but he ignored it. ‘And I’ve never owned a gun, or used one,’ he promised.

  She broke herself a piece of bread, and asked him to tell her more about himself, hating her words as soon as she uttered them. She sounded like a therapist. ‘Not your problems, of course,’ she hastened to add. ‘Or at least not the real, real, real ones.’

  His eyes were direct, a gaze that she tried to meet. ‘Do you want me to start with my childhood, or leap straight to my first marriage?’

  She didn’t mean to cough into her water, and then it was like a choking sound, embarrassing and foolish. ‘Can I ask how many marriages you’ve had?’

  ‘Are you worried I’m one of those hopeless romantics who gets married on a weekly basis?’

  She nodded.

  ‘I’ve only been married once. And it was to a friend of mine who had a girlfriend in Australia and wanted to be able to stay. What about you?’

  She held up a finger, still chewing on her bread.

  ‘Is that an “up yours”? Or a one?’

  ‘One marriage — the pollster. We have two daughters — twins. But you know that.’

  ‘Did it end a long time ago?’

  She nodded, not wanting the conversation to veer back to Lawrence.

  He asked if she wanted a coffee, and she said yes, relieved at the chance to shift the talk in another direction.

  ‘I didn’t know your father was Maurie Marcel.’ He looked embarrassed then. ‘I did a bit of research,’ he confessed. ‘I’m sorry. I feel foolish now.’

  She smiled, although she didn’t confess to her own internet trawling.

  ‘I actually have one of his paintings. I bought it when I got my first paid work as an actor. I’ve always loved it.’ And then he shook his head and smiled again, laughing slightly. ‘I almost made a worse fool of myself,’ he told her, holding two fingers up, touching. ‘This close to saying you’d have to come over and see it sometime.’

  ‘The old etchings line,’ she grinned. ‘Got used in art school far too often.’

  ‘I can imagine.’

  She liked him. Even more than she had the last time she met. Her skin rushed with effervescent sparks of joy and nerves; it was as though each sense had been turned up a notch.

  Strange, she thought, how readily we forget the intensity of attraction, how impossible it becomes to recall. She’d felt it once before with Lawrence, and years earlier with Matthew, who’d been a sculptor in the year above her at art school. She’d adored Matthew, plotting and planning what she did and where she went in the hope of bumping into him. She took him home several times, back to the share house she’d lived in in Redfern, her bedroom up the top, two French doors opening onto a dust-caked balcony and the constant hum of traffic. They would lie on her bed under the swinging rice-paper lightshade and kiss for hours, his mouth like silk on hers, his pale hair sweeping across her cheek. And then he would fall asleep. Always.

  ‘He’s a junkie,’ her housemate told her. ‘I can’t believe you didn’t know. Everyone knows.’

  She was right. Ester saw the marks on his arms the next time, the tiny black pinpricks of his pupils as he smiled lazily at her before once again drifting away, fast asleep next to her. He’d stolen her rent money twice. She hadn’t wanted to admit it to herself, but it was hard to deny. And still she’d loved him, sure that he would change, furious with her housemates when they said they didn’t want him round anymore (the kitty had also disappeared).

  He didn’t even tell her when he checked into Odyssey House; it was a friend of a friend who explained why he was nowhere to be found. He moved to Melbourne soon afterwards, and it wasn’t until years later that she learnt of his overdose, the news saddening her more than she would have expected, the memory of her feelings for him enough to take her back there, briefly.

  She looked at Steven sitting opposite her, and told him that she’d never had any regrets about giving up art. ‘I thought I would have. Which only goes to show I wasn’t cut out for it in the first place. I guess Maurie knew that.’

  Steven’s father had been a used-car salesman.

  ‘Of the worst type,’ he confessed. ‘He even sold clapped-out pieces of junk to friends of mine, and then refused to give back their money when they wouldn’t start. We were always going from boom to bust — living in a mansion one week, fleeing creditors the next. He died of a heart attack two years ago.’

  Ester looked at him. ‘And your mother?’

  ‘Family life sent her to an early grave.’ He grimaced.

  It was strange shaping your life for someone else, she thought. Here they were, both in the business of extracting such stories from clients, spinning tales across the table, tossing them forth to snare each other.

  In the days following her lunch with Steven, she resisted the urge to contact him again.

  ‘But what if he’s lost my email, or thinks that I wasn’t keen?’ After four days of waiting, she told Marta she couldn’t do it any longer. She felt embarrassed by her eagerness. She’d seen clients ruin new relationships by rushing in, giving too much too soon, and she feared behaving like that because it had been so very long since she’d felt this way.

  Marta was the only friend she’d told. She’d come over to help Ester put together an Ikea chest of drawers for the girls’ room. She’d worked as an assistant for a sculptor who made public art pieces, and had developed a practical competence that most of Ester’s other friends lacked. Lawrence used to call on her too, asking her to help him rehang doors and fix window sashes on their old house, always determined to do it himself, only to find that he didn’t have the skills he pretended to have. Marta would take over, dismantling his initial work and teasing him mercilessly as she started from scratch.

  She had the instructions laid out on the floor, and was reading through them as Ester spoke.

  ‘Perhaps I should just send him an email?’

  ‘No.’ Marta insisted. She tapped the hammer gently on the side of Ester’s foot. ‘No. No. No. Subliminal messaging from me to you. If you try to send that email you’ll feel those hammer blows, and they’ll stop you.’

  ‘I don’t think so,’ Ester told her. ‘Although, I will feel foolish and wish I could retract the message as soon as I’ve pressed send.’

  She counted the bolts in her hand. ‘Have you got the other one?’

  Marta did.

  ‘I had a client once who told me that finding a man was like finding real estate.’

  Marta rolled her eyes.

  ‘You have to put in your offer straight away or someone else will come and nab it.’ Ester chewed on her bottom lip. ‘What if she was right?’

  ‘So what is he?’

  Ester didn’t understand.

  ‘In real-estate language?’

  Ester laughed. ‘Harbourside. Off-street parking. Custom joinery. Seamless indoor-outdoor flow.’

  ‘An infinity-edge lap pool?’

  ‘Oh god, I hope not. Far too common.’

  She stepped nervously from foot to foot, unable to keep still, her heart too quick, all o
f her on edge with the potential for disappointment, the potential of not hearing from him again, of finding out he wasn’t interested after all. The potential that she had fucked it up. She looked down at the ground and took a deep breath. ‘I’m sorry,’ she said. ‘I will rein it in.’ And she picked up the hammer and tapped the back of her hand three times lightly. ‘Time to try and let it go.’

  ‘And Lawrence?’ Marta smiled at her. ‘What was he?’

  Ester shook her head. ‘One of those new developments that seems so good on the prospectus — and then turns out to be nothing but trouble.’

  She bent down to hold the side and the back of the chest together, trying to keep the edge steady while Marta bolted one into the other.

  ‘And what is it you want?’ Marta put the drill down and looked at Ester. ‘Holiday cottage? Flashy city home? Rustic? Modern?’

  ‘Something where the work’s already been done,’ Ester eventually said. ‘I really don’t want to have to renovate.’

  ‘Can’t say I want that for you either. I’d be the one doing most of the work.’

  Behind them, Ester’s phone beeped. She’d put it on alert so that she could hear emails when they arrived. ‘Can I look?’

  Marta wagged her finger in admonishment, and then shooed her away. ‘Go,’ she told her.

  And she did, her squeal ringing out from the kitchen to the girl’s bedroom, followed by a peal of laughter — loud, embarrassed.

  ‘I am so sorry,’ she apologised, leaping up and down, phone in hand. ‘I’m behaving like an adolescent. I know I am. I seem to have no control.’ She held the phone out to Marta, the message open on the screen.

  Lovely having lunch last week — want to have dinner on Friday?

  Marta took the phone from her. ‘You can reply when I’m gone,’ she told her. ‘Not until then.’ And then she leant forward and kissed her on the cheek. ‘I’m glad for you,’ she said. ‘I really am. Just don’t buy without getting all those reports — pest inspection. Building. All of them.’