***
Eric’s colleague Ian is down from Sydney — two wrinkly toads sitting on the new white sofa, playing Nintendo, when Brigitte gets home from work at 4.30am. An expensive bottle of wine, white lines, and rolled-up hundred-dollar bills litter the coffee table. Ian never talks to her, and she ignores him. He jokes about Eric ‘playing house’ when he thinks she can’t hear, and he watches her when he thinks she can’t see.
She double-checks that the bathroom door is locked before she showers and gets ready for bed.
Tendonitis has flared up in her arm again — a sickening cord of pain buzzes from her left bicep to her fingertips. She wraps a bandage around it, and swallows some anti-inflammatories, Panadol, and a sleeping tablet. A hot-water bottle makes it all feel better, for a while.
She dreams of Kurt Cobain standing in the apartment doorway, holding a gift box. Behind him, in the foyer, deliverymen struggle with plastic-wrapped furniture on trolleys. She grasps Kurt’s arm, and whispers into his ear, ‘Please don’t leave me here.’
He lifts the lid on the box. Inside is a puppy with a red collar around its neck. She reaches for the puppy, but a huge lizard jumps out. Rainbow patterns reflect off its shiny, silver-brown scales. A syringe sticks out of its back.
Heart palpitations wrench her from the dream, and she instinctively reaches for the Valium on the bedside table. Doctor O’Meara warned her not to mix alcohol with the anti-inflamms. Rage is on the portable TV in the bedroom, playing Nirvana all night. She feels around for the remote. Where the fuck did Eric put it this time? This film clip with the little girl in the Ku Klux Klan costume creeps her out.
23
The back gate at Nana and Papa’s house is never locked. It’s ‘pie night’. Brigitte can smell baking and wood smoke as she walks down the sideway. It’s been raining, and moss is growing in scattered patches along the path beside the house. Nana always says, Be careful, don’t slip. Brigitte has slipped a few times — on the way out after too many sherries. To fall over with her hands in her pockets would not be a good look, so she takes them out of her white woollen coat. The screen door bangs behind her as she goes into the kitchen.
Papa is setting the red Laminex table. He looks up, ‘G’day, Brigi. Where’s ya new fella?’
‘Working.’ She hangs her coat over the back of a chair.
‘When are we gunna meet him?’
‘Dunno.’ Hopefully never.
‘Fancy a sherry?’ He takes one green and one rose-coloured glass, and the bottle, from a bottom cupboard. He pours their drinks, and rolls himself a cigarette.
‘Got a house-warming present for ya.’ He walks over to the open fireplace and touches the heavy, black iron object beside the mantel clock. ‘It was my grandmother’s.’
‘Is it an iron?’ Brigitte sips her drink, enjoying its warmth in her stomach.
‘Yeah. She used to heat it on the stove.’ He picks at a tobacco thread stuck to his lip. ‘But you can use it as a doorstop at ya new place.’
‘It looks too heavy to carry home.’
‘I’ll bring it over for ya in the car.’ He throws some pieces of wood into the fire and sits back in the new Chesterfield chair that Brigitte bought for his birthday.
Nana comes in. She brushes flour from her apron and gives Brigitte a hug. Her face is cold, and her hands are red — she’s been doing the laundry in the wash house out the back. She smells of vanilla, liquorice chews, and that stinky Joy perfume. Brigitte sneezes.
‘Have you buggers been into my cooking sherry again?’ Then she frowns. ‘Where’s Uncle Joe?’
Brigitte didn’t call in at The Railway and walk him home. ‘I’m sure he can find his own way home from the pub.’
Nana narrows her eyes.
‘All right. All right.’ Brigitte holds up her hands. ‘I’ll go back and get him.’ She’s got her coat half on when the phone rings.
Papa gets up and answers it. He nods and says, ‘Right … Right … Right …’ He hangs up and looks at his shoes. ‘It was Stefan from the pub. Uncle Joe fell off a bar stool.’
Brigitte and Nana stare at him.
‘Ambulance just took him away.’
Brigitte asks if he’s OK.
‘He’s dead.’
Shit.
Nana crosses her legs and holds onto the kitchen bench as if to stop herself from falling. Papa rubs Nana’s back and asks Brigitte to ring Joan and Auntie Linda. Brigitte does as she’s told, while Papa comforts Nana.
Beep beep beep, STD pip tones. ‘This is Joan Weaver speaking.’
‘Hello, Mum.’ It’s been a while.
Joan pretends to not recognise her voice.
‘It’s Brigitte. I’m at Nana and Papa’s. You might have to come down.’
‘What for?’
‘Uncle Joe died.’
‘Oh, is that all?’
Nana wails.
‘Brigitte, what’s going on?’ Joan says.
Nana collapses, clutching her chest, into Papa’s arms. Brigitte drops the phone.
‘Brigitte. Brigitte …’ Joan’s voice from the receiver swings on the cord.
Brigitte asks Papa if Nana’s OK.
Papa shakes his head. He kneels on the lino floor, holding onto Nana. Brigitte cuts Joan off and dials triple-O. When an ambulance is on its way she kneels with Papa, stroking Nana’s clammy forehead and soft, grey hair.
The pie burns, and Brigitte jumps up to take it out. Smoke billows from the oven.
Nana is conscious when the paramedics arrive, but they think she’s had a minor heart attack. They make her comfortable on a stretcher, and joke about her burning the dinner. Papa goes with her in the ambulance. Brigitte wants to go, too, but Papa tells her to wait at home — he’ll call with any news.
She checks the letterbox as she walks through the foyer. There’s just some junk mail and two Nirvana CDs with a note from Sean, the caretaker: To Brigitte. Let me know what you think.
She calls in sick for work. Al says she’ll have to do a day shift to make up for it. Prick.
She takes a Valium, and stands under a hot shower for a long time, trying to wash away stress with a bar of ‘chill out’ aromatherapy soap. The phone rings, and she drops the soap. She runs, naked, to answer it, dripping water over the plush cornflower-blue carpet. It’s Papa, from the hospital. Nana’s doing fine. She should be able to go home in a day or two. Phew.
Brigitte dries herself and puts on pyjamas. Pop: the happy sound of a champagne cork escaping. Into the bottle goes a big splash of raspberry cordial, and into the CD player, one of Sean’s albums. She sits cross-legged on the floor with her drink. When she hears ‘Polly’ she feels a connection — a shared knowledge of what it’s like to be trapped. Cobain couldn’t have written those words without understanding. Sean was right: he did know how to say stuff in his songs. No wonder the fans burned their flannelette shirts at his memorial. She should have taken more notice of him when he was alive.
She knocks back her drink, pours another, and thinks about Nana. There’s a photo of her on Papa’s bedside table; it’s been there forever. Nana must be about twenty, maybe younger. She’s at a party, smiling — perfect teeth, sparkly eyes, clear skin. She’s luminescent, the way some movie stars seem to be — like there’s a light shining on her but not on anybody else in that photo. When she was little, Brigitte wished she’d grow up to look like that. Joan looks like that, but without the shine. Nana is always so happy, but growing old and losing those looks must have made her sad. It made Joan sad.
Brigitte thinks she’ll end up alone like Uncle Joe: no partner, no children. Eric says nobody else will ever want her. She’s too difficult, too much of a mess — and he’s right. But Dan wanted Joan, and she was an even bigger mess. Why had nobody wanted Uncle Joe? He was handsome when he was young. Pe
rhaps he inherited the mess gene — probably from Nana’s mother, who was an alcoholic depressive. Nana says she was a fragile soul who had bad nerves and liked a drink. Obviously she was the reason Nana never touched a drop. Papa says she was just bloody nuts. He told Brigitte, in sworn secrecy, that the fall down the stairs that killed her was no accident.
Why did Kurt Cobain kill himself? He had everything to live for. Somebody should have loved him enough to save him. Too much of a mess? She finishes her drink, and turns up ‘Something in the Way’. She has no idea what the song is about, but imagines it has something to do with the unfairness of life. Or maybe he’s just taking the piss out of pescetarians — it sounds like he’s singing about eating fish because they haven’t got feelings.
When the CD finishes, she upends the bottle over her glass, but it’s empty. She goes to the fridge and gets another. Pop.
She puts on a Prince CD.
24
Sean brings her coffee every day around noon. She tries to be dressed before he comes in, but today she’s still in her pyjamas. Her eyes are puffy from crying, and she’s hung-over. Again. Such a mess.
Sean’s white shirt’s been ironed, his hair smoothed with product, his shoes polished. ‘What’s wrong, Brigitte?’ He places the coffees on the breakfast bar next to a Berocca hissing in a glass.
She bites her bottom lip. ‘My Uncle Joe died.’
‘I’m so sorry.’ He looks surprised when she hugs him, a little knocked off balance, then he slowly, tentatively, encircles her in his arms.
‘It’s all my fault.’
‘That’s a silly thing to say.’
She blubbers over his shirt.
When she calms down, she apologises and lets go of him. He asks if she’d like something stronger than coffee. She nods, and he heads down to the bottle shop at the corner hotel.
He comes back with a bottle of Johnnie Walker, and takes two tumbler glasses from a cupboard. ‘Got any coke?’
‘No, but I can ring somebody who can get some for us.’ She reaches for the phone.
‘Coca-Cola, silly.’ He’s looking in the fridge. There’s not much in there — no champagne left.
‘God, no. That crap is so bad for your body.’
‘Where’s Eric?’
‘Working.’
‘Where does he work?’
‘Everywhere. He’s a concert promoter.’ She sits at the table, and runs a hand over the shiny walnut finish. ‘He’s not home very often.’
‘You don’t work, do you?’
She nods.
‘But you’re always here during the day.’ He places the drinks and the bottle on the table, and sits opposite her.
‘I work at night.’ She screws up her face — the straight Johnnie Walker tastes disgusting but does the job, faster than champagne.
‘Where?’
‘At the Gold Bar.’ She lets her guard down.
Sean raises his eyebrows.
‘Behind the bar,’ she says quickly — the same lie she tells everybody. She changes the subject back to poor Uncle Joe, and Sean asks what happened.
‘He fell off a chair when I was meant to pick him up from the pub, and hit his head. I forgot about him. Actually,’ she takes a big drink, ‘I kind of didn’t forget. I just didn’t want to go in because the publican tried to kiss me last time I was there.’
He puts a hand on hers, comforting.
‘Uncle Joe had dementia.’
‘Was he in a home?’
She shakes her head. He should have been in a home instead of renting Nana and Papa’s spare room. He was always forgetting to pay Nana rent and to turn off the gas on the stove. He couldn’t remember where he’d hidden his life savings. But Papa found them — the remains of them, anyway — in an old wooden box hidden inside the disused barbeque, after he decided to cook some sausages to see if it still worked.
‘Why didn’t I just get him from the pub?’
Sean pats her hand gently.
‘And then I had to ring my mother, who hates me.’
‘Don’t be silly. I’m sure she doesn’t hate you.’
‘Yes, she does.’ She stops talking. He’s looking at her the way men look at her at work, the way Stefan the publican looks at her. He wants to kiss her. And if he tried, she’d probably let him. But he doesn’t.
‘I’ve heard him shouting at you,’ Sean says.
‘Who? What are you talking about?’ She takes her hand from under his, and crosses her arms.
‘Eric.’
‘No, he doesn’t. Not really. Sometimes he just has a loud voice.’ She forces a smile that doesn’t reach her eyes.
‘You come and get me if you ever need to.’
‘Now you’re being silly.’ She laughs it off. ‘The whisky’s gone to your head. You better get back to work, or you’ll be in trouble.’
‘I’m serious. OK?’ He looks directly into her eyes, and she looks away.
The intercom buzzes and they both stand. It’s Ember/Jennifer. Brigitte opens the door, and Jennifer flounces in wearing a dress too short and heels too high for daytime. She kisses Brigitte on the mouth. ‘You OK, sweetie?’ She doesn’t wait for an answer. ‘Brought you some presents to drown your sorrows.’ She places two bottles of champagne and a fat joint on the breakfast bar. ‘What’s your name?’ She looks Sean up and down.
‘Sean.’ He extends a hand, which she takes and kisses. He blushes.
‘Hi Sean. I’m Jennifer,’ she says, flashing a cheeky smile.
‘Just on my way out.’
‘Oh. What a shame.’
He kisses Brigitte — politely — on the cheek. ‘I’ll check on you later.’ It’s the first time Brigitte has seen a man not turn for a second look at Jennifer.
‘Sean’s cute.’ Jennifer lights the joint with a match. ‘You should get with him.’
‘Just a friend.’
‘Nice place.’ Jennifer looks around. ‘Eric must really like you.’
25
The intercom buzzes while she’s preparing food from Vogue Entertaining for the apartment-warming party. It’s Papa, too close to the screen. She can see up his nostrils. She giggles, presses the button that unlocks the front security-door, and hears it click out in the foyer.
He whistles when she opens the door. ‘Don’t ya look a million bucks!’
So she should. She spent almost that much on highlights at the hairdresser, a French polish for her acrylic nails, and a rejuvenating facial at the beauty salon.
Papa tilts his head. ‘Ya look like ya mum.’
Brigitte frowns; she hates it when people say that. Papa’s brought his grandmother’s iron. He props the door open with it, and whistles again as he looks around.
‘Bit better than the last place.’ He takes out his tobacco pouch and papers.
‘Have to go outside to smoke.’
‘Why?’
‘Don’t like the smell in here.’
He rolls his eyes and re-pockets his smoking paraphernalia. ‘Where’s ya bloke?’
‘Away. Working.’ She washes some lettuce leaves at the sink. ‘How’s Nana?’
‘Good.’
‘Recovered?’
‘Miraculously. Tough old bugger.’ He shakes his head. ‘Got anything to drink?’
‘Only champagne.’
‘Well, la di da da.’ He helps himself to a piece of olive bread.
‘Papa, I’m really busy.’
‘Too busy for ya old granddad?’ He sucks his teeth.
‘I’ve got to get all this food ready for tonight.’ She tucks her hair behind her ears.
‘All right. All right. I’m going.’ He comes around the breakfast bar and kisses the top of her head.
‘Thanks
for the door stop.’
‘See ya at Joe’s send-off.’
Sean stands in the doorway with his hands in his pockets until she tells him to come in.
‘You look nice,’ he says.
‘Thanks.’ She’s too busy to look up. ‘Could you please take that stuff to the club lounge for me? I thought we’d have the party in there.’ She points at the crate of champagne and the box of hired glasses on the floor. He carries them to the communal lounge across the foyer.
‘Ryan!’ She sees him getting out of a taxi on the street. She claps her hands, pushes aside the baby beetroot salad with raspberry vinaigrette, runs to the open window, and leans over the black iron grille.
‘Hey, Little Sis!’ Ryan calls up to her, grinning, squinting in the sunlight.
Brigitte unlocks the security door.
Ryan walks in and drops his bag in the corner. She hugs him, too tight. He smells of the aromatherapy aftershave she sent him. Her eyes moisten.
‘Hey, what’s wrong?’ He holds her face in his hands.
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