Getting Real

by Ainslie Paton

  The colour drained from Jake’s face, the breath left his body. She must’ve planned this days ago and never hinted at it. When she told him she loved him and sobbed on the bathroom floor, did she know she was going to cut and run? He gulped the drink, held the empty crystal glass tightly and when Rand said, “She took Jonathan with her,” he pitched it across the room, shattering the mirror behind the bar.

  With Sharon by his side, Jake kept it together to help the rest of the band check out and get to the airport. Sharon took Jeremy and Brendan to the domestic terminal for their Queensland flight and Jake took the rest of the group to the international terminal.

  In the airline lounge, Rielle was the absent force. Everyone knew she’d cut and run with Jonathan, but no one was talking about it, at least not to Jake.

  How and Roley took up residence at the bar. Ceedee sat on Jake’s knee and hugged him, pressing her soft cheek against his stony clenched one, and when the Bali flight was called, Stu clasped Jake’s hand and gave him a shoulder bump.

  Jake sat on with Rand and Harry, too sunk in his own misery to be embarrassed by witnessing the last moments of their parting. Harry was set to finish the documentary and join Rand in Europe for a brief stint before taking up a freelance contract in LA.

  The two of them sat shoulder to shoulder, thighs touching, hands clasped, talking softly. Harry wore a funky black diamond pendant. It was Rand’s parting gift, in place of the very white, very large diamond engagement ring she’d made him put back in the box. There was nothing anxious or wretched or fearful about them. They were serene in the knowledge they’d be together again soon.

  When the LA flight was called, Rand kissed Harry long and slow, holding her close and savouring the feel of her body in his hands. He looked like he was hearing music. Watching them was like sticking pins in his eyes, a fork in his heart, but Jake made himself look as penance for his short-sightedness and naivety.

  “Been fun,” said Roley, slapping Jake on the back.

  “Been fucking fantastic,” said How, holding out his hand to shake. “I love Australia.”

  Jake shook How’s hand, shook Roley’s, and offered his hand to Rand, who knocked it aside and bear hugged him instead, saying simply, “I’m sorry,” before releasing him.

  “Gentlemen, it’s been a pleasure,” said Jake.

  The three men made a noisy exit from the lounge, with Rand coming back twice to kiss Harry. And then they were gone.

  “You okay?” he asked Harry.

  She sniffed. “I’m great.” She smiled though her snuffling. “I’ll see him soon and we’ll talk every day.”

  “Been terrific to work with you, Harry. I wish you all the best in LA and with Rand. You both deserve to be happy.”

  “Thank you. I’m so sorry about Rielle. I thought things would work out for you. I really did. I don’t know what to say except give her time.”

  Jake nodded, more to be polite than anything else. The possibility that there was a reasonable explanation for what Rie had done was as slim as air. She’d cut and run; ruthlessly, stealthily, deliberately without a word. She’d thrown their relationship in his face by taking Jonathan with her. What explanation could she have for that, and how could he ever find it in his heart to forgive her?

  When there were no more details to attend to back at the stadium, the hotel or with the crew, Jake collected Bonne and went home for the first time in over two months. There was a pile of mail stuffed under his door courtesy of his downstairs neighbour: flyers, bills, a second notice for the unpaid gas. There was a fridge full of condiments and nothing to put them on, and a dripping tap in the bathroom that needed a new washer. There was a musty smell, a blown bulb in the galley kitchen, a trail of ants and an unmade bed. He was tired, cranky and frustrated beyond words. And at the back of those feelings lurked deeper emotions: anger, bitterness and resignation.

  He stripped the bed, realised he had no clean sheets and slept on the bare mattress, his phone by his side, hoping she’d call and wake him so he’d have the satisfaction of hearing her excuses and the pure pain of knowing precisely where they stood.

  The morning’s heat building up in the small flat woke him. He was thirsty and disoriented. It took him a moment to realise he was looking at the rental beige painted ceiling of his flat and to understand she hadn’t called. He did a rough time conversion— maybe it was too early for her to have landed—but he knew that was a lie. He could call again, but that was the problem—again. She’d only earned so much forgiveness, and he was owed a call, a text, something. Surely she’d do that for him.

  He dragged himself up, showered and dressed, shopped for groceries. He came home and stocked the fridge, swept, scrubbed and vacuumed, washed and dried sheets and towels. He made the bed, fixed the tap, logged onto his PC and paid bills, left the ants to their enterprise. He went back out for a coffee and dawdled over the newspaper. He made a mental list of people to call to organise work. He came home and chopped onions, cooked mince for spag bol—all the time waiting for the phone to ring. All the time thinking, this was the other side of purgatory.

  It wasn’t til late that night, when he was almost asleep in front of an X Files repeat, that the phone did ring and after that he had a whole fresh hell to worry about.

  46. Arielle

  Los Angeles, USA. Ten months later.

  Rielle finished the tour in a dazed, spaced-out state, like an accident victim struggling to process a catastrophic, life-changing event.

  Because like it or not, her life had to change. Like it or not, he’d already changed it.

  Being with Jake taught her how broken she was. How much her life was about playing a role, and how scared she was to step outside of being the Ice Queen and embrace her whole self and a real life. And if she doubted that, Rand, with a smug look on his face, was there to remind her.

  It’s just that it took her months to face up to it. Months of hiding behind the rigours of touring: the tight timetable, full days, exhausting nights, the suitcases, planes, buses and hotel rooms, the different cities, almost identical interviews with different journalists, and the hundreds of times she’d performed the show to millions of fans, whose screaming sounded the same in every location and language.

  While they toured, Rielle managed to hold all her grief and guilt in. It was the only way to keep it together. She knew if she avoided thinking about Jake and how she’d taken his perfectly true, unconditional love and deliberately turned it into bitterness and regret, she could pretend it didn’t matter. It’s how she’d survived at fourteen. Got angry, got focussed and stayed that way. And it’s how she’d survived the tour.

  But now that it was all over, she had to find a way to be, a way to cope with the knowledge that Jake was the sacrifice, and her punishment for not knowing how to change and accept his help was being alone. And alone, she didn’t think she’d ever find the music and the lyrics to being whole. It cost her sleep, ate at her body and left her gaunt and drawn. She stayed home, watched endless seasons of HBO programs and tried to be happy with the fact she had insomnia and unconsciously bit her nails.

  Of course, she’d never meant for it to end so badly, though she’d meant for it to end. Love for Jake meant she had to run or she’d hurt him, ruin him, and infect him with all her own unease and unresolved issues.

  He’d been so unshakably loving and trusting. His capacity for acceptance and forgiveness so deep, it was difficult to know how to make things clear to him. That’s why she’d taken Jonathan, to make sure she killed the thing good and dead. To make sure there was no way to falter or weaken. She’d designed the perfect plan to leave Jake with anger in his heart, and the stunning clarity that she was more bitch than beloved. It was the perfect plan for herself too. There was no backing out, no way back. She knew Jake would mend, toughened like the skin formed under a scab, but be better for it, better without her.

  But forgetting him was unworkable, and ignoring the scale of how she must’ve hurt him even more impos
sible. Now months later, his phone number was still like a new tattoo on her fingertips, burning, itching to be used. The thought of hearing his voice, even raised in anger, even hard with hurt, was almost irresistible. But giving in would be a coward’s act. So she didn’t dial, she screwed up the letters she wrote, and deleted the texts and emails.

  What she did do was recall his messages and listen to them late at night; listen to the confusion in his voice that became bewilderment, then panic, then cold coiled rage—to remind herself it was better this way. And when he never made contact again, she told herself to feel relieved.

  She told herself if only.

  Post tour, everything was different. Somehow it was all as broken as Rielle felt. The tour itself was a critically acclaimed success, but that miracle was squashed flat and gored bloody now—roadkill. Rand and Stu were barely speaking. Their rivalry and creative differences, once good for business, were now tearing them apart. Then Ceedee shocked them all by suddenly quitting on Stu, the band and the whole industry, to go to college and study business.

  They scattered. Roley started playing guest spots with other bands. How crashed in an ashram in India with his new girlfriend. Jeremy bought a beachside house and turned decorator, and Brendan went back to Europe.

  Rielle watched her brother and her closest friends stumble about on shifting sands and felt a sense of mourning. Not the shocked, lashing distress of a child, but the confused, unearthed sorrow of an adult. Things were changed, changing, and she couldn’t stop them. Things were dying and being reborn differently, and she didn’t know how to react to that. It made her feel panicky, insecure. She was the Ice Queen; without the band what did she have left?

  Rand cut his hair short and stopped dying it, looking younger as a blond. He got recognised less often but hit on more, much to Harry’s amusement.

  What he wanted most was for Harry to agree to a wedding. He didn’t care what form it took: an Elvis chapel, a registry office or even a drive-thru McDonald’s if that’s what she wanted—as long as it was legal. But Harry iced him. She wasn’t ready to settle down. She wanted time to re-establish her career. She was working hard on freelance assignments all over the country to build her name and a portfolio of local experience.

  The irony of that made Rand grind his teeth. He whined that it was supposed to be men who were scared of commitment. Supposed to be rock stars who played hard to get. It made him love Harry all the more. She wasn’t dependent on him and she didn’t need him. She chose him. It was their one source of tension.

  Rielle would’ve given up the contents of her bank balance and every royalty yet unearned to have that problem with Jake.

  She knew Rand found Harry’s holdout thoroughly frustrating but cruelly inspirational.

  He was writing prolifically. New songs, songs that didn’t fit Ice Queen; songs for some other band to record. He was thinking about producing for other artists. Jonas, now clear-headed and trying to mediate their way through the ‘break’ they were having without it morphing into a ‘break up’, said Rand should start his own record label.

  Stu said Rand had gone soft, suburban, lost his edge. Stu got angry when Ceedee left and stayed that way. No one knew what he was doing, but every so often he’d show up at the house, sometimes wasted, sometimes sober, to abuse Rand. No one talked about replacing Ceedee and everyone waited.

  Rielle watched Rand build a new part to his life and felt envious. She watched him with Harry and felt empty. She looked at herself and saw her life for what it had become, hollow and without meaning. She was a tabloid sensation, a chart topping star. She had the world at her feet. She could do anything she wanted. She was young and rich and healthy, and terrified about how to live. She looked at herself and saw nothing but a cardboard cut-out and knew if she didn’t change, she might as well lie down and die. Might as well have done it a long time ago.

  Without the rigours of touring to hide behind, she shut herself off; she spent time alone. She thought about the things that defined her life—that wet night and that dangerous road and that stupid argument, and what she’d done to bury the guilt. She knew forgiving herself was out of the question, but learning to let it go and move past it, like Rand had done, to stop being defined by it, was the lesson she needed to master if she had any chance of living a real life.

  For the first time in a long time, she let herself think about Maggie and Ben freely—remembering without being crushed by the pain of loss. She had long conversations with Rand, and they both laughed as much as they cried, and this was new—this ability to face the past rather than to duck it, haul darkness over it and cloak it in fear.

  Rand worried about her, kept her close, made her eat and gently fathered her like he’d done for most of their lives. He put her back to work with Jonas to finalise a new album of songs, leftovers from years gone by and some new stuff recorded pre-tour. The three of them knew it might be their last Ice Queen album.

  And then amidst the fumbling and stuttering to rebuild herself, Rielle started hearing music again—her own music. It started with a curl around the back of her brain. Tickling, teasing, not quite heard, not quite present—more irritating than productive—then it would disappear. But it would come back when she was least ready for it. Waking her from the depths of sleep, interrupting the mechanical nature of exercise, when she was stirring a sauce, chopping vegetables, watching a zombie apocalypse on TV, there it would be—vaguely twisting, forming, forcing its way out.

  She started writing again and could lose whole days without thinking once about anything but the words and sounds in her head. She stopped using makeup, forgot about the contacts, and packed the prosthetic tooth piece in its box. She gave up on wearing her hairpieces, letting her own hair grow out longer. She quit dressing up and stopped being a rock star on a daily basis.

  At first she had trouble looking in the mirror. She’d avoid it as usual, but after a while she realised she needed to face that too. This person in the mirror was who she was. Different to who she’d been, but the same as well.

  She dug down; she learned. She faced her fears.

  She changed.

  And it was both a trial and a relief. She told herself she was happy.

  Rand said her pants were on fire.

  It wasn’t long before she had a collection of entirely new songs. Once she’d found the voice and music in her head again, fresh sounds and words poured out as though they’d been there all the time, stored up, waiting for her to be ready to receive them. They were different; lighter and freer. Songs for Arielle, not for an ice queen; simple songs for a singer with a guitar and not much else. Songs that weren’t anthems or chart toppers, but shone unaccompanied with little pieces of pain and truth and daring. They were songs about fear and having courage. Songs about unflinching honesty and unconditional love. Songs inspired by her time with Jake that proved she didn’t have to be the Ice Queen anymore unless she wanted to.

  Going back seemed like the right thing to do. She couldn’t do it in LA, or New York or anywhere else in the US, too much risk she’d be caught out and the media frenzy would be intense, especially on the back of the continuous break-up rumours. But in Sydney it would be easier to hide and there were people she trusted, so Sydney made sense. It would give her cover in every respect but one, but then, it was a long time now and she wasn’t going to search him out anyway. She’d made her peace with that, as much as it was possible to and still be listening to his wretched voicemails.

  It was Bodge who set it up for her. He got a little blonde folk singer called Arielle a gig at a mate’s pub. She could barely remember being so excited, but the dread was there too. Fear of failing, fear of falling—which is what she’d have called the album if it ever got recorded, if it survived being played live.

  47. Jake

  Sydney, Australia.

  The call from Glen was a pleasant surprise. The building site was noisy, and Jake almost missed the phone ring under the squeal of an angle grinder. From his perch
on top of the scaffold, four storeys up, where he was threading electrical cable, Jake told Glen how his dad was doing. Thankfully much better, with movement restored to his right leg and arm and cheekier every day now that he was getting his speech back after the stroke.

  That’s what the shouting the night Rielle came to dinner had been about. Dad working too hard and not taking care of himself. They were lucky he’d survived. His recovery was going to be slow and frustrating, but he’d get there. He was a tough old bugger. They’d had to make changes of course, maybe take on a partner for the business or sell it, because much as Jake was happy to carry things, it wasn’t what he wanted to do forever.

  He had no idea what he wanted to do next week, let alone forever. He was distracted, unanchored; bouncing between the business and helping Mum and Issy take care of Dad.

  It was good to be busy. Too much thinking time was bad for his soul, because in his quiet moments he thought of Rielle.

  He had an endless loop of mental images to call on. Rielle in every mood and manner: the mystery Gym Girl, the fiery hellcat, the tempting seductress, the electric powerhouse performer. The girl he’d loved. The girl he hated. Rie on the back of Bonne. Rie in lycra and leather, and Issy’s flowery dress. Rie in his arms, in the cage, in her bed. Rie as the moth goddess. Rie as a bitch and a sweetheart, an idol and a lover and a nightmare.

  When he remembered how she looked that night with the Bogongs, or seducing him in the St Kilda alleyway during the video shoot, he felt nothing but anger with himself for being so taken in by her. She was a fake and an actress and a liar, and he’d known it from the first. The only thing she’d been brutally truthful about was the one thing he’d chosen to conveniently ignore—the fact they didn’t have a future. That she would use him and leave him without a backwards glance.

  He was a fool and a sap with a straw heart like she’d once accused him of being. Too angry to forgive her, too craven to forget her and perversely grateful that what happened to Dad prevented him from abandoning all pride and going to her so she could humiliate him all over again.