The Visitor
MERV shuffled across the linoleum and flicked the kettle on. He prepared a battered tin pot with leaf tea. While waiting for the water to boil his mind wandered to his grandson, Diezel, who was due at any moment. ‘Diezel,’ Merv brooded, not for the first time. Jesus wept. And the sight of him. Like a bloody girl he was. Tight jeans, plunging neckline, flicky hair. At his age, Merv thought, I was in New Guinea getting shot at. Then the doorbell rang, and Merv all but ran to it, as excited as a kid at Christmas. ‘Coming, mate! Coming!’
The Puppy
DURING the long drive home from the farm where they’d collected the puppy, Isabel and Leo threw around names. ‘Heathcliff? Darcy?’ she suggested, as the puppy nestled into her lap. ‘What about Craig?’ he grinned. ‘Or Kevin?’ Then they ran out of petrol, at which point they stopped thinking of names and started grumbling about their predicament. After an age, an old bloke in a dusty ute stopped and donated some petrol from a battered jerrycan. Leo proffered his hand as the man went to leave. ‘You’re a lifesaver, ah…?’ ‘Rex,’ the man said. ‘Rex!’ Leo and Isabel said in unison. ‘Perfect!’
The List
IN the days following Kon’s sudden flight, Tanya surfaced between fathoms of grief to compile a list of his failings, exaggerated in the service of healing: ‘Bad breath! Arrogant! Balding! Big-nosed! Tight! Short-tempered! Terrible dancer!’ When Kon later returned with his tail between his legs, and Tanya forgave him, they moved back in together. Which is how Kon stumbled upon the list, slipped inside a cookbook. It was hard to read—he bristled at ‘terrible dancer’—but he knew he deserved it and vowed to change what he could. He started by brushing and flossing.
Man Flu
SITTING in the medical centre waiting room, Dennis watched as a coughing child stacked blocks. Had the receptionist a quaver in her voice when she’d set up the appointment? ‘A mild infection at worst,’ his wife, Rosie, had said dismissively. Mild? A beautiful woman in all other ways, Rosie had never sympathised during his illnesses, automatically querying the severity of his symptoms. This time, as usual, he’d felt awful—but, again, nothing but eye-rolls from her. Minutes later the doctor addressed him. ‘Dennis, I’m afraid I have very bad news…’ His first thought was how much he’d enjoy telling Rosie.
X
OLIVER and Tami slid into bed and opened their laptops. Oliver’s mailbox binged. ‘Anything interesting?’ Tami murmured. ‘Someone thinks I need a bigger knob,’ he said. ‘Someone else, you mean,’ she replied, and they laughed. He didn’t mention that he’d also received a surprise email from an ex. Adding to the surprise was the way it made him feel. She was coming to town, wanted to catch up, and she’d signed off with an ‘x’. His penis filled like a windsock in a storm. Jesus, he thought, as he closed his laptop. Terrible idea. I’ll delete that. First thing tomorrow.
Pas de Deux
FOR months Jimmy had noticed his daughter, Tessa, inexorably pulling away from him. Like a boat from a dock, he lamented. It wasn’t just the physical distancing that upended his heart, but the eye-rolls, the scoffing, the insolent glazing over. One afternoon, he walked in on her dancing, filming it on her phone. Overcome by pettiness, he began dad-dancing in the background. He didn’t get the reaction he’d intended. Instead, Tessa guffawed and copied him. Later they sat thigh-to-thigh, watching it back, and each time she laughed she placed her hand tenderly on his shoulder.
The Gift
TONY and Marian had been dating six weeks when her birthday loomed, in Tony’s mind, as ominously as the north face of Everest. He wanted desperately to impress her but was hobbled by a disastrous history of gift-giving that had seen him buy previous girlfriends things like bananas (during a shortage!), a tow bar (useful!) and a rape alarm (just a precaution!). He considered lingerie but worried she’d find it creepy. So he compromised and bought her thermal underwear. If it ended their relationship, he reasoned, she’d at least be warm on those cold, lonely nights without him.
Proprioception
WHILE Nora got dinner, Jacob wrestled with his daughters on the bed—one of them in the biteable chub of infancy, the other a hungry sapling. He made exaggerated sounds of effort and strain as he rolled them, flipped them, twisted them. As if extensions of himself, he knew intuitively where their bodies were in space and how they’d land. Desperately often, as if gorging before a famine he knew would one day come, he’d steal kisses, give raspberries and tickle armpits. Nora was cross and dinner lukewarm by the time they got to the table: dishevelled, ruddy, radiant.
Tough Love
LUKE and Charlotte had been going out for months, and Charlotte was clearly crazy about him—not just because she texted him and called him, like, a thousand times a day, but because when they made out in his room she wasn’t even worried about his parents walking in. ‘Did Romeo and Juliet hide their love?’ she’d say fiercely, cheeks blazing. Well, yes, he’d think, terrified of her passion. To date, carrying a futon mattress up five flights of stairs was the most difficult thing he’d ever done. Breaking up with Charlotte was going to be ten times harder.
The Shakes
IT was late when the earthquake struck. They were in the kitchen at the time, arguing. Annabel was dreading the bedtime routine to come: brushing, undressing, reading under the lamplight, all conducted in a pregnant silence, a hair’s breadth from another conflagration. But then the glasses started clinking. The crockery rocked, doors rattled, wine rippled in the bottle. When it finally ended, they beamed at each other. ‘Wow,’ said Patrick. ‘The kids will be sorry they missed it,’ said Annabel. Together they checked on the children and found them dead to the world. They went to bed, their anger subsided.
Manning Up
AFTER seeing Jonah cower from his bigger opponent in an under-8s rugby game, Simon took his son home to teach him a lesson. For hours, until the weak winter sunlight gave way to darkness, Simon had an exhausted, tearful Jonah repeatedly run at him with a football. Each time, Simon would pummel him to the damp grass that he’d been meaning to cut for months. Watching from the kitchen window, Teri’s heart ached for her son. But he was an overly sensitive kid and long overdue a lesson on how to be a man.
Head over Heels
HIS mother always assured him that he’d meet someone special when he least expected it. For years, however, Thomas hadn’t expected love to come calling, and nothing had changed. Then one day, he was knocked senseless by a beautiful woman. When he emerged from his coma, she came to his room. Jane, her name was, hair as red as the light she ran. As she sat next to his bed amid the tributaries of cords and drips keeping him alive, Thomas saw so much guilt in her beautiful eyes that he dared to dream that fortune had finally smiled upon him.
Boom Box
NATHAN had seen enough movies to know that you don’t let love leave without a fight. So when Ellie said, ‘It’s over’, he knew it was just the start. First he texted and left voicemails, pleading his case. Then he crashed her office with flowers, chocolates, her favourite soups. With Ellie still playing hard-to-get, he turned up outside her home one night holding aloft an old boom box. ‘Never Gonna Give You Up’ blanketed the dozing neighbourhood. Minutes later, from the backseat of a police car, Nathan found time for regrets. Chief among them was his choice of song.
The Clock
MARGERY always hated the grandfather clock. Much like Jack’s father when he used to visit, it was too large, loud and overbearing for their modest cottage. It was the only thing Jack’s father ever gave him, however, so Margery’s frequent requests that he sell it were met with blunt refusals. The clock’s grave ticking greeted Jack the afternoon he returned home from Margery’s funeral. After momentarily standing before it, he went out to the garden shed. Returning with an axe, he took to the clock with a vigour that belied his years.
Home Truths
AFTER returning from the specialist, Ling, though shaken, embraced the opportunity afforded by her terminal diagnosis to deliver a few home truths to her
gathered family. From her matriarchal throne, an ancient recliner clad in its original plastic, she calmly went around the stunned room, cataloguing their individual failings. Such was her withering assault, it was later decided that her son Chen (‘a buffoon without the sense God gave a dog’) had got off lightest. Whether this unburdening was behind it no one could say, but, somewhat awkwardly, Ling had what doctors called a miraculous recovery. A rose returned to her cheeks.
True Love
FIVE weeks after Stephen and Kathleen stated dating, he felt their relationship was ready for a critical test. So without embellishment or undue caution he bravely passed wind in front of her for the first time, then looked up as if he’d just asked a question—which, in a way, he had. Her rich laugh gave him the answer he’d hoped for, but it wasn’t until she bent forward and, with hands on knees, unleashed a fart of such ferociousness and pungency that it literally took his breath away that he knew he’d found something truly special.
The Reward
ON his long, lonely walks through leafy streets beyond his means, Michael often imagined committing an act of heroism for which he would reluctantly accept a huge reward. Then, one gloomy afternoon, he saw a man in a blazer about to step in front of a hurtling bus. Michael leapt into action and hauled the man back to safety. Grateful for his life, the man, Ian, offered Michael a reward: one-half of a dinner for two. He was so handsome and sweet Michael accepted, learning in the process that it was not money he was looking for all along.
The Martyr
FROM her early years, Denise volunteered when her siblings wouldn’t. Dishwasher-emptying, errand-running, Aunt Agnes-visiting; Denise always buckled and said yes, letting out an imperceptible sigh as she did so. Such acts of sacrifice brought her little joy but weren’t entirely without reward: ‘You’re so selfless and kind,’ her mother often told her, pulling her close. By the time she had her own family, Denise’s martyrdom was well established. Unlike in childhood, however, her countless acts of selflessness and sacrifice went unrecognised. With that, her sighs intensified. Some days, they filled the house like a gale fills a forest.
Just Getting Started
GREG’S ambivalence towards his new brother-in-law changed abruptly the Christmas Miles gave him Chicken Soup for the Expectant Mother’s Soul. Greg stewed over it for months until, for Miles’s birthday, it was payback time. ‘Here you go, mate,’ he said cheerfully, handing him a gift which he’d wrapped in newspaper: Justin Bieber’s autobiography, Just Getting Started. When Miles opened it, laughed, and said, ‘Touché!’ Greg realised he’d been misreading Miles all along. From that day on they got along famously. And never again could Greg see something like Creative Embroidery in a bookshop and not think of Miles.
Waterworks
BEFORE his girls were born Fitz never cried. He rarely even felt like crying. He could watch movies like The Champ and wonder why they were called tear-jerkers. He could endure crushing documentaries on starving Ethiopians or sunken-eyed Albanian orphans and not even get a tight throat. Hell, a girlfriend could leave without him so much as misting up. But from the moment his twins entered the world—causing him to geyser like a run-over fire hydrant—everything changed. Country songs. Life insurance commercials. His children breathing softly in the dark. Anything could bring him undone.
Summer
THEY hadn’t even returned to the car when the restorative effects of the beach began to wane. Somewhere between packing up and waiting to cross the esplanade, Adam had pissed Monica off. What now, he thought, irritated himself. Little Kimberley, meantime, was whining about iceblocks, while Jessica, practically sunstruck, was reefing his arm, begging to go back. Finally they got to the car and the heat inside took their breath away. That’s when they discovered the aircon had packed it in. Adam managed to hold it together until he turned on the radio: Australia, 9 for 143 at tea.
Spaces in Between
THE evening Nina met Ryan, they walked the long way back to her house. The warm air was jasmine-scented, TVs flickered like dry lightning from behind curtains, and fruit bats flapped audibly across a sky edging towards black. ‘I love that shade of blue,’ they said simultaneously, the coincidence prompting Nina to sock him joyfully on the shoulder. Heart thumping, Ryan dared himself to take her hand. Intoxicated, Nina challenged herself to do the same. And the world was at once vast and promising yet entirely reduced to the electrified sliver of space between them.
Pillow Fights
DRIVING home from the bedding warehouse—with not just the new mattress they needed but also, exasperatingly, two $150 latex pillows—Robyn and Dan conceded they’d fallen victim to saleswoman Betty’s persuasive pitch. Determined to soldier on, they used their new firm pillows that first night. They tossed and turned like boats in a storm. A week of disturbed sleep later, Robyn said enough was enough and went back to her old pillow. Dan wasn’t about to let Betty win so easily, however. He’d get his money’s worth out of his damn pillow even if it meant never sleeping again.
Jellybeans
TESTING the urban myth, Trent and Michelle put a jellybean in a jar every time they made love during their first year of marriage. After just one frenzied month the jar was overflowing. Another jar was called for. Then another. By year’s end there were eight jars jostling on their dresser. They could now remove a jellybean every time they made love and supposedly never empty the jar. Jars. Too right, they thought. They were spent. So they ate the jellybeans in record time. When they woke from their sugar coma, they were left with a lifetime of memories.
Mutley
THE dog died, the kids cried, then they went to watch TV. Martin sat with him on the sunny porch, running his hands over him, feeling an octave of old ribs beneath the coarse fur. Oh, Mutley. He could have been sleeping, but he wasn’t, and Martin would have to deal with it. The spade took chunks from the backyard. Thank God for all that rain. Done, he wrapped Mutley in an old sheet and laid him in place. The kids sobbed with every tossed sod until he was half done. Then, spent, they went back inside, leaving him to it.
Neighbours
WHEN she first moved to Garden Street, Jenna enjoyed her front-gate chats with her neighbour, Esme. Indeed, every time Jenna returned home from work or an outing, the dear old thing would be out front, smiling, awaiting a chin wag. Turns out, however, you could lose ten minutes to an hour engaging Esme. It got so bad that Jenna would sometimes scale her side fence to avoid her. At other times, after parking and seeing Esme opening her door, Jenna would slide down in her seat until Esme returned inside. Ridiculous, she thought, what Esme was making her do.
Revolution
WITH increasing excitement Dina, Margie and Karen began sharing accounts of women leaving ‘feckless’ husbands. ‘My friend said she was popping out for milk—and never went back!’ said Karen. ‘A friend’s friend had her husband drop her, and a big suitcase, at the station, and she never saw him again!’ Margie offered. ‘Didn’t he wonder about the case?’ Dina asked. ‘No!’ Margie replied, and they screamed with delight. At the other end of the dinner table the women’s husbands looked up from their conversation, startled by the ruckus and unnerved by an incendiary whiff of revolution in the air.
Nits
THE girls had been scratching for days before Leigh twigged. With the trepidation of a horror-movie actress investigating a noise in a dark cellar, she checked their hair. She stifled a scream; they were everywhere. Exhausted by her week, by her life, she could have cried. She might have done, too, had her husband not walked in the door. Redefining the word romance, Rohan announced, ‘I’ll deal with the nits!’ Then he sent her to bed with a glass of red. She was approaching blissful repose when the hungry buzz of hair clippers drifted up the stairs.
Nostalgia
GEORGINA first saw Leo in a bookstore perusing Sexist Imagery in the Mass Media. He’d picked it up hoping to see some boobs, but Georgina, with typical generosity, pegged him as a man open to a feminist dialogue. And handsome, to boot. She caught his
eye and braved a smile. He blushed but held his nerve. After some spark-filled chat they left together for a drink. Two years to the day later they married. Pride of place on their bookshelf was the book which, when Georgina was out, Leo often found himself browsing through with an arousing sense of nostalgia.
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