August Falling

by Les Zig

  Then I push her away.

  ‘What’s wrong?’ she asks, and glances at my crotch. I don’t know if she’s referring to me pushing her away or that I’m flaccid.

  ‘After a year,’ I say, ‘you think … what … you … disrobe, and everything’s forgotten?’

  Lisa sniffles and sits on the couch. She casts her face into her hands and bawls this awful meowing which might or might not be real—I don’t know; she cried so rarely when we were together, and when she did it was never with this ferocity. When she lowers her hands and looks up, tears streaming from her red eyes, I know it’s real.

  ‘I’m sorry. I didn’t know how to talk to you, how to put this to you,’ she says. ‘What I did to you was the worst mistake of my life. For months, I rehearsed in my head how I’d approach you, how I’d fix this. This is so stupid.’ She picks up her robe, pulls it on and ties it tight. ‘Can’t we try? Just see where it goes. You might not be able to get past what I’ve done to you. I’m sorry. I wish I could take it back. I wish I could take everything back. But it’s done. So we’re left with this. I’m not going to beg. I love you. Bobby loves you. Maybe it can grow to be the way it should’ve been.’

  I gape at her, unsure what to say.

  ‘Well?’

  When I have dinner with Gen and Pat that night and I relay what happened, Gen is unblinking, her mouth hanging wide open, while Pat doles rice onto my plate alongside the fried chicken until the rice has overflowed onto the table. Only Oscar, shouting in his high chair, and Jet, curled up in her bed in the corner of the kitchen, are oblivious.

  ‘Are you fucking insane?’ Gen says.

  Oscar turns to her, startled. Even Jet lifts her head.

  ‘Wait, easy, Gen,’ Pat says, returning the rice cooker to the counter and rubbing Gen’s back. Then Pat looks at me. ‘Are you fucking insane?’

  Oscar swats his hands down.

  ‘This woman cheated on you,’ Gen says.

  ‘Cheated on you,’ Pat says.

  ‘For five years.’

  ‘Five fucking years.’

  ‘She let you live the lie that Bobby was your son.’

  ‘And then took that away.’

  ‘And, what? Because she calls, you go running back?’

  ‘I didn’t go running back,’ I say. ‘I agreed we could see each other on a casual basis to see if there is anything there to work on.’

  ‘How does she feel about you losing your job?’

  ‘She got me another one …’

  ‘What?’

  ‘She got me another one.’

  ‘Where?’

  ‘Carpet Duke. I start tomorrow afternoon.’

  ‘I might’ve asked this before,’ Gen says, ‘but are you fucking insane?’

  ‘Obviously you’re hurt from what happened with Julie—’ Pat begins.

  ‘No, wait, stop, stop!’ I jump up from my chair and it screeches back along the kitchen tiles. Oscar looks at me with stunned eyes and Jet trots out of her bed, tail wagging. ‘Somewhere, right at this very moment,’ I say, ‘somebody’s taking their partner back even though they cheated on them; somebody’s taking a partner back who beat them; somebody’s taking a partner back who’s unreliable, who’s an alcoholic, who’s a gambler, who’s a drug addict, who squandered the family savings, who’s an out-and-out fuck-up; why am I being held to a different standard?’

  Gen gets up from her chair, comes over, and hugs me. ‘Because I want the best for you.’

  Pat appears behind Gen, puts one arm around her, and runs her free hand up and down my arm. ‘We both do.’

  ‘And what if this is it?’ I ask. ‘What if everything that happened was the catalyst that changed her, made something of our relationship? What if … well, with everything I’ve gone through, what if it’s made me grow the fuck up and that means I can handle Lisa, that I can appreciate the relationship, that I can fit in—finally fit in?’

  ‘Do you believe that?’ Gen asks. ‘Do you really believe that? Or are you in a place where you’re scared because of what happened with Julie, you lost your job, and you feel alone?’

  ‘You could be reaching out for something familiar,’ Pat says.

  ‘I don’t know,’ I say. ‘I don’t know what to think. But I need to find out.’

  ‘You’re my brother and I love you,’ Gen says. ‘I don’t want to see That Cunt Lisa twist you up. Again. Whatever Julie was, she let you be you. Lisa started making you the person she wanted you to be the day you met her.’

  ‘Maybe that’s what I need.’

  ‘You really think that? You really believe that?’

  ‘Gen, you’ve always been the strong one.’

  ‘You’re being too hard—’

  ‘It’s true—even before Mum and Dad were killed, you were strong, independent, and self-sufficient. I was the quiet one. The shy one. The daydreamer, lost in his head. When Mum and Dad died, we both became more of what we already are.’

  ‘You’re—’

  ‘No, Gen—’

  ‘No, you listen, August: you’re being too hard on yourself.’

  ‘I’m not being hard on myself. I’m accepting reality. And I think I’m okay with it. I want to try move forward now, make something for myself. I guess it took all this for me to see it.’

  Gen and Pat exchange a long look. Pat’s lips draw thin; Gen sighs. Oscar squeals and smacks his hands down. Gen picks him up, cradles him to her chest, and sits back in her chair. Pat gives me this wan, noncommittal smile, and sits back on her chair too, leaving me with Jet pawing at my shin and appealing to me with her big, dark eyes.

  27

  I lie in bed, waiting for tiredness to claim me, but there’s nothing but the same thoughts of surrender teasing me. I think of the things I do have in my life now: the talk to Don about my book, Lisa, and my old job. Maybe it’s not what I expected, but it’s something.

  I jump out of bed and head for the door. On my way out, I step on something small and flat. I scoop it up from the floor, trudge to the couch, and turn on the lamp. It’s Don’s book, Discovering You—it must’ve fallen out when I gathered my clothes for washing the other day.

  I flip it over, read the blurb that I was interrupted from finishing:

  Stop. Think. Reflect.

  We all have goals, dreams, and aspirations, but few of us ever attain any of them, let alone all of them. We become a victim of limitations programmed into us through upbringing, cultivated by environment, and simply predisposed through genetics. We become a ready-made person who rarely questions whether there could be something better for us, that there could be something more.

  We all have the capacity for self-awareness.

  To question who we are.

  And thus to change.

  If you are looking for meaningful change in your life and in your relationships, YOU must first begin by enabling meaningful change within yourself.

  In Discovering You, Professor of Psychology, Don Talbot, teaches you how to go about becoming the person you’ve always wanted to be by breaking down a lifetime of systematic programming that only tells us what we can’t do.

  I remember Julie’s assessment of the book, and I go to throw it onto the coffee table, but stop. At the very least, it would be courteous to read Don’s book given he’s read mine. I lie back on the couch.

  The book’s broken into twelve chapters, each with a series of exercises at the end. I want to be surprised, I even want to be helped, but except for a few titbits that promise something captivating but go unsatisfyingly unexplored, nothing challenges me any more than the blurb.

  I fall asleep on the couch but it’s a restless sleep, and my internal clock wakes me when it’s morning. After breakfast, I head out. My neighbours have already got the music up loud. The baby’s wailing and there’s shouting. The door opens. The guy stands there, probably lucky to be twenty, lean, in jeans and a singlet from which bony, tattooed arms protrude, a ridiculous growth above his upper lip that he’s probably trying
to foster into a moustache. Give him twenty years, he might be successful.

  ‘Yeah?’ he says.

  His partner appears behind him, no older than him, bouncing a bawling child against her chest. She gives me a glance of complete disinterest, and walks back out of sight.

  The guy’s jaw pronounces, like he’s trying to give himself a profile, but it causes his lower lip to tremble. ‘Can I help you?’ he says again.

  ‘Just on my way out,’ I say.

  On the train into the city, I rehearse possible scenarios with Don. He’ll love my book. His publisher will love my book. The publisher will publish it. It’ll become a bestseller. Then a movie. I’ll make a fortune. The level of success will wow even Lisa. There’ll be no more shitty jobs. Of course, I’m being facetious, but I let myself get carried away.

  At the university, my breath grows shallow. Students race to classes, or chat by the atrium. They’re so easygoing. A few times, the sight of blondes fools me into thinking I’ve spotted Julie, and I start rehearsing what I might say. I’d stare at her. Stare at her and wouldn’t know what to say.

  Don’s office is in the main building, on the fifth floor, although I have to ask several times for directions, and one group of students unwittingly sends me the wrong way, but finally I emerge from an elevator into a hallway that runs a square around the building. It’s quiet now, and I can’t work out what the scent is that fills my nostrils. Carpet, maybe? Although there’s something faintly antiseptic about it.

  I read names on doors, and see Don seated at his desk before the name on the glass door registers in my head that it’s who I’m looking for. He frowns, then smiles. I knock on the pane of his door and he gestures me in.

  His office is functional more than anything else, although he’s tried to personalise it with a couple of potted plants by the window, and pictures of him and his wife at various functions and a series of crystal animals adorn the shelves of his bookcase. One shelf is filled with nothing other than his book, and on another sits what can only be the antique typewriter Julie told me she picked up for him.

  ‘August, it’s a pleasure to see you.’ Don gets up from behind his desk, shakes my hand once. ‘Can I get you something to drink? Tea?’

  ‘No thank you.’

  ‘Coffee?’

  ‘No, no, I’m fine really.’

  ‘Whiskey?’

  ‘Might be a little early for something like that.’

  ‘You may be right.’ Don indicates the chair on the opposite side of his desk. ‘Please. Sit down.’ He resumes his own chair, opens a drawer, and pulls out my book. The pages are all dishevelled. ‘This is marvellous.’ He drops the book on his desk and pats it. ‘I read this over two nights. My wife read it the next day—my wife! And she’s a … a …’

  ‘Critic?’

  ‘No! A shrew. She insisted I take it to the chief editor at my publisher, and she loved it! Simply adored it!’

  ‘Really?’

  ‘The prose is simple and engaging, the voice is concise, the story may be a little cerebral at times, but it has real verisimilitude.’ Don smiles, leans back in his chair. ‘My publisher would love to publish this—love to!’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Yes! I couldn’t believe the response—well, yes, I can, given the quality of the work.’

  ‘Thank you.’

  ‘Unfortunately, my publisher’s concerned about the commercial viability of the book.’

  ‘What’s that mean?’

  ‘They like it, but they’re not sure it’ll sell. Number one rule of publishing: they have to believe it’ll sell. So while they love it, unfortunately it’s a no-go. I’m sorry I don’t have better news for you on that front. But this,’ Don taps my book, ‘is good. Excellent. There are some things you can look at—I’m sure Julie’s already discussed them with you.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Excellent. I really don’t have much more to add.’

  And yet, Don proceeds to repeat Julie’s suggestions, even going so far as to reiterate some of the ones written on the book verbatim. I nod and smile, but through the window, I watch students gather in the courtyard. They are tiny from here, but it’s easy to tell they’re joking around—laughing, a couple hugging. One of them is blonde. I know it’s not Julie, but it makes me think of her all the same.

  Don rises abruptly and thrusts his hand out over his desk. ‘I’d wish you good luck, but I think you’ll be okay—better than I was, at least!’

  I get up and shake Don’s hand. Again, like he did at the bookstore, he holds onto me.

  ‘Thanks,’ I say. ‘I read your book, by the—’

  Don snorts. ‘Trite.’

  ‘Sorry?’

  ‘My book. It’s trite.’

  ‘At your launch, you said you wanted an opinion—’

  ‘A performance for the masses.’ Don laughs. ‘My book is a product of what I am, rather than who I am, and as a result I’m restricted by certain parameters and buoyed by certain expectations. But even if that weren’t the case, I don’t think I could emulate your abandon. Ah, I almost forgot!’ He reaches into his pocket with his free hand, produces a business card, and finally releases the handshake so he can place the card in my waiting palm. ‘My publisher. My editor asked me to pass on her card—a direct line, for anything else you might have.’

  ‘I don’t have anything else. Not really.’

  ‘Anything you might write, then—something with commercial viability. A love story about an unlikely couple, perhaps.’

  Don picks up my book, comes around the desk, and holds the book out to me. I take it from him and he walks me to the door, a hand on my back.

  ‘I’m sorry I couldn’t have better news than encouraging feedback and a business card,’ he says, ‘but at least some good came out of it with Julie. That’s something, given everything that’s happened.’

  He opens the door and presses his hand into the small of my back, but I dig my feet into the carpet.

  ‘Given everything that’s happened?’ I ask.

  ‘You haven’t spoken to her?’

  ‘Um, not recently.’

  He frowns. ‘Not at all?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Her aunt died, last Tuesday. Poor thing. Julie’s deferred school for the rest of the year.’

  The calculations that take place in my head are unbidden but instantaneous. Last Tuesday. The day after we broke up. Her aunt died. While I was moping, she was dealing with that. I wish I could’ve been there to help, although who knows how useless I would’ve been? Dead mother, abusive stepfather, cast out on her own as a teen, life with a frail aunt—she keeps getting back up.

  Don’s hand is still putting pressure on my back, but I’m not moving.

  ‘You mentioned something good coming out of this,’ I say.

  ‘My publisher was so impressed with the feedback scribbled all over your manuscript, they offered Julie some freelance editing—I’m not aware if she’s accepted. I wouldn’t blame her if she didn’t.’ Don shakes his head once. ‘We treated her horribly, I’m afraid.’

  ‘We did?’

  ‘My book may be trite, but it was tripe before she got to it—it may have even actually been something had I listened more to her, instead of others,’ Don peeks out the door, as if afraid of being overhead, ‘such as the shrew. But I completely ignored Julie at my launch, because of … well, you’re aware of her past?’

  I nod.

  Don smiles, pats me on the back. ‘Good luck with your book, August,’ he says.

  Then, finally, he gets me out the door.

  28

  I assume my usual booth at Charisma’s and within moments Nicole’s standing before me, notepad in her hand, a wry grin on her face.

  ‘How’s the real world treating you?’ she says.

  ‘Other-worldly,’ I say. ‘You?’

  ‘Better.’

  ‘Sorted out your relationship problems?’

  ‘Ditched him.’

  ‘So
you’re free?’

  ‘I’m with somebody else now.’

  ‘Just like that?’

  ‘Just like that. What can I get you? Beer?’

  ‘Chamomile tea.’

  ‘Chamomile tea?’

  ‘Yeah.’

  I lean back in my booth and enjoy the solitude of Charisma’s before the lunchtime rush. At a table in the promenade sit three men, probably around my age, give or take a couple of years, the similarity between each striking enough to suggest they’re family, all sandy haired—although the youngest of the three has curls—and dressed in black suits. It would be easy to think they’re execs, or three guys dressed in suits doing whatever three guys in suits would do in the city at this time of the morning, but they’re stony faced and dead eyed in a way that makes me assume that they’re grieving. I’m sure they’ve come from a funeral, and I wonder who they’ve lost. A parent? A sibling? The eldest lifts his coffee and when the other two toast it, I’m sure it’s a sibling.

  Then Nicole’s blocking my line of vision as she unceremoniously plonks my chamomile tea in front of me.

  ‘One chamomile tea,’ she says.

  ‘Thanks.’

  ‘You are okay?’

  ‘Yeah. Thanks.’

  ‘Sure?’

  I nod.

  She leaves me to my thoughts, to my tea, to my sense of waiting. I lean my head against the window and tiredness claws at me. The clatter in Charisma’s becomes distinct—the few people present talking, cutlery on plates, the whistling of the coffee machine—and I try to let myself drift away, but something nags at me, something indistinct that’s gotten in but I can’t pinpoint.

  As I ride the elevator up to work—or what was formerly work—I expect apprehension, but feel nothing but an impatience to do this and be on my way. The elevator stops and the doors open. The chorus of cold-callers reciting their scripts hits me with, at first, a momentary shock, and then a sense of familiarity.