Did Adam think she looked like a medieval painting? Any kind of painting at all?
‘Cake, love?’
‘No thanks. Too much sugar makes me come out in spots.’
‘Are you sure it’s sugar? It could be, you know, stress.’
Hazel made reassuring noises, said she was fit and healthy and would definitely check out that nursing degree as soon as she got home. Because sometimes you had to lie to a mother to stop her from worrying. Did mothers ever stop worrying about their children? And why was there no word in English for a person’s adult child?
‘June’s been talking about online dating herself,’ said her mother. ‘Some website called Plenty of Fish. I think she’s very brave.’
Hazel remembered the names: eHarmony. RSVP. Naughty Date, presumably for adults who said winky instead of penis, lady garden instead of vagina. She hadn’t bothered to look.
Her mother leaned in closer. ‘I wasn’t supposed to tell anyone,’ she said. ‘June doesn’t want her girls to know.’
‘Why not?’
‘She’s worried they might laugh at her. Do you know what she said to me? I don’t want to lose my dignity, it’s one of the few things I have left. She never saw it coming, with her husband and that woman from down the road. She said it felt like life had punched her in the face.’
Then her mother screwed up her own face, apologised for gossiping.
‘It’s not gossiping, Mum. You’re being a good friend. And I’m really sorry about what happened. With your four babies.’
She couldn’t begin to imagine a life growing inside her, a life dying inside her. And Juliet. A sister. She would have been—what—twenty-one or twenty-two by now. This too, was unimaginable.
Her mother sighed. ‘They were your father’s babies, too,’ she said. Then she looked Hazel straight in the eye. ‘Are you sure there’s nothing wrong, sweetheart? You look a bit worried. I didn’t upset you, did I?’
‘I’m just a bit preoccupied. Job applications again.’
‘Well, give that nursing degree some thought, won’t you?’
‘Sure, Mum. I’ll check it out as soon as I get home.’
At least she hadn’t made a promise.
Encounters
Hazel and Beth began their day by eating virtuous, boring Weetbix. Eat your Weetbix, brush your teeth, wash your undies in the bathroom sink because you couldn’t be screwed lugging a bag of dirty washing to the laundromat, which was often full of weary mothers and electronic kids and the occasional hopeless male chatting up a hopeful female. But today wasn’t really an ordinary day. Beth’s dress, for starters: bold red and electric blue, with some snaky green things that looked like tropical plants. Her interview dress, apparently, because she’d actually managed to snag one with the owner of a travel agency. Consultancy, Beth had corrected herself, it sounds much classier that way. She was bright with possibilities, as well as her dress, because she’d done some preparation by having coffee with a guy who used to be a travel agent—oops, consultant. Patrick. Very helpful and very good-looking but married, alas, with two kids and another one on the way, and he didn’t look a day over thirty. Anyway, she’d contacted him through Facebook, via the cousin of a friend of someone she used to work with, and he had nearly two thousand friends.
‘Patrick told me that sales skills top the list,’ she said. ‘As long as you can charm people into forking out thousands to reach their destination, it doesn’t really matter if you don’t have destination knowledge yourself.’
‘What’s that?’
‘It means you’ve done some travelling. It has more authority if you call it the other thing. So it’s no big deal that I’ve only been to Sydney and France and Hong Kong with my cousin Carson. That’s always a mouthful, my cousin Carson, so I should just call him Carson and you know who he is anyway, although I don’t think you’ve ever met Carson. My cousin.’ Beth shoved in a spoonful of cereal, chewed quickly, swallowed. ‘And I’ve never been to Bali, which might be a point in my favour cos everyone’s been to Bali.’
Hazel nodded. Tried to look encouraging. Wondered if people actually booked face-to-face these days instead of buying their tickets online.
‘Anyway, I tick the other boxes,’ said Beth. ‘Solid academic results and a passion for travel. Well, I would have a passion for travel if I could afford it. Plus Patrick gave me a whole lot of other advice about ticketing and computer skills and multi-tasking and de-stressing because it can get really full-on, and other things I can’t remember. All that for the price of a decaf soy latte. Except I forgot to ask for decaf when I ordered at the counter. What if he’s one of those people who reacts really badly to caffeine? What if he gets a giant headache or stays up all night with the jitters? I’d never forgive myself. Anyway, he was impressed by my out-there personality. Another plus in the travel industry when you’re dealing with customers. Oops. Clients. You’re meant to call them clients.’
She pushed away her bowl, smoothed down her dress.
‘I bought this at David Jones,’ she said. ‘Two hundred bucks knocked down to eighty. What do you think? I want to look—you know—ready to take on the world.’
Hazel thought the world wasn’t ready for a dress like that.
‘I think something—more professional—would be good,’ she said.
Beth sighed. ‘I think you’re right.’
She picked up her spoon, began slurping her cereal again. Hazel had grown used to the slurping, after three years of living together. Like an old married couple, Todd had once joked.
‘I guess I’ll wear my sensible navy blue suit,’ said Beth.
Their teaching clothes, which they’d worn in different but equally ratbag schools in order to set high standards for the students. Although they’d both turned a blind eye to the shirts that weren’t tucked in, the multiple piercings and clumps of mascara: all the gestures of youthful defiance. Hazel knew she’d been ridiculously naïve. The idealistic, please-feel-free-to-walk-all-over-me teacher who hadn’t taught her semi-literate, often rude and probably unhappy students one goddamned useful thing. But now she was finally doing something useful, in a puny kind of way. Three hours of doorknocking for five weeks in a row. That’s what Simon had messaged her, along with the details of the meeting. The meeting. The very words warmed her but she had to keep her cool.
Beth dashed off to change, dashed back, gave Hazel a here-goes-nothing grin and headed for the door.
Hazel went in search of distraction. Tried to block out what might lie ahead at a house in Wright Avenue, Swanbourne. When everything might go wrong. She thought about cleaning the living-room window, then decided she didn’t really need a clearer view of the congested highway. She cleaned her bedroom window instead, which offered an unimpeded aerial shot of the desolate car park with its massive potholes from last winter’s heavy rains. Next she tackled the fridge, one of her more courageous acts in recent times: broccoli gone to seed, tomatoes squashed and dripping, yoghurt that could have strutted off by itself, plus two mouldy bananas. Then she sorted out her wardrobe, throwing out dresses that were too dull or fussy or desperate, packed them in a bag destined for Vinnie’s. All that waste: food and dresses and a pair of red boots that pinched her toes horribly. Two years ago, she’d bought them, thinking she’d look cool, and she just couldn’t wait for them to order in her size.
How could she not feel ashamed?
She’d seen homeless people huddled in the streets. One of them had played a guitar as a mark of self-respect. Sometimes she dropped a coin into a tattered hat.
Next she tried to pass more time with Persuasion, although the tone was beginning to annoy her: a bit woe-is-me with a dash of English-stiff-upper-lip. But still, it was the book that had brought them together. Adam. Hazel. It was the book he’d held in his hands, the story that—her phone buzzed—an SMS: Todd, asking them to dinner, because would you believe it a job in a bookshop and Dora wants to show off her ring. Wasn’t there some dopey golden oldie about th
at? That you’d have to be drunk to sing along to? Third finger, left hand, that’s where he placed the wedding band. Probably sung by one of those all-girl bands with beehive hairdos and bright red lipstick, belting out their manufactured bliss.
She messaged back: Heaps of congrats on the job will make a huge difference and can’t wait to check out the ring
She deleted the part about the ring because it sounded sarcastic. It was sarcastic.
She heard a quiet knock on her bedroom door, saw Beth’s drawn face in the doorway.
‘I was shit,’ she said.
She sank down on the bed. ‘After all the effort it took to write my application. I’m sick to death of writing applications and so fed up with people telling me I was a natural as a teacher. That’ll look good on a CV, won’t it: a Dip. Ed. in natural talent.’
‘But you were a brilliant teacher, Beth. The students all loved you. I saw all the cards, the gifts.’
Beth pulled a face. ‘I was entertaining,’ she said. ‘As well as being fucking exhausted. Perform, perform, perform, every single day, to kids who couldn’t tell the difference between a plateau and a plate of chips. I was heading that way myself.’ She looked on the point of tears.
‘And that’s why we left, Beth, remember? To save our sanity.’
Beth sniffed. ‘I’m just so sick of feeling dumb,’ she said.
Hazel put an arm around her friend’s shoulder. ‘I wish your mother’s voice wasn’t lodged in your brain,’ she said.
‘Ha! Do you know what happened the other day, Hazie? Aunty Dot was round for afternoon tea and she was boosting me up about how clever I was, with my two degrees and all, then she turned to my mother and said, Aren’t you proud of her, Lisa? And do you know what she said, the cow? Not a fucking word. She didn’t even have the grace to pretend.’ She put her head on Hazel’s shoulder. ‘Todd told me I should try and laugh it off,’ she said. ‘I thought that was really funny.’
Hazel had tried on four dresses and all of them looked wrong—too boring, too flashy, too short—until she found the one that would do. Cool and floaty, without being shapeless, and if you looked closely, it matched the colour of her dark grey eyes. But as for her hair: flat and mousy brown again, now that she’d washed it a dozen times to get rid of the brazen copper. She used to buy a lot of product for that flat, lank hair, in the days when she was a keenly paid-up member of capitalist consumer society: special shampoos and conditioners that were meant to add volume, make your hair billow and swirl. Or if you wanted to be funky, there was sticky gel or fluffy mousse (sometimes one helped, sometimes the other: there was no logic to it at all), as well as spray, foam, de-curl and do-curl. Hundreds of dollars she’d spent, in her quest to be appealing. No wonder she’d been more or less broke when she quit her job. Ran away.
She could still feel the girl’s slimy spit on her cheek. She could still see the girl’s vindictive eyes.
But now it was finally time to head for an unknown house, to an unknown man, who all this time had been living just a few kilometres from her doorstep. She decided to walk instead of catching a bus, because she needed the exercise, the late afternoon was balmy, and it would give her more time to settle down, take in the outside world, even if that world was a little bizarre: a For Sale sign on a massive brick-and-tile, with its bold red words across the top: CIRCA 1987. Circa? Was that white Australia’s version of ancient history? And which real estate guru had dreamt that up? Next she saw an ancient woman (circa 1929) watering her English country garden. More like flooding. Didn’t she know that water was precious, that Australia was the driest continent on the planet? She turned the corner and saw a front verge stacked with a computer and chair, a microwave, a sofa, a mattress, a table, because new ones were always beckoning. And now another house for sale, with a sign boasting five bedrooms, a formal dining room, three bathrooms, etc., etc., and something called a powder room. But women didn’t powder their noses anymore, they injected their skin instead, stretched it, tried to turn back time. Like Nicole Kidman, with her rabbit-inthe-headlights look. Our Nic. The woman hadn’t lived in Australia for years.
Hazel knew she was filling her head with garbage. She, the great consumer, railing against consumerism to stop herself feeling afraid. Because she was almost there, turning into his street. Cars parked on his verge. A brick-and-tile with an overgrown native garden, bushes leaning into one other. A front porch with a worn, comfy-looking sofa. There was no turning back now, climbing up four steps, standing at the open door, and there he was. Sitting at a table. His back to her. She knocked. He stood up, turned around and walked towards her, opened the door and her heart was lubdubbing madly and surely he would see it beating underneath her dress. They said hello. As people do. Was she meant to offer her hand? Wasn’t it the woman’s place to offer her hand? Even if they’d already met?
‘I saw your name on the list,’ he said, in his low, quiet voice. ‘I thought there couldn’t be too many Hazels.’
It was only now she understood how much she loved that voice.
He was stepping aside now and letting her pass and she couldn’t even look at him, saw nothing but a blur of sunshine through a window, then faces coming into focus. Simon and Felicia waving. And then the introductions: a woman called Molly, maybe in her fifties but most definitely decked out in turquoise. Her dress, necklace, earrings, bracelets, some streaks in her hair. A man called Neville, maybe older, with a sour kind of face.
All this waving and shaking of hands, and still she hadn’t touched him. Adam.
She heard offers of tea, coffee, milk, sugar, as she willed her hands to loosen. Would you like tea or coffee, Hazel? She looked up into those bright, pale blue eyes that were—she saw it now—the exact colour of his shirt, and it was the melting feeling all over again and she heard herself say that she’d prefer a glass of wine—again—if that was alright—again, and now everyone was starting a chorus: me too…red if you have it…I can pop down to the bottle shop… She was beginning to like these wine-drinking people as she glanced around the room, trying not to look like a snoop. A simple room, yes, but charming. Polished floorboards, off-white walls, a plain wooden table and six wooden chairs. A small white bookcase with a few rows of books. But not an ornament in sight, no shiny, pointless things, no fuss or display.
Adam handed her a glass of wine and then called for their attention in a non-commanding kind of way. She heard papers shuffling, saw people nodding, told herself to keep her mind on higher things. Adam thanked them all for their commitment, handed them each a file, guided them through the steps as she dutifully turned the pages. There were summaries of policies—whoever invented bullet points deserved a medal—protocols for introducing yourself, strategies for meeting with resistance, how to answer questions, how to jog people’s memories, because sometimes they forgot the issues.
‘Or they don’t really care,’ said Neville.
Adam ignored him, reminded them to put leaflets into letterboxes when no one answered the door. To watch out for snarling dogs lurking in a front garden. And never accept an offer to go inside a house, he said, especially you women. Next up he showed them some forms, and how to tick off people’s responses: Strong Support, Weak Support, Strong Opposition.
‘Most of all,’ he said, ‘we need to listen to voters’ concerns. It’s courteous and strategic. It’s killing two birds with one stone.’
Molly laughed. ‘Did you hear what you just said, Adam? A Green, killing birds?’ She looked around the table. ‘That’s dear Adam for you,’ she giggled, and thrust out her chest, showing not so much a hint of cleavage but a highly explicit statement.
Who was this goddamned woman? Hazel decided she had to speak.
‘Maybe we shouldn’t say concerns,’ she said. ‘That’s an invitation to complain. Maybe we should ask people what matters to them. You know, encourage them to think constructively. Or to speak from the heart.’
‘I like that,’ said Felicia. ‘I like the heart.’
&nb
sp; ‘Matters it is,’ said Adam, and looked around the table. ‘Good call, Hazel. I should have thought of that years ago.’
Hazel flushed with pleasure.
‘So what do people really care about?’ said Molly.
‘Their taxes,’ said Neville.
‘Asylum seekers are a big issue,’ said Simon.
‘Keeping them out, you mean,’ said Neville.
What a pain, thought Hazel. And wasn’t a cynical Green a contradiction in terms? She could see Adam grimace but trying to move on, making some points about climate change.
‘And if people don’t seem to care’—jumping in before Neville could speak—‘appeal to their children’s future. Their grandchildren’s future.’
Silence. A few nods from Simon. Was Neville the serial pest? Why was there always one in the classroom?
‘One more thing, Adam,’ said Molly. She was doing the fluttering eyelash routine. There was always one of those, as well. ‘What would you like us to wear?’
‘Thanks for reminding me, Molly. It is important: that moment when a person first sees you and wonders who you are.’
Tell me about it, thought Hazel.
‘We should wear green-coloured clothes,’ said Neville. ‘But only if people already have some. Why should we fork out money when we’re already giving up our time?’
He was still sounding grouchy but Hazel took his point. And she didn’t own one green item of apparel.
Others were chipping in now: Molly wanting Greens T-shirts, important for verification, while Simon felt strongly that people were put off by the slogans. Felicia agreed with Neville, although Hazel was thinking that Felicia’s dress was bound to be irrelevant, since unknown men at unknown doors would be undressing her with their non-political eyes.
She cleared her throat. Ready to say her bit. ‘What about everyday clothes?’ she said. ‘As long as they’re neat and clean. You know, look mainstream so people don’t feel antagonistic. And then hit them with your radical views.’
The Art of Persuasion Page 6